| | SERGT. EVIT DUNN
Serial No. 2,026,562
Rosebush, Mich.
Inducted November 21, 1917.
Was promoted to Corporal June 13, 1918, and he, along with Corp. Waters, drilled the new recruits which were received at Custer June 25th. Dunn was a born military instructor and in a few days he produced wonderful results in the way of making drilled soldiers out of rookies. He worked very hard and was self-sacrificing in his eagerness to instruct the new men. His treatment of them during this period was marked with such consideration and understanding that he will always have their kind remembrance.
He had a photographic memory, which is discernable in his narrative of events in the fighting area, where he was Section Chief of No. 2 piece. He was well built, of medium stature and of soldierly bearing, and in nature represented the finer type in the army. We will reproduce his own impressions of army life as he found it in the early stages:
Just a few of my experiences as a soldier in the United States army. I enlisted in the U. S. National army “by request” on November 21, 1917, and life has been one great round of pleasure ever since. We landed at the receiving station about noon. They started us on our first diet, then, after we were examined and given a shot in the arm and had marched us about three miles, we were given our first meal at 11 p. m. in a training camp. We were still on the same diet when the war ended. About midnight, a fellow I found out afterwards was the Top Sergeant, told us to go to bed. I had just got in bed when one of the cooks came in and hung a big sign which read “K. P.” and knowing I was in the Artillery I imagined it was the job I was to have on one of the big guns, but found out the difference in the morning when the same cook came up at 4:30 and told me that K. P. stood for Kitchen Police. I dressed and went down to the kitchen thinking a police job in the kitchen wasn’t such a bad job, but changed my mind when I was told to roll up my sleeves and start washing dishes. I think I must have been a good dish-washer, for the K. P. sign hung on the foot of my bed very often after that. Well, I didn’t know what a good place old Camp Custer was until our Captain called me out of ranks one day and said he was going to send me to France. I had always said I wanted to go across the pond, but for a while that day I thought Camp Custer was a pretty good home. There were two sergeants, a mechanic and myself, then a corporal, left camp on July 11th with the School Detachment or Advance Party of the 85th Division. We landed at Camp Mills, staying there eight days. On July 21 we boarded the transport Canopic. There were eighteen transports in the convoy and one battleship.
Going to Camp Coetquidan we were very much surprised a few days later to find ourselves on the way to the front. We left the French camp one morning with our packs on our backs for the front. They were long, tiresome hours and when we would stop to rest every man was ready to fall out and lay his pack aside for the few minutes they would give us to rest in of that day. Our kitchen stopped at a little village to get water, as we were among the hills and couldn’t see very far. Our kitchen got on the wrong road, so we were out of luck for our supper; but we had to get our positions on the front that night and were forced to keep going. They were sure long hours that night. The night was dark and rainy and as everything had to be done under camouflage, we were not allowed to have any lights.
As we were stumbling along with the weight of our packs on our backs, we began to realize what the war really was. As we came nearer the front
Page one hundred thirty
the flashes from the guns and the bursting of shells furnished light enough to travel by. It was like a great electric storm traveling ahead of us. No one can imagine the many thoughts that were in our minds that night as we walked along that dreary road. Everybody was silent, thinking of the task that we had before us. We were all so tired that when we would stop to rest we would sit down on the wet road and fall asleep.
After midnight that night we stopped at the head of a dark, muddy road leading into a wood; about a quarter of a mile down this road were our gun positions. I can say it was some job getting our guns in position that night. The road was so narrow we were obliged to wheel our guns in part way by hand and wading mud nearly to our shoe tops. As we went feeling our way between trees and over dugouts and trenches, we were swearing vengeance on the Huns. It was that night we were “broke in” to living in dugouts and got segregated with our old pets, the “cooties.” Our guns were camouflaged overhead to keep them from sight of the German aero planes, which flew over us very frequently. Our dugouts were about ten feet below the ground, with cement walls and a half-inch of steel overhead. We had to walk about three-quarters of a mile through a camouflaged path through the woods and ate hardtack and bully beef from then on and were glad to get that. The days we spent in that position were long and tiresome. We would sit out around our guns in the mud and rain waiting and ready at any minute for the orders to give Old Fritz what was coming to him. We had always hated to hear the bugle play first call in the morning, but it would have been a treat to have heard it then and knew when our day’s work was over we could go to bed and have a good night’s rest; but, as it was, we would lie down on our board bunks with the command barrage always ringing in our ears and our shoes and clothing all on and in readiness. One day we got orders that we were to go up nearer the front and build new positions for our guns.
We started out that afternoon with picks and shovels. We traveled some distance apart so that Fritz could not get a pot shot at us from his aero plane. We took up our new positions in the hills north of Pont-a-Mousson and Montauville, and each time we would pass along the road we would find fresh shell-holes, one big shell landing in the cemetery and tearing up the graves of a half- dozen soldiers. I believe the Germans were trying to show us there was punishment after death.
I was sent back just at dusk that night with a detail of men, and as we sat down to rest along the side of the road, we could see the German shells bursting in the village below and could see the flash from the American guns as they sent back an answer to the Huns.
We were sent back the next day to finish camouflaging our positions and found many fresh shell-holes along the way. When we were through with our positions that night it was very late. It was raining as we dragged ourselves along the road that night back to our dugouts. We were tired, hungry and muddy, and before we had time to get our suppers we had orders to pull our guns up into our new positions. Everything had to be done without any lights and I can say it was some job to get our guns out of the woods. We took what we could find and the rest we left behind. We were a tired bunch that night as we walked along behind our guns in mud nearly to our shoe- tops and our packs on our backs. When we got to our positions we had to build bridges across the trenches and push our guns across by hand. We put our guns in position and laid for our barrage at two o’clock. (Someone had to be on guard, so I volunteered for the first hour.) It was near daylight when I woke the next man up. As we had no place to sleep, only sitting on the gun seats or lying under some bushes in the rain, any kind of a bed looked good to me, so I lay down on a few sacks just back of our gun. I woke a half- hour later with my hip and side lying in about three inches of water and the rain pouring down on us from above. All the next day we sat around our guns—nothing to keep us warm, only when one would get orders to throw a few shells over into the German lines. We were forced to stand around all day with wet clothes, in the rain and with but very little to eat. Some meals one spoonful of beans was our limit. Bully beef (Belbeck’s bull beef) would have been a treat those days. The second night we were there Fritz sent us over three gas barrages. When the first gas alarm was sounded the gas mask record-breaker of the A. E. F. had nothing on me.
Each day as we stayed there we would send a few death pills over to the Huns, receiving an answer to a good many of them. Always sleeping with our muddy, wet clothes on, with one eye and one ear open and with nothing to protect us from the German shells but a net camouflage, eating whenever we had the chance, which was not very often or very much (and for three days I didn’t leave my gun) just waiting to get a pot
Page one hundred thirty-one
shot at a bunch of Huns whose front lines were only 1,500 yards over the other side of the hill. We washed ourselves and mess kits when we got the chance, but we didn’t get the chance while we were there, only in the mud holes. Our clothes and bodies had a fine coat of yellow clay on that didn’t come off until after we came back from the front. We had had but very little sleep for a number of days, and were all about tired out when one night we were called on to give a big barrage. The barrage lasted an hour and when it was finished we were ordered to pack up and move out.
We moved out about ten o’clock without our supper. The night was dark and rainy. It was one awful night and as we marched along the men would fall asleep walking along the road with their packs strapped on their backs and wouldn’t wake up until the column would stop and they would walk into the carriages. We traveled all night along a road that was lined with graves on both sides, and we passed villages where there wasn’t a building left standing and the trees were shot until there was nothing but the stubs left. There was a steady flash in the sky, with shells bursting and guns barking on all sides of us. We had walked into a hell on earth. As it began to get daylight we pulled our guns under some trees along the side of the road, camouflaging them well from the sight of the German aero planes and hiding our horses in the woods, which a few days before had been a slaughtering pen. The woods were full of graves and it had shown signs that Fritz had left it in a hurry; for he had left clothing, guns, ammunition and very many dead behind. It sure looked like the ruins of war. The trees were cut and shot off and there were smashed trucks, Red Cross wagons, ambulances and wrecked German tanks. We stayed there that day. It was still raining and no place to sleep but in the mud. Some of the Battery chose the mud to going without sleep, but as we expected to stay there but one night, part of us scouted around to find some dugouts. We found some that the Germans had made, I think intending to stay there for the duration of the war. They were lighted with electric lights and all fixed up like a city park with beer gardens, swing chairs, spring beds and all the comforts of home. We thought we were going to get one night’s rest, but when we had finished our suppers the orders came for us to move into a position that our B. C. had located for us.
That day we were shelled four times and had seven gas attacks while we were there. We left there that night about seven o’clock to take our position on one of the hardest fought fronts of the war. As we dragged ourselves along, being too tired to be afraid and shells singing their death songs all around us and enough excitement to keep up the nerve of the men, we pulled our guns off the road and through a field and into a little shell torn grove on the South hill overlooking Death Valley.
We got our guns into position about one o’clock, and as we could not lay them that night, we had orders to find some place to sleep. We unrolled our packs and had our bunks made in the mud with the clouds for a roof, and had just laid down when the orders came that the Huns were retreating and we would have to follow them. We rolled our packs and ran our guns out onto the road. Our horses were as near dead as were the men, and as we pulled down into Death Valley and up the hill on the other side, it was the men that did most of the pulling and pushing of the guns.
As we came to one particular crossroad which the Huns used to shell every few minutes, we had just got by the corner when two shells burst right beside us. We were in a hell from then on, as we dragged slowly along the muddy shell torn road, with guns creaking and shells bursting on either side of us and German aero planes humming over head trying to find something to destroy. Just at the break of day we passed a farm house and a few minutes later pulled our guns in through a field and ran them into a hedge running from a small piece of woods over to a larger woods on our right. We camouflaged our guns in the hedge, which was full of barbed wire entanglements, and our horses had been unhitched. We did not know we were in direct observation of the Germans, whose front lines were only five eighths of a mile in front of us. We were ordered to hurry into the woods and get under camouflage, but it was too late. The Huns had spied us. Our horses had just left when the Huns gave us a friendly welcome by handing us a nice barrage, which lasted nearly two hours and at the rate of about 160 per minute. As there were no dugouts near, we had to hide behind trees, under caissons, behind a stone wall that was near there, and anywhere we could find shelter. We had had no breakfast and our kitchen was somewhere in a woods a mile or more through an open field. The field we had to cross was so full of shell holes that it was nearly impossible to get through, walking through them
Page one hundred thirty-two
or jumping the smaller ones, but we scattered out like a flock of sheep and started to breakfast while Fritz still dug more shell-holes all around us. We stopped on our way back to talk to some heavy artillery men that had their gun located about a mile back of us and one of their officers asked us where we were located. When we told him, he shook his head and said that artillery up that close to the Germans didn’t last very long. He was the first to tell us how close we were to Fritz. We thought he was just trying to scare us, but we began to believe it when the enemy would give us a barrage every few minutes. The shell holes behind our guns, that had water in them, were colored red with blood from the fight a few days before. The dead Germans still lay around us unburied, and in front of our guns a few hundred feet, it was like a slaughtering pen. Dead men lay all over. Glad to say, most of them were dressed in grey uniforms, though once in a while there would be one in khaki. There were many little wooden crosses standing around in the fields and woods with an American helmet hung over the top and their identification tag nailed on it. One night, as we came from supper, two of us stood on a crossroad as the infantry were carrying their dead out to bury them, and their wounded out where they would get aid. As we passed the same place the next day we saw fifteen fresh graves and fifteen wooden crosses to mark the place where they had been laid to rest.
One day, as we were coming from our dinner, a medical sergeant came out of an old barn and told us to send an ambulance, that there were men lying in there dying and had been there all night without any aid whatever. We could see them lying covered with blood and could hear their moans. It was a pitiful sight.
The woods where we were located was the former headquarters of a German regiment. We were in some of the buildings one night trying to get a little rest, when the Germans began shelling us with their big guns. As I lay on my bunk with one eye open, I could hear the shells as they came whistling towards us. It would seem like a half hour before they would get there. As the whistling would get louder and closer, we would hold our breaths waiting for it to hit us, as every one seemed to be coming right at us. As they would hit, the jar from the explosion would nearly shake us out of our bunks and it would splash the dirt up against the side of the shack.
On the night of the tenth of November we were lighting our aiming stakes, which was always done with the greatest of care to keep Fritz from seeing us, when his keen eye happened to spy the light and he soon let us know by sending us over a number of hot ones, one lighting so close to our guns that the dirt from the explosion lay thick all over the gun. But Fritz sure got paid back.
The next day, November 11th, the bombardment began in the morning and it was a continual roar of cannon and the machine guns kept up a steady click all the forenoon. We would hear the whistling of the projectiles from the sixteen-inch guns miles behind us as they flew over our heads on their way to Germany. We got word in the middle of the forenoon that the armistice was to be signed at 11 o’clock that day, but the guns never ceased their barking until the last second, and at exactly eleven o’clock all firings ceased.
It seemed too good to be true, but we knew it was over because we could hear the infantry bugles ahead of us blowing “cease firing,” and also hear the German bugles answering back. It seemed like being out of prison to us to be able to walk in the open again without being afraid of being seen by the enemy. We had heard nothing but camouflage before, and all our work had to be done at night, sneaking through the woods like thieves. It was a joyous day, but we went about our work in silence although it was with happy hearts. We were too busy with our thoughts to make any noise.
That afternoon we pulled our guns back a mile or more from where we were and pitched our tents for the night. After we had our supper we built a great bonfire. It was a happy bunch that gathered around that fire and sang songs and talked of home and received the first mail we had had for a month. The next day we were moved back to Montauville and billeted in real buildings. There we cleaned up and changed our clothes—the first time we had had a chance for days. A few days later we moved to Pont-a-Mousson.
There the battle of waiting to go home commenced, each day hearing rumors that we would move for home in a few days, but the days turned into months. There were many battles fought there- Privates Cayer and Witz fighting the battle of cognac many times, being captured once and sentenced to three months’ hard labor. We thought when the war was over we had heard the last of Squads East and West, but were still at it just as strong as ever. While I was at Pont-a-Mousson, I was given a furlough of seven days at Aix Les Bains, although we spent another
Page one hundred thirty-three
We took a trip up the Catstooth mountain one day. There is a beautiful rock road running around the side of these mountains, gradually going up until it nearly reaches the top. We were up to what is known as Hannibal’s Pass. It was a wonderful sight to look down on the lake and villages around there and to see the snow-covered Alps just as the sun was going down in the west. The snowy peaks seemed to blend into the sky. It was like a great painting and gave a man the feeling that he was in Fairyland. At the foot of the Catstooth mountain is an old palace of the early kings of Italy and is still Italian government land, which we visited Christmas afternoon.
So, on Christmas, 1918, I ate my Christmas dinner in France, was in Italy Christmas afternoon and could see Switzerland.
How well will we remember,
On that eleventh of November.
When the German shells were falling ‘round us fast;
Every one we thought would get us,
But they always seemed to miss us,
As they sang their little death song as they
passed.
And upon the eleventh hour,
When the news came o’er the wire,
That signed would be the armistice that day,
All the world seemed full of gladness,
After four long years of sadness.
—E. B. Dunn.
Page one hundred thirty-four (beginning) |