War in Words

By Daniel W. Phillips

War in Words is a gripping journey through World War I. In this rare firsthand account, Corporal Daniel W. Phillips describes his tour of duty from high school to boot camp and then overseas as a machine gunner at the front lines of battle. This narrative recounts with bone-chilling detail and brutal honesty the hardships of survival, the horrors of war, and the incredible strength of the human spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483503219

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PREFACE

I, Daniel W. Phillips, an American of Welsh descent, was born on a farm in Lyon County, Minnesota. When I was seventeen, my parents moved from the farm to Tracy, Minnesota where I attended the city public schools.

On February 23, 1918, when I was a senior in high school, I answered my country's call to arms. The United States had entered the world war on the side of the Allies against Germany. From this date to May 1918, I underwent a great transformation; from a peace-loving school boy to a ruddy, militant soldier, trained in the art of machine-gunnery and had sailed overseas to war-torn France.

In July 1918, I received a letter from home, stating that my high school class had graduated and that I, too, had been awarded my diploma as a war graduate.

During the hectic year that followed overseas, I wrote many letters home, I lived up to my promise that I would keep my mother fully informed of my health and experiences. In so doing, I furnished much war information which proved very interesting to my parents and close friends at home. Unknown to me then, many of my letters that I wrote when at the front were published in the hometown paper. Naturally, when I returned home, I was asked to relate this and that experience until I was fairly exhausted. I then conceived the idea of putting my full military experience into a story form. I gathered together my letters and other war notes I had made during my services and combined all with my then vivid memories to write a true war story. Arranged in nineteen chapters in which I reveal all that happened, whether pleasant or gruesome, and in the order of their occurrence, spanning the period from the day I left home for camp, to the day I returned a war veteran.

My war story is quite different from other war stories that have been published and put in pictures. My story has no love affair, nor is the story of a one-man hero. The credit and glory is shared among all the men who wore the uniform and more so to those comrades who died in sacrifice so that our Democratic way of life be preserved.

By reading these chapters, many for the first time will grasp the full and true meaning of war. Few people stop to realize the number of men who were lost, some ten million soldiers died throughout the entire battle lines. Millions more became physical and mental wrecks who were dumped back into civilian life after the war to struggle against many odds for existence.

May our Government so provide even though it be necessary to fight again to preserve our hard-won liberties, so that our dead comrades may not have died in vain.

CHAPTER ONE

From High School to

a Military Camp

In July 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian boy named Gavrilo Princip fired a pistol killing Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Immediately Austria declared war on Serbia. Simultaneously other European nations began mobilizing their armies. A war had begun which was to involve thirty-eight of the greater and more civilized world powers.

On August third, Germany declared war on France. The German armies marched on through Belgium, being the shortcut to reach and to attack France. This act was in violation of then-existing treaties and Belgium naturally resisted the German invaders. Germany, determined to go through, turned her powerful artillery on the Belgium fortifications, demolishing such fortifications as were then considered impregnable. The victorious German army drove the Belgians into retreat. The Belgians fought stubbornly, successfully checking the German advance long enough to allow France and England to get their hastily equipped armies to Flanders to meet their common foe, Germany. Some of the fiercest fighting, the most inhuman slaughtering and gassing of soldiers the world has ever known, occurred on those Belgium and French battlefields from July 1914, to November 11, 1918. By 1916 many incidents had occurred on sea and land, which automatically forced the United States to favor entering the war on the side of the Allies against Germany.

It was in the fall of 1916 when I accompanied four of my hometown pals to St. Paul, Minnesota to enlist in either the Marines or coast artillery. Two of the boys passed the rigid peacetime examinations to the Marine Corps. A little later, I made another effort to enlist in a Pacific Coast Artillery School. The entrance examinations were given at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I passed the technical examination with high grade, but in the final checkup I was again rejected on account of being too light for my height. I weighed around 140 pounds and stood five feet eleven-and-a-half inches in my stocking feet. Words could not express my disappointment. Much discouraged, I returned home to wait on some further developments.

The following year on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson read his message to Congress that declared that a state of war actually existed between the United States and the German Alliance. Belgium, France, and Italy, and the British Empire had been fighting desperately for three years and victory was in the balance. It was evident that America had to come to the rescue with money, food, munitions, and plenty of fresh soldiers; our standing army was small, our military equipment was then inadequate for a foreign campaign. To meet the emergency, our government made a hasty conscription of the nation's manpower and resources. Of course, I was then in line for the first call. I took the medical examination given by a local examining board and was accepted without question. I was in the soundest of health and had never been sick a day in my life.

High school graduation photo.

Shortly after, on February 23, 1918, I left high school on a quick summons for service. It was on Saturday at one-o'clock in the afternoon that a train waited at the hometown depot, ready to haul a load of young men to a military camp. Those fellows who assembled at the depot that day were from Tracy, Minnesota and the surrounding vicinity.

Boys leaving for camp. At the depot in Tracy, Minnesota.

When we recruits had assembled, the city businessmen presented each of us with an overseas cap. The local Red Cross gave each one a handy little bag containing a sewing kit and some toilet articles. Around us were the citizens of the city and country, bidding us all good luck and goodbye. There were waving of flags and the playing of patriotic music by the city band. However cheerful the occasion may have seemed, there were here and there mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers with tear-filled eyes and aching hearts. All members of my family were present. Their emotions made me feel a bit sad, but I braced up and camouflaged my feelings with a smile while I bid my people and friends goodbye. I assured them all I would be back before long with some of the Kaiser's scalp. What I said and what I thought were quite different, for I realized I had made a promise that was not so certain. For three years I had read and followed the war developments. At that time I was sure I would see France and an unknown amount of action. The future was dark, but I lived in hopes. I never forgot that parting scene, as I viewed the home crowd from the platform of the rear coach until distance separated us from sight. Our train sped along in an easterly direction until around sundown when we reached Mankato, Minnesota.

Daniel Phillips and his mother Sarah Williams Phillips

at the depot in Tracy, Minnesota.

Troop or recruit trains were then new, and great crowds gathered at all the stations. The greatest crowd gathered at Mankato to welcome us. Here we got out and in double file marched from the train on south through town and up the hills to the armory, and to several church kitchens where we were all given a fine evening meal. I did not learn whether this food was donated by the Mankato citizens or if furnished by the Government. I was hungry and everything tasted very good. After all were fed, we lined up and marched back to the train to continue on our journey to Camp Dodge, Iowa, the new mobilization center for most Minnesota and Iowa men.

As the train was about to leave I had a most pleasant surprise. One of my high school teachers, Miss Ethelwin Hopkins, who had come to her home in Mankato to spend the weekend, brought me a nice, big box of candy. I had barely received it when the train started. I sampled my candy and placed it in my suitcase. For several days after my arrival in Camp Dodge, I had some good candy lunches.

All that night we traveled in day coaches from Mankato, south. During the first part of the evening the fellows in my car smoked, joked, and laughed merrily. We were all from around home and were well acquainted. As the night dragged on, many became tired and fell asleep, sprawled out in the seats and on the floor. When morning came, one by one, the boys awoke and fished in their luggage for an apple or a hidden sandwich to pacify a breakfast appetite. By the time it became daylight we were approaching the cantonment. When we had gathered ourselves and our luggage together the train stopped at the camp gate.

CHAPTER 2

Camp Dodge, Iowa

Learning to Soldier in the

88th Division

When our train stopped within the camp limits, I saw from my car window, through the slanting rays of a February morning sun, seemingly hundreds of two-story rather flat-roofed sheds. Some were unpainted and others still less finished, having open spaces where large windows were being fitted.

We sat in our cars quite impatient for about an hour until arrangements had been made to receive us. Finally, we were ordered out and to line up alongside the coaches, then we marched a short distance to a brand new barrack. Every one of us was given a sheet of paper on which were a number of questions for us to answer. According to our answers, we were quickly graded into several groups. These groups were then assigned to different branches of the service. Some going to artillery, some to the infantry, and others, as I did, to a machine-gun company.

I have mentioned, many of us were from my hometown, but after all were assigned to our respective units, I found myself alone in a company of strangers. I had to make new friends and this I did with no difficulty.

It took until eleven o'clock that Sunday morning before I and other newcomers were fed. We were called into a large mess hall where there were rows of plain board tables with plank benches for seating. The table was set with tin and aluminum dishes. Food was brought in on huge containers from the kitchen, which was at one end of the barrack. Several large loaves of army-baked, white bread were sliced and stacked on a tray on each table. Of all the things I remember best, it was the coffee. It was poured from a large pitcher into our aluminum cups. I sipped it several times, and always the metal cup seemed many times hotter on my lips than the coffee. I found sugar for my java, but there wasn't any cream. I looked up and down the table for a cream pitcher; just then one of the kitchen police or waiters shouted, No cream in the army. I heard someone else say it was tough, but we had to like our coffee straight. The flavor of that strong, black coffee in that thin, hot cup was anything but good. But as time went on I learned to like everything. I soon realized all was so different from home where Mother had everything to suit. The coffee incident put me thinking there was no use getting excited over army ways and customs, that they were never changed to suit a fellow. I decided to make the best of anything I had, and felt satisfied knowing that things could be worse. All who did likewise got along famously in the army. I also found I had to adjust myself to certain schedules. There was a definite time to get up, shave, and brush our uniforms, eat, go to drill and go to bed. Lights had to be out at nine and all about the camp had to be quiet except for the guards who marched their beats, shouldering army Springfield rifles.

The first few days in camp passed with little excitement. The second week was entirely different. New loose-fitting uniforms were issued to those who thus far had been wearing their civilian clothes. Eight hours a day of drilling was done on the hills north of camp. Next, we were placed under quarantine for two weeks. Those were two pretty tough weeks for some.

Every man in the company was vaccinated in the left arm for smallpox; we were also given three inoculations in the back, near the left shoulder. These last three were given about a week apart. They were for prevention of typhoid and other diseases. The serum and the smallpox vaccine made many of the fellows terribly weak and sick. We went out a short distance from the barrack for setting-up exercises or a short exercise hike each day. Many of the boys fell out exhausted and some fainted. Along about the fifth week in camp, we all were pretty well over our ills and the regular army life was progressing in earnestness.

Every forenoon and afternoon except Sunday we drilled with barely a pause. It was forward march, squads right, column right or left, squads right and left about-1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, everybody in step, hup, hup, hup, hup (double-time march); sure enough, this last command was given as it seemed, always at the wrong place. As I remember, we double-time marched more uphill than on any other lay of the land. Our non-commissioned officers, as well as some of our lieutenants were regular army men. They had spent many years of their life in the army, and they surely let us know how tough they were. Some of them had a sort of a pride in walking around like a lion, and, in fact, a couple of them had lionlike features. All the drilling and double-time stuff that seemed hard to us at first was soft stuff for the regular fellows, but it was not long before we new men were as hardened and, in many cases, superior and more capable of standing rough, outdoor army life than our senior members.

As our company gained in soldierly discipline, our good Captain Severson offered us special privileges to go to Des Moines to spend our evenings, providing no one misused the privilege and failed to be on the spot for reveille or roll call each morning. Every man was loyal and showed cooperation in this manner, exactly as they did on the field of training during the day. Scores of soldiers, other than from our company, traveled each night on the electric cars to Des Moines. I enjoyed many visits to the city to call on my cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Dahl, who treated me royally. Sometimes when I did not visit with my cousins, I attended a theater with the boys, had a good feed after the show, and returned to camp for our sleep and to be on the drill job with the company in the morning.

This life went on marvelously for some weeks, but it was too good a life to last when a fellow's country was at war. The end of our joys came one morning when our captain announced that during the first part of April our company would be broken up and that the best men would be transferred to Camp Gordon, Georgia to bring the 82nd Division up to war strength. The indications were that the 82nd would be the next division to go to France.

I immediately notified my parents in Tracy, Minnesota of my possible move. Mother and Father decided to pay