War historians

     A historian at the Antietam Battlefield in Maryland told me the following.  I repeat it but warn that I haven't verified it.

     Around 1890, the Army acquired large parts of the Antietam Battlefield.  It realized it didn't really know in detail what happened there during the Civil War battle in 1862.  However, it had good records on both Union and Confederate veterans to whom it was sending pension checks, so it figured out which ones had at Antietam and sent them a packet of material with questions about their experiences and maps on which to sketch their locations during the battle.  The Army got a surprising number of responses, in the thousands as I recall.  Its historians reconstructed the battle from the voluminous material.  A few years later, it acquired the Gettysburg battlefield and did the same for it.  As I recall, Dwight Eisenhower was commandant at Gettysburg and oversaw the effort.  He did such a good job that at the end of WWI, he was sent to Europe as General Pershing's deputy for a monuments and cemetery commission.

       Regardless of whether this is the reason, the Army paid great attention to the history of World War I.  When I was researching Dad's participation in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, I went through boxes and boxes of documents about the battle that the Army had saved and that are now at the National Archives in Washington.  These included a 65-page battle order the Division had mimeographed off and distributed to all subordinate commanders before the battle, "after action" reports and "lessons learned" reports collected from the officers, and battle maps.  The map below was prepared by Army historians after the war to show the sector assigned to the 35th Division on September 26, 1918.  The colored lines were drawn on by the historians.  The red ones are the sector sides on left and right.  The blues ones mark the planned lines of advance.  I added "Buzemont" at the bottom to indicate the hill where Dad's machine gun company was located when the battle started at 5:30 a.m.  The map shows Vauquois, Cheppy, and the other towns.

More on Vosges

    Here are three more pictures of the Vosges Mountains and fortifications there that Kevin Adams took.  The first, a panorama, confirms what Kevin said about how rugged the mountains are although they aren't particularly high.  The second shows a well-reinforced trench above a steep slope, making it almost impossible to attack.  The third is of a sign, in three languages, explaining how strong the German fortifications were.  Little wonder this was considered a quiet sector: the German defenses were too strong to attack.  Dad told me that when they moved into the French trenches in this area, they had been occupied so long that rats had taken up residence.  According to Dad, one American soldier was killed one night when his comrade fired at a rat but hit his fellow soldier instead.  From then on, Dad said, they were ordered not to shoot at rats.  In the last photo, notice how close the opposing lines were.

Vosges Mountains

    My daughter Meredith and Kevin Adams, who are traveling in eastern France, "volunteered" to contribute to this blog to the extent they crossed paths with my father's travels in the Vosges Mountains.  Dad's summarized his travels in his diary: 

    "Went in trenches up from Moosch, Alsace first time June 20th, snowed June 23rd, came out of trenches June 29th came out to Oderen and stayed all night next day hiked to La Bresse.  Trained.  Went back July 20th from Kruth.  We were relieved August 2nd by 128th M.G. Bat[talion]. Went back to Kruth 13th went in trenches 14th. Went out morning of Sept. 2nd.  Went to Kruth Sept. 3rd went to Cornimont  Left Cornimont on train on morning of fifth.  Got off about 12 o’clock at Eaurix and started hiking about 1:30.  Hiked until morning of sixth until about 2:00 when we arrived at Neuveo Maison.  Left Neuveo Maison in rain and mud night of 11th.  Hiked in rain and mud all night to be in reserve for St. Michael [Mihiel] drive, we pitched pup tents in woods near Liverdun.  Transport left woods night of 15th.  We left September 20th in French trucks rode all night.  Left there night of 22nd went to woods from where we went into drive.  I was on detail and got to ride in truck."  This last movement put them in position for the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

        Kevin took these two pictures of the Vosges, which he described as more "rugged" than he expected, and of the trenches.  Meredith took the picture as they entered La Bresse.

     Dad's diary says they "hiked" from Oderen to La Bresse.  Google Maps shows that is 17 kms, including a 500 meter change in elevation.  It would take 4 hours by foot today, but in the First World War, it was nothing for soldiers to march from town to town in France.  Dad wrote that one day at Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma, they went on a 28-mile march that took a full day, but Oklahoma is flat as a pancake.  In the diary quote above, Dad says they hiked for twelve and a half hours in going from Eaurix to Neuveo Maison in rain and mud.  Before joining the Army, Dad had not traveled beyond the plains of central Kansas.  One can imagine what an eye-opening experience this was, including things like snow in late June.  That is when wheat is harvested in Kansas.

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.