Evening Star Newspaper, September 12, 1926, Page 81

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES Part 58 Pages ‘MAGAZINE SECTION o Che Sunday Star WASHINGTON, "D. C., SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 12, 1926. e \ FIX B ~ NETS! Text and Illustrations by Capt. John W. Thomason, Jr., U. S. M. C. How the Navy Offered a Brigade of Ma- rines for Service in France in 1917, as Trained Soldiers in the United States Were at a Premium—Story of the Early Advance Against German Lines When Prestige of American Arms Was at Stake—Patriotic Devotion to Coun- try Under Withering Fire Revealed: Daring Which Stirred Enthusiasm of the World. . Introduction. This story is a cross section of the war. As Capt. Thomason is a marine officer, naturally the actual names, dates and places mentioned will bear a definite relation to marine activities in France; there is no intention, how- ever. to overshadow fighting American wnits. This story {s a marine story, because the author is onlu familiar with the combat er- periences of his own men—but every doughboy who s service in the war will recognize these cxperiences and encounters as similar to his own vears after the war, s the world from France, | major of the American teral staff who was on th road that las . and saw the hoy going in looked fine. coming in there” he said. “Tail fellows, healthy and fit—they lanked and competent. We watched vou going in, through those little tired all felt better. was going to nd we were silent, over W hapoen— SAVAGE the rest of the | hard ; | common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and | the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory. x % %% HEY tell the tale of an American lady of notable good works, much esteemed by the I'rench, who, at the end of June, 1918, visited one of the field hospitals behind Degoutte’s 6th rench Army. Degoutte was fight- ing on the face of the Marne salient, {and the 2d American Division, then |in action around the Bois de Bel- {leau, northwest of Chateau Thierry, was under his orders. It happened that occasional casualties of the Ma- rine Brigade of the 2d American Divislon. wounded toward the flank where Degoutte’s own horizon hlue infantry joined on, were picked up by French stretcher bearers and evacuated to French hospitals. And this lady, looking down a long. crowded ward, saw on a pillow a ce uniike the fiercely whiskered Gallic heads there displayed in rows. She went to it " she sald, “surely you are an ican!” ma’'am,” the casualty answer- I'm a marine.” FIGHTING IN THE WOODS AT SOISSO! the Leathernecks, the Old Timers; collected from ships' guards and shore stations all over the earth to form the 4th Brigade of Marines, the two rifle regiments, detached from the Navy by order of the President for service with the American expe- ditionary forces. They were the old | breed of American Regular, regard- ing the service as home and war as an occupation; and they transmitted heir temper and character and view- point to the high-hearted volunteer mass which filled the ranks of the Marine Brigade. It 15 a pleasure to record that they found zood company in the Army. The 24 Divisfon (United States Reg- ular was the official designation) was composed of the 9th and 23d In- fantry, two old regiments with names from all & our wars on thelr battle flags. the 2d Regiment of En- gineers—and engineers are alwaye €ood—and the 12th, 15th and 17th Field Artillery. It was a division distinguished by the quality of dash and animated by an especial pride of gervice. It carried to a high de- gree esprit de corps. which some Frenchman has defined as esteeming your own corps and looking down on all the other corps. And. although it paid heavily in casualties for the things it did—in five months about 100 per cent—the 2d Division never lost its professional character. Tn 1917, when “trained soldiers in the United States were ata premium, the Navy offered a brigade of Ma- rvines for service in France: it was regarded desirable for Marine officers to have experlence In large opéra- tions with the Army: for it is certain that close co-operation hetween the Army and the Navy is a necessary thing in these days of far-flung bat- tle lines. ‘The British distress at Gallipoli is a crying witness to this principle. In_a_Navy USO8 ment of transport, therefore, Henderson, the 5th Regi- Marines _embarked for France in June, 1917, with the first armed American forces. The 6th Marines followed. The two regjments constituted the 4th Brigade, and served in the 2d Division, United States Regular, until the division came home, in August, 1919. About 30.000 Marines were sent to France: some 14,000 of these went assre- | placements to maintain the two regi- NS. Chilean wine, in a piace on the Sou iy The men who marched up the Pacific. thinking of those days and | Paris-Metz road to meet the Boche those men A There is no sight in all the pageant ot war like young. trained men going to battle, The columns look solid and usinesslike. kach battalion is an entit 1,200 men of one purpose Th go on like a river that flows very deep and strong. Uniforms are drab these days, but there are points of light on the heimets and the dbayvonets, and light in the qui steady eves and the brown vou faces, greatly daring. There is ginging—veterans know, and they do not sing much—and there is no ex- citement at all: they are schooied craftsmen, golng up to impose thei will. with the tools of their trade. on another lot of fellows: and there is nothing to make a fu out Battles are not and every file knows that a many more are going in than will come out again—but that is alon with the job. And they have no illu- slons about the job There {s nothiy ous anout sweaty killing g o glori- tools such represents a great deal more than 28.000 individ- wMals mustered into a divisipn. Al that is behind those men is in that eolumn gotten. that secured our Brandrwine and Trenton and York- town, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, ¢ amauga, El Caney: cores of nearly every yvear—in whi can be killed as dead as ever was in the Argonne: traditions things endured and thinzs accom- plished. such as. regiments hand down forever: and the faith of men and the love of women: and that ab- etract thing called patriotism. which 1 never heard combat soldiers men- tion—all this passes into the for- ward zone, to the point of contact, where war is girt with horrors. And nation— rmishes a man A chap | counter. salubrious places, - great . | words. and words culled from ail too: the old battles, long for- | Antietam, | of | { in that Spring of 1918. the 5th and | 6th Regiments of United States Ma- I rines. were gathered from various | places { 250 strong, You could find every sort |of man, mro every sort of call- ing. There were Northwestern- |ers. with straw-colored hair looked white against their tanned skins, and delicately spoken chaps <, | with the stamp of the Eastern uni- | versities on them. There were large- llmnt‘d fellows from Pacific Coast lumber camps, and tall, lean South- | erners, who swore amazingly in gen- {tle, drawling voices. There were | husky farmers from the corn belt, and voungsters who had eprung, as it were, to arms from the necktie And there were also di- verse people who ran curiously to type. with drilled shoulders and a bone-deep sunburn and a tolerant { scorn of nearly everything on earth. Their speech was flavohred with Navy the the In the the folk ports easy who live on the seas and where our warships go. hours their talk ran from Tarta’ Wall bevoend Peking to Southern Islands, down under nila: from Portsmouth Navy New Hampshire and ve obscure bushwhackings in the West Indies, where Cacao chiefs, whimsi- cally sanguinary, barefoot generals with names like Charlemagne and Christophe, waged war according o | executioner. the precepts of the French Revolu- ! tion and the Cult of the Snake. They | He java drank the eau de vie of Haute- Marne and reminisced on” saki, and 3 and Bacardi rum-—strange rinks in strange cantinas at the far ends of the earth: and they spoke fondly of Milwaukee beer. Rifles were high and holy things to them, and they knew 5-inch broadside guns. They talked patron- izingly of the war, and were con- cerned about rations. .In the big war companies, | that | Ma- ! yard ! ¢ cold—to | found an amiable cow. | been nothing in the way | Al hands took ments of the ith Brigade. A brigade musters some 7.500 officers and men: this brigade took part in some very interesting events Hereafter 1 have written' of the Marines in the war with Germany: how they went up. and what they did thepe, and how some of them came out again. Being a Marine, I have tried to set forth simple tales without comment. It is unnecessary to write what I think of my own people, nor would it be, perhaps, in the best taste, t And T have written of Marines in this war because they are the folks 1 know about myself. Those battle- fields were very larze, and a ma seldom saw much or very far he: yond his own unit if he had a job in hand! As a company officer. T always had a job. There is no intent to overlook those very gallant gentle- men, our friends.the Army. Their story is ours too, JOHN W. THOMASON, JR. * ok ok % CHAPTER 1. Attack. the fields near Marigny, Marines of the 1st Battalion of the 5th that day: there nated a robust Polish corporal He claimed been a butcher in a former existence. was leading from touch of swank that chauffeurs always affect, gorged a very angry colonel. “Lieutenant, what are you doing there—?" he yelled. “8ir, vou 'see, the men haven't had anything to eat, and I thought, und this cow wanderin’ They were!around—we couldn’t find any owner sir—we There had of rations were no prospects. thought and desig- as to have the cow decently the road when a long gray car boomed up, halted with the{ Headquarters’ and dis- — T e e—— “THEY'RE NO BETTER FOLKS ANYWHERE THAN THE ENGINEERS.” —we'd like to chip in and buy her— we were goin' o “I see, sir, I see! You were go ing to Kill this cow, the property of some worthy French family. You will bear in mind, lieutenant, that we are in France to protect the lives and property of our allies from the Germans. Release that animal at once! Your rations will be dis- tributed _as soon as possible—carry lon—" The colonel departed, and four or five 77 crashed into a_ilttle wood 200 yards up the road. There vere more shells in the same place. Brother Boche must think over there!—"" “Well, there ain't—" The Marines sat down in the wheat and observed the cow, abandoned ¢by a vanished French family. “I was & quartermaster sergeant once, sir,” said the platoon sergeant “I remember just ‘what of ,beef are. There'd be on tha cow-critter, Mr. Ashby (another flight of 778 burst in the wood), if we was to take that cow over an' tia her in that. brush—she oughten to be out | here In the open, anyway—might draw fire . shell’s liable to hit anything, you know, sir—" ‘‘Sergeant, you heard what the colonel said. But if vou think she'd be safer--I'd suggest volunteers. And by the way, sergeant, T want a plece of tenderloin —the T-bone part—" + The cow; was duly secured in the | wood, men 'risking their lives thereby. | The Boche shelled methodically for two hours, and the Marines were r duced to a fearful state of nerves “Is that heifer gonna live forever?—" Two or three Kilometers away fight- ing was going’ on. The lieutenant, with his glass, picked up far, running figures on the slope of a hill. You caught a flicker, poinis of lizht on the gray-green fields—bayonets. Oc- casional wounded Frenchmen wan- dered back, weary ed men, very dirty. They looked W the Americans—"Tres bas! ~ Beaucoup Boche, Marines were not especiall ested. Their reziment had been a year in France, training. Now they, too, were dirty and tired and very hu gry. The war would get along it always had A week ago, Memorial day. had been no drills. The 2d D there trenches. rested pleasantly around Bourmont. Rumors of an attack by the 1st Division. at Cantigny. filtered in. Cantigny was a town up toward Montdidi Notions of geography were the vaguest—but it was in the MARINE PROUDLY EXHIBITING SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN AT ST. MIHIEL, a ision, | up from a tour in the quiet Verdun { | [tidal wave of figh where all the neavy fighting It appeared that the 2d was g up to relieve the 1st. . . . i We'll relieve ‘em. But if they wanted a fight, why didn't they let us know in the first place? We'd a-showed. 'em what shock-troops can do!" north, w * ok ok K HE division set out in camions: in the neighborhond of Meaux they were turned around and sent out the P Metz road. along which the civilian population from the country between the Chemin des Dames and the Marne, together with the debris of a nch army. was coming back. The civilians walked with their faces much on their shoulders, and there was horror in their eves. The Marines took notice of another side of war, 8 “Hard on poor folks, war ““You said it!" ‘“‘Ssay-—think about my ' your fi out on the road i e eh. I'm thinkin’ it An' when we meet that I'm gonna do somethinz about ok--right nice-lookin' girl, yon- about Boch: 1t—1 der . There were French soldiers in the rout, too. Nearly all were wounded, or in the last stages of exhaustion. They did not appear to be first-line troops: they bearded fel- lows of 40 . territorials: or mean, unpleasant-looking Algerians, such troops as are put in to hold a quiet sector, Seven or eight divisions of them had been in the line hetween Soissons and Rheims, which was, until the 27th of May, a quiet sector. On that day forty-odd divisions, a ng Germans, with artillery concentration the Boche ever effected, was flugg upon thgm, and they iwere swept away, as%a levee goes hefore a flood. They had fought: they had come back, fighting, 35 miles in three days: and the Boche, though slowed up, was still advancing. They were hold- ing him along the Marne, and at Cha- teau-Thierry a machine-gun battallon of the American 3d Division was pil- ing up his dead in heaps around the bridge-heads, hut to the northwest he was still cominz. And to the north- west of the 2d Division was gather- ing During the 2d. the 3d and the 4th of June it grouped itself, first the 4th Brigade of marines, with some guns, and then the regular infantrymen of the 9th and 23d. Already, around Hautevesnes, there had been a brush with advancing Germans, and the Germans were given a new experi- ence: Rifie fire that begins to kill at 800 yards; they found it very interest- ing. Thit was June 3: the battalion near Marigny, on the left of the ma- rine brigade, had a feeling that they the greatest ISSUED were going in tomorrow. . . . The men thought lazily on events and lounged in the wheat and watched that clump of trees—and at last an agonized bellow came on the echo of a bursting shell—- “Well—she's stopped one! Thought she musta dug in—— “Let's go get it—"" Presently ‘there was lots of steak, and later a bitter lesson was repeat- ed—mustn't build cooking fires with green wood, where the Boche can see the smoke. But everybody lay down on full bellies. Before dark the last French were falling back. Some time during the night brigade sent battle orders to the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines, and at dawn they were in a wood near Champilion.” Nearly every man had steaks in his mess pan and there was hope for cooking them for breakfast. Instead. . . . ok THE platoons came out of the woods as dawn was getting gray. The light was strong when they ad- vanced into the open wheat, now all starred with dewy popples, red as blood. To the east the sun appeared. immensely red and round, a hand- breadth above the horizon: a German shell burst black across the face of it, Jjust to the left of the line. Men turned their heads to see and many there looked no more upon the sun forever. “Boys, it's a fine, clear mornin’! Guesd we get chow after we get done molestin® these here Heinles, hey One old non-com—was it Jerr) of salmon. hoarded somehow against hard times. He haggled it open with his bayonet, and went forward so, eating chunks of goldfish from the point of that wicked knife. Two hours later Sergt. Jerry Finnegan lay dead | across a Mixim gun with his bayonet in the body of the gunner. . . . It was a_beautiful deployment, lines ed and guiding true. ~Such wera of deep concern to this outfit. The day was without a cloud, promising heat later, but now it was pleasant in the wheat, and the woods around looked biue and cool. Across this wheat field there were more woods, and in the edge of these woods the old Boche. lots of him, in- fantry and machine guns. Surely he had seen the platoons forminz a few hundred yards away—it ‘s possible that he did not believe his eyes. He let them come close hefore he opened fire. The American fighting man has his faflings. He is prone to many re- grettable errors. But the sagacious enemy will mever let him get close enough to see whom he 1is attacking. Finnegan of the 49th?>—had out a can | |all hands, ver “Common Men Endure These Horrors Despite Reasonable Promptings of Fear, and in This,I Think,Is Glory,” Declares Officer Who Records the Thrilling Story—How the Fate of an Inoffensive Cow Was Eagerly Awaited by Hungry Fighters on the Battle Line—Heroic Advances in the Face of Death by Ma- chine Gun Seen in Vivid Account of One Who Was a Participant. board platoons of the 43th and 67th Companies, burst from the trees upon a gentle slope of wheat that mounted to a crest of orderly pines, black against the sk A three-.cornered coppice this side of the pines com- manded the slope: now it blazed with machine-guns and rifles: the air was populous with wicked keening noises. Most of the front waves went down; . flung them- selves prone. ik up to these babies—-" —won't he enough of us left to get on with the war——" “Pass the word: crawl forward, keep- in’ touch with the man on your right! Fire when you can——" Sweating. hot and angry with a bleak, cold anger, the marines worked forward. They were there. and the Germans. And there was an officer, risking his head above the - whe: observed progress. and detached a corporal with his $quad to get forward by the flank. “Get far enough past the flank gun, now. close as vou can, and rush ft—we'll keep it bus: . . . Nothing sound as mad as rifle fire, staccato, furi ous—-— The corporal judged that he was far enough, and raised with vell, his- squad leaping with hi He was not past the flank: two gun: swung that way and cut the squad down just as a grass-hook levels a clump of weeds. . . . They lay there for days, eight marines in a dozen a woodplle, with a big auto-rifieman. Just across from them, very near, a machine gun behind another wood- pile was searching for them. The leutenant, all his world narrowed to that little place. peered vainly for a loophole: the sticks were pumping and shaking as the Maxim flailed them; bullets rang under his helmet. “Here, Morgan,” he said, “I'll poke my tin hat around this side and you watch and see if you can get the chaut-chaut on them——" He stuck the helmet on his bayonet and thrust it out. Something struck it violent- Iv from the point, and the rifle made his fingers tingle. The chaut-chaut went off, once. in the same breath there was an odd noise above him . the machine gun - he looked up. Morgan's body was slumping down to its knaes; it lean- ed forward against the wood, the chaut-chatt, still grasped in a clenched hand, coming to the ground butt first. The man's head was gone from the eves up: his hehnet slid stickily back over his combat pack and lay on the ground “My mother,” reflected the leu- tenant, “will never find my grave in this place!” He picked up the chaut- chaut and examined it profession- ally, noting a spatter of little red drops on the breech, and the fact that the clip showed one round ex pended. The charging handle was When he has seen the enemy, the American regular will come on in. To stop him you must kill him. And when he is properly trained and_has somebody to say “Come on!" to him, he will stand as much killing as any- body on earth. The platoons, assailed now by a fury of smallarms fire, narrowed their eyes and inclined their bodies forward, like men in heavy rain, and went on. Second waves reinforced the first, fourth waves the third, as prescribed. Officers velled “Battle- sight! fire at will"—and the leaders, making out green-gray, clumsy uni- forms and round pot-helmets in the gloom of the woods, took it up with Springfields, aimed shots. Automatic rifiemen brought their chaut-chauts into action from the hip—a chaut- chaut is as accurate from the hip as it ever is—and wrangled furiously vith their ammunition-carriers— ‘ome on, kid—bag o’ clip: “Aw —I lengit to Ed to carry, last night— didn't think—" “Yeh, and Ed lent it to a fence-post when he got tired— get me some off a casualty, before A very respectable volume of fire came from the advancing platoons. There was yelling and swearing in the wheat, and the lines, much thinned, got into the woods. Sonfe grenades went off; there was scream- ing and tumult, and the “taka-taka‘ L(‘,Akl—lak&" of the Maxim. guns died own. ‘‘Hi! Sergeant!'—hold on! Ma- jor said he wanted some prison- ers——" ‘“Well, sir, they looked like they was gonna start somethin’—" “All right! All right! but you catch some aliv next _place, you hear?— ¥, now—get some kind of a line—- ‘Can’t make four waves—" “Well, make two—an’ put the chaut-chauts in the sscond— no use gettin' ‘'em bumped off before we can use ‘em——" The attack went on, platoons much emaller, ser- geants and corporals commanding many of them. A spray of fugitive Boche went be- fore the attack, holding where the ground offered cover, working Iig light machine-guns with devlish skill, retiring, on the whole, commendabiy. He had not expected to fight a defen. | sive battle here, and was not heavily intrenched, but the place was stiff with his troops, and he was in good quality, as Marine casualty lists were presently to show. l There was more wheat, and more . l.ncl' oubscur!l -h\'ll’! fls:l- ng .mg viduals a brushy ravine, ~of Torcy. attack, especially the fn. vards, face down on their rifles. But they had done their job. The men in the wheat were close enough to use the split-second interval in the firing. They got in, crusing and stabbing. Meanwhile, to the left. a little group of men lay in the wheat un. der the very muzzle of a gun that clipped the stalks around their ears and riddled their combat packs— firing_ high by a matter of inches and the mercy of God. A man can stand just so much of that. Life i presently ceases to be desirable; the only desirable thing is to kill that gunner, kill him with your hands! One of them, a corporal named Geer, said: “Let's get him!" And they got him. One fellow seized the spit- ting muzzle and up-ended it on the gunner; he lost a hand in the mat- ter. Bayonets flashed in, and a rifle butt rose and fell. The battle tore through the coppice. The machine funners were brave men, and many of the Prussian in- fantry were brave men, and they died. A few streamed back through the brush, and hunters and hunted burst in a frantic medley on the open at the crest of the hill. Impartial machine guns, down the hill to the left; took toll of . both. Presently the remnants of the as- sault companies were panting in the trees on the edge of the hill. It was the objective of the attack, but dis- tance had ceased to have any mean- ing, timé was not, and the country was full of square patches of woods. In the valley below were more Germans, and on the next hill. Most of the officers were down, and all hands went on. * o ok x HEY went down the brushy slope, across a little run, across a road, where tweo heavy -Maxims were caught sitting, and mopped up and up the next long, smooth slope. Some marines branched off down that_road and went into the town There was fighting in Torcy. and a French avion reported Americans in it, but they never came out again a handful of impu- dent fellows against a battalion of Sturm-truppen. . Then the men who mounted the slope found themselves in a cleared area, full of orderly French woodpiles, and ap- parently there was a machine gun to every woodpile. Jerry Finnegan died here, sprawled across one of them. Lieutenant Somers died hera. One lieutenant found himself behind back. He got to his feet with delib- eration, lald the gun across the wood- pile and sighted three Boche with very red faces; their eves look- ed pale under their deep helmets. . . . He gave them the whole clip, and they appeared to wilt. Then he came away from there. Later he was in the little run at the foot of the hill with three men, all wounded. He never knew how he got there. It just happened. Later in the day the lieutenant was back on the pine-crested hill, now identified as Hill 142. Capt. Hamil- ton was there, one or two other offi- cers and a handful of the 49th ang 67th Companies; a semblance of a line was organized. From the direc tion of Torcy a counter-attack devele oped; the Boche was filtering clever- ly and forming somewhere on the Torcy road, in cover. The marines were prone, slings adjusted, killing him. “It's a quarter-point right windage—" “Naw! not a breath of air! Use zero—" A file of sweating soldiers, bur- dened with picks and shovels in ad- dition to bandoleers and combat gear, came trotting from the right. A second lieutenant, a reddish, rough-looking youngster, clumped up and saluted. “You in charge ?" he said to the marine officer. 'm Lieutenant Wythe of the 24 Engineers, with a detachment. I'm to report to you for ‘orders.” Well —captain’s right up vonder—how many men vou got?” “Twenty-two, six——" “Fine! That makes thirty- six of us, Includin’ me—just flop right here, and we’ll heold this line. Orders are to dig in here—but that can wait—see yonder- Those engineers, their packs went one way and their tools an- other, and they cast themselvea down happily. “What range, buddy? —usin’ any windage—?" A hairy non-com got into his sling and laid out a little pile of clips. . . . There was always good feeling between the marines of the 2d Division and the Regular Army units that formed {1t, but the marines and the 2d En- gineers—*"'Say, if I ever get a drink, a 2d Engineer can have half of it! —Boy, they dig trenches and mend roads all night, and they fight all day' An’ when us guys get all killed off, they just come up an’ take over the war! They's no bet. ter folks anywhere than the en- gineers. . . . (Copsricht. 1996.) Continued in Next Sunday's Star.) LS