FIGHTING UNITS OF THE 37th DIVISION
Reading edition
GUARD ARMY (OHIO)
AND THEIR COMMANDING PERSONNEL ON SEPT. 5th, 1918
37th DIVISION Major General C.S. Farnsworth Commanding. Lieut. Colonel Dana T. Merrill Chief of Staff. Major Edward W. Wildrick Adjutant General.
73rd BRIGADE OF INFANTRY Brig. General C.F. Zimmerman Commanding. 145th Regiment Col. Sanford B. Stanberry. 146th Regiment Col. C.C. Weybrecht. 135th Machine Gun Battalion Major Charles C. Chambers.
74th BRIGADE OF INFANTRY Brig. General W.P. Jackson Commanding. 147th Regiment Col. F.W. Galbraith, Jr. 148th Regiment Col. George H. Wood. 136th Machine Gun Battalion Major John A. Logan.
62nd BRIGADE OF FIELD ARTILLERY Commanding officer not announced 134th Regiment Col. Harold M. Brush. 135th Regiment Col. Dudley M. Hard. 136th Regiment Col. Paul L. Mitchell. 112th Trench Mortar Battery Captain A.S. Dillon.
ENGINEER TROOPS 112th Regiment Col. John R. McQuigg.
SIGNAL TROOPS 112th Field Signal Battalion Major Russell L. Mundhenk.
DIVISION UNITS 37th Division Headquarters Troop Captain Frank F. Frebis. 134th Machine Gun Battalion Major Wade C. Christy.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction 11
I. Five Weeks in a Flivver 15
II. On the Move 42
III. Our Invincibles 54
IV. Holding the Line 71
V. Tanks and Tractors 83
VI. Pen Pictures 91
VII. Moral Flashes 112
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Ford Camionette Driven by W. B. West Frontispiece
Facing page
German Aerial Bomb (small) 24
German Aerial Bomb (large) 48
Memory Sketch of a Sector of the Battlefield, 1918 54
French Officer—German Officer 64
German Weapons 94
Varieties of Shells and Bombs (Photographed at Nancy) 120
INTRODUCTIONToC
It was on the road from Neufchateau to La Foche, where Base Hospital 117 was located, that I first became acquainted with the author of this book. He evidently knew how to run a Ford camionette, even though it was not in just the shape in which it left the factory. I remember that I asked him what he did for a living back in the States—those service uniforms were great levelers—and he said he was a parson. "But now you are a chauffeur," I objected. "Well, you see," he said, "when I first came over they asked me to fill out blanks indicating what I could do, and in that statement I admitted that I could run a car. I also said I could preach. They tried me out as a chauffeur and liked my work so well that they said they would stand pat on that; they had never heard me preach."
As a matter of fact, I heard Mr. West preach that morning to the boys suffering from war neurosis, or "shell shock," in Hospital 117. He had helped them out on former Sundays there, and they sent for him again and again.
Later, when I was in the Baccarat sector, I met a most interesting and effective man who was in the Supply Department of the "Y" on week days, and conducted services in outlying camps every Sunday morning with great success. He had been a circus acrobat back in the States. What a revolutionizing influence war is, with preachers chauffeuring and acrobats preaching! The important point was that they were all serving whole-heartedly in whatever way they could.
It was in Baccarat that I met West again, running his car, transporting newspapers or moving-picture machines, or canteen supplies, or itinerant entertainers such as I, out over any sort of road toward the front line. His glimpses of the great war were from an angle of vision that makes what he has to say in this book well worth reading. His duties took him into every sort of billet, and brought him into close touch with many branches of the army, as well as with all sorts of welfare work and workers. I find that he refers, in passing, to that dramatic moment when we stood on a hilltop and watched the bombing of Baccarat just below us, while the Boche machine passed very close overhead. He does not say that he hid behind one tree and I hid behind another, trying to keep the trunks between us and the flying shrapnel. Nor does he say that he picked up and carried home a fragment which landed between us in the road, although it came just as near to me as it did to him!
This started out to be an introduction to a book. It is really a personal expression of good will toward one whom I was glad to meet and touch for a moment in that strange whirlpool of human activity last summer in France.
Burges Johnson.
Vassar College, March 3, 1919.