A Memorial Day Tribute: Part I(Author’s note: This may well be the last time we gather for this as the plan is to shut down the SPS server sometime in early 2010. Therefore I have chosen to do “something special” this year and feature reminiscences from three of America’s finest combat chroniclers. Following the piece below, on Sunday we’ll hear from Lt. Charles B. MacDonald through the prism of his memoir of World War II,
Company Commander. To wrap up on Monday will be Lt. Nathaniel Fick, author of
One Bullet Away, a Marine platoon leader who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, I know purists will note that not only have I left out the Air Force and Navy, but two of these men are Marines. For that, I will not apologize. Readers of this board will know that the Marines do, and always will, occupy a special place in my heart. - OMG)
World War I had already been going on for nearly three bloody years when America entered the fray in April, 1917. President Wilson told us we were “Waging a war to end war” and originally planned that America’s contribution would be primarily naval, with perhaps a token force of ground troops in France. This plan was upended when Marechal Joseph Joffre of France, hero of the Battle of the Marne, arrived in this country as liason for the French Army and was asked, “What do you need?” His reply, “Les homes!! Les homes!!” - “Men! Men!”
This country was in no way prepared for this. As late as 1916, the US Army’s Ordnance Department, in a report to Congress, had confidently stated that it could foresee no set of circumstances that would require a force of more than 600,000 men. In the trenches around Verdun, in 1916 well over 600,000 French and Germans had been killed. Now the Army realized that it would have to throw its earlier estimates out the window and began planning for a force of 4.5 million soldiers in France by the Spring of 1919.
Almost immediately, a draft was instituted and those millions of men flooded into Army camps across the country and lived in confusion and squalor as the higher-highers decided what to do with them.
In the end the Americans would go to France and in great numbers. They would fight in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). The early divisions were composed of a cadre of “regulars” and a host of volunteers and draftees. Due to a shortage of officers felt capable of handling anything larger than a company, the divisions were “square” composed of two brigades each with two regiments of infantry. There was also a regiment of artillery in each division.
One of these was the 2nd Division, which was in itself an anomaly as one of its two brigades was composed of the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments. The Army didn’t want the Marines, but a few visits with the appropriate Congressional leaders convinced them otherwise. For their part, the Marines were even less equipped for expansion than the Army. The largest Marine units were companies scattered around the country and across the globe guarding ports and other naval facilities. Each company was numbered and “Old Hands” were well acquainted with each other. Nevertheless the numbers were found and the regiments deployed on schedule.
The Marine Brigade, technically the Fourth Brigade, Second Division, first saw significant action on 6 June 1918 when the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and the 3rd Battalion Sixth Marines assaulted Belleau Wood. They had to traverse an open wheatfield 1000 yards wide to get there. The Germans were waiting and cut the assault to pieces. Over 1300 Marines were killed or wounded in that awful field and survivors remembered to their dying day the juxtaposition of gently waving poppies in the wheat against the awful slaughter of their shipmates.
Replacements came up on the night of 7 June and one of them was a kid from Niagara Falls, NY, named Elton Mackin. He found himself assigned to the 49th Company, 1st battalion, 5th marines which had suffered through its own baptism of fire that awful day in a diversionary attack against a terrain feature known simply as “Hill 142.” Mackin kept a diary (strictly verboten) and used it as a basis for his memoirs Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die, which he never published but was found by his son after the Old Soldier’s death in 1974 and submitted for publication.
Mackin’s memoirs are unique, being written in the third person, (he refers to himself as “Slim” – his nickname) as though he were observing from some distance. They are nonetheless powerful and are now on the required reading list for every Marine officer and NCO. One chapter describes his march up to the front and his initiation into the fraternity that WWII’s Bill Mauldin dubbed “The Ancient and Honorable Order of Them What Has Been Shot At.Initiation
Around a great bend came a cavalcade of Ford ambulances carrying shattered fragments of battle to the rear. At the sight of the green-clad marine column a cheer of frenzied exhortation had risen from the lesser wounded who rode seat, running board and tailgate.
“Gyrenes, gyrenes, you – you go**amn leathernecks, go take ‘em!”
“You’re needed up there bad, The outfit is all shot to hell – go get ‘em marines!” Cries and curses; loving curses from the lips of broken but unbeaten men. Their feverish exhortations were an inspiration, a challenge, a comrade’s benediction, almost a prayer.
Another march. As night closed in they began to pass scattered batteries of barking 75s.* Then single file over dim trails that wound through wood and field , drawing ever nearer to the distant rattle of “sho-shos”** and rifle fire.
In one such field they’d heard a strange zeep-zeep, like insects fleeing to the rear. Occasionally, something cracked while passing close at hand, and Slim felt a thrill of terror upon hearing a knowing voice say, “Machine guns, double time!”
Their route led through a hedge and into a field of wheat where again the zip of bullets from some unseen gun had loaned wings to their feet as they dashed for the looming shelter of friendly trees.
It was there that little Purcell# had stumbled and sat down amidst the grain. His upturned face had greeted Slim with the surprised look of a child hurt in play. Even as he stopped to lend a hand, Purcell’s boyish figure had begun to settle back and an uplifted hand had suddenly gone limp upon Slim’s arm. In sudden awe he realized he was witness to the passing of a boy who had won the love of older comrades and whose voice had often joined with his in singing away the miles.
Slim had left him as he lay, carrying only the memory of a childish face – strangely at peace – looking up into the clear, cold light of summer stars.
Mackin reached the front that night and was assigned to the 49th Company commanded by Capt. George Hamilton. Preparations were already underway to face an expected German counter-attack. Mackin and the rest were ordered to dig in. Mackin, overwrought from his harrowing experience, merely lay down on the ground.How long he lay inert there, he did not know – nor care. Repeated pictures of Purcell, laughing, questioning, and now dead, weakened his resistance until a dry sob, which would not be denied, wrung itself free. The dam of his false fortitude broke down and he cried – as a soldier cannot cry, but as only a weary heartsick lad can pour out the last of his boyish tears in facing that change which is the boundary between childhood and bitter reality.
That was how Sergeant McCabe## found him. A rough hand clutched him and snatched him back to the threshold of war. “It’s too late to snivel now, Bud, so grab that shovel and start digging.” The noncom’s voice was full of the contempt of the professional soldier for the amateur.
Slim wanted to explain that it was more grief than fear to which he had surrendered, and he even managed a word about Purcell, but the manner in which McCabe answered showed that Slim’s tears had branded him a weakling; he fell silent before the withering sarcasm of his superior.
“Hell, Bud, you’d think you were the only guy in this man’s war to lose a pal. We’ve all lost them up here, an’ we want MEN to take their places – not babies! Now, dig in!”
Mackin did as he was told. After dawn word began to spread that the Germans were, indeed, coming. The first attack came off to the right. Soon, Sgt. McCabe was back by his side. McCabe showed him the direction of the next attack and left Mackin with a warning, “Don’t turn yellow and try to run. If you do, and the Germans don’t kill you, I will!” As McCabe passed from sight among the trees, the meaning of his last words suddenly came to Slim. A flush of shame chased the whiteness from his face. And for a moment he lay his head upon his arm. He felt robbed of what little strength remained. To be thought a coward on his first day of battle, in his first hour of action, seemed to place him beyond the regard of these men he strove so hard to copy.
The taunt had reached him and hurt his pride. At that moment, boyhood lay forever behind, a page in life’s story had turned. In back of a small mound of earth, a disciplined soldier faced the long slope ahead, determined to do his part.
Mackin would indeed “do his part.” After Belleau Wood, Mackin was made a “runner” - a messenger, carrying orders and reports back and forth along the line. This was no “cushy” job: the life expectancy of a runner in combat was measured in minutes. He was made a sergeant during the war served in the occupation forces after the Armistice. Mackin’s battlefield exploits earned him the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross, both the nation’s second-highest awards for valor. He was wounded three times and earned two Silver Star Commendations. After the war he was diagnosed with "shell-shock" - what we know today as PTSD.
To this writer’s mind, his most searing line comes at the end of a later chapter, “Little crosses stand above the dead. They seldom stand alone. Men see to that.”
Do Sergeant Mackin and his comrades from all America’s wars the simple honor of thinking of them this weekend, ponder their sacrifices and suffering, and salute them.
It is the least any of us can do.*The French-built M1897 75mm field gun.
**The French-made Chauchat automatic rifle (light machine gun), as useless a battle implement as American soldiers have ever carried into combat. It was eventually replaced by the legendary BAR.
#There is no “Purcell” listed among the KIAs of this day. Mackin changed the name to spare the man’s kin.
##Sgt. John C. McCabe, KIA, 4 October 1918.
Source: Mackin, Elton E.,
Suddenly We Didn't Want to Die, Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1995.
