Ward Loren Schrantz Memoir - 1917-1919
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The Accurate Line
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From Mrs. W.L. Schrantz 125 W. Centennial Ave. Carthage [Missouri] 64836 To Mrs. R.E. Truman 5446 Harrison St., Kansas City, [Missouri] 64110
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[sticker]
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City of Carthage Memorial Hall Board Carthage, Missouri
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[photograph] The above picture was taken at Camp Clark, Nevada, in the summer of 1909. Front row, left to right: Clark O'Donnell, Clyde Greeson, Fred McQuivey, Unidentified (possibly William Fasken,) Ora Fees, Lew D. Perry, Guy A. Roos, Floyd R. Hirst, Harry M. Bouser, Lee Landers, Carl (Poke) Hampton, Louis E. Dettwiler, Arthur C. Burke, Henry Pipkin, John H. (Ham) Bates, Unidentified, Capt. W.E. Hiatt. Second row, Second Lieut. Roy C. Thompson, Urban Tuttle, Milton Wash, unidentified, Fred Bennett, unidentified, James Galbraith, Ward Schrantz, unidentified (possibly Carl Murdock,) Dwight Murto, Clyde Narramore, James Bogardus, James Mealey, Schell Mitchell (cook,) Stanley Saylor, Fred Mitchell (cook,) Fred Jennison. Co A, 2d Infantry, Missouri National Guard
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Nature, kindly or otherwise, endowed me with an innate interest in military subjects and in military history and my boyhood in Carthage, [Missouri] was filled with thoughts along that line. Veterans of the great civil war were all about in my home town at that time and many of them willing enough to tell their experiences to an interested small boy. This, together with the outbreak of the Spanish-American war in the spring of 1898, with the epidemic of wars various places in the world the next six years, all liberally treated in newspapers and magazines, fostered and encouraged the natural inclination. Campaigns in Cuba and in the Philippines; the Boxer rebellion, the Boer war, and the Russian-Japanese war, all were subjects of boyhood conversations and games. These things naturally influenced mental trends and most of the small boys with whom I "played war," eventually served in the national guard, army or marines in the next 15 years even before our entry into the first world war put so many men in uniform. As a boy between seven and eight years old I saw the local national guard company -- the Carthage Light Guard -- march away as Company A, Second Missouri Volunteer Infantry, to the railway station to entrain for Jefferson Barracks. They appeared huge men to me, a small boy, as I stood in the muddy street watching them -- blue uniformed, their long 1872-model caliber 45 Springfield rifles, sloped off their shoulders at what seemed neat angles to me but probably were not; their knapsacks on their backs with the blankets in a small roll transversely across the top. In memory, looking
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[page 2] back at them, they still seem huge -- viewing them as I still do mentally from the altitude of a seven-year-old boy. I did not know then -- or I would have been happier at being too small for the war -- that years later I would march in the same company and from the same armory as a sergeant away myself/ to the Mexican border troubles, or that I would again march away with it as its captain at the beginning of the first world war and would command it when it first went into battle. I became well acquainted with Col. W.K. Caffee, then the commander of that volunteer regiment, and of Capt. John A. McMillan, then Company commander, and heard from their own lips the story of the regiment's activities and trials in the months that followed. It was an old unit, as Missouri national guard organization went, having been formed in 1876 under the influence of Col. Caffee, then one of the gilded youth of the town and fresh from Shattuck, military school, but with its first officers and a nucleus of its rank and file veterans of the great Civil War, some of the Confederate army, some of the Federal. And as commander of the company in later years I took pride in the fact that within 11 years after the Civil War closed, in this town of southwest Missouri which the hostilities had reduced to ashes and around which the border war was most bitter, veterans of opposing armies could get together in the same military organization. And still as a seven-year-old boy I watched a second volunteer unit -- Co. G, 5th Missouri Volunteer Infantry -- march away, unarmed and in civilian clothes, for the train to Jefferson Barracks. I was to hear much of Capt. George P. Whitsett, its commander,
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[page 3] later. After his company was mustered out he gained publicity in connection with some proposed filbustering expedition to Nicaragua, nipped in the bud by our own government but for which he had signed up a number of his volunteer soldiers. Then he became an officer in the 34th (?) U.S. Volunteer Infantry in the Philippines and wrote letters to the home newspapers about fighting in northern Luzon. Still later he was connected with the constabulary there and was some kind of a judge in the administration of the island. Newspaper readers in these days heard much of the "water-cure," a form of torture said to have been inflicted on suspected native guerrillas in the Philippines to make them confess their offenses, and in my imagination I connected him -- and probably quite unjustly -- with those. In World War I, I knew him as the judge advocate of the 35th Infantry division and later of a corps staff and cited for gallantry in action. At the time of his death some years after that war he was a major in the regular army. My early military interests had a rather adverse and now amusing influence on my high school career. Naturally interested in history I narrowly avoided flunking out in that subject due to my inclinations to dig into reference books containing more details of military movements than the textbooks possessed. Hence of the allotted pages I knew relatively little and was in consequent disgrace, quite humiliating at the time. But despite it I have since always congratulated myself on my tangent directed energy and poor scholarship in this regard. A less laudable high school fault my senior year was an interest in the writings of Karl Marx which did not influence me very long but which ran somewhat counter to my natural trend. But even that probably has its value since in my vigorous spasm of reading I
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[page 4] acquired a good deal of knowledge of communist doctrines which have in later years given me a certain foundation on which to argue against them, and at the same time helped toward an understanding of the stuff out of which the formidable Red army of the second world war was built. However my military inclinations soon won over my early Socialist leanings and three months after I was 18 I enlisted in the national guard, and organization which was anathema to my erstwhile Socialist associates who had picked me as a promising young radical becoming instead one of those young men opprobriously referred to as "scab-herders" by my late associates. I always have remembered with a smile a comment one of my elderly Socialist friends made to me a short time later. "Ward" he said sadly, "I always thought you were a pretty good boy -- until, concluding with energy, "you went and joined the damn milishy." And another one said to me not long afterwards when he dropped into the newspaper office where I was employed: "Ward, if you were on duty with the militia and you were ordered to fire on a crowd and your brother was right in front of you, would you shoot your brother?" "Of course," I replied brazenly to shock him, "that is exactly what he would do to me if the situation were reversed." He had no answer to that, but it was a reply I could make easily since both of my two older brothers were and are violently loyalist and strong law-and-order men and if they ever have had any inclinations to shoot me it probably was during that brief period when I was reading Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
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[page 5] On the evening of [February] 5, 1909, I went to the local national guard armory, asked rather timidly how one went about enlisting, and was ushered promptly to the company office where I was put through a form of physical examination by Capt. W.E. Hiatt, the company commander, and sworn in forthwith, my physical examination by a civilian physician following afew days later. Capt. Hiatt was a national guardsmen of some 15 years or so service and had been a second lieutenant in the volunteer unit during the Spanish war. He was a courteous gentlemen and able soldier and I liked him as well as any officer, regular or national guard, under whom I later served. I was issued immediately a tight-fitting blue uniform with bright buttons, a bell-topped cap with cross-rifles on the front and a 1903 Springfield rifle with bayonet -- the clothing to be taken home and the rifle and bayonet kept in the arms rack. I did not do so well a short time later when I drew khaki. There was a blouse with bright buttons, a pair of straight trousers, and leggins large enough for a man with twice my caliber of legs so that the first practice march I took they were bagging down around my ankles. Shirts were not then an article of issue in the Missouri National Guard and each man bough his own of blue chambray. The straight trousers, I learned, were already obsolete - the regular army wearing khaki breeches. About 30 years later, after a great deal of wandering around with other types, the army came back to trousers and leggins not unlike those then out of style. The hat issued was the high crowned campaign hat, creased in the center, and with blue hat cord.
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[page 6] This organization -- Company A Second Missouri, Infantry officially, and still the Carthage Light Guard locally - was in the doldrums though I learned later it was still one of the best units in the regiment. The high social status it had once enjoyed had been lost back in the late 'nineties though something of the old reputations of a crack militia outfit still lingered. There was no pay attached and attendance at drill was more or less voluntary. A small nucleus of enthusiasts inspired more or less by the example of the captain worked hard and drilled faithfully every Friday night while the rest dropped in when convenient or a date with the girl friend did not interfere. According to my count there were usually 20 or 25 there at that time. However some time later seeing some drill reports I noted that according to them we always had between 35 and 40. There were 58 on the muster rolls but of those a number had been away from town for a year or two, I learned. I have said the captain was an excellent officer and he was, but then as now there was sometimes a difference between being an excellent officer and being a successful national guard company commander in dull periods. The professionally skilled captain did not always have the best turn-outs. But Capt. Hiatt kept the unit going and trained his faithfuls for noncommissioned officers, and so even in this low period a volunteer unit could have been formed quickly if war came. After I had belonged to the unit for about a month there was the annual federal inspection. To pass this it was necessary actually have 35 or 40 men on the floor. This was done by getting "substitutes" from ex-members who came down for the occasion, donned a vacant uniform and answered to an absentee's name. Men stood at right shoulder arms until their names were called, then came down to the order.
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[page 7] There was some embarrassment on this occasion when some of the substitutes forgot the names which had been assigned to them and had to be nudged by the next man in ranks before coming down to the order. My first camp was at Nevada, [Missouri], 60 miles north of my home town in the summer of 1909 -- an eight day camp with army pay. It was devoted to simple drills, maneuvers and parades, and all of the Missouri National Guard was present. Brief and rudimentary as it was, it was helpful training in camp life and organizational functioning in the field. I found the period very interesting though it though my zealousness and my newness might easily have made it a tragic one for me -- though possibly less tragic for me than for another. I took my military duties very seriously, and guard duty, quite properly, most serious of all. As a sentry on post along one side of the camp one night I was under orders to stop all men trying to enter the camp after taps and to hold them for the corporal of the guard. The previous night, I learned in guard tent gossip, some out-late rowdies had avoided the embarrassment of going to the guard house by engaging sentries in conversation, then brushing the bayoneted rifle aside suddenly, smiting the guard violently on the point of the jaw, then strolling in while the sentry recovered. That night a man tried to cross my post long after taps I held him for the corporal of the guard. He chatted pleasantly while waiting for the corporal then attempted to push my rifle aside and step toward me. Unfamiliar with the use of the gun butt, I knew only one answer. I jerked my rifle back, then advanced the point of the bayonet near his belt buckle and commented, rather inanely and probably in a quavering voice: "Wait a minute." Quavering or not, I was poised and steeled to drive the bayonet into his body
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[page 8] at the first aggressive movement on his part. He obviously sensed that, for he waited very quietly and both of us silently, the bayonet point at the pit of his stomach, until the corporal of the guard arrived. The next day I heard the man telling someone else confined in the guard tent that a sentry came near killing him the previous night. He was quite correct and maybe the word spread, or perhaps he was the only one who attempted to slug sentries, for I heard of no more cases of the sort. As for me I learned a lesson I remembered in reference to others -- there is no one in the army more dangerous than a scared recruit. A battalion of the 13th Infantry was at the Camp from Fort Leavenworth, [Kansas], where that regiment was then stationed to serve as a model for the state troops. Mostly it was a good example -- a well drilled organization, its men swarthy with the sun and apparently tough as nails. But I remember their crap games, with a great many $20, $10 and $5 gold pieces on the blanket, for the regular army at that time and for years afterwards paid in gold. And I discarded my ill-fitting uniforms and replaced them with with modern breeches, leggins and khaki blouse purchased from miscreant members of the 13th trying to raise funds by sale of their uniforms. Back home again, and not quite such a recruit as national guardsmen of the day went, I became one of the nucleus of enthusiastic young soldiers which kept the guard alive. Since for economic reasons I still could not go to college, where the military training of Missouri University interested me more than anything else anyhow, and lacking the political influence necessary to secure an appointment to West Point, I put all my spare time, thought and energy into military work and study. In the spring I became a corporal and at the annual
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[page 9] inspection apparently did very well in a little quiz that the inspecting officer conducted for noncommissioned officers afterwards. Col. W.K. Caffee, who as previously mentioned had commanded the regiment during Spanish-American days, was present and at the conclusion of the examination gave me some kind words of praise. It was most encouraging to me, and its effect lasted for a long time. It has always been a lesson as to how much a few encouraging words can do for one who is trying. There was a noncomissioned officers camp in 1910, with all the noncomissioned officers of the regiment gathered together into two provisional companies for training at Nevada under the tutelage of the 13th U.S. Infantry. The affect was most healthful. There was also a maneuver that year at Fort Riley which I, for reasons connected with my civilian employment was unable to attend. This fact I always regretted since it is my observation that every bit of military experience, however tiny, is of ultimate military value. In the spring of 1911 I became a sergeant and was immediately made quartermaster sergeant - the equivalent of supply sergeant of later years -- and served as such at the 1911 encampment at Nevada. This was uncongenial work but doubtless educational and was the more difficult for me in the field since I acted as duty sergeant besides. The year 1911 was important to my military training in another way. I began interviewing old soldiers and studying the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies to write a serious of newspaper articles about civil war engagements and skirmishes in my home county. This interest continued for years, resulted in publishing a modest volume on this field in 1923. Since war changes only as weapons and circumstances change, I feel that many important lessons in irregular and guerrilla warfare lie hidden and neglected in the dusty tomes dealing with such phases of our own civil war. When the 1911 drill regulations came out I and a group of
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[page 10] fellow enthusiasts purchased some of the first copies issued by the Army and Navy Journal and studied them most carefully, trying them out in our own little nucleus on Sundays and any night in addition to drill night we could get possession of the armory. Our efforts were soon helped by the War Department which sent drill sergeants from line regiments to be stationed for a time with National Guard units for instructional purposes. We first had one named Johnson from Company A, 15th Infantry, andlater one named Foster from the Fourth Infantry. These men had committed the regulations to memory and we did the pertinent portions likewise. This was of assistance to me until after the first world war. I can still quote paragraphs from memory. In the summer of 1912 our Second Missouri Infantry was sent to Kansas to participate in maneuvers -- the Seventh U.S. Infantry stationed at Fort Leavenworth, our regiment, and a squadron of the 15th U.S. Cavalry, all commanded by Col Daniel Cornman, maneuvering against the Kansas and Oklahoma National guard regiments, the 13th Cavalry, then at Fort Riley, and some other regular artillery units. It was both an interesting and worthwhile maneuver, involving actual marching, bivouac and simulated combat over some 60 miles of Kansas terrain, terminating at Lansing, south of Leavenworth, [Kansas]. Still a combination, supply, mess and duty sergeant, I hada busy time. Long [ms illegible: 3 wds] One unpleasant featuredof the maneuver for me was connected with hard tack which with raw bacon was the nearest equivalent of the day to the C and K rations of the second world war. We breakfasted one morning at 4 a.m. and did not have a cooked meal again until the days maneuver was over about 5 p.m. IN our haversacks we had hardtack and raw bacon. I ate maybe a box of hard tack. It swelled after I ate it. The result was uncomfortable in a big way, as I recall, and as we bivouacked that night east of the Kansas State Pententiary I groaned in agony.
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[page 11] The maneuvers were reasonably realistic and made the more interesting because of an abundance of blank cartridges issued the men. In my opinion they were excellent training. The Mexican troubles were already absorbing the attention of mostvregular troops and as I recall no more combined army and national guard maneuvers were held. Even after the first world war they were not resumed on any large scale until -- if my memory is right -- about 1937. Our army was sadly in the doldrums to permit any such long intermission of a training feature so important. By the summer of 1912 I had reached a place where national guard activities -- however much increased interest the federal government was manifesting and howevermuch additional clothing and equipment was arriving -- ceased to satisfy me. I decided either to enlist in the regular army in the hopes of gaining a commission in the Philippine Scouts or to join one of the factions in the Mexican revolutionary troubles in order to get war experience preparatory to service in the American army. My mother -- my father had died when I was two years of age -- agreed I should join the regular army. Wisely she felt that a young man with a trend like mine had better get into the army and stay there. She had no enthusiasm about Mexico yet offered no objection. She could see the value of war experience for a soldier. I am proud of my fine Spartan mother -- an ideal mother for a soldier. I am only sorry that a more or less erratic military career failed to live up to her probably hopes and expectations.
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[photograph] Decoration Day 1910 [photograph] 1911 [photograph] 1912 M.R. Schrantz Ward L Schrantz
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[photograph] CoA Mo NG July 3 [1910] [photograph] N.G.M. Nevada [photograph] Decoration Day 1911
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[photograph] Lakeside 1911 [photograph] Nevada Camp Clark 1911
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[photograph] May 30, 1912 [photograph] May 30, 1912 [photograph] 1912
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[page 12] My application for a discharge from the national guard to join the regular army being slow to go through, I resigned from the newspaper where I was employed, visited for a time with abrother in southwest Oklahoma, and then went to El Paso to look into the matter of joining in the wars in Mexico. My original interest in the Mexican wars had hinged in part on my sympathy for Francisco Madero in his successful revolt of 1910 and 1911 against President Porfirio Diaz. It seemed to me -- quite ignorant of details as I was -- that he had not dealt fairly with the leaders who had helped him to make that revolt successful. When Pascual Orozco raised the standard of revolt against him in 1912, Tracy Richardson who lived at Lamar, [Missouri], who once had been a member of the Second Missouri Infantry in which I had had my national guard experience, and who later had served under Lee Christmas in Nicaragua, gained a good deal of publicity as a machine gunner in Orozco's army. This gave me a rather favorable impression of the Orozco effort. By the time I reached El Paso the Orozco revolt was broken and such of his former forces as remained were in the field only as bandits under the name of "Colorados" or, as Americans called them, "Red Flaggers." It did not take much enquiry around El Paso to decide me that they were not the right side to be on anyhow. But I decided to go over to Juarez to take a look, although El Pasoans to whom I talked advised me that just then was a good time for all good Americans to stay on the American side of the line. In point of fact the only Americans I saw in El Paso that day was an old Iowa couple looking at the bullet-chipped statue of Benito Juarez, and an American post card salesman who told me that it was unwise to wander about Juarez alone.
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[page 13] One of the first things I did in Juarez after looking at the monument and church was to wander down by the jail, garrisoned and loop-holed for rifle fire. This was interesting and I stopped to stare. In the Mexican army those days the women constituted the commisary department, each man being paid daily and his wife, or the woman camp follower who served as such, getting and preparing food for him. It was lunch time and these women, some far gone in pregnancy and others with children accompanying them, were bringing food to the soldiers. A stack of Mauser rifles inside the main entrance interested me also. My acquaintance with military files was limitedto the 1903 Springfield and the obsolete 1872 Single-shot Springfield. All this display of interest was no doubt indiscreet and the sentry studied me suspiciously. I decided it might be as well to walk on. Walking on past the jail about a block I found nothing but adobe houses and turned back. As I neared the jail on my return the sentry called out an officer. The two studied me closely as I passed. Despite an uneasy conscience caused by the fact I had come down there in expectation of bearing arms against their side, I ambled past, trying to look as innocent and unconcerned as possible. The officer apparently decided I appeared harmless and so I was not stopped. Otherwise it is possible my future might have been an unhappy, the Mexican custom of the time according to reports, being either to shoot suspects or to put them in jail andforget about them. This little experience caused me to remember the old post card man and seek his counsel. He told me that the regular soldiers, clad in blue grey such as those at the jail were a part of the army that President Madero had taken over from the Diaz regime. Many of them, he surmised, ought to feel at home garrisoning that jail since they had been recruited from jails in the first place. The rest of the soldiers in town, those
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[page 14] wearing khaki, were Maderista volunteers -- mounted troops who were largely ranch hands who had volunteered to help Madero, a good many of them English-speaking and from the Mexican population on the American side of the border. He suggested that if I was determined to look around the town that he get one of those -- a good many of whom he knew -- to show me about. To this I was agreeable. A pleasamt young Mexican who in consequence I soon had as a guide told me that his name was Umberto Tabares and that he had worked on a ranch near Marathon, Texas, until he joined the Maderista volunteers. He thought he was to fight for Mexico, he said, but that they way it was there was no fighting at all. The Mexican regular army commanders would not let them fight the red flaggers about the town. They would be sent out from time to time but once outside the town some distance, would be required to halt and do nothing. In his opinion these regular army troops were not at all loyal to Madero. As for him, in view of that situation, he was considering slipping back across the border and returning to Marathon. His estimate of the situation, I noted later, was about correct. When Victoriano Huerta revolted against Madero early the next year, the federal troops in Juarez turned rebel, united with the Red Flaggers bands outside the city, and surrounded and captured the Maderista volunteers in the town. Accompanied by young Taberes I strolled through the local market and at my suggestion we walked up by the main barracks of which I had read in newspaper accounts concerning some of the fighting in Juarez. These were held by regular troops. Some kind of ceremony was in progress, possibly guard mount Gaily-garbed buglers and some troops were maneuvering in the
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[page 15] street, then marched back inside where a considerable body of troops were in formation. We stood across the street opposite the entrance looking in. A portly officer of upper middle age came across to us and engaged my Maderista guide in a wordy exchange, the Marathon cowboy holding up his end of it quite as boldly as if he had been a dignitary of the old army himself. Finally the officer turned away and Tabores turned to me. "He says we can't stand here," he commented. We walked down to the corner, stayed there until the music stopped he accepted my offer to buy a dinner if he would show me a place and handle the conversation. He led me to a hotel, argued for awhile with a fat woman in a hotel courtyard who regarded us with obvious suspicion but who eventually agreed to serve us. A waiter stood behind our chairs thrusting lined-up dishes, hot with pepper, in front of us as we cleared the contents from the preceding one. An additional dish of pepper sat in front of us, and since I did not care for mine in view of my feeling there was already a superabundance in the food, my companion added my spare seasoning to his in flavoring his own food. The waiter impressed me as being there partly to listen to our conversation, and it was with some relief a short time later, after I had told my guide good-bye, that I returned to the American side of the line again, being searched for firearms by the bridge guards as I had been on the way over. That night I was on an east bound Texas Pacific train, pumping a discharged member of the Second Cavalry about the fight at Bud Dajo, in Jolo, in which he had engaged shortly before returning to the United States. And I was impressed when somewhere near Fort Hancock, a couple of armed cavalry guards passed through the car, carefully
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[photograph] Prison, Juarex, [Mexico]. [photograph] Oh You Insurrectos [photograph]
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[photograph] Ruins of City Hall. Juarez, [Mexico] Rebels in action
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[postcard] Church of Guadalupe, C. Juarez, Mexico. In 1549 Spanish explorers reached the Rio Grande, founded El Paso del Norte and established the Church of Guadalupe. Infinite labor was expended in the hand carvings of the beautiful ceiling and altar of gold leaf. The bells were brought from Spain and for almost four centuries have called the faithful to worship and have marked the hours of the day and night. On September 16th, 1888, in memory of Benito Juarez, the founder of Mexican Independence, this quaint old City was re-named Ciudad Juarez. [postcard] Monument Benito Juarez, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. [photograph] [ms illegible: 1 wd] Para Recivir A Rabago
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[postcard] "Aduana" Mexican Custom House, C. Juarez, Mexico. This building will ever by pointed out as being the one in which President Diaz of Mexico banqueted President Taft. $20,000 was expended in fitting up the banquet hall. [postcard] A general view of El Paso's business section, looking west on San Antonio St. The mountains to the left are on the opposite side of the Rio Grande and in Old Mexico. [photograph] Warren Hancock, Troop L, 2d U.S. Cavalry
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[page 16] scrutinizing each passenger, I supposed they were looking for Mexican bandits or suspicious characters. My companion grunted. "Showing off," he surmised. Back home I found my discharge from the national guard waiting for me, went to nearby Joplin, applied for enlistment and that night with one other recruit went to Jefferson Barracks where after final physical examination we were sworn in with a group of men from various other recruiting stations. It apparently frequently happened that men applied for enlistment but their nerve failed them and at the recruit depot they did not want to join. The club the army held over their heads was that if they did not go ahead and take the oath they were guilty of getting railway transportation to the depot under false pretenses. The reluctant ones thereupon tried to fail the medical examination. One man in my group professed to be unable to read any letter of any size on the eye chart. And he could not hearing the ticking of a watch behind his ear or even loud whispers. "You can't see very well, can you?" said the medical officer. "No sire," answered the man, "I can't see skeercely at all." "And you can't hear very well?" continued the medico. "No sire. I can't hear skeercely at all." "Well," said the officer, "I guess you can see and hear well enough to soldier. Get over with that group of men who have passed." This was on October 23, 1912, and we enlisted for three years. On November 1 a new law went into effect by which men enlisted for seven
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[page 17] years -- either three or four with the colors and the rest in reserve. We congratulated ourselves on getting in just under the wire. Generally speaking, the recruits depot was something of an amusing nightmare. Recruit companies consisted of a training cadre of permanent party men -- "general service infantry," I think they were called -- and the recruits. The permanent party men lorded it over the recruits in a big way, impressing on the newcomers that they were the lowest of the low., A corporal ranked about as high as a colonel in the line and even a private was an important personage. As for us we officially and unofficially were "Cruts," so listed on the roster. One gathered that the one unforgiveable sin at that time in the army was being a recruit. I was rather surprised the first time I did a guard and became acquainted with some of the noncommissioned officers to find that thet were quite human and rather pleasant fellows when away from routine in barracks. Since I suspected that telling I had been a national guardsman would not add to happiness of life in the army, I carefully remained silent about any military background. Since obviously I already knew the recruit drill I was subjected to some appraising stares but no one questioned me. Presumably a man's past was his own business until he was exposed. But the noncommissioned officers evidently came to certain conclusions. One evening the corporal in charge of my squad room in the 27th Company, a man who never honored a recruit with anything but a scowl, came in to the room and direct to my bunk, affable and smiling. "Your name is Jones, isn't it?" he asked. "No" I said. "That is Jones yonder." He scowled at me as of old and smiled on Jones.
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[page 18] "Get your blankets," he said pleasantly as to an equal, not to a contemptible recruit, "we are going to the guard house." And so "Jones" who we soon learned, had served in the army before, deserted and reenlisted under a false name, passed out to prison and punishment. If there were any chaplains about Jefferson Barracks I never saw them but I went once to a religious service conducted by some ministers from St. Louis. They addressed us as if it seemed to me, we had been convicts in a penitentiary. A soldier in the ranks was not rated very high by ordinary civilians in those days and I have not doubt these good ministers regarded us as about convict social level. We did not see much of our officers but occasionally they gave lectures of one sort or another and since they talked to us as if we were soldiers and not mere recruits we were pleasantly impressed. Only one of these officers remains in my memory and of his talk only one section. He was a jovial old cavalry major named Quinlan Daniel P. Quinlan I think. "Don't get the idea that you are heroes because you are in the army," he told us. "No man is a hero just because he joins the army and no man is a hero in his first war. But if he ever volunteers to go back to a second war -- ah then he is a hero." The recruits in the 27th Company as I remember them was not a bad lot. My principal friends were a man named Percy Lang from Chicago who had been a cook on lake steamers, a quiet ex-laundryman named Dennis from somewhere, some six or seven years my senior, and a young farmer named Apple -- " 'Crut Apple" -- was always the first name called on our our roll call. Lang like I had enlisted for the infantry, Dennis was in forth coast artillery, and Apple for the cavalry. My own preferences were for the cavalry but I had a somewhat
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[page 19] exaggerated idea of the value of my previous infantry training and thought I would have abetter chance there. I wanted first to be in the infantry therefore, and second I wanted to get out to the Philippines. All the men at the recruit depot had enlisted for some particular arm or service and changing to any other was optional. Requisitions came to the depot from time to time for so many men of such-and-such an arm or service for such-and-such a point. IF there were not enough enlisted for such arm to fill the requisitions, others were invited to volunteer and many did. Everyone was anxious to get away, and services such as the medical corps for which few had signed up thus obtained their quotas. I was tempted once to transfer to the field artillery for there was a group going to the Philippines. Had it been a cavalry group I would have done so probably. But I held off, waiting in hope. My main fear was that I would be sent to the 7th Infantry at Fort Leavenworth, and my fear was based not on any objection to that famous regiment but to the fact that Fort Leavenworth was a bit too close to my own home. Could I have seen what the future held for the Seventh, I would not have minded. Less than a year and a half later that regiment boarded transports at Galveston for Vera Cruz while my own waited on the beach for orders that never came. In early December there came a bunch of requisitions for replacements and most of us "old timers" in the 27th Company moved out -- the infantry to Fort Bliss, the coast artillery to Fort Morgan, [Alabama], and the cavalry to the Third Cavalry on the Rio Grande somewhere. Bidding goodbye to Dennis and Apple, Land and I with a couple of carloads of others were soon speeding across Missouri, Kansas, the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico down to El Paso where a few short months before I had been pondering the idea of joining some army in
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[page 20] Mexico. Noncommissioned officers of the Jefferson Barracks permanent party conducted us on our jaunt so the atmosphere on the trzin was much the same as at the barracks except that we were happy and elated at being on the move. Our food was a bit scanty but I had ben in the national guard too long where it was still scantier at camps to grouse about that. I ate slowly, masticated the food thoroughly, and hence -- believing something I had read somewhere -- was better satisfied than if I bolted it. Carefully, from policies sake, I refrained from complaint. One evening as we crossed the Panhandle there was, for a wonder, plenty of hash. Just as we were finishing eating, the sergeant in charge came up the aisle and spoke to me. "Did I hear you say you were not getting enough to eat?" he queried. "You never heard me make any complaint," I answered truthfully. "I don't know whether I complained or not," spoke up Lang, "but anyhow I haven't been getting enough to eat." Someone carrying the receptacle with the hash was with the sergeant and the noncomissioned officer filled Lang's meat pan heaping full. "Now I want to see you eat that," he said. "Eat every bit of it." Lang ate the food leisurely -- all of the huge pile. Next he took a piece of bread, swiped up his mess kit with it and ate the bread. Then he spoke. "Sergeant," he asked, "May I have some more hash?"
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Arriving at Fort Bliss on the north edge of El Paso on [December] 7, 1912, the detachment of recruits from Jefferson Barracks were lined up near the railway and counted off to go to various infantry units. The troops at Fort Bliss and in the El Paso vicinity at that time consisted of the 22d Infantry, commanded by Col. D.A. Frederick, the first battalion of the 18th Infantry, and the Second Cavalry. Col. E.Z. Steever (or Brig Gen.) was in command of the whole. "Easy" Steever some of the soldiers good-naturedly called him, I learned later, because they thought he was too willing to accede to the request of El Paso for troops for parades. That Col. Steever might have had a sound military reason for making a display of his strength in El Paso whenever occasion offered in view of the disturbed conditions along the border did not seem to have occurred to anyone. But there were no parades while I was there, so far as I recall. Certainly my company participated in none. The infantry units had been sent to ElPaso from their home posts at the time the Orozco revolt started. The 22d was guarding the international bridges and had outposts at other key points along the border, with headquarters at Fort Bliss. The battalion of the 18th, as I recall, was all at Fort Bliss, as was all of the Second Cavalry at that time. The reason for the cavalry being at the post instead of on patrol, I was told, was that it had recently returned from the Philippines and had been filled up with recruits, whom it was necessary to train before going on anything even approximating active duty. In the assignment of recruits I was in the group allotted to the 22d Infantry and the genial sergeant major of that regiment, an old soldier named Jans, detailed several men including myself to Company F.. My friend Land went to Company C of the 22d where he soon became a cook
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[page 22] and so far as I have knowledge of his life lived happily thereafter in that capacity. Company F was stationed at Washington Park in East El Paso near the Rio Grande and we were taken there in a mule-drawn escort wagon jolting over dusty roads. From the high ground before we started downward I remember staring over the valley at the distant often captured Juarez, dominated by hills to the south so that it looked from there like it might have been founded with the specific purpose of making its capture easy. A noncommissioned officer in the wagon explained that we were joining the best regiment in the army and being assigned to the best company of that regiment. Capt. L.A. Curtis the company commander, he further asserted, was a fatherly individual, deeply interested in his men, and and an ideal officer under whom to serve. We were favorably impressed, particularly after we were told the same thing by other men of the company. It was a unit which believed in itself. Capt. Curtis, a slow-spoken Spanish-American war veteran 40 years of age, welcomed us himself, and we were then taken in charge by a heavily bearded, middle-aged first sergeant. Beards had gone out of military fashion before this but when the regiment left its quarters at Fort Sam Houston the preceding February he had stated that wasn't going to shave again until it returned -- and he hadn't. His whiskers gave a civil war aspect to the scenery. Company F was billetted, along with Company E, in a long adobe building at the front of the park in a long room evidently used in normal days for fair exhibits of some kinds. At the head of the bunk allotted to me was a huge crude mural of an ailing chicken with the words "Conkey will cure you." We were issued field equipment and rifles, with 30 rounds of live ammunition to carry in our belts
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[page 23] and we settled down feeling quite field-soldierish and warlike. Company F, we found, maintained an outpost about a mile to the west on the international line which here was a former channel of the Rio Grande, the river having cut a new channel inside Mexican territory. This was the region later called "the hold in the wall" and I have heard its ownership was disputed but at that time all south of the old stream bed was considered Mexico. From the outpost tent single sentries by day and double sentries by night patrolled a beat which on the west ran to the foundry and on the east along the old streambed to where it ran into the river. The company was low in strength and about a third of it was on duty nightly. It was with some disappointment that I learned that recruits were to be given special training a week or so before being turned to duty. My first glimpse at a regular army organization from the inside naturally interested me. The noncommissioned officers, unlike those at the recruit depot, were friendly and human. Most of them were old soldiers -- the junior of them being on his third three-year enlistment, and a number of them being veterans of the Spanish-American war 14 years before as well as the later Philippine campaigns. While the general educational level was low, by modern standards, there were exceptions in some obviously well -educated men whose presence in the ranks I presumed to be the result of love of soldiering or love of liquor, or both. It was only at pay-day they showed the liquor trait. When a private drew $15 a month, a corporal $21 and a sergeant only $30, normal sobriety was a necessity as well as a virtue. My own position in the company was pleasant from the start due to a reticence about the past which fitted in with military ideas
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[page 24] of the day. The reticance was entirely due to my feeling that it would be tactful to conceal a national guard background so long as I was new in the regular army but whatever interpretation was put on it by my new comrades the result was favorable. A man's past was his own business. What he had been or done in civil life id not matter; only what he was and did in the army. My first evening I had unpacked my gear from the Jefferson Barracks recruit bag to stow it away in a box underneath my bunk, my well-worn infantry drill regulations of national guard days was lying on my bunk. A sergeant picked it up curiously, and noted that I had torn out the flyleaf where a man usually wrote his name and organization. "Where did you get this?" he asked. "It is none I had left over," I replied. He grinned and asked no further questions, for this reason or others but I found myself accepted henceforth as a soldier instead of a recruit. Within a few days I was "turned for duty" and began to take my turn at border patrol. It was, properly, a patrol. though on each of Company F's patrol posts there was one man by day and two by night. Tours of duty were four hours on and eight off. By day I strolled along under cotton wood trees in which mistletoe was profusely growing, studied the Mexican side for alertly signs of activity and the American side curiously to observe the habits of the local Mexicans. And in the long tours at night there were long conversations with my companion about his military experiences or about his home regions. Under orders we carried our rifles with empty chambers but with a full clip in the magazine so that there was a minimum danger of accident but only a movement of the bolt necessary to prepare for action. I fell in the habit of a mountaineer friend and habitually carried my rifle in the hollow of my left arm. Orders were not to fire, even if fired upon, except in self-defense.
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[ms illegible: 9 wds]
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[page 25] The restraining order was not taken too seriously. The "except-in-self defense" clause seemed broad enough to cover all eventualities. To me it seemed that the duty itself was not taken as seriously as it might be. The first night I was on post from 10 to 2 a.m. and was amazed to see the 2 to 6 o'clock relief turn out with blankets. The nights were chilly and custom was for the men on number 1 post to the west to sleep in the foundry at the west end of the post and those of No. 2 relief to sleep in the plant at which El Paso garbage was burned which was within the territory of that patrol post. The only man of the whole outpost awake during those hours was the non-commissioned officer of the guard dozing over a magazine at a lantern much of the time at the guard tent within 50 feet of the border. My expressions of surprise drew amused rejoinder that there was no danger -- that the officers never came around after 2 o'clock. As for the Mexicans "those fellows know better than to attack Americans. Now if they were Filipinos, it would be different." I wondered, perhaps [ms illegible: 1 wd] f few years later if a [ms illegible: 2 wds] was responsible for the surprise of the garrison at Columbus, [New Mexico] by [ms illegible: 2 wds] This carelessness in patrol due to the bored attitude of the rank and file was only a passing phase and ended with renewed activity across the line which caused renewed activity of our own officers in checking up. But while it lasted I was never on the 2 to 6 o'clock relief, always trading it off, when I drew it, to someone who had drawn the 10 to 2 watch and preferred the later one where they could sleep. As for me I tried to be alert, being young and comparatively ambitious, and once for a few moments I thought my vigilance was about to be rew3arded by action. Going on patrol as a single sentry at 6 o'clock in the morning I was strolling along No. 2 post when I saw to the east two horsemen in civilian clothes, ride toward a Mexican farmhouse on the American side just to the east. In the early morning light I caught the glint of the butts of rifles in boots attached to their saddles.
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[page 26] My instructions covered a situation such as this appeared to be. Working my rifle bolt and slipping a cartridge into the chamber, I ran across the field to intercept them, the safety catch up and with my thumb against it to knock it down to "ready." The horsemen drew up to wait for me without making any motion toward their weapons. As I heared them I saw they were American, and smiling. In fact I had already met both of them One, I knew, was a retired first sergeant of cavalry and the other a Texan of gun-antecedents. They were men of the customs border patrol which at that time were uniformed save as their heavy revolvers in western holsters and their Winchesters indicated their calling. My recognition of the two was attended with a combination of relief and disappointment but happily not of chagrin since, without mentioning it, they obviously considered my zeal in intercepting a couple of gunmen as most commendable. These were indeed gunmen, though on the right side. In all the history of border patrol of that and subsequent periods I suppose there was no duty as dangerous as theirs. As activity increased we saw more and more of them. Though fewin numbers they undoubtedly were a very effective guard against the kind of banditti then along the border. I felt at the time that the army patrol as I saw it needed some such supplementation. As the weeks went on, alarms of one sort or another became not unusual, usually reaching us in the form of an alert for which we knew no reason, requiring that all men off duty remain in camp available for call. One day when I was on outpost duty we noticed a number of horsemen riding rapidly back and forth near a clump of trees a mile of so south of the border. A few moments later a cannon opened fire toward to the south and for about four hours shots were fired at intervals
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[page 27] but he hard no other firing, and all we could see was the flash and smoke of the discharge and an occasional horseman riding off rapidly to one flank or the other. A few American civilians drifted down to the border to watch what was going on but that apparently was all the interest the affair created. It was not even mentioned in the usually voluble El Paso papers -- much to my regret since I had spent most of the time perched in a tree observing proceedings. One night we had a brief false alarm which taught me a lesson. I Had been on first relief, had come off post and had turned into my bunk at a little after 11 o'clock, fully dressed of course in accordance with regulations on the subject but unbuckling my cartidge belt for greater ease. About 11.30 a rattle of shots on the Mexican side close at hand brought brought us out of our sleep, off our our bunks and out in the open in an instant, rifle in hand and ready for whatever might happen. But there really was no cause for excitement. A wedding celebration was in progress at a Mexican house just across the dry river bed and, Mexican fashion, some of the guests were expressing their hilarity by firing into the air. And it was just as well for me that this was the case for about the time the shooting was explained to us I discovered that I had left my belt of cartridges on my cot and had answered the alarm without ammunition other than the five rounds in the magazine of my gun. I slunk back in and put on my belt while the others were staring at the house and so no one noticed -- and I saw no occasion for mentioning it. One morning a little after daylight when I was shivering up my beat on the Number 1 post about three blocks west of the guard tent, two mounted Mexicans wearing long serapes muffled about their faces rode across the border from the direction of an adobe hut where I had been told two cowpunchers lived who worked
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[page 28] on the American side. I let them pass unquestioned with a "good morning" exchanged in English with the leading one. After they passed it occurred to me that I should have made them throw back their cloaks so that I could see that they were unarmed. It was not too bad a slip since our orders principally concerned the smuggling of arms into Mexico but obviously armed men should not be permitted to cross either direction and the men might have been wearing revolvers under their cloaks. I reflected that I too was getting careless. That night in the El Paso Herald was an item saying that Pancho Villa, formerly a bandit but later an officer in the army of Madero and still later a prisoner in the penitentiary at Chihuahua City where he had been confined by Gen. Victoriano Huerta, had with the assistance of some friends made his escape from the prison and that morning with a single companion, both fully armed, had crossed the border and was then at such-and-such a hotel in El Paso. Villa was not as prominent at that time as he later became, but I have always wondered if I let an opportunity to [ms illegible: 1 wd] words with that redoubtable chantry escape me. Soon after this a considerable band of Red Flaggers chased the federal garrison out of Guadaloupe, some distance down the river, began to talk about an attack on Juarez and sent patrols up toward it. A detachment of federal cavalry men -- five or six men as I recall it -- took post at the Mexican end of the unguarded ford just south of Washington Park, and there was considerable riding of patrols back and forth. A flag was flying on some white buildings some distance south of the river and I suppose troops were stationed there, probably the force from which the ford outpost came. Partly for exercise and partly out of curiosity I was accustomed to stroll along the American side down there when off duty and I recall that the Mexicans at the ford were rather careless with firearms, firing at objects in the river occasionally and
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[page 29] in such direction that now and then a richocheting bullet which had probably struck a sandbar went singing off on the American side to the east ward somewhere. Around a third to a half o four company of about 60 men were on guard duty daily and the remainder not on detail of some sort drilled, maneuvered or took short practice marches in the forenoon. One of these jaunts , one morning, was eastward along the border road leading toward Alfalfa a few miles further on. As we rested just west of the village there came from the brushland in the valley across the Rio Grande the sound of a rifle shot, followed by four or five more, increasing to the patter of a lively little irregular fusilade which soon dwindled away into a few scattering shots then ceased. Mexicans in vehicles of one sort or another going by us toward El Paso were thrown into consternation. Quite possibly they thought our presence had some connection with the firing and that bullets might soon be coming in our direction. Some of them flailed their burros into sharp trots, others impelled their animals into accelerated speed by gouging them with sharp sticks where it would do the most good -- the whole group clattering down the road toward the city trying to get away from our vicinity as rapidly as possible. Soon we were hiking back to our position at Washington Park but we enlisted men at least never knew what started the fireworks. Probably a red flagger patrol had clashed with some of the federals. That afternoon I strolled down by the river as usual. The federal outpost, I noted, was no longer in the bunch of willows on the other side of the ford. As I stood there, whittling on a cane I had cut from the brush a few moments before, I noted seven mounted men trotting around the bend of the river on the Mexican side of the stream to the southeast. They were in single file with intervals of about 20 paces between horses and I
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[page 30] could not see what uniform, if any, that they wore, For some distance around where I was standing the ground was perfectly flat and bare, as this was the low bank and the river flowed over it in time of flood. I was therefore quite visible to the approaching patrol and when it had drawn a little nearer, the leader, followed by the others in file, veered away from the course of the river and directly toward the clump of willows in such manner as to keep it between them and me. I did not like this maneuver very much, and liked it still less when I saw through the willows as they approached that they were clothed in nondescript garb, no part of which suggested either the khaki of the Maderista volunteers or the bluish grey of the Mexican regulars. Obviously they were red flaggers. I remembered with some disquiet that a day or two before some of Salazar's band had fired at some members of the 13th Cavalry in the Guadaloupe vicinity for preventing recruits from crossing to join them, and I would have been glad if I at least had had my rifle with me. However since retreat would have been undignified and perhaps not entirely to the credit of the American army I remained where I was, whittling on my stick and endeavoring to appear indifferent. The patrol rode up to the clump of willows and the leader drew rein behind it, staring at me over the top of the bushes. Then drawing a rifle from a boot on the right side of the saddle he dismounted, threw his reins to a companion, and with his rifle and free hand punching away the willows, came through the clump and stood staring at me across what seemed at the moment a lamentably narrow stream. I continued to whittle, but with one eye fixed on a nearby depression in the sand which I figured I could reach quite promptly if he raised the gun to his shoulder. But either he decided that I was harmless or it was not his day to shoot at
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[page 31] Americans, for after a short scrutiny he returned to his companions; all dismounted, and began to prepare a meal. I then felt free to continue my stroll. About an hour later the men departed, trotting toward Juarez. The only guard maintained at Washington Park itself during this time, completely unprotected though it was in the direction of the ford directly to the south. was a single sentry post. Three privates and a non-commissioned officer were detailed alternately from E and F companies for this duty, the N.C.O. going to bed at night, though fully clothed, and the sentries waking each other up when time came for the reliefs. During day light hours the sentry walked back and forth inside the building to prevent any soldier inclined to do so from taking out any bundle of clothing to sell to augment his $15.00 a month pay. But at night his post was outside the southern portion of the long adobe building -- the section of it occupied by troops - encircling the southern end and cutting through the lighted sally-port in the center. At each round he also was required by his orders to walk south of the buildings a short distance along the front of some adobe stables where a few race horses were kept. For some reason the custom was for this quarters-guard to be armed with a revolver instead of a rifle - the 38-caliber service weapon of the time being passed from one sentry to another at the end of the period of each on post. The first time I walked this post there had been five cartridges transmitted. The night after I saw the red-flagger patrol at the ford and I went on this duty there was only two. This seemed to me a rather meager armament in troublousbtimes for a sentry who was the only man awake out of a hundred or so soldiers sleeping in a rather exposed situation, but having no inclination to invite ridicule of accusation of timidity by
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[page 32] protesting I accepted the situation as I found it though I would have been much more comfortable if I had carried my rifle and worn the cartridge belt that hung by the head of my cot inside. There was more or less movement, all the early part of my tour of duty, along the Alfalfa road, north of the park and this was somewhat disquieting since usually at that hour there was little. Also my youthful imagination pictured lurking red-flaggers in the blackness by the stables and I walked that part of my post with revolver in hand. Now the Alfalfa road north of the park was paved with about a nine-foot strip in the center and along about two a.m. while in front of the stables I heard a tremendous clatter of galloping horses coming down this highway from the east. It sounded to me as if half the red flaggers in Chihuahua had crossed the border and were galloping in. I raced for the sally-port, believing that if I ran fast enough I could reach it by the time the horsemen did and make a two-cartridge stand in this entrance, deriving gloomy satisfaction from the thought that after I had done so my exit from the world would be directly in front of my captain's door, his quarters opening up on this entrance. My first and more practical purpose however was to reach the sally port in time to throw off the light switch so my brief resistance would at least have the protection of darkness. As I reached the sally-port and ran through with revolvers in hand the horsemen swept by to the north, continuing toward town. They were American cavalrymen, and only five or six of them at that. And rankest recruits too, I reflected sourly -- who else would gallop horses on concrete when there was gravel road alongside. It was time for my relief. I went in, woke up the sentry whose turn was next, gave him the revolver and two cartridges, felt for my rifle and ammuniation belt to see that they were convenient to my hand, and went to
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[page 33] sleep. The next morning I was told that soon after I had gone off duty all the border posts had been alerted with word that the red flagger forces south of the Rio Grande had started movement westward toward Juarez. The patrol which had given me a few pseudo-heroic moments quite possibly had been carrying information of some sort. The red flagger bands, I further learned, had not come west along the river as far as Washington Park, turning south instead when about opposite the Company E outpost at San Lorenzo ford. As soon as I was relieved from guard I borrowed the first sergeant's field glasses and climbed to the top of a shoot-the-chutes structure at the south end of the park to see what I could see across the river. It was not much. There was a distant scurrying about of mounted patrols, apparently federal, but no signs of conflict. A little later I saw the smoke of four trains moving south from Juarez on the Mexican Central Railway and in about an hour the occasional sound of a distant cannon could be heard, probably "El Nino", a light piece mounted on a flat car and frequently mentioned in the newspapers as used for patrol on the railway. So far as I ever heard there was no real fighting -- and the El Paso newspapers would probably have had the story if there had been. My recollection is that the reporters said that seven troop trains had been sent out but that the red flaggers continued moving to the south and the federals returned to Juarez. A period of quiet followed this brief flare of excitement. The first battalion of the 18th Infantry had left El Paso for Fort D.A. Russell, (later Fort Francis E. Warren) at Cheyenne, [Wyoming]. The 22d Infantry, it seemed, was also scheduled for station at that post instead of its previous post at Fort Sam Houston and much of the company gossip had to do with the possibility of such a move.
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[page 34] Then came new development in Mexico -- this in the early part of February, 1913. A portion of the garrison of the city of Mexico under leadership of General Bernardo Reyes revolted and attempted to capture the palace. General Reyes was killed but his followers, now commanded by Feliz Diaz, a nephew of Porfirio Diaz, the president whom Madero had ousted, stood siege in the arsenal 10 days. Then on [February] 18 General Victoriano Huerta, reaching an accord with the rebels, arrested President Madero and the vice president, forced their resignation, and took over the government. the episode being climaxed by the murder of the former president and vice president the night of February 22. These things had caused intense excitement in El Paso and Juarez, and in the Mexican town the old-army federals declared for Huerta, made prisoners of the Maderista volunteers who formed part of the garrison and were joined by the Red Flaggers, their late enemies. The counter-revolution and the murder of Madero made a very unpleasant impression on American public opinion and there was widespread talk of intervention and war. Possibly there was some natural concern as well as excitement in El Paso, since the papers assured their readers that the 22d Infantry would remain in El Paso to protect that town, regardless of what happened. Our Philippine and Cuba veterans laughed at this. El Paso would be much more comfortable in case of war, they said, than Chihuahua, but we younger and less experienced men raged. We would be "the El Paso Home Guards" we grumbled. Down on our Company F No. 1 patrol post east of the foundry there lived an old civil war veteran who was a friend of mine and with whom I discussed the local situation. It amused and pleased me when the old man confided that he was ready to take the war path. The more turbulent
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[page 35] part of the Mexican population of El Paso was preparing for hostilities against the American population in case of war, he said, and he had made plans all of his own. "I have a mighty good gun and know how to use it," he confided. "There are five Mexicans in this part of town I am going to get just as soon as a war starts. They have made their brags but they are going to have to shoot fast if they shoot first when I go after them." President William H. Taft Had only a couple weeks of his term of office remaining -- since President-elect Woodrow Wilson would be inaugurated on March 4 -- but it was reported that he would order the concentration of an American division in Texas ready for his successor in case he decided on intervention. This interested us. A paper divisional organization announced some time previously had listed the 22d Infantry in the 2d Division. Maybe- just maybe. A morning or two later after calling the roll as usual at reveille, First Sergeant Elbert C. Russell stared at us belligerently with bristling beard, a sure sign that something of important would be forthcoming. "Hurry over and get your breakfast, then roll your packs and fold your cots," he said. "We are going to move." A short time later as we completed our preparations, a troop of the Second Cavalry rode up at Washington Park. A detachment moved down to relieve our outpost. The remainder dismounted and unsaddled and carried in armloads of saddles, rifles, sabers and other paraphernalia, while the escort wagons which had accompanied it began unloading supplies at our kitchens. Our own escort wagons were being loaded at the same time and
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[page 36] I was busily engaged in this activity. Swinging up a huge cotton sack of navy beans I glanced at a tag on it. "Not ours," I commented as I lowered it. "Troop L, Second Cavalry." "Throw it is! Throw it in!" forcefully whispered our mess sergeant. I did, and so we were ahead a sack of beans and the horse-soldiers short. That night at Fort Bliss where the regiment was being concentrated was a most miserable one. A merciless wind whipped around the shoulder of Mount Franklin, driving before it a cold steady rain. Shelter tents would not stay up in such a gale with only loose sandy soil to hold tent pegs and we sought what shelter we could. I huddled in the lee of a canvas sidewall of an old kitchen but, thoroughly drenched, gave up the fight in due time and joined hundreds of other men gathered around huge fire down by the railroad track. I slept toward morning and was awakened by some women searching for acquaintances, or husbands maybe. Just then first call sounded. "First call for a move," commented a grizzled corporal grinning grimly. "There's an old saying. 'It pays all debts and divorces all women'." There was a day of shifting about and waiting, and night found us down in east El Paso somewhere shivering with cold and still waiting for cars. Our cooks, installed in a baggage car, were drunk and supper consisted of cold beef sandwiches without the hot coffee we craved. One of them kept muttering over and over inanely in answer to complaints: "Well, we're all American soldiers, aren't we?" He was an old soldier who had served with Funston in the 20th Kansas in the Philippines and a friend of mine -- but I did not feel friendly to him that evening. Confusion everywhere, discontent, oaths. "The army on the move," sneered someone caustically, "The army on the move."
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[map of Mexico]
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[photograph] NACO, ARI, [December] 1914. [photograph] U.S. INF. in Trench on Border Douglas, [Arizona. November] 4 [1915] [photograph] Chow Time US Soldiers in Trench on Border Douglas, [Arizona. November] 4 [1915]
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[photograph] Pvt Frank Zepp [photograph] Pvt Percy Long Co C, 22d Inf [photograph] James Mountcassal Sarver Rudisell Lynch Duncan Fullerton Wilcox Men of Co F, 22d US Inf Washington Park, El Paso [Texas] 1912
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[photograph] Our station Jefferson Barracks 1912 [photograph] Jefferson Barracks, [Missouri] 1912 [photograph] Billets, Co F, 22d US Inf, Washington Park, El Paso [Texas], December 1912
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[photograph] 1st Sgt EC Russell, 1912 [photograph] Pvt Aron Nikolonetski [photograph] Sgt Simenson Rodisill Samples Blubaugh
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National Geographic Society Dufaycolor by Luis Marden Here the Pecos, Flowing Across West Texas, Empties into the Rio Grand Cliffs form the United State frontier; lowlands at right are in Mexico. The tree-grown ridge at the cliff's base marks the pioneer roadbed of the Southern Pacific Lines, now relocated on the mesa above. In the Pecos's mouth stands a ruined bridge pier over which once rumbled California trains.
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Photograph by Luis Marden This Dizzy-Looking, Spindle-Legged Bridge Spans the Pecos River Above Its Confluence with the Rio Grande The Pecos, rising in northeast New Mexico, flows southeast across west Texas, to form one of the Rio Grande's chief tributaries. here Southern Pacific trains cross the rock-walled canyon on their long runs between New Orleans and California (Plate III and page 439). National Geographic [October] 1939.
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[page 37] After a period of freezing and waiting, we found our tourist cars, when they finally arrived, most warm and comfortable, and as I lay in my upper berth that night as the train jolted and jerked southeastward on the Texas Pacific railway I felt like one transferred from a bleak, freezing inferno to a comparative paradise. Off to the wars! Altogether I was in a most happy frame of mind -- possibly because I had never yet seen war. Morning found us near Alpine at the top of the Big Bend country, traversing a rugged region greener than that around El Paso and to me new and delighful. At the stations where we paused we found the cowboys and other loungers who greeted us as expectant of war as were we, and obviously, as men of the exposed frontier, expecting to be concerned in it, and in the case of the young men at least apparently looking forward to it with some relish. Marathon, which the young Mexican Maderista volunteer who had once guided me about Juarez had told me was his home; Sanderson -- Langtry. Much publicized as Judge Roy Bean has been in the intervening years, I had never up to that time heard of him. But an old corporal who had served many years on the border told me some of the anecdotes concerning him and pointed out the sign on the front of a building facing the tracks: "Justice of the Peace. Law West of the Pecos." And he further told me that the railway bridge over the Pecos canyon was the highest above the stream of any bridge then in the United States. We stared down with some awe at the water far beneath as the train crept across it. A detachment of cavalry -- the 14th if I remember right -- was stationed as guard at this bridge as well as at some other points along the railroad. Devils River and a coyote trotting across a hill and not afraid of a train. Del Rio, and a turn away from the border through
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[page 38] Spofford and to the east. Morning found us south of Houston in a region which appeared as southern as El Paso was western. The hut of the Mexican laborer had been replaced by the ramshackle shanties of the southern Negro. Forests of pine trees with long streamers of Spanish moss appeared here and there; once in awhile there were large hayfields, and now and then pretty country houses, with climbing roses, all in bloom, clambering over the front veranda, seemed like pages out of some delightful southern novel. In the air, mingled with the odor of the pines, was the salt smell of the sea. Soon we ran out on a huge, green, floorlike plain and presently reached Texas City which, as it turned out, was to be our homes for many a month. At Texas City, Texas, on this February 28, 1913, everything was activity. The sidings were crowded with the trains of eight regiments, some just arriving. Some almost unloaded. Scores of escort wagons slushed through the mud, their splattered mule teams straining every muscle. Everywhere was seeming confusion, and displeasure at the weather which had turned rainy and the camping ground which under the circumstances seemed little better than a swamp. North of town on this flat, treeless, grassy plain, pyramidal tents were already beginning to rise. Soon ours joined them, our officers frowning at the ground, permitting gaps in the line so as to avoid as many low spots as possible and take full advantage of occasional mounds.
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[page 39] The 2nd Division, the only division assembled at that time, was of the old triangular type which preceded the "square" type of World War I days. There were three infantry brigades which by the paper organization of the day were supposed to have three regiments each. In fact one brigade -- the Fifth, which was concentrating at Galveston across the bay, had four regiments, the 4th, 7th, 19th, and 28th. This brigade was soon to be commanded by Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston though I have the impression that at first Col. Daniel Cornman of the 7th Infantry was in command. On the Texas City side was the Fourth brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Hunter Ligget consisting of the 23d, 26th and 27th Infantry regiments, and our own brigade, the Sixth, commanded by Brig. Gen. Clarence R. Edwards, which included the 11th, 18th and 22d. There was also the 6th Cavalry, the 4th Field Artillery -- a regiment of mountain guns -- and some odds and ends -- a battalion of engineers, a field hospital, an ambulance company, a signal corps company, a bakery unit and an airplane squadron. Regiments probably ran about 800 men each and the the total strength of the division on June 30 after a considerable number of recruits were received is listed as being 517 officers and 10,770 men. Major General William H. Carter, a medal-of-honor man from Indian-fighting days, was in command. He was quoted in the Texas State Topics as saying: "This is the largest concentration of a single command of regulars in the history of the army." It is possible, however, that he was misquoted. The so-called "maneuver division" at San Antonio in 1911 had an aggregate strength of 12,598 at one time, and the command that
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[page 40] Major General William R. Shafter took to Cuba for the Santiago campaign of 1898 aggregated 16,887 of whom fewer than 3,000 were volunteers. However it certainly was one of the three largest concentrations of regular army troops in American history up to that time and those of us who were included therein, took considerable pride in being members of such a force, supposing that very soon we would be on our way to Mexico. As for the armament of the day, the infantryman's weapons was the 1903 Springfield rifle and bayonet, except that each regiment had a regimental detachment of two Benet Mercier machine guns carried on pack mules. The cavalry, of course, had rifle, pistols, and savers-- the slightly-curved 1906 model -- and I think two Benet-Merciers on pack horses. The artillery was armed with 2.95 pack howitzers. The expectation of immediate war did not last long. When President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated on March 4 it became quite clear that he had no ideas of intervention, and the soldiery at Texas City settled down dejectedly in the mud while the high command pondered a better-drained camp site. The camp site matter was a somewhat serious one in the Sixth brigade at least. Probably someone had made some sort of preliminary reconnaissance before we were assigned to the ground on which we had pitched our tents, but rather obviously that recommaissance had been made at some time in dry weather. Now it was raining more or less continuously and and there was no drainage. Ditching the tents did no goo. Diking was more appropriate but rain at night usually overflowed the dikes. In my tent we fastened our weapons and equipment onto the central tent pole and kept all else on our cots, At night we tied our shoes up on
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[page 41] onto the cots to keep them out of the couple of inches of water we could count on covering the dirt floor by morning. All tents were not this bad, or course, but on the other hand some were worse, and getting to the mess hall at the head of the company street meant wading two or three lakes. Meanwhile the engineers were busy working out the official solution to the problem on the beach a mile and a half to the east, staking out lines of proposed ditches -- about 17,000 feet to a regiment, someone said. Soon we were going out on working parties to this trench net-work and a little later the entire brigade floundered through the mud to the new site and re-pitched the camp. The engineers had figured well. Thanks to the ditches which drained onto the beach itself -- perhaps a fall of four or five feet at high tide -- the camp was livable and while at first the roads were quagmires they were soon gravelled and the place became excellent for its purpose. It was while on one of the working parties digging ditches that I first saw General Edwards who became well known a few years later as the World War I commander of the 26th Division. He and his staff were out riding horseback watching the work on his brigade area. As the general rode up we saw our Corporal chapman -- a lean, ramrod like soldier of Indian mien and perhaps 45 years of age -- come stiffly to attention and salute then to our surprise we saw the general lean over, shake hands cordially with him, and dismount and chat for awhile. "He used to be my company commander," was to corporal's complete explanation in response to a query as we trudged back to camp. The episode gave me a good opinion of generals in general which I have never had any occasion to lose. It was maybe 8 or ten months later that I had my own first and only conversation with General
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[photograph] General View Of Texas City Docks [photograph] General Carter and Staff Reviewing Army. Texas City [Texas] 1913 Higby Photo [photograph] Wagon Train in Review Texas City [Texas]. Higby Photo. [photograph] 2nd Division U.S. Army Camp Texas City [Texas] 1913. Higby Photo.
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[photograph] Sixth Street Looking North Texas City [Texas] Higby Photo One of Texas City's Main Business Streets. Texas City, [Texas] Higby Photo. View of Portion of Texas City, Looking North From the Docks. [ms illegible: 2 wds] Houston [Texas January] 28, 1913 [photograph] Cotton Steamers Loading At Texas City.
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[page 42] Edwards. A corporal by that time I was corporal of the guard, and the only noncommissioned officer at the guard tent, on an occasion when the general was making one of his frequent rides around the camp. He stopped and chatted for a time, remarking mildly, among other things, as he surveyed the scene that the camp of the 22nd Infantry looked like "a camp of Pennsylvania militia." I laughed, as he probably meant for me to do, for in truth the camp was somewhat irregular in shape but it was a most sensible one shaped to fit the terrain. Perhaps the Pennsylvania state troops used sensible camps too. The lessening of the rains brought on vigorous training period. Our earlier drills included battalion formations on the plain west of our first camp. My remembrances are chiefly of the huge mosquitoes which annoyed us and of the terrified rabbits which frightened from their hiding places by the march of one column dashed off at top speed only to run into another column and then veered off only to run into still another, for the ground was covered with troops. This continued until the animal finally found its way out or was pulled down by the crowd of canines who as company mascots were with the troops and who gave chase with as much vigor as was possible in view of their habitually overfed condition. I also have a vivid remembrance of one occasion when "F" Company, doing close order drill, was marching along in company front when the center of the line stirred up a nest of snakes. This much disturbed the drill and I suspect rather tried the patience for which our fatherly company commander was noted. There were constant maneuvers too, battalion, regimental, brigade and eventually division. The early ones were accompanied by a certain awkwardness and a tendency of one unit to get in the way of others
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[page 43] indicated that regular army units of the day had been accustomed to operate singly instead of in conjunction with others, but it was not long until all habitually flowed smoothly; and the men were toughened and in as good physical condition as it is possible for men to be. This constant activity made life at Texas City interesting and livable enough. I remember no particular boredom, and that was a time when no one outside of the army tried to furnish entertainment to soldiers on other than a commercial basis. One could always go in to Texas City in off-duty periods, a town pleasant enough but small and where I entertained myself usually by strolling along the docks and looking at the ships, the Wolvin line vessels which ran into Tampico and Vera Cruz putting in there, good many British steamers carrying cotton and also some coasting line to New York. Ferry boats ran at convenient intervals to Galveston, and those who felt ambitious enough could go to Houston by street car. Entertainment in the camp seemed to depend upon the chaplains principally and in the 22nd there was for a long time no regimental effort along that line. There was a pleasant Y.M.C.A. tent back of the 18th Infantry camp, however where I went frequently to read or write, and there was an 11th Infantry enlisted men's club in another tent, run by the chaplain, which I like most as a loitering place, perhaps due to the variety of reading matter there including military magazines. Probably most of the soldiers at Texas City came to know or know about Chaplain John T. Axton of the 11th Infantry. I was much pleased when, some years later, he was made chief of chaplains for the entire army. At this time, Major General Wm. H. Carter commanding the division, seemed to me a rather colorless figure but in point of fact he must have been an excellent officer however much he failed as an individual
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[page 44] to impress his personality on the troops - or at least on me, looking back, I know that discipline in the division was excellent, morale high and that training progressed rapidly. What with constant drills, maneuvers, practice marches and target practice, the division must early have been considered in full readiness to perform any mission it might have been given in connection with the Mexican situation. That there were still possibilities in this respect was shown by the fact that all through the months there laid in readiness at Galveston wharves four small army transports of the day -- the Sumner, the Meade, the McClellan and the Kilpatrick. Though most countries had recognized the Huerta government in Mexico, our own country had refused to do so with the result that there was diplomatic bickering throughout the year while in Mexico civil war continued without getting much of anywhere except into the newspaper headlines -- Carranza, Villa and Zapata against the government. The airplanes -- something of a novelty at that time -- had added interest to the early part of the maneuvers. The army, I have read, owned 15 planes at that time and I think most or all of them were at Texas. Two non-stop flights of 240 miles were made, which was quite an achievement at the day and a great deal was said about their success in war if used as scouts or messengers. In my scattered notes about this-and-that, made at the time, I find this one: "One reads much in magazines about various styles of artillery made for the purpose of bringing down these aerial craft and to me it is unknown whether there are any such weapons in the United States army. It is certain however that there is none in this division. As one watches one of the 'enemy's aeroplanes on maneuvers circling about out of rifle range, observing every move of the column, it is easy to understand what a disconcerting effect such actions would, or will, have when war is
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[page 45] real instead of mimic." On the morning of July 8, 1913, when the men of my company gathered at the head of the company street for the daily police of camp we watched one of the planes which circled over and few west, chatting about how pleasant it would be to be in the air on a hot day like that was already starting to be. Then something went wrong with the machine. It nosed upward, then forward and straight down, both wings collapsing before it crashed near the 4th Artillery camp. A Lieut. Call was killed in this crash. So far as I recall there was never another airplane flight from the Texas City camp. A curious accident happened in E Company of my regiment about this time -- a man's life saved by his moustache. Hunting had been encouraged and there were a number of shotguns in camp. One soldier in that company had a little moustache of which he was quite proud and which he constantly curled with his hands. One morning as men were returning from the mess hall, there was a shotgun blast in the Company E area just back of my tent. I ran out, with others, to find this man whirling about with a ghastly wound in his right forearm and a shot-torn spot in his shirt in the right chest. Another soldier, seated on a cot, working with a shot gun, had accidently discharged it, the charge striking the man with the moustache. Happening to be curling his moustache at the moment, his chest was partly shielded by his forearm which caught the full effect of the charge. It was said at the time -- when reports cam back from the hospital -- that he would lose his arm but that the wound in his chest was not serious due to the position of his arm when the shot was fired. Mustaches were of course quite common and there was even an exceptional case where there were beards. I recall how a soldier of my company came to grow one of the latter. Shaving in the field was not
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[page 46] particularly stressed except that it was necessary to be nearly shaved for Saturday morning inspection. A certain Private Reynolds had neglected this for some reason, and must have been casting about desperately for an excuse as Captain Curtis came down the line inspecting arms. "Reynolds, why - didn't - you - shave?" the captain demanded in slow inexorable voice when he reached him. "Sir," answered Reynolds, "I 'lowed to grow a beard." "Then - see - that - you - do." replied the company commander as he passed on. So Reynolds grew a beard -- a thin, Van-Dyke-appearing affair that gave him a rather distinguished look. Along in October, 1913, opportunity came my way. Capt. Curtis had been sent to the Army School of the Line at Fort Leavenworth and as succeeded by First Lieut. James E. Ware, another 40-year-old Spanish war veteran. Lieut. Ware made several changes in the company and tried a series of men out for corporal, by making them lance corporals, observing their work, then relieving them of duty as lance corporals and trying someone else. In time I was selected for such trial. At the time of my initial assignment in charge of a squad, squad drill was being stressed, each corporal drilling his own. My lot on this day was to drill my squad -- this I assume by chance -- directly in front of the company commander's tent and under his eye. Normally this would have been my ruin since it was the first time I had drilled anyone in the regular army. But in my national guard days, under tutelage of regular army sergeants visiting my unit in Missouri, I had practiced myself in this. I not only knew how to drill a squad but I knew every movement by rote as laid down in the drill regulations. It was my morning to grandstand. We had had but little close order squad drill in the 22d
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[page 47] -- which was a field soldier organization -- and the first sergeant, keeping an eye on me because it was my first effort, thought, I had explained one movement wrong. "No, sir," I was able to say positively, "that is correct. I am quoting the exact words of the regulation." and so left him thumbing through his book, and went merrily on my way. My warrant as corporal came 1913. but not until Lieut. Ware had interviewed me to find how that it happened that a first enlistment man with only a year's service, could drill a squad like one who had often done it before. So it behooved me to confess my national guard service, explaining why I had been silent on the point. the lieutenant understood. "I was in the national guard once too," he said. I was immensely, though I hope secretly, pleased at this promotion. To be a corporal in the regular army seemed to me a very important position-- as it doubtless was, and is. It was a big aid to my morale which had sagged somewhat as intervention in Mexico appeared to grow less probable. The winter of 1913-1914 was one with many field firing problems -- a thing relatively new in the army at that time -- in which little tactical exercises were worked out with targets and ball ammunition, and my note books of the time contain details of many such, I having attended voluntarily as a wandering observer those held my many units besides my own. The Second Division was being as well trained as the knowledge and means available at the time permitted. It was also kept oriented by means of occasional lectures and motion pictures concerning events in Mexico -- those of my knowledge being for the rank and file and there must have been many more available only to officers. Lectures were by returned missionaries or refugees. Pictures I recall include at detailed one
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[page 48] showing the federal (Huertista) army At this picture, shown in the open air near the 11th Infantry or 18th Infantry recreation tents, I was seated with a mass of other enlisted men in front of some chairs later occupied by General Edwards and other officers, and I remember hearing the general comment on "the latest French artillery" in the possession of the Mexicans. Another picture shown at the newly-erected 22nd Infantry club was taken in the Big Bend country of Texas, showing Mexican red flaggers forced across the Rio Grande at Ojinago. The close-ups of wounds, I recall, were big and vivid enough that they should have constituted some seasoning for what battle wounds were. Reaction of ex-sailor American and other allied war vessels were at this time lying in Mexican harbors and on February 28, 1914, the British cruiser Essex came into port in Galveston, bringing Sir Lionel Carden, the British ambassador to Mexico, on his way to Washington for a conference with somebody. Aboard was the commander of the British fleet in Mexican waters, Vice Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock. On March 7 there was a review at Texas City in which the division passed in review before Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, then in command of the division, and Admiral Craddock. "The admiral is about the same size as General Funston and wears a short beard," I noted in my diary. Eight months later Admiral Craddock went down fighting with his fleet 40 miles off Cape Coronel, Chile, against the German squadron of Admiral Von Spee in one of the initial naval actions of World War I. The next day the Essex was open to visits by the public and I was among the Texas City soldiers who went to Galveston to go aboard her. I was quite impressed with the nattiness of the British marines, the glittering brass water-jacket of a machine gun mounted on a tripod, with the racks of rifles and cutlasses, and with the British short rifle used by the marines -- then new but later to become familiar to millions of Americans as the
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[page 49] British regulation rifle of World Wars I and II. I was less favorably impressed -- being an American without previous contact with the British armed forces -- with mottoes appearing here and there "Fear Good and Honor the King," "The King, God Bless him," and others of similar import. On April 9 the Mexican situation again flashed to the foreground. The Mexicans seized and held as prisoners an American paymaster and some sailors who had landed in a launch at Tampico. Rear Admiral Mayo, commanding our fleet off their port, immediately demanded their release and the firing of a salute of 21 guns as an apology to the American flag. The prisoners were released by General Huerta refused to fire the salute. In the midst of the hub-bub incidental to this situation, the Second Division departed on a march to Houston to participate in the San Jacinto day parade, the Fifth brigade leaving Galveston the 15th and the Texas City troops moving out to join them on the morning of the 16th. It was a march of much interest to me, the entire division moving by one route in a long column, and exercise no doubt affording valuable and probably much needed practice in logistics for the division staff. My own regiment camped the first night at Hulen Park, 11 miles from Texas City; the second night at Webster after another march of 11 miles from Texas City; the second night at Webster after another march of 11 miles and the third night at Dumont, also called South Houston, 12 miles farther on. At this latter camp we heard that President Wilson had issued an ultimatum to President Huerta demanding that he salute the flag in apology for the Tampico incident and we younger soldiers were quite elated at the prospects the situation seemed to offer for active service. On the morning of the fourth day my own unit remained encamped for about two hours as the forward parts of the column moved by, and I remember distinctly the impressiveness of the scene as the 6th
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[page 50] Cavalry, in column of twos, with its band mounted on white horses in the lead, passed up the road, the white horses standing out against the background of pine woods. For us that day's march was only seven miles, we going into camp about noon in Magnolia Park south of Houston. Crowds from town thronged our camp during the afternoon, most of us much flattered at this most unusual interest in the army on the part of the civilian populace. This was April 19th and we were scheduled to rest on the 20th, then participate in the Houston San Jacinco day parade on the 21st. A good many of our men departed for town, with proper leave until taps, as soon as the evening meal was over but I was among those who remained in camp, planning to visit Houston on the next day's holiday. Speculation of course was on what Huerta would do, as President Wilson's ultimatum expired at 6 o'clock P.M. Soon after 8 o'clock the regiments nearest the street car line suddenly began cheering, and soon shouting news boys invaded our own camp. "Huerta Refuses to Salute!" Our own regiment took up the cheers and others followed until the whole camp of the division seemed cheering in unison. At 3;30 a.m. the next morning an orderly stumbled over the rope of my shelter tent looking for headquarters. In a few moments officers call was sounded, and as the camp stirred in excitement, first call and reveille followed. "Hurry up, hurry up," the word was passed along. "Breakfast at once. We march at 4:30." It was a beautiful still morning in the black pine woods and soon thousands of candles were burning in the open as men hastily tore down their shelter tents and rolled their packs. Somehow the cooks had risen to the situation and a hasty breakfast was ready by the time the
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[page 51] the packs were rolled. The company escort wagons came rolling up, the teamsters cutting fences in their haste -- the government probably paid for that. By 4:30 my own company and all others so far as I could see, was ready, and wagons were completing loading, the field ranges being jammed in still hot. Then we waited for orders - and kept waiting. "We are going back by train," was the report. At daybreak the Fifth brigade swung by on the way to the railway. We kept on waiting, grumbling, soldierlike, at what we deemed someone's inefficiency. As to the time necessary to put a division in motion on unexpected orders, we of course had no idea. We were ready. What was the matter with headquarters? Where were the railway cars on which we were to load? About 8:00 the 6th brigade received orders -- to march. The railway report was a dream so far as we were concerned. In point of fact only the Fifth brigade moved by rail, the remainder of the division returning by marching. The citizenry had already gathered to watch and an incident at the first halt amused me. We halted by bugle, and in accordance with custom all men immediately turned to the right and trooped off the road to rest. We were in a pine woods and off to the right were a number of women with baby carriages watching As the column halted, and all men with one accord left the road en masse toward them, the mothers snatched their infants from the carriages and fled. I have often wondered what thought was in their mind. When, glancing apprehensively back in flight, they saw everyone sit or lay down on the ground, they returned in obvious relief to the baby vehicles they had abandoned. Later in the day, about 10 miles south, as we perspired along an asphalt road by the railway track under a blazing sun, the Fifth Brigade passed us in special troop trains -- passenger cars, box cars and flat
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[page 52] cars on which escort wagons were blocked. There was a shouted chorus of banter and genial mutual vilification, drowned in the roar of the cars, but the Fifth Brigade men were the victors in the tilt as as they rolled by, raising and lowering their clenched right first rapidly and mockingly in the army signal for "double time," and also throwing off to us copies of Houston newspaper extras saying that the Fifth brigade would board transports for Vera Cruz immediately on arrival at Galveston. We camped at Genoa after a march of 14 miles. The mail came and with it my copy of the Army and Navy Journal dated the preceding Saturday. War was inevitable, said that authorative publication. I believed it and was jubilant. What the Army and Navy Journal said was gospel to me. I still read that dignified publication, and have ever since, but also ever since I appraise its editorials before believing them. Being in an exuberant mood that evening I broke into an old silly song as I went down the line of shelter tents after mess -- "I'm going to get married, ma-ma, ma-ma; I'm going to get married --." "If you were married, Schrantz," commented First Sergeant Basil D. Coleman not unkindly, "You probably would not be singing that way." In truth a sudden move to Mexico or elsewhere would cause some worry and embarrassment to our married noncommissioned officers who had their wives at Texas City. And that evening, to further impress me with the idea that war was serious, an old corporal narrated his experiences after the Philippine Insurrection of helping dig up bodies of dead soldiers for shipment to the states. But I crawled into my blankets still happy. The night of the 21st we camped near Dickinson after another march of 14 miles. No officers or men were permitted to leave camp.
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[page 53] The wares of the newspaper vendors who visited the camps informed us that the marines and blue jackets of the fleet had seized the customs house at Vera Cruz with a loss of four men killed War! Knowing nothing of shipping problems I wondered if we would return to our Texas City Camp before going to Galveston to board transports. I had four five-dollar gold pieces secreted in a corner of a wooden box in which I kept my belonging and was worried about them. The next day we marched the remaining 14 miles to our permanent camp. The Fifth brigade, to my surprise, was reported still at Galveston but the marines and blue jackets had completed the capture of Vera Cruz with the loss of a good many more killed and wounded. A few days later the Fifth brigade sailed on the four army transports and by that time we too were packed, with our company property marked for shipment or for storage, as the case might be. We kept waiting. General Funston who had commanded the Fifth brigade in the movement, had taken command in Vera Cruz, we read, extending his lines to take in El Tejar and the water works. Two troops of the 6th Cavalry and some miscellaneous troops had gone from Texas City. On April 25th I saw a battalion of the 4th Field Artillery sail on the SS Saltillo from Texas City, leaving a horde of canine mascots barking on the piers, no dogs being allowed on ships. The newspapers now talked of an international conference and peace instead of war. My balloon of hopes subsided. No war, no campaign, no ribbon, no nothing. I was disgusted. Preparations for a possible move of the remainder of the Second Division to Vera Cruz continued, however, a number of small merchant vessels being chartered and moored at convenient piers in readiness. At the end of May the ships available, together with their tonnage, was as follows: At Galveston: U.S.A.T. Kilpatrick, 2380; USAT Meade, 2376; U.S.A.T. Sumner,
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[page 54] 2182; SS City of Macon 3999; SS City of Memphis 3081; SS Colorado 2025; SS Denver 2819; SS Kansan 5131; SS Minnesotan 4067; SS Panaman 4064; and the SS San Marcos 2168, all at Galveston, and the SS Ossabow 2043 and the SS Saltillo 2044 at Texas City. The 22nd Infantry, we were told, was scheduled to go on the City of Memphis, in case of movement, my own company, I recall to be assigned to standees being put up in the tween deck section. Conversion work was pushed on these and I watched with interest in my spare time the conversion of the Ossabw, a vessel with engines aft, to carry horses or mules, some to be in stables below deck and the others to be carried in stalls built on the open deck. The City of Memphis, in which we were so interested at the moment, did not carry troops to Vera Cruz but was later to have an unhappy part in a real war, being one of the American vessels sunk by German submarines prior to our entry into World War I. While the Vera Cruz excitement was still fresh, Maj. Gen. J. Franklin Bell, another famous soldier of the Philippine campaigns, appeared at Texas City and took command of the division. He addressed each regiment of the division in turn, talking to the 22d Infantry on June 1. He explained President Wilson's policy which intended to avert a war buy added that he thought war was probably and that therefore he wanted to talk to all of the men in the division telling them now he wanted to conduct themselves in campaign. The inhabitants of Mexico were to be treated kindly. So long as members of the armed forces had arms in hand they were to be killed but enemy soldiers too were to be treated kindly, once they had surrendered. He gave counsel on military precautions and on conduct in battle and in campaign. He warned against making a march with a canteen of whiskey --
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[page 55] doubtless good advice which struck me as curious since I had never personally known, nor have I since known, or anyone trying to make a march on whisky instead of water. Gneral Bell urged coffee in the canteen as a thirst-quencher. I tried it on the next march but the results were most unhappy. At each drink I became thirstier. Someone told me that was because I had sweetened coffee whereas it should be unsweetened, but after that I stayed with water. A more pertinent bit of advice was on endurance. "When you are exhausted and feel you cannot go a step farther, keep marching anyway," the general said. "Pretty soon you will get your second wind. And when you are again exhausted still keep on going. You will get your third wind and be all right." General Bell took a vigorous personal interest in the preparation of the division in training and other wise for the possible campaign -- talks by visitors to Mexico and officers returned from Vera Cruz; familiarization of infantry with the fire of the mountain guns (from the sidelines where the shriek of the shell could be heard without one being near the point of burst) and with more maneuvers. On July 14, President Huerta, yielding to battlefield reverses at the hands of opposing factions from within and to American pressure from without, gave up power and fled the country. The following month Gen. Venustiano Carranzo took over the government and while he was not particularly friendly to the United States, our country had been backing him and it was assumed that peace would come to Mexico. As July merged into August ultimatums and was declarations crackled in Europe. The Galveston News and the Houston Chronicle which were our principal sources of information in the camp broke out in great headlines. There was talk about-it-and-about in each of the multitudinous khaki tents at Texas City and perhaps in the higher levels there was excitement as well, akin to that which I have heard existed in the civilian world at that time.
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[page 56] But I recall no particular excitement about the matter among the enlisted personnel of my own unit. We followed events with interest but in a detached sort of way, as I recall, perhaps because our own little balloon of war anticipations regarding Mexico had so recently burst in our faces leaving us more matter-of-fact than before. Those men, of whom we had a good many, who had come from homes abroad were naturally concerned about their kith and kin who would be in the armed forces of the various belligerents, but for the rest of us it all seemed rather remote, of interest only from a professional standpoint. Besides there were other things on our minds, particularly a scheduled march to Galveston. We made the 17-mile March the evening of August 3, starting shortly before dusk. The road at first was flanked by ponds in which were growing masses of tall cat-tails, and the flat grass lands were a dark yellowish green in the fading light. It was dark by the time the causeway was reached and the moon had risen. The broad expanse of the waters of Galveston Bay, luminant in the moonlight, and the long white causeway with the endless dark column of infantry pouring over it toward the lights of the distant city, made an impressive picture. And here and there companies broke into song, inspired by the scene-- "We were sailing along, on Moonlight Bay--". That great day in history was just a peaceful soldier evening for us and with little thought given to the storm breaking over Europe. It was during the five or six days that we were encamped at Fort Crockett that I first really felt the thrill of the European war. Off duty I went down town to join the crowds at the newspaper bulletin boards. The crowds were of almost as much interest as the bulletins. Reservists of many nations had already poured into Galveston in response to mobilization notices published by the foreign counsels in the newspapers
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[page 57] in hopes of getting transportation home. These included Austrian, German, French, Swiss, English, Dutch, and others -- for all overseas nations were mobilizing. There was a babel of tongues, discussions, arguments. Back in Texas City on August 11 I watched the SS City of Tampico from Vera Cruz and Tampico moor, loaded with German reservists who had been in Mexico. I talked to one of them who spoke English. He said that they were mainly engineers and men of similar professions who were working in Mexico and were sent to the United States by the German counsels when they answered the call to reservists. They had been told that in Galveston they could get a ship for Germany. They were a happy, cheering and apparently high type group. A tender came alongside and took them to Galveston. Later I read in the newspapers that they had been told by the German counsel in Galveston that there were no ships available and he advised them to return to Mexico, offering them transportation. But most of them, not thus easily thwarted, took trains for New York instead, paying their own fare, hoping to get a whip there. There apparently was no though by anyone that the United States might eventually be drawn in. The popular idea, based on tables of strengths of armies published in newspapers and magazines, was that the war would be over in three months. I disputed this in our camp arguments. "The German army cannot be defeated within three months," I held, "and it is only on a belief that it will be that this three-months idea is based." Men of the company who had been in European ramies before they came over as immigrants told of their organization and armament, we listened eagerly. A Private Stelmach, recently arrived and recently joined, showed me a picture of his brother in the "Feefy-five regiment" of Austria. The newspapers said the Germans had occupied a certain town in Russian Poland near the border. Private Aaron Nikolonetski
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[page 58] showed me the printed item and protested violently: "Its a lie. I know that town. The Germans couldn't possibly take it. There is a whole squadron of Cossacks stationed there." I followed the course of the war with pencil marks on maps. For a while after August 22 the maps told what the headlines didn't. These told each day of British victories -- the British being better publicized than the larger French army -- but each day the current "victory" was many miles in rear of the victory of the day before. It was the retreat from Mons. News accounts told only of isolated successful rearguard actions, and on them the headlines were based. That there was a retreat was shown only by the map. I believed nothing unless I could check it by town names -- which is still the best way of which I know for following a war from newspaper accounts. In view of what was going on elsewhere, life at Texas city, while pleasant enough, seemed dull. Yet the docks were always of interest to me. A longshoremen's strike and Negro strike-breakers from Galveston unloading ships under supervision of colored bosses. It was a dangerous job for them. Nets full of cargo were swung over the side by the ship's cargo derricks, lowered to within five or six feet of the pier, then let go -- the freight flying in all directions and spools of barbed-wire occasionally bouncing and rolling into the water between ship and pier. I then thought it indifference and it was not until many years later when I had something to do with ships that I realized that it came only from unskilled winchmen. Apparently there was not cargo nets enough. When one had been landed, the hook was switched to as near the bottom of it as could be reached conveniently, and it was hoisted away,
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[page 59] dumping the freight in a bouncing clatter onto the decks. The Negroes dodged and jibed and sang at their work. As the cargo nets hung suspended, prpeparatory to the inevitable crash when the winchman let go, the boss man would shout "Watch out," then "Watch out or the devil will git you." The men, hopping nimbly aside to avoid bouncing spools of wire, were impressed with the phraseology of the latter warning. They began to chant it themselves. Soon they had made up a little song which they sang as they worked. The strike over, and a deck load of long-horned cattle being unloaded from the SS Haakon, in from Tampico. Wooden, cleated gangways had been placed from the deck to the bulwarks and from the bulwarks to the pier, and up and down this runway to long-horns were forced to go by cattle-hands, swearing in southern drawl. The men worked down among the cattle, their shirts wet with sweat and fouled by manure. Now and then an animal would break back down the deck and one of the men would turn it back, by shouting, striking it across the nose with a short stick, punching his fingers in its eyes, or grasping its long horns and forcing it back by sheer strength. Reluctant ones were heaved up the narrow runway by strength of shoulders of several men, or by someone twisting its tail until it started from the pain. And when all other means failed, a rope was looped around the creature's horns and it was swung off by a cargo derricks, collapsing in a heap in bewildered fashion when it reached the dock. An overnight pass in Houston and a 3 a.m. fire which called me from my bed in a nearby hotel to see the excitement. It was a cleaning establishment in the upper story of a two story structure adjacent to a one-story structure. Two fire engines puffed in the streets. Firemen on ladders from the roof of the
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[page 60] one story building to the roof of the two-story one, stood on their ladders directing a hose at such flames as were emerging above while other hose placed from the front through broken windows. It wasn't mush of a fire, I thought, standing chatting across the street with a policeman. Waiters in an all-night restaurant beneath the cleaning establishment returned to their counters and started serving customers. Then a violent explosion showered the street with bricks. Firemen on the leaning ladders leaped straight backward off them. I raced the policeman up the street out of brick range. but almost as I started there was another explosion. The wall on which the firemans ladders had stood collapsed, and tons of brick and debris crashed through the ceiling of the restaurant. The bricks and wreckage had hardly settled until the firemen were scrambling up the ruins, playing their hoses on the fire, seeking to dig out those entrapped by the collapse. It was a fine example of courage. The newspapers said next day that two were killed and 12 injured. The city council passed some kind of ordinance against keeping gasoline in cleaning establishments. The new battleship New York up from Vera Cruz and open to public inspection in Galveston. A new ship -- the pride of the navy -- spotlessly clean and with the crew in white undress lounging about or playing acey-deucey. The battleship some 20 parrots acquired in Mexican waters. I stared at the vessel's great 14-inch guns and peered into gun turrets from which the only exit was steel doors of not great size -- like man-holes, I thought. A beautiful ship, but I would rather fight on shore than sink penned up in a gun turret. The "new New York" then was the "old New York" when I next saw her again 29 years later accompanying a troop convoy to Casablanca. By October the American military future looked drab. It was announced that Vera Cruz would be evacuated and there were rumors that the Second Division would be demobilized. A wave of pacifism borne of
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[page 61] reports of tremendous casualties in the European war appeared sweeping over the nation. A new song "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier" was popular, in civilian quarters. Morale in the Second Division probably seemed sagging, for General Bell issued an order encouraging men to take furloughs or go on fishing passes. Back home letters from friends in the national guard told me of changes in my old company. A former national guard corporal, once junior to mem, told me that he was now first lieutenant and that I would have been myself if I had stayed in the guard instead of enlisting in the army. A new man to the company had been named second lieutenant because he had been in the regular army and all the old-timers of the company were gone. I writhed a little at this. Naturally I wanted to be an officer. No officers were being commissioned from the ranks in the regular army at that time or did such appear likely in view of the apparent overwhelming pacifist sentiment in the nation. And no more soldiers were being given commissions in the Philippine Scouts. At this stage I received a letter from the home town newspaper offering what appeared at the time a promising position if I could and would leave the army. It was not hard, I knew, to get out if I made a request. A man with two years service could purchase a discharge for $100 if he had a job waiting. "You will be making a mistake, Schrantz," my first sergeant told me. "You like the army and you should be a solider and nothing else. If you leave the army now you are leaving your military career behind." And he was right as regarded a professional career. I was discharged on November 4, 1914. Captain Sylvester Bonaffon III, then my company commander, was kind enough to write in on my discharge "Qualified for a commission as second lieutenant in the
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[page 62] volunteer army." This was a high and coveted honor in those days for men being discharged and I realized also that it probably did not go to many men discharged by Purchase. Moreover it was not entirely an empty honor. In April congress had passed a law authorizing the president, in time of war or when war was imminent, to form a national volunteer army with officers commissioned by him. Captain Bonnaffon's note on my discharge might well serve to get me a volunteer commission in the event of war, I reflected, and in the meanwhile I would go back into the national guard.
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Texas City, [Texas] and Environs 1913
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[map] Progressive Reconnaissance Map
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[map]
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[photograph] 18. Inf 11th Inf 22nd Inf. View of Camp of 6th Brigade, Texas City, [Texas] from Aeroplane No. 18. 400' altitude. [photograph] Texas City [October] 1913 Kitchen Row, 22nd Inf 2nd Div U.S.A. Photo by Windhorst [photograph] 22nd Inf 2nd Div. Camp View #1 Texas City [October] 1913 Photo by Windhorst
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[photograph] Wagon Train 22nd Inf 2nd Div U.S.A. [photograph] Corral of R.D., 22nd Inf 2 Div. U.S.A. Texas City, Texas, [October] 1913 photo by Windhorst [photographs] Views of Galveston Harbor and Causeway Photo by Windhorst 5318 Ave S. [photograph] Rifle Range Galveston Texas 1913 [photograph] Galveston Texas Rifle Range 200 Yards Shooting Slow Fire for Record Photo by Windhorst 5318 Ave. S [photograph] Rifle Range Shooting Rapid Fire 200 yards for Record shots 21 sec [photograph] Rifle Range 600 Yards [ms illegible: 1 wd]
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[photograph] Bird's Eye View of Texas City [photograph] Mess Hall Co F, 22d US Infantry, Texas City, [Texas]
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[photograph] Texas, Taken Several Months Ago. probably made in 1912 [photograph] Dickenson [Texas] 1913 June When Water Is Invaluable. Dickenson, [Texas], June 1913 (Looking south)
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[photograph] Pvt Claiba Samples [photograph] Pvt Wilson [photograph] Plane Crash, Texas City, [Texas], July 8, 1913
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[photograph] Pvt Pearson [photograph] Cpl Chester Blubaugh Cpt Lonnie Parham [postcard] Grain Elevator. Texas City, [Texas] Publ. By Daferner's Book Store.
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[photograph] Cpl War L Schrantz, 1st Sgt B.D. Coleman 1st Lt. James A Ware Texas City, [Texas] [photograph] 22 Inf. Cook Shacks. At Galveston [photograph] Battleship New York - Galveston 1914
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[photograph] Cook Ernest Rousseau Pvt Paul P Szesze [photograph] Pvt Paul P. Szesze [photograph] Pvt Cooper
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[photograph] Galvez Hotel Galveston [Texas] [photograph] CO. F. 22nd Inf. Thanksgiving Day, 1914
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[photograph] Beach At Galveston, [Texas] [photograph] 1st Sgt BD Coleman Pvt Paul P Szesze [photograph] Jones Nikolonetski
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[page 63] On November 13, 1914, the first national guard drill night after my return to Carthage, [Missouri], a week earlier from service in the regular army, I reenlisted in my former guard organization, Company A, Second Missouri Infantry. "Keep on your corporal's chevrons," said the company commander, "I will send in a request for your appointment." However when my warrant came I found I had bee appointed sergeant, my former rank in the unit. The small attendance at drill rather shocked me, as did the apparent state of training -- all of which indicated principally, probably, that my memory was poor. The national guard, in the days before there was any drill pay, worked under many handicaps. yet the group, which was a cadre rather than a company, obviously was a nucleus which could be expanded in case of emergency into a wartime unit, and, however unprepared the national guard was for campaign, it was certain that it would be called if American needed more troops. The regular army was so small it would not even be a start. A part of the older men who had left or dropped out of the company during my absence were back in uniform again, and the former second lieutenant was now first sergeant -- having lost his commission by a temporary change of residence. I added my efforts to those of the others to build the unit up. Now for the first time I experienced the restlessness and difficulty of adjustment to civil life which all who have ever left the armed forces know. Nor was this eased any by the fact that in late December the 22nd Infantry, with the rest of the Sixth brigade, had left Texas City and was now on border duty at Naco, [Arizona], called there by the attack on the Carranzista garrison of Naco, Sonora, by
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[page 64] Villista forces under General Maytorena. And in February, 1915, the war in Europe took a turn which was ultimately to result in American intervention -- the inauguration of the German submarine campaign. At the outbreak of the European war I was a mild German sympathizer for no other reason that I know except my Teutonic name -- though my forebears were not German nationals but had come to Lancaster county, [Pennsylvania], from Switzerland in the early 1700s -- both my father's family and my mother's. Stories of German excesses and mistreatment of the populations of France and Belgium during the invasion of 1914 which turned most Americans against that country, I had not believed. Such things happen only in undisciplined armies, I held, and the German army was one of the best disciplined in the world. As is well known now, the German troops, outrunning their food supply system, were in places practically turned loose to forage for their own food, the civil population being left unprotected and at their mercy -- the mercy of drunken men who looted wine and liquor as well as food. And that atrocities did occur I later found out for myself by conversations with French inhabitants of villages, overrun in 1914, in which I was stationed in 1918. But from being a German sympathizer I switched to a questioning neutrality when the submarine companign started, and became an ardent advocate of war against Germany after the Lusitania was sunk in May. Since it appeared from ensuing exchange of notes that our national policy was to be marked by the same strength of words and weakness of action that had characterized it with Mexico, I toyed somewhat idly with the idea of going to Canada, as many Americans were doing, to join the Canadian forces for overseas service. I was deterred principally by a feeling that my German name would be a disadvantage and that I might even
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[page 65] be suspect -- as I probably would have been had my late sympathies for the enemy been known, mild though they were. As for the name itself, the fear was probably vain, since I have been since told by Canadians that there were many Teutonic names in the Canadian forces. The 1915 training of the national guard regiment to which I belonged was an eight-day maneuver in July, between Bowers Mill and Aurora, [Missouri], a distance of about 40 miles, the first battalion retreating up the Valley of Spring River and engaging in a rear guard action against the other two battalions, the regimental commander and Major Charles Miller, U.S. army, acting as umpires. There were about 150 or 200 men in our battalion, so I suppose the whole force participating amounted to between 500 and 600. The conditions gave ample opportunity for training in life in the field in varied weather, patrolling, outposts, and minor combat action and I believe was about as good a preparation as was possible for such a regiment in such a period of time for service such as might have been encountered in Mexico. So far as I noted, the maneuver was taken seriously and no opportunity for training neglected. One incident which created general amusement was when the battalion adjutant came galloping up from the rear of a part of the battalion marching in columns of fours on the road, his mission probably being to take a message to someone at the head of the column. But when he came to the tail of the column, he not being accustomed to horses and this particular tough-mouthed beast hired for the occasion having ideas of his own, he could neither check his mount or swerve it around the column. Tugging vainly at the reins he galloped right through on the crown of the road, the men, diving to the ditches to right and left, grinning and shouting wise-cracks at his distressed receding form. International affairs during 1915 were such as to keep my thoughts focussed on military affairs instead of to the civilian matters
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[page 66] to which I perhaps might have more sensibly and more profitably directed them. Conditions along the border were turbulent at times. In southeastern Texas, in the lower Rio Grande Valley, there was a period of disorder which caused part of the troops remaining at Texas City and Galveston after the hurricane of that year to be sent down into the area to afford protection and to dispose of any Mexican marauding bands that the Texas rangers had not already eliminated. The 22nd Infantry -- my old organization -- was now at Douglas, [Arizona], and on November 1 I was flattered to receive from my friend, Frist Sergeant Basil D. Coleman of Company F the following telegram: "Can see Villa's army forming on hills east of Douglas for attack on Aguqa Preita. we're entrenched along border. Better join us." I was tempted as I read of the battle at Agua Prieta which my old associates were witnessing from their border trenches, but I still had hopes both for service and for a commission in the national guard -- though the latter was unlikely enough. With war talk in the air there was but a small turn-over of officers and certainly no resignations impending in my own company. The "continental army plan" broached about this time by the secretary of war gave me some hope. The pacifists and preparedness people were still engaged in wordy argument but it was generally conceded that some sort of preparation should be made. The secretary of war proposed the formation of a national reserve organization of citizen soldiers to be known as "the continental army", this force to train in the field 30 days each year. I hoped I might obtain a commission in this but the idea of this kind of army was soon discarded and congressional thoughts began to take the turn which resulted in the passage of the first national defense Act the following year. On March 9, 1916 the Mexican disturbances neared the war stage when Francisco Villa, or some of his bands, raided Columbus, [New Mexico]
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[page 67] surprising the 13th U.S. Cavalry stationed there, killing any number of soldiers and citizens and burning part of the town before being defeated by the cavalrymen and chased back across and south of the border. Service even with the national guard now seemed likely but the punitive expedition to pursue the Villistas was organized and invaded Chihuahua without provoking hostilies with the Carranza government. By April I was restive enough that I determined to take a month off from work and wander about. I had always wanted to travel on a Mississippi River steamer and learning that there were some commercial lines still running, I went to Memphis, intending to go by water to New Orleans. However there were no through boats farther than Vicksburg, so I engaged passage on the "John Lee" of the Lee lines for that city and went aboard. The river water-front was all new and strange to me. As I wandered about there was a pistol shot from a group of Negroes nearby. The blacks scattered in all directions, and one Negro with raised revolver backed up the railway embankment, menacing the dissipating crowd, then at the top of the bank lowered his weapon and ran. I walked over to the scene of the disturbance. Two Negroes were supporting a bury third, shot through the chest. He seemed able to walk, and the two half led and half carried him away. No white man other than myself had evinced any visible interest in the affair. I mentioned this later to the first mate of the John Lee. "Oh these niggers are always killing one another," he said. "No one pays any attention." As the John Lee wound leisurely around the tortuous channel of the Mississippi two or three days on its way to Vicksburg, stopping to unload passengers and freight at many obscure landings not reached by railway, I found many things to interest me, and among them were the colored roustabouts who handled the freight. Nothing disturbed their good humor long and they mixed their work with non-interfering horseplay,
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[page 68] such as cramming their old felt hats upside down on their heads as they trotted back and forth unloading cargo. The mate, whom they called "Mistah Mike" and who they apparently regarded with a mixture of fear, respect and liking, drove them to their best effort with forceful threat and direct expletive, yet without sign of rancor and I suspect with underlying affection despite the violence of word and tone. And the Negroes sprang with quick obedience at his word but without sign of resentment and with grins undisturbed. "Bird's Nest', you black S.O.B.," he would shout, as a sample, "If I come down and bend this bar over your head you will move," Whereat "Bird's-Nest moved with alactrity but with a smile. The Negro called "Birds-Nest" was completely bald -- not a hair on his head. The custom of the roustabouts when they wanted a drink was to lean overside and scoop up a greasy hatful of muddy river water to quench their thirst. But if Birds-Nest was about they always borrowed his hat, perhaps considering it a sanitary drinking cup because of his hairless cranium. Other nicknames I recall were "Burley", "General," and "Monkey-head", and there was one man who even the mate cursed as "Mister Brown." The roustabouts apparently were heroes to the colored girls along the river as at every small landing a dusky feminine group was on hand to exhange badinage with them. There were a good many colored passengers going from one landing to another, they being carried up on the hurricane deck. There was an occasional white man, billeted like myself in a state room, but most of the state rooms remained empty. with these white passengers and with the ships officers I talked concerning the river, the interest of which to me lay in the civil war atmosphere in which my reading had placed it, and I learned something of river life. They showed me the steamer City of
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[page 69] St. Joseph hard aground near Luna Landing, [Arkansas], waiting for higher water to float her off. And one passenger had been aboard the steamer Ben Hur when she struck a stump a short distance above Vicksburg a week or two earlier, listing and going down immediately in shallow water but deep enough that one woman was drowned in her stateroom and most of the cabin passengers, including my informant, had had experiences with water. A courtly elderly gentleman, familiar with Vicksburg and knowing many of the people there, talked to me at length, as elderly people will to a sympathetic listener, about the town and its history. Having told him that I intended to go over the old battlefield thoroughly, he narrated an anecdote, which he passed on as hearsay, concerning the placing of the numerous monuments on it showing the points of interest and commemorating the "high water marks" reached by various union organizations during the assaults in the early part of the siege. An Iowa infantry regiment, noted for its prowess in marching, had been called "the greyhounds" and on the battle marker its veterans had placed on the field was carved the figure of a greyhound in full motion, according to the story. But through some mistake the marker was placed on the wrong side of the driveway and so, as set, showed the greyhound exerting its speed away from the Confederate line instead of toward it. In two days plodding on foot over the field I saw no such marker -- but anyhow it was a story worth remembering. The other remark this gentleman made amused me. We had landed at Vicksburg and were walking up to the Carroll hotel together. It was early Saturday and there were many colored women going toward the business district. Some of the mulattoes modishly dressed and trim in appearance were different from any colored women I had seen and I remarked with surprise. "Why, some of these women are actually pretty."
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[page 70] "They should be," he answered, "they have in them some of the best blood of the South." From Vicksburg I went to by train to New Orleans, thence to Galveston and Texas City, whence I wandered somewhat disconsolately and very homesick for the army over the deserted flats which had been the camp ground on which as a member of the Second Division I had spent so many months. The hurricane of 1915 and driven the sea over the camp and far inland. Happily the Sixth Brigade, which had been the most exposed in 1913 and 1914 was out in Arizona in 1915 so the loss of military life, while considerable, was not as heavy as it might have been, the camps being vacated in time. The causeway connecting Galveston Island to the mainland was gone, and instead there was a trestle supporting the railway. Near the lower docks the railways were still twisted like ribbons and along a considerable part of the sea side of Galveston the seawall stood alone, with the boulevard washed out behind it and adjacent houses gone. The troops were all gone now except the garrison at Fort Crockett. At San Antonio, I wandered around Fort Sam Houston where the 19th Infantry, or a part of it, was now stationed, then took train down to Laredo through a country which at the time was quiet and peaceful enough in appearance. Laredo too was serene and I enjoyed wandering around its quaint Mexican streets and strolling with interest through war-scarred Nuevo Laredo. Many of the building of the Mexican town leading down toward the river were in ruins but so far as I noted were not pock-marked with rifle bullets like walls I had seen in Juarez a few years earlier. I was told by Americans that when our forces took Vera Cruz that the Mexican garrison of Nuevo Laredo, believing that war with the United States had come, had set fire to the city and retreated to the south, attempts to blow up the bridges being frustrated by American army sharpshooters
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[page 71] who shot down Mexican soldiers who sought to fire the charges which had been placed under the Mexican end of the structure. I turned my face my face homeward -- never suspecting that I soon would be back in Laredo as a soldier. It is a curious coincidence that I should have visited El Paso as a civilian in 1912, then soon found myself back there on border guard, and that the same thing should happen as regards Laredo following this civilian visit of April, 1916. However peaceful the section of the border I had visited appeared and however little informed the public was on the facts, to those in authority, war with Mexico must have appeared imminent by the end of April. The Mexican government was ceasing any form of cooperation with the punitive expedition in Chihuahua in pursuit of bandits, was on the contrary shifting to an attitude of open opposition soon to result in armed clashes between detachments of the U.S. forces and federal forces of Mexico, and was soon to demand complete withdrawal of the Americans. Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, army chief of staff, and Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston, commanding the border forces, were in conference with Gen. Alvaro Obregon of Mexico at El Paso. Information of the American generals was that some 17000 Mexicans had concentrated at Pulpito pass to threaten communications of the expeditionary forces, that Mexican irregular groups were forming near Victoria in Tamaulipas with the implied consent of local federal commanders to raid the Brownsville section of Texas, and that Luis de la Rosa was openly recruiting men in Monterey for some similar effort along the border. Practically the entire small regular army in the United States was now on the Mexican border or with the punitive expedition, except one regiment of cavalry, but due to the enormous length of the Mexican border, it was so thinly distributed that the border country was open to raids anywhere. The conference with Obregon proving
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[page 72] futile since the tentative agreement reached there was not approved by Carranza, the "organized militia", as the national guard was then officially termed, of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas was called into federal service on May 9. But raids along the border became more frequent. On June 3 congress finally passed the 1916 national defense act which gave the national guard a federal status above anything which it had previously enjoyed and authorized the president, in event of a national emergency, expressly declared such by congress, the power to draft it as units into the army of the United States. The new law also set the term of national guard enlistment at three years active and three years in the reserve, and for this or other legal reasons, it was required that every member of the national guard sign a new enlistment oath. In my own company, and elsewhere so far as I know, with a few exceptions, this was done promptly and gladly, and 65 of the 70 odd men on our rolls had taken the new oath before June 17 when urgent directions came from the Missouri adjutant general that the work be completed at once. The newspapers were now telling of numerous raids on unprotected sections of the border, including some in the Laredo region, and on the basis of these alone it was felt in our own unit that the entire national guard was about to be called into service. What was not known to the public was that General Funston had informed the war department that information in his possession indicated that the Mexican army was contemplating an invasion of Texas with San Antonio as the objective. On June 18 -- which was Sunday -- President Wilson called the entire national guard of the United States into service. Congress had not declared an emergency and the call was under the constitutional right of the president to call the militia into service to suppress insurrection, repel invasion or execute the laws of the union. It was not until
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[page 73] July 1 that an emergency was formally declared. Thereafter, the president was empowered to draft the national guard and use it in an invasion of Mexico should such be decided upon. It was on the morning of June 19 that orders to mobilize reached Company A, Second Missouri Infantry, by which time some two-thirds of the company had already assembled in uniform on the basis of newspaper reports. By nightfall the unit was ready to move, but for some reason, probably inability to get railway cars, the companies of the regiment each in a separate town, did not move to the state concentration camp at Camp Clark, Nevada, [Missouri], until the morning of the 21st. In the meanwhile we endeavored to recruit. It had always been my belief that while Americans were averse to military service of any sort in time of peace that they would volunteer in great numbers whenever an emergency arose which offered chance of active service. This little recruiting effort banished illusions. We sought 108 men, the authorized war strength of the day. We left with 84, of whom seven were rejected later on a physical examination. Our was not a bad company for a national guard organization of 1916 when general efficiency standards were much lower than they were later when the national defense act, federal pay and the prestige of World War I made the national guard a reasonably effective force. Our captain and first lieutenant were guardsmen of considerable experience. Our second lieutenant was a former regular soldier who was commissioned a year later in the regular army; our first sergeant was a former officer; the combined mess and supply sergeant, four of the six duty sergeants and two of the six corporals had been enlisted men in the regular service, as had several of the privates. This was a rather unusual percentage of ex-regulars for that time, when the regular army was quite small, and taken with the small group of experienced national
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[page 74] guardsmen who had taken their previous training seriously, constituted a framework out of which an efficient company was quickly built. We were reminded by association with other units at Camp Clark that the national guard of the time was rather spotty as regarded military attitude, training and bearing. Some companies were very good, some were very bad, more were mediocre. But under tutelage of a fiery and energetic commanding officer, Col. W.A. Raupp who had been a captain in the bolunteer army in the Spanish-American war and was of long national guard experience besides, the regiment was soon whipped into serviceable shape. Col. Raupp, highly regarded in his organization and in my opinion a most capable officer, somehow became embroiled in a feud with senior officers of the regular army while on the Mexican border, a circumstance which deprived him of combat service during the first world war and placed him instead in command of a pioneer regiment which did not leave the states. For many years after the war he was a brigadier general commanding the Missouri National Guard and served for a time as adjutant general of Missouri. The first day we were at Camp Clark, Col. Raupp sent for me and kindly offered me the position of regimental sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned post in the regiment. However I wanted to fight the war, if any, with a rifle instead of a typewriter, so thanked him but told him that if it was a matter of choice I preferred to remain a duty sergeant. He named instead a friend of mine, Battalion Sergeant Major Clyde A. Narramore who had originally been from my own company and who doubtless made a much better regimental sergeant major than I could have done. He was commissioned a few months later while on the border, served as lieutenant of the 110th Trench Mortar Battery during World War I and was a national guard captain for some time thereafter.
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[page 75] The colonel, I felt, rather sympathized with my desire to keep clear of paper work, and I believe that if a vacancy had occured in the officer personnel of my own company during the border service he would have recommended me for a second lieutenancy -- but there was no such vacancy. In the early months of the first world war I served under his command as a captain. Although the Missouri troops were ready, so far as I could see, to move immediately, after the concentration at Camp Clark, and the issue of additional equipment and clothing, there was a delay that seemed then to be considerable in view of a reputedly critical situation along the border. The adjutant general of Missouri later reported that this was due to the fact that the government furnished only one mustering officer. The first regiment to leave departed July 1 and my own not until July 5. The mustering in process was accompanied by some amusing incidents. In a newly formed company of my own regiment there were a number of young business men without knowledge of military matters and apparently skeptical of what their officers told them. They had all taken the new federal oath and could not understand an additional mustering-in oath. They acquired the idea that they were to be mustered into the regular army instead of for the emergency and 28 refused to take the oath until a field officer in whom they had confidence was sent for and explained to them that this was just an extra frill that the government required and made no difference in their term of service. In another company some men had refused to sign the new federal oath but had been brought to camp anyhow, as was proper since the call was for "organized militia and national guard." The mustering officer's instructions, however, was not to muster anyone unless they had signed the new oath and these seven men were able to evade service. Their uniforms were taken from them, and they were given fatigue clothes
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[page 76] and told to leave camp. Their departure was something of an event since their late comrades formed behind them with tin wash basins and "drummed them out of camp" by marching along, thumping on the tin pans and chanting in loud unison: "Yellow, yellow, yellow." It was pleasant to be on a troop train and border-bound again, equipment swinging back and forth on hooks in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke as the train jolted along, and with volunteer quartets carolling forth their joy at being alive and going places. Carranzista troops had shot up two troops of the 10th U.S. Cavalry at Carrizal, Chihuahua, a short time previously and the war fever was running high. There was a cheering reception at many of the towns through which we passed and I recall particularly that at Enid, [Oklahoma], where groups of women served ice cream to all personnel, there being a delay there which permitted the troops to be detrained in front of their cars for that purpose. But as we neared San Antonio those of us who had served before told our comrades sagely: "You will get no reception here. San Antone is an army town and army towns are not enthusiastic about soldiers." But as soon as our train drew into the station, ladies were passing along the cars handing up boxes of food and candy through the windows. South of San Antonio the country took on a warlike aspect, quite different from what it has appeared when I travelled that road a few months before. bridges and culverts were guarded by squads of troops with red hat-cords -- coast artillerymen with bulging cartridge belts temporarily serving as infantry -- standing beside sand-bagged trenches. In the small towns a number of citizens were seen wearing revolvers picturesque old frontier models many of them. Near Webb was pointed out a wooden cross marking the grave
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[page 77] of a Carranza colonel, killed some time before in a raid meant to cut the railway. Moving northward on the roads were groups of Mexican men, women and children in burro-drawn vehicles or trudging along on foot, presumably seeking safety from the storm they imagined about to break over the border country. We arrived at Laredo the night of July 7, and established camp north of the town the following day. There were at Laredo at the time, the 9th Infantry, the 14th Cavalry (less units on border patrol up or down the Rio Grande,) the provisional regiment of coast artillerymen less those on railway or border guard, and a battalion of the Third field artillery. Within a few days there was the entire Missouri National Guard, totalling some 5,000 men, the 2nd Maine Infantry, the 1st New Hampshire and I believe a Vermont regiment. Later the 2nd Florida also was to come. Perhaps there was a total of 9000 or 10000 men. The principal concentrations of troops were in the Brownsville District, El Paso, and at Douglas, [Arizona] - - the bases from which an invasion of Mexico would be launched if war came. The troops at Laredo, I have since learned, were to move on Monterey, uniting with those coming from Brownsville. But the concentration of the national guard on the border brought a prompt return of peaceful conditions. To the Mexicans it must have appeared a considerable army. Raids ceased. There was no need for the president to draft the national guard into the federal army under the new defense law and it served throughout under the call under which it could have been used only to "repel invasion." The Maine regiment relieved the coast artillerymen on the border and on the railway guard, so long as this latter was maintained, other units
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[page 78] furnished occasional details to guard fords or bridges about Laredo or public utility plants therein and for the rest the time was devoted to training which no doubt was badly needed. The only danger was from careless handling of ball ammunition which had been issued on arrival, and every few days there was a crack of a rifle bullet as someone accidentally discharged a piece, yet I heard of no one injured thereby. The days of careless border guard that I had known with the 22d Infantry in El Paso in late 1912 and early 1913 were no more -- ended by the Columbus, [New Mexico], and other raids. The 14th Cavalry detachment at San Ygnacio, Texas, some 40 miles below Laredo had been attacked by Luis de la Rosa on June 15 and suffered a number of casualties in killed and wounded before routing their assailants. With these lessons in mind extreme care was taken -- some of it possibly due to the newness of our own officers. In our regiment one full company went on guard nightly; another company remained in its company area clothed and armed, and a third was held in readiness to respond immediately in case of an alarm. Nervous sentries made life dangerous for wanderers. It was told at the time -- with how much accuracy I do not know -- that Brig. General H.C? Clark commander of the Missouri troops, was riding through the Missouri camp one night looking over the situation rather hurriedly when a sentry stopped him with the usual "Halt! Dismount!" Not wishing to be delayed, the general from his saddle explained that he was the commanding general checking up on the guard Not to be cozened the sentry replied threateningly: "Don't you fool with me, mister. This things loaded. Dismount!" Whereupon the general wisely dismounted and waited quietly until the arrival of the corporal of the guard to check up on his credentials. The nervous stage of the camp guard soon passed, and either because the situation was deemed to be less threatening, or because our
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[page 79] national guard commanders became acclimated to border conditions, a simple one-company guard was deemed adequate. My own first tour of border guard was then I commanded an eight-man outpost for 24 hours at Indian Ford northwest of Laredo -- a crossing which angled across the river and naturally needed to be watched. With each man carrying 100 rounds of ammunition in his belt and wearing two extra bandoliers each containing 60 rounds more, we were in position to carry on a little war of our own in our isolated position if necessary. Across the river was a similar squad of Carranzista soldiers, stationed not at the fort but at a house nearby around which a trench had been dug. An occasional Carranzista mounted patrol passed up or down the river, pausing at the Mexican side of the ford to water their horses. The only excitement of our tour happened to a patrol I sent up our own side of the river. These two or three men, hearing voices beyond a thicket, stalked them and burst out on the river bank with rifles at the ready -- disturbing a bevy of Mexican women bathing. They retreated in haste at the same voices raised in angry expostulation. At least that was their report to me. Our camp of pyramidal tents which we had pitched at the north edge of Laredo gradually began to take on a more permanent air. Some frame tables were built in the company street near the kitchen tent and fly, and we ate sitting at these instead of on the ground. Next cots arrived, replacing the hollows we had scooped in the sand for sleeping. Finally a mess hall was built and screened. The weather varied the monotony of drill, hike and minor maneuvers a little. Dust storms occasionally filled the air so that it was difficult to see across the company streets. The tail of a hurricane caught us one night, flattening three fourths of our regimental camp and submerging with rain water those tent sites on low ground or in gulleys.
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[page 80] A morale factor developed in the national guard troops on the border. While it is known now that relations with the Mexican de facto government remained unsatisfactory and were several times near the point of war, there was no outward evidence of this and the true situation was unknown to the troops or to the public. It all looked peaceful enough and homesick guardsmen and their families wondered why they were kept there. Some had left families, and could not support them on the $15.00 a month pay of the private soldier. Congress soon took care of this by making allowances or authorizing discharges for men with dependents. In my own company, morale was good enough, due probably to the fact that the noncommissioned officers affected an old-solider air and derided as weaklings anyone who complained. We looked down with lofty scorn on some neighboring companies where even some sergeants whined about wanting to go home. We made a point of pride in being punctiliously military with our officers, however well we had known them at home. We had, in fact, a very good opinion of ourselves. My own pride was deflated somewhat however by an incident which occurred when I was sergeant of the regimental guard. The guardhouses consisted of three pyramidal tents and we had 16 garrison prisoners therein who worked around the camp under guard during the day and whose security at night was looked after by two sentries, one of whom walked in front of the tents and one who walked behind them. There was a dense dust storm that evening and when the guard was changed at 10 p.m. two of the prisoners were missing. I was in a fury, "jerked the belts" of the lackless sentries, placed them under confinement too and talked the officer of the guard into leaving them there. Word of the escapes had gone to the company and as I
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[page 81] went over to breakfast I encountered grins on the faces of my fellow sergeants. "How many prisoners did you have last night?" one of them, an ex-marine, asked me. "Sixteen," I snarled in reply. "And how many do you have this morning?" he smiled. "Sixteen," I snarled again. All looked at me in surprise at this. Evidently their information was incomplete. And I let them stare blankly for a moment before I grudgingly explained: "Yes, I lost two, but I used my Number 1 and 2 sentries to fill the vacant ranks." This reestablished my prestige a little but it didn't last. When I returned to the guard house I found 17 prisoners. One of the two who had escaped had come back during the night and, entirely by another pair of sentries, had slipped back into the prison tent and went to sleep. This was the crowning shame and I could think of no answer to the subsequent good-natured jeers of my associates on this one. But since the provost guard picked the remaining missing prisoner up down town and since the officer of the day released the two sentries I had confined, I at least turned over to the new guard on my relief the same 16 that I had received. There were strict and, under the circumstances, quite proper orders against soldiers visiting Nuevo Laredo on the Mexican side, but the place being across the river had a fascination, though I had been over there as a civilian a few months before, so twice I borrowed civilian clothes and went over again just for the walk on unfriendly territory. The first time I was accompanied by the first sergeant. He was a slender man who wore glasses and neither of us probably looked very military in civilian clothes and we had no trouble. The next time I went with the ex-marine who had something of a belligerent countenance and bellicose air and whose borrowed civilian clothes looked like they had been
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[page 82] built for someone else. At the Mexican end of the bridge a Carranzista captain with a group of nondescript Carranza soldiers lounging nearby by, glared at us directly and with offensive hostility. The situation looked like the inside of a jail to me but the officer let us pass, though he watched us up the street. Glancing at my companion I noted that his lower jaw was thrust forward and he had cocked his hat forward over his eyes. "Put your hat on the back of your head and try to look like a tourist," I whispered He complied, but at each unfriendly look we received -- and there were many -- he would reach up behind and shove his hat forward again. We did not stay in Nuevo Laredo long. We sat in the first plaza a few moments to see if we had been followed from the bridge but apparently had not been. Then we wandered to the next in front of a building which had been prepared for defense, around which trenches ran, and where, naturally, many Carranzista soldiers lounged. Trying to appear nonchalant we sat on a bench with our backs to the enemy. Then an unpleasant-looking Negro approached us and grinned as he looked at us and than at the Mexican soldiers. He said he had seen us in uniform in Laredo, and here he was in Nuevo Laredo and broke, he said he thought we might want to buy an old watch he had for a dollar. We looked at it silently. It was indeed an old watch. Once it had been a dollar Ingersoll but it had long since stopped running. A one-dollar blackmail-- cheap but humiliating: Our thoughts were murder but we could hardly afford crime under the circumstances. We bought the watch and studied him so that we might remember him. He grinned and ambled off toward a cantina. We later prowled Laredo a number of times looking for this man but never saw him. We started back to the bridge and passed the Mexican guards unchallenged. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. But on the American side the immigration guard asked us to step in a little room in the bridge
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[page 83] shack. He grinned at us and asked to see our vaccination marks. This, we knew, was exposure. Back at Camp Clark when our regiment had been vaccinated, each man had been scratched in three separate spots, in a triangle. I suppose that someone had given instructions that each man should be vaccinated three times, meaning that the process should be continued this often if the first one did not take, but that the surgeon had misunderstood and made it three times at once. In any event three vaccination scars in a triangle was as identifying as the tattooed name of our state. "You boys are from the Missouri camp, are you not?" said the immigration guard, ginning again. "Oh no," we lied hopefully, surmising that the immigration man's orders were to turn persons such as us over to the American army bridge guard outside. There were a few such malefactors already in our own guardhouse. "We are from Missouri," we admitted, "but we are just down here looking around." "in that case you can go ahead," he smiled once more and waved us on. This was the last time I visited Nuevo Laredo. In the latter part of August there was considerable talk of an impending nationwide railway strike and our organization, and I suppose all other troops, were polled to find and list men with railway experience, presumably for railway service if the government found it necessary to operate trains. There was some speculation in camp as to how order would be maintained with practically all of the regular army and national guard on the border. About the 25th my own regiment marched east of Laredo some distance for target practice, missing a visit by Maj. Gen. Frederick
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[page 84] Funston, my favorite military hero before whom all troops at Laredo were passed in review. Back in the Laredo camp on [September], 3, we found the camps of the 1st and 3d Missouri regiments empty. They had started back to Missouri on September 2, presumably in order to be available in the event of disorders in connection with the impending strike. Many other regiments were sent home about the same time. The strike not developing, they were mustered out of service several weeks later. A Presidential election campaign was in progress at that time and it is perhaps possible that a return of a part of the national guard might have had some political aspects since President Wilson's supporters were stressing the "he-kept-us-out-of-war" slogan. In any event since no evil effects appeared on the border as a result of their departure it is evident that their services could be spared. As for my own regiment, it received orders to relive the 2d Maine Infantry on the Rio Grande where it was patrolling about a 100 mile front from 67 miles below Laredo to 32 or 33 miles above. My own battalion, the first, was to occupy the southern sector with headquarters at Zapata. The 49-mile march from Laredo to Ramireno in Zapata county which my own company was to garrison was something of a military idyll. After the first 15 or 20 miles the region was sparsely inhabited and with the border road a trail rather than a highway, shifting whenever ruts on an old route suggested another would be better. Now and then there was a gate through which to pass, marking the boundary of some great ranch. The second night's camp was on a stream known as Dolores creek, among eroded earth canyons. The coyotes howled about in an unbroken circle. The nights were clear and balmy and our camps were a sort of bivouac-de luxe,
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[page 85] -- each man unloading his cot from the company escort wagon and sleeping under the stars which in this section of Texas seem brighter than any place from which I have ever seen them. Yet, not so long before, some of the nights in this section had not been safe ones. At a little store and a few houses called La Perla, some distance south of Dolores Creek, there was a small detachment of troops, their camp surrounded by a wall of earth held in place by a brushwork reveiment on each side. The proprietor of the store, a white American, wore a heavy revolver and a dirk, while a Winchester carbine hung on the wall just behind him as he stood at the counter. At San Ygnacio, further to the south, there was a long parapet about 3
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map of Laredo, Texas
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[page 86] The border road swung away from the river at San Ygnacio, and late that afternoon, some six miles further on, my own company turned to the right down a side trail and after a mile or two came into the friendly Mexican village of Ramireno near the river bank. Ramireno had not been garrisoned previously and the placing of garrison there now was said to have been at the request of the Ramirez family who owned the region about it and who were the employers of all who lived in the village. There were a good many cattle and horses, some of the latter very fine ones, and while the Ramirez family lived humbly enough in a vine-covered cottage, I have no doubt that they were people of considerable wealth who profitably might have been held for ransom. Isolated as it was, the place would have been as easy objective for a raid before it was garrisoned. The land beyond the river on the Mexican side also belonged to this family, as I recall it, but it was seldom used and I believe the cattle and horses from it had been brought to the American side-- or perhaps stolen. I saw no signs of any activity over there except an occasional Mexican patrol. Our arrival that evening was something of an event. The whole male population turned out to greet us. They filed by our officers, each man shaking hands with them. Knowing a few words of Spanish I had been called upon to attempt to act interpreter for the captain and as such shared in the hand-shaking. Afterwards I think that most of them shook hands with everyone in the company. That night the local singers (masculine) gathered at the bivouac and sang and strummed on guitars until Taps were sounds -- whereupon they rose promptly, knowing the call as "silencio," and quickly faded away. For six weeks we were in this village and mingled with the inhabitants (male again) with all friendliness and no untoward events.
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[page 87] The local girls were evidently under orders, scrupulously obeyed so far as I know, not to fraternize and no doubt that wise precaution was a factor in the maintainance of cordial relations. For some reason our camp was pitched on a flat open space practically as part of the village itself -- two rows of pyramidal tents facing each other with the two A-tents meant for the officers pitched at the village end and looking down the street. Still closer to the village and close to the village grocery was the kitchen tent. The officers tents were actually occupied by the first sergeant and supply sergeant, the two officers with us occupying a house in the village adjacent to the camp. The fortification of the camp under such circumstances was something of a problme. Now without any intent to boast and regardless of my humble rank as sergeant I can fairly say that I knew more of the subject of fortification than anyone else in the organization, including the officers. Not only had I had such practical training as was given to soldiers in the regular army and national guard, but I had carefully studied the books on field fortifications issued by the Fort Leavenworth school. In addition, as an amusement, I had studied older systems of fortifications, which were more to the point since there was no danger of artillery being used in any attack on our camp -- only small arms. Any attack would be a surprise one and we needed something that would give men a measure of protection from short range fire while asleep on their bunks. The enclosure we saw at the post at La Perla and the long parapet at San Ygnacio were probably both developments meant to meet such need based on the fact that in the San Ygnacio attack men had been killed while still on their cots. I went to the captain and explained my idea. He approved it and directed me to carry it into effect. The plan was simple enough.
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[page 88] Basically it provided for a parapet three-and-a-half foot above the ground level, revetted at the back with brush and with a broad one-foot-deep trench behind it which enabled a man to fire easily over the parapet from a standing position. Additional earth needed for the parapet was obtained by digging a sloping excavation in front, which, when completed, was deep enough that a man in it could not even see over the top of the parapet. In order to prevent an attacker from using the parapet there was a bastion at each lower end, flanking both the long stretches and the entrance to the back of the camp. A field of fire, except toward the houses, was provided by clearing away the mesquite brush on the flat around the camp. The revetment was provided mainly by slender brush obtained along the river and the cut-off mesquite was used partly to block an arroyo which afforded a possible means of hostile approach to the lower end of the camp and partly to provide an obstacle in the ditch in front of the parapet. This work was given priority above everything else and flowed along smoothly, the more so since the first sergeant was an engineer in civil life and three of our non-commissioned officers had been in the engineer corps of the regular army in a past enlistment. The one-foot trench to provide shelter for a man in a prone position was dug first so there would be some immediate cover available, the clearing of the foreground proceeding at the same time. The officers quarters, the kitchens and the latrines were all outside but there was no anticipation of any need of standing siege -- only to beat off a first rush. It must be admitted that the officers sleeping outside was a weak point as regarded their personal safely -- but that was their worry. So far as carrying on an action was concerned we did not feel that we needed them particularly.
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[page 89] This work pleased me immensely since I had devised it and even the local citizenry commented that it was a "buen fortin" -- a good fort. They further suggested that after we were gone they would use it for a goat corral, which I have no doubt they did. Of course it was never attacked. So far as I know no fortified place on the border had ever been attacked. Raiders looked for weak spots, not strong points. There was one alarm. At 1 o'clock on the morning of September 29, several rifle shots from the lower end of the camp snapped us out of our slumbers. I snatched my rifle which was suspended from my cot, took my cartidge belt from the tent pole and buckled it around my underwear, than sat down on the cot to put on my shoes. Just at that unhappy moment some one directly behind my tent fired twice. I sallied out of the tent barefooted to take part in the war. The hub-bub still seemed to be at the lower end of the camp and noting that all hands were scrambling out and manning the parapet I started toward the apparent center of activities. Then I stepped on a prickly pear cactus, extricated it with oaths and went back into the tent and put on my shoes. Down at the end of the camp the sentries were explaining rather vaguely that they had "seen something" to the northeast. It sounded rather silly as an explanation for that much firing but at the direction of the first sergeant I went back and dressed and took out a patrol, finding nothing. Later the guard confessed that they had fired the shots at the directions of the captain who wanted to see how quick the men could get into the trenches. Being mindful of the effect that this sort of thing would have on our prestige with the local citizens,
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[page 90] I was perhaps unduly annoyed. I could have been court-martialed for my thoughts, if expressed, and perhaps I did express them. It turned out rather happily in fact that I had. Being deemed by my words to be one of the party of resentful malcontents that this incident created, I was taken into a private-soldier plot a few nights later which had as its design "getting even" with the captain for wrecking the unit's reputation of not having any false alarms -- a thing which previously added to unit esprit. The plot was to stage another false alarm that night, firing a few rifle bullets through the roof of the captain's house to see how quickly he could emerge therefrom and get to his post of duty in the trenches. I explained the folly of such a proceeding to them and the plot was dropped. In some ways, I reflected privately, it was rather a bright and tempting idea at that. The six weeks or so my company spent at Ramerino was in general about as happy and carefree a period as any I have ever spent in the military service. Outside of guard, which came every third night, there was little duty once the parapet was completed and with a natural propensity to ramble about on foot in new territory, I spent much of my own time in long walks up or down the river or into the wild hills roundabout in company with one or two kindred spirits with similar inclinations. Since we carried rifles and wore our full cartridge belts on such occasions, these jaunts probably also served the purpose of voluntary patrols. Perhaps most of these jaunts were made with Cecil R. Stemmons, a corporal, whose family had about as complete a civil war record for all male members as anyone I have ever known. Or his six uncles, four had been in the union forces engaged in the guerrilla warfare of Southwest Missouri and two had gone into the confederate army -- one attaining some modest note in the southern forces. His grandfather had been killed by confederate guerrillas one night when his house was attacked and burned while he
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[page 91] was organizing a militia company with men he had assembled at his house. When I became a national guard captain some six or seven months after the Ramireno sojourn it was my pleasure to include stemmons as one of two men I sent to the first officers' training camp of World War I and he served as as infantry officer during that war. I was associated with him for a time in the trenches of the Sommedieue sector southwest of Verdun in October 1918 until he was sent to the rear sick, having caught the measles somehow. This deeply chagrined him. So many things might happen to a man when his unit was in contact with the enemy -- and what happened to him was measles. Some jaunts also were made with Guy A. Roos, the first sergeant frequently heretofore mentioned, and John M. Curlee a duty sergeant. Roos, like myself, was a chronic citizen solider and was always in some military unit when there was any around, and without caring much about what rank he held. He had been a second lieutenant back in 1912 but lost his commission when he temporarily changed residence and had since been serving as an enlisted man. Some eye trouble caused him to fail to pass the physical examination at the beginning of World War I but later managed to get into a hospital unit in which he served. After the war he was alternately officer and enlisted man in the national guard, attaining the rank of captain once, then losing it when his wandering engineering life led him elsewhere, only to reenlist as a private when he returned. He eventually became a reserve officer, served with the Civilian Conservation Corps during most of its life, went into the active army early in the emergency preceding our entry into World War II and emerged therefrom a major, promptly going back into the reserve again. His father was German-born and in the first war he had a number of uncles
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[page 92] in the German army. When I was in France in 1918, he still being in the states, he wrote me a letter in which he said: "If you see any of my square-headed relatives over there, take a crack at them for me." Curlee, a competent and enthusiastic soldier, did not go into World War I for some family reason, working as a captain of guards at a plant making explosives. He became a national guard captain between the wars but was out when World War II came along, He could not get a commission because of his lack of World War I service, nor enlist because of his age. He served as a full time state guard officer during the second war, being my own adjutant while I commanded such a regiment before being called to active duty under my reserve commission. I mention these three men in detail as indicative of the type of national guardsmen of the period preceding the first war. Once Curlee and I invaded Mexico naked. With him and Roos, I had wandered up to a place called San Ygnacio Viejo, the site of the first San Ygnacio which seems to have been one of the original Spanish settlements. There were only a few tumbled walls there and some fragments of pottery. The Rio Grande was running rather high and Curlee and I fell into a discussion about swimming it to see what we could see from the bank on the other side. Leaving Roos to guard our clothes and rifles we waded out into the stream but by the time it was waist deep it was so swift that we could hardly keep our feet. We decided to start swimming. Immediately we were swept down the stream at what seemed to me a terrific rate, and for a moment of panic I fought against the current, then more sensibly let it help me. Curlee was right beside me so I suspect his mental reactions were similar. After that we had no trouble, landing on the Mexican side, well down stream. Our path to the top of the bank was over beds of sand burrs not at all
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[page 93] pleasant to bare feet. And at the top all that confronted us was dense thickets of mesquite. We decided to return to the United States and did so, our back swim being easy enough now that we knew how, but there was a long trudge unclothed up stream before we could get back to where we had left our garments and guns. Once Sergeant Roos and I accompanied the captain on a ride on hired Mexican horses down to Zapata, 17 miles below to visit battalion headquarters there. Thirty-four miles in one day is considerable for one who has not been on a horse for some years. I had no interest whatever in horseback riding for a time after that. On the evening of October 15, Company H, Fourth Missouri Infantry, hiked wearily into town to relieve us, and the next morning we started the long march back to Laredo. I left rather regretfully, being by nature a lazy man who enjoyed a life like that we were leaving, but I suspect my sentiments were shared by the majority of my associates. The column broke into song, singing many songs of many verses, and including, I recall, a parady of some religious one: "In heaven above, where all is love, There'll be non-coms there." After a 21-mile march we reached Dolores Creek, somewhat weary, and paused while the captain considered whether to camp on the south bank where we had before, or on the north. He chose the north, which was just as well for Dolores Creek which was then ankle deep was a roaring torrent before morning and not fordable for days. It was the usual balmy evening as we bivouacked. Our cots were unloaded and we went to sleep on them under the open sky. During
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[page 94] the night, Roos, who slept next to me, woke me up and said hesitatingly: "Schrantz, there is a cloud in the north, and some lightning." Indeed there was -- just a spot of cloud vividly illuminated from time to time. Texas storms come up rapidly. We buttoned our shelter tents together to form a tent and shouted for others to do likewise. By then the cloud was almost above us. Men were sitting up looking around drowsily as we feverishly ditched our tent. "Let it rain," said some of them, pulling their shelter tents or ponchos over their blankets. It did -- and immediately. Roos and I dived for shelter and lay snug in the only tent up, hearing the muttering and oaths of misery about us. The "let-it-rain" boys on their cots did not do very well. Their ponchos or shelter halves protected them from the direct torrents but the water caught on the end of the bunks and ran down into the depressions caused by their bodies, forming little lakes. They sought shelter elsewhere -- and in vain. Dolores Creek rose rapidly for before long we could hear huge segments of undercut banks sliding into the torrent with sounds like explosions. I think the first sergeant and I were the only dry men in the company the next morning, except perhaps some who had been first in the rush to get into the covered escort wagon. I have mentioned ponchos. So far as I know this border disturbance was the last campaign for these as an article of issue. Our entry into the first world war brought the raincoat as an inferior substitute, I presume because of the introduction of gas into warfare. A gas mask could be worn over a raincoat. Underneath a poncho it would hardly have been acessible. The next day's march was a long and trying one, the first few miles through the mud. After a 28 mile hike we reached Laredo after
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[page 95] dark, tired and footsore. During the day we passed a group of men of the Fourth Missouri, baseball players who had lingered to play a game and now were trudging south to join their companies. Among them was an an acquaintance from our own town, Sergeant Marcus O. Bell of the Columbia company which contained many men from the University of Missouri. Bell was commissioned in the regular army soon thereafter and in the second world war became a brigadier general, assistant division commander of the 81st Division. Back in the Laredo camp the usual routine of drill and maneuver was resumed, to which was added a weekly parade at Fort McIntosh. There were only four infantry regiments now at Laredo, including our own -- the regiments numbering about 1,000 men each. Besides us there was the 9th U.S. Infantry, the 1st New Hampshire and the 2nd Florida. There were rumors of impending trouble but I saw no evidences of any change myself. The 1916 election was hear and on October 25 the secretary of war issued a statement that Mexicans might raid border posts before election day in order to discredit President Woodrow Wilson, who, it will be remembered, was being supported for reelection on a "he-kept-us-out-of-war" platform. Along about October 30 there was a little flurry of interest, Troops were moved down into Laredo. Machine guns were set up in Martin plaza. Full companies were at the light plant, at the post-office and at Indian ford and detachments of one sort or another were placed at other strategic points. Since we of the Second Missouri had returned so recently from border patrol, we were left in our camps, presumably as a reserve. The occasion for all these precautions I have never learned. Some weeks later, after the election was well over, there were some other alerts of a minor nature, but no actual trouble.
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[page 96] Non-mounted infantry officers were usually not goo horsemen and an incident resulting from this fact amused us at one of our regimental parades at Fort McIntosh. For the parades the regiment was always formed with battalions in order of the rank of their commanding officer. Our major was the senior in the regiment and hence our battalion was always on the right in the formation. But he went home on leave and on the occasion of this parade the battalion was commanded by the senior captain who inherited the major's horse during the period of his temporary command. He being the junior battalion commander present, our battalion this time was formed on the left. Obviously ill at ease on the horse, the captain still successfully managed that part of the ceremony where at the command "Officers Center" the commanders of the flank battalions and their staffs closed on the commander of the center battalion and rode forward to a position in front of the colonel. But at the colonel's command "Officers, Posts, March," when battalion commanders were to return to the front of their battalions, by the most direct route, the captain had trouble. His horse on many such occasions had gone through this ceremony and then returned to the right. He did this now, and the captain's vain efforts to guide him to the left were without avail. The horse knew where he belonged, or thought he did, and took the embarrassed captain to the right of the regiment and not until he had completed this accustomed path would he permit himself to be directed over to the left flank. It was most amusing for everyone except that captain, and maybe the horse. The latter's mouth must have suffered from the jerking on the bits, and his sides must have been sore from being violently prodded with the rowelless spurs. Despite the occasional rumors of further trouble on the
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[page 97] border, there was an occasional national guard regiment being moved out for home and muster-out. It appeared that the tour of border duty was drawing to a close but in the meanwhile the custumary routine went on. The 1st New Hampshire relieved the 4th Missouri on river guard, and a month later was relieved in turn by the 2nd Florida. Just after Christmas the 2nd Missouri received orders to return north. We left Laredo on December 28, were mustered out at Fort Riley, [Kansas], January 13, 1917, and my own company arrived in Carthage, our home station, the following day -- reverting back to state control as a national guard unit. Personally I would have been pleased to stay on the border since there was no interest now to draw me homeward and there still seemed some possibility of more active service in connection with the Mexican troubles, but in truth I was an exception. Most of the national guardsmen were well sick of the border and felt that they served no useful purpose there. Looking backward, it would seem to have been folly from a national standpoint to have broken up these units which had at least had some training in the field. In theory the units could be called again if needed and while this was so in fact it did not apply to the personnel. Men scattered everywhere in search of employment. It was a partial demobilization of our armed forces and I have wondered sometimes if the muster-out of the national guard from federal service might have been a actor in causing Germany to start her unrestricted submarine campaign in February. In any event, within less than three months after the return of my own company to civil life, the United States was at war with Germany.
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[photograph] Co A Armory, N.E. Cor Howard & Sixth, 1916 [photograph] June 1916 [photograph] Sgt W.L. Schrantz, Camp Clark, 1916
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[photograph] At San Ygnacio [photograph] [September 8, 1916] [photograph] [August 6, 1916] [photograph] San Ygnacio [September 19, 1916] [photograph] [September 6, 1916] [photograph] [September 25, 1916]
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[photograph] Sgt Ward L Schrantz Indian Ford - 1916 [photograph] Indian Ford 1916
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[postcard] Bird's Eye View of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico [photograph] [September 21, 1916] [photograph] [ September 14, 1916] [photograph] Rio Grande
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[photograph] [September 10, 1916] [photograph] San Ygnacio [ms illegible: 1 wd] [photograph] [September 15, 1916] [photograph] September 14, 1916] [photograph] [October 12, 1916] [photograph] [September 21, 1916]
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[photograph] [ms illegible: 1 wd] Ranch [photograph] Zapata [photograph] Urabena [photograph] [September 22, 1916] [photograph] Bunte Arrano
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[page 98] With the Mexican border service in the background but with a world war still in progress in Europe, it seemed to me that I had already served a somewhat overlong apprenticeship as an enlisted man and that if I ever was going to see service as an officer that it was high time that I do something about getting a commission. The National defense act of 1916 had provided that for the purpose of securing a reserve of officers available for service as temporary officers in the regular army or volunteers that the president might commission officers up to the grade of major, inclusive, for an "Officers Reserve Corps of the Regular Army." I felt sure that I could pass any examination likely to be given and that the recommendation for a commission received upon my discharge from the regular army would be of assistance. I accordingly made application, sending in the required number of character recommendations, etc. required. However I made this direct and not through national guard channels and it came back with a notation that since I was a membr of the national guard I would need recommendations from my company, battalion and regimental commander. These were easily secured but my regimental commander suggested that I not be in any hurry about sending them in -- that my company commander probably would soon be made a major and that it was quite likely that I would be made captain of my own town company. I took the suggestion of a captaincy with some mental reservations but a little delay could make no difference and if there was to be a vacancy in my company I might reasonably expect a lieutenancy. So I waited. A rather amusing incident in retrospect happened to me about this time
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[page 99] which, with a different turn, might have rendered a commission of no use to me. There had been a number of grocery store hold-ups recently and on going home one Saturday evening past a residence grocery I saw the little clump of loungers around the stove with their hands in the air, and one of them waved his hand at me. I passed on a few steps thinking it a joke, then wondered and turned to go back. Just then a young man ran from the store, thrust a dingy-appearing nickle-plated revolver close to my stomach and demanded in quavering voice that I put up my hands. My hands at the time were in my overcoat pockets and I felt reluctant to remove them, joke or not. I declined. The pistol was wavering in nervous circles but the muzzle was still on the target and I felt it wise to comply with the next order to come back into the store. The boy was scared and hence dangerous. Inside an older man thrust another revolver at my anatmony and repeated the demand that I put up my hands. Hesitating still, I probably would have complied except for his next words: "Put up your hands, you so and so, "he barked, "Or I'll knock the hell out of you." This was reassurance. All I was perturbed about at the moment was the possibility of getting shot and it seemed to me the pair would not start any shooting if they could avoid it. I again declined to take my hands out of my pockets. Continuing threats the pair backed into the street, requiring me at gun's point to accompany them. My courage was rising at having gone thus far unshot and I shouted at a passing car. "Don't yell at those cars," said the older man. I called to the next one. "Let's get out of this," said the younger man turning and running down the street. The older one cursed me and followed. Stepping in the store I ascertained that the pair had robbed the till and were about to search those present when I appeared. The
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[page 100] proprietor, in response to my question if he had a gun, took one from under the counter. Outside I could see nothing of the men. Knocking at a neighboring house in front of which a car stood I asked the owner, a young man calling on a girl there, if he would help me search for the pair. He agreed. As we were ready to start the girl came running out. "Can I go too?" she queried. We had no objection -- it was an affair like a comic motion picture -- so in the car we scoured that section of the town in the chance the men might have been on foot and still about, but of course never saw them, nor could the police notified by the storeowner do so. As I wnt home much later I reflected that perhaps I had not come out of the affair too badly. I at least had not lost the thirty or forty dollars I had on my own person and I had blundered along in time to save the men in the store being searched. My mother, when I narrated my adventures, commended me with some obvious reservations. It was not difficult to see that she felt a son of her's should have come out of the affair with a complete victory, leaving the bandits dead or in jail. That was really my own view of the matter, but I had not been able to figure out how to do it. but she probably was appreciative of my personal safety. When I told her my story I had tossed on the table a five and aten-dollar gold piece, saying that I had nearly lost them and that she might have them. After her death some eight or nine years later I found that she had placed them in her safety deposit box at the bank and kept them. The newspapers gave my refusal to put up my hands some prominence, so it became a subject of some personal raillery. My friends gently suggested that my conduct showed a low order of intelligence or else that I had been too frightened to control my muscles. I secretly hoped that there might be those not so well acquainted with me who would misinterpret it
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[page 101] as courage. What it really had been was a conviction gained from the men's demeanor that they did not want to shoot anyone. However when they were captured in nearby Webb City a few weeks later after a similar hold-up there was an exchange of shots in which a policeman was wounded in the leg. They went to the penitentiary for the Webb City incident and I was never called upon to testify against them. In February, Germany started her unrestricted submarine warfare and the course of events steadily carried us toward war as American ships were armed and sent into the submarine zone and some sunk. The First and Third Missouri Infantry regiments, which had left the border early, were called into federal service March 26 under the militia clause of the constitution for a second time, this time to guard railways and bridges. On April 6 the United States entered the war. As the regimental commander had predicted, Capt. E.B. Trowbridge, my company commander, had been elected major by the line officers of the regiment -- promotion by election was required by Missouri law -- and on April 9 a field officer of the regiment conducted an election in my own company to fill the vacancy. In our unit it was deemed unmilitary to "campaign for office" and no one did so. I expected the first and second lieutenants to be moved up and that I would become the new second lieutenant. Each of the lieutenants were nominated for captain, however, and finally an older man who had just joined the company and who had once known my elder brother, nominated me. My friends looked around at me in surprise to see if I would decline. Normally I would have done so since it was a little unusual for a sergeant to be considered for a captaincy while two lieutenants were in the field. But I knew that the first lieutenant, a fine and conscientious officer, was in no physical condition to stand a campaign, and that the second lieutenant, one of the best drill-masters I have ever known, was in high disfavor at state
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[page 102] headquarters because he was alleged to have borrowed money from enlisted men of the 9th U.S. Infantry at Laredo while he was attached to that regiment, and was unlikely to be commissioned if elected. Besides, the colonel had mentioned the captaincy to me, and I probably wanted to be a captain anyhow. So I gave no sign. I was elected on the fourth ballot. Due to some mistake in the handling of the election it was declared invalid the next day and another election held the night of April 13. This time I was elected by an overwhelming majority on the first ballot. The first lieutenant served under me loyally as such until given a medical discharge some eight or nine months later. He died soon after the end of the war. The second lieutenant was given commission in the regular army a short time later as the result of an examination he had taken at Laredo and was a captain at the time of his death several years after the war. Though I still had an examination to take before I could be commissioned, I actually took charge of the company immediately and pushed the recruiting campaign, the first lieutenant signing all papers in the interim. There was a large group taking the examinations at Jefferson City and they were thorough ones. Since I was jumping the two lieutenant positions I hadthree sets of examination questions to answer. My commission dated from April 13, Friday the 13th the day of the final election. The elective system of choosing officers has been widely condemned though it was still to continue in Missouri for several decades. Since my first commission came through it, I naturally may be supposed to have some kindly feelings toward it. Since I could hardly have won any popularity contest I feel that I was chosen because I had somewhat more military experience than either of the two lieutenants or because of some other
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[page 103] reason. I even hoped that it might be because they preferred to serve under me in war and in point of fact under the now defunct elective system I believe that those balloting on such occasions attempted to select officers on the basis of probably qualifications and efficiency insofar as they could judge such qualities. If mistakes were occasionally made, mistakes are also made occasionally under any system of selecting and appointing officers. With our entry into the war already a week in the background my first duty was to recruit up my unit in an endeavor to build it up to the war strength of 150 men then prescribed for a rifle company. It had been announced that the national guard would be drafted as organizations into the United States service under the national defense act on August 5, 1917, and since this was some months away there seemed ample time. But there were difficulties. For some reason it had been ordered by the war department that all enlisted married men, or other men with dependents, be discharged from the national guard, except for marriages which had occurred after April 6. This was a mandatory thing and the desires of the man had no bearing on it. Always on the return of a military unit from service there is an epidemic of marriages and my own had been no exception This eliminated a valuable group of men who had had training during the border service. I discharged some, despite their protests, who were shortly thereafter drafted into the national army despite their dependents, and no doubt were badly needed in the new divisions. The order also offered a way out for men who wanted to quit and who could manage to claim dependents other than their wives. I lost some in this classification, none of whom, so far as I can recollect, served later in the war though my memory may be at fault on this. With this stripping-down process complete there were remaining only 42 enlisted men who had served on the border.
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[page 104] For several years the public had been reading of the terrific loss of life on European battlefields and family pressure was put on many of the men to claim dependency even though such claim was not justified and the man desired to go. In most cases the men concerned took care of such situations themselves but a few naturally came to me, the more so since knowledge of military methods were not well known in those days and some relatives thought that the decision on whether or not a man should be discharged rested solely on the captain. I recall one instance of a rather bellicose lady, an old friend of my family and whose son was a member of my company, who had quite lost her poise about the matter. She came to my home one morning while I was eating breakfast, refused my mother's invitation to enter and asked to speak to me on the front porch. She was a very good woman but on this occasion had worked herself into quite a temper. "I'll tell you this, War Schrantz," she shrilled for all the neighborhood to hear as I stepped out on the porch, "You are not going to take my boy to war!" But I did. There was another case in which the soldier was much embarrassed by his family's insistence. I explained to his father and mother but a grandfather living down in Oklahoma was not content. He wrote a letter to President Woodrow Wilson saying that he had always voted the Democratic ticket, including the two times the president had run for office, and that I refused to discharge the boy although his parents were dependent on him. This last statement was not true. The father was in ill health and three sons aided in the family's support, neither of the other two married or at that time in the service. The letter went to one of the secretaries at the
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[page 105] White House, was sent over to the War Department, thence to the Adjutant General of Missouri and finally down to me through channels, arriving with an imposing number of endorsements demanding action. I endorsed it aback with the explanation that the man did not want a discharge and was not entitled to one under the regulations, the interest of the relatives being concern for his personal safety and not need for his financial assistance. This bounced back quickly from state headquarters with instructions that I should have the man make application for discharge on ground of dependency and express my opinions in an endorsement to that. The soldier flatly refused to sign such application until I explained to him that in view of the endorsement I was going to put on it there was no chance of it going through. And in due time it came back disapproved. Our recruiting to war strength was also hampered by the fact that while physical standards had been lowered for the regular army they were still kept at the old peacetime standards for the national guard. A number of men turned down by our doctor went down to nearby Joplin and enlisted in the regular army. Eventually this was lowered for the national guard too and I enlisted such of the earlier rejects as were still available. It is only fair to add, somewhat ruefully, that most of this group failed to pass later examinations for overseas service and were assigned to duty in the states or else proved unable to stand up under the rigors of active campaign and were invalided home. A number of young men enlisted on their claim that they were 18, as they appeared to be, when in fact some were 16 and 17. Since it has always been my opinion, borne out by the pages of history, that a man is old enough to soldier if he is old enough to carry a pack and pull a trigger, I was not inclined to go back of these age claims unless
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[page 106] the matter of an underage enlistment was formally called to my attention in which case I had no option but to discharge the man. Most parents did not complain -- believing that the boy was big enough to serve and that the country needed his services. There was one youth who enlisted as 18 who looked as if he might by 19 or more, but his father confided to me that the youth was only 16. However both parents felt that he should serve since there was a need and opportunity and that moreover they were glad that he went into the army he had developed a roving tendency which had led him on tow occasions to leave home without notice and steal rides on freight trains to California and back, a thing which had causedthem great anxiety. The army might stabilize him, they thought -- and in fact it did. He settled down after the war and became a quite solider citizen. His only trouble had been that he had a spirit of adventure which needed an outlet. A grandmother, however, had quite different ideas about his entry into the armed forced and being a forceful old woman she expressed herself to me quite energetically. "He is just a boob," she said, "A great big overgrown boob. He'll be the first one killed. The boobs are always the first ones killed --" And she went on to prove that quaint view to her own satisfaction by telling me of boys she had known in that category who went off to the civil war and were killed in their first battle. Happily for the youth and possibly for me, this lady did not write to the president. Recruiting a small-town national guard unit up to war strength of 150 men during the four months which intervened between our entry into the war and the draft of the national guard into the army was fraught with considerable difficulty. To young men who wanted to volunteer the regular army recruitingparties
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[page 107] could offer immediate service whereas we could only promise it on August 5, 1917, and thus we lost the restless, the impatient or the unemployed prospect. And indeed, much as I needed the men, I never attempted to enlist anyone who was considering enlistment in the regular army, the navy or the marine corps. It was all the same war and I had a certain sympathy for those who did not want to wait around while hostilities were in progress. Had I foreseen the future I might have acted otherwise. SO much of the regular army was kept at home during this war that many of the impatient ones saw no combat service because in regular units .The war department planned for a long war and wished to feed the regular army into it slowly also as not to have its best-trained soldiers killed off in the early stages. The result was that the war ended before most of the regular formations were engaged -- a bitter thing for thousands of fine officers and men and a mistake that was not repeated in the second world war. The selective service law which congress wisely had passed operated both for and against our recruiting campaign. It brought into our ranks many men who were not particularly eaager to go to war but who preferred to go as volunteers rather than as drafted men, since go they must. It kept from us many other men who would have volunteered because of a feeling that their country needed them except for the selective service law which assured them that if they were needed the government would call them. On Sunday morning, August 5, at which time we donned uniforms for the duration and reported for duty we actually had the allowable three officers and 150 enlisted men present for duty and an additional two men who had been signed up, absent without leave. Being overstrength on paper and called upon to transfer two men to another
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[page 108] company which was understrength, I naturally transferred the papers of the two AWOLs,. One of these men showed up a few days later, feeling quite badly because he had been transferred. Whether the other ever reported I do not know. No additional equipment had been received at our home station and apparently not at the state mobilization camp and the concentration of the regiment was accordinly delayed, and for 12 days I conducted a vigorous training program in fundamentals in Carthage, feeding the men in restaurants and letting those who wished go home at night, the remainder -- some 40 -- sleeping in the armory. This was to me a rather welcome opportunity to get my unit organized on an active service basis and in hand before going to camp but leaving the national guard companies in their home towns was most distressing to the liquor-sales industry since federal law forbade a saloon to operate within half a mile of an army post and some district attorney had ruled that a national guard armory used as quarters for a unit on active duty constituted an army barracks. The draft of the national guard into service thus closed practically all the saloons in all the larger towns of southwest Missouri. The shortage of mess equipment was the final factor delaying move to the state camp -- and this was soon solved. Some patriotic citizens of Southwest Missouri -- said to have been the saloon men -- kindly purchased and presented to the Second Missouri Infantry enough tin plates, tin cups and knives, forks and spoons to equip all personnel with civilian mess gear. Thus outfitted the regiment was ordered assembled at Camp Clark. My own company departed from Carthage on the morning of August 17, after a spendid send-off by the home town, reaching Camp Clark a few hours later and going under canvas.
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[page 109] Now followed on a somewhat larger scale the rather tedious and boresome process of being physically examined again and formally received into the army of the United States, similar to the procedure the previous year when called for duty on the Mexican border. Happily the Camp Clark experience was not to last long for Company A. Camp Doniphan, [Oklahoma], on the Fort Sill reservation was already under construction as a training camp for the 35th Division which was to be formed by the Missouri and Kansas National Guard and one company of each regiment was to go in there in advance as cantonment guard. My own was selected and on August 23 clambered onto a troop train which Company L, Fourth Missouri Infantry, from Mound City, was also boarding, and soon was rattling away to the southward at a rather surprising rate of speed and a relatively clear track. The railways were cooperating wholeheartedly in the war. The next day we detrained on the reservation near a groupof quartermaster warehouses, were told where we could draw food and directed vaguely over the the northside of the quadrangular horseshoe with instructions to find enough completed mess halls and to billet ourselves in them. It was all very nice -- and was still very nice when we were assembled in a compact group a few days later with only an occasional guard or fatigue to interrupt training schedules which company commanders drew up for themselves. The First Oklahoma Infantry was still camped on the site when we arrived but departed a few days later for Texas where it was to form part of the 36th Division. The men enjoyed this phase of the Camp Doniphan life. There was picturesque country to wander over over on Sundays, there were jackrabbits in the open treeless plains between the camp and the hills
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[page 110] a short distance to the north of us which afforded sport for soldiers and company mascots alike in the evening after mess and without much danger to the rabbits, and beyond the hills, at the foot of 300 foot Medicine Bluffs was Medicine Creek full of fish. If there was any post regulation against fishing we were mot informed of it with the result that huge catches augmented the company messes. There was also opportunity to get acquainted with the officers of other regiments, an opportunity of some value, I found, since cooperation on the front in France the following year seemed easier with officers whom one knew already. The vicinity had been used as a firing range for the artillery and we had not been there long until one of my men brought me with great pride a dud shell he had found near camp. He immediately took it back and buried it deep where he found it and I assembled my company for a lecture on dud shells. It was the next day, I think, just after noon that two young fellow townsman of mine who had enlisted in a Kansas City artillery battery which had just arrived that morning, came to call on me. One was telling me enthusiastically about artillery projectiles when there was a sudden explosion in the kitchen of his own battery, a cloud of rising blue-black smoke, and the tinkle of falling fragmentsof singing steel which had torn hole through the rood and sides of the building. "That's one of them now," he concluded with a shocked expression. It was indeed. And there was one cook dead and another wounded. The newspaper accounts of the little tragedy said that by accident the kitchen range had been set over an unexploded shell buried in the ground but serving a short time later on the courtmartial of the
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[page 111] battery's mess officer, I learned first hand the facts. The lieutenants of the battery had served in it as enlisted men on the Mexican border and had learned about shrapnel but nothing of high explosive. Shrapnel, as is well known, was a projectile which contained in its forward end a large number of lead balls packed in a smoke-producing matrix. In the back of the projectile was a charge of explosive connected with the time fuse on the nose by a tube. At the time set on the fuse, theoretically wen the projectile was about 40 feet from its target, the fuse fired this charge, blowing the balls out shot-gun fashion in what was supposed to be a deadly manner. Theses officers knew that after the firing that such cases as had not cracked, and fuses on which the threads were still intact, could be pickedup and screwed together to form a harmless memento. One young officer of the battery picked up a 4.7 shell near the First Oklahoma Infantry Camp. It was a new type to him but was hollow at the base and taking a stick and poking it up the orifice he was able to scrape out only dirt and assumed it harmless. He carried it to his own camp and set it down by the kitchen. The mess officer, setting up the company field range, did not have stove pipe enough to keep it more than a short distance clear of the wall. The wall began to scorch and he ordered a griddle iron to be placed against it for protection. There was still a few inches exposed. He directed a soldier to place "that old shell case" in the gap. The meal was finished, the men ate and departed and the officers were eating in the mess hall when the shell exploded. The mess officer was brought before a court martial composed part of regular officers and part of national guard of which Col. (later Brig General) Sherwood L. Cheney was president. In view of the officer's entire lack of instruction on the matter of projectiles other than
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[page 112] shrapnel and his apparent character and intelligence and potential value to the government he was let off with a nominal punishment -- forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for three months and confinement to camp for the same period, and to a reprimand. Brig. Gen. Berry, acting division commander at the time this sentence was published [October] 5, 1917, concluded the order announcing it with these words: "The sentence, although deemed inadequate, is approvedand will be duly executed. This ignorant officer has wasted the life of a soldier placed under his command. Further reprimand is unnecessary." I have always felt that if General Berry had heard the evidence, the reprimand might not have been so savage. And from what I heard of the unfortunate officer's later career I believe the opinion the court martial had as to his future value was justified. Certainly he was one of the officers sent overseas in the advance school detail of the division the following March, a position for which officers were chosen rather carefully. The officer who had brought the dud shell into camp was never tried, for reasons naturally not explained the court martial since that body had to do only with those brought before it. The permanent commander of the 35th Division at this time was Major General Wm, Wright who had gone overseas on an observation tour when this sentence was published but who was much about camp during the days of the advance detachments' duty as such. My first meeting with him I have occasion to remember with burning ears. My company was having squad drill on the plain north of camp one day, the corporals giving commands to their squads the sergeants watching the corporals, the platoon commanders watching their platoons and the company commander --myself -- observing all. I was zealous enough about it too, except when the general arrived. Some airplanes
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[page 113] rose from a nearby field and began looping the loop and doing other stunt flying -- a new thing to us in that day. I had been speaking to my first sergeant about something and together we stood staring at the planes. Suddenly the sergeant broke off the conversation in an awed voice: "Captain," he said, "Here comes the general." The general was indeed coming, striding across the field with fire in his eye. I advanced to meet him and saluted. "Who was that private with whom you were talking?" he demandedfuriously. "That was not a private, sir," I answered, "It was my first sergeant." "Were you talking about the drill?" he further queried. "Not just then, sir," I admitted. "We were speaking about the airplanes." Whereupon he read me a doubtless well-deserved few sentences lecture on keeping my mind on the job. "This is wartime, captain," he said, "not playtime." "Yes, sir," I replied, and saluted as he turned away, apparently in some surprise that I did not attempt to argue with him. I was amused, rather than humiliated, by this encounter. Plainly the general thought he had caught some national guard captain hob-nobbing with some crony of his home town in the ranks. He was a bit taken aback when he found it was my first sergeant, and he was obviously surprised that I knew how to take a reprimand in the approved military manner of the day. ON subsequent occasions when I met General Wright he did
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[page 114] me the honor to remember me and was most pleasant. I suspect it had not been an accident that a day or two later Colonel (later brigadier General) Robert McCleave, his chief of staff, had strolled unobtrusively up to my company when it was engaged in boxing exercise. He probably took back a good report for he told the men of the company that if they put as much spirit in fighting as they did in the boxing exercise that he had no doubt as to their performance. I believe General Wright to have been a great soldier, though the opportunities for a man like him were not as extensive in the first world war as the second. He commanded the 35th until it was in the Vosges mountains, then became a corps commander in that quiet mountain sector, later getting assigned to the 89th Division and commanding it during the active operations. Naturally being at Camp Doniphan on advance detail for my regiment I was anxious to find where the Second Missouri's camp was to be and to see what I could do about getting it in order I could not understand why I could not get this information at division headquarters. The camp was being laid out in the old triangular division formation -- three infantry brigades of three regiments each and an artillery brigade of the same number of regiments. Mess halls and bathhouses were being erected, the sleeping quarters of officers and men to be in tents. We had heard nothing of any impending change in organization. Toward the middle of September a quartermaster captain at division headquarters answered my query with, "Hy yes, I can tell you" and showed me a plat on which had been marked at one place "Second Missouri Infantry (128th, 129th and 130th Machine Gun Battalions and
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[page 115] 110th Trench Mortar Battery." I pondered this as I strolled over to look at the site. The old regiment was to be broken up. Here was a bombshell indeed for the people at Camp Clark. Mentally I began phrasing the letter I must write to the colonel that night. Happily it was taken out of my hands. That evening at the quarters of Brig, Gen. Arthur Donnelly, national guard, who had come down to take command of the advance detachments of Missouri troops, I met Major Westley Halliburton, my battalion commander, who was attending the infantry school of arms then at Fort Sill. I told him what I had learned. "This calls for a telegram," he said and hurried off to Lawton. In Camp Clark this created consternation. Queries to congressmen developed the facts. All divisions were to be made square divisions - two infantry brigades of two regiments each and the artillery brigade of three regiments. The Second Missouri was to be divided as the plat which I had seen showed. All other infantry regiments were to be paired, each pair to make one new regiment. All infantry letter companies continued to be rifle companies as before and each regiment had one one machine gun company. Each infantry brigade, under this first plan, was to have a three-company machine gun battalion and in addition there was to be a four-company machine gun battalion directly under division control-- all companies animal-drawn. A few months later this was changed to make the divisional machine gun battalion a two-company motorized one and the brigade battalions four companies each -- animal drawn. Near the end of September the remainder of the troops from Camp Clark came down, morale depressed because of the coming
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[page 116] changes, and on October 1 the new plan was put into effect. My company became Company A, 128th Machine Gun Battalion, the divisional organization, and whatever the old regiment suffered by the change our own company lot was better than those of units which had to merge. I had one officer and seven private soldiers transferred to me and that was all so far as the reorganization went. Later I received a number of men from the selective service act and two officers from the first officers' training camp at American Lake, [Washington] bringing the company strength up to six officers and 172 enlisted men. As to the wisdom of the War Department in going to the cumbersome square divisions, I have not ventured to pass, even mentally. I believe, however, that the form was about obsolete at the time we adopted it, the French already having passed to a form similar so far as infantry units were concerned to the triangular division we adopted many years later. At the time I questioned nothing. The War Department had decided and the War Department was all wise so far as I was concerned. Calling us machine gun organizations did not make us so. In the first place there were no machine guns for us and in the second place the War Department did not even have any machine gun instructional material to issue to us. Capt (later Brig. Gen.) Harry J. Maloney, had published commercially a book on machine gunnery and this was our only text book aside from some ordnance manuals dealing with nomenclature and functioning. As to the
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[page 117] tactical handling of the guns our army apparently knew only the rudiments and apparently nothing whatever of the massed use of guns such as the new organization implied. I purchased every work on machine gunnery available -- there were but few -- and learned what I could. After a lapse of some months I found in a Lawtonbook store a brand new book on machine guns and their use written by a marine corps officer. I bore it back to my tent at Camp Doniphan in triumph and settled down to the acquisition of worthwhile knowledge. But the officer who had written it knew even less of machine gunnery than I had already learned. After this I quit the books in despair and tried to turn to common sense 9nstead of instruction. Unhappily it was not until after the war that I came across a copy of Col. John H. Parker's "Gatling Guns at Santiago" written while he was a lieutenant. Colonel Parker knew more about machine guns and their potentialities in 1898 than the rest of the regular army apparently knew in 1917. ? Aside from the tables of organization there was no material concerning the new machine gun organizations furnished us and even in our formations it was necessary to use our own judgement. In the rifle company of that day the men were organized in height from right to left, and obviously unsuitable method for a machine gun unit since there would be heavy carrying to do and all gun squads should be of equal physical strength. I borrowed an artillery drill regulations and devised a formation for my own company based on that and the probable common sense requirements. I showed it to my battalion commander and he made it uniform for the battalion. When the official regulations finally appeared they were almost the same-- the board presumably having approached the problem in about the same way that I did as an individual.
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[page 118] Information on machine gun company drill with carts and animals came a little more directly. One on the regimental machine gun companies had been working out at the Infantry School of Arms at Fort Sill under the direction of the board devising the drill. This company, probably at the division commander's directions, gave demonstrations for us using hand drawn home-made wooden carts drawn by men. We made such carts too for ourselves. And my mess sergeant hailing from our own home town knew a stenographer who worked for the board. Through him and her we obtained a carbon copy of the recommended plan and without betraying the source of our detailed information were actually familiar with the drill long before the War Department had approved it -- much less had it printed. In time we got mules -- and nothing else -- and ledthem daily by their halters through the drill with imaginary carts --much to their bewilderment. Then in time we received old French carts and harness. This enabled us to break our mules and train them, as well as ourselves. The animals needed training too. French carts and Missouri mules made an inharmonious combination at first. A mule would dubiously eye the cart chosen for him and flatly refuse to get between the shafts. It took much coaxing, cursing and expostulation before he could be hooked up and started off. Then in a panic at the strange vehicle he was drawing he would dash off a t a wild run to the picket line to the dire peril of all bystanders and with the driver and squad hanging onto the reins and all projecting parts of the cart, trying to stay its progress. But in time all was well and since riding horses had been furnished for officers and certain enlisted men we thought we made a smart enough showing.
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[page 119] As for weapons we were in worse shape -- there being no machine guns for the American army as yet. Our first instruction with a borrowed Benet Mercier -- the obsolete air-cooled gun I had seen fired so often at Texas City. Next the division secured somewhere four American Maxims, model 1904, an excellent gun, albeit heavy, and with these a division school was started. Then eventually two obsolescent Colt machine guns per company were issues -- a gas-operated air cooled gun and this gave an opportunity for training the men in machine gun firing. A short time before the division moved to a port of embarkation early in 1918, and after I had left in advance, a few Vickers were also loaned for training purposes. Looking back it seems that we trained as well as we could under the circumstances. There was a flock of foreign instructors around the division but so far as I recall there were no machine gun instructors -- at least none prior to the time I left. I attended one excellent tactical lecture on machine guns in trench warfare on the western front delivered by a British officer and lookedforward with great anticipations to a scheduled lecture by Col. F.D. ? Applin, famous machine gunner of the British army. Only, to our deep regret, Col. Applin did not talk about machine guns. He told us of the fine discipline of the British army and how far we had to go before we could be as good. "Of course you can hold a line," he said scornfully. "Anybody can hold a line. Even the Portuguese can hold a line." I thought of that some time later when the March 21 German offensive hit and neither the Portuguese or the British were able to hold their line due to circumstances which Colonel Applin had not foreseen.
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[page 120] The British are a great fighting people but in that winter of 1917-1918 they still had a good deal to learn about the fighting ability of some of their friends. We were neither pleased nor instructed by the address of the great Colonel Applin -- we machine gunners felt quite cheated. Looking back, the greatest shortcoming in instruction at Camp Doniphan seems to me to have been the lack of division maneuvers. So far as I know, none were ever held. I think I am correct in saying that the first time the 35th Division maneuvered as a complete unit in World War I was in battle in France. Many of my men were married to home-town girls while at Camp Doniphan -- most of them probably being marriages that would have occurred had the men remained at home. There being no U.S.O. in those days and no social contacts in Lawton, so far as I know, the brides were all Carthage, [Missouri], girls who, with or without relatives, came down to the Oklahoma cmp to marry their boy friends while there was still time. So far as I recall the marriages turned out to be reasonably happy ones, but all the same I thought it most unwise for a man to get married on the eve of a campaign. But with normal human inconsistency, since we stayed at Camp Doniphan for a long time, I went against the advice I hadgiven to others. Miss Delphia Hoover of Carthage and I were married February 23, 1918, at Lawton. Three weeks later I started for France. I have never regretted marrying on the eve of a campaign. I had been a member of an "advance school detachment" for some months, a group to precede the division overseas and receive additional training in the A.E.F. So far as the machine gun units were concerned this included a captain from each battalion
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[page 121] and a lieutenant and three sergeants from each company. With me from my company was Lieut Frank L. Snyder, with whom I had served as an enlisted man on the border in 1916. Sergeant Fred Clark, who like myself had served both at Texas City in the regular army and later on the border with the national guard, Sergeant Edwin W. Wiggins who later was to fall in action, and Sergeant (later Lieutenant) James A. Hines. On March 20 we finally got under way and were on the troop train crossing New Jersey and nearing New York when newspapers were brought aboard with news of the great German offensive of March 21 and of a German long range gun firing on Paris which was miles beyond any known artillery range from the front. Our artillery officers with us on the train went into a huddle and emerged hooting at the idea. It was impossible, they emphtically agreed, for a gun to be constructed that would fire that far. They had yet to learn that in war the supposedly impossible is frequently accomplished. After some days at Camp Merritt, at Tenafly, [New Jersey], we were moved down to the former Hanburg-America Line dock in Hoboken on March 29 and embarked on the George Washington, one of the German liners which had been interned in American ports, seized by our government on the outbreak of the war, and operated as navy transports This was already a famous ship because of her peacetime voyages. She had been built in 1908 by the A.G. Vulcan Co., of Stettin, Germany, was 722 feet in length and 78 feet in the beam, and had a gross tonnage of around 24,000. She was to carry about 100,000 troops during this war and later was to take President Woodrow Wilson to France to attend the Versailles conference. At that
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[page 122] time she was a two-funnel coal-burner, capable of only about 11 knots. In World War II she was again placed in service after complete modernization and the installion of oil-burning engines which gave her a speed of around 16 knots and I sailed in convoy with her on her maiden second war voyage early in 1943. Going aboard here that March 29, 1918, I was assigned to a stateroom with Major (later Colonel) W.L. Gist; Capt. (later Brig. Gen.) George A. Wark, and Capt. (later Lt. Col.) Paul A Frey. Wark had belonged to the Kansas National Guard, the rest of us were Missourians. It was a nice stateroom, originally built for two, I was impressed. In the bath room I looked with pleasant anticipations at the various faucets, labelled in German, for cold fresh water and hot fresh water, and cold and hot salt water. I turned to hot fresh water faucet for a shave but what I drew was cold salt water. That was all any of the faucets yielded. The Germans had disabled the condensing apparatus. All the fresh water we had on the voyage was brought in daily in a small can by the room steward. That day and the next we lounged on the deck, staring at the North River and the ships, camouflaged in wierd World War I fashion, that passed by. Among them was the great Leviathan -- the former German Vaterland -- which was fast enough that she ran alone instead of in convoy. At dusk, March 30 we cast off, proceeded down the river and into the bay, past the brightly -lighted Statue of Liberty, out through the narrows and to sea. Daylight of the next day -- Easter Sunday -- showed us steaming along behind the cruiser Frederick with the Abraham Lincoln, the Antigone, the St. Louis and a smaller
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[page 123] ship saidto have been a former United Fruit Lines vessel which none of the navy personnel with whom I talked could identify. Later two more transports -- the Susquehanna and De Kalb -- appeared and we zig-zagged our way toward Europe. The cruiser was the only escort vessel in the early part of the voyage, the danger of submarines in the western or middle Atlantic being deemed slight. All of our guns were loaded and fully manned at all times, a glimpse of a periscope or the wake of a torpedo being the only way to presence of a submarine could be detected. The life jackets issued were fore-and-aft contrivances commonly referred to as "Ostermoors". This being my first sea voyage everything was new and novel to me, but on the whole -- on that first voyage -- I was disappointed with the sea. It did not look nearly as pleasant from a ship as it did from the shore, and since the North Atlantic in April is not always smooth I was just enough affected by the motion of the ship to be uncomfortable. However time passed well enough, reading Winston Churchill's "River War" which I found in the ship's library and staring at the other ships in the convoy. Among these was the Abraham Lincoln, also a former Hamburg-Anerica liner, which sailed to the port of us. This ship was torpedoed and sunk by the enemy when returning, without troops, from her next voyage. After some days at seas, passenger officers were assigned as additional watchers for submarines. This duty kept me in the open air more and my seasickness touch disappeared. There was only one touch of excitement during the voyage. On April 8 there were several cannon shots, followed by the shrilling of the ship's siren which sent all hands hurrying to their
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[page 124] abandon-ship stations hastily donning their life-jackets. A gunner at one of our after guns on the port side had mistaken the flash of a porpoise for a periscope and had fired once, and a bow gun of a ship astern of us had fired twice. This episode was recognized in the "Mother-Goose-at-Sea" column in "The Hatchet", the ship's newspaper, as follows: "Hey diddle diddle, the fish showed his middle, The cannon began to roar. The soldier boy laughed to see such sport -- But he put on his Ostermoor." Approaching the war zone, the cruiser Frederick turned back and was replaced by 10 American destroyers which encircled and cruised about the convoy. Life preservers were required to be worn at all times and all persons remain fully clothed. The weather turned stromy and the ships plunged through heavy seas. On April 13 we sighted land, steamed up the long "Goulet de Brest" and dropped anchor outside the Brest breakwater after a voyage of 3,100 or so Nautical miles. We casual officers, at least, were soon landed by lighters. It was the first anniversary of my commission as captain.
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[photograph] Camp Doniphan East section Northside
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[photograph] Fort Sill [Oklahoma] 1917-1918
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[photograph] Oklahoma, 1917. 1918 West Section North side
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Camp Doniphan Fort Sill Center Section North Side
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[map]
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[postcard] Brest. - Le Port du Commerce et l'Escadre. -LL
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[postcard] 28 Brest. - Les Rampes et la Rade. -LL [postcard] 85 Brest - La Place du Champ-de Bataille - LL [postcard] 89 Brest. - La Place du Chateau -
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[postcard] 98 Brest. - Le Cours Dajot -LL [postcard] 90 Brest. - La Rue de Siam -LL [postcard] Brest. - Vue prise des Glacis vers la Place des Ports. -- LL
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[postcard] 18 Brest. - Le Pont National. - LL. [postcard] 49 Brest. - Le Chateau. - LL. [postcard] 15 Brest. - Le Pont National. - LL.
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[page 125] The enlisted men of the 35th Division advance school had been formed into provisional companies with an appropriate allotment of officers and all these were quartered at the Pontenezan barracks some distance outside Brest. The other officers sought quarters where they could in the town and Capt Frey and I shared a room at the Continental Hotel. Brest being the first European city in which I had been, interested me much and I spent most of my days there roving about it. Of especial interest was the parklike promenade above the waterfront, Le Cours Dajot - The long, twisting Rue de Siam crowded not only with civilians but men of many nations in many uniforms, as well as Algerian labor groups in their native North African habiliments; the walls of the old city and the medieval castle near the port. Once too I visited the Pontenezan barracks to see how my sergeants in the provisional organization were faring out there. They had only one complaint --men at the barracks were not given passes to visit town. There was perhaps ample reason for that A French admiral with whom Capt. Frey had formed an acquaintance said that Brest was the "wickedest city in France", and certainly swarms of prostitutes solicted openly on the main streets and in broad daylight,. Many of these women, I was told, had come from Paris, having fled that city as the result of the long-range shelling of the town still in progress. In Brest too I saw my first German soldiers -- prisoners of war marching to and from work at the docks or elsewhere, splendid physical specimens almost without exception and with something of an arrogance in bearing even in captivity. Contracting a sore throat I was placed in an improvised hospital for a time as a diphtheria suspect and remained
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[page 126] there for a week or so after my group had gone. During the period I was in hospital there was some sort of disturbance in the city, originating, as I recall it, in some disturbance between Portuguese soldiers and the Algerians but in which the enlisted men of our navy who thronged the streets had somehow become involved. The Algerians looted a number of shops along the Rue de Siam and I believe some were killed by French troops before order was restored. For a time none of the officers of the hospital were permitted to go out except accompanied by armed guards and the nurses were confined to their quarters. All this had eased when I was deemed convalescent but the Algerians were going about their work under armed guard and American naval personnel were still being denied shore leave. Travelling by French civilian train to Tours, thence by American military train to Chaumont, then by local train to Chattilonsur-Seine in the Department Cote d'Or, I rejoined my group then quartered in the old Cordeliers Barracks in that town, a 13th century monastary which later had been used as a barracks by the troops of Napoleon. The 35th Division machine gunners, on arriving at Chattilon. had first been formed into classes to study the Hotchkiss machine gun, French regulation weapon with which American troops then in Europe was equipped. As a result of the spring defeats on the British front, however, it had been decided to send the 35th Division to the British area, armed with British weapons, and just before my arrival, the class had been shifted to the Vickers Machine gun with a British captain named Sharp in charge. He had the idea, as did many British at the time, that the American organizations were to be broken up and assigned as individuals to the British army. He endeavored to teach
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[page 127] British soldier psychology, along with machine gunner, to his officer-students and a common expression with his was: "When you get in command of our Tommies--." He was an excellent instructor and a practical soldier besides, having served in a British machine gun unit until disabled by wounds a year before. He knew what we needed to know, and there were excellent British manuals to fill the void which had never been filled form our own army sources. And visiting British machine gun officers lectured in detail and with apparent complete frankness on the machine gun lessons of the British defeats in March and April. Capt. Sharp, in his istructional talks, included somewhat apologetically the regulation jokes which seemed to be a part of the course. These were in the form of normal questions with facetious answers. The instructor asked: "Where does the bullet leave the gun?" The official answer was not the obvious "at the muzzle" but "on the tripod." In machine gun parlance a "runaway gun" was one in which the weapon continued firing after pressure on the trigger was released. The way to stop a runaway gun was to twist the belt, thus preventing more cartidges from entering the feed block. But the official facetious answer to the query as to the immediate action to take in case of a runaway gun was: "Send the tripod after it. It has three legs while you have only two." Our genial instructor deserved a better finale of his service with us than was actually his. The school closed with a demonstration of all infantry weapons, selected students or instructors performing in turn for their group. Captain Sharp elected to be himself one of the two gunners to demonstrate the Vickers Machine Gun, Choosing as assistant Lieut. Monta Moore of the 130th
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[page 128] Machine Gun Battalion, one of our own group. It was a good choice. Lt. Moore had been in some Central American wars -- with Lee Christmas in Nicaragua if my memory is correct -- and had had some practical gunnery experience. When the group of observers had assembled behind the two guns, Capt. Sharp, with probably pardonable national pride, announced: "You will now see, gentlemen, what an English machine gunner can do with his own weapon." The two guns began firing. Lieut. Moore gave a beautiful exhibition, his chattering weapon running without interruption through the whole schedule of fixed fire, distributed fire, searching fire, diagonal traverse and swinging traverse. The unfortunate Captain Sharp had stoppage after stoppage, correcting each one promptly only to run into another, and accompanying his embarrassed efforts with explanatory oaths at "this damned American ammunition." With us at the school were the advance detachments of the 3rd and 5th American divisions, both of which continued the Hotchkiss course throughout. They were going to the American or French front and we of the 35th were quite elated that while the regular divisions were going to a quiet sector, we were scheduled for what was at the time a very active one. Happily for our state of complacency we could not foresee that the course of war would throw them into serious action long before ourselves. A Captain Rainey, who commanded the Machine Gun Company, 7th U.S. Infantry, messed next to me and who commanded our 35th Division machine gun officers in a brief daily close order drill, was killed in action on the Marne before my own guns ever fired a shot in battle.
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[postcard] Chatillon-sur-Seine Rue de L'Isle Eglise Saint-Nicolas [postcard] 88. - Cote-d'Or. - Chatillon sur-Seine Quartier des Cordeliers et Route de Dijon C Pariaet, photo.-edit, Chatillon-sur-Seine [postcard] G. Parisot , photo-edit., Chatilion-sur-Seine Guerre 1914-1917 553.- Cote-d'Or. -Chatillon-sur-Seine. - Les Cordeliers, ancien monastere (1226). Le Generalissime Joffre y resida en Septembre 1914, lors de la Battaille de la Marne; c'est de la que partirent les ordres qui nous assurerent la victoire
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[postcard] Chatillon sur-Seine -Vue generale prise de Saint Vorles Vise Paris 1200 [postcard] Chatillon-sure-Seine -Le Pertuis au Loup [postcard] Chatillon-sur-Seine - Panorama de Saint-Vorles
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[postcard] Chatillon-sur-Seine - Tour de Gisse [postcard] Ed. Boutin Chatillon-sur-Seine - Eglise Saint-Vorles [postcard] 290 Dieppe. - Vieilles Tours
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[postcard] 42 Dieppe. - Le Vieux Chateau [postcard] 10 Dieppe. - La Statue de Duquesne et l'Eglise Saint-Jacques ND. Phot. [postcard] 73 EU. - La Chappelle Saint-Laurent - LL.
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[page 129] The closing of the school was accompanied by one disappointment for line officers. We had all expected a tour of observation in the trenches with the French before returning to our units. Only fieldofficers were sent, however, but perhaps it was just as well for some of us that we did not go. An infantry major of my acquaintance who did get to make the visit received from the French a croix de guerre and from the Germans a machine gun bullet which smashed some bones and sent him back out of the war home and eventually onto the emergency officers retired list. While we were at the school, our division had come overseas, my own battalion travelling to Liverpool by a British transport, thence to a rest camp at Romsey, then through Southampton and over the channel to Le Havre, thereafter to the village of Sept Meules near Eu in the departments of Seine Inferieure. Our return there to was by the edge of Paris which we passed in the dusk as the balloon barrage was going up. then to Dieppe which we had full opportunity to explore between trains, then to Eu at which division headquarters was located. No instructions were given to me when I reported at Division headquarters other than information as to where my battalion was located, but while strolling about the town I met an acquaintance who expressed surprise that I was going to the battalion. He had heard, he said, that another captain was in command of my company and that I was to be assigned as a machine gun instructor. It was a dark and gloomy period until I reached Sept Meules and found that no one there had heard of orders detaching me, and that while a new captain was in command of my company he would be shifted to another and I returned to it.
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[page 130] The 128th Machine Gun Battalion by this time was only a two-company one, due to a change in tables of organization some time before I left the states which raised the two brigade machine gun battalions from three companies each to four each (animal drawn) while the divisional battalion was reduced to two campanies supposed to be motorized. I found it, however, completely equipped with British horse transport, limbered wagons for each section and some spare ones for ammunition and supplies, complete with a British transport detachment command by a pleasant young British lieutenant named Gradwell. And I found, to my pleasure, that there was a horse for me. Of more importance was the fact that my company had been completely equipped with British Vickers machine guns, 303 caliber, and all necessary fire control equipment. There were 16 machine guns to the company, one for each of the 12 squads and four in reserve. Only our detachment returning from school had received anything like adequate instruction in the Vickers gun and we set to work at once to impart what knowledge we had to the others and to start range firing. The distant thud of artillery to the eastward and the general military situation indicated the need for haste. The March 21 German offensive on the Somme and the April 7 offensive on the Lys had made deep penetrations in the British divisions. The day that our school detachment had reached Dieppe the enemy had smashed through the allied line on the Aisne and now was headed for the Marne through a broken field.
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[page 131] Our 35th Division was associated with the remnants of the 30th British Division and for the moment was a part of the British XIX corps. The 30th had been on the front line when the March 21 offensive had hit and had been badly cut to pieces. What was left of it had then become involved in the Lys operation and suffered still further. Lieut. Gradwell told me he was the only officer left of his battalion and he had survived solely because he was in charge of the transport. There were daily expectations that we would move up to battle, and there were, of course, rumors that a new German offensive against the British front was impending. As a captain I had been allowed to bring 250 pounds of baggage to France and the officially "required" articles took that full poundage enclosed in two trunk lockers and a bedding roll. But the war had broken out of the trenches. Orders were to strip down to 80 pounds. Trunk lockers were to be sent to Calais -- in fact they wound up somewhere else -- and were to be secured later. The way things were going it looked to me as if the Germans might be in Calais before long and I had small hope of seeing my property again. This was spring, but winter would come in time and I placed my long heavy overcoat in my bedding roll, a wise precaution as it turned out as the foot-lockers were returned only after the end of hostilities. I gave my cot, one foot-locker and miscellaneous articles to the housewife in whose home I was billeted and turned in one for storage or capture as the case might be. Major Gen. Wm. Wright, our division commander,
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[page 132] visited Sept Meules and to my amazement called for me by name and I hurried in from the field. So far as I recall I had not talked to General Wright since the dressing-down he had given me at Camp Doniphan for what he had considered inattention during a drill period. "You know all about the Vickers machine gun and its use, don't you?" he queried. "I wouldn't say that, sir," I replied. "I know something about it." "You received a good report from that school", he answered, "and we count on you as the division machine gun expert." Somewhat dazed, I expressed gratification, reflecting inwardly that if I was the most expert in the division, the division was indeed in a bad way. On June 2, Col. (later Brig. Gen.) W.R. McCleave, chief of staff of the division visited the village. He also sent for me. "We count on you to oversee the training of the machine gun units of the division," he stated, "what are you doing now." "I am training my own company, sir," I answered, "I have received no orders to do anything else." He reflected a moment. "That is probably as good as anything," he said. "This is Tuesday and I believe the division will be in battle by Friday. Oversee the training of the companies of this battalion which we count on as the divisional reserve of fire power. See that they not only know how to shoot but that they can bring fire to bear on reverse slopes." All this personal attention from high places had me
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[page 133] puzzled as well as amused. Later the circumstances were to cause me some embarrassment. Strange as it seemed then, and still seems, an order had been issued or ordered issued the previous day, naming me, a captain, as division machine gun officer while there were three machine gun majors in the division. Presumably division headquarters thought that inasmuch as the division was armed with the Vickers gun that a Vickers man was necessary for that position. I did not receive a copy of that order while in the area. Perhaps there was some days paper work delay and by that time it began to be rumored that we were to be sent out of the British area and the order was never furnished me since a French area at that time meant the Hotchkiss machine gun. Receiving no order I continued to carry on my normal work, deeming it tactful -- since the chief of staff had not mentioned the matter to my battalion commander -- to confine the supervision of the other company he had directed me to exercise to trading of ideas with my fellow captain and watching his unit work as his and mine functioned side by side. Sept Meules was a pleasant village in thecvalley of a stream called the Yeres and I much enjoyed our brief stay there, riding a bit over the country incidental to my unit's training. In the next war -- in 1940 -- the region featured in the news as the Germans overran the country and I wondered, with curiosity unsatisfied as to what happened to Sept Meules. Our stay there was not to be long. On Jun 3, five American divisions -- the 4th, 28th, 35th, 77th and 82nd Divisions --
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[page 134] had been ordered shifted from the British front incidental to the shift of the main danger zone southward, the 35th's orders calling for it to turn in its British weapons and move to the Vosges region. It was the forenoon of June 6 before the move order had trickled through channels down to the 128th Machine Gun Battalion, nor had we heard any previous rumor of it. We assumed that when we moved it would be toward the front. That forenoon the 12 guns of my company were busily firing away on a 1000 inch range on a hillside near the camp. First Lieut. Frank L. Snyder who had just returned the day before from the British gas school at Nouvion was telling me about Abbeville through which he had passed. "The German planes are blasting at that place every night," he narrated. Then our attention was attracted by a noisy motor cycle pop-popping up the valley road to Sept Meules. Immediately afterwards a runner fro battalion headquarters came out to tell us to come in immediately. We were to turn in our machine guns and move on Neufchatel, clearing Fresnoy-Folny, two hours march to the south, by 1:50. It was now 10 o'clock and we would need to leave the village in an hour and 50 minutes. There followed the usual activity in such cases of rolling packs and bedding rolls. A school detachment which had been at Val du Roi up the valley of the Yeres rejoined breathlessly, and at the time appointed we were on the march -- leaving the machine guns in charge of an officer since there as yet were no British authorities to take them. We marched 15 miles that warm afternoon.
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[page 135] lunchless due to the haste of our departure, through Londiniere and up the valley of the river Eaulne to the hamlet of Fesques, near which we pitched shelter tents in the fields for the night. It was the first route march I had made with my unit in France, and the event rather thilled me. In front as we marched through the countryside was the battalion in column of fours. Behind it came the limbered wagons of both companies. Behind that in a group marched the British transport detachment, which our men had relieved. Lieut. Gradwell, the British transport officer, and I watched this last detachment as they came in -- he with considerable pride since they were finishing in good shape, swining swagger sticks and singing, though he said most of them had been relegated to the transport because of wounds. Their song had a fine marching lilt to it and was one that I had never heard before, familiar as it has become since: "Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parley vous, Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parley vous ---." The next day as we moved southward after a less hurried departure we passed through Neufchatel where the French inhabitants had mustered with great pitchers of cider and numerous glasses to welcome the Americans. The column could not stop but full glasses were passed out to the marching men which they drank as they walked, handing the empties back to small boys who had trotted along to receive them. It was a most cheering courtesy. "They used to do that for us too," commented my British lieutenant somewhat sadly, "When we first came over." All that day and the next, artillery fire was roaring angrily away far to our left as we marched. Behind me as I
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[page 136] marched was a young soldier assigned as a runner, and I heard him muttering distastefully: "Listen to them damn guns; listen to them God damn guns." This young man was doubtless younger than I knew, for he was rather short and chunky whereas within a year he added about 6 inches to his heighth. Always an excellent soldier, a wound received in the Meuse-Argonne did not discourage his military learnings and after the war he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving with it many years and attaining a commission in World War II. Eventually he was retired as a major when incapacited by fresh wounds. That night we camped at a village called Fontaine-en-Bray after a march of only nine or 10 miles, andthe following day pounded down the poplar bordered road to the village of Buchy, some 20 miles or so northeast of Rouen and bivouacked, preparatory to entrainment at a railway station to the west about a mile and a half. There were a number of British hospitals somewhere about and the cluster of wineshops and their vicinity near the railway station that night were filled with Americans, British and Australians, the latter two groups principally convalescents, though part of the British were attached to our own division pending the orders detaching them which came that evening. A lowered state of discipline was evidenced by the British and Australians, both of which elbowed the British officers rather rudely on the street, and relatively few of the English saluted my British friend Gradwell with whom I had walked to the railway station. One drunken Tommy even stopped him and demanded how long he though the war would last. The Australians, many of whom were drunk,
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[page 137] were the noisiest. A rumor had spread among them that the Australian divisions which had suffered heavy casualties were to be broken up and the men distributed as individual replacements in English divisions and they were quite vociferous in objections to any such arrangement. The British officers circulated through this turbulent mob with unshaken poise, quite admirable under the circumstances I thought. Gradwell made no comment on the English soldiers but in reference to the Australians said: "Good fighters but a wild lot, those fellows. Once they got to firing their revolvers in the streets at Calais ----". Our American soldiers wandered about looking at this scene with something like amused amazement, well ordered and behaved. In Buchy while walking with Major westley Halliburton my battalion commander, we encountered Lt. Col. Paul Tucker who had been executive officer of the old Second Missouri before it was broken up and who lately had been acting as division machine gun officer. I explained tohim, in response to his query which I hadheard frequently from other officers on the march, that I had not gone to Val du Roi to take command of the four regimental machine guns companies which had been training there as a provisional battalion, for the very good reason that I had had no orders to do so. He pulled from his pocket a copy of the order, which I reproduce. Headquarters 35th Division American Expeditionary Forces, 1 June 1918 Special Orders No. 122 Extract 2. Lieut. Col. Paul Tucker, 137th Infantry, is relieved from duty with provisional machine gun battalion and will report to his regimental commander for duty. 3. Capt. Ward L. Schrantz, 128th Machine Gun Battalion, is designated as division machine gun officer. Until further orders he will
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[map] France
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[page 138] take station with the provisional machine gun battalion and will exercise general supervision over training of the machine gun battalions this division. By Command of Major General Wright R. McCleave Colonel, General Staff Chief of Staff Official: WM. Ellis Major, N.G., U.S., Asst. Div. Adjutant "I am the only Paul Tucker I know of," said the colonel airily, "so I went back to the 137th. You are the only Ward Schrantz I know." Whatever Major Halliburton felt at this order which assigned one of his own captain -- one of his Mexican border sergeants -- to supervise the training of his battalion as well as the two other battalions both of which were commanded by majors, he showed no sign of his injured pride. He agreed with me that since the division was on the move that there was nothing I could do about it until we reached the new area. The regimental machine gun companies were all back with their own regiments now. It was with some amusement that on the evening of June 9 we loaded the British horses and limbered wagons which were our only transport on railway cars. We had expected an order taking them from us before we left the British area, andthere was a rumor when we finished loading that such an order had come. If so it never reached us, and we entrained our men and departed about 9 p.m. Our destination was the region of Epinal Department Vosges, and with the Germans on the Marne at Chateau-Thierry the route naturally was a bit circuitous, through Rouen, Versailles, Melun and Chaumont to the little station of Harol, a few miles west of Epinal, where we detrained. We marched south some distance, then (Montdidier-Noyon Defensive June 9-13 began)
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Headquarters 35th Division American Expeditionary Forces, 1 June 1918 Special Orders No. 122 Extract 2. Lieut. Col. Paul Tucker, 137th Infantry, is relieved from duty with provisional machine gun battalion and will report to his regimental commander for duty. 3. Capt. Ward L. Schrantz, 128th Machine Gun Battalion, is designated as division machine gun officer. Until further orders he will take station with the Provisional Machine Gun Battalion and will exercise general supervision over training of the Machine Gun Battalions this Division. By Command of Major General Wright R. McCleave Colonel, General Staff Chief of Staff Official: WM. Ellis Major, N.G., U.S., Asst. Div. Adjutant
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[page 140] east, passing through some belts of barbed-wire entanglement which apparently marked the limits of the fortress area of Epinal, to the village of St. Laurent on the Moselle River a few miles above the French city, where we went into billets. The division, with units billetted in villages, occupied a considerable area with division headquarters at Arches, a few miles below St. Laurent. Going to the division adjutant's office at Arches I asked about the order which had been issued concerning me, and if it had been countermanded. Some clerk finally found it and could find no countermanding order. Next I went to the G-3, the divisional plans and training officer, and he looked at it in surprise. He had never known such an order had been issued, he said. Obviously the division had not been very badly upset by my failure to report. G-3 took me to Col. McCleave, the chief of staff, who received us pleasantly, looked at the order, smiled and said, "Oh, yes," smiling again at my explanation of why I had not obeyed it. I suspected that he had intended to countermand it when he learned the division was to leave the Vickers-machine gun area and had forgotten to do so. Indeed by this time the division had probably put in a request for a Hotchkiss machine gun officer. However he was not going back on his own order. "You are quite a young man," he commented -- I was 27 but that was considered young for a captain in this stage of World War I -- "and this is not a boy's job we are giving you. You will remain quartered with your battalion but we will give you a motor cycle with sidecar; you get a driver from your company. I want you to visit every machine gun company in this division, push their training along and keep G-3 informed of their progress.
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[page 141] This was on June 14, and I carried out the order quite zealously -- for four days. Hotchkiss machine guns had been issued to us on our arrival -- 16 per company, including four to be held in reserve. This Hotchkiss machine gun, model 1914, was the regulation gun of the French army and used by all the early American divisions in France not on the British front. It was a long, gaunt weapon of death -- air-cooled, gas-operated, fed with metal strips containing 24 cartridges each, and had an estimated killing range of over 4,000 yards due to its copper, boat-tailed bullets, It was one of the best machine guns in the world in its day and those who used it soon became enthusiastic about it, but it appeared ungainly at first sight to men who had learned to love the trim little Vickers. "I never knew what a good machine gun the Colt was," I heard one of my sergeants say disconsolately as he first surveyed the Hotchkiss on its tripod, "until I saw this thing." It was urgent that the new gun be learned as quickly as possible since it was expected that the division would move to the front at any time to relieve French troops to move toward the Marne. Indeed some French troops, possibly a reserve disision we had relieved, was already moving out on trains passing through S. Laurent. It was necessary that all men be familiarized with its mechanism quickly and be taught to fire it, or otherwise they might be on the front before they had an opportunity. On visiting the three battalions and each of their companies I found the training being pushed. In the regimental machine guns companies it was less advanced. Two of these regimental companies moved forward within a day or two after I started
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[page 142] my tours. In one of the others, the captain -- a friend of mine from Camp Doniphan days -- had mapped out a week's instruction in mechanism before any firing practice, quite after the British ideas. His lieutenants were secretly fuming with impatience. I speeded him up and explained that while his program would normally be reasonable enough that he might be looking at the enemy within a week. The other regimental machine gun company had done nothing at all with the new guns. Finding the captain at his office I asked him where his company was. It was out having bayonet practice, he said. The rifles which had been issued it were to be turned in and he thought the men should have some more bayonet practice while they still had a chance. I persuaded him that to a machine gun company machine guns were the most important. He stopped bayonet practice and started on the guns. I kept pretty much on the road -- a pleasant thing in itself in June -- found everyone cooperative, including the majors whatever they thought, and kept the G-3 informed that things were moving along well. On the evening of the fourth day as I came in late in the 128th Machine Gun Battalion mess after a visit to one of the companies, there was a strange major in the group. "Captain Schrantz," said Major Halliburton with possibly a touch of malice in his pleasant voice, "I want you to meet Major Hay, our new divisional machine gun officer." I trust that I took that introduction with as unmoved face as Major Halliburton had taken the original word of my detail as such. "I am glad to have you with us, Major," I said, "and I
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[page 143] will turn over the motor-cycle and side car I have to you in the morning." And so I did, together with all the information I had without ever having seen the order appointing him or relieving me. I never received nor did I ever see a copy of the order. My successor was Major (later Lieut. Col.) Donald D. Hay of the regular army. He came to us from some machine gun school in France, as I recall, spent the war with the 35th Division, and after the war was a machine gun instructor at Fort Benning. he had been commissioned in the regular service in 1902 before I was 12 years old and I have no doubt was much better qualified for the position of division machine gun officer than was I. Perhaps I should have been chagrined at my relief and doubtless would have been had it come later, for then I might have assumed my work and not been satisfactory. Coming this early I felt that it was a thing already arranged before I began my duties. And besides I knew I had done as well in that short time as anyone could. Consequently I did not feel badly and was glad to get back to my company. Naturally my brief elevation did not make me popular with the majors of the machine gun battalions, pleasant as they had been about it, and I suspect that none of them ever really forgave me that brief jolt to their pride. Among the first things I did when I returned to my company was to take it on the range. Use of a French army rifle range between St. Laurent and Epinal had been secured for certain hours. We waited our turn while a company of French Chasseurs Alpine finished and by the time we were through a French machine gun company was waiting for us.
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[page 144] Later we shifted to an improvised range of our own west of St. Laurent in the hills and firing was more or less continuous from this time on, mixed with drill and maneuver. Soon after our arrival British animal-drawn transport was taken from us and a dusty convoy of 30 light Ford gun trucks limped into the village to take its place. The divisional machine gun battalion was to be motorized at last -- after a fashion. Whatever had been produced in the United States under war pressure, these vehicles were neither new nor in number or capacity equivalent to those called for by the table of organizations. They were a light model T with a low covered back and had been used during the border troubles by national guard machine gun companies equipped with Lewis guns. I had seen such vehicles with the Second Florida Infantry at Laredo, and those I now received bore the mark -- as I recall it -- of a North Carolina organization. With them for the battalion came several motorcycles and 10 ton-and-a-half Garford and G.M.C. trucks. My original allotment of the light cars was 15, but two of these were soon taken away to go to some division headquarters unit. No additional motor equipment was received by us during the war. This available was sufficient to carry the guns and ammunition and that was about all. Men and their weapons were thus necessarily separated during a march since moto and food columns could not travel together. Since there was no personnel carriers the mobility of the battalion was no greater than the animal drawn companies of the brigade battalions except when additional trucks could be secured from the division motor pool. Our men composed a satirical little song which they sang as we marched along -- "We're Motorized."
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[map] 1914 Guerre Europeenne 1915 Les
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[map] [Vosges] Carte Relief No. 2 Louis Burgy, editeur, Nanterre (Seine) Censure No. 2, Paris.
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[page 145] It was at St. Laurent soon after our arrival that we first saw enemy airplanes. It was in the forenoon and my men were clustered around their funs in the village street. There was a cannon shot off to the east across the Moselle River, then a second and a third. Tiny white blotches appeared in the eastern sky around a tiny black speck which, drawing near defined itself as an airplane. The men, in accordance with instructions, stood along walls or in shadows to avoid observation. More guns were firing now in a slow leisurely fashion. More blotches of smoke appeared, an initial angry flash of fire in the center of each. The plane came on undisturbed and over the Moselle river until the Maltese crosses on his wings could plainly be discerned, then turned back eastward once more followed by the blossoming patches of smoke. Still warm shrapnel balls and shell fragments fell around us. From that time on visits by these hostile observation planes were of almost daily occurrence. I do not recall in this area ever having seen an allied fighter plane after them. Now did the anti-aircraft fire disturb them much. Occasionally they changed altitude when the shell bursts came too close, and that was all. St. Laurent was a pleasant place and our stay there to me was an agreeable one. I was billetted in the home of a middle-aged motherly woman named Madame Flot who, aided or hampered, by our American army cooks prepared the meals for our officers mess which was served in her dining room. She served with great amusement the canned corn which was a part of her comissary supplies. Corn, she said, was for horses. She had never heard of human beings eating it before. She placed delicious roast beef before us, flavored with wine. She chided us for eating so much. French officers ate
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[page 146] little and drank much atvtheir meals, she averred. As for us we ate much and drank nothing It wasn't seemly. Living with her were two nieces. Jeanne worked in a local camouflage factory. Germaine helped Madame Flot around the house, milked the cows and worked in the hayfield between the house and the Moselle River, an endeavor in which I noticed our soldiers were most anxious to aid. First Lieut. Fred D. Hays of Lamar, [Missouri], also was billetted in the house and he spent a good many evenings in the dining room chatting with the family in our attempted French which amused them much, Hays singing American songs for the girls and they responding with French ones. There was no sentimental interest involved so far as I was concerned. They had demanded my marital status on my arrival and finding that I was married no doubt promptly crossed me off the books as a non-prospect. Hays may have rated as a prospect, but that was all so far as I ever saw. I have no doubt that our orderlies and mess attendants paid court but these two young ladies were certainly amply able to hold their own. Sometimes half a dozen officers would be there in an evening. One or twice some French sergeant or lieutenant came for a hasty visit -- these were cousins, it was explained. Madame Flot wept when she found that our men were mostly volunteers. This puzzled us until it was explained. There had been some kind of volunteer company gone to the war from St. Laurent, they said. Now they were all dead -- all the eligible young men of the village fallen in battle. War held a sure fate for volunteers, they felt. The madame wept at the thought that soon we and our men too would be killed. In France, they said, after the war each man left would need to have two or three wives. The laws would be changed. Girls must have husbands and there would not be nearly enough men for one apiece. Our lieutenants told
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[page 147] the girls that since there might be no husbands for them that they might as well go to war too, and to the young ladies' manifest pleasure indicated their preference between the two to take as orderlies. Then the girls demanded of me which I wanted for an orderly. I said I would have no orderly but Madame Flot. They looked mildly surprised at this, then shrieked with merriment as they figured out the answer for themselves. "She is the best cook," they cried. Toward the end of June rumors began to circulate that we would soon move forward. Second Lieut. Ross Dunlap, my company train officer, came to me and said: "Captain, we can't move. These old Fords have had plenty of hard usage before they came to us. Some of the cars had cracked spark plugs and they broke in cleaning. I can get none from division headquarters. They tell me there are no Ford spark plugs in France." "We must move when ordered whether we can or not," I assured him "Those cars limped in here under their own power and it is up to you to see that they are able to move out the same way." He pondered this pronouncement. "If you will let me take a car and be gone for a few days without asking anything about it," he finally said," I think I may do something." After checking with the battalion commander I gave the required permission. Two days later he was back with not only an ample supply of spark plugs but with many badly needed spare parts for repairs. He had visited some French motor pool of which he had heard. "These French will give you anything if you will give a receipt for it," he explained. It was so we met our needs until the receipts he had signed began to come in. Then Division headquarters
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[page 148] had Major Hallibarton on the carpet. "They wanted to courtmartial somebody," he told me afterwards, "but what they decided to do finally was to take Dunlap away from us and use him themselves. They need someone at division with his ability to get things that everyone says are not available." On the afternoon of June 30 we departed from St. Laurent as a motorized column, trucks to carry personnel having been loaned by division headquarters. Passing southward through the perimeter of Epinal forts me wound through through the valley of the Moselle and constantly-mounting, pine-covered hills to Remiremont, thence east and southeast up the valley of the Moselette as the hills grew into low mountains, past Saulxures and the the white village of Ventron nestling in the green heart of the Vosges, only a few miles west of the Alsatian border. One bridge of the 35th Division was now holding trenches over in the mountains of German Alsace. The forward echelon of division headquarters was at Wesserling in the Thur Valley across the mountain ridge east of us. The rear echelon of division headquarters was at Ventron. Cornimont, just east of Saulxures and behind us around a shoulder of mountain, was division railhead -- the furtherest east point reached by that particular rail line. Here we resumed training in the valley and on the mountains. In addition to the frequent visits of enemy observation plans, each attracting the attentions of anti-aircraft guns which spotted the sky with futile bursts, there was the occasional rumble of gunfire to the east. There was a little spy scare at Ventron. Mysterious lights flashed at night on La Ronde Ruche, a tall hill southeast of the Village and looking directly toward the Col d'Odernon, the
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[page 149] mountain pass to the east; mysterious thin smoke columns rose from the hills sometimes at evening; curious occasional flashing lights which would be signals were seen from village windows. The first time Iwas officerof the day I determined to do something about this. I posted men during the day in the pine woods to come down on any smoke columns and hold the persons making them. Across on the hills south of the village as duck approached I saw smoke columns on the north hill then saw the men I had posted come down out of the woods. I was soon with them and found them talking to some small boys and smiling. The smoke "signals" were from fires which were kindled at evening when mosquitoes began to annoy the cattle and were supposedto afford some protection. After if became dark I investigated intermittent lights which apparently started the village phase of the stories. They came from a back window of a wine shop. The room in which the window was unlighted, but an open door led into a lighted room and men passing back andforth across this doorway gave something of a dot, dash effect seen from acertain angle. Late at night there was an intermittent light far up on the east side of La Ronde Bruche, a hill I knew well as a result of my hill-climbing propensities. I hurried to the guard house to get the sergeant of the guard to accompany me on an investigation patrol. On the way I met First Lieut. John F. Williams, our battalion adjutant, who was to be a major general and chief of the National Guard Bureau in World War II and for some years before. He suggested that he accompany me instead of the sergeant. Clambering up a circuitous path we finally reached a point above the lights and could hear voices below. Sliding down the steep hill through the pine trees, our pistols in one hand and our
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[page 150] flashlights in the other, we cascaded down on two startled French people -- an inebriated mountain man and his wife, the latter with a flashlight in her hand and obviously trying to get her drunken mate back to their hut near the summit. That ended the spy scare at Ventron. About 4 o'clock on the afternoon of July 11 while I was maneuvering my company in a wooded valley northeast of the village, a motor-cyclist brought a note from my battalion commander to bring my entire unit in as soon as possible. On my arrival he informed me that he had received orders to send one company immediately over into the Thur valley across the old frontier where it was to report to the division chief of staff at Wesserling. He was lending me trucks from the battalion to carry personnel. He stressed the need for haste. With the necssary instructions I dismissed the company to return to its many billets, scattered over the entire village, and by 5:20 the column of 16 Fords and attached trucks, complete with all of our equipment and ammunition was ready to move. In accordance with my usual custom, when security measures did not prevent, I gave the full company our destination and such information as I had, concluding by way of general information, with reading an extract from the division daily intelliegnce report which had just been handed me: "Enemy raid at Hilsenfirst at 3 a.m., after artillery preparation, repulsed successfully. Enemy not able to reach our wire. Our casualties are six dead and 20 injured." Cheering at this little victory, the men streamed back to their trucks and a moment later I led them out of the village. I felt pleased at the time factor. An hour and 20 minutes from time
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[page 151] of receiving the word on the training field to time of departure was not bad. In view of the apparent urgent need for us somewhere I would have liked to have done it in less but this could be considered prompt. Later I found that according to the inspectors at the rear echelon of division headquarters who nosed into my empty billets as soon as I departed, it was far too prompt. A scathing letter in due time informed me that they were not at all immaculate and that I should have inspected each of them personally before leaving -- a task which probably would have an additional hour. It was a steep climb to the top of the Col du Mont d'Oderon and we paused at the old frontier to fill the radiators of the old model Ts, most of the water having boiled away, then zigzagged down into the Thur valley, thence southward to Wesserling, 15 miles from our starting point. Colonel McCleave, division chief of staff, explained the situation to me. Unusual movement of trains and activity of enemy cable systems opposite the front of the 22nd French Division on our right had caused the French to fear that a German attack in the vicinity of Hartmannsweilerkopf was imminent. Lacking reserves the French had asked that an American battalion with machine gun company attached by placed at their disposal to deliver a counter-attack in case, as they expected, the initial enemy attack would make progress. The second battalion, 138th Infantry, ahdbeen sent down to the villages of Moosch and Weiler behind the French positions and I would report to Major Norman B. Comfort, the battalion commander at Moosch. Major Comfort in turn directed me still farther down the valley to Weiler. The French were so sure as they had been about the attack, but we should be ready to move out any time we were called upon.
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[page 152] Weiler nestled among hills, the front line in the direction from which the attack was expected, being three of four mikes to the eastward, over the mountain masses which bulked dim in the dusk. A mile and a half below was the partially ruined village of Thann just beyond which, where the Thur river ran out into the Alsatian plains, was the front and that point. As we settled ourselves in the village, a heavy piece of artillery on the hill west of us, fired and sent a projectile over our heads and eastward bound. Decidedly we were nearer the front than we had yet been. Weiler, though within the French artillery lines, was fully inhabited and the German-speaking populace went about their evening affairs in a normal way. In front of a village cafe by the river, French soldiers sat at tables and drank undisturbed as guns on the surrounding hills roared into action as night went on -- the muzzle flashed stabbing out sharply in the darkness. The German artillery was returning the fire. Shells were exploding not only in the hills to the east but sang over us and burst near the artillery positions on the hills behind. Weiler continued to sip its wine. We learned that the Germans did not fire at the villages. Nor did the French fire at the villages behind the German lines. We gathered that both France and Germany considered Alsace as their own and wanted to do as little damage as possible -- a very nice way to conduct a war, I thought. In the morning I went to Moosch to see Major Comfort and to my annoyance found he and his four rifle captains had gone to the front on a reconnaissance without including me in the party. I spent the day in training and in wandering down the valley toward
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[page 153] Thann, studying the defense scheme, as outlined by rusty belts of barbed wire, for resisting an enemy attack up the valley. I was billetted in a tall house, presided over by a English -speaking hostess and having several German-speaking maids. My hostess told me that she had always spoken French and German and was learning English from a Y.M.C.A. man billeted with her. "Here there is not much danger," she told me in her carefully articulated English when I commented on her nearness to the front. "Of course sometimes comes the obus, and in Thann are 40 civils dead of the gas, but we can go to the cellar and we have the masks." "But soon we must go," she amended somewhat sadly later that same day -- and indeed she had some reason for being more perturbed about the war. French army engineers had invaded her large potato field south of the house. The vines were growing tall -- taller than they did in Missouri I reflected -- and the soldiers with scythes were cutting broad diagonal swaths across the field. Then followed others with stakes, and soon a broad belt of new barbed wire had sprung up just below her home. But she took the situation calmly enough and by way of being courteous enumerated for me the prvious occupants of my quarters, apparently having a complete mental roster. There was General this and Colonel that, "dead in the mountains," and Count de somebody and a collection of majors and captains, "dead in the mountains," and there was some officer whose forefather had fought in American with LaFayette, "dead in the mountains." There evidently was no doubt in her mind as to what was going to happen to me soon. Of her sympathies in the war I never asked but while I was with her she
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[page 154] was anxious to do all she could to make me comfortable. If the "dead in the mountain" catalog was intended to make me otherwise, it failed in its effect. I had already heard about people being killed during a war. I remember her as a very pleasant, very courteous and very stately woman. When Major Comfort Returned from the trenches that evening I was at Mossch waiting for him. "I forgot I have five captains now instead of four," he told me. "But you can go up in the morning. I know of a French soldier here who speaks English and you can take him along for an interpreter." So early the next day I chugged up the hill in my headquarters Ford to the French brigade headquarters where I was cordially received and sent down to regimental headquarters where my reception was equally pleasant and shunted on down the hill to the headquarters of the battalion I sought. Captain Cordon, the battalion commander, eyed me with grave suspicion when he heard my Teutonic name. This deepened when I explained that I commanded the machine gun company with Major Comfort's battalion. "Ah," he commented sharply, "but Captain Holmes commands Major Comfort's machine gun company." Capt. Cordon had served with the 138th Infantry in the mountains farther north and at that time the regimental machine gun company, of which Holmes was the captain, was attached to the battalion. I explained that an American battalion, unlike the French, did not have an integral machine gun company, these being attached as needed. Finally he decided I was not a German spy after all, and explained to me the situation on the map, then from an observation point nearby pointed it out on the ground.
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[page 155] We stood high on the eastern slope of the central mountain mass between the Thur valley and the Alsatian plane. Below us a shoulder of the mountain ran downward, and beyond the foot of the shoulder rose Hartmannsweilerkopf down toward the summit of which we looked downward. The scene of heavy fighting in 1915 the timber which once had covered it had been chewed away by shell fire until only shattered stumps and churned earth criss-crossed by old trenches remained. To the left and to the right on the approximate line of Hartmannswilerkopf a zone of stumps and shattered trees indicated the location of the long stabilized front. In the German positions ahead of us occasional French shells were falling, apparently some battery registering. And off to our left now and then came the crash of an explosion and a little puff of blue-black smoke as some German heavy gun searched out a target or checked its battery's range. Everything else was silent except for an occasional rifle shot. The French held the near slope of Hartmannsweilerkopf, Captain Cordon told me, and the Germans the far slope, but the summit itself was between the lines. If the expected German attack came, it was believed the French trenches on the near slope would be overrun, the little valley crossed and progress be made up the shoulder as far as Camp Pierre, a concealed strong point below us. Here, it was felt, the enemy could be held, except that he presumably would work up the wooded ravines on each side. The mission of the American battalion would be to counter-attack down these ravines, drive him out and back over the top of Hartmannsweilerkopf again. Captain Cordon was somewhat depressed but I had heard the reason before I cam up. In the French army, as in
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[page 156] our own at that time, A French battalion was normally commanded by a major. Cordon, as the senior captain, hadbeen in command for some time but he was 29 years of age whereas the French regulations, I was told required that a man must be 30 before he could be a major. Therefore he was to be relieved by another captain old enough to be promoted. I was amusedto reflect that this occasion of my first visit to the front was on the 13th of the month. I was born on a 13th, my captain's commission dated from a 13th and I had landed in France on a 13th. The next day being Bastile day the French used it as a suitable occasion for a ceremony at Moosch in which certain members of the 138th who had distinguished themselves during a raid on the enemy tranches some time before were decorated with the croix de guerre. On the 15th I accompanied Major Comfort and his rifle company captains to the front again. This time we went down the shoulder, and winding through innumerable communication trenches, visited not only Camp Pierre but even the French outpost positions. I noted on this occasion the value of a helmet. I was forever bumping my head on tree trunks which hadfallen across the communication trench, or scratching my helmet on barbed wire -- the result, of course, of trying to look about instead of watching where I was going. Neither the chasseur Alpine captain who had succeeded Cordon as battalion commander, nor his captains that we met, believed that the Germans were going to attack them now -- "the instinct of the infantry" I suppose, or perhaps absence of immediate pre-attack signs with which their experience had familiarized them.
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[page 157] "But if they attack, we will not run away," grinned a French captain who had his command post between the foot of Hartmannsweilerkopf on the French-held mountain. "The hill behind us is too steep." It was steep indeed and on our climb back I was amused at Capt. E.F. Lloyd of one of the rifle companies and a friend of mine from Camp Doniphan days. He a was short plump man and at each of our occasional stops to rest muttered angrily as he panted for breath: "Damn the boche; damn the boche." Major Comfort's battalion was from St. Louis where there is a considerable population of German descent and some of his officers spoke German, though none of them spoke French. And though most of the French officers could not speak English, a number of them knew German. So here on this Vosges mountain were allies finding s common tongue in the language of the enemy. Back at the battalion observation post we stared again at the front and the great Alsatian plain beyond the hills. Reading our thoughts, the French captain laughed. "It looks easy, gentlemen," he said, "but it is hard. We have tried it." He pointed out the Black Forest in the extreme blue background and called our attention to a glitter below it which he said was a bend in the Rhine. Back in Weiler that evening of July 15 I went down, as was my habit, to use my high school German to buy the Paris newspapers from which I might spell out the course of the war. But that night there were no papers. They had not arrived. There must be a big offensive somewhere, she said. Alway the papers came, she averred, unless there was a big offensive, then they didn't. "Es ist immer so," she concluded. And she was quite right. That morning the Germans
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[page 158] had attacked on the Marne. The signs of an impending offensive in the Vosges which the French had noted and which had brought us to Weiler, quite possibly was German deception in cooperation with the great attack in the west. On the evening of the 16th the Americans at Moosch and Weiler were relieved from duty with the 22nd French Division and on the 17th my company returned to Ventron.
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[postcard] Ad. Weiek, Saint-Die- M 11717 Moosch (Haute Alsace) [postcard] Haute- Alsace. - Willer. - Rue Principale J.K. 111. Edition Alsaitia [postcard] Vise Paris N 662 Vise Thann N 996 Campagne 1914-1918 Willer (Alsace). Les Bords de la Thur. The banks of ten Thur.
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[postcard] Notre Vielle Alsace Steinbach Molkenrain Chappelle St-Antoine Hartmanswillerkopf Rehfelsen Hirizstein Eglise et Gare de Cernay Autour de L'Hartmanswillerkopf - Appele Le "Vieil Armand" Par Nos Poilus (D'apres Une Gravure de 1840) Ad. Weick, Saint-Die -N 11185 [photograph] Col De bussang Et Grand Lacet De La Route De Wesserling
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[clipping] Alternately in French and German hands since the early days of the war: The shell-scarred summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf a few days before the recent fight. December 1915 From London News [January] 15, 1916
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[postcard] Capagne 1914-1918 Saint-Amarin (Alsace). - Vue generale. - General view. ND. Phot. [photograph] Urbes (Alsace) Et Col De Bussang [photograph] Crepuscule Sur Les Hautes-Vosges Alsaciennes A L'Horizon On Voit Se Profiler L'Ancienne Frontiere Francaise Cols De Bussang Et Oderen.
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[page 159] The Trenches of the Vosges Back at pleasant Ventron on the French side of the border, my company resumed its routine training and waiting as part of the division reserve. A bit restive at this I wrote a formal letter asking that my officers in turn be allowed to make brief visiting tours with machine gun companies of the division in the line. This seemed such a good idea to Major Halliburton that instead of forwarding my letter he made a similar request for the officers of the battalion and it was authorized. As a result of this I visited the front July 27 and 28, the days allotted to me, spending the night with Capt. Wm S. Moore, Co. C,, 130th Machine Gun Battalion, the Jefferson City, [Missouri], unit, Metzeral in the Fecht valley in Alsace, some 15 miles north of where I had visited the French line during our tour of duty at Weiler. The routewas over the Col d'Oderon again into Alsace and through Kruth in the Thur valley, then eastward up Wissori Mont to Bussat, the cable head on top of the mountain where Major John F. Constable, 130th Machine Gun Battalion, was stationed. From there guides took me down the back of the mountain to Captain Moore's command post somewhere south of a ruined village named Steinabruck. It was a quiet period even for this quiet front. Metzeral a ruined village-nestled at the foot of mountains. East of it was a ridge surmounted by a knob at the north end known as the Kiosque. This was held by our troops as an outpost, except for the extreme east end which was occupied by German wire. The German outpost trenches were just over the eastern slope so close that hand grenades could be tossed back and forth. Above the Kiosque rose enemy-held heights with the result that rifle grenades came into it from time to time from above. It was the hot spot of this
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[page 160] sector. In the valley the front line was just north of Metzeral, our forces holding Braunkopf and Altmatt Kopf, the heights on the west side of the Fecht, but with German trenches climbing a short way up their slopes. North of Metzeral in the valley north of where the Fecht turned east was the enemy-held village of Muhlbach. Accompanied by officers of Company C, I dutifully visited all the machine gun posts of the company, part of which were in the ruins of Metzeral itself and most on the high ground west of the Fecht south of the town. And that Saturday night I spent until midnight or so in a gun position at Geisbodle on a projecting slope southwest of the town, watching the rising flares which kept the area illuminated and speculated with my companions on the possible meaning of an occasional colored rocket from within the enemy lines. There also was the sound of a quiet front at night --- brief sputters of enemy machine gun fire or the rattle of our own automatic rifles, sporadic rifle shots, the occasional crash of grenades, and now and then the sound of a shell going overhead and exploding somewhere in the rear. The next morning, I aspired to visit Kiosque hurriedly before it came time to depart. Lieut. Curtle Gates volunteered to show me. We crossed the valley through the trenches, amused at the tiny burros which the French still scattered through the sector used to carry food through the large communication trenches, and finally reached the ridge and started climbing it. But Lt. Gates did not know the way and we wandered upward toward the top until we saw the trenches through which we were moving were no longer used -- yet interesting with old French bayonets and other signs of fighting a year or two old. Then we saw that from Muhlback any enemy observer, looking at long range, could see us toiling up the old trenches. Just short of the summit we took council. Gates said that if we thrust our head over the hill we most likely would get them shot off.
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[page 161] It did seem lonely and isolated up there with an air of there being nothing between us and the enemy, for the trenches evidently had long been unused. We decided that since there was no purpose to be served outside of gratifying curiosity that discretion might indeed be the better part of valor. We retraced our steps and since I did not have enough time remaining to visit the Kisoque went back to the command post. Checking our wanderings on the trench maps we found that we had been up the Mamelon, a part of the ridge which our forces had abandoned because commanded so completely by the enemy hills above it and we were assured by all present that we did well to keep our heads below the summit -- that if we had not we might have stayed on the Mamelon without any further interest in the war. Three days after my return to Ventron orders were for the 128th Machine Gun Bn. Some one had finally decided to relieve machine gun companies in the trenches that the divisional machine gun battalion should have some front line experience. There was a stir of interest when this word was circulated on July 31. A few officers, but no enlisted men of the battalion, had been in the front line and the soldiers probably were beginning to wonder if it was a war for officers only. And the division intelligence report that day told of an affray up front which was read to both companies at retreat that night to stimulate their interest as well as for their information. "At 2355 July 30," read the report, "enemy after a barrage on Hilsenfirst and Epaulette attempted a raid on our trenches at 0030 July 31. Eleven of his men entered our first line trench but were immediately repulsed and retreated, leaving one dead noncommissioned officer in the trench. The enemy secured no identifications. In addition to equipment taken from dead German we have three sacks of hand grenades,
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[page 162] two cases Maxim machine gun ammunition, four flame projectors, only one of which has been used, two cases of explosives and a German flag on which is written: 'We fear not France or America. With us it's go again. Regards to Wilson.' Our casualties, two lieutenants and nine men wounded." My company, Company A, was to relieve the machine gun company, 139th Infantry, furnishing the machine gun defense of the front line immediately north of Metzeral, a sector held by the third battalion, 139th Infantry. Thus I was to go to a sector where I was to some extent familiar with the terrain. Company B (Capt. J.J. Corey) was to relieve the machine gun company, 140th Infantry, in the vicinity of Hilsenfirst. On the morning of August 1st the battalion formed in Ventron in a long motor column made up of its own vehicles and borrowed trucks, passed the white Christ on a black cross in the center of the village, climbed the long hill to the Col d'Oderon with which Company A was already familiar as aresult of its Willer trip, then followed the zig-zag road down the mountain and into the valley of the Thur, bivouacking for the night in a pine wood and the north end of the village. Two roads led from Kruth to the front, one the route up Drehkopf which I had followed on my reconnaisance trip, and another over a saddle known as the Col du Huss, a route said to be even steeper than the Drehkopf one though of it we knew nothing except that a sign at tis entrance said "impassable in case of snow", a fact not particularly pertinent in August even here on what seemed the roof of the world. Corey drew the Drehkopf road, I the Col du Huss, and we were to unite at Mittlach in the Fachtbach valley. The men's packs and miscellaneous paraphernalia went up the cable to Bussat, thence down to Mittlach. The heavy trucks stayed at Kruth. We had to get our light gun trucks over the mountain.
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[page 163] Shortly before dusk the battalion lined up to move forward on foot with gun trucks following. A pistol-armed unit, the officers and most of the men carried steel-shod canes of a type common in the Vosges and quite useful in the trenches there. It was somewhat informal, this starting for the front, and Capt. Corey whose company had formed on my left -- the direction of march -- glanced grinning along his company front. Then instead of the expected "squads left" order of the current drill regulations, gave vent to his high spirits by shouting, "Present canes." Then while the battalion laughed, he swung his company into column and stepped off gaily, I following with my own unit. The ways soon separated and I turned my own company to the left up the steep road to the Col du Huss just as the sun was dropping back of the mountain behind us. It was a beautiful evening and the white road could be seen zig-zagging back and forth before us as it climbed the slopes. It was one of the occasions which suggest a song to the men, one which bursts out spontaneously. I remembered such an occasion in the 22nd Infantry four years before when the column, marching across the causeway to Galveston, [Texas], at night and impressed by the brilliant moonlight on the water, broke out in: "I was sailing along, on Moonlight Bay --". Similarly the winding road ahead up this Alsatian mountain suggested a song evidently familiar to the men but then unknown to me. A few men took up a chorus, then apparently all were joining in: "There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams." But the road became steeper and the song dwindled away for the very good reason that all breath was needed for climbing. For hours we struggled up the road through the pine forest. The gun trucks which
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[page 164] had left some time after the foot column caught up. It was time too, for at spots they needed help. The Model T fords just couldn't make it and places and it was necessary to set groups of me to add upward pressure on the steepest spots -- all this in darkness for the Fords, through the necessities of the situation always movedat night unlighted. At last the company reached the top and was "over the hump." Gravity was now an aid. For the Fords the problem was purely one of peril, with a sharp hill on one side, a drop into nothing on the other and a steep, zig-zagging road down in the black night. Through the pine trees could be seen the rising flares and rockets of the trenches. Reaching the valley of the Fecht-bach, passing up it through Mittlach, we finally came to a locality known as Camp Picard and bivouacked on a boulder-strewn hillside which the men promptly named "the featherbed." It was guides sent by battalion headquarters who had met us as we entered the valley and taken us to the "feather bed", bearing directions from Major Halliburton that we follow them. I had wanted to bivouac in the woods back of Mittlach since the men were very tired and any distance we moved to the south would need to be backtracked the next day to get to our scheduled positions. But at 0517 the next morning I was awakened by explosions to the north -- enemy shells falling on Mittlach a quarter of a mile away. Our own position on the hillside to the south could hardly be reached by enemy projectiles. Commanding officers, I reflected, often had a good reason for what they did and Major Halliburton had certainly designated a better place than the one that I would have picked. After breakfast I wandered down into Mittlach to look over the situation for through this village my unit must later pass. Mittlach was a somewhat shattered and disheveled Alsatian mountain village,
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[page 165] mauled about a bit by shell fire but still inhabited by men, women and children who long had been living in range of the guns. A part of it was hidden from enemy view by a shoulder of a hill but there was a sign suspended over the street --"Take care. The enemy is watching." Beyond this point one could see the pine clad heights east of Metzeral- and could be seen from there, though an isolated individual presumably would attract no attention in a village where civilians moved about. Below this was the village cemetery, swollen now by soldier dead. "Mort pour la France" the French military graves were marked, and, after the French fashion, "He died for his country" marked the graves of the more recent American dead, largely those of the 137th Infantry, 35th Division, which preceded the 139th in the sector. Soon 1st Lieut. Frank L. Snyder of my company who had gone forward a day early as reconnaissance officer, showed up at Camp Picard with Lieut. Walter A. Wood, commanding the machine Gun Company of the 139th Infantry which we were to relieve. There were also orders for the relief, though we worked out details on the basis of recommendation of Lieut. Wood. Six of our guns were to go forward by day on French pack mules, since two of them were to go to a reserve position and four to a front line position which could be approached under cover. The other six would go down the Fechtbach valley after dark direct to the positions. The company less motor section, would move by day through the village and over a mountain to the north, reaching the trenches to be occupied before the guns came in. The supply section and Fords were to remain at Camp Picard. I furrowed my brow a bit over the route of the company. In the center of Mittlach and in view of the enemy was a bridge over the Fecht-bach which it would be necessary to cross. Yet Lieut. Wood told me that if we waited until night to start from Camp Picard he could not get his
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[page 166] company out before daylight. On a portion of the streets too the unit would be exposed. To avoid inviting shell fire there seemed only one way. At 1000 the six guns on the pack mules departed. At 1500 the sergeant range finder --Sergeant Edwin W. Wiggins later killed in the Meuse Argonne -- and I led off the move of the marching unit. At irregular intervals of 100 to 150 yards. First Lieut. Dunn, company executive officer sent the rest of the men in groups of twos and threes, straggling along as if sightseeing. It took considerable time to cross the exposed space but when we reassembled under cover at the foot of the heights to the north there had been no enemy shell fire and I hoped that the hostile observation posts had interpreted the straggling movement as something other than a relief for units in the trenches that night. Up these pine-clad heights -- a great hill known as Sillikarkopf- we toiled, finally reaching an elevated little mountain lake by which there was a French artillery camp, then around through the pine woods to the front of the hill where there were some hutments. This was the battalion reserve of the 3d battalion, 139th infantry, to which my second platoon (less one section) of my company was to be attached. It was not yet quite dark but it seemed that the guides knew a trench route by which my third platoon, which was to be on the left, could proceed to its sector by day without being exposed. The third platoon, Lt. Samuels, wound its way downward through the woods and out of sight. With the headquarters section, the 1st platoon and one section (Ellis) of the second platoon I waited until dark. Then we too slid downward until we came to a few clustered shelters roofed with logs and earth which the command post of CR (center de resistance) Benoit. Here was battalion headquarters
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[page 167] and the stopping place of myself and headquarters section. The gun sections proceeded forward in the direction of the front from which an occasional flare was already rising and from which now and then came the sound of a rifle shot, or a burst of machine gun or automatic rifle fire, or the crash of an exploding rifle grenade. The headquarters section, under the direction of Lieut. Dunn and guides, was distributed to the various billets available, replacing the headquarters section of the machine gun company, 139th Infantry, which was formed and ready to move out and to the rear. With First Lieut. Wood, commander of that company, I reported to Major William D. Stepp. commanding officer of the 3rd battalion, 139th Infantry, in one of the shelters. I already knew Major Stepp. He was an old time Missouri national guardsman and had been on my examining board when I had been commissioned captain in the spring of 1917. He said the usual things and I said the usual things, I hope, then Wood and I returned to his shelter, which now was to be mine, and he explained the defense of the sector and turned over his maps to me. It was a log building on the forward slope of the hill, roofed with a layer of logs, a layer of rock, another layer of logs and some dirt. It was concealed by the woods but otherwise would have been quite visible to the enemy. In the same building, and separated only by a thing partition, was the battalion aid station. We waited in this place, or on the road above it, during the hours which were to elapse before we could hope to receive the messages from the forward platoons that the relief was complete. I listened with some anxiety to the occasional heavy explosions on the hills ahead of us which I knew were enemy medium trench mortar shells -- the
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[page 168] vaned projectiles knwn as "flying pigs" because of the screaming-squealing sound they made as they hurtled through the air. It was one of these, I knew, which had killed Lieut. George A. Bilsbarrow, 138th Infantry -- an acquaintance of mine in early Camp Doniphan days, and recall the first officer of the 35th division to die in the trenches of the Vosges. The occasional bursts of machine gun fire, intermittent rifle shots, and the crash of an exploding grenades now and then, continued, but rather with a routine air, and only once did a lively burst of firing off to the south somewhere indicate a clash of patrols. A normal night, said Wood, and indeed it was much the same as the night I had spent with the 130th Machine Gun Bn. a mile or so to the south some time before. About 2 a.m., perhaps a few minutes before, we received messages from the platoons that the relief had been completed and without casualties. Lieutenant Wood departed and I remained -- thinking with a thrill that I now was in command of a machine gun company in the line. I contemplated my quarters -- a room with a bunk, a table, a straight chair and an easy chair, looted doubtless from some wrecked cottage and, splintered a bit by bullet holes -- seven, if I remember rightly, which appeared to have been made by a burst of machine gun fire. Then I removed my shoes and otherwise fully dressed crawled between the blankets. I was early astir the next morning. PC Benoit where I stood was 800 meters (about 2,600 feet) above sea level according to the map. About three-quarters of a mile to the northeast rose the summit of Altmatt Kopf, about 260 feet higher than Benoit. From the south slope of this, some 540 feet down and about a third of a mile distant jutted out another hill known as Braunkopf, slightly south of east from where I stood and some 330 feet lower.
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[page 169] On the forward slopes of Braunkopf and Altmatt Kopfs my machine gun positions were located. Immediately after breakfast I was going forward to visit them. Descending some 400 feet or so into a little gully, through which an ice cold stream of water was gushing, I soon was climbing up Braunkopf and moving forward into its trenches. This entire area had been the scene of severe fighting in the past. A few days later, Pvt. Carl Tangner, my orderly, brought me some German cartridgs he had picked up by some unburied skeletons of German dead back near Benoit itself. Braunkopf which had been held for a considerable time by the Germans was a maze of shell holes and rusty barbed wire outside the trenches. As I went forward I passed occasional old German dug-outs, evidently meant to afford protection from fire in the direction of Altmatt Kopf since their entrances were to the south. These openings were wired up-- the rest of the time I was in the sector I wondered what one would find if he removed the wire and went in. I found Lieut. Snyder in a shelter back of the crest of Braunkopf and he accompanied me on my rounds. The right machine gun strongpoint was about 300 yards due south of the crest of Braunkopf and went by the name of "Samigny. To the southeast one looked down on the ruined village of Metzeral. The two guns at Sampigny were sited to protect Metzeral against attack from the north. The next section was in a post known as "Braunkopf" in the saddle between the Braunkopf knoll and the south slope of Altmatt-Kopf. Its line of fire was to the northeast in front of our barbed wire entanglement. Below both of these positions some forty feet, in the front line trenches, were rifle combat groups.
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[page 170] These rifle unit GCs (groupes de combat), as we called them after the French fashion, ranged from about 200 yards to 450 yards apart, depending on their locations. The front line trench, though continuous, was thus lightly held, much of the rifle strength being held in support to deliver counter attacks if needed. A broad belt of rusty barbed wire protected the front, yet an occasional infiltration by some bold enemy patrol was not unknown. My machine gun GCs, like those of the riflemen, were for this reason completely wired in for all around defense and were guarded in the main trench by double-gates of barbed wire which were kept closed at night. These two gates at each of the G.Cs were some distance apart. The trench between the two was roofed by chicken wire which was supposed to bounce off any grenades thrown on it. The sentry stood at the inner gate. A person approaching the GC along the trench pulled the end of a long wire which ran to the inner gate where it jangled a tin can. The sentry then opened the inner gate and cautiously went to the outer, opening it if the caller was of the right faction. This elaborate arrangement had been fixed up by the French and was by us taken over. On this first visit -- it being day -- the gates were open and there was no delay in getting from one GC to another. The trenches between, as in the GC areas themselves, spoke eloquently of the hard fighting of the past, notably in 1915 when the trenches had been thick with men. Many bodies of the dead had been buried in the parapet and were marked -- where marked at all -- with little tin tricolors or some German marking where there were enemy dead. Clambering upward for about 250 yards to the
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[page 171] next Machine Gun GC -- a change in elevation of about 140 feet -- I came to our post known as "Port d'Alsace." It was aptly named as "the door of Alsace" in that it looked directly down the valley of the little Fecht river toward Munster, a valley leading directly into the enemy lines. All along, of course, I had been studying the position of the enemy so far as I could see it, but here the view was superb. About a mile to the southeast was the hill known as Le Kiosque the exact summit of which was American held but with an enemy trench so close beneath it that grenades could be thrown from one to the other. Above it to the southeast towered the enemy held hill known as Engel-Berg, while directly to its east and northeast was a smaller elevation called Petit Braunkopf scarred everywhere with enemy trenches. From the foot of the Kiosque and Petit Braunkopf, the south flank of an enemy salient ran directly in the direction of the Port d'Alsace. The apex of this enemy salient was 400 yards from where I stood staring, though almost 300 feet lower. From there it angled back northeast for another mile or so to join the main north-and south German line north of the valley which was formed by the Fecht running north through Metzeral, then turning east within the salient. At the neck of the salient was a ruined town named Muhlbach which was assumed to be strongly held by the enemy, though at this time there was no enemy to be seen. There were no rifle GCs in front of Port d'Alsace -- there being a gap of 450 yards between them there -- so there was nothing but elevation and barbed wire between this position and the enemy.
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[page 172] As I studied the enemy held territory there came the crash of grenades from the Kiosque and looking over I saw fluffy puffs of white smoke opening above it. These were rifle grenades discharged by the Germans from the hills overlooking the place. It was a thing that happened, apparently, every time anyone on the Kiosque exposed themselves in the slightest degree. Occasionally there came the crack of a bullet in our direction -- some sniper apparently. Except for this occasional sign of the enemy one might have thought the whole front uninhabited this sunny day. Some 500 yards to the northeast, and perhaps 150 feet higher, I found the right combat group of the third platoon (Lt. Samuels). This GC was known as Rospel because located in what had been a woodland known as Rospelwald. It was now only shattered stumps and dead down timber, all affording some meager cover from view. Here and there in what had been a clearing were red respberries, once tame but now growing wild and in profusion, loaded with ripe fruit. Four hundred yards or so farther to the northeast, up over a hose and down, I came to our left combat group -Runz- on one side of a little valley, to the left of which were French troops holding a hill known as Klitzerstein. The wire at this last group was bad and its left seemed to me to be considerably exposed. Sergeant Joseph E. Taylor, in command there, had mounded up a stack of grenades at the exposed end and gleefully explained to me what he was going to do to the enemy if any night he should come over. This post was not bothered while we were there but a long time later I was told by an officer of the 6th division with whom I swapped recollections of the sector, that it had been raided by the enemy after relieved the 35th.
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[map] Volges Et Alsace
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[map] No 12
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[clipping] Picture taken from Altmatt Kopf 4.15 P.M.: The German Trenches On The Summit And Slopes Of The Braunkopf Under Bombardment By The French Artillery. Picture taken during action of Junezo, 1915 From London Illustrated News July 17, 1915
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[page 173] From Runz I retraced my steps to P.C. Benoit, back over Almatt Kopf north of the summit and then through a trench which had a bamboo screen at both sides and overhead -- to work, I was told, of French Indo- Chinese troops which had once held the sector. My company now being in the presence of the enemy, though in a quiet sector, I naturally wanted to give the men such wars experience training as was available. The guns in the GCs naturally were all laid on their barrage lines and were not to fire unless the enemy attacked -- the only kind of an attack anticipated in that region begin a night raid. Our ideal was to have the guns firing before the sparks from the rockets from the rifle GCs calling for aid had died out. But I had two spare guns in addition to those with the reserve section -- 10 guns in the line, two in reserve and these two spares for replacements should any of the others go wrong. It seemed to me that if I placed one of these spare guns on Braunkopf, shifting it about on different nights, and another in Rospel Wald that I might do some harassing fire nightly on the enemy communications coming down the valley. Some beautiful annoyance schemes could be worked out. I interviewed Major Stepp, though with faint hope. Lieutenant Wood had told me that the major would not permit him to engage in harassing fire. But when the major heard what I had in mind he agreed readily. Lieutenant Wood, he told me, had wanted to set up harassing guns near his command post and drop long range machine gun fire on the enemy front lines. He didn' approve of that. The shelters at battalion headquarters were not very strong ones and he did not care to invite enemy artillery fire on them. As for reaching way back in the enemy lines he was for it. But I would need to submit a chart each day showing exactly
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[page 174] what I was going to shoot at and from where, and how many rounds I was going to fire, each of the times during the night I planned to do the shooting. This as agreeable enough so far as I was concernd. I would need to do that anyhow in order to follow the pattern I planned, which was to fire bursts at irregular intervals throughout the night on the routes were I believed there would be enemy might use. I picked villages behind the line, cable-heads and other points likely. The gun on Braunkopf I scheduled to fire to the northeast, the one of Rospel Wald to the southeast, the two guns thus crossing their fire and being able to reach farther up side valleys leading into the main one. We began the firing on the night of August 5 -- the first anniversary of our entry into service. Major Stepp included that night, as well as later, a brief notation of my plan in his patrol orders. Here is his extract for that first night: " Two guns of Company A will use some harassing fire on night of August 5-6. Firing to begin about 10 p.m. continuing at irregular intervals until about 2 a.m., firing about 600 rounds. Guns located as follows: One in unused trenches on south slope of Braunkopf, harassing road running west from Tiefenbach for 500 meters, striking crossroads in Tiefenbach, searching and traversing very thinly through a zone about 500 meters long and 300 meters wide, west of Tiefenbach and north of railway. One gun located in unused trenches in Rospel Wald - harassing a zone 500 meters long west of Breitenbach and 300 meters deep, the Breitenbach-Sendenbach road being the northern edge of the zone." This system did not promise to be particularly lethal for the enemy but bullets flying about at unexpected hours of the night
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[page 175] where bullets were not reasonably to be anticipated could not make anyone happy except the firer. And I was using the long range of the Hotchkiss with its boat-tail bullets to reach sections which probably had been free of bullets with killing velocity for some time. The killing range of the German, British or American machine guns of the day was only about 2500 yards, or may meters, but the Hotchkiss killing range was estimated at from 3500 to 4000 meters, and I had charts showing the angle of fall at all ranges. I actually was firing this first night around 2500 meters. Moreover the Tiefenbach-Breitenbach region was one where there was certain to be circulation after nightfall, and the intelligence maps showed a German cablehead just between the two villages. I stood in one of the crumbling, unused trenches of Braunkopf as the firing started. I had wanted to pull that first trigger myself, and perhaps should have done so, but I was reluctant to deprive the sergeant in charge of that honor, so I let it pass. At 10 o'clock the Braunkopf gun started chattering and the Rospel Wald gun cut in a moment or two later, the bullets cracking across each other far up the valley. Most thrilling I found it. This, incidentally, was the night of August 5, 1918, the first anniversary of the company's entry into service. The reaction of the enemy, I must own, was not encouraging. He simply ignored the whole procedure this first night, somewhat to my chagrin since I had expected him to get stirred up about it. But after all there was no particular reasons for the Germans near us to be disturbed. They could hear the noise but we were not shooting at them. Why should they lose any sleep about American noise? Moreover by crossing the fire of the guns even their flash was more of less
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[page 176] concealed from the direct front, a thing worked out with some care in picking the locations, and in using wet gunny sacks for screening. Consequently the target presented was an area on e rather than specific. So the front line enemy this night treated us with cold disdain. Anyhow it was fun. It must also be admitted that this two-gun war I was trying to start up in the Vosges never did greatly upset the course of combat in this altitudinous region. The trend of history probably was in no whit changed. But it was not a thing that the enemy would let pass completely unnoticed. Someone back in rear knew bullets were falling where they weren't wanted -- knew that someone was breaking the rules in this region where live-and -let-live had been the custom for some years before the Americans came in. So the front line apparently received the word to reply in kind. At dusk the next evening, two German machine guns on Petit Braunkopf opened fire up the valley of the Fecht-bach which come into Metzeral from the west and which our forces used as a means of passage after dark. We were being done by as we were doing. And that night when our two harassing guns opened fire, another German machine gun on the enemy hills began to sweep Braunkopf. That too was new, but since positions had been changed from the night before, and since Braunkopf was liberally furrowed with antique trenches of considerable depth, it caused neither concern nor undue peril. The front actually awoke a little, even though the intelligence reports which I have preserved do not show it. Maybe there was no more shooting but more of it came in our direction. More trench mortar projectiles came screaming over to burst with a crash here and there. There were a few more shells. And we began to get a bit more specific in our efforts. A new enemy approach trench was being constructed in the valley west of Sendenbach. I figured out position for a gun
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[page 177] which would enfilade it. That night it received some attention -- all this was map firing of course -- and our men in the line nearest the place, and knowing the region was to be fired upon, thought that they heard some shouting and the shrilling of a whistle from there when our gun opened up. I hoped they were right. And in any event no more fresh dirt from that trench appeared while we were in the sector. So far as I could see the enemy didn't really need any new trench there anyhow. Occasionally enemy artillery during the night rather lazily tried to find our fun in the Rospel Wald. I had instructed that between the times of firing, the gun would be dismounted and taken back into the trench. Long after the war one of the men in that section told me an incident that occurred. The men were changed nightly on the harassing gun so as to give everyone a little experience of shooting at the enemy. This man -- Private Lawrence Akin -- was new that night and after a time or two tired of helping take down the gun. "Why not leave it up her?" he suggested to Sergeant Carl Cain who was in charge. "We must put it up to shoot again in a half hour. Why not let it set?" "Take it down," replied Cain, and the men did. No sooner was the gun in the bottom of the trench than came the shrilling of an approaching shell which exploded where the gun had been sitting just a moment before. As the screaming of the fragments died away and the clods pattered down, the men heard Cain's voice again: "You see what I mean." The war was picking up in a small way. An American trench mortar squad back of my Braunkopf
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[page 178] position saw no reason why my machine guns should have all the fun. It began to lob over trench mortar projectiles from time to time during the night. I was in the Braunkopf GC the night they started and was quite startled by the sudden swoosh behind me where I didn't know there was anything. This drew some return trench mortar fire. Back even with the battalion command post and half a mile or so south of it were two French machine guns "of position." They were St. Etiennes which were regulation in the French army in 1914 but which had been succeeded by the Hotchkiss in 1915. They were beautiful guns but of considerable complexity compared to the Hotchkiss. The French had a few of them stuck around in the mountains manned by crews which remained with them whoever was in the sector. Onthe evening of August 9 as the German gun began firing up the Fecht-bach valley, the two St. Etiennes suddenly cut in. The Germans did no more firing from that position that night, though the next evening both these guns and the French ones fired at intervals-- stopping in time however, to get to bed at a decent period -- and this continued until I started a new innovation which I will later relate. In the meanwhile I was irritated a little by daily reports of the sound of wheeled traffic entering Muhlbach at night from the east. This was closer than I had been firing to our own lines and rifle unit Chauchats -- automatic rifles -- had fired at the sound a number of times in vain. One evening a gun was laid by day on a bit of camouflaged roadfrom which this sound seemed at night to emenate. When the sergeant in charge heard the sound that evening he fired a burst into the place and then distributed fire up and down the road. According to the men on the forward slope of Altmatt Kopf,
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[page 179] there was some shouting at the first burst and the noise of teams whipped to a gallop. Then this noise abruptly stopped after some of the succeeding bursts. I hoped that this was true, and the gun crew and others believed it most happily. In any event if the enemy came down in wagons to Muhlbach at night after that they did so more quietly as I recall no more reports of the sound being heard. During this period I prowled the trenches by day and carefully and long studied the enemy trenches through my binoculars to see what I could see. Nocturnal activities were well enough but we circulated about in our trenches by day, ration parties came and went, and all sorts of other things like that. Something the same must be going on in the enemy lines, even though his positions from our point of view appeared untenanted. Running down the north slope of enemy-held Petit Braunkopf was what we came to call the "Y" trench because in shape it was like an inverted "Y", one arm of which was the front hostile fire trench, as shown on the map and one a communications trench running directly north to the valley south of Muhlbach. Our position in Rospel Wald looked right into these trenches and presumably for that reason the tops of them had been covered with camouflage. Like most things up in this region, this camouflage had fallen into disrepair here and there. Studying this trench for a prolonged period from the down timber which was all the shells had left of Rospel Wald, I saw now and then men in the enemy trench pass by these open places. The trenches were evidently used. They were in fact the obvious way for people to get from the hill down into the valley. And while we could see into them only here and there because of the camouflage our bullets could
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[page 180] strike into them anywhere. As for firing positions, the down timber of Rospel Wald offered numerous concealed ones, and firing through a wet gunny sack suspended in front of the gun, as we did at night, would conceal the flash from the hostile hills. And not only the "Y" trench could be annoyed but we could comb out the enemy woods on the hills a bit. Accordingly I submitted to Major Stepp on August 8 the following formal request: "1. Permission is requested to install a 'gun of opportunity' in the woods on the eastern slope of Altmatt Kopf beginning on the morning of August 9. This fun is the same one used for harassing fire in Rospel Wald at night. It will work in shell craters and abandoned trenches in the wood, will fire at any target in the enemy lines which may present itself and will from time to time harass likely targets in the enemy lines, particularly the woods on Krahenberg and Engel Berg and the 'Y' trench on Petit Braunkopf. "2. It is believed that this gun can make the 'Y' trench untenable for the enemy. Short bursts will be fired into it at intervals during the day." With this I submitted my daily schedule calling for not only the usual night firing but the daylight firing as well. The daylight schedule was a follows, the word "stripes" referring to the metallic strips of 30 rounds each with which this type of machine gun was fed. "9:30 a.m. 3 strips rapid traversing edge of Engelberg woods. 3 strips traversing Krahenberg wood 10:30 4 strips searching 'Y' trench, bursts of 10. 11:15 2 strips searching 'Y' trench, bursts of 10 12:00 4 strips in Krahenberg woods, traverse and search 2:10 p.m. 3 strips traversing Engelberg woods 2:20 1 strip searching 'Y' trench-bursts of 5 2:40 same as 2:20
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[page 181] 3:05 2 strips 'fanning' Engelberg woods 4:00 1 strip searching 'Y' trench-bursts of 5 4:30 2 strips fanning Engelberg woods. "Note: This gun will also fire on any target that may present itself." Major Stepp approved this and the next morning the gun went to work. This was good practice. The men could see what they were trying to hit and could lay the gun with the tangent sight instead of the spirit level or quadrant as in night firing. Good work and most enjoyable for all hands. But the enemy did not at all like this breach of custom, it would appear. Or it may be that he was just in bad humor that night and felt called on to show his nasty disposition. Before dark that evening the enemy trench mortar bombs -- 'flying pigs' -- were squealing over and exploding angrily on Altmatt Kopf and these increased after dark. That night for the first time the fire of our harassing guns was interfered with. Sergeant Fred Clark of the second platoon had brought his section down from reserve to relieve the other 2nd platoon section at Porte d'Alsace -- this was done to assure equal training for both -- so it was the newcomers who caught the brunt of this unpleasantness. The projectiles kept the squad shifting from one shell hole to another to avoid it, but in time Corporal John Gouty -- a gallant solider who later lost a leg in the Meuse-Argonne -- properly felt impelled to cease fire altogether and shelter his men in a dug-out. Angry machine gun fire swept Braunkopf too while my gun there was firing that night but did not interfere. Either in the 'Y' trench or on the hill above we apparently had touched a sensitive spot. Most gratifying, in view
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[page 182] especially of the fact that we had had no casualties. On the whole I was highly pleased and the next morning my gun in the shattered woodland renewed its wholesome efforts. But already Major Stepp at his command post was receiving complaints from the angry French. Our 35th division artillery had not yet come into the line and we were supported entirely by French guns. They had an observation post up on the top of Altmatt Kopf. The Germans knew where it was, they told Major Stepp -- or so I later was told. They could knock it out any time they wished. This day machine gun fire from Rospel Wald by day should cease. That seems to have been the tenor of it. Most, or maybe all of that day's firing was gotten in before I received and relayed to the front Major Stepp's order to stop it. But that was the last time we tickled up the "Y" trench. By shifting positions to considerably distant from where the firing had been in the day, our Rospel Wald gun got in its schedule very well that night, but some [ms illegible: 1 wd] trench mortar or artillery projectiles plastered the front of Altmatt Kopf during the hours of darkness and the machine gun fire on Braunkopf was again heavier- though just as harmless- as before. One enemy shell, or mortar maybe, did fall within our GC Braunkopf that night, tearing out some trench revetment but injuring nobody. A sizable little war broke out about 11:30 that night a few miles to the south of us. First enemy Maxis, then rising rockets of various colors and the chatter of Hotchkiss machine guns, and the thunder of both American and German artillery barrages coming down. We supposed it a raid and was interested because our B company was up there. In point of fact all of
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[page 183] Co. B's guns actually were blazing away from their battle positions, at that time, we later learned. But according to the division intelliegence report the next day it was all started by one of the hostile patrols coming over to our wire and opening up with three light machine guns on a rifle company GC. It was lucky if it ever returned home again. But B company got a great thrill our of the affair and burned up a lot of ammunition. Though daylight firing from Altmatt Kopf --except in the unlikely event of an enemy attack -- was now forbidden, Major Stepp gave permission to use a harassing gun by day from Braunkopf. We could not hit the "Y" trench from there and the gun would be a long way from the French artillery observation post. But Braunkopf was a barren hill and while liberally furrowed with old trenches and pockmarked with shell holes very convenient in night firing, firing by day from any of them would have been distinctly unhealthful. The enemy-held Engelberg looked right down onto the top of Braunkopf at a range of 1700 or 1800 meters. The guns in battle positions were dug in and screened but a gun set up anywhere else to fire would have been visible indeed. Lieut. Frank L. Snyder in charge of the Braunkopf guns studied hard and prowled long in an effort to find a reasonably safe daylight firing position. No use. Finally he figured that from a certain deep trench on the forward slope he could tunnel out a galley, poke the nose of the gun through the side of the hill and fire from there. This sounded logical, the more so since he had some former miners in his platoon. The tunnel was dug accordingly and the gun set up to fire. But alas for the effort. His ex-miners apparently had had no practice in timbering. Rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat,
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[page 184] the gun started out bravely -- and then silence prevailed and kept on prevailing in that spot. The hole had caved in. Snyder, deeply chagrined, pulled out his men and gun, dirty but undamaged. He forthwith began to plot and soon began to delve on a new tunnel which would be properly timbered, but we were relieved from the sector before it was completed. But the night firing went on, and there were plenty of other activies by day. Lieut. Dunn, my executive and I, took turns in touring the trenches and staying overnight in forward positions. Trenches and shelters were improved where practicable. I had emplacements constructed at a suitable position north est of PC Benoit for my reserve section at Camp Munier to use if an attack should submerge the front line and the Germans come around to the back side of Altmatt Kopf. And on one lone occasion I tried my hand at sniping. The men in Porte d'Alsace GC had discovered what appeared to be an enemy observation post near the foot of Petit Braunkopf. There was an aperture which showed daylight behind it at times. At other times it would be partially blocked out by what appeared a man's head and shoulders. Sergeant Fred Clark, the section chief was telling me about it one day as we went along the trench from Porte d'Alsace toward GC Rospel. I stood on the fire step and studied the place with my glasses. Sure enough, the place seemed to be as described. Sergeant Clark was carrying a French carbine he had picked up somewhere. "You watch the place with the glasses while I see if I can make him duck," I said. He handed me the carbine and took my binoculars. I sighted the weapon hopefully and pulled the trigger. "He heard the bullet. He's ducked," said the sergeant.
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[page 185] But I was gazing with chagrin at the little cloud of dust drifting from the front part of th parapet from where I had fired. The carbine was short and the muzzle did not reach across it. The muzzle blast of the piece had raised a little dust cloud to show exactly from where the shot had been fired. "Let's go down a couple of trench bays and see what happens," I told the grinning sergeant. We did so and watched the opposite hill. Almost immediately there came the crack of a bullet somewhere across the region of the place from which we had fired, and then the sound of a shot from the direction of the enemy. The enemy sniper fired several more times in lazy fashion at the spot where the little dust cloud had been and then doubtless returned to his siesta. One platoon of Company I, 1st Lieut. Gilfoyle held the Kiosque and both the lieutenant and Capt. Alexander M. Ellet, the Chillocothe, [Missouri], man who commanded the company, were worried. Not only was there a frequent heaving of hand grenades and the annoyance of rifle grenades there, as previously mentioned, but they thought that they heard the sound of a mine gallery being driven beneath them. I had talked to both of them about it -- but there was nothing a machine gunner could do. One day Captain Ellet had been conferring with Major Stepp about it and later had started back to his company position. He had been on Kiosque a short time before and instead of a canteen in the canteen cover on his belt he carried a number of grenades -- one or more of the "citron" variety, an old-style French type which was plentiful in the Vosges trenches. This lemon-shaped missile did not have a lever and pin like the later types but instead had a sort of screw
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[page 186] protruding fro its neck. It was started to fusing and spitting fire by striking this screw on a rock or helmet. It was thrown in the four or five seconds which elapsed from that until the time it was thrown. The screw was protected against being accidentally driven in by a cylindrical tin cap. I was in my shelter on the hillside at this time and heard an explosion a short distance below. A shell burst, I thought, and paid no attention. Then someone came running and calling for Lieut. Rhode, the battalion surgeon, who was nest to me. The call was repeated urgently. "Keep your shirt on. I'm coming," replied the man of medicine getting into some clothes, and then finished his dressing en route when he realized that the voice was that of Major Stepp himself. But no one had been injured by a shell blast as we expected. Going down the steep hill Captain Ellet had slipped on a muddy spot, sat down or fell on his canteen cover, drove in the tin cap of a citron grenade and the missile had exploded. He died on his way to Mittlach in an ambulance. Two nights later there was another accident with a grenade, this time back up Sillikarkopf at Camp Munier where Co. M, 139th Infantry --along with my second platoon (less one section) -- was stationed. In one of the rifle company's shelters, for M was a rifle company in World War 1, someone accidently pulled a pin from a grenade and dropped it. Six men were wounded, one fatally according to my notes. The injured were brought down to Lieut. Rhode at his aid station from which I was separated only by a thin wall. He had more help than he could use. I could only listen and suffer mentally as his patients suffered physically. As for the war, it had eased up a bit after we ceased
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[page 187] annoying the 'Y' trench by day. The enemy reaction that had stirred up caused the French commanders to direct the two French St. Etienne machine guns to stop their harassing fire. No longer did their bullets crack above Braunkopf in the twilight. And the Germans, after the French-German custom of 1918 in the mountains, ceased in turn their evening firing up the Fecht-bach. The concern of Major Stepp about his platoon on the Kiosque finally brought about an arrangement with the French artillery to react against the German aggression in the form of digging underneath that knoll. One evening I learned that the next noon that Company I platoon there would be withdrawn and at 2:30 p.m. the French artillery would smite the German trenches thereon in and thereabouts in wrath, possibly dropping a shell or two in the American trenches by accident since the lines were so close together. It behooved the embattled defenders of the grenade-pestered hill, therefore, to be well back down the slope when the fireworks started. I, and most everybody else who could spare the time, had binoculars -- or at least eyes -- glued on the Kiosque as the hour approached. Not being familiar with the ways of artillery I expected the calm afternoon to be broken suddenly by a terrif concentration of gun fire. Not so. A shell exploded in a trench over the crest of the hill where the Germans were presumed to be. Then a slow steady series. The French were making a slow and deliberate artillery practice of it. The shooting continued unexcitedly during the afternoon. Occasionally a shell fell within the American position. Most of them went over and burst behind. And the communication trench leading down from Petit Braunkopf and up to the German side of the Kiosque was thoroughly searched. No German guns replied It seemed that the enemy artillerymen knew their side had been breaking the rules this time
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[page 188] and so had no cause to become angry about the matter. Along toward evening the fire subsided and by that time there must have been a good deal of work for trench repair parties to dom, and, I was told, as the artillery ceased at the appointed time the Company I men climbed back up to the top of their knoll again through the trenches before some German should come nosing over. And I have no doubt that they tossed over a few grenades to remind the enemy that they were there. But the sounds of German digging continued. yet so far as I know no mine was ever exploded there, and if it had been done while the 35th division was in the line I would have heard. Up to this time -- or during the period my company was in the line--the 70th Infantry brigade of the 35th division was holding what was known as the Fecht sector, the left was which was at Rospel Wald, and the 69th brigade, which had been in the Fecht sector earlier, was back in reserve somewhere. Then on August 14 the 69th brigade came into the Gerardmer sector to the left of the Fecht sector, thus doubling the division front. This involved the moving of division headquarters from Ventron to the town of Gerardmer and since both brigades were now in the trenches it necessitated the return of the division machine gun battalion to the reserve and to division headquarters control. So it was that on August 12 there came an order for the machine gun companies of the 139th and 140th Infantry regiments to return from Ventron to their old trenches, the former relieving my company in the Benoit sector and the latter Captain Corey's company in the Hilsenfirst region. The relief was made in the same manner as when we had entered the trenches. On the night of August 14 the machine
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[page 189] guns of the regimental company came up the valley by pack mule as before. The reserve section at Camp Munier was relieved at dusk and went back over the hill to Camp Picard. Soon after dark Lieut. wood and his men came sliding down the hill to PC Benoit and Wood and I waited in the command post until word would come that the relief was complete. By the very nature of things it was an anxious time. If the enemy knew a relief was being made he might shell the communication trenches and cause us trouble -- casualties perhaps. The night at first was a calm one, just the usual fireworks and sporadic firing at the front but without the usual chatter of my harassing guns. Maybe this would be a giveaway. For once I wanted the enemy to be peaceful -- quite peaceful. Then enemy shells began to drop off to the right somewhere -- too far to the right to injure my men. Then about 11 o'clock shells started exploding forward and to the left. They sounded fairly close in, though we could see no flash of explosions, and both Wood and I feared that they might be falling in the communication trenches our third platoons would be traveling. This shelling in that region continued for a couple of hours or so. Some time after 1 o'clock came a message from Lieut. Snyder saying that the relief of the 1st platoon and of the section of the second at Porte d'Alsace was completed at 12:12. Fine. These men were now on their way up the Fecht-Bach toward Mittlach. But what of Lieut. Samuels and the third platoon. It was about that one I was worrying. About a half hour later came a message from Samuels. Relief completed at 12:12. The shelling, the runner said, had been off to the left farther. No casualties. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Good work.
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[page 190] I bade good night to Lieutenant Wood and with my headquarters section slid forward down the slippery path to the valley back of Braunkopf, then down this to the Fecht-Bach valley, then up this valley on what was called the ration route. Some machine guns of Company C, 130th machine gun battalion, were chattering away in harassing fire from Geisbodle south of Metzeral. An occasional crack of bullets rom the German lines passed high over our heads occasionally. On our left, in some pine woods, we passed a military cemetery in which some shells had apparently fallen, for the odor of decaying flesh was strong. Then through the shattered village of Steinabruck, then Mittlach and so to Camp Picard some time before dawn. Then I unrolled my bedding roll --returned by pack mule -- among the rocks of "the feather bed" and went to sleep thankfully. When I awoke it was braod day and in the flat part of the valley, a bit away from the rocky hillside, the cooks were serving breakfast as candidates appeared, the sleepers being left to rouse of their own accord. It was an enjoyable breakfast that for me, despite the brevity of the sleep which had preceded it. The company officers had all assembled and it was nice to have them together again. And the tongues of the men were clacking merrily and busily as they exchanged reminiscenses, and doubtless tall tales, of their adventures and doings while they had been separated. Even the rear echelon which remained at Camp Picard had stories to tell of shellings of Mittlach and the Camp Picard region or of adventures on their road to and from the trenches on the ration route. Old soldiers reunion this. And before long there was news of B company too, Like A company it had finished its tour of duty without casualties but
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[page 191] -- a less pleasant note -- the machine gun company, 140th Infantry, had had a couple of men killed on the road upon the hill the night before as it moved toward the trenches to relieve Company B. Our own route that night, I knew, would lie over that same road, for orders called for us to move to Kruth by way of Bussat and the Drehkopf instead of over the mountain west of us by the Col de Huss route by means of which we had entered the sector. That day the men's packs and officers baggage were sent up by cable to Bussat at the top of the hill, there to be continued on by the same route down to the cable station at Holsplatz at the foot of the slope near Kruth. To get to the rear this time we first would go forward, up -- and a long way up -- to Bussat over a road where shell fire was not at all uncommon. The marching portion of the company was to start in late afternoon and the Ford gun trucks at dark. As the shadows grew long, but even before the sun had dropped behind the Foret de Herrenberg which cloaked the huge hill which towared to the west of us, I started off at the head of the marching section with the company strung out behind. The march was in column of twos with great gaps between sections and still greater ones between platoons to lessen the danger of losses by shell fire should there chance to be any. Once, soon after the climb started and while the valley behind us was already in shadow though the sun still shone on the tops of the hills above, there came the drone of an airplane engine. I halted the column and it shrunk to the trees at the side of the road while the distant machine, the tiny Maltese crosses visible on its wings in the upper sunlight, kept a straight course westward while our anti-aircraft guns placed futile blotches of shrapnel smoke about it.
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[page 192] Then the march was resumed, the column climbing upward with straining lungs, zig-zagging back and forth on the white road toward the summit while the darkness climbed up the side of the mountains. Halts were frequent but it was a rather weary organization that finally reached the hilltops and turned southward on the road along the crest, in darkness now, and soon after the column of gun trucks had struggled by us. The crest of the ridge over which we were now passing was the principal danger stretch as it was a favorite target of enemy guns. The road first passed by some well-sheltered command posts then out on an open prairie with barbed-wire entanglements to the left of the route. It was here, we understood, that the men of the 140th had been killed However it was a peaceful stretch for us, there being no enemy fire and the only persons seen being a few military pedestrians and once a drunken American soldier riding a long horseback, muttering and waving his pistol. Then we were on the downhill slope of Drehkopf headed westward on the zig-zagging route. Half way down in the deep pine woods there was a welcome stop at a Red Cross station where hot chocolate was served. And in due time we reached the bottom of the hill, sorted out the packs at Holzplatz and then to the woods north of Kruth where we had been before and where Company b was already slumbering -- a wholesome occupation and which we quickly joined. It was already August 16 by a considerable margin. That afternoon the marching portion of the 128th Machine Gun battalion loaded into trucks on a street in Kruth and these trucks followed the guns trucks and other motor vehicles belonging to the 128th northward from the town. The route led up the valley of the Thur, past several villages as the woods and hills closed in on the stream, then northwestward
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[page 193] in wide zig-zags up a mountain and across the old frontier into France through a pass marked on the map as the Col de Bramont, then down again. Behind the streams had all flowed ultimately into the Rhine. Those seen now were haded in the other direction toward the Moselle. Down into a little French valley running into the valley of the Moselotte, the column rolled, then up this stream to the northeast, next jogged sharply to the northwest across another great ridge at the Col de la Grosse Pierre, thence downward and northward on a well travelled road at the foot of which a large blue lake soon gleamed. The road now veered tot eh eastward around the hill near the shore of the lake. Garish houses appeared, all the earmarks of a resort town, ten the route led into a solid-built little French city. This was Gerardmer, named, one discovered later, from Gerard of Alsace, first duke of Lorraine, who in the 11th century built a tower on this lake. In the main street of the town of about 4,000 people the main truck column halted, the men scrambled out, formed in column and were marched to the south up a paved street ending in huge, steel-barred gates now swinging wide. On either side of the base of the arch which supported them were French sentries in horizon blue, their long bayonets glittering on their rifles. Above the entrance was the sign "Caserne Kleber." The 128th was to be billeted in old French peacetime military barracks. Having seen my company into huge barnlike rooms on the second floor of brick barracks, I was taken to my own quarters in town which the billeting officer had selected for me. "In town" is not strictly correct, for although the houses were more or less continuous, a mile-stone at a road-crossing a short distance east of
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[page 194] the one in which I was lodged bore this inscription: "Gerardmer, 1 kilometre". This was a bit far from my unit but with a town full of headquarters of one kind or another the billeting officer could not have done much better. As for the billet itself, it was all heart could desire. There was a nice ground-floor bedroom with entrance to the street, after a few feet of fenced front yard. A nice old couple lived there with a six or seven-year-old granddaughter with a shy manner, sores on her face and the name of Yvonne. We became good friend sand when I left I presented her with a set of captain's bars. Her father -- the old couple's son -- was off in the French army somewhere. A not unusual tragedy of war occured while I was here. One day I found the old woman in tears. They had just received official word that he was "missing in action." Gerardmer was a pleasant place, with a park suitable for limited instruction at the head of the lake, while there was abundant training room on steep, pine-covered hills all about the town. A lovely spot this and quite suitable for training in mountain warfare, though we hoped and expected soon to move to a more active sphere of operations and leave the mountains, beautiful as they were, behind up. From time to time we could hear the thunder of artillery to the northeast of us, and we heard a great deal of talk about how thin the lines were up there. The enemy, it was said, could come through any time he wanted to concentrate force enough there and pay the price of forcing the trench lines. This led me to an experience of pseudo-excitement one night which amused me at the time and remains clearly in my memory. On that occasion I was awakened from a sound slumber
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[page 195] by the old French woman rushing into my room and shrieking at me. "Les boches, les boches," she shrilled, "Viennent les Allemands," or better French to the same effect. There meanwhile was a tremendous clatter on the stair, and the crying of children, as the citizenry from the floor above, wearing wooden shoes, raced down to ground level. And above the sound of frightened feminine voices came the crash of artillery in action somewhere not too far away. "Merci beaucoup," I told the old woman most heartily as I blinked about. Nothing like having a word of warning. Would be bad indeed to be caught asleep. She disappeared and as I struggled into my clothes, still probably only three-fourths awake, there came the familiar rat-tat-tat of Hotchkiss machine gun fire. The enemy has broken through just like they said, I reflected. But nothing except cavalry could have gotten this far. I listened for the sound of horses' hoofs in the street. Fully dressed, I belted on my pistol, slung my gas mask, tied it at alert position and started for the door. I would try the front first and if the street was clear would join my company by the most direct route. If the German horsemen came before I got out the front door, I would duck out the back and go down the railway track, shooting my way through it necessary. In the meanwhile the old woman stuck her head into the room again, shouting about the boches and wanting me to follow her. I shook my head. was going to try the street first. If that way was blocked, time enough to get away out the back and down toward the town. But just as I reached the door I had a thought for the first time, then a conviction.
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[page 196] Enemy planes! I tossed my pistol and gas mask on the bed in disgust and went out the front door, joining a French small boy in staring up at the sky. The old lady had been trying to get me to go to some shelter in rear or in the basement somewhere. They had had airplanes before. I had seen the deep scars on the front of the building from where a bomb had burst in the street. This time there had been no bombs. The planes had circled pver the railway yards and dropped flares, then, having had a good look, departed under machine gun and anti-aircraft gun fire. Rather sheepishly -- quite sheepishly in fact -- I turned back to my room when the firing had subsided. The old lady met me there. "Pas de peu de boches?" she demanded. "Pas de peu de avion," I replied. She shook her head wonderingly and departed. Soon I was asleep again, thinking as I dozed away of the battle I had imagined and missed. Mighty fine of the old woman though to keep trying to drag me to safety instead of getting into safety herself. During the time we were at Gerardmer, the regulation cal. 45 sutomatic pistols were issued to the unit, replacing the .45 cal revolvers which had been issued to it before leaving the States. There being an abundance of ammunition there was a good deal of pistol practice here with the automatic -- first at a sand-pit below the Gerardmer lake and later at a French range nearer to town. For the rest there was such other training as we could do, and wandering on foot or by Ford,
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[page 197] over the surrounding hills, including up the road toward the Col de la Shlucht which was the mountain pass leading to the front -- a route along which there was a beautiful chain of smaller lakes. Toward the end of August came word that our division was to be relieved and move to an active front. Headquarters of the 6th U.S. division moved into the town including a machine gun unit with American cal. 30 Vickers machine guns. This created a stir of interest. It was the first American machine gun organization we had seen armed with American weapons. Some troops of the 131st French division were in town too and I stood at the east end of the place one day watching a battalion of French Indo-Chinese soldiers marching toward the front. Instead of the horizon blue uniform of most of the French forces, or the dark blue of the chasseurs Alpine, with which we had long been familiar, these men wore the mustard-colored uniforms and helmets of the French Colonials. The men were small in size and with oval, feminine-appearing Mongolian faces. In addition to their regulation weapons, some of them wore huge bolo-like knives on their right hips. The officers were French and in a number of cases towered almost head and shoulders above their Asiatic soldiers. Neat and trim-appeared soldiery, these Indo-Chinese, but I stood on the leeward side of them and as they passed there was an over-powering odor of unwashed human bodies. At 7:30 a.m. [September ] 2, 1918, the 128th Machine Gun battalion rolled out of Gerardmer, northward bound, for a staging area prior to entrainment. Of the town I always retained the most pleasant memories -- of the friendly children who greeted me each morning as I went down to the barracks, of the kindly old lady and her husband in whose home I was billeted and of their grand-daughter, the shy and tiny Yvonne, her little face disfigured by sores, who was a friend of mine. I hoped
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[page 198] as I left that some day her missing-in-action daddy might return to her. Our motor column, and the borrowed trucks for the non-motorized portion of the battalion, journeyed 18 miles north and west that morning through wooded hills and rapidly decreasing altitude to the twin villages of Le Paire and Taintrux. My company was to be billeted in Le Paire, B in Taintrux. Our reception in Le Paire was an uncordial one, the only instance of the kind I encountered in France in that war. The reason I do not know. Perhaps they had some reason to dislike Americans, or perhaps they feared that our being stationed there would lead to the villages being bombed. We had no sooner detrucked and the men moved off to their billets than one of the sergeants sent for me. His section had been assigned to the loft of a village barn. An old woman had stopped them at the door and was shrieking violent French at them and weeping alternately. I sent for the French town major who had assigned them there. He over-shrieked the old lady and the men moved in There were several incidents like that. We were anything but welcome guests the day of arrival. "Boche sympathizers" said the French town major who also spoke Enlish. This last did not sound reasonable to me, but whatever the cause was the hostile feeling was quite transitory. By the next day they were most amiable and friendly and remained so during our brief stay -- just like other French villages. Evidently we did not turn out nearly as bad as expected. To the east was the usual intermittent thud of guns, marking the front. Occasionally there came over an enemy observation plane, flying high amid splotches of bursting anti-aircraft projectiles, and never low enough to be within range of the machine guns we had hidden hither and yon in the orchards, much to the distaste of the villagers.
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[page 199] Soon we would leave the Vosges behind us. We were, in fact, only two days at Le Paire before moving to an entraining point. On the whole I was reasonably well satisfied with our experience in the mountains considering the fact that we were a division headquarters unit and supposed to be a reserve of fire power. I would indeed have been glad to have spent more time in the trenches and to have had more combat experience there --such as affording covering fire for a raid -- but at least the company had been in the trenches, practically every man had taken a turn at fire on the harassing guns, and all had been under enemy fire. That was something. And they were a good outfit with high morale. I was proud of them.
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[postcard] Gerardmer. -Vue generale. [postcard] 170 Gerardmer. -Vue prise du Mirador de Merelle. [postcard] Gerardmer. -L'Hotel de la Poste.
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[postcard] 80 La Schlucht (Vosges). - Tunnel de la Route de Munster. [postcard] 46 Les Lacs de Retournemer et de Longemer. (Vosges). [postcard] 254 Lac De Gerardmer
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[map] Vosges (Section Sud) Haute-Alsace
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[back cover]
Details
| Title | Ward Loren Schrantz Memoir - 1917-1919 |
| Creator | Schrantz, Ward Loren |
| Source | Schrantz, Ward Loren. Memoir. Schrantz, Ward Collection. 1917-1919. Jasper County Records Center, Carthage, Missouri. |
| Description | Ward Loren Schrantz (1890-1958) of Carthage, Missouri began his military career in 1909 when he enlisted in Company A, 2nd Missouri National Guard. Schrantz served with the 2nd Missouri during the Mexican Expedition until 1917. During World War I he served as a captain of the 128th Field Artillery. Schrantz also served during World War II as a U.S. Army troopship commander, finally ending his long military career in 1950. This memoir details his experience along the Mexican border as well as his time fighting in France in the Vosges Mountains as part of the 128th Field Artillery. |
| Subject LCSH | Missouri. National Guard; United States. Army--History--Punitive Expedition into Mexico, 1916; Fort Bliss (Tex.); Soldiers--Billeting; Intrenchments; War horses; Tents; Draft; Draft--Law and legislation; Measles; Camp Clark (Mo.); Mules; United States. Wa |
| Subject Local | WWI; World War I; Mexican Border War; Selective Service Act of 1917; United States. Army. Machine Gun Battalion, 128th |
| Contributing Institution | Jasper County Records Center |
| Copy Request | Contact Jasper County Records Center at (417) 359-1100, 125 N. Lincoln, Carthage, Missouri 64836 |
| Rights | Permission is granted for duplication of the materials from the Jasper County Records Center with no restrictions. Materials may be quoted with proper citation. |
| Date Original | 1917-1919 |
| Language | English |