Harry Truman's and George Patton's experiences in Cheppy

     Future president Harry Truman was waiting south of Cheppy for the start of the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26, 1918.  He was eight years older than my father and was an officer in command of an artillery battery.  He had been with the Missouri National Guard when it was called up and merged with the Kansas Guard to make the 35th Division and had trained at Camp Doniphan.  There were 25,000 men in the Division, meaning there was little chance he and Dad knew each other during the war.  However, the two men knew each other after the war when Dad was living in Independence, Missouri, and they both were officers in an Army reserve unit in Independence.  Dad never mentioned comparing memories of WWI with Truman though.

     At the start of the fighting, Truman's artillery was farther back from the front than Dad's machine gun company was.  Truman's men had fired in the artillery barrage that started at 2:00 a.m. that day. His battery spent the night of September 26 south of Butte Vauquois whereas Dad was about a mile to the north outside Cheppy.  Truman's unit had breakfast there around 10 on the morning of September 27 and then passed through the area where Dad had been.  

     By this time, the fighting had shifted to the west side of the Division's sector as the Americans tried to take the village of Charpentry.  Map of Charpentry.  Truman's actions here, though sensible and aggressive, almost got him court-martialed.  Unable to see where the American troops were in front of his position, he ordered his battery to fire on German artillery to his left on several occasions.  Unfortunately for Truman, that was in the 28th U.S. Infantry Division's sector, and it was against standing orders to fire into another unit's sector.  The commanding officer of the 28th fumed that whoever was firing into his sector would be court-martialed -- even though Truman claimed his firing was effective -- but nothing came of it.  This ended Truman's combat in WWI  because the battle lines became so confused that the artillery was ordered not to fire lest it hit American troops.  (Incidentally, tomorrow former Senator John Danforth will be given the "Doniphan Award" at the Truman Library in Independence.  The announcement on the Library's website explains who Doniphan, who gave his name to the camp in Oklahoma, was).

      Future general George S. Patton was on same battlefield on September 26, commanding the 344th Tank Battalion.  Patton thought the new-fangled tank would change warfare and was eager to prove this.  His tanks trailed the infantry attack that morning and were supposed to move forward if the foot soldiers ran into trouble, which they did.  Patton himself wasn't in a tank.  When he saw the infantry fall back, he ran forward to stop them.  He stopped a machine gun bullet instead.  Seriously wounded, he was pinned down on the battlefield for several hours before being evacuated.  Patton's combat in WWI was over.