December 23, 1918. Wyoming Guardsmen of the 148th Field Artillery at the Château-Thierry and beyond.

The DI of the 148th Field Artillery.  Many of the Wyoming Guardsmen who served as infantry on the border were reassigned to this Field Artillery unit made up of Rocky Mountain Region and Northwestern Guardsmen during World War One.

If you'd been wondering what became of the men of the Wyoming National Guard, whom we started following with their first muster into service with the Punitive Expedition, the Wyoming State Tribune gave us a clue.

As readers will recall, quite a few of those men were put in to the 148th Field Artillery.  None of them deployed as infantry, which is what they had been when first mustered for border service with Mexico and then again when first recalled for the Great War.  Not all of them ended up in the 148th, but quite a few did, which was a heavy artillery unit of the field artillery.  Indeed, a quite modern one as it used truck, rather than equine, transport.  

Here we learned that the 148th was at Château-Thierry.

Another version of the distinctive insignia for the unit with additional elements for the western nature of the composite elements.

To flesh it out just a bit, the 148th at that time was made up of elements of the 3d Rgt of the Wyoming National Guard, the 1st Separate Battalion Colorado Field Artillery, and the 1st Separate Troop (Cavalry) Oregon National Guard. They were part of the 66th FA Bde.  They'd arrived in France on February 10, 1918, just prior to the German's massive Spring 1918 Offensive.  They were equipped in France with 155 GPF Guns and Renault Artillery tractors.

155 GPF in use by American artillerymen.

They went to the front on July 4, 1918 and were emplaced directly sought of Château-Thierry and began firing missions on July 9.  After that engagement, they'd continue on to participate in the St. Mihiel Offensive and the Meuse Argonne Offensive.  By the wars end, they'd fired 67,590 shells.

American Army Renault EG Artillery tractor with a GPF in tow.  Note the wood blocks for chalks.

The unit went on to be part of the Army of Occupation in Germany following the war, a mission with which it was occupied until June 3, 1919, when it boarded the USS Peerless for New York.  It was mustered out of service at Camp Mills, New York, on June 19, 1919, with Wyoming's members sent on to Ft. D. A. Russell for discharge from their World War One service.

We'll pick this story up again as we reach those dates, but as we made a dedicated effort to follow these men early on, we didn't want to omit their story later.  Wyomingites reading the papers in 1918 learned of their service, accepting censored soldier mail, for the first time on this day in 1918.  While news reporting done by the U.S. and foreign press during World War One was often remarkably accurate, one set of details that was kept generally well hidden was the service, and even the fate, of individual American servicemen and units.  Wyomingites now learned what role many of their Guardsmen had played in the war for the first time.

And it was a significant one.

Countdown on the Great War. October 10, 2018. Disaster at sea.

U.S. field artillery, 155 mm gun of A Bttry, 324Bn, 158th Rgt.  October 10, 1918.

1.  The RMS Leinster sunk in the Irish Sea by the UB-123 with the loss of over 500 lives including Canadian nurses.

2.  British take Baalbek, Lebanon.

"The Boche spotted this truck A few minutes after this truck, which had ventured out for salvage, had appeared on the roads near Blanzy the Boche followed it with shells all the way back to Fismettes. The "funk-holes" are occupied by our soldiers, a few of whom have come out to ascertain the cause of this latest commotion. 77th Division, Blanzy, Sept. 9, 1918."

Note the legs of horses in the distance.

The old transportation and the new.

Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky. August 26, 1918.

Base Hospital.

Field Artillery Officers Training School.

Scene at Divisional Headquarters.

Third Battalion 13th Regiment Heavy Field Artillery, Fourth Division, U.S. Army, in rest camp on hillside near Andelot. 155-mm. guns can be seen in the foreground almost hidden by camouflage and harness. Andelot, Ste. Marne, France. August 25, 1918.

Night attack with phosphorous bombs, Gondrecourt, Aug. 15, 1918 / Signal Corps photo by Sgt. J.J. Marshall.

News on the local boys. July 30, 1918.

More than anything, readers of Wyoming's newspapers likely were hoping for news on what was going on with Wyomingites who were serving in the Great War.  The Laramie Boomerang on this Tuesday, July 30, 1918, gave them that, letting them know what was going on with the Guard units that had been brought into service, and then formed into new units.

The 1st Division in World War One.

 

I've oddly, I suppose, posted on the 2nd Division and the 3d Division, but not the 1st Division.   We seek to correct that omission here.

Rather obviously, the 1st Division was one of the very first U.S. Army divisions to be formed as the United States sought to build an Army to send to France.  Like the 2nd and the 3d, it was a Regular Army division made up of units of the standing U.S. Army.

The 1st Division is the oldest continually serving division on the U.S. Army.  Most sources will indicate that the division was formed on May 24, 1917, just after the American declaration of war, but like the 2nd Division and the 3d Division, it has a Civil War antecedent and a case can be made that the 1st Division first existing during that conflict.  At any rate, it's been serving continually as the 1st Division ever since May 24, 1917 and its seen action in every major American conflict since that time.  It's arguably the most famous U.S. division, although that could be contested I suppose.  It's the only US division to have its nickname, The Big Red One, used for the title of a movie, which says something.

The 1sts was the first U.S. division to fire an artillery mission during World War one and the first to sustain casualties.  It was also the first to launch an offensive operation, Cantigny.

It's make up was typical for an American "square division" for the war:

• Headquarters, 1st Division
• 1st Infantry Brigade
  • 16th Infantry Regiment
  • 18th Infantry Regiment
  • 2nd Machine Gun Battalion
• 2nd Infantry Brigade
  • 26th Infantry Regiment
  • 28th Infantry Regiment
  • 3rd Machine Gun Battalion
• 1st Field Artillery Brigade
  • 5th Field Artillery Regiment (155 mm)
  • 6th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm)
  • 7th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm)
  • 1st Trench Mortar Battery
• 1st Machine Gun Battalion
• 1st Engineer Regiment
• 2nd Field Signal Battalion
• Headquarters Troop, 1st Division
• 1st Train Headquarters and Military Police
  • 1st Ammunition Train
  • 1st Supply Train
  • 1st Engineer Train
  • 1st Sanitary Train
    • 2nd, 3rd, 12th, and 13th Ambulance Companies and Field Hospitals.

Battle of Hamel, July 4, 1918

British soldiers depicted in Hamel in March 1918, prior to their withdraw from the town in the German 1918 Spring Offensive.

On this day in 1918 Australian and American soldiers jointly attacked and took the French village of Le Hamel in northern France.

The attack was a meticulously planned combined arms attack featuring the innovative use of the fast (for the time) British Mark V tank and air support from the RAF.  It was also a joint operation, under the command of Australian General Sir John Monash, featuring primarily Australian infantry but heavily augmented by units of the American 33d Division and supported by a creeping barrage using British and French artillery.

The attack was well planned by the experienced General Monash and provided an learning example of new combined arms tactics.  It was not without its problems, however, in that the American troops were somewhat reluctantly supplied and when supplied were directly attached to Australian units at the small unit level, something the American Army did not approve of.  The American Army had approved the use of troops of the 33d Division for a raid, not an outright assault.  Indeed, fewer troops of the U.S. 33d Division were supplied at first than initially promised and when the Australians were further supplied with U.S. troops prior to the battle some were withdrawn upon General Pershing learning that they were being assigned out to Australian formations at the company level.  The augmentation was partially needed by the Australians due to the thinning of their ranks by the Spanish Flu.

The assault technically commenced at 22:30 on July 3 when British and French artillery opened up simply to mask the noise of the deploying tanks.  A harassing artillery barrage commenced again at 03:02 which caused the defending Germans to anticipate a gas attack, for which they accordingly masked.  The RAF went immediately into action at that time and deployed fighters as light bombers, with each assigned pilot flying at least three extremely dangerous pre dawn flights.  The infantry assault commenced at 03:14 with American units showing their inexperience by advancing into the allied creeping barrage.

Allied objectives were calculated by Monash to require 90 minutes and in fact took just 93.  The Australians began to resupply the successful units with tanks and the Royal Australian Flying Corps immediately commenced areal photography in order to produce new maps.  The RAF, for its part, participated in resupply operations by dropping some supplies by parachute in a brand new technology which was, of course, necessarily limited by the nature of the aircraft of the time.

The Germans reattacked, using storm troopers, at 22:00 and were initially successful.  A flanking Australian attack, deploying grenades and clubs, reversed that and the shocked Germans retreated.

The battle was significant for a number of reasons.  For one thing, it was the first signficant use of an American division, partially, that was made up of National Guardsmen, in the case Guardsmen from Illinois, which was what formed the 33d Division.  Beyond that, it was a spectacular example of clear thinking in a meticulously planned combined arms attack using every new and old arm in the Allied arsenal successfully and also using forces from four different armies.  Beyond that, it showed that Allies had not only withstood four months of German assaults but were more than capable of going into at least limited offensive operations at this time, tactics which sucked up German storm troops, upon which their success now depended, who were shown to be capable of being beaten. Indeed, Australian troops in the action showed an offensive spirit so pronounced that they were willing to resort to the most primitive of weapons.

The US Second Division

We looked at the 3d Division a bit earlier, as they were showing up in large form in the Press at that time due to Chateau-Thierry.  

The 3d, however, was only one of three U.S. Divisions that saw heavy combat, as U.S. Divisions, in the 1918 Spring Offensive of the Germans.  The 1st and the 2nd also did. 

Here we look at the 2nd, as it was the Division that won the Battle of Belleau Wood.  Moreover, it was the most unique of the three for a reason we'll explore a bit in a second post.  

The 2d Division was also made of up regular U.S. troops.  I.e., it wasn't a National Guard Division nor was it made up of conscripts (although it would soon have them in the form of replacements).  Here's the makeup of the WWI 2nd Division:

One thing that was really unique about this division is that it include a Marine Brigade. As noted, we'll explore that in greater depth soon, but the Marines entered their modern form, or started to, in the 2nd Division.  They also saw significant combat with the 2nd Division, forming the bulk of the troops that fought at Belleau Wood while the rest of the 2nd Division was engaged nearby.  Indeed, the Marine Corps was so associated with the 2nd Division that it was in fact twice commanded by Marine Corps general officers.

Charles A. Doyen, U.S.M.C. who commanded the 2nd Division during October and November, 1917, before returning to the United States.  He was a victim of the 1918 Flu Pandemic and died in October 1918.

The 2nd Division saw heavy combat all trough the rest of the war and has gone on to be one of the stalwart standing US Infantry Divisions, having been long stationed in the Republic of Korea.  It hasn't included Marines in its ranks, however, since 1919. 

Headquarters

• 3d Infantry Brigade
• 9th Infantry Regiment
• 23d Infantry Regiment
• 5th Machine Gun Battalion

 

John A. Lejeune, who commanded the 2nd Division from July 28, 1918 until August 1919.  He later became Commandant of the Marine Corps.

• 4th Marine Brigade:  This will be further addressed in a later post, but as noted, the inclusion of a Marine Brigade in the 2nd Division shows how tight US forces really were early in the war. As will be explored later, Marines simply weren't regarded as regular ground troops until World War One and this was their first real use, large-scale, in this role. 
• 5th Marine Regiment
• 6th Marine Regiment
• 6th Machine Gun Battalion

• 2nd Field Artillery Brigade
• 12 Field Artillery Rgt. 
• 15th Field Artillery Rgt
• 17th Field Artillery Rgt
• 2nd Trench Mortar Battery

• 4th Machine Gun Battalion
• 2nd Engineer Regt
• 1st Field Signal Battalion
• Headquarters Troop.  As previously noted, this was a cavalry troop drawn from a regular cavalry regiment, although I've forgotten what regiment it was drawn from in this instance.
• 2nd Train Headquarters and Military Police
• 2nd Ammunition Train
• 2nd Supply Train
•  2nd Engineer Train
• 1st, 15th, 16th and 23d Ambulance Companies and Field Hospitals.

The Battle of Belleau Wood. June 7-9, 1918 Stalemate

The Marines now held a foothold in the Belleau Wood.  The Germans were in the Wood as well.

At midnight on June 7, the Germans launched as assault on the Marines and were completely stopped.  The Marines, in turn, launched an assault on the Germans on June 8 and it was likewise halted, taking so many casualties by this point that the Marine battalion that participated in it had to be relieved and replaced by a more fully manned one.

On June 9 French and U.S. artillery virtually destroyed the Wood, a former pristine hunting ground.  The Germans, in turn, fired artillery into Lucy and Bouresches and reorganized inside the Wood.

But note what wasn't happening.  The Americans had not fought this battle according to script at all. . . and the Germans were not advancing.

The news of the Marine Corp's actions of a day ago hit the front page back home, with dramatic results. This was likely the first time Americans had really thought of the Marine Corps in this fashion.

What was missed in these accounts is a significant factor.  American troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3d Divisions were in action, and as American divisions. But they were not in the overall command of an American Army.

Rather, these divisions had been supplied by the U.S. command, somewhat reluctantly, after it became convinced that the Germans might break the French and British lines.  So, while the divisions fought under their U.S. commanders, these three divisions, made up all of regulars, were above that level now in the French sector under French command, albeit temporarily.

On a local note, the school district in Casper (there was more than one in the county at the time) had purchased property that would become Roosevelt School in 1922.  The school was, rather obviously, named after the recently departed President  Theodore Roosevelt.  It was in use for decades, having completed its service as an alternative high school, and was recently closed and transferred to another entity for a veteran's facility.

This is a situation the US had hoped earnestly to avoid.  Indeed, while the German 1918 Spring Offensive was no surprise whatsoever, the US high command in France had studied it under Gen. Fox Connor and determined that the Allies could resist it successfully without U.S. help, and this would leave the Americans ready to go into action in the Fall and Winter, bringing the war to a conclusion in 1919.

Whether the US was right about that or not can be debated. There was good reason to feel that the Americans were flatly wrong about the French ability to hold out without US assistance by this point in 1918.  And in fairness by this point the American high command was convinced and the three US divisions made up of regulars did in fact start fighting, but not under an overall US command like the Americans had planned on. This would develop into a inter allied spat of a rather serious nature as the summer rolled on.

3d Division Order of Battle, 1918

The order of Battle for the 3d Division, which we've been discussing here recently.

All US divisions in World War One were big "square" divisions, much larger than those which the US went to after 1940. Indeed, they were absolutely enormous compared to the divisions of other armies, in part because the U.S. was capable of fully manning a division. Generally, U.S divisions contained at least 30,000 men, but some would swell up beyond that. The 3d Division is an example of that. By October 1918 it contained 54,000 men, well three times the size of a World War Two Division.

Indeed, this impacts histories of the war as many histories fail to note how large US divisions were.  As we'll see, in the Battle of Belleau Wood the 2nd Division took on elements of five German divisions. But by 1918 German divisions were rarely fully manned. For that matter, Allied ones were rarely fully manned either.  So while histories may note that one army or another had "x" divisions here and there, while the US had only "y", the US commitment at any one time was often much larger than those numbers would suggest.

Anyhow, the 3d Division was made up mostly of Regular Army units. For that reason, it was one of the first divisions in France and one of the first combat ready divisions.  As the U.S. Army did not keep divisions formed during peacetime, it was assembled just prior to the war.  Nonetheless, it was largely made up of Regular Army soldiers augmented in some areas, to flesh it out, with National Guardsmen (most likely) or recent inductees from civilian life.

Here's how the unit was formed.

Headquarters, 3rd Division

5th Infantry Brigade, consisting of;

4th Infantry Regiment, a regular Army regiment.

7th Infantry Regiment, also a regular regiment

8th Machine Gun Battalion.  I don't know the make up of this unit but machine gun battalions were a recent introduction into the Army.  World War One would prove to be unique for the combat use of such battalions and they'd not really reappear in the U.S. Army during World War Two.

6th Infantry Brigade, consisting of;

30th Infantry Regiment. Regular Army.

38th Infantry Regiment.  Regular Army.

9th Machine Gun Battalion

3rd Field Artillery Brigade, consisting of;

10th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm)  Newly formed in 1916 at Camp Douglas, Arizona.

18th Field Artillery Regiment (155 mm).  Newly formed in 1916 at Ft. Bliss, Texas.

76th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm).  Converted from regular U.S. Army's 18th Cavalry Regiment wholesale.  The 18th Cavalry was a newly formed Cavalry regiment authorized in 1916 which had a brief existence before being converted to cavalry Quite a few of the newly authorized cavalry regiments from the National Defense Act of 1916, and National Guard cavalry regiments, were reorganized from cavalry to artillery or transport.  Indeed, even some National Guard infantry was so reorganized.  The reorganization of available cavalry regiments made sense in context as the men in them were familiar with handling horses, and artillery was horse drawn at the time.

3rd Trench Mortar Battery.  Another new formation. Trench mortars were a major feature of World War One but would be obsolete by World War Two.

7th Machine Gun Battalion

6th Engineer Regiment

5th Field Signal Battalion

Headquarters Troop, 3rd Division.  This was a cavalry troop.  I'm not sure what cavalry regiment provided the troops for it.  Basically, however, cavalry troops were individual troops assigned from prewar cavalry regiments, quite a few of which were National Guard cavalry troops.

3rd Train Headquarters and Military Police.  Military police as a regular establishment was new to the Army at this time, and reflected its enormous growth.

3rd Ammunition Train.

3rd Supply Train

3rd Engineer Train

3rd Sanitary Train

5th, 7th, 26th, and 27th Ambulance Companies and Field Hospital

German artillery commenced a barrage on the evening of this day, Sunday, April 7, 1918. . .

near the towns of Armentières and Festubert that would carry through until April 9.

German 21cm Morser being moved into position, March 1918.

Something must have been up. . . .

116th Field Artillery, Major E.L. Anderson, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Ga., Ap. 6th, 1918

Eighth Field Artillery, Major C. L. Corbin, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Ga., April 6th, 1918

What was that big gun?

It was a railroad gun.

And a really big one at that.

Or rather, they were really big ones.  There were several.

Details on the giant long range guns are surprisingly sketchy.  They, or it, or whatever, never fell into Allied hands and the Germans took what was left of the guns, whatever that was (and it was likely most of it, or them), back into Germany as they retreated towards the end of the war.  What they couldn't take, they destroyed.

The guns were apparently 211mm guns, a little over 8in.  That would remain a large gun today, but not so large as to not be deployable then or now as field artillery. The M110 Self  Propelled Howitzer, for example, featured an 8" gun.

 

 M110 Self Propelled howitzer

The Paris guns weren't howitzers, however.  They were rifles.  Extremely large rifles with very long barrels.  And over time, likely due to barrel wear, they were bored out to 236mm, 9in.

 They were transported by rail, and indeed they featured a rail turntable as part of their emplacement.  

And they were weapons of terror.

Say what you like about the Germans prior to World War Two, but at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that the German military seems to have been uniquely prone to acts of terrorism as early as the Franco Prussian War.  And during World War One they undertook several strategies and weapons that were frankly terroristic, of which the giant railway guns were merely one example.  Their only purpose was to silently shell Paris at extreme long range, some 75 miles, and with accuracy that was no better than to simply hit the city, which the guns did at least twenty-one times on March 21, the first day they were used.  They kept up that rate of fire for a considerable time thereafter until the end of the Kaiserschlacht in August and the ultimate reversal of German fortunes mandated their dismantling and removal.  They were never captured by the Allies.  It's telling that while the Versailles Treaty required them to be turned over to the Allies, the Germans did not do it.

250 Parisians were killed by the giant guns and another 620 were wounded.  On this day, Good Friday, 1918, a projectile from one of the giant guns went through the roof of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church, killing 91 and wounding 68.

The aftermath of the March 29, terror shelling.

There is no excuse for their use.  There wasn't then, and there still isn't.

Super artillery, into which these guns class these fit, went on to see some use during World War Two by the Germans again, but the advent of aircraft meant that they had become too vulnerable for much use, although they never saw all that much use to start with.  The Germans would deploy some super artillery in the East during World War Two, but the manpower required was so vast that the use of the guns has been calculated to be a net detriment to the German war effort during World War Two.  They didn't achieve much during World Ware One either, as the Parisians grew blase about the big guns which, as destructive as they were, were unlikely to actually get any one person in a city of millions.  In modern times super long range artillery has not seen use although it has been studied with at least Baathist Iraq having taken an interest in them, and having studied a gun that would have been capable of hitting Israel while being fired from Iraq.

Seems if a nation uses these its cause is dishonorable by definition.

113th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. J.A. Mack, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 16th 1918

The ceremony of "Escort to the Standard", 114th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. Thomas D. Osborne, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 10th, 1918

115th Field Artillery, Col. John T. Geary, commanding; Capt. Max C. McKay, adjutant, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918

115th Field Artillery, Col. John T. Geary, commanding; Capt. Max C. McKay, adjutant, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918.

This depicts, of course, the 115th FA Rgt. of the U.S. 11th Division in 1918.  Not the 115th FA Bde which is associated with the National Guard.

Smiling Artillerymen with Red Cross supplies, 5th FA, 1st Division. March 7, 1918.

From the National Archives Blog.