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THE 
 
 READING MILITIA IN THE 
 
 GREAT WAR 
 
 jf BENNETT NOLAN, Esq. 
 
 of the Berks County Bar 
 
 Published under the auspices of the 
 Historical Society of Berks County 
 
 PRINTED BY F. A. WOERNER. 32 N. SIXTH ST. 
 READING, PA. 
 
 C^ 
 
 \'\l. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 Part I ' 
 
 Chaptbb Page 
 
 Foreword 3 
 
 I. Departure and Embarkation 13 
 
 II. The Baccarat Sector 31 
 
 III. The Champagne Front 53 
 
 IV. The St. Mihiel Drive 81 
 
 V. The Argonne-Meuse Campaign 91 
 
 VI. The Army of Occupation 102 
 
 Part II 
 
 I. The Training Camp 113 
 
 II. The Fismes Sector 136 
 
 III. The Argonne 153 
 
 IV. The Projected Attack on Metz 169 
 
 Conclusion 179 
 
 Company "I"— Dead 181 
 
 Company "A" — Dead 182 
 
 Company "I"— Wounded 183 
 
 Company "A"— Wounded 184 
 
 Company "I" Roster 187 
 
 Company "A" Roster 201 
 
 ^og^^U 
 
 
T 
 
 <>o Foreword 
 
 X 
 
 ^ r ■ ^ HE transmission to posterity of the record 
 
 of honorable achievement at a time of 
 great crisis is a task which should com- 
 mend itself to every citizen. The great war 
 brought to us, as to all men, privation and woe. 
 It left a path of blasted hopes, of young man- 
 hood maimed or sacrificed in a glorious cause. 
 But it was not without its compensations. It 
 showed us that the old time zeal of this martial 
 county could, on the occasion, again burn high. 
 It evoked in us qualities to which we had long 
 been strangers. Our people displayed a spirit 
 of unselfish sacrifice, a self abnegation, a de- 
 voted, united and tireless activity for the com- 
 mon weal which surprised ourselves and earned 
 the admiration of our neighbors. 
 
 High traditions count for much whether in 
 families or in bodies politic. The proud mili- 
 tary record of fifteen centuries steeled the arm 
 of a sensitive, high strung people, called upon 
 to defend Verdun. And doubtless the Berks 
 boys who fought in France in the trying summer 
 of 1918 were conscious that they were main- 
 taining the high standard set by their forefathers 
 in the Revolution, in 1812, at Chapultepec and 
 on the Rapidan. 
 
4 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 It is both interesting and instructive in re- 
 viewing the history of our county in former 
 wars to see how, at each new trial, the sterling 
 worth of our citizenry has risen to meet the 
 occasion. Then, as now, men of all ranks 
 hastened to enroll with the colors. Those who 
 felt themselves competent sought and won com- 
 missions; the elderly, and the women busied 
 themselves in welfare work. To the men who 
 successfully led the yeomanry of Berks in former 
 wars, to the Hunters, the Muhlenbergs, the 
 McKnights and the Greggs of other days, has 
 succeeded a new generation of gallant officers. 
 Their task led them far over seas under strange 
 skies, amidst new conditions of warfare. But 
 who shall say that they did not worthily uphold 
 the great traditions to which they were born 
 heir? 
 
 The war activities of Berks County were far- 
 flung and manifold. Each deserves to be per- 
 petuated, so far as is humanly possible, through 
 the medium of history. But amongst all the 
 Berks units which labored at home and abroad 
 the record of the local Militia Companies is the 
 most salient and appealing. Their members 
 fought no more intensively than thousands of 
 other Berks lads who accepted the great call. 
 
FOREWORD 5 
 
 These, however, went and returned singly or 
 in small groups. The Militia Companies were 
 the only pecularily Berks County units which 
 fought cohesively and continuously from the 
 beginning of the American Intervention to 
 Armistice Day. They marched out together 
 through lanes of heart-sick, apprehensive towns- 
 men, and they returned together, though with 
 depleted ranks, to receive the deserved plaudits 
 of those same townsmen. 
 
 The military system in Berks County has had 
 a long, a checkered, and on the whole, an hon- 
 orable career. Our local levies were formed 
 along the careless, hap-hazard lines which char- 
 acterized our National Defense from Colonial 
 days. On paper, Washington was head of a for- 
 midable force, supposedly four hundred thou- 
 sand men. Actually he never had more than 
 twenty thousand available for command. Five 
 Militia Companies from Berks were organized 
 during the Revolutionary War, the first hav- 
 ing been commanded by Captain Joseph Hiester. 
 The Company commanded by Peter Nagle re- 
 ported to General Washington at Cambridge as 
 early as August 18th, 1775. The men fought 
 well at the battle of Long Island and in the 
 Yorktown Campaign. Discipline, however, does 
 not seem to have been strict and the term of 
 
6 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 service was uncertain. As late as 1840 nine of 
 these Revolutionary militia veterans were still 
 living in Reading. 
 
 Passing the abortive Whiskey Insurrection of 
 1794, to the suppression of which Berks County 
 supplied some levies, the next appearance of 
 the local militia was in the War of 1812. The 
 natural aptitude and bravery of the men were 
 sacrificed to indecision and incapacity amongst 
 the leaders. Vaunting patriotism seldom dwells 
 on the cowardly surrender of Detroit and the 
 burning of the National Capitol by a vastly in- 
 ferior force, opposed by a militia four times its 
 number, fighting under the eyes of the President. 
 As many as ten companies were raised in Berks 
 County during the war. One of them, the Wash- 
 ington Guards, was commanded by George De 
 Benneville Keim. These companies appear 
 never to have gotten far from home, and the 
 part which they took in the actual fighting was 
 insignificant. 
 
 Then ensued in our County annals, a period 
 of military inaction. The piping hours of peace 
 were punctuated only by Fourth of July Reviews 
 and by Battalion days. The most notable of 
 the Battalions was that of 1842 which was re- 
 viewed by General Winfield Scott, who came to 
 
FOREWORD 7 
 
 Reading expressly for the purpose. The gen- 
 eration of soldiers which has returned from 
 France to a land strangely changed and Puritan- 
 ized may find it interesting to contrast their re- 
 ception with that of the military heroes of 1842. 
 The Berks and Schuylkill Journal of May 20th, 
 of that year, in discussing the above affairs said: 
 
 "This glorious assemblage of heroes made 
 their annual appearance yesterday at Read- 
 ing. There was lots of fun, beauty and 
 broomsticks, rum, flying-horses, fights with 
 the guards, fancy military movements, fisti- 
 cuffs, dances, dice and pitching pennies, and 
 all the elegant amusements peculiar to the 
 bill. The words of command were given 
 with remarkable emphasis and cadence. 
 The movements of the troops were, we are 
 compelled to say, not quite so elaborate as 
 we had anticipated from the known abilities 
 of the commanders." 
 
 The part taken by Berks County Militia in 
 the Mexican War was particularly active and 
 heroic. The Reading Artillerists who had had 
 a continuous career since 1794, departed for 
 Pittsburg in 1846 under the captaincy of 
 Thomas S. Leoser. They were engaged in heady 
 and continuous fighting, terminating in the as- 
 sault upon Chapultepec, at which Lieutenant 
 Richards McMichael was cited for bravery. 
 
8 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The great Civil Conflict gave to our local 
 militia the opportunity to write its name large 
 on the pages of history. It was Berks County 
 which furnished the first defenders. In a 
 harassing crisis, Captain James McKnight and 
 the Ringgold Light Artillery, were the first to 
 respond to their country's call. The laconic 
 telegram of the Secretary of War on April 16th, 
 1861 : "Push forward your company by the first 
 train," is at once an ample excuse and a fitting 
 dedication for the thousands of brave Berks 
 Militia men who served their country so well 
 in the last one hundred and forty years. Eight 
 companies, formed in various parts of the 
 county, came crowding on the heels of the gal- 
 lant Ringgolds. Their exploits are too well 
 known to require further commentary here. 
 
 It was towards the close of the war, in 1864, 
 that the present loosely constructed body, 
 known as Pennsylvania State National Guard, 
 came into existence. Of the two militia com- 
 panies, whose career it is proposed to detail 
 in the pages which shall follow, Company 
 A has had the longest existence. It succeeded 
 the venerable Reading Artillerists and was mus- 
 tered into service in 1881 as Company G, Fourth 
 Regiment, National Guard of Pennsylvania. The 
 
FOREWORD 9 
 
 first captain was Robert H. Savage. The com- 
 pany numbered fifty-six men. 
 
 Company I came into existence during the 
 stress of the Spanish-American War on June 
 8th, 1898. The first captain was Harry M. 
 Phillippi. Both companies served creditably 
 through the war. Company A took part in the 
 expedition to Porto Rico and received its bap- 
 tism of fire at the battle of Cahey Pass. Captain 
 Samuel Willits, who commanded the company 
 on this expedition, afterward entered the regu- 
 lar service and died far from his native county, 
 amidst the rice fields of Mindanao. 
 
 Another period of comparative inaction, 
 broken only by patrol duty during the coal strike 
 of 1902, was terminated by the disturbance on 
 the Mexican border in the spring of 1916. Both 
 of the local companies were mobilized for serv- 
 ice on June 22 d, 1916, and departed for the 
 border. They were formally mustered into the 
 federal service and became a part of the regular 
 United States Army on July 8th, 1916. 
 
PART I 
 
 THE CAREER OF COMPANY I 
 
 Later known as 
 
 Company D 
 
 150th Machine Gun Battalion 
 
 Forty-second Division 
 American Expeditionary Force 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Departure and Embarkation 
 
 COMPANY I, at the time it was called into 
 service in the war against the Germans, 
 numbered one hundred and eighty-five 
 men and six officers. Of the Berks boys, one 
 hundred and three were from the City of Read- 
 ing and nineteen from the County. A squad 
 of twelve privates from the Tenth Pennsylvania 
 Infantry was assigned to the Company. The 
 average age of the Company was twenty-one 
 years. All wars have required the services of 
 youthful soldiers. As this war surpassed all 
 others in stress and fiery acuteness, it peculiarly 
 required the services of young athletic men. It 
 was no raw, untrained body that assembled that 
 hot Sunday morning at the Armory in Reading. 
 The months of service on the Mexican border 
 had trained the men, and given them the poise 
 and self-reliance of the trained soldier. The 
 intelligence of the officers, commissioned and 
 uncommissioned, had been sharpened by the 
 practice of actual warfare, albeit of the guerilla 
 variety. 
 
 The call for mobilization came at nine o'clock 
 on the morning of July 15th, 1917. The citizens 
 
14 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 who saw the khaki-clad forms making their way 
 to the Armory on Walnut street had a vague feel- 
 ing that the war had come home to us at last. 
 An irksome period of forty days ensued, devoted 
 to drills, practice hikes and perfection in the 
 training of a soldier. Those of us who met the 
 company in line of march on the roads near 
 Reading were impressed with the earnestness 
 with which all maneuvers were continued. The 
 hour of the great adventure was near at hand 
 and the boys were ready to confront it fearlessly 
 and steadfastly. 
 
 On the 18th of August, an order was received 
 transferring Captain Charles G. Miller, who had 
 led the Company throughout its Border Cam- 
 paign, to Company A, and transferring Captain 
 Edward V. Kestner, of Company A, to Company 
 I. The two lieutenants were also transferred to 
 other companies and their place taken by Lieu- 
 tenant Victor Garman of Company H, Fourth 
 Pennsylvania Infantry, and Lieutenant David N. 
 Trapnell of Company K, Fourth Pennsylvania 
 Infantry. Second Lieutenant Glenn H. Ross of 
 the Sixteenth Infantry and Second Lieutenant 
 J. B. McCall of Company B, Tenth Regiment, 
 were also assigned to the Company. First Lieu- 
 tenant Fred Arsenau, from Wisconsin, joined the 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 15 
 
 detachment at Camp Mills. The Company itself 
 was formally transferred to the One Hundred 
 and Forty-ninth Divisional Machine Gun Bat- 
 talion. It was realized that these changes meant 
 that the men would probably train abroad and 
 that the day of embarkation must be near. On 
 August 23d, it was announced that they would 
 move to Camp Mills on Long Island. 
 
 At three o'clock on August 25th, the Company 
 moved out of its Armory and entrained for 
 Camp Mills. The fact that it had been chosen 
 for a machine gun detachment and that it had 
 been selected for early departure overseas, made 
 the leave-taking a particularly impressive one. 
 The departing Company was escorted to the sta- 
 tion by various civic detachments, but without 
 music, and in a manner befitting the solemnity 
 of the moment. 
 
 It was realized by all that from this body 
 would probably come the first sacrifices which 
 Berks County was to offer in a great cause. Men 
 who later served abroad and grew callous to the 
 stress of actual conflict have been heard to say 
 that their most lasting impression in the Great 
 War was the sight of that column of white-faced 
 boys marching out to the great empty station, 
 ascending the hill down which so many of them 
 were never to return. 
 
16 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The stress of the all-night journey bore hardly 
 on the boys who were naturally under the strain 
 of leave-taking, coupled with that of uncer- 
 tainty. All of the Company were glad when the 
 signal to detrain was given at eight o'clock in 
 the morning of August 26th, at the Long Island 
 rendezvous. 
 
 About two miles from the beautiful estates of 
 Garden City there has arisen, in the last three 
 years, a collection of ugly wooden barracks, 
 stores and dining halls, reached by muddy com- 
 pany streets and dominated by a huge water 
 tower. This is Camp Mills, famous as the 
 pre-embarkation point of so many units of the 
 American Expeditionary Force. Company I 
 pitched its tents and made itself as comfortable 
 as possible for what was to be a seven weeks' 
 sojourn. The irksome hours of camp life were 
 employed in bettering the men in their soldierly 
 exercises. They seldom left camp except for 
 stereotyped hikes on the flat Long Island roads. 
 Weariness bore hard on the boys. It was very 
 difficult to keep them within the bounds of dis- 
 cipline. It was no wonder that the A. W. 0. L. 
 (absent without leave) increased steadily. Some 
 of the truants even found their way as far as 
 Reading and had to be brought back through 
 the ministrations of the Provost Guard. 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 17 
 
 It was at Camp Mills that the boys had their 
 first experiences with the great welfare bodies, 
 which were to contribute so much to the comfort 
 of their life overseas. The American civil 
 populace was aroused to an unprecedented pitch 
 of activity. Not only did the great organized 
 bodies, such as the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A. 
 and the Knights of Columbus, cater to their 
 comforts, but the families in the neighboring 
 towns took turns in entertaining the boys at 
 their homes and in endeavoring to alleviate the 
 inevitable homesickness. 
 
 No place is so prolific of rumors as an army 
 camp. The date of sailing was announced at 
 least twenty times before it actually came. At 
 last, on October 18th, the welcome order to 
 entrain was given and the Company left Garden 
 City for Hoboken, where they embarked at half 
 past six of a crisp fall evening upon the trans- 
 port "President Grant." 
 
 The "President Grant" was a converted Ger- 
 man liner, which formerly plied between Boston 
 and Hamburg. It was a comfortable ship 
 enough but very much overcrowded. Indeed, 
 this was the condition that obtained on all trans- 
 ports which left American shores at that time. 
 She carried on this particular voyage sixty-five 
 
18 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 hundred soldiers and a crew of fifteen hundred 
 men. 
 
 To the millions of American youths who made 
 the fateful crossing in 1917 and 1918, the trans- 
 Atlantic passage is scarcely a pleasant memory. 
 To those, who, like the writer, have made the 
 trip under the stress of war conditions and in 
 an overcrowded transport, it evokes memories of 
 the horrors of the middle passage in the slave 
 ships of other days. The horrible sickening 
 odor that met one upon descending into the 
 fetid, poorly lighted hold, will never be forgot- 
 ten. Conditions on the "President Grant" were 
 probably better than the average and yet they 
 were bad enough. The men were fed twice a 
 day, at eight in the morning and at two in the 
 afternoon. The food appears to have been 
 deficient both in quantity and in quality. The 
 sanitary conditions were indescribably bad. Dis- 
 cipline in the use of the latrines seems to have 
 been wanting. Stout Sergeant Smith, whose 
 diary we shall often have occasion to quote in the 
 pages which shall follow, remarks naively, "It 
 seems more like a lunatic asylum than a trans- 
 port carrying United States troops." 
 
 Nor was the voyage to be an uneventful one. 
 On the third day came a call for volunteers to 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 19 
 
 work as stokers and firemen. To the credit of 
 the Reading Company, be it recorded that four- 
 teen of the boys, in all their misery and nausea, 
 volunteered for this gruelling task. The ship 
 lagged, however, and it soon became apparent 
 that something was wrong. The voyage was 
 finally abandoned on the evening of the third 
 day. 
 
 "It was sure a disappointed bunch," says 
 Sergeant Smith, "that watched the re- 
 mainder of the fleet, which consisted of 
 seven transports and their convoy, grad- 
 ually disappear into the still night and we 
 returned a failure." 
 
 After a rough tempestuous home voyage the 
 boat load of heart-sick boys passed once more 
 under the Statue of Liberty and docked at Ho- 
 boken on October 28th. Company A, as the 
 Reading contingent was now designated, were as- 
 signed to quarters at Fort Totten on Long Island. 
 
 Now ensued a trying three weeks for the dis- 
 appointed soldiers. Such letters, written during 
 this period, as the writer has been able to peruse, 
 testify to the low state to which their morale 
 had fallen. One of them frankly writes, "Want 
 of money is the only reason that we are still 
 here." The weather was indescribably rainy 
 
20 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 and bad, and the men were assigned nine tents 
 for the entire Company. Finally at three 
 o'clock of a bitterly cold morning, on November 
 14th, 1918, the Company once more embarked 
 on the British transport "Cedric." 
 
 Conditions were infinitely better on the 
 "Cedric" than they had been on the "President 
 Grant." The men had the privilege of the deck 
 and enjoyed a pleasant run to Halifax, which 
 they left on November 19th. 
 
 The second convoy was composed of four 
 ships with a protecting flotilla of torpedo boats. 
 The voyage was uneventful until November 
 28th, when the bare rainy headlands of the Irish 
 coast were descried dead ahead. Here there 
 was plenty of excitement as a submarine en- 
 deavored to attack the convoy. The ships im- 
 mediately scattered as per preconcerted arrange- 
 ment and the "Cedric" raced under forced draft 
 into Belfast Harbor. They left there at one 
 o'clock of the next day and reached Liverpool 
 on the morning of December 1st. Two days' 
 rations were issued to the men, who disembarked 
 at eight o'clock. It was a solemn moment when 
 the company first set foot on foreign soil. Each 
 soldier had a feeling that the grim adventure 
 had commenced in earnest. 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 21 
 
 Anyone who passed a trainload of American 
 troops in England or France will remember the 
 experience with interest. The men were crowded 
 sixteen to a compartment in third-class carriages. 
 They must sit upright as there was no room to 
 lie down. The windows were open, to be sure, 
 and these were always lined with the heads of 
 excited doughboys singing, gesticulating and 
 shouting, "We are on our way" or "Where do 
 we go from here?" The equipment was carried 
 in box cars behind. The officers rode in coaches 
 ahead and were but little better off than the 
 men. When the weather was fine, a two or 
 three day trip was barely tolerable, but in ex- 
 treme cold or extreme heat, the privations were 
 severe. There were no toilets in the troop car- 
 riages and the men must watch their opportunity 
 as best they might when the train stopped. 
 
 The Reading boys entrained almost imme- 
 diately for the great camp at Winchester in 
 Hampshire. At Paddington there was a stop 
 and many a grateful letter brought its testi- 
 monial to Reading mothers of the coffee and 
 food served by the English Red Cross women. 
 Winchester was reached at ten o'clock in the 
 evening. The city, in common with all the South 
 English towns, was kept in complete darkness 
 because of the air raids. The men stumbled 
 
22 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 about in the darkness, loaded their baggage as 
 best they could and marched through the dark 
 narrow streets to their destination. This proved 
 to be an English rest camp, where they were 
 quartered in wooden barracks, thirty men to a 
 hut. Each hut was equipped with a stove, but 
 as there was no fuel it was an asset of doubtful 
 value. There was no bed available and one of 
 the Corporals plaintively remarked, "We damn 
 near froze." Their stay at Winchester was un- 
 eventful except for hikes on the chalk downs 
 and sightseeing tours of the noble cathedral. 
 
 On December 11th, the Company aroused 
 in the darkness, at four o'clock, and entrained 
 for the great embarkation port of Southhamp- 
 ton. They embarked from the same wharf 
 which had been used by the gallant First Ex- 
 peditionary Force in the fateful days of August, 
 1914. Their ship was the "Prince George" and 
 was American-owned before the war. 
 
 Slipping down the Solent, they passed the his- 
 toric Isle of Wight. No navigation lights were 
 shown and the location of Southhampton was 
 only to be detected by the rays of the giant 
 search lights continually circling in the heavens 
 for raiding Zeppelins. Further up, between 
 Dover and Calais, the strait was guarded by a 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 23 
 
 chain of torpedo boat destroyers. In the broad 
 channel, however, where the Reading boys 
 crossed, there was no protection save the dark- 
 ness and the convoy. 
 
 They arrived at Havre and first set foot on 
 French soil on the morning of December 12th. 
 The lads were marched out two miles to an 
 English camp where for the first time since their 
 introduction into the services, they were given 
 the privileges of the wet canteen, English ale 
 and French wines. Small wonder that after the 
 perils and privations of the voyage some of the 
 boys succumbed to this unwonted temptation. 
 
 On December 13th, at 3:30 in the morning, 
 the Company entrained for their first journey 
 upon French soil. It was bitterly cold and all 
 the windows in the cars were broken. Reading 
 ingenuity, however, devised a covering with bur- 
 lap and tacks. The journey was interesting 
 enough and the boys amused themselves by 
 calling in Pennsylvania Dutch to the German 
 prisoners whom they passed, working upon the 
 roadbed. When noon came, however, and they 
 had eaten nothing since four o'clock of the pre- 
 ceding afternoon, the troops became impatient 
 and somewhat faint. At last, at 12:30, after- 
 noon, they stopped on a siding and rations of 
 
24 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 corn, tomatoes, jam and "hard-tack" were served 
 to them. 
 
 In their two days' journey they had crossed 
 the breadth of France and reached the historic 
 province of Lorraine, the field of so many wars 
 of other times and whose soil was once more to 
 be drenched, and with American blood. In 
 their migration they passed the little city of 
 Chaumont, ancient capital of this martial 
 province. Had they noted, they might have 
 seen, not far from the track, the gray walls of 
 an old French cavalry barracks. In the court- 
 yard waved an American flag and all the win- 
 dows glowed ruddily in the twilight of that brief 
 December day. It was a veritable hive of in- 
 dustry, for this was the general headquarters of 
 the American armies, the celebrated and mys- 
 terious G. H. Q. of official records. Hard by 
 at a stucco villa, the sentry paced before the 
 residence of the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 At six o'clock in the morning of December 
 15th the weary boys arrived at La Franche, de- 
 trained, and hiked to Liffol-le-Petit, where they 
 were billeted in stables and slept on piles of 
 straw on the floors. This was the first experi- 
 ence of the Reading boys in the French rural 
 villages which they were afterwards to know so 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 25 
 
 well. It is both amusing and interesting, in 
 reading the letters written at this time, to note 
 the comments of the lads. All of them, of 
 course, make comparisons between living con- 
 ditions in France and at home. All of them are 
 struck by the circumstance that in France, 
 house, stable, pig-sty and chicken-house are 
 under the same roof and in communication with 
 one another. The invariable and unsavory 
 manure heap before each door is also noted. 
 It was the holiday season and amidst the mud 
 and monotony all thoughts were of the folks 
 at home and of the Christmas season there. The 
 field Y. M. C. A. did its part to make their stay 
 tolerable and arranged a Christmas entertain- 
 ment to which the Reading boys contributed. 
 
 On the morning of the great holiday, Sergeant 
 Smith was aroused by the clanging of church 
 bells and stepped out of his cantonment to find 
 the ground covered with snow. "Gee, but I 
 felt home-sick," is his plaintive note. It was a 
 tragic period for the heart-sick boys. 
 
 On the next day the Company arose at five 
 o'clock and were aware that some immediate 
 change was in prospect. Emergency rations 
 were served and they started on what was to be 
 a three-day hike through a steady downfall of 
 
26 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 snow. The hob-nail shoes bore hardly on the 
 boys and by noon many of them were incapaci- 
 tated. After a fourteen-mile journey through 
 the slush they arrived at Millaris. 
 
 Captain Kestner, who had been tireless in his 
 labors for the comfort of the men, declares that 
 this two-day hike over the heavy Lorraine roads 
 was the most trying experience which the Com- 
 pany had in France, excepting only the actual 
 warfare in the trenches. The real reason for 
 the peremptory journey, as the Captain under- 
 stands it, was intelligence that the Boche had 
 prepared a swift and gigantic stroke from their 
 base at Metz. It was deemed advisable to move 
 all the untrained troops further back from the 
 lines. At 6:30 the next morning, the travel- 
 spent boys could scarcely be routed from the 
 attics and stables where they had spent the night. 
 Their shoes were as stiff and hard as rocks ; their 
 feet were in a pitiable condition and nearly all 
 of them were suffering from the exposure. They 
 left the village at eight o'clock and were soon 
 in the midst of a blinding snow storm. Man 
 after man dropped by the wayside, but they 
 struggled on for fourteen miles and reached the 
 village of Thivet in the middle of the afternoon. 
 The boys went to their billets and were able to 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 27 
 
 procure pails of hot water in which to wash their 
 feet. The next day the Company completed the 
 short lap of six miles to Chanoy, "A dreary and 
 desolate burg," as one of the lads describes it, 
 where the soldiers were billeted in the inevitable 
 stables and spent four dreary days. Hard labor 
 was the order of the hour. "It surely is 
 amusing," writes Sergeant Smith, "to see officers 
 doing an enlisted man's work." 
 
 On the third day of the new year, Captain 
 Kestner, Lieutenant Ross, Sergeants Moore, Lud- 
 wig and Boyd were sent to the school for ma- 
 chine gun training at Gondrecourt. Lieutenant 
 Garman was left in charge of the Company. At 
 this time, also, they received their first pay in 
 foreign money. The boys marveled at the size 
 of the one hundred franc notes and compared 
 them humorously to wall paper. A debauch of 
 chocolate, eggs, apples and all sweet meats pro- 
 curable in the village followed. There, too, the 
 boys were first given their steel helmets. 
 
 The Company was now put under French in- 
 structors and given daily training in the routine 
 of machine gun warfare. The weapon, which 
 the boys were to use throughout the war, was the 
 French Hotchkiss gun, capable of firing three 
 hundred and fifty shots to the minute. The 
 
28 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 officers pronounced the gun an excellent one 
 and cite the fact that in all the spirited fighting 
 which the Company underwent, the guns never 
 once jammed. The boys were in full war regalia 
 and were given daily drills in the practice 
 trenches which had been dug to accustom them 
 to the actual warfare which they were soon to 
 encounter. The difficulty in understanding 
 their instructors was at first a drawback, but 
 the natural aptitude of the American lads, 
 coupled with the zeal and good humor of the 
 French sous-officers soon overcame this obstacle. 
 Apparently our veterans of the Mexican War 
 had little to learn from the army who had been 
 four years in the trenches of Europe. "Nothing 
 gained" is the plaintive observation of one of 
 the Corporals. "We had all the dope they gave 
 us long ago." 
 
 On January 20th, Sergeant Jarrette and Pri- 
 vates Reifsnyder, Kraemer, Burkey and Dough- 
 erty were sent to the school at Branchmont for 
 a week's advance instructions in machine gun 
 tactics. 
 
 On January 27th, at eight in the morning, the 
 Company assembled in heavy marching order 
 for a long hike to a new location. Their march 
 took them through the old Roman town of 
 
DEPARTURE AND EMBARKATION 29 
 
 Langres. The boys were delighted with the high 
 walls and the moats. Some of them were given 
 an opportunity to visit the citadel perched on its 
 rocky eyrie. From here they could observe the 
 snow cloud on the southeast, which marked the 
 summit of Mont Blanc. To the northwest, a 
 blue haze on the horizon, lay the Alsatian Hills 
 in Germany. It was their first glimpse of the 
 land against which they had come to fight and 
 from which so many of them were never to re- 
 turn. 
 
 Tired and spent from their long march under 
 the heavy packs, the men arrived at Bourg and 
 were again billeted in barns. 
 
 The time until February 8th was taken up 
 in severe exercise and drill in the machine gun 
 emplacements. 
 
 "No more holidays in the Army," writes 
 
 Sergeant Smith, "Sundays are to be devoted 
 
 to drills in sanitation." 
 
 On February 9th the Company engaged in a 
 particularly irksome three-day maneuver. There 
 was a lack of mules, so that the boys had to pull 
 the carts themselves and were thoroughly worn 
 out by the end of the day. On their return 
 from the maneuver they were cheered and de- 
 lighted by the reappearance of Captain Kestner 
 
30 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 and his detachment, who returned from the 
 school at Gondrecourt. The Captain gave the 
 boys their first instructions in the use of the 
 English gas masks, which were dealt out to them 
 at this time. 
 
 On February 12th, while the Company were 
 at practice on the ranges. Private Reynolds was 
 accidently struck by the ricochet of a chance 
 bullet. He was removed to the Base Hospital 
 at Langres and there, next day, he died; the 
 first of the Reading boys to make the supreme 
 sacrifice in his country's cause. 
 
 At this camp the boys were perfected in the 
 use of hand grenades, a hazardous employment 
 which seemed, however, to appeal to their ad- 
 venturous spirits. 
 
 "Some sport," wrote one of the boys to 
 his mother at home, "would like to feed the 
 Boche about a ton or more." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Baccarat Sector 
 
 IT was now apparent to the dullest mind that 
 the hour of the great trial could not be far 
 distant. All the grim panoply of modern 
 warfare, gas masks, steel helmets and hand 
 grenades had been issued and the men were 
 trained as well as troops could be trained, out- 
 side of the shock of actual warfare. 
 
 It may be well, at this time, in order to under- 
 stand the movements of the Company towards 
 the front, to undertake a short resume of the 
 general operations in which the Company 
 formed a small but necessary link. 
 
 When it became apparent to the Allied High 
 Command that the American troops were to ap- 
 pear in France in much greater numbers and at 
 a far earlier period than our friends had sup- 
 posed, or, the foe had expected, the selection of 
 their place in the line became a problem of 
 vital importance. Certain important elements 
 in the English and French General Staff were 
 against an independent American army, holding 
 that it would be better to incorporate the Ameri- 
 can troops as reserves with the French and Eng- 
 
32 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 lish armies as they existed. General Pershing 
 steadily opposed this proposed policy. With an 
 acute farsightedness, which events have since 
 justified, he contended that the American army 
 must and would fight as a unit. Happily, for 
 the future of Democracy he won his point. It 
 was then determined that the existing operations 
 and arrangements would be least disturbed if 
 the Americans took their place in the right of 
 the Allied line. The American front formed a 
 liason with the French, at a point a few kilo- 
 meters west of Toul, and at this time extended 
 to the east of Luneville, where it joined the 
 Eighth French Army under General Gerard. 
 
 This arrangement of the First American Sec- 
 tor enabled our troops to develop their great 
 bases of Bordeaux, Brest and St. Nazaire, and 
 to perfect their lines of communication directly 
 through Touraine and Burgundy without inter- 
 fering with the lines of communication of either 
 the French or English. The great depots, store 
 houses and training camps which were to feed 
 the mighty army which we eventually put on the 
 front, were scattered along these lines of com- 
 munication. 
 
 The brunt of the first fighting fell upon four 
 sorely tried divisions, the First, Second, Twenty- 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 33 
 
 sixth and the Forty-second. The Reading Com- 
 pany, as has been stated, belonged to the Forty- 
 second Division, commanded by Major General 
 Charles T. Menoher. It had not been expected 
 that the Americans would engage so early in 
 such large numbers. However, when the Ger- 
 mans broke through between Soissons and 
 Noyon, in their frantic drive in March, 1918, 
 they crumpled Gough and the Fifth English 
 Army like an old glove and threatened Paris 
 itself. It was well for the Allied Cause that the 
 Americans were there, brave, devoted and well- 
 trained, to act as reserves for the harrassed 
 French and English. Each of the four divisions 
 alluded to had a normal strength of about twenty- 
 six thousand men, but usually mustered far below 
 that number. Each had a nucleus of regular 
 troops with which were incorporated certain 
 elements of militia, such as the Company whose 
 fortunes we now follow. 
 
 It was on February 20th, at 2:15, of a bitterly 
 cold morning, that the Company started for the 
 lines. They hiked to Langres, where they en- 
 trained in box cars at 5 :30 in the morning. The 
 men were nearly frozen. With the improvidence 
 of youth, they started a fire on the floor of one 
 of the cars. It was soon put out, because, as 
 
34 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 one of the boys naively explains, "We couldn't 
 stand the smoke." In all their distress and 
 anxiety of mind, they found time for the in- 
 evitable crap game. This, however, had a trag- 
 ical ending when Sergeant Ludwig's twenty 
 franc note flew out of the door and vanished 
 down the track. That day they rolled slowly 
 to the north, to the sound of heavy cannonading, 
 and at five o'clock in the morning of February 
 21st they arrived at the little town of Moyen 
 and began their hike up to the lines. All day 
 they passed through a ravaged countryside, from 
 which the civil population had long since fled. 
 The villages were in ruins and occupied only 
 by troops who were waiting to go up into the 
 trenches. The roads were in frightful shape 
 from the constant passing and repassing of ar- 
 tillery and transport. The Company finally ar- 
 rived at the half-demolished town of Giriviller, 
 where they found some French troops, also the 
 One Hundred and Forty-ninth, One Hundred 
 and Fiftieth and One Hundred and Fifty-first 
 Machine Gun Battalions, all in a state of hope- 
 less confusion. 
 
 The Company rested over Washington's 
 Birthday and February 24th, and left on the 
 morning of February 25th for what was to be 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 35 
 
 an eighteen-mile hike to the village of Bena- 
 menil. This latter place was only five kilometers 
 from the trenches. Aeroplanes, friendly and 
 hostile, hovered constantly overhead. The roar 
 of the artillery was continuous and deafening. 
 At night the glow of the north horizon reminded 
 the boys of the blast furnaces in their native 
 county. Ambulances were constantly passing 
 with their pitiful loads. Fearless youth, how- 
 ever, grows callous to the most disturbing con- 
 ditions. In the midst of all this clamor and 
 misery, the most important entry which Sergeant 
 Smith can conceive of for the diary, is that he 
 has a real white bed spread and that Sergeant 
 Gring is enjoying a cot. These comforts, how- 
 ever, were to be short-lived. The boys were for- 
 bidden to congregate in groups, as these might 
 be marked by the watchful Boche, who hovered 
 constantly overhead. They stood about through 
 the whole of the nerve-racking day and watched 
 the high explosives bursting about them. The 
 Captain went up to the front line upon an in- 
 spection trip. In the afternoon they saw their 
 first aeroplane battle. 
 
 On February 27th, Captain Kestner, who had 
 so well and devotedly led the Company from its 
 departure from Reading, was relieved of com- 
 
36 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 mand and Lieutenant Joseph W. Brooks was 
 appointed as Company Commander. Lieutenant 
 Brooks was a New Yorker and a graduate of 
 Williams College. He had been a notable foot- 
 ball player and was well qualified to lead men, 
 as the event will show. He was twenty-seven 
 years of age and came from the One Hundred 
 and Fiftieth Machine Gun Battalion. The offi- 
 cer directly over him, at that time, was Major 
 William Hall. 
 
 That afternoon the officers, platoon sergeants 
 and leaders went up to the second line trenches 
 and at six o'clock the first platoon started after 
 them, the others following in ten-minute in- 
 tervals. It was an intensely dark and dreary 
 night, with a steady downpour of rain. The 
 Company remained in the support trenches for 
 three hours and then returned to their billets. 
 
 On March 1st, Lieutenants Carman, Trapnell, 
 MacKall and Reidnor were relieved of command 
 and transferred to other units. They were suc- 
 ceeded by Lieutenants Hamlin, Shelledy and 
 Rowse. 
 
 On March 2d came the Company's real bap- 
 tism of fire. They left Benamenil at nine o'clock 
 and had scarcely reached the third line trenches 
 when the wary Boche opened up a lively bar- 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 37 
 
 rage fire, followed by a gas attack. The Berks 
 boys remained in the trenches for ten eventful 
 days, from March 3d to March 12th inclusive. 
 They grew accustomed to life in the trenches 
 and experienced the usual vicissitudes of bar- 
 rage, both light and heavy, gas attacks and alarm 
 of actual conflict. They were supported by the 
 One Hundred and Forty-ninth Artillery and also 
 by a French Battery. On the second day, how- 
 ever, the Boche got the range of the American 
 guns and scored two direct hits upon the One 
 Hundred and Forty-ninth Artillery with ghastly 
 results. The Germans were employing twelve- 
 inch shells, which exploded with terrific noise, 
 leaving a hole six feet across. Lieutenant 
 Arseneau and Sergeant Smith made an exciting 
 trip back to the base for supplies, walking hand 
 in hand with death the entire distance. 
 
 On March 6th Private Sharp was wounded by 
 a bursting shell and Bugler Folk was hit on the 
 left hand. Private Sharp had a message for the 
 Company Commander. He devotedly refused 
 any dressing for the wound until he had deliv- 
 ered his message. The casualties were soon for- 
 gotten in the joyful advent of eleven bags of 
 Reading mail. 
 
38 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 On March 8tli, at 10:30 in the morning, Pri- 
 vate Kotouche was struck and instantly killed 
 by a fragment of a bursting shell. The bom- 
 bardment was continuous and appalling. The 
 Germans were masters of the air and directed 
 the fire of their own artillery without any ap- 
 parent disturbance. The One Hundred and 
 Forty-ninth Artillery, maddened by the losses 
 of their comrades, were firing at the rate of 
 twelve shots per minute and the French were not 
 far behind them. In the midst of this inferno 
 came the news from the right sector of the Read- 
 ing line that Sergeant Ludwig and Corporal 
 Gehring had been killed. No member of the 
 Company but had a hair-breadth escape during 
 this appalling period. Each wondered whose 
 turn would come next. The old Berks County 
 pluck asserted itself and the boys fired until their 
 machine gun barrels were red-hot. At last, 
 when it seemed that flesh and blood could stand 
 the strain no longer, the Company was relieved 
 and ordered back to Benamenil, where they as- 
 sembled in the field Y. M. C. A., drank hot choc- 
 olate and greeted each other as men returned 
 from the grave. 
 
 The next day they retraced their steps to 
 Moyen, where the Company was inspected and 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 39 
 
 reformed. They remained here en repos until 
 March 20th, when they again returned to Giri- 
 viller. It was at this place, on March 26th, that 
 the Company was formally transferred from 
 Company A, One Hundred and Forty-ninth Ma- 
 chine Gun Battalion, to Company D, One Hun- 
 dred and Fiftieth Machine Gun Battalion. The 
 Company was then moved to the ruined village 
 of Domptail and the next day passed through 
 the populous town of Baccarat. Here, in con- 
 trast to the utter ruin in the villages in which 
 they had lately been quartered, there was some 
 measure of civilian life. The shops were open 
 and men and women crowded about the boys 
 and made them welcome. 
 
 The Company spent a muddy Easter at the 
 French Cantonment at Voire and left for 
 Reherry early next morning, where the second 
 platoon, under command of Lieutenant Shelledy, 
 went into the second line trenches. The rest 
 of the Company remained in support for ten 
 days, where they were instructed in what the 
 French called Defense contre Avion, or anti- 
 aircraft defense. They installed two anti-aircraft 
 guns and watched with interest the emplacement 
 of a huge nine-inch naval monster, the first of 
 the gigantic American guns, which were later to 
 blaze a way to Sedan and victory. 
 
40 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 On April 11th, Lieutenant Brooks and the 
 platoon leaders went upon a reconnaissance to 
 the front line trenches, preparatory to relieving 
 the One Hundred and Sixty-sixth Machine Gun 
 Company. That evening the entire Company 
 hiked up to Ancerviller, directly on the front, 
 where they were to remain for ten days. All 
 the letters which the writer has been able to 
 peruse complain of the filthy conditions in which 
 the trenches were left by their predecessors and 
 of the utter waste which seemed to have obtained 
 in their kitchen. The French Artillery, which 
 was in support, threw over a continuous and 
 lively barrage. The boys were lulled to sleep 
 by the whistling of the shells, while the Ger- 
 mans maintained a sulky silence. The men were 
 quartered as comfortably as possible in the damp, 
 dark cellars and debris of what had once been 
 a smiling village. Meals were served twice a day. 
 Latrines were dug after the army regulation. 
 The usual watch observed was two hours on and 
 four hours in repose. The officers placed their 
 machine guns to best advantage and then all 
 settled down to the monotony of trench life and 
 watched the aerial battles which went on over- 
 head. They cheered towards evening when a 
 German plane came floating down apparently 
 fatally struck, but in the end, the aviator righted 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 41 
 
 himself and made off in the direction of the 
 Rhine. 
 
 The tedium was broken on April 14th by the 
 appearance of a German scout who was discov- 
 ered and fired upon at a distance of only a few 
 hundred feet and who returned the fire, shooting 
 through the stock of Corporal Jarrette's machine 
 gun. On the same day, Acting Sergeant Hos- 
 tetter was wounded and sent to the Base Hospital 
 at Baccarat. Detachments of the men went out 
 into "No-Man's Land" for nightly reconnais- 
 sances in the hope of potting the Boche sharp- 
 shooters. They saw several, but were unable to 
 reach them. The first section of the second pla- 
 toon was located a little to the right of the main 
 body in a grove. It was a critical position enough, 
 being bombed all day and gassed at night, but 
 the humor of the boys was not to be denied and 
 they dubbed the place "Carsonia Park." 
 
 On April 20th, in a light fall of snow, the 
 Company started to move out of the trenches 
 and marched to Merviller. The weather had 
 been steadily bad and the plastic Lorraine mud 
 became more and more harrassing. The morale 
 of the boys was at low ebb after their irksome 
 stay in the trenches. It required all the efforts 
 and resources of the officers to keep up the 
 
42 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 standard of discipline. The Company was now 
 quartered in another of the ruined villages which 
 they had come to know so well. The cellars had 
 been converted into damp, dark dugouts, only 
 tolerable in the reflection of how much worse 
 the quarters had recently been. At this critical 
 juncture the boys were cheered by the arrival 
 of the One Hundred and Forty-ninth Field Ar- 
 tillery Band. The men wept for joy at the sound 
 of American tunes. 
 
 On the 24th the Company was moved still 
 further back to Neufmaisons, where they were 
 billeted. The surroundings here were pleasanter 
 than they had been for some time and the Com- 
 pany was cheered by the presence of a Y. M. 
 C. A. station with a real American girl to pour 
 the chocolate. 
 
 On the 27th Lieutenants Brooks and Hamlin 
 took the first platoon of fifty-one men who had 
 been ordered to Baccarat, to undergo a course 
 of instructions in trench raiding. 
 
 On May 2d the artillery fire was of an un- 
 precedented intensity and the Company knew 
 that some unusual offensive was in preparation. 
 Later in the day came orders to have the men 
 ready to move up to the lines that same evening. 
 Accordingly, at nine in the evening, in a steady 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 43 
 
 drizzle, the Company moved over the muddy 
 roads to the Ancerviller sector of the front, 
 which they reached at midnight. The sky was 
 aglow with the continual explosions of the heavy 
 pieces. The first platoon had gone on ahead into 
 the inferno, and the rest of the men unloaded 
 the machine guns and made ready for whatever 
 the fates should send them. Callous as the boys 
 had grown, they all remarked on the violence 
 of the barrage. The earth seemed to quiver after 
 the discharge of the heavy railroad pieces. "They 
 were shooting a blue streak," records the imper- 
 turbable Smith, "and they sure did raise hell." 
 At about 5:30 in the morning the missing pla- 
 toon appeared with clothing torn and smeared 
 with blood. They were covered with mud from 
 head to foot and only to be compared with a 
 bunch of football players coming from a muddy 
 field. The Reading heroes had been as far as 
 the Boche third line trenches, had set up their 
 machine guns there and held their position with 
 cool daring, until the raiding party was ready 
 to withdraw. It is worthy of note that this was 
 the first time that a machine gun had been taken 
 over the top by an American raiding party. 
 Several of the raiders had been severely wound- 
 ed, but there had been no mortalities. Sergeant 
 Jarrette, who had been at the fore-front in the 
 
44 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 raid, received the congratulations of the Com- 
 pany Commander. As soon as the wounds had 
 been bound up and the paraphernalia collected, 
 the Company left the field, just as the sun was 
 arising over the Lorraine hills, and arrived again 
 at their barracks at 9:45, where all hands 
 promptly went to sleep. 
 
 On May 8th came a very welcome and merited 
 promotion to Lieutenant Brooks, who was made 
 a Captain. He was given an ovation by the Com- 
 pany. The Company stayed at Neufmaisons for 
 three weeks, until May 14th. It was a dreary 
 period on the whole, punctuated only by drills 
 on the rifle-range and games of baseball between 
 the showers. All the letters written at this period 
 bear testimony to the vileness of the weather. 
 The excitement of the actual fighting in the 
 trenches had subsided and the boys became again 
 discouraged and homesick. The days were passed 
 in the succession of cloudy skies overhead and 
 under foot the continuous clinging of the Lor- 
 raine mud. Small wonder that the note of home- 
 sickness is the predominant one in the records 
 of this period. 
 
 The Company moved on to Montigny, where 
 they remained from the 14th to the 21st of May. 
 Here, while not engaged in actual fighting, they 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 45 
 
 were subject to frequent gas attacks and became 
 proficient in the use of their masks, of the Eng- 
 lish model, which had been furnished to them. 
 They were under continual bombardment and 
 had grim evidence of the accuracy of the enemy's 
 aim, when a complete hit was registered on one 
 of their machine guns, smashing it to fragments. 
 All their comrades who had been wounded in 
 the trench raids were well cared for in the Base 
 Hospital at Baccarat. 
 
 On May 14th Corporal Ludwig was promoted 
 to a Sergeancy and Privates Belong, Fry and 
 Behm to Corporals. The spring was now far ad- 
 vanced on the Lorraine hills. The beautiful 
 verdure of the early French summer was be- 
 ginning to make itself apparent. The same birds 
 came back from the south land, which the boys 
 were accustomed to seeing at home; the same 
 flowers that bloomed in Berks County were be- 
 ginning to be seen in this devastated land. The 
 boys knew that their hours of respite were draw- 
 ing to a close and that they must soon again 
 take their place on the battle line. 
 
 On May 21st they turned in their extra 
 blankets and heavy overcoats and made ready 
 for the return trip to the trenches. It was late 
 in the evening when they moved out from Mon- 
 
46 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 tigny and made for their old station in the 
 Ancerviller sector. A German aeroplane had 
 been brought down that same afternoon and its 
 outlines were dimly seen in "No-Man's Land," 
 directly in front of the Reading sector. 
 
 Their first days in the trenches were unevent- 
 ful, except for the periodical appearance of 
 enemy aeroplanes. These must have located their 
 position with more or less accuracy, for on May 
 26th the enemy began shelling the American po- 
 sition with gas shells. The day passed in the 
 succession of gas attacks and amidst tremendous 
 artillery fire. The whole country side, as far 
 back as Montigny, was literally drenched with 
 gas. The full horror of this form of attack soon 
 became apparent. Those of the boys whose bod- 
 ies were in any way moist with perspiration had 
 their skins eaten into by the insidious gas. They 
 lay writhing in agony and the more serious cases 
 had to be carried to the Base Hospital. The 
 enemy were using their heaviest pieces and 
 dropped two one hundred and five millimeter 
 shells within two hundred feet of the post com- 
 mand. It was a close call. The Alabama Militia, 
 who held the sector to the right of the Reading 
 boys, were less fortunate or less skillful in the 
 use of their gas masks. They suffered sixty cas- 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 47 
 
 ualties. This frightful experience continued 
 until five o'clock in the morning, when the firing 
 gradually died down. Shortly afterwards the 
 boys were puzzled to see what was apparently 
 an American aeroplane being brought down by 
 their own guns. It turned out to be a machine 
 which had been captured by the Boche and sent 
 back by them for a reconnaissance. 
 
 The long course of vigorous training which 
 the Company had undergone now began to bear 
 fruit. Their positions were well taken and skill- 
 fully conceived. Their guns were planted in a 
 way which earned the commendation of the Reg- 
 imental Commander. 
 
 ^^ On May 27th the Captain laconically records, 
 "Now have sixteen guns on the line, having util- 
 ized our four reserve guns. Ready for any 
 emergency." The emergency nearly came that 
 same evening when the Alabama troops and the 
 French repulsed a particularly vicious attack, 
 coupled with a heavy barrage and gas. With 
 the coming of the dawn, the Berks lads could 
 count forty German dead, hanging on the barbed 
 wire to the right of their position. All that day 
 the Company was kept on the alert as the firing 
 was incessant. The expected attack, however, 
 did not materialize. Sergeant Smith, who had 
 
48 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 been sent back to Baccarat with dispatches, was 
 caught in a gas bombardment and had an ex- 
 citing time getting the gas mask upon his refrac- 
 tory horse. 
 
 May 30th was Memorial Day and all their 
 thoughts went back to the happy anniversary 
 of a year before, when they had marched out 
 to the Charles Evans Cemetery. The contrast to 
 their present position was marked indeed. The 
 boys were worn and harrassed by loss of sleep, 
 continual bombardment and the strain of watch- 
 fulness. "Will it ever end?" writes one of the 
 lads to his sweetheart at home. "It is like a 
 raging furnace." Many of the letters written at 
 this period express the hope that if death comes 
 it will be a clean hit, and that they will not suffer 
 the tortures of their gassed companions. 
 
 On May 31st came a more than welcome re- 
 lief. The Company hiked back to Reherry in 
 a state bordering on collapse. Their respite, 
 however, was short. The Allied line was so 
 thinly held that seasoned troops were continually 
 needed. 
 
 At nine o'clock on the evening of June 4th, 
 the platoon moved out at fifteen minute intervals 
 to the Montigny sector, where they again took up 
 front line positions. The enemy seemed to have 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 49 
 
 an intuition that the trench garrison was being 
 changed and welcomed them with a particularly 
 heavy barrage. Forty of the boys who were in 
 a dug-out had a miraculous escape when a nine- 
 inch shell struck close by. Only two of them 
 were wounded. Our artillery retaliated the next 
 morning by bringing down a German observa- 
 tion balloon with inflammable shells. 
 
 The history of the Company's career in the 
 Lorraine trenches is almost monotonous in its 
 unvarying experiences. The long days passed in 
 a succession of gas attacks, alarm and heavy 
 barrage. The harrassed Reading boys, who a 
 year before had been on the farm or in the 
 workshop, were now cool intrepid veterans. 
 They realized that they held the forefront of the 
 battle line of civilization. But for them and 
 their comrades, the Germans would probably 
 have attempted a mighty stroke against Dijon 
 and again have threatened Paris from the rear, 
 
 June 10th saw the Company in its old station 
 on the Ancerviller front. The indomitable Cap- 
 tain Brooks was sorely smitten with fever, but 
 led his platoon the entire distance. 
 
 On the 14th of June the monotony was broken 
 by the appearance of a particularly venturesome 
 German, who recklessly flew low over the gun 
 
50 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 positions, bombarding them with his machine 
 gun. Although pursued by a continuous fire, 
 he made his escape. One of the boys writes, 
 "I believe he was low enough to hit with a rock. 
 He sure was a nervy cuss." 
 
 The fine weather abruptly ceased and the 
 heavy rains again set in, turning the trenches 
 into rivers of mud and adding inexpressibly to 
 the misery of conditions. A particularly insid- 
 ious gas attack on June 18th caused the Reading 
 Company several casualties and killed nine of 
 their mules. The devoted village of Reherry, 
 which the boys had so lately left, received a 
 terrible bombardment, killing seventy-three of 
 the Forty-second Division who were quartered 
 there. 
 
 On June 19th the enemy registered three di- 
 rect hits on the stable where the Company had 
 forty-seven head of horses and mules, causing a 
 ghastly havoc. 
 
 On June 20th the Company were relieved by 
 a French detachment and marveled how few 
 men our war-worn allies were compelled to send 
 to man the sector which they were just aban- 
 doning. The mortality among the horses and 
 mules handicapped the transportation severely. 
 Each man was compelled to bear a double bur- 
 
THE BACCARAT SECTOR 5l 
 
 den. Even then it was with difficulty that they 
 were able to drag their guns, ammunition, field 
 kitchen and paraphernalia. The boys hiked the 
 entire night in a heavy rain, repassing through 
 Baccarat and arriving at Domptail early in the 
 morning. They had covered a distance of 
 twenty-five kilometers, a notable achievement, 
 considering the heavy burdens which they bore. 
 
 The Company was now temporarily under the 
 command of Lieutenant Rowse, Captain Brooks, 
 according to the army regulations, remaining on 
 the front twelve hours after the relief. The rain 
 was incessant, and the boys utterly worn after 
 their sleepless nights in the trenches. Neverthe- 
 less, they were compelled to meet another forced 
 march of twenty-eight kilometers to Morriville. 
 Seven of the boys collapsed and were left behind 
 in a barn on the way. It was two o'clock in the 
 morning when the tired soldiers marched through 
 the narrow street of Morriville. Breakfast was 
 served and the men dispersed to neighboring 
 hay-lofts. They were awakened by the church 
 bells pealing on a beautiful Sunday morning, 
 marched to their rail-head at Chatel and en- 
 trained the same evening. Their few remaining 
 mules were so upset by the experiences at the 
 front that it was with the greatest difficulty that 
 they could be forced into the cars. The soldiers 
 
52 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 sat about and waited for the train to start. Some 
 of them visited a German prison camp in the 
 village and talked Pennsylvania Dutch with the 
 prisoners. 
 
 The train consisted of fifty wagons. It made 
 its slow way across the breadth of the ancient 
 province of Burgundy ; through Nancy, Toul and 
 Bar-le-Duc. They passed within a few kilometers 
 of the headquarters of one of the greatest sol- 
 diers whom the city of Reading has ever fur- 
 nished to a grateful country — Lieutenant Gen- 
 eral Hunter Liggett, a Berks County lad; the 
 Commander of the First American Army, who 
 was at this time lodged at Neuf chateau on the 
 Meuse. The Company arrived at noon on the 
 24th of June, at the detrainment yard at Coolus. 
 Here they were cheered by coffee served by the 
 American Red Cross women and detrained their 
 equipment. After a three-hours' hike they 
 reached the beautiful town of Togny, which de- 
 lighted them with its cleanliness and picturesque- 
 ness. The next few days were devoted to a gen- 
 eral clean-up. The Company were again almost 
 on a peace schedule and were delighted at the 
 indulgence accorded them after the horrors of 
 the trenches. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 The Champagne Front 
 
 IN order to understand the maneuvers of the 
 Reading militia company in their new field 
 of action, it will be necessary to make a brief 
 survey of the status of the war. 
 
 At the little city of Charleville, near the Bel- 
 gian border, in a gray walled building, which 
 had once been a convent, was housed at this 
 time the celebrated German General Staff. Their 
 intelligence was direct and accurate; they knew 
 almost to a man and a gun the extent of the 
 mighty American preparation. Whatever cheer- 
 ing bulletins they might send forth for home 
 encouragement, they themselves had no illusions. 
 They saw, early in the spring of 1918, that their 
 U-boat warfare was ineffectual to stem the Ameri- 
 can invasion. They could calculate with scien- 
 tific accuracy the hour when they must event- 
 ually succumb, unless this invasion could be 
 checked. That was the reason for the vehement 
 and gigantic attack in the western Marne sector 
 in the latter days of May. It was the heroic 
 Second American Division which saved the day 
 and made the names of Chateau-Thierry, Bois 
 de Belleau, Bouresches and Vaux, immortal ones 
 
54 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 in American history. Had it not been for the 
 Fifth and Sixth Regiments of Infantry the enemy 
 would have obtained their object, which was the 
 great Paris-Metz highway. The courageous de- 
 votion of the Second American Division, coupled 
 with the genius of General Degoutte, the Com- 
 mander of the Sixth French Army, saved the day. 
 But the foe, though checked, were not defeated. 
 The number of trained American troops was 
 pitably small and it was well known that the foe 
 was assembling all his strength for an effort of 
 unparalleled scope and ferocity. 
 
 It was well for the Allied Cause, that Provi- 
 dence had given it a leadership equal in re- 
 source and brilliancy to that of the Teutons. 
 From the Chateau at Chantilly, which was the 
 headquarters of the French High Command, 
 Marshal Foch was watching the enemy with an 
 alertness and unerring military judgment which 
 was to stamp him as one of the greatest generals 
 of all time. With an intuition, Napoleonic in 
 its genius, he divined that the blow would fall 
 to the east of Rheims, in the rolling hills of 
 Champagne. 
 
 To guard against this menace, two American 
 divisions were hastily withdrawn from the 
 Baccarat sector and brought by train to Suippes. 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 55 
 
 They were the Twenty-sixth Division of New 
 England mihtia, led by Major General Clarence 
 Edwards, and the hard-fighting Forty-second or 
 Rainbow Division, of which the Reading com- 
 pany formed a part. In the plans and counter- 
 plans of the two great General Staffs, the com- 
 pany of Reading boys were as so many pawns 
 moved to and fro upon a chess-board by an in- 
 visible hand. The hopes and aspirations and 
 futures of wives and mothers in the mountains 
 of Pennsylvania were dependent on the man- 
 euvers directed by the two invisible High Com- 
 mands at Charleville and Chantilly. 
 
 The peaceful hours in the cantonments at 
 Togny were destined to be all too brief. The 
 Company were rehearsed again in the old lesson 
 of open warfare, which they had almost for- 
 gotten in the contracted trenches of Lorraine. 
 These maneuvers gave rise to a flood of rumors. 
 It became noised about in some mysterious way 
 that the Company was to take a part in the "Big 
 Show," in the war of divisions rather than of 
 companies. The boys were wild to start. 
 
 On the night of June 28th, the Company, in 
 battle array, filed out of their cantonment and 
 soon passed through the city of Chalons sur 
 Marne, the largest city which they had so far 
 
56 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 encountered in France. They passed swiftly 
 through the dark narrow streets, crossed the fa- 
 mous river Marne and marched steadily to the 
 northward. This march was the longest that 
 they had made in France. By morning they had 
 covered thirty-five kilometers and were glad to 
 lie down in a pine wood, filled with enormous 
 parks of heavy ammunition, cleverly camou- 
 flaged. They were at Camp Tambeau, very near 
 to the French town of Buoy and on the famous 
 River Vesle, which was to run red with Ameri- 
 can blood. 
 
 The Company remained here two days, when 
 they received an order to make ready their guns, 
 ammunition, caissons and escort wagons, to 
 march out on the evening of July 1st. Two days' 
 travel rations were served the men, but at the 
 last minute a messenger arrived on motorcycle, 
 postponing the march. The Company remained 
 at this camp until midnight of July 3d, when 
 they marched to Ferme de Suippes, quite close 
 to the third line trenches. Captain Brooks rode 
 over to the headquarters of the Third Brigade 
 of the One Hundred and Sixty-sixth Infantry 
 and received his orders to go up into the trenches 
 the same night. Accordingly, at nine o'clock, the 
 Company moved out by platoons in five minute 
 intervals. Sergeant Jarrette commanded the 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 57 
 
 Third Platoon in the absence of Lieutenants 
 Rowse and Hamlin. The men were given orders 
 to subsist the next day on their reserve rations 
 of dog biscuits. By 12:30 they were settled in 
 their position in the reserve line. The Allies, 
 at this point, were well supplied with artillery 
 and celebrated the Fourth of July by an almost 
 continual barrage of seventy-five, one hundred 
 and five and one hundred and fifty millimeter 
 shells. The Reading soldiers had never experi- 
 enced a bombardment of similar intensity. Their 
 experience on the Lorraine front seemed tame 
 in comparison. Each man vaguely felt that the 
 "Big Show" had commenced at last. 
 
 The tumult continued unabated. By now the 
 Americans had brought up some of the famous 
 naval guns, evidence of Pennsylvania genius, 
 and these were thundering some miles in the 
 rear. The One Hundred and Forty-ninth and 
 One Hundred and Fifty-first Artillery joined in 
 the chorus. The firing at night was so contin- 
 uous that the individual flashes were blended 
 in one blinding and vivid glare. Just behind 
 the station of the Reading boys were two power- 
 ful automobile searchlights, whose restless beams 
 searched the air and the country side during the 
 entire night. The boys remarked with pride that 
 
58 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 the Boche no longer had his arrogant mastery 
 of the air. In the Baccarat sector he seemed to 
 come and go at will. Here in the Champagne 
 the American planes were assembled by hun- 
 dreds and no hostile challenge was disregarded. 
 By July 6th the field kitchen had gotten up 
 with warm coffee and bacon. It was a welcome 
 punctuation of the biscuit diet upon which they 
 had been existing the previous days. Lieutenant 
 Arsenu returned from Brigade Headquarters 
 with the belated Reading mail, nearly seven hun- 
 dred welcome letters. That night the Company 
 moved up to the second line trenches, where 
 they were quartered in large fortified dug-outs. 
 They learned to cleverly camouflage their stores 
 by the use of wire netting covered with grass 
 and foliage. 
 
 On July 11th, amidst a bombardment on the 
 most tremendous scale of modern warfare, at 
 three o'clock in the morning, the first and sec- 
 ond platoons moved up to the extreme advance 
 positions and mounted their twelve machine 
 guns. The sons of Reading held the position of 
 honor; the extreme test had come. It was ap- 
 parent to the dullest doughboy that a major drive 
 was in preparation. The Rainbow Division at 
 this time held the sector between Auberive sur 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 59 
 
 Suippe on the west and Perth les Hurlus on the 
 east. The acute mind of Marshal Foch had 
 divined almost to the kilometer where the blow 
 was to fall. The picked American troops were 
 selected to defend the direct road to Chalons, 
 which with Epernay, as we now know, were 
 the goal which the Germans expected to attain 
 on the first day of their gigantic drive. The 
 Forty-second Division was under the command 
 of Major-General Charles T. Menoher and the 
 entire First American Army was commanded by 
 the intrepid Hunter Liggett. To the immediate 
 right of the Reading boys was stationed a de- 
 tachment of Chasseurs Alphins, the famous 
 "Blue Devils." These made nightly raids into 
 the German trenches and returned with grim 
 evidence of their success. 
 
 On July 12th the Company received its last 
 orders from the Divisional Headquarters, which 
 were: "In the event of an attack, hold your 
 lines at whatsoever cost and retreat under no 
 circumstances." The Company's machine guns 
 had been placed with the most scientific care 
 and the officers enthusiastically declared that 
 the field of fire was never better. The first line 
 trenches had been abandoned, according to the 
 plan of the French Commander-in-Chief, as it 
 
60 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 was known that the Germans had their exact 
 range. All of the Reading machine guns except- 
 ing two were mounted in what had been the 
 second line trenches. These two were left one 
 hundred yards out, in order to enfilade a flank 
 attack. 
 
 July 14th, the great French national holiday, 
 passed in an ominous lull. Fifty-five miles away, 
 on the boulevards of Paris, detachments of all 
 the Allied troops united in a magnificent parade. 
 Last of all came the steel-hatted American 
 Marines, the heroes of Bouresches and Bois de 
 Belleau. As they marched along, the acclaim 
 of the crowded spectators arose almost to a 
 frenzy in their ovation to the men who had 
 saved France. Late that night, as the residents 
 of the eastern suburbs, in Pantin and Joinville, 
 were retiring, they could descry a red glow in 
 the eastern horizon and hear the faint rattle 
 that betokened artillery of the heaviest calibre 
 firing ninety kilometers away. The great drive 
 was on. 
 
 "The great drive is on." This is the entry 
 which Sergeant Smith, in all the stress of excite- 
 ment, found time to write at one minute after 
 midnight on July 15th. Five hours later the 
 boys were still clinging to their positions, al- 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 61 
 
 though the entire appearance of the terrain had 
 been changed by the terrific bombardment which 
 they had undergone. The Germans were bom- 
 barding with over one thousand pieces of ar- 
 tillery and their huge shells were falling twenty- 
 five miles in the rear, in Meaux and Coulom- 
 miers. The lurid atmosphere reeked with gas 
 and the boys' eyes burned like fire, through hav- 
 ing worn the masks continuously for five hours. 
 The official record of the Forty-second Division, 
 now on file at the War College in Washington, 
 contains the dry statement: 
 
 "Enemy attack along the whole line at 
 seven in the morning." The full meaning 
 of this notation can best be expressed by the 
 record of one of the Reading heroes, made 
 next day: 
 
 "Seven in the morning, liason from 
 Third Platoon rush into the P. C, reported 
 the Boche through the line on the right. 
 Captain Brooks orders the reserve guns 
 mounted and calls for volunteers to go out 
 through the bombardment to the ammuni- 
 tion dump for more ammunition. Private 
 Hanson and I reach the ammunition dump, 
 break the tops of the boxes with an old pick, 
 and come back with as many clips as we 
 
62 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 could carry. Oh! what an experience! 
 Reached my gun and I just tested same by 
 passing half a clip through, when Sergeant 
 Rettger's liason reports that the First Pla- 
 toon had all been lost. Our blood boiled. 
 I changed my gun position slightly to give 
 a good field of fire, covered a communi- 
 cating trench and said: 'Let the God 
 damn Boche come.' The bombardment got 
 heavier if anything. Two Boche planes ap- 
 peared directly overhead and peppered us 
 with machine guns. Sergeant Rettgers and 
 what was left of his section came running 
 in and reported their guns lost." 
 
 "Eight A. M. — Boche planes with ma- 
 chine guns came like flocks of birds. It 
 looked bad for us. Runner from the French 
 to know if we can hold our lines. Corporal 
 Smith killed. Privates Epler and Karausta 
 killed. Private Hickman suffered horribly 
 from gas. Died." 
 
 "Ten-thirty A. M. — Liason from Second 
 Platoon report: Lost a gun. Private Hous- 
 ton killed by high explosive. Could see 
 lines of Boche attacking in their big hel- 
 mets." 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 63 
 
 "Twelve-thirty P. M. — Boys nearly dead 
 
 frora continuous fighting and lack of food. 
 
 Started back for the field kitchen to see 
 
 what I could get. Passed many dead men 
 
 on the way. One of them shot in half. 
 
 Acting Sergeant of Company I horribly 
 
 mangled." 
 
 "Seven P. M. — Attack seems completely 
 
 repulsed. French warn us to be ready for 
 
 a counter attack." 
 
 Such is the modest record of a heroic day. 
 He must be callous, indeed, who can read this 
 laconic record without a quickening of the pulse 
 and a thrill of pride, at the noble way in which 
 these boys acquitted themselves in their hour 
 of trial. 
 
 The Germans had captured both of the out- 
 lying Reading guns. Private Willis P. Snyder, 
 a Cotton street lad, showed rare heroism in fight- 
 ing his gun to the last and endeavored to save 
 a number of his wounded comrades. For his 
 bravery he was awarded both the Croix de 
 Guerre and the Distinguished Service Medal. 
 
 Private Snyder, back to work-a-day life in 
 Reading and not at all disposed to regard him- 
 self as a hero, gives the following version of the 
 incident: 
 
64 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 "We were pretty far out in front of the 
 rest of the bunch. Our two guns were well 
 placed, so as to command the two communi- 
 cation trenches. We hadn't been told the 
 first line trenches had been abandoned but 
 thought the French were still there. By 
 morning we were all nearly crazy with the 
 awful bombardment. It was broad daylight 
 when they came and there seemed to be 
 thousands of them coming through the 
 bushes. At first we thought they were 
 Trogs,' for most of them wore French uni- 
 forms. Suddenly Corporal Smith, who 
 commanded our gun, said: 'My God! 
 they're Boche.' He jumped on the gun and 
 fired perhaps two belts when he was hit in 
 the brain and dropped. I took the gun and 
 fired like mad. I couldn't very well miss 
 them, they were so close. I remember 
 Karausta come running up to me, telling 
 me that Epler and Burkey had been killed 
 and the other gun taken, then all of a sud- 
 den the Boche were on top of me. I lit out 
 at them and they at me. A couple of them 
 were tearing at my pack. They tell me I 
 tried to pull Karausta's body along but I 
 don't remember anything more until I was 
 back in the reserve trenches." 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 65 
 
 Such courage and modesty was not to go un- 
 noticed. The great Petain, under his own sig- 
 nature, testified to the achievement of a gallant 
 Reading boy.* 
 
 July 16th was a harassing day under continual 
 bombardment. The struggle seemed to have 
 shifted a little to the left, where the French were 
 receiving the full fury of the enemy's attack. 
 The Company were at last able to evacuate their 
 severely wounded, including Privates Dough- 
 erty, Larson, Burkey, Snyder, Artz and Wil- 
 liams. The surrounding ground was compared 
 by one of the boys to a sieve, so pit-marked was 
 it by the bombardment. 
 
 They might well be proud of their achieve- 
 ment. The Forty-second American Division and 
 Twenty-first French Corps had repulsed a major 
 attack by five German divisions, viz: — the 
 Guard Cavalry Division (dismounted), the Sec- 
 
 Citation de Willis P. Snyder 
 Tous ses Camarades ayant 6te tu§s ou blesses a 
 continue a manoeuvrer les mitrailleuses et dans le 
 corps a corps qui suivit a force I'ennemi a se retirer. 
 Bien que blesse a essaye de ramener ses camerades 
 blesses. Son courage et son abnegation ont fait 
 radmiration de tous ceux qui I'ont approche. 
 Au Grand Quartier General, 
 
 PETAIN, 
 Marecbal de France. 
 Le 16 Avril, 1919. 
 
66 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 ond Bavarian Landwehr, the Eighty-eighth Di- 
 vision and the Seventh Saxon Division. They 
 penetrated the American and French trenches 
 at various points, but were only able to hold a 
 part of their gains. Their loss had been tre- 
 mendous. Our losses had also been serious. 
 Lieutenant Hamlin and his heroic platoon were 
 nearly all prostrated from the effects of gas. 
 They had held the center position, command- 
 ing the road into Suippes. 
 
 While the Allied front under the command 
 of Gouraud, that is to say, the territory between 
 Rheims and Massiges, had been held, the 
 enemy had been more successful on General 
 Berthelot's front, between Chateau-Thierry and 
 Cailly. Here he succeeded in getting six divisions 
 across the Marne. The storm burst with tre- 
 mendous fury upon the Thirteenth and Thirty- 
 eighth Regiments of the Third American Divi- 
 sion. It was a critical moment. The Germans 
 were able, in the next two days, to pour a tre- 
 mendous fire upon the position of the Forty- 
 second Division. It is estimated that the enemy 
 employed eighty-four batteries in continuous 
 bombardment. This bombardment kept the 
 Reading Company in the trenches during the 
 entire day of July 17th. A small detachment, 
 headed by Captain Brooks, went out at night 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT dl 
 
 into "No-Man's Land" to look for the lost gun 
 posts. With consummate audacity, they made 
 their way over a front literally carpeted with 
 dead Germans. They found the gun intact. 
 Corporal Smith, who commanded it, was lying 
 beside it, his face to the foe. He had been bay- 
 oneted in the throat. His two assistant gunners 
 lay behind him. The Captain reverently removed 
 the personal effects from the dead men's bodies 
 and the detachment started back to the lines, 
 bringing the lost guns with them. 
 
 On the 18th of July, the intense bombard- 
 ment began to lessen. The general order for a 
 counter attack was at once given. Far to the 
 left, Mangin and Degoutte began their advance 
 on the plateau of Etrepilly. The Reading boys, 
 however, were in no shape to take part in this 
 maneuver. Flesh and blood could stand no 
 more. They had acquitted themselves well and 
 earned a citation from the American Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. 
 
 On the morning of July 19th they were re- 
 lieved. There was some delay in this movement 
 and it was not until 3:45 and quite light, when 
 the Company left their trenches. The watchful 
 German observation balloons detected the man- 
 
68 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 euver at once and laid down a heavy barrage. 
 The men ran for safety as fast as their heavy 
 loads would permit. Many of the relieving in- 
 fantry were killed before they could gain the 
 trenches. Fatigued as they were, the Company 
 were compelled to make a twenty-five kilometer 
 march to Cuperly. The roads were choked with 
 troops and artillery passing up to the front. The 
 rumor of victory was in the air. The soldiers 
 going up cheered the ragged, blood-stained Read- 
 ing heroes as they staggered past. They arrived 
 at a wood near Cuperly about nine in the eve- 
 ning of the 20th. A huge German plane crashed 
 down almost in their midst, but the boys were 
 too tired to take much interest in the occurrence. 
 They bathed in a little creek; pitched their dog 
 tents and enjoyed an eight-hour sleep. On the 
 next day there was a pretty ceremony when Gen- 
 eral Gouraud and his entire staff came to for- 
 mally congratulate the heroic division. 
 
 On the night of July 22d the Company hiked 
 to the entrainment point at Saint Hilaire and 
 boarded box cars for an unknown destination. 
 It was known that the Germans had the exact 
 range of this place, and only the night before 
 had bombed an American troop train. Some of 
 the soldiers were still scattered in the surround- 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 69 
 
 ing woods, to which they had fled after the raid. 
 As the train made its slow way in a westerly 
 direction, the clamor of the front died down and 
 they passed out of the zone of war. 
 
 For two days the boys traveled through a 
 beautiful smiling country side, as yet untouched 
 by the horrors of war. The unwonted sight of 
 a trolley car brought tears to their eyes and 
 evoked a round of cheers. Their tortuous course 
 took them almost into the suburbs of Paris. 
 They could see, against the southern horizon, a 
 marble dome which the Captain told them was 
 the Church of the Sacre Coeur, on the heights 
 of Mont Marte. They passed through the great 
 rail-head of Noisy le Sec, detrained at Esbly, 
 almost midway between Chateau-Thierry and 
 Paris, and hiked to the semi-ruined town of 
 Nantovillet. The noise of the front grew in 
 volume before them and they surmised that they 
 would soon be at close grips with the enemy 
 again. 
 
 At nine in the morning they marched out for 
 what was to be an all day thirty-kilometer hike 
 to Mareuil, on the River Marne. The boys en- 
 joyed a belated swim which, however, had a 
 tragic ending in the drowning of Private Nelson 
 Bowers. He was buried with military honors 
 next day. 
 
70 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 During the afternoon a convoy of French 
 camions and motor trucks, operated by Annam- 
 ites, arrived at the camp. The emergency 
 rations were issued, while the men loaded their 
 guns and equipment, knowing that they were 
 once more going up into the furnace. They 
 passed through the tortured town of Chateau- 
 Thierry, crossed the bridge over the Marne, 
 which American valor had held against ten-fold 
 odds, and rode steadily to the north. Callous as 
 they had grown to the awful evidence of war, 
 they were struck by the utter horror of the 
 country through which they passed. 
 
 "Dead Boche scattered everywhere and 
 badly decomposed," writes one of the boys. 
 "We are all of the same color from dust and 
 the roads in an awful jam, owing to the 
 thousands of men and supplies going to the 
 front in trucks." 
 
 Late that night they reached a wood near St. 
 Germain which the Captain describes as literally 
 saturated with gas. There was no water with 
 which to prepare a meal and the men had not 
 eaten since half-past six that morning. This 
 wood had been the scene of a Homeric combat 
 but two days before, in which one American 
 company of two hundred and fifty had been 
 wiped out to the last man. 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 71 
 
 On July 26th the Company advanced toil- 
 somely through a heavy rain to Foret Maison du 
 Bois. The gallant Twenty-sixth or Yankee Di- 
 vision had swept over this terrain, taking a huge 
 toll in guns and prisoners; the decomposed 
 corpses of men and horses were scattered every- 
 where, and the stench was almost insupportable. 
 The boys lay in the soggy wheat fields all night. 
 Morning found them directly next to the em- 
 placement of one of the gigantic guns with which 
 the Germans had amazed the world. The gun 
 itself was gone but the base with the attending 
 railroad, machine shop and equipment was still 
 there. One of the lads compared it to a loco- 
 motive turntable at the Reading Car Shops. The 
 men were amazed to see the enormous pyramids 
 of ammunition which the enemy had left be- 
 hind in his flight. They had been taught to be- 
 lieve that the German ammunition was at low 
 ebb but saw no evidence of this in the enormous 
 booty at hand. 
 
 On the next day they advanced to Beauvardes. 
 The Reading Company was now in reserve for 
 the first time, as they proudly note, since the 2d 
 of March. The bombardment was appalling. 
 
 At three o'clock on the morning of the 27th 
 the Company was groping its way along the road 
 
72 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 to Ferme de Ferret. It was evidently suicidal 
 to follow the road any further, as the enemy 
 appeared to have the exact range. Captain 
 Brooks ordered the Company to scatter into the 
 neighboring woods with their carts. It was too 
 late. The great marmites were falling with 
 pitiless accuracy. The animals were maddened; 
 the Company was in inextricable confusion. The 
 enemy took a fearful toll. Cook Oberdorf was 
 killed and his field kitchen blown to pieces. 
 Corporal Bowers was horribly mangled and died. 
 Privates Pliss and Kissinger were instantly 
 killed by high explosives. The skull of Private 
 Briel was fractured. Sergeants Bingaman and 
 Smith, with devoted heroism, went out into the 
 open field and rescued Private Troutman, who 
 had been badly wounded. After some hours the 
 Company formed in the woods, in assemblance 
 of order, and took account of their casualties. 
 These had been severe: Privates Weidner, 
 Kompa, Stauffer, Shuker, Eckenroth, Austin, 
 Troutman and Briel had been severely wounded. 
 Sergeant Ludwig, Privates Reifsnyder, Shappell 
 and Tobias were also wounded. No ambulance 
 could be secured until 7:30 the next morning 
 and the poor stricken boys must bear their suf- 
 ferings as best they might. Briel gave no sign 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 73 
 
 of life and it was thought he was dead. Both 
 Captain Brooks and Lieutenant Arsenau had 
 their horses shot. The German aeroplanes 
 circled overhead, reporting every movement. 
 The woods afforded a precarious shelter, the 
 Boche peppering them continuously with bombs. 
 They held their position the whole of that trying 
 day without food or water. At 8:30 in the 
 evening came bread, corn cakes, water and cig- 
 arettes. All of the next day the tortured Com- 
 pany clung to its position in the woods. 
 
 "We gave ourselves up for dead," records 
 Sergeant Smith. "This was the open war- 
 fare to which we had looked forward. We 
 found it hell in its hottest state. It was 
 tough. The smell of the dead was horrible 
 and the groans of our wounded nearly made 
 us crazy." 
 
 On the morning of July 29th the bombard- 
 ment slackened somewhat. The Company took 
 up its laborious advance to the village of La 
 Folic, taken by the Americans only the day be- 
 fore. The ambulances with their pitiful loads 
 choked all the roads. The village was still under 
 bombardment and Company D took shelter in a 
 large farm yard. They were desperately hungry 
 and eagerly shared a gallon of maple syrup and 
 some cans of salmon. 
 
74 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 At 4:30 in the afternoon the order was given 
 to advance. This maneuver provoked such a 
 heavy storm of shells that the Company were 
 again forced under cover. The infantry who 
 had advanced were caught in a bad trap and 
 suffered severely. The officers were lodged in 
 a villa, which only a few hours before had been 
 the headquarters of the German Command. The 
 enemy were making a desperate stand in the 
 village of Serenges, just ahead. From their 
 cellars the boys could observe the effect of the 
 Allied fire and see the devoted village gradually 
 disintegrating. They watched the church steeple 
 for some time, until finally the whole tower fell 
 down into the edifice. In all their distress they 
 found time to admire the intrepidity of the 
 American ambulance drivers racing in and out 
 of the village. Private Wentzel was detailed as 
 a runner to Brigade Headquarters with dis- 
 patches, but had scarcely shown himself when 
 he was shot through both legs. At 7:30 in the 
 evening. Lieutenant Arsenau managed to get up 
 some food which was trebly welcome to the 
 famishing boys. One gas attack succeeded an- 
 other. 
 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon a Lieutenant- 
 Colonel from the One Hundred and Sixty-fifth 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 75 
 
 Regiment rushed in with the intelligence that 
 Serenges had fallen and ordered the Company 
 to advance their gun positions. The appalling 
 strain through which the men had passed was 
 beginning to have its effects. Some of them had 
 gone insane. It was deemed impossible to ad- 
 vance, as the heavy shells were falling contin- 
 uously. One of them demolished three houses 
 directly across the street from the point where 
 the Reading boys were stationed. Oddly enough, 
 the Company in reserve was in a far more 
 dangerous position than it would have been if 
 directly at the front. Corporal Yeich was hit 
 by a high explosive, inflicting thirteen wounds. 
 He died thirty-five minutes later, babbling of 
 Eleventh street and of the folks there. Serenges 
 had fallen at last to the Irish-Americans of the 
 One Hundred and Sixty-fifth Regiment, the old 
 Sixty-ninth of New York, but the resistance of 
 the enemy had been desperate, as many a weep- 
 ing American mother could testify; word came 
 back that the Boche had retreated eight kilo- 
 meters. 
 
 The Forty-second Division had been roughly 
 handled and were relieved by the Fourth Divi- 
 sion on the evening of August 2d. This was a 
 most critical maneuver. It required the filitra- 
 tion of one division through another, under the 
 
76 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 direct fire of the enemy and over congested 
 roads. It was, however, accomplished in a way 
 which reflected credit upon the tactical training 
 of the American Army. 
 
 Company D, in single file, staggered back to 
 the woods at Ferme de Ferret, where they had 
 undergone the fatal bombardment on the night 
 of July 28th. 
 
 "Was one pool of mud," says one of the 
 boys. "We sure were a tough bunch. Many 
 of us fell by the road." 
 
 They slept all day. In the evening the half- 
 starved boys received their first warm meal 
 which they had tasted for many a day. They 
 were utterly unable to move any farther and 
 lay in the rain and mud for a week, recuperating 
 as best they could. Their losses had been so 
 severe that it became necessary to reform the 
 entire Company. 
 
 Sergeants Jarrette and Smith were recom- 
 mended as Second Lieutenants because of con- 
 spicuous bravery shown on the field of battle. 
 Corporal Queer and Corporal Pattison were pro- 
 moted to Sergeants. Privates Ashford, Giles, 
 Hanson, Leinbach, Daniels and Boyer were pro- 
 moted to Corporals. Whatever rewards a grate- 
 ful country could heap upon these gallant sol- 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 77 
 
 diers had been well earned. Their achievement 
 is perhaps best summed up in the Divisional 
 Citation of Major-General Charles T. Menoher: 
 
 "Fresh from the battlefront before Chal- 
 ons, you were thrown against the picked 
 troops of Germany. For eight consecutive 
 days you attacked skillfully prepared posi- 
 tions. You captured great stores of arms 
 and ammunitions. You forced the crossings 
 of the Ourcq. You took Hill No. 212, 
 Sergy, Meurcy, Ferme and Serenges by 
 assault. You drove the enemy, including an 
 Imperial Guard Division, before you for a 
 depth of fifteen kilometers. When your in- 
 fantry was relieved it was in full pursuit of 
 the retreating Germans and your artillery 
 continued to progress and support another 
 American division in the advance of the 
 Vesle." 
 
 It must be noted that with the end of the 
 Marne- Vesle campaign ended the period of 
 French Command. The gallant First American 
 Corps, whose fortunes we have been following 
 under General Hunter Liggett, had functioned 
 as a part of the Sixth French Army. This was 
 the first time that we had a Corps organization 
 in tactical command of troops, either in practice 
 
78 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 or in action, since the Civil War. With the ex- 
 ception of this Corps all Higher Staffs were 
 French. The organization of the First American 
 Army was now to come. 
 
 The Company appears to have stayed at the 
 camp at Ferret a longer period than was con- 
 templated by their superiors, because of their 
 absolute inability to move. Their stay was un- 
 eventful, being only punctuated on August 10th 
 by a visit from the American actress, Elsie Janis, 
 who delighted the boys with her singing. 
 
 On August 13th they finally left their camp 
 in the woods and marched to Villers, on the 
 River Marne. Here the Forty-second Division 
 received a very welcome reward for its labors, 
 in the shape of a general order from General 
 Menoher, permitting ten per cent, of the strength 
 of each Company to go to Paris for a two-day 
 holiday. Company D at this time numbered one 
 hundred and forty-six men. Thirteen were se- 
 lected for the trip. They were given the pick 
 of the clothing of their less fortunate compan- 
 ions and supplied with as much spare change 
 as the Company could muster. The boys spent 
 two wild days in Paris, into which they seemed 
 to have crowded an inconceivable amount of 
 sightseeing and taxicab riding. Incidentally, 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE FRONT 79 
 
 they were caught in an air raid and had to take 
 shelter in a subway station. 
 
 On August 18th the Company left Villers-Sur- 
 Marne and marched to Chateau-Thierry, where 
 they entrained and rolled eastwardly along the 
 great Paris-Metz main line. All day they sat at 
 the open doors of their box cars, interested in 
 the trail of broken bridges and ruined towns, 
 which testified to the fierceness of the late strug- 
 gle. 
 
 On August 19th they debarked and marched 
 to Vrecourt, where the Company, to their utter 
 delight, slept in beds for the first time in many 
 months and for the second time since their ar- 
 rival in France. They remained in these pleas- 
 ant quarters for eight days, mostly devoted to 
 re-formation and hard work. 
 
 On August 24th Lieutenant Shelledy and 
 Sergeant Park were sent to the Advance School 
 of Machine Gun Instruction at Gondrecourt 
 while a corporal and six privates were sent to 
 Signal School. On August 25th, Lieutenant 
 Shivers was succeeded by Lieutenant George H. 
 Pendelton. "No mail since the 29th of July," 
 records one of the boys. It is a testimonial to the 
 pleasantness of their stay that they found time to 
 grumble over the smaller hardships which had 
 
80 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 later been forgotten in the stress of conflict. 
 These were Arcadian days. Life was pleasant 
 and quarters comfortable in the little village on 
 the Marne. Duty was in no ways relaxed, but 
 there was plenty of time to sit under the shade 
 of the cafe awnings and practice French with 
 the village girls. The war seemed far away. 
 
 This idyllic existence came to a rude end on 
 August 29th, when the Company was ordered 
 to Viocourt, sixteen kilometers away, where they 
 remained until September 4th, and then trailed 
 the One Hundred and Sixty-fifth Infantry the 
 entire day, through the dust to Tranquiville, 
 which they reached at 4:30 in the morning, 
 "damn tired" from the slowness of the march. 
 
 On the 6th of September they left Baisey le 
 Cote and next day arrived at Choloy. The entire 
 division, horse, foot and artillery, was moving 
 like a gigantic snake in the direction of Verdun. 
 By day the enormous reptile slept and concealed 
 itself as best it might. With the coming of dark- 
 ness it bestirred itself and wound its sinuous 
 way over the muddy roads to the eastward. The 
 Americans were coming in to Brest by the hun- 
 dreds of thousands; all the countryside between 
 Chaumont and Toul was crowded with them. 
 Great events were in preparation. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The St. Mihiel Drive 
 
 TBE days which the Company had spent in 
 training and rusticating after the Marne 
 Campaign were days of comparative in- 
 activity for the entire American Force. The 
 American Army, as an individual unit, was or- 
 ganized at this period. Only then did our Staff 
 begin to direct the active operations of our 
 troops. This, excepting in the training areas, 
 had really been done by the French. The First 
 Army Staff and the Corps Staffs began, for the 
 first time, to function. It would, indeed, have 
 been absurd for the great American nation, with 
 two or three million men in the field, to fight 
 any longer under foreign High Command. The 
 American Commanders, now left to their own 
 devices, were to demonstrate a resourcefulness 
 and ability worthy of the highest military tradi- 
 tion. General Pershing had long planned to at- 
 tack the St. Mihiel salient. The men and re- 
 sources were in his command and it was only a 
 question of choosing the hour to strike. 
 
 When the Kronprinz and his German Army 
 drove upon Verdun in August, 1914, they took 
 and held a huge salient in the French line, ex- 
 
 81 
 
82 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 tending as far as Fort Troyon on the Meuse and 
 embracing the village of St. Mihiel. Only the 
 genius of General Serrail and the heroic defense 
 of the Grande Courronne had saved Verdun and 
 the city of Nancy. 
 
 From this ridge of St. Mihiel the Germans 
 could not be dislodged. For four years they 
 maintained an annoying dent in the French line 
 which had withstood the most sanguine attacks at 
 Les Eparges, Apremont and the Bois de Pretre. 
 The best blood of France had been poured out 
 like water to flatten out this salient. It was esti- 
 mated that one hundred thousand lives had been 
 sacrificed in the vain attempt. One reason for 
 the success of the German defense was that they 
 held all the high ground and had direct obser- 
 vation for their artillery; their watchers on 
 the famous Mont Sec could notice the slightest 
 movement in the Allied trenches. 
 
 In the beginning of September, 1918, the 
 salient was held by nine German divisions, per- 
 haps ninety thousand men. Six out of the nine 
 divisions were second-class troops, made up of 
 Landwehr or Austrian troops. The ridge bristled 
 with artillery, machine guns and wire. The Ger- 
 mans deemed it impregnable and the French 
 High Command was almost inclined to coincide 
 
THE ST. MIHIEL DRIVE 83 
 
 in this belief. The success of the American 
 movement depended on a great measure upon 
 its secrecy. This was the reason for the night 
 marches, about which the Reading boys grum- 
 bled. As an additional cover, a feint was insti- 
 tuted of a general attack in the Vosges. Skeleton 
 divisions were formed at Besancon and Belfort. 
 American boys on leave in Paris whispered to 
 each other that our troops would soon be fight- 
 ing on the Rhine. Incoming officers were told 
 of it, in strictest confidence, of course, before 
 they had left their transports. Everyone knew 
 that we were to attack from Belfort and every- 
 one was feverishly concerned that the enemy 
 should not know it. Meanwhile the German 
 spies were active. 
 
 How far this gigantic hoax succeeded we shall 
 probably never know. It evidently had some 
 measure of success. While serving with the 
 French in August, 1918, the writer was told by 
 a prisoner, a Saxon artillery officer, that the 
 Americans were to attack in force in Alsace and 
 that the fatherland was ready to receive them. 
 Nevertheless, the astute Haupt Quartier was not 
 entirely deluded. They began at the last moment 
 to remove their heavy artillery from St. Mihiel. 
 This, however, was done in a vacillating manner 
 and undoubtedly weakened the morale of their 
 troops. 
 
84 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The Reading Company, now preparing to take 
 its part in the gigantic attack, marched slowly 
 up through Choloy and Lagny to the Foret de la 
 Reine, just back of the front. They were now 
 on the training ground of the first American 
 Armies, the sector on which had occurred the 
 early raids in the fall of 1917. Their progress 
 in the dark had been very toilsome. They moved 
 in echelons through a countryside literally 
 choked with troops and artillery. 
 
 On September 11th Captain Brooks, Lieuten- 
 ant Pendelton, Sergeants Jarrette and Faust went 
 up to the front to get a reconnaissance of the 
 positions which the Company was to occupy. 
 The men advanced with exasperating slowness 
 over the congested roads through Mandres, 
 around the famous "Dead Man's Curve" to 
 Beaumont. The classic and heart-breaking rain, 
 which had accompanied all the Allied offenses, 
 was falling in torrents. 
 
 Their division was supported on the right by 
 the Eighty-ninth Division and on the left by the 
 glorious First Division, which three divisions 
 formed the Fourth Corps. The Berks lads ar- 
 rived just in time. At one o'clock in the morn- 
 ing began a tremendous preliminary barrage, of 
 what was to be the greatest battle ever fought 
 
THE ST. MIHIEL DRIVE 85 
 
 by an American Army. The French Marshal 
 Petain, no mean authority, has said that with 
 the exception of General Allenby's capture of 
 the Turkish Army in Palestine, no large opera- 
 tion in the war worked out so exactly to plan as 
 did the American attack on St. Mihiel. At five 
 o'clock in the morning six American divisions 
 attacked simultaneously on a ten-mile front. 
 One of our soldiers, in a letter to his mother in 
 Reading, describes it as the most beautiful sight 
 of the war. 
 
 "Just at dawn," writes he, "the party 
 started. Oh! it was grand. Thousands of 
 our boys charged the Boche lines. I never 
 could have believed there would be so much 
 barbed wire, but they couldn't stop us. Our 
 aeroplanes were so thick that they darkened 
 the skies and our tanks moved like clock 
 work. The Germans were firing like mad 
 from their high mountain (Mont Sec), but 
 nothing could stop us. Boche prisoners 
 started coming back in droves. We counted 
 eight hundred in one bunch. A little French 
 chap kissed me in his excitement and told 
 me the war was over." 
 
 While one platoon, under Sergeant Smith, re- 
 mained in support, the other two, under Sergeant 
 
86 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 Jarrette and Lieutenant Shelledy, went forward. 
 Captain Brooks was serving as Brigade Liason 
 Officer. This is Sergeant Jarrette's narrative of 
 a glorious day: 
 
 "I was in charge of the Third Platoon and 
 told to report to a platoon of the One Hun- 
 dred and Sixty-fifth Infantry, to hold the 
 open space between the Forty-second Di- 
 vision and the First Division. Reported to 
 headquarters of the One Hundred and 
 Sixty-fifth Infantry, but no one could tell 
 me where to go. Put my men in improvised 
 trenches for protection against shell and 
 rain and went out with Private Reifsnyder 
 to find our positions. Gave up the search 
 as the zero hour was almost at hand. 
 
 "At 5:15 in the morning came the order 
 to go 'over the top.' I knew I was in the 
 wrong position, but gave the order to go 
 forward. We found ourselves with part of 
 the One Hundred and Sixty-sixth Infantry 
 and right in front of a number of tanks; 
 a position of great danger. I sent runners 
 forward and at last found our places. Big 
 shells and machine gun bullets were flying 
 all around. We had only two casualties 
 until about eleven o'clock, when we were 
 
THE ST. MIHIEL DRIVE S7 
 
 ordered to take a machine gun nest on an 
 opposite hill. Cook Silvey, who had begged 
 to come along and see some real action, was 
 shot through the right lung and died. Sev- 
 eral other men were also hit in arms and 
 legs. Corporal Fry's squad was put out of 
 action completely. At last we silenced the 
 machine gun nest and after that moved 
 steadily forward to the objective which we 
 had been told to hold." 
 
 The victory had indeed been a signal one. 
 On the morning of the second day the St. Mihiel 
 salient existed no longer. The prisoners num- 
 bered fourteen thousand, four hundred and 
 thirty-nine. Four hundred and forty-three guns 
 and huge supplies of ammunition had been cap- 
 tured. 
 
 The Forty-second Division was in the van of 
 the attack, being opposite to the Tenth German 
 Division, recently brought down from Flanders. 
 This enemy division contained the famous 
 Twenty-sixth Grenadier Regiment, composed 
 entirely of Stoss Truppen, the best material in 
 the German Army. The losses of our division 
 on the first day were seven hundred and two, 
 which was not large, considering the magnitude 
 of the operation. 
 
88 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 On the 13th of September the Company moved 
 slowly over the battlefield of the day before. 
 They marveled at the strength of the enemy po- 
 sitions and at the huge booty which was every- 
 where apparent. The foe was sullenly retiring 
 beyond Thiaucourt; the entire army was de- 
 lirious with joy. 
 
 The Company remained three days in a woods, 
 which had been the German artillery station. 
 They had plenty of time to explore the dug- 
 outs, which only a few hours before had been 
 in German hands. The boys were amazed at the 
 comfort in which the enemy had been installed. 
 They found electric lights, beds, bath houses 
 and a complete saw mill and machine shop. 
 They examined all the German equipment with 
 a critical eye and pronounced it to be of the very 
 best. The wood was choked with artillery, which 
 the enemy had abandoned in their hasty flight. 
 The soldiers were employed in the next few days 
 in salvaging such of the German equipment as 
 was of value. Their stay at this camp was un- 
 eventful on the whole, although they were bom- 
 barded by intermittent long range artillery and 
 by aeroplanes. 
 
 On September 23d the boys were disconsolate 
 to learn that they were to lose Captain Brooks, 
 
THE ST. MIHIEL DRIVE 89 
 
 who was being sent to a Staff School. He had 
 led the Company since February 27th with con- 
 summate devotion and heroism. No criticism of 
 an officer is so just or so searching as that passed 
 upon him by his own men. The men of Com- 
 pany D are unanimous in pronouncing him the 
 best officer with whom they came in contact. 
 On September 25th he bade farewell to the as- 
 sembled soldiers. There was speech-making, not 
 unmixed with tears. On the same day Lieutenant 
 Shelledy and Sergeant Parks returned from their 
 school. Lieutenant Shelledy then took com- 
 mand. 
 
 On September 27th the Company again ad- 
 vanced to a position in the new line. The enemy 
 had recovered somewhat from their late repulse 
 and was shelling the new American position 
 viciously. While the boys were in line for mess, 
 September 30th, a huge shell dropped within 
 fifty feet of the kitchen. There was fortunately 
 no casualties. 
 
 On October 1st the Company was relieved, 
 loaded again on French trucks and hauled eighty- 
 five kilometers to Issoncourt. It required eigh- 
 teen hundred trucks to move the huge Division 
 with its paraphernalia. The recently captured 
 territory was not yet organized, so that rations 
 were very uncertain; the boys did not get a 
 
90 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 mouthful to eat the entire day. The Company 
 waited two days for the mules and horses to 
 catch up with them and then executed a toilsome 
 hike of thirty kilometers to Thiaucourt. The 
 next day they marched about the same distance 
 steadily to the west. On neither day was there 
 time to stop for mess. Only seasoned veterans 
 could have undergone such marches in heavy 
 equipment. Another major operation was in 
 progress, destined to be the last one of the war. 
 While the arm-chair strategists at home were 
 consulting their maps and prophesying an im- 
 minent attack on Metz, the American Army was 
 headed in the opposite direction and moved 
 swiftly up to the Forest of Argonne. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 The Argonne-Meuse Campaign 
 
 THE American forces engaged in the Ar- 
 gonne-Meuse battle, the decisive battle 
 of the war, as the event proved, were 
 about ten times as large as those of General Lee 
 at Gettysburg. They attacked a terrain of the 
 greatest difficulty and they were opposed by sea- 
 soned and formidable opponents, fighting under 
 the eye of General von der Marwitz, probably 
 the best of the German Field Generals. The 
 Americans had many veteran troops in line, such 
 as the Forty-second Division, whose fortunes we 
 are following, but over half of their troops and 
 of the Divisional Staffs were absolutely green 
 in modern warfare. Argonne Forest had been 
 considered impregnable for four years. Men 
 who fought in our Civil War had compared it 
 to the Wilderness in Virginia, only the Wilder- 
 ness was fairly level, while the Argonne Forest 
 was full of steep hills and ravines. The roads 
 were bad and transportation would necessarily 
 be difficult. The Hindenburg Line, the back- 
 bone of the German defensive system, ran di- 
 rectly through the forest. The enemy were en- 
 trenched in such strength that it is doubtful if 
 
92 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 any troops in the world, except the fresh, ardent 
 Americans, could have dislodged them. 
 
 The Americans engaged in all, fifteen divi- 
 sions. The attack was begun by General Liggett 
 and his First Corps on September 26th. The 
 Forty-second Division, which had been brought 
 around from St. Mihiel, was at first in reserve, 
 but we shall find them later in close grips with 
 the enemy. 
 
 On the days of October 8th, 9th and 10th the 
 Reading boys advanced through the forest. They 
 were on the extreme left of the line, behind the 
 Seventy-seventh Division. The violence of the 
 struggle was evidenced by the number of dead 
 bodies, German and American, and by the debris 
 of the great battle. Montf aucon on the right was 
 still holding out, although invested by the Mary- 
 land drafted men of the Seventy-ninth Division. 
 The Berks Company went directly through the 
 wood, which was the scene of the exploits of 
 Major Whittlesey and his famous lost battalion. 
 
 On October 10th they had advanced as far 
 as Apremont (not to be confounded with the 
 town of the same name which figures in the St. 
 Mihiel drive). Their march was necessarily toil- 
 some. 
 
THE ARGONNE-MEUSE CAMPAIGN 93 
 
 "Marched the whole night through the 
 forest," writes one of the boys. "We went 
 very slowly as the roads were jammed from 
 fighting in this woods. They were carpeted 
 with Boche and American bodies. Our big 
 guns are all up and make us very proud. 
 Saw fourteen big calibre guns, but to but. 
 When our big naval guns fire as we pass it 
 makes us blind and deaf for about five min- 
 utes. The firing never stops." 
 
 On the night of the 11th, in a terrific bom- 
 bardment, the Company dug in on famous hill 
 No. 240, above Apremont. Although not aware 
 of it, they were now directly in front of the 
 Kriemhilde defense system, two and one-half 
 miles in depth. It was to withstand our attacks 
 for nearly twenty days and to cost us tens of 
 thousands of the flower of our youth. However, 
 if this line could be taken, there were no pre- 
 pared defenses behind it. The four-track rail- 
 road from Mezieres, over which flowed the life 
 blood of supplies, munitions and men for the 
 German Army, would be threatened. 
 
 There are no more intensely interesting pages 
 in the diary of Sergeant Smith, to which we have 
 referred so often, than those which relate of his 
 experience in the next few eventful days. 
 
94 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 "October 12th — Out over the lines we see 
 many of our dead. Fifty-four of our pieces 
 of artillery in position back of us. Thirty- 
 six seventy-five milimeters, twelve howitzers 
 and four naval long range guns. Barrage 
 continuous and tremendous. Can hardly 
 stand the noise, owing to our closeness to 
 same. The very earth is trembling." 
 
 "Four to five in the afternoon — Boche 
 planes attacking our kitchen squad with 
 their machine guns. Wild scrimmage for 
 cover. Must dig in tonight. Fritz sending 
 too many big ones across to lay in the open." 
 
 "October 14th — Moved out at 4:45 in 
 the morning. Attacked at eight in the morn- 
 ing. Private Leonard killed almost in- 
 stantly. I just turned long enough to see 
 him fall. We advanced in full view of one 
 of Fritz's observation balloons. He sure 
 gave us a warm reception. Private Cahill 
 shot through the leg." 
 
 "Nine in the morning — We dug in and 
 Fritz pulverized the ground over which we 
 had advanced this morning. We paid dearly 
 for our gains. Fritz bumped off four of our 
 boys with one shell, which burst in the 
 midst of a signal detachment that was ad- 
 
THE ARGONNE-MEUSE CAMPAIGN 95 
 
 vancing with us. Many of our men are 
 going back wounded. Dug in the side of 
 another hill late in the afternoon. We were 
 about all in. The bombardment never 
 stops. Wagoner Shores wounded at mid- 
 night. Sergeant Pattison wounded shortly 
 afterwards. It began to rain and our holes 
 got soaking wet. Most of us were sick with 
 dysentery. Corporals Behm and Hanson 
 wounded. Sergeant Conners wounded. Pri- 
 vate Walsh killed. Private Arnold severely 
 wounded." 
 
 "October 16th — Still raining. Sure it is 
 hell to be lying in shell holes half filled with 
 mud and water and practically no food. 
 First Platoon, under Sergeant Rettgers, has 
 been cut off from food for the past two 
 days." 
 
 "October 17th — Liason again with the 
 First Platoon. Sure glad to get food. Boche 
 artillery combing the hill continuously. 
 Gee! what gloom. Brought down a Boche 
 plane this morning. Private Stubbeline 
 shot in the stomach. Many of the boys go- 
 ing down with influenza." 
 
 The day of October 16th will go down as the 
 most glorious in history of the Forty-second Di- 
 
96 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 vision. It was then, after the forty-eight hours 
 of punishment, which Sergeant Smith so graph- 
 ically described, that the One Hundred and 
 Sixty-sixth Regiment stormed the Cote de 
 Chatillon, defended by the Prussian Guard, 
 scrambled through the wire and bayoneted the 
 Germans still kneeling at their guns. The hor- 
 rors which the Berks lads endured during these 
 October days can only faintly be imagined. They 
 were continually attacked with gas and the bom- 
 bardment never ceased. The Americans had 
 been temporarily checked along the whole line 
 and the Boche began to hope that the final at- 
 tack might be postponed long enough to bring 
 some results from their feelers for an Armistice. 
 The Americans, however, were not to be denied. 
 They were feverishly active, bringing up their 
 artillery, building their narrow gauge railroads 
 and improving their lines of communication. 
 The Reading company found plenty of action 
 for their guns in driving off the Boche raiders 
 who came daily to attack the American obser- 
 vation balloons. They brought down one enemy 
 plane on the 23 d, two on the 25th and one on 
 the 27th. The boys led the life of cave diggers 
 in dug-outs, more or less bomb proof. Their 
 progress up to this time had been slow, but all 
 was now in readiness for the great drive of No- 
 
THE ARGONNE-MEUSE CAMPAIGN 97 
 
 vember 1st, which was to advance the Allied line 
 by kilometers instead of by yards and to end 
 the war. 
 
 The last days of October were days of prep- 
 aration, amid an intense excitement. The Berks 
 lads made perilous trips to the rear and brought 
 up large stores of reserve ammunition. They 
 were to support the great attack by indirect 
 firing. That night no one slept. At 3:30 began 
 a bombardment which has gone down into his- 
 tory as the most terrible of the war. Far away 
 to the right the Americans were pouring thou- 
 sands and thousands of gas shells of yperite into 
 the Bois de Bourgogne. They were using for 
 the first time, a new lethal gas, which will pene- 
 trate any mask. The Reading troops watched 
 with awe the flashes of miles upon miles of ar- 
 tillery, giving the impression, as one of them 
 remarked, "Of a whole range of munition fac- 
 tories on fire." 
 
 The new American attack achieved a swift and 
 decisive victory. The doughboys went forward 
 like dogs loosened from a leash. In three days 
 they were to advance eighteen kilometers and 
 capture more than five thousand prisoners and 
 a little more than one hundred guns. The 
 Mezieres railroad came for the first time under 
 
98 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 the direct fire of our long range guns and Hin- 
 denburg telegraphed to the Emperor that the 
 game was lost. 
 
 Company D was not in the van of this last 
 tremendous advance. They assisted in the pre- 
 liminary barrage, firing at indirect fire for two 
 and one-half hours. They then prepared to 
 break camp and move forward in the direction 
 of Sedan. On the morning of November 3d 
 they advanced to St. Juvin, where they spent a 
 miserable night in the rain, soaked to the skin, 
 in a plowed field. The American line was go- 
 ing forward by leaps and bounds and the Com- 
 pany moved rapidly with it. On November 4th 
 they reached Authe and on November 5th 
 Brieullers, where their echelons again came in 
 contact with the retreating enemy. On Novem- 
 ber 6th they came directly into action with the 
 Boche, who were sullenly retreating from the 
 village of Chemery. The enemy had hoisted a 
 white flag over the village to show that they 
 had abandoned it. The boys fired at direct range 
 and in utter disregard of a barrage which the 
 Germans were throwing back to protect their 
 retreat. The advance on these days was so rapid 
 that the wagon trains and field kitchen could 
 not keep up with the troops, so that the boys 
 
THE ARGONNE-MEUSE CAMPAIGN 99 
 
 often went hungry. The Forty-second Division 
 was hot on the scent of the enemy, having re- 
 lieved the Seventy-eighth Division, in pursuit. 
 By now the immediate rear of the retreating 
 Boche had become one mass of confusion. The 
 transport could not move; the infantry was 
 thrown back on the supply units and extrication 
 became almost impossible. The enemy was 
 frantically intent on putting the River Meuse 
 between himself and the impetuous Americans. 
 The scent of victory was in the air and it was 
 with great difficulty that the officers could con- 
 trol the ardor of their troops. The Forty-second 
 Division, flushed with victory, came suddenly in 
 sight of the river from the heights, west of 
 Remilly. Below them, across the river, was the 
 historic city of Sedan, the scene of Emperor Na- 
 poleon the Third's humiliating surrender to Bis- 
 marck in 1870. Now ensued a desperate race 
 between the First and Forty-second Divisions, 
 as to which should be the first to enter the town. 
 As a matter of fact, the Americans never did 
 enter Sedan until after the Armistice; but the 
 Forty-second Division established itself a kilo- 
 meter away, across the river. The Berks Com- 
 pany did not get as far as Sedan. Indeed, .they 
 never saw the Meuse at this point imtil after the 
 cessation of hostilities. On November 7th and 
 
100 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 8th they were at Maisonelle in reserve and on 
 the 10th they moved out sixteen kilometers to 
 Fontenois, where an accidental explosion of 
 some of their ammunition wounded Sergeant 
 Queer and Private Bremen. Lieutenant Rowse 
 had joined the Company some days before. 
 
 All through the night of November 10th 
 strange rumors were flying about. Self- 
 important dispatch bearers were continually 
 passing, who hinted at great news. The officers 
 were non-committal, but everyone guessed that 
 some great event was shortly to take place. On 
 the momentous day of November 11th the Com- 
 pany moved out at fifteen minutes past eight 
 in the morning and marched fifteen kilometers 
 to Blemery. At eleven o'clock, to their intense 
 amazement, the awful roar of artillery, which 
 had become as much a part of their life as the 
 very breath in their nostrils, abruptly ter- 
 minated. It appears, however, that no one really 
 believed that the war was over and it was not 
 until late that night that the great news was 
 officially confirmed. 
 
 "It was a wonderful sight," writes one of 
 the Berks lads. "The men were celebrating 
 as on the Fourth of July. The fires sprung 
 up all along the line like so many stars in 
 
THE ARGONNE-MEUSE CAMPAIGN 101 
 
 the sky. We sent up all the Boche rockets 
 and flares which we had captured. Every- 
 body was wild with joy and we saw our- 
 selves back in Reading in four weeks at the 
 latest." 
 
 So, in the historic language of President Wil- 
 son, the war came to an end. Three thousand 
 miles away the Victory bells were ringing in the 
 City of Reading. A delirious populace thronged 
 the streets, scarcely daring to believe that the 
 end had come. Amidst the frantic joy, it is to 
 be feared that few gave a thought to the ragged, 
 unkempt battalion, hiking drearily over muddy 
 roads by the Meuse. And yet these lads, 
 through their toils and through their sacrifices, 
 had made possible the celebration in which they 
 could not share. Their days of warfare were 
 over. What they endured and what they 
 achieved has been set down in these pages ex- 
 actly and moderately, with no attempt at exag- 
 geration or heroics. Let their fellow-citizens, 
 who may read these lines, judge whether they 
 did their duty and whether they deserve well 
 of their land and of the town which sent them 
 forth. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Army of Occupation 
 
 THE days which immediately followed the 
 Armistice were devoted to a general 
 checking up of a roughly handled divi- 
 sion. The men received a belated pay and crap 
 and card games were the order of the day. The 
 strain of actual warfare had passed and the bonds 
 of discipline were naturally a little relaxed. 
 
 On November 15th, Lieutenant Pendelton was 
 promoted to the grade of First Lieutenant. Pri- 
 vate Moodhart was made Mess Sergeant and 
 Privates Spears and Wiatt were made Corporals. 
 Lieutenant Rochester was assigned to the division 
 with thirty-seven replacements to take the place 
 of the men whom the Company had lost in the 
 drive through the forest. Every possible field 
 of hostilities, including Siberia, was suggested 
 as the ultimate goal of the division. On Novem- 
 ber 16th, however, came the definite order that 
 the division was to move on into Germany. The 
 Reading boys crossed the river at Stenay on No- 
 vember 17th. In every direction they could see 
 the enormous fortifications which the enemy had 
 erected. The roads were crowded with happy 
 French soldiers, liberated by the Germans and 
 returning to their homes. 
 
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 103 
 
 On November 18th, Lieutenant William Jong, 
 from Wisconsin, took command of the Company. 
 The weather turned quite cold with a light fall 
 of snow, so that the leather jerkins, heavy socks 
 and winter caps, which were issued to the men, 
 were gratefully received. 
 
 On November 21st they crossed the Belgian 
 border at Limes, to the inspiring music of the 
 band of the One Hundred and Sixty-fifth In- 
 fantry. They were marching through a beauti- 
 ful, smiling country, comparatively untouched 
 and a marked contrast to the ravaged country- 
 side to which the boys had lately been accus- 
 tomed. All the villages were in gala attire with 
 bunting and flags. Avenues of trimmed cedar 
 trees were erected along the streets through 
 which they passed. 
 
 On November 23d, after a hike of thirty kilo- 
 meters, the Company crossed the frontier of 
 Luxembourg at Oberpallen. The inhabitants 
 were German in speech and appearance, but 
 gave the boys a warm welcome. The beer was 
 of a quality and delighted the boys who had 
 grown somewhat tired of the red wines of France. 
 The broken German Army were retreating along 
 all the roads and about a day's march ahead of 
 the Company. They remained in the little Lux- 
 
104 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 embourg village until December 1st, wben tbey 
 moved on fifteen kilometers to Fishbaeb, and 
 the next day, twenty-four kilometers to Beau- 
 fort. 
 
 On December 3d the Company again took up 
 its line of march. Just outside of the village of 
 Bollendorf they came upon the black and white 
 striped frontier posts with the arrogant Prussian 
 eagle glaring defiance from the top. The moment 
 of which they had so often dreamed and spoken 
 had come at last; they were crossing the Ger- 
 man border. That night the Company rested at 
 Peffingen. 
 
 As soon as they crossed the border, the march- 
 ing columns were put again upon a war footing, 
 with advance guards and vedettes. The populace 
 were outwardly friendly, but no chances were 
 taken. The men were ordered to carry their 
 automatic pistols at all times. The machine guns 
 were kept ready for action and the ammunition 
 boxes were never locked. The weather was bad 
 with heavy fogs and the roads were in terrible 
 condition. The Company moved steadily north- 
 ward in long marches through the mountainous 
 country, known to the Germans as Die 
 Volkanische Eifel (The Volcanic Eifel), 
 upon which they had counted as one of 
 
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 105 
 
 their principal lines of defense. The 
 men were billeted each night in the houses and 
 stables of the primitive villages in which they 
 halted. The boys could find no complaint as to 
 their reception. The inhabitants did everything 
 in their power to make them comfortable. The 
 tired Company reached the village of Nie- 
 deradenau on the 9th of December and remained 
 there until the 14th. 
 
 On the 11th they were formed in a neighbor- 
 ing field to witness the awarding of the Medals 
 of War to such of the battalion as had earned 
 them. Private Willis P. Snyder, who had dis- 
 tinguished himself on the Champagne front, was 
 to have been among the recipients, but was in 
 the hospital at the time; the award was made 
 at a later period. 
 
 The Company had now reached the Head- 
 quarters of the River Ahr, beloved of tourists, 
 and were to follow its beautiful valley down to 
 the Rhine. The men were delighted with the 
 vine-clad hills and interested in the beautiful 
 villas and hotels which they saw. Passing very 
 close to the source of the famous ApoUinaris 
 Spring, they marched to Ahrweiler and reached 
 Bodendorf late in the afternoon. Beneath them 
 was the broad yellow flood of the Rhine, flow- 
 
106 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 ing between low, vine-clad banks. The goal of 
 which they had spoken and sung had been at- 
 tained. 
 
 The months which the Company spent on the 
 Rhine were on the whole pleasant ones. Dis- 
 cipline was comparatively light, except in the 
 critical days when it was thought that the Ger- 
 mans might reject the peace terms offered them. 
 At that time the Company was again put on a 
 war schedule and prepared to take its part in 
 the threatened invasion. Happily, the crisis 
 passed and the boys were not disturbed in their 
 pleasant quarters at Bodendorf. The mornings 
 were usually devoted to drill and target prac- 
 tice. In the afternoon there were a variety of 
 athletic events. Most of the men were billeted 
 with private families in the villages and the ar- 
 rangement proved eminently satisfactory. The 
 officers were fairly liberal with passes to the 
 neighboring villages and to Coblentz and 
 Cologne. Some of the boys took excursions on 
 the Rhine steamers as far up the river as Mainz 
 in the French zone of occupation. 
 
 On January 5th, to the intense delight of the 
 organization, Captain Brooks returned to his 
 command. Lieutenant Shelledy reported back 
 on January 8th. The Hotchkiss guns which the 
 
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 107 
 
 boys had been using up to this time were re- 
 placed by the new Browning gun and the lads 
 instructed in its use. 
 
 Sunday, the 16th of March, was a memorable 
 day. The entire Forty-second Division was as- 
 sembled at Kripp for inspection by the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, General Pershing, who dis- 
 mounted and reviewed each individual unit, the 
 regimental bands furnishing music the while. 
 "Black Jack" Pershing, as the doughboys loved 
 to know him, inspected each unit of the entire 
 division on foot. After this ceremony, the huge 
 division, in column squads, passed in review be- 
 fore the General and his Staff. 
 
 For many weeks, rumors of departure had 
 
 been flying, but it was not until April 9th that 
 
 the Company actually turned its back on the 
 
 noble river they had come to know so well and 
 
 entrained in American Pullman cars, forty-five 
 
 men to a car, for their first lap of the journey 
 
 towards home. They traveled via Metz, Verdun 
 
 and Chartres, arriving at Brest at seven in the 
 
 evening. "Gee! what a shout," writes one of the 
 
 boys, "when we saw the American liners lying 
 
 out in the roadstead." The Company were given 
 
 quarters in the famous camp at Pontanezen, 
 
 where they remained until April 15th. They 
 
108 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 then marched to the docks and embarked next 
 day on the S. S. "Victoria," a comfortable boat, 
 but very much overcrowded. 
 
 There is little more to narrate of the career 
 of Company D. After an uneventful voyage they 
 arrived at Boston on April 28th and began a 
 triumphal progress to Camp Devens, in Massa- 
 chusetts, which they reached that afternoon. 
 Here they were met by a reception committee 
 sent on from Reading. A trying week ensued, 
 during which the boys controlled their impa- 
 tience as best they might. At last, on May 4th, 
 they left Camp Devens and entrained for Camp 
 Dix, New Jersey, which they reached at 10:30 
 in the evening. On the afternoon of May 8th 
 they left Camp Dix, arriving at Reading about 
 4:30. As they detrained from the same station 
 which they had left twenty-one months before, 
 they were greeted by the clanging of bells and 
 the shrieks of whistles. The entire city was 
 waiting to receive them. A frenzied tide of ap- 
 preciating fellow-citizens bore them through the 
 streets to the Armory, where, with appropriate 
 ceremonies they were finally dismissed. 
 
 In all, three hundred and eighteen men had 
 passed through the Company rolls. Of the one 
 hundred and twenty- two Berks lads who had 
 
THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 109 
 
 marched up the hill to the Outer Station on that 
 hot August afternoon in 1917, there remained 
 only forty-nine. Some had been exchanged to 
 other detachments. Thirty-four had come back 
 home, wounded or gassed. And the sons of 
 thirteen Reading mothers would never return 
 again, but were lying beneath the soil of that 
 fair land which they had fought to save. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE CAREER OF COMPANY A 
 
 Later known as 
 
 Company B 
 
 108th Machine Gun Battalion 
 
 Twenty-eighth Division 
 American Expeditionary Force 
 
CHAPTER I 
 The Training Camp 
 
 COMPANY A is the senior detachment of 
 the Reading militia. Its members love to 
 boast that they are the successors of the 
 venerable Reading - Artillerists and that their 
 organization has had a continuous existence 
 since March 23d, 1794. The Company served 
 creditably on the Mexican border, under the 
 leadership of Captain J. Lewis Lengel. They 
 were mobilized on Sunday, July 16th, 1918, at 
 nine o'clock in the morning. The same period 
 of forty days' drill and practice hikes, which 
 has been noted in the training of Company I, 
 was ended by the order of departure for August 
 20th. It has previously been stated that on the 
 18th of August, Captain Charles G. Miller, of 
 Company I, was transferred to Company A, and 
 Captain Edward V. Kestner, of Company A, was 
 placed in the leadership of Company I. At three 
 o'clock on the afternoon of August 20th, escorted 
 by a dense throng of well-wishers, the Company 
 left their Armory for a short parade through 
 the principal streets and entrained at the outer 
 P. & R. station. 
 
 113 
 
114 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The men numbered at this time one hundred 
 and thirty-three, whose average age was a little 
 under twenty-one years. One hundred and three 
 were from Reading and the remainder from 
 rural Berks. They were commanded by Captain 
 Charles G. Miller, First Lieutenant Irwin E. 
 Seaman and Second Lieutenant James M. Sny- 
 der. 
 
 After a journey of thirty-six hours they 
 reached the great training ground at Camp Han- 
 cock, near Augusta, Georgia. No preparations 
 had been made for their reception and the Com- 
 pany slept on the ground the first night. They 
 were then assigned to the location, which they 
 maintained with some changes, until September 
 16th. Afterwards they were moved to a new 
 location on Pennsylvania Avenue, which they 
 kept until the date of their departure overseas. 
 The Twenty-eighth Division, which was pecu- 
 liarly a Pennsylvania and a National Guard Di- 
 vision, was in process of formation at this time. 
 It was commanded at first by Major-General T. 
 C. Clement, of Sunbury, who later was succeeded 
 by Major-General Charles C. Muir. Captain 
 Francis Wilson, who came from the officers' 
 training camp at Plattsburg, was assigned to the 
 Company as an additional officer shortly after 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 115 
 
 Company A arrived in camp. The Company 
 underwent the usual strenuous course provided 
 in the American training camps. After re- 
 arrangement, they were chosen as a Machine Gun 
 Detachment and underwent intensive training 
 under English instructors. Eight men formed a 
 squad and to each squad was assigned one ma- 
 chine gun. The exigencies of our Ordnance De- 
 partment were such that few actual machine 
 guns were available. Men were drilled with 
 wooden guns, except that the non-commissioned 
 officers were given some schooling with real 
 weapons. Conditions were very chaotic during 
 the first few weeks at the training camp and it 
 was not known to which battalion the Reading 
 boys would finally be joined. 
 
 On September 26th, to the great disappoint- 
 ment of the Reading soldiers, came a general 
 order, transferring one hundred and twenty-five 
 men to the One Hundred and Ninth Regiment, 
 which had formerly been the First Regiment of 
 Philadelphia. The men realized that it was their 
 soldierly duty to go where they were sent. Most 
 of them, however, had been recruited with the 
 understanding that they were to serve in a pecu- 
 liarly Reading Contingent, amongst their friends 
 and neighbors. The news of this contemplated 
 
116 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 action found its way to the city of Reading, 
 where there was a widespread feeling of discon- 
 tent over this summary breaking up of a detach- 
 ment which had served as an individual unit 
 since the days of the Revolution. This feeling 
 crystalized in the Citizens' Meeting in which a 
 committee of three, Robert G. Bushong, Esq., 
 John F. Ancona and George Wynkoop, Jr., were 
 appointed to secure, if possible, an amelioration 
 of the order. The Committee called at the War 
 Office and also interested Congressman Arthur 
 G. Dewalt in the matter. Their protestations 
 evidently had some effect, as the execution of 
 the order was postponed for ten days. In the 
 end, and as of October 17th, the Company was 
 formally reorganized as the Second Company of 
 the One Hundred and Eighth Machine Gun Bat- 
 talion. It was later known as Company B. 
 Seventy-nine of the original Reading boys stayed 
 with the Company. The remainder were scat- 
 tered about among various contingents and their 
 places taken by men from the One Hundred and 
 Ninth Infantry, which had been part of the Thir- 
 teenth Regiment of the National Guard of Penn- 
 sylvania. Lieutenant Seaman, who had left 
 Reading with the Company was honorably dis- 
 charged under medical certificate. Second Lieu- 
 tenant Snyder was made First Lieutenant and 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 117 
 
 three new Second Lieutenants, Bellou, Howard 
 and Frederick, were added to the staff of offi- 
 cers. Captain Sanderson Detweiler, of Colum- 
 bia, served with the Company for a short while. 
 On November 16th, Captain Miller was removed 
 from the command and assigned to Company D 
 of the One Hundred and Ninth Infantry. He 
 was succeeded by Captain Laurence H. Watres, 
 an attorney from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who 
 had received his training in the Thirteenth Regi- 
 ment of Pennsylvania National Guards. First 
 Lieutenant William P. Hayes joined the Com- 
 pany at this time. Major R. M. Vail assumed 
 command of the One Hundred and Eighth Bat- 
 talion on November 1st. Two officers of the 
 British Mission, Sergeant Drieballs and Captain 
 Pinnell were assigned to the Battalion as instruc- 
 tors in machine gunnery. The reorganized Com- 
 pany remained at Camp Hancock for six tedious 
 months. 
 
 There is little to relate of the stereotyped rou- 
 tine of the camp. The boys trained faithfully 
 and well. Their letters and diaries all breathe 
 a spirit of impatience that their time of active 
 service had been postponed so long. 
 
 "The worst of camp life," writes Sergeant 
 Joe Eisenbrown, "is the monotony. We are 
 
118 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 all of us hoping and praying that we will 
 soon be sent to France." 
 
 It was particularly galling to the high-spirited 
 Company to know that their old comrades of 
 Company I were enduring the shock of actual 
 battle in the trenches of Lorraine, while they 
 were condemned to the monotonous inactivity 
 of camp life. 
 
 Their hour came at last. On April 21st they 
 left Camp Hancock and on April 23d arrived 
 at the same Camp Upton which had received 
 their Reading comrades six months before. On 
 May 2d they entrained for Brooklyn and em- 
 barked at once from the Bush Terminal on 
 board the English ship Anchises. The boys de- 
 scribed the ship as ill-kept and very much over- 
 crowded. Eighteen hundred troops were on 
 board. The food was uncertain and indifferent, 
 consisting principally of Australian rabbit. 
 After an uneventful voyage of two weeks the 
 Company arrived at Liverpool on May 16th. The 
 men at once entrained and traversed the length 
 of England, arriving at Folkestone on the south- 
 ern coast at two o'clock in the morning. The 
 boys were under strict military restraint during 
 the entire journey; they passed through London 
 but had no opportunity to inspect it. That same 
 afternoon, about five o'clock, they arrived at 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 119 
 
 Dover and were quartered in Rest Camp No. 3, 
 in the South Port. It was a nerve-racking loca- 
 tion. The great trans-channel ferry for troops 
 and ammunition ended here and the town was 
 bombed systematically by Zeppelins, aeroplanes 
 and raiding torpedo boats from the German base 
 at Ostend. 
 
 The next day the Reading Company made the 
 dangerous crossing to Calais, escorted by a 
 flotilla of torpedo boats. They were well re- 
 ceived at an English rest camp, where they re- 
 mained for three days. A part of their war 
 equipment, including gas masks, was issued to 
 them. The boys complained that the rations 
 were insufficient and that they had not yet ac- 
 quired a taste for the jam and tea with which 
 their English comrades plied them. Whilst in 
 this camp they were raided by German aero- 
 planes. Sergeant Earl Shilling wrote humorously 
 to his folks at home concerning the incident. 
 
 "At the first alarm all the French and 
 English dug for cellars or bomb shelters. 
 Our crowd on the contrary, were so curious 
 over their first sight of an enemy aeroplane 
 that they rushed out into the open and stood 
 gaping at them while the bombs fell. A big 
 English Tommy said, 'My eye ! Look at the 
 blooming Sammies standing out in an air 
 raid. They won't last far at that gait.' " 
 
120 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 On May 21st the boys marched to an entrain- 
 ment point and were borne southward to 
 Desveres, where they detrained and marched to 
 Henneveux, in the English rear zone. The 
 Twenty-eighth Division was billeted in this area 
 for about two weeks, where the lads received 
 the entire British equipment for use in the field 
 and began to train for the first time with real 
 machine guns. The gun furnished them was 
 the Vickers gun, of English pattern. A detach- 
 ment of the Northumberland Fusileers was 
 attached to the battalion to assist in training. 
 
 "The English are well enough," wrote 
 one of the boys to a Reading newspaper on 
 May 20th, "but they do not have any tobacco 
 to give us. The supply that we brought 
 from home is all gone and now we are pick- 
 ing up stumps and even smoking dried 
 leaves." 
 
 On May 24th, Captain Watres with Lieuten- 
 ants Finley and Boss and six non-commissioned 
 officers left for the British machine gun school 
 at Le Wast, where they remained until June 8th. 
 On May 26th, Lieutenant Finley and Corporals 
 Mallatin and Ruddy left for a similar school 
 at Camieres. June 3d was made memorable by 
 the arrival of the first Reading mail. 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 121 
 
 It seems to have been the intention of the 
 General Staff to leave the division in this train- 
 ing area for a longer period of time. The situa- 
 tion, however, became so critical that it was 
 necessary to throw all available troops into the 
 line. Company B accordingly turned in all of 
 its British equipment, except the limbers and 
 horses and prepared to leave. They left 
 Henneveux about noon and marched to Cam- 
 pagne, where they were billeted for the night. 
 Resuming their hike, they arrived at Chappelle 
 Neuve, "dog-tired," late in the afternoon. 
 
 On June 11th they again took up their march 
 and bivouaced that night in a marsh, where 
 they were compelled to wait two days for the 
 other units of the division to entrain. It was 
 here that the Company received its first pay in 
 French money. 
 
 On the morning of June 13th they embarked 
 on the classic box cars, "Hommes forty, chevaux 
 eight," for the journey to the eastward. All 
 through the long summer day of June 14th they 
 rode to the eastward, passing through the suburbs 
 of Paris and in clear sight of the Eifel Tower. 
 They detrained at Esbly, the same station which 
 was to receive their comrades of Company I 
 three weeks later. 
 
122 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The men unloaded their guns and equipment 
 and marched to trucks which soon started, 
 crossed the Marne and moved steadily north- 
 ward. For the first time, the awe-struck boys 
 beheld the flashes on the northern horizon and 
 heard the rumble of heavy artillery at the front. 
 Early in the morning they arrived at Nantouillet, 
 where they slept until evening and then moved 
 on to Thieux, where they bivouaced in a field. 
 During the night they were awakened by the 
 distant wails of sirens and the thunder of a bar- 
 rage of seventy-fives, so continuous as to suggest 
 the rattle of a machine gun; the enemy aero- 
 planes were raiding Paris. The Company re- 
 mained in this place two days and then moved 
 on to Mory. They later moved a few kilometers 
 to Gresse, where they encamped in the beautiful 
 grounds of a fine old chateau. The Germans 
 had swept through this country in their first 
 drive of August, 1914, but had been ejected after 
 the first battle of the Marne before they had 
 had the opportunity to do much damage. Lieu- 
 tenant Doret of the French Artillery Service was 
 assigned to the battalion as Liason Officer. 
 
 The Company started a severe five days of 
 training under French instructors. This school- 
 ing terminated abruptly on the 23d, when the 
 Company marched southward in lorries to La 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 123 
 
 Celles, near Montmirail, where a further inten- 
 sive period of instruction with the French was 
 undergone. Here, for the first time, the boys 
 had a range practice with the Hotchkiss gun. 
 At this place they were rejoined by Lieutenant 
 Shoemacker, Sergeants Lawrence, Schwartz and 
 Grauer and Corporals Malatin and Ruddy, who 
 returned from machine gun school. Lieutenant 
 Finley returned from a similar school at 
 Camieres on July 2d. 
 
 The days in this sector were spent in drills, 
 practice hikes, instructions in machine gunnery 
 and in rehearsing attacks in open order. There 
 appears to have been considerable difficulty in 
 understanding the instructions, owing to the fact 
 that the Company was not sufficiently provided 
 with interpreters. 
 
 "The Frogs were willing enough," wrote 
 one of the boys at this period, "but for the 
 life of us we couldn't understand them. We 
 were all glad when Lieutenant Finley and 
 his bunch returned from school to teach us 
 in English. Every day we can hear overhead 
 the sound of the big shells which the Ger- 
 mans are sending into Paris from some point 
 sixty miles away." 
 
 The division was now in the rear Marne area, 
 directly back of Chateau-Thierry. It was the 
 
124 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 eve of the despairing and gigantic thrust which 
 the Germans were to make in July. It also was 
 to be their last offensive; they never attacked 
 again. Marshal Foch was so admirably served 
 by his Intelligence Department that he knew 
 the enemy would strike southwest of Chateau- 
 Thierry. For this reason he drew in heavy con- 
 centrations of French troops and used the com- 
 paratively raw Pennsylvania troops to fill the 
 gaps thus created. A sprinkling of French de- 
 tachments was left with the Americans with the 
 idea of instructing and steadying the troops as 
 yet untrained in battle. By this disposition the 
 American soldiers were within the sphere of 
 operation, but not directly on the line of attack. 
 
 For the first time the Reading boys saw the 
 pitiful scenes which accompanied the exodus 
 of an entire countryside. The peasants from the 
 country north of the Marne were fleeing south- 
 ward; their household effects piled on high 
 wheel carts. There was an electrical tension in 
 the air. For some weeks they had been hearing 
 the rumble of artillery at the front and now this 
 had grown into a menacing roar. The boys no- 
 ticed the new gravity of their officers and the 
 fact that they were frequently summoned to 
 Headquarters for consultation. Everyone knew 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 125 
 
 that the great blow was soon to fall. Lieutenant 
 Hayes and Corporal Eisenhower went up into 
 the front line for observation with the French 
 for about four days. A Fourth of July celebra- 
 tion had been planned but was never to take 
 place. 
 
 At 2 :30 in the morning, of the national holiday, 
 to the tune of an intense bombardment, the en- 
 tire Company broke camp and moved to Pargny, 
 where they were encamped in a wood near a bat- 
 tery of heavy French guns, which made the night 
 hideous with their continued firing. Lieutenant 
 Boss was sent up to the line to locate a position. 
 Finally, on July 8th, the Company took up its 
 position in the line, on hill No. 208, near Conde- 
 en-Brie, about six kilometers southwest of 
 Chateau-Thierry. The Third Platoon, under 
 Lieutenant Shoemacker, was in position in re- 
 serve at Montigny. For five days the boys were 
 feverishly busy, digging new emplacements and 
 dug-outs. All the guns were carefully placed, so 
 that every part of the Brigade front was cov- 
 ered. A telephone line was run to the Brigade 
 Headquarters at Pargny. The horses which had 
 heretofore served to draw the gun carts were 
 replaced by mules. It was at this period that 
 the Pennsylvania Division first saw action, two 
 
126 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 platoons of the One Hundred and Eleventh In- 
 fantry having participated with the French in 
 an assault on hill No. 20. 
 
 On July 9th the Company had its first gas 
 alarm. The shrieking of klaxons and hammering 
 of tin pans was caught up from trench to trench 
 and borne along from the front to the reserve 
 trenches three miles away. 
 
 On July 14th one of the French liason officers 
 visited the Company and predicted to Lieutenant 
 Boss that the Germans would never get across 
 the Marne, as the south hank of the river was 
 so fortified with machine gun nests and barbed 
 wire entanglements as to constitute an impreg- 
 nable line of defense. If the officer was sincere 
 in this prediction, he was sadly mistaken, as the 
 event showed. 
 
 The day of the French National Holiday was 
 long and tense. Far to the eastward in the front 
 line trenches above Suippes, the Reading boys 
 of Company I were undergoing a similar strain. 
 No one slept. Occasionally a star shell flared 
 up in the sky or a gun sounded from the farther 
 shore of the Marne, where the foe was complet- 
 ing his preparation. Finally, at 11:30 at night, 
 came a ripping roar from miles of French bat- 
 teries in the rear. Foch had anticipated the at- 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 127 
 
 tack from the foe by exactly an hour. At 12 :30 
 the great German offensive began, preceded by 
 that famous bombardment which Karl Rosner, 
 the war correspondent of the Berlin Lokal 
 Anzeiger, described as "unparalleled and ap- 
 palling." 
 
 Private Russell Moll, a Windsor street boy, 
 describes the tension of waiting for the blow to 
 fall. 
 
 "We were over a week on that damned 
 hill looking down on Conde-en-Brie'. From 
 the excitement all around us we knew a big 
 push was coming, but we didn't know when. 
 The Boche planes were over us all the time, 
 sometimes very low. Every night we dug 
 new emplacements and mounted the guns. 
 We had every road and high point fully cov- 
 ered and were ready to give the Boche hell 
 if he came through. It was weary work and 
 the boys put away a whole lot of red wine. 
 We used to fetch up cheese from the French 
 canteens back of Villette and have parties. 
 Part of our One Hundred and Ninth outfit 
 was sent up into the lines because so many 
 of the Frogs wanted to go into Paris for the 
 holiday. Well, at midnight on July 14th, the 
 show began all right. They threw gas at us 
 right away and we never got our masks off 
 the whole night. I never heard such a deaf- 
 
128 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 ening roar. We could see every shell falling 
 into Conde and they sure did knock the old 
 town to pieces. Then their barrage started 
 to creep up the hill. We thought it was all 
 over but when they got within fifty yards of 
 us they lengthened the range for some lucky 
 reason and began to throw the shells back 
 of us. We had no shelter but the machine 
 gun emplacements and the big fellows were 
 falling around us. If the enemy broke 
 through, our signal was a light in a house 
 at the foot of the hill and we watched for it 
 all night. We had to keep rubbing our guns 
 all the time as the gas was eating away the 
 wood and metal. All next day they were at 
 it and we heard that the Germans were over 
 the Marne and mauling our Pennsylvania 
 boys. Lots of wounded kept coming back. 
 Boche aeroplanes flying very low kept com- 
 ing for us. Towards evening of the next day 
 three came in a bunch. We all ducked and 
 I heard the explosion just back of me near 
 the kitchen. Private Gerald Manley was 
 killed and Lieutenant Hayes, Sergeant Mc- 
 Loughlin and Cook Bare, wounded. It was 
 a sickening sight. Lieutenant Finley took 
 command. A report came that the Germans 
 were in St. Aignan to our right. We fired at 
 the town for a while, but stopped for fear of 
 hitting our own boys." 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 129 
 
 So much for the part which the Reading Com- 
 pany took in repulsing the Great Attack. How 
 the Germans attacked with one hundred and 
 seventy thousand men ; how they swarmed across 
 the Marne, how the four Companies of Penn- 
 sylvania National Guard in the front line were 
 cut to pieces and how the attack was finally 
 stemmed, is scarcely within the scope of this 
 account. 
 
 Company B remained in reserve until July 
 18th, when the First Platoon was relieved and 
 returned to Montigny, where Lieutenant Finley 
 took command of the Second Platoon, which 
 took over the position of the First Platoon. First 
 Lieutenant Hayes rejoined the Company. The 
 men remained in their improvised trenches, still 
 under bombardment, until July 20th. The roar 
 of artillery had gradually died down and the 
 Berks boys realized that the front was moving 
 away from them and that the Germans were 
 in full retreat. The raw Pennsylvania Division 
 had acquitted itself in a heroic manner and 
 earned the sincere praises of our critical Allies. 
 "The hitherto untrained American 
 troops," wrote the acute military observer 
 of the London Tribune, "fought like vet- 
 erans. Their officers showed unwonted ap- 
 titude and military skill." 
 
130 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The Division including the Reading boys now 
 marched southwest out of the bombarded dis- 
 trict to Viffort. The shattered companies were 
 reformed and the depleted ranks filled with new- 
 comers, good soldiers, but very few of them 
 Pennsylvanians. 
 
 On July 24th the march was resumed in a 
 westerly direction. Company B crossed the 
 Marne at Charly and camped in a woods about 
 two kilometers north of the river. The German 
 host, stunned by the rapidity of the counter- 
 thrust, were in full retreat. Their Kaiser, who 
 had watched the battle from Ludendorf's villa 
 at Blanc Mont, returned disconsolately to his 
 headquarters at Charleville. 
 
 Mangin and Degoutte launched a ferocious 
 attack from the Aisne-Ourcq line, which com- 
 pelled the German General Staff to direct the 
 recrossing of the Marne and to retreat rapidly 
 to the northward, destroying as much of their 
 material as possible. The roads were blocked 
 by a dense swarm of retreating columns and 
 supply trains, on which the Allied aviators and 
 artillery poured tons of projectiles. The re- 
 formed and somewhat rested Twenty-eighth Di- 
 vision was thrown upon the trail of the dis- 
 comfited enemy. 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 131 
 
 On July 27th, the fateful day on which a few 
 kilometers to the westward, their comrades of 
 old Company I received such punishment. Com- 
 pany B marched through Chateau-Thierry and 
 struck northward in the direction of heavy can- 
 nonading. Even the callous boys were struck 
 by the appearance of the shattered town of 
 Chateau-Thierry. 
 
 "We all thought of Reading," wrote one 
 of them to his home newspaper, "and tried 
 to picture Penn street in the condition of 
 these streets here. The ruins were awful 
 and even house corners were shot away. We 
 guessed that the first bombardment must 
 have come about meal time, for we could 
 see the prepared meals still standing on the 
 tables in the ruined houses." 
 
 After a short rest, the march was resumed the 
 same evening, through Chartreves, Jaulgonne 
 and the beautiful Foret de Fere. In the middle of 
 the night they observed to the northward a tre- 
 mendous and continued illumination which one 
 of the boys compared to a blast at the Keystone 
 furnace. No one knew what it was, but they 
 were later to learn that it arose from the destruc- 
 tion by the Germans of their huge store-houses 
 at Fere en Tardenois. The woods were filled 
 with the debris of the retreating army. Two of 
 
132 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 the lads who had strayed a short distance into 
 the forest found five German wounded, whom 
 they sent into the rear in an ambulance. The 
 Company lay for three days in the forest as the 
 reserve company of the battalion. They were 
 continually under bombardment, both by artil- 
 lery and aeroplanes. The Germans' retreat was 
 temporarily stayed, owing to the fact that by 
 now they had reached their reserve lines on the 
 Ourcq. The Berks boys lay about in the forest 
 but could get little sleep because of continual 
 gas attacks. Corporal Hawk, a Thirteenth street 
 lad, was badly gassed and sent to the rear. The 
 Forty-second Division was actively engaged to 
 the left ; numbers of wounded from that division 
 straggled through the lines and were fed at the 
 Company kitchen. The forest was full of ma- 
 chine gun emplacements erected by the Ger- 
 mans, many of them still occupied by their dead 
 garrison. The houses and villages had been sys- 
 tematically destroyed and the fruit trees hacked 
 down. This was a miserable period for the Read- 
 ing lads. The men crept close to the trunks of 
 the larger trees or dug themselves little shelters 
 in which to pass the terrible nights. Meanwhile 
 the Fifty-fifth Infantry Brigade just ahead was 
 fighting its way through Grimpetts Wood, one 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 133 
 
 of the crowning exploits of the war for Penn- 
 sylvania troops and one all too insufficiently 
 known. 
 
 On August 1st, ahout midnight, an enemy 
 aviator made a particularly vicious and success- 
 ful raid directly over the woods in which the 
 Company was encamped. He dropped six bombs 
 which inflicted numerous casualties upon the 
 sleeping infantry. The men of Company B 
 were aroused to an indescribable confusion and 
 spent the night in carrying stretchers and giving 
 aid to the wounded. Harry Baureithel was one 
 of the boys who passed through this gruesome 
 experience. He wrote: 
 
 "In the afternoon a Boche plane was ob- 
 served above us for quite a while. We sus- 
 pected that he was taking photographs. It 
 was easy to mark our position because there 
 was a break in the line of woods. We were 
 asleep when the crash came and didn't 
 know at first that it was an aeroplane. It was 
 sickening the way our poor boys were cut 
 up. You couldn't light a light, as the 
 officers would have shot us if we had, so we 
 had to go up around in all the blood and 
 smell and collect the wounded as well as we 
 could. I needn't tell you no one slept any 
 more." 
 
134 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 By this time the way had been cleared. The 
 heroic Keystone boys had driven the enemy 
 back on the line of the Vesle. On the night of 
 August 3d the Company advanced through 
 Roncheres, Cierges and Colounges, names which 
 deserve to be immortal in the history of their 
 native state, and arrived at a wood near Cohan. 
 It had been a hard march through a driving rain ; 
 the tired men slept where they stood, leaning 
 against wagons or limbers. There was little rest, 
 however, and the same afternoon they pressed 
 on to the northward to a valley east of the town 
 of Chery Chartreuve. They dug in on a hillside 
 to the tune of a heavy bombardment and numer- 
 ous gas alarms. 
 
 On this march, near the little village of 
 Chemery, the Berks boys passed a decorated 
 grave at which the French had established a 
 military guard of honor. The boys looked curi- 
 ously for the inscription and read the name of 
 Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, who had been 
 brought down here by an enemy aeroplane a 
 few weeks before and buried by the Germans. 
 
 The entire next day they were hard at work 
 upon their dug-outs. All varieties of high ex- 
 plosives, shrapnel and gas were hurled on them 
 and they must endure for long hours the misery 
 
THE TRAINING CAMP 135 
 
 and discomfort of the gas masks. The crisis had 
 come which was to test their mettle to the utmost. 
 The enemy had turned to bay with his back to 
 the River Vesle. The drive on Fismes began the 
 next day. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Fismes Sector 
 
 THE Twenty-eiglith Division had now come 
 to be regarded as seasoned troops and had 
 well won their name of the Iron Division. 
 They were next given, as their objective, the 
 town of Fismes, at the junction of the Vesle and 
 Ardre rivers. The exhausted Thirty-second and 
 Rainbow Divisions were brought out of the front 
 line and the Pennsylvanians put in their places. 
 The town had occasionally loomed large on the 
 pages of history, and it was here that the kings 
 of France were wont to rest for the night when 
 on their way to be crowned in the neighboring 
 cathedral of Rheims. It is an important railroad 
 junction on the line which runs from Rheims to 
 Soissons, and one of the largest German muni- 
 tion depots in the sector. The railroad em- 
 bankment was for a time the barrier between 
 the contending forces. The Germans were bur- 
 rowed into the north side and the Pennsyl- 
 vanians into the south slope. The contending 
 forces would throw hand grenades and even 
 stones at each other over the high emplacement. 
 The town lay on the south side of the narrow 
 stream. On the north side was the suburb of 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 137 
 
 Fismette, destined to see some of the hardest 
 fighting of the war and to be entirely wiped out 
 in the operation. From their hillside the Read- 
 ing boys could see the town and the placid river 
 and the heavy German guns crashing from the 
 hills on the opposite shore. The valley back 
 of the Vesle was the "Death Valley," which was 
 to cost the division so dearly. 
 
 August 4th was a glorious and crowded day. 
 From their position the boys of Company B 
 could see the panorama of the attack unfolding 
 before them. The One Hundred and Twelfth 
 Pennsylvania Infantry secured a foot-hold in the 
 south end of the town. Furious street fighting 
 from house to house ensued, the enemy strug- 
 gling like trapped wolves. It was a costly ad- 
 vance but the gallantry of our soldiers was not 
 to be denied and by nightfall the foe had sullenly 
 withdrawn across the river, leaving a portion of 
 their forces as prisoners to the victorious Ameri- 
 cans. 
 
 All through the long hot days of August 6th, 
 7th and 8th the Company remained in their 
 dug-outs. An enemy aeroplane bombed directly 
 behind them. Meanwhile the Americans were 
 moving cautiously forward and planting their 
 artillery, while the stage was being set for the 
 
138 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 assault on Fismette. After nightfall of August 
 9th the Berks Company left its dug-outs and 
 moved slowly to the northward over a road 
 which was being violently bombarded. They 
 were to support the infantry attack by a harass- 
 ing fire into the wooded ravines north of Fismes. 
 The boys went forward gallantly to the forward 
 slope of a hill, about a kilometer south of Fis- 
 mes, where they were heavily shelled. Privates 
 Coitti, Graham and Hermes were wounded. 
 Company B supported the attack by firing a 
 barrage into Fismette, across the river. To the 
 First Platoon was assigned the task of clearing 
 the woods west of Fismes and firing into a tan- 
 nery northwest of the town which was still oc- 
 cupied by the enemy. They fired from 3:30 in 
 the afternoon until six. A platoon of the in- 
 fantry was sent up as support and later a part 
 of the Third Platoon joined the Second Platoon. 
 It was a harassing day under continual bombard- 
 ment and the Company was nearly exhausted by 
 evening, when the ration wagon finally came up 
 with a hot meal. Private Moran was gassed and 
 Sergeants Hancock and Lawrence and Privates 
 Hobbs and Flanagan wounded. 
 
 All of the next day the men clung grimly to 
 their position under heavy bombardment. The 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 139 
 
 kitchen was moved back to a reserve position, 
 giving promise of the expected relief which came 
 that evening. The Company had scarcely fired 
 a shot during the last day and yet it had suf- 
 fered severely. Private Reber was killed and 
 Privates Franke, Hunter, Mabry, Press, Hag- 
 gerty, Jill, Joyce, Marsh and Pittoc were wound- 
 ed. Plucky Harry Mabry lost a leg and died in 
 the dressing station. It was necessary to reform 
 the entire battalion. For four days the exhausted 
 men lay in a reserve position north of Dravegny, 
 while the Germans, who had command of the 
 air, used their advantage to the utmost. Com- 
 pany B mounted their guns for anti-aircraft de- 
 fense and dug in, as well as possible, against the 
 continuous bombardment. 
 
 On August 16th the air attacks were so con- 
 tinuous and virulent that two squads were sent 
 forward to protect the infantry from low-flying 
 enemy planes. In this operation Private Carden 
 was gassed and Private Hafer was wounded. 
 Lieutenant Potter was detached from the Com- 
 pany and became the Battalion Adjutant. The 
 Boche artillery was served with unusual ac- 
 curacy, their bombardment searching the entire 
 valley and hillside in an effort to dislodge the 
 stubborn Pennsylvanians. There were several 
 
140 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 direct hits upon our artillery and one costly hit 
 was registered upon a body of infantry near the 
 Brigade Headquarters which caused many cas- 
 ualties. Meanwhile, the fight for the river cross- 
 ing and the penetration of Fismette went slowly 
 but steadily on in the face of a stubborn re- 
 sistance. The fight in the town was of an un- 
 paralleled intensity. Five times it was taken by 
 the Americans and five times retaken by the 
 Germans. It was now resolved by the Divisional 
 Command to attempt a flank movement against 
 the left of the German forces entrenched be- 
 hind Fismette. Accordingly, on August 19th, the 
 Reading Company was ordered ot take a posi- 
 tion on the extreme right of the divisional front. 
 It was obviously suicidal to march across the 
 field, as that section was combed continually by 
 the enemy artillery. Consequently the line of 
 march was taken in an almost southerly direc- 
 tion and the men were temporarily with their 
 backs to the line of fighting. 
 
 The platoons marched at fifteen minute in- 
 tervals, the mules and limbers being with the 
 last platoon. This last platoon and wagon train 
 was under the command of Sergeant George I. 
 Strawbridge, who had been a reporter on the 
 Reading Herald. Strawbridge had served all 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 141 
 
 through the Mexican Campaign and was a man 
 of unusual intelligence and military aptitude. 
 Somewhere in the belated mail, between Chau- 
 mont and the Division Headquarters, lay his 
 commission as Second Lieutenant, but when it 
 arrived, the gallant boy to whom it was ad- 
 dressed, was already cold in death. His com- 
 rades say that on the fateful day he appeared 
 to have a premonition of impending doom. He 
 was heard to say that he chafed at the life of a 
 machine gunner in the reserve zone and hoped 
 that before he died he would one time go over 
 the top with charging American infantry. There 
 is a rise of ground just before the white road 
 dips down into the ruined village of Arcis le 
 Ponsart. Here the men came under a fire di- 
 rected by German observation balloons, which 
 were in full view. The animals became restive, 
 and Private Bohn was shot down. Strawbridge 
 exposed himself with the intrepidity of the true 
 soldier, rallied his command and led them down 
 into the village. The Company had reached the 
 market place and were in comparative safety 
 when a well-directed shell seemed to fall almost 
 in their midst. A wall at the side of the Square 
 fell over, instantly killing Strawbridge and Pri- 
 vate Salesky. Corporal William Lutz, a Birds- 
 boro boy, was horribly mangled. His grieving 
 
142 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 comrades crowded about him, but his only 
 thoughts seemed to be of the folks at home. 
 "It will be all right," he said. "Don't any of 
 you write home about it," and again, "Only don't 
 tell my mother." For more than a month his 
 comrades speculated as to his fate, not knowing 
 that he had died that same night in the field 
 hospital. Corporal Watkins had also been killed 
 by this ill-omened shell and Privates Dalton, 
 Davis and Scardelette grievously wounded. 
 
 The badly shaken Company reformed itself 
 and waited for the cover of darkness, when they 
 stole up to a stone quarry near the front and 
 east of the village Courville. The quarry af- 
 forded some shelter from the almost continual 
 bombardment, and the Company remained in 
 it for nearly two weeks. The place was well 
 within the observation of the enemy and it was 
 suicide to move out during the day. The kitchen 
 had been moved up to a nearby dug-out but 
 meals could be served only at night. The days 
 passed at this place were incredibly long and 
 wearisome. The men worked at their dug-outs, 
 cleaned their uniforms and wrote letters. The 
 smallest sign of activity was provocative of a 
 bombardment. Private Elmer Root was wound- 
 ed by a shell fragment while attempting to bring 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 143 
 
 up rations. The excessive heat added to the dis- 
 comfort of the men in the cramped quarters. 
 Watchful enemy aeroplanes were continually 
 soaring over the quarry and were shot at by 
 the lads whenever it was deemed that they were 
 within range. On August 26th they were lucky 
 enough to bring down an enemy plane very near 
 the dug-outs; the aviators were taken prisoners 
 by the French. 
 
 Meanwhile the awful struggle for Fismette 
 went on without a pause. The gallant Pennsyl- 
 vanians were able to hold the line of the railroad 
 embankment but could do little more, while the 
 enemy artillery was continually shelling the back 
 areas. The German guns from the hilltops over 
 the valley poured down their galling fire upon 
 the American positions and their snipers and 
 machine gunners were so well placed as to make 
 the crossing of the river too hazardous for an 
 attack in force. The fighting in the streets of 
 the town swayed back and forth until August 
 28th. On that day the Germans made a major 
 attack which swept into and over Fismette, driv- 
 ing the Pennsylvania lads back to the river. 
 Then and only then did our High Command 
 awake to the knowledge that the town could not 
 be taken by infantry assault without an ap- 
 
144 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 palling loss. However, the Allied artillery was 
 now up and the gunners went systematically to 
 work to level the place. 
 
 By that strange free-masonry which prevails 
 in armies, the word was circulated that Company 
 B was once more to take its place in the line of 
 battle. On August 30th, with the coming of 
 darkness, the Company moved stealthily out of 
 its shelter and back to the reserve area south 
 of Arcis le Ponsart, where the men enjoyed the 
 crowning luxury of a bath and received new 
 clothing, of which they were badly in need. 
 Here, too, they were regaled with chocolate, 
 cigarettes and a warm meal, to which they had 
 lately been strangers. 
 
 The next night, in a heavy downpour of rain, 
 they reluctantly left their agreeable asylum and 
 marched back to the quarry. Lieutenant Finley 
 was transferred to Company C at this time and 
 Lieutenant Evans took his place with the Read- 
 ing boys. Captain Watres received orders to 
 reconnoitre positions for firing into the town of 
 Baslieux, about a kilometer northeast of Fis- 
 mettes. A detail which included Lieutenants 
 Evans and Boss stole up to the lines and located 
 a position in a field to the southwest of the vil- 
 lage. They left ammunition in the position 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 145 
 
 which they had chosen and then returned to the 
 quarry. On the next day came definite orders 
 as to the part which tlie boys were to take in 
 the impending attack. Replacements were sent 
 to take the place of the comrades who had re- 
 cently fallen and the entire detachment moved 
 forward to strange quarters in a cave southeast 
 of Villette. This was a cavern of some dimen- 
 sions extending into the hillside. The place was 
 ivell known to the Germans who had destroyed 
 one of the exits but had somehow failed to block 
 the other. It afforded a very welcome refuge 
 against the searching bombardment, which was 
 continually going on. The men left their guns 
 and tripods outside in the woods and crept mto 
 the cave which was large enough to shelter sev- 
 eral companies. The enterprising "Y" contrived 
 to bring up a field picture machine and to give 
 a show. Meanwhile the heroic One Hundred 
 and Third Engineers had advanced to the river 
 and, under most trying circumstances, succeeded 
 in placing fourteen frail structures across the 
 Vesle. The Berks boys remained in this unusual 
 place the entire day of September 3d, the en- 
 trance was so carefully watched by the Boche 
 sharpshooters that it was impossible to bring up 
 food until the evening. 
 
146 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 On September 4th the men prepared for ac- 
 tion under the critical eye of their Captain and 
 left their rocky refuge about noon. They crossed 
 the famous railroad embankment and then car- 
 ried their guns over the river by means of a foot- 
 bridge recently constructed by the engineers. 
 This crossing was a most perilous maneuver, as 
 it was conducted under the observation and bom- 
 bardment of the enemy. Once arrived on the 
 aorth bank of the Vesle, the boys dug in and 
 prepared themselves for the attack of the en- 
 suing day. 
 
 The anniversary of September 5th should al- 
 ways be commemorated in the City of Reading, 
 as it marks a particularly glorious page written 
 into the military annals of a martial town. It 
 marks also a unique achievement for American 
 arms, in that it was probably the only occasion 
 on which a Machine Gun Company went ahead 
 of infantry in an attack on an entrenched posi- 
 tion. It is hard to discover just why this costly 
 maneuver was attempted. The officers of Com- 
 pany B, upon being questioned upon this point, 
 invariably shake their heads or shrug their 
 shoulders, maintaining a discreet silence. Be- 
 fore the writer lies the letter of Irwin Moyer, 
 a Reading boy, who shared in the heroic attack. 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 147 
 
 written on powder-stained, yellow paper. It de- 
 serves to be perpetuated as an epic of Reading 
 valor. 
 
 "The order came from Colonel Ham, 
 commanding the One Hundred and Ninth 
 Infantry, for the attack to begin at seven 
 o'clock. The First Battalion was to lead with 
 Company B. When we arrived at the point 
 from which the advance was to be made. 
 Company D was without any officers to give 
 us directions. A Boche plane flying very 
 low was directing their artillery fire. At 
 seven o'clock we were still without any in- 
 structions and so we left the wood and went 
 to the job. As soon as we got out of the 
 woods they began to shoot at us. Our losses 
 were very heavy. We were advancing in 
 squad columns. Big Mike Panoski, whom 
 we called the Polish giant, made a living 
 tripod out of himself and the boys fired the 
 gun from his back. Lieutenant Boss was 
 just ahead of us and waved his hand to en- 
 courage us to come on, when I heard him 
 give an awful shriek and fall down. I tried 
 to get his first-aid packet open but couldn't 
 do it. I saw he was done for, but he kept 
 saying he wanted to go on. We left him and 
 Sergeant Grauer took his place. Our boys 
 were falling fast, as the Boche fire was very 
 
148 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 accurate. By this time we were up to the 
 top of the hill and very near the wire. Ser- 
 geants Grauer and Lawrence went forward 
 to find openings in the wire. The next 
 thing we saw was about fifteen Boche ap- 
 pearing on the other side of the wire, hold- 
 ing their hands up. Lawrence took them 
 prisoners and brought them through the 
 fence. Just then Grauer got a shot in the 
 stomach, which finished him. By this time 
 we had only two guns left out of twelve and 
 only sixteen men out of seventy-two, who 
 had begun to climb the hill. We were in a 
 high wheat field at this point, so we laid 
 down and waited for support. We dug holes 
 as best we could and lay in that damned 
 wheat field for three days. The first two 
 days we had no food at all. We lay in our 
 holes all day. We didn'tteven fire a shot. 
 At night the Boche sharpshooters would 
 come up from the other side of the wire and 
 pot at us. The first evening, Mr. Barker, 
 the Y. M. C. A. man, who sure was a nervy 
 cuss, came up with first-aid treatment. He 
 crawled through the wire and fixed up the 
 one German and some of our own wounded 
 who lay there. They were pumping gas at 
 us continually and we had our masks on as 
 much as we had them off. The first night it 
 rained hard and we were a miserable bunch. 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 149 
 
 At daylight of the second day we saw a 
 wounded man from the One Hundred and 
 Ninth Infantry lying on our field and Ray 
 Steinacker went out and brought him in. 
 Captain Watres was lying in his hole with 
 us and on the second day, about eight o'clock 
 in the morning, he was wounded and taken 
 to the first-aid station. He was the only offi- 
 cer we had remaining at that time. Lieuten- 
 ant Evans came forward and took his place. 
 Lieutenant Shoemacker started to come up 
 with us but was wounded for the second time 
 and had to give up the attempt. The last 
 day, about midnight, they brought up our 
 chow, which we sure were glad to get. 
 
 "The next day was the hardest of all. The 
 German planes were flying over us all day 
 and signalling to their artillery. We were 
 about all in when Lieutenant Potter came 
 in, just about sunset, and asked us to hold 
 on a little longer, saying that the French 
 were up and believe me, we all beat it, leav- 
 ing the guns where they were. As we went 
 through the woods again there was some 
 awful bombardment. We beat it back to the 
 sand quarry, where we formed the Company 
 and waited until daybreak and went 
 through Villette with our limbers, following 
 up back to a woods near Arcis-le-Ponsart." 
 
150 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 So much for Corporal Moyer's letter. He who 
 will, may read between the lines and interpolate 
 a story of confused orders, of incomplete liason, 
 of insufficient artillery preparation and of gal- 
 lant boys sent unfalteringly to their death be- 
 cause someone had blundered. Out from the 
 frayed pages stands the vision of the long hillside, 
 rising from the river and shimmering in the heat 
 of that September day and of the desperate little 
 groups of machine gunners advancing in the face 
 of a terrible bombardment and then holding 
 their position, almost without food or water, by 
 sheer pluck, for two galling days. 
 
 It was only a skeleton of a Company which 
 assembled itself at dawn in the woods by the 
 Vesle. Captain Watres was in the hospital and 
 did not again take up active leadership. The 
 Company had to mourn an irreparable loss in the 
 death of Lieutenant S. H. Boss, a gallant and 
 competent officer, who embodied the best tradi- 
 tions of the American army. The casualties 
 were severe, as was to be expected from the 
 nature of the advance. These included Sergeants 
 Grauer, Shilling and Hayward, Corporals Phil- 
 lip, Howard, Latin, Ruddy, McLoughlin, 
 Scherimler, Selinsky, Skulmis, Vincent Smith, 
 Stoudt, Stubblebine, Symons, Troy, Watson, 
 
THE FISMES SECTOR 15 1 
 
 Wayne, Adolph C. Yeager, Moll, Hain, Coe, 
 Dutcher, Hahn, Skinner, Thomas, Trout, Harry 
 Yeager, Bowers, Guenther and McCloud. 
 
 This heroism was not to go without its reward. 
 While the Reading Company was holding its po- 
 sition on the hill, their infantry comrades of 
 the One Hundred and Ninth, One Hundred and 
 Tenth and One Hundred and Eleventh Regi- 
 ments had advanced three kilometers across the 
 broad plain, leading from the height above the 
 Vesle to the Aisne. The eventual result of this 
 advance was to sweep the Germans back to the 
 Chemin des Dames. The Pennsylvania boys had 
 fought their way to the top of the high plateau 
 from which they could dimly descry the towers 
 of the cathedral of Laon, lying about twenty 
 kilometers to the north. The enemy had again 
 rallied on a new line of defense on the River 
 Aisne. For the Twenty-eighth Division, however, 
 there was to be no more fighting in this locality. 
 On September 7th they were relieved by the 
 French and ordered back to a rest camp for a 
 period of recreation, of which they were sadly 
 in need. 
 
 The infantry had fought unremittingly, day 
 and night, for nearly sixty days and the artillery 
 for over a month. Even the taciturn Mangin, 
 
152 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 usually so sparing in his praise, was moved to 
 cite the heroic division. 
 
 "I am proud," wrote he, "to have com- 
 manded you during such days and to have 
 fought with you for a deliverance of the 
 world." 
 
 The Divisional Commander, General Charles 
 H. Muir, was equally lavish in his praise. 
 
 "A new division by force of circumstances 
 took its place in the front line in one of the 
 greatest battles of the greatest war in his- 
 tory. The division has acquitted itself in a 
 creditable manner. It has stormed and taken 
 points that were regarded as proof against 
 assault. It has taken numerous prisoners 
 from a vaunted Guards Division of the 
 enemy. A little more grit and a little more 
 effort and the division will have the right 
 to look upon itself as an organization of 
 veterans." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Argonne 
 
 THE brilliant and arduous campaign on the 
 Vesle marked the conclusion of the 
 Twenty-eighth Division's participation as 
 part of a French Corps. The new American 
 army was now organized and henceforth the 
 division was to fight under American command. 
 It appears to have been the plan of the General 
 Staff to give the worn division a rest, but the 
 crowding events which accompanied the great 
 American advance of September, 1918, made 
 this impossible. The division was held in re- 
 serve at Loopy-le-Chateau, in the back St. Mihiel 
 area, where they remained in readiness on the 
 glorious day of September 12th, but were not 
 needed. Scarcely had the rejoicing over the sig- 
 nal success of their comrades subsided, when the 
 Divisional Commander received orders, on the 
 night of September 15th, to terminate the hard- 
 earned rest period and to proceed by stiff night 
 marches northward towards the forest of Ar- 
 gonne. The Fifty-third Artillery Brigade had 
 advanced and taken up its place in the wood 
 south of Boureuilles on the night of September 
 24th. In the meanwhile, the Infantry and Ma- 
 
154 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 chine Gun Battalions, with the accompanying 
 divisional trains, reached the new front by the 
 night of September 25th and lay in reserve posi- 
 tion until midnight. 
 
 The decimated Reading Company hiked 
 wearily southward all through the long hot day 
 of September 10th and reached Ouilly, along 
 the River Marne, late in the afternoon. The 
 men were utterly exhausted and the officers 
 deemed it impossible to move them during the 
 whole of the next day. About ten in the evening, 
 of September 11th, the tired Company mounted 
 on motor lorries and rode the entire night, fol- 
 lowing the course of the Marne through Chalons, 
 Pagny and Vitry, arriving at Contrison in the 
 afternoon, where they received an issue of hard 
 rations and then marched about twelve kilo- 
 meters to Cheminon le Ville. Here the exhaust- 
 ed lads were billeted in barns previously occu- 
 pied by French and Italian troops. The kitchen 
 outfit had been left behind with the wagon train, 
 but the boys improvised a canteen from which 
 they supplied themselves with fresh vegetables 
 and bread. This was the day on which their old 
 comrades of Company I went over the top in 
 the van of the Forty-second Division, in the great 
 attack of the St. Mihiel. The three days which 
 ensued were devoted to rest and a general po- 
 licing of billets and equipment. 
 
THE ARGONNE 155 
 
 On the night of September 16th the Company 
 moved out for what was to be the longest and 
 hardest hike which they were to make in France. 
 New shoes had recently been issued, which added 
 Qiaterially to the misery of the march; many 
 of the boys were compelled to drop out of the 
 line. Early in the morning they arrived at a 
 woods near Lisle en Barois, where they rested 
 for the balance of the day and sent back trucks 
 for their comrades who had fallen out. 
 
 On the next day they were cheered by the ar- 
 rival of the wagon train and early in the evening 
 they took up their march to the northward. It 
 was now apparent that the rest period which 
 they had promised themselves and which they 
 had so well deserved was to terminate all too 
 soon. It is a striking commentary on the morale 
 of the detachment that not one of the letters, 
 written at this period and which the writer has 
 been able to read, breathes the slightest spirit of 
 discontent. These boys had been in France 
 scarcely four months. They had come out of a 
 furnace which would have tested the spirit of the 
 most seasoned veterans and yet they were willing 
 to take up a new and terrible adventure with 
 cheerfulness, even with enthusiasm. 
 
156 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 They were now at Les Islettes, directly in the 
 celebrated Argonne forest. The signs of a major 
 operation were everywhere and the men noted 
 with pride that for the first time they were to 
 fight with a purely American army. All the 
 teeming thousands of soldiers — infantry, ar- 
 tillery, engineers, supply service, tanks, air serv- 
 ice, medical service. High Command and Staff 
 were American. What interested the boys to an 
 equal degree was the preparation for a belated 
 pay, which was distributed to them on September 
 19th, and which provoked an orgy in chocolate 
 and cigarettes. Many replacements were as- 
 signed to the Company during these days of prep- 
 aration, including Lieutenant Fred B. Proctor, 
 destined to a brief but glorious career, who 
 joined the boys at Neuvilly. The men were now 
 well within the range of the enemy's heavy ar- 
 tillery and it was necessary to dig in for protec- 
 tion. Inventory was taken of all the equipment 
 and all missing articles were supplied. The lads 
 were prepared, as far as possible, for the tre- 
 mendous drive which was before them. 
 
 On the great day of September 25th, the Com- 
 pany rested all day and cleaned their equipment. 
 They were to assist in the infantry attack on 
 Boureuilles by direct overhead fire during the 
 
THE ARGONNE l57 
 
 artillery preparation. One platoon was assigned 
 to be a combat liason group with the Thirty-fifth 
 Division, composed of Tennessee and Carolina 
 National Guard units. To the Brigade Platoon 
 were assigned six guns, under the command of 
 Lieutenants Potter and Proctor. To the liason 
 group were assigned four guns under Lieutenant 
 Evans. 
 
 Late that night the Company moved stealthily 
 northward to a point east of the road about three 
 kilometers north of Neuvilly, where they sep- 
 arated. Lieutenant Evans going forward with his 
 detachment and the other platoon removing their 
 equipment from the carts and setting up their 
 guns. There was a tense period of waiting and 
 then exactly at eleven o'clock, far away to the 
 east, sounded the booming of a signal gun. Im- 
 mediately there began the crash of the famous 
 "Million Dollar Barrage," of which so much has 
 been written. On a flaming front of fifty-four 
 miles, from St. Mihiel to the Champagne, over 
 three thousand guns were bombarding with the 
 intensity of drum fire. When the infantry ad- 
 vanced through the fog at half-past five in the 
 morning, the first line of German trenches had 
 been literally pulverized. The Reading boys per- 
 formed their part in this tremendous effort by 
 
158 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 firing into the towns of Boureilles and Petit- 
 Boureilles. About ten o'clock in the morning, 
 an excited runner, his head bound in a bloody 
 bandage, arrived to state that both towns had 
 fallen to the victorious Pennsylvanians. Accord- 
 ingly, the two platoons joined again and ad- 
 vanced warily to the northward over a part of 
 the field of the great battle of Verdun, fought 
 in 1916. The ground was so pitted with the 
 craters left in that gigantic struggle that the 
 Reading boys must continually scramble down 
 one side and up another of the enormous shell 
 holes. Suddenly they came in full view of the 
 historic town of Varennes, nestling in the valley. 
 "For all the world," wrote one of the boys, "like 
 a big Bernville seen from the hill." Had they 
 reflected, they might have remembered that this 
 was the town in which the last of the Bourbon 
 kings had been taken prisoner, in his flight from 
 Paris, at the beginning of the great Revolution. 
 The lads, however, seem to have been too utterly 
 spent by their harassing night and day to think 
 of anything but sleep. They spent that night in 
 an abandoned German trench and made ready 
 for the advance of the next day. 
 
 Early in the morning the Battalion received 
 its orders to move. Company B went directly 
 
THE ARGONNE 159 
 
 through the wrecked town of Varennes, which 
 had been virtually demolished by the shell fire 
 from both sides, most of the buildings having 
 been cut off at the second story. It was while pass- 
 ing through Varennes that the Berks lads got 
 their first glimpse of General Pershing, who 
 passed them in his automobile going up to the 
 front. The Company went forward to a quarry a 
 few kilometers north of the town and made ready 
 to assist in the infantry attack on Montblainville. 
 Four guns, under Lieutenant Proctor, were sent 
 to aid in the attack and two squads were sent to 
 reinforce Company A in the first line. This was 
 a particularly hot corner, as the enemy shelled 
 the roads and fields the entire day. The four 
 squads which remained in battalion reserve 
 busied themselves in bringing up ammunition 
 and in distributing the clips. 
 
 On the next day the strongly fortified hamlet 
 of Montblainville, on the west bank of Aire, fell 
 to the heroic One Hundred and Tenth Regiment. 
 A platoon, with Lieutenant Proctor, went on 
 with the victorious infantry. The two squads 
 which had been assigned to Company A re- 
 turned, having been in heated action and hav- 
 ing lost Privates Sloane and Zegular. At one 
 time General Muir, the Corps Commander, had 
 
160 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 personally directed their fire. Towards evening 
 the reunited Company moved to Montblainville 
 and established an ammunition dump there. 
 
 Early in the morning of September 29th the 
 reserve platoon went forward under a heavy 
 bombardment, to a stone quarry north of Mont- 
 blainville, where the battalion P. C. was estab- 
 lished. Sergeant Paul Fett, a Ninth street boy, 
 was severely wounded and lost an eye while gal- 
 lantly exposing himself in bringing up ammuni- 
 tion. By this time the American attack had gone 
 as far as the celebrated town of Apremont. Here 
 ensued the greatest struggle in which the Read- 
 ing boys took part during their entire career in 
 France. The town was held in force, much as 
 Fisme and Fismette had been, and presented 
 almost the same problem. The enemy had 
 brought up fresh reinforcements and covered 
 every approach by concentration of machine 
 guns. Apremont had been originally set up by 
 General Headquarters as the objective of a two 
 days' advance. However, the brains which 
 mapped out the campaign had failed to take into 
 account the nature of the terrain. That the 
 Twenty-eighth Division accomplished the task 
 in four days was remarkable. It had only done 
 so at a terrific cost. Regiments were down to 
 
THE ARGONNE 161 
 
 half their original strength and the survivors 
 were in a bad state from constant exposure and 
 extraordinary physical exertion. After one en- 
 gagement at Apremont, Company H of the One 
 Hundred and Ninth, buried twenty-four of its 
 men, which is the largest loss in killed of any 
 company in the Division, in one engagement, 
 during the war. 
 
 The Reading boys had scarcely penetrated into 
 the town when the enemy laid down a heavy 
 barrage, followed by a determined infantry at- 
 tack. There was close hand to hand fighting in 
 the dark. It was here that Brigadier-General 
 Dennis E. Nolan of the General Staff took com- 
 mand of the brigade in person and won the 
 Distinguished Service Cross by fighting in the 
 ranks with the doughboys. A reconnoitering 
 body of enemy, who apparently were not aware 
 that the Americans were in the town, came down 
 the village street almost at the moment that the 
 Berks Company, under the command of Lieu- 
 tenant Proctor, turned a corner by the church. 
 In the melee it was impossible to use the ma- 
 chine guns. Lieutenant Proctor had, with de- 
 voted courage, gone forward alone to find some 
 point of advantage at which a gun could be 
 mounted and brought into action. He was in- 
 
162 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 stantly shot through the lungs. Some of the boys 
 carried him to the first-aid station in the rear 
 but he died almost instantly. Lieutenant Potter, 
 who succeeded him in command, became lost 
 in the maze of winding streets and found himself 
 confronted by an enemy machine gun position 
 near the church. Nothing daunted, he called 
 upon the three men serving the gun to surrender 
 and took them prisoners. The entire command 
 then withdrew from the town and took up a 
 position on a hillside to the south. 
 
 Much grateful appreciation is voiced by the 
 boys for the work of Cook Dougherty, who had 
 managed to establish an improvised kitchen in 
 a stone quarry north of Montblainville and stuck 
 pluckily to his position, though almost constantly 
 under fire. He sent hot food each day to the 
 Company on the line all during the period up 
 to October 7th. 
 
 The Brigade Commander had planned a 
 reconnaissance in force to take place early in 
 the morning of October 1st. All of the machine 
 guns of the Brigade with one Company of the 
 One Hundred and Seventh Divisional Machine 
 Gun Battalion, were ordered to take part. Posi- 
 tions were assigned north of the town, with di- 
 rections to fire into La Forge and Chatel Chierry. 
 
THE ARGONNE 163 
 
 Strong infantry patrols were to go forward, fol- 
 lowing the Aire River on the right. Considerable 
 ammunition had been brought in bulk to the 
 dump in Apremont. About 3:00 A. M. the re- 
 serve platoon moved up from the quarry to the 
 town, where they were joined by the Machine 
 Gun Company of the One Hundred and Tenth 
 Infantry with six guns. Reconnaissance for po- 
 sitions was made and the guns were placed along 
 hedges in the infantry outpost lines a short dis- 
 tance in front of Apremont. Just after the guns 
 had been placed and such ammunition as was 
 in the boxes brought up, the enemy set down a 
 heavy rolling barrage on the town and vicinity. 
 The gunners sought what cover there was and 
 waited for the barrage to lift. A direct hit was 
 made by the enemy on one of the guns, putting 
 it out of action. The Germans followed their 
 barrage closely and due to the mist and character 
 of the terrain they were able to approach within 
 a short distance of the town. When the barrage 
 lifted the machine gunners took their positions 
 and had direct fire at the Germans coming on 
 in groups at short range. The gunners were 
 without sufficient ammunition for sustained fire 
 at the positions but in a short time a clip filling 
 party was organized at the P. C. and enough 
 ammunition was carried to the positions to keep 
 
164 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 the guns in action. This attack lasted for three- 
 quarters of an hour and ended in the complete 
 repulse of the enemy, who suffered severe losses. 
 It was one of the rare occasions upon which the 
 soldiers were enabled to fire directly upon an ad- 
 vancing enemy at point blank range and the op- 
 portunity was only afforded because of informa- 
 tion given by prisoners taken the day before. 
 Several American tanks which were in Apre- 
 mont were sent out from the flanks and rolled 
 ponderously across the fields, firing on the enemy 
 with machine guns and one-pounders at close 
 range. A direct hit was made on one of the tanks 
 by a German "77" which set it on fire. Privates 
 Bea and Stevenson were gassed during this en- 
 gagement. 
 
 The Company maintained its position during 
 the night of October 2d, amid continual bom- 
 bardment from our own and the enemy guns. 
 In the morning Lieutenant Evans took command 
 of the Second Platoon, crossing the Aire River 
 under a heavy shell fire and went forward along 
 the right bank about a kilometer, where he took 
 a favorable position and assisted in clearing a 
 woods which was infested by the German sharp- 
 shooters. The platoon remained here through 
 the entire day of October 4th, keeping up a 
 
THE ARGONNE 165 
 
 harassing fire upon the enemy territory which 
 lay in front of the One Hundred and Ninth In- 
 fantry. Meanwhile, the First Platoon maintained 
 its position in front of Apremont and fired dur- 
 ing the entire day into the wooded area near 
 Chatel Chierry. In some places their only target 
 was the flash from the enemy guns. On the 
 morning of October 5th they also crossed the 
 Aire and advanced two kilometers to the north- 
 ward, taking up a position in a trench about 
 three hundred meters from the Second Platoon. 
 It was hot work the entire time and the Company 
 suffered many casualties, including Privates 
 Dunn, Gray, Frank, Wright and Hawk. All of 
 this firing was prefatory to the infantry attack 
 upon Chatel Chierry and the ridge to the north 
 of the town. 
 
 This attack occurred early in the morning of 
 October 7th, preceded by a heavy barrage. A 
 terrific struggle ensued, for the enemy was 
 strongly fortified in the houses and narrow 
 streets of the little town and fought desperately. 
 The Pennsylvanians, however, were not to be 
 denied and penetrated the town at all points. 
 Soon came an order for the Berks Company to 
 proceed into the streets which presented a scene 
 of horrible havoc and carnage. 
 
166 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 To reach the village it was necessary to re- 
 cross the Aire, which, though narrow, was quite 
 deep at this point. It was a most critical move- 
 ment and was conducted with splendid spirit and 
 success. The men waded into the stream, hold- 
 ing their equipment as well as they could above 
 their heads. In spite of all their precautions 
 they ruined nearly all of their ammunition and 
 could not have taken part in any attack that day 
 without first being supplied with new cartridges. 
 This spectacular crossing of the Aire probably 
 gave rise to the accounts published in the Read- 
 ing newspapers, which pictured the Company 
 crossing the Marne under shell fire. In the first 
 place, the Marne, a river of about the size of 
 the Schuylkill in its upper reaches, is not to be 
 waded with impunity and in the second place, 
 when the Reading boys crossed the Marne, the 
 Germans had retired from the north bank and 
 they were in no more real danger than if they 
 had been crossing the Penn street bridge. There 
 is so much real glory attached to the career of 
 old Company A that there is no need to en- 
 croach upon the realm of imagination. 
 
 The bedraggled Company assembled in the 
 town late in the afternoon and was soon ordered 
 to report to the Second Battalion of the One 
 
THE ARGONNE 167 
 
 Hundred and Ninth Infantry, which was some 
 distance away. It was quite dark when the march 
 commenced and the Company was guided 
 through the dense forest in single file and event- 
 ually arrived at the P. C. of the One Hundred 
 and Ninth Infantry, where the men got a much- 
 needed rest in some German dug-outs. Their 
 casualties for the day included Sergeant White, 
 who had been badly gassed; Corporal Eisen- 
 hower and Privates Clayton, Price, Shuker, Sny- 
 der, Mill and Trask. 
 
 It was the understanding of the officers that 
 the Company was to take a part in an attack the 
 next morning, and the forward movement had 
 actually begun when a counter order was received 
 ordering the units back. Indeed, the exhausted 
 Division was bordering on collapse and was in 
 no shape for any further advance. The men had 
 had thirteen days of the most arduous fighting 
 against some of the best troops in the German 
 army. Their losses had been severe and it was 
 deemed absolutely necessary that they be moved 
 temporarily into a rest area. 
 
168 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 "The work of this division in the Argonne 
 offensive," wrote Lieutenant-General Bui- 
 lard, the Commander of the Second Army, 
 "is too well known for me to recount at 
 length, but such names as Varennes, Ar- 
 gonne forest, Apremont, Chatel Chierry and 
 Montblainville are written in history after 
 the name of the Twenty-eighth Division." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 The Projected Attack on Metz 
 
 EARLY in the morning of October 9th, word 
 was received that the division was to be 
 relieved, its place being taken by the fresh 
 Eighty-second Division. The worn out Reading 
 lads returned to their wagon train, north of 
 Varennes. Next day they marched to the rear, 
 passing through Varennes and NeuviUy and en- 
 trained late that night for an all-night ride in 
 the direction of Metz. At ten o'clock on the next 
 day the trucks stopped at an encampment north 
 of Menil le Tour, directly on the training ground 
 of the first American contingents in 1917, where 
 the men were enabled to get a much-needed six 
 days rest, punctuated by drills, baths and the 
 cleaning of equipment. They received fifty-six 
 replacements to make up for their severe losses 
 in the Argonne. Lieutenant Potter, who had 
 been gassed in the forest but had pluckily stuck 
 to his post, was admitted to the hospital and 
 Lieutenant Evans took command of the Com- 
 pany. Lieutenant Turner from Company A was 
 assigned to the detachment at this time. It was 
 during this period that the Fifty-third Artillery 
 Brigade was detached from the Twenty-eighth 
 
170 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 Division and sent across the entire breadth of 
 France to take part in the fighting in western 
 Belgium. The remainder of the division, includ- 
 ing the Reading soldiers, was assigned to the 
 Thiacourt sector in front of Metz, with its Divi- 
 sional Headquarters at Houdicourt. It was now 
 a part of the newly formed Second American 
 Army, which was intended to execute an en- 
 circling move and to have enveloped the de- 
 fenses of Metz for the first great invasion of 
 German territory. The division took over its 
 sector of the front on October 16th. 
 
 The rested Reading Company moved up 
 towards the lines to Noviant on the afternoon of 
 October 17th. They were well within range of 
 the outlying forts of the great stronghold of 
 Metz. From the high points they could see the 
 steeple of the famous cathedral, and when the 
 wind was right the sound of church bells in the 
 town came plainly to their ears. For ten days 
 the Company remained in this area, the time 
 being devoted to baseball and drilling on an 
 improvised machine gun range. A major attack 
 on the same gigantic scale as those of St. Mihiel 
 and the Argonne was in preparation, intended to 
 be launched about the middle of November. On 
 October 27th definite orders arrived for the ma- 
 
THE PROJECTED ATTACK ON METZ 171 
 
 chine gunners to move up and take a place in the 
 line then held by the French. Lieutenant Evans 
 and some of the non-commissioned officers went 
 forward to reconnoitre the positions. The ex- 
 pectant Company waited all day for the trucks 
 to move, but the order was postponed. Finally, 
 on the night of October 28th, the men moved 
 up to a position at Hassavant Farm and took 
 over a position from the French. The wagon 
 train stopped in Houdicourt in German billets. 
 The boys placed their guns and worked hard to 
 improve the emplacements turned over to them 
 by their allies. They were under continual and 
 heavy bombardment and had to be continually 
 on the watch for gas attacks. On October 31st 
 Sergeants Moran and eight privates were badly 
 gassed by a particularly insidious attack. Ser- 
 geant Flanagan and his detail took over the po- 
 sition of the men gassed. 
 
 On November 6th the Company rolled packs 
 and waited for a relief which did not arrive until 
 the next day, when the One Hundred and Tenth 
 Machine Gun Company took over their position. 
 The Berks boys moved to a woods near Veg- 
 neulles, where they enjoyed a three-days' rest, 
 after which the order came to move again up to 
 the line and support the One Hundred and 
 Ninth Infantry which was attacked at Heumont. 
 
172 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 The memorable day of November lltb found 
 the boys dug in at a position about five hundred 
 meters north of the ruined town of Heumont. 
 Let it be set down without any aspersion to the 
 reputation of a gallant company that the boys 
 did not manifest their usual ardor in going into 
 battle on that day. Rumors had been flying for 
 some time and it was tacitly understood that the 
 end of the war could not be far off. Neverthe- 
 less, at eight o'clock, orders were received for 
 Company H, of the One Hundred and Ninth 
 Infantry, to attack at 10:40 in the morning. The 
 Second Platoon, which up to this time knew 
 nothing as to the Armistice, was guided to a 
 position in the rear of the attacking Company. 
 Their advance was held up by an enemy ma- 
 chine gun nest, about one kilometer north of 
 Heumont. The platoon drew back about two 
 hundred meters to better protected positions in 
 a ravine. At 9:45 came the expected announce- 
 ment that the attack would not be made, that the 
 Armistice was to be signed. The over-joyed pla- 
 toon at once took up a defensive position which 
 they maintained until the fateful hour. Mean- 
 while, the First Platoon, under command of 
 Sergeant Flanagan, was in position about two 
 hundred meters west of Heumont, in support 
 
THE PROJECTED ATTACK ON METZ 173 
 
 of Company G, of the One Hundred and Ninth 
 Infantry, with orders to support the attack upon 
 the heavy entrenched Bois de Bonsil. At 10:40 
 they were subjected to heavy artillery fire, which 
 ceased at eleven o'clock. The Third Platoon was 
 on the left flank of Company G. Unfortunately 
 the casualties of the Company in this eleventh 
 hour's engagement were severe, including Ser- 
 geant McLoughlin, Privates Beaudry, Church- 
 man, Hedrick, Landis, Strickle, Thomas and 
 Wideman. Brave Mike Panoski, the Polish boy 
 who had so distinguished himself in the attack 
 at Baslieux, had been shot through the heart at 
 the beginning of the bombardment. 
 
 On this great day, Carl Stuber, a Tenth street 
 lad, was runner for Brigade Headquarters, and 
 he it was who carried the momentous tidings to 
 the Reading men in the line. 
 
 "They were in their dug-outs," he relates, 
 "getting ready for an advance, which would 
 have been a pretty hot affair. I had hardly 
 given my message when we were stupefied 
 to see crowds of Boche running over to us 
 between the mine fields with their hands up 
 and yelling like mad. They were crazy for 
 cigarettes and chocolate. They had some 
 cigars but they were awful. They were big 
 
174 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 fellows in sloppy uniforms, from the Three 
 Hundred and Twenty-eighth Infantry. Some 
 of them had been to America and talked 
 English and, of course, many of our Reading 
 crowd could talk to them in German. They 
 said their food had been vile. We had some 
 burned rice that our boys wouldn't eat and 
 they fell on it like wolves. They showed us 
 where the mines were and it kept us busy 
 for two days exploding them. This getting 
 together lasted for only about an hour when 
 our officers stopped it and chased the Ger- 
 mans back to their lines. All that night we 
 could hear them singing and burning Verey 
 lights and bon-fires. There wasn't much 
 doing with our crowd as they were all played 
 out and wanted sleep." 
 
 The heroic division had well earned its re- 
 pose after a long period of sustained fighting. 
 They had to mourn the loss of 2,551 killed and 
 their wounded numbered 11,429. This was the 
 highest percentage of loss for any National 
 Guard Division and is exceeded only by the Reg- 
 ular Divisions, the First, Second and Third. 
 Company B had been badly cut up and had been 
 reformed several times. The losses to the Berks 
 contingent numbered seven killed and fifty-one 
 wounded. 
 
THE PROJECTED ATTACK ON METZ 1 75 
 
 There is little more to relate of the active ca- 
 reer of Company B. Captain Watres, who had 
 received his majority in the interval, returned 
 shortly after the Armistice, as Battalion Com- 
 mander. It was thought for a while that the 
 division would form part of the Army of Occu- 
 pation and the men were held in readiness for 
 an advance upon Metz. They spent eight weary 
 weeks in their position at the Hassavant Farm, 
 leading a monotonous life in a small town of 
 scarcely a dozen houses. Captain Potter kept 
 his men as busy as possible in building roads 
 and in drills with the machine guns. Several of 
 the large hospital buildings were still standing 
 and were used by the men as barracks. On Jan- 
 uary 5th the division was moved back to the 
 Lorraine sector with Divisional Headquarters at 
 Columbey la Belle. The Berks Company was 
 quartered in the small village of Saulxures les 
 Bannes. Another disappointing interval of hope 
 and speculation passed for the homesick boys. 
 At last, on March 16th, they entrained once more 
 and moved westward to the great camp at Le 
 Mans in Brittainy, where they remained for six 
 weeks and then moved on to the embarkation 
 port of St. Nazaire. Here the lads embarked on 
 the Peerless, a Standard Oil ship, hastily remod- 
 
176 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 eled as a transport. The ship proved to be an 
 execrable sailer and the lads were seasick nearly 
 all the way to the Delaware Capes. They re- 
 ceived a wireless, when a day out from Phila- 
 delphia, to the effect that the great Jubilee 
 Parade of the Twenty-eighth Division was being 
 held without them, but seemed to have been too 
 much occupied with their own troubles to care 
 anything about it. They finally disembarked on 
 May 16th and entrained for Camp Dix, New Jer- 
 sey, where a week was consumed in the process 
 of mustering out. At last, on May 23d, the im- 
 patient lads entrained for the last lap of their 
 long journey, arriving at Reading on the after- 
 noon of May 23d. As they left camp there was 
 an affecting scene when the boys filed past Cap- 
 tain Potter and each clasped his hand. The 
 train moved out and the men joined in a rousing 
 cheer for the plucky Captain who had led them 
 so faithfully and well. Representatives of the 
 Citizens' Patriotic Committee met the men at 
 Camp Dix and their progress was heralded 
 through the fire alarms in the city of Reading. 
 When the train stopped at the Outer Station it 
 was in the midst of a dense throng of rejoicing 
 fellow-citizens, who led the boys in triumphant 
 march through the streets of the city, to the tune 
 
THE PROJECTED ATTACK ON METZ 177 
 
 of victory bells and amidst the plaudits which 
 they had so well earned. Their superior, as an 
 indomitable hard-fighting unit, is not to be 
 found in the annals of the American Expedi- 
 tionary Force, nor, has any National Guard Com- 
 pany a more creditable record for continued and 
 severe combat. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 SO ended the careers of two bodies of de- 
 voted soldiery. A complete record, in- 
 volving casualties, replacements and 
 orders of the day, as embodied in the official 
 records at Washington, would swell this book to 
 undue proportions. What is given here purports 
 to be a plain, unvarnished recital of the careers 
 of old Companies A and I in the Great War. 
 The writer, though unattached to either com- 
 pany during the war, has had the advantage of 
 having been personally over most of the terrain 
 covered by the lads in their peregrinations in 
 France. He has talked to scores of modest boys, 
 recounting in our kindly local accent and in the 
 most matter-of-fact way, sacrifices and achieve- 
 ments which should ring down the years. He 
 has been enabled to read many letters written 
 from overseas to relatives and friends. He has 
 had the advantage of several excellent diaries, 
 in particular, of the very admirable and com- 
 plete record kept by Sergeant Smith, the Ulysses 
 of Company I. Spontaneous communications of 
 this sort have a grip and a thrill which is not to 
 be attained by any form of literary invention. 
 
180 THE READING MILITIA 
 
 Out from their frayed pages mount the crowding 
 visions of glorious days; of Corporal Smith fight- 
 ing his spitting gun to the last when the gray 
 hordes overwhelmed him at Suippes; of Snyder 
 carrying his wounded comrade back through the 
 traverse trench with the foe at his very heels; 
 of Strawbridge steadfastly leading his command 
 over the bombarded road down to the village 
 where his doom awaited him; of Grauer taking 
 command of a forlorn hope when all his superi- 
 ors had been shot down and advancing up a 
 bullet-sprayed hill to meet his death at the top. 
 
 "Fame," wrote the poet, "is the fragrance of 
 heroic deeds; of flowers of chivalry and not of 
 weeds." If, by this recital, the writer shall 
 have been enabled in some small measure to en- 
 large the appreciation of his fellow-townsmen 
 for the suffering and achievements of the sons 
 of Reading in the greatest of all wars, he will 
 be well content of his task. 
 
COMPANY I— DEAD 
 
 Sergt. Paul H. Ludwig, 433 Moss. 
 Corp. William F. Gehring, Reading. 
 Corp. Floyd Bowers, 1416 N. Tenth. 
 Corp. Herbert Yeich, 943 N. Eleventh. 
 Private Adolph Kissinger, Glenside. 
 Private Ross Overdorf, 114 N. Seventh. 
 Private Achileffs Karausta, 441 Little Maple. 
 Private Nelson A. Bowers, 1416 N. Tenth. 
 Private Floyd Heckman, 202 S. Ninth. 
 Private Walter Briel, 1138 Green. 
 Private Alvin P. Epler, Mohnton. 
 Private Charles Arnold, 1043 Elm. 
 Private Milton H. Folk, 1716 N. Front. 
 
COMPANY A— DEAD 
 
 Sergt. George I. Strawbridge, 344 S. Fifth. 
 Sergt. George C. Wyncoop, 108 Spring. 
 Sergt. George E. Shade, 901 Schuylkill ave. 
 Corp. Leroy W. Correll, 727 Locust. 
 Corp. Frank G. Goodman, 512 S. Fifth. 
 Private Henry C. Rothenberger, 421 Wunder. 
 Private Charles Reber, Shillington. 
 Private William J. Lutz, Birdsboro. 
 Private Shipton G. Grauer, 433 Woodward. 
 Private Harry Mabry, Reading. 
 Private Nevin E. Miller, 409 W. Windsor. 
 Private William A. Giles, 929 N. Eighth. 
 Private Benjamin Moyer, 425 Moss. 
 Private Arthur Thomas, 746 N. Eighth. 
 Private Adam Behm, Mohnton. 
 Private Daniel Austin, 259 Jefferson. 
 Private Earl Hauck, 1354 Green. 
 Private George A. Gilliams, 901 Schuylkill ave. 
 Private John Loughlin, 422 Chestnut. 
 Private Paul Hollinger, 628 N. Thirteenth. 
 Private James G. H. Peiffer, 508 Mulberry. 
 
COMPANY I— WOUNDED 
 
 Sergt. Clarence E. Bingaman, 680 Tulpehocken. 
 Sergt. George A. Gring, 325 W. Greenwich. 
 Corp. Robert E. Muntz, 335 Locust. 
 Private George K. Sharp, 84114 Penn. 
 Private John E. Tobias, 212 S. Tenth. 
 Private Lloyd R. Burkey, 725 Pear. 
 Private James Troutman, 571 Douglass. 
 Private John Rinker, 744 Penn. 
 Private George H. Simmonds, 537 Spring. 
 Private Willis P. Snyder, 503 S. Twelfth, D.S.C. 
 Private Alvin P. Epler, Mohnton. 
 Private Frank G. Reilly, 1636 Cotton. 
 Private Milton Shuker, 131 Orange. 
 Private George Kochel, 1448 Muhlenberg. 
 Private Clarence W. Stubblebine, 1000 N. Sixth. 
 Private Robert W. Shappell, 620 Moss. 
 Private Albert Boldt, 210 S. Twelfth. 
 Private John C. Wessner, 826^4 Bingaman. 
 Private Earl W. Bennethum,269 S. Seventeenth. 
 Private James Oudath, 334 Buttonwood. 
 
COMPANY A— WOUNDED 
 
 Lieut. James M. Snyder, 436 N. Twelfth, D. S. C. 
 Lieut. Walter B. Ravel, 1257 Eckert ave. 
 Sergt. Albert R. Miller, 1396 Perkiomen ave. 
 Sergt. Earl L. Shilling, Shillington. 
 Sergt. Harold Miller, 548 North Eighth. 
 Sergt. Paul W. Fett, 35% N. Ninth. 
 Sergt. Samuel E. Crammer, 423 N. Second. 
 Sergt. Lehman Bright, Bernville. 
 Sergt. Howard S. Smith, 732 Birch. 
 Mess Sergt. William H. Bare, Shillington. 
 Corp. Jacob Newster, 538 South Sixth. 
 Corp. Philip K. Howard, Mt. Penn. 
 Corp. Norman E. Baer, 935 Windsor. 
 Corp. Stanley W. Schweimler, 158 W. Windsor. 
 Corp. John S. Lash, 320 Wood. 
 Corp. Lester R. Spickler, 732 Birch. 
 Corp. Charles A. Hawk, 432 N. Thirteenth. 
 Corp. James E. Snyder, 919 Douglass. 
 Private William S. McKeever, 521 Pike. 
 Private Russell H. Moll, 135 West Windsor. 
 Private Charles F. Lash, 320 Wood. 
 Private Antonio Diguardi, Millmont. 
 Private William A. Mitchell, 100 Yarnell. 
 Private Antonia Morro, 1335 Moss. 
 Private John W. Grim, 201 North Tenth. 
 Private Walter L. Eshbaugh, 439 Pearl. 
 
COMPANY -A"— WOUNDED 185 
 
 Private Harry Yeager, 649 Tulpehocken. 
 Private Elmer Root, 142 S. Twelfth. 
 Private Ammon R. Wayne, 1163 Mulberry. 
 Private Robert Fisher, 1355 Cotton. 
 Private Albert F. Shade, 422 Wood. 
 Private Charles U. Stoudt, 315 Cherry. 
 Private Raymond R. Weiser, 422 Spruce. 
 Private Raymond D. Barter, 1218 Green. 
 Private Frank Hahn, 869 N. Eighth. 
 Private George C. Wright, 1340 Church. 
 Private William E. Williams, 350 Tulpehocken. 
 Private Harvey E. Noll, 206 Chestnut. 
 Private Raymond N. Weiser, 422 Spruce. 
 Private Clyde Rippert, 439 Pearl. 
 Private Ammon R. Wayne, 352 Schuylkill ave. 
 
 Private Arthur M. Lowrey, 418 Pine. 
 
 Private Harry W. Schaeffer, 420 Orange. 
 
 Private Charles J. Marsh, 1311 Buttonwood. 
 
 Private Clayton Stubbeline, 342 Tulpehocken. 
 
 Private Carl F. Stuber, 7471/2 N. Tenth. 
 
 Private Charles K. Simmons, 335 Chestnut. 
 
 Private John J. Schucker, 131 Orange. 
 
 Private Henry A. Gehris, 725 Birch. 
 
 Private Earl C. Burkhart, Stony Creek Mills. 
 
 Private Earl R. Bohn, 134 N. Second. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER 
 
 The roster of Company 1. follows: 
 Captain Edwin V. Kestner, 734 N. 13th St., Reading, Pa. 
 First Lieut. Victor Garman, 25 N. 5th St., Lebanon, Pa. 
 First Lieut. Henry M. Gross, 1517 N. Front St., Harris- 
 burg, Pa. 
 Second Lieut. Glenn A. Ross, Waynesburg, Pa. 
 Second Lieut. James W. Mackall, Beaver, Pa. 
 Second Lieut. David N. Trapnell, 242 W. Walnut St., 
 
 Lancaster, Pa. 
 Second Lieut. Alfred O. Arseneau, 3510 Woodland Ave., 
 
 Duluth, Minn. 
 Agnew, Harry, Pvt., Washington, Pa. 
 fAlexander, Nicholas, Pvt., Clarksburg, West Va. 
 
 Ambler, J. Herbert, 817 Schuylkill Ave., Reading, Pa. 
 ♦Arnold, Charles, Pvt., 1043 Elm St., Reading, Pa. 
 fAustin, Daniel, Pvt., 259 Jefferson St., Reading, Pa. 
 Baer, Irvin R., Cook, 936 Mulberry St., Reading, Pa. 
 Bard, Harry, Pvt., 540 N. 13th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Barth, William F., Pvt., 711 Windsor St., Reading, Pa. 
 Bennethum, Earl, Pvt., first class, 269 S. 17th St., Reading, 
 
 Pa. 
 Behm, Adam, Sgt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Benson, Leon, Sgt., 2713 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Bingaman, Clarence E., Sgt., 680 Tulpehocken St., Read- 
 ing, Pa. 
 Bixler, Hammond, Pvt., 822 Court St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Bowers, Nelson, Pvt., first class, 1416 N. 10th St., Reading, 
 
 Pa. 
 tBoldt, Albert, Pvt., first class, 210 S. 12th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 ♦Killed. 
 
 tWounded. 
 
 JDeath due to sickness. 
 
188 COMPANY "F ROSTER 
 
 Boyd, Douglass B., Sgt., 308 Main St., Monongahela, Pa. 
 
 Bordner, Paul C, Corp., 659 Gordon St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Boyer, William E., Pvt., 1630 Muhlenberg St., Reading, Pa. 
 ♦Bowers, Floyd, Corp., 1416 N. 10th St., Reading, Pa. 
 *BrieI, Walter, Pvt., first class, 1138 Green St., Reading, Pa. 
 tBurkey, Lloyd, Pvt., 725 Pear St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Castner, Bryan, Pvt., 261 S. 17th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Conner, Robert, Mess Sgt., 101 Douglass St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Correll, LeRoy W., Sgt., 727 Locust St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Collins, Thomas, Pvt., R. F. D. 1, Parkwood, Pa. 
 
 Cunnningham, Clifford, Pvt., 214 E. Washington St., Mt. 
 Pleasant, Pa. 
 
 Daniels, Christian, Corp., 738 Pear St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Daniel, Louis, Pvt., 1481 Front St., Reading, Pa. 
 tDaugherty, John F., Pvt., 917 Church St., Indiana, Pa. 
 
 Davis, Miles, Pvt., 757 N. 8th St., ileading. Pa. 
 
 Davis, George, Pvt., P. O. Box 123, Bloomsburg, N. J. 
 
 Dease, Robert P., Sgt., 1116 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Dease, Earl, Pvt., first class, 1116 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 DeLong, Charles W., Pvt., first class, 220 W. Elm St., 
 Reading, Pa. 
 
 Devine, Joseph V., Sgt., 1108 N. 9th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Diefenbach, Arthur, Pvt., 1441 Fairview St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Dombroski, Martin, Pvt., 622 Pine St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Dwyer, William J., Pvt., 915 N. 8th St., Reading, Pa. 
 fEckenroth, Charles, Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 *Epler, Alvin P., Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Faust, Elmer E., Sgt., 114 N. 7th St., Reading, Pa. 
 fFerryman, Charles, Mech., Schuylkill Haven, Pa. 
 
 Fix, Harrison, Pvt., 1143 Franklin St., Reading, Pa. 
 $Folk, Milton H., Pvt., first class, 1716 N. Front St., Read- 
 ing, Pa. 
 
 Fry, Chester D., Corp., 318 Washington St., Reading, Pa. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER 189 
 
 Fry, Daniel, Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Garis, Harold, Pvt., 519 Bingaman St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Gehring, William F., Corp., 308 High St., Hanover, York 
 County, Pa. 
 Giles, William A., Corp., 929 N. 8th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Gillmore, Raymond, Pvt., 131 S. 9th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Gilliams, George A., Pvt., 901 Schuylkill Ave., Reading, Pa. 
 Good, George E., Pvt., 330 S. 17th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Graeff, Harry E., Supply Sgt., 114 N. 7th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Gring, George A., Sgt., 325 W. Greenwich St., Reading, Pa. 
 tHauck, Earl, Pvt., first class, 1354 Green St., Reading, Pa. 
 tHeckman, Floyd, Pvt., first class, 202 S. 9th St., Reading, 
 Pa. 
 Heckman, James I., Pvt., Kingston, N. J. 
 Herring, George, Pvt., 416 S. 11th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Herman, John, Pvt., Barren Island via Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 
 New York. 
 Heil, Charles, Pvt., 1215 Church St., Reading, Pa. 
 *His8inger, Adolph, Pvt., R. F. D. 2, Box 147, Reading, Pa. 
 HoUinger, Paul, Pvt., 628 N. 13th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Homan, Clarence, Sgt., 1721 Haak St., Reading, Pa. 
 Homan, Webster, H. S-, Grill, Pa. 
 
 Hoover, Frank G., Pvt., 150 Clymer St., Reading, Pa. 
 Hoster, Reuben, Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 Hoster, Howard E., Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 Hoster, Clayton, Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 Hostetler, Harry, Stable Sgt., 306 S. Diamond St., Mt. 
 
 Pleasant, Pa. 
 Hurst, Paul, Pvt., 1320 Buttonwood St., Reading, Pa. 
 Hummel, John C, Pvt., first class, Shillington, Pa. 
 Hyneman, Arthur, Pvt., 1702 Hill Road, Reading, Pa. 
 Jarrette, Ralph C, Sgt., 1424 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 Johnston, Earl J., Pvt., 96 Ewing St., Washington, Pa. 
 
190 COMPANY "I" ROSTER 
 
 *Karausta, AchilefFs, Pvt., 972 Pennsylvania Ave., Tyrone, 
 Pa. 
 
 *Keltz, Harry A., Pvt., 323 Fairmont St., Latrobe, Pa. 
 
 Kelly, Alden, Pvt., 303A S. 17th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Kissling, Harry, Pvt., Sinking Springs, Pa. 
 
 Klein, William R., Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Klopp, John E., Corp., West Leesport, Pa. 
 tKochel, George, Pvt., 1448 Muhlenberg St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Koehler, Charles, Corp., Reading, Pa. 
 fKompa, Anthony, Cook, Reading, Pa. 
 *Kotouch, Robert, Pvt., Greensburg, Pa. 
 
 Kramer, Earl, Pvt., 1210 Church St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Kreider, Russell, Pvt., 638 Penn St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 LaMar, William H., Pvt., 36A S. 10th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Lamb, John W., Pvt., 515 Finley St., Monongahela City, Pa. 
 
 Lee, Frederick, Pvt., 712 McKnight St., Reading, Pa 
 
 Leinbach, Harry, Pvt., first class, 1721 Center Ave., Read- 
 ing, Pa. 
 
 Leininger, Barton, Pvt., first class. Sinking Springs, Pa. 
 
 Long, John A-, Pvt., Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Lotz, Earl C, Cook, 1626 Mulberry St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Loughlin, John, Pvt., 422 Chestnut St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Ludwig, Paul H., Sgt., 433 Moss St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Ludwig, Raymond, Corp., 433 Moss St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Major, Ross, Bugler, 330 N. 10th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Millen, James, Pvt., 718 Chestnut St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Miller, Nevin E., Pvt., first class, 409 W. Windsor St., 
 Reading, Pa. 
 tMoore, William B., Sgt., Joanna Furnace, Berks County, 
 Pa. 
 
 Moyer, Ben, Pvt., first class, 425 Moss St., Reading, Pa. 
 fMuntz, Robert E., Corp., 335 Locust St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Muthart, John L., Pvt., 640 Minor St., Reading, Pa. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER l9l 
 
 Noecker, John F., Pvt., 115 High St., Schuylkill Haven, Pa. 
 Odage, Christofiur, Pvt., 3 Cedar St., Reading, Pa. 
 Ottilo, Alfred, Pvt., Ascoli Piceno, Italy. 
 Oudath, James, Pvt., 334 Buttonwood St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Overdorf, Ross, Cook, 114 N. 7th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Palm, William J., Pvt., first class, Wyomissing, Pa. 
 Park, Arthur M., Sgt., 419 Fairmont St., Latrobe, Pa. 
 Peiffer, James G. H., Pvt., 208 Mulberry St., Reading, Pa. 
 Personette, Charles E., Corp., 1972 Patterson Place, Balti- 
 more, Md. 
 Queer, Thomas, Sgt., 935 W. Washington St., Mt. Pleasant, 
 
 Pa. 
 Rambo, Harold, Pvt., 817 Schuylkill Ave., Reading, Pa. 
 Reber, William J., Corp., 1147 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 Reifsnyder, Franklin, Pvt., 1030 Spruce St., Reading, Pa. 
 Reilly, Frank, Pvt., 1638 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 Remza, Anthony W., Pvt., 660 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 Rettgers, Tthamar, Sgt., 1041 Elm St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Reynolds, Walter S., Pvt., 20th St. and 5th Ave., Beaver 
 Falls, Pa. 
 Rinker, John, Pvt., 744 Penn St., Reading, Pa. 
 Rogers, Robert L., Cook, 138 Plum St., Reading, Pa. 
 Sabatucci, Enrico, Pvt., Temple, Pa. 
 
 Savage, Earl W., Pvt., 351 W. Douglass St., Reading, Pa. 
 Schaeffer, Irvin L., Cook, 148 Walnut St., Ephrata, Pa. 
 Schaufert, Paul R., Pvt., 1008 Franklin St., Reading, Pa. 
 Schick, Walter H., Corp., 116 S. 8th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Seger, Ward M., Pvt., Derry, Pa. 
 
 Shade, George F., Sgt., 901 Schuylkill Ave., Reading, Pa. 
 Shappell, Robert W., Pvt., 620 Moss St., Reading, Pa. 
 tSharp, George, Pvt., 841 i Penn St., Reading, Pa. 
 tShuker, Wilton, Pvt., 131 Orange St., Reading, Pa. 
 Simmonds, George H., Jr., Pvt., first class, 537 Spring St., 
 Reading, Pa. 
 
192 COMPANY "I" ROSTER 
 
 Simpson, Charles M., Pvt., Sidney St., Greensburg, Pa. 
 
 Simon, Cost, Cologne, Greece. 
 
 Smith, Stanley G., Mech., 114 N. 7th St., Reading, Pa. 
 tSnyder, Willis P., Pvt., 1237 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Spears, Samuel, Sgt., 706 Commerce St., Shamokin, Pa. 
 
 Stark, Abe., Cook, 1718 Park Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 fStauffer, John W., Pvt., R. F. D. 5, Box 102, Greensburg, 
 Pa. 
 
 Steely, Harry, Pvt., R. F. D. 3, Sinking Springs, Pa. 
 
 Stief, Lourin, Pvt., Warnersville, Pa. 
 
 Stover, Carson E., Sgt., 144 Washington Ave., Ephrata, Pa. 
 
 Stoudt, Cleveland, Pvt., first class. Sinking Springs, Pa. 
 tStubblebine, Clarence W., Pvt., 1418 Mulberry St., Read- 
 ing, Pa. 
 
 Swavely, William, Pvt., 410 Orange St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Thiry, George M., Pvt., 1032 Amity St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Thomas, Arthur W., Pvt., 746 N. 8th St., Reading, Pa, 
 
 Tlumack, Andrew T., Sgt., R. F. D. 7, Greensburg, Pa. 
 tTobias, John E., Pvt., first class, 212 S. 10th St., Reading, 
 Pa. 
 
 Tothero, William, Corp., Mohnton, Pa. 
 fTroutman, James, Pvt., 571 Douglass St-, Reading, Pa. 
 
 Visner, Walter, Pvt., 421 S. 7th St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Vogel, William E., Pvt., first class, Mohnton, Pa. 
 
 Wagner, George A., Pvt., 1348 Cotton St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Walker, Harry R., Bugler, 152 Hamilton St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Wanner, Louis, Corp., 918 Robeson St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Waidner, Elmer, Pvt., 564 S. 15th St., Reading, Pa. 
 tWentzel, Charles C. D., Pvt., 227 Penn St., Reading, Pa. 
 tWertz, John E., Pvt., 1618 Fairview St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Wessner, John, Pvt., 826| Bingaman St., Reading, Pa. 
 
 Wieand, Grover, Pvt., R. F. D. 1, Reading, Pa. 
 
 Wildermuth, Lewis C, Corp., 432 Laurel St., Reading, Pa. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER 193 
 
 tWitman, Charles, Pvt., first class, 361 W. Greenwich St., 
 Reading, Pa. 
 
 Wynkoop, George, Corp., 108 Spring St., Reading, Pa. 
 *Yeich, Herbert, Corp., 943 N. 11th St., Reading, Pa. 
 Young, Earl E., Corp., 703 N. 10th St., New Brighton, Pa. 
 Young, William F., Pvt., first class, Mohnton, Pa. 
 
REPLACEMENTS— Officers 
 
 Brooks, Joseph W., Capt., Williams Club, N. Y. City. 
 
 Rowse, Herbert W., First Lieut., 12 Cever St., Plymouth, 
 Mass. 
 
 Shelledy, Earl E., First Lieut., Edinburg, Texas. 
 
 Hamlin, Edgar G., Second Lieut. 
 
 Ridenour, John S., First Lieut., 220 East Penn St., Bed- 
 ford, Pa. 
 
 Shivers, Edw. D., Second Lieut., Marian, Alabama. 
 
 Pendleton, George, First Lieut., 7 E. 80th St., N. Y. City. 
 
 Rochester, William E., Second Lieut., Ellicott City, Md, 
 
 Jung, William J., First Lieut., 1309 Washington St., Mani- 
 towoc, Wisconsin. 
 
 Hupe, Leroy W., Second Lieut. 
 
REPLACEMENTS — Privates and Non-Commissioned 
 Officers 
 
 Ahlm, Oscar, Pvt., Chicago, 111. 
 Anderson, George, Pvt. 
 tArtz, Leo J., Pvt., Aberdeen, S. D. 
 
 Artz, Matt. Pvt. 
 fAshford, Harry, Corp. 
 Ashton, William, Sgt., 511 Benton Ave. (North), Helena, 
 
 Montana. 
 Askew, Francis, Pvt. 
 Barber, Charles J., Pvt. 
 
 Barlow, William H., Pvt., Organsville, Georgia. 
 Bowman, Eddie W., Pvt. 
 Blackman, Irving, Pvt., New York City, N. Y., 1090 
 
 Simpson St. 
 Blank, William F., Pvt., Delavan, Walwarth, Wisconsin. 
 Blashfield, Ralph, Pvt., 188 S. Jefferson St., Battle Creek, 
 Michigan. 
 *Bonacher, John E., Pvt. 
 Borglin, Rudolph, Pvt., 229 Harvard St., Cambridge, Mass. 
 Boschenien, Frederick, Pvt., Mt. Vernon, N. Y., 112 Pros- 
 pect Ave. 
 Bothwell, Harold H., Pvt. 
 Bouten, Joseph O., Pvt. 
 tBrazelli, Primo, Pvt. 
 Bremen, John J., Pvt., 370 York St., Jersey City, N. J. 
 Bryant, Rufus R., Pvt. 
 
 Buch, Herman, Pvt., 11 E. 98th St., New York City, N. Y. 
 tBumgarner, Sim, Pvt., Delight, Arkansas. 
 Burracker, August, Pvt. 
 Cahill, Joseph M., Pvt. 
 
 tWounded. 
 ♦Killed. 
 
196 COMPANY "I" ROSTER 
 
 Camp, Albert J., Pvt. 
 
 Carroll, Thomas J., Pvt., Delight, Arkansas. 
 
 Casale, John, Pvt., Valla Torino, Italy. 
 
 Clair, Harry A., Pvt. 
 
 Cohen, Louis, Pvt. 
 
 Cohl, Davie C, Pvt. 
 fConvey, James S., Pvt. 
 
 Cornelius, Edwin H., Pvt. 
 
 Cornish, John H., Pvt., Nathan, Arkansas. 
 
 Daniels, Charles B., Mech., 1552 Dwight St., Holyoke, Mass. 
 
 Degista, Fedelle, Pvt. 
 
 Dowd, James H-, Pvt. 
 
 Dubitsky, Hernan, Pvt., 24 Hewins St., Dorchester, Mass. 
 
 Eubank, Champ R., Pvt., Sundryes, Virginia. 
 
 Eubank, George E., Pvt., Sundryes, Virginia. 
 
 Fay, Alfred C, Pvt. 
 
 Ferguson, John K., Pvt. 
 
 Fifield, Earl, Pvt. 
 
 Florey, Charles E., Pvt., R. F. D. No. 4, Coldwater, Mich. 
 
 Fralich, Palmer B., Pvt. 
 
 Grape, Erick W., Pvt., Estelline, S. D. 
 
 Granit, Michael, Pvt. 
 
 Hann, Orion A., Pvt., Sharon, Pa-, Box 113. 
 
 Hanson, Charles, Corp., Rivertown Route, Deerwood, Minn. 
 
 Hathaway, Roy C, Pvt. 
 ^Hickman, Roy, Pvt. 
 
 Hines, James M., Pvt., 57 Easton Ave., Worcester, Mass. 
 
 Holland, Joseph, Pvt., Monticello. 
 ■""Houston, John M., Pvt. 
 
 Huffman, Willie, Pvt., Bridgewater, Virginia. 
 
 Hughes, Mack L., Pvt- 
 
 Hyronimus, Rheinhold, Pvt., Toledo, Ohio. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER 197 
 
 Johnson, Evan, Pvt. 
 
 Knighten, John C, Pvt. 
 
 Larson, Albert, Pvt. 
 tLarson, John W., Pvt. 
 * Leonard, Herwitt, Pvt. 
 
 Lesikar, Emil, Pvt., Route 3, Temple, Texas. 
 
 Lewis, Thomas J., Pvt. 
 
 Liebman, William, Pvt., 733 West Washington St., Madison, 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 Loose, Robert B., Pvt. 
 
 Macie, Frank, Pvt. 
 
 Martin, Luther W., Pvt. 
 *Martorella, Guy, Pvt. 
 
 McDonald, Frank E., Pvt., Winnebago, Indiana. 
 
 McWhorter, Jesse J., Pvt. 
 
 Meleske, Anton W., Pvt., 340 Mitchel St., Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Miller, C., Pvt., Eldarof Stanton, Virginia. 
 
 Millar, Iveaux, Sgt., 163 Second Ave., Appleton, Wis. 
 
 Miller, Harvey, Pvt. 
 
 Miller, Joseph E., Pvt., Dannrayer Ave., South Bend, Ind. 
 *Mitman, Stanley E., Pvt. 
 
 Morgan, Louis R., Pvt., Farrwell, Michigan. 
 
 Moravec, Frank, Pvt., Jirice, 31 Humpolea, Bohemia. 
 
 Muiler, Arthur, Pvt. 
 
 Murray, Ernest L., Sad., Elliston, Montana. 
 
 Neal, Clarence P., Pvt. 
 
 Nelson, Irvin Pvt., 4706 Troy St., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Nielsen, Jens C, Pvt. 2517 North Springfield Ave., Chicago, 
 Illinois. 
 tOlder, Delbert F., Pvt., 109 Nelson St., Battle Creek, Mich. 
 
 O'Neal, John E., Pvt. 
 *Pattison, Robert C, Sgt., Esterly St., Carlisle, England. 
 
 Painter, Thomas W., Sgt., Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. 
 
198 COMPANY "I" ROSTER 
 
 Pepper, Thomas E., Corp., Englewood, Florida. 
 Perlestein, Albert, Pvt. 
 *Plis, Samuel, Pvt. 
 Polkinghorn, Wright W., Pvt. 
 
 Personette, Charles, 209 N. Green St., Baltimore, Md, 
 Radtke, Louis A., Pvt., Peshtigo Marinette, Wisconsin. 
 Reich, Reinholt F., Pvt. 
 Rice, Guy L., Pvt., Gleason, Wis. 
 Rosenfeld, Samuel, Pvt., 51 Willett St., New York City, 
 
 N. Y. 
 Scharf, Hyman, Pvt., 1459 Minford Place, New York City, 
 
 N. Y. 
 Schlaupitz, Ben A., Pvt., Armenia Juneau, Wisconsin. 
 Schneider, John J., Pvt., 44 Dominick St., New York City, 
 
 N. Y. 
 Seegar, Alfred W., Pvt. 
 
 Schultz, August £., Pvt., Sparata, Wisconsin. 
 Sheahan, Edward, Pvt., A1109 South Hamilton Ave., 
 
 Chicago, Illinois. 
 Silvaro, Vallititti, Pvt. 
 *Silvey, Bryant D., Pvt. 
 Sinicke, John J., Pvt., 365 11th Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
 Sloane, George E., Pvt. 
 * Smith, Harvey, Corp. 
 Smith, Hyman, Pvt. 
 Smithers, Clifford, Pvt. 
 Snyder, Walter R., Pvt. 
 Stanes, William, Pvt., Blaza, Greece. 
 Standiford, Ralph, Pvt., Bryant, Wisconsin. 
 Steiger, Charles, Pvt. 
 
 Stein, Philip, Pvt., 313 S. 5th St., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 Sterner, Edw. C, Pvt., New German, Martindale, Minn. 
 Tallant, Ben M., Pvt., Gumming, Georgia. 
 
COMPANY "I" ROSTER 199 
 
 Taylor, Robert, Pvt., Cooper, S. D. 
 
 Thomas, Avila, Pvt. 
 
 Thompson, Clarence, Pvt., Holem, Wisconsin. 
 
 Thurloff, Frank C, Pvt., North Prairie, Wisconsin. 
 
 Traeder, Adolph, Pvt. 
 
 Tryggestad, Ray E., Pvt., Genoa, Wisconsin. 
 
 Tua, Angeluis J., Pvt., 726 Demoth St., West Hoboken, N. J. 
 
 Vegotsky, Abraham, Pvt. 
 
 Walgreen, Martin, Pvt., Athelstane Marinete, Wisconsin. 
 *Walsh, George, Pvt. 
 
 Ward, Francis B., Pvt. 
 
 Weaver, Wesley, Corp., F. R. F. D., No. 2, McKean, Pa. 
 
 Weber, Edward, Pvt., 309 Vernon Place, Mt. Vernon, N. J. 
 
 Weisjahn, Emil G-, Pvt., West Field, Wisconsin. 
 
 Wignot, Ernest C, Pvt., Glenwood St., Natice, Mass. 
 tWilliams, Matson, Pvt. 
 fWoytisek, Frank, Pvt. 
 
 Wyat, Lyle, Corp., E623 Logan St., Helena, Montana. 
 
 Yagle, Joseph A., Pvt., 407 E. 153d St., New York, N. Y. 
 
 Yarborough, Felix N., Pvt., R. F. D. No. 1, Aragon, Georgia. 
 
 Zechmeister, Anton, Pvt., 339 23d Ave., Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Zimmer, Arthur, Pvt., 1111 29th St., Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Zimmer, Joseph. Pvt., 2025 Madison Ave., New York City. 
 
 Zingsheim, Paul A., Pvt., Allentown, Wisconsin. 
 
COMPANY A ROSTER 
 The roster of Company A follows: 
 
 Capt. Charles G. Miller, aged 43 years, 323 McKnight Street, 
 city detective. 
 
 First Lieut. Harry E. Wootten, aged 29 years, shoemaker, 
 1047 Church Street. 
 
 First Lieut. Irvin E. Seaman, aged 43 years, sporting goods 
 distributor, 219A North Fourth Street. 
 
 Second Lieut. William A. Kauffman, aged 34 years, cutter, 
 1436 Perkiomen Avenue. 
 
 Second Lieut. James M. Snyder, aged 36 years, salesman, 
 436 North Twelfth Street. 
 
 First Sergt. Merrill E. Goldman, aged 29 years, clerk, 415 
 Woodward Street. 
 
 Supply Sergt. Joseph D. Eisenbrown, aged 23 years, book- 
 keeper, 300 North Sixth Street. 
 
 Mess Sergt. Walter Shultz, aged 44 years, molder, 314 Kline 
 Street, West Reading. 
 
 Sergt. Earl L. Shilling, aged 22 years, florist, Shillington. 
 
 Sergt. George L Strawbridge, aged 24 years, newspaper re- 
 porter, 344 South Fifth Street. 
 
 Sergt. Harold Miller, aged 22 years, chauffeur, 548 North 
 Eighth Street. 
 
 Sergt. William B. Moore, aged 27 years, planing mill hand, 
 1008 Cotton Street. 
 
 Sergt. George A. Kuersten, aged 26 years, clerk, 335 Doug- 
 lass Street. 
 
 Sergt. William J. Eppinger, aged 35 years, boilermaker, 830 
 Master Street. 
 
 Corp. Irvin B. Bitler, aged 23 years, laborer, Shillington. 
 
 Corp. Samuel E. Crammer, aged 22 years, salesman, 423 
 North Second Street. 
 
 Corp. William H. Baer, aged 24 years, mill hand, Shillington. 
 
 Corp. Jacob Newstetter, aged 22 years, molder, 538 South 
 Sixth Street. 
 
202 COMPANY "A" ROSTER 
 
 Corp. Paul M. Johnson, aged 21 years, machinist, 930 But- 
 
 tonwood Street. 
 Corp. Walter B. Ravel, aged 24 years, inspector, 1257 
 
 Eckert Avenue. 
 Corp. Clarence L. Kercher, aged 20 years, painter, 1108 
 
 Douglass Street. 
 Corp. Samuel H. Nelms, aged 25 years, electrician, 442 
 
 Pearl Street. 
 Corp. John F. Haggerty, aged 21 years, laborer, 536 North 
 
 Eleventh Street. 
 
 Corp. Lehman Bright, aged 23 years, laborer, 122 Oak 
 Street. 
 
 Cook George E. Franke, aged 37 years, hatter. Tenth and 
 Walnut Streets. 
 
 Cook Thomas Scott, aged 41 years, steam fitter, Allentown. 
 
 Mechanic Claude B. Hain, aged 22 years, machinist, 1017 
 Douglass Street. 
 
 Bugler Charles A. Hawk, aged 19 years, electrician, 432 
 North Thirteenth Street. 
 
 Bugler John J. Shucker, aged 19 years, student, 131 Orange 
 Street. 
 
 Private Floyd Adam, Brst-class, aged 23 years, machinist, 
 214 Hudson Street. 
 
 Private Norman C. Bear, first-class, aged 22 years, ma- 
 chinist, 935 Windsor Street. 
 
 Private Emanuel C. Beck, first-class, aged 25 years, fore- 
 man, 1020 North Fourth Street. 
 
 Private Edward J. Boone, first-class, aged 22 years, clerk, 
 8 North Second Street. 
 
 Private Earl Bush, first-class, aged 20 years, laborer, 742 
 North Ninth Street. 
 
 Private Duval Carbaugh, first-class, aged 26 years, laborer, 
 106 NicoUs Street. 
 
 Private Harry C. DeLong, first-class, aged 20 years, baker, 
 550 Pike Street. 
 
COMPANY "A" ROSTER 203 
 
 Private Elwood C. Ford, first-class, aged 24 years, weaver, 
 
 Coatesville. 
 Private Franklin H. Gates, first-class, aged 40 years, laborer, 
 
 110 South Ninth Street. 
 Private Frank J. Goodman, first-class, aged 20 years, iron 
 
 worker, 512 South Fifth Street. 
 Private Raymond D. Harter, first-class, aged 19 years, 
 
 laborer, 1218 Green Street. 
 Private Thomas S. Marsh, first-class, aged 44 years, gardener, 
 
 1311 Buttonwood Street. 
 Private Harry D. McCarty, first-class, aged 20 years, shoe 
 
 worker, 715 Locust Street. 
 Private Elmer J. Mengel, first-class, aged 24 years, inspector, 
 
 244 Franklin Street. 
 Private William A. Mitchell, first-class, aged 21 years, 
 
 laborer, 100 Yarnell Street, West Reading. 
 Private Walter C. Morgan, first-class, aged 19 years, heater, 
 
 1339 North Ninth Street. 
 Private Arthur M. Sowrey, first-class, aged 22 years, laborer, 
 
 418 Pine Street. 
 Private Stanley R. Stitzman, first-class, aged 22 years, clerk, 
 
 1137 Douglass Street. 
 Private Raymond R. Weiser, first-class, aged 19 years, 
 
 messenger, 422 Spruce Street. 
 Private John W. Ault, aged 18 years, laborer, 1231 North 
 
 Ninth Street. 
 Private Russell C. Bernard, aged 23 years, plater, 617 Minor 
 
 Street. 
 Private Jeremiah A. Bossier, aged 24 years, finisher, 
 
 Shillington. 
 Private Charles F. Lash, aged 21 years, laborer, 320 Wood 
 
 Street. 
 Private Charles E. Mack, aged 22 years, teamster, 1336 
 
 Buttonwood Street. 
 Private Paul A. Adams, aged 18 years, knitter, 723 Locust 
 
 Street. 
 
204 COMPANY "A" ROSTER 
 
 Private John H. Baureithel, aged 24 years, bank teller, 116 
 
 Walnut Street. 
 Private Clair A. Baney, aged 20 years, hotel bellman, 1327 
 
 Kenney Street. 
 Private Earl C. Burkhart, aged 21 years, laborer, Stony 
 
 Creek. 
 Private William F. Bucher, aged 18 years, machinist, 572 
 
 South Eleventh Street. 
 Private Robert E. Bruder, aged 24 years, laborer, 1028 
 
 Locust Street. 
 Private Lewis Cacia, aged 26 years, porter, 36 North Third 
 
 Street. 
 Private John G. Conway, aged 20 years, laborer, 115 Second 
 
 Avenue, West Reading. 
 Private Harry A. Crist, aged 18 years, car repairer, 759 
 
 North Twelfth Street. 
 Private Enrico Ciotti, aged 20 years, laborer, 844 Nicolls 
 
 Street. 
 Private Wilson D. DeLong, aged 19 years, student, 325 
 
 South Ninth Street. 
 Private Reuben Dibler, aged 33 years, laborer, Oakbrook. 
 Private Antonio Diguardi, aged 23 years, laborer, Millmont. 
 Private Edward A. Dorrington, aged 41 years, teamster, 17 
 
 Adams Street, Paulsboro, N. J. 
 Private Walter L. Eschbach, aged 18 years, laborer, 439 
 
 Pearl Street. 
 Private Harvey H. Eshelman, aged 28 years, clerk. Scarlet 
 
 Mills. 
 Private David Edwards, aged 28 years, teamster, 904 Nicolls 
 
 Street. 
 Private Paul W. Fett, aged 25 years, driver, 35^^ North 
 
 Ninth Street. 
 Private Robert Fisher, aged 21 years, laborer, 1355 Cotton 
 
 Street. 
 Private Charles H. Gallagher, aged 19 years, laborer, 427^/^ 
 
 Locust Street. 
 
COMPANY "A" ROSTER 205 
 
 Private Charles Garrett, aged 24 years, laundryman, 347 
 
 Cedar Street. 
 Private Paul Garrett, aged 27 years, laborer, 347 Cedar 
 
 Street. 
 
 Private Henry A. Gehris, aged 19 years, machinist, 725 Birch 
 Street. 
 
 Private Shipton G. Grauer, aged 19 years, student, 433 
 Woodward Street. 
 
 Private John W. Grim, aged 18 years, painter, 201 North 
 Tenth Street. 
 
 Private Harry Green, aged 40 years, puddler, 2911 Sixth 
 
 Avenue, Altoona. 
 Private Harry J. Gill, aged 34 years, electrician, 4340 Free- 
 land Avenue, Roxborough. 
 Private Howard McK. Hartman, aged 21 years, waiter, 
 
 Schaefferstown. 
 Private Frank Hahn, aged 18 years, chauffeur, 869 North 
 
 Eighth Street. 
 Private Arthur T. Halmar, aged 18 years, machinist, 525 
 
 South Fifteenth Street. 
 Private George A. Heckler, aged 18 years, laborer, 432 Penn 
 
 Avenue, West Reading. 
 Private Philip K. Howard, aged 21 years, clerk, Mt. Penn. 
 Private Arthur Hunter, aged 27 years, salesman. Savannah, 
 
 Illinois. 
 Private Walter B. Huber, aged 27 years, checker, 417 North 
 
 Tenth Street. 
 Private Harry H. Hill, aged 20 years ,laborer, 3 North 
 
 Seventh Street. 
 Private Robert O. Jepsen, aged 19 years, clerk, 322 North 
 
 Tenth Street. 
 Private Paul S. Kercher, aged 18 years, shoe cutter, 1106 
 
 Douglass Street. 
 Private Horace Kline, aged 18 years, laborer, 1212 Windsor 
 
 Street. 
 
206 COMPANY "A" ROSTER 
 
 Private Eugene Kochel, aged 32 years, laborer, 1448 Muhlen- 
 berg Street. 
 Private William J. Lutz, aged 20 years, clerk, Birdsboro. 
 Private Calvin S. Madara, aged 22 years, laborer, 1261 
 
 Spring Street. 
 Private Charles J. Marsh, aged 18 years, messenger, 1311 
 
 Buttonwood Street. 
 Private John A. Manbeck, aged 20 years, student, Bernville. 
 Private William J. McKeever, aged 22 years, inspector, 521 
 
 Pike Street. 
 Private John McMahon, aged 23 years, laborer, 435 Tulpe- 
 
 hocken Street. 
 Private Albert R. Miller, aged 23 years, laborer, 1398 
 
 Perkiomen Avenue. 
 Private Raymond L. Mitchell, aged 18 years, truck driver, 
 
 624 Mulberry Street. 
 Private Russel H. Moll, aged 20 years, student, 1018 North 
 
 Fifth Street. 
 Private James Morro, aged 29 years, molder, 712 Briggs 
 
 Street, Harrisburg. 
 Private Antonio Morro, aged 22 years, laborer, 1335 Moss 
 
 Street. 
 Private Harvey Rootmoyer, aged 18 years, usher, 417 Pear 
 
 Street. 
 Private Irvin Moyer, aged 18 years, student, 1306 Pricetown 
 
 Road. 
 Private Robert S. Myers, aged 21 years, knitter, 20 Third 
 
 Street, Shillington. 
 Private Harvey E. Noll, aged 18 years, teamster, 208 
 
 Chestnut Street. 
 Private Kenneth L. Ormsbee, aged 18 years, meat packer, 
 
 Riverview, N. Y. 
 Private Herbert E. Pence, aged 24 years, laborer, Worthing- 
 
 ton, Pa. 
 Private George E. Price, aged 18 years, student, 116 West 
 
 Windsor Street. 
 
COMPANY "A" ROSTER 207 
 
 Private John S. Rathman, aged 29 years, elevator operator, 
 
 Seyferts Station. 
 Private Charles Reber, aged 20 years, hatter, Shillington- 
 
 Private Elmer A. Reinert, aged 21 years, electric service 
 operator, 937 Pear Street. 
 
 Private Walter F. Ritz, aged 21 years, machinist, Shillington. 
 
 Private James W. Reifsnyder, aged 40 years, cigarmaker, 
 1030 Spruce Street. 
 
 Private Clyde Reppert, aged 22 years, baker. Palm, Mont- 
 gomery County. 
 
 Private Elmer Root, aged 21 years, silk weaver, 142 South 
 Twelfth Street. 
 
 Private Henry C. Rothenberger, aged 24 years, teamster, 421 
 Wunder Street. 
 
 Private Arthur C. Ruthkowski, aged 18 years, pipe cutter, 
 
 755 Laurel Street. 
 Private Harry W. Schaeffer, aged 20 years, laborer, 420 
 
 Orange Street. 
 
 Private Paul G. Schwenk, aged 21 years, iron worker, 913 
 
 Culvert Street. 
 Private Stanley S. Schweimler, aged 18 years, student, 158 
 
 West Windsor Street. 
 
 Private Albert F. Shade, aged 23 years, cupola tender, 442 
 Wood Street. 
 
 Private Charles J. Simmons, aged 18 years, tipper, 235 
 Chestnut Street, West Reading. 
 
 Private James C. Swarmer, aged 22 years, laborer, Birdsboro. 
 
 Private James E. Snyder, aged 18 years, assistant baggage- 
 master, 916 Douglass Street. 
 
 Private Clinton A. Stubblebine, aged 18 years, laboror, 342 
 Tulpehocken Street. 
 
 Private Charles C. Stoudt, aged 30 years, braider, 315 Cherry 
 Street. 
 
 Private Harry E. Smith, aged 32 years, printer, Reading. 
 
208" COMPANY "A" ROSTER 
 
 Private Howard J. Smith, aged 19 years, stocking boarder, 
 
 732 Birch Street. 
 Private Lester R. Spickler, aged 19 years, iron worker, 1121 
 
 Douglass Street. 
 Private Nick Taddeo, aged 24 years, fireman, Mansville, Pa. 
 Private Thomas J. Tiernan, aged 37 years, structural iron 
 
 worker, Rhawn and Crait Streets, Philadelphia. 
 Private David H. Trout, aged 21 years, pipe cutter, 42Z 
 
 Withreel Street, Oakbrook. 
 Private Ammon R. Wayne, aged 18 years, laborer, 1163 
 
 Mulberry Street. 
 Private Wesley Y. Weidenhammer, aged 27 years, laborer, 
 
 513 Robeson Street. 
 Private William E. Williams, aged 18 years, operator, 350 
 
 Tulpehocken Street. 
 Private George C. Wright, aged 23 years, knitter, 1340 
 
 Church Street. 
 Private Harry Yeager, aged 22 years, laborer, 649 Tulpe- 
 hocken Street. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS f^ 
 
 021 545 891 A