Experiences of the great war : Artois, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne

Preface

This Record of my Experiences in the Great War was begun shortly after the Armistice when the events were fresh in my mind, and solely for the purpose of preserving them in my own memory. This statement is made as an apology for the many personal references in the account. The work was well on its way to completion before it became apparent that there would be no other detailed and continuous account of the events herein recorded ; and many men and officers expressed a desire to have a copy of the account, and this book is published in response to that desire and largely for their special benefit. It will be a very happy coincidence, however, if others shall find in it something to increase their appreciation of the heroic service and sacrifices of the men whose names are recorded here, or to stimulate a greater pride in their achievements.

Nothing has been written herein merely for the purpose of appealing to the popular imagination ; the facts stated are historically accurate, and movements, battles and other events are based upon orders and copies of orders in my possession.

I am indebted beyond measure to my Orderly in the War, Corporal Leon M. Bazile (who is referred to on many occasions in the book) for his painstaking collection of data as to dead, wounded and missing, and the participants in the great battles, and for his valuable suggestions made in the course of the preparation of the book; and I am indebted also to Corporal David Shiflf, the Battalion Clerk, who spent many hours in typewriting the manuscript.

ASHBY WILLIAMS,

Roanoke, Va., June 20th, 1919.

PRESS OF

THE STONE PRINTING AND MANUFACTURING CO.

ROANOKE. VIRGINIA

EXPERIENCES OF THE GREAT WAR.

Chapter I The Departure From Camp

It was five o'clock on the afternoon of the seventeenth day of May, 1918, that my command, "E" Company, 320th Infantry, was lined up in front of the "Upper Barrack" at Camp Lee, Virginia, preparatory to leaving for the Great War. The men, in full equipment, and the officers completely togged up for foreign service, had previously taken part in a battalion parade. As we passed out Thirty-first Street and along Avenue B, on the way to the train, soldiers had lined both sides of the way and cheered us as we passed. Some people whom I knew called to me as I marched at the head of my column and bade me Godspeed. The men were, for the most part, silent. They were wondering, no doubt, how many of us who had started out on that great journey would ever return. And I confess, for my own part, that a lump came in my throat as I answered those who called to me, and the tears would not keep back. I remember Mrs. McQuillen, mother of one of my lieutenants, who came to tell him good-bye ; she strove hard to keep back the tears as I shook hands with her. Reverend Mr. Nelson was at the train and insisted upon my stepping aside to take a snapshot of me togged up in my foreign service equipment.

We were soon aboard the train, men and packs and everything, including Pete, a black and tan bulldog, the mascot of "E" Company. It shall be my melancholy duty to report later the manner of his taking off. We reached Lambert's Point by ten o'clock that night and got aboard a ship, and by twelve o'clock, exhausted by the fatigue and emotion of the day, were sound asleep in our bunks.

The next morning (May 18th) shortly before noon we slipped out of the harbor so quietly that many of us did not know the ship had left until we chanced to go on deck.

The ship was called the Duke D'Abruzzi. She was an old Italian liner which we understood had been engaged for a number of years in commercial traflfiic between the Mediterranean Sea and South American ports. She was a dirty old ship of about 400 feet in length, with enough staterooms to accommodate the officers and some of the sergeants, and fitted up below the main deck with tier upon tier of canvas bunks for the men. The men's quarters would have been fairly comfortable but for the fact that they were below decks and lighted and ventilated only by the portholes, which had to be closed and kept closed at night to keep out the heavy seas and to prevent the lights from shining out for the benefit of lurking submarines.

There were on board the ship the following troops :

2d Battalion 320th Infantry ;

315th Machine Gun Battalion;

A detachment of the 319th Infantry; and the

160th Brigade Headquarters ;

making a total, including the crew of one hundred men, of about one thousand eight hundred souls aboard the ship. Brigadier General Lloyd M. Brett, the commanding general of the 160th Brigade, was in command of the troops, and two naval officers acted in conjunction with the Italian ship's officers in the direction of the ship's movements.

THE TRIP ACROSS THE OCEAN

The next day out at sea we were joined by eight other ships, some of them carrying troops as we were, and one laden with naval stores, making a total of nine ships in the convoy. They were, indeed, a curious lot, with their camouflage of paint and false funnels and all that. There was one painted so that it looked like two ships, and another fixed up to appear as if going in the opposite direction, and so on, everything to deceive the dreaded submarine torpedo. All distinctive markings were, of course, eflfaced, to prevent the Boche from getting identifications, but notwithstanding this we learned the names of some of them.

There was the Re d'ltalia, the slowest ship in the convoy, carrying the First Battalion of our regiment, which I was destined afterwards to command in the great war. and there was the President Lincoln, a huge ship carrying five thousand men, and others we could not learn the names of.

Our escort consisted at first of one American cruiser, the Huntington, so we were informed, and, I think, two torpedo boat destroyers. Later on we were joined by five other boats of the latter class. The work of the escort ships was wonderful ; they had a speed of as high as thirty knots an hour, and this great speed enabled them to shoot in and out and around the flanks and to the front when anything suspicious appeared on the horizon. Their vigilance enabled us to maintain an even and uninterrupted speed of twelve knots along our zigzag course. On about our fifth day out most of these torpedo boat destroyers left us for a time and we were informed that they had gone to the Azore Islands for fuel oil. While they were gone the cruiser was like an old hen with nine chickens. With her great speed she would shoot around to the flanks and to the front and sometimes to the rear of the convoy in response to wireless messages picked up, or when anything suspicious appeared above the waves. One day, I remember, she sighted something on the horizon to our right front and she took out after it with all speed and when almost "over the hill" she signalled back frantically with powerful lights : "Change direction forty-five degrees to the left." In less than five minutes every ship in the convoy was headed in the new direction. Of course there was great excitement and there was much speculation as to the cause of this sudden change in direction, and the news sifted through to us that the cruiser had sighted submarines chasing ships that were going back to America.

Of course everybody was on the qui vive and everybody was straining his eyes toward the horizon. One can, therefore, imagine the excitement which we experienced when about in mid-ocean we discovered a number of specks appearing upon the horizon ahead of us. The cruiser immediately went out in that direction and sent back word that the torpedo boat destroyers that had left us for the Azore Islands were coming back, and in a very short time all the torpedo boat destroyers were around us and we felt very much more secure.

SUBMARINES

Submarines was the topic, of course, of most discussion. Every precaution that it was possible for us to take was taken against them. We wore our life preservers always when awake and kept them close to our heads when asleep. In fact, a great many men slept in them at night as they were warm. A submarine watch was organized with Lieutenant Martin, one of my officers, in command of it. Twelve men stood watch all night from points of vantage on ship. There was also on duty a regular guard with twenty-five or thirty sentries stationed about the ship to prevent lights at night, or to prevent articles being thrown overboard that would give a clue as to our passage, and for the purpose of enforcing other regulations for the safety of the ship. Besides this, there was the daily "Abandon ship" drill when, at the sound of a bugle, all men would rush to their proper places in line on deck, and diflferent parties would assemble at the lifeboats and rafts.

It was determined also that in case of a submarine attack the ship would be divided into four parts, an officer in command of each, to direct and control the men in case of attack. The ship was divided as follows : Bow, under the command of Major

Holt; Port, under command of Major Rothwell ; Stern, under command of Captain Price ; and the Starboard under my command. This was, by far, the most tickHsh job that I had ever tackled, at least that was the way I felt about it, and I confess to having spent many anxious hours in connection with this duty. To take care of myself in case of a submarine attack was a pretty big job but to have to undertake to control and direct the conduct of between three and four hundred men at such a time as that was quite another matter.

Many perplexing problems presented themselves to my mind. The men had been drilled to stand in line at "attention" and not to move without command of the proper officer. I had made a pretty accurate survey of the ship with special reference to its bulkheads and had made up my mind that she would have to be struck either at a point separating two of the compartments or amidships into the boiler room before she would sink, and this opinion gave me a certain amount of assurance. But it was only an opinion and one can never tell where a torpedo will strike a ship, nor what the ship will do when she is struck. If she were struck on the starboard side and listed in that direction, the problem was how soon should we jump, or whether we should jump at all, considering that she might right herself sufficiently to float ; if she were struck on the port side and listed in that direction, at what time should we jump, considering the fact that if she listed far enough we could not jump at all. Such perplexing thoughts as these occupied a great many of my waking moments aboard the Duke D'Abruzzi.

On the eighth day out we had a real submarine scare. There appeared on the surface of the water in the midst of the convoy an object which resembled the back or side of a submarine awash. It did not appear until after our ship had passed it. At any rate, when it came into view, every ship in the convoy (all were armed fore and aft with 3-inch guns), as well as the torpedo boat destroyers, opened fire. Of course when the ships opened fire, the "Abandon ship" call was sounded and every man rushed to the deck to his place in line. At the same time all ships put on full speed, determined to give the Boche as wide a berth as possible. There are those who say it was a submarine, and others who say it was a dead whale or a capsized lifeboat, but all of them thought that it was best to shoot first and investigate afterwards.

On our tenth day out we reached deep water. Theretofore depth had been measured by fathoms, now it was measured in miles. Indeed the great ground swells made the surface of the ocean resemble the hills and valleys of rolling prairie land. All of us passed over the choppy seas without the slightest touch of

EXPERIENCES OF THE GREAT WAR V

any interior uneasiness and many of the young men had boasted like an "old salt" of their ability to sail the sea.

THE DEATH OF "PETE"

There was much to do and no time was lost on board ship. Reveille in the morning, breakfast, and drill and exercises around the promenade deck. It was during one of these exercises that Pete, the mascot of "E" Company, came to grief. He was tired of being cooped up below decks and wanted some exercise and slipped out and began to run around with the men. Unfortunately, General Brett got a glimpse of him and he asked me whose dog it was and how it happened to be on the ship. I told him that it belonged to "E" Company and that no one seemed to know how it got aboard. Later some official correspondence passed between General Brett and myself in regard to "a black and tan bulldog, named Pete." The next day at dinner General Brett said to me : "If that dog lands in France it is going to go very hard with a certain Captain aboard this ship." I had no doubt who that Captain was, and I knew also that there were strict orders against landing dogs in France. The next day, therefore, Captain Taylor was Officer of the Day and I told him that I thought it was his duty to dispose of Pete, as I did not have the heart myself to do it, although Pete was crippled from many fights and had the mange and was not much good anyway. The next day, therefore, Captain Taylor took him into the infirmary and tried to chloroform him, but Pete seemed to "smell a rat" and would not be chloroformed. Captain Taylor then tied an iron to his neck and threw him overboard. That night I told General Brett that Pete had been disposed of and the manner of his taking off. The General turned pale and would not eat any more supper but excused himself and went to his stateroom. Whether he was ill or whether the story of the dog's death had turned his appetite I do not know ; but I think it was the latter, because he was a gentleman of great sympathy and kindness of heart and I know it hurt him to think that he had had anything to do with injuring any living creature.

Much of our time aboard the ship was spent in studying for officers' school, which exercises, of course, delighted us very much. After supper the officers would assemble in the main salon and Lieutenant "Joe" Tydings, Captain "Fred" Maag, and Lieutenant "Aqua" Waters delighted us with their songs and imitations of Bert Williams. It was there also that we discovered that Lieutenant "Sleepy" Bixler was an artist when it came to getting music out of a piano. No one ever thought of submarines in the salon after supper.

By far the most interesting part of the ship was the dining salon. It easily held the sixty-odd ofificers aboard the ship. There was a life-size painting of the Duke D'Abrnzzi, that famous nobleman who almost married one of our American heiresses, for whom the boat had been named. General Brett sat at a table at the upper end of the salon, with his back to that portrait. Major Rothwell was at his right and Major Holt at his left with Major Eby, the brigade adjutant, at the foot of the table. I sat next to Major Rothwell with Lieutenant Ray Miller on my right, and Lieutenants Vandewater and Benny Weisblatt across the table from us. The three lieutenants were the General's aides. This was, indeed, a very happy party. Poor Benny Weisblatt never ate anything except a boiled egg now and then or some soup. We had lots of fun at his expense, but he took it always in good part. We consoled him by telling him that he wasn't seasick but homesick, as he had left a brand new wife in the States, and that anyway the only cure for seasickness was dry land. Major Eby, at the foot of the table, always ordered a second helping of every dish ; it was a pleasure to watch him eat. He always had time, however, to wedge in a joke or two, which he never failed himself to enjoy immensely. Major Rothwell, a quiet gentleman, always told his jokes without a smile, but they were good. Unfortunately he had stayed on deck a good deal and the sun and wind had peeled the skin off his nose and turned it red, and he was thereby brought under slight covert suspicion in certain quarters. But General Brett was the life of the table. His comments upon people in history, and his stories of the Indian wars, and his long service in the army, always entertained and delighted us. As I look back upon this boat trip I have nothing to be so glad of as the fact that I had the opportunity of becoming really acquainted with General Brett. He was always the gentleman, always the soldier, in the highest sense. He was a pleasure and a benefit and an inspiration to me. He got the best out of life so that his long service enriched and enobled his character. He knew men's rights and he knew men's duties and he knew what men could stand. The highest compliment I can pay him is to say that on many occasions when problems have confronted me I have thought what General Brett might or would have done, and have been benefited by the thought.

THE SUBMARINE ATTACK

Land came in sight on the thirteenth day of our trip. May 30th. It was Belle Isle, a rock-bound island off the coast of France, in the Bay of Biscay. There was great joy at the sight of land. We did not stop to think that this was the thirteenth day of our trip and that something unusual must happen before we finally set our feet on land, but it was not long before it happened. I remember that I was standing near the top of the stairs leading to the bridge. I noticed a constant ridge under the water in front of the big liner on our right, much as if some huge fish were plowing his way toward the boat. I was suspicious of it and I called the attention of an officer who was standing near me, to it. The liner on our right passed over it, and immediately began to toot her whistles as a signal of distress. In a moment or two every ship in the convoy, as well as the torpedo boat destroyers of the escort, opened fire behind us. It was the submarines. Instantly every ship in the convoy put on full steam ahead. The torpedo boat destroyers darted in and out amongst us firing as they went. Now and then one of them would hover over a suspicious place and drop depth bombs, those terrible things that sink under water and then explode, crushing and destroying with their concussion anything in a wide radius and carrying terror to the heart of the submarines. These ships fire on the periscope, destroying it and blinding the submarine, and then rush on it and drop bombs, much in the same fashion as a man would knock another down with his fist and then jump on him with his feet to make sure that he was dead. We learned afterwards that there were ten submarines that took part in the attack and that our war vessels sunk two of them. But however many there were, they overshot their mark and were taken by surprise by our ships and subjected to such a fire that not a single torpedo reached its mark ; for which we, of course, were profoundly thankful.

That was the first time we had ever really been in the presence of death and I think it is no discredit to say that every man's heart was in his mouth. But when the bugle sounded the "Abandon ship" call every man went to his place in line or at the rafts ready in almost pathetic grandeur to obey orders and to take whatever might befall. But thanks to the speed of our ships and the splendid work of the torpedo boat destroyers, no harm came to us. We sailed on at top speed until we reached the inner waters of the Bay of Biscay. Here our ships slowed down and took up single file to enter the mouth of the Loire River, leading to St. Nazaire.

INTO PORT ST. NAZAIRE

I shall never forget that afternoon as we glided into the inner harbor betwen the rows of mines that had been planted to protect us against the submarines. The sun was just going down over the waters in the west. It was like a great ball of fire, purple and red and pink and gradually shading off into the blue of a cloudless sky. We stood there, leaning against the rail, looking at it. Perhaps it looked more beautiful to us because it was just then shining on those we loved many miles across the sea and on the other side of the earth. On board ship we had seemed like one great family, and so long as we did not see land we did not realize that we were so far away from those we loved, but when we reached the coast of France and realized that we were soon to land in a foreign country, there was a lump in the heart we had not felt, and sometimes a lump in the throat too. Many a homesick boy looked out at that sunset as we glided into the harbor and thought of the loved ones on whom it was shining and prayed that he might be spared to return to them again. Some of those prayers will be answered, many of them we know cannot be answered.

We anchored in the inner harbor for the night, and in the morning (May 31st) steamed up the Loire River and tied to one of the docks in St. Nazaire. It was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny ; so different from the cold winds we had encountered almost throughout the trip. I remember while we were waiting to debark (while the harbor master was going over the ship's papers, or something of that sort) we all lined up at the rail and had great sport throwing pennies to the little French urchins who scrambled on the cement wharf for them. Some old women joined in the scramble, too. I remember also the American soldiers on shore bandying with our boys on the ship. One of our boys said : "I thought you came over here to fight." The other replied : "Well, you don't seem to have been doing much of it. Where have you been ?" And this is the answer he got : "I have been back home looking after your girl." But it was all goodnatured. They were glad at heart to see each other.

THE REST CAMP

We soon debarked and marched through the city to a "rest camp" about three miles distant. As we passed through the streets nobody seemed to pay much attention to us, even the women did not seem to have any curiosity. This was perhaps a keen disappointment to a great many of the Americans who thought that all France would turn out to greet us. I noticed that the women were all in black, and the impression was then indelibly made upon my mind that France was a land in mourning for her dead. At any rate we reached the "rest camp" shortly after mid-day. These places were called "rest camps" evidently by some humorous person in the War Department at Washington, although there was more tragedy than humor about them. The barracks for the men were little old low buildings about a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide with an aisle down the middle flanked on either side by rows of double-deck bunk racks. There was a large pile of hay called "straw for bedding" from which the men filled their bed-sacks. Nobody knew how deep the dust was. The men were brought to this place to rest after their long journey and to wash their clothes ; but as a large number of the men were detached for stevedore duty at the docks, and as the water supply was not sufficient to enable them to wash their clothes, the "rest camp" idea was a mere theory.

But everybody had time to write a letter or two, and the censors were busy in those days. Judging from some of these letters (I censored some of them) it is remarkable how quickly our men gained a comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the great French people! One thing they never failed to comment on, that was how long the days were. At nine-thirty o'clock it was still daylight. We could not realize that we had gone so far north of the latitudes of our own homes. They noticed, too, that there were no frame houses in France, that all the women were in black, that French streets are very narrow, and a thousand other thing that I cannot recall. I remember the first time I went down town to get a good meal. I did not even know how to ask for a glass of water. I look back now on that time with real sorrow in my heart for myself when I reflect that now I am an accomplished French scholar when it comes to asking for something to eat.

CHEVAUX 8; HOMMES 40

After a four days' stay at the "rest camp" at St. Nazaire our Battalion (the Second, of which "E" Company was a part) entrained for Calais. That was on the third of June. We marched down through the city and got aboard one of those little dinky French troop trains so like a toy compared with our great American railway trains. The cars were box cars about twenty feet in length and of the ordinary width, with doors on both sides. They were marked on the side in French: "Chevaux 8; hommes 40," which means that they had a capacity of 8 horses or 40 men. One of our men wrote home that he was touring France in a new French car called the "Chevaux 8." We loaded our men in the cars, thirty-six to a car and full equipment and rations for four days. I can tell you that there was no room to spare in those cars. The officers' cars were, of course, much better. They were for the most part second and third class passenger cars with four independent compartments entered from the outside and sufficient in size to accommodate four officers, though more than four were crowded into some of these compartments. There were no toilets in either the men's or the officers' cars. With all our equipment and rations our cars looked more like picnic trains than troop trains bent on serious business. My compartment contained, in addition to myself, Lieutenant Tydings, lieutenant Martin and Lieutenant McQuillen. Liutenant Tydings was the cook and general housekeeper of the party. He entered into the spirit of it, as he always entered into the spirit of anything he undertook, with so much enthusiasm that he made canned bully beef and beans seem really palatable.

We pulled out of St. Nazaire about noon. Our first stop was at the ancient and historic city of Nantes. Here we saw from the train the women washing their clothes in the Loire River. It was at Nantes also that all our plans for getting the soldiers off and on the trains at stops went awry. We had planned to have the bugler sound a call for the men to get ofif and then sound a call five minutes before the departure of the train to enable the men to get aboard, but the bugler strayed too far at Nantes and the train pulled out and left him. As a matter of fact, there was no way of telling when the train would stop or, if it stopped, when it would start again. Even the engineer did not know when he would stop or start, as he received orders at each stop when to start and where to stop next. This was necessary on account of the number of troops trains using the railroads in France.

But slowly we went on our journey. We passed through historic Normandy from which came our ancestors who conquered Britain, and through that famous city of Rouen, the birth place of William the Conqueror, the Capital of the Dukes of Normandy and the city that witnessed the burning at the stake of Joan of Arc. It was here also that Guy de Maupassant wrote his fascinating stories that have delighted so many American readers ; and Comeille first staged his model dramas that have charmed the literary world.