by Neil Hanson
Monk’s Second Battalion reached the river by sliding down the embankment onto the heads of a company of the 102nd Engineers still engaged in the futile attempt to lay footbridges across the river.19 After fording the river and climbing the slippery banks, the battalion attacked and mopped up, crossing a trench system cratered by shell fire, which proved a formidable obstacle.20 They then entered Saint-Martin-Rivière and cleared the town, silencing the enemy guns from which heavy firing had been coming, and taking numerous prisoners.
The Second Battalion moved on to a railroad a thousand yards east of the town and took cover under the embankment—about forty feet high—unaware that enemy troops were occupying dugouts on the other side, within a few yards of them. When this startling discovery was made, Monk led his comrades in scaling the embankment and bombing the enemy dugouts. More prisoners were taken, and the Second Battalion marched their captives forward with them, making them identify enemy positions.21 Using captives as human shields breached the rules of warfare, but the weary and now battle-hardened New Yorkers were less concerned with legal niceties than with ensuring the survival of as many of their remaining comrades as possible.
Fierce resistance at Jonc de Mer Ridge was overcome by rifle fire and a frontal attack, with the Second Battalion clearing the trenches at the point of the bayonet. They were then held up by machine-gun nests hidden in hedges and thickets just outside Arbre Guernon, fulfilling the prophecy contained in their battle orders that the main resistance might not come from the village itself but from the hedges flanking the road to the northwest.22 Strong patrols eliminated the machine guns, and the Second Battalion then linked up with the 105th Infantry and established a line of resistance just east of the main road. The other battalions of the 106th were digging in along a sunken road west of Arbre Guernon, ready to hold this line for the night.
As Monk and a comrade worked their way forward, mopping up enemy positions with bombs, bullets, and bayonets, they came across a young German soldier huddled in a dugout and paralyzed with fright. He was only fifteen years old but looked even younger. In these dying days of the war, in a last desperate attempt to hold the line, the Germans were throwing their last reserves of manpower—the young, the old, the wounded—into the fight. The boy made no effort to defend himself, staring helplessly up at them as Monk’s buddy raised his rifle. He was about to shoot the boy when Monk pushed the gun’s barrel down.23 “Don’t shoot,” Monk said. “He’s only a kid.” They took him prisoner instead and sent him under guard to the rear as they continued to advance. The boy owed his life to Monk.
By now, the 106th Infantry had crossed the crest to the east of the river and advanced two miles, but they had suffered more heavy casualties. The First Battalion was down to ten officers and thirty-eight men, and the others were little stronger. Along with the other exhausted men of the 27th Division, they were due to be relieved that night, but the British commander, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, informed General O’Ryan that unforeseen circumstances would prevent this and asked whether the American troops would be willing to hold their lines until the following morning.24 With a confidence shading into hubris, O’Ryan replied that they would not only be willing to hold their ground but would make a further advance if the Australian artillery supplied a barrage.
O’Ryan’s plan called for the 106th to leapfrog the 105th during the advance, but the 106th was now so numerically weak that it could not assume that responsibility. Instead, Monk’s Second Battalion was merged with what was left of the 105th Infantry, and they went over the top together toward La Jonquière Farm on the morning of October 18. Their battle orders predicted that the farm, occupied by a full German unit, strongly entrenched, would be a major obstacle, occupying a commanding position, with extensive cover surrounding it and concealed approaches on the enemy’s side.
It was another gray, mist-laden morning, and barely light enough for observers to distinguish the trees outlined against the skyline from the groups of men moving like ghosts through the smoke and mist. A barrage was put down at 5:30 but was answered almost immediately by a furious enemy counterbarrage, and in “one of those unfortunate military miscalculations which result in the infliction of greater losses upon your own men than upon the enemy,” the targeting for the Allies’ barrage was so inaccurate that the 105th and 106th Infantry’s sector was deluged with shells from their own guns.25
In a system of warfare dependent on cooperation between different units and synchronization of their movements, sometimes even to the minute, potentially disastrous mistakes were inevitable. This was one such occasion. As a result of a delayed or misunderstood order, the barrage that should have fallen two hundred yards in front of the infantry began fifty yards behind them, and when it lifted and began to creep forward, it swept right through them. Desperately seeking whatever cover they could find, many men huddled against the eastern bank of the road, but some companies didn’t know whether to go forward or back or remain where they were.26 When the barrage had passed, their handful of officers and NCOs managed to reorganize them and get them moving forward, but they had been nearly annihilated by their own fire and left behind many wounded or dead comrades.
As they advanced under heavy machine-gun fire, the Phantom Division, with a paper strength of almost 15,000 men, had been able to field no more than 850 rifles, and that included the cooks, orderlies, and other noncombatant troops who had been pressed into action.27 Most of those 850 were suffering the effects of previous wounds or gas attacks before they even began advancing. Held up once more by hidden machine-gun nests and repeated counterattacks supported by artillery, the attackers lost touch with the 30th Division on their flank and had to dig in until contact could be reestablished. The First and Third Battalions of the 106th meanwhile offered what feeble support they could to the attack, but no further advance was made or attempted, and the day’s fighting ended with the front line pulled back a little to a road on the eastern slope of the ridge above the Saint-Maurice River. The 106th Infantry had lost another eighty-one men to wounds during the course of the day, and among them was Monk, who had again been hit as they pressed home their attack. Once more, he was treated at a British field hospital, and once more he returned immediately to the firing line.
That evening, determined to squeeze the last ounce from his exhausted men, O’Ryan issued orders for another advance, and in the latter part of the night and the early morning, the attack was resumed. It met no opposition, except from La Jonquière Farm, where the 106th had to make a bitter advance attack to capture or destroy enemy machine-gun nests.28 There had been such a heavy dew during the night that it looked like frost, and the men of the 106th, lying in the long grass as they waited for the signal to attack, were soaked to the skin, but at a whistle blast, they rose from the grass and the shouts of “Let’s go! Let’s go!” were answered by their battle cry: “MINEOLA! MINEOLA!” Although they were weary to the core of their being, they summoned the energy to attack with renewed ferocity, storming the machine-gun nests and wiping out gun crew after gun crew. One badly wounded German “begged to be put out of his misery; he was accommodated on the spot.”
When the Second Battalion reached the Mazingheim road, they found their way blocked by a high stone wall. The road was exposed to enemy fire but they crossed by rushes, breached the wall with pickaxes, and then pushed on again, covered by the First and Third Battalions. They crossed an orchard, marked on the map as a danger spot; the splintered trees and trampled hedges gave evidence of the fierceness of the fighting as they eliminated yet more nests of machine guns and snipers, and occupied La Jonquière Farm. As they cleared the farmhouse, they found two badly wounded American soldiers, lying on stretchers. They had been treated by enemy field-ambulance men, and when the Germans were forced to retreat, they left the wounded Americans in the farmhouse with water and rations within reach. Monk could have been forgiven for thinking that the care the enemy had given to the two men was a return for the mercy he had shown to the boy
soldier from the same German unit a couple of days before.
The 106th Infantry’s own casualties from shelling, machine-gun, and sniper fire continued to mount. Under covering fire from their own Vickers machine guns, patrols went out, crawled to within throwing range, and then bombed the nests of snipers and machine gunners with grenades; several more of their own men were killed or wounded as they did so. Intense bursts of shelling continued throughout the night, and once more the men of the 106th Infantry were forced to endure the cries for help from their wounded comrades in No Man’s Land, without being able to help them. At five o’clock the next morning, the enemy again shelled their positions.
The Second Battalion of the 106th now held a line along the west bank of the Saint-Maurice River, though enemy snipers and machine guns remained active. Patrols destroyed four German machine-gun nests and killed several snipers, but the 106th were driven back by heavy machine-gun fire. They regrouped and advanced again, and by nightfall they had achieved all their objectives. Fourteen hundred German soldiers had been taken prisoner, and by degrees the enemy had been driven back, incurring heavy casualties every time they tried to make a stand, and forced to abandon ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars, and rifles as they fled for their lives.
Once more the enemy had been driven out of strong defensive positions by the sheer aggression of the American attackers. Many more German troops had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, and the remainder were now so debilitated and demoralized that when the 106th Infantry pressed forward in two waves in one final attack, they met practically no opposition at all. Many of the officers described it as “the prettiest fight of our war”; it also proved to be the last.29
20
ALWAYS SHALL WE HONOR THEM
On the night of October 20, 1918, the remnants of the 106th Infantry, with an effective strength of only 180 rifles—little more than a twentieth of the numbers with which they had first entered the lines just three months earlier—were relieved by British troops. The Second Battalion made way for the First West Yorkshire Regiment at 9:30 that evening and, as they withdrew, utterly exhausted, “the column moved on its nerve alone,” the stronger among them carrying double loads and supporting their weaker comrades.1 During the march back to Escau-fourt, they were given hot chocolate and crackers from a rolling kitchen, though some of the men, marching from memory and instinct, were barely aware of it. From time to time an exhausted man fell in his tracks and was cursed awake by those who tripped over him.
Over the next four days they marched slowly westward, bivouacking each night under the stars. On the morning of October 24, in a chill atmosphere of rain and fog, the regiment reached a railhead at Roisel where a train was waiting to carry them to their designated rest area. They stacked their arms and began to relax in the false hope of soon entraining. They were still there in early evening, when an ominous roar and a terrifying crash brought them stumbling to their feet. “Roadbed and rails, wagons and teams shot skyward” as a delayed-action land mine, planted by the retreating enemy at the intersection of the railroad tracks and the road, exploded.2 A group of prisoners of war working near the railhead burst out laughing; for some, it was the last thing they ever did. Several British and American men had been killed in the blast, and in revenge for the explosion and the laughter, a number of POWs were shot on the spot by British guards. Grabbing their rifles, several men from the 106th Infantry also ran toward the POWs, but a hastily formed line of guards prevented any further bloodshed.
With their train destroyed and the railhead devastated, the bone-weary troops of the 106th were then forced to make another night march in driving rain to Tincourt. They then had to wait alongside the railroad tracks for five hours before crawling wearily into boxcars from which artillery horses had just been unloaded. The train eventually pulled out at 3:40 on the morning of October 25, and pounded and bumped its way back to Corbie, arriving there at 1:15 that afternoon. From there they marched one final time to the stuffy little hamlet of Bussy-lès-Daours, where they could at last lay down their packs and arms and rest.3
While Monk and his fellows were still enduring their marathon journey, his wife, Worthy, must have read devastating news. On October 24, 1918, the local newspaper carried the story that “Friday’s casualty list contained the name of Edward Eastman of Presidio, Texas, killed in action.4 He is the first man from the Big Bend District to be mentioned on these lists.” It was the second time in his life that Monk had erroneously been listed as dead by a newspaper—The New York Times had also reported his death after he was gut-shot and taken to Gouverneur Hospital in 1901—but such tragic mistakes were not infrequent during the war. Monk’s wounds and his treatment at a British or Australian dressing station rather than an American one may have contributed to the confusion and led to him being listed as missing in action or dead. However, no correction to that report appears to have been published, and when, if ever, Worthy realized that it was false is not known. Like many of her Big Bend neighbors, Monk’s wife seems to have disappeared from the official records without a trace, and it is conceivable that she never discovered that terrible error and went to her grave believing that Monk had been killed in action.
Other than the conscription of some of its young men, life in Big Bend was little altered by the war, but great changes were sweeping the United States, and nowhere more so than in New York. From the turn of the century to the outbreak of war in Europe, there had been almost continuous growth and rising prosperity right across America. The number of people employed in manufacturing had increased by 65 percent, and the value of industrial output, salaries, and wages had all doubled. In a ten-year period, it was estimated that one-third of New York’s Italians and Jews had left manual labor for semi-skilled or skilled work, or for self-employment. A recession beginning in 1914 had been threatening that prosperity, but the war in Europe ended that, causing rocketing demand from the Allies for foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and war matériel, and boosting the U.S. economy to such an extent that by the time of the U.S. declaration of war in April 1917, more than $2 billion in goods had already been supplied to the Allies, principally Britain.5
Many American corporations laid the basis of their postwar global dominance during the war years, and American farmers had also scrambled to cash in on the soaring demand for wheat and other agricultural produce. Marginal lands went under the plow, and intensive cultivation and mechanization increased, with the number of gasoline-powered tractors quintupling during the war years.6 With Europe’s farms depopulated of young men to work the land and much of the land itself devastated by the war, the United States became the prime supplier of food to Britain, France, and some of the other Allies. However, poor harvests in 1916 and 1917 led to shortages for domestic consumption and export. Herbert Hoover, appointed by President Wilson as the head of a new Food Administration, introduced the idea of voluntary “Wheatless Mondays” and “Meatless Tuesdays,” with Americans at home going without a little of their food to supply the Allies and feed the U.S. troops in training at home and serving abroad.
Cards were issued, instructing American housewives in economy and conservation and suggesting “Victory Menus” with alternatives to meat, though such dishes as “stewed lima beans with milk” would not have struck everyone as an adequate substitute for a steak or a pot roast.7 It was claimed that the meatless days at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York alone saved two thousand pounds of beef a week. Many parts of the country went even further, observing “Gasless Sundays,” “Sugarless Mondays,” “Meatless Tuesdays,” “Wheatless Wednesdays,” “Porkless Fridays,” and “Two Meal Saturdays.” Such measures were not enough to prevent food shortages, however, and sugar was so scarce that stores ran out completely.
Tobacco was also in short supply, as the U.S. Army bought huge quantities for its troops. The majority of smokers before the war had used pipes or cigars, but the greater convenience of cigarettes led to their wholesale adoption by soldiers. Issued along with their
rations, cigarettes were the only luxury that men in the trenches could enjoy, and virtually all of them smoked. Those who opposed supplying doughboys with cigarettes were accused of being traitors, and General Pershing even made the extraordinary claim that “what we need to win this war [is] tobacco as much as bullets.8 Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons without delay.”
Huge loans to the Allies tied American finance and prosperity ever more closely to an Allied victory, though U.S. government propaganda still justified the war in terms of lofty aims and ideals, stressing that the Americans were fighting for peace, freedom, and justice for all individuals of all nations, including Germans.
Despite such rhetoric, many Americans felt a less than overwhelming enthusiasm for the conflict. Socialists dismissed it as a businessman’s war, but opposition was not confined to the Left. An Akron, Ohio, newspaper said that the nation had “never embarked on a more unpopular war” and only seventy-three thousand of the one million men needed had voluntarily enlisted in the six weeks following the declaration of war, forcing the introduction of conscription.9 In some Americans’ eyes, the “war to make the world safe for democracy” was also signally failing to safeguard democracy at home. Although he had led his nation into the war, Wilson had warned of the danger it would pose to American society: the American people, he said, would “forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.10 To fight you must be brutal and ruthless and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.” That was not markedly different from the socialist Max Eastman’s prophecy that it would not be a war for democracy at all; “we will Prussianize [militarize] ourselves and will probably not democratize Prussia.”11
