The Heroic Gangster_The Story of Monk Eastman, From the Streets of New York to the Battlefields of Europe and Back

by Neil Hanson

  As the escorts circled, the convoy steamed ahead in close formation, at full speed, with black smoke belching from the funnels. All hands were at full alert, but a stand-to at 2:30 in the morning on May 22 proved to be a false alarm, caused by a lookout spooked by hours of staring into the darkness.10 The men wore their life belts constantly now, and that night, at the suggestion of the ship’s captain, everyone slept fully dressed, their boots on as well. They remained in their hammocks only a short while before the wailing of the ship’s sirens and blasts on its whistle, accompanied by the sound of sailors running through the ship ringing handbells, signaled another stand-to in the small hours, triggered by reports of U-boat sightings off Brest.

  May 24, 1918, dawned without further alarms. It was a beautiful morning and the men’s spirits were lifted even more by the sight of land ahead: the coast of France. French patrol boats came out to meet the convoy while aircraft circled overhead and the destroyer escorts formed a protective screen as the troop transports, in single file, threaded the narrow inlet to the harbor, the only break in a rocky coast studded with reefs. As the President Lincoln nosed its way in, Monk and the other men at the rails saw “emerald-green hills, dotted here and there with tiny thatched-roof peasant houses, the bluest of blue waters, and the fleet of sailboats of all colors, some almost toy-like in size.”11 Overhead, tethered barrage balloons strained against their moorings in the stiff onshore breeze.

  The ship docked at Brest late that day, and the 106th Infantry spent that night aboard, before disembarking the following morning. They were luckier than they knew to have made the crossing unscathed; at 11:40 on the morning of May 30, 1918, their ship, carrying convalescent soldiers home to the United States, was torpedoed and sunk two hundred miles out on the return voyage.12 The U-boat wolf pack also accounted for the USS Covington, the ship that had flanked the President Lincoln on the voyage to France.

  On May 25, the men of the 106th Infantry were ferried ashore. As they took their first steps on French soil, the strength of the regiment stood at 92 officers and 3,196 men. All the companies were short of officers—a reflection of the scarcity of suitably qualified men—but Monk’s Company G was particularly badly served, consisting of 231 men but only 4 officers.13 Since line officers tended to suffer disproportionately high casualty rates because of their leading position in attacks, the shortage continued to prompt concern.

  Struggling under the weight of their packs, the men formed up on the dockside before marching through the town and up the steep hill, lined with ancient houses. Curious French people watched them pass, and the war-weary civilians in their somber clothes were curiosities themselves to the new arrivals, almost all of them setting foot on European soil for the first time in their lives. The vast scale of French losses in the war was immediately apparent. There seemed to be few people who were not in mourning; almost everyone on the street was dressed in black. There were no young men to be seen, only women, old men, and boys.14 After a two-hour march, they halted at Fort Bougren, one of the ancient defenses of the port, and pitched their pup tents for a three-day rest. It puzzled them all greatly, since they had been doing virtually nothing but rest since sailing from Hoboken fourteen days earlier.

  On May 28, 1918, the 106th Infantry marched back down the hill to the station. They traveled in three separate detachments, with Monk’s Company G among four companies to leave at 11:30 that morning. The waiting trains hauled French boxcars, so small they seemed like toys and immortalized by the slogan stenciled in white paint on their sides: 40 hommes—8 chevaux (forty men and eight horses), though forty men could be accommodated in those cars only if they were all standing up.15 In each car were boxes of rations, supposedly enough to last three days. In groups of forty, the men were loaded into cattle cars still stinking of manure, and the train moved off. The journey passed with painful slowness, and the train was sometimes shunted into sidings and left for hours before jerking back into motion.

  The commanding officer of the 106th had been ordered to prevent his troops from obtaining liquor, but there was little opportunity for them to do so.16 They were penned in their cattle cars and forbidden to leave for any reason, even though sanitary facilities were nonexistent. Trying to sleep at night was next to impossible. “We lay like sardines in a can. If one of us turned over, a dozen or so others had to do the same. If one tried to make the side door in an emergency, he crawled over all those between him and his goal. The cursing on such occasions was something to hear and would awaken everyone. Then we all cussed each other, France, the French railroads and the Army.”

  They traveled north and east for two days and nights, through Normandy in apple-blossom time, passing “checkerboard fields, broom-swept woods, past toy-like railroad stations, and road-crossings where papa or mama emerged from their little house near the tracks to lower and raise the crossing gates.”17 The beauty of those surroundings made the contrast all the more pointed when they eventually arrived in the war zone at Noyelles-sur-Mer, near the major British base at Abbeville. Sleepy, stiff, and sore, they picked up their packs and began to march, hearing for the first time the ceaseless bass rumble of the heavy guns in the front lines.

  The troops of the 27th Division bivouaced for miles around the Somme estuary, but on General Pershing’s orders they were kept as far away from towns as possible, to minimize the VD rate. He was so obsessed by the potential impact of venereal disease on his troops that he ordered guards posted outside brothels to stop his men from patronizing them, and when he was told that prostitutes deliberately sought out foreign troops because they had more money, Pershing cabled the War Department to withhold part of each soldier’s pay.18 Men who did contract VD were subject to trial by summary court-martial. General O’Ryan matched his commander’s zeal by demanding that regimental and unit commanders of the 27th Division exercise the greatest care to ensure that no man escaped trial and punishment. Sufferers were also subjected to “extremely painful medical treatment which, it was suspected, was partly intended as a punishment and deterrent.”

  The bureaucratic and logistical chaos of war was never more evident than in the travails of the First Battalion of the 106th Infantry, which finally arrived by train at Noyelles at 2:15 on the morning of May 30. There was no one there to greet them and direct them to their billets and, as the station was deserted, Major Ransom H. Gillet told his men to remain aboard until dawn.19 Just after daybreak, at about 4:00 a.m., a British officer appeared and told him to disembark and unload the equipment at once. The men stumbled from the cattle cars of the train, and unloading had been completed by 5:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes later another English officer arrived and told Gillet that breakfast was waiting at a rest camp a few minutes’ walk from the station and that the battalion would be billeted at Crécy. However, first all the equipment that had just been unloaded from the train had to be moved again, into an open field, so that an incoming train could use the same space to unload. They then marched to the rest camp, and after a cold breakfast, they returned to the railroad yard.

  Later that morning, two senior officers of the 27th Division appeared and issued orders about what each man should have in his pack and what should be done with his surplus equipment. While the men were unpacking, sorting, and repacking their equipment, their commander was informed that they would need to clear the area quickly, as another battalion was right behind them and would have to use the same ground. By the time all the clothing and equipment had been sorted and stowed to the officers’ satisfaction it was 12:30 p.m., and Gillet was then ordered to take his men back to the rest area for lunch. When they arrived, they found Monk’s Second Battalion already there. Since there was barely enough room for one battalion, let alone two, the resulting overcrowding meant that the First Battalion did not receive their full rations, nor have the chance to fill all their canteens before a British NCO told them to move out as yet another battalion was expected.

  The promised guide to lead them to their billets did not appear until 3:
10 that afternoon, and at that point, the First Battalion began the march to Crécy. By 7:30 that evening they had been marching for approximately eleven miles and were just a mile short of Crécy when yet another British officer rode up, told Gillet to halt the column, and informed him that they were on the wrong road and that there were no billets, no room, and no rations for them at Crécy. The battalion waited at the roadside while the British officer took Gillet to his office in the town and produced a map that showed the Americans were supposed to be billeted not at Crécy but at Canchy, a few miles away. Gillet then pointed out that it was now almost eight at night and his men had been on the move since four that morning, and were without food or water.20 He therefore asked for trucks to take them to Canchy.

  Another hour elapsed while thirty-five trucks were located and dispatched to where the battalion was waiting, and they were then driven to Canchy, arriving at 11:30. Inevitably there was no billet warden there to greet and direct them, and when one of the drivers took Gillet to the headquarters of the 27th Division, several miles away, he got lost, so it was two in the morning on May 31 when they arrived. The billet warden directed them to the house where the 27th Division had its headquarters, but it was in darkness, and no one came in answer to Gillet’s fusillade of knocks. He went back to the billet warden, who sent him back to the house again. This time, in answer to a renewed barrage of knocking, a sergeant finally appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The sergeant took Gillet to another house to see a colonel, who sent him to see a captain in yet another house, who sent him and the sergeant back to the division’s headquarters to make further inquiries by phone.

  At 3:15 a.m. a weary Gillet gave up the attempt and decided to return to his troops, who had now been without food or water for almost twenty-four hours, his journey given added urgency by the truck driver’s announcement that all the trucks would have to be back at their base by six that morning. A few miles down the road they met the troops in the other trucks, now under the care of yet another British officer, who was taking them to La Festel. There, as dawn was breaking, they at last found billets, but while his men settled themselves, Gillet made one final trip, to Coulonvillers, where he persuaded his commanding officer to give him some rations and water for his hungry and thirsty men. Such were the ways of great armies in wartime.

  13

  THIS REALM OF SILENCE

  Although the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General Pershing, had hoped to retain all American troops under his direct control, as a result of the “Abbeville Agreement,” ten U.S. divisions, including the 27th, were sent to British sectors of the Western Front, where they would operate under overall British command. As a result, the 106th Infantry found itself at a British staging camp at Abbeville, where they spent their first night under fire. The town, incorporating a vital rail junction, was bombed every night, but while the raids sent British veterans sprinting to their dugouts, the men of the 106th, not yet realizing the horrors such raids could bring, “appeared to enjoy the performance as a child enjoys a circus.”1 As searchlights sliced through the night sky, sometimes fixing an enemy aircraft like a moth on a pin, the roar of the antiaircraft guns pumping up a barrage of shells was counterpointed by the drum rattle of falling shrapnel and the sudden bass rumble of bomb explosions. Yet throughout this cacophony, the American troops remained in the open, “all standing and gaping heavenward, like Kansas gentlemen on a visit to New York.”

  After a brief sleep, Monk and his comrades were awakened at daybreak. They splashed their faces with cold water and then ate their first British Army breakfast. “The hot Irish cracked oatmeal with a big gob of jam on it, the bacon and the bread were wonderful.2 Why the ‘Limey’ had to spoil it with tea was more than we could understand or endure. Our howls of protest were heard all the way to General O’Ryan’s headquarters, aided and abetted by those from every other unit in the Division. From then on we had coffee with all our meals.”

  Although there were complaints about British food, with the anonymous stew known as “McConachie” coming in for particular criticism, soldiers on British rations were much better fed than their counterparts, who were reliant on the American supply train. Most of those supplies arrived by the congested and lengthy rail route from Bordeaux, and General Pershing often had to choose whether a trainload of food or of ammunition would have priority. When at war, there could only be one solution to that problem, and as a result, his men were often forced to subsist on iron rations.3 By contrast, the 27th Division, fed via the much shorter British supply lines from the Channel ports, never went short of food.

  On May 31, the 106th broke camp and the three battalions transferred to different areas of the Albert region, with Monk and the rest of the Second Battalion billeted in barns and cowsheds at Oneux-Neuville. There they were issued the rest of their battlefield equipment, including box respirators, gas masks, rifles, and bayonets, while all their excess clothing, shoes, and personal items were taken from them and put into storage. From now on they would have to carry all they owned on their backs. Each man had his razor and toilet articles, a pair of woolen socks, a suit of long johns, two blankets, a shelter half—one half of a pup tent—a tent pole and pins, a pair of shoes, an overcoat, a slicker or raincoat, a trench shovel, a Bowie knife, a revolver with ammunition, a first-aid kit, a mess kit, and a canteen for water. The full kit weighed around seventy pounds, and most men discarded some of it along the road; if challenged about it later on, they could claim that it had been lost in action.4 Steel helmets and gas masks were added burdens to carry, but only the insane or suicidal would have discarded them. American-made military equipment of any sort remained in such short supply that, like their rations, every piece of their uniforms, equipment, and weaponry—even their underclothes—was British. Even where U.S. military equipment was demonstrably better than its British equivalent, problems of logistics and lack of compatibility with existing Allied weapons or ammunition rendered much of it unusable.

  The 106th Infantry’s final training, on ground that had been fought over for years, was all with British troops and instructors, and they were lectured on every aspect of frontline operations, from gas drills to censorship rules. To instill confidence in their gas masks, American troops spent half an hour in dark cellars that were sealed and filled with greenish-yellow chlorine gas. They were also taught how to detect the various poison gases by their odors, and what precautions to take. One of the more astonishing statistics of the war was that a thousand high-explosive shells were required to cause one casualty, whereas every gas cylinder produced a casualty.5 All of the gases, particularly mustard and phosgene, were lethal if inhaled, but mustard gas also produced severe burns and blindness if it came in contact with the skin or eyes. Chlorine caused victims’ lungs to fill with fluid and could “drown” them. Many of the gases clung to the ground, filling shell holes and seeping into unprotected dugouts, and remained virulent and deadly long after they had been spread.

  At the end of their training, after a month without anything more than the most perfunctory wash, the entire 106th Infantry was given the luxury of a two-minute shower, albeit in cold water. The engineers had erected a crude framework on the banks of a creek, with five-gallon gas cans punched with holes acting as showerheads. A bucket line of men fed the showers with cold creek water, and ten or twelve men at a time took their turn underneath. One bucket of water descended on them at once, and after a minute for soaping up, another bucketful rinsed them clean. “If you didn’t get thoroughly soaped or rinsed, it was your fault.6 You wiped yourself dry anyway.”

  On June 16, slightly cleaner and fresher, they began a punishing two-day march from Oneux to a new training base at Gamaches-Moutiers, during which they crossed the infamous River Somme for the first time.7 A few soldiers dropped out of the march along the way, too ill or exhausted or with feet too badly blistered to continue, but Monk was not one of them. He was twenty years older than most of his fellows, and his health had been wreck
ed by his years in Sing Sing and the two major stomach operations he had required, yet his marching stride never slackened and his voice was never raised in complaint, no matter how many miles they trudged through mud and rain or heat and dust. At Gamaches-Moutiers, Monk and the rest of the Second Battalion were quartered in tents set among fields vivid with poppies and cornflowers. They remained there for four days, under the instruction of British veterans of the British 66th Division, a unit so depleted in numbers and morale by their horrific losses during the great German offensive that spring that it was a mere skeleton.8

  The 106th’s British instructors, once naïve young soldiers themselves, were now hard-bitten veterans of the Somme and Passchendaele, and an instructor’s first sight of the American troops was not encouraging for him or them. “My God,” he said.9 “These are nothing but boys.” A British corporal was even more offensive. Tired of American big talk about what they were going to do to the Germans, he expressed the fervent hope that “Jerry [the Germans] will smash them to atoms, for they are nothing more than human garbage, and this is the best I can say about them.” The Australians expressed their views with a little more discretion, but were equally unimpressed by American officers, who “carried leather suitcases and umbrellas and looked more like commercial travelers than soldiers.”

  Although the American troops were raw, they were eager for the fray, and they were equally unimpressed with the war weariness and negativity that restricted the war aims of many British soldiers to obtaining a “Blighty” wound that would see them invalided out of the army and sent back to Blighty (Britain). The passivity and fatalism their instructors displayed in the face of a potential German attack also horrified the American troops. The British seemed resigned to being driven back by the next German attack, and appeared to have no aggressive spirit or desire to prepare for an offensive.10