"And They Thought We Wouldn't Fight - free ebook by Floyd Phillips Gibbons

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1918 , By George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America...

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Personal. France, August 17, 1918. Mr. Floyd Gibbons, Care Chicago Tribune, 420 Sue Saint-Honore, Paris. Dear Mr. Gibbons: At this time, when you are returning to America, I wish to express to you my appreciation of the cordial cooperation and assistance you have always given us in your important work as correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in France. I also wish to congratulate you on the honor which the French government has done you in giving you the Croix de Guerre, which is but a just rewar

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FOREWORD

Marshal Foch, the commander of eleven million bayonets, has written that no man is more qualified than Gibbons to tell the true story of the Western Front. General Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, has said that it was Gibbons' great opportunity to give the people in America a life-like picture of the work of the American soldier in France. The key to the book is the man. Back in the red days on the Rio Grande, word came from Pancho Villa that any "Gringos" found

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THE SINKING OF THE Laconia

Between America and the firing line, there are three thousand miles of submarine infested water. Every American soldier, before encountering the dangers of the battle-front, must first overcome the dangers of the deep. Geographically, America is almost four thousand miles from the war zone, but in fact every American soldier bound for France entered the war zone one hour out of New York harbour. Germany made an Ally out of the dark depths of the Atlantic. That three-thousand-mile passage represe

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PERSHING'S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE

Lean, clean, keen—that's the way they looked—that first trim little band of American fighting men who made their historic landing on the shores of England, June 8th, 1917. I went down from London to meet them at the port of arrival. In my despatches of that date, I, nor none of the other correspondents, was permitted to mention the name of the port. This was supposed to be the secret that was to be religiously kept and the British censor was on the job religiously. The name of the port was exclu

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THE LANDING OF THE FIRST AMERICAN CONTINGENT IN FRANCE

The first executive work of the American Expeditionary Forces overseas was performed in a second floor suite of the Crillon Hotel on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. This suite was the first temporary headquarters of the American commander. The tall windows of the rooms looked down on the historic Place which was the scene of so many momentous events in French history. The windows were hardly a hundred yards from the very spot where the guillotine dripped red in the days of the Terror. It was

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THROUGH THE SCHOOL OF WAR

Clip the skyline from the Blue Ridge, arch it over with arboreal vistas from the forests of the Oregon, reflect the two in the placid waters of the Wisconsin—and you will have some conception of the perfect Eden of beauty in which the first contingent of the American Expeditionary Forces trained in France. Beckoning white roads curl through the rolling hills like ribbons of dental cream squeezed out evenly on rich green velour. Châteaux, pearl white centres in settings of emerald green, push the

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MAKING THE MEN WHO MAN THE GUNS

While our infantry perfected their training in the Vosges, the first American artillery in France undertook a schedule of studies in an old French artillery post located near the Swiss frontier. This place is called Valdahon, and for scores of years had been one of the training places for French artillery. But during the third and fourth years of the war nearly all of the French artillery units being on the front, all subsequent drafts of French artillerymen received their training under actual

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"FRONTWARD HO!"

When the artillery training had proceeded to such a point that the French instructors were congratulating our officers upon their proficiency, the rumours spread through the post that the brigade had been ordered to go to the front—that we were to be the first American soldiers to actually go into the line and face the Germans. The news was received with joy. The men were keen to try out their newly acquired abilities upon the enemy. Harness was polished until it shone. Brass equipment gleamed u

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INTO THE LINE—THE FIRST AMERICAN SHOT IN THE WAR

A damp, chill, morning mist made the dawn even greyer as our battery train slid into a loading platform almost under the walls of a large manufacturing plant engaged in producing war materials. In spite of the fact that the section chiefs reported that not a man had been injured, and not so much as a leg broken in the crowded horse cars, every man in the battery now declared the absence of any doubt but the air raid had been directly aimed at Battery A. "There might be a spy in this here very ou

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THE FIRST AMERICAN SECTOR

It was in the Luneville sector, described in the preceding chapter, that the first American fighting men faced the Germans on the western front. It was there that the enemy captured its first American prisoners in a small midnight raid; it was there that we captured some prisoners of theirs, and inflicted our first German casualties; it was there that the first American fighting man laid down his life on the western front. In spite of these facts, however, the occupation of those front line post

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THE NIGHT OUR GUNS CUT LOOSE

As soon as our forces had made themselves at home in the Toul sector, it was inevitable that belligerent activity would increase and this, in spite of the issuance of strict orders that there should be no development of the normal daily fire. Our men could not entirely resist the temptation to start something. As was to be expected, the Germans soon began to suspect that they were faced by different troops from the ones who had been confronting them. The enemy set out to verify his suspicions. H

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INTO PICARDY TO MEET THE GERMAN PUSH

Toward the end of March, 1918, just at the time when the American Expeditionary Forces were approaching the desired degree of military effectiveness, the fate of civilisation was suddenly imperilled by the materialisation of the long expected German offensive. This push, the greatest the enemy had ever attempted, began on March 21st, and the place that Hindenburg selected for the drive was Picardy, the valley of the Somme, the ancient cockpit of Europe. On that day the German hordes, scores upon

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UNDER FIRE

On the day before our departure for the front from the concentration area in Picardy, every officer in the division, and they numbered almost a thousand, was summoned to the temporary divisional headquarters, where General Pershing addressed to them remarks which have since become known as the commander's "farewell to the First." We had passed out from his command and from then on our orders were to come from the commander of the French army to which the division was to be attached. General Pers

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BEFORE CANTIGNY

It is strange how sleep can come at the front in surroundings not unlike the interior of a boiler factory, but it does. I heard of no man who slept in the cellars beneath the ruins of Serevilliers that night being disturbed by the pounding of the shells and the jar of the ground, both of which were ever present through our dormant senses. Stranger still was the fact that at midnight when the shelling almost ceased, for small intervals, almost every sleeper there present was aroused by the sudden

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THE RUSH OF THE RAIDERS—"ZERO AT 2 A. M."

While the First U. S. Division was executing in Picardy a small, planned operation which resulted in the capture of the German fortified positions in the town of Cantigny, other American divisions at other parts along the line were indulging in that most common of frontal diversions—the raid. I was a party to one of these affairs on the Toul front. The 26th Division, composed of National Guard troops from New England, made the raid. On Memorial Day, I had seen those men of the Yankee Division de

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ON LEAVE IN PARIS

"So this—is Paris,"—this observation spoken in mock seriousness, in a George Cohan nasal drawl and accompanied by a stiff and stagy wave of the arm, was the customary facetious pass-word with which American soldiers on leave or on mission announced their presence in the capital of France. Paris, the beautiful—Paris, the gay—Paris, the historical—Paris, the artistic—Paris, the only Paris, opened her arms to the American soldier and proceeded toward his enlightenment and entertainment on the sole

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CHÂTEAU-THIERRY AND THE BOIS DE BELLEAU

I have endeavoured to show in preceding chapters the development of the young American army in France from a mere handful of new troops up to the creation of units capable of independent action on the front. Only that intense and thorough training made it possible for our oversea forces to play the veteran part they did play in the great Second Battle of the Marne. The battle developed as a third phase of the enemy's Western Front offensives of the year. The increasing strength of the American f

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WOUNDED—HOW IT FEELS TO BE SHOT

Just how does it feel to be shot on the field of battle? Just what is the exact sensation when a bullet burns its way through your flesh or crashes through your bones? I always wanted to know. As a police reporter I "covered" scores of shooting cases, but I could never learn from the victims what the precise feeling was as the piece of lead struck. For long years I had cherished an inordinate curiosity to know that sensation, if possible, without experiencing it. I was curious and eager for enli

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"GOOD MORNING, NURSE"

Weakness from the loss of blood began to grow on me as Lieutenant Hartzell and I made our way through the deepening shadows of the wooded hillside in the rear of the field on which I had been shot. In an upright position of walking the pains in my head seemed to increase. We stopped for a minute and, neither of us having first aid kits with us, I resurrected a somewhat soiled silk handkerchief with which Hartzell bound up my head in a manner that applied supporting pressure over my left eye and

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GROANS, LAUGHS AND SOBS IN THE HOSPITAL

There were fourteen wounded American soldiers in my ward—all men from the ranks and representing almost as many nationalistic extractions. There was an Irishman, a Swede, an Italian, a Jew, a Pole, one man of German parentage, and one man of Russian extraction. All of them had been wounded at the front and all of them now had something nearer and dearer to them than any traditions that might have been handed down to them from a mother country—they had fought and bled and suffered for a new count

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"JULY 18TH"—THE TURN OF THE TIDE

Through the steady growth of Marshal Foch's reserves, by the speedy arrival of American forces, the fourth German offensive of 1918, the personally directed effort launched by the Crown Prince on May 27th, had been brought to a standstill. The German thrust toward Paris had been stopped by the Americans at Château-Thierry and in the Bois de Belleau. It would be an injustice not to record the great part played in that fighting by the French Army attacked, but it would be equally unjust not to spe

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THE DAWN OF VICTORY

The waited hour had come. The forced retreat of the German hordes had begun. Hard on their heels, the American lines started their northward push, backing the Boche off the Marne. On the morning of July 21st I rode into Château-Thierry with the first American soldiers to enter the town. The Germans had evacuated hurriedly. Château-Thierry was reoccupied jointly by our forces and those of the French. Here was the grave of German hopes. Insolent, imperialistic longings for the great prize, Paris,

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PERSONNEL OF THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES IN FRANCE

Major Gen. Hunter Liggett, commanding. 1st and 2nd Division, Regular Army; 26th, (New England), 32d, (Michigan and Wisconsin), 41st, (Washington, Oregon, North and South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Minnesota), and 42d ( Rainbow , troops from twenty-six States) Divisions, National Guard. 1ST DIVISION—Major Gen. Charles P. Summerall, commanding; Lieut. Col. Campbell King, Chief of Staff; Major H. K. Loughry, Adjutant General. 1st Brigade, Infantry —Major John L. Hine

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