Echoes from over there

Front matter

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Preface

Ask a doughboy or an officer about "over there" these days, and nine times out of ten his answer will be, "Oh, what's the use of talking about it? Folks are tired of hearing about the war."

The boys, lately returned, are eager to tell us of what they have seen and endured. Is it possible there is no audience for the moving stories of our young heroes?

We believe that people, through the return, or nonreturn, of some loved one, are now so familiar with the reality of the Great War that they have little interest in war fiction. The day of the war play with its battle raging offstage, and the novel with its villain regenerated on the field, is past.

Instead, we long to look into the eyes of our young fighters and hear from their own lips, authentic details of what happened overseas.

Will you yawn and think of other matters when your boy stretches his legs before your fireplace once more and begins, "Well, Dad, it was this way. We went over the top at — "

Or, if your boy paid the supreme price and lies with lips forever sealed, would you not listen hungrily to the story told by a member of his own company, by his Buddy, perhaps?

Possibly, you had no one dear to you to send across. You must still be eager to learn all you can of that strange world of death, and struggle, and unimaginable bravery into which our untried youth advanced, and from which they have emerged, laurel crowned, our great, national pride.

We offer you in this volume, not the skillful work of fiction writers, but veritable human documents. The boys themselves wrote these stories, or dictated them from their hospital beds.

You will find adjectives and elaborate descriptive writing conspicuously lacking. But if you have imagination, what inspiring drama you will find between the lines of these abrupt, little narratives!

And if you lack imagination, these tales must still be eloquent, for they are abrim with the personalities of the boys, so only a heart is necessary to understand and love them.

The Editors.

Contents

Page

McIntyre Girls' Letter iii

Preface

Part I

Private T. S. Allen 9

Lieutenant J. A. Brady 19

Sergeant Samuel P. Capwell 27

Corporal Meyer J. Lapine 35

Private Frank M. Jacobs 45

Private Wayne W. French 54

Private Frank J. Vanderhoven 63

Corporal Paul Bonner 69

Part II. The Old Army and the New

Captain Wilmar Bradshaw 75

Private Hyman Zucker 83

Sergeant Ray Smith 85

Private Charles C. Weise 90

Letter from Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt 95

Private Roy Miller 97

Sergeant Spiras Thomas 99

Page

Private Irving Abrahams 103

Private Charles A. Pettit 107

Private Albert Marks Ill

Sergeant Joseph Morini 115

American Official Communique No. 133. ... 119

Corporal John H. Bennet 121

Appendix I.

"Passed by the Censor" 123

Part III

Captain George U. Harvey 137

Private Joseph Rigler 153

Private Joseph Sisenwein 157

Private George Hart 169

Lieutenant Sidney Schoenfeld 177

Prviate Louis Weinberg 180

Private Larry Wolff 182

Sergeant Max Wicker 189

Corporal Alan Streat 193

Sergeant Sidney Ettinger 197

Citation — Sergeant W. Maloney 199

Sergeant Victor Vigorito (Johnny Victor) 200

Sergeant Michael Donaldson 233

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

Private T. S. Allen 7

Sergeant Samuel Capwell 26

Corporal Meyer Lapine 34

Private Frank Vanderhoven 62

Corporal Paul Bonner 68

Captain Wilmar Bradshaw 74

Private Hyman Zucker 82

Private Roy Miller 97

Private Irving Abrahams 102

Private Albert Marks 110

Sergeant Joseph Morini 114

Corporal John Bennet 120

Captain George Harvey 136

Private Joseph Rigler 152

Private Joseph Sisenwein 156

Private George Hart 168

Sergeant Max Wicker 188

Sergeant Michael Donaldson 232

PARTI

PRIVATE T. S. ALLEN

Private T. S. Allen

Born in Clear Lake, South Dakota, December 21, 1896. Enlisted in United States Marine Corps May 2, 1917. Wounded and gassed in Belleau Wood May 8, 1918, still in Pclham Bay Hospital.

When I emerged from, kilts or whatever it was I wore as a kid, and acquired my first sling shot, I began to hanker for a fight. While the sun was high in the heavens, I would venture forth from the house in search of "redskins" and the bold bad men whose exploits we still heard much of in the west of my childhood. As the shadows lengthened, the house always looked good to me while my mother's arms and my father's towering bulk offered a most welcome retreat from the hostile hordes my youthful imagination had conjured up.

In time, I became the proud possessor of a gun and my father taught me to use and respect it.

As was natural, my reading ran to the deeds of the men of the last frontier; then along came my school histories with their stories of Lexington and Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Lundy's Lane, Chapultepec. These seemed to me like those stories which begin, "There were giants in those days." Still, they gave a heroic background in my mind for the closer events of the Civil War, and the brief but glorious episodes of the War with Spain, in reading of which I was first introduced to the Marines.

This may seem going a long ways back, but, I take it, that in telling my story I am telling the story of the thousands of mighty fine lads we left "over there," for in these fragments of my youthful activities and mental processes I believe is the key to the miracle we wrought in France.

As the years ran on, I did not plan to be a merchant, or a lawyer, or farmer, but kept to my books, my hunting and fishing and my dreams of soldiering, — of "the day of glory."

How angry I used to get at the pacifists who wanted to abolish war, for I counted myself, even then, as among the "red blooded" that Teddy was always appealing to. And how ill I thought Fate had used me, in that I had been born too late for even the "Relief of Pekin."

I was, of course, ashamed of my military dreams, and after the fashion of youth, carried them hid in my heart where they fed hungrily.

The War in Europe, however, found me, at first, strangely unresponsive. Of course, I was interested and read everything about it that I could get hold of, but it did not seem real to me. I just could not believe somehow, that armies were once more arrayed for battle.

But the ferment was at work. As the war ran on, month after month, I became, first of all, a partisan. It was the Canadians who "got" me.

They came from our side of the water. Many of them were Americans, so the papers said. Well, if the Americans were fighting, I was with them, no matter what uniform they wore.

There were many German sympathizers in our neck of the woods, and I had all the fighting I wanted every day at school.

Nothing like fighting for a thing to make a man value it.

I began to turn over in my mind the project of running away to join the Canadians, but something held me back.

Then America entered the War. My long dreamed of day had come.

On May 2, 1917, at Maryland, California, I enlisted in the Marines.

The first to fight ! It seemed to me that I belonged among the first.

One may ask, "Why the Marines?"

Well, as I have said, I had read a great deal of our history and I had seen a few soldiers and an occasional Marine. • The soldiers looked like husky chaps, but there was something about the Marines you could not forget.

Alert, clean, always minding their own business, getting all that was their due quietly but firmly, they left a deep impression on me of being men who were able to look out for themselves in' any situation.

I may seem a "stuck up" boy to have elected myself to that illustrious company. But I tell you I felt that I "belonged."

For fourteen weeks, they put me through the marine course of training at the Maryland Camp and I'm frank to admit that there were many bitter moments when I wondered if I had not paid myself too much of a compliment in picking out the Marines.

There were many things about them, too, which surprised me. Though the occasional Marines I had seen had been young men, still my idea of a Marine had been a grizzled old fighting man, who was a cross between John L. Sullivan and a bull fighter. My companions in camp were youths like myself, even the sergeants and most of the lieutenants were but little older than myself.

One thing helped me with the outfit. I qualified on the range as a sharpshooter and the drill-sergeants did the rest.

I was a Marine and I was not.

I belonged and I did not. So matters stood ; when they shipped us to Quantico, Virginia.

On the way, we had a train wreck. Some of the bunch were killed and many were hurt. Life and the service gained something of reality from that experience. But when we reached Quantico, and as a member of the 78th Company, I also became one of the 6th Regiment of the United States Marine Corps,

I really first came into my heritage of "belonging" to the Marines.

Colonel A. W. Catlin, now Brigadier-General Catlin, was our commanding officer and he sure could put jazz into a lot of men, gathered from all over the country, and make them feel that a regiment of Marines was the greatest thing they ever had been or ever would be associated with.

Drill, drill, inspection, and still more drill. Then along about the middle of January, 1918, we slipped aboard a transport one night and sailed for France, arriving at St. Nazaire on February 3rd.

France did not look anything like I thought it would. I had expected to see everything smart and sort of all aressed up. But here it was old fashioned. French soldiers going about in uniforms of bright colors. Red trousers and gold braid. The lighthouses and cottages painted all colors, pink, yellow and blue; and the people as quaint as the town.

"Some one has been telling it to the Marines," said my comrade oi the moment, "this place ain't France. I know better. I seen too many movies of Paris down in Newport, Tennessee, where I come from."

He found those to agree and disagree with him. A heated argument started which the bugler stopped as he barked us an order.

The people were kind to us, though somewhat shy. They struck me as being disappointed in a way, as though we were not up to sample. I didn't get it at the time, but I made up my mind later that they were looking for something about seven feet tall with whiskers, like the bearded lady in the circus.

A three-day trip in tiny box cars brought us to Robecourt, a town near Nancy, where we began some more training and learned about cooties, and trenches, rats, French weather, and mud.

By the middle of March, we were on the line, having taken over some old French trenches near Verdun. It was a quiet sector, a so-called training sector.

We had patrol work, and "stood to," and went through all the rest of it. While there were a few of the fellows killed, it seemed unreal, as it had in the newspapers at the beginning of the war. Frankly, we were bored and little interested, and could not understand why it had been necessary to bring us over to finish the job.

Then it got to be June, and they moved us up to a place you have read about called Belleau Wood. I'd say that position held our attention all right. It sure did measure up to everything one had ever heard of. or imagined about this war or any other.

The country was broken. There were wheat fields tucked in among patches of brush and tall trees. An occasional village half seen, half hidden among trees and foliage. Ravines, little knolls and hills and, just where we entrenched, a great rough stretch of forest, rolling up and spreading out to either side.

Our line ran along the crest of ground rising above a small ravine. There were a few rods of open ground and then the woods. Belleau Wood.

The world was filled with confusion, noise and excitement. The French troops we came in touch with, had been having a hard time of it, around that neighborhood, and some had been shot up elsewhere and brought there for rest. A fine place to rest I'd say it was.

My company dug its fox holes along the line of the ravine. The Huns left us pretty much alone while we were at it; I guess because a drove of French "seventy-fives" somewhere back of us were worrying them about up to capacity.

Being marines, we knew that if the French guns were putting in shell as fast as they were, something was due to come along.

Sure enough ! The German guns began to tune up. A deepening roar came from the hills beyond the woods, while out from the concealed machine gun positions in the woods, a well-directed machine gun fire whipped our position.

We were being punished without being able to reply, for the woods hid the enemy from us. The French ''seventy-fives" seemed to sense our uneasiness, for they increased the volume of their fire in a great wave.

"Here they come !" a shrill boyish voice piped up.

"Hold your fire!" the injunction ran from officer to officer and man to man.

The German barrage lifted ; the French guns almost ceased firing. The men about me were cursing and swearing in that choice collection of profanity that belongs to the Marines. It took me back swiftly, on the wings of memory, to a lonely walk in the woods I had taken, as a boy, when I had whistled to keep up my courage.

The German troops were clear of the woods. On they came with closed ranks in four lines. One looked at them with almost a friendly interest. No particular hate or fear. And yet there was a queer sensation along the spine, and the scalp seemed to itch from the tug of the hair at the roots. The fingers bit into 1 the rifle.

"Hold your fire !"

As the command rang on my ears with a sharpness that enforced obedience, I seemed to be standing on Bunker Hill and hear the command : "Wait till you see the whites of their eyes !"

I think I know how those old Yanks felt that day, as the enemy drew nearer and nearer.

The next I recall is firing. Firing. Firing. My fingers were tearing greedily at more ammunition, then the instinct of the hunter restrained me. I began to fire slower, looking for my mark, making sure of a hit. The Huns now appeared to me almost on top of us and then, all of a sudden, there was nothing more to aim at. A few scattered groups with hands held up, racing for our lines and shouting "Kamerad! Kamerad !"

We had ceased firing, but still these terror stricken men withered away. It was their own machine gunners behind them, in the woods, deliberately shooting their own men who had failed to carry home an impossible charge.

I felt suddenly sick. From that moment, I hated the Hun and treated him without mercy.

The German guns opened on us again and the French replied. Another period of torment began; a period when many gallant lads "went west" or, badly wounded, were sent to the rear after dark.

Our position was the most advanced of the whole line.

The Hun wanted us out of there, but there we stayed until relieved and the fighting had swept to other parts of the line.

A little later, I mean of course a few days later, the defensive game was over. We had the ball, and the line we had to put it across was Bouresches. The 96th company of Marines was on our right, if my memory is correct, and under cover of our advance and the excellent work of the guns, a handful of them reached the town. The fields they had crossed were brown with the bodies of our boys, who had not sought to take cover but had driven straight ahead at their object in the face of continuous bursts of well-directed machine gun fire.

Oh, the Huns bled us that day ! But the blood was not shed in vain, for the whole German line, clear to the English channel, creaked from the blow struck by a handful of American Marines, most of whom were under twenty-one.

Well, as I started to say, a handful of the 96th got into town and hung on by the skin of their teeth while fighting hand to hand with picked German shock troops. They managed to get a runner back asking for help, and I'd say every man in the division (the Second) wanted to go to their help.

They got about a platoon together finally, from positions where a man or two could be spared, and they went through to help the 96th. We held Bouresches when that fight was over.

Once more the war had measured up to expectations.

Our dead were numbered by the thousands, and we had been tested, almost to the limit. There had been no time for thinking, little to notice what was going on.

One simply fought by instinct and, being a Marine, fought in the right way. Did the correct thing. Marines are born, not made by enlisting in the corps. Enlisting in the corps simply develops the Marine or uncovers a yellow streak and the man is dropped. All the drill in the world would not teach men the things that I saw boys like Paul Bonner of New York do. Paul, who used to be a jewelry salesman before the war, and joined the Marines because he, too, thought that he belonged ! Paul who always kept his smile and his head, and who threw his life away a dozen times in a day and lived to come home !

I can't go on and carry you through the fight for Belleau Wood. It needs a book itself, but as this is my story, I'll jump ahead a little to where I was hit.

Our lines were advancing by sheer pluck. I think it was in the afternoon of June 13th, that my company took up a position in a heavily wooded valley. When I say heavily wooded, I mean a place where the thickets of underbrush grew between the trees higher than a tall man's head, and paths and roads were few and far between, while the heavy foliage of early spring overhead, shut out the light of day until it was always twilight among the trees, and at night so dark a man could not see his hand before his face. No use trying to wear a gas mask, for you could not see with it on, and twigs and branches were always tearing it out of position.

The German planes had been watching us all day, and they knew where we were all right.

It was a desperate hole for troops to be in, and we were deployed of necessity to cover the front, as well as for protection from the shell fire we knew was coming.

The late afternoon and evening passed quietly. We slipped some men back to a well from which the German dead had been taken but a few hours before. The water was foul with taint, but at least it was water. Chow was due along about midnight, and in spite of the wickedness of our situation we began to cheer up. In the morning, it was our job to clean out the last of Belleau Wood in our front.

Almost on the hour of midnight, when the chow was being distributed, the Hun opened up everything in that part of the country on the valley, which had, of course, been accurately registered.

H. E., shrapnel, whizz bangs, and mustard gas shell rained on us.

There was no standing such fire. It meant annihilation for the whole unit and perhaps a hole in our line. There was but one thing to do, and that was to get out before the gas had done its work.

We began to feel our way out of the trap. The darkness of the place was made darker still by the flashes of the exploding shell ; the mustard gas was getting in its devilish work, while perfectly helpless before the wrath of the Hun, we stumbled blindly and in agony toward the rear.

The human senses reeled into oblivion before such an attack. Men lived by the spirit that is in them, "carrying on," though it was to the rear, with a thought for the honor of the regiment and for the need of the boy next who had fallen.

We came out of that place finally — some of us.

And we came out as an organized military command. We had our weapons with us and our wounded. Driven back, decimated, in agony, but still conscious that we were Marines of the 6th Regiment, whose dead had fallen without a chance for a blow.

Every survivor in the company went to the hospital, except the two cooks who were not there.

It was in that engagement, that I was hit and gassed.

I do not recall being hit, though I had a shrapnel bullet through my leg.

Now, I have written for you of the boyhood hours when in my mind, as well as in the minds of my fellows, the mental thews were being formed. And I have told you as briefly as I know how, perhaps too briefly, of the hours when those thews were tested. I hope it will be a little plainer just how it was we went over so blithely, and bore ourselves so well.

It was September, before I was back with my regiment to go with it through to the signing of the armistice. The gas and the wound, however, still bothered me so I went to the hospital again and have just returned to the United States. At the time of writing this, on May 8th, I am still in Pelham Bay hospital.

ECHOES FROM OVER THER E J9

II

Lieutenant Joseph A. Brady

Reporter for New York Evening World. Commissioned a Lieutenant and assigned second battalion, Fifth Regiment of United States Marine Corps. Fought at Belleau Wood and in the Soissons offensive.

His Own Story of the First Day of the Offensive

Suppose you were a soldier and for four months a strong and hideous enemy had been heaving steadily into the columns of your army great quantities of gas, flame, shells and bullets and had been ceaselessly forcing you back; and you, sometimes starving and thirsty, had been fighting him back, and then suppose on a clear summer morning the earth had opened and drawn your enemy into a literal vortex of hellfire, what would you do? Would you first go into a wild delirium of joy and then fall down in the fields in a deep, contented sleep? That is just what most of us did who had been fighting for four months when the great offensive of the Allied Armies overwhelmed the German Army south of Soissons on July 18 last.

When we stepped from the auto trucks in which we had been riding for thirty hours, on the afternoon of July 17, on the edge of the Villers-Cotterets Forest, we did not know that we were going into battle, but we did know that we were tired and hungry. We looked for food and there was none. We looked for water, but it was poisonous, and guards with bayonets kept it from us. The only food was grass, and we could eat that without water. There were thousands of us there, but each man only thought or realized that he alone was there.

We wearily plodded through the deep roads of the forest, but we did not know where we were going.

Then we noticed cavalry, thousands of horses, standing quietly in the woods. And tanks, standing silent and appearing not at all like the great demons we had been told they were. Guns were everywhere, large, medium and small. Two hundred thousand men were there, and on that quiet summer day beyond the confines of the forest you would not know there was a soul there. Enemy aeroplanes above hummed and the aviators peered in vain through the thick foliage of the mighty trees.

Night came, and with it rain and lightning, and thunder, and action. The tanks, the great guns and the ammunition wagons rumbled out on the roads. The soldiers staggered along up to their knees in mud in the ditches alongside the roads; now and then they cried out as a horse slipped and a wagon filled with heavy shells fell and crushed some of them. For forty-eight hours some had been without sleep. The officers fought every step of the way to keep alert for what was to come, and they prayed to God the Germans would not find out what was going on, for knowledge to the Germans then would have meant certain destruction to a great allied army.

Somewhere along the fifth mile, we were stopped and a call for officers went out. We, the officers of the 5th Regiment, United States Marines, assembled in a little clearing and met Col. Logan Pheland. He told us briefly we were going to attack and attack big — - along a thirty-mile front. We had the post of honor, he said, along with the 1st American Division, and French Zouaves were to be on our left. My battalion, the 2d, was to be in the first wave ; X day and Z hour were the time for the attack. We laughed, for we knew it meant in plain language early the next morning.

I was battalion scout officer and Major Ralph S. Kayser gave me the maps and told me to mark off* the objectives and directions. In the pouring rain, and with the help of my smothered flashlight, I marked the maps and handed them out to the company commanders. I saw that Capt. Wass was there, Lieut. Elliott Cooke, Lieut. Becker, Lieut. Zyschke and myself. We were all that were left out of the nine officers that started in the mess of the 18th Company at Verdun in March. The next night Wass and Becker were dead, and Cooke, Zyschke and I were headed for the hospital. Two days before, Zyschke and I had matched to see who would be the next officer to go to the States as an instructor and Zyschke had won ; he was to leave after the attack.

Col. Pheland called to me and asked me to go ahead of the regiment with him to find the guides who were to take us to the jumping-ofT place. We plunged ahead, dodging horses, tanks and artillery. It was pitch dark, the only light coming from an occasional flash of lightning. On we went to the Paris road where the guides were to be. 'No one was there. We awakened sleepy French artillery officers, but they told us they had just arrived and could not help us. We stood in the woods waiting for the battalions with no definite idea of where to go, and in an hour and a half, at 4:30 A.M., we were to attack.

Right there came deep if unspoken curses; no guides, no time, no food, little ammunition and precious little information, except that in an hour and a half two thousand guns would open a barrage which we were to follow, and a hundred thousand German shell would fail to stop us before we were within a mile of where we were to attack. The battalions came up and we plodded on. When we stopped figuring how we were going to pull out, we prayed.

Daylight came suddenly. It revealed artillery officers standing just within the forest borders with watches in their hands. It revealed twenty minutes to make the attacking point, and it showed a thousand yards away a small arms ammunition dump. The men rushed to the dump. I saw a dozen French soldiers hurrying away. They had been relieved from the trenches. I ran after them. One of them spoke English. He had lived in New York.

"Guides," I shouted. "Guides, soldiers to take us in. We are late. Hurry ; hurry."

The Frenchman, who spoke English, hurriedly explained to the others, and these dozen poilus, who were on their way out to safety, water and food, turned and volunteered to lead us in. They knew it meant death. It did, indeed, to some of them, and they went back to take it, all for La Patrie and because the Americans asked them.

The men were grabbing ammunition, bullets and grenades and as fast as they finished, I was putting them in charge of a poilu to lead them in. The last man cleared. Down the road we went, running, for the artillery officers would be calling off the seconds now. Then it came. I heard a quiet human voice. I suppose it said fire. Perhaps many voices said it. In a second came the blast of two thousand guns. The concussion almost threw us over but we went on, catching our breaths and hardly knowing for a minute what it was.