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97 Chapter Six Verdun It was early October, and the Yankee Division, now relieved by elements of the 79th Division and the 2nd Dismounted Cavalry (French) Division, gathered itself together and made its way slowly, wearily to a new sector. The experience of the 102nd Machine Gun Battalion was typical. On October 4, after being relieved at Longeau Farm, the unit withdrew to Troyon, where they remained several days. The machine gunners started north again on October 8 to Casernes de Bevaux, a cluster of French barracks just outside Verdun . There, in the words of Chaplain Arthur LeVeer, “for the first time I got in touch with the spiritual side of my battalion of 800 men.” He said Mass and heard confessions of men both from his battalion, as well as those from the 101st Machine Gun Battalion, which did not have a Catholic chaplain. After several more days, the unit moved on to Samogneux and more fighting. There, LeVeer helped with the wounded at a nearby dressing station.1 Chaplain Robert Campbell of the 101st Field Artillery told of his journey north to Verdun: We did not come by trains, but by long night marches. One night we covered over 18 miles. The whole regiment stretches out over two miles. It causes an awful rattle with a dull echo as the guns, wagons, horses’ hoofs, and groups of men move over the road. The nights are pitch dark and cold. The sky is illuminated constantly by the flashes of guns which thunder away incessantly. In spite of the dangers from occasional shelling and fragments of antiaircraft shells sprinkling down upon the column, Campbell found the night marches “extremely fascinating.”2 Neptune Sector Even when the shells were not flying, a World War I battlefield was a dangerous place, littered with booby traps and unexploded ordnance. In ad- 98 SKY PILOTS dition to the rusting barbed wire, unburied or partially buried bodies, and the sucking mud, there were shell holes full of slimy, stagnant water, and all was overlain with persistent, toxic mustard gas. Whether you carried a weapon or a litter, if you touched it or inhaled it, either way, you suffered its effects. It simply could not be helped. The Heights of the Meuse, east of the river and north of Verdun, had been fought over virtually from the beginning of the war. The Germans and the French suffered nearly threequarters of a million casualties in one six-month period alone, from February through September 1916. This critical ground was likened to a hinge that the Germans were determined to hold, and where the Allies needed to dislodge them in order to protect the flank of the American advance to the west of the Meuse.3 There were few trees still standing. Forests, so-called, were, for the most part, merely reference points on a map. It was difficult to get one’s bearings with so few landmarks, as the respective trench systems zigged and zagged, nearly touching at some points. Besides the littered ground, there was a stench in the air of cordite, gas, and death. The last was present everywhere, with bones and body parts lying on or just below the surface, putrefying. The doughboys found shelter in dugouts previously occupied by French and German soldiers, or in shell holes and shallow trenches and hastily dug foxholes, with a poncho pulled over them for a cover.4 That was the scene on the ground when the Yankee Division made its way to what was referred to as the Neptune Sector in early October 1918. The scene on the ground was coupled with rain and cold, all compounded by the raging influenza epidemic. The division was under-strength to begin with, especially in the 101st and 102nd Infantry Regiments. It was a critical sector for Pershing’s attack proper in the Meuse-Argonne, which began well on September 26, but frustratingly bogged down by the time the Yankees had reached the fight two weeks later. Once settled in the sector, the Yankee Division joined the French II Colonial Division, old friends from St. Mihiel, as well as the American 29th and 33rd Divisions, already there and finding the going very tough.5 The sector was important, since it kept the Germans, who were well entrenched on the ridge, from firing on the flank of the main American attack. All the Yankees knew was that their final battle would be “uphill” in more ways than one. General Edwards...

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