1918

The best-selling car of the era: a Ford Model T.

____________________

 

“An unending circle of pain. … That would be the picture of war.”

 

William March

____________________

 

 

William March, a World War I veteran, later wrote a despairing novel about the war, called Company K. March himself had been wounded and gassed, and offered the reader no patriotic illusions. His book is broken down into vignettes, so that every member of his fictional unit has a chance to have a say.

 

Explaining his purpose, March said he’d like to peg all of the stories to a huge wheel, until every peg was filled. Then he’d spin it faster and faster, until everything he had written came to life, “became part of the whole,” flowing together, blurring, blending “into a composite whole, an unending circle of pain. … That would be the picture of war.”

 

*

 

“I can whip them all!”

 

Private Rowland Geers is one of the first to speak. He remembers a winter day, during training, when he and a comrade went for a shower. Finding that the warm water had run out, the two men “held our breath and ran under the cold water.”

 

Walt Webster, his friend, started singing at the top of his lungs. As they exited, he tried to pick Geers up and toss him in a snowbank. Geers held on and both soldiers tumbled, laughing, into a snowbank.

 

The other boys in the bunk house saw us and soon every man in the company was naked and wallowing in the snow, shouting with exhilaration.

 

Walt stood up, slapped his thighs, and began to crow like a cock. “Bring on the whole German army!” he shouted. “Bring them on all together, or one at a time. I can whip them all!”

 

On the voyage to France, Private Archie Lemon listens to a minister tell the soldiers what they are fighting for. “He said we were not soldiers, in the accepted sense of the word: We were crusaders who had dedicated our lives and our souls to our country and to our God that the things we revere and hold sacred, might not perish,” Lemon explained.

 

On return to their quarters, Sylvester Keith, another member of the company, gives Lemon a cigarette, says the chaplain has

 

“the right dope…I mean about saving civilization and dedicating our lives to our country.”

 

Bob Nalls had come up, and joined us. “I’ve been thinking over what [the chaplain] said about this being the war to end injustice. I don’t mind getting killed to do a thing of that sort. I don’t mind, since the people coming after me will live in happiness and peace.”

 

Then we sat there smoking our cigarettes and thinking.

 

Private Samuel Updike talks about landing in France, and how good it felt to be on land again. The men were in high spirits. One soldier handed his rifle and pack over to a friend and did a few handsprings. The French people watching seemed lifeless, all dressed in black. “Everybody is wearing black,” Updike said. “You’d think they’d just come from a funeral.”

 

An English woman speaks up – saying of course – these people in black are in mourning. “We’re having a war, you know.”

 

“I’ve thought many times afterwards what clowns we must have seemed,” Updike says with embarrassment.

 

One problem for the men is their company commander, Captain Terence L. Matlock. Behind his back they refer to his as “Nit-wit Terry,” or “Fishmouth Terry.”

 

Trench life, even during times of relative quiet, quickly proves unpleasant. Private Carter Atlas groans about the food.

 

For breakfast weak coffee, a thin slice of bread and a dipper full of watery soup; for dinner two soggy potatoes, with dirt still clinging to their jackets, a piece of meat the size of a man’s thumb and a spoonful of jam; for supper more coffee, but weaker this time, and a pan full of unseasoned rice. How can a man keep going on such rations?

 

Atlas thinks about food all the time. He dreams about “a thick, luscious steak, broiled a deep brown, a lump of butter melting over it and becoming a part of its juices.”

 

When he awakes, soldiers from the rear are bringing up supper in a g.i. can for the men on the front line.

 

It was rice again, cold and clammy, and when Sergeant Donohoe gave me my part of it, I took it, hungry as I was, and dumped it in the mud. Then I went back to the dugout and lay on my bunk and cried like a baby. If they’d just give me a good meal every once in a while, I wouldn’t mind this war so much!

 

*

 

Bloody bread.

 

Sgt. Wilbur Tietjen is one of the first men to draw blood, using his rifle and a telescopic sight to fire at German soldiers a thousand yards or more away in their own line of trenches. He says that a sniper must have patience. Sometimes he lies there for hours, waiting for some enemy soldier to carelessly expose himself.

 

“There are men there, all right,” I’d say to myself, “and one of them will get careless and show himself before long.” Sure enough, sooner or later, a head would appear over the side of the trench or a man would crawl outside for a minute.

 

Then I would figure windage and elevation, line up my sights, slack my body, take a half-breath and squeeze the trigger very slowly. More often than not the man I was aiming at would jump up and spin around a couple of times before falling. He looked very comical from where I was – like a toy soldier which somebody had whittled being upset by the wind.

 

I was the best rifleman in the regiment, so everybody said. One time, in July, I hit nine men out of a possible twelve. The colonel was in the line that afternoon and he and his adjutant were watching my shots with their strong field glasses. They made a lot over me when I plugged the ninth man and I grinned like a great fellow. You see, the men were so far away, it didn’t seem like killing anybody, really. In fact I never thought of them as men, but as dolls, and it was hard to believe that anything as small as that could feel pain or sorrow.

 

The company changes positions and moves forward, past a town smashed by German artillery. An officer announces that Company K will be going into the woods at dark. “What’s the name of this place?” a soldier named Art Crenshaw wonders. His sergeant doesn’t know and doesn’t see why it makes any difference. “I asked a Frenchman on the road,” says Allan Methot, “and he said it was called Belleau Wood.”

 

Reality sets in, as Private Edward Romano explains. One night, at an observation post on Hill 44, he shivers in the cold rain.

 

The rain was washing up bodies of men buried hastily; there was an odor of decay in the air. …

 

I saw a man. His feet were bare and his beautiful hair was long. I raised my rifle to kill him, but when I saw it was Christ, I lowered it again. “Would you have hurt me?” he asked sadly. I said yes, and began to curse: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself to let this go on! – You ought to be ashamed!”

 

But he lifted his arms to the sodden field, to the tangled wire, to the charred trees like teeth in a fleshless jaw. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do, if you know! …” It was then that I began to cry, and Christ cried, too, our tears flowing with the slow rain.

 

Lt. Edward Bartelstone talks about coming off watch one night, feeling cold and sick. “I could feel vermin itching my back and crawling over my chest,” he says. “I had not bathed for weeks and my feet had blistered offensively. There was a sour, overpowering smell in the dugout, and it turned my stomach and made me want to vomit.”

 

Another day, Private Jacob Geller and a fellow name Harry Waddell come upon a dead German. The dead man had “a hole in his chest as big as your fist.” He was lying, face up, over a log. So they rolled him over to see what he had in his knapsack. There was one pair of extra underwear and half a loaf of German bread, Geller recalls.

 

“That’s luck,” said Harry, “we can eat the bread!”

 

My mouth commenced to water and I could feel my stomach growling, but when we looked at the bread close we saw that it was covered with blood. (The bread was what the Heinies called pumpernickel, and it was still a little soggy on the inside where the blood hadn’t dried out.)

 

I took out my knife and tried to scrape off the blood but when I saw that it went all the way through, I gave up that idea.

 

“Don’t waste the bread that way!” said Harry. So I cut it in two equal parts and Harry Wadell and me ate every crumb of it.

 

Private Graley Borden remembers a time when Company K was detached from their division and fought alongside the French, “for six days and nights…without sleep and without rest.”

 

The men drew supplies and food from the French too.

 

When the first food arrived, there was red wine and a small ration of cognac for each of us. We were hungry, cold, and very tired, and the cognac warmed our blood and made the long nights bearable.

 

But on the second day, when rations were delivered again, the wine and the cognac were missing from the allowance of the American soldiers. The religious organizations in France had protested against rationing intoxicants to us: It was feared the news would get back to the United States, and that the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals would hear of it and would not be pleased.

 

Lieutenant Thomas Jewett tells his story next. One June day, he and Sgt. Prado are examining their lines. A small grove of trees on a hill forward looks to Jewett like a good place to put a machine gun, if the Germans decide to attack. Prado tells him it’s not a good idea. “I wouldn’t do that, Lieutenant. That clump stands out like a sore thumb. The Germans are sure to figure we’ll put men there, and shell hell out of it. I’ve been expecting that all morning.”

 

Jewett stands on authority, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think you understand my orders.”

 

A few minutes later Prado and his men had wormed their way through the wheat, and with my field glasses I saw them enter the trees. Then, as I lowered my glasses, and was walking away, I heard one shell in the quiet air. I stopped, turned, and saw it strike short of the clump by ten yards. There was silence while I held my breath, and the German artillerymen recalculated their range. Then there came innumerable shells which twisted and whined in the air and exploded with terrific blasts among the trees. Geysers of dirt, leaves and branches sprang upward, and the trunks of the lashed trees bent this way and that, as if a hurricane were lost among them, and could not find its way out.

 

The shelling lasted for twenty minutes and then lifted as suddenly as it had begun. I ran through the wheat, terrified, regretting what my vanity had made me do; and when I reached the clump, the first objects I saw were the bodies of Alden, Geers and Carroll huddled together, their faces torn away, the tops of their skulls caved in. Lying across a fallen tree, his body ripped from belly to chin, was Sergeant Prado, While Leslie Jourdan stood upright looking down at his hand, from which the fingers had been shot away.

 

I leaned against a tree to keep from falling. “I didn’t mean to do it, I said; I didn’t mean to…”

 

Private Caroll Hart recalls a day he and Sgt. Tietjen came upon a blasted German machine gun nest. Only one heavyset, bearded soldier remained alive, but badly wounded. When the German reaches inside his coat and fumbles, Hart figures he’s reaching for a grenade and empties his pistol into him.

 

I went over and opened his palm to see what he had in it. It was the photograph of a little German girl. She was round-faced, and freckled, and her hair was curled, for the occasion, over her shoulders. “That must have been his daughter,” said Sergeant Tietjen.

 

That night I couldn’t sleep. I rolled and pitched about and toward daybreak Tietjen came over and laid down by me. “No use blaming yourself that way, fellow,” he said; “anybody in the world would have thought he was going to throw a grenade.”

 

*

 

A face the color of wet cement.

 

Private Martin Dailey awakes on a hospital train, rolling through pretty French countryside. “My eyes burned and chest ached and I could feel my leg throbbing with pain,” he says. “There was a stench of disinfectant and dried blood in the coach and that smell which comes from many men caged together.”

 

Above me a man talks ceaselessly of Nebraska. His hand, hanging over his bunk, was grayish white and his nails were turning blue. He talks softly, in a slow voice. He wanted to talk a great deal, because he knew he was going to die before we reached the hospital. But there was nobody to listen to him. We lay there, mostly in silence, and thought of our own misery, like newly castrated sheep, too tired to find comfort in curses. We stared at the ceiling dumbly, or glanced out of the doors at the lovely countryside now in full bloom.

 

Corporal Lloyd Somerville has a similar story:

 

All the men in our ward were gas patients, and all of us were going to die. The nurses knew there was nothing that could be done for us, and most of the men realized it too. … Across the room, a man lay straining, trying to breathe. Sweat rolled from his face and he caught his breath with a high, sucking sound. After each spell had passed he would lie back, exhausted, and make a bubbling noise with his lips, as if apologizing for disturbing the ward; because each time the man strained for his breath the other men unconsciously struggled with him; and when he lay back exhausted, we clenched our fists, and relaxed a little ourselves. …

 

A man whose face was turning the color of wet cement leaned over his cot and began vomiting into a tin bucket.

 

Private Christian Geils dies, unheroically, when Sgt. Donohoe finds him hiding in a shell hole one day, and orders him out. “No,” Geils says. “No.” Donohoe pokes him with his rifle and calls him a “yellow bastard.” Geils is shaking uncontrollably, hands trembling, his teeth clicking together. Lieutenant Fairbrother comes up, and Geils climbs out of his hole. He begins to back away. “Stand still,” Fairbrother commands, but Geils can’t help himself and keeps backing away. Donohoe points his pistol at Geils’ head.

 

There was a silence for a moment. I could hear my teeth clicking together, playing a tune. “Stand still!” I said to myself. “Stand still, for Christ sake…he’ll shoot you!” Then I turned and began to run, and at that instant I heard the crack of Sergeant Donohoe’s pistol, and I fell in the mud, blood gushing out of my mouth.

 

Private Mark Mumford tells how he and Bernie Glass and Jakie Bauer jumped down into an enemy trench. Only one German soldier was to be found, “a fat little German boy who was scared to death. He had been asleep in a dugout and tried to climb over the side of the trench.” Bauer caught him by the “slack of the pants” and pulled him back and made him prisoner.

 

The boy is terrified, having been told that the Americans cut off the hands and feet of prisoners. Jakie speaks German, and he and his friends decide to tell the prisoner a story: that regulations require them to carve their initials on his belly with a trench knife.

 

The German unbuttons his uniform blouse. Jakie sees he’s wearing a fine Gott Mit Uns belt and wants it for a souvenir.

 

So he told the German boy he wanted his belt, and that he’d give him ten francs for it.

 

The German boy didn’t answer him. I don’t think he even heard Jakie, he was crying so and wringing his hands, thinking about how we were going to slice up his belly.

 

“Go on and take it, then!” said Bernie; “take it, if you want it!”

 

But when Jakie reached forward to unbuckle the belt, the little German boy screamed and cut his throat from ear to ear with a knife, which he had hidden under his tunic!

 

The German leaps to his feet and tries to run, but Glass chases him down and kills him with his bayonet. “It was a treacherous, dirty trick to cut Jakie’s throat that way. Jakie was the straightest man I ever knew and he wouldn’t hurt a fly if he could get out of it,” says Glass. “And to see him with his head almost cut off, and his eyes… It all goes to show that you can’t trust a German. I know I never gave one and even break after that.”

 

One day, Private Benjamin Hunzinger makes friends with a French girl in a little village. That night he sneaks away and spends hours with the girl. He’s not even sure of her name. Annette, he thinks. They don’t speak the same language. Around dawn, he rushes back to his post – but the company has moved out.

 

He doesn’t catch up with the unit for ten days, and when he does, they’re in action at St. Mihiel. His rifle is taken away and he’s charged with desertion in the face of the enemy. “You can’t say that about me, by God!” I kept repeating. “I’m not a deserter. I didn’t have any idea of deserting.”

 

*

 

No war could possibly last as long as a week.

 

Private Plez Yancey follows with his story. He and the rest of the men take up a position on the banks of the Moselle River. French troops are pulling out and explain the “club rules” and ask the Americans not to violate them. On the far bank are the Germans.

 

In the morning the Germans could come down to the stream to swim, wash clothes, or gather fruit from the trees on their side of the river. In the afternoon they had to disappear and we were free to swim in the river, play games, or eat plums on our side. It worked nicely

 

One morning the Germans left a note of apology telling us that we were going to be shelled that night at ten o’clock, and that the barrage would last for twenty minutes. Sure enough the barrage really came, but everybody had dropped back a thousand yards and turned in for the night, and no harm was done. We stayed there by the Moselle for twelve lovely days and then to our regret, we shoved on. But we had all learned one thing: If the common soldiers of each army could just get together by a river bank and talk things over calmly, no war could possibly last as long as a week.

 

Death stalks the men in many forms. Lt. Archibald Smith is killed when one of his soldiers sneaks up on him in a communications trench one night and bayonets him in the dark. “You got it in for me,” Private Edward Carter tells him, before stabbing Smith.

 

Carter, says Smith, repeats his claim, as if “reading it from a book.”

 

Then, without haste, he pressed on the butt of his rifle and the bayonet entered my body slowly. Then he withdrew the bayonet and struck me quickly again and again. I fell to the duckboards and lay there in the mud. Above me Carter stood cleaning the blade with blue clay which he dug from the side of the trench.

 

Carter explains his fury in the next story. Lt. Smith had asked him to go out on a wiring party one night, to do galley police, to go out on patrol again without rest, to go to the rear and bring up rations. He was exhausted. One night, he was asleep, when Lt. Smith came to get him for yet another patrol. Carter opens his eyes and sees Smith, “looking fresh and rested” standing above him. “We start at ten o’clock. We’ll be out all night,” the lieutenant says.

 

Even Corporal Brockett speaks up, telling Lt. Smith, “Eddie’s pretty tired. He’s been  on a working party all day. Maybe you’d better take somebody else.”

 

Smith insists Carter will be fine once he gets on his feet.

 

Carter shakes sleep from his head, and decides to follow Smith, who has said he’s going to headquarters to write a few letters before they go out on patrol. Carter slips out of the dugout, runs through an old trench, and waits where it intersects with the supply trench. He’s waiting when Smith passes by in the dark, humming “La Paloma” under his breath.

 

I had taken off my shoes, so as not to make a sound on the duckboards. I followed him for about three hundred yards, still undecided what to do, and then he turned and saw me. He tried to talk me out of it, but I pinned him to the side of the trench and stuck my bayonet in him until he quit breathing. After that I ran back as quickly as I could and was in the dugout, and asleep again, before the guard had completed his round, or before anybody had missed me.

 

Private Emil Ayers recalls listening to two men in his company argue during training camp. Both were college graduates “and they could talk on any subject that came up.”

 

But mostly they talked about war and how it was brought about by the monied interests for its own selfish ends. They laugh at the idea that idealism or love of country had anything to do with war. It is brutal and degrading, they say, and fools who fight are pawns shoved about to serve the interests of others.

 

For a while I listened to them, and tried to argue the thing out in my mind. Then I quit thinking about it. If the things they say are really true, I don’t want to know it.

 

Private Sylvester Wendell is given the task, by Captain Matlock, of writing letters of condolence to the families of soldiers who have died. He gives every man “a glorious, romantic death with appropriate last words.”

 

After the thirtieth letter, he can’t stand the lying and decides to type up a truthful letter:

 

Dear Madam:

 

Your son, Francis, died needlessly in Belleau Wood. You will be interested to hear that at the time of his death he was crawling with vermin and weak from diarrhea. His feet were swollen and rotten and they stank. He lived like a frightened animal, cold and hungry. Then, on June 6th, a piece of shrapnel hit him and he died in agony, slowly. You’d never believe that he could live three hours, but he did. He lived three full hours screaming and cursing by turns. He had nothing to hold onto, you see: He had learned long ago that what he had been taught to believe by you, his mother, who loved him, under the meaningless names of honor courage and patriotism, were all lies…

 

He reads that much to his comrade, Steve Waller, who keeps the company payroll. Waller suggests they go get fried eggs, and  Wendell tears up what he has written and goes off to eat.

 

The grim realities are overwhelming. Private Philip Wadsworth says that his chastity is “one of the stock jokes” in the unit. Wadsworth explains that he has been saving himself for Lucy Walters, his “pure” girl back home. But in a café in a French town one day, while the men are on rest, a girl comes over to his table and puts her arms round his neck.

 

She told me of her sweetheart, a boy from her village; how they, too, had loved each other, and planned marriage, and how he had been killed at the first battle of the Marne. She thought of him constantly, she said: She regretted, always, that he had died before he had consummated their love, or learned how rich and beautiful life could be. …

 

Wadsworth is torn between desire and morals. He thinks, “I could be killed next week.” He knows he may never see Lucy again. The French girl takes his hand, and tears fill her eyes. “What difference can it make, one way or the other, if I go with this woman?” he asks himself.

 

He does. He sleeps with her and leaves her twenty francs, but she refuses the money. “She clung to me and kissed me. She said I reminded her of the boy who had been killed on the Marne: he, too, had been very innocent. … And all the time she knew that she had diseased me.”

 

He is infected with venereal disease, has to go to the hospital, and gets sent to a labor battalion for his sins.

 

He tries to puzzle it out:

 

I have thought the matter over a thousand times, but I cannot understand, even yet, what there is about male chastity that is humorous, or why it repels and offends. The woman in the café got two hundred francs from my friends for seducing me. She reenacted the entire scene for them when she returned to the café: I was very clumsy and funny, I understand.

 

Private Methot tells his tale next. He was writing poetry before the war – even getting noticed. He was “convinced of the beauty of war by the beauty of my own sonnets.”

 

Now he looks at the “dull, sheeplike faces” of the other men. He knows he will soon be killed. “Soon a hand will stretch out and jerk me off my feet,” he thinks, “and I shall lie broken against this broken earth. … Soon a foot, shaped like infinity, will step upon my frail skull, and crush it!”

 

The horrors of war the men in the novel reveal are horrors the author himself would have witnessed firsthand. Private Jeremiah Easton watches an artillery barrage pulverize enemy lines:

 

Then toward morning the rain stopped and the first of the guns opened. Instantly a thousand guns were firing in a roaring, flashing semi-circle, and a thousand shells were flying through the air and exploding in the German lines. The barrage lasted for three hours and then, just at daybreak, it lifted. From where I was, I could see our men going over, the early light gleaming against fixed bayonets. But there was little for them to do, for there was nothing left of the German trenches or the surrounding terrain: Not a tree, not a blade of grass. Nothing living. Nothing at all. The dead lay thick in the trenches, in strange and twisted groups. … “There’s nothing left, I thought; Nothing at all!”

 

And then from a demolished pill-box a man crawled out of the wreckage. His jaw was partially shot away, and hung down, but he held up the pendulous bone with his hand, when he saw us, and made a frightened, conciliatory sound.

 

*

 

“We’re prisoners too: We’re all prisoners.”

 

In a series of stories, several men wrestle with an order by Captain Matlock, to shoot twenty-two German prisoners. Sergeant Julius Pelton thinks Matlock is joking. He has twenty years of service – but calls this “the rawest thing” he’s ever heard of. Matlock suggests getting Corporal Foster, and his automatic rifle squad, to do the shooting.

 

When Foster is asked, he justifies the order in his mind, citing German atrocities earlier in the war. He expects two of the men in his squad, Walt Drury and Bill Nugent, to object. And they do. “What do you birds think this is?” Foster scoffs. “This is war! … Why didn’t you bring along your dolls and dishes to play with?”

 

Drury speaks next. They take the Germans to a nearby gravel pit.

 

There were about two dozen prisoners, mostly young boys with fine, yellow fuzz on their faces. They huddled together in the center of the pit, and spoke to one another in soft, frightened voices, their necks bending forward, as if too frail to support the heavy helmets they wore. They looked sick and hungry. Their uniforms were threadbare and torn, and caked with mud, and their bare toes protruded through crevices in their boots. Some were already wounded and weak from loss of blood, and could hardly stand alone, swaying back and forth unsteadily.

 

Then suddenly my own knees got weak. “No,” I said; “no. – I won’t do it.” In a flash, Drury sees the truth. “We’re prisoners too: We’re all prisoners.” He’s in a prison of orders. He throws his rifle down and runs, stumbling through the woods. Eventually, he hides in a barn. He doesn’t speak French. He doesn’t have any friends. He knows he’s likely to be picked up as a deserter.

 

Private Charles Gordon is one of the men in the squad with orders to kill the prisoners. He notices that one of the Germans has “very blue eyes” and doesn’t seem frightened at all. Suddenly, the German looks at Gordon and smiles, and he smiles back.

 

When the order to fire on the prisoners comes, Gordon takes special aim at the blue-eyed man.

 

I stood there spraying bullets from side to side in accordance with instructions. …

“Everything I was ever taught to believe about mercy, justice and virtue is a lie,” I thought. … “But the biggest lie of all are the words ‘God is Love.’ That is really the most terrible lie that man ever thought of.”

 

Private Roger Inabinett, another man in the squad goes through the pockets of the dead prisoners, “looking for Iron Crosses.” He knows they’re worth “real money” as souvenirs, especially with soldiers who’ve never fought on the front lines. Sgt. Pelton jerks him by the collar and tells him to put everything back. Inabinett offers a cigarette lighter he has just found. Pelton looks like he’s about to hit him, but only orders him to rejoin his squad.

 

Private Howard Nettleton weighs in, after he and his friends have to listen to an American chaplain praying to God to “spare all the American Galahads and destroy their ungodly enemies.” He tells a comrade, “I’m going to ask him if he doesn’t know that the Germans are praying, too.”

 

After the Battle of St. Mihiel, Private Nalls and several other men, are billeted with an elderly French couple in Blenod-les-Toul. Their only son, René, had been killed early in the war.

 

After his death, the French government had sent them a small copper plaque showing in bas-relief the heroic face of a woman surrounded by a wreath of laurel, and under the woman’s face were the words, “Slain on the Field of Honor.” It was not an unusual decoration. It was the sort of thing that a Government would send to the next of kin of all men killed in action, but the old couple attached great importance to it. In one corner of the room they had built a tiny shelf for the medal and its case, and underneath it the old woman had fixed up an altar with two candles that burned day and night.

 

The Americans remained in the town for five days and then received orders to move out. A few weeks later, as Bernie Glass is opening his kit bag, the copper plaque rolls out.

 

“How could you do it Bernie?” I asked; “how could you do a thing like that?”

 

“I don’t know that it’s any of your business,” said Bernie, “but I thought it would make a good souvenir to take home.”

 

I never returned to Blenod, and I never saw that old couple again, but somehow I wish they knew that I am ashamed of the whole human race.

 

On another occasion, Private Silas Pullman waits for the order to go “Over the Top.”

 

Only a few minutes more and we’ll be going over. I can hear my watch ticking – ticking. This silence is worse than shelling. … I’ve never been under fire before: I don’t know whether I can stand it or not. This isn’t the way I thought it was going to be. I want to turn and run. I’m yellow, I guess. … Sergeant Mooney is speaking to me: “See that your bayonet is fastened tight,” he says. – I nod my head. – I don’t dare speak. … Oh, Christ! don’t let anybody see how frightened I am. – Don’t let them see, please!

 

They climb out of the trench and advance. Heavy fire pins them down. Mart Appleton and Luke Janoff are hit. They lie “quietly, neither of them moving.” The man next to Pullman is hit. Pullman’s not sure, but thinks his name is Lew Yawfitz.

 

He stands up and then falls down. He’s shot in the face. Blood is running down his face and into his mouth. He is making a choking sound and is crawling about like an ant. He can’t see where he’s going. Why don’t you lie still? … That seems the sensible thing to do.

 

Private Samuel Quillin was visiting a field hospital in a wrecked house, when he heard “a whine and a rushing sound in the air.”

 

I knew by instinct that the shell was going to register a direct hit. The sound increased to a shriek. Then a flash of light and a thundering explosion that blew the walls outward, and I fell swiftly into a lake of ink and lay prone on the bottom and at peace, for a long time, not breathing… and then climbed out of the ink slowly, inch by inch and began to groan. …

 

“There’s a man alive down there,” I heard somebody say. Nobody answered the voice for a moment, then finally there came another voice: “Nobody could be alive with all that weight on him.” … Then I remembered where I was. I was lying on my back and through the beams, iron sheets and tons of earth, I could see one star, tired and faint in the sky. I became frightened and began to shout. …

 

“Lie quiet!” said the first voice sharply. “You’ve got to keep your head. … Lie quiet! And listen to what I say: There are hundreds of tons balanced over you. If you move about you’ll bring it down.” Then I became quiet. Above me I could see the men moving beams, but very cautiously taking out the bodies as they came to them. The first man spoke to me again. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

 

“I suppose so,” I said.

 

In his mind, Quillin begins to compose a letter to a girl back home named Hazel Green, making each line rhyme. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he can see a “whole patch of the sky.” Soon, the rescuers pull him out and he’s able to walk to the dressing station alone. The doctor examines him, but there’s not a scratch on his body.

 

“Twenty-six men were taken out of that dugout, and you’re the only one that came out alive,” said the doctor. “You’ve had a lucky escape.”

 

“Yes, sir, I sure did,” I said.   

 

*

 

“A teaspoonful of brains.”

 

Private Abraham Rickey relates his story: “I was lying in the wheat near captain Matlock when he got hit and I was the first man to reach him. One machine gun bullet had hit him squarely between the eyes, plowing through his head and coming out at the base of his skull.”

 

Later, he tells his comrades what happened. The captain “just fell down in the wheat and doubled up.” The bullet, Rickey explains, “went all the way through his head. When I turned him on his face, I saw a teaspoonful of brains run out on the ground.”

 

“Wait a minute now… take it easy, sailor!” said Sergeant Dunning. “How much brains did you say ran out of Fishmouth Terry’s head? …”

 

“About a teaspoonful,” I said.

 

Everybody shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders.

 

“Are you sure it was Captain Matlock you picked up?” the sergeant asked again.

 

“Why, yes,” I said. “Sure it was.”

 

Everybody began to laugh. … “Be reasonable!” said Vester Keith. “Be reasonable! – If that many brains ran out, it couldn’t possibly have been our Terry!”

 

In the Argonne Forest one day, Sgt. Marvin Mooney and his men come across a wounded German.

 

When he saw me, he begged for a drink of water. I said: it was different when you were raping Red Cross nurses and cutting off the legs of children in Belgium, wasn’t it? The shoe’s on the other foot, now. Here’s some of your own medicine! Then I straightened out his head with my foot and pounded his face with the butt of my rifle until it was like jelly. After that I opened my canteen and poured all the water I had on the ground, as I didn’t want anybody to think it was giving him the water I minded. “Here’s a drink of water for you,” I said.

 

Mooney describes the German as a “crummy little fellow,” with eyeglasses “tied around his ears with two pieces of common twine.” 

The Unknown Soldier also has his say, relating the story of how his wiring party was cut down when two German Maxim guns opened up. He himself took a “shove,” and fell into a thicket of barbed wire.

 

At first I did not realize that I was wounded. I lay there on the wire, breathing heavily. “I must keep perfectly calm,” I thought. “If I move about, I’ll entangle myself so badly that I’ll never get out.” Then a white flare went up and I saw my belly was ripped open and that my entrails hung down like a badly arranged bouquet of blue roses. The sight frightened me and I began to struggle, but the more I twisted about, the deeper the barbs sank in. Finally I could not move my legs anymore and I knew, then, that I was going to die. So I lay stretched quietly, moaning and spitting blood.

 

I could not forget the faces of the men and the way they had scurried off when the machine guns opened up. I remembered a time when I was a little boy and had gone to visit my grandfather, who lived on a farm. Rabbits were eating his cabbages that year, so grandfather had closed all the entrances to his field except one, and he baited that one with lettuce leaves and young carrots. When the field was full of rabbits the fun began. Grandfather opened the gate and let in the dog, and the hired man stood at the gap, a broom stick in his hand, breaking the necks of the rabbits as they leaped out. I had stood to one side, I remembered,  pitying the rabbits and thinking how stupid they were to let themselves be caught in such an obvious trap. – And now as I lay on the wire, the scene came back to me vividly. … I had pitied the rabbits! – I, of all people…

 

I lay back, my eyes closed, thinking of that. Then I heard the mayor of our town making his annual address in the Soldier’s Cemetery at home. Fragments of his speech kept floating through my mind: “These men died gloriously on the Field of Honor! … Gave their lives gladly in a Noble Cause! ... What a feeling of exaltation was theirs when Death kissed their mouths and closed their eyes for an Immortal Eternity! …” Suddenly I saw myself, too, a boy in the crowd, my throat tight to keep back the tears, listening enraptured to the speech and believing every word of it; and at that instant I understood clearly why I now lay dying on the wire. …

 

*

 

“I know how I look with my face burned and twisted to one side.”

 

The war ends, but the trauma does not fade. Private Andrew Lurton is assigned duty as a military court reporter. On a Monday, “a kid from my company named Ben Hunzinger got fifteen years hard labor for deserting in the face of the enemy.” On Tuesday another soldier got five years for leaving his post – thirty kilometers behind the lines – “in order to warm his feet in the bunk house.” On Wednesday, a soldier who went nuts after the Battle of Soissons, and shot himself in the foot, got eight and one-half years.

 

Why exactly eight years and six months? – I’ve never been able to figure that out.

 

Then, on Thursday and Friday we had a big, front page case. A sergeant named Vindt and a private named Neidlinger were accused of certain acts together and were sentenced, on the unsupported word of a sergeant, getting the limit that the court martial manual permitted.

 

Private Howard Bartow has his chance to tell his tale. After just one trip up to the trenches, he started figuring out ways to avoid seeing combat. First, he volunteered for grenade school, and was sent to the rear to train, while Company K fought in Belleau Wood, “and the handful of men who had survived” were sent back behind the lines.

 

In July, while on a work party, he let a heavy desk fall on his foot and spent three “delightful” weeks in the hospital, and missed the fighting at Soissons. Next, he helped prepare court martial papers for men who had self-inflicted wounds. “It was most amusing,” he says. In September, he went to Division Headquarters as an interpreter, but they discovered his French “was the elementary French of a school-boy, and that I knew no word of German.”

 

In November, he thought the game was up, and he’d have to fight in the Argonne, “but I volunteered to take a message back to Regimental Headquarters. On my way to the rear, I decided to take a chance.” He hid in a cellar in Les Eyelettes for six days, and when he rejoined the company after the Armistice he told a story of being captured by Germans.

 

Nobody doubted the story, because I was careful to make my part in it unheroic and ridiculous.

 

During my entire enlistment I was in only one barrage. I never fired my rifle a single time. I never even saw a German soldier except a few prisoners at Brest, in a detention camp. But when we paraded in New York, nobody knew I had not been through as much as any man in the company. Just as many silly old women cried over me and I had just as many roses thrown at my head as were thrown at the heads of Harold Dresser, Mart Passy or Jack Howie. You’ve got to use your brains in the army, if you expect to survive!

 

Many men come home damaged in various ways. Leslie Yawfitz has had his eyes shot out. One soldier is too badly injured to do most work and not sure how he’ll make any money. Another ends up in the madhouse, hearing the “shells falling …nothing but shells falling.” Private Theodore Irvin suffered a “flesh wound,” he thought. It became infected. They had to amputate his foot. The infection kept spreading. Year after year they had to amputate, a little higher each time. He hoped when they amputated above the knee his suffering would end. The infection “crept upward” into his thigh. “For ten years I have been like a side of beef on a butcher’s block,” he groans.

 

Private Everett Qualls is haunted by his part in the massacre of the twenty-two prisoners. He has a farm – but all his cattle sicken and die. And he knows it’s punishment for what he has done. His wife kisses him and tells him not to worry. Then their baby, “who had been so strong and healthy, took sick. I saw him wasting away before my eyes, his legs and arms turning purple, his eyes glazed and dead with fever, his breathing sharp and strained.”

 

Qualls knows God is punishing him. He pleads for the baby, telling God, “It’s not his fault; it’s not the baby’s fault. I, I alone am guilty. Punish me, if You will – but not this way!”

 

He locks himself in a bedroom, but hears the doctor in the next room. “Then the baby’s breathing stopped altogether and there was my wife’s intaken wail of despair.”

 

I beat my breast and flung myself to the floor and that scene I had tried to crush from my mind came back again. I could hear Sergeant Pelton giving the signal to fire and I could see those prisoners falling and rising and falling again. Blood poured from their wounds and they twisted on the ground, as I was twisting now on the floor. … One of the prisoners had a brown beard and clear, sunburned skin. I recognized him to be a farmer, like myself, and as I stood above him, I imagined his life. He, too, had a wife that he loved who waited for him somewhere. He had a comfortable farm and on holidays, at home, he used to drink beer and dance. …

 

My wife was knocking on the door, but I would not let her in. Then I knew what I must do. I took my service revolver, climbed out of my window and ran to the grove of scrub oaks that divided my land. When I reached the grove, I put the barrel in my mouth and pulled the trigger twice. There came blinding pain and waves of light that washed outward, in a golden flood and widened to infinity. … I lifted from the ground and lurched forward, feet first, borne on the golden light, rocking gently from side to side. Then wild buffaloes rushed past me on thundering hooves, and receded, and I toppled suddenly into blackness without dimension and without sound.

 

Private Keith tries to organize an anti-war society on his return, but fails. “I felt,” he explains, “that if people were made to understand the senseless horror of war, and could be shown the brutal and stupid facts, they would refuse to kill each other when a roomful of politicians decided for them that their honor had been violated.”

 

Private Leslie Jourdan, who had once dreamed of playing the piano before concert crowds, moves to Birmingham, Alabama after the war. He goes into the paint business, marries Grace Ellis, and they have “three fine, healthy children.”

 

One day, he meets an old friend in the lobby of the Tutwiler Hotel. They had studied piano in France, before the war – and his friend wonders why Jourdan has given up his dream.

 

I laughed and tried to change the subject again. I commenced telling him about the way I had prospered in the paint business, but he kept cross-examining me closely and bawling me out for having given up my music until finally I had to do it. I took my hands from my pockets and rested them quietly on his knee. My right hand is as good as it ever was, but shrapnel has wrecked the other one. Nothing remains of my left hand except an elongated thumb and two ragged teats of boneless flesh.

 

After that Henry and I talked about the paint business, and how I had prospered in it, until it was time for him to leave for his concert.

 

We’ll let Private Walter Webster have the final word, to make March’s point, about the horrors of war.

 

“It was different when war was declared, and the band was playing in Jackson Park and there were pretty girls dressed in nurses’ uniforms urging the men to enlist and fight for their country: it was all different, then, and all very romantic. …” that’s what I said to Effie’s mother when she came to me about breaking the engagement.

 

Effie will marry you, if you insist on it, her mother said. She knows what you have suffered. We all know that. She'll go through as a wedding, if you want her to.

 

Alright dash I want her to! I said. “We made a bargain: she promised to marry me if I enlisted. I carried out my part of the contract. She’s got to carry out hers.”

 

Effie’s mother spoke slowly, trying to pick words that wouldn’t hurt my feelings. “Probably you don’t quite realize how – how – you have changed. Effie is a high-strung, sensitive girl, and while we all realize you have been unfortunate, and cannot help your – your present appearance, still…”

 

“Go ahead and say it!” I said. “I’ve got a looking glass. I know how I look with my face burned and twisted to one side. Don’t worry,” I said; “I know how I look, alright!”

 

“It isn’t that at all, Walter,” her mother said. …

 

“We just want you to come to Effie, of your own accord, and release her from her promise.”

 

“I won’t do it,” I said. “Not as long as I live.”

 

Mrs. Williams got up and walked to the door. “You are very selfish, and very inconsiderate,” she said.

 

I put my hand on her arm. “She’ll get used to me after a while. She’ll get so she won’t even notice my face. I’ll be so good to her, she’ll have to love me again.”

 

What a fool I was. I should have known Mrs. Williams was right. I shouldn’t have gone through with it. I can see Effie’s face now. I can see her face that night when we were alone in our room for the first time in that hotel in Cincinnati. How she trembled and covered her face with her hands because she couldn’t bear to look at me. “I must get used to that,” I kept thinking. “I must get used to it. …”

 

Then I came over to her, but I did not touch her. I got down on my knees and rested my face in her lap. … If she had only touched my head with her hand! If she had only spoken one word of understanding! … But she didn’t. She closed her eyes and pulled away. I could feel the muscles in her legs rigid with disgust.

 

“If you touch me, I’ll vomit,” she said.

There was romance and a promise when he went to war.

 

 

*

“Mere dirt and dust traps and do more harm than good.”

March-December: The New York Times ran an interesting story on the 1918 pandemic. The outbreak in the U.S. began with a hundred soldiers at an Army base in Kansas, in March. In a week, 500 men had fallen ill, and the flu spread far and wide. Eventually, seven cities put into force mandatory mask orders, four in California, Seattle, Denver and Indianapolis. The Spanish flu was thought to have been brought to San Francisco by an infected traveler from Chicago. By October, 7,000 San Franciscans had fallen ill, and the town became known as the “masked city.” That month, 195,000 Americans died from the virulent strain.

Soldiers gargle with salt water in hopes of avoiding the flu.

 

Even a century ago, not everyone wanted to don a mask. In those days, they were referred to at times as muzzles, germ shields and dirt traps. Some complained about the look, saying wearers appeared to have pig-like snouts. “Some people,” the Times noted, “snipped holes in their masks to smoke cigars. Others fastened them to dogs in mockery. Bandits used them to rob banks.” Others wore masks we now know would have been less effective, of gauze (police favored multiple layers) and cheesecloth.

 

At least one writer noted in October, that famous people in Los Angeles resisted wearing masks, lest they go unrecognized. Regular people were more careful, Alma Whitaker wrote. “The big restaurants are the funniest sights, with all the waiters and diners masked, the latter just raising their screen to pop in a mouthful of food.” As for Whitaker, herself, she was grabbed as a “slacker” and “forcibly taken” to the Red Cross, where she was required to make her own mask and put it on.

 

If Whitaker went quietly, not all did. The Times tells the story:

 

On Oct. 28, a blacksmith named James Wisser stood on Powell and Market streets in front of a drugstore, urging a crowd to dispose of their masks, which he described as “bunk.”

 

A health inspector, Henry D. Miller, led him to the drugstore to buy a mask.

 

At the door, Mr. Wisser struck Mr. Miller with a sack of silver dollars and knocked him to the ground, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. While being “pummeled,” Mr. Miller, 62, fired four times with a revolver. Passers-by “scurried for cover,” The Associated Press said.

 

Mr. Wisser was injured, as were two bystanders. He was charged with disturbing the peace, resisting an officer and assault. The inspector was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

 

By the time November rolled around, San Francisco was fining people who went mask-less, $5 or $10, or ten days in jail. On November 9, alone, a crackdown led to 1,000 arrests. It was standing-room only behind bars.

 

The question of whether or not to wear masks roiled debate in Los Angeles the same month. Some called them “germ-scarers” or “flu-scarers.” Others complained that people often wore them around their necks, only raising them to cover their faces when others came close. This meant, as someone said at the time, that they were “mere dirt and dust traps and do more harm than good.”

 

Suffragists, sensitive to the idea that women’s voices were going unheard, made the decision not to mask.

 

There was even an “Anti-Mask League,” led by E. J. Harrington, a female, and a lawyer, but it did not gain wide traction.

 

Then, as now, strong measures were soon required. Chicago police raided bars that stayed open despite orders to close. Athletic events were canceled. Theaters closed. Churches were still open; but windows had to remain open. A headline in the Chicago Tribune warned that “open-face sneezers” would be arrested. A 9 p.m. curfew was put in place.

 

The mask requirement in San Francisco lasted for four weeks, “four weeks of masked misery,” ending on November 21. One man tore off his mask at the deadline, noon that day, and stomped it on the ground.

 

As the Times explains: “Waiters, barkeeps and others bared their faces. Drinks were on the house. Ice cream shops handed out treats. The sidewalks were strewn with gauze, the ‘relics of a torturous month,’” the San Francisco Chronicle said. But the flu came back quickly and there was talk of stringent measures being reinstituted. Every century, of course, has its nuts. That era was no different from ours.

 

Around the end of the year, a bomb was defused outside the office of San Francisco’s chief health officer, Dr. William C. Hassler. “Things were violent and aggressive, but it was because people were losing money,” said Brian Dolan, a medical historian at the University of California, San Francisco. “It wasn’t about a constitutional issue; it was a money issue.”

 

By year’s end nearly a quarter of a million Americans were dead. The virus continued to ravage the nation the following year. Pasadena instituted a mask-wearing rule in 1919. Cigar smokers complained. Barbers lost business, as customers chose not to be shaved. Shoppers stayed home as much as possible, and stores saw declining business. Police enforced the rule as best they could, even arresting the president of one bank, and five of his “prominent” friends, for not wearing their masks properly while gathered at the Maryland Hotel one Sunday.

 

In San Francisco, a railway worker named Frank Cocciniglia, spoke for the “mask resisters” of his century. 

Arrested on Kearny Street in January, Mr. Cocciniglia told the judge that he “was not disposed to do anything not in harmony with his feelings,” according to a Los Angeles Times report.

 

He was sentenced to five days in jail.

 

“That suits me,” Mr. Cocciniglia said as he left the stand. “I won’t have to wear a mask there.”

 

By the end of 1919, an estimated 675,000 Americans had died. Adjusted for population, that would be equivalent to 2.1 million dead today.

 

*

 

Axios offers a number of interesting details, regarding the Spanish Flu epidemic, and I have interspersed stories from other sources below:

 

500 million were infected, about a quarter of the world’s population; 100 million died.

 

In the U.S., more children under the age of nine died, than during the next 25 years combined.

 

Dr. Jeremy Brown, of the National Institutes of Health explains:

 

In 1918, the basic treatments that were offered were enemas, whiskey and bloodletting. Hospitals as we know them today were quite different. There were no intensive care doctors [and] no antibiotics to treat any secondary infection. So it was a very different time and a very different way of practicing medicine.

 

* 

March: Soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, began reporting acute flu-like symptoms. John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, explains: “The most horrific symptoms were that you could bleed not only from your nose and mouth but from your eyes and ears. People were turning dark blue from lack of oxygen.” 

That same month, during spring training, the Red Sox held batting practice for the troops at Camp Pike in Little Rock, Arkansas. A 23-year-old pitcher named Babe Ruth smashes five home runs. The next morning’s headline: RUTH PUTS FIVE OVER FENCE, HERETOFORE UNKNOWN TO BASEBALL FANS. 

Several Red Sox players fall ill. Reporters detail their flu-like symptoms, but since so little is known at the time, no alarms are sounded.

 

* 

April: In desperate need of hitters after losing 13 players to the war, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow turns to his best pitcher, Ruth, who had won 24 games the year before (2.01 ERA), while hitting just two home runs. 

Babe gets to bat.

 

*

 

One day, over lunch, Dr. Johan Hultin, a Swedish medical student, heard a doctor say that the only way to figure out what caused the flu strain in 1918 to be so deadly would be to dig up the graves of victims buried in permafrost. Hultin took the hint and with a grant from the University of Iowa, headed for Alaska in June 1951. In the village of Brevig Mission, he found what he was looking after. The pandemic in 1918 had killed all but eight of 72 Inuit residents, and they had been buried in a mass grave. The first victim that he dug up was a girl, about 10, still “wearing a dove gray dress, the one she had died in,” he later recalled. Her hair was braided and tied with red ribbon.

 

Dr. Hultin’s discovery [during a second trip to the village in 1997] was crucial to finding the genetic sequence of the virus, allowing researchers to examine what made it so lethal and how to recognize it if it came again. The virus, which was 25 times more deadly than ordinary flu viruses, killed tens of millions of people and infected 28 percent of Americans, dropping the average life span in the United States by 12 years.

 

*

 

May 12: The American Expeditionary Force, at the urging of General Pershing, organizes a letter writing campaign for Mother’s Day.

 

Cpt. Arthur Wolff, of the 306^th Infantry, writes home:

 

Dearest Mother,

 

I am back from a four days trip to frontline trenches…Today is known as Mother’s Day and every American soldier is writing home today. I never felt better in my life.

 

Pershing had issued an order on May 8:

 

I wish that every officer and soldier of the A.E.F. would write a letter home on Mother’s Day. This is a little thing for each one to do, but these letters will carry back our courage and our affection to the patriotic women whose love and prayers inspire us and cheer us on to victory.

 

When no letters are received from overseas, the greatest distress is caused to those at home.”

 

At soldiers’ and sailors’ clubs in Paris there were offers of unlimited cake and ice cream for those who wrote letters. YMCA volunteers took pouches of paper and pencils to the front. Wolff would describe the desolation in France, “destroyed villages, torn up fields and one shell hole after another.”

 

Fifty thousand sons would die in battle; another 63,000 would perish from non-combat causes. President Wilson suggested a gold star flag for mothers who had sacrificed for their country; American Gold Star Mothers Inc. was organized in 1928.)

 

Pershing’s own mother, Anne, had been skeptical when he decided to go to West Point. She would later write that she was “distinctly proud of having a son serving with the colors.” She followed his “career with the utmost interest,” as she once wrote to him. Pershing married, had a family, three daughters and a son. A fire at his quarters in the Presidio (August 27, 1915) killed his wife and three girls, leaving only six-year-old Warren alive. Source: NYT (5/13/18).

 

*

____________________ 

It was illegal to “use in speech or written form any language that was disloyal to the government, the Constitution, the military, or the flag.”

____________________

 

May 16: Congress passes the Sedition Act, making it a crime to say or publish anything that casts the government or the war effort in a negative light. “So,” Axios notes, “as the virus began to spread, the nation wasn’t told.” 

According to the First Amendment Encyclopedia: 

The provisions of the act prohibited certain types of speech as it related to the war or the military. Under the act, it was illegal to incite disloyalty within the military; use in speech or written form any language that was disloyal to the government, the Constitution, the military, or the flag; advocate strikes on labor production; promote principles that were in violation of the act; or support countries at war with the United States.

 

President Woodrow Wilson also created the Committee on Public Information. Axios describes it as “a propaganda machine designed by Arthur Bullard, who once wrote, ‘Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms. ... The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.’”

 

* 

July 1: With the U.S. dramatically increasing the size of its military forces, no one knows for sure if the 1918 baseball season will go on as scheduled. The “Work or Fight” rule, which states that all men with “non-essential” jobs must enlist, make themselves draft-eligible or apply for work directly related to the war goes into effect. 

Hundreds of players join the military ranks. Others take jobs at mills and shipyards, which leads to the rise of industrial leagues. 

Bethlehem Steel lures big leaguers like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson to play in its six-team baseball league. “The whole gang of them was draft dodgers,” one umpire grumbles. “They were supposed to be working for the war, but they didn’t do any work. All they did was play baseball.”

 

*

“That damn fool.”

 

August 6: A scow doing dredging work on the Niagara River broke loose from the tugboat that was pulling it, after the scow struck a sandbar. The cable snapped and the scow went careening down the Niagara River with two sailors aboard. About a third of a mile above Horseshoe Falls, the craft smashed into a shelving rock, before it could go plunging over the 167-foot brink.

 

The two men aboard, James Harris and Gustav Lofberg, had no idea how long the scow would remain where it was. Nor did they have any idea how they might escape, with 650 feet of rushing water separating them from the nearer, Canadian shore.

 

The New York Times tells the story:

 

From the roof of a powerhouse, rescuers shot a rope line to the boat from a cannon and constructed a pulley system. Then they attached a breeches buoy, or a canvas sling, to the pulley, which they hoped could carry the men ashore.

 

It was a risky gambit: The strain on the line from the first man to cross might have pulled the scow from its ledge and sent it plunging over the falls.

 

As darkness fell, and a knot in the pulley’s ropes blocked the buoy from the marooned men, the rescue team abandoned its efforts for the evening. But the rescuers erected a large electrical sign to comfort Mr. Harris and Mr. Lofberg through the night, according to news reports at the time. It read, “REST.”

 

It’s unlikely the trapped duo got much rest that long night. Next morning, William “Red” Hill Sr., a Canadian, volunteered to ride the pully system, and managed to untangle the ropes in midair. The buoy now reached the two men on the scow. Ashore, rescuers saw a scuffle break out.

 

It looked as if Harris and Lofberg were fighting to be the first to climb aboard the buoy, or sling.

 

A man climbed aboard, and rescuers pulled him across. Half-a-dozen times, his weight caused the line to sag into the fast-moving waters. As soon as the first sailor reached shore – Harris, it turned out – he gasped, “Get the buoy back as quick as you can. That damn fool Lofberg said he was the skipper and I’d have to come ashore first.”

 

Lofberg was soon riding the buoy to safety. And for the next hundred years the rusting wreck of the scow was pointed out to visitors and the story of their lucky rescue and the courage involved was told.

 

*

 

“Poor devils dropping like flies.”

 

September: An army doctor wrote from Camp Devens, outside of Boston. Soldiers would sicken in the morning. ““It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes. It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or 20 men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day.”

 

In the U.S., life expectancy dropped from 54 to 47 during the course of the pandemic. In England and Wales the drop was more than a decade. Life expectancy in India bottomed below 30. 

 

The shortened Major League season ends with the Red Sox (75-51) winning the American League pennant. The Cleveland Indians (73-54) finish second. The Chicago Cubs (84-45) run away with the National League. 

Babe Ruth ties for the Major League lead with 11 homeruns.

 

* 

September: The shortened Major League season ends with the Red Sox (75-51) winning the American League pennant. The Cleveland Indians (73-54) finish second. The Chicago Cubs (84-45) run away with the National League. Babe Ruth ties for the Major League lead with 11 homeruns.

 

* 

September 5: Game 1 of the World Series: “The Star Spangled Banner” is played for the first time before a sporting event — a tradition that later extended to all sports after it became the National Anthem in 1931. Babe Ruth pitches a shutout and the Boston Red Sox win 1-0.

 

* 

September 9: Game 4: Babe Ruth pitches another gem, but the Chicago Cubs score two runs in the fourth inning, stopping his scoreless innings streak in the World Series at 29.2 innings. The Red Sox win 3-2. Babe drives in a pair of runs.

 

* 

September 11: By the time the World Series ends (with the Red Sox winning in six games), Boston has been swept by the flu. City officials have waited too long, and crowded public events like the World Series games fuel the pandemic. By the end of the year, 5,000 Bostonians have died from the influenza.

 

* 

September 28: Philadelphia ignores any health risks and holds a 200,000-person parade. As Axios notes, “Three days later, every hospital in Philadelphia was filled with sick patients. By the end of the week, 4,500 were dead.” By the end of the second wave, nearly 18,000 had died in the city.

 

* 

College football season: Most teams complete a truncated schedule. Some conferences shut down completely. Michigan (5-0) and Pittsburgh (4-1) finish as co-champions, “with the former shutting out an otherwise-unblemished Syracuse team while the latter crushed previously unscored-upon Georgia Tech.” 

 

*

“The last act of the tragedy of Woodrow Wilson had begun.”

November: When President Wilson calls on voters to return more Democrats to Congress, Teddy Roosevelt calls it an insult to all patriotic Republicans who had supported prosecution of the war. He telegraphs leading GOP senators to oppose the Fourteen Points.

 

“I am glad Wilson has come out in the open,” he wrote to [Henry Cabot] Lodge. “I fear Judas most when he can cloak his activities behind treacherous make-believe of nonpartisanship.” It was the sort of message, he said, that could have been expected from a pro-German, unprincipled, cold-blooded, selfish, tricky, cowardly, unscrupulous, shameless, hypocritical, double-crossing President. (10/203 II)

 

Then, says Walworth, “the blow fell.” In the November elections, women, in states where they had been enfranchised, voted Republican. So did Negroes who had migrated North for war work. “Great blocks of German and Irish votes” also went against the president. The Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate by one vote, the U.S. House of Representatives by forty-five. The president “now stood politically bankrupt in the eyes of the world. The last act of the tragedy of Woodrow Wilson had begun.” (10/204 II) 

Wilson, said McAdoo later had a horror of fatuous ideas, what he called “blank cartridges.” (10/214 II)

 

* 

November 11. This comes from the Facebook page of Heather Cox Richardson:

 

My grandfather fought in France in WWI, but when I think of that horrific, interminable conflict, and all that it says about war, I think not of him, but of George Lawrence Price.

 

In 1918, Price was a private serving with Company A of the 28th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium. Along with all the other exhausted soldiers, Price had heard that their leaders had negotiated for the guns in Europe to fall silent once and for all on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The soldiers hardly dared to hope that peace would really come to pass.

 

As the moment of the armistice approached, a few soldiers continued to skirmish, and Price's company set out to take control of the small town of Havre. As they crossed a canal to their target, a German gunner hidden in a row of houses tried to stop them. Once safely across, just ten minutes before the armistice, the Canadian patrol began to look for the German soldier who had harassed them. They found no one but civilians in the first two homes they searched. And then, as they stepped back into the street, a single shot hit Price in the chest. He fell into the arms of his comrade, who pulled him back into the house they had just left. As Price died, German soldiers cleared their guns in a last burst of machine-gun fire that greeted the armistice.

 

Price’s life ended just two minutes before the Great War was over.

 

Even at the time, Price’s death seemed to symbolize the pointless slaughter of WWI. When an irony of history put Price in the same cemetery as the first Allied soldier to die in the conflict, disgusted observers commented that the war had apparently been fought over a half-mile of land. In the years after the war ended, much was made of George Price, the last soldier to die in the Great War.

 

But ever since I learned Price’s story, I have been haunted by the unknown story of the German sniper who killed him. What made that man take that one last life, two minutes before the war ended? Was it rage? Fear? Had the war numbed him into a machine that simply did its job? Or was it a final, deadly act of revenge against a world that had changed beyond his reckoning?

 

And what did the knowledge that he had stolen another man's future—legally, but surely immorally—do to the man who pulled that trigger? He went back to civilian life and blended into postwar society, although the publicity given to Price's death meant that he must have known he was the one who had taken that last, famous life in the international conflagration. The shooter never acknowledged what he had done, or why.

 

Price became for the world a heartbreaking symbol of hatred's sheer waste. But the shooter? He simply faded into anonymity, becoming the evil that men do.

 

*

“It is not the people ‘in the game’ whom I am seeking to serve.” 

December 13: President Wilson arrives in France to take part in the peace conferences. On the eve of his departure for Europe, speaking of America’s fighting men, who had laid down their lives, he explained why he was going.

 

It is now my duty to play my full part in making good what they offered their life’s blood to obtain. I can think of no call to service which I which could transcend this … I realize the magnitude and difficulty of the duty I am undertaking; I am poignantly aware of its grave responsibilities. I am the servant of the Nation. I can have no private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. (10/215 II)

 

Later, he explained in a letter: “It is not the people ‘in the game’ whom I am seeking to serve, but the people not in the game and with whom political motives count for nothing except to excite suspicion.” (10/221-220 II) 

Walworth describes the reaction:

 

Once the epochal speech was uttered, the whole world gave heed. Washington circles and American newspapers, even some that were usually in opposition, were laudatory. Even in the uttermost parts of the world the words of the prophet stirred a worshipful response in hearts that were yearning for the American gospel of which missionaries and traders were telling them. Human beings everywhere felt the magic of the tug on sensibilities that are deep in all men. (10/152 II)     

 

In the early months of 1918, Wilson laid down four generalizations that he thought essential for a lasting peace:

 

 First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent;

 

Second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that

 

Third, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of a mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states; and

 

Fourth, that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world. (10/156 II)

                                                                                   

Wilson told a group of reporters now that he “would be ashamed to use knock-down and drag-out language.” 

“That is not the language of liberty,” he added.

 

Quoting Burke, he went on: “‘A government which those living under it will guard … is the only possible definition of a free government.’ … There isn’t any one kind of government which we have the right to impose upon any nation. … I am not fighting for democracy except for the peoples that want democracy … the people have the right to make any kind of government they please.” (10/169 II)

 

The Czech leader, Thomas Masaryk, had met with Wilson previously, to plead the case of his people for a land of their own. He found the president to be “the most intensely human man” he had ever met – a  man “actually incandescent with feeling!” (10/170 II) 

Told that Clemenceau and Lloyd George had mocked the ideas he laid out, Wilson told reporters, “Yes, I know that Europe is still governed by the same reactionary forces which controlled this country until a few years ago. But I am satisfied that if necessary I can reach the people of Europe over the heads of their rulers.” (10/175 II) 

In his diary, Colonel House noted that “Lloyd George…and Clemenceau dislike the President and the President dislikes them.” (10/180 II) 

Walworth sees it so:

 

At the end of this war, however, Wilson conceived that the United States had no selfish interests except those that she shared with all civilized nations – to prevent a recrudescence of chauvinistic despotism, trade wars, and other phenomena that might disturb the peace. Therefore, the prophet sensed a rare opportunity to build a great rainbow arch of what he called “impartial” justice far above the limited concepts of justice that were worshipped in the temples of the nations. … National interests would be expendable for the good of all humanity. (10/182-183 II)

 

 

*

What follows are notes from First Call by Arthur Guy Empey. When the United States was slow to enter World War I, Empey, an American, joined the British Army in order to do his part.

 

His book, Over the Top, published in 1917, was a sensation, offering a compelling view of trench warfare.

 

Below, I have provided a sampling of Empey’s descriptions from First Call, published in 1918. The book is inferior to Over the Top, but full of telling detail:

 

____________________

 

“We are fighting murderers and pirates.”

____________________

 

 

“The United States is at war. To many of us, as yet, the above fact carries no significance; it is merely accepted as something disagreeable which cannot be avoided…The actual scene of fighting is too far away; all about them [these unaware Americans] is industry and prosperity.” (18-1)

 

Like many Americans, Empey did not trust German immigrants living in the United States. His anti-German bias is not much different from a similar bias against Japanese Americans in 1942, or anti-Muslim bias after the attacks of 9/11:

 

The German in the trenches can be handled by our boys at the front, but what about the German at home here in the United States? The one who stabs us in the back! Are we going to let these snakes hinder and undermine our armies [emphasis added throughout] at the front or are we going to safeguard our boys and exterminate the pests?

 

Although we are fighting Germany, German language newspapers are being published all about us.

 

The Germans in the United States, whether naturalized or not, who are unwilling to renounce their Fatherland and who are unwilling to fight this Fatherland with rifle and bayonet, are our enemies and should be interned immediately.

 

We have many men who hold high offices of trust who are nothing more or less than pro-Germans or spies in the pay of Germany. They have tried and are now trying to hinder the successful promotion of this war. These men should be hanged as traitors; shooting them is too good for them.

 

Before the United States entered the war, the genuine pacifist was to be respected as one who had the strength of his convictions, but now that the United States is at war, it is up to every pacifist to help, not hinder. The pacifist of to-day is either a pro-German or a traitor to his country and should be treated as such. Give a few of them jail sentences and see how quickly the rest become patriotic.

 

The flag flying from the front of your home is your flag, our flag; our fathers shed their blood to put it there; now it is up to every man and woman of us to shed our blood, if need be, to keep it there. If you will not do this, you are not an American and America does not want you. Go over where you belong, under the German flag of murder, rapine, dishonor and treachery. (18/3-4)

 

(Empey’s use of the dehumanizing descriptor “snakes” in reference to German immigrants is similar to the Governor of Idaho, who referred to all Japanese Americans in 1942 as “rats.”)

 

“This is a war of right, therefore it is God’s war; if it were not so, America would not have unsheathed the sword, because America has fought and shall fight only on the side of Right. She could not do otherwise and be America.” (18/5-6)

 

Empey tries to reassure his readers—some of whom may soon enlist in the U.S. Army, saying, if a soldier is “wounded severely, the suffering is not great—in fact there is very little pain.” “I myself have been through three military hospitals, not as a visitor either, but as a severely wounded patient.” (18/6-7)

 

Empey also tries to fill young American men, who might be thinking of enlisting, that the veteran soldier comes to believe the Germans are terrible shots; “until after a while, he looks upon a bursting German shell with the utmost contempt.” (18-11)

 

He also downplays another threat to the soldier of 1918, telling his readers:

 

Right here I wish to impress upon you the fact that there is certain propaganda in the United States (if its source is traced it will be found that it is of pro-German origin), spreading the report that our boys, when they reach France, will have ample opportunity to mingle with women of questionable character. Nowhere in the world is a stronger line drawn between soldiers and this class of women than in France.” “So, Mothers, do not let this worry you in any way…” (18-12)

 

Using the slang term for a German soldier, he writes, “‘Never trust a Fritz’…The fact that it doesn’t pay to trust him has been proven thousands of times in this war.” (18-17)

 

He says there’s no shame in being drafted. This simply means, “Come on boys, we’re going ‘over the top’ for democracy, justice, and liberty—and self-preservation.” (18-18)

 

Empey discusses some of the specialties in the army. He has a high opinion of the “Signal Corps man.” Often, he says, he has seen them signaling from a captured enemy trench in broad daylight, “Ammunition Required.” “The Signal Corps is the nerve system of the army.” The cavalry is not obsolete. When “we break through on the Western Front (which will not be in the near future, but will happen eventually) then the cavalry will, as of old, demonstrate to the world its usefulness, dash, and efficiency.”

 

At the time of his writing, he said the cavalry could most be often seen serving as military police:

 

At every crossroad you will see a solitary mounted man with a red band around his left sleeve on which appear the black letters ‘M. P.’ meaning Military Police. He has absolute authority invested in him, and it is his duty to patrol all roads, villages, and keep open lines of communication, arresting all suspicious persons. In fact, he is one of the main spy-catchers on the Western Front.

 

Empey hastens to add that such duty is often “done under shell fire.” At other times the cavalryman is dismounted and sent to the trenches if large attacks are contemplated. Then, the “cavalryman, to impress upon the infantryman that he is a ‘horse soldier’ wears his spurs, even while sleeping.”

 

“The artillery is the battering ram of trench warfare. A soldier loves his own artillery and curses that of the enemy.”  “I have witnessed a battery of ‘four fives’ during a heavy action, men stripped to the waist, sweat pouring from them, and German shells bursting in their near vicinity, singing songs and cracking jokes while ‘carrying on’ with their work of ‘strafeing Kultur.’” (18/25-28)

 

(“Kultur,” here is used in reference to a supposedly warlike German culture.)

 

“When an infantryman reaches France he quickly learns that in trench fighting, ‘the shovel is mightier than the sword.’” (18-30)

 

As for the young recruit who hopes to present a dashing picture, Empey recommends: “After being outfitted, go to the regimental tailor. For a couple of dollars he will alter your uniform so that it fits, and you won’t look like a sack of oats with a belt around the middle.” (18-45)

 

In bayonet training, the instructor may explain to some “juniper,” or green recruit, that “a bayonet is not for the purpose of stabbing a custard pie, but is to be used only to let daylight through a German.”  “When you are hand to hand with an enemy, your life depends on the quick and proper use of your bayonet, so therefore my advice to you is: while in training put your whole heart and soul into bayonet drill.”

 

Empey also hastens to add:

 

But I must speak of one great advantage we have: the German is deathly afraid of cold steel. He is a good artilleryman, machine gunner, bomber [grenade thrower], and long distance fighter, but when he sees that polished knife in front of him, it is generally ‘both hands up in the air.’ Squealing like a pig he will shout…‘Mercy Kamerad’; but when he surrenders take no chances,—do not in any way put yourself at a disadvantage, because if he has a chance he will get you—that is one of the lessons he has learned from Kultur. Sometimes it is necessary to kill a snake so I will leave it to your own judgment. (18/90-91)

 

He suggests soldiers carry various items: a metal match-box, a small metal trench mirror, nail clippers, playing cards, a pocket chess and checkerboard set, safety pins, “Sauce, A 1,” a pair of tennis shoes, Ivory soap, a sponge for bathing, a “whetstone (for razor blades and knife), a balaclava for winter, including “strings to tie below the chin,” but no white handkerchiefs, which “are dangerous” “A bottle of sauce will make the ever-present ‘Canned Willie’ [beef] palatable.” Why tennis shoes? “These shoes will rest his feet when returning from tours in the trenches and long hikes.” (18/94-97)

 

Empey is reassuring and brutally honest by turns. In a chapter titled “Smokes,” he tells the story of his first wound and trip to the hospital. The bed on one side was empty. The pillow was missing; and a rubber sheet stretched across the center of the bed. “It was my first time in a hospital,” he said, but it felt sure the bed had been specially prepared for “a special case.”

 

In the bed on the other side of his own, was a soldier from the 15^th Royal Scots, or “Ladies from Hell,” as the regiment was known to the Germans. The “Jock,” or Scottish soldier “had lost his left foot from a shell burst.” Empey wondered about the patient who might fill the empty bed. The Scot explained: He was a Canadian and up in the operating room “having both hands amputated at the wrists, and also that he “had been blinded by an exploding bomb [grenade], while raiding the German trenches.”

 

Soon four orderlies in white came down the ward with the wounded Canadian on a stretcher, followed by a Red Cross nurse. They laid the man down and left, “but the Red Cross nurse sat beside her patient, every now and then shooing a fly away from the bandaged head, or with a piece of gauze bandage, wiping away the white froth which constantly oozed from the half-open lips of the bandaged form.” In a short time, the wounded man began to stir. His lips twitched. He let out a sigh. Then he began to sing, “Never Introduce a Bloke to Your Lady Friend.”

 

Clearly, the Canadian was delirious. He began shouting,

 

“‘Ammo! Ammo! Ammo forward!’ You could hear him all over the ward. The nurse started to sing a crooning lullaby. The shouting ceased…In a few minutes, rays of consciousness penetrated to the brain of the wounded man and he started to mutter:

 

“Turn on the lights, it’s dark—it’s dark—I can’t see—it’s dark—dark—Take that damned pillow off my head—it’s dark—dark—I tell you! What’s the matter with my mitts?—they’re tied—cobblestones on them!—Where am I?—Smokey, this dugout’s dark—switch on the glim!’

 

The nurse was talking to him in a low voice and crooning her lullaby. My God, how that girl could sing!

 

Eventually, the poor man drifted off into sleep. For the next three hours the nurse never left his side. “The presence of that nurse,” Empey admitted, “made me feel happy and contented all over.”

 

(A “glim” would be an electric torch or flashlight, as we might call it.)

 

At last, the wounded soldier began to stir once more. “Where am I?” he asked. Why wouldn’t anyone turn on the lights? Empey continues:

 

The sun was streaming through the window.

 

The nurse was crying. So was I. The Jock on my left was softly cursing to himself.

 

The angel of mercy leaned over her patient and in a low voice whispered to him:

 

“Never mind, dearie, you are in a hospital, and will soon be in Blighty [England] for a nice long rest.”

 

The Canadian’s mouth twitched, I thought he was going to cry…[his] lips were blanched a bluish white.

 

He asked the nurse: “What time is it?”

 

She answered “Three o’clock, dearie; try and go to sleep, you’ll feel better soon.”

 

The Canadian asked in a piteous voice, “Why is it so dark? Then he shouted in a terror-stricken voice, “I know—I know—they’ve put my lights out! Good God, I’m blind! I’m blind! My eyes are gone—gone—gone!” and his voice died out in a long sob.

 

Three doctors soon appeared. In hushed tones they discussed the man’s case. “The Jock whispered to me,” Empey said. “Poor bloke, he’s ‘going west.’ I know the signs.”

 

The dying soldier began to mutter; the nurse bent over him again and asked if he’d like to write a letter home to his folks, “Just a short note telling them that you are all right and will be with them in a couple of months?” The Canadian mumbled a response. He had no folks at home—had been on his own since he was a kid. Empey noticed, “The writing pad in the nurse hand was wet. The bandage on my shoulder was wet—perhaps the blood was soaking through, but blood is red.”

      

The nurse asked her patient if she could get him anything, perhaps a nice cool drink. The Canadian responded, “Hell no.” He wanted a smoke. The nurse looked at one of the doctors, who nodded, then she came to Empey’s side.

 

…I felt as if I were in the presence of God. She whispered to me: “Have you a cigarette, my dear, for that poor boy? We are all out—have not received any for ten days. If the people at home only realized what a Godsend smokes are for these poor wounded lads, they would send them out. They are as important as shells.”

 

I told her to look in my kit bag. She looked through it and found one, all out of shape—a Goldflake. I think it was the only smoke left in that ward of sixty-nine patients.

 

With joy in her eyes she went back to her patient, gently put the cigarette between his lips and lit it.

 

A contented sigh, two or three week puffs, and the lighted cigarette fell out of his mouth on to the sheet. He was asleep.

 

It was getting late; I fell asleep. When I woke it was morning.

 

The bed on my right was empty. The nurses in the ward had red eyes. They had been crying.

 

I turned an inquiring gaze to the Jock on my left. He solemnly nodded and his mouth twitched. I thought he was going to cry, but suddenly he looked at me, tears in his eyes, and said, “Aw, go to hell!” and turned over on his side. (18/104-110)

 

In First Call, Empey urges Americans at home, particularly women, to make every effort to support the men at the front, by hard work, sacrifice, adhering to meatless days, and more. Then “you will go to bed with that warm glowing feeling that you are personally conducting a little war of your own against autocracy, rape, loot, and murder.” (18-119)

 

As for the young soldier, Empey offers all kinds of useful advice.

 

In marching, when out of range of the enemy, hang your helmet by the strap over your bayonet scabbard—this will take the weight from your head and the march will be easier. Take your khaki handkerchief, tie a knot in each corner, and wear it on your head; this will protect you from the sun’s rays or prevent your catching a cold. (18-137)

 

Empey admits that the English soldiers he had served with referred to body lice as “cooties.” “This is a repulsive subject, but it must be faced by ‘Sammy.’”

 

(“Sammy,” as in “Uncle Sam,” or the American soldier.)

 

“I will have to admit that the only way to get rid of cooties permanently is to be wounded and sent to a hospital where there are no ‘cooties.’”

 

He suggests soldiers make their own scratching tools. Get a piece of hardwood, about eighteen inches long, “whittle it to the thickness of an ordinary meat skewer; polish it with sand or a piece of stone, so that it is smooth and will not splinter.” Keep this “scratcher” with you at all times. “An easy way of carrying it, while in the trenches or on the march, is to stick it in the right puttee (or legging), where it will always be handy and within reach.” “When clean underwear is issued, never put it on without first taking a bath—that is, if you are lucky enough to have bathing facilities present.”

 

He advises taking a “few cakes of strong carbolic soap” overseas. Use this and the cooties “will avoid you for a few hours.” “The only effective way is to get them in the egg. Light a candle and pass the seams over the flame, being careful not to burn the garment. This will destroy the eggs of new ‘cooties.’”

 

As I have said, it will be impossible to devise a method which will permanently rid you of these pests. The best advice that I can give is to constantly engage in a “shirt hunt.” Pick them off by hand; the thumb-nail is the weapon most commonly used in the trenches against “cooties.” Strong pressure, exerted at the psychological (?) moment, will do the trick. After all, the real and only tip is to grin and bear them. (18/149-153)

 

____________________

 

“The two armies on the Western Front are really nothing but two grindstones rubbing together.”

____________________

 

 

He writes: “Now modern warfare means digging and living in ditches, hammering with artillery, trying to smash the other fellow…The two armies on the Western Front are really nothing but two grindstones rubbing together. The one which wears away first will be vanquished.” (18-165)

 

Empey’s comments about artillery are clearly contradictory. He scoffs at the idea “shrapnel” is a great danger. He has been under fire.

 

In several instances, shrapnel balls kicked up the dust a few feet from me, but I came through without a scratch. If you will realize that you only occupy a small place and that shrapnel has the remainder of France in which to scatter itself, it will be comparatively easy to figure out the chance of being hit.

 

Shrapnel is a shell loaded with small steel or iron balls about the size of a marble, imbedded in rosin. It carries a time fuse and bursting charge.

 

He does admit a soldier experiencing artillery fire for the first time “is naturally very nervous and agitated.”   

 

I have seen a man, during a heavy bombardment, crouch behind a bush on the roadside, apparently satisfied that he was safe. He did not seem to be very worried because he was smoking a cigarette. In the front-line trenches ponchos or waterproof sheets are spread during rainy weather across the top of the trench, the men getting under these sheets for shelter from the rain. They hear a shell coming over and there is a mad rush to get under this rubber protection, and the fellow who is left in the open feels very much afraid.

 

The new recruit, in battle for the first time, will think “every rifle and gun in the German Army” is aimed at him. They are not. In fact, the Germans do not know you have enlisted.” Consider the number of bullets that miss—and then carry on, feeling somewhat safe. (18/175-180)

 

Chapter XXXIII, From My Trench Note Book, offers tips for the soldier new to the line.

 

Empey notes for example, how hard it is to see anything through a periscope, except “barbed wire, an expanse of dirt, then the German barbed wire, and their trenches.” These appear like thin lines in the distance. To make a periscope of you own, he says wrap a piece of string or wire tightly around a small mirror. Then insert your bayonet in the back, under the string or wire.

 

Sitting on the fire step, close up against the parapet, raise the mirror, tilting it slightly backward, until you get a view of No Man’s Land. Do not keep the mirror up very long, especially if the sun is shining, because the rays will attract German snipers and draw their fire, and perhaps a bullet will hit your bayonet and ricochet into the trench, wounding or killing someone.

 

If for any reason you have to fire or look “over the top” in daytime, do it very quickly and duck as soon as possible. Never put your head up or fire twice in the same place [emphasis in the original], because you may have been spotted by an enemy sniper and he doubtless has his rifle aimed at that particular spot, waiting for your head to reappear. The first rule in trench warfare is, “Keep your head down.”

 

“In the trench always keep your bayonet fixed.” (18/190-191)

 

Another rule: “Never throw rubbish, the remains of your rations, or tin cans, out in front of your trench.” This will attract rats. (18-192)

 

At night “never light a match or show a light” in the front line. In daytime never light a fire that smokes. Smoke will draw enemy shell fire. On arriving in the front line, he advises the newcomer to pick out a good place to sleep.

 

Then go to the Quartermaster stores and beg, steal, or buy an empty ammunition tin or wooden box. You do not want your rations to become covered with dust or to be chewed up by your ever-present neighbors, the rats, so use the aforesaid tin or box in this manner: Nail it above your head, about two feet from the ground. If you do this, you can place your candle in your ration box when lying down and so can read or write letters by the light. Another reason is that your rations are within reach; if you happen to get hungry in the night, you will not disturb the other fellow who is asleep.

 

Across the open end of your ration box hang your towel, thus keeping out the dust and dirt, also keeping your towel dry for the morning. An empty sand bag can be used instead. Keep your mess outfit in this box and it will not be lost in the straw or appropriated by someone who needs a knife, fork, spoon, or mess tin. Your rations are safe from the rat burglars and your corner is always neat. (18-194)

 

Another tip:

 

Remember, especially in the winter time, that if you want to sleep warm you must not pile everything on top of yourself, if you do you will be cold. The following morning, if you ask the fellow next to you how he slept during the night, you may be surprised to hear him say—“Fine, tip top, warm as a bug in a rug.” Immediately you class him an A No. 1 liar, for you know that he had only one overcoat and one blanket over him, while you were cold and had your overcoat, two blankets, poncho, and blouse over you. But he was telling the truth. He put the remainder of his covers under him. So be sure and fix the bed beneath. (18-195)

 

A good switch from army rations can be created:

 

Save your bacon grease and bread crumbs; take about a half pound of issue or store cheese; shave it with your jack knife or cut it into little pieces. (The shaving process is the better of the two.) Open a tin of “canned Willie” or canned beef; chop it up fine, thoroughly mix with the cheese, bacon grease, and bread crumbs. Fry this in your mess tin over a candle until it begins to stew and eat it quickly, for as soon as the odor pervades the billet or dugout a crowd will gather round, asking for a handout. It is good stuff. (18/196-197)

 

To keep matches, papers, tobacco and a handkerchief dry in rainy weather he suggests sewing “a little pocket on the inside of your steel helmet large enough to carry these articles.” (18-197)

 

Also, after filling in latrines and garbage holes, always mark them with a sign. You don’t want the next regiment which takes your place in line to uncover such buried treasure. He warns about unexploded shells—with hundreds of men killed or wounded when their picks or shovels strike them unexpectedly. Empey also explains that troops coming out of the line have “right-of-way over incoming troops. The troops relieved are tired and worn out and their nerves are on edge from their tour in the fire trench…be patient and cheerful with them and help them if possible.” This will help establish your unit’s reputation as a good one; and the favors may later be repaid. If the enemy lays down a smoke barrage, “watch for poison gas.”

 

At night he suggests firing occasionally; “this may ‘get’ a German working party or patrol out in front.”

 

If you should gain an enemy trench and begin the “cleaning out” process, “be very careful going around traverses or sharp turns…because you are liable to walk right into a group of Germans lying in wait. Nor should you advance with rifle and bayonet (which must, of course be fixed) pointed forward. This means the bayonet will show around the corner before you do—making you a perfect target the moment you appear. Carry it straight up, by your side. In attacking an enemy line he also suggests strapping “two or three empty sandbags on your equipment.” “If you get into a hot corner where you are exposed to rifle or machine-gun fire, it is an easy matter to fill these sandbags with earth, thus making a cover which will prove very effective against bullets.” “Sandbags also make excellent covers for the feet while sleeping.”

 

He also suggests making bunks out of lumber found in the many blasted villages, using baling wire or twine to make a “spring” for your bed, filling sandbags with hay, grass or straw, “and you will have a bed fit for a king.”

 

Finally, remember, “Mud is great protection from shells.” If you hear incoming fire, “drop down flat in the mud—the chances are a hundred to one that you will not be hit. The shell buries itself very deeply in the mud and explodes, the mud preventing fragments from scattering to any great extent.” If you do have to carry ammunition to a machine gun post, don’t linger in the vicinity of the gun. “One of the pet pastimes of German artillery is ‘searching out’ machine-gun emplacements with shells.” (18/198-204)

 

Empey also had advice for soldiers on sentry duty. “Make certain that your front and rear sights are free from mud and that the bore of your rifle has not become clogged with mud from the walls of the trench.” “Make a sentry passing an order down the line repeat it, and then repeat it yourself to the sentry on your left.” “See that the gas gong is working.” “Before mounting the fire stipe see that a flare pistol is handy, with a sufficient supply of star shells.” “In the daytime…Note all objects, depressions in the ground, shell holes, high grass, stumps of trees, or any other objects which would at night screen an enemy crawling toward your trench.”

 

Once darkness falls the man on sentry post will imagine “that every dark object in front of him is a battalion of Germans solely bent on the purpose of exterminating him, and he is constantly wondering what they will do with his body.” “If you carry a piece of cheese and biscuit in your pocket and occasionally munch same, the time will pass much more quickly.” He also took a few sandbags if there had been rain and stood on those to keep a steadier spot on the fire step. (18/209-212)

 

He describes the Lewis gun, invented by Colonel I. N. Lewis of the Coast Artillery Corps: “It can hardly be classed as a machine gun. It is rather an automatic rifle. This gun only weighs twenty-six pounds, is air cooled, gas operated, and fed from a circular or ‘pie plate’ magazine, holding forty-seven rounds.” This makes it lighter; and it is not subject to freezing as water-cooled machine guns are. “It can be handled and transported by one man in case of necessity.” (18/214-215)

 

Empey also talks about gas attacks: “A wind velocity of about five miles per hour is the most favorable. So, when such a wind is blowing from the German lines toward your own, keep constantly on the watch for gas, both day and night.” A variable wind is problematic, “and ‘the gassers’ are liable to become ‘the gassed.’”  “When the gas cloud reaches the trenches it settles down into the low parts and dugouts. Therefore, during a gas attack, a soldier should occupy the highest point he can reach without exposing himself to the enemy. But he must never leave his post to do so.” “The killing power of gas is effective as far back as three to four miles from the fire trench.” “Gas cannot be sent over successfully when it is raining.”

 

“One thing a soldier thanks the gas for is the fact that it kills his objectionable neighbors, the rats.” (18/244-248)

 

Empey also has an entire chapter filled with suggestions for soldiers sent out on nighttime trench raids. “Learn a few phrases of German—you may need them on the raid.” Two he hopes they might eventually use: “Auf mit deiner hande! (Up with your hands!)” and “Komm’ mit mir. (Come with me.)

 

He also warns:

 

Do not wear your steel helmet on a raid; it is cumbersome, awkward, and heavy while crawling on the ground. In its place, wrap a heavy knitted woolen scarf around the head, taking care it does not pass over the ears, because you will have to depend chiefly upon the sense of hearing. Remember that trenches are only raided on the blackest of nights and that your eyes are practically useless.

 

If you carry a revolver, unbutton the flap of your holster before getting in touch with the German barbed wire, because when you do need a revolver or pistol, you need it badly. Remember to place a lanyard on your revolver—this is important because you are very liable to lose it in crawling across No Man’s Land. Losing my revolver while on a reconnoitering patrol in No Man’s Land nearly cost me my life. Never take a stiff holster with you, because it prevents a quick draw.

 

Blacken your hands, face and neck. Do not be careless in this important feature…

 

The best blackening is made this way. Get a cork from a pickle bottle…burn this cork. Then take your mess tin, put a little butter or jam in it, and mix thoroughly with the burned cork until you have a black paste. Jam is better than butter because it is more adhesive and will not rub off easily. If possible, do not use bacon grease because the salt in it will get into the eyes and smart the skin. Close your eyes and blacken the lids.

           

…When you enter the German trenches you have to work quickly—perhaps only six minutes have been allotted in which to inflict casualties, secure a prisoner, vacate the trench, race madly across No Man’s Land under a hot fire to your own trenches…

 

You are fighting hand to hand in a strange and narrow trench. It is hard to distinguish friend from foe. Black face means friend, white face means German. You can see them while they cannot see you…

 

Another tip: Take two pairs of old heavy woolen socks. Cut off the feet, pass your legs through and cover the knees, using them as you would a rubber athletic knee supporter. Do the same with the elbows. Remember that you have to crawl across No Man’s Land on your elbows and knees. The sock covering will save many bruises from stones and sharp objects which you cannot avoid in the darkness.

 

Each man should carry an illuminated wrist-watch, well covered by the sleeve of the blouse or tunic, because everything is done by time on a trench raid and you may get separated from the rest while in the German trench. You do not want to return ahead of time and you do not want to stay overtime in the trench.

 

He also advises raiders to be sure to get the password and “give it immediately” on returning to their own lines. Otherwise, in the fear of the moment, the sentry may forget a raiding party was out and fire, “perhaps killing or wounding you.”

 

Finally, he suggests carrying four grenades, in the lower pockets of the tunic or blouse, two on each side. “If wounded in either arm, with your unwounded one you can readily reach two of the bombs.”

 

Another tip: let two men in the raiding party take the left and right wings, unraveling white tape as they cross No Man’s Land; these will help the raiders when they have to retreat to their own lines.

 

A bombing club is a handy weapon to take on a trench raid. The one we used was made of hard wood, about eighteen inches ling, and shaped like a cave man’s club. The handle is thin, but thick enough to afford a good grip. Through the hole in this handle is a leather thong. The loop is passed around the wrist, making it easier to carry while crawling (just let it drag). The other end is thick, forming a large knob. The outside of this knob is studded with sharp steel spikes. Down the center of the club is a bar of lead or iron to give it weight and balance. This club makes a handy weapon in a narrow trench. One of its chief assets is that it is noiseless.

 

Another good weapon is the “knuckle knife” or trench dagger. The blaid is of heavy steel, about eight inches long. The grip is reinforced over the knuckles with heavy steel bands (similar to brass knuckles). In a narrow trench you can either stab a man or shatter his jaw with a punch. One punch generally stuns him and it is an easy matter to take him prisoner.

 

Occasionally, a captured enemy resists being dragged back to your trench. In this situation Empey suggests:

 

Get a strand of barbed wire about four or five feet long; make a loop on one end; then with your wire cutters remove the barbs on the other end and make a similar loop just large enough to allow the passage of your hand through it, thus securing a firm grip on the wire.

 

When you get a prisoner, pass the larger loop over his head so that the barbs will stick into his neck if he baulks. After you place one of these “come-alongs” around the neck of a Fritz, he is as peaceful as a lamb.

 

Other do’s and don’t’s: be on the lookout for “trap wires” or wires strung out about six inches from the ground. “These may cause nasty and noisy falls, laceration of hands and knees and entangling of the uniform. The sound of the ripping betrays you to the enemy.” Cutting a path through any enemy barbed wire can be “hair-raising work, with the Germans so near that you can hear their conversation.” The best way to cut wire is to hold it about two inches from a stake, nip the wire and carefully lower it to the ground. Cut it from the next stake and place it out of the way.

 

If you cut a taut wire in the middle, that is halfway between the stakes to which it is attached, it will curl up perhaps hitting you in the face or becoming entangled in your uniform, and will also betray your presence to the Germans by the sound it makes—a loud “twang” like the snapping of a banjo string.

 

If an officer considers a situation too risky he may give a “tap signal” and then you retreat or look for another point in the enemy line to attack. “Do not feel ashamed if you are afraid while raiding a trench,” Empey concludes. “Every time I went out I was ‘scared stiff.’” (18/272-278; 283-285)

 

If a man is killed, Empey notes, “The remains are often carefully sewed in a blanket. The cost of this blanket is noted in the paybook of the deceased and is deducted from the pay due him.” (18-303)

 

“…if they see me, my bacon’s cooked.” (18-313)

 

First Call has a glossary at the end, including these terms:

 

A.W.L.: Absent with leave.

 

A.W.O.L.: Absent without leave; the above is the more advisable way to visit your “sweetheart.” (18-349)

 

Canned Willie: Nickname for canned corned beef issued in the army ration. (18-350)

 

Coffee cooler: Slang used in the army for a soldier who is always looking for a soft job. (18-352)

 

Growling: The right of an old soldier, but tabooed for recruits. It means grumbling. (“Grousing’ in Tommy Atkins” language.) (18-355)

 

(A “Tommy” is a British soldier.)

 

It didn’t take an Act of Congress to make me a gentleman: A very weak expression a disgruntled soldier uses as soon as he is out of hearing of an officer who has just reprimanded him. It was derived from the phrase, “an officer and a gentleman.” It takes an Act of Congress to commission officers. When they receive their commissions they are officially gentlemen according to the army “sorehead.”

 

Holy Joe: Army chaplain. Also known as “Sky Pilot.”

 

Venereal List: A list of names of men suffering from venereal disease. These men are not allowed to visit town until they are cured or until the doctor strikes their names from the list.

 

He also mentions a “war bridle” used to control unruly horses. He adds, “Would be good on a pacifist’s jaw these days.” (18-364)

 

Yellow ticket: Dishonorable discharge. The paper is yellow in color. (18-365)

 

 

I prefer Empey’s first book, Over the Top. If you teach, I offer a reading at my site, Middle School History and Tips for Teachers, on teacherspayteachers.com.

 

I can tell you my students (I’m retired) were always interested in Empey’s descriptions of the horrors of war.