CONTENTS I Ministering to a Restless Army. II Indifference and Suspicion.. The Men Who Brought Law and Order to Desdemona.... 120 The Genesis of "40 Hommes et 8 Cheveaux". 193 Colors Passing the Cenotaph at New Orleans, 1922..... 289 Alvin Owsley.. 293 Robert A. Adams, Eben Putnam, Russell G. Creviston... 300 304 CHAPTER I MINISTERING TO A RESTLESS ARMY THE full fury of the "Kaiser storm" still beat upon the Allied lines and kept them rolling backward upon Paris when July of 1918 brought to the Allies a new month of battle, but no new hope. Fresh German armies, gathered from the vanquished Russian front, from Austria, from Roumania, from Italy, had been brought west in the last grand attack, which was to end the war on German terms. The British had escaped disaster almost by a miracle. Terribly hammered, they were hardly holding before Amiens and the last direct line of communication between Paris and London. The French had been swept off the scarred Chemin des Dames and were back along the line of the ominous Marne. Ruined Rheims was practically enveloped by the enemy. Château-Thierry was lost. Shells were falling in Paris. The French government was packing to go elsewhere. The French and British were grown familiar with defeat. Only the Americans among the Allies had not been beaten. They had not been beaten because they had not come into the fight; because they had not been considered fit to fight. The situation had been so critical that the Allied High Command was not willing to take a chance on the battle qualities of tenderfoot troops. Strong necessity overbore these scruples. The wide salients the Germans had driven into the Allied line had greatly extended the fighting front. The French and British reserves were practically gone. The Germans were preparing for an effort mightier than any before. Men must be had. Bring on these Americans then-infantry and machine guns, proven or not; there is nothing else to do. Call on Washington for more-infantry and machine guns ahead of everything, trained or untrained; that pounding must be met! In went the First and Second American Divisions. The First had fought like veterans at Cantigny. The Second had saved the day at Belleau Wood and Bourèsches. Could they repeat? They could. When the news filtered through the A. E. F. that the First and Second, with a Moroccan division between them, had made the surprise attack that recaptured Soissons, we knew it had happened. We were in the war. We were in the war for keeps and we felt a peculiar elation over the fact that we had reached a fighting man's estate. That compendium of all things which go to make an excellent army, and which we call morale, was never in better evidence than when this realization came to the American Expeditionary Forces. Never in modern times has an army, and in this case it was a green and untried army, faced greater responsibilities than those which fell to the United States forces in France in July, 1918. Never was morale a more precious necessity than at that particular time. It was so precious because it had been so scarce. But now that the Americans knew they were in the war a tide of it came their way. That is the point I wish to make. In a desperate plight American morale rose to meet the odds. The Soissons drive marked the beginning of the Allied counter-offensive which won the war in less than four months. In this offensive American arms had played a conspicuous part. An American president had written the scriptures of peace. American prestige has never been higher than it was on November 11th, 1918. It was good to be an American anywhere. It was glorious to be an American soldier or sailor in France. It was magnificent just to be one. Two months more bring us down to February, 1919. It had not been a dream. The victory was real. The Stars (MIU) and Stripes flashed in the brilliant winter sunshine over old Ehrenbreitstein to prove it. An American president had made a progress triumphal through Europe such as no crowned monarch or conquering general has ever made. American prestige unfolded the wings of an eagle. And the American soldier in France—the man who really turned the trick that made possible the signal events which had contributed such luster to his country's name—the man who made the clock tick during some of history's greatest moments -what of him? Feeling particularly glorious just now? Hardly. Or magnificent? Well, not so he could notice it. Gone was that matchless morale which had been the hope (and savior?) of the world just six months before. Like a hardy mountain flower which will flourish on the wintry crags of its natural home but will wither and die in the meadows of the lowlands, the esprit de corps which sustained America's fighting men when they had their backs against the wall in July had succumbed by February after ten weeks of placid billet life. Books might be written, and probably will be, on the distressing phases in the life of the A. E. F. that came after the Armistice, but the gist of these volumes may be epitomized in a very few words. The war was over and the A. E. F.'s reason for being was at an end. And like all things which have outlived their usefulness it did not fare well. It began to be a nuisance to itself and a source of unhappy concern to others. A lot of mystery and flubdub has been made over what got into our soldiers in France after the Armistice. Much ado was made of it at the time, and the unfortunate part of it is that a great many homesick soldiers with too much time on their hands (the kind of time Mark Twain said is not money) and with nothing much to do but believe what they heard and think of their troubles, took this talk seriously. Some introspective spirits were actually alarmed at themselves. Were they going bolshevist, or what? |