“Major Donovan found the men in line contending with a desperate condition,” wrote Father Duffy in his diary. “The trenches were in places leveled by the bombardment and though the enemy were no longer hurling the big torpedoes, they kept up a violent artillery attack on the position. The only answer that we could make to this was from the trench mortars and one-pounders. One of these guns was blown clean out of position.”
Donovan was anxious to get to the cave-in and the trapped men, but he knew that the first duty of a soldier is to hold his position. He quickly saw to it that the front-line defense was organized. Next, as he wrote to Ruth,
Went around to each man on post, talked to him and straightened him out. It was just getting dark; flares were going up from the French and Germans, and there was tenseness in the air. I went down myself into this dugout where the men were working, got them organized a little better, and picking up ten men who had lost their way and wanted to get back with these two officers, started with them.
This was about 8:30. I stopped for a minute to put my arm around a youngster who was on guard and asked him if he were going to let those damned Dutchmen get his goat, in response to which he smiled and said, “No,” grasped his gun a little more firmly and resumed his watch more intently. [The boy was 17-year-old Eddie Kelly.]
I was not more than two minutes away from him and had left the trench and got into a little path leading back through the woods, when a terrible bombardment commenced. We were out of all shelter, so I made the little detachment lie down in the woods while those large minenwerfers and shrapnel scattered around in a terrifying manner.
Most of them were passing over the trench system with a whistling, penetrating noise and seemed to be seeking us out individually. They were striking around us and lighting up the dead trees. In the blaze of the explosions you could see the twigs and branches and sometimes trees crash down. It did not last long and seeming to me that the trench system had not been touched, I gathered these ten men, who by this time were thoroughly frightened, together, and started out through the dark, very lonely muddy trail back to the post of command.
The party had not gone very far when the Klaxon that indicated a gas attack sounded. Donovan continued,
We all put on our gas masks and grabbing one another’s arms, hands, or sticks, resumed the march. After going about a quarter of a mile, I lifted my mask to test the gas, and feeling that the air was clean, took it off. I made the rest of them keep theirs on for a few minutes until I made certain.
We then all took them off, and when we got about half way another gas alarm sounded. By that time these poor micks with me were scared to death. They got ploughing around—making so much noise that I thought we would have had the whole German artillery firing on us. Went back to one man who was particularly obnoxious and handed him a good punch in the jaw. That quieted all of them. Then I put one lieutenant in front, one in the middle, and I took up the rear and marched them back.
Donovan gave a few directions to the now completely demoralized commander. The second bombardment had scattered the men attempting to dig out those trapped in the collapsed dugout. The officer in charge came to Donovan.
“He was shaken and frightened,” wrote Donovan to Ruth, “and no one seemed to know what to do, so I jumped up and said I was damned if I was going to see these men stay there without a chance, so I started out and picked up two of the lieutenants who had been with me before and whom I myself had trained, so I knew I could depend on them, and we went back.”
The barrage had caved in part of the trench, through which the three men hastened. “As I entered the trench, I fell over the dead body of a soldier,” Donovan wrote, “and found that it was the youngster whom just a few minutes before I had been talking to, and telling him what his duty was. It appears that after I left him and the shelling commenced, they had yelled to him to seek cover, but he refused to leave his post. He had been hit in the head with a piece of shrapnel and killed instantly. I hope, Ruth, that if my day should come here, I would be lucky enough to die as he did.”
Donovan at last reached the shattered dugout. He ripped off his gas mask and coat and jumped into the hole, where the earth was still falling. “Thought again of you and the youngsters,” he wrote, “wished I had finished my letter to you, and then made up my mind that the thing to do was to go to work. Had only a little entrenching tool. I started in digging after I knew that one man had been partly uncovered just before the last bombardment and had been talking and that his face must be somewhere near where I was. After a while, I made a hole leading to his face because I could hear the breathing, but the breathing was that of a man about to die. I talked to him and yelled to the others, but got no response.”
Seven men who had been freed from the suffocating debris joined Donovan and the rescue party. The earth kept slipping and shifting around the diggers, threatening to bury them in turn. Close to where Donovan dug, a muddy hand, cold and lifeless, appeared in the muck.
Deep down to Donovan’s left, a buried boy was shouting in his delirium. “Come on, come on, fellows!” he would cry. Then he would lower his voice to a poignant murmur. “Mother,” he would beg.
“I wish I could give you the picture,” Donovan wrote. “The winding stairway shattered, covering held by a few broken posts, one candle lighting our work, two young officers on the stairway tense and white and tired, and while willing to face all personal dangers rapidly losing their nerve at the cries of the poor devils and the absolute futility and hopelessness of it all.
“As I looked at that mass of earth it was brought home to me that nothing more could be done and that this must be their tomb. I did not want to go then, so I sent up a message to bring up the engineers. I almost wished that the rest of the covering would fall and bury me.”
Donovan finally went up above and put three sergeants of his own battalion, who had been helping to orient the Second Battalion to trench warfare, to work on the front-line trench that had been smashed. He went up and down the trench, “saw these youngsters standing at their posts and told them what to do and quieted them down, and then, having sent away all the lieutenants and sergeants, I found myself alone. It was then two o’clock in the morning, and as I stumbled across the broken trenches, ran into those poor kids who were shivering, they didn’t know whether from cold or fire. I did not know the way very well. I had no rifle, no revolver, nothing but a fancy cane, so I had to have some one with me. I caught hold of one husky youngster who had a rifle, and he undertook to guide me out.”
The boy crouched low beneath the German fire and crawled along so slowly that Donovan pressed his cane against the seat of his breeches to keep him moving.
“When we got to the trail leading to the woods, he was in despair, and did not like the idea of starting out,” Donovan continued, “so I had to get ahead of him and lead him. Luckily my bump of direction held good, and I went into our line instead of the Germans’.”
By then it was 4 A.M. There was no transport, so Donovan hiked 4 miles to the regimental headquarters to report to the colonel. He then hiked back to the Second Battalion command post.
“I did not like the shell fire,” he later wrote to Ruth, “but I found that the danger and responsibilities quickened my instincts and decisions so that I was able to do a lot of things which in reality I had no authority to do. But you would be surprised at the fear of the dark that men have, and you would wonder how the mere fact that a man is an officer and is standing with them has a guiding effect upon an enlisted man. These men did not know me. I was not their battalion commander, but all they needed was someone to talk to them.”
The Rainbow Division cited Donovan as a “superior officer who has shown brilliant military qualities, notably on the seventh and eighth of March, 1918, by giving during the course of a violent bombardment an example of bravery, activity, and remarkable presence of mind.”
French authorities awarded Donovan the coveted Croix de Guerre. “I told them that while I wo
uld like to have it for the sake of my wife and youngsters one day,” he wrote to Ruth, “I did not think in this case I was entitled to one because I did only what I should have done—that I was not only a Major of a battalion, but an officer of the regiment and because of my rank more was expected of me.”
Donovan finally accepted the award on the condition that the medal also be given to the three sergeants and the lieutenants who had worked under his direction. French General Gaucher pinned the Croix de Guerre on the chest of Maj. William J. Donovan in a ceremony on March 16. When other officers congratulated him on being awarded such a high honor for valor in his very first engagement, Donovan had little to say.
“All of which seems absurd to me,” he wrote to Ruth, “because why am I here except to look out for those youngsters who are with us?”
Warwick Greene, proud of his aide of War Relief Commission days, learned of Donovan’s Croix de Guerre and wrote to his mother, “Did you know that Donovan has won the Croix de Guerre? And with very, very complimentary remarks from the French. He should make a wonderful officer, that fellow, and I hear good things about him from everybody. He ought to go far if he doesn’t get killed first. There should be a marvelous opportunity for men with a natural gift for military command in our Army. And I should say that Donovan has very great gifts for handling and leading men. I am delighted to hear that he has won distinction so soon.”
General Charles Menoher brought Gen. James G. Harbord and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to the sector. General Harbord and Baker were touring the battlefront. They came, as Harbord put it in his war diary, “to inspect a battalion of the old 69th, New York, now wearing a higher number in a greater army. The battalion was commanded by a nice-looking New York Irishman named Donovan, wearing a bright, new-looking Croix de Guerre conferred on him by the French the day before. General Menoher called the attention of the Secretary to it, saying, This officer is wearing this without warrant of law or regulations, Mr. Secretary.’ The Secretary said to Donovan, ‘I give you executive authority to wear that cross. If anyone questions your right to wear it, refer them to me.’ ”
Not all the officers in the Rainbow Division were proud of Donovan’s Croix de Guerre, won in his very first engagement. Some at headquarters scoffed at a safe distance from the front and averred that nobody could be that brave or distinguished in conduct under fire.
Eddie Kelly was buried in Croismare in a plot near a roadside calvary. Donovan stood by, his face solemn, his blue eyes tearful. It hardly seemed to him then that he had done a good job of looking out for his youngsters. A marble tablet was affixed to the ruins of the dugout beneath which brave men had been crushed. “Here on the field of honor rest” began the inscription, followed by a list of the men entombed. Joyce Kilmer had intended to write a book about his life in the Fighting 69th. Now he wrote the poem “Rouge Bouquet,” his first attempt at versification in a dugout.
In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet
There is a new made grave today,
Built by never a spade nor pick
Yet covered with earth ten metres thick.
There lie many fighting men,
Dead in their youthful prime,
Never to laugh nor love again
Nor taste the Summertime,
For Death came flying through the air
and stopped his flight at the dugout stair,
Touched his prey and left them there,
Clay to clay. . . .
Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor,
You will not need them any more,
Danger’s past,
Now at last,
Go to sleep!
Three days later the Germans sent a choking cloud of poisonous gas over the lines held by the 165th Infantry. Donovan immediately rejoined his First Battalion in Camp New York. Spring found the battalion recuperating in a village overlooking the Vosges Valley. To Donovan the view from the village resembled the Genesee Valley in his native New York just as it began to turn green, except that the fields were studded with French and German graves from the earlier fighting.
“Stretching for miles was the rich green meadowland and winding river,” he wrote to Ruth. “Dusty red ploughed fields were splashed on the upper rim, and at intervals—much as David might set his building blocks on a green carpet—were dotted with many villages. You would be surprised to see how eagerly the men drank in the picture. Your soldier man is a sentimental person, and when he is happiest he is singing some lonesome melody of home or mother.”
On St. Patrick’s Day, a Sunday, Donovan and his men went to Mass. There were games during the day, and that night the regimental band played Irish airs. Father Duffy read Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet” to the men for the first time.
“The last lines of each verse are written to respond to the notes of ‘Taps,’ the bugle call for the end of the day, which is also blown ere the last sods are dropped on the graves of the dead,” he noted in his diary. “Sergeant Patrick Stokes stood near me with his horn and blew the tender plaintive notes before I read the words, and then from the deep woods where Egon was stationed came a repetition of the notes.”
Egon was a bugler who played from the heart, and the men wept for their lost comrades. Donovan stood with his head bowed, tears welling from his eyes. Father Duffy looked about him at the regiment. “We can pay tribute to our dead,” he said softly, “but we must not lament for them overmuch.”
Donovan lifted his head and transfixed the chaplain with a steady gaze.
7
Taking Hell with Bayonets
AFTER ST. PATRICK’S DAY, Donovan’s men, back in the trenches, prepared to carry out a raid. Donovan drilled his officers before the blackboard in the command post, and he exercised the men to be sure they were in condition for the attack. Donovan also studied a stone tablet by the roadside that commemorated the Duke of Lorraine’s 400-year-old victory over the Duke of Burgundy on the same terrain.
Then on the morning of March 21, 1918, the American artillery laid down a barrage. Donovan and his men went over the top at 7:35 A.M. The previous night he had sent scouts out to cut the wire, and now the men poured through the gaps and ran zigzagging toward the German lines. At 7:50 the American artillery struck the German lines again, and when the men reached the enemy trenches they found that the Germans had pulled back. Then the German artillery opened up on their abandoned trenches, and the Americans in turn fell back to their own lines.
Two days later the entire 165th Infantry was withdrawn from the lines for a rest. They marched through Lunéville as German shells fell, speeding them on their way with the threat of death or dismemberment.
In March Father Duffy found Donovan and his men staying in the Haxo Barracks at the north end of Baccarat, a town in the gentle Meurthe Valley that had been partly destroyed by the Germans in 1914, its famous glass factory gutted by fire. “Dropped over in the morning to call on the First Battalion,” he noted. “I found them in the field, where Donovan had had them lined up for a cross-country run. I prudently kept out of his way, until he was off with his wild youngsters.”
Off went Donovan, still bent on keeping his men in the peak of condition, running over hills and through the woods, splashing through brooks, climbing over barbed-wire fences. A few hours later he burst back into sight, still running strong, followed by his boys, who now ran as strongly as he did.
“Oh, Father,” he said as he stopped before Duffy, who had spent the time chatting with a Donovan aide. “Why didn’t you get here earlier? You missed a fine time.”
“My Guardian Angel was taking care of me, William, and saw to it that I got here late,” replied Father Duffy.
That afternoon the regimental band came over to play for the men, and there was a vaudeville show. The men gave a loud cheer at Donovan’s appearance and demanded that he make a speech. Donovan would have none of it, insisting that Father Duffy talk in his stead, which Duffy did.
“I got square by telling the story of a
Major who had been shot at by a German sniper while visiting one of his companies in the trenches,” he wrote. “He made a big fuss about it with the Captain who in turn bawled out an old sergeant for allowing such things to happen. The sergeant went himself to settle with the Heinie that was raising all the trouble. Finally he got sight of his man, took careful aim and fired. As he saw his shot reach home, he murmured, Take that, confound you, for missing the Major.’ ”
Donovan studied the top of his boots while the men of his command roared their approval of the chaplain’s story. Later he was prevailed upon to sing for the men. He favored them with an Irish tenor’s version of “The Heart of the Gas House District.”
More familiar now with the qualities of his men, Donovan made command changes. He named Joyce Kilmer a sergeant and placed him in charge of field intelligence. He reasoned that the poet’s fine eye for detail would enable him to make careful and accurate observations of enemy dispositions on midnight forays into no-man’s-land.
“By the way, I’m a sergeant now,” Kilmer wrote to Father Daly, a friend back in New York, on April 5. “I’ll never be anything higher. To get a commission I’d have to go away for three months to a school, and then—whether or not I was made an officer—I’d be sent to some outfit other than this, and I don’t want to leave this crowd. I’d rather be a sergeant in the 69th than a lieutenant in any other regiment in the world.” Kilmer also refused a staff assignment on Stars and Stripes in his desire to remain with Donovan.
While the Fighting 69th rested in and around Baccarat, the Ohioans, who made up the other half of the brigade, held the line. On April 23, orders came for the New Yorkers to relieve the Ohio troops on the left of the Rainbow Division’s sector. Donovan and his men marched over a road that led east of town across the Meurthe Valley and up into a gap in the high hills, beyond which the American line defended a string of villages. The First Battalion was once again first into the trenches that ran along the edge of the Bois Boubroux.
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