Don
Martin diary entry for Tuesday, August 6, 1918:
Went out with Forest of the [New York] Tribune. Went through many
villages which have been practically destroyed by shellfire from the French and
Americans. German debris everywhere. Saw miles of abandoned ammunition,
machinery, etc. Forest a little timid about getting near the front. Insisted on
taking back roads which was rather disappointing to me. Got caught in fierce
rain and wind storm. Rode eight hours in an automobile. Had luncheon in an
officer’s’ mess in Tardenois. Got back to Meaux at 6:30 p.m. Wrote a column
story for Paris and about 1,000 words cable for New York. Am getting a bit
weary of the work. It requires constant application and endless travelling.
This in addition to the dangers of being hours on roads which the Germans
shell. Went to a chateau which the Germans had defiled and practically ruined.
They are a fine lot of vandals.
Don Martin’s lengthy dispatch about what he had witnessed in his long
day on the road, dated Tuesday, was published in the New York Herald on Wednesday, August
7, 1918.
PRUSSIAN GUARD BUILT UP WITH THIRD RATE TROOPS AFTER THEIR FATAL
MEETING WITH AMERICANS
Don Martin Learns Huns Are Sending
Their Wounded Back to Line
24 DIVISIONS PUT OUT SINCE JULY 18
Unmistakable Evidence of Waning Man Power
Discovered on Dead and
Captured Enemies
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, Tuesday
Three important discoveries have
just been made by the Allies as a result of new statements by German prisoners,
the examination of battlefields and documents found on the bodies of dead
German officers.
The first of these is that the
enemy now is using third-rate soldiers to replace the crack Prussian Guards,
thus proving that he is hard up for men.
The second discovery is that the
German wounded are being sent back into the line, thus further confirming the
fat that the German manpower is waning.
The third fact is that out of the
seventy-three divisions used in the fighting on the Soissons-Rheims salient since
July 15—of which number forty-eight divisions were composed of the very best
troops in the Hun armies—at least twenty-four divisions (about 324,000 men) now
are ineffective. This proves, at least, that Germany will require a
considerable time to rest her forces and reorganize them before she will be
able to undertake any other large operations.
A “Nose Full of War”
Among the prisoners captured by the
American troops recently were four Poles and one Alsatian, who said that they
had been fighting with the Fourth Prussian Guard, which, they declared, was
terribly short of men. Indeed, so short is this supposedly crack organization
that Poles and men of other nationalities are being used to fill up the gaps in
the lines. Many of these prisoners declared that German troops assert that “the
Prussians have a nose full of German fog,” the nose evidently referring to the
war.
While we do not now get copies of
the German newspapers, I am convinced for obvious reasons that they continue to
lie about the situation, especially with regard to the use of submarines
against allied shipping and American troop movements and also with regard to
the strength of the American armies in France. The word has spread throughout
the entire German army that the Americans on the battlefront are merciless, and
that they kill and torture the prisoners they take. The very same reports are
circulated in the German ranks with regard to our men as were said of the
British troops at the beginning of the conflict. These reports are absolutely false,
although I can truthfully say that the American soldiers are not mollycoddles.
One German said:--“We do not want the newspapers to know that they lie.”
Statements made to us by German
prisoners and from documents found on them and on the dead indicate that the
German troops are as loyal to the Kaiser as they ever were, but that they now
are becoming more and more doubtful of the final outcome, seeing as they do the
shadow of defeat hovering over them and their armies, instead of the glow of
victory, which cheered them on until the Americans arrived on the front and the
tide of battle turned in favor of the Allies.
General Foch Fooled Hun
It is now known that the allied
offensive bewildered the German high command. Their secret service fixed
General Foch’s attack to begin on June 14 in a sector east of Rheims. The
German General Staff prepared to meet the blow there, and, placing its best
divisions along that line and in readiness to meet the allied thrust, waited.
When no blow was struck by General Foch at the time anticipated by the enemy he
rearranged his divisions there and along the entire line. While he was engaged
in this shifting process the French and the Americans struck, catching the
enemy in the midst of confusion, and his soldiers were made ashamed and
discouraged at the failure of the vaunted genius of Von Hindenburg.
One of the most important features
of the situation to-day unquestionably is in the very great superiority of the
allied artillery. Again last week this superiority was demonstrated, and still
again by the paths of destruction which the French and American guns blazed all
along the way between the Ourcq and the Vesle. In the intensity of their
artillery fire the Germans hitherto were equal to this when they were seeking
to open a road to a definite destination. All of this, however, is changed now,
since American artillery, backed up by the wonderful accuracy of American
gunners, got into the fighting and with the French obtained the mastery.
I started out from the war
correspondents’ headquarters this afternoon and visited a section of the front
just south of the Vesle. I followed along the path over which a savage barrage
had been placed by the Franco-American gunners. In this stretch of the front
many Germans had been hidden in machine gun nests which were stretched within
three hundred feet of the edge of a wood. This entire section of the front now
is a series of holes and craters with an average depth of nineteen feet and
thirty feet in diameter. I found them an equal distance apart along an entire
half mile of the front.
The Movement of the Barrage
The barrage, first laid down within
a hundred feet of the front machine gun nests, crept forward in jumps of fifty
feet right straight up to the wood, meanwhile churning up the ground around the
nests and the nests themselves, and hurling gunners and their ammunition up in
the air and about the pits as if it were a terrible and most disastrous
earthquake. Indeed, this wood was uprooted, trees were tossed about and huge
rocks, each of them weighing many tons, were knocked about like paper houses. A
barracks was wrecked and battered into a thousand fragments.
The Franco-American troops advanced
in the wake of this barrage, passing over the bodies of many German dead, men
killed by the barrage.
At another place I saw further
ghastly evidence of the fighting in this sector and the way in which some of
the German troops, left to protect the retreat of the main armies of the Crown
Prince, remained in their pits of death, operating their machine guns and
automatic rifles and spurting leaden hail in the direction of our advancing
troops.
In one of these pits I saw a dead
German soldier with an automatic rifle, empty, still in position, the butt
against his shoulder. Its chamber was empty; the last cartridge had been fired
before he died. Stretched out beside him was his comrade, who evidently had
been killed by a rifle shot.
His Last Bullets Find Targets
The man who still was in position
with the automatic at his shoulder apparently had exhausted his own supply of
ammunition, and when his comrade fell he seized the latter’s automatic rifle
and continued to fire at our advancing lines. Two French soldiers lay on the
ground not more than two feet away from him. His last bullets had found marks in
their bodies, while he himself was dying.
I saw three dead Germans all of
whom wore bandages which covered wounds. Some of these bandages evidently had
but recently been made. One of them had a bandage on one of his feet which did
not permit him to wear a shoe. The second wore a bandage on one of his hands
that covered a wound that could not have been received by him in the fighting
the day he was killed. The third was wounded on his head and the bandage he
wore seemed to be at least five days old.
This and the instance I previously
mentioned indicate that the German manpower is seriously diminishing.
Americans did splendid fighting in
the region around Fismes. Before advancing to the attack on the town our forces
halted for a few moments on the ridge overlooking it. The town was filled with
German snipers and the enemy artillery on the hills back of the place was
waiting and ready to begin the work of hurling all kinds of shells at our men.
Just before the final assault on
the place a message was received at headquarters from one of our officers with
the attacking troops. This message was typical of the American spirit—of the
determination of our men to win.
“We will enter the town despite the
snipers, who are waiting to try to pick us off,” he said. “We will get them
soon.”
Enormous Amount of War Material
The extent of the German
abandonment of supplies here was enormous and will be revealed only by careful
exploration of the woods and fields northward from Fere-en-Tardenois all the
way to the Vesle. In one wood alone more than a million dollars worth of shells
were found by our forces. In another wood we found enough tools and implements
to equip a regiment of engineers and a hundred aerial torpedoes similar to
those used by Boche airmen in their attack on Paris.
The very dastardliness of the
Germans in their conduct of the war is being shown constantly. To-day a huge
ammunition dump left by them blew up, with the result that we suffered many
casualties. The cause of the explosion was a time fuse which had been left in a
pile of hand grenades, which caused them to detonate. The entire thing was
arranged so that a single movement of a wire in the midst of the pile touched
off a dozen forms of infernal machines.
As a result of this an order was
issued to-day that nothing German shall be touched until it has been inspected
by engineers.
As we near the Vesle River we can
see proof that the enemy was preparing for the construction of lines which he
intended should be permanent. We remember that he attempted the same thing in
the city of Fere-en-Tardenois, which now is one of the most complete wrecks I
ever saw and is another monument to the accuracy and fury of the American
artillery.
Renaming French Streets
In this connection, the Germans
left elaborate sign painted on buildings in Fere-en-Tardenois. I saw there
streets which they had renamed Dresden street and Munich street, and another
thoroughfare named after towns in Germany.
Every indication is that the enemy
loss of life in Fere-en-Tardenois was very great.
The Americans have learned that the
way to keep the Germans moving in retreat is to pour a continuous stream of
heavy explosives on them, sparing nothing and leaving nothing but desolation in
the wake of the fire of the guns. Incidentally, that is the American idea, and
they soon will be able to put this scheme into effect wherever they hold a sector. Great American guns to-day are
on their way to the front, and they are attracting the attention of every one
along the road. They look like great smokestacks mounted on giant cranes, and
every one of them is an odd antithesis to the fresh complexioned Americans
under twenty-three years of age sitting with arms folded upon these guns.
Instead of such lads the French expect to see grizzled giants.
The difference in the methods of
the Germans and the Americans was strikingly exemplified at Château-Thierry,
which was first used by the enemy for his headquarters and later by our forces.
The Germans left Château-Thierry like a shambles, with debris and dirt
everywhere. Private safes were blown open and rifled, paintings were ripped
from their frames and thousands of articles of value and of sentiment to their
owners were damaged. Closets were ransacked and women’s finery was brought from
them and ripped and torn, while in the homes of refined families the walls were
defiled.
Cleanliness of Americans
I have just seen the American
forces leaving Château-Thierry to move northward. The floors of the houses they
occupied were scrubbed and left immaculately clean. The Chief of Staff showed
me a room which was securely locked.
“As soon as we came here,” he said
to me, “we gathered together everything of value and of sentiment to this
family and stored them in this rom.”
Americans are moving almost daily
into some château or house that was occupied by Germans the day before.
Conditions in these places always are identical with those in Château-Thierry,
and always they are in perfect condition when our men leave them.
The American soldiers who were the
first to cross the Vesle River are wonderful, stalwart types of our citizens.
Most of them chew tobacco and every man of them will fight like a tiger.
This afternoon I saw a thousand
Americans, many of them from New York State, having “chow” in a field on the
way to the front as replacements. They were a fine looking lot of men. While we
were there five German prisoners in charge of a cavalryman paused in the road
by the field. These were the first Americans these Germans had ever seen, and
they glared at our men and said nothing. Some of our soldiers crowded up to the
side of the road and looked at them.
“If that’s the best Germany has got, it shouldn’t take long
to clean her up,” one of our men remarked.
Another short piece, dated Tuesday and
published in the New York Herald on Wednesday, August 6, about American
engineers putting a bridge across the Marne contrasts markedly with how he told
the story for the Paris Herald (see fifth paragraph of next article).
AMERICAN ENGINEER HEROES DEFY
DEATH TO BUILD BRIDGE;
HUNS PLANNED BIG RAILWAY
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, Tuesday
Maps found on prisoners and German
dead show that the Germans had planned an extensive standard gauge railway system
from the Aisne south to the Marne. More than fifty kilometres of track had been
laid.
There is a story current of the
remarkable courage of some American engineers. It was necessary to have a
bridge thrown across the Marne River. The detachment started work at a place
which was being shelled and swept by machine guns from a hill half a mile away.
A second detachment continued the work when the first was cut to pieces, and a
third detachment finished the job.
Don Martin’s article for the
Paris Herald, dated Tuesday and published on Wednesday, August 7, had
interesting details not included in the New York version.
GERMAN HEAVY GUNS TAKING UP POSITION NORTH OF THE VESLE
Machine-Gun Duels
from Opposite Banks—
One Enemy Detachment Is Wiped Out
(Special Telegram to the Herald)
By Don Martin
With The American Armies, Tuesday.
The Germans
are doing precisely what it was believed they would do—making a stand on the
heights to the north of the Vesle and getting heavy guns in position to bellow
back an answer to the steady chorus of death which has been sung during the
last few days—and is still being sung—by the Allied artillery.
No serious
attempts were made last night by the Americans in their part of the sector to
cross the Vesle at new points. Thee were machine-gun duels from opposite banks
of the Vesle and a steady rain of shells in both directions.
Indications
now are that for a few days at least there may be a constant play of artillery.
There once was a time when the Germans believed they excelled the Allies in
this particular branch of warfare, but there is probably no such optimism to be
found among them at the present. The punishment they have received from the
French and Americans since the last big operation began on July 14 should have
caused the scales to drop from their eyes.
Fismes has
been under shell fire. The Germans used considerable gas. Along parts of the
Vesle the German have machine-guns concealed in the brushy and marshy growths.
A company of
German machine-gunners which crawled to the crest of a slope on the north bank
of the Vesle to direct its murderous fire upon some American engineers who were
building a bridge over the stream, was annihilated by a company of American
machine-gunners. The Germans sneaked over the crest of the slope and descended
a few rods when they began to place their weapons in position. They were under
the observation of the Americans, who at a timely moment turned loose a spray
of death from the machine-guns on the south bank of the river. The Germans were
all killed or wounded before they could get back over the crest. The bullets
were directed at them for some time and it is believed that the mortality rate
of that particular group of Germans was one hundred per cent.
Villagers Lived in a
Cave
A story was
told to-day of ninety residents of the village of Villowoye who lived in a cave
during the entire occupation of their section by the Germans. They were able to
live on the food they had stored and on the results of their night prowlings
about the fields near by. They were kept supplied with water from a spring in
the vicinity. They were not in good condition when discovered by the French,
but were soon back in good health.
Thousands of thrilling stories come from the region which has so
recently been reclaimed from the Germans. In a church which the Germans had
used as a hospital thirty wounded Germans were found dead. They had been
deserted in the hurried retreat and had died.
An example of the thrift of the Germans and at the same time a new ray
of light on the impoverished condition of the German civil population was
furnished by the thousands of small canvas sacks which the Germans were using
as containers for wheat to be sent back home. The sacks were supplied by the
German government, and the soldiers were told that they could send as many home
as they could fill, the Government providing the transportation. The Germans
cut the fields of ripe wheat in many sections, and the soldiers threshed it
with flails. The sacks held two pounds each. Many of them, filled and
addressed, were found by the Americans.
In many places the Germans had cut the wheat and shocked it with the
intention of shipping it back to Germany. Certain fields are clean, showing
that some wheat was at least started on its way to Germany. The great bulk of
it, however, remains, and the French, with their accustomed enterprise, are
already harvesting it.
Fere-en-Tardenois
Stripped
The Germans are proving themselves expert looters. The shops and
residences in Fere-en-Tardenois have been stripped, torn and mutilated. There
was considerable external damage from the furious shelling of the Allies, but
the Germans completed the devastation with bayonets, rifle butts and such other
weapons as were at hand. They stole all the wearing apparel, particularly
feminine apparel, and helped themselves to everything in sight. In hundreds of
dugouts all around the region are to be found bundles of women’s clothing which
the soldiers had stolen and stored, to be forwarded to their folks at home some
time in the future.
The Château Fer, about four kilometres from Fere-en-Tardenois, was
defiled and mutilated. I went through it to-day. Having seen the marks of the
Hun in other châteaux and private residences of humbler character, I was not
surprised, and yet one cannot help marveling that anyone can be so wanton and
so vicious as to do the things the Germans have done.
Costly cabinets, sideboards and various articles of furniture have been
hacked. Bullets have been fired through family portraits. Bedding was stolen.
From top to bottom the château, which very evidently was gorgeously furnished,
was disfigured, and the wantonness of the offence is emblazoned on a hundred
wrecked articles.
Systematized looting has now taken the place of vagrant looting, which
the German Government when caught red-handed has blamed upon the individual
soldier. In all occupied places all the brass and metal utensils and articles
have been taken, and it is stated by the German prisoners that it has been done
by request of the German officers, who wish the material for use back home.
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