August 11, 1918: 1st American Army in France formed, and Don Martin recounts story of Cavalryman Baldwin of Albany

Don Martin diary entry for Sunday, August 11, 1918: Went out with Smith of the Chicago Tribune – a very fine fellow. Went to Fère-en-Tardenois, Coulange etc. Had luncheon in a chateau north of Tardenois with two artillery officers from the state of Washington. Cabled 300 words on our lack of airplanes and 450 words on the formation of the first American army. [Edwin] James [New York Times] ill yesterday and today; didn’t go out.

            The big news of the day August 11 was announcement of the 1st American Army formation under General Pershing. Don Martin's dispatch was published in the Paris Herald on Monday, August 12.     

FIRST AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE 

IS NOW FORMED

General Pershing Takes Personal Command 

in Addition to His Duties as Commander-in-Chief

(Special Telegram to the Paris Herald)

By Don Martin

With The American Armies, Sunday.

            The most important development to date in the organization of the American Expeditionary force is the announcement of the formation of the First Army. On August 10 General Pershing, in addition to his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the American Forces, took personal and direct command of the First American Army to be organized in France. The Corps Commanders of this army, so far announced, are Major Generals Liggett, Bullard, Bundy, Reed and Wright, under whom are the divisional commanders.

            It should be understood that a division is composed of troops of all arms, numbering approximately 30,000 men, and that an army corps consists of several of these divisions, while an army is composed of several army corps with additional troops, supply troops, air squads, tanks, heavy artillery, etc.

            It is not stated where the First American Army will operate, but it is assumed that it will be in the area of the battles which reduced the Marne salient and resulted in the withdrawal of the German army behind the line of the Marne and the Vesle.

A Seasoned Army

            The divisions composing the several army corps have had their preliminary training and service in active sectors of the front, and a number have participated in the recent offensive battles. The formation of the First American Army is a natural development of the 1917-1918 scheme of organization and training, whereby regiments once trained have been merged into completely functioning divisions, and those, later on, into completely functioning corps, with all arms of service and full staff direction. Recently French troops have served under an American corps staff, just as in many instances American troops have served and are serving under French corps and army staffs.

            No statement has been made as to whether General Pershing intends to remain for a long time as field commander of the First Army or whether he soon will turn over the command to a junior general officer. No announcement is made from headquarters about the imminence of the organization of later armies, though it is understood that other armies will shortly be organized. The only information of any sort made public has been that from Washington stating that the number of American troops who have left for France already has passed the 1,300,000 mark.

            The principal importance in the announcement of the First Army’s organization lies in the fact that it is obviously the harbinger of a great American effort, the troops functioning under strictly American commanders, who are again, of course, under the unified command which was long ago vested in Marshal Foch.            

            In Don Martin's dispatch for New York, dated August 11, he recounted the heroic tale of Cavalryman Baldwin of Albany. It was published in the New York Herald on Monday, August 12. It was republished in elaborated form by the Herald on October 13, 1918, a week after Don Martin's death (see the December 11 and 12, 2017, blogs).

ENEMY MUST SOON RETREAT 

TO THE AISNE

Allied Officers Declare Foe More Worn Down 

Than Generally Known

STARVATION IN ENEMY PRISON CAMPS

Escaped French Prisoners Tell Don Martin Deaths 

from Want of Food Occur Daily

By DON MARTIN

Special Correspondent of the Herald with the American Armies in France

[Special to the Herald]

WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE, Sunday

            The American and German forces continue their machine gun and artillery duels across the Vesle River and for the time being our men are making no effort to establish their line any considerable distance north of the river, due in part to the fact that the enemy has greatly strengthened his force there.

            Nevertheless, the opinion in well informed military circles here is that the Hun will soon be forced to withdraw to the Aisne. The reverses which he has met in the Soissons-Rheims salient, coupled with the slap the Franco-British forces gave him at Amiens and again at Montdidier, fast is demonstrating that he is receiving repeated strong blows which are likely to keep him on the defensive.

            Until this withdrawal comes it is certain that our men and our allies will continue with ever increasing energy their constant pounding and harassing.

Tales of Heroism Abound

            And in connection with these efforts by the allied troops there are constantly coming out of the battle zone tales of heroism as brilliant as any ever recounted by romancers. One of the very latest of these relates to Lieutenant W. R. Baldwin, an American cavalryman, whose home is at No. 291 Lark street, Albany, N.Y.

            Fresh from the front, where he penetrated further north of the Vesle than any of the allied officers or enlisted men, I saw him to-day just as he came out of the thick of the fighting, the personification of courageous youth. To me he told the story of the detachment of which he was a part and its penetration of the German lines north of the Vesle, opposite Fismes, for the purpose of learning the location of enemy machine gun nests and batteries.

            At the head of a small detachment of American cavalry, Lieutenant Baldwin galloped up a road which was in full view of the enemy and which was swept by the German guns. Shells fell all around them and one made a great crater in the road fifty feet away from them. Close to the German lines they dismounted and, fastening their horses to trees at the edge of a small wood, crawled to a point within two hundred yards of the front lines of the Huns, who immediately spotted them and turned their machine guns on them.

            Lieutenant Baldwin and his companions, however, stayed there until they had learned all they wanted to know, and then turned back toward their mounts, while a hail of machine gun bullets fell around them.

Race For Their Lives

            They reached their mounts safely, but then it was necessary for them to pass through the road, which again was being swept by machine gun and artillery fire.

            With the rowels of their spurs deep in their horses’ flanks and leaning forward under cover of the necks of their mounts, they raced through the road in the direction of our lines. It was a race with death, and they passed through it as if they bore charmed lives. Returning to our headquarters they reported the location of the Germans and their batteries and machine gun nests, which instantly were shelled by the American guns.

            This, however, is but a single instance of the courageous and effective scout work our cavalry is doing. Frequently they are being used to draw out the enemy fire, and they do it with the coolest courage imaginable.

French Prisoners Escape

            French prisoners who recently escaped from German prison camps and who reached our lines yesterday bring us the news that just prior to the offensive started by the enemy on June 15 the Germans in the back areas and even up to the front lines were singing songs of “On to Paris.” They declared that the enemy soldiers boasted in the presence of French captives that the Germans would be in Paris by August 1.

            Four days after the Allied offensive began, they said, the Huns became excited and demoralized, from which state they became sullen.

            I saw two of the Frenchmen and talked to them. They are Henry S---- and Alfred M----. They were captured by the Germans on May 27 and remained prisoners until last Monday, when they cut their way out of the barbed wire enclosed prison camp. After a week of travelling afoot by night and hiding out in woods by day, they finally reached the banks of the Vesle yesterday and were astonished to learn that the enemy had been thrown back and out of the salient and that it now was the Americans who were acting in the rôle of the pursuer and that the Germans were those being pursued

            They told me a startling story of the treatment which prisoners are accorded in the German prison camps. They declared that they could hardly get enough food to keep body and soul together, and they added that two or three prisoners die of starvation every day in each of these prison pens. They declared that the Huns strike their prisoners with heavy clubs at the slightest provocation.

Austrians Greatly Dissatisfied

            Both of them were extremely weak and were unable to eat a  solid meal. They asserted that even the food of the German soldiers has been reduced in quantity in order to supply the Austrians, who are mumbling threats against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and against Germany and, indeed, threatening a separate peace.

            They said that the German losses have been extremely heavy since Marshal Foch’s offensive in the Soissons-Rheims salient, which marked the beginning of the enemy’s great reverses. They declared that five or six trains loaded down with wounded Huns pass daily through the town wherein was their prison camp. They said that the German wounded now are being piled into cattle cars and transported to hospitals outside the war zone.

            The Germans with whom they talked, they added, boasted that they had burned all French crops in many sections through which the retreat had taken them, which is true.

            I also talked with men of the Prussian Grenadier Corps, eighty of  whom were captured last Friday by American troops in the vicinity of Fismes. They were haughty, strong and well nourished. I asked them if they expected that Germany would win, but they replied that they could not now tell.

            “We thought that the war would end this year,” one of them told me, “Now we think that it will last another year or maybe two; maybe more.”

            Asked how many Americans they thought were in France, he replied that there much be 2,000,000 of us. Then I asked him if he believed that the American troops killed all the prisoners they took.

            “Our officers say that they do,” he replied, “but they are not believed. The Americans are hard fighters, though.”

            I also talked with a German who, before he entered the war was in the electrical business in Berlin.

            “We thought that we would be able to reach Paris late this summer,” he said, “We did not count on the American resistance. Now we will not reach Paris for a long time. The situation is quite different from what we thought it was.

            “Yes, we knew of the Marne retreat because we were in it. However, we hear of nothing elsewhere on the front.

            “The people back home are disappointed at our failure to win, but there is no danger of a revolution in Germany. We will fight for a long time.”

            Despite the fact that the demeanor of the Prussian prisoners is uniformly supercilious and their eyebrows characteristically arch with arrogance, they are treated with respect by the Americans.

         Don Martin also wrote a routine war report dated Sunday, August 11, on the Americans at the Vesle River, which ws published in the Paris Herald on Monday, August 12. 

FOE MASSES BIG FORCE ON VESLE, FACING AMEXES

American Guns Boom Continually—

Germans Use Large Number of Gas Shells

(Special Telegram to the Paris Herald)

By Don Martin

With The American Armies, Sunday.

            Along that part of the Vesle where the Americans are holding the front there was practically no infantry action last night or to-day. The Germans, on the hills north of the river, maintained an incessant artillery fire during the night, dropping shells in the back areas. They used a good deal of gas.

            The American guns were booming constantly all night, throwing shells on the German front lines and on areas far back. For the time being it would appear that the opposing forces have settled down to an artillery duel. The Germans attempted no raids and no counter-attacks. They have centered a strong force along the north of the Vesle, and as I have stated in former despatches they are evidently determined to make a stout resistance along their present line.

            German fliers were more active yesterday and to-day than during any other period for weeks past. Notwithstanding the overwhelming number of German aviators wheeling over the borderline and shooting now and then well back over the Allied terrain, American observers took photographs of the entire German front and the territory along the Aisne. One observer counted forty-one German planes in the air while he was taking pictures. A second American observer reported that he saw seventeen planes.

            At daybreak this morning the Germans dropped bombs in the vicinity of Fismes. Notwithstanding that the American observation planes went on their perilous journeys without escorts they returned with their missions fulfilled.