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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (June 8, 1919)
4C THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE: JUNE 8, 1919 Rainbow Division Breaks German Defense System on Ourcq and Forces Enemy to iletreat Back Toward the Vesle River Alter Six Days of Constant Fighting Americans dyircom German Maze of Ma chine Guns, But With Heavy Cost Over 3,000 Yanks Wounded Hills and Vst Fields' Crimson With Blood of Boch.es and Americans Elsie Janis Appears to r Cheer Last Horrible Week On Field Before Relief Came. In this, the sixth installment of the "History o! tke Rainbow Di- ion,h by Raymond 8. Tompkins,' th winning of th Baftle of the Ourcq aeieribed. It r ffruellifi firht ana in which everv ounce of strength cry bit of pluck and every art and artifice of the American lighters had be put forth to win. but they won. . , The loss was heavy, but the Rainbow ceaated not its losses when it the Germans scurrvina- back toward the Vesle river and when - they ew that the resistance in the Marne salient was broken forever. After a week's steady fighting;, the Rainbow was sent from this battle (res, hut the rest was brief. The next installment, which will appear lnThe Bee Friday, takes the division into th great Meuse-Argonne drive. By RAYMOND S. TOMPKINS f It was growing dusk on July 28 when the Alabamans and lowans n&Tiirt .Nrrrv inr tni iar rime mat nav ana neia 11. inc uciimn win- lef shelled it savagely all night and clouds of bombing planes circled found and around it, dropping tons of bombs, but the Rainbows huddled cl&ser and closer behind ruined house walls and stuck. Then early in the morning of the 29th the Prussian guard returned to thw battle and in a final desperate charge drove the doughboys out of -Sirgy for the seventh time; drove them back to the banks of the Ourcq. Lost All Gained in Two Days' Battle. tfhus after two days' fighting after "tlfc German retirement from Croix Rfcuge Ferme, the Rainbow had nw.de no permanent gains and its cfsualties had been heavy. Meurcy ' Firm, Sergy and Hill 230 were still trman strongholds, commanded by kchme cutis in other German strongholds fasther on. Something had to be done; , The thing that was done was tne thing that, more than any one battle move, broke the morale of the Ger man army and bade fair, later on, to turn its splendid rearguard action into a rout. NIVERSALtreade TIRES AiBig Savings These tires are made to give service The material is carefully selected, carefully blended, made practically puncture proof and will wear like iron. Tfl some instances our customers get from 7000 to 8000 miles out of them. Remember you get a brand new Perfection inner tube with every tire ordered. "These Price Include Tire and Tube" SHIS 82x3 9,1x4 Ill.Sfl 37X41 ., 31514 lltO Mti .. 84x41 .... IS 0B 36lS . tfixil .... 13.34 87iS . Mx4i .... 13.80 SEL1NIE 7RZZ WITH EVERY TIRE .1 a.9o . 1 m . 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Rushing through the open tip to the concealed German machine guns in the hope of frightening the gunners into surrender, or of catching them off their guard was sheer suicide. That was now certain. v Try New Strategy. So then and there the Rainbow conceived and launched a typically American style of attack; launched it as extemporaneously at a great orator in the heat of a debate launches an immortal phrase. It claims no credit for having origi nated it. In one form or another the American divisions which had fought in Belleau Wood and up to Le . Croix Rouge Ferme and before Soissonsyhad used the same method of capturing German machine gun nests. But the Rainbow knew nothing about that. It had had no schooling in such work. Without time for either rest or schooling it had come from a sector of patrols and raids to a sector of defense, and from there directly to a sector of offense, and what it learned it had to learn by bitter, costly experience. What it did now, with Sergy. Meurcy farm,, Seringes, Hill 220 and the whole line of other flanktjipoJi tions still in German hands after nearly two days of fighting, was an inspiration born of desperation; the grim, determined desperation of baf fled men bound to beat an opponent at his own game, if it takes a life time. ,. Advance Indian Fashion. Onthe morning of the 29th the entire Rainbow division made a general attack, not only upon Sergy and Meurcy Farm, but upon the pla teau between. It was not a rush this time; it was a painfully slow crawl. German machine guns blaz ed from fields of tall, yellow wheat on top of the plateau. From the tall grass, a brown streak would Milt Osilltf Motor transport is the second high est rated branch of U. S. war service. Aviation is first. ' So war taught wondrous things in truck-building s it did in aeroplane manufacture. 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Phone Tyler 2462 suddenly shoot ahead for a yard or two and disappear from view while the German guns blated at it A moment of quiet, then off to the left another brows streak and a burst of bullets from the wheat Then in the center another, then another to to right, until a half dozen men were headed toward that single German mathia gun. advancing in quick dives, now left sow right now cen ter! and whenever a man dived a Volley of rifles from his comrades answered the Sputter of the machine gun. . m And soon though it might be a half hour Or an hour, and though a sheaf of bullets might have caught one of those brown streaks in mid air so that it never dived againa little ring of men in olive-drab would be around that machine gun nest and "a kill'1 would be on. Iowan Routs Prussians. One by one the, German machine gun nests grew silent As the day waned the clatter of them, like the clatter of riveting hammers, came from farther and farther to the north. The lowans took Sergy. They got some machine guns in 'a near-crest of Hill 220, from which they could fire' jnto the German waving wheat fields and the bodies of some of them had floated down the Ourcq. But neither losses nor German reinforcements could stop the Rain bow division, now that it had start ed. The Foret de Nesles lay before it full of German defenses, and from the woods on Hill 220 machine guns still raked the positions of the 168th. At 9 a. m. on the 30th, Colo nel Screws and his 167th Alabam ans started through the wheat to ward the Chateau de Nesles, and with the aid of the sniping guns of the 26th division's artillery, blasted out machine-gun nests, crossed the plateau and dug in close to the cha teau. The 168th had to dig in after progressing about 300 yards. In Muercy Farm, Colonel Mc Coy's New Yorkers could only dig and seek shelter from the withering fire down the valley of the Ru du Pont Brule. Light field batteries and machine guns played constant ly on the ruins and unceasing duel .went on between them and the 161st artillery from Minnesota. The most the 166th could have done was hold, and they did that with heroic tenacity.- That night, the Ohioans of the 166th finding Seringes a rather hot t I ill $ M Tjifr ,M Truv'-ir mi i m Yiim -m&mmmusmmei&atom&m Sergt. B. B. Hamilton, left, (infantry) ; Sergt. Warren Hamilton (cav alry), center; Private Harry Hamilton (field artillery), right. It was Sergt B. W. Hamilton of Company M, 168th infantry, who wounded while out ahead of his own line, was attacked by 10 Prussian guardsmen. He shot five and the rest ran away. This photo was taken in July, 1916, at Camp Dodge, la., shortly after the Iowa National Guard had been mobilized at tHe time of the Mexican crisis. The Hamilton brothers, all lowans, had nit seen each other for more than five years and met for the first time on the day the snap shot was taken. nests in the Arbe les Jomblets and the Bois de Planchette. Here on Hill 220, Sergt. B. W. Hamilton of M Company, 168th in fontry, wounded while out ahead of his own line, was attacked by 10 Prussian guardsmen. He shot five and the rest ran away. The Aalabamans got well on to ward the top of the plateau, and the 165th, unsuccessful at Meurcy Farm with the new "Indian meth od" of attack on machine guns, call ed for a long concentration of artil lery fire on the place, and finally their Irish tempers got the best of them and they went at it with their bayonets as they had gone over the top in Champagne. They killed the German machine gunners in hand-to-hand fighting. In the afternoon, Colonel Hough's men of the 166th regiment, stormed Seringes on its high, bare hill. It was a gallant charge across i,:uu meters of ground entirely without cover, while machme-srun nests flanked it and heavy fire came from the village. Instead ot talcing it by direct attack the Ohioans worked around it and took Hill 184 to the northwest. From there they silenc ed the machine guns in Seringes and then went down and bayonettea tne gunners who were left. Huns Chained to Guns. It was shortly after this, you will remember, that stories became cur rent about Germans being found chained to their machine guns in the woods. There also began com ing from German sources stories of inhuman cruelty of American sol diers. There had been many other stories heretofore, bearing on the in human treatment of German soldiers by their officers, and there had been much German propaganda intended to counteract stories of German fiendishness and cruelty. But behind those stories in those days of late July and early August, 1918, was something more than propaganda. There was looming up in the German army a feeling of terror of these quick, forward,mov ing men in olive drab, who were not afraid even of the wonderful German machine guns, but who dived and wriggled toward them and were suddenly all around them in desperate little rings. German gunners were being chained to their guns; it was becom ing necessary. And since men at bay will always fight for their lives, the fights around the machine gun nests in the battle of the Ourcq were nearly ' always fights to the death. The Rainbow division took few prisoners in that battle; its rec ord of prisoners captured through out the war falls short of the rec ords of one or two other divisions; it usually fought to kill. That was the cruelty of which the Germans spoke. . Germans Send Reserves. With this advance of the Rainbow through the first of the Ourcq's great defenses, "the German high command, too, became alarmed for the dignity of its retirement from, the Chateau Thierry'salient. It be gan putting id reserves. Opposite the Rainbow there was now, from left to right the 10th Laudwehr division, the Sixth ' Bavarian re serves, the Fourth Prussian guard and the 201st. Nowhere else along the whole fighting front were Ger man troops massed so densely as op posite the Rainbow, the 28th and the Third American divisions at this stage of the Ourcq battle. By 8 o'clock on the night of July 30, Colonel Fatrchild, the Rainbow division surgeon, had reported the losses in wounded atone as 3,276 men from the beginning of" the fighting at La Croix Rouge Ferme. Of the killed no record could be kept at that time. The brave men wiui had died ware out thera in thai place to hold, worked a ruse. They deserted the village. During the aft ernoon enemy patrols, filtering in to it, found it empty. More came in, and still more, until by nightfall a large body of them was there, probably preparing new machine gun positions, if not preparing a counter attack. And all this time Colonel Hough's men were hanging to the edge of Hill 184, and when darkness had fallen they surrounded Seringes, at tacked it from every side and in a fierce hand-to-hand battle mopped it as clean of boches as a new bath room floor. The 168th fought its last fight of the Ourcq campaign on August 1, when it took Hill 212. It was a ter rible task and the fight lasted all through the hot day. The whole regiment was in the battle at one stage or another, with Maj. Claude Stanley's second battalion leading the first attack, Maj. Emory Worth ington's first battalion relieving Stanley, and the third battalion un der Maj. Guy Brewer coming in to ward the end of the day. The third battalion was the first to get a firm foothold on the hill. Germans Start Retreat. It was Private Burke, Major Brew er's personal orderly, who carried to regimental headquarters at La Motte Farm the message that Hill 212 had at last been captured, after three runners who had started with the same message had been killed by German artillery. Shells fell in the whole Ourcq valley that day like rain. Hill 212 commanded the Foret de Nesles, which was now the only strong position the boche had left in his whole Ourcq system. French and American artillery, concentrat ing upon it, silenced the . German batteries and they began to with draw. And on the. night of August 1 the German infantry pulled itself together quietly, and silently stole away toward the River Vesle. v The Rainbow had outwitted, OUt gamed and outfought the bast Sol diers in the German army. They were now in full retreat from the Ourcq. 1 The pursuit started next morning. The 168th exhausted after six days and nights of constant fighting of the hardest kind, was revealed by the 117th engineers from California and South Carolina, -commanded by Colonel Kelly. This regiment, ready now to attack as infantry, as they had been ready to defend in the Champagne, carried on the chase with the Ohio, Alabama and New York infantry regiments. That day the Rainbow advanced through the Foret de Nesles nearly five kilometers beyond the point from which it had started in the morning. The Germans in their hurry to get away blew up great ammunition dumps, but the Kain bow came so closely upon their heels that they deserted nearly 30,- 000 shells which the division captur ed intact. Lived in Posthole. A line running between Mont St. Martin and Chery Chartreuve was the limit of the Rainbow's advance; between the first-named point and La Croix Rouge Ferme the distance was 1 kilometers tne longest ad vance by any division attacking be tween Sqissons and Rheims. There a relief of the Rainbow by the Fourth division, which had been pro gressing during the pursuit, ' was completed, but the artillery stayed in position for several days assisting the Fourth to maintain a footing be yond the Vesle river. ihe weather was hot. and the country full of ruined villages, dead unburied bodies boche and Amer ican and thousands of dead horses. The men were dirty; baths were next to impossible. But instead of being withdrawn from the salient, which seemed on the verge of be coming a pest hole, the Rainbow division was held in reserve for nearly a week. Sickness broke out. Elsie Janis Appears. And into the middle of this filthy backyard of war, with its sicken ing smells and sights and its un kept, lousy men, there bounded on a fine afternoon one Elsie Janis fluffy, beautiful, pipquant not at all unlike a goddess just stepping out of the clouds for a bit to see what all this rough-house was about down here below. That's what it seemed like to the Rainbow divi sion. They hauled a wagonbed into an open field and made a stage on it, and there jblsie Janis danced and sang before a vast concourse of un washed doughboys, who suddenly remembered that there was such a thing in the world as a pretty American girl and were somewhat awed and saddened at the remem brance. An aeroplane came whir ring overhead while Elsie Janis sang "Oh You Dirty Germans!" It came so low that you could see the black Maltese cross on the lower planes. But nobody minded. (To be continued in The Bee Friday). Stuht Reports Many Recent Sales in Omaha Recent sales of homes and vacant property of C. B. Stuht Co. aggre gate $92,100 and are as follows; Dundee home at . 4845 Farnam street to John F. Hecox, vice presi dent of the Pioneer State bank, for $11,000. Dundee home at 4650 Dodge street to Peter M. Ccnklin for $5,000. Dundee home at M650 Dodge Street to Hannah Morskovitz for $10000. Home in Mcntclair addition at 3223 Hamilton street t4 John P. Cummins for $6,000. Dundee home at 1300 No. 52 ave nue to Anna B. Van Knuth for $6,250. ! Dundee hotoe at 1310 No. Slst street to Neal Jones, managing, editor, Of Omaha Daily News, for $5,650. ' ! Home in Lockwood addition to Raymond E. Davis, vice president, O'Brien-Davis-Coad company, for $13,000. Dundee lot to George E. Grimes, who is building a home, for ,$1350. Dundee lot to Otto Nilson for $1,2000. Dundee lot to Herman Hull for $1,650. Dundee home to Walter S. John son, presiden of Mid-City Motor and Supply company, at 4858 Harney Street, for $6,500. Dundee home to T. H. Simms, organist, All Saints Cathedral, at 4856 Harney street for $6,500. Home m Glen park addition, near Benson, to C V. Murry for $3,900. Home in Montelair addition to Louis fterrmann for $d.75Q- Notre Dame, ths largest boarding school iu the world, is situated at Souih Bend, Ind. The estate covers 15,000 acres and cOlts $1,200 daily for maintenance. 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