| Chapter 1 |
Training for the Trenches We found our Company quartered in an old hunting house that had been used by some rich French nobleman while on his hunting trips. It brought back to me memories of a similar rustic ranch-house my father had built many years ago in the pine hills of old Louisiana. Here we remained for ten days receiving individual instructions which are given to all soldiers without exception, and final training before being sent to the trenches. Here, through lectures and study, we were taught the principles of military education, from which springs bravery, fortitude, self-reliance, discipline and true devotion to one's duty. And, there was military law with its stern penalities, for those who did nothbey. Our drills which continued daily were made up of diversified exercises as tend to develop agility, accuracy and personal bravery of the soldier, such as crossing barbed wire entanglements, shell holes and obstacles of all kinds. Each day we had a full rehearsal on the tactical employment of various weapons, such as the automatic rifle, hand grenade, trench defense weapons and bayonet practice in every possible position. Our study of conventional signals also occupied a part of our time. We had rock walls to build, hikes with full packs on a fifteen mile stretch, while detail work took up almost every spare moment we had. Our food was scant, oftentimes a full meal consisted of just a spoonfull of beans, a piece of dry bread and coffee without sugar barely sufficient to keep a man alive under such conditions. On September 22nd new orders came regarding replacement men for another Division on the front. Immediately a selection of four hundred from our 39th Division was made and ordered to move at once. I was one of the four hundred chosen. We were given a careful examination and had a complete field inspection under the most trying weather conditions to test our physical endurance. I still remember how soaking wet and shivering cold we were, and my feelings when I realized that we would soon be at the front. The next morning at four o'clock we bade farewell to our company and solemnly marched out under the pale moonlight, our old comrades yelling farewell and wishing us good luck. We were the first contingent out of the old 39th Division to go to the front and were mostly Southern boys. Whit was to be sent to a training camp, and how we hated to part from each other. To remain with me a little longer, he got permission to join us in our fourteen mile hike. After a long and tiresome tramp we reached the French town of Saint Florence, which was our destination. I shall never forget our parting words. "Matt," he said, "if you come back and I don't, will you 'bring back' a message for me?" "And Whit," I said "if you come back and I don't, tell 'her' that her soldier boy was true to her - and, Whit, once more, tell mother in consoling words the sacrifice was one of honor and duty bound." Thus we parted; Whit going back his way, and I, I knew not where - somewhere to the front, into the 'Valley of Death'. We remained on the field three days, having pitched our pup tents on the open ground of mud and water. I was placed on guard duty four hours on a stretch, working night and day, in pouring rains and bitter north winds. It was here that we were issued our gas masks and steel helmets, thus completing our fighting equipment for the front. We were also given our final instructions as to the use of the mask, by means of a gas chamber provided for this purpose and were fully impressed that one minute too late in adjusting the mask meant instant death to the soldier. In the early evening of September 23rd, leaving St. Florence we entrained again in box cars, some of us riding second class, some third class, some in cars marked Chevaux 8-Hommes 40- which means the box car carries eight horses or forty men. We traveled along for three days and nights. The third day at a station where we had stopped, we were told to go no further as the Germans were shelling the country ahead of us. For the first time we could hear in the distance the roar of the enemy's guns indicating we were soon to be in the midst of the world's greatest battle – the war of all nations. My brother Jack's birthday had been on the day previous, the 25th, just a boy of 18, two years my junior. How I longed to be with him on that day! I had written him a letter and wondered if he had ever received it! After a bite of salmon, bread and coffee we prepared for our hike to the front. We were given strict orders to carry our masks and wear our steel helmets at all times from now on, as we were entering the danger zone leading to the front line. We loaded our packs on trucks and started on our first long hike of eighteen miles - some distance to propel one's self on foot. It was on this hike that we came face to face with the real horror and destruction of modern warfare as it is carried on by the latest inventions. All along the roadside lay hundreds and hundreds of cannon shells of all sizes and kinds, some were piled in camouflage along the road, others scattered in the brush and fields. Then we passed miles and miles of barbed wire and spike entanglements, fastened to sharp pointed rods driven in the ground, which were used to halt the invading Huns in the event they should break through the front lines. Farther up the road, where a few weeks before the fight had been raging, were hundreds of old rifles, bayonets, parts of cannon and a number of German guns. Here also were dug-outs the doughboys had constructed in the ground. Bordering the roadside were curtains, as high as 25 feet, made of brush and bushes worked and lashed together and fastened upright to poles in the ground as a protection from the enemy during the movement of troops and guns. |