CHAPTER 10

THE LAST BATTLE
"The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,
 One blow on the forehead will finish the fight."

HOLMES.

HARDLY had the new replacements, some 1800 in all, learned to what company they belonged, when our definite orders reached us. The trucks arrived and we rattled off toward the front. We detrucked and bivouacked for a couple of days in a big wood while our supply trains came up. The weather, fortunately, was crisp and cool and bivouacking was really pleasant. What our mission was we did not know, but as we were to be in General Sumrnerall’s corps we were sure there would be plenty of fighting to go around.

General Summerall himself came and spoke to each of the infantry regiments.   The regiment was formed in a three-sided square and he spoke from the blank side.

Almost immediately our orders arrived to move up. As usual we moved at night. The weather repented of its gentleness and cold heavy rain started. The roads were gone, the nights black, the columns splashed through mud with truck trains, with supplies for the troops ahead of us, crisscrossing and jamming by us. We passed the barren zone that had been No Man's Land for four years and was now again France.

Early in the morning in a heavy mist we reached another patch of woods just in rear of where the line was. Here we gained contact with the Second Division that was ahead of us. They attacked the same day and again we received orders to follow them. On this night the maps played us a trick, for a road well marked turned out to be a little wood trail. All night long we moved down it single file to get forward a bare seven kilometers. A wood trail in the rain is bad enough for the first man that moves over it, but it is almost impassable for the three thousandth man when his turn comes. We got through, however, and by morning the regiment was in place. The road was clogged with a stream of transports of all kinds—trucks, wagon trains, tanks, and tractors, double banked and stuck. Occasionally, passing by them on foot, you would hear some general's aide spluttering in his limousine at the delay and wet.

Through this our supply train was brought forward by Captains Scott and Card and Lieutenant Cook with the uncanny ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible which had stood us in good stead many times. Indeed, the train beat the infantry and when we arrived, we found them there banked beside the road, with the kitchens smoking, and the food spreading a comforting aroma through the rain-rotted woods. Orders were received to march to Landreville. We gave the men hot chow and put the column in motion as soon as they had finished. The sun came out and dried us off and we felt more cheerful.

Still following in the wake of the victorious Second Division, we passed through the desolate, war-battered little town of Landreville. There, to my intense astonishment, I suddenly came on my brother, Kermit, and my brother-in-law, Richard Derby, who was chief surgeon of the Second Division. My brother Kermit had transferred to the American army from the British, had finished his course at an artillery school, and was now reporting to the First Division for duty. Seeing them so unexpectedly was one of the most delightful surprises.

We went into position at Landreville and sent out patrols, which immediately gained contact with the marines in our front, who were preparing to attack next day.

That night my brother and I sat in a ruined shed, regimental headquarters, surrounded by dead Germans and Americans, and talked over all kinds of family affairs.

Again the following night, as the Second Division's attack had been successful, we moved forward. Again it rained. Next morning we were bivouacked in the Bois de la Folie, but before evening were on the march again to another position. By the time we had reached this position, orders came to move forward again and we went into position in woods just south of Beaumont. Here the Colonel of the Ninth Infantry and I had head-quarters together in an old farmhouse that had been used by the Germans as a prisoners' cage. It was surrounded by wire and filthy beyond description.

Here we got orders that we were to take over from the division on the left of the Second Division and attack in the morning. By this time the troops had marched practically five nights in succession and also two of the days. Speaking of this, there is a military phrase which has always irritated me. It appears in all accounts of big battles. It is, "At this point fresh troops were thrown into action." There is no such thing as "throwing fresh troops" into action. By the time the troops get into action they have marched night after night and are thoroughly tired.

The   correct   phrase   should   be,   "troops that have suffered no casualties." For example, that night my three majors, Legge, Frazier, and Youell, all of them young men not more than twenty-eight years old, came in to get their orders for the attack. We all sat down on wooden benches in the cellar. Something happened which made it necessary for me to change part of my orders. Making the changes did not take more than five minutes in all. By the time I was through, all three of them had fallen asleep where they sat.

After receiving the orders, I got in touch with the Second Division, and I want to say that when the next war comes I hope my side partners will be of the same type. Colonel Robert Van Horn, an old friend of mine, was commanding the Twenty-third Infantry, which was to be on the right flank. I was to attack with two battalions in line and one in support, my right flank on Beaumont, my left following a road that led north to Mouzon. Together Van Horn and I worked out our plans and arranged for the connections we wished to make. He had been fighting then for a number of days, but was just as keen to continue as a schoolboy in a game of football.

That night again sunny France justified her reputation and for the fifth day in succession it rained. The troops moved forward and with the easy precision of veterans found their positions, got their direction, and checked in as in place at the moment of attack.

At 5.35 in a heavy mist they went over the top. The Hun had, by this time, lost all his fight and we advanced for seven or eight kilometers to our objectives, Mouzon and Ville Montry. By 6.00 in the evening the sector was cleared, the troops established on the objectives, and the advanced elements fighting in Mouzon.

Two of the German prisoners who were brought back early this day, an officer and his orderly, were nothing more than boys. They said they had been retreating for days and that they were so tired that they had not woke up until some of the Americans had prodded them with a bayonet.

It was in this attack that, among others, one of the medical officers, Lieutenant Skillirs, was killed. Like most of our medical officers, he followed his work with absolute disregard for his personal safety. He was hit by a shell toward the end of the attack while crossing the shelled area to help some wounded.

At 8 o'clock we received word that we were to withdraw from the sector we had taken and march into a position from which we should attack Sedan next morning. The Seventy-seventh Division was to extend its right and occupy the sector we were leaving. Word was sent to the majors to collect their commands and assemble them at a given point. All honor again to our supply company. They were there close in the rear of us and worked forward food to the men. At this time, with the men as tired as they were, it was of vital importance.

I received my detailed orders from General F. C. Marshall at a little half-burned farm.

By 8 o'clock the officers and men, who had marched and fought without stopping for twenty-four hours, were again assembled and moving west on the Beaumont-Stormy road. All night long the men plowed like mud-caked specters through the dark, some staggering as they walked. Once we had to move single file through our artillery, which was to follow in our rear. Often we had to take detours, as the Germans had mined the road. At one place a bridge over a stream was gone and the whole division had to cross over single file. Everyone had reached the last stages of exhaustion. Captain Dye, a corking good officer, fainted on the march, lay unconscious in the mud for an hour, came to, and joined his company before the morning attack. Major Frazier, while riding at the head of his battalion, fell asleep on his horse and rolled off.

As I rode up and down the column I watched the men. Most of them were so tired that they said but little. Occasionally, however, I would run on to some of the old men, laughing and joking as usual. I remember hearing a sergeant, who was closing the rear of one platoon, say, "Ooh, la, la!"

"What is it, sergeant, aren't you getting enough exercise?" I said to him.

"Exercise, is it, sir? It's not the exercise I'm worried with, but I do be afraid that them Germans are better runners than we are! Faith, to get them is like trying to catch a flea under your thumb."

Another time I passed an old sergeant called Johnson, at one of the five-minute rests.

"Sir," asked Johnson, "when do we hit 'em?"

"I'm not sure, sergeant," I said, "but I think about a kilometer and a half from here."

"That's good," Johnson replied. "If we can once get them and do 'em up proper they will let us have a rest."

Johnson voiced there the sentiments of the rank and file. They had been set a task and it never entered into their calculations that they could not do the task. They wanted to do it, do it well, and then have their rest.

In the morning we passed through a French unit at Omicourt and started our attack. By afternoon we were on the heights overlooking Sedan, where word reached us to halt our attack. Shortly after we were told to with-draw, turning over to the French. We found later that it was considered wise that the French should take Sedan on account of the large sentimental value attached to it because of the German victory there in the war of 1870.

I waited in the sector until the troops had checked back, and then followed them to Chemery, where we were to spend the night. When I arrived I found the three battalion commanders sleeping in the stalls of a stable. As I came in one sat up and said: "Sir, I never knew until this minute what a lucky animal a horse is."

A characteristic incident of the new spirit occurred in this attack. Lieutenant Leek of E Company was assigned the task of occupying the town of Villemontry with a platoon. After severe hand-to-hand fighting on the streets he succeeded. The rapidity of the attack prevented the Germans from carrying off some French girls with them. The town was under heavy fire and the runner who was sent with the message directing the withdrawal and the march on Sedan was killed before he reached them. After the relieving unit arrived a message was sent to Leek that his regiment had withdrawn. He replied that the First Division never gave up conquered ground and he would hold the town until he received word from his proper commander.

The next day we moved to the south and east. The plan of the higher command, I have been informed, was to throw the First, Second, Thirty-second, and Forty-second Divisions across the Meuse in an attack on Metz, to assign no objectives but to let the rivalry in the divisions determine the depth of the advance.

All through the last ten days vague rumors had been reaching us concerning a proposed armistice. None of us really believed there was anything in them. This was largely on account of the fact that during the year and a half we had grown so accustomed to war that we could not imagine peace. Besides, we felt that terms that would be in any way acceptable to us would not be even given a hearing by the Germans. We felt also that we had them on the run and we wanted to go in and finish them. As a matter of fact, we didn't give much thought to it anyhow. We had almost as much as we could do finishing the job we had in hand.

On the march one day I heard one man discussing with the other members of his squad. He finished his remarks by saying, "I hope those damned politicians don't spoil this perfectly good victory we are winning."

As we were moving back a day later an engineer officer rode up to me from the rear and told me he had just come from Second Division headquarters, where they had announced that the armistice had been signed and all hostilities were to cease at 11 o'clock that morning. I sent back word to the men. It was announced up and down the column and a few scattering cheers were all that greeted it. I don't think it really got through their heads what had happened. I know it had not got through mine.

That night we stopped in the Bois de la Folie, and for the first time the men began to realize what had happened. Fires were lit all over. Around them men were gathered, singing songs and telling stories. It was very picturesque: the battered woods, the flaming fires, and the brown, mud-caked soldiers. The contrast was 'doubly great, as until that time no fires were lighted by the troops when anywhere near the front lines. German airplanes always came over and as the men expressed it, "laid eggs wherever they saw a light."

The first thing that really brought it home to me personally was when a little military chauffeur came up through the dark and said, "Colonel, Mrs. Roosevelt is waiting in the car at the corner."

I knew that no women had been anywhere near the front the day before. I realized that this really meant that the war was over. 

The car came up and skidded around in the deep mud. Mrs. Roosevelt was there in a pair of rubber boots. She had somehow managed to come because she wished to say good-by to me and return to our children in the United States now that the fighting was over. I went back with her some ten kilometers to a tent where some Y. M. C. A. men were giving out chocolates, crackers, etc.

All the way back through the night the sky was lit by the fires of the men. On every side rockets were going up, like a Fourth of July celebration. Gas signals and barrage signals flashed over the tree tops. The whole thing seemed hardly possible.

Although we had been there in France only a year and a half, it seemed as if the war had lasted interminably. It seemed as if it always had been and always would be with us. All our plans had been based on an indefinite continuation. I had been rather an optimist, and yet I did not consider the possibility of a cessation of hostilities before the following autumn. Much of the quaint philosophy of the French had sunk into our hearts and insensibly became a part of us—the philosophy which had its creed in the expression Cest la guerre. To them and to us Cest la guerre had much the significance of "All in the day's work." Like them, we treated apres la guerre as something in the nature of "castles in Spain."

So the war finished, so our part in the fighting came to an end; a page of the world's history was turned and we moved south to Verdun to prepare for our march into conquered Germany.