It is rather surprising that movies of the Meuse-Argonne offensive exist and are online. This first one doesn't identify the location. It may be later in the offensive, after Dad's division was taken out of combat. However, at about 2:20 you can see a wagon go by with one of the big, heavy French machine guns of the type that Dad's company was using then. It is pulled by mules, and Dad, a farm boy, wrote about taking care of the mules at Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma.
Meuse-Argonne offensive
This movie of burials is identified as taking place at Cheppy. This would have been at the time Dad was there. Burials at Cheppy
On a different movie note is this clip on YouTube. Varennes, a town a few miles west of Cheppy and within the 35th Division's sector on September 26, 1918, was where French King Louis XVI was captured as he was fleeing to the safety of the German border to escape the Revolution. He as taken back to Paris and later executed. Thus, Varennes's brief fame was as the place Louis XVI was captured. The incident was turned into a movie La Nuit de Varennes, or A Night in Varennes. Le Nuit de Varennes This map shows both Cheppy and Varennes-en-Argonne. Map The King's night in Varennes was in 1791. Dad's night in Cheppy was 127 years after that My visit will come 100 years after Dad's.
My father Harold Johnston fought at the opening of the Meuse-Argonne in WWI. He never went back, but I did on September 26, 2018, exactly 100 years later. This is his story from 1918 and mine from 2018.
Friday, September 7, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Background on U.S. participation in World War I
The history of U.S. participation in World War I is commonly confused with what happened in World War II. In the Second World War, the allies invaded France on June 6, 1944 and fought their way across Europe until Germany's surrender in May 1945.
U.S. participation in World War I was quite different. Although the British, French, and Russians had been fighting Germany since 1914, the United States didn't declare war until April 1917. President Woodrow Wilson instructed the American commander, General John "Black Jack" Pershing, to make sure the American contribution to winning the war was recognized. That is, if sending one million American soldiers into the fight led to the defeat of Germany, then Wilson wanted the United States to get the credit, which might be of great value in post-war negotiations. Therefore, Pershing rejected repeated requests from French commanders to throw American units into the fighting piecemeal. Rather he insisted, American troops should not go into battle until he had assembled an overwhelming force, one that could be demonstrably decisive. This decisive battle was the Meuse-Argonne offensive, named for two rivers in northeastern France that were the scene. By the start of the offensive, on September 26, 1918, Pershing had more that one million men under his command, and they did indeed have a demonstrably decisive impact. The Armistice came on November 11, 1918, just forty-seven days later. The chart below of American battle deaths by week is tragic evidence of how the fighting progressed. Prepared a few years after the war, it shows few American battle deaths until June 1918. This is because American troops hadn't gotten to Europe in any numbers yet. The United States was completely unprepared for war when it was declared in April 1917. But some troops had arrived by June and Pershing allowed these, principally the Marines, to be used to block a German offensive at Chateau Thierry. Deaths reached 2,529 in the most intense week of fighting then. But this was dwarfed by the huge number of battle deaths beginning with the Meuse-Argonne campaign in late September. There were 6,559 deaths that week, continuing at a declining rate through the end of the war in November. It is worth noting that total battle deaths for the Americans in World War I was around 47,000. Deaths from other causes, mainly disease, were higher as killers like measles and influenza took their toll in the confines of encampments.
U.S. participation in World War I was quite different. Although the British, French, and Russians had been fighting Germany since 1914, the United States didn't declare war until April 1917. President Woodrow Wilson instructed the American commander, General John "Black Jack" Pershing, to make sure the American contribution to winning the war was recognized. That is, if sending one million American soldiers into the fight led to the defeat of Germany, then Wilson wanted the United States to get the credit, which might be of great value in post-war negotiations. Therefore, Pershing rejected repeated requests from French commanders to throw American units into the fighting piecemeal. Rather he insisted, American troops should not go into battle until he had assembled an overwhelming force, one that could be demonstrably decisive. This decisive battle was the Meuse-Argonne offensive, named for two rivers in northeastern France that were the scene. By the start of the offensive, on September 26, 1918, Pershing had more that one million men under his command, and they did indeed have a demonstrably decisive impact. The Armistice came on November 11, 1918, just forty-seven days later. The chart below of American battle deaths by week is tragic evidence of how the fighting progressed. Prepared a few years after the war, it shows few American battle deaths until June 1918. This is because American troops hadn't gotten to Europe in any numbers yet. The United States was completely unprepared for war when it was declared in April 1917. But some troops had arrived by June and Pershing allowed these, principally the Marines, to be used to block a German offensive at Chateau Thierry. Deaths reached 2,529 in the most intense week of fighting then. But this was dwarfed by the huge number of battle deaths beginning with the Meuse-Argonne campaign in late September. There were 6,559 deaths that week, continuing at a declining rate through the end of the war in November. It is worth noting that total battle deaths for the Americans in World War I was around 47,000. Deaths from other causes, mainly disease, were higher as killers like measles and influenza took their toll in the confines of encampments.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Harold Johnston's war
Dad joined the Kansas National Guard shortly after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. The picture of him on this blog was taken about that time. In August, the Kansas and Missouri National Guards were called into active service and merged into the 35th U.S. Infantry Division. They trained at Camp Doniphan in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They left there in early April 1918, sailing first to Liverpool before arriving in Le Harve, France a month later. Once there, the soldiers were stripped of diaries, such as the one Dad had been keeping, and given combat equipment and moved to a relatively quiet sector in the Vosges Mountains in eastern France to get some experience before being thrown into full-scale combat.
That combat came on the morning of September 26, 1918 just south of a little village called Vauquois. The Germans had fortified a hill south of the village. Butte Vauquois is still there and the entrenchments. have been preserved.
Vauquois map
Dad was in a machine gun company. The battle order for that morning, which I obtained from the National Archives, assigned Dad's company to what was called Buzemont hill to the south of Butte Vauquois with instructions to direct fire at the Butte. Dad's diary, which he retrieved after the war, recalls the machine guns began firing at 5:30 a.m. and continued for twenty-eight minutes. Then their comrades in the trenches "went over the top" in Dad's words, and the machine guns fired over their heads for another nineteen minutes.
So this is where I plan to start my day on September 26, 2018 although maybe not at 5:30 a.m. You can get future postings automactically by submitting your email address in the space to the right.
That combat came on the morning of September 26, 1918 just south of a little village called Vauquois. The Germans had fortified a hill south of the village. Butte Vauquois is still there and the entrenchments. have been preserved.
Vauquois map
Dad was in a machine gun company. The battle order for that morning, which I obtained from the National Archives, assigned Dad's company to what was called Buzemont hill to the south of Butte Vauquois with instructions to direct fire at the Butte. Dad's diary, which he retrieved after the war, recalls the machine guns began firing at 5:30 a.m. and continued for twenty-eight minutes. Then their comrades in the trenches "went over the top" in Dad's words, and the machine guns fired over their heads for another nineteen minutes.
So this is where I plan to start my day on September 26, 2018 although maybe not at 5:30 a.m. You can get future postings automactically by submitting your email address in the space to the right.
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