Five Lieutenants by James Carl Nelson

Author:James Carl Nelson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

ORDERS IS ORDERS

SOMETIMES WHEN HE WAS out there the night would explode, and he would drop quickly and press his nose deep into the musky chalky earth of France and lie still, detecting no sound but his own heartbeat and the slow hissing from above, as the torn-up ground around him turned as vacant and white and forbidding as the surface of the moon and shone, almost as if lit by the sun; and it was at times like those that he waited, and he waited, and he waited.

This was one of those nights that found George Buchanan Redwood prone and waiting in the sticky mud, vainly watching at the edge of a German trench until the dawn brought just enough light for him to espy the silhouetted shape of the sentry.

Then, with no sound, Redwood and four Americans leaped over the parapet and in a wild, muffled melee made some history, securing four of the Boche and dragging them back through the perilous light of dawn to the American lines, where newspaper reporters and a bucketful of medals awaited the five doughboys who had become the first to secure live German prisoners in a trench raid.

Redwood’s notorious exploit would put him on the front pages of the newspapers back home and crown the 28th Regiment’s experience at Seicheprey, which until that point of March 29, 1918, had consisted of the usual—the usual hail of gas, sometimes as many as five hundred canisters per day; the usual shelling, hundreds of rounds blanketing the American lines on an average day; and the usual patrols, which until now had secured some information but no real, live prisoners to show off to the Allies, and to the folks back home, and to the German Army itself, which had been the source of many a black eye dating back to the deaths of Gresham, Enright, and Hay almost five months before.

The 26th Regiment had launched a daring raid on the Germans on March 10 and gotten nothing for its effort; in retaliation, the Germans on March 19 sent a large raiding party toward the lines held by Capt. Edward Johnston’s Company E in the Bois de Remieres on the right of the American line.

“All was still along the front except for an occasional rifle shot and the ever present display of star shells,” the 28th Regiment’s history says. “Suddenly, about 3 A.M., the whole of the German line seemed to burst into a blinding flame, and the roar and crash of trench mortar bombs and high explosive shells shook the earth.”

The German attackers were cut down by the division’s artillery, and the survivors hied back to their lines. Disaster had been averted by the quick action of the 5th, 6th, and 7th artillery regiments, but the regiment lost its first junior officer, 2nd Lt. John B. Graham—a “wealthy Irish-American from New York, a brainy, likeable fellow,” Company E’s 1st Lt. Irving W. Wood would remember.

Graham, twenty-six, and a squad of men had been sent

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