Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France

Chapter 12 Wounded Again

W O U N D E D A G A I N 119 CHAP TE R TWE LVE Wounded Again F orty-eight hours in the hot and dusty thickets of the Champagne afforded a working knowledge of what the labyrinth of trenches, the dugouts, the barricades, the camouflage, and the thumping artillery were all about. Perce and Wally explained the defensive setup for the big doings to come, while Sergt. Ford was outfitting me with mask, helmet, web belt, and “45.” A walk with Beavers, Jensen, and three or four others to the northern edge of the woods was even more enlightening. A flat expanse ahead was divided by a snake-like road of white, whose mouth was joined by trenches on either side and guarded by movable barricades of metal and wire. The desolate plain was crisscrossed by gray-white parapets and dotted here and there with patches of stubble and scrub pines. Myriad poppies, blood red against the chalk, danced in the shimmering waves of July heat. Out there a couple of kilometers or so two regiments of French held the first line of our front. A kilometer behind them was a second line of unseen poilus, New Yorkers, Ohioans, Alabamans, and Iowa troops of our own second battalion. The advance troops were to fall back to this second line in case the expected assault should come on full force.1 Back in the woods the trenches of K, L, and M, supported by I, which ran through our bivouac of pup tents, tree cradles, and rustic barracks, constituted a reserve for the present and 120 TRENCH KNIVES AND MUSTARD GAS a secondary defense should withdrawal of the forward line become necessary. I lost no time getting acquainted with the new men of the fourth platoon, in helping McDonough select four stretcherbearers , and in identifying the L company trenches. These were joined on the left by K and M, with more Alabamans beyond them. Our first battalion abutted our right and was in turn joined by the Alpine Chasseurs of the French 46th Division . A company of Georgia and Pennsylvania machine gunners and our own machine-gun company were parts of the immediate scheme. A reserve company of machine gunners, the South Carolina and California engineers, our “one-pounders ,” the Maryland mortars, were in our rear. Artillery of various calibers, both French and American, was hidden in the brush with camouflage behind the battalion headquarters shack and the adjoining sanitary detachment. An order from Gen. Gouraud, the commander of the Fourth French Army, which had been read to troops shortly before my return and which was now paraphrased for me by all and sundry , seemed to reduce our job to simple, if awe-inspiring, terms. No matter what happened, the Fourth French Army and its integral part, the Rainbow, were to remain in their tracks. “The bombardment will be terrible,” Wally quoted from memory. “. . . None shall glance to the rear; none shall yield a step. Each shall have but one thought, to kill, to kill many until the Boches have had enough . . . .” Battalion officers’ meetings offered snatch visits and reunions with Melvin, Turk, and the rest of the K bunch, with Cullen and Van of M, with Capt. Moore, High, and Albert of I, and with Dorsey, who had been transferred to M when George Knabe and Jim Bonner had been sent to L. So the cocky Jim had been granted his wish to get out of the supply company and into a line outfit. A map in Maj. Bronson’s possession gave a rough picture of the Fourth Army’s whole front. We seemed to be in the center of a thirty-five- or forty-kilometer stretch, extending from Rheims on the left to the edge of a wooded area marked “Argonne Forest” on the right. A letter went to my Dad, hint- W O U N D E D A G A I N 121 ing at our general location. We were about fifteen miles in front of a certain well-known river, while the city of the famous cathedral was about as far to our left as Ringgold is from Chattanooga. A walk with Wally, George, Albert, and High to a place called Souain on the map disclosed a huge mine crater, an expanse of debris and flattened buildings, in the midst of which stood the side...