Muscatine County, Iowa During World War I

Source: Muscatine Journal & News Tribune, Saturday, March 29, 1919 page 5
Submitted by Lynn McCleary, August 8, 2020

France As It Seemed To A Yank Soldier
By J. H. Jamison, Jr.

“How do you feel the first time you go into action?” That is a question that is difficult to answer. I suppose that every man has different emotions and many of them. One’s emotions are so conflicting that it is hard after it is all over to pick out the ones that predominate.

At first it seems to me, that one is dazed and certainly astonished at the terribleness of it all. Looking back on my first time in action I don’t seem to have any clear recollection of the first few minutes. My head was a jumble of thoughts and now I can’t remember just what any of them were. However, that condition of semi-paralysis lasted for only a few minutes and then came the realization that at last I was “up against” the real thing.

That morning will remain fresh in my memory as long as I live.

We artillery casuals, which included Marion Latham, Fred Koethe, Walter Knetsch, Grover Barker, Walter Howe, and Raymond Martin of Muscatine and Perry Herrick, Floyd Marshall, Jesse Havenhill and Paul Verdow of Wapello, had been attached to the 28th division for rations only the day before. None of us had ever had any infantry training before when the doughboys were ordered into action we asked to be sent along.

After marching half the night and sleeping in the rain, we were aroused an hour before daylight and told to get ready to move. For possibly an hour we followed a camouflaged road and then deployed into a wheat field. Then we were told that our objective was a cluster of farm building just over the ridge we were approaching and we were ordered to load our rifles and fix bayonets. Most of us had our rifles loaded for a week. We weren’t risking having the Germans surprise us.

As we marched ahead through the waist high wheat which was ripening fast, I glanced down the line and didn’t see a face that registered fear. Some of the boys were a bit pale but none of them were nervous. I remember distinctly that when a wild boar jumped out of the wheat a few yards ahead of us and went bounding away like a scared rabbit nearly everyone laughed. We went through the houses but the Germans had evidently gotten news of our advance and had retreated during the night. By this time we were pretty well scattered and we were ordered to assemble in a small patch of timber about 150 yards to our right.

We had just gotten well into the woods and were standing around waiting for orders when the first shell came screeching into the woods. We didn’t wait for an order to get ‘under cover’ but got.

I ran for a large shell crater that I noticed a few moments before and beat Fred Koethe and Walter Knetsch to it by about two jumps. However, there was room enough for three of us. We crowded in the bottom of that hole and listened with bated breath to the shells as they came. I don’t know what the other two were thinking about but I was wondering why I had ever been so anxious to come to France. The explosions sounded nearer and nearer and we knew that the boche was sweeping the woods with all of the artillery that could be brought to bear on it. We discussed the advisability of leaving our hole and seeking a better place. We were all willing to that locality alright but we didn’t know where to go.

We were still discussing the situation when a shell exploded fifteen or twenty feet from where we were sitting in the mud. We sat no longer, in fact, we stayed no longer in that place. We left. We were leaving the woods when someone yelled ‘Gas’. I remember that I had some difficulty in adjusting my mask. My fingers seemed to be all thumbs. It was shortly after this that one of my friends said “Take me by the arm. I thing I am gassed”. I took hold of his arm and asked him where he wanted to go. He replied that he wanted to be taken to the first aid station. I had no more idea where the first aid station was than he had, but I started to the rear with him. Before we had gone very far an idea occurred to me and I asked him how he felt. “Sick at my stomach” he faintly replied. “That’s nothing” I told him. I feel sick there too, but it isn’t gas, it just a plain case of the buck.”

For the rest of the day we laid in a deep and narrow ditch were we were safe from all fire except a direct hit. That evening we were reassembled but some of the lads who were with us that morning were missing, some were in the hospital and some had paid the supreme price.