In September my wife and I and another couple visited France to follow the footsteps of my friend’s grandfather, Sgt. Ira Scull, and my wife’s grandfather, Pvt. Liege Sedlaczeck, both World War I U.S. Army veterans. On a peaceful sunny day we stood above a beautiful champagne grape vineyard overlooking the Marne River and the quaint village of Saint Agnan while my friend read a section from Scull’s company history.
They fought alongside a French division to gain combat experience. They learned to dig trenches, to cut through razor sharp rolls of wire, to follow rolling artillery barrages ahead of them, to counter criss-crossing machine gun fire, to attack with bayonets, and to identify deadly gas shells quickly. In July 1918, Saint Agnan would be their first test as an independent American unit.
German soldiers, like the French and British, were exhausted after four years of bloodshed, but the German high command knew millions of Americans were headed across the Atlantic. They launched a last gasp offensive before fresh American troops were combat ready. The Marne River marked the western edge of that offensive, and French forces were hanging by a thread. If the Americans didn’t succeed, the Germans would be in Paris.
Scull’s combat engineer company was beside the first wave of attacking infantry. The Americans emerged from a tree line just south of a roadway. They ran across a wheat field that offered little protection from the wall of steel enemy guns hurled toward them.
Men fell all around them. Some screamed in pain. Some spewed blood from gashed torsos and dismembered limbs. Others died from less visible wounds and lay quietly as if in a deep sleep. Still, the doughboy line surged forward. Through the hellish carnage, noise, smoke and confusion they broke through the German lines, clamored across a maze of enemy trenches and pushed into the rear areas, capturing hundreds of prisoners, provisions and artillery. The enemy retreat continued, and Germany signed an armistice four months later on Nov. 11, 1918. Nearly 117,000 doughboys died during those months of fighting.