April 5, 1918 - Don Martin reports Germans are targeting American troops with artillery

Don Martin diary entry for Friday, April 5, 1918: 

Went to Toul and Nancy with [Edwin] James [New York Times]. Looked around both towns quite a bit, particularly Nancy which is very beautiful and terribly battered from the Hun air raids.

Correspondents told that the 3 Association men may go with the First Division headquarters and that the other men may be accredited to the various regiments – must, in fact, be like staff officers subject to same rules as other officers. This sounds all right to me except I don’t like idea of being limited to one regiment, and hardly see my way clear to go unless I get some word from [Commodore] Bennett.

Weather delightful but showery in p.m.
        Here is Don Martin's letter of attachment to the 6th Artillery.

        Don Martin wrote a letter to Dorothy on April 5 from Neufchateau, mostly personal things, but including the following about his interaction with the war.

My dear Dorothy:

... I have seen quite a bit of the smaller side of the war, but couldn’t get up to the big battle as only two American correspondents were allowed there and they had been at the front for a long time. Maybe later I shall get to the British and French fronts. ... There are no farmhouses in France. The farmers all live in little villages with one street, no yards and a big church, always very old. Every day, if I go to Nancy, as I frequently do, I pass a church 800 years old. Services are held in it every Sunday. I don’t think a single of all the churches I have seen was built after 1700. I have seen some very cute children along the country roads where they sit while their mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers work at ploughing, planting or gathering dandelion greens. Their fathers are never around. They are all in the war or dead.

Yesterday I spent two hours in a prison for Germans. One of the Germans could speak English. They live well enough. In one of their long wooden buildings where they sleep, they have a small stage where they give comedies. You see Dorothy by using automobiles we can cover a great deal of country and we go somewhere every day where the American soldiers are guarding the line against the Germans. I certainly have learned a great deal I never dreamed of about the detail of war.

Dad

      Don Martin cabled on April 5 a story about the Germans targeting American troops, published in the New York Herald on Saturday, April 6, 1918.

HUNS DETERMINED TO SMASH EVERY AMERICAN SECTOR

Bombardments Show Intent to Crush Lines Wherever Troops Appear

By DON MARTIN

[Special despatch to the Herald via Commercial Cable Company’s System]

AMERICAN FRONT IN FRANCE, Friday

        That the Germans intend to attack every section of the battle line in which American forces appear is indicated by bombardments of a severe character that have developed in the sector on the Meuse Heights, south of Verdun, which the Americans have just taken over.

        The raid on an American listening post at that point yesterday followed the first bombardment by the Germans. Four men were in the listening post when there was a furious rain of shells all about them as well as back of the American first line trenches.

        While the shelling was in progress a force of Germans attacked the Americans with great fury and a hand to hand fight resulted. Meantime a barrage had been started by the American batteries and the Boches hurried back to their own line.

        Heavy shelling all along this new sector held by the Americans tends to bear out the report that the Germans are preparing for activity wherever Americans appear in the line.