Don
Martin spent Tuesday, October 1, at the front and visiting the wounded at a
field hospital. His cable to the New York Herald reporting on his day was
published on Wednesday, Oct 2.
New
York Troops Are Fighting
In Argonne Jungle
Don Martin Tells
How Americans Advance,
Crawling On Stomachs
By Don
Martin,
Special Correspondent of the Herald
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE, Tuesday
I am permitted to say that New York troops
now are fighting in the Argonne Forest.
[The unit mentioned
by Mr. Martin probably is the Seventy-seventh, or Metropolitan, Division, which
is composed of drafted men trained at Camp Upton. The Seventy-seventh Division
was last reported in the Vesle-Aisne fighting.]
In the face of the heaviest resistance, the Americans continue to
advance steadily northwest of Verdun, with their principal gains to-day along
the edge of the Argonne Forest.
It now is conceded that the Germans in this sector are beginning a
policy of retirement similar to the defensive scheme employed in their retreat
following the second battle of the Marne. Briefly, this scheme provides for a
slow retirement while inflicting the heaviest possible losses on our attacking
troops.
While the enemy is making strong efforts to hold his present line,
indications are that he is preparing for a backward movement. Observers to-day
reported large fires back of the German lines on the American left and this is
taken to indicate they are destroying supplies which they find it impossible to
take away. As I write this the battle line from the Meuse to Argonne Forest is
a sheet of flame.
Huns Deliberately Sacrifice Men
Despite the heavy opposition, our men are going steadily forward. The
foe has systematized his defensive campaign here and is relying almost entirely
on machine guns and grenades to slow us up. In the Argonne his tactics call for
the sacrificing of groups of half a dozen machine gunners and grenade throwers
in the hope of killing thrice that number of Americans.
The struggle in this forest is easily the most picturesque of any in the
entire four years of war. The Argonne in many places becomes a veritable
jungle. In this heavy undergrowth the Huns, securely hidden away, lie in wait
for the Americans. As our men come within range the Huns open up their rapid
firers. I have talked to scores of our doughboys who have been in this
fighting, and all of them tell stories of fierce hand to hand encounters and of
progress against almost insuperable opposition.
“I have been in the fighting there for four days,” Isidor Berkovitz, one
of our doughboys, told me to-day. “Up to the time I entered it, I thought that
I knew something abut what fighting was. But I didn’t. I got a new slant on it
in the Argonne. We have been advancing mostly on our stomachs – crawling
forward and groping through that wilderness and never knowing whether we were a
yard or a mile from the enemy until he would open on us with his machine guns.”
“The commander of a patrol detachment of which I was a member got tired
of this kind of carrying on by the Huns and said he would show one of these
enemy machine gun nests a thing or two. He shouted a command to us and
instantly a German gunner about thirty feet away from us blazed away. Five of
our men were wounded, but we got the Hun. He will never ambush another
American.”
The enemy evidently is striving frantically to establish himself in the
Kriemhilde line and is constantly bringing up divisions from Metz and other
concentration centres to contest every foot of the terrain over which we are
moving forward.
Every indication is that he expected to hold this territory for all time
and that he never expected to return any part of it to France. Now that he is
being forced back, he is destroying everything that he cannot take away with
him. At many places the destruction that he wrought is complete. He has felled
trees, destroyed roads and spread wreck and devastation over the face of the
land. We have found scores of mined dugouts, and while there have been but few
explosions in them, those that have occurred have been severe.
I know an American officer of high rank who recently had a very narrow
escape while passing through a section of a mined highroad on his way to an
inspection of the front line. The vehicle in which he was traveling was blown
to pieces when its wheels passed over the wires that set off the mine. I know
of more than a score of instances where camion wheels set off mines.
Another case has been reported of an innocent looking wire extending
into a dugout. A doughboy pulled it and in a flash the dugout vanished in the
air, with nothing left of it but a great crater in the earth.
In this way the Huns are seeking to impress upon the Allies their power
of destruction and resistance. This also partly explains why our advance is not
so fast as some of the home folk might wish. I need only say that here it is
necessary to exercise the most extreme caution in advancing into territory which has been evacuated by the Huns, especially when they have had time before
their flight to lay their devilish traps and to vent their fiendishness.
It unquestionably is true that Germany is using some of her very best
shock troops on our front, thus lessening her strength on other parts of the
allied line and making it easier for our allies to carry out their offensive
elsewhere. It is equally pertinent that the German reserves are fast being used
up or exhausted in the wild effort to check the victorious advance of the
armies under Marshal Foch all the way from the North Sea to the Meuse. It also
is true, however, that the enemy soon will have other reserves that will be in
condition to reinforce his line.
While it may seem immodest for an American newspaper writer to dwell at
great length on the heroism of the American troops, each eulogy is more than
justified by events. To-day I went through a hospital back of our lines where
most of the wounded in the Argonne fighting have been taken. There I met Dr.
John J. Morehead of New York City, who is attached to the Red Cross in this
sector.
[Dr. Morehead before
entering the service was a professor of surgery at the New York Post-Graduate
Medical School and Hospital, visiting surgeon at the Park and Harlem hospitals
and assistant visiting surgeon at the Post-Graduate Hospital. He is a member of
the Academy of Medicine and of the New York County Medical Society. His New
York residence is at No. 115 East Sixty-fourth street.]
Dr. Morehead led me through those hospital wards where the most severely
wounded men had been taken. They came from every part of the United States.
“I have seen patients in every degree of illness and with all kinds of
wounds and who possessed great fortitude and courage, but never in my
experience as a surgeon have I seen such patients as we have here,” he said.
“They are the nerviest men in the whole world.”
“Here is a man who is dying. A bullet penetrated his jaw and ploughed
its way into his throat. He can’t live an hour, and he knows it, but just watch
him try to smile.” He leaned over the cot upon which the doughboy lay with his
eyes closed and asked him how he felt. “Better, thank you,” the wounded
doughboy replied.
“That’s the spirit of all of them here,” he continued, speaking to me.
“There are amusing incidents here, too. To-day a Jewish lad, recovering
from the effect of an anaesthetic, was very talkative and brushed the surgeon
aside, ordered him away. “Go away from me,” he said, “or I’ll send for the
doctor in the next block.”
“A negro from Virginia saw specters of death and annihilation, but when
he was quite conscious I asked him what he thought of the war. “I’m jes
natu’lly a peaceful nigger, an’ I ain’t ‘xactly used to it yit,” he said. ”I’m
a stevedore an’ a cook, and when the war’s over I’ll try to get a job where
they ain’t no machine guns, for they’s bad business for a nigger.”
Dr. Morehead said they have many wounded Germans in the hospital and
that they are men of fine physical condition and hard to kill. He attributed
their strong constitutions to the training they have had and to their long
campaigning.
In the fighting in the vicinity of the Meuse our forces have captured
Russian guns, which the Germans had brought to this front and had used against
us. These same guns now are hurling high explosives into the German lines.
American air supremacy in this sector is unquestioned, and meanwhile our
aviators are winning new laurels. One of our flying men was told this morning
to observe and report on the situation back of the German lines It was a
dangerous undertaking, but he returned inside our lines in forty minutes and dropped
a message containing his report at American headquarters. From his airdrome he
went directly to a hospital with a bullet through one of his legs. While on his
flight he had been bombarded by enemy anti-aircraft guns and attacked by boche
flyers.
Another of our observers while alone and far over the German lines
completed his observation work and engaged five enemy airplanes. Returning to
his airdrome he found a bullet had punctured his gasoline tank and that it was
leaking badly. Soon the tank was empty, and although his situation was most
desperate he began volplaning and succeeded in landing inside our lines. He made a difficult landing, and in making it suffered slight injuries.
Published in the Paris Herald on Wednesday,
October 2.
One American Unit Takes
1,200 Huns
(Special Telegram to the Herald)
By DON MARTIN
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES, Tuesday
With their
forces freshened the Germans this morning made a severe counter-attack north of
Apremont, but were repulsed by the Americans, who have everywhere held their
advanced positions.
The Germans
used much gas during the night and shelled many back areas during the day. It
is very evident that one effect of the American offensive has been the
diversion hither of troops which had been intended for use at other points.
Many German
divisions have been employed opposite the Americans during the last six days.
Near Varennes, it is now learned, four American infantrymen captured
seventy-five German prisoners. The Germans were in a position where they could
have been attacked on two sides. The Americans appeared, demanded their
surrender and not a German resisted.
Explorations
show a most interesting underground system in the vicinity of Vauquois. Tunnels
a hundred yards long led to spacious chambers where the Germans had been living
in luxury. Everything had been provided for the comfort of the officers.
One unit of
Americans has, up to date, captured, besides twelve hundred prisoners, two
Russian 100-mm. guns, five 6-inch howitzers, between fifty and sixty heavy
machine guns and sixty railway cars.
Published in the Paris Herald on Wednesday,
October 2.
Hard Pressed by Americans,
Enemy Manifests Unrest
(Special Telegram to the Herald)
By DON MARTIN
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES, Tuesday night
There were
some indications late to-day on the battlefront west of the Meuse that the
Germans are preparing to withdraw from their advanced positions on our left.
They are moving their guns rearwards.
The enemy has
been hard pressed by the Americans during the last twenty-four hours and is
showing many signs of unrest.
Published in the Paris Herald on Wednesday,
October 2.
KANSAS TROOPS SET FINE
EXAMPLE
IN RECENT FIGHTING
American Pilots Continue to
Hold Mastery of Air
and Bomb German Lines
(Special Telegram to the Herald)
By DON MARTIN
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES, Tuesday
I have seen
one of the typical fighters of the Kansas contingent which the communiqué says
has been in the hard fighting recently. He is William B. Wilson, engineer, of
St. John, Kansas—a fine, upstanding youth. He said:---
“I belong to
a wireless outfit. We went over with the first wave, but part of our apparatus
got lost, so it was no use continuing. We got together and decided we ought to
do something, so threw away all our burdens, got bayonets and went ahead with
the boys.”
In addition
to visiting some of the boys who have been engaged in the Argonne fighting I
went through a hospital, where mostly Americans are being tended. There I saw a
remarkable example of fortitude which is illustrative of the spirit of the
whole army. One young man, who from appearance was accustomed to rough work,
was lying in a cot actually trying to smile, though terribly wounded. A bullet
had gone through his jaw and throat and he was certain to die in a few hours.
The surgeon said to me: “He is one of the nerviest chaps I ever saw. He knows
he is going to die.” Then the surgeon leaned over and asked the boy, who
evidently was in great pain, “Do you feel better?” to which the lad replied,
“Yes, sir, I do.”
These Boys
Never Complained
I talked to
Major John J. Morehead, the eminent surgeon, of New York City, now with the
Kansas troops. He is in charge of a large Red Cross hospital. He said:--
“These boys
are the most wonderful I have ever known. They never complain; never say they
are in pain. We ask some whom we know are suffering intensely how they are
getting on, and they say: ‘Oh, pretty well.’ “
An incident
which was somewhat inspiring occurred while I was in the hospital. Some
officers seriously wounded were brought in. Transfusion of blood was certain to
save their lives. Major Morehead went to the gas ward, where twenty sturdy
youngsters were being treated as slightly gassed.
“I’ve got
two officers who need blood,” he said. “Anyone here who’ll volunteer?” “Sure,
we’ll give them all the blood they want,” was the reply. Every boy bared his
arm. Four of the volunteers were accepted. The officers will recover.
A negro with
a wound in his arm came rushing into the hospital alone and said: “Gosh, my
whole regiment is destroyed! Only two left—me an’ de fellow coming along behind
me!”
The
Americans continue to maintain their supremacy in the air. Our bombers have
been active over the German back lines, doing much damage. A thrilling story is
told of an air observer who was ordered to make observations over a vital point
of the line. He was assailed by anti-aircraft guns and was also attacked by
Boche fliers. He nevertheless returned to headquarters, made his report and
then flew to his base, whence he was taken to hospital with a bullet in his
thigh.
Scores of
incidents demonstrating the courage of American fliers might be told and will
be told soon. These boys are earning everlasting laurels for themselves and
their country and are bearing their losses with “Oh, well, it’s all part of the
game.”
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