3. Shifting About
"Flanders", by Otto Dix
We looked up and there stood John Lydon, face white as a sheet, looking down at us. We thought he was hit but couldn’t figure out what he was doing standing there in the middle of the shelling while we were afraid to raise for only a couple of seconds.
When we yelled to ask if he was hit, he shook his head no. I shouted, "Then for God’s sake, get down here with us before you do get hit."
Later, he told us that when the shelling started he dove into the nearest shell hole and, when he did, he landed in something mushy which he figured at the time was mud. (He had on his gas mask and could not see. When we thought the Germans were coming we took off our gas masks, gas or no gas. We might as well be gassed as killed by the Germans - we couldn’t see 10 feet with them on.)
It was then that Lydon saw what his fingers had dug into. Two dead Germans, decayed until mushy, were there under his feet. What he had thought was mud had once been man. In sudden shock he lost no time getting out of there, even though it was almost certain death to walk through the shelling. By removing our gas masks, it caused us to suffer intensely for the next three or four days from the effects of the gas. Our lips, tongue, mouth and throat were parched, our eyes burned and our vision was in very bad shape.
In the mire and muck of this battlefield we saw boys sink to their waist in seconds. It was terrible beyond description to see some of our boys who had been hit and seriously wounded lying there in a pool of blood and mud. But what seemed even worse was to see them look up at us and smile as we hurried by - all the while knowing that we had no time to spare to help them.
Even now, when I close my eyes and reflect on those horrible scenes of battle so long ago (which to me seems like yesterday) I can still see those faces.
That morning after the shelling had stopped there was nothing but snipers to bother us. They picked at us constantly with machine guns and kept us moving about. At 10 o’clock, a soldier emerged from the hollow carrying a gunny sack, which he dropped amongst us, then made his way back. As we gathered around the sack which contained food for us, the snipers stationed at the town of Alberts just to our left increased their fire, hoping to get in some good shots while we were bunched. We soon scattered and moved into shell holes.
In those holes we dumped out the food and found it consisted of hard tack, green cheese and rotted beef. English rations, I supposed, for we were on an English sector. We were desperately hungry but could not eat that stuff. Corporal Fengel put the stuff back in the sack, slung it over his shoulders and started at a brisk walk toward the hollow. The hollow itself afforded some protection from the snipers, but while getting to our front lines the snipers were at him constantly. So intent was the corporal on returning the rotten food that had been sent his men that he didn’t seem to notice them. He returned in about an hour with good rations, making the remark that they had plenty good stuff up there but just figured they could pass anything off on us as we were in a position where we couldn’t do anything about it.
Corporal Fengel deserves great credit for his gameness in battle and his loyalty to the men in his charge.
After leaving this front we were sent to various places as supports. Those places were such that we had a chance to slip away occasionally to some small town for some food and drink. Several times I left camp on a hunt for drinks (and food) in company with others. I remember getting into the town, but not when I left it or returned to camp.
One night, several of us had gone to town and were lucky to find plenty of wine and champagne. Somewhere on the road back to camp I suddenly sobered and could hear the war going on in the distance. Several aerial bombs were dropping here and there, the droning of planes and chatter of their machine guns could be heard firing pursuing planes or firing tracer bullets marking positions of troops or artillery.
It was a bright, moonlit night and as I glanced up and down the road I could see the rest of the boys, mostly in pairs, weaving back and forth arm in arm, lecturing to each other, not seeming to be going anywhere. How peaceful I had been a moment before, and now to realize the war was still going on. I slipped back into unconsciousness.
I don’t know how we got there, but the next morning we woke up in our little pup tents. Our heads were somewhat enlarged but our minds relaxed and rested. Perhaps if the boys could have had these little rests more often than most had the opportunity, there would have been less insanity. As the Canadians and Australians told us: "Yank, the best way to go through this war is get drunk and stay drunk till it is over."
I won’t say that was good advice but I do know that it was the only complete relief our tortured minds got from the war.
While we were camped at this place there occurred a phenomena which astonished and amazed us. Quite a bunch of us were sitting around on a grassy slope - some of us talking, some of us reading mail from home folks, others looking over some of their love letters. We always kept this mail to read over and over at every opportunity. It brought loved ones a little closer.
It had been drizzling rain but stopped and the sun started peeping through the breaks in the clouds. All of a sudden the sunshine broke through a large gap in the clouds and numerous rainbows appeared. They were all about the same size - probably their half-circle would have measured 15 feet. We could see each other through them, run our hands through them, lie with our head at one end and our feet at the other. It was a magnificent display of color. If there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, there was a gold mine on this grassy slope.
I do know there was gold buried in France, because in Moline Woods, while digging a corral to protect the horses from airplane raids, the boys dug up a pot of Roman money. I remember some of these coins had pictures of ancient buildings on them. One of them had that of an elephant hitched to a cart. One of the officers offered the boy who found it 1,500 francs for it. I never heard of any of these coins reaching the USA.
We were shifting about, never getting out of shell range of the enemy, and finally landing in the Verdun sector. Here we took over the front (which was very quiet till we got there) from the French. The French and Germans seemed to have an agreement not to fire at each other for the French told us that if we wouldn’t fire on the Germans, they wouldn’t fire on us.
Everywhere one looked, one could see French grenades. These our boys began to make use of as soon as we were situated in the trenches. They began to liven things up by throwing them out on no-man’s-land, making it sound as if a battle was in progress. They did not like such quiet.
One of the boys, by the name of Deaton, made the remark that he was the best lil’ old grenade thrower in the whole U.S. Army. A lad name of Bertog didn’t believe him, so they agreed to find out who was best. Each took a position by a large pile of grenades, piled up a few sacks as their forts, and prepared to throw at one another to see which could blow up the other first. Someone had told the Lieutenant what was about to happen and he came out just as the boys were each asking the other if he was ready.
"What in the hell are you doing," he demanded angrily. "Are you crazy?" Whereupon Private Deaton answered calmly. "Oh hell, Lieutenant. These French grenades won’t hurt anybody, they just make a noise and smoke is all." However, they had to give up their little war.
The noise the boys had already made had excited the Germans and they began to move about making preparations of some sort. Observation posts sent word that night to stand ready, the Germans were undoubtedly going to attack us.
Well, privates Deaton and Bertog were going to have their fun anyhow, so they asked permission to go out on no-man’s-land to lie in a shell hole and wait for the Germans. As they left they said, ‘’When we start firing you’ll know the Germans are there and you can be ready for them when they get to the trenches." I don’t believe those two had any intentions of letting the Germans get any farther than the shell hole in which they were hiding.
We held this front for several days without the expected trouble from the Germans. One night, four or five Germans came over to play pinochle with the French, not knowing we had moved in. Two of them were captured, the rest got away.
Another night we were standing guards, huddled under a piece of old sheet iron that we had over our trench to keep off the rain. Someone who had come from the rear stepped on and mashed the thing down on my head and that of my buddy, then kept on going right towards the Germans. My buddy wanted to shoot him. I told him there were a lot of us and only one of him, so we ordered him to halt. He turned and queried, "Where in the hell is the Third Platoon?" He was one of our own men, lost in the night. On another occasion, a similar incident took place. That night we sighted a patrol party coming right towards our post. It was too dark to tell how many or who they were and as we had no patrol out that night, assumed they were Germans. Our Lieutenant and Sergeant were called and came out just as the patrol halted, about 50 feet from the muzzle of our machine gun.
I was fairly sure by this time that I recognized American uniforms. The Sergeant coming out of the light from the dugout could not see as well as I and drawing his .45, shouted "Let them have it." I knocked his arm and called "Who goes there?"
The answer came. "Friend." I said "Advance one and be recognized." The corporal of the patrol came forward. They were Americans of another outfit coming in off patrol duty.
After our officer directed them how to get back of the lines and find their own outfit, our Sergeant turned to me. He was nervous and shaking and said: "Gee, I’m sure glad you grabbed my arm cause I couldn’t have missed all of them."
It was here one moon-lit night that an enemy plane flew over our trenches seeming so low we could almost hit it with a rock. We could not shoot at it-although he was inviting us to do so, as he would have liked to signal to his artillery the exact spot we were. We stayed quiet as he hovered over our position. When he was a little past us, he dropped a few bombs but did no damage. The experiences thus far were as nothing compared to what we later witnessed.
We were taken into a large tunnel, getting ready to start the war in earnest. As ammunition was brought up we were detailed to carry it to the front. There mud in the trenches, knee deep, which we were made to walk around and stand in day after hellish day. Then, on the morning of Sept. 26, we were in those trenches waiting for the zero hour. The paths we were to follow through our barbed-wire entanglement had been cut through the night. Only five minutes more for a great many of the boys to live. Four minutes, three minutes, two, then one.
"Ready? Let’s go!"
