August 29, 1918: Don Martin vists 32nd Division headquarters in quarry

Don Martin diary entry for Thursday, August 29, 1918: 

Got up at 5:30. Found [Lt.] Delany had put McFall of the A.P. in car I had engaged. Refused to go. Waited till 9 when [Edwin] James [New York Times] and I started out with Fowle. Went to a quarry which is the headquarters of the 32^nd division. It is a weird place – 40 feet underground, wired and lighted with electricity --  more than 200 men working as efficiently as if they were in a Wall Street office building. While there, lights were turned off and message brought that gas shells were dropping nearby. Looked bad for a few minutes. I had my gas mask so I didn’t worry much. Got story about the Americans – the boys from Wisconsin and Michigan making slight progress. Germans are resisting vigorously here. Returned by way of Fresnes and there saw the staff of the 3^rd corps. Quiet on the Vesle. Got back to Meaux – 100 kilometers – at 6. Had dinner with Battersby of Reuters. Wrote 700-word cable and a column story for Paris. Weather getting cooler.

        Don Martin's August 29 'column' report for Paris on the battle front-including air battles-mentions the village of Juvigny, but he apparently did not know about the great struggle going on there. It was published in the Paris Herald on August 30.

AT VITAL POINT YANKS ADVANCE: 

TAKE PRISONERS

In Comparatively Small Numbers, 

They Wrest and Hold Ground North of the Aisne

 (Special Telegram to the Herald)

By DON MARTIN

With the American Armies, Thursday

           With the French fighting brilliantly on either side of them, the Americans, in comparatively small numbers, to-day made an advance against the Germans and held their ground. Since the Americans were put in the line at this vital point north of the Aisne and northwest of Soissons they have advanced and have taken upward of 200 prisoners.

           The Americans began a barrage at a quarter to five o’clock this morning and continued it for forty minutes. It was of savage character and caused havoc in the front German line. The Germans did practically all their fighting with machine-guns. They used eight-foot rifles, with cartridges an inch in diameter, to assail the tanks which were again used in the assault. They are French tanks—baby tanks.

           The Americans mopped out several machine-gun nests on the outskirts of the village of Juvigny, where the Germans were prepared, in their customary way, to pepper the enemy with machine-guns placed at scores of points.

           The machine gun fire of the Germans was savage for a short time. Experienced, however, in assaults upon these pits of death the Americans destroyed them with minimum loss.

           To-day the Germans strengthened their lines and put up a furious resistance. Prisoners admitted that the American attack on Tuesday came as a complete surprise and a shock as well to the Germans. They had been told that the French soldiers opposite were fatigued and could not make another attack for several days. Then, at daybreak or shortly after, the Americans, who had arrived in the line but three hours before, leaped “over the top”—largely a figure of speech, since open fighting took the place of trench warfare—and attacked.

           There were many personal encounters on Tuesday; there were but few to-day. The German prisoners were well fed. They wore reasonably good clothes and their boots were in many cases new. There was nothing to indicate that the German soldiers are faring badly for food. When asked what they thought of the fact that many of the American soldiers fighting at this point are of German ancestry, the German prisoners shook their heads and intimated that they did not believe it. Such is the fact, however.

           In the Voivre last night an American patrol of nineteen men and one officer was encircled by a German patrol. The Americans fought their way out, capturing three prisoners, causing many casualties, and had no losses of any kind. Early this morning another American patrol routed enemy detachments which were discovered to be occupying at nighttime the same outpost the Americans were using by daylight.

           Enemy airplanes were shot down to-day northeast of Razonville. They attacked American observation balloons. The record of one American air unit, consisting of an average of seventy-five pilots, shows that during July it shot down twenty flight planes and one balloon, eighteen more planes were sent to the earth, but their destruction was never confirmed. These airmen fought 140 combats and went on 130 combat patrols; they flew an aggregate of 2,017 hours; made a total of 1,840 flight. The best days were July 16, when they destroyed six planes and one balloon, and July 24, when they brought down five planes without suffering a single casualty.

           Along the Vesle, where the Americans are holding the line, there was artillery and patrol activity.