World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
Next morning, while I was out going over the village, selecting drill
grounds and planning the schedule, a motorcycle orderly arrived and
handed me a message which read, "You will be prepared to entruck your
battalion at two this afternoon." This meant no rest for us. We realized
that a move on our part now meant one thing and one thing only, that
something serious had arisen, and that we were going in again. Rumor had
been rife for two or three days past that the big Hun offensive was
about to start again. In the army, among the front-line troops,
practically all you get is rumor about what is happening daily. Where
the rumor starts from it is impossible to say, but it travels like
lightning. Officers' call was sounded, and when they had assembled, I
read them the order and told them it was my opinion we were going into a
big battle right away. The men were immediately assembled and told the
same thing. We always felt that all information possible should be given
to the men. Instead of the command being downcast at the idea of leaving
their well-deserved rest, their spirits rose. Immediately bustle and
preparation was evident everywhere in the town.
By one o'clock the truck train was creaking into place on the road.
Oddly enough the truck train was made up of White trucks, made in
Cleveland, with Indo-Chinese drivers and was under the command of a
French officer. The troops filed by in columns of twos toward the
entrucking point. The men were laughing and joking. "They can't do
without us now, Bill." "Say, Nick, look over there" (pointing toward a
grave yard), "them's the rest billets of this battalion, and that"
(indicating a rather imposing tomb) "is the battalion headquarters."
Many of them were singing the national anthem of the doughboy, _Hail!
Hail! the Gang's All Here._
I got into the automobile of the French commander of the train, taking
with me Lieutenant Kern, as he was pretty well played out and I wanted
to spare him as much as possible. The French train commander had no idea
what our ultimate destination was. All he knew was a route for about
sixty kilometers, at the end of which he was to report for further
orders at a little town. As we ran up and down the column of trucks
checking the train to make sure that all units were present and all
properly loaded, the men were singing and cheering.
As all afternoon we jolted northward through clouds of dust, rumors came
in picked up from French officers on the roadside. The Hun had attacked
in force east and west of Rheims in a desperate attempt to break the
French army in two. East of Rheims they had met with a stone-wall
resistance by Gouraud's army and been hurled back with heavy loss. West
of Rheims their attack had been more successful, and they were reported
to have broken through, crossed the Marne, and to be now moving on
Châlons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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