Scuttlebutt & Small Chow USMC History List
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May 1st.--We hiked all day, & went into the front line trenches
at
Haudiomont. Relieved the French troops. Everything quiet at the
front.
No excitement.
May 5.--We got a green lieutenant here, first time up. Say, he
sure
was nervous first night. At every little noise we was ordered to
fire.
We liked that, so last night we tied cans on our bobbed wire
with a
rope leading back to the trench and when he come by we pulled
the
rope. Well, he listened a minute then he yells, "The Germans are
coming, Fire at will" & he ran and lit a flare. It was the wrong
flare. It called for artillery to increase its range when they
was not
even firing. The enemies opened up on us with machine guns then.
I
wonder what they thought of us crazy Americans.
Another lieutenant, Lieut. Moore, a Princeton graduate in
command of
2nd. Platoon, has a police dog by the name of Straff and he
won't eat
the food they hand out to us. The call for mess is "Come and get
it,
or I'll throw it away." Many and Many a time I've gone hungry
because
I could not get down the chow we get & so have a lot of the
boys.
Letters from home tell about the meatless sugarless and
wheatless days
they have to save for the boys at the front. Well, here we are.
Where
is that food?
May 8th.--At 7 P.M. Lt. Marshall, Sgt. Crow & myself went over
to the
enemy lines on a scouting party. Got back to our lines at 2.30
A.M.
good & wet. I fell in a shell hole full of water and did not
like it.
We crawled around No Man's Land on our stomack, listening. It
was the
first time I ever was that close to the enemy lines, & every
little
noise, I made sure the Germans heard. I was sure scared. Our
lines
never looked so good as when we got back. But it wasn't the
place we
started from.
We came in front of the 86th Company & their night patrol
thought we
were Germans. We heard him holler "Germans", I thought we were
done
for. Lt. Marshall yelled for them not to shoot, we were marines
from
the 97th Co. on their right. About that time the whole outfit
had
their guns pointed out to where we were. It was pitch black &
they
were not taking any chances, so Lt. Marshall he stood up &
walked over
& was recognized. They we followed & began to see how lucky we
were.
We went back to our own front line then.
May 9th.--Received a big fruit cake from home & shared it with
boys in
dugout.
May 10th.--Everything quiet. This town, like all the rest, was
plumb
shot to pieces. At 11 p.m. we were relieved by French troops &
marched
to Haudainville.
I got a cablegram from the States. It worried me so I begun to
shake. All my buddies come over wondering what was in it, Show
us,
Joe. I figured the worst. Someone was dead at home, sure. So I
would
not open it.
I asked Lieut. Kennedy if there was a chance to go back to the
States if someone was dead in my family. He says, "Huh, not a
chance
in the world. The whole army'd be getting cables."
So I tore the cable up & burned it without reading it. Oh how
I
prayed everything was all right at home. I wrote to my sister to
find
out. We use the back of our mess kit for a desk to write
letters, but
the trouble is you have to carry them around ten or fifteen days
before they can get censored and mailed home.
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