With the Doughboy in France: A Few Chapters of an American EffortHungerford, Edward
History
With the Doughboy in France: A Few Chapters of an American Effort
Hungerford, Edward
American National Red Cross; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
"The intervening country had been No Man's Land for four years and the
condition of the roads can only be imagined," says Captain Kellogg. "We
followed the troops, who left at about eleven o'clock that morning, but
were soon caught in that tremendous congestion that existed on all the
roads during the first days of the drive. By dark we were still on the
road, having progressed less than two miles. We finally became
hopelessly stuck, being stalled, and were obliged to remain stuck
throughout the night. During the day we had given out many packages of
cookies to the tired and hungry men along the road. Many times since the
soldiers have spoken to me in appreciation of those cookies. That night
was one of the most uncomfortable experiences that I had in France. It
was so cold that we could not keep warm. This, coupled with the
occasional whine of incoming shells, prevented sleep, although
frequently we threw down our bedding rolls at the side of the road and
attempted it.
"In the morning we found a number of ambulances among the other stalled
vehicles. For more than forty-eight hours they had been on the road with
their wounded and neither drivers nor patients had been able to obtain
much of anything to eat or drink. We supplied them with cookies and gave
them what water we had in our canteens. Two of the wounded had died
during the night. Two others were unconscious and another was delirious.
The congestion ahead of us on the road that morning seemed as bad as
ever. Finally we managed to get out of that road entirely, making a
fresh start by a longer but less crowded way. At dusk that first day of
October found us still quite a distance from our Division. We spent that
night with some Signal Corps men in the cellar of a shell-shocked
building in Varennes. The following morning we succeeded in reaching our
destination and located ourselves with several enlisted men of the
Forty-third Balloon Company in a dugout which until a few days before
had been occupied by German officers.
"This place was interesting. Reached by a steep flight of steps, it was
sunk fully fifty feet below the surface. It consisted of three rooms and
a kitchen, the walls of each nicely boarded and the whole comfortably,
if roughly, finished.
"The combat regiments and battalions of our army were all around us in
the woods. We continued serving them. On the morning of the third I
drove back to Froidos for fresh supplies. Upon my return I found that
the troops of our Sixty-fourth Brigade were already on the road, moving
toward the town of Véry. We knew what this meant--that in the morning
they were going into the front lines and probably over the top. We
quickly unloaded cookies and cigarettes from the car and, standing by
the roadside in the dark, handed a supply of each to every soldier who
passed by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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