by Ann Bausum
The so-called Lost Battalion experienced one of the more harrowing trials of the First World War. This outfit from the 77th Division fell out of communication with its flanking troops as they advanced into unfriendly territory. Before they realized it, they had outpaced their compatriots and been cut off on all sides by German forces. Maj. Charles Whittlesey, the battalion commander, attempted to signal his distress—delivered by carrier pigeons—but failed to adequately convey the peril of their situation. The men had advanced with only a day’s rations, and the Germans kept them pinned in place, at first for one day and then for a second.
At one point, an American artillery barrage, presumably intended for the Germans, began falling on the trapped U.S. soldiers. Whittlesey entrusted his last remaining pigeon with a plea to stop the shelling. However, this bird, upon its release, flew not toward its homing station but into a tree. It took flight only after a daring doughboy climbed up after it and startled it aloft. The bird, known as Cher Ami, became famous for delivering the message. Coincidentally or not, the shelling stopped. But not until the fourth day of the battalion’s isolation did American troops dislodge the Germans sufficiently to secure its relief. By that point, 216 of the battalion’s 554 members had died and another 144 were too fatigued or wounded to walk from the scene.
Comparatively speaking, the Yankee Division was faring much better. Two weeks into the Meuse-Argonne campaign, as October unfolded and other soldiers continued to fight, the YD men earned a brief reprieve from warfront service. Having completed its late-September diversionary raids, the troops began to move toward the main front. Along the way they passed through Verdun for a break. Stubby “played around here for a week just before entering the Meuse-Argonne drive,” reported Conroy, and the dog’s antics entertained the soldiers while they regrouped.
The 26th Division captured more than 3,000 German soldiers during the First World War, including these men on November 10, 1918, one day before the cease-fire.
At about the same time, General Pershing turned over command of the bulk of the American fighting forces to Lt. Gen. Hunter Liggett. This mid-October change freed the A.E.F. commander to focus on broader administrative and diplomatic duties, including the anticipated negotiation of Germany’s surrender. That Germany would surrender had become certain. Only the timing of when it would do so remained in doubt.
Because the fall campaign had failed to progress as planned, Liggett insisted that his men had to pause and regroup. He recommended that the Allies renew their coordinated assault at the end of the month. During the intervening two weeks, some troops would keep up the fight while others rested and shifted positions. Two types of military actions took place during the “lull.” Some were designed to secure more advantageous starting ground for the renewed offensive; others, including ones manned by the Yankee Division, were meant to distract the Germans at their flanks, thus preventing them from reinforcing the midsection of the line where the Allies planned to focus its final assault.
The Germans maintained a nearly impenetrable series of fortifications all along the Meuse-Argonne front, the so-called Hindenburg Line. They had held the territory since 1914 and had constructed a sequence of three trenches in its defense; the Allies knew its conquest would be difficult and costly. These defensive lines had been carved into a territory that stretched to a depth of 12 miles behind No Man’s Land. Each of the bands of trenches bore the name of a witch from one of Richard Wagner’s operas, with the middle one—the Kriemhilde Stellung—serving as the strongest line of defense. Allied forces had penetrated the fortifications in places during the opening days of the Meuse-Argonne campaign in late September, but overall the line still held.
One of Pershing’s last orders, before he relinquished his operational command to General Liggett, hit the Yankee Division with the force of an incoming artillery barrage: Pershing relieved General Edwards of his command. On October 22, the YD leader learned that he was being ordered back to the States to help with further training there. Fodder for the transfer had been accumulating throughout the war. The two career Army officers had conflicting styles, backgrounds, and temperaments. Even more significantly, Pershing had a bias against National Guard troops, favoring such regular Army units as the Big Red One over the Yankee Division. He had even referred to the Yankee men as Boy Scouts, a dig at the presumed inferior training and fortitude of citizen soldiers originating in the National Guard versus the professional fighters of the nation’s small standing Army. Accomplishments notwithstanding, Pershing tended to focus on the faults of the division under Edwards’s command rather than celebrating what had gone right. Pershing tapped Brig. Gen. Frank Bamford to take Edwards’s place.
The loss of their beloved “Daddy” stunned the Yankee Division soldiers. Morale plummeted. Straggling, which had never before been high with this division, began to rise. Conroy’s spirits surely must have dropped. Even Stubby, who had befriended the general, would have missed the congenial leader. Edwards had had a way of motivating the men to accept every assignment as a new challenge that could be tackled with Yankee grit and ingenuity. After his departure, that fighting spirit would be tested without the benefit of his leadership by some of the division’s worst combat yet.
On October 16, just a few days before Edwards was relieved of his command, his soldiers had returned to duty, this time on the right flank of the Allied lines, north of Verdun. Initially the men were tasked with wresting advantageous high ground from the Germans. Doing so proved difficult and deadly. Then, just as Edwards relinquished his command, his men were thrown into a series of almost endlessly fruitless assaults against the Hindenburg Line, all designed to keep the Germans focused on their flank so that they could not shift troops elsewhere along the defenses. U.S. casualties ran high, and the men became exhausted as their ranks thinned, even as orders kept coming to advance. Add the ever present mud and rain plus the hardship of transporting food to the embattled troops, and it’s not surprising that morale continued to fall.
On November 1, the overall Meuse-Argonne assault resumed. Once again the Allies threw their full force against the Hindenburg Line, but this time they were better positioned and more effective in their assaults. Artillery barrages and gas shells softened up the German front lines, and long-held defenses began to give way. In some places the Allies burst past the first line with such force that their opponents abandoned not only it but the Kriemhilde Stellung, their more heavily fortified middle trench, too. Instead of advancing by the yard, the Allies advanced by the mile. Even when the Germans gave ground reluctantly, the Americans fought fiercely and relentlessly.
While the overall campaign continued, the Yankee Division persisted with its slower, diversionary work in what was dubbed the Neptune sector of the front, so named because of its location at the outermost orbit of the battle territory (during an era when Neptune represented the most distant orbiting body in the solar system; Pluto had yet to be discovered). Casualties mounted as ground was taken and lost and taken again. Even with reinforcements, the infantry regiments remained under strength, and all up and down the lines the soldiers were wet, hungry, demoralized, and in need of rest.
The Americans, who lagged behind the Germans in their use of poison gas, increased their employment of it late in the war. Meanwhile the Germans continued to routinely bombard Allied forces with gas-filled shells. All of the chemical agents they used distressed the lungs; mustard gas, the latest German innovation, caused painful blistering and, often, at least temporary blindness, too. Soldiers coated their bodies with a greasy paste nicknamed sag in an effort to protect their skin, and they continued to wear gas masks when called for, but such precautions were not foolproof. Plus, sometimes gas arrived so unexpectedly that advance preparation was impossible.
No one recorded what type of gas overcame Robert Conroy on November 2, or under what circumstances, but his exposure was serious enough to require hospitalization. Some accounts suggest that Stubby, too, was injured in the attack and that
he and Conroy recuperated together at a field hospital. This injury served as Conroy’s only battlefield casualty and is listed in his military records as “wounded in action, slightly.”
Once again the mascot’s presence proved fortuitous. He reportedly attracted the interest of a Red Cross nurse during one of his prowls around the facility; she followed him out of curiosity, and, when they reached Conroy’s bunk, she recognized the wounded soldier as an acquaintance from New Britain. “Stubby was a messenger of friendship,” noted the reporter who retold the tale. Perhaps thanks to the added care of Nurse Borg, Conroy recovered quickly. He and his ever present friend were back at the front as the war came to a close.
By November 10, commanders understood that the fighting was scheduled to stop the next day, 11/11, at 11 a.m. Nonetheless, they continued to order Allied assaults, motivated, perhaps, by a mixture of habit, ambition, and the belief that they needed to remind the Germans of the Allied determination to keep fighting. The final two days of Yankee Division combat proved just as fruitless and just as deadly as the ones that had preceded them. Straggling peaked among soldiers determined not to die after having survived all the previous months of warfare. In contrast, many artillery batteries approached that final morning of combat as a team challenge. Could they launch all of their remaining shells before being ordered to cease fire? Some batteries ignored the temptation, but others took it up, often triggering a reciprocal response from the opposing side.
One A.E.F. soldier recorded the minute-by-minute scene at a nearby gunnery. At 10:59, one minute before cease-fire, he noted, “The guns are so hot that the paint is rising from them in blisters. The crews are sweating despite the autumn chill of the air. To them the peace approaches as a regrettable interruption.” When 11 a.m. arrived, he wrote: “The silence is oppressive. It weighs in on one’s eardrums.”
An Army Signal Corps photographer documented this battery from the Seventh Field Artillery during operations in the St. Mihiel salient, September 1918. Later that month, Capt. Harry S. Truman told the gunners in his battery from the 129th Field Artillery that “I’d rather be right here than be President of the United States.” After his crew discharged some 3,000 shells during the opening hours of the Meuse-Argonne campaign, the future President reported being “deaf as a post.”
Such a silence fell all along the line, signaling safety for troops pinned down under fire. Suddenly natural sounds, even the dripping of moisture from branches, were audible once more. Some soldiers began to cheer; others just went off in search of hot food. Conroy and “hundreds of friends crowded around Stubby,” when the cease-fire arrived. “Many credited him with causing the gods to yield the good luck of victory.”
Military dispatch writers searched for the right words for sharing the news. Every evening since May 15, 1918, the U.S. command post had been issuing a report of battlefront highlights. For a few weeks, as the war drew to a close, two reports were issued daily. These messages offered a snapshot of warfront events to the media and general public. Some of the communiqués conveyed moments of calm: “June 22 (No. 39).—The day passed quietly at all positions held by our troops” and “July 13 (No. 60).—There is nothing of importance to report.” Others offered clipped summaries of horrific days of fighting: “July 17 (No. 64).—N.W. of Château-Thierry the enemy yesterday repeated his attempt of the preceding day to penetrate our lines near Vaux. His attack was completely broken up by our infantry and artillery fire before reaching our lines.”
Now, thanks to the armistice, the military command would have no cause to write, as they had on August 2, “Last night our aviators successfully bombed the railroad station and yards at Conflans,” or, as released the next day, “The full fruits of victory in the counter-offensive begun so gloriously by Franco-American troops on July 18 were reaped today when the enemy, who met his second great defeat on the Marne, was driven in confusion beyond the line of the Vesle …”
The dispatch for November 11 avoided hyperbole and boasting. Maybe the writers were exhausted, just like everyone else, or perhaps they knew that, in this case, less was more. So, with its more typical, dry brevity, the communiqué stated: “November 11, morning (No. 197).—In accordance with the terms of the armistice, hostilities on the fronts of the American Armies were suspended at 11 o’clock this morning.”
The troops on the ground felt no compunction to keep their emotions in check. As the reality set in, the celebrations began. Bonfires sprang up all along the battle lines. Soldiers luxuriated in the heat and the possibility of drying out their clothes. Despite orders forbidding it, some Americans crossed into No Man’s Land and fraternized with their former adversaries. There was jubilation among the Germans, too. Anyone who had survived such a war, whether victorious or not, could celebrate being alive. During some encounters, the Americans traded their extra cigarettes for German military souvenirs. At others, they collaborated on finding and burying their dead.
Conroy left no record of how he and Stubby celebrated in the hours that followed the cease-fire. Perhaps he still had work to do for the regimental commander. Maybe Stubby helped the medics locate the last of the wounded men. Or maybe they, too, had the freedom to savor the moments of silence, add their voice and bark to the cheers of relief, and settle into a warm spot for a mutual exchange of companionship and affection. Stubby, of course, wouldn’t have understood the men who told him, “We’re going home!” But he certainly would have shared their excitement.
That night the Germans took a cue from the morning’s artillery gunners. This time, though, they raided their supplies of signal flares. These colored tracers had communicated military commands during the chaos of battle. The month before, a resourceful U.S. lieutenant had even co-opted this code for his own advantage during combat. His company, hesitant and exhausted, lacked the motivation to advance toward its next objective. The lieutenant coaxed his men into a favorable position and then, after nightfall, without them realizing that he had done so, he shot off a captured German signal flare. His men, who assumed the Germans had fired the flare, knew the green sparks meant one thing: incoming artillery. At the lieutenant’s urging, the horrified soldiers rushed toward the relative safety of their objective, fleeing the shelter they had previously been reluctant to depart.
On the evening of the armistice, though, the colors of the signal flares lost their meanings of attack and warning and distress. All up and down the old Hindenburg Line, showers of sparks arced across the sky. Plenty of questions remained: When would the troops head home? To what surrender terms would the Germans be held? Would the Americans have to stay on to enforce the cease-fire?
Such worries dissolved in the enchantment of colored sparks. For once, no one was under fire, and both sides could savor the improvised repurposing of weaponry into a celebration of peace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ARMISTICE
“THE BLOODIEST BATTLE IN AMERICAN HISTORY” IS HOW historian Edward G. Lengel characterizes the Meuse-Argonne campaign. It lasted 47 days from its start on September 26 to the armistice on November 11, 1918. According to Lengel, almost half of the casualties suffered by U.S. troops during the First World War were concentrated into these closing seven weeks of battle. More than 95,000 men were wounded during this span, and more than 26,000 died in action or from combat wounds.
Lengel states, “No single battle in American military history, before or since, even approaches the Meuse-Argonne in size and cost, and it was without question the country’s most critical military contribution to the Allied cause in the First World War. And yet, within a few years of its end, nobody seemed to realize that it had taken place.”
The idea that this battle—and, indeed, the war as a whole, really—would be largely forgotten some day was unfathomable in 1918. Army dispatch by Army dispatch, mile by mile, French town by French town, folks back home had followed the war’s movement and could recite its progression from battlefront to battlefront almost with the confidence of a veteran. Meanwhile the so
ldiers, many of whom may have wanted to forget at least some aspects of the war, would bear its marks, inside if not out, for the rest of their lives.
Sgt. John J. Curtin, the Yankee Division soldier Stubby had aroused to safety during a gas attack in the spring of 1918, was among the survivors at war’s end. By November, his tribute to Stubby could chronicle the dog’s good fortune, too:
North of Verdun were our hardest battles,
And many brave men gave death rattles,
But Stubby came through hell O.K.
And is ready to go back to the U.S.A.
Some semblance of the YD had made it through the war, as well. The division had entered the conflict at full strength with 28,000 men, but the summer campaigns, the closing battles from the Meuse-Argonne campaign, and even the spreading influenza epidemic had all helped to thin its ranks tremendously. Despite the periodic arrival of reinforcements, the division’s outfits never managed to close the gaps created by continual attrition.
At war’s end, for example, one of the division’s four infantry regiments could muster only 240 fighters when it should have had 3,000. Not all of the absent men were dead. True, 2,281 had been killed in action or died because of combat injuries, but more than 11,000 had been wounded and yet survived. Perhaps a third of these men had been wounded severely enough to leave the battlefield permanently maimed or disabled.
Such costs had not been paid without rewards. Yankee Division historian Michael E. Shay points out that the division ranked eighth out of the war’s 29 most-active U.S. divisions in total territory gained under fire; when added up, its wartime advances totaled 28 miles. Additionally, the YD had captured more than 3,000 prisoners of war, including the one Stubby had seized. Only one division, the Big Red One, had served more days on the front line: 220 versus the Yankees’ 193. Considering that such figures exclude travel time to and from points of service and that only 284 days had elapsed between the first of February, the month when the Yankee Division entered into combat service, and Armistice Day on November 11, it becomes clear that the men truly had gone to Europe to fight.
