‘[American] officers and men were most anxious to learn, and eager for the fight.’
Lieutenant-Colonel John Farrell, Commander Australian 43rd Battalion
ON SUNDAY 30 June, the day after Ned Searle and his 15th Battalion mates played with the tanks at Vaux, officers and NCOs of the American 131st and 132nd Infantry Regiments also took part in the tank exercises. Unlike the Australians, the Americans had no previous experience with tanks, good or bad, and they participated with great interest and enthusiasm. The 131st’s commanding officer Colonel Sanborn rated the day as ‘most instructive, as it gave the men some idea of tank tactics and promised confidence in action’.75
One of Sanborn’s NCOs practising tank cooperation that day was twenty-three-year-old Corporal Thomas Alexander Pope from Chicago. Tom Pope had been born and raised in Edison Park, a predominantly Irish area on the northern rim of Chicago named for inventor Thomas Edison. On leaving school, Tom had gone to work for the busy Cook County Highway Department. To this day, Chicagoans will tell you: ‘We only have two seasons in Chicago – Summer, and Repairing the Roads.’
Tom also joined his brother J. J. and a bunch of school friends in enlisting in the part-time National Guard’s 1st Illinois Regiment. Tom, a solidly built, long-faced, thoughtful boy who was slow to smile, had gone to Texas with the regiment in 1916 during the Pancho Villa crisis, then returned there the following year as the Prairie Division trained for the war in Europe.
By the time the 131st and 132nd arrived in France in May 1918, the Chicago National Guard units had been brought up to full strength by the addition of draftees from throughout Illinois. Voluntary enlistment in the US military after the United States officially declared war on the Central Powers on 4 April 1917 had not met expectations, and the government of President Woodrow Wilson had instituted conscription. This had met with legal challenges, going all the way to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the draft had been suspended. This was one of the reasons why the US was slow to send troops to Europe; it was intended that when the Americans arrived they did so in force, as an independent entity and not as piecemeal reinforcements the French and British could throw into their own battered units.
On 7 January 1918, the US Supreme Court had decided in favour of conscription, and the draft got underway in earnest across the US. In Los Angeles on 8 January, Carl Laemmle, boss of Universal Studios, laid off 1500 of his 2100 employees. With the US Government talking about sending more than three million men to the European war by 1919, Laemmle foresaw a drastic dropoff in US movie-house attendances in 1918. Other Hollywood studios quickly followed his lead, and soon Los Angeles was so flooded with out-of-work actors who couldn’t pay their bills that rooming houses and restaurants put up signs: ‘No dogs. No actors.’ More than one Hollywood actor was drafted into the US military as conscription built the nation’s army in 1918.
As the political and legal games played out in Washington DC, to the frustration of the 131st Regiment’s longtime volunteers like Tom Pope, who were chafing to get into the fight against Kaiser Wilhelm II’s men, their training in Illinois and Texas had been stretched out for close to a year, without a hint of action. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers died at the front.
Despite the lengthy training, during which Tom and his comrades practised defending and taking trenches time and time again, the brutal realities of trench warfare were as yet unknown to them. By the time they marched into Allonville in France, they were still novices, yet to see or be exposed to an artillery bombardment or experience the maiming and death of buddies around them. On the way to Allonville, the appearance of a German aircraft overhead had sent the men of the regiment diving for cover at the roadside, where they nervously remained for some time, delaying the march.
General Bell and Colonels Sanborn and Davis were acutely aware of the inexperience of their men, and keen to let them taste action without putting them too far into harm’s way. Participating in a ‘show’ in company with the Australians offered just such an opportunity. But, for the moment, the Hamel secret remained confined to them; they could not tell their men that within days they would be coming face-to-face with the Boche.
In the National Guard units it was the experienced guardsmen who received promotion to officer and NCO ranks, and in this way Tom Pope had become a corporal in charge of one of the squads in the 131st Regiment’s Company E. His company commander was Captain Jim Luke, who had only recently taken over this command, and Pope’s platoon commander was First Lieutenant Alfred N. Clissold. As Company E was attached to the Australian 43rd Battalion on 30 June, the company’s lively intelligence officer First Lieutenant Herman H. Weimer and his assistants eagerly partnered with the 43rd’s experienced intelligence men. Lieutenant-Colonel John Farrell, commander of the 43rd Battalion, was impressed by Tom Pope and his Company E comrades, reporting: ‘Officers and men were most anxious to learn and eager for the fight.’76
That night, from the reserve trenches at Allonville they were now sharing with Australians, Tom Pope and his comrades watched a display that had become commonplace to the Aussies. ‘The sky was lighted along the entire northern horizon by fireworks as numerous big guns shelled the trenches and roads to the front and rear.’77 The same day the American units were absorbed into the Australian units, all junior officers were informed for the first time that they and their men would be attacking the Hamel salient on the fourth of July. It would be another two days before Tom Pope and all other NCOs and enlisted men were brought into the secret. Little did mild-mannered, duty-bound Pope know that, before long, he would make American history.