March 24, 1918 - A Sunday spent in Neufchateau with fellow war correspondents

Don Martin diary entry for Sunday, March 24, 1918: 

Palm Sunday 

Hung around Neufchateau all day. Great excitement over report from Paris that Germans had bombarded the city with a gun from nearest point in Germany, 75 miles away. Frenchmen around the Lafayette Club much exercised. 

National Archives Photo No. 165-WW-255A-7, 4-26-1918

Went for walk about Neufchateau. Had dinner at the club with Floyd Gibbons of Chicago Tribune. Beat him half dozen games checkers. He was determined to go to Paris to get his wife out of the city. I almost went with him but concluded it would be unwise. Went to bed about midnight. No letters from home.

German offensive, talked about so long, has started in vicinity of Cambrai. Pessimistic reports tonight.

Weather excellent.

          Don Martin wrote a dispatch dated Sunday on the shelling he had observed on March 20. It was cabled and published in the New York Herald on Monday, March 25, 1918.

American Artillerymen Under Terrific Fire

Show Calmness of Veterans

Stick by Their Guns Amid Shower of Bursting Shells Until Battery Is Wiped Out—Heroism Arouses French Instructors, Who Bestow War Crosses on Five

By DON MARTIN

[Special Despatch to the Herald via Commercial Cable Company System]

AMERICAN FRONT in France, Sunday

     American batteries under a terrific fire by the enemy have demonstrated their mettle in a glorious manner to their commanding officers, their French instructors and all their associates. In an action, following which several were decorated by the French government for extreme bravery, the American soldiers remained as calm as veterans.

     I was in a small village in the Lorraine sector talking with an officer and watching shells dropping in the vicinity of our batteries nearby and wondering why the town was let alone when it could be so easily reached by the enemy shells when the officer there said there was no reason except a sort of unwritten understanding.

     But just then an under officer rushed up, panting but calm, saying that gas shells were dropping nearby and the range was nearing the town and that telephone connection had been destroyed.

     A shell smashed at the end of the street just then, only a few hundred feet away from us, reducing a building to ruins. Dozens of other shells banged all around the end of the village, hitting a cemetery. It was the first time the place had been under fire.

Batteries Encompassed

     Soon the batteries on a hill close by were encompassed by exploding shells. More than a thousand shells dropped in the village in a short period and several small buildings were powdered and fragments scattered all over the village.

     All except those needed for duty in the village streamed our to the fields, leaving the town virtually unoccupied.

     I heard a Frenchman playing selections from “Tosca” on his violin during the bombardment. He sat near the window of a building he had used as a billet, the exploding shells providing a banging accompaniment for his instrument.

     A dozen other Frenchmen and Americans nonchalantly played cards while shells boomed and crashed all around them. As we watched the bombardment I talked with several Americans. They certainly are the cool ones. All they wanted, they said, was a chance to get back at the Huns. Seven of them then left to go to one of the batteries under the heaviest fire. They know no fear whatever.

     After it had been decided to leave twenty horses to their fate, they being where shell fire was swiftest and deadliest, a sergeant approached the officer to whom I was talking and said:--

     “I can get them out, sir.”

     He was not ordered to do so, but he got those horses to safety. It was a splendid demonstration of coolness.

     The American soldiers who are having their baptism of fire are glad to be with the French veterans and they work perfectly with them.

Americans Make a Raid

     Members of the American force made a raid Wednesday night, following a long barrage fire. They went over the top in good shape, but the German trenches wee deserted, the long and heavy fire of the allied barrage having driven everything out of the German positions. No American was hurt on that occasion.

     All the American batteries are immensely [leased by the decoration of some of their men for bravery while under fire. Their bravery is typical of the entire American contingent.

     Corporal Alexander B. Burns, an American, was decorated with the French War Cross for bravery, but died before word of the honor could be conveyed to him.

While his battery was under fire he was sent out to repair a broken telephone line. A shell splinter struck the wire he held in his fingers. Paying no attention to this, he finished the job while shell splinters fell all about. Later he repeated the performance just as heroically, but got twenty-five wounds from a bursting shell, dying a few hours later.

     Honors for bravery were also given Lance Corporal Louis Holmes and Sergeant Frank Hickman of the same battery, five and six shells a minute being rained on their battery, but they stuck to the job and kept firing till German guns silenced both. Private Hickman and Private J. H. Mosely, of the same battery, who also received the honor, distinguished themselves by dashing through a shell swept region, helping to put out a fire in a neighboring trench battery. The French commander personally reported that the men acted with rare courage and perseverance. Private Hickman was badly hurt.