Chapter I: Have a Rendezvous with Death (4)

Out of the stories these men told upon examination emerged not only the hideous perfection of the bomb itself, but the direct hand that the German government and its agents in this country had in the scheme of putting it to its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared Fay’s admission that he had left Germany with money and a passport supplied by a man in the German Secret Service. Later, on the witness stand, when Fay had had time enough carefully to think out the most plausible story, he attempted to get away from this admission by claiming to have deserted from the German Army. He said that he had been financed in his exit from the German Empire by a group of business men who had put up a lot of money to back an automobile invention of his, which he had worked on before the war began. These men, so he claimed, were afraid they would lose all their money if he should happen to be killed before the invention was perfected. This tale, ingenious though it was, was too fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connection with all the things found in Fay’s possession when he was arrested. Beyond all doubt his scheme to destroy ships was studied and approved by his military superiors in Germany before he left, and that scheme alone was his errand to this country.

EXPLAINED TOO MUCH

Far less ingenious and equally damning was his attempt to explain away his relations with von Papen. The sinister figure of the military attaché of the German Embassy at Washington leers from the background of all the German plots; and this case was no exception. It was known that Fay had had dealings with von Papen in New York, and on the witness stand he felt called upon to explain them in a way that would clear the diplomatic service of implication in his evil doings. He declared that he had taken his invention to von Papen and that von Papen had resolutely refused to have anything to do with it. This would have been well enough if Fay’s explanation had stopped here.

But Fay’s evil genius prompted him to make his explanation more convincing by an elaboration of the story, so he gave von Papen’s reasons for refusal. These were not because the Fay device was calculated to do murder upon hundreds of helpless men, nor because to have any part in the business was to play the unneutral villain under the cloak of diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the first interview, seeing only a rough sketch and hearing only Fay’s description of preliminary experiments, von Papen’s sole objection was:

“Well, you might obtain an explosion once, and the next ten apparatuses might fail.”

To continue Fay’s explanation:

“He casually asked me what the cost of it would be and I told him in my estimation the cost would not be more than $20 apiece. [$20 apiece for the destruction of thirty lives and a million-dollar ship and cargo!] As a matter of fact in Germany I will be able to get these things made for half that price. ‘If it is not more than that,’ von Papen said, ‘you might go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything whatever.’”

_Courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly._

The French Nation Celebrates

One of the most impressive features of the national holiday observances in Paris on July 14th, 1918, was the parade by Russian troops led by a giant color-bearer marching along the Grand Boulevard amid the applause of enormous crowds. These were a portion of the army sent by the Czar, to fight for the Allies in France. Persistent rumors that thousands of Russians were landed in England to fight on the Western front proved a hoax.]

Fay then went back to his experiments and when he felt that he had practically perfected his device he called upon von Papen for the second time. This time von Papen’s reply was:

“Well, this thing has been placed before our experts and also we have gone into the political condition of the whole suggestion. Now in the first place our experts say this apparatus is not at all seaworthy; but as regards political conditions I am sorry to say we cannot consider it and, therefore, we cannot consider the proposition any further.”

In other words, with no thought of the moral turpitude of the scheme, with no thought of the abuse of diplomatic freedom, but only with thoughts of the practicability of this device, and of the effect upon political conditions of its use, von Papen had put the question before technical men and before von Bernstorff, and their decision had been adverse solely on those considerations—first, that it would not work, and second, that it would arouse hostility in the United States. At no stage, according to Fay’s best face upon the matter, was any thought given to its character as a hideous crime.

PERFECTED DEVILRY

The device itself was studied independently by two sets of military experts of the United States government with these results:

First, that it was mechanically perfect; second, that it was practical under the conditions of adjustment to a ship’s rudder which Fay had devised; and third, that the charge of trinitrotoluol for which the container was designed, was nearly half the quantity which is used on our own floating mines and which is calculated upon explosion twenty feet from a battleship to put it out of action, and upon explosion in direct contact, absolutely to destroy and sink the heaviest superdreadnought. In other words, beyond all question the bomb would have shattered the entire stern of any ship to which it was attached, and would have caused it to sink in a few minutes.

A brief description of the contrivance reveals the mechanical ingenuity and practical efficiency of Fay’s bomb. A rod attached to the rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, turned up, by one notch, the first of the beveled wheels within the bomb. After a certain number of revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one revolution to the next; and so on through the series. The last wheel was connected with the threaded cap around the upper end of the square bolt, and made this cap slowly unscrew, until at length the bolt dropped clear of it and yielded to the waiting pressure of the strong steel spring above. This pressure drove it downward and brought the sharp points at its lower end down on the caps of the two rifle cartridges fixed below it—like the blow of a rifle’s hammer. The detonation from the explosion of these cartridges would set off a small charge of impregnated chlorate of potash, which in turn would fire the small charge of the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, and that in turn would explode the still more sluggish but tremendously more powerful trinitrotoluol.

The whole operation, once the spring was free, would take place in a flash; and instantly its deadly work would be accomplished.

WHAT FAY PICTURED

Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind as he toiled his six laborious months upon this dark invention. He saw himself, in imagination, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder post of a ship loading at a dock in New York harbor. As the cargo weighed the ship down, the box would disappear beneath the water. At length the ship starts on its voyage, and, as the rudder swings her into the stream, the first beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship and crew is clicked out by its very turning. Out upon the sea the shift of wind and blow of wave require a constant correction with the rudder to hold the true course forward. At every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps out another of the lurking beats of death. Somewhere in midocean, perhaps at black midnight, in a driving storm, the patient mechanism hid below has turned the last of its calculated revolutions. The neck piece from the bolt slips loose, the spring drives downward, there is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five minutes later a few mangled bodies and a chaos of floating wreckage are all that is left above the water’s surface.

HERE’S TO CONSTABLE RITCHINGS

It Is Probable that His Record is Unique in the Annals of War Since Spartan Days

Few men have the modest estimate of duty in relation to self that has given an unsought celebrity to Arthur Ritchings of Cardiff, Wales. If his conduct may be taken as evidence of his philosophy of life, doing one’s duty in the world confers no particular distinction on the individual—the discharge of a moral obligation establishing no title to swank, swagger or puffed-upness. Possibly it is necessary to be a Welshman to appreciate Ritchings’ mental attitude, for it seems that the people of Cardiff saw nothing abnormal or eccentric in the behavior of their townsman, regarding it quite as a matter of course. Indeed it was a London paper that acquainted the Cardiffians that they had in their midst a hero deserving of especial respect. We get the particulars from the same source.

When Germany fell foul of Belgium, Arthur Ritchings was a member of the Cardiff Constabulary, in plain terms, a policeman. As soon as England declared war in 1914, Ritchings threw aside his truncheon, and other police insignia, and enlisted in the Army as a private. He served in that capacity for three years, doing the job with thoroughness, having an eye single to duty. Though unobtrusive in all his doings, not in the least inclined to celebrate in canticles of self-praise his deeds in trench or field, he nevertheless came to the notice of his superiors finally, and in November, 1917, his bravery won him promotion on the field. He was made second lieutenant. But he went right ahead in his normal way, yet, having once attracted their attention, he could not keep out of the view of his superiors, and so in February, 1918, they called him up and gave him to understand that in their opinion he measured up to a captaincy. But Ritchings just went right on being Ritchings, and so they made him a major. Then they made him a lieutenant colonel, and there is no conjecturing what they would have had to do with him had the war continued a little longer. As it was they made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, pinned on his breast the Croix de Guerre with palms, gave him the Military Cross, and did what they could to persuade him that as he had been a gallant and daring soldier so also had he been an able and decisive officer. In the meantime the Germans had done what they could to further his interests by wounding him on six different occasions.

Now, the war having been fought and won, his duty no longer commanding the wear of khaki, Lieutenant Colonel Ritchings retired from the Army and returned to his native Cardiff. His townsmen welcomed him, congratulating him that he had managed to escape death for a further enjoyment of the unemotional serenity of the sturdy Welsh town. The Chairman of the Municipal Bench publicly declared that he was glad to see Ritchings back, and spoke approvingly of the fact that his war record was a credit to the town.

HIS HOME HONORS

Then Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Ritchings—with four years of active military service to his credit and field rank worn at the front, with a breast-load of decorations and the proved ability to command over 3,000 fighting men—stepped over to police headquarters, took up his truncheon and resumed his familiar duties as a common policeman in a mining town, where the care of drunks and disorderlies alone taxed his military genius.

There the matter might have ended but for the interests of a person who had no particular business to come fussing around in Cardiff affairs. This person happened to be one of those ordinary mortals who hold the notion that certain honors attached to heroism and military achievement are not sufficiently represented by mere medals and things, and this person thought it in high degree outrageous that a man who had lifted himself by valor from private to lieutenant colonel should be permitted to walk a beat and swing a club as a means of serving the Crown. This indignant person wrote a passionate letter to the London _Times_, with the result that Cardiff took a second view of the situation, and the Watch Committee (a sort of police commissioner) took the ex-lieutenant colonel off his beat and gave him the lofty job of training the police to the proper dignity of constabulary service.

This, however, did not entirely satisfy outside admirers of Ritchings, honorable as it might seem to Cardiffians, so the Lord Mayor was pressed for information whether there was any intention of appointing the distinguished officer to a higher and more responsible position on the force. That dignitary (and a Lord Mayor truly esteems himself a dignitary in England) went to the extent of admitting that he thought that he might say that all the members of the Watch Committee were in sympathy with the idea, and that he had no doubt that when the opportunity occurred Colonel or Constable Ritchings would be given a place better suited to his merits.

And what said Ritchings concerning himself? Why, merely this, that he “recognized as every right-thinking man would that he had a moral obligation to return to the Cardiff police force for the reason that the ratepayers had been contributing during his absence to the support of his dependents at home.”

Well, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Ritchings, here’s hats off to you!

WHAT GILLES BROUGHT IN

Driving His Automobile over a Shell-Swept Road a French Lad Braved Death to Deliver the Dead

It was during the dreadful few days when the Germans came closest to Paris, a French writer tells us. Gilles Thurmand—sixteen years old, whose mother kept the _Côte d’Or_—had got hold of an old motor-car which had been smashed up in the first days of the rush to the front, had tinkered with it until it ran again, and then had driven it out to see what he could pick up. He went in the direction of Givres, for he heard that there were a good many wounded along the roads, and the French were yielding. He had come as far as a little coppice, where he slowed down at the sight of a couple of French uniforms. The Germans began suddenly to shell the part of the road over which he had just driven. He did not pay much attention to this at the time, for he was so engrossed with the French officers, of whom there were three standing, and a fourth badly wounded. They had been cut off from their regiment, and were left in this little patch of wood either to be killed by one of the enemy’s shells, or to be taken prisoner. “Get in,” Gilles told them, “and we’ll make a run for it. I’m game if you are.” He was extremely proud of having to do with so many officers at once, and besides, he thought, it might be the means of getting him admitted into the Army. Just as they were lifting the wounded man onto the floor of the vehicle, which was about the size of a Ford limousine, Gilles’ sharp eyes spied another blue coat through the trees at a little distance away, and he ran over to the man, who wore the uniform of a captain. He was squatting over something in the denser underbrush, and raised up hastily as Gilles came toward him.

“Let me get you out of this,” said Gilles, “along with these others.”

“Yes, come with us,” said Major Hervé, the senior officer of the party, limping toward them to find out the cause of the delay. The strange officer responded rather thickly that he couldn’t—that he had his duty to perform, and would prefer to remain at his post. The major, finding that arguing with him was of no avail, commanded him rather shortly to follow the rest, and when he still demurred, ordered the other three to bring him. They did so, gently enough, believing him to be a little unbalanced by shell-fire. Then they all climbed into the crazy vehicle, shut the door, and Gilles, mounting to the front seat, set out to drive them through a quarter of a mile of fire and brimstone, which was as near to hell as anything he had ever imagined.

Shells whizzed past, and bullets hailed upon the roof. Once or twice Gilles heard a faint cry in the back of the motor, and he knew some one was hit, but he bent doggedly to his wheel, and didn’t once look round, for fear, as he phrased it, that he would “lack courage to go on again.” Though a bomb ripped off the fender and nearly capsized the car, Gilles himself was not touched, and presently he drove into a silence as deafening as the noise had been. It was the outskirts of a camp, and there were a few simple little everyday noises like the rattling of dishes and the chopping of wood. But it was like the cemetery of Père La Chaise to Gilles. He could not hear a sound. Two or three Frenchmen in khaki came running toward him as he slid off the box and opened the rear door. Three dead bodies tumbled out. The two left inside were those of the last-found officer and the badly wounded man. They, too, were dead. How had they been killed? Not by shell fire, certainly. Examination proved that they had died by pistol shots. Gilles, taken into custody, his teeth chattering with fear, pointed out the officer who had forcibly been made a member of their party. The man was searched. There were found upon him a spare telephone receiver and a map of the district, together with other evidence proving him a German spy. He had probably been directing the German fire at the moment when Gilles had so inopportunely come upon him. His great reluctance to join the party was explained. During their wild ride he had apparently found time to put a bullet through the head of each of his unsuspecting captors. Whether one of them or he himself had caused his own death, could not be discovered.

“Tell Her Not to Worry”

“Dear Father, guard our gallant men
Within whose hearts is love enshrined,
And bring them safely home again
To those they cannot leave behind!”

Arthur Guiterman.]

THE ROCK OF THE MARNE

The Story of Col. U. G. McAlexander and the Heroic 38th Infantry, Defender’s of the Surmelin Valley, the “Gateway to Paris”

By CAPTAIN J. W. WOOLRIDGE, U. S. Infantry

When two divisions of German shock troops pile up on a regiment of American fighting men, one does not need to be gifted in imagination to see war in all its ramifications and vicissitudes.

I admit that to those of us who participated the picture as a whole is blurred by proximity while spots are multicolored and accentuated into sheets of concentrated lightning.

The historian of the future will view the battle from afar and do much better, particularly as he will not be hampered by individual facts. Therefore we shall tell you the story and not the history of the 38th’s recent unpleasantness.

The scene is laid in that erstwhile heavenly little valley of the Surmelin which finds its resting place on the banks of the River Marne. The semi-mountainous ridges that flank this little valley are wooded with what the French call trees; they are tangled with shrubs and second growths that make for ideal machine-gun nests, as we shall see.

Down in the bosom of the valley meanders the Surmelin river, so called we presume because the French do not know our word “crick.” It is heavily foliaged creek; its value we first recognized in its production of trout through the agency of the festive “OF” grenade tossed into its tiny pools.

This valley is a series of golden wheat fields and garden patches. Not fields as you know them but as the French crofter laboriously cultivates by hand to the limits of one man’s activities—small, though profuse, spots of shining cereal decorated resplendently with carmine red poppies. * * * * *

The maps show this valley to be the gateway to Paris—that is, from the farthest point of the second German drive to the Marne. Would you call it the 38th’s good fortune to be given this gateway to defend? Anyway, the fates so decreed and we were rushed by the fastest means possible from our training billets, with French beds five feet high, at Arc, Cour le Vecque, and Comprey, to stem the tide and thereby block the way to Paris.

The 38th had made some marches before and has since, but none of us will forget when we pulled into the woods back of St. Eugene that last day of our trek. We had revised the tables of field equipment on the way so that when we got there we didn’t bother to spread our blankets. We simply laid down and hoped in a maudlin, disconnected way one of the shells the Germans welcomed us with would make a direct hit and end it all.

The Colonel was right there ahead of us. Nobody ever knows how he does it but he is always ahead of us and we have gotten used to a confident feeling of knowing it’s all right to go anywhere the Colonel is ahead. He warned us about aeroplane observation and gas shells and said, “Be ready for orders to move up!”

Our position was taken without delay on the south bank of the Marne, which is about fifty yards wide and which at that time separated us from the enemy. The Colonel gave orders directly opposite to the “live and let live” principle. “Don’t let anything alive show itself on the other side except those you go over and get for information!”

So we gave them some lessons in rifle fire.

* * * * *

With the French opposite them the Germans had an insulting and cocky way of strolling about their business in plain view at a few hundred yards. The French custom of running themselves ragged trying to hit the enemy with a hand grenade did not appeal to us, so we became, in the German opinion, disgustingly belligerent with our rifles.

Their movements soon after our advent became surreptitious and reptilian. So at night we paddled over in various nondescript flotillas, dug them out of their holes or chased their patrols around a bit—and sometimes got chased back again somewhat the worse for wear. They sprinkled us with H. E.’s and gas and we likewise sprinkled them. It was a great game and we thrived on it.

One dark night a patrol of theirs came over right at the point of a sentry post of ours. As they reached for the bank with a boat-hook a Yank accommodatingly took hold and pulled them in. He said, “Come on over, Fritz. We are waiting for you,” and our men proceeded to pacify one boat load of misdirected Huns.

That sort of thing was our daily, or rather nightly, ration, until prisoners and intelligence officers began to tell a new story. The Boche were preparing for another grand offensive and this time their objective was Paris with no stops.

The French on our right were generous with their warnings and made feverish arrangements for something or other—we thought at the time it was for battle. Aeroplanes and scouts verified this rumor and it looked like business. So the whole thing so far as our sector was concerned—the Gateway to Paris, the Valley of the Surmelin—was put up to the Colonel, U. G. McAlexander, who at once proceeded to make hay while the making was good.

“Rowe, you hold the front line with two companies of your battalion, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, with two companies in their immediate support,” answered Major Rowe, commander of the 2nd Battalion.

“Very well,” said the Colonel. “Thicken the lines by moving one company up. This will give you three company fronts on our sector and your remaining company will entrench themselves in echelon formation, so,” indicating on map with pencil marks the exact position he wished them in. “They will act in close support on the extreme right and also as a right flank rearguard. The weak point on this line is on our right. I don’t believe the French will hold and I shall arrange my regiment to meet that contingency.”

This was a direct statement as usual; no equivocation in the Colonel’s remarks. But we were all greatly surprised, as everybody else had complete confidence in the gallantry of the French division on our right. It was our first introduction to the depth of the man in his preparation for battle. But for his judgment on their instability this would be a requiem, not a story.

The regiment was arranged on advanced and original principles of “formation in depth.” The 2nd Battalion, Major Rowe, as above; then the 1st Battalion, Major Keeley, and the 3rd, Major Lough. The Colonel looked us over individually and collectively, took a rifle to a point near the river in broad daylight, sniped a while as though to challenge the enemy, and said, “Let ’em come.”

* * * * *

The evening of July 14th (1918) came with a darkness you could feel. French crickets cricked in a language we could not understand. Night birds winged their uncertain way in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Frogs croaked and walked—not hopped—after the manner of no other frogs on earth. The Y.M.C.A.—God bless them!—sent chocolates and cigarettes down to the men in the very front lines. The rolling kitchens steamed up in preparation of the boys’ one hot meal per day to be delivered by carrying parties to the front. Company commanders made the usual night reconnaissance of their positions, chatted with the lieutenants and again learned that a plebiscite of the men would produce a reiteration of the Colonel’s “Let ’em come.”

Our artillery lugged over the usual intermittent harrassing fire, but the murmuring pines and whispering hemlocks went A.W.O.L.[1] so far as looking out for the Germans was concerned. For all the noise they made you could hear your eyelashes meet. Their quiet finally became ominous and there was a general stiffening of our cerebral vertebra.

At exactly 12 o’clock it happened.

All the demons of hell and its ally, Germany, were unleashed in a fierce uproar that transcended all bombardments of the past. It thundered and rained shells, H.E.’s shrapnel and gas. They swept our sector as with a giant scythe, and as far back as their guns would reach.

For hours that seemed weeks we huddled in our tiny splinter proofs or open slit trenches in the horrible confusion of it all, but we lovingly patted our, as yet, cold steel and awaited the second shock we knew would come—the shock of bodies, material bodies that we could see, feel and fight—something tangible, so that we could release our mad lust to kill this great snake that was slowly coiling around us, this furious beast that was volcanically tearing at our vitals.

God, what hallucinations under a pounding like that!

Yes, we wanted them to come. We wanted anything to come that we could see, feel, and fight. We wanted to fight, I tell you. Not to lie there on the rocking ground with hell crashing and the devils snatching at our guts, our eyes, our lungs.

What was that in our lungs?

Yes, Damn them, Gas!

They are not satisfied to drench us at long distances with all the steel they can crowd into space but the dirty, ghoulish, primeval Hun racks his warped and tortured brain for a method more becoming the slime and filth of his rotten being.

Well, so be it. We fight him back with his weapons, so on with the gas masks, it’s only a bluff. He can’t come himself in his poison—and he’s coming, he’s coming! It became a song in our hearts—“He’s Coming! He’s Coming!”

* * * * *

We began to brighten perceptibly. Instead of the earth rocking it became the gentle tossing of a languorous, moonlit sea. We leaned our heads in genuine affection against the dirt sides of our little slit trench and began to marvel at its motherly shelter. How they could churn up the whole world and never drop one in! Of course they could not drop one in. They had no brain, the swine.

If a chemist could run them through a Pasteur filter, he would get a trace of intellectual process about the mental grade of the Pithecanthropus erectus!

That’s it. He is shooting away his fireworks in the vain hope of something. Wonder what it is. Anyway, he shot it away for eight hours on our support and reserve lines, but at about 4 o’clock on the morning of the 15th he lifted his general bombardment on the front line and started a rolling barrage, one hundred meters in three minutes.

Behind it, almost hugging it, they came!

God, weren’t we glad to see the grayness of them!

This was more like. Something we could see, feel and fight. And when we say they came we mean two divisions of them.

“When two divisions of German shock troops pile up on a regiment of American fighting men”—Do you remember what we told you!

Well! they piled up, at first with excellent formation and a distribution of machine guns, as bumble bees distribute themselves after the small boy wallops their nest with his handful of switches—all over everywhere.

On the river bank where they came in crowds, boats, and pontoon bridges, it was eye to eye, tooth to tooth, and hand-to-hand. It was a strange silence after the barrage had passed. The tack-tack-tack of machine guns, mounted and firing from boats as they came, and the clash of steel as the bayonets met sounded like a death stillness compared to it.

The lines on the river were fought out completely. The barrage had not reached the railway bank and reënforcements could not be sent to them. They paid the supreme price, but the action delayed the enemy advance so that the organizations in depth could unlimber and meet the advance with the result as stated above—this is a story, not a requiem.

Their barrage got away from them, an unpardonable crime in military science but humanly pardonable when one learns they thought it impossible to be met and fought on the river bank.

* * * * *

Our line of resistance was the Metz-Paris Railway. The embankment is some nine feet high with tiny slit trenches on the forward edge but not sufficiently forward to be on the military crest. When the Boche started their advance across the wheat fields intervening, some five hundred yards, this embankment became a living thing and American Springfields began to laugh in their faces.

That wasn’t fair. They had been assured with all German sangfroid that there would be no resistance after their barrage. But those were shock troops brought from afar with orders. “To Paris. No Stop-overs.”

Though their brains became loose-leaf ledgers with no index and the Kaiser became a more ghastly figure, they were fighters. I should say, professional soldiers. So they came on. We admit they looked like the whole German army and we had to wonder if the little old Springfield would keep on laughing. We had been warned of a big offensive, but we did not know the Boche thought our front was like a city park, free for all.

The Springfield did keep on laughing and after covering about half the distance they were transferred from a soldiers’ maneuver column into a German military omelet. However, their machine guns had infiltrated through the high wheat and covered our front as flies cover spilled molasses.

The rest hit the ground and continued their advance in a more becoming manner, like a mole. They wriggled themselves, many of them to the very foot of the railway embankment, where they were safe from our fire for the above mentioned reason. They rested, then charged the crest, were hurled back; rested, threw stick grenades and charged some more, but never successfully, until the splendid heroes of that line joined their comrades of the river bank, joined them on that long journey to that land which knows no war.

Then came the supporting troops from their immediate rear in a charge to which history will never do justice. They couldn’t come before, as there is only room for a certain number to fight on the forward edge. To the Germans on the embankment the Kaiser must have taken on a more material aspect; they saw visions of Paris, but visions only, which disappeared like mist in the sunshine.

It was not sunshine that hit them. No. It was an earthquake. San Francisco one April morning of 1906 had nothing on that shock which must have been felt back in the Reichstag. Bayonets, rifle butts, fists and teeth. Our boys in khaki were overwhelmed by numbers in gray.

But the McAlexander spirit; that is God-given and Heaven-sent!

The Colonel had said, “Let ’em come.” Well, here they are, and God, the joy of it all!

* * * * *

Did you ever turn yourself loose in a mad passion that knew no limit? Were you ever blinded by blood and lust to kill and let yourself go in a crowd where you could feel their bodies crumble and sink to the depths below you, then brace yourself on them, and destroy, destroy, destroy!

I hope not, but we did—and what do numbers amount to against spirit? In San Francisco the earthquake subsided and we were left to contemplate and ponder. There was no subsiding of these seismic demons of Colonel Ulysses Grant McAlexander, once they had their orders. We were to hold that railroad. Did we hold it, Go down there and count the German graves. Six hundred before one company alone. Ask the prisoners, pens of them, why they didn’t fulfil their mission. They don’t know just what happened, but whatever it was, it was awful, colossal.

Sir, they did not even take the first line of resistance of the 38th. An officer, later captured, stated that only twelve of the 6th Grenadiers, the Kaiser’s favorite Prussian shock troops, returned to their side of the Marne.

Yes, back they went, and they stood not upon the manner of their going, although I will say their machine guns covered their retreat to the limit of their ability. Without their usual “nest” arrangement they were comparatively easy picking for us. For instance, during the retreat Corporal Newell with his squad augmented by two men went down into the field and captured five guns, killing or capturing their crews.

* * * * *

During the heat of battle one lone private crawled down the embankment through the wheat to the flank of a machine-gun crew who were too busy on their front to know where his shots were coming from. He picked off seven Germans and dragged the gun back with him. These incidents are not typical, but they serve to illustrate the many, many remarkable individual feats of heroism of the 38th, under the stress of battle.

No grander man lived than Lieutenant Kenneth P. Murray, killed in a flank attack which started in a line from the railway to the church in Mézy, drove in one hundred and eighty-five prisoners, but from which only three returned, the company commander and two privates. Lieutenant Mercer M. Phillips died on the railway with a blood-dripping bayonet on the rifle in his hands. Lieutenant David C. Calkins, whose troops blocked the enemy’s progress at the river edge until the barrage passed and those in his support could get into action, made the supreme sacrifice.

Many, many other splendid souls, born leaders of brave men, joined the great majority with a smile on their lips and pistols empty.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank H. Adams, that great soldier with a lion’s heart, and yet who led his command by an irresistible personal magnetism, by precept and example and never an unkind word—that big, handsome, he-fighter won the Distinguished Service Cross by standing in the way of a whole regiment, not one that he had any direct connection with, but one nearby that was practically routed by the shock the 38th stood and fought back. He brought comparative order out of chaos and succeeded in getting them in a support position.

We could mention hundreds of great deeds by great men on that day, but this is a story of the 38th, not of the indomitable spirits that go to make it up, or we would never reach the end.

* * * * *

At 10 o’clock, on the 15th, our front was fairly cleared and we were beginning to feel that it was a great day, when something else happened. Can you, who were not with us, imagine how a prohibitionist feels on a yachting party? Completely surrounded by hell and damnation and can’t get off.

The enemy had penetrated to our left like the boll weevil through a Southerner’s cotton patch and fortified himself with minenwerfers, machine guns and barbed wire. They did not penetrate to our right. No, they simply walked over and wondered how much of a hike it was to Paris. We were then aware of the reason for “Feverish preparations on the part of the French on our right.”

Do you remember what we told you? We thought it was to fight, but evidently no such idea ever marred the sweet thoughts of the 131st. Say what you please, make any defense you like. They weren’t there. And that’s the business we have in hand just now. They weren’t there. Whence they came or whither they went we know not. A. W. O. L. most likely, but that is neither here nor there.

On the morning of July 15, 1918, when Colonel McAlexander was hurling battalion after battalion of the 38th into the Surmelin valley, the Gateway to Paris, and out-fighting, out-maneuvering, out-generaling the Kaiser’s favorites, there were no friendly troops on our right where they had been on the evening of the 14th.

However, thank God for a real soldier’s instinct. The Colonel had anticipated and was prepared to meet a right flank attack. Good old Captain Reid was there to meet them when they tried to consolidate their line through our regiment. He met them first with rifle fire, then with the bayonet, and finally with butts. He fought them all over the ridge and down on every side except our side. He never let them set foot on our sector of the Marne and though it cost him nearly his entire command he was there when fresher troops could get to him for relief.

On the left we repulsed a heavy rear attack and a light flank attack with a handful of the most exhausted troops in France—old “G” company reduced to fifty-two men from two hundred and fifty-one—taking up new positions and fighting off ten to one is a picture that will ever live in the memory of the 38th.

Major Rowe made desperate efforts to reinforce, but the Boche, just at that place, had us under direct fire of Austrian 88’s, German 77’s, and one pounders. You know what direct fire means. Effective forces can’t be sent against it, that’s all.

* * * * *

So, for three days we fought on our flanks, for three days the German high command gave us all they had in their desperation to open the gateway. The Colonel received an order. “Fall back if you think best.”

After a long, hard day, the voice of the bugle was a welcome sound to the ears of the tired soldiers.]

He answered, “Is it up to my decision?”

The answer: “Yes.”

The Colonel’s answer: “Then I hold my lines!”

God, what a world of torture and yet solace in that answer! What a world of pain and joy! We were shot to ribbons, cut to small sections, unfed, and oh, so tired; but the drive would never have stopped once they consolidated their lines through the 38th.

It was Paris for them and a terrible defeat for us if we withdrew and gave them the little Surmelin valley. The Colonel had been studying the attack orders taken from captured German officers and knew as no one else knew what it meant to fall back.

He was there for a soldier’s purpose and did a soldier’s duty. He paid an awful price, made sacrifices of officers and men that tore his heart to pieces. But he held the Gateway to Paris and not only that, drove them back across the Marne and _followed them across_.

Believe it or not, it was an absolute physical impossibility, but we went right on after them and fought them again at Jaulgonne—still nobody on our right, mind you—where for several days and several nights it steadily rained and where for the same length of time we hammered them with shot and bayonet until they fell back with such impetus that our next big battle was at Fismes on the River Vesle.

One soldier was heard to remark: “I don’t see any more prisoners coming in. I wonder what can be the matter?”

Second soldier: “Didn’t you hear the Colonel say he had all the information he needed?”

There are not many of us left of the old 38th. There has been considerable talk in French circles about “Regiment d’elite,” “unconquerable tenacity,” and the like. Yes, our flag is to be decorated with the Croix de Guerre and it is generally recognized in high French command that “McAlexander’s defense was peculiarly American in conception, plan and execution.” You see we have been under French command and our deeds have not been recounted at home. All the glory goes to the High Command.

Things like this though, we keep close to our hearts:

27 July, 1918.

General Order I.
(From the Field.)
To the Officers and Men of the
38th U. S. Infantry.

The Colonel commanding the regiment wishes to praise you for the heroic manner in which you took your baptism of fire on July 15, 1918, upon the banks of the Marne. No regiment in the history of our nation has ever shown a finer spirit or performed a greater deed.

Let us cherish within our hearts the memory of our fallen comrades. Salute them! Then forward!

MCALEXANDER.

And look at this for an official report and try to remember if in all history such a feat was ever before accomplished:

Headquarters, 38th U. S. Infantry.
A. P. O. 740, France, 8 August, 1918.

From: Commanding Officer, 38th U. S. Infantry.
To: The Adjutant General, U. S. Army.
(Through Military Channels.)
Subject: Capture of Prisoners from Three German
Divisions.

1. In the second battle of the Marne, July 15-23, 1918, the 38th U. S. Infantry was attacked on the south bank of the Marne, July 15-18, by two German divisions, and it captured prisoners from each of their regiments, namely:

{ 6th Grenadier Guards
10th Division { 47th Infantry
{ 398th Infantry

{ 5th Grenadier Guards
36th Division { 128th Infantry
{ 175th Infantry

2. On July 22, 1918, this regiment attacked the 10th Division Landwehr on the north bank of Marne and captured prisoners from its three regiments, namely:

{ 372nd Infantry
10th Division Landwehr { 377th Infantry
{ 378th Infantry

3. It is believed that the capture of prisoners from nine enemy regiments during nine days of battle constitutes a record justifying a report to the War Department.

4. Identification of twenty-one separate and distinct regimental and other units were secured from enemy positions in front of this regiment.

U. G. MCALEXANDER,
Colonel, 38th U. S. Infantry.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Military abbreviation for “absent without leave.”

AMERICA’S HIGHEST WAR HONOR

The 78 Soldiers Who Won the Congressional Medal of Honor for an Act of Supreme Courage

England’s most coveted reward for heroism in battle is the Victoria Cross. France gives her _Médaille Militaire_; Germany, her Iron Cross.

There has been little need of war medals in the United States, but with the entrance of this country into the war Congress established its medal of honor—called by its full title, The Congressional Medal of Honor.

This decoration is given only to those who achieve an act of supreme courage, or, as “General Orders” have it, to those who in action “have fought with conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty.”

Seventy-eight of the 1,200,000 men in the A. E. F. received these awards. Fifty-seven of this number were enlisted men, twenty-one were officers. Nineteen awards were posthumous. For every 15,400 soldiers who were in action one received the Congressional Medal.

The best showing was made by the 30th Division, the National Guard organization of the Carolinas and Tennessee. Second honors go to the 89th Division, which is the selective draft unit of Western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, and New Mexico. The third largest is the 33rd or National Guard Division of Illinois. Fourth honors go to the famous 2nd Division of Regulars, which includes the Marines, while fifth place is shared by the two New York divisions, the 27th and 77th. The list follows:

1ST DIVISION

_Colyer, Wilbur E., Sergeant_, Co. A, 1st Engineers, 1st Division, Ozone Park, L. I.—Verdun, France, Oct. 9, 1918. Volunteering with two other soldiers to locate machine-gun nests, Sergeant Colyer advanced on the hostile positions to a point where he was half surrounded by the nests, which were in ambush. He killed the gunner of one gun with a captured German grenade and then turned this gun on the other nests, silencing all of them before he returned to his platoon. He was later killed in action.

* * * * *

_Ellis, Michael B., Sergeant_, Co. C, 28th Infantry, 1st Division, East St. Louis, Ill.—Exermont, France, Oct. 5, 1918. During the entire day’s engagement he operated far in advance of the first wave of his company, voluntarily undertaking most dangerous missions and single-handed attacking and reducing machine-gun nests. Flanking one emplacement, he killed two of the enemy with rifle fire and captured seventeen others. Later he single-handed advanced under heavy fire and captured twenty-seven prisoners, including two officers and six machine guns, which had been holding up the advance of the company. The captured officers indicated the locations of four other machine guns, and he in turn captured these, together with their crews, at all times showing marked heroism and fearlessness.

2ND DIVISION

_Bart, Frank J., Private_, Co. C, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, Newark, N. J.—Médéah Farm, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Private Bart, being on duty as a company runner, when the advance was held up by machine-gun fire voluntarily picked up an automatic rifle, ran out ahead of the line, and silenced a hostile machine-gun nest, killing the German gunners. The advance then continued, and, when it was again hindered shortly afterward by another machine-gun nest, this courageous soldier repeated his bold exploit by putting the second machine gun out of action.

* * * * *

_Cukela, Louis, First Lieutenant_, 5th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Minneapolis, Minn.—Villers-Cotterets, France, July 18, 1918. When his company, advancing through a wood, met with strong resistance from an enemy strong point, Lieutenant Cukela (then Sergeant) crawled out from the flank and made his way toward the German lines in the face of heavy fire, disregarding the warnings of his comrades. He succeeded in getting behind the enemy position and rushed a machine-gun emplacement, killing or driving off the crew with his bayonet. With German hand grenades he then bombed out the remaining portion of the strong point, capturing four men and two damaged machine guns.

* * * * *

_Hoffman, Charles F., Gunnery Sergeant_, 5th Regiment Marines, Second Division, Brooklyn, N. Y.—Château-Thierry, France, June 6, 1918. Immediately after the company to which he belonged had reached its objective on Hill 142, several hostile counter-attacks were launched against the line before the new position had been consolidated. Sergeant Hoffman was attempting to organize a position on the north slope of the hill when he saw twelve of the enemy, armed with five light machine guns, crawling toward his group. Giving the alarm, he rushed the hostile detachment, bayoneted the two leaders, and forced the others to flee, abandoning their guns. His quick action, initiative, and courage drove the enemy from a position from which they could have swept the hill with machine-gun fire and forced the withdrawal of our troops.

* * * * *

_Kocak, Matej, Sergeant_, Co. C, 5th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Albany, N. Y.—Soissons, France, July 18, 1918. When the advance of his battalion was checked by a hidden machine-gun nest he went forward alone, unprotected by covering fire from his own men, and worked in between the German position in the face of fire from an enemy covering detachment. Locating the machine-gun nest, he rushed it, and with his bayonet drove off the crew. Shortly after this he organized twenty-five French colonial soldiers who had become separated from their company, and led them in attacking another machine-gun nest, which was also put out of action.

Immediately after the ceremonies incident to the naming of the “Avenue du President Wilson.”]

* * * * *

_Kelly, John Joseph, Private_, 6th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Chicago, Ill.—Blanc Mont Ridge, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Private Kelly ran through our own barrage 100 yards in advance of the front line, and attacked an enemy machine-gun nest, killing the gunner with a grenade, shooting another member of the crew with his pistol, and returned through the barrage with eight prisoners.

* * * * *

_Van Iersal, Louis, Sergeant_, Co. M, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, Newark, N. Y.—Mouzon, France, Nov. 9, 1918. While a member of the reconnoissance patrol sent out at night to ascertain the condition of a damaged bridge, Sergeant Van Iersal volunteered to lead a party across the bridge in the face of heavy machine-gun and rifle fire from a range of only 75 yards. Crawling alone along the débris of the ruined bridge, he came upon a trap, which gave away and precipitated him into the water. In spite of the swift current, he succeeded in swimming across the stream, and found a lodging place among the timbers on the opposite bank. Disregarding the enemy fire, he made a careful investigation of the hostile position by which the bridge was defended and then returned to the other bank of the river, reporting this valuable information to the battalion commander.

* * * * *

_Pruitt, John H., Corporal_, 78th Co., 6th Regiment of Marines, 2nd Division, Phoenix, Ariz.—Blanc Mont Ridge, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Corporal Pruitt single-handed attacked two machine guns, capturing them and killing two of the enemy. He then captured forty prisoners in a dugout near by. This gallant soldier was killed soon afterward by shell fire while he was sniping at the enemy.

3RD DIVISION

American locomotive builders assembling an engine in shops behind the battle lines.]

_Barkley, John L., Private, first class_, Company K, 4th Infantry, 3rd Division, Blairstown, Mo.—Cunel, France, Oct. 7, 1918. Private Barkley, who was stationed in an observation post half a kilometer from the German line, on his own initiative repaired a captured enemy machine gun and mounted it in a disabled French tank near his post. Shortly afterward, when the enemy launched a counter-attack against our forces, Private Barkley got into the tank, waited under the hostile barrage until the enemy line was abreast of him, and then opened fire, completely breaking up the counter-attack and killing and wounding a large number of the enemy. Five minutes later an enemy 77-millimeter gun opened fire on the tank point blank. One shell struck the driver wheel of the tank, but this soldier, nevertheless, remained in the tank; and after the barrage ceased broke up a second enemy counter-attack, thereby enabling our forces to gain and hold Hill 253.

* * * * *

_Hays, George Price, First Lieutenant_, 10th Field Artillery, 3rd Division, Okarchee, Okla.—Grèves Farm, France, July 14-15, 1918. At the very outset of the unprecedented artillery bombardment by the enemy of July 14-15, 1918, his line of communication was destroyed beyond repair. Despite the hazard attached to the mission of runner, he immediately set out to establish contact with the neighboring post of command; and, further established liaison with two French batteries, visiting their position so frequently that he was mainly responsible for the accurate fire therefrom. While thus engaged, seven horses were shot under him and he was severely wounded. His activity, under most severe fire was an important factor in checking the advance of the enemy.

5TH DIVISION