The Heroic Gangster_The Story of Monk Eastman, From the Streets of New York to the Battlefields of Europe and Back

by Neil Hanson

  One of the most effective grenade throwers in the regiment, he spearheaded his company’s attacks and personally destroyed several machine-gun nests.17 Belly-crawling through the mud under constant shell and machine-gun fire, he wormed his way forward using any cover—battlefield debris, craters, shell holes, even the bodies of the dead—until he was within range, and then threw his grenades with an outfielder’s power and accuracy. If any of the German gun crew survived the blast, they were likely to be dispatched by Monk’s bayonet.

  Even though he was wounded in his left leg and right hand, Monk refused to seek treatment, remaining with his company at the heart of the fighting. One soldier recalled the shot of being hit as “a sharp pain when you are hit, and a shock that leaves you faint.18 This lasts about fifteen minutes, then the pain is gone, but a raging thirst sets in. I guess I smoked at least a dozen cigarettes in about twenty minutes.” To Monk, a man who had been gutshot, scarred, and nicked innumerable times during his gangland career, the wounds would have been less of a shock.

  While Company G was still battling to wipe out the machine-gun nests that were wreaking such havoc among the attackers, Brennan’s cobbled-together command advanced in small groups. Each move drew further shell fire, on one occasion so heavy that they were unable to move for more than an hour. They eventually completed the occupation of Chinese Trench in the face of a heavy bombardment from Wytschaete Ridge, but stragglers turning back from G Company reported that they had suffered very heavy casualties and were being driven back. The blizzard of shells and machine-gun fire eventually forced Lieutenant Archer to order a withdrawal.19 The mopping-up companies then withdrew to the old Vierstraat line, where they could get some shelter, while the remainder of the troops held position and awaited nightfall. As Company G began to withdraw, despite his wounds and in full view of the enemy guns, Monk crawled to a dugout under enemy fire to help one of his fallen comrades—Sergeant Francis X. “Hank” Miller—back to the lines.20 “ ‘The Monk’ was wounded,” Miller later said. “He saw me fall with a bullet through my right shoulder. He crawled to me, picked me up and carried me to the rear. He saved my life.”

  After dark the men of E, F, and G companies fell back to the positions they had held that morning. Company H soon also withdrew, but the four companies of the First Battalion remained dug in, occupying a line along the railway at the foot of Wytschaete Ridge despite heavy barrages by artillery and machine guns. All the companies of the 106th were relieved by British troops during the course of that night. Major de Kay noted regretfully, though not without some satisfaction, that “the command I took charge of was worn out in forty-eight hours of the heaviest kind of work, during which time they had suffered heavy casualties and had been compelled to get little or no food, but the men responded to the call to go forward and continued to endeavor to clean up the machine gun nests and attack vigorously until absolutely stopped by machine gun fire.”21

  Although the bravery of Monk and his fellow soldiers was not in doubt, de Kay admitted there had been confusion, even chaos, between the line officers, battalions, and companies of the regiment during the fighting around Vierstraat and Wytschaete ridges. While conceding that liaison between companies and battalions had been very poor, however, he blamed the difficulties in mopping up the German machine-gun nests on the fact that their organized plan of cross fire had been very little disrupted by American artillery.

  The impact of that cross fire was shown in the casualty figures. During the action around Vierstraat and Wytschaete ridges, of the four companies of the Second Battalion, Company E had lost seven sergeants, nine corporals, and thirty-three privates; Company F lost one sergeant, four corporals, and twenty privates; Company G—the worst affected—lost one officer, one first sergeant, five sergeants, and thirty-eight privates; and Company H lost one sergeant, five corporals, and twenty-nine privates. A first sergeant of Company K and several other noncommissioned officers and runners were also killed when one of two concrete and brick pillboxes being used as a forward battalion headquarters was blown up by a delayed-action mine. The roof of the pillbox was a one-foot slab of concrete, covered by railroad iron, which in turn was covered by another one-foot slab of concrete, and about a foot of earth and grass on top of that.22 In the terrific explosion of the mine, the roof collapsed and all the occupants were instantly crushed.

  Losses in the other battalions were not quite as severe as in the Second Battalion, nonetheless, in the regiment as a whole, 47 men had been killed, 267 wounded, and 41 gassed, and 7 more were missing in action and another 5 captured by the enemy. That casualty rate was equal to one-tenth of the original strength of the entire regiment when it disembarked in France, even before the steady attrition from gas, shell fire, shrapnel, sniper rifle, and machine gun had begun to whittle away its numbers. The dead—or those who could be found among the carnage of the battlefield—were buried in rows in a graveyard at Abeele, Belgium, the first of their countrymen to fight and die “in Flanders Fields.” Strangely, it was among the duties of the regiment’s mechanics to prepare the dead for burial, though after such losses, many others were compelled to lend a hand.23

  The surviving men of the 106th Infantry had come through their ferocious baptism of artillery, rifle, and machine-gun fire. They had taken Vierstraat Ridge, pushed their lines forward more than a mile in the face of ferocious opposition, and only their mounting level of casualties had prevented them from taking and holding their final objective. However, while they and the men of the other American regiments had undoubtedly been brave fighters, their losses had been heavier than necessary. A German officer reported that these still inexperienced American troops did not yet comprehend “how to utilize the terrain in movement, work their way forward during an attack, or choose the correct formation in the event the enemy opens artillery fire.”24 Much of the blame for that had to be laid at the door of their officers, and Major Hildreth was only one of those whose abilities had been under question even before the 106th Infantry had embarked for France. First Lieutenant Fred E. Mayor and Second Lieutenants Lucius H. Doty and Harold deLoiselle had been reported to the inspector general as “professionally unfitted to hold their positions in the military service,” yet they nonetheless embarked with their men.25 The commanding officer, Colonel William A. Taylor, reversed his opinion about deLoiselle after the regiment had been in France for a few weeks, and he was later cited for gallantry in action. However, Lieutenant Mayor failed to win the endorsement of his commander, and Colonel Taylor noted that, though Lieutenant Doty was “studious and takes a very good book examination,” his battalion commander rated him as “having no qualities of leadership and states that his work as Company Commander … is unsatisfactory. Physically he would not rate above 6 [out of ten].” It was another vivid reflection of the paucity of good officers that, despite the withering assessment of his capabilities, First Lieutenant Doty had remained as second-in-command of Company G.

  After the battle, the wounded Monk had been taken to a casualty clearing station and then to a British field hospital. The 27th Division’s medical facilities were still insufficient to cope with the level of casualties they were experiencing, and once more, British, Australian, and Canadian units filled the gap. Monk would have empathized with the soldier who noted that when they cut off his clothes in the hospital, it was the first time he had removed his shoes in a month.26

  While his wounds were being treated, it was discovered that Monk had also been gassed, but had said nothing about it until then.27 Chlorine-gas casualties were particularly alarming. Fluid and blood filling the lungs would pour out of the casualty’s mouth, and his efforts to breathe were distressing to watch, let alone experience. The treatment required the victim to lie facedown with his feet at least twelve inches above his head, to allow the lungs to drain. Afterward, if the victim was still alive, the advice was to keep him warm and avoid giving him alcohol or morphine, both of which slowed respiration. If he could be kept alive for two days he would re
cover, but the recovery was only partial. The effects of chlorine gas were permanent, damaging the lining of the lungs, and victims were never 100 percent healthy again.

  Gas patients were all stretcher cases because any exertion increased the damaging effects of the gas and could prove fatal. Military regulations required a gas victim to be stretchered from the battlefield and kept in the hospital for a week for observation, but Monk had other plans.28 His crude speech, rough manners, and bruiser’s appearance would not have endeared him to British officers and, in turn, he must have chafed at their rigid adherence to formalities, regulations and military etiquette, and a class consciousness that sometimes bordered on contempt. He had been in the field hospital only three days when he heard that the 106th Infantry was about to go back to the front lines. “Wanting to be in on the big show,” without notifying the surgeon or even an orderly, he slipped away from the field hospital, still wearing his pajamas.

  Confused, traumatized soldiers, often suffering from shell shock, were not an unknown sight near field hospitals in the rear areas, and no one tried to detain Monk as he made his escape. Pausing only at a salvage dump, where he exchanged his hospital clothing for a uniform and a pair of boots that roughly approximated to his size, Monk headed east, toward the angry rumble of the guns.29 Bandaged, unarmed, and still only partly equipped, he eventually made his way back to his unit. By leaving the field hospital without permission, he had made himself technically absent without leave, but none of his officers were ever likely to have punished him for a breach of discipline motivated solely by his desire to rejoin his unit in the firing lines, and when the 106th Infantry went over, Monk was with them.

  16

  THE MEN MUST GO FORWARD

  During the night of September 2 through 3, the exhausted troops of the 106th had been relieved by the British 122nd Infantry.1 They trudged back across the Franco-Belgian border, leaving their billets at Micmac Farm at 1:30 a.m. and marching to Napier, where they boarded a narrow gauge railway to Rattekot, Saint-Eloi. After spending what was left of the night in tents there, they made a three-hour march the following night to Wayenburg and boarded another train, though they first had to shovel out the manure left by the animals that had previously been transported in it.2 They finally entrained at 1:30 a.m. on the morning of September 5, but did not reach Mondicourt until 6:30 that evening, and then faced another two-and-a-half-hour march before finally reaching their billets at Doullens. When they at last arrived, the surviving 12 officers and 654 enlisted men of the Second Battalion of the 106th ate for the first time in thirty-six hours.

  They were quartered in the ancient stone citadel on a hill just outside Doullens, or in barns in the surrounding countryside. “There were prior tenants in these barns … some of them were quite large and every night they came out of their hiding places to chase each other over the blankets of the soldier occupants … We were involved in a serious training mission and were too tired to be bothered with rats.3 We just went to sleep, pulling our lone blanket over our heads.” There were other prior tenants, too: “cooties”—lice—infested the men, their clothing, and their hay and straw bedding. Despite the army’s attempts to delouse their troops, steaming or fumigating their uniforms to kill the lice while the men stood naked and shivering, they were louse-free only until they again lay down to sleep, when they at once became reinfested.

  General Read, Commander of the Second Corps that included the 27th Division, had already made a request for replacements for his depleted ranks—now 62 officers and 2,547 men short.4 The request was not answered; the 27th Division received no replacements at all until late October 1918, by which time its fighting service was at an end.

  The 106th Infantry remained in Doullens for a fortnight, reorganizing the depleted ranks, which were slowly being augmented by a trickle of returning wounded and gassed men, and reequipping and retraining, despite torrents of rain that left them once more knee-deep in mud and water. These tired and bloodied soldiers showed an understandable lack of enthusiasm for drill sessions during their rest period, drawing complaints from a regimental adjutant who noted that almost seven hundred men of the 106th and the other regiments of the division were “in billets at time of inspection … this number is out of all proportion and appears beyond reason.”5

  There was also a problem with men going absent without leave, some of whom must have been classified as deserters. A report produced on September 6, 1918, showed that about fifty men had been AWOL at some time during the previous fortnight, with two companies particularly badly affected. Fifteen men from Company F were AWOL for at least part of that time, including eleven who had disappeared before the regiment’s tour of frontline duty at Dickebusch Lake and Vierstraat Ridge and never returned. Seven men of Company I had been AWOL during the entire tour of duty, since early July. Whether they were ever found and what punishment was imposed does not appear to have been recorded, but the brigade commander made it clear that in every case, in addition to charges for being AWOL, he also wanted the men charged with misbehavior before the enemy.6 The implications of that were made clear in the relevant Article of War: Any officer or soldier who abandoned his post, incited others to do so, or threw away his weapon was liable to suffer “death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.”

  The men who had been involved in the brutal fighting around Vierstraat Ridge felt an understandable need to let off steam afterward, with predictable consequences. On September 14, 1918, a military policeman entered an estaminet in Doullens just in time to stop a brawl involving a dozen men of the 106th. There were about fifteen champagne bottles on the table in front of them and the men were “in a very nasty mood.7 I realized that if I endeavored to stop them from taking the champagne with them,” the MP said, “it would mean trouble and probably necessitate the use of my gun.” He got them outside, and after more fighting among themselves in the yard and on the road in front of the estaminet, he managed to get them started on the journey back to their billets.

  However, they then assaulted two British YMCA workers who were out for an evening stroll. Although the culprits were arrested, the YMCA workers’ superior, voicing the strong feelings of his staff and his YMCA executive, showed a remarkable degree of understanding in expressing the hope that the men would be dealt with as leniently as possible. His demand for action against “the sellers of strong drink, rather than the victims of it,” echoed the debate on temperance and Prohibition that was dominating the domestic political agenda back in the United States.8

  Although they had been allowed a brief rest, the men of the 106th Infantry, like those in the other regiments of the 27th Division, were now in intensive training, practicing alongside British tanks for the first time. Their depleted state after the fighting on Vierstraat Ridge and Mount Kemmel was shown by the record of attendance for a tank demonstration on September 17, 1918, when almost half of the surviving members of the Second Battalion were missing, the majority of them wounded men who were still in the hospital. Depleted or not, a communiqué from General O’Ryan now informed them that in the near future they would be carrying out a mission of great importance, requiring them to serve as “shock troops.”9 That mission, now being rehearsed by these still inexperienced soldiers, was to be an attack on the enemy’s most formidable defensive system: the Siegfried Stellung—the Hindenburg Line.

  Despite huge initial advances, the great German offensive that spring had not achieved its ultimate objective of dividing the British and French armies and breaking through to the Channel. It had also represented something of a last throw of the dice. Germany’s economy, starved of raw materials by the British blockade of the North Sea ports, was struggling to supply enough war matériel and munitions for the troops, or even enough food and clothing for the population at home. German forces had suffered massive casualties, for which even the transfer of troops from the Eastern Front following the collapse of Russia into revolution could not compensate, and now the floods of fresh America
n troops arriving daily in Europe were tilting the balance of manpower ever more heavily in the Allies’ favor.

  The last German hopes of outright victory had evaporated when the great spring offensive faltered and stalled. Now, massed behind the fortifications of the Hindenburg Line, the German war aim was simply to weather whatever Allied storm might break against them, and then, negotiating from a position of rough parity, secure a peace that would allow them to retain as many as possible of the territorial gains in Belgium and France that they had made in the autumn of 1914.

  When not carrying out their training and practice maneuvers, the men of the 106th Infantry and the other regiments of the 27th Division were told to get all the sleep they could.10 In between the endless hours of rehearsal for the attack and the sleep they were encouraged to get, Monk and his comrades also found time for some recreation, including a regimental athletics meet. There were also hundreds of stray dogs wandering the areas behind the lines, and many were adopted as pets by the American soldiers. Given his fondness for animals, it was no surprise that Monk found himself one, “a poor waif of a cur he picked up somewhere behind the lines in France” and took with him from billet to billet.

  The 106th rested at Doullens until September 23, when they once more marched to a railhead and boarded the familiar boxcars, heading “in the general direction of the big show.” The 15 officers and 635 men of the Second Battalion boarded their trains at 2:30 that morning, their numbers increased by the return of gassed and wounded men.11 In all, 39 officers and 2,058 surviving men of the 106th Infantry, accompanied by a baggage train of 60 limbers, journeyed by train to the dismal Tincourt area. Every soldier was burdened with a greatcoat, a British Lee Enfield .303 rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition, and their rations for the day. A convoy of thirty trucks carried each battalion’s additional ammunition: 140,000 rifle rounds, and 50,000 rounds for the Lewis machine guns.