The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

When war was

declared against Germany in April, 1917, the United States had only a small ill

equipped army. The first action was to nationalize the National Guard troops.

This amounted to 345,000 men who needed to be trained and ready to meet the

professional German Army in the shortest amount of time possible.

A number of

young men from Orange who were members of the National Guard suddenly found

themselves drafted into the regular army. They were mobilized and sent to Camp

Bowie, near Forth Worth, Texas. Camp Bowie would become one of the largest

training camps in the United States, but at the time the Orange troops arrived

there it was only partially constructed.

By July,

1917 the camp encompassed 1410.5 acres. The rifle range was 750 acres and the

Benbrook Trench System would cover 125 acres and be 10 miles long. The cost of

the camp would be slightly in excess of $3, 400,000.

Most of the

men from Orange would be assigned to the 141^st and 142^nd

Infantry Regiments that would, along with the 132^nd Machine Gun

Battalion would comprise the 71^st Brigade of the 36^th

Infantry Division. The 36^th Division was comprised of troops from

the Texas and Oklahoma National Guard units.

The troops

received some very basic training in regular army maneuvers and trench warfare,

received equipment and clothing as they slowly became available, had to assist

with construction of the camp and by July, 1918 they were deemed ready to go

overseas.

The Orange

troopers went by train to Camp Mills, Long Island, New York. The next movements

were to take them to the large port of embarkation in New Jersey and board them

on the troopship Finland for the voyage to France.

The thing

that stayed with the men, long after the war, was that they were constantly

seasick and that the food was terrible. Some of them existed mostly on coffee

and water. They landed in Brest, France and went by rail in boxcars called “40

and 8s”; they could carry either 40 men or eight horses. They were to be

further trained in the Bur-sur-Aube area.

General John

J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, was adamant that

American troops would only fight under the direct command of American officers.

This caused friction between Pershing and the English and French general who

believed the Americans to be untrained and unable to fight.

The First

American Army was created on August 19, 1918 and assigned the following

September to be part of the French Fourth Army under the command of French

General Henri Gourard. They would become part of the Muse-Argonne Offensive.

In September,

when the French attack faltered at Blanc Mont, the 71^st Brigade, and

the rest of the 36^th Division was assigned to the Somme-Py sector

and placed in a combined command of U. S. Army and Marine troops under the

command of Marine General John Lejeune. This was the first instance of Army and

Marine troops together under one commander.

In the

distance the boys from Orange could see clouds of smoke, airplanes skimming the

horizon, probably the first time some of them had seen an airplane, and barrage

balloons. Soon the noise of the artillery shells became a reality as the

American and German lines were less than 100 yards apart. At 5:15 a.m. on

October 1, 1918, the attack started.

Combat was

very heavy. In two days, October 8 and 9 the 71^st brigade suffered

1600 causalities, 1300 of these on the 8^th alone. The Germans had amassed

massive amounts of firepower in the Blanc Mont area; they were well entrenched

and seasoned troops. In one instance American artillery fire that was supposed

to land among the German troops went over them and left them virtually

untouched when the attack started. The 71^st Brigade faced machine

guns that had supposed to have been wiped out by the artillery.

They faced

such heavy opposition that in the period of time they were supposed to have

taken seven miles, they were only able to advance 700 yards. They ran out of

water and the best that could be done for them was to find some canned tomatoes

and drink the liquid off those.

The fierce attacks

by the 71^st Brigade and the rest of the 36^th Division and

their ability to take all that the Germans could throw at them with led to the

Germans finally retreating out of the Blanc Mont front.

The 71^st

Brigade was given a short period of rest when the October 14 attack on Forest

Farm started. They were held in reserve and on October 27, the 141^st

Regiment moved into place on the front. After three days of combat October 27

to the 29^th, the 141^st Regiment along with the rest of

the Division was taken out of combat.

On November

11, 1918, the war was over and the armistice signed.

The 36^th

Division was sent to Tonnerre, on the Paris highway. They were assigned to do a

little road building and general labor work with the rebuilding process in the

area. They did have recreation areas and General Pershing saw that all of the

troops got at least a short period of leave in Paris.

In May, 1919

the 36^th Division began to go home. The Orange troops assigned to

the 141^st and 142^nd Regiments were on different ships.

The trip home was through calmer waters and there was less seasickness. At New

York the 141^st had boarded the troopship Yale, due to sail for

Galveston. A case of smallpox was discovered and the troops had to be quarantined

for 17 days, the sent by train to Camp Travis, near San Antonio.

The men from

Orange who were sent to Camp Travis were discharged and sent home with five

cents per mile travel allowance from their home or place of enlistment, plus a

$60 bonus. They were allowed to keep their uniforms, shoes, overcoat, steel

helmet and gas mask.

For men from

Orange who had spent their lives in Orange, their wartime experiences had to be

somewhat of a wonder. For the most part they had only seen wooden ships on the

Sabine River. They went to New Jersey and boarded steel ships, larger than

perhaps they could imagine. They arrived in France seasick, nearly to the man,

and were faced with a different culture than they had ever known. For the men

in the 141^st and 142^nd Brigades, they fought for their

lives for nearly a whole month of constant combat conditions. Short of water

was nearly a constant condition and the majority of the food was canned beef,

or corned beef. For the first time in their

lives they saw airplanes and saw those airplanes fight to the death in some

cases.

On their

journey back to Orange, they may have had more money than they had ever had in

one time in their lives. Arriving back home, they picked up the life they had

left behind to go from Orange to the Argonne and became fathers, grandfathers,

and saw other young men go to other wars.

There are no

longer any living veterans of World War I, but the legacy they left behind is a

lesson in doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done in service to

their country.

November 11

was first designated Armistice Day in remembrance of the date the armistice of

World War I was signed. After World War II it was renamed Veterans Day to be the

day that we honor all veterans of all branches of service to America.