THEN CAME THE ODOR OF GAS--MUSTARD GAS

On April 15, 1918, SSU 647 moved from its base at Neufchâteau to a new post thirty miles to the north near Vignot and was assigned to the American 26th Infantry Division. The famous "Yankee Division" was deployed just to the south of the front near the St. Mihiel Salient and became one of the first American units attacked by the Germans in WWI.

On April 20, German artillery bombarded the 102nd Infantry's positions near Seicheprey before German stormtroopers moved against the village. The barrage, continuing 36 hours, isolated American units. The Germans overwhelmed a machine gun company and two infantry companies of the 102nd and temporarily breached the trenches before elements of the division rallied and recaptured the village. The Germans withdrew before the division could counterattack but inflicted 634 casualties, including 80 killed, 424 wounded, and 130 captured, while losing over 600 men, including 150 killed of their own.

Grant and SSU 647 were in the thick of it. For the first time they experienced one of the most vicious aspects of WWI: gas warfare. Not only did they care for gas causalities, they became gas causalities themselves.

This entry is one of the most exciting of the entire diary.

Thursday, April 25, 1918:

Well! A week and a day since I last had a chance to write in this book. More things have happened in that time than in any week of my young life. In brief, it has included an attack by Germans and Americans through our most advanced post and back again to original positions; action for 48 hours under terrific artillery fire; finally, after 5 hours in a gas mask, to be taken out with seven others and sent back to a hospital as mustard gas patients and then convalescences. I am now in the latter state in our quarters at Vignot. We are all out of the hospital and ready for more action.

Mandres-aux-Quatre-Tours

Detail--Was ready for action by noon of Apr. 18. McCrackin and I reached Mandres[-aux-Quatre-Tours] about 5 P.M. each with an aide or orderly, as they are called in the American Army, from the 102 Ambulance Company with whom we are now working. Everything was quiet. We lived in a room on the second floor of a house equipped with electric lights, stoves and some unbroken windows. There were six of us in our room--Kendrick, Risley, McCrackin, Dunlap, Gaynor and self--and two orderlies in the front room.

After writing a letter to Sis, I retired and soon everything was quiet with sleep. Sat up suddenly in pitch blackness with the most deafening noise outside I had every heard.

Dunlap was next up with, “What the hell!”

This sign in Mandres reads:
Remember your American comrades
fallen in the region for France and for humanity.
1918.

Then Kendrick jumped up. “Come on let’s get out of here!” “The cellar! The cellar!” “Don’t forget your gas masks!”

We all cleared out but Speed. As we were going down the stairs we were sprinkled with tile and pieces of roof. Wow! We made some time into that cellar. It was an ordinary cellar approached through a trap door in the floor of a ground floor room above. The five of us pretty well filled the place. A few minutes was spent in laughing at each other’s various costumes. Jack Kendrick was the funniest. He hadn’t planned on being turned out in a hurry when he went to bed so he had stripped. When I flashed my light on him in the cellar he sat on the steps -- hip boots turned down at the knee then a space of nothing up to a sheepskin coat. The poor kid was freezing.

Photo by Grant Willard taken somewhere around Beaumont.

Then came the odor of gas--mustard gas. A rat came running out of a hole and died in the middle of the floor before our eyes. Oh no! We weren’t very scared! Into our English masks we climbed. We sat in silence. One can’t converse from behind--or rather underneath--such a mask. It was then 3 A.M. Friday, Apr. 19. We sat in the cellar until the gas got too bad even for masks and went to the floor above hovering around the hole ready to drop if a shell hit the house. Wow! What a racket! One 77 landed just outside our door spattering us with all kinds of debris.

We decided to climb higher and get out of that dreadful gas, if possible. Back in our room we covered the window which had remained intact and stuffed up the cracks in our doors and built a fire to draw the fumes out of the room as much as possible. Then we took off our masks keeping our noses and mouths covered that no stray gas might get into our lungs. That was a great relief. We found there was very little gas in the room--just enough to make you weep a little.

Mandres in 2010

At 7:30 we slipped back into our masks and went over to the dressing station to see what the damages amounted to. The racket had died down considerably. A shell had pierced the roof of our house lodging in the hay directly over the room in which we had stayed. It was a mean looking hole--mustard gas we discovered later with our masks off. Everybody was white and scared into inaction at the dressing station. Kendrick put life into them by ordering us to get our cars out in front and ready for action. Mine looked like the top of a pepper box where pieces of debris had pierced it.

All communications had been cut. Wounded had walked in bringing bits of news. The Boche had taken Seicheprey, but the Americans were counter-attacking. Cars were wanted at Beaumont (1 km from Seicheprey) and at the various batteries around Battery 419 just off to the right of “dead man’s curve” and 436 in “devil’s half-acre” were the favorites.

I went out to 419 and oh, what a mess. The Boche had registered two direct hits leaving but one gun in action. Out of the three crews there remained but one. The captain had been killed and we carried the 1st lieutenant back unconscious leaving the battery in charge of a 2nd lieutenant with a broken arm. He was one of the pluckiest men I ever saw. He refused to leave the gun long enough to get his arm properly tended to. Just before we left he said, “For God’s sake tell them to send me some fuses. I haven’t got a fuse left.”

The sight of so many American dead gave me an awfully weak feeling--impossible to suppress some emotion.

Back at Mandres reports were coming in thick and fast. The Germans had been forced out of Seicheprey to their original lines. American reserves were swarming through town on their way up. Losses had already been heavy for the Americans, but the boys swore they had “given’em hell.” Our batteries now held full sway until the reserves filled the valley over back of Beaumont when the Boche again cut loose and raised havoc with the boys. From then on everything is more or less indistinct. My orderly and I made numerous trips to Ménil-la-Tour from batteries Beaumont and Mandres until about 5 P.M.

Our last trip down from Mandres took us through the fumes of a fruit gas shell which broke ahead of us right in the middle of the road. We were making pretty good time so it didn’t get us badly except in mind. My orderly, McDonald, a very plucky boy, got sick to his stomach and when we got in to the hospital we were ordered to stay in for the night. Boatman took my car and Mac and I went to bed pretty sick to our stomachs with eyes smarting and blood-shot.

That night Kendrick went to the hospital with mustard gas; McGuire had his car shot out from under him between Beaumont and Seicheprey, he and his aide miraculously escaping injury; Harris smashed a rear wheel on his car; № 13 ran into a camion putting it out of business. The 102nd lost two cars and two men by direct hits. Mandres was evacuated and all cars recalled from Seicheprey.

Many thrilling stories were told. About noon our lieutenant who hadn’t been near the scene of action all this time, sent word from Ménil-la-Tour that [we] were to return immediately to Ménil and from there to Vignot. Sunday and Monday were spent between sheets in the 104th Field Hospital where we received gas treatment and liquid diet. On Tuesday Swain, McEnnis and I were released. We were glad of the rest, but the liquid diet almost killed us because we hadn’t eaten very much on the two preceding days. Our day hospital sergeant was an ex-movie actor who was drafted. His assistant was a mechanic in Chicago. The night Sergeant was a bar tender in New York before being drafted so one can imagine what kind of care we had when the doctors were not around. They did the best they knew how. Since then we have been leading a life deluxe here in our Vignot quarters. Risley is the only man who hasn’t fully recovered, except Kendrick of course. Risley seems to have gotten some on his lungs and his eyes give him some trouble. Kendrick got some of the mustard gas on the exposed portions of his body Saturday morning and he is still suffering some though he is out of the hospital.

We have had two more smash ups in the section since we left Mandres. Kerr slid off Dead Man’s curve with 5 wounded and smashed a rear wheel. All came out alive. Lafleur tipped over while trying to pass a staff car out near here smashing a rear wheel and throwing the whole front end out of line. No lives lost. We now realize how lucky we are all round.