Captain Foster and Captain Wortley also were killed at this time, besides many other gallant officers and men. Foster when he died was but twenty-two years old. When he came over with the division, he was nothing but a curly-headed boy. In the year and a half that he spent in France he turned from a boy into a man. He was afraid of nothing and had a rarer virtue in that he was always in good spirits. He had been hit once before at Soissons. He had been platoon leader and adjutant. Later, on the death of the company commander, Captain Frey, he had taken command of a company. He, like Lieutenant Amory, was shot through the head by a machine gun.
Wortley was an older man and had always been ambitious to join the regular army. He had served an enlistment in the regulars and had been a sergeant. Later at the Leavenworth School he had received his commission. Wortley also had been wounded at Soissons.
Major Youell described to me a personal incident of this battle, which illustrates very well the dull leathery mind that everyone gets after a certain amount of bitter fighting and fatigue. As commander of the Second Battalion he had received orders for an attack. He was not sure of his objectives. He got out his very best prismatic compass, which he valued more than any of his other possessions, as it was virtually impossible to replace it, sighted carefully, determined the direction of the attack, ordered the advance, put the compass on the ground, and walked off, leaving it there. When he next thought of it the compass was gone for good.
Another captain we had was thoroughly courageous personally, but he had one very bad fault. He could not keep his men under control. Once after an attack his battalion commander was checking up to see if the objectives were taken and all units in place. He found the objectives were taken all right, but that, in the instance of this one company, the company itself was missing! On the objective was sitting simply the company commander and his headquarters group. The rest of the company had missed its direction advancing through a wood and got lost.
I remember this same company commander in another action. We had been advancing behind tanks, which had all been disabled by direct fire from the Germans. I went forward to where he was lying with a handful of men by one of these tanks. I said to him, "Captain, where is your company?" He said, "I don't know, sir; but the Germans are there." He knew where the enemy were and was perfectly game to go on and attack them with his eight or nine men.
Colonel Hjalmar Erickson was commander of the Twenty-sixth Infantry during this action. He was a fine troop leader and a powerful man physically. During a battle the higher command naturally want to know what is going on at the front. It is very difficult for the officer at the front to furnish these details; often he is busy, sometimes he knows nothing to tell. Once, during the first Argonne battle, the higher command called upon Erickson. Nothing was happening, but Erickson was equal to the occasion.
"Yes, yes, everything is fine. What has happened? Our heavies have just started firing and it sounds good," was Erickson's reassuring message.
Meanwhile I had been given a Class B rating and detailed as an instructor at the school of the line at Langres. After I had been there a short while I saw an officer from the First Division and told him I was awfully anxious to get back and felt quite up to field work again. A few days after that General Parker called up some of the commanding officers in the college on the telephone. I had one obstacle to overcome. I still had to walk with a cane, and, although this did not really make any difference to me from a physical standpoint, it was a question if I could get the medical department to pass me as Class A. We decided that the best way to do was to take the bull by the horns and go anyhow. I said good-by to the college one night and went with Major Gowenlock, of the division staff, directly back to the division. I was technically A. W. O. L. for a couple of weeks, but they don't court-martial you for A. W. O. L. if you go in the right direction, and my orders came through all right. On reporting to General Frank Parker, who was commanding the division, he assigned me to the command of my own regiment. When my orders finally came to the school directing me to report to C. G., of the First Division, for assignment to duty, I was commanding the regiment in battle.
At about this time three cavalry troopers reported to the Twenty-sixth Infantry. They said they came from towns where they had been on military police duty. They stated that they had heard from a man in a hospital that the First Division was having a lot of fighting and so they had gone A. W. O. L. to join it. They were attached to one of the companies, and a letter was sent through regular channels saying that they were excellent men and we wanted their transfer to a combatant branch of the service. We phrased it this way in order to tease one of our higher command who belonged to the cavalry. A long while later, as I recall, an answer came back directing me to send the men back to their outfit, but they were all either killed or wounded at that time.
After the division was relieved from the Argonne it went into rest billets near the town of Ligny, there to rest and receive replacements before returning into the same battle. Advantage was taken of this brief period of rest to give leave to some of the enlisted personnel and officers. This was the first leave most of them had had since they had been in France. Captain Shipley Thomas took the men under his command to their area. He described to me on his return how on the way down all the men would talk about was: "Do you remember how we got that machine-gun nest? That was where McPherson got his." "Do you remember how Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Dobbs got those seventy-sevens by outflanking and surprising them?"