Over There 

with the AEF

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

The World War I Memoirs of 

Captain Henry C. Evans

1st Division

American Expeditionary Forces
The cover art is courtesy of the US Army.
Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

Over There 

with the AEF

The World War I Memoirs of

Captain Henry C. Evans
ii

Combat Studies Institute Press publications cover a 

variety of military history topics. The views expressed 

in this CSI Press publication are those of the 

author(s) and not necessarily those of the Department 

of the Army or the Department of Defense. A 

full list of CSI press publications is available 

at: http://usacac.army.mil/organizations/lde/csi.

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this 

document as an official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited 

to use the CSI’s official seal on any republication without 

the express written permission of the Director of CSI.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Evans, Henry C., 1895-1976.

 Over there with the AEF: the World War I memoirs of Captain Henry 

C. Evans / Henry C. Evans.

 pages cm

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-940804-20-0 (alk. paper)

1. Evans, Henry C., 1895-1976--Diaries. 2. United States. Army.

Field Artillery, 6th--Biography. 3. United States. Army.--Officers-

-Biography. 4. World War, 1914-1918--Campaigns--France. 5. 

World War, 1914-1918--Artillery operations, American. 6. World 

War, 1914-1918--Personal narratives, American. 7. World War, 

1914-1918--Regimental histories--United States. I. Title. II. Title: 

World War I memoirs of Captain Henry C. Evans. 

 D570.326th .H57 1919

 940.4’1273092--dc23

 [B]

2015013614

Editor

Jennifer B. Fike
iii

I would give anything to be able to come home and see you now, but 

I feel that every American should put aside all personal feelings and 

pleasures until Germany is defeated. I firmly believe that a victory for 

the Allies means the securing of world peace for all the future. What 

cause could be more worthy?

Excerpt of letter from Henry C. Evans 

to his stepmother, Ella, 18 August 1917

v

Foreword

When “Grandma Evans” died in 1991, John and Rosalyn Evans 

fell heir to John’s father’s old Army footlocker, which contained a treasure trove of World War I memorabilia. “We hadn’t realized it before 

his death, but Pa kept a diary of his war years and had even typed a 

ninety four-page journal using the notes which he made while ‘over 

there’ from 1917 to 1919. In addition, Frank and Ella Evans, Pa’s father 

and stepmother, carefully saved each of the fifty-four letters which their 

dough-boy son sent to them. They returned the letters to him on his 

return.” Twenty letters which relate directly to the diary are included 

for reference.

To read this combined collection is to relive with Henry C. Evans, 

or just “Pa,” an important era in his life. Each page reflects his integrity, 

intelligence, courage and delightful sense of humor. We know Pa would 

want you to read and enjoy his writing. For those who knew and loved 

Pa, this project should rekindle fond memories. For his progeny who 

were not so fortunate to know him, including fifty-five and counting 

great-grandchildren, we hope that this project might acquaint them with 

this wonderful and heroic man. On 17 September 1995, one hundred 

years after Henry’s birth, John and Roslyn compiled Pa’s diary and pertinent letters as a gift to their family.

In 2003 the diary was shared with the Reserve Officers Training 

Corps at The Johns Hopkins University. The diary was such a hit with 

the cadets and cadre that the single copy became worn and severely 

dog-eared. In 2004 the Professor of Military Science, Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. Roller, Field Artillery, received permission from the 

family to retype the diary and add footnotes to give the diary historical 

context. In addition, more photos were added and the original letters 

were typed to make them easier to read. The goal of this new project 

was to significantly increase the audience for this wonderful diary and 

to use the diary to teach ROTC cadets the values of the US Army, which 

are so evident in this diary. Those values are: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, 

Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage.

The Evans Family

vii

Acknowledgements

Presenting Henry Evans’ World War I experiences to the public has 

been a very important and rewarding task. CSI Press would first like 

to thank the Evans family for this unique opportunity. Mr. Henry C. 

Evans III, the grandson of the memoirist, provided invaluable advice as 

well as photographs that enriched this publication. We would also like 

to acknowledge the work of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Roller (USA) 

who created an excellent unpublished version of this memoir. Finally, at 

CSI, Mr. John McGrath deserves special recognition for writing the introductory essay, creating operational maps, and adding other elements 

to “Over There” that offer the reader a broader understanding of the 

setting in which Henry Evans’ experiences took place.

ix

Table of Contents

Foreword .............................................................................................. v

Acknowledgements ..............................................................................vii

Table of Figures .................................................................................. xi

Introductory Essay .............................................................................xiii

Biography of Henry C. Evans .......................................................... xxi

Chapter 1 My Decision to Serve...........................................................3

Chapter 2 Serving with the French Army .............................................9

Chapter 3 Commissioned and to the Front .........................................21

Chapter 4 Training for War.................................................................25

Chapter 5 Battle at the Front...............................................................29

Chapter 6 Respite from Battle.............................................................37

Chapter 7 Returning to Battle .............................................................41

Chapter 8 Break in Battle Cut Short by German Attack.....................49

Chapter 9 Supporting the Scottish Black Watch Regiment ................59

Chapter 10 The St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives...............63

Chapter 11 Command of Battery B.....................................................83

Chapter 12 Armistice ..........................................................................89

Chapter 13 Occupation of Germany ...................................................93

Chapter 14 Sailing Home....................................................................99

Appendix 1........................................................................................103

Appendix 2........................................................................................125

Appendix 3........................................................................................127

Appendix 4........................................................................................133

Bibliography .....................................................................................139

xi

Table of Figures

Figure 1. Shoulder Sleeve Insignia of the 1st Division. ................. xviii

Figure 2. Brigadier General Henry Evans in World War II. ........... xxiii

Figure 3. American Field Service Truck Column, 1917 .....................12

Figure 4. Quiet Lorraine Sector Used for Training 

and Acclimation. ................................................................................21

Figure 5. French 75-mm Gun in American Service, 

1917-1918. .........................................................................................23

Figure 6. HQ of the 6th FA January 18, 1918 

South of Toul, France..........................................................................30

Figure 7. Henry Evans’ Campaigns in 1918 .......................................42

Figure 8. US Army Field Artillery French 75mm 

Gun Crew, 1918 ..................................................................................44

Figure 9. The First Infantry Division in the Aisne-Marne 

Campaign, July 1918. .........................................................................50

Figure 10. Three US artillerymen standing by their gun. ...................53

Figure 11. The First Infantry Division in the 

St. Mihiel Offensive. ..........................................................................65

Figure 12. A mule team, hauling a US ammunition 

wagon, is holding up the advance of the whole column.....................66

Figure 13. American Field Artillery on the move, France 1918. ........69

Figure 14. The First Infantry Division in the Meuse-Argonne ..........71

Figure 15. The 6th Field Artillery Regiment on the march.................76

Figure 16. The First Infantry Division in the Meuse-Argonne 

Offensive, Phase II..............................................................................84

Figure 17. Evans’ Battery Refreshing Their Horses...........................86

Figure 18. Allied Occupation Zones in Germany, 1918-1919. .........93

Figure 19. World War I Victory Medal with Evans’ 

Campaign clasps. .............................................................................129

xiii

Introductory Essay

by John J. McGrath

The First World War

The First World War began in August 1914 with Germany and 

Austria-Hungary (and later the Ottoman Empire) facing off against 

France, Great Britain and Russia as the culmination of decades of military build-up and tensions resulting from contemporary geo-political 

pressures. Allied, primarily British, propaganda soon turned American 

public opinion against Germany even though Americans of German descent were the largest ethnic group in the country in 1917. The Germans 

added to this propaganda by committing atrocities such as the burning 

of Louvain, Belgium, the execution of noncombatant Belgian civilians 

held as hostages to prevent guerilla activities, and the adoption of a 

policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in which American civilians 

riding cruise or merchant ships were indiscriminately killed. The most 

prominent example of the latter was the sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger liner, on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat, resulting in the 

death of 128 Americans. In response to the uproar in the United States, 

the Germans ended unrestricted submarine warfare in September 1915, 

but reinstituted the policy in January 1917. At the same time, British intelligence decoded a German diplomatic cable (the infamous Zimmerman Telegram). In a particularly far-fetched attempt at diplomacy, German Deputy Foreign Minister Alfred Zimmerman proposed a German 

alliance with Mexico and urged the latter to attack the United States 

and recover the territories lost in 1848. Although President Woodrow 

Wilson had won reelection in 1916 with the slogan “he kept us out 

of the war,” the two new German provocations so enflamed American 

public opinion that Wilson felt compelled to ask Congress to declare 

war. It did so on 6 April 1917. Since the United States was not prepared 

for a land war on the European continent, the nation had to expand 

its military forces exponentially with the primary source of manpower 

being a draft. While units cobbled together from reinforced elements 

of the existing Regular Army were in combat as early as October 1917 

(Evans’ unit, the 6th Field Artillery (FA)), the first major action for a 

division-sized unit occurred only in April 1918 when the 1st Division 

attacked the Germans at Cantigny. The American Expeditionary Force 

(AEF), the large army raised to fight in France beside the British and 

French, was not ready for major operations until the late summer of 

1918. The AEF eventually fought three major campaigns: Aisne-Marne 
xiv

(July-August 1918); St. Mihiel (September 1918); and the Meuse Argonne (October-November 1918). The Meuse-Argonne Campaign was 

the largest land battle in American military history up to that time with 

over a quarter of a million men directly involved. On 11 November 

1918, the belligerents signed an armistice, ending ground combat operations. American forces occupied a sector in the German Rhineland 

around the city of Koblenz from December 1918 to May 1919 as part 

of Allied efforts to guarantee German acceptance of a peace treaty. An 

American residual force remained until January 1923 when the last 

units returned home. Despite rigorous campaigning by President Wilson, the Senate rejected the Allied-imposed Treaty of Versailles, which 

the Germans signed in June 1919 and the United States signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1921.

The American Field Service1

Americans living in France or who had come to France to volunteer 

for war service in support of the Allied cause formed the American Field 

Service (AFS), a force of motorized ambulance drivers, in April 1915. 

In early 1915 the AFS was organized into sections of about 30 drivers 

each. The sections were organized similarly to French Army units of the 

same type, with each section assigned to a particular French Army division. By 1917 the AFS had expanded to 33 ambulance sections (Section 

Sanitaire Unité or SSU), a total strength of about 1,200 volunteers. In 

1917, after the American declaration of war, 14 motor transportation 

units (Transport Materiel Unité or TMU), together referred to as the 

Réserve Maillet, were added to the AFS, composed of about 800 volunteers. The TMUs carried ammunition and supplies forward to French 

Army units. When the TMUs were raised, so many volunteers arrived 

from specific American colleges that some of the initial units were organized with members all from the same university or prep school.

Volunteers initially enlisted for six-month terms and were mostly 

recent college or prep school students or graduates. Some volunteers, 

usually college graduates, were given unique uniforms and ranks 

commensurate with the French Army ranks of first lieutenant (AFS rank 

commandant-adjoint) and second lieutenant (AFS rank sous-chef). These 

acting officers assisted the French officers who actually commanded the 

1 For detailed information on the AFS see History of the American 

Field Service in France (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920) and 

Gentlemen Volunteers: American Volunteer Ambulance Drivers in WWI, last 

modified unknown date, http://www.militaryphs.org/articles/WWIVolunteerAmbulanceDrivers.pdf, accessed 12 September 2014.
xv

sections. Thirteen volunteers were killed in action, all but one in 1917. 

Two others died in 1917 of other causes. Many volunteers received 

French military awards for their service. After the AFS was made a 

component of the AEF, most volunteers transitioned to service in the 

US Army, although some joined the French armed forces, the US Navy 

or the Red Cross. Volunteers who had a college background, including 

collegiate military training, were typically given commissions as 

second lieutenants, first lieutenants or captains, based on the amount of 

prior military training they had received. Branch designation was based 

on a combination of the individual’s background, preference and prior 

military training. Volunteers without college attendance were assigned 

as enlisted men, usually in junior NCO rank, in the US Army. 

The AFS reached its operational height in the spring and summer 

of 1917, just before it was merged into the US Army in the fall of 1917. 

The ambulance portion, now referred to as the US Army Ambulance 

Service, continued to support the French until the AEF became operational, and the Réserve Maillet become part of the Quartermaster Corps.

The Organization and Campaigns of the First Division

Although it had just been mobilized for service on the Mexican 

border in 1916, the US Army was small in 1917. The infantry, cavalry 

or artillery regiment was the highest permanent unit. Accordingly, all 

larger organizations were created new. In the World War I era, the basic 

tactical and operational unit of modern armies was the infantry division. 

As it mobilized, the Army formed its regiments and separate smaller units into combat divisions. The divisions fell into three categories: 

Regular Army, National Guard and National Army. The first group was 

formed from existing units of the standing Army, reinforced with newly 

enlisted and commissioned soldiers and officers. The second category resulted from the mobilization of National Guard units into Federal 

service. The National Guard was, then as now, organized on a state-bystate basis and consisted of part-time soldiers. The third category, the 

National Army, consisted primarily of draftees, with some volunteers 

and a sprinkling of Regular Army officers, formed into divisions based 

on general geographical regions.

As organized for wartime service, an American infantry division 

consisted of two infantry brigades, each with two infantry regiments 

containing three subordinate battalions, and a field artillery brigade. 

The field artillery (FA) brigade contained two 75-mm FA regiments 

and a 155-mm FA regiment. Each of the 75-mm regiments provided 
xvi

direct support to one of the two divisional infantry brigades. The direct 

support field artillery regiment had two subordinate battalions, each of 

which supported an infantry regiment. Each battalion had three firing 

batteries, allowing a battery to provide direct support to an infantry battalion. Evans was in one such battery. The 155-mm regiment provided 

general support to the whole division, which meant that its three battalions and six batteries could be used to reinforce or augment the 75-mm 

artillery or to mass for a main attack. As constituted in 1917, an American division was approximately twice as large as a typical contemporary division in the British, French, or German armies, though, ironically, similar in organization to French and German divisions in 1914.

After the American declaration of war in April 1917, the Wilson 

administration thought it essential to send a token force to France as 

soon as possible. Accordingly, the vanguard of the newly formed First 

Expeditionary Division, consisting of Regular Army units filled out to 

wartime strength with draftees, arrived in France in June 1917. The 

bulk of the division gradually arrived over the next seven months and 

the division was redesignated as the 1st Division in July 1917. By the 

end of 1917, only four divisions of the nascent AEF were in France, 

the Regular Army 1st and 2d, and the National Guard 26th and 42d. 

The pace picked up in 1918. By the armistice, signed in November, 29 

divisions had joined the AEF, with an additional five used as depot or 

Figure 1. Shoulder Sleeve Insignia of the 1st Division.
xvii

replacement units and seven having been broken up to provide replacements. These included two segregated divisions, one of which fought 

exclusively with the French Army.

Evans’ unit was the 1st Division. Although considered a Regular 

Army organization, the presence of a non-regular officer like Evans 

shows that the unit consisted of new soldiers and officers as well as 

professionals. As division elements were organized in the US and sailed 

to France and Britain in the fall of 1917, the division formed up and 

trained at two training camps (one specifically for the artillery). On 23 

October, only a few days after Evans received his commission, cannoneers from Battery C, 6th Field Artillery Regiment, Evans’ regiment, 

fired the first American combat artillery round of the war. Several days 

later, the 2d Battalion, 16th Infantry, also of the 1st Division, suffered 

the first American casualties of the war. 

Subordinate units of the division continued to man quiet sectors 

of the front well into 1918. By April of that year, the Germans had 

pushed to within 40 miles of Paris. In reaction to this thrust, the 1st 

Division moved into the Picardy sector to bolster the exhausted French 

First Army. The 28th Infantry attacked the town of Cantigny and within 

45 minutes had captured the town along with 250 German soldiers, thus 

earning the regiment the special designation “Lions of Cantigny.” The 

first American victory of the war was a 1st Division victory. 

The division assisted in the recapture of Soissons in July 1918 while 

participating in the Aisne-Marne counterattack. The Soissons victory 

was costly, as more than 7,000 men were killed or wounded. The division then helped to clear the St. Mihiel salient by fighting continuously 

from 11 to 13 September 1918. The last major campaign of World War 

I was fought in the Argonne Forest in October and November 1918. 

The division advanced four miles and defeated, in whole or part, eight 

German divisions. This action cost the unit over 7,600 casualties. 

When the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, the division was located along the Meuse River across from the fortress city 

of Sedan. This marked the farthest American advance of the war. The 

division was the first to cross the Rhine into occupied Germany, where 

it remained until the peace treaty formally ending WW I was signed, 

refilled with Regular Army soldiers and officers. It deployed back to the 

United States in August and September 1919. 

In total the division suffered 22,668 casualties and boasted five 

Medal of Honor recipients. Its colors carry campaign streamers for: 
Montdidier-Noyon; Aisne-Marne; St. Mihiel; Meuse- Argonne; Lorraine1917; Lorraine, 1918; and Picardy, 1918.

Field Artillery in World War I

Field Artillery was the most lethal killer in the First World War. At 

the start of the war, most artillery fire was direct, meaning the gunners 

could see their target. The ability to fire indirectly from a covered position from which the gunners could not see the target was understood by 

all armies; however, as combat on the Western Front evolved into trench 

warfare, employing direct fire became too deadly for cannoneers. In direct fire mode, battery commanders usually set up an observation post 

in front of the battery position and personally directed the fires of the 

battery. This practice was initially continued when using indirect fire 

procedures, meaning the battery commander was frequently away from 

his command during combat, making the junior officers in the battery 

responsible for the actual firing. Battery and battalion commanders also 

generally conducted liaison with supported infantry units. It was not 

until late in the war and in the interwar period that dedicated artillery 

liaison officers and forward observers were created. 

Indirect fire was conducted by battery officers using maps, mathematics and firing tables to develop firing data for missions based on 

target information provided by observers. In terms of rolling barrages 

placed in front of advancing infantry, or fires in front of defensive positions, this data was prepared in advance. In the interwar period, the 

US Army would develop the fire direction center, first at battalion and 

later at battery level, to do this computation and to coordinate the fires 

of multiple batteries.

US Army field artillery (as opposed to siege and coast artillery) 

in 1917-1918 was divided into light and heavy categories. The basic 

light cannon was the French 75-mm gun or the British equivalent, the 

6-pounder. The French 75 is generally considered the best field gun of 

the war. Anything larger than 75-mm was considered heavy. Divisional 

artillery was organized to theoretically provide each infantry battalion 

with a direct support light field artillery battery. The divisional FA brigade also had a heavy field artillery regiment, usually of 155-mm caliber, organized into three battalions, each with two firing batteries. This 

artillery served in general support of the whole division, meaning it 

could be used wherever the division commander felt it was most needed. Such guns were also used in a reinforcing role with direct support 

xviii
xix

batteries and battalions, to add fire support to critical attacking or defensive sectors. FA batteries consisted of four guns of all calibers.

Despite this preponderance of field artillery, a continuing problem 

in the war was providing responsive artillery fires to infantry units on 

the battlefield. The technique usually used was the detachment of one 

gun from a direct support battery to accompany the infantry and respond to the direction of the infantry unit commander in a direct fire 

role. This technique had its risks, however, which led eventually to the 

development of light and medium mortars at the infantry company and 

battalion levels to assume the close fire support role. 

The AEF and Henry Evans

The memoir that follows reveals the relative amateurishness of the 

AEF at the start of the war. Like many other AFS volunteers, Evans 

was directly appointed to the US Army as an officer in the National 

Army component. Although then placed into a theoretically Regular 

Army unit, Evans had no qualifications as a field artillery officer and 

was never sent to formal training. Yet within months he was commanding a firing battery. All of Evans’ subsequent training was on the job. 

That he performed so well over the course of his wartime service is 

more indicative of his natural intelligence and leadership skills than any 

training he received in the Army and is a clear indicator of why he rose 

to general officer rank in the National Guard in World War II. 

Evans’ account provides a good representative example of the experiences of a typical AEF field artillery officer appointed from civilian 

life. His unit, the 1st Division, participated in both the first American 

combat actions and was the spearhead of the AEF attack in the Argonne 

advance when the war ended. Evans served as a battery officer, battery commander, and liaison officer. Although his experience of direct 

combat was relatively limited, Evans’ position in the artillery gave him 

a broader view of the nature of combat in the First World War. Evans’ 

account provides a welcome and worthy perspective on the experience 

of a patriotic young American who was determined to help defeat the 

Kaiser. 

xxi

Biography of Henry C. Evans 

Henry C. Evans (1895-1976) was a prominent investment banker, 

civic leader and citizen-soldier in Baltimore, Maryland, for over fifty 

years. After graduating from the college preparatory high school Baltimore City College in 1914, Evans attended Johns Hopkins University, 

majoring in business and finance for three years. In 1917 he left the 

university for service in France with the American Field Service and the 

US Army. Appointed a second lieutenant in the field artillery in October 

1917, he served in various batteries of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, 

First Division, during five campaigns and briefly in the occupation of 

the Rhineland. He rose to the rank of captain before the end of the war 

in November 1918. Evans returned to Maryland and left the service in 

1919.

While overseas he had been awarded his BA from Johns Hopkins 

with the class of 1918. He began a forty year career in investment 

banking and joined the Maryland National Guard’s 110th Field 

Artillery Regiment. As a Guardsman he was promoted to major 

in 1930, lieutenant colonel in 1931 and colonel in 1940, when he 

commanded the 110th Field Artillery Regiment. The regiment, along 

with its parent 29th Division, was mobilized in February 1941. When 

Figure 2. Brigadier General Henry Evans in World War II.

Source: US Army.
xxii

an Army reorganization of the field artillery eliminated the regimental 

headquarters, Evans was eventually transferred in November 1942 as a 

brigadier general to the leadership of the Division Artillery of the 76th 

Infantry Division. 

Evans served throughout World War II with the 76th Division in the 

European Theater through campaigns in the Rhineland, the Battle of the 

Bulge and central Germany from January to May 1945. He assumed 

command of the division after the war ended in August 1945 until it was 

inactivated at the end of the same month. Evans was one of only nine 

division members to be awarded the Legion of Merit for his service. He 

subsequently commanded the 35th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade from 

September to October 1945 and brought the brigade home from Germany where it was then inactivated.

General Evans resumed his National Guard career in 1947, commanding the Division Artillery of the 29th Infantry Division, then becoming the Assistant Division Commander. He served as the division 

commander from 1954 to 1957. He retired on 1 October 1957, having 

served 40 years, during peacetime with the National Guard and in two 

world wars with the mobilized Army. Evans continued his civilian career in investment banking in senior executive positions until his death 

at age 80 in 1976. The Maryland Army National Guard armory in Westminster is named after him. 

General Evans had six children, three daughters and three sons. 

They were Rosalie Van Meter, Eleanor Hooper, Lela Chatard, Henry 

C. Evans, Jr., Charlie O’Donovan Evans, and John G. Evans. His oldest 

son, Henry C. Evans, Jr., was a 1951 graduate of West Point, following 

in his father’s steps as an artillery officer and serving in the Korean 

War and Vietnam, retiring as a Colonel. Charlie O’Donovan Evans 

served in the Maryland National Guard and rose to the rank of Captain. 

General Evans’ youngest son John was a 1958 graduate of West Point 

and served in the active Army for three years and for five years in the 

Maryland National Guard. He was an Infantry Captain. General Evans 

inspired his sons to serve and they did faithfully. He believed in the 

citizen soldier concept and lived it.
Over There 

with the AEF

The World War I Memoirs of 

Captain Henry C. Evans

3

Chapter 1

My Decision to Serve

Ever since war was declared in 1914, my sympathies always had 

been with England and France, but I had never taken the matter seriously enough to become wildly enthusiastic. I did feel, however, strongly 

enough on the subject so that I wanted to see America go into it when 

the Lusitania was sunk and voted for Hughes against Wilson merely 

because of the Democratic[Party] slogan, “He kept us out of the war.” 

However much I desired this country to get into the war on the side of 

the Allies I had never taken it as enough of a possibility to consider 

the matter of going into it myself until very shortly before we actually 

declared war.

In February, 1917 the National Convention of Alpha Delta Phi was 

held in Baltimore and there I met a number of my fraternity brothers 

from Toronto and McGill universities who either had been to France 

or had relatives in France.1 Talking with them aroused my enthusiasm 

terribly and brought the whole matter much closer to home than it had 

ever appeared before. As a result, when war was declared in April I 

immediately started to think of getting into some military service. My 

sole experience in military had been in the ROTC at Hopkins where I 

had nearly one year as a private in the rear ranks. All of my relatives 

except my father urged me not to go into the military service but to 

complete my college courses saying that if I did that I would be in 

a much better position to help than by going right away. My father 

never gave me any advice on the subject at all as he felt that I was over 

twenty-one years old and had a right to make up my own mind on the 

matter.2

When the first Officers Training Camps were announced I decided to try to secure an appointment to a camp at Fort Myer, Virginia.3

Most of the men in my class at Hopkins and also in the senior class 

were taking the physical examination for the first training camp and I 

went in along with the rest of them. I was examined by Dr. Harry Lee 

Smith and the medical examination paper was signed by Dr. Smith and 

Dr. Maurice Pencoffs. As I remember it, Dr. Pencoffs did not actually 

examine me but he evidently concurred, after talking with Dr. Smith, 

in the findings for he signed the examination paper. Dr. Smith informed 

me that I could not be accepted to Fort Myer, that there was no use at all 

in trying to get into the war as my kidneys were no good. He predicted 

that if I got into the war and was subjected to a hard outdoor life that I 
4

would not live six months. This was hard to believe as I was feeling fine 

and had never had any indications of sickness.

As I left the building after the examination I ran into Bobby France 

who was a class ahead of me at Hopkins. He had just been turned down 

as he was about a half inch too short and had just determined to sign up 

in the American Ambulance [Service] that was serving with the French 

Army. Leslie Buckler who was a graduate student at Hopkins was also 

going over in this and they were sailing in about a week or ten days. I 

decided to go immediately, went downtown and drew some money out 

of the savings bank, informing my father of my decision at the same 

time. He did not oppose my going in any way but said it was entirely 

up to me. I went to New York the next day and signed up in the American Ambulance, getting passage on the French Liner L’Espagne, sailing 

on May 5. I then returned to Baltimore and informed Dr. [Murray P.] 

Brush, the dean at Hopkins, that I was leaving college and proceeded to 

get my things together preparatory to leaving.

I took Eleanor [Evan’s future wife] to the movies the afternoon of 

May 3 and went to her house afterward for tea. I left on the night of 

May 3, joining France and Buckler in New York at the Hotel Belmont. 

Father, Ella and Aunt Louise saw me off at Union Station. I spent the 

4th of May getting a visa for my passport from the French Consul and 

getting the necessary papers from the Ambulance Headquarters. 

The next day we went to the dock and the only Baltimoreans to 

see us off were Dr. Warren Buckler and his daughter, Marian, who are 

cousins of Leslie Buckler. It was a cold raw day and Dr. Buckler had a 

big flask with him which he passed around to help against the cold and 

also to cheer up the departing voyagers. Up to that time I had never had 

a drink in my life and I decided not to participate. Leslie and Bobby, 

however, participated a trifle too freely and I had the most terrible time 

getting them on the boat. Bobby insisted on trying to sign his name 

upside-down on the back of his passport, much to the disgust of the 

French official on the dock. When we did get on board I found that all 

three of us had been put in separate staterooms. I immediately started 

out to find the men who were with Leslie and Bobby to try to make a 

trade on staterooms. This was finally accomplished and I got them both 

in the same stateroom and locked them in. However, they rang for the 

steward, who let them out.

This steward was an elderly Frenchman who did not understand 

American ways, particularly after an indiscreet use of the flask. Bob-
5

by and Leslie called him “Flannel Foot” which became his permanent 

name for the trip over. When I went down to the stateroom to see how 

they were getting along I found that the “birds had flown.” I caught 

up with them running up and down the corridors opening all stateroom 

doors and pulling pillows and sheets into the hallways. I finally got Leslie back into the stateroom. Then I went to get Bobby and found him on 

deck with his pocketbook and passport in his hand about to throw them 

overboard. His idea apparently was that he “wouldn’t come back alive, 

so what was the use of keeping a passport?” I took everything out of his 

pockets and kept all his belongings for a few days. I finally got them to 

bed and twenty-four hours later when they came to life again they were 

much sadder but wiser.

On the Sailing Ship L’Espagne4

I was put in the stateroom with two other men; one a man named 

Williams from Harvard and Julian Biddle from Philadelphia. Williams 

was only in France a comparatively short time when he was taken sick 

and sent home. Biddle was going over to enter the Lafayette Escadrille. 

He must have had a sense of impending disaster for he was very solemn 

and quiet during the whole trip. He entered the aviation and was killed 

soon after. Most of the men on the boat going over into the ambulance 

[service] were from Dartmouth. Practically the whole Dartmouth football team was on board and Les and Bobby and I were soon adopted by 

the Dartmouth crowd. We amused ourselves most of the time playing 

cards and shooting craps but were no match for Dartmouth and I soon 

gave it up as a bad job after I had held four queens only to be beaten by 

four kings. I took some lessons in French conversation from the ship’s 

printer but am afraid I did not make a tremendous amount of progress.

There was very little excitement on the way over other than lifeboat 

drill a number of times and once we sighted a ship on the horizon. Our 

boat turned around and put on full steam, zigzagging away from the 

other ship as fast as it could go. The other ship was evidently a torpedo 

boat and it soon overtook us. We discovered when it got closer that it 

was English. We then turned around again and followed our regular 

course and found that the English torpedo boat was convoying several 

British transports to Salonika in Greece.

On the last night out everyone stayed up all night. No lights, of 

course, were allowed except inside, and doors were not allowed to be 

opened when any lights were showing. Early on the morning of the 15th 

we pulled into Bordeaux, France harbor. We just missed a German mine 
6

at the entrance of the harbor by a few feet. I was looking over the rail 

and saw it close by the ship as we went by.
7

Notes

1. Alpha Delta Phi currently has 30 chapters in the United States. It 

is the fraternity upon which the fraternity in the movie Animal House was 

based, as the main writer of the movie was a member of Alpha Delta Phi.

2. The Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program at The Johns 

Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was one of the first programs 

established by Congress in 1916 as a result of the growing need for collegeeducated Army officers. Henry Evans had completed one year of the fouryear program by the time he departed for Europe, so at the time was not 

qualified to receive a commission as an officer.

3. In 1917 the Army had only 9,000 of the estimated mobilization 

requirement of 200,000 officers. The concept of sending Regular Army 

officers to form cadres for the required new units was deemed impractical for 

two major reasons. First, the Army wanted to send over a division as soon 

as possible to bolster the morale of the Allies. Second, the small number 

of Regular Army officers would have been lost in the huge number of 

conscripts. To build a large number of officers, the Army initially conducted 

sixteen Officers Training Camps for civilians and reservists. Later these 

camps were abandoned as the Army instead drew its officers from the ranks 

of qualified Regular Army enlisted men, from ROTC and the Student Army 

Training Corps in colleges and universities, and the largest numbers of all 

from Officers Training Camps conducted at division cantonments and later 

from eight consolidated Officer Training Schools. See Richard Stewart, 

American Military History, Volume II: The United States Army in a Global 

Era, 1917-2005(Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 

2005), 9, 18-21.

4. The L’Espagne entered service in October 1910 on the St NazaireWest Indies-Vera Cruz route. Between 1912 and 1915 she also operated 

services to New York. In 1920 the ship re-entered service on the Caribbean 

route. The liner was withdrawn from service in 1932 and scrapped in 1934. 

9

Chapter 2

Serving with the French Army

When we arrived in Bordeaux, France, we presented our papers to 

the local Ambulance Headquarters and received our passage to Paris, 

third class. We bought some bread, cheese, jam and a bottle of wine 

to eat on the trip to Paris. Third class compartments hold five or six 

very comfortably and it so happened that Bobby, Les and I were in the 

compartment with several French soldiers returning to the front from 

furlough. 

One of the French soldiers talked a little English and both Bob and 

Les spoke some French. They regaled us with stories of the barbarity of 

the Germans and in light of later knowledge I believe that most of these 

stories were pure propaganda although we believed them 100% at that 

time. They had the wildest tales of Belgian children with hands cut off 

and all the usual stories that were told during the war. 

When lunch time came we divided our wine with the French soldiers and when all of our wine was gone one of them pulled out a bottle. 

When I held out my cup he poured just a little in the cup and I thought 

he was very stingy with his wine after our liberality. I drank the stuff 

right down and for fifteen minutes was afraid to move for instead of 

wine I discovered it was some Eau de Vis that had been made by the 

man’s grandfather and was almost pure alcohol. If he had filled my 

cup as I expected I probably would have passed out. I believe that this 

was my first drink of anything stronger than wine or beer. We had been 

served wine and beer on the boat with our meals and I do not believe I 

had taken either of these before other than a sip. Another bad habit that 

I acquired on the boat was smoking as I had not smoked except very 

occasionally prior to getting on the boat. 

We arrived in Paris on the evening of May 15, 1917, just as the 

sun went down. We were met at the station by ambulances and taken 

up to Ambulance Headquarters at 21 Rue Reynouard. I thought I had 

never seen anything quite as beautiful as Paris at this time of the year. 

The headquarters of the Ambulance [Service] was in an old castle with 

beautiful grounds leading down to the Seine which had been Benjamin 

Franklin’s headquarters when he was in Paris during the Revolutionary 

War. It was a wonderful spot. The flowers and shrubbery were in bloom 

and I suppose looked all the more beautiful because of the fact that the 
10

whole thing was a very exciting adventure and I was looking at everything with rose colored glasses.

The first night we arrived in Paris, Bob, Les and I went to the Chatalet Theatre to see the Ballet Russe. The place was packed and the only 

seats we could get were up in the top gallery. Most of it was a perfectly 

marvelous performance and the whole scene was very colorful. The 

thing that struck me about the color was that in peacetime the ladies’ 

dresses would make the color and the men would have on dark clothes 

whereas in wartime most of the ladies had on somber clothes and the 

many uniforms of the Allied Armies made up the color. There were soldiers there from every one of the Allied Armies and a great many Russian soldiers. There was one futuristic dance that had been designed, I 

understand, by Picasso. I liked it the least of the lot but the Frenchmen 

went wild. It was the last scene and the crowd stayed in the Theatre for 

a half an hour after the final curtain yelling “Picasso” at the top of their 

lungs. I have never seen such an enthusiastic demonstration in a theatre 

or anywhere before.

We were told the next day that they did not need any more ambulance drivers, that all of the units were full and until somebody donated 

some more ambulances they had no need for us in that branch. There 

were over one hundred college students on the boat who had come to 

France with the idea of driving ambulances and naturally we were all 

terribly disappointed. However, a few weeks before, the French Army 

had organized a Motor Transport Unit with American volunteers as 

drivers. They had already signed up one group of men from Cornell 

who had come over about two weeks before with the idea of going into 

the Ambulance [Service]. Also a group from Andover who had come 

over on the boat before ours signed up for this work. 

We had our choice of waiting for ambulances or signing a six month 

enlistment in the French Army in their Motor Transport Service. The 

agreement was that at the end of six months we would be turned back to 

the Ambulance [Service] and during the six months we would be under 

the wing of the Ambulance [Service] in that some slight contribution 

would be made by Ambulance [Service] headquarters to Americans in 

the Motor Transport Units for extra fare above the regular French Army 

feed. This extra fare was composed principally of eggs for breakfast as 

most of the French Units had nothing but coffee and bread for breakfast. 

Leslie and Bob and I decided to sign up and on the twenty-third of 

May we had received our full equipment and were marched out of the 
11

grounds to the station to take a train to the Training Camp. This camp 

was located near Dommiers not far from Soissons. We left the train at 

Vierzy and were hauled in trucks to a camp in the woods.1 From then 

on we started to get hard work. There was not only water to be hauled, 

work to be done around camp and potatoes to be peeled, but we had 

to put in many hours a day on instruction on truck repairs, practicing 

driving trucks and lectures on truck operations and maintenance. All in 

all, we had a pretty good time at the camp. We were not far from the 

front and took several trips in the trucks up among the ruined villages 

around Soissons.

The only souvenir I picked up on any of these trips was a piece 

of a tombstone that had been marble but with plaster over the face of 

the tombstone to hide the French names underneath. In the plaster was 

carved the name of a German soldier. In a previous attack, apparently, 

the Germans had used some French tombstones by plastering out some 

old names, as headstones for their own soldiers.

I was terribly worried all during this time for fear the Germans were 

going to win the war before America could get ready. When we declared 

war I had thought that Germany would immediately give in and that it 

would only be a question of a few months before the Allies would win. 

On the boat going over we had received wireless [radio] messages each 

day of the tremendous attack being put on by the French and I thought, 

at that time, that it might be over before we actually arrived in France. 

Much to my surprise, I found on arriving in Paris that probably the only 

thing that had kept the French and English from giving in was the hope 

that America would be able to save the day.

The French attack around Soissons had failed miserably. General [Robert] Nivelle who had been in command of the French Army 

during these attacks had sent division after division into the attack only 

to have them slaughtered. The tremendous number of casualties had 

disheartened the French to such an extent that some of the divisions 

had mutinied. The ringleaders, however, were arrested and executed 

and General Nivelle was relieved of command and General [Philippe] 

Petain was put in command to try to bolster the morale. By the time we 

got on the front, things were better but there was practically no fighting 

being done. The French were anxious to keep things as quiet as they 

could until the French soldiers recovered from the shock received in the 

April attacks.
12

We were camped near a Chausseur [light infantry] regiment and the 

afternoons we would go over to listen to their Bugle Corps give a concert. The French buglers could make more music with their long bugles 

than most bands could using all instruments.

About June 6th we were ready to leave the training camp for the 

actual front. We took all our trucks, picked up a load of ammunition 

and drove back to Meaux where we turned over the trucks and ammunition to the French and proceeded to Paris for one day’s leave before 

returning to the front. When we arrived back at the front we were taken 

to a little town called Jouaigne which is about five miles from Soissons. 

Stationed in that town was a unit of the French Motor Transport Corps. 

It was part of the Réserve Mallet named from Captain Mallet of the 

French Army who was in command. 2 

This Motor Transport Reserve consisted of about eighteen hundred 

Pierce Arrow trucks which, as far as I ever saw, was the only American truck used by the French. Our particular unit was the Group Genin 

named after French Captain Genin who was our immediate commander. This group was divided up into three companies, known as peletons. 

Peleton A consisted of the Cornell unit, B was the Andover Unit, C was 

the Dartmouth unit [TMU 526] to which we were attached and D was 

composed entirely of Frenchmen. Captain Genin made a lot of speeches in French to greet us and then brought out a case of champagne and 

Figure 3. American Field Service Truck Column, 1917

Source: History of the American Field Service in France, 1920.
13

proceeded to give each of the Americans a cup of champagne to drink 

with him to the success of the Allied Armies. 

We were then assigned to barracks and each American was assigned to a French private. We drove on the truck with the Frenchmen 

for one day and then all of the French privates in the unit were taken 

out and we took over their trucks. All of the French officers remained 

with the Unit. A French cook remained with each unit and a few French 

mechanics for each group. We were allowed to elect our own non-coms 

(non-commissioned officers) and also elect two men to serve as officers; it was stipulated that the men elected to act as officers must be able 

to talk French. We elected Horton Kennedy, manager of the Dartmouth 

football team as our senior officer, known as a chef and Doisset who had 

been [team] captain and end on the previous year’s Dartmouth football 

team as sous-chef. Bob and Leslie were both elected corporals.

Our real work then started.3 We would take out the trucks, or camions as they were called, pick up loads of ammunition, barbed wire, 

lumber and any other materials needed by the Infantry and Artillery 

and drive from the railhead up to various artillery and infantry supply 

dumps. We usually would go as close as we could without being seen 

and then wait for nightfall to make the balance of the trip, getting back 

to camp in the early hours of the morning. We would then sleep well 

into the morning of the next day and do the whole thing over again. 

Sometimes we would be at the wheel of the truck as long as twentyhours at a stretch for three or four days running and then we might go 

for three or four more days without any work at all. There was very 

little discipline in the camp. I think the French were a little bit afraid to 

offend the Americans, and the American officers and noncommissioned 

officers had had practically no military experience and did not know 

anything about discipline. The net result was that the men dressed 

anyway and kept their living quarters in any fashion they saw fit. The 

only thing the French were strict on was that the motors, axles, springs, 

etc. all had to be thoroughly oiled/greased every day and they were very 

strict on their inspections of mechanical parts.

It was against the French Army rules to tamper in any way with the 

governors on the motors which prevented the trucks from going over 

fifteen miles an hour. However, one bright young mechanic in our outfit 

discovered that by driving a nail into the grease cup on the governor and 

then covered the top of the nail with grease and screwing on the grease 

cap again, the governor would not work and no evidence of breaking 
14

the seal on the governor could be found. He quietly passed the word 

around and the next day we went on a convoy with our eighteen trucks 

with all the governors fixed for speeding. 

We started down the Route Nationale from Soissons to Reims and, 

as none of our officers were with us, we soon opened up to about forty miles an hour. The French guards along the road ran out yelling in 

amazement at the audacity of the Americans by breaking the speed 

laws and, apparently, the telephones were humming all the way back 

to French headquarters before we had gone many miles. When we got 

back to camp the whole outfit was threatened with court martial. For 

a long time the French could not discover what we had done to the 

governors as the seals had not been broken. They finally had a French 

mechanic take one of the governors apart and thus discovered the nail 

driven down through the bottom of the grease cup. After many threats 

and warnings the French decided not to court martial everybody and let 

us off with a promise that we would not do it again.

While we all had Ambulance [Service] uniforms with the insignia 

changed to that of the French Motor Transport [Service] we did not 

wear these uniforms except on special parades and furlough. Ordinarily 

we wore blue denim trousers and coats and French blue helmets with 

French gas masks over our shoulders so that driving the trucks we were 

French for all intents and purposes. We were issued guns which I think 

had been left [over] from the War of 1870. We were never given any 

ammunition and I do not know whether the guns would actually fire 

as we were never allowed to try them. Technically, therefore, we were 

armed but actually they were of no more use than a club. On days when 

we stayed in camp we were taught to drill in French by the French officers. We had the manual of arms with our guns and the simpler infantry 

drill movements. We also had to learn most of the parts of the motor 

truck in French. Outside of that and issuing general orders for hauling 

ammunition, we saw very little of our French officers.

There were always aeroplanes overhead on clear days. One of the 

most exciting aeroplane fights I saw was one evening at dusk we were 

waiting behind a hill with our trucks before going over the top of the hill 

and down toward the front to deliver a load of ammunition. Five French 

planes sailed overhead, a lone German plane came into view and one 

of the French planes left the other four and chased the German out of 

sight. The remaining four French planes sailed nearly out of sight in the 

other direction. In a few minutes four German planes came sailing over. 

It was nearly dark by this time and we could barely see them. 
15

The lone French plane that had chased the German plane soon returned and apparently thinking the four German planes were his four 

comrades joined their formation. You could hear shouts from the ground 

all up and down the line for miles but, of course, the aviator could not 

hear. Soon the German planes turned on him. He was hit and came 

straight down to the earth with the motor wide open. He was just about 

to crash when suddenly the motor turned off and the plane was righted 

and landed in a field nearby. We were not allowed to leave our trucks 

but the Frenchmen in the neighborhood took the wounded aviator who 

was unconscious from the plane and sent him to a hospital. He had been 

unconscious during the fall but had come to just in time to turn off his 

motor, levelling out the plane. 

Apparently the plane landed by itself, as he was unconscious when 

taken from the plane and did not remember landing. We found our 

afterwards that he was James Norman Hall, the American, who had 

been in the British Army and had been badly wounded and discharged, 

had recovered and entered the French Aviation [Service]. Later he was 

transferred to the American Army as a captain and was brought down 

in Germany and taken prisoner. He is the same man who was [later to] 

co-author Mutiny on the Bounty.

On the Fourth of July, the French officers put on a tremendous celebration. We were the only Americans on the Front as a unit under arms. 

There were, of course, scattered Americans with the French and English Armies and there were the ambulance units, but the ambulance 

units were considered as non-combatant troops. The French troops from 

miles around came to the celebration. We had a big parade in the morning when medals were presented to a number of Frenchmen and some 

of the Algerian, Moroccan and Senegalese troops put on their native 

dances. They had sword dances, gun dances, whirling dervishes and 

all kinds of odd and queer performances. Wine flowed freely and there 

were a great many impassioned speeches by the French officers.4 Another celebration, not quite as elaborate, was held on July 14.

The French really served us with very good food. For breakfast we 

usually had some meat, potatoes and either a vegetable or salad with 

bread, jam and coffee and for supper we had about the same as for 

lunch. However, we were seldom in camp for both lunch and supper 

as we usually were out on the trucks driving during one of the two 

meals. When we were out of camp, we were given a meal to take along 

consisting principally of bread, some cheese and a piece of chocolate. 

The food was very well cooked and while there was not much over, 
16

there was always sufficient. The bread was made up in large, flat, round 

loaves about a foot in diameter and about 4 inches thick. It was the 

regular dark French Army bread and has a crust over half an inch thick. 

As the loaves were brought around for delivery in open wagons and 

dumped on the ground the thick crust was necessary in order to keep the 

dirt out and we always pared off about half an inch of the crust before 

eating. 

Each man was served a liter of wine a day. At first very few of the 

men would take this wine and, as a result, our French officers had more 

wine than they could possibly use. It was the new, poorest grade of red 

wine and was certainly an acquired taste. Before the summer was over, 

however, a great many of the men had learned to like it and it was much 

safer than drinking water as so much of the water was contaminated. 

Once in a while we persuaded the French Officers to turn in a large supply of our unused wine and get a keg of beer instead. Also, any time we 

did a particularly good piece of work we would be lined up in formation 

and a citation read out commending the unit on its good work. This 

usually carried with it an increase in the allowance of the wine ration to 

every man in the unit for a day, a week or two weeks depending on the 

importance of the work done.

On July 17 we hauled a lot of ammunition to an artillery ammunition dump near Soupir. I am told that Soupir was either the country 

estate of [Joseph] Caillaux who had been French Minister of Finance 

and had been mixed up in some shooting scandal just before the war, 

or was owned by the man he shot.5 It had been a beautiful place but 

the house was a crumbling mass of stones with trenches running all 

through the lawns and groves. There was a big ammunition dump in 

the stable yard. On this particular night we were not at Soupir but were 

at another ammunition dump about a mile away. The German artillery 

apparently located the place and just as our trucks were being unloaded 

they opened up a terrific bombardment. 

The Frenchmen who were unloading the trucks scattered for the 

dugouts but the crazy Americans had no better sense than to stay out 

and continue to unload the trucks or else, if they were not inclined to 

work, sit on the trucks and watch the explosions. Why some of us were 

not killed I do not know but none of our outfit were wounded although 

many of the trucks were hit by shell fragments. My truck was hit by a 

piece of shell fairly close to where I was, but did no real damage except that the explosion splattered dirt all over me. Thank goodness the 

Americans later learned that there was no sense in taking foolish risks, 
17

but at that time we had not learned our lesson. However, the French did 

not realize that we were just foolish and thought we were quite brave 

and our outfit received a wonderful citation from the head of the French 

Automobile Service for coolness in the face of danger.

A few nights later at Soupir I was on the last truck to leave for 

camp. I had just been made a Corporal, and it was my job to see that all 

the trucks were safely unloaded and started home. It was about 2 am, 

pitch black with no stars or moon. The driver of the last truck was Tom 

Jones, formerly a halfback on the Brown [University] football team and 

after his truck was unloaded I jumped to the running board to try to 

guide the truck out on to the road. Just as we started a German shell 

whistled over and exploded nearby. Tom thought it was time to leave 

in a hurry and turned on the gas. It was so dark he could not see where 

he was going and we smashed into a French wagon. 6 The long brake 

handle on the wagon caught on my knee and after dragging the wagon 

along for a few feet the wagon turned over, I fell off and Tom and the 

truck shot out on to the road. I jumped up and ran after the truck feeling 

sure that he would wait for me. When I got to the road the truck had 

disappeared in the darkness. Tom afterward tried to explain leaving me 

by saying that he thought I had climbed in the back. 

My leg hurt very badly and I reached down to see how badly it was 

hurt. My breeches were torn and my whole leg was wet with blood. I 

started to run down the road and proceeded to pass out in the middle of 

the road. The next thing I knew someone was bending over me with a 

flashlight. One of our officers had heard some shelling in the direction 

of Soupir and had driven over to see if all of the trucks had gotten out 

safely. Driving down the road he had seen an object in the middle of the 

road a little darker than the rest and had stopped his car to investigate, 

otherwise, he would have run over me. He took me back to camp and 

the only thing done for my leg that night was to take a bottle of iodine, 

unstop the cork and pour it over my leg, which was worse than the injury. The next day I went to the French Army doctor in the next town 

who dressed my leg and gave me an anti-tetanus injection in the back. 

The injury was not serious but I could not do too much walking around 

for about a week.

 In August the Germans made a strong attack on the French Front 

along the Chemin-des-Dames near Craonne and we were hauling ammunition night and day for about ten days. I think we averaged about 

twenty hours out of each twenty-four in the trucks and had to keep up 

with our sleep by dozing off at the wheel when we were halted. One 
18

day returning to camp from a trip my truck suddenly burst into flames. 

Evidently a greasy rag had dropped down on to the exhaust pipe and 

practically all of the woodwork was on fire in a few minutes. I put on 

the brake and jumped out and grabbed the fire extinguisher but found 

that the fire extinguisher would not work. Two more of the trucks drew 

up behind and their fire extinguishers would not work. There were some 

French soldiers nearby who ran out with fire extinguishers and finally 

put the fire out. When the fire was finally extinguished I found that the 

motor of the engine was still running although practically every piece 

of wood had been burned off the car. I had to sit on the gasoline tank, 

which was under the seat that had been burned away, to drive the truck 

back to camp. Even the steering wheel had been burned though the 

cross pieces of the wheel were metal and enabled me to guide the car on 

the balance of the trip. My car, therefore, was in the shop for a couple 

of weeks being repaired. 7

About this time we were notified that each man could take ten days 

leave and I decided to take a trip to the Alps. I did not have enough 

money to make the trip. I had taken $300.00 with me when I left home 

but by the time I had bought my ticket over and bought uniforms, etc. 

there was very little left. Our pay amounted to five cents a day and I had 

not even saved this as it became a custom in our outfit when we were 

paid off every two weeks to take the entire seventy cents and spend it on 

champagne. You could buy a bottle of champagne for this at the French 

Cooperative Army Store and, therefore, on pay day we always had a 

party. In order to raise money to take the trip I set up a barber shop and 

cut hair for two francs a cut. Every day when we were not on the trucks 

I would spend cutting hair for the rest of the outfit and I soon became 

expert enough to drive out of business all competitors. I took in enough 

money in this way to pay for my vacation. 8

I went to Paris and secured transportation for Chamonix which is 

on the French side of the Alps at the foot of Mont Blanc. Three other 

men from our section were with me, namely, Crathern, Cree and Klee. 

We spent about a week there climbing around on the glaciers and up 

a few of the smaller peaks getting in trim for climbing Mont Blanc. 

However, on the day we were expecting to go up to Mont Blanc there 

was a bad storm and the whole mountainside was covered with snow. 

As a result, we decided to call off the attempt and headed back to Paris 

to spend a couple of days there.

When we got on the train to go back to Paris we found that the train 

was terribly crowded and many people were standing up. We had seats 
19

but there was a very nice looking English family – mother, father and 

two girls, who were standing up so our quartet gave them our seats and 

we stood up or sat on the floor all night. I got to talking to the English 

family and found that they lived in Paris. The Englishman, Mr. Benjamin Ingle, was the Paris representative for some English manufacturer. 

I had a letter in my pocket which Uncle Samuel Cook had given to me 

before I left Baltimore, introducing me to a friend of his in Paris, Sir 

John Pilter. I asked Mr. Ingle if he knew Sir John and found that they 

lived next door to each other and with that introduction was immediately invited by the Ingles to spend the weekend with them. 

They had a house in the suburbs and I enjoyed staying with them 

immensely. The only difficulty I had was that the first meal I had in the 

Ingle house they started out with a tremendous platter of hors d’oeuvres. I was not particularly familiar at that time with the custom and 

believe I helped myself much too plentifully thinking this was the main 

part of the meal. However, I do not think they saw much out of the 

way but merely attributed my appetite to my delight at eating civilian 

food again. I also called on Sir John Pilter and spent a pleasant evening 

talking to him and his family.

Before going back to the front I went into AEF Headquarters and 

inquired about the possibility of getting a commission in the artillery. I 

was asked to fill out an application blank which I left at the information 

desk at the entrance to headquarters and departed for camp.9 

When I returned to camp I found that the French had started a school 

for officers in the Motor Transport Service and were selecting a number of men from our unit to attend. Leslie Buckler and Bobby France 

decided to go and although I was given the opportunity of attending the 

school I decided to take a chance on getting the artillery commission. 

The first sergeant of our section was sent to the school and I succeeded 

him as first sergeant and kept that job as long as I was with the outfit.

About this time a representative of the American Motor Transport 

Service came to visit us and made a very fiery speech stating that they 

were going to take over the Reserve Mallet as a unit of the American 

Army and wanted all of us to enlist in the American Army in the Motor 

Transport Service. He painted a marvelous picture of promotion for us 

in the Motor Transport Service and a lot of the men did enlist. As I was 

still waiting for the artillery commission I decided not to enlist but to 

take my chances on getting into the artillery.
20

Notes

1. Dommiers is several miles west of Soissons and was close to but 

behind where the frontline was in July 1918 when Evans’ unit participated in 

the Aisne-Marne offensive. Vierzy is located several miles south of Chaudun 

where Evans later earned his Silver Star. Long in French hands, the village 

was captured by the Germans during their July 1918 offensive.

2. See Frank O. Robinson, “The Réserve Mallet,” in History of the 

American Field Service in France.

3. See Letter #1, Appendix 1. 

4. French colonial troops came from three different sources: French 

settlers in African colonies, normally referred to simply as Colonial troops; 

Arab troops furnished by the kingdom of Morocco, a French protectorate, 

designated Moroccan; and black troops from French West Africa, primarily 

from Senegal, referred to as Senegalese. Each of these categories were 

organized into separate units composed solely of members of the specific 

group. These troops were considered elite because they were composed 

of volunteers, unlike the bulk of the French Army, which consisted of 

conscripts. The Colonial troops were originally organized into separate 

divisions and a corps. Later in the war battalions of Colonial and Senegalese 

troops were frequently combined into regiments while Moroccans usually 

fought separately in units up to division size. A small number of Vietnamese 

troops, referred to as Tonkinese and Annamese, later served in battalionsized units on the Western Front. For more information see Richard Standish 

Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 

1914-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

5. Caillaux was actually the French prime minister from 1911 to 1912 

and was subsequently the Minister of Finance in 1913. In March 1914, his 

second wife, Henriette, shot and killed the editor of the Le Figaro newspaper 

which had been publically attacking her husband, a crime for which she was 

acquitted in July 1914.

6. See Letter #2, Appendix 1.

7. See Letter #3, Appendix 1.

8. See Letter #4, Appendix 1.

9. See Letter #5, Appendix 1.
21

Chapter 3

Commissioned and to the Front

On September 18, 1917, I received a notice from the AEF Headquarters requesting my appearance in Paris for an examination for a 

commission. I showed the request to Captain Genin and he gave me 

a forty-eight hour pass to Paris. Whether I got the commission or not, 

I felt that it was worthwhile just for the two day trip to Paris. I went 

into Paris on the 22d of September and appeared before the Examining Committee composed of three artillery officers headed by Lt. Col. 

[Marlborough] Churchill. 

There were a great many Americans there to take the examination, 

mostly men who held commissions in the English and French armies 

and there were a few from our outfit. The examination consisted of just 

two or three questions. They asked what education I had had and what 

military experience and that was all. I went back to the front and it was 

not until about the third or fourth of October that I heard anything more. 

I then received a wire telling me that I had been commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery and asking me to report for duty. 

Captain Genin allowed me to go into Paris where the American Ambulance Headquarters gave me a discharge from the French Service.1

Figure 4. Quiet Lorraine Sector Used for Training and Acclimation. 
22

I went to AEF Headquarters, took my oath of office and told them 

that I knew nothing about artillery. I was informed that that did not make 

any difference as I was to be sent to Saumur to the Artillery School.2 My 

discharge from the French service was dated October 15 and my oath 

of office was dated October 19. I did not have enough money to buy 

a uniform so I cabled home and spent several days anxiously waiting 

until the money was cabled back to me. 

I was all ready and equipped on the twenty-fourth of October but 

when I got my transportation I found that the instructions read for me 

to proceed to Valdahon. I inquired as to the reason for the change and 

was informed that the First Division had just left for the front the day 

before and were shy of officers and that all available Artillery Officers 

had been ordered up immediately to the First Field Artillery Brigade. I, 

therefore, took the train in the evening, had to change once at midnight 

and changed again early the next morning. The early change the next 

morning was at Besanscon. I found there that the other train was leaving from another station and there was only about ten minutes to get to 

the other station and catch the train. There were about a dozen enlisted 

men on the way to Valdahon who were sitting in the station at Besancon 

and who evidently did not know that the other train left from a different 

station. I thereupon assumed my first command in the American Army 

by ordering these men to follow me across town to the other station. We 

doubled time to the other station and just caught the train.3

I arrived at Valdahon in the middle of the day and when I reported 

to brigade headquarters was assigned to the Sixth Field Artillery and 

put in Battery F [Second Battalion, Sixth Field Artillery] then under 

the command of Captain Murray Cushing Donnell. The other officers 

in the Battery were Lieutenant Pritchard, Lieutenant Emory, Lieutenant 

Hammersley, Lieutenant Redfield and myself.

Pritchard and Emory had been through the Officers’ Training School 

and knew something about artillery and had been through the French 

Artillery School at Fountainbleau. Redfield and I were both from the 

Reserve Mallet and knew nothing about artillery. It was all so strange 

and new that it preyed on Redfield’s mind to such an extent that he even 

talked of deserting and hiking to the Swiss border which was not far 

away. I persuaded him not to do that, but he was so upset about how 

little he knew of artillery that he could absorb nothing and never did 

learn much about it. 
23

Valdahon is high up in the foothills on the edge of the Alps and was 

very cold. I will never forget the sound of the first call on the bugle in 

the morning at 4:30 am and getting out of my blankets and shivering on 

the cold stone floor of the French barracks. I learned very little in the 

next few days I was at Valdahon. The batteries went to the range and 

fired but no one made an effort to give me any instruction that amounted 

to anything.

Figure 5. French 75-mm Gun in American Service, 1917-1918.

LT Evans trained with this gun at Valdahon.

Source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/fletcher/fletcher.html.
24

Notes

1. See Letter #6, Appendix 1.

2. The AEF had set up training courses in France for all arriving units 

since much of the weapons, tactics, and techniques were taken directly from 

the British and French. 

3. As previously mentioned, prior to the war, the Army did not have 

a division-size unit. The First Division was quickly formed from four 

infantry regiments from the Mexican border and augmented with recruits 

and men from other regiments, and reserve officers to fill out the staff. The 

division embarked for France in mid-June, 1917. To gain experience, the 

First Division was placed under French control and entered the line in the 

Sommerville sector, ten kilometers southeast of Nancy, on October 21, and 

withdrew the night of November 20, 1917. See Arthur W. Page, Our 110 

Days’ Fighting (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1920), 144.
25

Chapter 4

Training for War

Only the Second Battalion of the 6th Field Artillery was at Valdahon at this time, the 1st Battalion having gone to the front in Lorraine 

south of Nancy and there had fired the first shot fired by the Americans 

on October 23. The 2d Battalion left for the front on November 4. We 

left Valdahon in the evening of the 4th to march about fifteen miles to 

the railroad at Besanscon where we started loading on the train before 

daylight on the 5th.1 We traveled on the train all that day and unloaded 

about dusk at the town of Jarville from which place we had about a ten 

mile march to Varangeville.2 

We went into position on the night of the 6th in the same place that 

C Battery had occupied when they fired the first shot. It was on top of a 

hill and as it had been raining for several days the road to the position 

was knee deep in mud. The horses that we had were French Army castoffs and in very poor shape. The result was that we had to put sixteen 

horses on each gun before we could haul it up the hill to the position. 

We finally got into position before daylight. 

This was a very quiet front which was lucky for us, as we were 

able to get organized and shaken down without too much interference 

from the enemy. In fact there was so little firing that one of the French 

colonels nearby objected strenuously to our firing at all. He said that 

for the first time in many months, two enemy shells had landed near his 

command post, and that on this front the Germans never shelled any 

of the command posts except in retaliation for our fire, and that it must 

have been the American’s firing at the Germans as the French troops in 

the sector would have had better sense that to fire at the enemy in a quiet 

sector. However, we did continue to do some firing all during the two 

weeks and I, for the first time, was able to learn a little bit about firing, 

figuring data from the map and general artillery work.

One of the first jobs I was given was to supervise the building of 

some dugouts. As I had seen a good many dugouts while we were with 

the Reserve Mallet I probably knew as much about it as the other officers.

After two weeks there we pulled out of the position and headed for 

the training area near Gondrecourt. It was about a four-day march and 

we arrived at our billets in the town of Bure on November 24. About 

this time I was transferred from F Battery to C Battery. C Battery was 
26

being sent to the Artillery Officers’ School at Gondrecourt so that student officers could use the guns and horses for training. As I had had 

no training camp experience at all I was switched to C Battery so that 

I could attend the classes at the Gondrecourt School. However, I found 

that Captain McLendon kept me so busy supervising the grooming of 

the horses, giving gun drill, etc. that I was unable to attend any of the 

classes. Our only rest came when the students at the school took over 

our horses and guns which was only a few days a week for a few hours 

each time. I had to give the cannoneers gun drill and had to do this without previous instruction so that I was pretty green at it. I borrowed a few 

books and did some studying and got away with it.

One day, as I was giving gun drill, Lieutenant Colonel Glassford 

(after the war, Chief of Police in Washington, D.C.) strolled by and 

watched. In a few minutes he called me aside and gave me perhaps the 

worst cussing out and calling down that I have ever had. He told me I 

knew nothing about gun drill, did not know how to give commands and 

was not fit to hold a commission. He told me that my commands were 

given in too weak a voice and much too slowly and that if I was ever to 

make a good officer I would have to learn to yell out commands with 

some snap. When he asked me how much experience I had had and 

found that I had not attended any training school he softened up a little. 

It was a very worthwhile lesson, however, and scared me sufficiently so 

that never since have I failed, in giving a command to men in the Army, 

to yell it out with all my might.3

Captain McLendon told me that he wanted me to give the battery 

mounted drill the following morning. I knew nothing about mounted 

artillery drill so I spent most of the night studying and proceeded to 

give the drill next morning. I really think I learned it more thoroughly 

and more rapidly this way than I possibly could have learned it at a 

training camp. I got one of the sergeants in the battery who had been 

in the regiment for a long time to take me out several afternoons and 

give me some private instruction with the various instruments used in 

figuring firing data. This instruction stood me in good stead and was the 

only instruction I received on this during the War. The fact that I knew 

something about surveying was the only thing that saved me and made 

it possible for me to catch on sufficiently to hold down my job.

We had a terrible cold and snowy December and lived in a barracks 

that was almost as drafty as living outdoors and which had practically no heat. The only break the whole month was the weekend before 
27

Christmas. I received a three day pass to Paris and spent the weekend 

with the Ingles.4

In January I was transferred back to F Battery and then began two 

weeks of maneuvers, in the snow, that were terribly hard on both men 

and horses. We would start out from our billets before daybreak in the 

morning to travel five to fifteen miles to the scene of the maneuvers, 

sometime in the snowing and bitter cold and other times thawing and 

very muddy. Our feet were, therefore, alternately frozen and wet, and 

then frozen again; so that the net result was that most of the men had 

chilblains and swollen feet. I found that when I took my boots off my 

feet would swell up and it would be very hard to get them on again in 

the morning. As a result, sometimes I did not take them off and my feet 

were practically numb without circulation. They did not thaw out fully 

until the following April and the thawing out was worse than the original freezing. Many mornings nearly half the Battery would be unable 

to get to reveille on time because of inability to put on their shoes and a 

number of men had to go around without shoes with their feet wrapped 

in burlap.5

One day we started out to go to a maneuver when there was sleet on 

the roads. We left about six am and by noon the battalion had not progressed more than a mile. At one time there was not a team in the whole 

battery that did not have at least one horse down at one time. Finally, at 

noon, we turned around and started back. Why no horses or men were 

killed that day is still a mystery.6
28

Notes

1. See Letter #7, Appendix 1. In October 1917 the First Division went 

into the frontline to gain combat experience. One infantry battalion at a time 

from each regiment spent ten days with a French division. The first US Army 

casualties of the war occurred during this period when early in November the 

Germans conducted a trench raid against the same battalion that had paraded 

in Paris the previous 4 July. The Germans killed three Americans and captured eleven. See Stewart, 25-26.

2. The 1st Field Artillery Brigade was the only US field artillery unit in 

action during this period. 

3. See Letter #8, Appendix 1.

4. See Letter #9, Appendix 1.

5. See Letter #10, Appendix 1.

6. With the trench training complete, Pershing ordered the First 

Division to conduct further training to correct the deficiencies observed at 

the front. In mid-January, 1918, six months after its arrival in France, the 

division was ready in Pershing’s view to move permanently as a unit into a 

quiet sector of the trenches. For general information on this, see Stewart, 26-

27, and George Clark, The American Expeditionary Force in World War I: A 

Statistical History (New York: McFarland, 2013).
29

Chapter 5

Battle at the Front

Finally, on January 22, 1918, we left for the front and after about a 

three day march we took up positions northeast of Toul. During this trip 

the roads were full of ice and numerous times we had horses falling. A 

number of the horses in the regiment broke bones in falling and, as a 

result, we not only lost some horses during the trip but the horses, at the 

end, were in very poor shape.

Captain Donnell went ahead and left me to bring up the battery. 

We finally pulled into the position that had been selected after dark and 

found that we were right beside the Beaumon-Flirey Road in an old 

French position that had not been used for a couple of years. It was very 

much exposed and our only hope of not being seen by the enemy planes 

was to try and not change the appearance.

About this time we received some very definite orders from the 

brigade that Captain Donnell did not think should be obeyed. One was 

that we must have a man on duty at each gun ready to fire the normal 

barrage any minute of the day or night. Captain Donnell said that in the 

British Army they had a man sleep beside each gun and had one man 

for the battery on duty watching out for the signal rockets from the 

Infantry. As a result, he adopted this method. We also were ordered to 

fix up electric aiming lights for the guns but Captain Donnell thought 

that candles in tin cans out in front of the gun position were sufficient. 

We also were ordered to put up an anti-aircraft machine gun, but as no 

anti-aircraft mount was supplied us, Donnell also decided not to comply with this order. On General Summerall’s next visit, January 30, he 

found that his orders had not been carried out and Donnell was relieved 

from command and sent back to regimental headquarters. 1

Colonel Scott [the regimental commander] put me in command 

temporarily until a new captain could be assigned.2 The next twenty-four hours were very busy ones. We rigged up aiming lights for the 

guns using flashlight bulbs set in champagne bottle corks for sockets, 

we had a man on duty ready to fire at all times and the battery mechanic 

who was an excellent carpenter built an anti-aircraft mount out of an old 

railroad cross-tie. When General Summerall came by the next day he 

found the things he objected to corrected and he was so pleased that he 

asked Colonel Scott to leave me in command of the battery, making the 
30

remark to Colonel Scott “If your captains can’t obey orders I am sure 

there are plenty of second lieutenants who can.”

At this time the officers of the battery consisted of Redfield, Walker, 

Mackall and Cheston. Mackall and Cheston had been through “Saumur” and were very up-to-date on the latest French artillery procedure. 

I borrowed their books and did some studying and believe I learned 

faster than if I had gone to the school. There was plenty of ammunition 

and I could spend all of the time I wanted in the observation post learning how to shoot. 

Summerall used to visit us nearly every day and we were scared 

to death of him. The first unit in the regiment that would see him coming on his inspection tour would telephone all the rest of the batteries 

merely saying on the phone “Sitting Bull on the Warpath” and that was 

notice to get ready for inspection. These inspections were stiff enough 

so that shoes had to be shined, men shaved and no cigarette butts or 

match sticks within a hundred yards of the battery position. Summerall 

was very strict and fired officers out of the regiment right and left. Colonel [Charles] Pulis had been relieved from duty a few days before I 

arrived at the regiment. Eventually Colonel Scott was relieved. We also 

had relieved Lieutenant Colonel Neal, Major Starkey, Captain Haines, 

Figure 6. HQ of the 6th FA January 18, 1918 South of Toul, France.

Source: US Army Signal Corps.
31

Captain Huston, Captain Donnell and innumerable lieutenants. Captain 

Larabee who commanded A Battery was so scared of being relieved and 

so violent in his criticism of Summerall that he transferred to General 

Headquarters (GHQ). He later got sick of that and came up to the front 

with another unit. 

The story is told of Larabee that when he wanted to leave GHQ, he 

was unable to secure orders to go to the front again. He then got very 

tight [drunk] and rented a bicycle. He went to a restaurant in Chaumont 

where no one less than a general ever went and proceeded to mount the 

bicycle and ride around between the tables while the generals were at 

dinner. He finally bumped into some general’s table, fell off the bike 

and passed out on the floor. He left Chaumont the next day so he accomplished his purpose.

In February, George Gillet, who commanded a machine gun company, decided to put one platoon right beside our battery. As there were 

no dugouts for the men of this platoon, I invited the officer in charge to 

live in my dugout and the men to double up with my men. Several days 

later Gillet sent a new officer, Lieutenant Lewis to take command of the 

platoon. That day the Germans gave us a terrible shelling. Lieutenant 

Lewis and I were sitting in my dugout and Lewis was so nervous he 

could not sit still. It developed that this was his first day at the Front. I 

tried to calm him down but it did no good. Finally a shell landed on top 

of the dugout and blew the whole roof off so that we could see daylight 

through the hole above. Lewis went entirely to pieces, fell on the floor 

and tried to dig in the floor with his hands. He finally went entirely limp 

and we were unable to rouse him or get him to speak although his eyes 

were open and he apparently was not hurt. Finally we had to send him 

back on a stretcher. This was the only real case of shell shock that I saw.

Lieutenant Lewis was replaced by a Lieutenant Thompson. A shell 

splinter hit Thompson in the leg one day and he thought he was badly 

wounded. When we came to examine him he found the Germans got 

back safely to their own lines. Two Sixth Field [Artillery] officers on 

liaison duty with the infantry came out of it more or less heroes. Lieutenant Green of B Battery was in a dugout on the front line when the 

German raid came over. A German threw a hand grenade in the dugout 

and Green was wounded in the leg. In spite of this he limped out of the 

dugout and shot four or five Germans with his pistol and took a couple 

prisoners. He was pretty badly wounded and never returned to the regiment from the hospital. 
32

Lieutenant Coleman who, on the day of the raid, was supposed to 

be transferred to F Battery, crawled out in No Man’s Land and shot a 

couple of Germans and brought back a prisoner. As a result, the artillery 

officers took more prisoners than the Infantry did on that particular raid.

The whole front pepped up about this time and there was almost 

continuous firing. We were shelled nearly every day. We were in a very 

exposed position, quite close to the front line and we were ordered to 

build two alternate positions further back. The Germans found out about 

one of these positions and destroyed it before it was half built but no 

one was hurt. The other one they did not discover and we finally completed it and moved all but one gun to the rear position. I was ordered 

to cut the enemy wire for a forthcoming raid. I spent about 1400 rounds 

of ammunition in one day cutting a path in the barbed wire about thirty 

feet wide. The wire was stretched to a thickness of about fifty feet in 

front of the German trenches. The raid came off very successfully. We 

fired a box barrage which protected the Infantry during the raid.

One day General Summerall criticized the dugouts very seriously. 

He stated that he did not think they had a large enough head cover to 

withstand the overhead shell. I told him that the position was an old 

abandoned French position and that since we had not changed the looks 

of it, the Germans evidently did not realize that it was occupied. I was 

afraid to build up the roofs of the dugouts any higher for fear it would 

be noticed. He admitted that what I said might be true, but nevertheless 

ordered me to put at least another layer of sandbags on top of each dugout. A day or so later General Bullard came through on an inspection 

with General Summerall.3 We had been so busy that I had not been able 

to have any work done on the dugouts. General Bullard made the same 

criticism that General Summerall had a few days before, saying that the 

dugouts did not look very safe to him. Much to my surprise General 

Summerall then used the same reason to General Bullard that I had used 

to General Summerall a few days before.

One day about this time Lieutenant Colonel Scott decided to test 

out the Runner System and started messages back by runner from the 

front lines. Somebody on his staff slipped up and did not notify everyone of this. A breathless runner came up and handed me a message 

which stated “The enemy have entered the Bois de Remieres and are 

advancing in force on Siechprey.” As both of the locations mentioned 

were behind our lines I was on the verge of calling for a barrage when 

I realized that the front was very quiet and the enemy could not have 

advanced without a lot more firing. I called battalion headquarters and 
33

was told that it was a test message, to sign the message, put on the 

time received and let the runner go. Evidently brigade headquarters had 

not been notified of this and when a messenger arrived there General 

Summerall thought it was authentic and was about to have the heavy 

Artillery open up on Siechprey when someone who had heard of the test 

stopped him. Lieutenant Colonel Scott left that night and we never saw 

him again the rest of the war. Which officer on his staff had failed in 

his duty on this I do not know. I feel sure it was not Scott’s fault but he 

took the blame nevertheless. Scott was succeeded by LTC [John] Crane 

from Baltimore.4

One day Colonel Crane and Major Redmond Stewart from Baltimore came on a visit to the battery. Both of them had known my father 

and we had a very pleasant talk about Baltimore. When they left, Sergeant Gottlieb, near whose gun we had been talking, came up to me and 

said he had been very much interested in our talk about Baltimore as he 

had been born on Aisquith Street where his father was a tailor.

An additional battery was formed in the regiment to take over and 

operate some of the 99-mm French guns and I sent a squad of men, 

under Corporal McCarthey to serve with the extra battery. These guns 

had no recoil mechanism and were the type used in the Franco-Prussian 

War.5 One day Clemençeau [the French prime minister] came on a visit 

to our front and stopped to see G Battery, as the extra battery was called. 

He was so pleased to see the Americans using the old French guns that 

he had known and used in 1870 that he pulled out his watch and presented it to the nearest man to him who happened to be Corporal McCarthey. This spoiled McCarthey immediately, as thereafter he became 

the laziest man in the battery.

One day I went back to the alternate position we were building and 

found all the men were supposed to be digging dugouts sitting around 

loafing. I had only been in command of the battery a short while and I 

suppose the men thought I was easy and that this was a good opportunity to try me out. I gave them the dickens for not working and when 

most of them did not hurry to obey the command I lost my temper and 

very foolishly threatened some of them with very dire punishment. I 

even went so far as to say that anyone who didn’t obey my command 

was likely to get shot. Some man, which one I could not say, made the 

remark which I overheard, “He couldn’t hit anything with that gun of 

his.” That made me madder still and I proceeded to pull out my pistol 

and point to the stake that was in the ground about fifty yards away. I 

merely said “See that stick” and shot at it hardly taking time to aim. 
34

Much to my astonishment I hit the stick and it broke in half. I think I 

surprised the men so that they said not one word and went to work. That 

was the last time I shot the pistol off during the war. I thought it time to 

rest on my laurels.

Most of the casualties that we had on the front were drivers hauling 

ammunition and food to the Battery. We had to haul up ammunition and 

food every night after dark and the Germans usually shelled all of the 

roads all during the night.

Toward the end of March we were notified that we would soon be 

relieved from duty in the Toul Sector and were told to expect officers 

from the 26th Division which would relieve us. About midnight one 

night when there was a great deal of shelling and gas outside I heard a 

pounding on the door of the dugout and upon opening it an officer with 

a gasmask on came in. He took the gasmask off and introduced himself 

as Lieutenant Daniel Willard of the 26th Division. I immediately knew 

who he was and persuaded him to spend the night with me as he was 

looking for the 7th Field [Artillery Regiment] and it would have been a 

difficult thing to find it in the dark. He spent the night and I sent him on 

with a messenger the following morning.6
35

Notes

1. Brigadier General Charles P. Summerall was the commander of 

the 1st Field Artillery Brigade at the time. He was later promoted to major 

general and commanded the First Division and V Corps. From 1926 to 1930 

he was the Army Chief of Staff. 

2. See Letter #11, Appendix 1

3. See Letter #12, Appendix 1

4. John Alden Crane graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1907 

and was commissioned as a field artillery second lieutenant in the Regular 

Army. During World War II he served as an artillery major general in the 

Mediterranean theater. 

5. The demand for arms was so immense and immediate and the time 

required to retool US industry so long that the Army had to rely on foreignmade equipment for nearly all weapons except for the rifle. 

6. The 26th Division, an organization composed of National Guard 

units from the New England states, was the second American division to 

arrive in France and the first that had been completely organized before it 

arrived.

37

Chapter 6

Respite from Battle

The next day (around the end of March 1918) an officer from the 

Regiment to relieve us appeared and spent a day or two with us. Finally 

on April 6 we pulled out of our positions and went back to the little 

town of Burley near Toul. We had been on the front for about three 

months and all of the men were set for a celebration. Luckily I kept the 

men working all the first day and gave no one permission to leave the 

battery area until everything was in order. Some of the batteries, however, did not clean up their material, figuring that we would be given 

several weeks rest before moving on. I think that night every man in 

the battalion got drunk and the lid was blown off the town. This lasted 

several days. 

At midnight on April 10 we received orders to move and such a 

time as the battalion had trying to get men and equipment together and 

harnessed up to move. I was very glad then that we had everything in 

order as some of the batteries had a terrible time getting harnessed up. 

Finally, we got on the road about 2 a.m. and marched to Toul where we 

entrained at daybreak. 

Rumors were flying thick and fast, the most persistent one being 

that we were being sent up to the British front where the Germans had 

broken through the Fifth British Army. This proved to be correct and 

we were moved past Paris and to the north, detrained at Meru on April 

12, and marched to Delancourt. Here we stayed several days practicing 

open warfare maneuvers and trying to get the horses in condition.1 

Our horses were in terrible shape. They had not had enough food 

all winter and most of them were just skin and bones. We were given 

order to let the horses graze but not to let them go into the fields. We, 

therefore, had to graze them along the sides of the road. In spite of all 

orders some of the men would take their horses into the fields where 

the natives had just planted new crops and we were called down very 

severely. I, therefore, gave a very strict order and threatened dire punishment for any man allowing his horses in a field.

The next day Sergeant Chester Smith fell asleep and let two horses which he had been holding get away and they wandered through a 

newly planted field and ate up the young wheat shoots just coming up. 

I had recently reduced him from sergeant to private because he had 

disappeared the day we arrived in Delancourt and did not appear for 
38

forty-eight hours. There were several robberies in the neighborhood and 

while we could never pin them on him I always felt that he might have 

been responsible as they all happened during the period he was AWOL. 

As we had been called down so severely by the colonel about letting horses in the field I had Smith tied to a wagon wheel with his arms 

spread out for an hour as no other punishment seemed to have any effect 

on him. When he was released and returned to duty he slipped away and 

talked to Colonel [Courtland] Parker who had been his battery commander in the states before the war. Colonel Parker sent for me and 

gave me the dickens for using the “spread eagle” punishment but when 

I told him the circumstances he agreed that Smith deserved everything 

he got. However, Colonel Parker ordered me not to use this punishment 

again.

There were various rumors that we would not be allowed up to 

the Front because our horses were not in good condition, and when 

a French general came to inspect the division I heard that one of the 

horses dropped dead while he was looking at it, but finally we were 

allowed to go, pulling out on April 16. The day before we left General Pershing [the AEF commander] got all of the officers together and 

made us a goodbye speech. He told us that we were going into one of 

the biggest battles of the War, that it was the first American division to 

go into a fight of that kind since we had been in the War and he knew 

we would do our part even if none of us every come back. It was not a 

very cheerful speech but nevertheless we got off in good spirits early 

the next morning.

Battery E had been having officers’ mess in one of the French houses with a very good French cook serving them. They had had a few 

bottles of wine for dinner the evening before and the French woman 

who owned the house had not cleared up the table after dinner. Colonel Parker, after the regiment pulled out, proceeded to go around and 

inspect our area to see that it was properly cleaned up. He happened to 

walk into the French house where Battery E had been having dinner the 

night before and saw empty wine glasses and empty bottles on the table. 

He jumped to the conclusion that Battery E officers had had the wine 

that morning for breakfast and immediately sent out and put Captain 

Hall under arrest for being drunk on duty. 

Hall was riding along therefore, technically under arrest, trying to 

make his way to regimental headquarters to explain to Colonel Parker. 

Just as he got to a cross road in a town, the unit of the Division going 
39

through the town happened to halt so that they blocked the road. General Bullard [the division commander] happened to come up in his machine at the moment and as Hall was the only officer in sight he put him 

under arrest for blocking the road even though it was not his unit that 

was there. As a result, Hall had the distinction of being arrested twice in 

one day, both times for things he did not do. Later that day both charges 

were withdrawn and everything was cleared up. 

We were ordered not to ride horses except on difficult pieces of 

road so as soon as the teams were started out all drivers dismounted 

and walked beside their teams. After we had gotten started I went ahead 

with Lieutenant Cheston and a few men as we were ordered to ride 

ahead of the regiment so as to pick out battery positions before the 

batteries arrived. We finally got up to the front and found that a French 

division had come in a few days before and had stopped the German 

drive. We finally got in touch with the French artillery officers and 

stayed with them for a few days gathering information about the front. 

There were not trenches or dugouts as this was new territory that they 

had not fought over before and the French troops had only stopped the 

German advance a few days before.
40

Notes

1. After the Germans struck a near-fatal blow against the Italian Army 

at Caporetto in late 1917, they repositioned forces from the Russian front (as 

the Bolsheviks had signed a peace treaty in early 1918) and assembled 192 

divisions consisting of over 3.5 million men on the Western Front. The plan 

was to attack before the Americans could build up overwhelming forces. The 

initial assault consisted of an attack on 21 March 1918 by 62 divisions along 

the Somme River against the British, designed to push them into the English 

Channel, with the Germans then turning to confront the French. By the end 

of March, the offensive had bogged down after advancing forty miles, taking 

70,000 prisoners and causing 200,000 Allied casualties. Although a tactical 

victory, strategically the battle failed because it failed either to destroy the 

British Army or to separate them from the French. In addition, the Germans 

suffered as many casualties as the Allies, mostly in units of highly trained 

shock troops which could not be easily replaced. For background on the German spring offensives, see Stewart, 27-31.
41

Chapter 7

Returning to Battle

We left Delancourt on April 16 [1918] and the Battery pulled into 

its position on the outskirts of Coulmelle on April 23. The battery position was in the back yard of one of the houses on the edge of the town 

and each gun was located under an apple tree. We used the cellars of 

nearby houses as dugouts and strengthened the ceilings so as to make 

them shellproof. There was heavy firing from the beginning and all in 

all it was considered a pretty hot sector. I went on several trips down 

to the Infantry and crawled along the front line over nearly our whole 

sector so as to become familiar with both our front line and the enemy 

front line. There were long stretches where there were no trenches at all 

but merely groups of men in shell holes which they had enlarged.1

As we were on the west edge of the town of Coulmelle, we were 

firing directly over the town and were told to be careful not to hit the 

tower on the town hall. There was a beautiful square tower right to our 

front that had a big clock facing us, although the clock, of course, was 

no longer running. Our gunners were given careful instructions not to 

fire if the gun was aimed at the tower and this, of course, left a dead 

space on our front which we arranged with other batteries to cover for 

us. All of the men, however, were very anxious to take a shot at the 

clock and one morning, after firing all night, we discovered that the 

face of the clock was gone as someone had put a shell square through 

it. I never discovered who did it but from the sheepish looks on many 

of the men’s faces, I feel sure that somebody in the battery had done it 

on purpose.

The Germans fired almost continuously on the town and as we were 

right behind the town we got a great many of the shots and had a number of men killed and wounded. One day the Germans put over a big gas 

attack. The place was drenched with mustard gas for several days. We 

took all but a few men back a mile leaving only a minimum number of 

men on the guns. After four or five hours in gas masks we would send 

the men back out of the gas area and have a new crew come in. 

Wearing a gas mask continuously made my nose bleed which was 

very disconcerting and I had to take off my mask a number of times to 

clear up the blood. Why I was not gassed while doing this I do not know 

as I was in the gas almost continuously several days. The only thing I 

got was a small gas burn on my hand. One gas shell landed right beside 
42

our guns while we were firing. The men all ducked but were splashed 

all over their backs with the mustard gas which is in liquid form when it 

first comes out of the exploded shell. Within a half an hour the acid had 

eaten through their coats and had taken all the skin off their backs and 

we had to send the whole gun crew back to the hospital. Some of them 

never returned to the battery.

About this time there was an epidemic of some kind of fever which 

we called “trench fever” that put about half of the men in the hospital. I 

felt badly one day but held off going to the hospital and was better the 

next day so was able to stick it out.

Some of the Germans’ heavy guns fired at us one day and five huge 

shells of at least 320-mm size landed right close in the battery position 

but only one exploded. The one that exploded was right in front of the 

battery and made a hole about fifteen feet deep and about twenty-five 

feet across but did not hurt anyone. The rest of the shells did not explode. They made holes in the ground so deep that we could not reach 

the bottom with a rammer staff. One fairly large shell exploded right 

Figure 7. Henry Evans’ Campaigns in 1918. Boxes tied to later maps.
43

opposite me. I dropped flat on the ground and was almost buried by the 

dirt that flew up from the explosion. I thought surely I had been hit as 

I had a sharp pain in my back but was much relieved to find that it was 

only a bruise. A rock had been thrown high in the air from the explosion 

and had landed on my back.

During this stay on the front the regiment was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Courtlandt Parker, and Lieutenant Colonel John Crane 

was commanding our battalion. The other commanders were A.W. 

Waldron, Captain of D Battery, and Barton Hall, Captain of E Battery. 

The officers in my battery were Lieutenants Mackall, Cheston, Osborn, 

Siegel, and Redfield. We had a request to send some officers back as 

instructors and Redfield was sent back to the states. Osborne was sent 

as instructor to one of the schools in France and Siegel was transferred 

to regimental headquarters. 

These officers were replaced by Lieutenants Zenke and Murtha. We 

also had Lieutenant Anderson for a while. Anderson was at the horses’ 

line and was found one day, by General Summerall, reading the Saturday Evening Post when he should have been taking charge of grooming 

of the horses. The net result was that Anderson was transferred to the 

ammunition train for several months before we could get him back in 

the regiment.

One day we were accused of shooting into our own lines. The infantry reported a number of shots landing right in our own trenches and on 

investigating it was found that my battery was the only one in the whole 

sector that was firing at that time. I checked my data carefully and knew 

that I had given the correct commands. I was very much afraid, however, that I would be court martialed. One of the captains in the Fifth Field 

[Artillery Regiment] had one shot fall short a week before and had been 

immediately relieved of command by General Summerall. I had visions 

of being sent home in chains to prison at Leavenworth but was saved 

by John Crane. 

He spent an entire day with the infantry and had them show him exactly where the shells had landed. He collected all of the shell fragments 

that he could find in the shell holes and then very carefully measured 

and it was found that all of the rotating bands were 14-mm in width. The 

rotating band of the French 75 has a 12-mm width. The Austrian 88 is 

the only gun that we had any record of that had a 14-mm rotating band. 

What had evidently happened was that the infantry had heard my 

guns go off, heard our shells whistle through the air overhead and at the 
44

same time an Austrian [German unit equipped with Austrian guns] 88 

Battery was firing at our Infantry. They would hear our guns, then see 

the explosion of the Austrian 88 and thought the explosions were from 

shells coming from the rear. The Austrian 88 has such a high velocity 

that the shell travels faster than sound so that the explosion takes place 

before you hear the shell whistle through the air toward you and any 

sound of the shell going through the air is usually lost because of the 

sound of the explosion of shell itself. Colonel Crane took his evidence 

up to General Summerall and convinced him that I had not fired short.

On May 27 the attack on Cantigny took place.2 We fired a rolling 

barrage for some hours as the Infantry went forward. Prior to the attack 

early in the morning of the 27th, each battery adjusted its barrage. This 

adjustment was done with a time schedule, each battery having about 

five minutes to fire four shots on its initial barrage line. We would watch 

the battery on our left and when they completed we would fire ourselves 

to see if it connected properly with the Battery on the left.3

For the next three days we caught the devil as the Germans counterattacked many times and drenched the whole countryside with gas and 

high explosive shells.4

About this time we were ordered to build a reserve position in the 

rear and started digging gun emplacements and dugouts about a mile 

back. Practically every day General Summerall would make an inspection of each battery and was strict all of the time about the looks of the 

men and the cleanliness of the gun position. He also questioned all men 

on duty and we had to keep the men thoroughly posted all of the time 

on their duties and try to have the most intelligent men on duty when 

the general came around.

Figure 8. US Army Field Artillery French 75mm Gun Crew, 1918

Source: US Army Fires Center, Fort Sill, Oklahoma
45

One day General Summerall and Colonel Crane were at the battery 

position. As they completed their inspection the following conversation 

took place between General Summerall and Colonel Crane:

Summerall: “Crane, now that the Trench Mortar Battery is under 

your command I expect them to obey my orders in every detail.”

Crane: “Yes, sir.”

Summerall: “As you know, I have ordered them to do all of their 

work at night time and keep hidden in the day as they are in a defensive 

position and I do not want their position known to the enemy.”

Crane: “Yes, sir.” 

Summerall: “Crane, I would like to inspect the Trench Mortar Battery. Let’s go over there.”

I could see from Colonel Crane’s face that he did not know anything 

about the Trench Mortar Battery or where it was. I had seen it go into 

position the night before and was about to suggest that I lead them to 

the place when Crane said: “General Summerall, you have given them 

orders to keep hidden in the day time. I think it would be bad discipline 

for us to inspect the position during the day.” General Summerall said: 

“Quite right, Crane, quite right. I will be back at dusk.” 

As soon as Summerall was out of earshot Crane turned to me and 

said “Where in the devil is that Trench Mortar Battery. I never heard of 

it before.” The order concerning the Trench Mortar Battery had come 

to Crane’s headquarters and Charlie Baird, Crane’s adjutant, had probably forgotten to show it to him.

One day a German shell set fire to a pile of ammunition that we had 

about a hundred yards behind the battery. The ammunition was in boxes 

and the wooden boxes caught on fire although none of our shells exploded. I ran over to the pile and together with Chester Smith, Sergeant 

Blalock and two or three others we were able to pull the boxes that 

were on fire away from the balance of the ammunition. A few buckets 

of water brought up by some of the others soon put the fire out which 

probably saved us from a terrible explosion.

One day a barn right near the battery position caught on fire. We 

had some ammunition stored in the barn and the men worked heroically 

to put the fire out. One of the highlights was Private Zanti climbing up 

the roof with a hatchet to cut away some of the burning shingles. 
46

I spent one day with the infantry and when I returned to the battery late in the afternoon Bill Mackall came running out with a face a 

mile long and greeted me by saying “Hurry up – the whole battery is 

drunk.” We had been digging a dugout in the backyard of one of the 

houses right up against the house and evidently it had caved in to an old 

wine cellar in the house. Mackall had been down in his dugout figuring 

up some firing data for the night fire. When he came up to the surface 

again he found almost every man in the battery lying on the ground 

drunk. Sergeant Blalock and Sergeant Gottlieb and one or two others 

had not been in on it so the sober men carried all of the drunken ones 

down into a dugout to get them out of the way before the colonel or the 

general could come around. We got everybody taken care of except Private Fleming who was not drunk enough to pass out but merely drunk 

enough to fight. 

This was the only actual fighting that I did during the war and the 

only physical encounter I had. I had quite a tussle with Fleming as 

he was heavier and taller than I was and I was having a considerable 

amount of difficulty getting him under control when I remembered that 

he had been shot some months before and grabbed his leg where he had 

been hurt and to my relief found that the old wound still hurt enough so 

that by squeezing his wounded leg he came under control. 

Several months before, Fleming had gotten drunk and had tried to 

get into the kitchen about midnight to get something to eat. That day 

we had gotten some replacements and one of the new men had been put 

on guard at the kitchen. When Fleming tried to break into the kitchen 

the guard had told him to keep out. Fleming had told the guard in no 

uncertain terms that he wanted something to eat, that he had been in the 

battery before the recruit had been born and when he wanted something 

to eat he got it. The guard then proceeded to shoot him in the leg which 

put Fleming in the hospital for several months and he had only returned 

to the battery a few days before this episode.

I reduced all of the non-coms who had gotten drunk to privates and 

sent back to the horse line for drivers to come up to the battery. Cheston, 

Mackall, and I acted as gunners for the next twenty-four hours and with 

drivers to load the guns we managed to complete all of the firing that 

was required.

On the Fourth of July we had a grand time. In the morning there was 

a contest in the whole brigade to see which battery had the best looking 

gun positions. I was sent over to the Fifth Field [Artillery Regiment] to 
47

act as one of the judges so spent half of the day with that regiment. We 

had been delivered a large supply of mustard gas which was the first of 

this gas that we had fired. We had been on the receiving end of so much 

gas that we were all delighted to get a chance to reciprocate. 

The whole brigade fired mustard gas all the afternoon and observers 

reported that stretchers and ambulances were traveling back behind the 

German lines for several days thereafter so that we much have done a 

tremendous amount of damage. However, it was not an unmixed pleasure as the German came back with a tremendous amount of fire and 

there were a number of casualties. Lieutenant Jones of D Battery was 

killed and Lieutenant Mitchell of D had his upper lip blown off. Mitchell, however, had a new lip built using skin from the top of his head. 

He came back to us in a couple of months with hardly a scar showing, 

everything being hidden by a very thick mustache.
Notes

1. See Letter #13, Appendix 1.

2. The troops had been confronting the Germans in that vicinity for 

several weeks. The operation was planned long in advance. Good maps were 

available. The troops, while they had had experience in holding a defensive 

sector, had not attacked before. It was considered extremely important for 

purposes of morale for the first American attack to be successful. See Infantry 

in Battle, (Washington, D.C.: The Infantry Journal, 1939), 125.

3. For a map of the rolling barrage showing the Crane Subgroup and 

the plan of operation see Arthur Page, Our 110 Days’ Fighting (Garden City, 

NY: Doubleday, Page & Company), 22-23.The 28th Infantry, supported by 

French tanks and the artillery rolling barrage, took the town in forty minutes 

and captured two hundred and fifty prisoners. 

4. In what became known as the Aisne Offensive, the Germans 

attacked early on May 27 behind a barrage of close to 5,000 guns with 17 

divisions initially and 13 in reserve. The attack was initially successful as the 

German infantry plunged quickly over and beyond the Chemin des Dames 

ridge crossing the Aisne and Vesle rivers, and gaining up to 20 miles in the 

first 24 hours. Reinforcing the success, the Germans poured in more troops 

and were only stopped at the Marne River at Chateau Thierry when the US 

2d and 3d Divisions reinforced the French position and fought in the Second 

Battle of the Marne. See Stewart, 31 and American Armies and Battlefields in 

Europe (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1992), 29-33.
49

Chapter 8

Break in Battle Cut Short by German Attack

On July 6 (1918) we were relieved and dropped back to camp at 

Troussencourt near Beauvais.1 The first night there Colonel Parker held 

a dance in a big chateau nearby and invited a band of nurses from a 

nearby hospital. The only one I remember was a Mrs. Schenck from 

Baltimore who had been a Miss White and I remembered her as she 

had lived in Sudbrook one summer when we spent the summer there. 

The real joke of this party was on Bill Mackall. He had had a touch of 

trench fever the month before and had spent two weeks in the hospital 

near Beauvais where he had become very much interested in one of 

the nurses, a Miss Vivian Scott from New Orleans. When invited to 

Colonel Parker’s for the evening nothing was said about a dance and 

Bill Mackall decided to stay in camp. He was very much disappointed 

to find out later that there had been a dance and his friend, Miss Scott, 

had been present.

We expected to stay in this place several days but late that night 

got orders to move early the next morning. We pulled out on July 12 

and the next five days were the worst march that I had during the war. 

We would march from about five in the afternoon until nine or ten the 

next morning and on rainy or misty days would continue to march up 

until twelve or one o’clock in the day. By the time we had groomed the 

horses and fed the men we did not have more than two to four hours to 

sleep. It was a terribly hard march on both men and horses and we got 

so sleepy and it would be necessary to wake up every man before we 

could move again. Some of the men crawled off in the bushes and we 

did not find them in the dark to wake them up so that we lost six or eight 

men who caught up to us weeks later.2

The last few days were very disturbing. For two or three days we 

started out and marched for some hours and were then turned around 

and marched back to the same place from which we started. Evidently 

the high command changed its mind any number of times as to where 

to go into the line.

On the 15th of July the Germans attacked east of Reims and at the 

same time we were preparing an attack south of Soissons. As a result, 

we kind of hovered part way in between the two places. At one time we 

were close enough to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Finally, on the night 

of the 16th our horses were left behind and the guns were loaded into 
50

trucks. The truck drivers were all Annamites [Vietnamese], or Chinese 

from French Indochina. We traveled all night and unloaded early next 

morning near the front, south of Soissons. 3 

The guns were hidden and the battery commander went forward to 

locate positions. Meanwhile, the horses and limbers without the weight 

of the guns were able to make good time and caught up to us late on 

the 17th. That evening about dusk while walking down the road with 

Captain Waldron, we found Captain Durant of A Battery asleep in a 

ditch opposite the road, just as drunk as he could be. He had selected his 

battery position but apparently none of the officers in his battery knew 

where it was so they had a time getting straightened out in A Battery. 

Waldron and I later put in charges against Durant but withdrew them at 

Colonel Dodd’s request when Durant signed a pledge not to drink for 

eighteen months. That night we pulled up into position. 

Colonel Parker was afraid that all of the guns would not be in position in time and as he wanted a few guns in every position, he sent the 

first gun that came along to A and the next to B, etc. regardless of which 

battery they might belong to. As a result, I ended up with one of my own 

Figure 9. The First Infantry Division in the Aisne-Marne Campaign, July 1918.
51

guns and three guns from the other batteries. However, we untangled 

when we moved forward the next morning.4

It started to rain about midnight and continued until nearly daylight. 

No one had any sleep that night although everyone seemed to keep 

going in spite of the fact that we had had four or five very hard days 

marching before coming into the line. We were in position near the 

town of Coeuvres which is not far south of Soissons and north of the 

Villers-Cotteret Woods.

The attack started about 4:30 a.m. without prior artillery fire so that 

all of our firing was from map data.5 We fired a heavy rolling barrage 

for some hours. The Germans came back with a considerable amount 

of artillery fire and for the first time since I had been at the front the 

noise affected my hearing. The noise had never bothered me before in 

the slightest up to this time but suddenly about 6:30 in the morning I 

discovered that I was quite deaf and stayed deaf almost the entire rest of 

the war, although I would have spells between attacks when my hearing 

would get a little better. Each new attack from that time on, however, 

would make me deaf again. 

About 6:30 Colonel Crane took the three battery commanders forward on a reconnaissance. We rode across fields littered with dead and 

wounded and up on the high plateau west of the Paris-Soissons road. 

We went forward for some kilometers and then left our horses and proceeded on foot. We had not gone a thousand yards more when suddenly 

a German machine gun opened up on us. We noticed then that there 

were no dead and wounded lying around so came to the conclusion that 

there had been a gap in the line and we had walked into the gap until we 

came to the Germans. We dropped flat on the ground and started back, 

jumping from shell hole to shell hole. 

Finally, we saw deploying across the field seven or eight hundred 

yards to our rear a Moroccan Regiment from the 42d Moroccan Division 

on our right.6 As a result, we were caught between the lines with firing 

coming from both directions. Crane then announced that he was going 

to get up and walk back for if we tried to crawl back we would probably 

be shot by the Moroccans. Waldron and I were the only ones with him as 

Hall, who had started with us, stayed back with the horses. His foot had 

been burned badly with mustard gas and he could hardly walk. Waldron 

and I decided to follow Crane so we spread out and started back. The 

German machine gun bullets skipped all around us but luckily none of 

us were hit. We soon made our way through the Moroccan lines and 
52

they looked at us as though we were crazy – marching in direct from 

the German lines toward them. We got back to the batteries and brought 

them up into new positions in the middle of a large wheat field west of 

Missy-au-Bois.

That afternoon John Crane went forward on another reconnaissance with Lieutenant Ransome and was very badly wounded. Crane 

had always, apparently, had the idea that he was not going to be hit and 

seldom bothered to duck when under fire. Ransome said that the expression on his face when he was wounded was one entirely of surprise 

as he had no expectation of being wounded at all. After great difficulty 

he was gotten back to a hospital and was not well enough to leave the 

hospital for nearly nine months.

The positions that we had taken up were in an old German trench 

and that afternoon as we had very little firing to do, we tried to get some 

sleep. After getting the position in order we let the men take turns catching a few hours nap. We slept down in the old German trenches which 

was a big mistake as we all were covered with cooties [British slang for 

lice] when we woke up. We found that the German cooties were much 

larger and much heartier than French, American, British, Moroccan or 

Algerian cooties. They showed their nationality as each one had a distinct iron cross on its back.

That afternoon a regiment of French cavalry came up with the idea 

of breaking through the line and cutting the Germans’ lines of communication. However, there was so much barbed wire all over the fields 

that it was hard to see how they could do very much. They dismounted 

and waited in a field not far from us and pretty soon some German airplanes came over and the German artillery opened up on them, adjusted 

by the German plane. The slaughter was terrific until they pulled the 

French cavalry out again and sent it back.

The next morning we moved forward to new positions at Missy-auBois. On the way I ran into some of the 26th Infantry who were moving 

back into reserve and found Jim Manning in command. I stopped and 

talked to him for a few minutes as we went by. That afternoon he went 

back into the lines and was wounded.

When we got into our new position we were told that the advance 

of the Infantry had been held up by German machine guns and to endeavor to fire on the Germans. We were unable to get any information 

as to the location of our own front line of the location of the enemy. I 

sent Lieutenant Cheston forward to try to find out something. He came 
53

back in a little while reporting that it was impossible to see the German 

front lines without going on the crest of a hill which was in plain view 

and was being swept by enemy fire so thoroughly that it was impossible 

to go there. He had tried climbing a tree from the top of which he could 

see over the hill but found the machine gun fire on the tree so heavy that 

he felt it was suicide to climb up. 

I had had a terrible headache all morning, principally from lack of 

sleep, but decided to make a try at locating the enemy anyway. A tank 

had run over most of our telephone wire and we did not have enough to 

run a line to an observation post. I finally climbed into one of the trees 

along the Soissons-Paris road and found that I could see the enemy 

positions clearly from high up in the tree. I had Corporal Scully with 

me with a pair of semaphore flags and I called down data to him. He 

semaphored it back to Sergeant Blalock who had climbed up on top of a 

rudder of a German airplane that had fallen nose down in a field nearby. 

He relayed the messages to Sergeant Karns who was on a small hill near 

the battery.7 

We got a few shots off that landed close to the German machine 

guns and apparently they saw me and the semaphore man in the tree. 

They turned the works on the tree and it was lucky that the trunk of the 

tree was large enough so that I could get completely behind it except 

for one arm that I had to expose in order to hold on. Once when I was 

Figure 10. Three US artillerymen standing by their gun.

Source: US Army Signal Corps.
54

peering out around the tree in order observe the shots a machine gun 

bullet clipped off a leaf that was attached to a branch touching the side 

of my head and a number of shots hit the trunk of the tree within a 

few inches of my hand. Whether the firing arrived from the Infantry 

to the tree had anything to do with it or whether the Artillery fire on 

the machine guns had anything to do with it, I do not know, but, in any 

event, at about that time the Infantry dashed forward and rushed over 

the machine guns. I got out of the tree as quickly as I could and went 

back to the battery.

That afternoon in firing one of the sergeants called my attention to 

the fact that his shells were going very close to the limbs of a tree to our 

front. I looked through the barrel and thought the shots would miss the 

tree and told him to keep on firing. However, one of the shells exploded 

a few hundred yards in front of us. An infantryman walking in the road 

near the tree was wounded in the arm, I am glad to say, not seriously. 

The same day a horse galloped by the battery toward the front. One of 

his legs had been tangled in barbed wire and nearly severed. He was 

running along on three legs, and disappeared in front of us running 

down toward the German front lines.

The weather was very warm and the odors were almost unbearable. 

We had to send out men with picks and shovels to bury all of the dead 

horses and men lying within a few hundred yards of us in order to cut 

down the smell as much as possible. I have never smelled anything 

like it and hope never to again. That night I was sitting in a hole dug in 

the ground with blankets over the top to keep the light from showing, 

figuring firing data on a map. I had a candle stuck on my helmet beside 

me. I fell asleep during the process and woke up with my coat on fire 

and the hole filled with smoke. The net result was one perfectly good 

coat ruined.

About midnight of the 19th we were told to move position. Captain 

Austin commanding the First Battalion had picked out a forward position and E and F of the Second Battalion and one battery from the First 

Battalion were moved forward. We got into the position sometime after 

four am just as it was light enough to see and were given a rolling barrage to fire for an attack. The attack was to start five minutes later. We 

were unable to get the fire started on time as we had to unlimber, locate 

the battery position and figure the data. This took about ten minutes so 

that we joined in on the rolling barrage five minutes later. 
55

This position was near Chaudon and was in the middle of a field in 

a very exposed place. We were in plain view of the German balloons 

and for the three days we spent there we caught the dickens most of the 

time. Once a pile of ammunition near the battery caught on fire from 

a German shell. It was covered with a burlap camouflage net which 

burned very rapidly. I rushed out to try to put the fire out. The only man 

who rushed out to help me was Sergeant Chester Smith who tried to 

make me go back into the trench stating that he would take care of the 

fire. I appreciated very much his attitude in this even though I stayed 

until the fire was out, but my appreciation of Sergeant Smith’s attitude 

cost me many a dollar later on.

A number of men were wounded and Sergeant Gottlieb had two 

sights blown off his gun while he was looking through them but was not 

hurt. We soon dug trenches deep enough to protect us from everything 

but direct hits.

One time during an intense bombardment I felt my nerve giving 

away. Before I knew it I was in the bottom of the trench trying to dig 

deeper with my fingers and I realized that if anyone saw me it would 

be a very bad example and that it was up to me to control my fright. I 

then decided that it didn’t make much difference if I were killed or not 

and then proceeded to get out of the trench and sit exposed to the fire 

for awhile. I found this did my nerves a world of good and when two or 

three shots did not hit me I regained my composure.
56

Notes

1. Troussencourt and Beauais were located about 60 miles west of 

Soissons in the department of Picardy.

2. At this time there were seven combat-ready American divisions 

to oppose the German offensive. Five additional divisions were being 

acclimatized to front-line conditions in the quiet Alsace-Lorraine sector, five 

more divisions were serving with the British forces, and four divisions were 

being assembled in the American training areas.

3. The Germans attacked with 52 divisions. The offensive was twopronged. One army on the right (Allied left) drove southeast from the Marne 

salient and another army on the left (Allied right) attacked south from positions east of Reims. 

4. The French commander whose unit would receive the brunt of 

the German attack elected to pull the bulk of his forces from the forward 

trenches, leaving only outposts in what was known as a sacrifice line. 

While the vacant positions absorbed the German artillery bombardment, 

the French laid down a counter-barrage. As the German troops, battered by 

shellfire, neared the sacrifice line, the French and American troops fell back 

to an intermediate position. After repeating the delaying tactics, French and 

Americans again withdrew, this time to a main line of resistance. At this 

third line they held and later attempted to counterattack. This was the last 

major German offensive of the war. See American Armies and Battlefields in 

Europe, 29-37.

5. A few moments before the scheduled hour of attack, the Germans 

opened a violent bombardment on elements of the 16th Infantry Regiment. 

The infantry were tired after their difficult and fatiguing march to the 

front. Their morale was low until the American artillery barrage began. A 

commander reported that “This American barrage was the most inspiring 

incident of five days’ fighting. We who have been depressed . . . under the 

German barrage now jumped up and hurried to our places. It was a great 

relief.” See Infantry in Battle, 188-189.

6. The 42d Moroccan Division, including some of the best assault and 

shock troops in the French Army, was reserved always for occasions that 

required the utmost dash and desperate bravery. See Major General James G. 

Harbord, The American Army in France 1917-1919. (Boston: Little, Brown & 

Company, 1936), 328.

7. Evans may very well be the artillery liaison officer mentioned 

as an example of good command and communications in the classic 1939 
57

work Infantry in Battle. In the example, “the liaison officer was known to 

be observing artillery fire from a tree.” See Infantry in Battle, 180. Also see 

Letter #16, Appendix 1.

59

Chapter 9

Supporting the Scottish Black Watch Regiment1

On July 23 [1918] the First Division was relieved by the Fifteenth 

Scottish Division which included the Scottish Black Watch Regiment. 

It was found that they did not have enough artillery in with them and 

therefore, some of the batteries in our brigade were ordered to stay in 

the line with them and assist their artillery. My battery was one of those 

picked and I stayed in the line until early morning of the 26th of July.2 

The Scottish infantry all wore kilts and a great many jokes were 

made by our men as they marched by. The artillery, however, did not 

wear kilts and one of the Scottish batteries took a position right alongside my battery. They had English eighteen pound guns with six guns to 

a battery and a major in command of a battery. I thought they were very 

inexact in their figuring of firing data. The Scottish major came over to 

me after he had pulled his guns in, looked at my map, had me show him 

my location on the map and merely estimated his location from it. 

That afternoon a barrage signal appeared on our front. One red rocket from the infantry was supposed to call for a normal barrage. As soon 

as our lookout reported it we fired immediately but the Scottish battery 

did not. I went over to find out what the trouble was and the Scottish 

major said: “It is foolish to waste ammunition by firing a barrage on one 

red rocket. If the infantry really need a barrage you can count on them 

sending up half a dozen.” I never found out whether it was a false alarm 

or not but, at any event, the Scottish battery did not fire. All the major 

did was call out one of his sergeants and say “Oh I say, sergeant, have 

the men stand to, we might get an SOS.” 

The next day we fired a rolling barrage for an attack. Our orders 

called for starting the barrage at a range of about three thousand meters 

and the range was lengthened every five minutes until we reached a 

maximum of eight thousand meters. As the guns will not fire beyond 

fifty-five hundred meters without lowering the trails, as soon as we 

reached a range of four thousand meters I started dropping one gun at a 

time out of the firing to give the cannoneers an opportunity to dig a hole 

so that they could drop the trail and elevate the muzzle. By the time we 

reached fifty-five hundred meters all of the gun crews had dug holes for 

the trails of their guns and we, therefore, continued firing up to the eight 

thousand called for. 
60

When the Scottish battery got to fifty-five hundred meters they 

stopped firing and when I asked for information from the Scottish major he replied “We would have to dig in in order to fire at a longer range 

and there’s no use going to all of that trouble for, no doubt, the infantry 

will be stopped by the German long before they get that far.” It turned 

out that he was right, but nevertheless he had no right to stop firing on 

a rolling barrage without specific orders.

Our kitchen was located a couple of miles to our rear in the woods 

and they would send up, after dark every night, little two-wheeled wagons with enough food for the next day. When it was put on the wagon 

it was as hot as they could get it so that sometime during the night we 

received a hot meal and had to depend on cold food the rest of the time.

One night they did not show up and as we were running low on 

food at the battery position I sent back and found that the driver had 

been killed on his trip the night before but that someone else would 

bring up food the following night.

The man picked to drive the ration cart the following night was 

Private Kinni. Kinni was one the worst soldiers in the battery. He was 

very young, hardly eighteen, and was a little skinny fellow who did not 

have sense enough to do anything. He was very sleepy looking, always 

losing his equipment and was a resolute “crybaby.” Dozens of times 

he had come crying to the officers because someone had played a joke 

on him and, just because they knew he would cry, he was the butt of a 

great many jokes. The first sergeant had tried him at several things and 

found he could do nothing well and so finally put him on permanent KP.

Due to the ration car driver being a casualty, Private Kinni, however, was promoted from KP to that job and started off the first night 

driving the cart. He had not gone far when a shell exploded near him 

and killed the horse. He got the horse out of the harness, went back 

and got another horse, hitched in and started off again. A short distance 

farther on another shell killed the second horse, and smashed one of the 

wheels of the wagon. He then went back and got our fourgon wagon 

with two horses hitched in to it. The fourgon wagon was not driven by 

reins from the seat but one horse was ridden the same as an artillery 

team. He transferred the food to the new wagon and started off to the 

battery. This had delayed him so much, however, that day was breaking 

as he neared the battery. 

I was standing out behind the battery position thinking that another 

night had gone by without food when I saw the wagon coming over the 
61

hill toward us. The sun was just about up at this time and the German 

balloons could see every move we made. Kinni was about a quarter of 

a mile away driving across the fields to the battery at a brisk trot. I ran 

toward him waving for him to go back as I knew the German balloons 

would see him. Before he understood my signals, however, the German 

artillery opened up and a shell landed right beside the wagon and both 

horses went down. Kinni, however, jumped up and as I ran over to him 

he saluted more briskly than he ever had before in his army career. 

“Sir,” he said, “The Germans killed four horses but they couldn’t kill 

me and I brought the food up to the battery. They can’t stop me.” He 

was tremendously proud of his feat and at last felt that he was a part of 

the army. As a matter of fact, it was the only thing that he had been able 

to do except peel potatoes with any degree of success. However, this 

changed his entire outlook on everything and from that time on he was 

a pretty good soldier.
62

Notes

1. The original text had the archaic expression “Scotch” which has 

been universally replaced with the modern term Scottish.

2. The First Division had lost more than 7,200 men, mostly from 

the infantry, which was a 43 percent casualty rate among infantrymen. In 

addition, a large number of officers were lost. For example, the 26th Infantry 

Regiment came out of battle commanded by a captain who had less than two 

years military experience.
63

Chapter 10

The St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives1

On the 25th of July the Scottish ammunition arrived and we pulled 

out about midnight, marching back to the railhead, arriving there July 

28 and joined the rest of the regiment. We then went by train to Toul and 

went into camp in some fields near Chaudeney, arriving there July 30.2

Colonel Parker informed me that he was recommending my promotion to a captaincy. However, he was transferred out of the regiment the 

next day and the next ranking officer in the regiment, Captain Austin, 

took command. Due to Colonel Parker’s leaving, my captaincy was delayed to such an extent that I did not hear about it until after the Armistice although it was dated, finally, November 6.

While resting here all the officers in the battery discussed very seriously the setting up of a battery officers’ mess so that we would have 

better food on the front. Lieutenant Cheston was put in charge and he 

discovered that one of the privates in the battery had been a hotel cook. 

We bought an old French stove which would fit very nicely in the fourgon wagon and from then on during the rest of the war we ate marvelously.

On August 5 we started on a march to the front at Martincourt 

near Pont-a-Mousson.3 One night we marched all night and just before 

daybreak were instructed by Captain Austin to go into camp in a field. 

When day came it was discovered we were in an open field with no 

shelter and at that time we were very close to the front. Austin caught 

the dickens from the general but luckily it was raining that day so no 

German airplanes saw us. That night we pulled up into positions on the 

front. 4 

I had an old French position that was very well fortified and camouflaged and was instructed not to fire the guns at all except in case of 

a German attack. There was a battery of French 90-mm guns right near 

my battery position and I was instructed to take over this battery and 

operate it, using most of my cannoneers and leaving only a skeleton gun 

crew on the 75-mm guns. For the three weeks we were on this front all 

of our firing was with the 90-mm guns. They had no recoil mechanism 

and had tracks on which the guns rolled back after firing. They were 

very accurate but were slow, and about one round a minute was as fast 

as we could fire at first, although after considerable practice the gun 

crews could sometimes get off two rounds a minute. 
64

This was a very quiet front and neither we nor the Germans did very 

much firing. It was quite hot all the time we were on this front and the 

cooties bred very rapidly. It was necessary for both officers and men to 

spend at least a half an hour a day catching cooties. There were two favored methods of killing them. One was to stick a pin through them and 

the other was to drop them in the grease of a candle while the candle 

was burning. The latter method was much preferred.

Finally, on August 28 we were relieved by the artillery of the 78th 

Division and started on a march to the St. Mihiel area.5 After two days 

march, we pulled into a wood known as the Bois-de-la-Reine which 

was a few miles back of the area we had occupied in this sector in 

January, February and March, earlier in the year. The woods were low 

and the fall rains came on and made the whole place a sea of mud. Nevertheless, we were quite happy to be sitting in the woods with nothing 

much to do. I had had command of the battery since January and had 

made a number of changes in noncommissioned officers and had everything running very smoothly with the net result that I had very little 

to do except to keep an eye on things as all of the men were most loyal 

and willing.

On September 4 Captain Ralph T. Heard, who had been in the regiment the year before but who had been away at schools ever since, 

reported for duty with the regiment. Colonel [William] Dodds, who had 

recently taken command succeeding Colonel Parker, looked over his 

list of officers and realized that F Battery was the only battery at this 

time not commanded by a captain. He, therefore, proceeded to send 

Heard to take command of F Battery which nearly broke my heart. 

Major Waldron went up to see Colonel Dodds but could get nowhere 

with him on it, and he, himself, the next day, was transferred out of the 

regiment to the Fifth Field Artillery. Major Austin succeeded him [as 

battalion commander].

A few days later I was called to regiment headquarters and shown 

an order from brigade calling on the regiment to send one gun in the 

command of an officer forward, on the day of the next attack, with the 

Infantry, as an accompanying gun.6 I was told that I would have command of one of F Battery’s guns and was given coordinates showing the 

location of my initial position to be taken up fifteen minutes before the 

attack was to start. The order was finally amended to give me command 

of two guns with another officer, Lieutenant Young, as my assistant. 
65

I went on a reconnaissance and found that the location given me for 

the initial position was ahead of our front line and was near the town 

of Seichprey, the ruins of which were in no man’s land. I got the gun 

sections from E Battery and with the help of Sergeant McCabe of E 

Battery, proceeded to get all the necessary equipment together and give 

the men some preliminary training. Nearly every man in F Battery came 

up to me at one time or another in the next few days and asked me to 

use my influence, if any, to have them transferred to the accompanying 

guns so that they could go along on the expedition. However, I was not 

allowed to take any of F Battery’s men at all.

The day before the attack Lieutenant Young was taken sick and instead of giving me another officer they took one gun away from me and 

I was instructed to take only one accompanying gun. In the meantime, 

the batteries had been preparing gun positions, working at night and 

sleeping in the daytime, and on the night of the 11th of September we 

were informed that the attack would start the next morning.7

The batteries all started for their previously prepared positions after dark so as to be in position by 1 am and ready to fire at that time. I 

was instructed to go to E Battery’s position and arrived there at about 

midnight and pick up the gun to go with me from E Battery’s position. 

I hooked a ride in one of F Battery’s wagons. It was raining hard and 

pitch black so that the wagon had to crawl along at a snail’s pace. The 

Figure 11. The First Infantry Division in the St. Mihiel Offensive. 
66

infantry were streaming along the road going forward to their positions. 

The men were a cheerful lot and joked and sang as they sloshed along 

in the mud. The newcomers joked and sang because of their excitement 

and to keep their nerves up and the old-timers who had been in attacks 

before joked and sang so that no one would know how scared they really were.

Due to the traffic jam and the mud and the darkness it was long after 

midnight before I arrived at E Battery’s position and it was starting to 

get light by the time I pulled the gun down the Beaumont-Siechprey 

Road toward my first position. About fifteen minutes before the zero 

hour I pulled through the front line and took a position in the open behind Siechprey. At the zero hour I opened up at about three to five hundred yards range on the German front line and fired around fifty rounds. 

I then ordered the horses up and started forward following the Infantry. 

It was tough going as no man’s land was a sea of mud. The front had 

been fairly stable here for a number of years and the constant shelling 

had churned up the land until it was merely a series of shell holes. We 

had great difficulty getting by the old trench systems and several times 

had to wait for the engineers to fill in a portion of the trench.

In my hurry to get forward I pulled ahead with the gun, as the horses on the gun were a little better than those on the caisson. Finally I got 

across into what had been the German lines and had great difficulty in 

crossing a stream there. An accompanying gun from the Seventh FA 

Figure 12. A mule team, hauling a US ammunition wagon, is holding up the advance of 

the whole column. East of St. Mihiel, France, September 13, 1918. 

Source: US Army Transportation School.
67

tried to cross on an old narrow gauge railroad bridge and when they 

were half over the gun slipped off the bridge into the stream probably 

fifteen feet below and pulled all of the horses and men off the bridge 

into the water. I understand that the men were not hurt as most of them 

jumped clear before the entangled mass of horses and harness and gun 

hit the bottom. However, I did not try to cross on that bridge as it was 

so narrow that the wheels of the gun would just fit on the bridge without 

leaving any allowance for a few inches movement right or left. 

I finally found an old stone bridge that had been blown up and some 

of the Engineers came along and took some of the stones from the old 

bridge to make a base for a ford. I then got across and caught up with 

the infantry brigade headquarters on a piece of high ground that gave 

a good view of the town on Nonsard. The front wave of the infantry 

was closing in on the town. I was very anxious to shoot at the town 

but General [Frank] Parker who commanded the [1st] Infantry Brigade 

headquarters sent Lieutenant Anderson, our liaison officer, to me with 

the request that I keep away from his brigade headquarters as I might 

attract German fire. The infantry were going along without much opposition and he did not need any help. About that time the caisson caught 

up with me. They had gotten stuck in no man’s land, had unhitched the 

horses and hooked on behind a friendly tank and the tank had pulled 

them across no man’s land until they had gotten to a good road.

Finally General Parker told me to take a position in front of the 

woods about half a mile to the left to protect his left flank which at the 

time was practically undefended. As General Parker’s left flank was 

the left flank of all of the troops on the south side of the salient, I had 

no infantry at all between my position and the Germans occupying the 

salient. However, none of the Germans tried to attack and the only thing 

I saw was a wagon in the distance. I think it was a German wagon but it 

disappeared in the woods before I could fire.

We stayed in this position until about midnight when Captain Randolph from regimental headquarters came by and together we went to 

General Parker’s headquarters. General Parker said he had no further 

need of the gun and, therefore, I was ordered to rejoin the regiment. At 

about daybreak the regiment moved forward and I turned the gun back 

to E Battery and rejoined F Battery.

We went into position near Nonsard and stayed there a day without 

firing a shot. Our infantry had joined the troops attacking south from the 
68

other side of the salient and the entire St. Mihiel salient was cut off and 

many thousands of Germans were captured. 

A German hospital had been right in our path of advance and my 

orderly, with several other men, went through the hospital and brought 

us back a case of canned meat, a case of unfermented fruit juices, a 

number of German officer’s saddles and a little two-wheeled wagon 

that we decided to use to carry the officer’s baggage. He also found a 

bottle of brandy which helped a lot as it was very cold and wet and, of 

course, no fires were allowed. A couple of days later we moved into 

some German barracks in woods nearby supposedly for a few days rest. 

We had no sooner gotten there than we were ordered to turn in all captured German equipment and had to turn in our Officer’s saddles and 

the two-wheeled cart. 

The canned goods and the brandy, however, were gone by that time. 

Some of the Infantry units, I understand, found a number of kegs of 

beer but were made to break open the kegs and dump the beer on the 

ground and were not allowed to use it. We found out after one day in 

the barracks that the Germans had left the place full of fleas, and we 

were almost eaten up. Fleas were found to be much worse than cooties 

as cooties cannot jump and it is possible to catch them whereas the fleas 

were a very agile lot and were almost impossible to catch.

After a few days in the woods we started on a march toward the 

Argonne. On September 23 we went into camp in the Bois-d’Ahaye. 

Captain Heard was taken sick here and I again assumed command of 

the battery. The Argonne attack started on the morning of September 

26. At 11:00 pm of the 25th we started to march toward the lines and 

we were only given a short notice before pulling out. I had let a number 

of men go into town with the understanding that they would be back in 

camp by 9 o’clock. However, half a dozen of them did not arrive back 

before we left and we did not see them again until after the Armistice.8

We marched all night and pulled into a wood near Nixeville early 

the next morning. General Summerall [now the division commander] 

came by the next morning and as his car stopped made the remark to 

another general in the car with him “I see this is part of my old brigade 

so we do not have to inspect them as I know they are all right.” While 

he was our brigade commander we were scared to death of him and he 

was very hard-boiled but as soon as he was promoted to a larger command he got very hard-boiled with everyone else except his old brigade 

and nothing was too good for us after that.
69

When we unloaded our wagons at Nixeville I found that my bedding roll was missing. I sent a man back on a horse to follow along the 

road we had come over the night before. He went all the way back to 

our previous camp but found no sign of it. I had a brand new uniform 

in it, a new pair of riding boots, all my personal belongings, including a 

log book in which I had made daily entries of everything that had happened since I had been in command of F Battery.

On the 29th we pulled out toward the front and marched intermittently until the night of September 30th when we went into the lines. 

This was really a terrible march. While we did not cover much ground 

it rained the whole time. The mud and the traffic made the going very 

slow. We did not make any further camps but merely stopped in our 

path in the road when traffic was held up, unhitched the horses and fed 

them, hitched in and moved on again when we could. Finally, we were 

stopped by the traffic in the woods and did not turn a wheel for nearly 

twenty-four hours.9 

Another time one of our guns slipped off into a ditch together with a 

number of the horses. It was about midnight and pitch black and it took 

us several hours to get the gun out of the ditch, to get the horses out 

and the harness patched up sufficiently so that the gun could be pulled. 

However, traffic jams had kept the unit ahead of us from moving more 

Figure 13. American Field Artillery on the move, France 1918.

Source: The Field Artillery Journal, July/August 1925.
70

than a few yards during the interval so that we did not lose our place in 

line. 

Every time we stopped the men would flop off their horses and go 

sound asleep. When men got tired enough they could sleep no matter 

where they are and we would often find men sleeping right in mud and 

water and on rocks. In fact I took a snooze one night and when I awoke 

I realized I had been laying on a pile of crushed rocks that had been 

dumped on the side of the road for repairs, with my head on a rock a 

little larger than the rest.

All the time we were pulling up toward the front there was a steady 

stream of wounded and stragglers marching back. We discovered from 

these men that we were behind the 35th Division and evidently the 35th 

must have been pretty badly [off] as these men had no idea of what was 

happening or where their outfits were.10

On the night of the 30th we pulled up into the front and took positions near the town of Charpentry. We could not find any of the 35th 

Division Artillery around although we did see several of their abandoned guns, and in the valley near Charpentry there was a picket line 

with about eighty horses on it and with a group of men taking care of 

them. These belonged to one of the artillery units in the 35th. They did 

not know where their regiment was and were waiting for orders which 

never came, since what was left of the regiment had apparently pulled 

out forgetting this particular group.

The next day I went by this position, and all eighty horses were lying dead still tied to the picket line, and a number of the men were also 

dead. The valley had been gassed heavily during the night and apparently most of them had been gassed and those who had not been gassed 

had been killed by shell fire. They did leave, however, a considerable 

amount of almost brand new harness which came in very handy as our 

harness was pretty well worn out.

We had a little difficulty getting into the gun positions near Charpentry. It was very dark and the roads were being shelled heavily. One 

crossroad, particularly, had a shell dropped in on it every two or three 

minutes. We stayed out of range and waited until the shell exploded 

and then sent one carriage at a time by the crossroads at a gallop. The 

net result was that the whole battery got by without a casualty. Ralph 

Heard, who had gone to the hospital about September 23 returned to 

the battery just before we pulled into the position so again I was only 

second in command.
71

There was not a great deal doing for the next few days, most of 

the time being spent in organizing the position. The German artillery, 

however, was very active and all of our positions and our kitchens, particularly, were shelled heavily a large part of the time. The German guns 

doing the shelling could not be located and on the 3d of October I was 

called into regimental headquarters and instructed to go over to the 28th 

Division sector on our left, climb the hills near the Argonne Forest and 

try to locate the German batteries.11 

While these batteries could not be seen from our own observation 

posts, there was a possibility that they could be located from the high 

hills on our left. I took a few men, some telephones and some wire and 

worked my way through the 28th Division up to a machine gun company that had a position on a high hill that overlooked a lot of the German 

positions in front of the First Division.12 

Figure 14. The First Infantry Division in the Meuse-Argonne 

Offensive, Phase I. This map includes the locations of Evans’ battery. 
72

I ran the telephone wire down to one of the 28th Division units and 

was able to get a connection through the First Division headquarters to 

our own regiment. I was able to see the flashes of a number of German 

guns and plotted the positions as nearly as I could and sent them back. It 

was near midnight when I put through my final report and was ordered 

to stay in my position the rest of the night. Early the next morning, 

October 4, there was a general attack down the whole front so I immediately took my squad of men to return to the regiment. The shelling was 

very heavy and I had a [tough] time getting back.13

On the afternoon of October 3 I had gone through the town of Charpentry and passed an ammunition dump near the town. When I went 

back the next morning I found that the ammunition dump had been hit 

and apparently the whole place had exploded, for everything for yards 

around had been laid flat. A 155 GPF [Grande Puissance Filloux] gun 

with its tractor had been turned over completely by the blowing up of 

the ammunition dump.

I got back to the battery position just as the battery was moving 

forward. They had had a tough time and Sergeant Gottlieb and a half 

a dozen of his section had been killed. The detail that we had sent on 

liaison that morning, I heard, had been wiped out with the exception of 

three men.14

Private Sager had come up to me the day before and offered to go 

on liaison in place of Private Arnold. Arnold had been on liaison several 

times before while Sager had never been. I found out afterwards that 

Arnold had paid Sager 1000 francs to do this, but I did not know it at 

the time but merely thought Sager wanted the experience. I, therefore, 

sent Sager on liaison and he was killed the next morning. Arnold who 

paid 1000 francs to get out of the job was then sent by the First Sergeant 

to replace Sager who had been killed and Arnold had never been seen 

since. No doubt, he was killed and remained unidentified but he is one 

of the few men that the regiment carries as missing.

Lieutenant Rose of E Battery was also killed the morning of October 4. Before we went into the line he had had an opportunity to be 

transferred back to GHQ and secure a promotion. I always understood 

that this was through the influence of a relative who was on Pershing’s 

staff. However, Rose had been selected to head the liaison detail, and 

he was afraid that someone would think he was yellow if he left soon 

before the attack. He, therefore, declined the transfer and went forward 

with the liaison detail being killed early in the morning on the edge of 
73

Montrebeau Woods. His body was secured by some of the men in the 

regiment and put in a wagon and brought back to regimental headquarters. However, on the way back a shell hit the wagon and blew it to 

pieces and practically destroyed his body entirely. A funeral was held 

and a grave marked but there was not much found to put in it.

The regiment had sent forward two accompanying guns that morning under the command of Lieutenant Smith of A Battery. They went 

up over the crest of the hill and German artillery and machine gun fire 

wiped them out before they could fire a shot. All of the horses were 

killed and all of the men (about twenty-four) were killed or wounded 

except three.

When I joined the battery that morning I had the mess sergeant 

throw a few cases of canned goods onto the caissons. A case of tomatoes, a case of beans and a case of dried prunes were taken along with 

the firing battery. As we lost our kitchen for several days after this it 

was lucky that we had our food along, as it was all the battery had to eat 

until the kitchen was again located. We went forward and took position 

on top of the hill near Chehery.15 Major Austin went forward with the 

infantry, [who] had pointed out to him a large nest of German machine 

guns that was holding up the advance of the infantry.

Battalion headquarters ran a telephone back to the battery and after 

I had located the battery Austin gave me the approximate coordinates 

of the machine guns and I fired one gun. Austin adjusted this gun on the 

enemy machine guns and I then laid the entire battalion parallel to the 

adjusted gun. Initial range was about nine hundred yards. We fired for 

about ten minutes and then the telephone line to Austin was shot out 

of commission. I raised the range for about ten more minutes and then 

ceased firing. 

Meantime, the German artillery had located us as we were in plain 

view and put down pretty heavy fire on our position. Some Signal Corps 

men with a moving picture camera had followed us all morning and 

took pictures of everything we did. These pictures are now part of the 

Signal Corps film known as Flashes in Action and most of those of the 

artillery in this film were the pictures taken of us that day and the next.

While we were going into position, a tank came over the hill, went 

down the hill in front of the battery and attempted to cross the ditch at 

the bottom of the hill. The ditch was too deep for the tank and it turned 

over and the door was jammed up against the side of the ditch. I sent 

some men down with picks and shovels to dig away the side of the 
74

ditch so that the door of the tank could be opened and to my surprise 

Leslie Buckler crawled out of the tank. I had not seen him for a year and 

thought he was still in the Motor Transport Service. He was pretty well 

shaken up and went on back to the hospital.

Major Austin decided that we should stay in the same position although it was very much exposed. He felt, however, that the infantry 

would continue to go forward rapidly and that it was not worthwhile to 

change position. We were bombarded pretty much all night by enemy 

fire and the next morning when we fired a rolling barrage the German 

artillery opened up on us again and we had a great many casualties. 

Practically every gun in the battalion had been hit by shell splinters and 

there was hardly a wheel left that did not have one or two spokes out.

We finally were ordered to abandon the position and all of the men 

were pulled down the hill in front of the battery. We then sent up a squad 

of men to roll one gun down. As soon as they appeared on the hill the 

German artillery opened up. They were firing direct fire on us from the 

Argonne Forest and we could see the flashes of their guns over on the 

hill to our left, in front of the 28th Division. We finally got all of the 

guns down but not without losing several men.

An infantry officer came along with a report that the heavy artillery 

was firing short and wanted a telephone message sent back. Our telephone was on top of the hill and under very heavy fire. Corporal Shoebridge volunteered to try to get the telephone call through and went up 

on top of the hill to the telephone. However, he was unable to send the 

message through as the telephone line was out of order. He himself was 

hit in the leg by a piece of shell and was sent back to the hospital, dying 

the next day. If ever a man deserved a decoration Shoebridge certainly 

was the one. However, he did not receive the Distinguished Service 

Cross but only got the Silver Star Medal.16

When we had run all of the guns down to the foot of the hill we got 

the horses up and hitched them in and pulled out to the right. There was 

a stretch of about 100 yards where the horses had to pass in full view of 

the enemy and this stretch was being pounded by the German artillery. 

We sent one team out at a time and they would go past the open space 

at a gallop. All of the guns went through but several more men were 

wounded and some of the horses attached to caissons were killed and a 

number of men killed.

We took a position on the edge of Montrebeau Woods and stayed 

in this position until October 12. It was while we were in this position 
75

that Major Austin was killed. He spent most of his time up with the infantry and was a daredevil if there ever was one. He always seemed to 

be looking for trouble and if there were two ways of doing a thing, one 

more dangerous than the other, he would usually pick the more dangerous way. He borrowed one of F Battery’s men, Corporal Bergmarck, 

one day and took him with him up to the front line. This was, I think, on 

October 7. Neither one ever got back as they were both killed by high 

explosive shells. 

Captain Pollin of D Battery succeeded him in command of the battalion. A day or two before this Pollin had gone back a few hundred 

yards from the battery in order to get some quiet to work on his map, 

figuring up some firing data. One of the men on the guns thought that 

Captain Pollin was merely going back from the battery because he was 

scared to stay and pulled out his pistol and was about to shoot him in the 

back. However, one of the sergeants tackled the man and got him down 

and I don’t believe Pollin ever knew how close he was to being shot 

by one of his own men. Nothing was done to the man who attempted 

to do this. Everybody’s nerves were on edge and of those who knew it 

nothing was said until long afterwards.

Very few men, however, showed any signs of being afraid or bothered. One man was wounded and ran the length of the battalion screaming at the top of his lungs until one of the Medical Detachment men got 

him and bandaged him up. That was one of the few times I saw anybody 

actually give way. Most of the men took everything very cheerfully and 

would sit in a shell hole and shoot craps for cigarettes even if shells 

were dropping all around.

Captain Heard of F Battery had returned and took command of the 

battery about September 30. I had been in command for a long time 

when he came back to the battery and it so happened that he let me 

continue to run the battery as far as most of the details were concerned 

and merely tagged along. When we would pull into position he would 

usually get all the officers’ orderlies and have them dig him a nice little 

dugout so that by the time Mackall and Cheston and I had the battery 

firing, Heard would be very well fixed and quite comfortable. We got 

into the habit of paying no attention to him whatsoever but going ahead 

with what we knew had to be done.

On October 4 or 5 Heard decided that he had been gassed and went 

back to battalion headquarters to the doctor.17 He had not been any 

place that I had not been and if I wasn’t gassed I am quite sure he was 
76

not either. We had had a little gas around but not enough to seriously 

hurt him. He finally was kicked out of battalion headquarters by the surgeon and told to get back to duty, that he wasn’t gassed. However, after 

the Armistice up in Germany he worked on the doctor until the doctor 

decided that he had treated him for gas and Heard immediately started 

to wear a wound stripe.18

October 12 we moved forward to a position near Fleville.19 We 

found an old German 77-mm gun that had been abandoned and was in 

good condition. We got a book on German guns and proceeded to lay 

the gun along with our battery and, for three of four days we were in 

this position, fired the German gun every day until all of the German 

ammunition that we could find had been used up.

On October 14 we were informed that we would be relieved by the 

42d Division and about midnight pulled out of positions and started to 

march to the rear. After marching for about two hours the column was 

halted and turned around and we were ordered to go back to the same 

positions again, arriving back in position before daylight. This was terribly discouraging as everyone the night before had been tremendously 

cheered up by the thought of a rest. The net result of the maneuver was 

four hours marching and we were right back where we started.

Figure 15. The 6th Field Artillery Regiment on the march.

Source: US Army Signal Corps.
77

The 42d Division attack the next day did not make much headway. 

On October 22 we moved our positions to the woods near Sommerance. On the 23rd of October we were given permission to send part 

of our men back to the horse lines leaving only skeleton gun crews at 

the battery. This enabled the men to clean up, take baths and was a very 

pleasant interlude. We had been about a month since that last opportunity to take a bath and most of them had not had their clothes off in the 

interval.20
78

Notes

1. The Meuse-Argonne campaign was the largest battle fought in 

American history up to that time. Pershing’s forces consisted of 1,034,300 

troops, including 138,300 French. The battle was vital to the defeat of the 

German forces and was America’s main contribution to the war’s decision. 

Despite its title, this chapter relates Evans’ experiences in the St. Mihiel campaign and only the beginning of the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

2. The French attack succeeded and the Germans repositioned in an 

orderly fashion from the Marne salient all the way back to the Vesle River. 

3. See Figure 5, page 21.

4. See Frank J. Mackey and Marcus Wilson Jernegan. Forward-March! 

Section One – The Photographic Record of America in the World War and 

the Post War Social Upheaval (Chicago: Department of Rehabilitation, The 

Disabled American Veterans of the World War, 1939), 20-22.

5. A separate American Army of 19 divisions, under command of 

General John Pershing, was established on 10 August 1918. The army’s first 

operation was the elimination of a German salient southeast of Verdun around 

the town of St. Mihiel that had existed since 1914. 

6. The First Division attacked in the St. Mihiel offensive on 12 

September in the Beaumont sector, twenty kilometers northeast of Toul. In 

nineteen hours, the division advanced approximately nine miles. The division 

was then placed in reserve of the IV Corps. The division advanced to the 

north and linked up with the 26th Division advancing to the south from the 

opposite side of the German salient, thus surrounding the German forces 

near St. Mihiel. The accompanying gun concept was an attempt to provide 

immediate fire support to the advancing infantry by attaching one or two 

field artillery guns directly to a rifle company. The guns would typically be 

employed in direct fire mode rather than the routine indirect fire procedure 

used by artillery at the time. The concept was not very effective as the guns 

were bulky and hard to move at the pace of an infantry advance and left the 

gunners particularly vulnerable to enemy fire. In the interwar period lighter 

mortars were developed and in World War II eventually mortars at the 

infantry company and battalion levels replaced the guns. See John McGrath, 

Fire for Effect: Field Artillery and Close Air Support in the US Army (Fort 

Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2010), 27, 35, 59. 

7. Just after midnight on 12 September 1918, the first battle fought 

by an all American force began when three thousand American guns opened 

up on the German lines opposite the St. Mihiel salient. Four hours later, 
79

deafened yet exhilarated by the thunder of their guns, the infantry advanced. 

Twenty-four hours later the attack had succeeded. 

8. On 25 September the intelligence officer of the German High 

Military Command assessed the American attack thusly: “The artillery 

preparation prior to the attack was well carried out. Their objectives were 

bombarded with good effect and they were able to switch from one target to 

another in the minimum time and with remarkable accuracy. The coordination 

between the infantry and the artillery was faultless. If the infantry ran up 

against a machine gun nest they would immediately fall back, and very soon 

new artillery preparations would be directed on that point. A great many 

tanks were in readiness for the attack, but they were only used in very small 

numbers, as the masses of infantry accomplished the victory.”

9. This huge traffic jam resulted from the rapid transfer of some 

800,000 men, 200,000 French moving out of the new American sector west 

of Verdun, and 600,000 Americans moving in. 

10. The 1st Division was in reserve from 26 September to 1 October at 

the start of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The division took over for the 35th 

Division on 1 October. During this initial period the 1st Division’s artillery 

reinforced that of the 35th Division. See American Armies and Battlefields 

in Europe, 177. For the experience of the 35th Division, a unit composed 

of elements from the Kansas and Missouri National Guard, during this 

period see Robert H. Ferrell, Collapse at Meuse-Argonne: The Failure of the 

Missouri-Kansas Division (Columbia, MO; University of Missouri Press, 

2004).

11. By this time, the 1st Division was a veteran organization and 

had learned much about infantry-artillery liaison. It became common for 

artillery officers to call for and adjust artillery fire from the front infantry 

positions or in positions overlooking the battlefield. See Infantry in Battle, 

355. In late September, the French Commander Ferdinand Foch ordered a 

massive offensive. The plan called for a series of convergent and practically 

simultaneous attacks across a wide front. On 26 September the Americans 

attacked towards the Meuse River through the Argonne Forest, and the 

French attacked west of the Argonne, both in the direction of Mezieres. On 

27 September the British attacked along the St. Quentin-Cambrai front in the 

direction of Maubeuge and on 28 September the Belgian and Allied forces in 

the north attacked in the direction of Ghent. Although the Germans defended 

resolutely, the Allies had breached the Hindenburg Line by 29 September. 

This was the same day that the German commander Erich Ludendorff had 

a nervous breakdown. On 3 October a German appeal for an immediate 

armistice was sent to President Woodrow Wilson.
80

12. The 28th Division had the adjacent sector just west of the 35th 

Division and remained in the line until 7 October when it was replaced by the 

82d Division. Evans went into the neighboring division’s sector to observe 

and direct the fires of his battery from high terrain.

13. The 1st Division, in a fine display of power, drove a deep wedge 

into the enemy’s line which was of great value in affording space for the 

attack toward the Argonne which was to be launched later. The fighting here 

was characterized by the stubborn nature of the German resistance and the 

offensive spirit of the division. 

14. The 1st Division was determined to solve the problem of artilleryinfantry coordination. At the start of an attack, the concept of an artillery 

rolling barrage was sound. As the attack continued, the rolling barrage, which 

lifted and shifted forward on a time schedule, may become either too slow 

or too fast. In the first case it holds up the attack, in the latter it outruns the 

attack. Having artillery brigade, battalion and battery commanders serve as 

liaison officers, a role that is now filled by designated forward observers and 

fire support officers, provided for much more accurate and timely artillery 

fire. See Infantry in Battle, 341-342, 353-355.

15. Just west of Chehery on 8 October, Corporal Alvin York of the 82d 

Division virtually singlehandedly captured a whole German battalion, earning 

the Medal of Honor.

16. The Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest award for 

valor (after the Medal of Honor) in the US Army. The Silver Star is the next 

lower decoration. See Appendix 4.

17. This coincided with the First Division taking over the 35th 

Division’s sector in the Argonne and continuing the attack. By the end of the 

first day of the renewed attack the Germans, threatened with being cut off, 

began to retreat. 

18. On the Meuse-Argonne front, the US First Army renewed its 

offensive on 4 October after inserting experienced divisions into the line, 

but during the brief pause in operations the Germans also brought in 

reinforcements. As a result the Americans progressed no more swiftly than 

before. During this timeframe a “lost battalion” of the 77th Division, to 

the 1st Division’s left beyond the 28th Division’s sector, was surrounded 

for five days before other troops could break through to free 194 survivors 

out of the original 600. As previously mentioned, Corporal Alvin York of 

the 82d Division, on the 1st Division’s immediate left, while on a patrol 

singlehandedly killed 15 Germans and captured 132, a feat which won him 
81

the Medal of Honor. See American Armies and Battlefields in Europe, 227-

230, 362-365.

19. The 1st Division was relieved in the frontline by the 42d Division 

on 13 October. However, the 1st Division’s artillery, including Evans’ unit, 

supported the 42d until 22 October.

20. The American attack opened well, adding surprise to its numerical 

superiority of eight to one, but soon lost impetus because of supply and 

terrain problems. On October 14, after bitter fighting and severe losses, the 

US forces were still far from their objectives. 

83

Chapter 11

Command of Battery B

On the 25th (October 1918) however, we were back into position. 

On the last day of October the Second Division relieved the 42d and a 

big attack was planned. I made a deal with Heard that I would stay up 

all night, figure up all the firing data and take care of the night firing for 

him if he would get up in the morning and direct the fire of the battery 

until it was time to move forward if the attack was successful and that 

I would, therefore, sleep from about 4:30 am on. About 3:30 am after 

I had completed figuring up the firing data for the rolling barrages for 

the attack and had directed the night firing, I received a message from 

regimental headquarters to take command of B Battery immediately as 

all of their officers had been wounded. In one way this was unwelcome 

news as I had been up all night that night and had not had much sleep 

for several days. On the other hand, I was glad to get command of a 

battery of my own again.

I got over to B Battery about a half an hour before the attack was to 

start and found one second lieutenant there, Lieutenant Dries, who had 

recently reported to the regiment. He was very green and knew practically nothing about firing data. I found that all the rest of the officers 

had been wounded at the same time and that their maps had all been 

destroyed. They had been working on the maps when a shell landed in 

their midst and the maps not actually destroyed were so covered with 

blood that they could not be used. I got some new maps and started to 

figure the data for the rolling barrage. At the time the attack was to start 

I had completed figuring the first ten minutes of firing which I gave to 

the gun crews and while they were firing that ten minutes I figured the 

data for the next ten minutes and was just able to keep ahead of them 

all morning.

After firing for four or five hours we were ordered to move forward. When the horses came up to the gun position I noticed two white 

horses. The Sixth Field had never had any white horses before and I 

was very much surprised. I asked the stable sergeant about it and he 

reported that he had found them wandering loose. Far be it from me to 

inquire further, although I suspected that they were not wandering loose 

of their own accord. We needed the horses too badly to argue about it. 

That morning when we passed Colonel Dodds on the road he asked me 

where the white horses had come from and I repeated the sergeant’s 

answer that they had been found wandering loose. Colonel Dodds knew 
84

we needed horses very badly too and did not inquire any further into the 

matter. Both Colonel Dodds and I were quite deaf by this time, although 

I did not know he was deaf until much later.

A few days before I had taken him on an expedition trip up to the 

top of the Cote-de-Malda where there was an excellent view of the enemy lines and where our observation post was located. I explained in 

detail the enemy line, did a lot of talking and it was not until some years 

afterwards that I learned the he had heard not more than half I had said. 

At the same time he had spoken a number of times during the day but I 

have yet to hear one word that he said. I tried to keep talking so that he 

would not have a chance to speak as I did not want him to know that I 

was deaf for fear of being sent back and evidently he was embarrassed 

about his own deafness so the two of us spent several hours talking to 

each other without hearing very much and without letting on that we 

did not hear.

Figure 16. The First Infantry Division in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Phase II.
85

Since the first time I became deaf on July 18, 1918 I had been more 

or less deaf all of the time. Between attacks my ears would get a little 

better but as soon as there was any volume of firing I would immediately go deaf again. My guess is that 50 percent of the men in the battery 

were deaf by this time. For the next three or four days we were continuously on the move, trying to keep up with the Second Division who had 

gone forward very rapidly in the attack.

On the night of November 1 we were at Landreville where we 

stayed until November 3.1 We had had so many casualties in horses 

and men and the rest of the horses were in such poor condition that at 

Landreville on November 3 we abandoned one of our guns. Practically 

every battery in the Regiment had to do this and these were left under a 

guard when the regiment went forward again. On November 3 the First 

Infantry Division took over the line again. We received rumors during 

the day that an Armistice had been signed and there was much cheering 

all up and down the front. Except for a minimum guard everyone then 

turned in for a good sleep. I had not been asleep an hour when the telephone rang and I was informed that the Armistice rumor was a fake and 

that it was necessary for us to change position that night as the Infantry 

was to attack the next morning. We pulled out of the position about midnight and were on the go continuously thereafter until Armistice Day.

The next day we took up a position at Nouart but did not do any 

firing and the officers of the First Battalion played poker the entire day.2

On the 5th we moved forward and took positions at Yoncq. While moving forward we were shelled along the road and had quite a few casualties of horses and one man killed and a number wounded. Corporal 

Roberts came to me about a half an hour after the shelling and showed 

me a big hole in his side and said he had not noticed it until that minute. 

In the excitement of the shelling and others being wounded apparently 

his nerves had been sufficiently deadened so that he did not realize that 

he was hit. Just then an ambulance came by and we put him in. 

After we got into position and were ready to fire we held a battery 

funeral for Private May who had been killed along the road earlier in 

the day. On the 6th we received word that the division was to march 

through enemy territory and attempt to capture Sedan the following 

morning. After dark we started on a march that lasted all night. Through 

a mix up in orders at battalion headquarters the horses of B Battery 

were not instructed to come up to the battery positions with the rest of 

the battalion. I did not discover this until the rest of the battalion was 

ready to leave. I sent back a messenger and got the horses up as soon 
86

as possible but this delay put me at the tail of the regiment when I was 

supposed to be up near the head. It took me all night to get the battery 

into its proper place. 

The next morning when it became light we realized that we were 

marching through the territory that had been held by the Germans the 

evening before and, therefore, were very cautious. The Germans were 

pulling out as fast as they could but even so there were a few stray 

German soldiers in every town captured. About 8 am we pulled into the 

town of Bulson which was near enough to Sedan so that we could have 

fired on the town. However the French had come up on our left during 

the night and claimed the honor of capturing the town so we were ordered to sit tight and do nothing. This was welcome news. I had been 

about three days and two nights without sleeping. 

We first had to feed the horses and the men, clean the guns, groom, 

etc. but by noon we could all turn in and I slept for about fourteen hours. 

On the 8th we pulled back near Yoncq. I met Stewart Smith on the road 

that day. He had been sent with a message by his company commander 

in the Marine Corps and having delivered it was on the way to his regiment.3

 

The French people in this territory had been behind the German 

lines for four years and they certainly welcomed us with open arms. 

They flocked around us in the little towns, brought out bread and in 

Figure 17. Evans’ Battery Refreshing Their Horses. Evans is third from left.
87

some cases jam and offered slices of bread with jam on it to the soldiers 

as they went by.

On November 9 we received word to march south to a division 

concentration area where the Division was to be assembled preparatory 

to an attack toward Metz. We marched from Yoncq through Beaumont 

and parallel to the front to the Dieulet Forest where we made camp on 

the night of the 9th.4 We stayed there awaiting orders until the 12th. 

We heard on the 11th that an Armistice had been signed but it took us 

all day before we really believed it. Finally, when we did believe it we 

built fires to warm the men. We had been going for weeks in the cold 

fall weather without lighting fires. It was very welcome to be warmed 

up again and also to dry out our clothes and blankets which had been 

wet and damp for many weeks.5
Notes

1. Landreville was located off the southern edge of the map in Figure 

15 in the 1st Division sector.

2. Noart was located off the southern edge of the map in Figure 15 in 

the 1st Division sector.

3. Under pressure of continuing Allied attacks and of public agitation 

at home, the Germans early on 8 November sent delegates to a railroad siding 

in the Compiègne Forest west of Soisson to discuss armistice terms with 

the Allies. The next day, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, fleeing in exile to the 

Netherlands, and the Germans proclaimed a republic. The fighting ended at 

the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 11 November 

1918. 

4. Beaumont was 17 miles south of Sedan in the Argonne Forest.

5. The 6th Field Artillery Regiment received campaign participation 

credit for: Montdidier-Noyon; Aisne-Marne; St. Mihiel; Meuse-Argonne; 

Lorraine 1917; Lorraine 1918; and Picardy 1918. See US Army Center of 

Military History, “Lineage and Honors, 6th Field Artillery Regiment,” last 

modified 8 April 2011, http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/lineages/

branches/fa/0006fa.htm (accessed on 3 February 2015).
89

Chapter 12

Armistice

On the morning of November 12 Captain Rumbaugh arrived at the 

battery to take command. I had been promoted meanwhile to a captaincy but had not heard about it so when Captain Rumbaugh reported to 

the regiment for duty Colonel Dodds put him in command of the battery 

as B Battery was the only one without a captain. I then reported back 

to F Battery.

On the 12th we marched back to near Bantheville where we went 

into camp. The regiment stayed there over the night of the 12th to the 

14th. There was a lot of German ammunition all around and the men 

collected this and broke open the shells to get out the powder. We also 

found a large supply of German star shells and flares, and on the night 

of the 12th there was the greatest display of fireworks I have ever seen. 

Bonfires were made of the powders which sent flames fifty feet in the 

air and all of the German star shells were shot off and for miles up and 

down the front you could see the lights and different colored shells 

which looked like skyrockets.

On the afternoon of the 12th Captain Randolph of regimental headquarters made an inspection to see which ones needed new uniforms. 

My uniform was perhaps the worst in the regiment. I had been wearing 

it for over a year and it was so far gone that it was necessary to wear a 

coat over it all the time. I had bought a new uniform during the summer 

and had ordered it by mail from Lloyds in Paris but it had been stolen 

along with my bedding roll while I was in the Argonne so I was reduced 

to only my original uniform that I had started out with. About a half a 

dozen of the officers who were wearing the worst uniforms were given 

a two day pass to Paris. 

The nearest train to Paris was at Bar-le-Duc which was about fifty 

miles away. I hitchhiked all the way in between 7 and 11 pm riding in 

a couple of trucks and a station wagon. I arrived just in time to get the 

train. That afternoon I had been told by Randolph that a Belgian Order 

of Leopold had been awarded to the regiment, and that the colonel had 

selected me to receive it, principally because I was the only officer in 

the regiment with them on Armistice Day who had been with them since 

the previous October without a break. There were a number of officers 

in the regiment who had been in the regiment for the same length of 
90

time but they had had spells of some weeks away from the regiment in 

every case, either going to schools or to a hospital. 

I was also told by Randolph that my captaincy was coming through 

in a few days and the colonel had given me the authority to put on the 

captain’s insignia. The captaincy actually came through on the 19th of 

November but was dated back to the 6th of November. 

The Belgian decoration, however, had never been heard of from 

that day to this. Colonel [George] Marshall, who was one of Pershing’s 

aides, told me some years later that all records on the Belgian medals 

for the First Division had been lost or taken out of the files, and the only 

reference he could find was a copy of a telegram in army headquarters 

from the First Division giving my father’s name and address and stating 

that this was needed in connection with the Belgian decoration. The 

inference is that some officer in army headquarters extracted all records 

from the file and destroyed them and kept the medal for himself. None 

of the regiments in the First Division ever received these medals.1

The train to Paris was terribly crowded and I had to sit on the floor 

of the aisle all night. We got to Paris early the next morning and I proceeded to buy a ready-made uniform, a new pair of boots and a trench 

coat and then set out to get tickets to see the Grand Opera. 

I called on the Ingles, who had moved in from the country and were 

living in an apartment. The previous spring one of the Big Bertha shells 

had landed in the street outside their apartment and they showed me the 

shell fragments on the walls that had come through the windows. None 

of them had been hurt.

The next day I started back for Bar-le-Duc and arrived there in the 

afternoon. I had no idea how to get back to the regiment until I ran into 

Captain Marshall of the infantry who had a government car in Bar-LeDuc. He agreed to take me with him and let me off anywhere I wanted. 

He said the whole division had moved and that he did not know where 

the First Division was. About 11 pm. I noticed some heavy artillery on 

the road and found out it was the Fifth Field. I, therefore, got out of 

Marshall’s car and talked to one of the Fifth Field officers and he told 

me that he thought the Sixth Field was in a town a mile away. I walked 

to the town and found that the Sixth had just pulled in. 

The next day the regiment continued to march to near Nixeville 

where we stayed for about two days and left on November 17 to 

march into Germany. I was made battalion adjutant and remained 

in this position for the rest of my time in the regiment. On the 17th 
91

of November we marched through Verdun and camped that night at 

Fromezey. On the 18th we marched into Luxembourg and stopped 

at the Town of Esch-Sur-Alzette. On the 23d we continued to march 

and stopped at Medingen. On the 24th we moved to Beyren where we 

stayed until December 1.
92

Notes

1. Marshall had served as the G3 of the 1st Division before moving up 

to the AEF staff. In World War II he was the Army Chief of Staff and after 

that war Secretary of State.
93

Chapter 13

Occupation of Germany

On December 1 we marched into Germany proper, stopping for 

the night at Zewen. On the 2nd we stopped at Ehrang; on the 3rd at 

Schleun; on the 4th at Monzel and the 5th at Uhzig. This town was on 

the Moselle River and was the center of the Moselle wine district. The 

high slopes up from the river into the nearby hills were all terraced and 

covered with grape vines. It was beautiful country and an interesting 

sight after the portions of France that we had been in for many months. 

All the villages in France that we had seen for a long time were practically destroyed. All the trees were killed and broken down whereas in 

this country there were no physical scars from the war.1

Major Pollin and I were billeted in the largest house in town owned 

by the richest wine grower in the valley. He was an old man who had 

been to school in England and talked English very well. He invited us 

to supper. It was strictly against the rules to fraternize in any way with 

the enemy but Major Pollin and I decided to take a chance on having 

dinner with them. There were four of us at the table that night. The old 

gentleman, his son-in-law who had dropped out of the German Army 

a day before as they marched through, Major Pollin and myself. The 

Figure 18. Allied Occupation Zones in Germany, 1918-1919. 
94

old man’s daughter waited on the table as the Germans were so shy of 

people due to the war that there were no servants available. 

We received a very interesting lecture on Moselle wines. The old 

man told us all about the wines and he brought out bottles of wine to 

illustrate the differences between different types and different years. He 

started with a bottle of about 1850 wine. He had a bottle for perhaps 

every ten year period up until 1917. And 1917 had been the best year 

for wine that the district had ever had. When we had sampled every 

bottle the illustrated lecture ended and we were just able to crawl up to 

bed. We had a beautiful suite of rooms as the house was pretty close to 

being a castle. 

The next day we moved on and stayed overnight until we got up 

into Germany at the following places: 

December 6th – Scheidweiler

December 7th - Bullay

December 8th - Blakenrath

December 9th – Middle-Strimmer

December 10th - Alken

December 11th - Dieblich

December 12th - Coblenz

December 13th - Hohr

December 14th – Ransbach

At one of the towns, I think Bullay, I had a billet in a real medieval 

castle perched on top of a mountain, and from my window I could see 

for many miles up and down the river. Outside of my window there was 

a sheer drop of about three hundred feet straight down. On the other 

side of the castle where there was not a straight drop down the cliff, 

there was a moat and we had to go in over a drawbridge. It was owned 

by some baron who was not at home as he was with the Army but the 

caretaker let us in and gave us breakfast the next morning. The caretaker was a wounded German soldier who had a number of decorations. At 

Coblenz we stayed in a German Infantry Barracks and on the 13th left 

Coblenz and crossed the Rhine on the pontoon bridge. We were the first 

American Artillery to cross the Rhine. 

We marched to Ransbach and arrived there on the 14th. The little 

town of Ransbach was a typical German village. The main industry of 
95

the town consisted of a couple of pottery works, one of which we took 

over to use as stables for the horses. Battalion headquarters was established at a house on the edge of town and the German woman residing 

in the house was engaged to cook for the battalion officers’ mess. We 

supplied Army food which was supplemented with some vegetables, 

principally potatoes, turnips, and sauerkraut. All in all we had a very 

excellent mess. Mess consisted of Major Pollin commanding the battalion, Captain Francis, the medical officer, later superseded by Captain 

Manton, Lieutenant Mackall in command of the battalion Headquarters 

Detachment and Lieutenant Ennis, the dentist. 

On the march up into Germany, at one of the small towns, one of 

the enlisted men accidentally shot himself in the leg while cleaning a 

pistol. No medical officers were present at the time. The bullet had gone 

in near the hip and Doctor Ennis felt that something should be done 

immediately. He probed for the bullet and extracted it and the man got 

well which is pretty good work for a dentist. Major Pollin was so afraid 

of the colonel that a number of times when he answered the telephone 

and heard the colonel’s voice on the other end of the wire he would 

invariably come to attention.

We had very little duty to perform. The batteries would groom and 

exercise the horses and have a minimum amount of military training 

and the headquarters officers merely inspected the various batteries and 

played poker. I had a sergeant major (Sergeant Parker) who was so good 

at handling all of the details that I had practically no duties other than 

“Mounting the Guard” every afternoon.

Every evening the battalion officers would get together and play 

bridge, poker or Red Dog.2 German money had started to depreciate 

and the pieces of paper which represented the money seemed more like 

cigarette coupons than actual money. As a result, we were very careless 

of the way we bid and many marks would change hands in the course 

of an evening. Lieutenant Ennis made a bet one night consisting of a 

pile of German marks and I told him he was playing for high stakes. He 

insisted that it wasn’t of any value and when we counted up the marks 

it actually amounted to one month’s pay for him. 

The only other entertainment was from a troupe of YMCA workers 

who came to the town and gave a performance. 

We had one or two maneuvers during the three or four months I was 

there and that was all. 
96

I was billeted in a German house, the family of which consisted 

of a man and his wife and ten year old son. The man had been in the 

German Army and was still in uniform. They were very nice people 

and on Christmas invited me down to see their tree and drink a toast of 

Schnapps. None of the beds had any covers on them but merely the big 

feather pillows, one below and one above. As there was only one cover 

over you, unless the weather was extremely cold there was no halfway 

point between all the covers and one, so that you were either burning 

up or freezing.

Stewart Smith showed up one day. He was [an enlisted man] with 

the Sixth Marines and was stationed in a town about twenty miles away 

on the Rhine. He spent the day in our regiment and took the train back 

that same afternoon. I wanted to have him to the officers’ mess but 

Major Pollin was such a stickler for form that I did not even attempt it, 

but let him eat with the Headquarters Battery. Major Pollin had been an 

enlisted man and when he was made an officer he apparently got a lot of 

ideas and would not think of having enlisted men at our mess.

One Sunday Randolph and I rode over to visit Waldron [the former 

D Battery commander] who commanded one of the battalions in the 

Fifth. It was an all day trip on horseback. Late in January I went on 

leave.

I went into Paris and then on to the Riviera, stopping at Cannes. I 

went to the Grand Hotel which was certainly a beautiful place. It looked 

out over the Mediterranean and in the garden there were many orange 

trees laden with fruit. I stayed in Cannes a few days and together with 

some other officers went on a tour of the nearby islands. We went to St. 

Marguerite Island where there was a castle in which “the man in the 

iron mask” was supposed to have been imprisoned. 

We also went to St. Henerat where there was a monastery and the 

monks showed us the place where the Moors had come over in about 

1300 and killed all the monks. The principal occupation of the monks 

seemed to be the growing of tangerines out of which they manufactured 

one of the most delightful drinks I have ever tasted, called Grande Marnier. 

Francis Randolph and I also hired a sailing boat and had a picnic 

on one of the islands, taking along for company and amusement an English girl whom we met and a French one. The mothers of the girls were 

much disturbed at their going without a chaperone but finally decided 

that we looked sufficiently honest that they let their daughters go. Also, 
97

there was a very staid, old Frenchman who sailed the boat for us and 

he was probably bribed by the mamas to keep a weather-eye out for the 

daughters.

Every evening there was dancing at the Yacht Club. The men were 

principally officers on leave from the various armies and the girls were 

YMCA and Red Cross workers – English, Canadian and American. After a few days at Cannes I went to Nice for one day and to Mentone, 

where I visited the Ingles. They had come down from Paris for a visit.

I arrived back in Germany shortly after the first of February and on 

the 13th of February received two orders in writing. One order transferred me to the Third Corps Headquarters, Artillery Park, in Coblenz 

and the other transferred me to the Artillery Brigade that I found out 

was at Brest ready to sail for home. Regimental headquarters told me 

that the orders to the brigade at Brest came in later than the other so that 

is the one I finally obeyed. 

I spent a few days in Paris on the way and arrived in Brest on the 

17th of February where I was assigned to command Battery F of the 

347th FA, a National Army regiment consisting principally of San Francisco troops. There were about sixteen officers from the 6th FA at Brest 

at this time. All of the officers who did not wish to stay in the Regular 

Army were transferred out of the First Division about this time.

We lived at Camp Pontenazon which was the worst mud hole I have 

ever stepped into. Every day the battery I commanded was given work 

to do around the camp, building roads, etc. so that I was fairly busy 

during the day. In the evenings we either collected at the officer’s Red 

Cross hut or went into Brest. The Sixth Field officers found a restaurant 

known as the Café de la Marine, where we sometimes gathered in the 

evening for dinner.
98

Notes

1. Each of the Allied national contingents was given a specific sector 

along the Rhine River with bridgeheads on the east bank. The American 

sector was centered on the city of Coblenz. A new army headquarters, the 

Third Army, was organized to command the occupation. The purpose of 

the occupation was to encourage the Germans to sign a peace treaty. While 

technically the armistice was a temporary cessation of hostilities, the chaotic 

condition of Germany at the time ensured it was permanent.

2. See Letter #14, Appendix 1.
99

Chapter 14

Sailing Home

I did not finally sail until the 26th of March on the Leviathan.

1

 I 

was given charge of one of the rooms in the bottom of the ship where 

there were 487 men. The room was filled with bunks in tiers of four, one 

above the other and such a solid mass of bunks that there was barely 

room for the men to stand up in the aisles all at once. There were three 

officers in charge and we divided the time up – eight hours each.

The men ate twice a day and had to be marched exactly at the right 

moment by a given route through the ship to the men’s dining room 

where they were served with food. They could not go over the twenty 

minutes as exactly on the dot another group of men would be marching 

in. There were 12,000 soldiers on the boat and 2,000 crew so the kitchens were running practically continuously in order to feed all of this 

number twice a day. Only about 500 could eat at once so that feeding 

at twenty minute periods it took eight hours to feed all of the soldiers 

one meal. 

The officers, however, had a very nice dining room. Once a day 

our men were taken up on deck for about an hour. If it happened to be 

raining for our hour we had to wait until the next day as every hour of 

the day every foot of deck space was taken up. I spent eight hours out 

of the twenty-four with the men and the other sixteen hours I could use 

as I saw fit. I had a very nice stateroom and there also was a card room 

and recreation room for the use of officers.

I landed in New York on April 2, 1919 and went to Camp Merritt, 

New Jersey.2 Father and Ella came up to New York and I was able to get 

into New York the first night and met them for dinner. 

After a few days at Camp Merritt I was transferred to Camp Meade, 

Maryland, where I spent about a week coming up to Baltimore a number of times during the week. I finally received my discharge on the 8th 

of April, 1919.
100

Notes

1. See Letter # 15, Appendix 1. Launched in 1913, the German-built 

Vaterland was the largest ocean liner afloat in 1914. She was just about to 

leave Hoboken, New Jersey, in August 1914, for her eighth Atlantic crossing 

when Great Britain declared war on Germany and the ship remained unofficially interned in Hoboken to prevent its capture by the British Royal Navy. 

When the US declared war on Germany in April 1917, the ship was officially 

seized by the US government, handed over to the Navy for use as a troopship 

and renamed the SS Leviathan in an almost comical military operation. From 

November 1917 to the end of the war the ship carried over 100,000 American 

soldiers while making 19 round trips until the end of the war. On one crossing 

she had 14,416 troops on board - more human beings than had ever before 

sailed on a single ship. 

2. Camp Merritt was situated ten miles northwest of New York City, on 

a ridge midway between the towns of Cresskill and Dumont, Bergen County, 

New Jersey. It occupied an area of 770 acres, 580 acres of which were 

occupied by the camp proper. 
Appendices

103

Appendix 1

Letters Home

Letter #1

June 26, 1917

Dear Father:

I received your letter of June 2 with the clippings and the letter 

from Mr. Gutman. It is funny that you had only received one of my 

letters, for I wrote again from Paris at the same time that I sent a number of picture postcards. I can’t send any picture postcards from here 

as it is against the law to send any pictures of any kind from the war 

zone.

We have been fairly busy lately. About every other night we have 

to stay out all night. In fact most of our real work is at night. If we 

drive too near the lines in daytime, the German observation balloons 

can [direct enemy fire towards us from their] lines from the location 

of the balloons. Both the French and Germans have lines of observation balloons about 2 to 4 miles back from the trenches. We seldom 

go closer to the trenches than the artillery but it gets quite hot there at 

times. Twice the other night we had to stop and wait because the Germans were dropping shells at the bridges and towns ahead of us. As 

soon as they slowed up we went on. We are getting so used to hearing 

the big guns and hearing Boche [German] shells whistle overhead that 

we scarcely notice them much anymore. It doesn’t seem very dangerous although no one knows when he will happen to be where the shell 

lands.

Driving a car at night with no lights is pretty hard, although no 

serious accidents have occurred. Several of the cars have been in slight 

collisions (I have been in two, but no harm done) and some have run 

off the road into ditches, but we can always tow them out again. On 

a rainy night it is terrible, we can hardly see anything two feet ahead, 

and with autos, troops, horses and artillery continually passing it 

makes driving rather difficult.

Please remember me to Mrs. Whiting, Mr. Robinson and any of 

my friends you see.

Love to Frank, Tip and Ella,

Henry
104

Letter #2

July 19, 1917

Dear Father:

We have been fairly busy lately, although everyone grumbles 

about the lack of excitement. We get a German shell once in a while; 

one landed about 50 feet from me the other night, but that is nothing 

compared to the dangers of the real fighting. We all feel that this is a 

slackers’ work. The US papers seem to regard the Ambulance and the 

Transport divisions as slackers’ jobs. They are, but none of us came 

into this with the idea of getting out of danger and hard work; we 

came to get into it all the quicker. Most of the fellows realize that this 

is too easy a job for able bodied men and are going to something better. After seeing all the aeroplanes over here, we all have gone crazy 

about aviation. I would like to come back and go into the U.S. aviation, if I thought I could get into it. Aviation will win the war yet.

We had a great time on the 4th of July. There was a parade in the 

morning and three Frenchmen were presented with “Croix de Guerre” 

[French award for valor] medals. Then we had all kinds of games, 

both French and American, that lasted most all day. Two Algerian 

bands were here and they gave a concert of their African and Arab music. Then they did the crazy Arab and Moroccan dances with swords 

and rifles. It was hard to realize that the scene was in France, to see all 

the dark Africans, some in turbans and others in red Fezzes. The day 

ended with fencing matches between the French officers, and then a 

banquet, at which most of the fellows, being American youths of high 

standing, proceeded to uphold the honor of America by getting drunk.

I have had almost every kind of injection that they give now. I 

had typhoid and paratyphoid before I left and the other day they gave 

me anti-tetanus serum to prevent lockjaw. I was in a collision several 

nights ago in the dark and got a small cut on my knee, so they shot me 

full of anti-tetanus serum. They do that over here if you get cut at all 

because there is great danger of blood poison, etc.

I have just received your letters of the 29th of June and the 26th of 

June. I also got one from Aunt Helen and Mr. Whiting.

Lots of love for Frank and Tip.

Henry
105

Letter #3

September 7, 1917

Dear Frank:

I have received a couple of postals and a letter from you. I was 

tickled to death to hear that you had gone out west again this summer, 

especially with Mr. Emery. He is a fine man to work for. I think you 

will like him very much. I do. Remember me to him, and ask him if he 

has heard what Massy, Bennie and Mr. Hares are doing now. I suppose 

you are back in the old routine of cooking again. It isn’t always pleasant while you are doing it, but great to look back on. Write a note to 

me some day when you get a chance and tell me about your work this 

summer. Or else tell Father to send me your letters to him.

I have enjoyed driving a truck so far, but I want to get into some 

more active service. I am a corporal now, so I don’t run a machine any 

more. I just act as guide for two or three trucks. I put in an application 

for a commission in the US Artillery. If everything goes well I shall be 

a lieutenant in that before long. If I don’t get into the artillery I have 

been thinking of joining the aviation.

I have just come back to camp from a 10 days leave. I spent most 

of the time in the Alps, at a little town at the foot of Mt. Blanc. We 

climbed mountains and glaciers all day long. It was great. I was going 

to try to ascend Mt. Blanc, but the weather was too bad in the day I 

had planned to go up, and it didn’t clear off while my leave lasted. I 

hope to go back and climb it someday. The mountains were wonderful. 

I was wondering if you are in the plains or the mountains this summer.

We have not been in much danger so far. One night we were 

splashed with shell fragments for a couple of hours but no shells exploded nearer than 15 yards and none of our trucks were hurt. A hunk 

as big as your fist glanced off the back of my machine, and another 

car nearly got a hole in the ______. Otherwise we have been in very 

little danger, except from collisions. We have had a couple of head 

on bumps. I had one truck burn up with me, and I was in a collision 

with a wagon on a dark night and cut my knee a little. Wasn’t very bad 

though. We can never use lights in the machines and must drive mostly at night in order not to be seen by the German observation balloons. 

Collisions are numerous in dark nights. I shall write soon again and 

tell you whether I get into the artillery. Much Love.

Henry
106

Letter #4

August 18, 1917

Dear Ella:

I received your letter of July 25th and also the books and some 

news-papers from father. Thanks immensely for everything. You can’t 

imagine how I enjoyed them.

By the way, get the Saturday Evening Post for July 28th if you 

can. It has an article in it about us. The article isn’t much good but 

I would like to have you save the pictures. In the Aug. 4th Saturday 

Evening Post there are some more pictures of our camp.

The German aeroplanes have been raising the dickens the last few 

days. Three of their machines have been over camp today. About 200 

shells were fired at each but without effect. Yesterday I saw a French 

machine chasing a German. The German was getting out of the way 

as quickly as he could. The battles in mid-air are perhaps the most 

exciting scenes we have witnessed.

I go to Paris in a few days for a week’s leave. I expect to do a lot 

of sightseeing and also get a good rest.

If you see Aunt Helen, tell her I received her letter. I expect to 

answer it soon. Also ask father if Mr. Whiting has received any letters 

from me. I wrote him, but I never know whether the mail is going to 

arrive safely or not. 

I would give anything to be able to come home and see you now, 

but I feel that every American should put aside all personal feelings 

and pleasures until Germany is defeated. I firmly believe that a victory 

for the Allies means the securing of world peace for all the future. 

What cause could be more worthy?

There is the possibility that our army will start a school for officers over here. If they do I am going to try to get in it and study for the 

artillery. I would rather be in the artillery than anything else. 

Give Tip my love and a great big kiss.

Devotedly,

Henry
107

Letter #5

September 18, 1917

Dear Mother:

I received the box and yours and father’s letters. They were all 

thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, I had quite a birth day party out of them. 

The chewing gum and candy and caramels were wonderful. It seems 

funny to be 22 years old. I don’t feel any older than I have ever been.

We have been working hard lately. The French are getting ready 

for the winter, and we have been carrying lumber and logs for their 

dugouts. We have seen no excitement at all. Of course we see the 

preparations behind the lines, the supply trains, artillery, and troops 

being moved. But as for seeing anything of the real war, we don’t 

know what it is. Once in a while we get in on the very edge of things, 

but only very seldom. There seems to be no more danger in this work 

than in living at home.

This service is to be taken over by the US Army in about a week. 

I am not going to sign up, but am going to try to get in to Paris to take 

the exam for the artillery. If that fails I shall try aviation. If that fails I 

shall stay in this. It will be better when the US takes over, I think.

Thank you again for the box of birthday things. It helps a lot to get 

things from home and to read your letters. I do so want to come home 

and see you. I get homesick at times. But my conscience would not be 

clear if I seriously considered leaving France before the war is over. 

The war is, in my opinion, the most important thing for the whole 

world, and until our side has won, I shall not think of stopping.

We worked twelve hours today and start again at 4 tomorrow 

morning, so I had better stop and turn in.

Affectionately,

Henry
108

Letter #6

October 16, 1917

Dear Father and Ella:

I cabled yesterday that I had gotten a Second Lieutenant’s Commission in the Artillery. I am tickled to death, because I really didn’t 

expect to get it. The hundred I asked for is to buy a US uniform and 

the regulation equipment. I already have a hundred dollars but pay in 

the Army is so irregular that I think it safer to ask for more. My salary 

will be $160 a month so as soon as I get into actual work I shall have 

plenty.

I am sending this to America by a fellow who is returning so don’t 

be surprised at the New York postmark.

Bob France did not go into the Foreign Legion and as I said in my 

last letter, but is still in the auto transport work. He will probably get a 

commission in that branch of the US Army.

Love,

Henry
109

Letter #7

November 26, 1917

Dear Father:

I haven’t had a chance to write for about a month, for the simple 

reason that I have been at the front. Instead of being sent to an Officers’ Training School as I expected, I was assigned to Battery F of 

the 6th Field Artillery, which is supposed to be the crack regiment of 

the regulars. Almost as soon as I was assigned to that Battery it was 

ordered to the front. I am not allowed to tell you about the things that 

happened there, but I can say that I gained about 10 lbs. and learned a 

lot about artillery.

There is a great bunch of officers in this regiment and I have made 

some very good friends among them. Several of them are members of 

Alpha Delta Phi. By the way, let me know what is happening at the 

Fraternity and at Hopkins this year. 

If you have any small pictures of Ella and Tip and also of Frank 

and yourself send them to me. I don’t want to forget what you all look 

like.

I have acquired only one bad habit since I have been in the Artillery. I have started smoking a pipe. As it is almost impossible to get 

American tobacco over here I would appreciate it if you would send 

over a little once in a while.

As this letter will probably reach you about Christmas time I will 

say Merry Christmas to you all now. Don’t forget to draw the money 

from my account and get Christmas presents for everybody from me.

The picture I am enclosing was taken before I left the Transport 

Service.

Address me as: Second Lieutenant H.C. Evans, Battery F, 6th FA, 

American Expeditionary Forces, France.

Lots of love and a Merry Christmas to all.

Henry

P.S. I shall write again when I have more time and tell you more about 

my duties as Lieutenant.
110

Letter #8

Written during this period

Dear Warfield:

This is just a little note from “Tallie” to thank you for the wash 

cloth. It is a dandy and I really do not see how you made it. It is 

better than one bought down town at Hutzten’s. I can never thank you 

enough.

I wish I could show you the horse I have to ride. He is black all 

over and is just as pretty as a picture. And go – he just goes like the 

wind. I call him “Tip” after you. I wish I could send him home after 

the war to ride. On cold mornings when he is feeling full of pep he 

just dances and ________ cuts up in fine style. Like you when you 

were being “rushed.”

How is school this year? Guess you can read and write quite well 

now. I am anxious to know whether you are going to “Calvert” [private elementary school in Baltimore] this year and how you like the 

studies and the roof garden. Write to me some day and tell me about it.

Best of love to you, Tip, and to Mother, Father and Frankie. Remember me to Leon.

Skinny
111

Letter #9

December 24, 1917

Dear Father:

I received the boxes of Hershey’s chocolate today. I love chocolate 

and shall enjoy it very much. I am going to drop about a dozen cakes 

of it in a sock and make believe Santa Claus left it. Otherwise I expect 

Christmas will be about like any other day. The war keeps on no matter what the day or the occasion. At home tonight I guess you are trimming up a tree for Tip and spreading out the presents. Does Tip still 

believe in Santa Claus? I hope he does; it makes the day much livelier 

to have someone in the house who believes that myth to be true.

Last Friday I had a 48 hour leave, and I went to Paris. I only had 

Saturday and Sunday morning there, but I had time to do a little shopping, etc. Bought riding boots, overcoat, hat and the like. Everything 

is frightfully high in price, but you have to have clothes. I am not able 

to save as much as I had hoped. An officer must pay all his expenses; 

food, lodging and clothing and by that time there is not much left. I 

have a very nice room now, which I rent from some French people 

in the town where we are stationed. That is what all the officers do. 

Of course, when we are actually at the front we sleep in dug outs. We 

have been moved back of the line for more training. I hope we go to 

the front again soon. The two books you sent me came several days 

ago. Thanks very much. I have very little time any more for reading 

anything but books on Artillery, but I hope to get around to other 

things someday. Only one more thing I want and that is a copy of 

“Ashton’s Analytical Geometry,” or some other Analytic Geometry if 

you cannot get that one.

I went to church in Paris on Sunday morning; the first time I have 

been, except sightseeing in French churches, since last April. It was 

the British Embassy Church.

I am sorry that Frank is in that motorcycle battery. I don’t see how 

they could be used over here. The roads near the front line are so bad 

in most places that they could not get close enough to use their machine guns. It sounds rather absurd to me. Riding around on a motor 

cycle may be lots of fun in America, but I don’t think that a Motorcycle Machinegun Battery could do much in trench warfare. Of course I 

think that the Field Artillery is the only branch to be in. I hope Frank 

stays at school until he is of draft age and then picks out the Artillery. 
112

The draft army is going to be the big thing, the little militia regiments 

won’t be much beside them.

Love to all,

Henry
113

Letter #10

January 11, 1918

Dear Father:

I have been so busy lately that I haven’t had a minute to write. The 

Captain has been sick and I have been in command of the Battery. We 

have been having maneuvers of various kinds and have been on the go 

about twelve hours a day. It is frightfully cold and In addition there is 

about two feet of snow and more coming down. It is very hard on both 

horses and men. My feet have had no feeling in them for over a month 

now.

I feel sorry for some of the French people around here. All but the 

old women, a few children and the children have gone into the army. 

You see an old woman of sixty or seventy scantily clad, driving her 

cows to water, with the snow falling and the thermometer below zero. 

As she comes hobbling by in her big wooden shoes, I feel ashamed to 

be wearing leather boots and gloves and a warm coat. How I hate the 

Germans for causing so much hardship!

We gave the French children around near us a wonderful Christmas. Everyone in the Brigade chipped in and we had a pair of shoes, a 

suit and toys for every child. They had the time of their lives.

I am hoping to be sent to the front very soon. There is even less 

time and opportunity to write letters there than here, so do not be surprised or alarmed if three or four weeks go by without any mail from 

me.

The Christmas box has not yet arrived, but I haven’t given up 

hope, yet. I did receive the Hershey’s, but from your last letter I understood there was another box. Maybe it will come along one of these 

days. I shall enjoy it all the more for having waited so long. You asked 

me to send you word of how much pay I received in the Army up to 

December 31. I received 182 francs in October, 888 in November, and 

888 in December, which makes in dollars about $345.

I hope you took some money from my account and bought Christmas presents for everyone. If there is any money left in my account 

use it as you see fit. I don’t think I shall need any of it over here. I am 

not able to save very much of my pay as I must feed, board and cloth 

myself, and everything is high. I just had to buy a pair of boots and a 
114

new uniform. The riding boots cost 195 francs, almost 40 dollars, and 

the uniform 330 francs, about 60 dollars. Very high in price, but they 

are very good material and very good looking.

Best of love to all.

Henry
115

Letter #11

February 12, 1918

Dearest Ella:

I have received four letters from you since I last wrote but really 

I haven’t had a minute to myself. For three weeks now I have been 

in command of the battery and that is no small job, especially for one 

with as little experience as I have had. It would be easier if we were 

back at the front “en repos” [in rest]...1 I have the responsibility of 

the lives of the men of my battery, the lives of the infantry depending 

on us for support and also the responsibility of having to kill as many 

Germans as possible. It is very seldom that a 2d lieutenant has such a 

job thrust upon him, but it so happened that the Captain left and I was 

next in line and naturally fell into the job. They will probably give 

us another captain soon, but in the meantime I have my hands full. I 

haven’t been entirely unsuccessful, for the major told me yesterday 

that he intended to recommend that I be made a first lieutenant. There 

is so much red tape to it that I shall probably hear no more of it for six 

months or a year.

It is a shame that Tip had the chicken pox. I hope he is well again 

by now. Tell him that H. C. Evans would like to “kill the Kaiser in one 

shot” but not having that opportunity he intends to do his bit as best he 

can in other ways.

I am living in a warm, snug dugout with all the convenience of 

home. It takes a lot of work to build a good dugout. If anyone says that 

soldiers fight when they go to the front, you can just put him down as 

ignorant of the true state of affairs. Soldiers no longer fight, they dig. 

Don’t let anyone ever tell you about our brave and glorious soldier 

boys, fighting for liberty, humanity and freedom on the blood-soaked 

battle grounds of France. They dig and swear and sweat for thirty days 

for every one of actual fighting.

Please get Tip a birthday present from me. I have no way of sending anything from here or I should do it. Tell Tip I received his letter 

and shall take his advice.

I owe dozens of people letters of thanks for packages, but I have 

been so busy, day and night, that I really just couldn’t find a moment. 

I received a book from Mr. Robinson, one from Mrs. Townsend, and 

several other packages, but the wrappers had been torn off en voyage

so that I only received the contents. I do not know who they were 

from. I received a couple of books, which I haven’t had time to open, 
116

some candy, some chocolate “buds,” which, however I have had time 

to eat, and a sweater which I think is from Aunt Bessie. Father enclosed a letter from Martha Robinson in which she said she sent me 

some socks, etc. I appreciate everything very much and if things quiet 

down along the front long enough to let me write a few letters I shall 

answer all the letters I have received and thank everyone for their 

packages (half of which have not arrived yet). I received a letter from 

Aunt May, but I cannot answer until I get heaps of time, for she will 

expect a very thrilling and clever epistle, something which I cannot 

write off hand in a short space of time.

If you only knew how I look forward to your letters and enjoy 

them! Letters from home are the only things that can keep the spirits up when things go wrong and the whole world seems nothing but 

worry and sorrow. I enjoy them so much that I would walk out in No 

Man’s Land in broad daylight for one. 

“No Man’s Land.” It really is a quiet, peaceful looking place, as 

long as you stay out of it. I was down in the front line yesterday and 

No Man’s Land was the quietest place I have seen in a long time.

Henry
117

Letter #12 (excerpt of letter to Ella Evans)

March 12, 1918

I was very much surprised to hear of Katherine Hardy’s marriage. 

Every letter I get tells of somebody else who has just married a young 

Lieutenant so and so. They all seem to be doing it. I am relying on 

you to save me one. I do not seem able to book one up for myself. I 

can’t even get them to write to me. I have received a couple of letters 

from Katherine Brinton and a few from Eleanor O’Danovan but that 

is about the limit. They just write out of kindness I believe. Katherine 

Brinton is engaged, I heard somewhere, and I suppose Eleanor will be 

doing the same thing soon. I hope he is pretty good. She is too nice to 

waste on a bum. So it is up to you to have a nice one picked out for me 

when I return. She must be pretty, have lots of sense, and be sufficiently good natured to put up with my peculiarities. Also she must not like 

to tickle me in the ribs; you know what that would mean; a pain of 

sore wrists. . .
118

Letter #13 (on YMCA letterhead)

May 12, 1918

Dear Ella:

I received two letters from you day before yesterday and was 

overjoyed to get them as I hadn’t received any mail for ages. I also 

got another can of tobacco. You must have published my request for 

a little tobacco in all the papers in the country for everyone I know 

has sent me some. I’ve been swamped with it. Have more than I could 

possibly use in six months. Thanks very much, all the same. There are 

a great many people over here who can get no tobacco at all and I can 

always give it to them.

Strange to say I am still in command of the Battery. The promotion that was promised me did not go through, so I am still a second 

lieutenant, and probably shall be the rest of the war. Promotion is very 

hard to get over here, because they have sent over so many officers in 

proportion to the number of men. In the states it seems that promotions are given out wholesale. I have been holding down a captain’s 

job ever since the 31st of January. I don’t know how much longer it 

will last. They either ought to fine me or promote me. It doesn’t bother 

me. As long as I am doing my best to lick the Kaiser, a small petty 

thing like rank or grade worries me not the least.

There is one expression that I have learned to despise, “Doing my 

bit.” Whenever I hear an American say that, I feel like knocking him 

down. The word “bit” means a part, not all; a little, not much; it means 

that so long as one does something, anything at all, however little, he 

has a right to sit back and calmly feel very patriotic. No Frenchman 

ever thought of doing their bit, no Englishman does any longer. They 

know that they must do their best, give their all, and they do it as a 

matter of course. There is no “bit” for them; it is their best at all times. 

The Americans are too willing to do a little and then call it off, saying 

they have “done their bit.” They are too willing to shout at the parades 

and brass bands and think of the glories of victory, and not willing 

enough to sacrifice for the sake of that victory. If we expect to will this 

war, we must all sacrifice many times what we have already. Although 

France and England finally stopped the German offensive of March 

and April, the very fact that Germany could make such an offensive 

and hold the ground gained must show you that she is far from beaten.

I didn’t want to talk as much about the war, but my thoughts and 

life are now so wrapped up in it that I can’t help it. Nowadays my 
119

thoughts are divided between two things; the war and home. I had to 

come over here to appreciate what home and you really mean to me. It 

is something to dream about and long for. Just now it is my conception 

of Heaven. It will be a long time perhaps before I see it again, maybe 

never. If anything should happen and I don’t come back, do not feel 

sad. Be glad that I was able to give all I had. I would not feel anything 

but pleasure if such a ...
120

Letter #14

January 14, 1919

Dear Father:

Thanks ever so much for the Christmas package. It was the only thing 

to mark Christmas from any other time of the year and I was immensely 

pleased to get a present. We were not able to get any from the slips, that 

had to be sent home before a package could be sent, in time. So naturally I 

did not expect to get anything.

In spite of the fact that the war is over, we have, in a certain sense, 

as hard a time now as ever. Staff Officers and Inspectors who had soft, 

easy jobs in the rear during the war, are now greatly in evidence, and 

they delight, I believe, in finding fault with everything. They let us alone 

pretty much during the fighting, but now that the danger is over they buzz 

around to show how important they are. The Peace was harder than the 

real war. Everything must be done just so, according to regulation, and 

anyone who deviates an inch gets his. Lieutenant Hamilton Cheston, of 

Philadelphia, whom I have seen a lot of over here, was arrested the other 

day for wearing his putties in the wrong way. They will probably try to try 

him. He was the best, bravest and most energetic officer in the Battalion 

during all the fighting. They seem to give little credit for what was done 

during the fighting.

The Army has gone back to sham battle and maneuvers now that 

there is no real fighting to be done. We go out and make believe every few 

days. It is not as exciting as the real thing, but much safer.

The prospects for this division getting back before summer are very 

slim. Being a division of Regulars they will probably be kept over here 

until among the last. I am hoping that the Reserve officers will be replaced 

by Regular Officers and be allowed to go back to America. I am not 

betting on the prospect, though. There are not enough Regular officers for 

one thing, and few fighting troops will be sent back until peace is signed, 

I believe. Still, funnier things have happened, and I may be home soon. I 

sincerely hope so. The sooner the better.

Best love to all.

Henry

P.S. Have not fully decided what I want to do when I get back to America, 

except get out of the Army. It was fine in war time, but I would feel like 

I was wasting time to stay in during peace time. I have been thinking of 

going to the Medical School if I can enter when I get back. H.C.E.
121

Letter #15 (on YMCA letterhead)

March 21, 1918

Dear Father:

Our regiment sails today on the Aquitania, but there was not enough 

room for all the officers to go, so most of us are still here; we expect 

to sail very soon though and probably join the regiment in New York.

The regiment is made up of Western men so I may have to go out 

West with them before being mustered out. I am going to try and get 

dismissed at New York.

Hope to see you soon.

Henry
122

Letter #16 

(Written by John P. Scully in response to an invitation to a 10th Reunion 

of the First Division)

May 12, 1929

Erie, Pennsylvania

My Dear Captain:

I was very glad to have a return letter come from one I liked so 

well. I did not know that you were the Capt Evans that was my battery 

commander and I am sure all the rest of the fellows liked you as much 

as I did for we sure had a dandy when we had Heard (the fellow who 

got the wound stripe for being shaky, you know what I mean). You 

asked me about our day together when we climbed the tree on the Paris 

– Soissons Highway. Well it is hard to forget because I lost the heel of 

my shoe on that job but it was your brain that saved us both for when 

you told me to drop the flags and use the flashlight.

I still have the helmet with the machine gun bullet nicks in it but I 

think you should have been rewarded the same as I was. I just received 

the other day a large certificate to go with the Croix de Guerre. Tell all 

the fellows I would like to hear from them for I cannot come to the reunion for a lack of funds.

If you haven’t forgot we were only 20 yards behind the front lines 

when we climbed that tree.

Well I am not a very good letter writer so I will bring my letter to a 

close hoping to hear from you again.

I remain as always, as Rains used to say, Old Man Scully.

Mr. John P. Scully

824 East 11th Street

Erie, Penn

P.S. If you would like to write a letter I would have it read at the American Legion Post meeting urging all the 1st Division fellows to go to 

the reunion. I am a member of Post #11—1376 members –largest in 

Pennsylvania.
123

Notes

1. The rest of the sentence is illegible. En repos was the period of time 

when ambulances were at the front but inactive, awaiting taskings. For a 

detailed discussion of en repos, see Arlen J. Hansen, Gentlemen Volunteers: 

The Story of the American Ambulance Drivers in the Great War (New York: 

Arcade Publishing, 1996). In this instance, Evans is applying the term to his 

artillery battery.

125

Appendix 2

Major General Henry C. Evans

Expanded Biography 

From Citation, Johns Hopkins University

Distinguished Military Alumni Program - April 2004

Henry Evans was born in Baltimore in 1895 and attended the Johns 

Hopkins University until May 1917 when he paid his own way to 

France with the American Field Service with the intent of driving an 

ambulance for the French Army. With enough ambulance drivers on 

hand, he decided to enlist for six months with the French Army and was 

assigned to drive ammunition trucks to the front lines.

Late in August 1917 he went to the headquarters of the American 

Expeditionary Forces and obtained a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery. He was then assigned to the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Division, until the end of the war. He served in 

nearly every major engagement in which American troops fought, including the battles of Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. 

He was promoted to First Lieutenant in October 1918 and to Captain a 

month later. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for braving enemy artillery fire while directing his battery’s fire in the battle 

near Chaudun, and later won the Silver Star for heroic action in the 

Meuse-Argonne Offensive. From the French he was awarded the Medaille Commemorative du “Field Service” de Ambulance Americaine

and the Forragere. 

Between the wars, while serving in the Maryland National Guard, 

he reorganized the Maryland National Guard artillery forces and commanded the 110th Field Artillery Battalion. After the Maryland National Guard was federalized in early 1941, he was promoted to Brigadier 

General and assigned as 76th Infantry Division Artillery Commander. 

He served in that capacity during WWII under General Patton’s Third 

Army against German forces in Western Europe. Some of his WWII 

awards include the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf 

Cluster for Valor. He also received several foreign awards including the 

Legion d’Honneur Chevalier France, and the Croix de Guerre from 

France, Belgium and Luxembourg. 

After the war, General Evans became Commanding General of the 

35th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade until released from active duty in 

January 1946.
126

Once again home with the Maryland National Guard, in early 1947, 

General Evans was assigned as Commanding General of the 29th Division Artillery and also as Deputy Division Commander. In June 1954, 

he assumed command of the 29th Infantry Division, and served in this 

capacity for the next three years, during which he was promoted to Major General. He retired from military service on October 1, 1957 after 

more than forty years of distinguished service. 

In his civilian occupation he was in investment banking services 

as a registered representative of Robert Garrett & Sons. His positions 

included Chairman of the Board of Stein Brothers & Boyce, Inc., President of the Baltimore Stock Exchange, Bond Club of Baltimore, and 

the Baltimore Association of Commerce. In civic affairs, General Evans 

was named to city and state commissions, was Chairman of the Board 

of the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Chairman of the Maryland USO 

Committee. 

General Evans was active with the Catholic Scouting Committee 

and the Baltimore area Boy Scouts of America. He was State Department Commander from 1946 to 1947 of the Catholic War Veterans, a 

leader in Catholic charity fund-raising, and served as President of the 

76th Infantry Division Association.

He was Chairman of the Board of Stein Brothers & Boyce Corporation from 1963 to 1967, and “Honorary Chairman” until the firm’s 

merger with Bache & Company in 1970. He remained with the later 

firm until his death on February 17, 1976. 

In 1949 General Evans was the President of the Johns Hopkins 

Alumni Association and is a recipient of the Johns Hopkins University 

Distinguished Alumni Award.

A Maryland [Army] National Guard Armory in Westminster was 

named for Major General Evans. He married the former Eleanor M. 

O’Donovan in 1921 and had six children.
127

Appendix 3

Henry C. Evans

 World War I Awards and Citations

[G.O. 201]

G.H.Q

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES

General Orders} France, Nov. 10, 1918.

 No. 201 }

1. The Commander in Chief desires to make a record in the General 

Orders of the American Expeditionary Forces his extreme satisfaction 

with the conduct of the officers and soldiers of the First Division in 

its advance west of the Meuse between October 4th and 11th, 1918. 

During this period the division gained a distance of seven kilometers 

over a country which presented not only remarkable facilities for enemy defense but also great difficulties of terrain for the operation of our 

troops.

2. The division met with resistance from elements of eight hostile 

divisions, most of which were first class troops and some of which were 

completely rested. The enemy chose to defend its position to the death, 

and the fighting was always of the most desperate kind. Throughout the 

operations the officers and men of the division displayed the highest 

type of courage, fortitude and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. In addition to many enemy killed, the division captured one thousand four 

hundred and seven of the enemy, thirteen 77 m.m. field guns, ten trench 

mortars and numerous machine guns and stores.

3. The success of the division in driving a deep advance into the 

enemy’s territory enabled an assault to be made on the left by the neighboring division against the northeastern portion of the Forest of Argonne, and enabled the First Division to advance to the right and outflank the enemy’s position in front of the division on that flank.

4. The Commander in Chief has noted in this division a special 

pride of service and a high state of morale, never broken by hardship 

nor battle.
128

5. This order will be read to all organizations at the first assembly 

formation after its receipt. (14790-A-306)

By Command of General Pershing:

 JAMES W. McANDREW,

 Chief of Staff.

Official:

 Robert C. Davis

 Adjutant General
129

Figure 19. World War I Victory Medal with Evans’ Campaign clasps. 

Silver Star Citation1

Citations: American Expeditionary Forces

France, June 3, 1919

Citation of Orders No. 2

1. The following officers and enlisted men of the American Expeditionary Forces, are cited for gallantry in action and are entitled to wear 

a silver star on the Victory medal ribbon, as prescribed I.G.O.75.c.s. 

these headquarters:

2. 2nd Lieutenant Henry C. Evans, Btr. F. 6th F.A. for gallantry in 

action near Chaudon, France, 18-19 July, 1918, in fearlessly exposing 

himself to shell and machine gun fire in order to observe the fire of his 

battery.

by command of General Pershing:

 James C. Harbord

 Chief of Staff

Official:

Robert C. Davis,

Adjutant General
130

Distinguished Service Cross Citation2

American Expeditionary Forces

 Headquarters First Division

 American Expeditionary Forces

 Germany, December 4, 1918

General Orders No. 89

The Division Commander cites the following Officers and men of this 

command for conspicuous gallantry and heroism in the recent operations between the ARGONNE and the MEUSE, October 1st – 11th, 

1918.

1st Lt. Henry C. Evans, 6th Field Artillery “during an intense enemy 

bombardment of a battery position, went from piece to piece, giving 

the crews the data for continuing the rolling barrage in support of the 

Infantry and inspiring his men by his coolness and disregard of personal 

danger.”

By command of Major General McGlachlin

Stephen C. Fuqua

Chief of Staff

Official:

W.R. Wheeler, Lt. Col. Inf. U.S.A., Division Adjutant

Was in continuous active service from the first battle to the Armistice.

Holds Victory Medal with five bronze clasps, representing major engagements, and two silver stars, representing citations.
131

Notes

1. The Silver Star is the third highest military award designated solely 

for heroism in combat. Established in 1918 as the Citation Star, in 1932 

it was redesignated as a medal with a retroactive provision that allowed 

servicemen as far back as the Spanish-American War (1898) to receive it for 

gallant actions. 

2. The Distinguished Service Cross is the Army’s second highest award 

for military valor. The DSC was established in 1918 to honor heroism of the 

highest degree that did not merit the award of the Medal of Honor. The medal 

is awarded for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations 

against an opposing armed force. 

133

Appendix 4

Baltimore Sun Articles on

Henry C. Evans Service in World War I

WORD RECEIVED FROM 

BALTIMOREAN AT FRONT

----

Henry C. Evans Started for France

As Soon As America

Entered War

To a young Baltimorean – Henry C. Evans, son 

of Frank G. Evans, treasurer of the Eutaw Savings 

Bank – is given the honor of being the first Americans 

to answer the call to France for men from the United 

States after this country had entered the great war.

President Wilson’s memorable address to Congress, 

in which he declared that “a state of war existed between 

America and Germany, was hardly sent throughout the 

country before young Evans, who has just reached his 

twenty-first birthday, made arrangements to go abroad, 

and last month he sailed from New York for France on 

the steamer Espagna. By this time, he is already at the 

front, for in a postal mailed in Paris early in May just 

received; he says that he expected to be on the firing 

line before his message reached his home city.

Young Evans had been keeping in close tough 

with the European situation and when America joined 

the Allies he wanted to go. He told his parents of 

his intention to go to France and join the American 

Ambulance Corps. He then made hurried arrangements 

to catch the next steamer to Europe.
134

COMMISSION ABROAD

----

Henry C. Evans, Baltimorean, Wins

Lieutenant In U.S. Field Artillery

Word was received last night by Frank G. Evans, 

treasurer of the Eutaw Savings Bank, that his son, 

Henry C. Evans, who has been serving for several 

months with the American Field Service in France, had 

been commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United 

States Field Artillery. The information was contained 

in a cablegram from the son, “somewhere in France.” 

No circumstances of his change from the Field Service 

to the Artillery are given by young Evans in the cable, 

other than his desire “to experience more thrills.”

Evans was a member of the Third Year Class, Johns 

Hopkins University, when he volunteered for service 

last May. He was made a corporal in the Ambulance 

Corps and sailed for the front a month later. With him 

went Leslie Buckler and Robert France, 219 West 

Lavale Street, both students of Johns Hopkins.

After arriving in France Evans was changed from 

the ambulance service to transporting ammunition 

from Paris to the French front. The work did not afford 

enough thrills for Evans according to the letters which 

have been received from him periodically. Obsessed 

with the dullness of it he made application for an 

assignment to the infantry but was unable to secure 

enrollment.

However as soon as the country became enmeshed 

in the war, Evans expressed his intention of fighting 

under the flag of his country and when to Paris last 

week to take the examination for the commission.
135

CAPT. H.C. EVANS CITED

----

Son Of Frank G. Evans Wins Praise

For His Bravery

According to word received by Frank G. Evans, 

vice president of the Eutaw Savings Bank, his son, 

Capt Henry C. Evans, has been cited for conspicuous 

gallantry and heroism in the operations between the 

Argonne and the Meuse, October 1 to 11.

The communication came in a personal letter to 

Mr. Evans from Major Redmond C. Stewart, judge 

advocate of the First Division who enclosed the official 

citation, signed by Stephen O. Fuqua, chief of staff 

for Major General McGlachlin. This is as follows: 

1st Lieutenant Henry C. Evans, Sixth Field Artillery 

“during an intense enemy bombard-ment of a battery 

position, went from piece to piece, giving the crews 

the data for continuing the rolling barrage in support of 

the Infantry and inspiring his men by his coolness and 

disregard of personal danger.”
136

H.C. EVANS TO GET D.S.C FOR HEROISM

----

Baltimorean Cited for Extraordinary Episode in 

France During War

Under Fire While in Tree

Also Declared to have Inspired His Men By His 

Coolness When in Danger

Henry C. Evans, son of Frank G. Evans, vicepresident of the Eutaw Savings Bank, and an officer of 

the Field Artillery Officers’ Reserve Corps, yesterday 

was cited by the War Department for the Distinguished 

Service Cross.

He is to be decorated, the War Department 

announced, for “extraordinary heroism at Chaudon, 

France, while serving as first lieutenant in the Sixth 

Field Artillery, First Division.”

The particular episode for which Mr. Evans was 

cited occurred July 9, 1918. The citation reads as 

follows:

“Henry C. Evans, captain, Field Artillery Officers’ 

Reserve Corps, then first lieutenant, Sixth Field 

Artillery, First Division, for extraordinary heroism in 

action near Chaudon, France, July 9, 1918. Learning 

that the advance of the infantry which his battery was 

supporting was meeting with stubborn resistance, 

Lieutenant Evans voluntarily went forward through 

artillery and machine gun fire to the crest of a hill 

and climbed a tree overlooking the enemy position 

for the purpose of adjusting fire upon the enemy. 

Though subjected to severe fire from hostile artillery 

and machine guns, he remained courageously in this 

exposed position and this was able to direct the fire of 

his battery materially, so as to assist in the advance of 

the infantry.”
137

Toward the end of the war, he was cited again, 

this time by his division commander, Major General 

McGlachlin. He was commanding his battery in 

the Argonne-Meuse battle, and among General 

McGlachlin’s citations of his men “for conspicuous 

gallantry and heroism” was this paragraph:

“First Lieutenant. Henry C. Evans, Sixth Field 

Artillery, during an intense enemy bombardment of a 

battery position, went from piece to piece, giving the 

crews the data for continuing the rolling barrage in 

support of the Infantry and inspiring his men by his 

coolness and disregard of personal danger.”

Mr. Evans got into the war before the American 

armies started across. He went to France in May, 1917; 

served in the French Motor Transport Service; was 

commissioned second lieutenant of United States Field 

Artillery in October, 1917, and was assigned to the 

First Division.

He saw service in every major engagement in 

which American troops fought in France. Besides 

being a reserve officer, he is captain of Battery F, One 

Hundred and Tenth Field Artillery, Maryland National 

Guard. He lives in Calvert Court Apartments.

139

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US Army Combined Arms Center

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Visit our website at:

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/index.asp