Memories of the European War, Our Last Campaign, Five Days and Nights
With my straightforward but honest manner, my “diary” now reports on what I believe to have been our last mission. I say that it was the final one because I trust we have been victorious, although we have only enjoyed a thirty-five-day truce granted to an exhausted enemy that has practically begged for it.
We had been resting for a few days close to the front when we were told it was absolutely necessary to make a final push to defeat our enemy. The effort was not in vain since it pleased our superiors, who are in charge of our battle plans.
On October 26, the sergeant from the R.I.O. and I received the orders to take charge of a place we expected to occupy during our regiment’s offensive on the dawn of November 1. The first brigade from our division was already at the front and had reached its objective. We were now going to relieve them.
We took over the railroad station the Germans had used to supply food and munitions to their troops. Their artillery, located about four kilometers away, fired at us the five days we were there. The small village of Romagne was some one hundred meters to the southwest. Several field kitchens as well as a number of large cannon were to the south. We faced constant shelling and reported many casualties.
Small groups from our brigade began to move past us during the early evening hours of the thirtieth. The enemy soon discovered our troop movement and fired heavy artillery shells. They continued the all-night bombardment with large numbers of shells of suffocating gases. It was a night of great danger.
Our troop movement and the enemy’s artillery fire continued into the evening of the thirty-first. The sergeant and I left at four in the afternoon for our command post. Two kilometers later, we reached our destination. The shells were landing constantly on the road. Many dead animals were strewn along the way. Large amounts of equipment were also scattered everywhere, the kind that soldiers discard during forced marches, when they have to attend to the enemy’s resistance.
The second battalion had camped out in a small valley along the route we were taking. The soldiers were digging foxholes to protect themselves against the machine gun fire. Some tragedies had already occurred. A grenade had torn two soldiers to pieces right before we arrived. We arrived without a hitch, but I had to return to the station our brigade now occupied. I returned for my buddies who had remained behind and we reached our new location without any problems, but we continued to come across depressing battlefield scenes. Our colonel and a French lieutenant who is attached to our regiment were moving with us, within a short distance of our group. The ever-alert Germans spotted the officers with their powerful telescopes and opened fire. We moved in short intervals after each shell explosion to avoid becoming targets. Our officers escaped injury, although some soldiers were wounded in their foxholes.
As the dark mantle of the evening slowly covered us, we could now and then hear the deadly shrill of German shells followed by the terrible explosions and loss of human lives. After the explosions had shaken the ground and echoed in the valleys, a profound silence set in and regular time stretched into agonizing hours. The muffled sound of soldiers digging foxholes and moving in search of precious rest interrupted the silence. A natural instinct to survive and nothing else drove us to dig in. We absolutely knew what would happen if a shell landed on us. The heavy fortifications of cement and steel have been useless against such force. How could the quickly improvised cover of dirt and branches save us? The sole protection the spacious underground structures offered our officers was a thin galvanized sheet, also covered with loose dirt.
My buddies from San Diego and Backville, Texas, and I took more time and care than usual to build our dugout. We dug it so our heads would rest under the roots of some trees. The trees were not big but they were strong, and they offered us added protection. We had no trouble finding wood for the dugout cover. The artillery had decimated the forests and produced the necessary material. We also gathered empty munitions boxes, filled them with dirt, and placed them on the dugout’s flanks to serve as barricades.
As fate would have it, our dugout was not far from the command post and between the officers’ kitchen area and the munitions depot, all important places that attracted the attention of the enemy’s artillery. Their aircraft spotted us and alerted the big guns by the evening of that terrible day. The most horrific bombardment hit us in the early evening. We had never seen anything like it and do not ever wish to see it again. Our cannon, made up of all manner of guns, were positioned at the lower slope of each of the hills and up to six miles from the enemy’s front, but all of them, with the exception of one or two batteries that fired at intervals, watched in silence. Our artillery had been told to fire later, at eleven. Our infantry and machine gun battalions were also waiting.
We slept; we actually pretended to sleep. That was not the time to sleep! Many of the soldiers rested against their backpacks instead of preparing new makeshift beds. They waited for the supreme hour when our cannon would begin firing, believing this would silence the German guns.
We went to bed prepared for the sacrifice, yet recognizing that it would be useless to give in to our anxieties. By dismissing the danger around us, we were defying death itself. We did have our moments of deep contrition, solemn occasions when we acknowledged our insignificance next to the noble cause we serve. Nothing within a circumference of five kilometers was safe. It was the same everywhere, in the woods, foothills, valleys, and roads. None of us can forget—even if we wanted—the loud, frightful sound of the mortar rounds the Germans were using to finish us. We could hear the shells coming out of the mouths of cannon as if they were vomiting them. We followed their sound as they rose to some unknown height, paused momentarily, and then descended in search of their prey. The shells crashed on Mother Earth with their electrical discharges and dreadful explosions. They poured their deadly cargo and fragments over us.
Three powerful explosives fell near our dugout. The first small caliber shell landed three meters from our heads. It shook the earth and tossed dirt over us. Another huge shell caused such a great explosion it disoriented us. Gómez, our loyal comrade, was on guard duty and the only one standing in the vicinity. He thought we had been killed when he heard the explosion and saw where it had occurred. Gómez ran to us only to find a crater and large clods of dirt where we were supposed to be. He was more shocked when we failed to answer his calls, “Sáenz! Barrera! Are you alive?” We finally responded, “Yes, what’s going on?” We did not know what had happened and only feared a new possible danger. What I mean to say is we had not even heard the explosion. The third grenade had landed while we were sleeping. Barrera, however, had decided to get up at that instant and stand at the entrance of the dugout.
Barrera was standing, we were lying down. That grenade would have ended our lives if Divine Providence had not intervened. The branches on the tree had offered enough resistance to detonate the shell. The fragments rained over us but, fortunately, did not hit us. The sticks on our cover were torn into splinters while a big one tore through one of the boxes with dirt. Other splinters fell outside and within the foxhole, and many of them plowed into the earth and tree trunks. The branches fell on us and only a small steel fragment hit Barrera on the back of his neck, as if to remind us that death was never far. His injury alarmed us, but we later discovered it was not serious. We cleaned the small amount of blood in his wound with my handkerchief. Everyone who has survived the war will recount incidents like ours because all of us faced the same dangers along the entire front.
After witnessing the enemy’s attack, our artillerymen could not wait for the designated time to start firing. They took action an hour earlier than planned. We had it from a reliable source that they fired 73,000 volleys of various calibers. This occurred in the small sector of around three kilometers in width that we occupied.
Our first rolling barrage started at dawn, on the first of November. Our tanks, light infantry, machine gun squadrons, and regular infantry attacked the enemy’s front with indescribable fury. Their trenches and barbed wire were of little use. Machine gun fire supported the German infantry as they tried to resist our offensive. The fighting was some of the bloodiest of the war and the human loss was incalculable. We lost many brave men. The enemy’s losses, on the other hand, can be estimated conservatively at three times more than ours. Our artillery hit the tenacious Germans so well that entire companies of different types surrendered. Many of the prisoners celebrated the good fortune of surrendering to us and were more than willing to pick up the injured from the battlefield; the majority of the injured were their own.
The bloody fighting and our victory was the decisive blow that finished the Teutonic pride and dispelled forever the Germans’ false dream of global conquest.
We were in possession of the contested territory by November 2. The enemy beat a retreat and offered us little resistance. The Germans mostly occupied themselves with what they called their “strategic” retreat. This is what they first told their infantrymen. Our doughboys were inspiring; they heroically swept over the enemy and disregarded the many German ambushes. They entered the impenetrable woods to displace the machine gun nests in the trees and threw themselves into river currents to catch up with the enemy columns that were on the run. In many cases, the Germans did not even have time to bury their dead.
At four in the afternoon of the tenth, we reached a beautiful town the Germans had just evacuated. More than six hundred people regained their liberty. They seemed to have awakened from a deep stupor that had lasted more than four years. We cannot really understand what they were feeling. The Germans gave them enough time to leave the town, but they risked their lives to be free again.
We had just entered the town when a large gas shell hit a home, killing one of our soldiers and a French woman who had just won her freedom. We received orders at that moment to prepare for a major attack on the next day at dawn. Our battalions and artillery took their respective places. The orders were given and everyone prepared for the order to attack.
The day that we were eagerly expecting—the eleventh of November—finally arrived. Early in the day, one of my buddies, a messenger, was told to deliver the order in spite of heavy enemy fire. He carried out his orders faithfully. When he reached the second battalion at our front line of fire, the troops were already prepared for the assault. Everyone stopped for an anxious moment when they received the order that suspended the offensive. Our troops were surprised and eager for an explanation. The order also stated that the artillery from both sides would continue firing until eleven in the morning.
Soon after this, we learned that hostilities would cease for thirty-five days beginning at eleven. The hour arrived and we still doubted, but it happened—just like that, they suspended the hostilities, that horrible shedding of human blood by the millions of men who fought for more than four years.
The truce produced beautiful scenes, but not without the kind of sad incidents we expect in war. The multitudes from both sides of the line of fire burst with shouts of joy. Their last shell landed on some unfortunate soldiers and took six lives.
This was our last operation. Since then, we have entertained the sweet hope for the desired peace. Since everyone is observing the armistice, we are confident that soon, very soon, we will return to out dear homes on the other side of the blue Atlantic.
We Mexican Americans faced the danger never doubting the character and integrity we have inherited from our ancestors. I do not know whether to feel pride or a sense of satisfaction, or both, now that we have received this great opportunity to affirm our legacy. We should be amply pleased that many of our compatriots have held the name of our raza high. They have known how to give themselves fully to their duties as good citizens. Even we, the common foot soldiers, are glad to have been able to make a meaningful contribution to this most sacred cause. Now that our most noble mission has been met, our happiness has no bounds because victory promises us a better future.
Mr. Knox, my friend:
I cannot let this joyful occasion pass without writing you. I have nothing new or possibly significant to report for anyone except for the remaining soldiers who hope and wait for a better tomorrow.
The complete destruction of the most powerful, dangerous, and threatening autocracy to face weaker countries is obviously a magnificent and unappreciated act, especially if we take into account the price in lost lives we paid in the process.
At this moment of great expectations, we are so happy our burning faith demonstrates that Providence will rule in favor of our cause and crown our sacrifice with the desired triumph.
We also expect that someone will assume the responsibility of writing a full account of the martyred contributions of the millions of souls who sacrificed to guarantee peace and fraternity for years to come. During the few years we have left, we will be able to see the scarring over of humanity’s wound. That is why we can expect that the permanent unification of the races on earth will spring from this immense shared suffering.
LUZ