by Neil Hanson
Xenophobia was rampant. German-language books were publicly burned in several places, including Spartanburg; sauerkraut was renamed “Liberty Cabbage,” and the hamburger became the “Liberty Sandwich.” Hollywood weighed in with luridly titled films like The Beast of Berlin and The Claws of the Hun that fueled anti-German feeling. Citizens with foreign accents or names were instantly suspect, irrespective of their actual nationality or whether they were fresh off the boat or American-born, and in the U.S. heartland in particular, due process often gave way to lynch law and the rule of the mob.
Police, courts, officials, and government were often passive—and sometimes active—conspirators in an assault on American civil liberties, as the rights to free speech and thought, habeas corpus, and a fair trial came under attack. Free speech was now apparently tolerated only when the sentiments it expressed accorded with the views and policies of the U.S. government and did not include the right to criticize the decision to go to war, conscription, or the conduct of the war.
Federal prosecutors also showed extraordinary zeal in targeting individuals. In one of the more extraordinary cases, the maker of The Spirit of ’76, a film depicting British atrocities against American colonists during the War of Independence, was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment by a judge who told him that the film “tended to question the good faith of our ally, Great Britain.” The irony of the official listing of the case as U.S. v Spirit of ’76 seemed to elude everyone.12
Conscientious objectors were treated with uniform harshness. Even those whose religion forbade them to take up arms were persecuted; forty-five Mennonites were sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for refusing to wear army uniforms. The postmaster general took powers to ban from the U.S. mail any publication criticizing America’s war effort; seventy-five periodicals, the majority of them socialist publications, were put out of business as a result, and there was growing industrial and social unrest, as socialism, Marxism, and anarchism claimed increasing numbers of adherents among the industrial poor and the unemployed.
Conflicts between companies and their increasingly organized and vocal employees created conditions that, with one eye on events in Russia, some feared might even be prerevolutionary. Gangsters like Monk had long been used as strike-breakers for hire, but the gangs could no longer provide sufficient men to intimidate workforces that often numbered in the hundreds if not thousands, and companies hired in other “goons,” private detectives, vigilantes, and even the National Guard to break strikes and labor disputes.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 had been widely used to intern some of the 3.5 million immigrants from Germany and the territories of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act gave the government even more draconian powers, not only against espionage and sedition but against any form of dissent. Fines of up to ten thousand dollars and twenty-year jail sentences were imposed on offenders.
The state and the police now had the freedom to interfere in almost every area of American life; as the attorney general remarked, “It is safe to say that never in its history had the country been so thoroughly policed.”13 If that had already proved to be dangerous for aliens, pacifists, socialists, and union organizers, it also threatened to be bad news for criminals like Monk, should he attempt to resume his old career once the war was over.
Soon after Monk and his comrades arrived in Bussy-lès-Daours, the 106th Infantry received their first replacements since leaving Spartanburg the previous spring. The new boys, National Army men, had not faced combat at all, and there must have been an almost unbridgeable gulf between them and the surviving veterans.
Despite growing rumors about peace proposals, the 106th resumed intensive training, preparing the new arrivals for the regiment’s impending return to the front lines. On the morning of Sunday, November 10, as the 27th Division was about to begin the trek back to the Western Front, a bugle sounded, calling the surviving members to attention. Against the backdrop of the French hills, snowcapped and blue-tinted in the chill of the morning, the 27th Division Memorial Review was held in honor of the memory of their comrades.14 Although the dead had been buried in or near the battlefields where they fell, and burial services held over their graves, General O’Ryan felt that the survivors would still want to participate in a ceremony to commemorate their lost comrades and claimed that no soldiers had ever been more motivated by “the higher military ideals,” nor more disciplined.15 If that remark would once have provoked incredulous looks from those familiar with the disciplinary record of the 106th Infantry at Spartanburg, their subsequent conduct on the battlefield had more than wiped the slate clean.
The snow-covered ground on which Monk and the other veterans of the 106th stood shoulder to shoulder to honor their dead seemed to heighten the stillness of that somber scene. Fourteen months earlier, they had left for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, marching in the shadow of the skyscrapers of New York with the cheers of their fellow citizens ringing in their ears. Six months ago they had disembarked at Brest and marched up the hill from the harbor through the narrow streets, past throngs of French civilians curious to see these young American “saviors” of their land. Now there were no spectators, and the only visible building was the war-ravaged cathedral of Corbie in the distance. Their equipment was battered, their uniforms threadbare, and the once numerous companies were now hardly bigger than platoons. They were gaunt and tired, many bore wound stripes on their arms, and their drawn faces were almost unrecognizable as those of once brash, cocky young men.
Accompanied by their retinues of staff officers, Generals Pershing, Read, and O’Ryan walked past each file of troops. General Pershing inspected every single man and paused to talk to many of those who wore wound stripes or decorations. His progress was “so slow it seemed we would be there in our rigid position forever … this thing would never end.”16 Even when the inspection was at last over, the troops were still kept rigidly at attention. They watched from the corners of their eyes as the staff officers formed a circle around General Pershing, all facing outward, and the watching soldiers were left to wonder if theirs was the only unit ever to have to stand at attention while its commander emptied his bladder. The New York Division remained at attention while their massed bands played not a martial air, but a hymn in memory of all those men whose places in the ranks now stood empty. After a two-minute silence, the generals took the salute as, regiment by regiment, the troops marched past the dais. A pack of about twenty of their adopted stray dogs trailed after the soldiers, as if taking part in the ceremony.
The 106th Infantry and their sister regiments had fully earned the battle honors and the praise heaped upon them by the generals who watched them pass in review that cold November morning, but the men and their families had paid the heaviest possible price. The 106th Infantry had been over the top more times than any other regiment in the division, and had “the honor of being first over in every engagement, which to us is the greatest honor of all.”17 They had not been the first to break through the Hindenburg Line—that honor had fallen to their fellow regiments—but, as General O’Ryan acknowledged, “It was undoubtedly the fierce attack of the 106th Infantry which broke the morale of the enemy and made possible the subsequent attacks by the remainder of the division.”18
Monk had fought at East Poperinghe; the Dickebusch Line; Vierstraat Ridge; the Knoll, Guillemont Farm, and Quennemont Farm on the Hindenburg Line; and at the Selle and Saint-Maurice rivers.19 His commanding officer, Colonel Franklin W. Ward, described Monk’s record as exceptional, and there was probably no soldier in the entire 27th Division who was more inspirational to his comrades, more cool under fire, more brave in leading attacks, more willing to remain in the front line even when his regiment was being relieved, or more selfless in risking his own life to save others. His heroics at Vierstraat Ridge, the Hindenburg Line, and the Selle River alone make it difficult to comprehend why he was not cited for bravery.
The citations among other men
of the regiment and the rest of the division include a number whose feats appear far less selfless and impressive than those of Monk, yet he was awarded no decorations for his valor.20 The death of Monk’s Company G commander and the loss of all the other company officers during the fighting may have meant that he was denied simply by the ferocious toll of dead and wounded among them. Officers wrote up the battle reports and citations for bravery—one reason, cynics might have said, for the disproportionate number of officers who received medals for bravery—and many of the heroics performed by Monk may have been witnessed only by other enlisted men. The replacement officers may have been unaware of Monk’s actions when compiling reports for their superiors, or the commendations may have come from the less unimpeachable sources—at least in staff officers’ eyes—of NCOs and other ranks.
Monk was not alone in being overlooked. Of the eight men of Company G cited for valor after the war was over, only three were privates, the rest being sergeants, and none of the three privates had played any part in the actual fighting. One was a runner cited for delivering messages “between battalion headquarters, company and platoon headquarters under heavy fire and displayed unvarying coolness,” and the other two were stretcher-bearers at Mount Kemmel, cited for “devotion to duty and tireless energy under fire.”21
The other possible explanation for Monk’s failure to win the medals his bravery should have earned him is that his troubled past had counted against him; perhaps someone among the senior regimental or divisional officers knew that he was a convicted felon and had vetoed a citation. However, although Monk had no Congressional Medal of Honor or other military award, he had earned the unconditional respect and admiration of the most important judges: the men who served alongside him. If ever anyone had redeemed a terrible past by his present actions, Monk Eastman was that man.
His regiment had borne the brunt of the 27th Division’s losses.22 It had lost 663 men at the Hindenburg Line alone, and in all sustained 1,955 casualties, including 1,496 wounded, 376 killed outright, and another 83 who died later of their wounds. On October 27, a report on the current strength of the regiment, company by company, had shown that, while the headquarters company still retained 5 officers and 199 men, the fighting companies had been cut to pieces. Monk’s Company G alone had 52 men killed. They had no line officers at all, and just 56 men. None of the other eleven infantry companies in the regiment had more than 60 enlisted men still standing, and many of those were suffering from the aftereffects of wounds, gas, and shell shock. In less than four months’ service on the front lines, the total fighting strength of the regiment had been reduced by two-thirds. Losses in the 27th Division as a whole were massive; out of a paper strength of around 14,000 men, 236 officers and 7,901 men were casualties, and 1,659 had died, including 1,329 killed in action, 253 who died later of wounds, and the remainder from disease, primarily influenza, or accident. In the two infantry brigades that composed the 27th Division, only 850 rifles remained when the Armistice “terminated the World’s Greatest Show on the morning of the 11th of November.”23
Although Allied commanders knew that the war was about to end, many attacks scheduled for that morning still went ahead, with hundreds more men condemned to fall in one final, futile assault on territory that would have been handed over to the Allies anyway under the terms of the Armistice. Even in that monstrous meat-grinder of a war, never had there been such pointless deaths. The artillery also continued to fire right up until the eleven o’clock deadline, expending shells not merely in a final act of vengeance against the Germans, but also in the gun crews’ pragmatic knowledge that any not fired would have to be carried back by them from the front lines. That night there was a last orgy of firing, though this time it was a fireworks show, as all the remaining front and reserve line stocks of rockets, flares, star shells, and bombs were blasted off. As their comrades in other divisions celebrated, the men of the 27th Division were now so remote from the front lines that they were not even aware that the Armistice had been signed until General O’Ryan encountered two Australian soldiers on the road outside his headquarters who demanded to know why he wasn’t celebrating.24
After the suspicion, condescension, and sometimes hostility with which the American soldiers had first been greeted by their allies, there was now unstinting praise for their contribution to the Allied victory. Having lauded the 27th Division, Britain’s commander in chief, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, heralded the Anglo-American alliance as the start of a new era. “I rejoice to think that in the greater knowledge and understanding born of perils and hardships shared together, we have learnt at last to look beyond old jealousies and past quarrels to the essential qualities which unite the great English-speaking nations.”25
General O’Ryan’s reply gently punctured some of Haig’s hyperbole about the kinship of “English-speaking nations” with a reminder that his troops, “being Americans, are the descendants of many races and peoples, some of them having no sentimental or other ties with Great Britain.26 It is natural to assume that they entered upon the service of their Division with widely varying notions respecting British soldiers and the soldiers of her colonies.” However, he then sugared the pill by acknowledging that “upon the completion of our service, we carried with us respect and admiration for your soldiers, both officers and men.”
The five thousand new troops added to the 106th and the other regiments of the 27th Division would now never see action, though in that they were far from unique, for most doughboys never even saw a shot fired in anger.27 Even those who saw action were in the firing line for an average of just seven days; Monk and his fellows had seen almost continuous action for four months.
The 106th Infantry remained in the Corbie area for a further two weeks. Their billets were less than satisfactory, and when winter began to bite, the lack of heating was so keenly felt that the number of compensation claims for damages from French property owners increased dramatically, as furniture, doors, and windows were broken up and used for fuel. Commanding officers were ordered to take the necessary steps to prevent vandalism, but to the relief of men and officers alike, they were transferred on the night of November 27, marching to the railroad station just before midnight.28 After a twenty-four-hour journey, cooped up in the familiar horse cars, they then endured a further infuriating two-hour wait on the train after its arrival at Le Mans, where they were held by railway officials, before the men finally disembarked at 2:15 on the morning of November 29. They then marched to Le Breil, three miles away, arriving, worn out, at 5:45 in the morning.
Monk and his comrades stayed in Le Breil for three months, continuing to undergo training, inspections, and army “bull,” five days a week, beginning at 7:45 a.m.29 In addition to one hour’s close-order drill every day and three hours daily of field exercises, formation for attack, patrols, and advance guards, each battalion was required to hold one maneuver exercise each week, and target practice also continued.
The veterans of the 27th Division failed to share their commander’s enthusiasm for continued training; absenteeism from maneuvers held just before Christmas 1918 ran at about 25 percent, and in addition to 1,328 enlisted men, 28 officers were also missing.30 Longer-term absentees, men sentenced to imprisonment for being absent without leave, had been granted amnesty soon after the Armistice, but this did not signal a general relaxation of discipline. Reports that enlisted men had been discarding some items of their equipment and selling others led to General Order No. 106, issued at the end of December, requiring the mens’ shoes, gas masks, helmets, and slickers to be carefully checked; any soldier found to have disposed of them was threatened with a summary court-martial. Pistols and revolvers stolen or salvaged during operations and kept by many men as souvenirs from the battlefield were also confiscated.
The disciplinary tone had been set by a memorandum issued just after the Armistice, announcing that “owing to changed conditions of service it is now practicable to devote much attention to the details of personal ap
pearance of men and precision in all details of their life.”31 Orders forbidding the wearing of sweaters over their shirts when outside their quarters, or requiring enlisted men to salute automobiles, on the assumption that automobiles would always contain officers—“not enough attention is being paid to this order”—might almost have been calculated to provoke the exhausted survivors of a conflict that had claimed so many lives.32
There were also a few more serious breaches of discipline like brawls and thefts, and allegations of many more that were rejected as not proven.33 To minimize friction with the local inhabitants, the rules governing soldiers’ off-duty behavior were circulated both to the men and to the townspeople. Soldiers had to be in their billets by 9:30 every evening, and French citizens were asked not to allow any soldiers to be in their homes or places of business after 9:15 p.m. Soldiers were only allowed in estaminets between noon and 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and it was illegal to sell soldiers any alcoholic drinks except light wine and beer. Even so, drink may have fueled an incident in which, after a brawl with a soldier from Company G or H of the 106th, a soldier from the 102nd Field Signals allegedly had his ear cut off.
As they had done for most of their time in France, the men of the 106th Infantry were once more living in a sea of mud. Shortages of cooking stoves meant their food was often late and cold, and when they were issued with replacement underwear, it was already infested with lice.34 Faced with such living conditions and irritated by petty rules and complaints, the enthusiasm of the men of Monk’s Company G for further military service could be gauged by the reply to a memorandum seeking volunteers to remain in France and serve with the 16th Salvage Company, clearing the battlefields of ordnance and reusable equipment and materials. Only ten men from the entire regiment expressed interest, and of those, two were men held for being AWOL, who were trying to avoid being sent to a labor battalion, and another was volunteering for anything that would keep him in France because of his “infatuation with a Parisienne.”