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September 8, 1918: Don Martin reports Huns whipped but still strong

Don Martin diary entry for Sunday, September 8, 1918: 
Stayed in again today. Went for a long walk along the Marne in the afternoon despite rain. Also watched the celebration of the 4th anniversary of the Marne victory. Had long visit with Sam Blythe [Saturday Evening Post]. In the evening attended a conference of all the correspondents with Major James of the Press division. He says we shall move soon to Nancy and that before any American operation is started we will have the entire thing explained to us.
      Don Martin sent two Special Cables to the Herald on September 8, published in the September 9 New York Herald. The first contained a mix of reports on German morale.
AMERICAN INVITATION TO GERMAN SOLDIERS TO SURRENDER AND GET FED BEGINS TO SHOW RESULTS
Boches Gather in Groups and 
Gladly Give Themselves Up as First Chance
KAISER REALIZES HUN MORALE IS DECLINING
Don Martin Tells How High Command 
Is Trying to Combat U. S. Propaganda
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, Sunday
The German High Command is greatly disturbed at the extent of the propaganda which the Americans are dropping inside their lines. And it is coming, too, at the time of the enemy’s greatest reverses, when he knows the spirit of his fighting men is beginning to droop, and that this American propaganda is helping to lower their morale.
Reports reaching us are to the effect that German officers are taking drastic action to punish their men for reading this American propaganda, which, I may say, is entirely fair and is merely an appeal to reason. Our flyers are dropping tens of thousands of pamphlets inside the enemy lines every week. Prisoners with whom I have talked said that these pamphlets are being eagerly read by many German soldiers and cause many of them to think seriously.
Some of these pamphlets ask the Germans what they think they are fighting for, what they think will happen if the war continues when it is impossible for them to win. The Germans are told that the longer the war lasts the greater will be the sufferings of their home folks. The Germans are asked what they get to eat and are informed that the Americans will feed them bountifully--all they have to do is to surrender; that they will be well fed and sent back home at the end of the war.
This propaganda, appealing to the stomach, as well as to the mind of the Germans, informs them that America is determined to fight to the finish and that she has an inexhaustible supply of men who are coming to France by the hundreds of thousands.
The surrender of an occasional group of Germans who are found hiding in the woods is believed to be a result of this propaganda.
At the same time The Germans continue to drop thousands of pamphlets inside the French lines that are designed to embitter them against Great Britain and America.
French Experts Praise Americans
French experts, analyzing developments since the allied offensive, pay particular attention to the Americans, who, they say, are small numerically as compared to the French, but the quality of their fighting and their success in attaining the most difficult goal insured the success of the offensive, whereas had they failed the whole offensive, the biggest allied operation of the war, would have been endangered.
When the Germans swooped across the Marne and tried to force their way southward they were confronted by the Americans, who, after two days of bitter fighting, forced the Huns back. At the same time the First and Second American divisions, fighting on each side of the crack Moroccan divisions at Soissons—the most vital point in the line—swept forward through the pick of Germany’s shock troops, cutting and shooting their way through division after division and reaching their objectives.
Here is where they met and overcame the stoutest enemy opposition and they made possible the advance of the Franco-American troops from the south, compelling the entire German line north of the Marne to withdraw.
Men from Wisconsin and Michigan, composing the Thirty-second division, entered the battle and fought their way to the Vesle, capturing Cierges and Bellevue Farm and going through many tough fights victorious. They met six enemy divisions all told and finished the campaign in five days, fighting day and night, “chins up and hollow eyed.” Recently when an assault unit was needed, these crack-a-hard-nut Michigan and Wisconsin men were called northwest of Soissons, and they took Juvigny, which is likely to be the key to the western edge of the Chemin Des Dames.
To-day this division is the envy of the British and the French because of the youth and the gigantic stature of its men.
In the fighting up to this time American divisions have been in the hot of it and all along the line they have been praised equally by the French. The Forty-second has a splendid record in the fighting in the region of Sergy, where it met the Prussians.
The Americans are enthusiastic over the victories of the French around Noyon, and while the disposition here is not to become too enthusiastic, the feeling is growing that the Hums have much the worst of the situation, despite the fact that, by shortening the line, the enemy will be able to pack in his divisions thicker than ever and, consequently, will be able to make desperate resistance.
Americans here who are in possession of the very best information caution against making the home folk believe that the war will be over this year.
Tremendous shelling of villages between the Aisne and the Vesle indicates that the Huns now have their big guns emplaced. One village held by the Americans has been terrifically shelled, twenty shells falling in it every minute for two hours. However, it will be but a matter of a few days at most before the Huns will have been forced across the Aisne all along that stream. Where they will go afterward will depend entirely on the pressure of General Mangin’s army.
In their retreat northward the Germans are destroying everything that they cannot carry with them. Evidently they have no hope of returning to the territory south of the Aisne. They are wrecking villages and blowing up their ammunition dumps. They are, however, getting most of their guns away.
Germans Harvest Wheat
Fields in the entire region north of Fere-en-Tardenois have been stripped of their harvest of wheat, which, presumably, has been shipped to Germany. Everything of value in this part of France has been taken by the Huns, who have demonstrated one of the most successful looting operations in all history. The fields on the wide plateau between the Vesle and the Aisne are as clean as a billiard ball and there is not a single blade of wheat left, although the crop promised a bountiful harvest.
This afternoon I watched the shelling of the German back areas. The horizon looked like a hundred oil tanks were afire, an evidence of the huge explosions there. Whether these explosions were caused by our shells or by Boche incendiarism we have not yet been able to determine.
The Americans, hand in hand with the French, are pushing steadily ahead in the face of the bitterest kind of machine gun and artillery fire. On the other hand the Boche must be suffering from the allied artillery, which night and day is pouring high explosives along the roads, in the villages and in the back areas occupied by him to the north of the Aisne. We are using gas extensively and with good effect, according to prisoners, who say that the Germans fear gas more than anything else, as they are not adequately supplied with gas masks and those that they have are manufactured of material that is not the best.
There has been intense aerial activity during the last few days. I saw a thrilling spectacle of this air fighting in the region of the Vesle. In the distance the sky was dotted with German observation balloons, while allied balloons hung like a string of beads in the sky over our lines.
Suddenly a Boche airplane, like a swallow, slipped out of a cloud and headed straight for our balloons. Instantly a score of anti-aircraft guns were shooting at him, and black puffs of smoke broke ahead, behind, above and below him. It seemed impossible that the Boche would escape them, but he continued to soar onward, while our balloons, like silvery spots in the sky, began to descend, our observers coming down by the parachutes.
The German airplane raced on despite the storm of shrapnel. He darted close to one of our balloons and it began to descend, a whirling sheet of flame. He missed the next two, but got the fourth, which vanished in a spiral flame and cloud of smoke.
The Boche still was in the very midst of a tempest of shrapnel when suddenly he changed his course and shot upward, straight up into the blue. He became fainter and fainter.
      The second September 8 dispatch, published in the New York Herald on Monday, September 9, was an extended battlefront report.
STINGING ALLIED BLOWS 
CLOG HUN WAR MACHINERY
Officer Tells Don Martin Tide Has Turned 
and Kaiser Has Lost Chance for Offensive
GERMANS WHIPPED BUT STILL STRONG
Prisoners Say Desperate Resistance Will Be Made 
to Continue Pressure Along Aisne
“Always Forward” Is Their Motto 
As They Keep Close on Heels of Fleeing Foe
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, Sunday
Information which we have obtained from German prisoners is to the effect that the enemy is greatly worried at the persistence of the allied pressure against him on all sides, but intends to make all the resistance he can along the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames. These prisoners said they were not surprised at the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg line.
            In the opinion of the Franco-American military authorities, the British pressure against the Huns in the west and in the north is placing then in a dangerous position. It is now generally agreed that the enemy is in no shape to undertake an offensive.
Tide Turns Toward Allies
A high military authority told me this afternoon that even a short time ago no one expected that the Allies would now be in such a splendid position as they occupy at this time. At the same time he cautioned me against raising the hopes of the folk at home to too high a pitch, for while the Germans undoubtedly are whipped they still have left the strength for a stiff punch, which, he declared, we must not underestimate. He added that the enemy has suffered a stinging blow since last July, and that at the present time it seems that he will not be able to remain south of the Hindenburg line, where, probably, he will endeavor to maintain a position this winter—a season during which it will be hard to conduct a big operation against him, since the condition of the roads then will make it impossible for the Allies to transport the supplies which they will need for such an offensive.
He expressed the belief, however, that the tide has definitely turned in favor of the Allies, due to the fact that America has exceeded her promises in so far as the number of her men here is concerned.
In their retreat northward the Germans are adhering strictly to their policy of killing as many as possible of the Allied troops and at the same time sacrificing the fewest number of their own troops. Their resistance south of the Aisne was composed mainly of artillery and machine guns, with a few of their best troops placed in charge of the latter. These enemy machine gunners were told to stand by their guns and to fire until they were killed. Most of them obeyed this, although some of them surrendered.
Use Machine Gun Defence
By the skilful placing of these machine guns where they can sweep wide spaces of territory the Germans are making the advance of the Franco-American troops difficult. From a front observation post this morning I saw by the aid of a powerful glass along the edges of the plateaus which form the “hog’s back” in the Aisne-Vesle region.
The advance was slow and in one place the Americans re-formed six times. They were enfiladed by machine gun fire and some of them dropped, but most of them made steady progress and, after re-forming the sixth time, attained their objectives.
For five hours the Germans splashed one of the plateaus with high explosives, but the Americans and the French went through the fire and charged the machine gun clusters in the edges of the ravines which sloped northward.
The recent fighting around Blanzy-les-Fismes, Glennis and Meurival, just south of the Aisne, was well illustrative of the present tactics of the enemy. Shells fell in them every minute, and our soldiers could be seen darting from building to building in these villages and finally to emerge from them to the north, while shells fell all around them.
The German losses in this region have not been large, for their scheme is to leave a score of expert machine gunners to hold off hundreds of our men. The job has been a tough one for the French and Americans, but despite the opposition they have met they are progressing northward steadily.
Fismes is a wreck. I was the first civilian to go through it after it had been occupied by the Franco-American troops. The streets are filled with debris and filth left by the Hun hordes, and it is impossible to pass through its streets in an automobile. The Americans, however, now are cleaning it up.
For weeks the city was No Man’s Land. The Huns occupied one end of it; the Americans the other. Dead lay in the streets and it was impossible for either side to remove them. Indeed, for days dead Germans lay in front of the Hotel de Ville. Every night there were bitter clashes between patrols, and constantly soldiers on both sides fought and worked in their gas masks. The Germans hurled a gas shell every ten minutes.
Virtually every building in Fismes was damaged; most of them were ruined—another evidence of the damage by allied bombing and heavy artillery shelling. The great number of enemy graves there was a striking proof of their heavy losses.
Germans Burn Hospitals
To-day the Germans are making it a regular practice to burn their hospitals before their evacuation. All of them are constructed of wood, and many of them are several acres in extent. I have seen in the last few days half a dozen such ruins. In one of these ruins the Americans found a German serum intended to prevent gangrene poisoning that results sometimes from gas. The directions for its use said that it was not a certain preventive but was likely to be efficacious.
A unique method of patrol fighting was explained to me to-day by Private C. E. Colf, of Canandaigua, N. Y., and T. A. Coakley, of Philadelphia, Pa. They had just returned from fighting in the Aisne plateau when I saw them. They wore felt coverings over them steel helmets and explained to me that it was to deaden the sound of breaking twigs when they were on night patrol duty. They had been fighting all the way from the Marne to the Aisne.
“It has been tough fighting,” Private Colf told me. “The Germans have thrown away their rifles and are using machine guns only, because they are forced to use them. I saw two of them this morning who thought that by crying ‘Kamerad’ they would get off, but they didn’t. Ten Americans went to get them after they had signified their surrender but when our men got close to them the Huns began firing at them Then we got both of them.”
Private Coakley described his sensations when going into battle.
“Don’t believe any one who tells you that he is not afraid when  going into battle,” he said. “They are all afraid—not exactly afraid, either, but just worried. But I have never seen an American who got ‘cold feet.’
“I suppose that it would save many lives if we sneaked up on these machine gun nests and put them out of business that way, but to us it does not seem the American way. We want to make a quick job of it, and—believe me—we are doing it.”
The Americans are doing their full share of the fighting in the great offensive. No matter what unit is engaged, the records all seem to be the same. I have talked with a dozen of our men from New York city and while all of them said that they would rather be in Broadway they are willing to stick here until the job is finished.
All our men are glad that the harassing, guerrilla-like warfare which they knew in the Fismes region has ended, They like the dash of the open warfare. The spirit of our men is splendid and they firmly believe that they have the Boche running.
The evidences north of the Vesle indicated that the enemy retreated through that region in good order, although he left some ammunition and guns behind him.
I have just seen another demonstration of the value of aerial observation. The Americans were anxious for information regarding the situation along the entire length of the plateau. A French airplane ascended and in fifteen minutes returned and dropped a message in the vicinity of our headquarters.
“French troops occupying shell holes; four columns of troops advancing, with cavalry advancing well ahead of them. French batteries in action. Great number of troops. Fires in Villers-en-Prayeres; violent explosions in villages north of Villers-en-Prayeres. Convoys arriving Fismes.”
I now am permitted to tell a story of the remarkable nerve and efficiency exhibited by an American regiment in the fighting in the region north of Soissons. They advanced against the enemy well ahead of the troops adjoining them on the right and left, meanwhile subjecting themselves to a dangerous enfilading fire by the enemy, who in his withdrawal was trying to keep his line straight.
“We go ahead; never back,” said the Americans when the Germans began to counter attack, supported by machine guns. The Americans then dropped on their bellies and used their rifles with deadly accuracy.
The Huns advanced in five waves to force the Americans to retreat, but our man lay flat and pumped bullets into them with such accuracy that the Germans quit when their fifth wave was mowed down and many of their dead covered the field.
United States’ Motto Is “Keep Going!”
I talked to-day with one of our officers who was in this fighting. He said that the German dead carpeted the field and in places they lay two deep. The American troops, he declared, never budged, but in the fighting since the Marne have gone steadily ahead, following and living up to their motto:--“Keep going.”
I can say that the fighting between the Vesle and the Aisne has developed many of their fine qualities.
An interesting story of the fighting in Fismette—a stormy battle ground—was told to me to-day by one of our officers of the engineers who was engaged in cleaning up that region of death. Under him was one of our soldiers who had been in the fighting there.
They came across a grave at the edge of the town. During the fighting the American troops had held that part of Fismette, while the Germans occupied the opposite end of the place. The American soldier who was working directly with this officer pointed to the grave and said he had killed the German who was buried there. Then he told his story:--
He was a sentinel stationed at this spot, and while talking with his sergeant they saw a German approaching them. This German held a grenade in his hand and when he was ordered to stop paid no heed to the command. As he was about to throw the grenade the sergeant ordered the sentinel to shoot and the German dropped dead.
The sentinel looked at the fallen man and became greatly agitated. “Sergeant,” he said. “I never killed a man before.”
This sentinel is a mere boy and he felt himself a murderer. To-day, however, he is a calloused man.
         In the New York Herald on Sunday, September 8, 1918, the four photographs below sent by Don Martin were published with the following text.  
CAPTURED PHOTOGRAPHS OF GERMANS 
BACK OF THEIR LINES
SCENES BEHIND THE GERMAN FRONT—
GERMANS FIRING TRENCH MORTAR
By DON MARTIN
In the appearance of the young German officers seen in the accompanying photographs there is nothing to indicate that the ruling caste is emaciated or lacking in military pride. The pictures were taken from German prisoners, who refused to give any information concerning them except that they were taken before the allied offensive was started.
The German officers are just as militaristic and just as supercilious as they ever were—and this applies to those whom I have been permitted to see and talk with since the failure of the Germans’ July offensive and the brilliant success of the allied offensive. The soldiers seem to have lost some of their fighting spirit—in fact, many of the prisoners say the Germans are eager to give up—but the officers insolently say they will win. The officers are all well clothed and well fed.

        And on September 8, there was Don Martin’s daily report for Paris, published in the Paris Herald on Monday, September 9, including another story of bravery.
Yank Officer, Hit, 
Follows Advancing Men on Stretcher
 (SPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE HERALD)
By DON MARTIN
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES, Sunday
           There was lessened activity last night and this morning on the American front north of the Vesle. The Germans are continuing their machine-gun resistance, but are doing very little in the way of counter-attacks.
           A remarkable story may be told about the valor of an American officer, whose name for the present must be omitted. On Friday he was severely wounded in the abdomen. He was carried back for treatment, but he insisted on being placed on a stretcher and taken back to the scene of battle. His order was obeyed. For six hours he lay on the stretcher, being gently moved from place to place, and directed the advance of his men. This task completed, he was taken to a dressing station to be treated anew and afterward was removed to a hospital.
           In Alsace, after a thirty-minute artillery preparation Americans penetrated far into the enemy line, inflicting severe casualties upon the Hun. Several dead were counted. In this part of the American front an American observation aeroplane was attacked by fourteen enemy machines, but succeeded in finishing its tasks and returned safely.

          This afternoon General Pershing in three ceremonies pinned distinguished service crosses on heroes of the summer fighting.

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