Don Martin diary entry for Sunday, April 21, 1918:
Left
early with Gregg and pest Adams for Boucq to get story of the battle of the
Americans. Told by army authorities we had won big victory but later learned
Germans captured 178 of our men prisoners and killed a good many. French
apparently came to aid of the New Englanders who look pretty good but who
certainly are nothing like their ancestors. Looks like a rather sad blow for
our prestige. Returned early and wrote column each for New York and Paris. More
trouble with the censors. Got telegram from Commodore saying he had taken steps
to have me accredited and that after that he wants me to go wherever I think
best.
Weather
cold and raw. Rainy in forenoon.
There was big news in the Monday, April 22, 1918, edition of the New York Herald. Showcased on page one of Section 2 were articles by the three Herald special war correspondents: Percival Phillips on the British front, Herman Bernstein on the Russian front and Don Martin on the French/American front. Here are the headlines of the first two, and Don Martin's article.
BELGIANS SAVED BRITISH FROM A FLANK ATTACK ABOVE YPRES,
FRUSTRATING DEADLY BLOW
By PERCIVAL PHILLIPS,
Special Correspondent of
the Herald with the British Armies in France
---------
HUNS RAPIDLY PUSHING MOVE ON PETROGRAD
By HERMAN BERNSTEIN
-----
GERMAN
TROOPS FORCED BACK WITH HEAVY LOSSES AFTER RAID INTO THE AMERICAN TRENCHES
Meet Steady Resistance Which Astonished
Them and Finally Lose the Village of Seicheprey, Which the Americans Recapture
and Pursue Foe to Their Own Line, Re-establishing Their Original Positions
By DON MARTIN
[Special
cable to the Herald]
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE,
Sunday
American
soldiers take the battle much the same as a football game. Losses, of course,
are more serious, but they cause no dismay on the part of the Americans, who
say it’s too bad about some, but they did their best and “that’s the spirit of
all as things go in the greatest world war.”
The engagement to-day and yesterday was
only an incident, but to Americans it was vital because it was their first real
baptism of fire. The boys themselves wondered how they would stand up under the
fierce shower of shrapnel, gas and rifle and they now know. They met many
situations (four words deleted), acquitted themselves with credit and now find
they have nothing to fear in individual encounters with the Boche. The team
work from top to bottom was flawless, and there was no sign of wavering or
indecision.
The Germans tried every device of battle
on the American troops, including a steady flow of drenching gas.
- - - - -
The
Americans were steady at all times. When ordered to retire in order to get a
better grip on the situation they took up the new position skillfully, rallied
at the proper time and let loose their fullest energy, retaking a village the
Germans apparently had expected to hold. The conduct of the troops brought the
hearty approval of their superiors (eleven words deleted).
Germans Fail to Bore Hole
in Line
The action started at dawn yesterday and
is continuing intermittently still. It shows, in the estimation of many, that
the Germans are determined to bole a hole in the line held by the Americans.
While the engagement, which amounted to a
gigantic raid, continued, with shells bursting over the landscape, I stood
watching from an eminence. I saw French farmers, long accustomed to cannonading
and all that, ploughing nonchalantly,
while women and children working in the fields, almost in the shadow of the
flare of cannon, paid no attention to the fighting.
Holding on courageously under the terrific
barrage of gas and heavy explosive shells, the troops of Uncle Sam yielded
ground to the twelve hundred picked shock troops, only to rally when the
opportunity came to fight in the open. They drove the Germans back practically
to the point from which they started, beyond the village which is a shattered
and charred ruin from the battles of former days of the war and which was
occupied by the Americans.
When the German shock troops swept over
the outposts to the first line trenches, following a mighty barrage lasting an
hour, they found the village deserted, for it would have been foolishness for
the Americans to try to hold it.
The Americans put their artillery into
full action and drove the Huns to the woods near the village. Finally with
grenades and rifles, in old fashioned fighting, they drove them to the
outskirts of the village and from there over the second line trenches and then
back to the first, where, as this despatch is being written, the fight is still
raging, with the Americans showing up better than the Germans at every stage.
Americans’ Resistance
Astonishes Hums
There have been losses on both sides but
the Germans suffered heavier than the Americans. Prisoners taken by the
Americans expressed astonishment at the vigor of the resistance and the skill
with grenades and rifles of the Americans. The Germans expected to sweep
straight through the American line and make an important dent prior, possibly,
to a heavy assault on this end of the line and at the same time to attack, in a
small raid, an American sector further north. No Americans were taken prisoner.
The highest tributes for valor by the
Americans in action were paid to the men on the right flank, who virtually
surrounded by Germans, scorned a demand to surrender. They fought the Germans
to a standstill, driving a way through to safety. That was but one of a hundred
incidents of a brilliant character marking a battle which, beginning at dawn,
raged all day in the first sunshine of weeks.
- - - - -
Ireland’s flag has gone over the top into the German trenches and now is
framed for shipment back home for the archives of a historic military
organization in the United States.
The
boy who carried it on its perilous but successful journey has a name as Irish
as the bit of bunting he unfurled from a bayonet as he started over the top
with forty comrades to make a raid on a German trench.
The assault occurred several days ago,
resulting in several Boche prisoners and several German dead. There were no
American casualties. As the Irish American boy tied the tiny bit of green his
father gave him in America to his bayonet he said that if he came back the
green bunting would too. He was a pretty proud youngster.
“Dad gave me that flag when we sailed,” he
said. “I kept it close to me and thought that on the first time over the top
I’d carry it along. It got caught in the
wire, was torn some and was covered with German mud, but it’s the same old
green flag Dad handed to me, and it’s going back.”
 |
| Men Going Over The Top (National Archives photo no. 111-SC-101, France, July 1918) |
Another inspirational article for the folks back home by Don Martin. His articles featured good headlines and very long bylines. He doesn’t do much quoting of sources for his article but clearly states it is information he collected. Maybe there was too much red tape or problems with censors that made him avoid naming sources. His diary is great at identifying people he doesn’t like or respect. If I get ambitious I might try to find the articles written by Bernstein and Phillips to compare their writing style with Don’s style ........Regarding censors: During WWII, my Scottish Grandfather and I corespondent via V mail. Both the the British PO and theUSPS had forms the you wrote on and folded up. They were opened up by censors , edited, then then micro photographed with other letters and flown across the Atlantic. On several occasions my Grandfathers letters would arrive with just a salutation to me and a closing Ifound out later that he had described a German Air raid dropping bumps on his village on the East Coast from bombs left over from a raid on Glasgow. I shared the same disdain for Censors as Don
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