Don Martin diary entry for Wednesday, July 24, 1918:
Went out with [Edwin] James [New
York Times]. Visited corps headquarters of the 1st
corps which is not very far back of the line. Then went to the 26th
division. Saw many towns which have been shot to pieces. Also went over some of
the battlefields where I saw plenty of dead, German and American. Guns, graves,
helmets, other ghastly relics everywhere. Spent couple hours in Chateau Thierry
to see what the Germans did in the fine residences they occupied. Found they
had wantonly destroyed furniture and everything else in magnificent dwellings.
No doubt the Huns are Huns. Wrote 300 word cable on the vandalism and 600 cable
on the situation generally. Also wrote considerable for Paris. Germans still
retreating from the Soissons-Marne-Reims salient. I expect about tomorrow or on
next day they will stop when a great battle will start. Americans are coming
rapidly to the front and will be a big factor. Without them the war would be
lost to the Germans.
Don Martin was able to report on July 24 that the German Kaiser had been in Château-Thierry just after the Germans had occupied it in June. The New York Herald published this report in a black-lined box on July 25.
KAISER WAS AT CHÂTEAU-THIERRY
TO SEE HIS SON OFF FOR PARIS
By DON MARTIN
Special Correspondent
of the Herald with the American Armies in France
[Special Cable to the
Herald]
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE, Wednesday
It was reported to me to-day that
the Kaiser was in Château-Thierry on June 2, two days after the German hordes
in their great push southward entered the place. He proposed then to watch the
start of what was intended by the German high command to be the triumphant
march on Paris along the Paris-Metz road.
I am informed that his staff
accompanied him and that the event was cause of a great celebration among the
Germans.
The Germans are retreating
northward far above Château-Thierry, leaving many dead, large numbers of guns
and great quantities of ammunition and paraphernalia along the roadside,
abandoning it as they retreat.
There is no question that the great
crisis of the war has been reached. The French, Americans and British are
continuing their tremendous artillery attacks against the enemy.
The Germans are drawing a score of
divisions from the British front in the north, where they intended to make a
drive late in July. They hope that they will be able with the aid of these
divisions to check the allied onrush.
It will be a long time before the
enemy will be able to start another giant offensive. The German military genius
has been eclipsed by General Foch and General Petain.
Don Martin, now in the thick of the war, tried to do his best to portray what he was witnessing, as this lengthy dispatch of July 24 demonstrates. It was published in the New York Herald on July 25.
Trail of Fleeing Hun Shows Tremendous Loss American Guns Inflicted
Don Martin, Following in Wake of Retreating Enemy, Sees Evidence on
Every Hand of Heavy Toll Taken by Yankee Artillery and Haste of Retirement
By DON MARTIN
Special Correspondent
of the Herald with the American Armies in France
[Special Cable to the
Herald]
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE, Wednesday
Desperate at being forced back
along the whole line of attack, the Germans now are fortifying the hills east
of Soissons and north of Château-Thierry. Meanwhile they are unleashing their
great guns far in the rear of the front lines in support of the savage counter
attacks which they are launching with newly brought up shock troops. They are
using an unlimited amount of gas and high explosive shells in their attempt to
delay the allied advance. All this, however, in the circumstances was regarded
as inevitable.
The vigorous fight which has
characterized the last few days may continue for several days longer. The
Allies, however, are giving the enemy more than he is able to send over to us.
We are able to resist the most powerful thrusts the maddened Hun is capable of
making. Attacks by the Americans on enemy lines at one point north of Belleau
met a vicious resistance, but our men forged ahead despite everything the
Boches could do.
It is known now that the German losses have been appalling. I heard
from a French officer who always has been most conservative that the casualties
may be counted as more than 100,0000 and may amount to twice that number.
Prisoners
which we have taken say that many companies were wiped out and that even whole
regiments were annihilated until men were sickened at the sight of the carnage.
All of our prisoners were eager to surrender.
American troops quickly learned the
danger of using kid glove methods in dealing with the Boche. As a result of this
they are now systematizing their work of slaughter, just as they are
systematizing everything here. Now they are conducting the war for the purpose
of exterminating the enemy, until those who remain are satisfied and ready to
quit.
I can testify that the American
troops are making wonderful headway. Beginning at daybreak to-day, I visited a
score of hamlets and villages which had been captured from the Huns since last
Wednesday. The scenes there were indescribable. One village which had a
population of one hundred in peace times was nothing more than a pile of
crumpled stone. There was left standing nothing except a sixteenth century
church. A remarkable thing here was that the clock in the steeple of the church
still was running and the church chimes were hanging amid the fractured
masonry.
The Germans were in this village
when the Americans started their artillery going at them. Scattered in the
streets and throughout the ruins were boots, hats and masks; food, ammunition
and fragments of human bodies. These signs of the enemy defeat were in evidence
everywhere, and they showed the fury of the attack of our troops. Indeed, so
swiftly did our men move forward, sweeping everything before them, that few
Germans remained there to try to delay our advance. All these were either
killed or captured.
Scores of Dead Unburied
I found the same thing on varying scales at a dozen other
places that I visited. Everywhere the fields on the edge of the towns were
pitted with shell holes. One pasture through which the Germans fled before the
onrushing Americans had more than two hundred shell holes in it. Some of them
were ten feet across and six feet deep. Fragments of shells—horrible things
with jagged edges as sharp as razors and some of them weighing about two pounds—were
lying everywhere.
The presence here of scores of dead
Germans will be understood when it is realized that these terrible fragments of
shells were veritable flying buzz saws.
In the wood the Germans paused and
carried scores of their dead to the shelter of the trees. Many of these dead
are there yet. I saw five of them in a narrow strip of the wood and more than
twenty on the edge of the road, where they had been waiting for our attack.
Here the toll must have been tremendous. I saw many German helmets which had
been pierced by bullets. Coats and machine gun belts and soldiers’ trinkets
were scattered as if they had been blown about in the winds of a hurricane.
In the villages of Belleau and
Torcy the streets are being cleared of their debris by the Americans. There
farm colonies of five or six houses each, which sheltered the waiting Germans,
have been levelled. Everywhere was shown evidence of the horrible slaughter,
but this also is apparent everywhere in the line of the swift advance on
Soissons, southward in the direction of Château-Thierry and northeastward in
the region of Rheims.
Drive Germans at the Run
The Franco-American forces swept
forward in the wake of their artillery, driving the Germans at a gallop from
cover to cover, killing and capturing hundreds.
The German communiqué which says that “we withdrew without
the knowledge of the enemy” is laughable when one sees, as I have seen, the
unmistakable evidences that reports of the wild flight of the enemy are true.
With a general I passed close to a
road which the American artillery shelled last Saturday. This road was totally
destroyed. Our shells had gouged holes from four to five feet deep in the solid
foundation. Our trucks now pass along a new road nearby. Adjoining it are
fields of oats and wheat and hay. They stretch away on either side, but now
they are polka-dotted with mounds of new earth turned up by our shells. Each of
them looks like a huge ant hill from a distance.
I visited a section yesterday where
the Germans were entrenched last Sunday along a road which is edged with apple
trees. It has an embankment five feet high. At equal spaces apart there are
dugouts for a distance of a mile and a half. In them Germans were concealed to
snipe the Americans and to man machine guns, which were extensively employed in
the fields in the rear.
Caught by American Fire
When our troops got there they
found that the fields were destroyed. Many machine guns were hidden in the
dugouts and many German dead lay beside the road and in the dugouts. They were killed
by American rifle fire and shrapnel. The Americans were burying these dead
while I was there.
It was interesting to see this
country, which was occupied only the day before by the Germans. The roads were
marked by boards bearing German names. Tinned German food had been abandoned by
the Huns as they fled before our men. The cellars in most of the villages
contain grenades, ammunition and machine guns, which the enemy was unable to
remove before we forced him out. Beside another wood I saw the body of a German
sniper. A bullet hole through the helmet he wore told the story of his death.
His rifle lay beside him.
In many sections of this region I
saw German pistols, kirks, rifles and helmets scattered about, the wreckage of
a battlefield left by a defeated foe.
Americans Never Faltered
The Americans who drove the Germans
away were themselves plunged into a perfect inferno, but they never faltered.
The horrors of this war are
indelibly stamped on the mind of one who follows in the immediate wake of an
advancing army. It is a striking thing that small damage has been done to the
oat and wheat crops, which are awaiting the harvester. While the fields are
dotted with shell holes and the grain near these holes is scorched and
blackened, most of it is undamaged.
Two kilometres back of the present
lines peasants are cutting their wheat with their scythes and nonchalantly
hoeing turnips in their fields. Looking from these fields where they labor, the
roads as far as one can see are crowded with trains of war. Dust clouds are
rolling in every direction and the roads are littered with the boughs of trees
in places where the fire was bitterest. I saw a dozen trees each a foot and a
half in diameter cut clean off close to their bases. Many patches in small
woods look as if they had known a visitation of fire.
The Germans, attempting to recover
from the shock of the allied attack, began a counter movement while I was
traversing the line. Shells from enemy artillery dropped on the road
intersections at various places. Evidently they were trying to verify airplane
and balloon observations and to catch our transport.
Airplanes Dot the Sky
Dozens of French and enemy aircraft
were hovering in the areas back of their respective lines. One Boche bombing
machine boldly flew over our line and dropped aerial torpedoes, one of which
struck in a wooded spot. They was no excitement. The terrible roar caused not
even a comment. C’est la guerre!
Other trips by enemy bombers caused
deafening thunder, but did no damage except to fields and forests. By the side
of the road, a hundred rods from where shells were dropping, American
doughboys, tired after the night’s drive, were sleeping as soundly under the
trees as if they were on Long Island.
Shots dropped by the Germans so
generously in our territory are taken as a pretty sure indication that they
have their big guns in place and expect to make a stand regardless of the cost.
The value of air observation to the
army was demonstrated to me near Château-Thierry when American soldiers crossed
the Marne and started across the fields in single file. The Germans then were
hurling shells at a group of buildings outside the village. Suddenly there
appeared above a Boche airplane. He had the field all to himself for a few
moments.
Five minutes after the Americans
began trailing across the field the enemy shells stopped falling among the
buildings and began spattering the earth close to the men. Twenty shells struck
all around them, but none of them was hit. When the men stopped the shells
stopped, showing the perfect communication between the aviator and his battery
and the astonishing value of perfect army eyes.
Nothing is more certain than that the airplane is essential to victory.
Ten thousand airplanes would win the war.
Several times to-day I saw as many
as thirty machines in the sky at one time. Shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns
was bursting around them and from our place on the ground it resembled nothing
as much as the sudden opening of a gigantic flower. The odor of these flowers,
though, was sudden death. Both sides were in pursuit constantly and every
little while would occur a brush between these knights of the air. In this
connection I may say that American flyers in large number are becoming very
effective in service.
 |
| Allied anti-aircraft gun (National Archives photo No. 111-SC-7587, Menil-la-Tour, Feb 17, 1918) |
Another instance that showed what a
vital factor is the airplane in the war occurred on the French front, where a
detachment was completely cut off from its regiment and was face to face with
extermination unless relief was found. An airplane flew over it and dropped
food, ammunition and a message, which made it possible for the men to fight
their way out.
The Story of an American
Illustrative of the indomitable
spirit of the Americans here is the story of an American physician. I am not
permitted to use his name, but he is dead and his true name will be known when
the fighting is over.
The Americans were between Fossoy
and Brezancy. The report came that forth wounded Americans had been captured
and were being held a mile away by a detachment composed of seven Germans. This
physician took eight soldiers and led them to the spot mentioned. The soldiers
fought under the command of the physician, and they put up a wonderful fight.
Briefly, the Americans won after a struggle. They killed two of the Germans and
marched the rest of them back to our line, the slightly wounded being compelled
to carry two of their friends who were unable to walk.
The Americans had begged their
rescuers to carry back with them the German wounded, explaining that their
captors during the forenoon had prepared to kill our men, but that one of the
enemy had pleaded with his comrades not to do so. This German spoke English,
and so fervent was his appeal that he won his comrades’ consent to wait until
just before nightfall, when the majority of the Huns declared they would line
the wounded Americans up and shoot them.
The wounded German managed to get
word out of the plight of our men. This word reached the American physician,
with the result that the lives of forty Americans were saved. The following day
this physician was killed by a shell.
A chaplain while searching
for wounded men in the field where the battle had been raging last Wednesday
night went into a cemetery where he found a private named Knight caring for
five seriously wounded Americans. He could
not leave them and had been there for three days, meanwhile finding food and
water for them and saving their lives. He feared, he said, that he would be
court-martialed for staying away during the fighting.
Don Martin sent a brief dispatch about the air war to Paris on July 24,which the Paris Herald published on July 25.
Americans Bring Down Five
Enemy Planes in Combat
(Special Telegram to the Paris Herald)
By Don Martin
With The American Army, Wednesday.
In combat today with an enemy
air squadron of twelve aeroplanes, Americans brought down four in two hours.
Later, in another combat, they brought down
one enemy plane.
No American machines were lost.
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