Guarding the Border: The Military Memoirs of the Ward Schrantz, 1912-1917

Editor’s Postscript

on April 13, 1917, a week after the United States declared war on Germany, Schrantz’s hard work with the National Guard paid off with his election as captain of the Carthage Light Guard. The company did not immediately enter federal service . It was not until August 5 that the Second Missouri Infantry was officially drafted, and on August 17 the regiment assembled on the now familiar grounds of Camp Clark, near Nevada, Missouri. After a quick round of physical examinations and inoculations , Schrantz’s Company A was designated the “advance detail” and ordered to travel to Camp Doniphan, near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the new Thirty-fifth Division was being organized. On August 23, Schrantz and the other Carthage men left for Camp Doniphan, arriving the next day. There they served as a fatigue party and camp guards until the rest of the division arrived. On October 1, 1917, the Carthage Light Guard, Company A, Second Missouri Infantry, passed into history, as Schrantz and his fellow Carthaginians became Company A, 128th Machine Gun Battalion.1 The Thirty-fifth Division trained at Camp Doniphan through the winter , and on April 17, 1918, Schrantz’s company left Oklahoma for Camp Mills, New York. Eight days later, the 128th Machine Gun Battalion left the United States on the SS Caronia, bound for Europe. After a short stay in England, the Missourians arrived in France on May 16. So that they might become familiar with the Western Front, the Carthage company was initially ordered to train with the British in 11 Editor’s Postscript 120 Chapter 11 Picardy, but in June Schrantz and his men were ordered to move and serve with the French army. They spent the next several weeks in a relatively “quiet” area in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France (near the German border) with the Thirty-third Corps of the French Seventh Army, gradually learning the art of war against their experienced European enemy. Finally, in mid-September, the battalion joined the American First Army for the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient. Although held in reserve during the great offensive, Schrantz and his men admitted that it was better to be in reserve than to miss the operation entirely. Almost immediately after the successful conclusion of the St. Mihiel operation, the American commander, General John J. Pershing, ordered his First Army to conduct a larger and more difficult offensive. This time the Thirty-fifth Division was ordered into action and would play an active part in the assault on the formidable German defenses in the MeuseArgonne region. On the morning of September 26, the offensive began, and the green Missourians and Kansans in the division moved to attack. Before being withdrawn on October 1, the Thirty-fifth Division suffered more than six thousand casualties. The intense fighting cost Schrantz’s company five enlisted men killed (plus one attached ammunition carrier ), with two officers and thirty-two enlisted men and twelve or thirteen attached ammunition carriers wounded. The Meuse-Argonne offensive was the Carthage company’s only major operation. Following that bloodletting, the 128th Machine Gun Battalion moved to the area around Verdun and did not see significant combat for the remainder of the war. The battalion remained in France through the spring of 1919. On March 23, 1919, Ward Schrantz was promoted to major and transferred away from his beloved Company A to command of the 130th Machine Gun Battalion. On April 24, exactly a year after they entered foreign service, the Carthage men sailed into Newport News, Virginia. They were discharged at Camp Funston, Kansas, on May 7. In twenty-one months of service, the old Carthage Light Guard had lost five men killed in action, one dead of exhaustion, and two from disease. After his return to Missouri, Schrantz continued to work for the Carthage Evening Press newspaper. In 1942, he reentered the army as a colonel and commanded troop transports, making numerous successful Ward Schrantz, after his return from the border and promotion to captain in the Missouri National Guard, 1917 122 Chapter 11 trips overseas delivering men and materiel. In January 1946, he returned to the Evening Press as editor and was still working at the newspaper when he died of a heart attack on July 3, 1958, at the age of sixty-seven. Ward Schrantz was well respected and loved by his fellow citizens, who admired his service to the nation...