Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.

With company E, 101st Infantry, in the world war.

E Company of the old Fifth Regiment Infantry, Lawrence Light Guard, of Medford, Mass., was called out shortly after war was declared by the United States, on April 6, 1917, against Germany—this war caused by that most inhuman act on the high seas, the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine.

The company was quartered in pyramidal tents on the armory grounds. One company street of about sixteen tents, each tent housing a squad of men, eight in number. My tent was headed by Corporal Frank Hurley, and later by Corporal William Harris, who, sad to relate, was blown to pieces by a large shell which exploded just [p. 78] as Corporal Harris and several other members of the company reached a shell hole. Captain Magee commanded the company. He was one of the finest, most considerate men I have ever served under. He was loved by every man in the company and respected by all. John Tidd was first lieutenant and Frank Gibbs was second lieutenant. Ten sergeants and one hundred and fifty men all told comprised the company war strength.

Scott MacCauley was top sergeant, and early every morning he would take the company out on the banks of the river for exercises.

On July 25, 1917, the company was mustered into Federal service with an elaborate ceremony. About a week later, after a farewell speech by His Honor Mayor Haines, the company left in open cars for Camp Darling, Framingham, Mass. We pitched our tents that same night at Camp Darling.

About August 21, 1917, we were joined with Company E of the Ninth Regiment, which amalgamation made us E Company, 101st Infantry, 26th Division; General Clarence Edwards commanding the division.

On that day there was an electrical storm. After we went into our tents there was a terrible flash of lightning. Every man in the company was thrown off his feet into a huddled heap. The lightning had struck the tent poles and was grounded through our rifles, which were leaning against the tripods, causing a circuit which passed through our bodies. One man on the next company street, I am told, received a burn from that flash which left the mark of a perfect cross on his wrist. The flash of lightning killed two or three men.

When we became known as Company E, 101st Infantry, we were moved to Camp Maguiness, Framingham.

On September 6, 1917, we broke Camp Maguiness and left for parts unknown. Packed in day coaches with our roll packs, we slept sitting down in our seats with our feet stretched out over the fellow opposite us. [p. 79]

At daybreak, September 7, we took a river boat down the East river, past the famous Sing Sing prison at Ossining and down to Hoboken, N. J. As we left the river boat Bear Mountain, we marched down the pier. On our way we passed a giant steamship, which we later learned was the Vaterland, afterwards known as the Leviathan. Its sides loomed up like the sides of the Custom house when standing at its base. We were marched past this palatial boat and put on board one of the United Fruit steamers named the Pastores.

After fourteen days on the sub-infested seas and getting quite seasick, we landed at St. Nazaire, France, September 21, 1917. We debarked and marched to Base Camp No. 1, a good-sized French camp about a mile from the city. Along the streets the people very generously showered us with apples, grapes, oranges, peaches and all kinds of fruits and good things.

From St. Nazaire we entrained and our destination was Neuf Chateau, a small town nestling in the foothills of the Vosges mountains. But not our luck to be quartered in the city; we had to hike five kilometers, with our new packs on our backs, out to a very small village having one street, a condition famous in rural France. This village was called Villars; here we spent about four months in training.

Villars was a beautiful place surrounded by sharply rising hills, which at some places were almost mountains. We had our quarters in an old plaster-made grain-mill, and there two hundred and fifty men lived for four months. It was a long, narrow building about two hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. There were two floors, one hundred and twenty-five men on each floor. A small stream flowed through the village on its winding way down from the Vosges. In this stream we made our toilet morning, noon and night. Sometimes we took a bath in this stream. Of course taking a bath in a stream of icy water in November or December has its drawbacks. Therefore only a small number bathed in the stream. [p. 80]

Drill every day from 7.30 A. M. to 12.00 M., and 1.30 to 3.30 P. M.; close order skirmishes, rifle practice and automatic rifle practice, hand grenade and rifle grenade, and everything pertaining to trench and open warfare— we were drilled in these arts.

On February 5, 1918, we marched down to Neuf Chateau, entrained in side-door pullmans, forty hommes and eight chevaux style, packed in like sardines in a box.

We detrained the following day and started to hike for the reserve-line trenches. We hiked about ten kilometers to a large chalk mine. We went down about forty feet below ground. Here we stayed a few hours and then we were ready to go up into the front lines. About 9.00 P. M. we left Rouge Maison and hiked over shell-torn ground, through battered trenches and sticky clay mud which stuck to our boots until we could hardly drag one foot after the other.

About midnight we relieved a company of French soldiers and took our post in a small rifle pit, a trench about eight feet long and four feet deep, with an improvised dugout where two or three could sleep. Our position was at the foot of a hill with the Aisne river in front and on the other side was the German lines.

After about seven days in the first line we were relieved by another battalion of our regiment and we went back to the second line at Froidmont. From there we went to the third line at Soupir.

While we were holding the first line there was a raid pulled on the Germans which was the first successful American raid to be made. Our men captured twenty men and two officers. They were caught in a relief and taken by surprise. Edward Larkin, Claude Seitz, Stew Millar and several other well-known Medford boys were decorated with the Croix de Guerre and citations for bravery above the call of duty.

We then were relieved, after having our baptism of fire in the Chemin des Dames sector, which we learned afterwards was a quiet sector; the French called it a [p. 81] rest camp. We had a few days' rest at Tramport. After some few days we were ordered to move again, this time to the Toul sector, for several months' tour of duty in the front lines. It was here at Apremont that the 104th Infantry received its colors decorated for bravery for the entire regiment, and they well deserved it.

About midnight one very dark night we relieved the First Division regulars and I have never seen an outfit so scared as these men were. We came into Broussey talking out loud to each other, and as another company from the First Division passed us on the way out they yelled, ‘Shut up, you d——fools, you'll all get blown up.’ But the boys only gave them the ha, ha! and laughed it off and kept on talking. Afterwards we learned they were several spies, French people who remained in Broussey, and they flashed light signals to the Germans on Montsec. We spent quite a long time at this part of the Toul sector, and it was a wet, swampy place. Rubber boots were in order all the time. We would stand guard all night in the front lines, and when in reserve we had to stand to about 4.00 or 5.00 A. M. to be ready for any attack or raiding party. Every morning the Boche shot over a gas attack—mustard, rose, violet and other kinds of gas were employed.

After a relief we went to Beaumont, another part of the Toul sector, and were in reserve, ready to go into the lines at the battle of Seicheprey, where the 102d Infantry met and drove back two battalions of the Kaiser's best guards in a fierce battle which lasted about two days. At the time when the attack began we were taking a rest in a woods about twenty kilometers away. Orders came in suddenly to roll our packs as soon as possible and leave on a forced march for an attack at Seicheprey. That was some hike! We had only two stops in the twenty kilometers, and we made the hike in record time.

We did a trick in the lines at Shrapnel valley and another in Flirey in front of Mandres. On June 26, [p. 82] 1918, we were relieved by the Eighty-third Division and sent back for a rest. We rode on flat cars back as far as the city of Toul and then hiked seven days, about eighteen kilometers a day.

On the second of July we arrived at Meaux and went to a small town nearby where we were going to have a rest. On the 4th of July we had a Regimental Field Day at Meaux. We didn't get any dinner until about 4.00 P. M.

The next day we received orders to roll our packs and be ready to leave immediately. The Germans were marching on to Paris, coming through Meaux. We were piled into trucks and rushed up towards Vaux where the oncoming Germans were marching triumphantly toward Paris over the Paris Metz road. There was another division ahead of us, and on July 1st and 2d the Second American Division, with the 5th and 6th Marines and the 9th and 23d Infantry, had stopped the Germans and had made history in Belleau woods and the Bouresches and at Vaux. One impression I would like to correct, the 9th and 23d Infantry did just as much as the Marines in stopping the Germans at Belleau and Vaux, but from reports one would think the Second Division was composed solely of Marines.

On the 8th and 9th of July we relieved a company of the 23d Infantry. They were telling us to keep quiet and not make so much noise. Well, we didn't get wise until the next morning when we saw where we were posted—on top of a hill with the German trenches just over the top on the other side about forty feet away. When we came into Vaux the village was partly destroyed by shell fire, and in a few days its ruination was completed by German shells.

On the 20th of July we went over the top on the Chateau Thierry drive, through a wheat field, and then we chased the Germans for eighteen kilometers through woods and fields, up hill and down—meeting plenty of stiff rear-guard action. The Germans were chained to [p. 83] machine guns so they could not run away or surrender. They were killed on their guns. It was a beautiful summer's day, very hot, with a pure blue sky above. We didn't have any water all day, no rations, and no one knew where the soup guns were. We kept on going until dark, then set up lines and rested until dawn, when we were off again. We kept going with nothing but hard-tack to eat and poisoned well water to drink until the 23d, when we were leap-frogged by the 12d Infantry, who went ahead and almost got wiped out at Epieds, where the Germans left a machine gun in every house and lined the hill around the town so when the 102d came into Epieds they were met with a rain of lead from the machine guns. They came back through us with the wounded in bunches on litters and on their backs, carrying them in arms and every way possible.

We were relieved by the Twenty-eighth Division. They went ahead, but they were inexperienced and didn't last but a few hours when our division had to take back the position and hold the ground for a relief, because our ranks were terribly depleted and we only had a few men left in each company. The boys around us were getting wounded so rapidly that we were ordered to grab a stretcher and rush our buddies to the first-aid station. The hospital men with our battalion worked like Trojans, bandaging, putting on splints and doing everything possible to give the boys first aid. It was here the gallant Captain Leahy fell mortally wounded with a piece of shrapnel through his body. With those famous words on his lips, ‘The command is forward, boys,’ he fell dead behind a huge oak tree. In the midst of this terrible scene, with the wounded men screaming and the dying men moaning with untold pain, the Germans dropped a box barrage around us and the shells were dropping in on us all the time; then they shot over a mustard gas attack, and if such a thing is possible that was hell on earth. It is a terrible sight to see your buddies getting torn apart by a high explosive shell or [p. 84] see some poor lad get burned severely by mustard gas, which eats clothes, shoes and flesh and makes the flesh red and raw wherever it touches, and stand there helpless, not knowing when a shell or a machine gun bullet was going to get you.

Explosive shells were doing terrible damage in our ranks and at this time our battalion was all mixed up, keeping together as best they could under such trying conditions.

One lad I had on a stretcher with an explosive bullet through his leg, and it had torn a hole about a half an inch round through his leg, was suffering agony and pleading with us to kill him and put him out of misery.

I was badly gassed and was sent to Base Hospital, No. 36, on the 24th of July, where I was kept for two weeks. Gee, but it sure was good to get into a real bed again, with nice clean white sheets and coverings and a nice soft mattress to lie on. It seemed like a little bit of heaven. And three squares a day! I thought I was dreaming for a while, but it was true. I arrived back in my company in time to start on a six-day hike through woods in a rain storm.

On September 12, 1918, we went over the top on the St. Mihiel drive and we kept going until about ten o'clock that night, when we were leap-frogged by the 102d Regiment.

It was here that Corporal William Russell was killed, and three other men with him. Top Sergeant James Mahoney was killed about nine o'clock that morning. Robert Wetzler was killed and William Reardon severely wounded that afternoon, when we were caught in a trap by a German machine gun crew. About fifteen men were lost and we started ahead all by ourselves. We captured about thirty prisoners and sent them back under guard. We stayed on the St. Mihiel sector for a week or two and then went over to Verdun, where we went over the top twice before the Armistice was signed. Quite a number of the boys were killed here at Verdun. [p. 85] Irving Woodside was killed in Death valley. Abe Grant, Thomas Brogan and Ralph Schofield were killed here also. Lieutenant Sullivan was killed standing alongside of me, talking to me.

What wonderful news! The Armistice was signed. We were on a hill overlooking Death valley and we nearly went wild with joy.

A ten-day hike started from Verdun with fourteen men left in Company E. Many had been wounded and some killed. Some few had gone on furlough as soon as the Armistice was signed.

We sailed from Brest, March 28, 1919, and arrived at Boston on April 6, 1919, and, believe me, it was good to see home once again after eighteen months in foreign lands fighting one of the fiercest, bloodiest wars the world has ever seen. We were discharged on April 28, 1919, and immediately came home, civilians once again, but patriots for all time, inspired by our service, under the starry banner of the ‘Red, White and Blue,’ for the freedom of the world.