Duffy's War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I

23. “You Expected to Have the Pleasure of Burying Me”

23 “You Expected to Have the Pleasure of Burying Me” 349 F ield order no. 18, issued thirty minutes after midnight on 15 October by the adjutant of the Eighty-third Brigade, was blunt. “The attack will continue today.” The start time had been designated as seven-fifteen with an artillery barrage aimed at destroying the wire five hundred yards in front of Lt. Col. Bill Donovan’s troops. The barrage was to lift at seven-thirty and then resume twenty minutes later in front of the entire brigade’s front, rolling ahead of the doughboys at a rate of one hundred meters every six minutes until it had reached the enemy wire. “The infantry will move forward close to the barrage line and at 7:30 will commence the passage of the hostile wire, following the barrage closely until the 3rd Objective is reached.” That objective: break through the wire, mop up the trenches, and capture Landres-et-St. Georges.1 In his diary, Donovan was equally blunt. “New attack at 7:30. I was hit at 7:40. Remained in field until noon. Men blown up about me. Heavy shelling. Carried off field. One of the men hit.”2 From the time the attack started and until he left the field in a blanket, Donovan and his boys fought as if possessed by demons against an enemy that refused to give an inch. The Rainbow’s chief of staff recorded, “The enemy has continued his resistance with undiminished fury and has at no time showed any tendency to withdraw or surrender.”3 Before the attack, Donovan had approached all the old veterans of his battalion, now under the command of Mike Kelly, to encourage them, “telling them that we had to go through and that they were the fellows to do it. When they started forward I went with them.”4 GroundGainedonRomagneHeights Adapted from American Armies and Battlefields in Europe: A History Guide and Reference Book, American Battle Monument Commission (GPO: Washington 1938). YOU EXPECTED TO HAVE THE PLEASURE 351 Father Francis Duffy, down among the men, hardly took his eyes off Donovan. It was now obvious that Wild Bill enjoyed a battle. “He goes into it in exactly the frame of mind that he held as a college man when he marched out on the gridiron before a football game, and his one thought throughout is to push his way through. ‘Cool’ is the word the men use of him and ‘Cool’ is their highest epithet of praise for a man of daring, resolution and indifference to danger.” Duffy remembered Donovan yelling to his men as they bucked up the slope toward the wire. “Come on, fellows, it’s better ahead than it is here. Come on, we’ll have them on the run before long.” For two days, Donovan, dressed smartly, with the strap of his Sam Browne belt crossing his chest so that the enemy knew exactly who he was, had stood gallantly at the front, convincing his troops that no one in the old Sixty-ninth was “ever afraid.” Turning toward them with a smile, he had yelled again and again, “Come on now, men, they can’t hit me and they won’t hit you!”5 But on the morning of the 15th, Wild Bill had hardly taken a step forward when a bullet crashed into his leg. He pitched to the ground. The bullet shattered his shinbone. As he struggled to sit up, the Germans came pouring out of the wire in a counterattack. Although the pain must have been unbearable, Donovan refused to give up command now that his front was threatened. He called in artillery support and ordered his Stokes mortars, which he had brought up the night before, to pound the enemy. The artillery fire again proved weak, and the Germans kept coming. It would be up to the mortars to stop them. But from their poor position, the mortar men did not know where to lob their shells. Knowing the need was desperate, Tom Fitzsimmons, from South Orange, New Jersey, a sergeant in one of the mortar platoons , bolted up the slope for about one hundred yards, exposing himself to machine-gun fire. At the crest of the hill he found a spot that gave him an excellent view of the approaching Germans. It also gave the Germans an excellent view of him. Father Duffy said...