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Show HE'S RETREAT IS vmnmraiED Storm of Shell Fire Described by Illinois Officer. HUN SLAUGHTER WAS GREAT First Lieutenant Pettit of Ottawa, in Letter to His Father Gives Details of Battle in Which British Fought at Great Odds. The thrilling story of the finis retreat re-treat in the terrific battle In Picanly Is most interestingly detailed by First Lieutenant Roswell T. Pettit, M. O.-K. O.-K. C, of Ottawa, 111., In n letter to his father. Dr. J. W. Pettit of the Ottawa tuberculosis colony, and published In the Chicago Tribune. For nine days the American otlicer wns in the thickest thick-est of the fiphting. and during the retreat re-treat of the British Fifth army from before St. yuentin. His account of the battle thrills with the stress of the herculean conflict, as It was detailed Immediately after ho had passed through the terrible experience and before be-fore his impressions had been dulled by time. His letter : Lieutenant Pettit's Letter. March 30. Dear Father: Now that the show Is over for me for the time being;, and I have time to breathe and sleep and eat and write, I'll try and tell you about the battle. Before you receive this you will have had the whole story from the papers, but I know you will be interested in knowing what I did in the affair. Of course, the things I saw were but an infinitesimal part of a gigantic whole and it would he impossible for me to give a correct description of the battle. And as I write this, I do it with no knowledge whatever of what has beengoing on even a few miles from me. I have not seen a paper in eight days ; I have received no mall, and the onlv Information we have received has been by word of mouth, and most of what we hear must be wild rumors. For example: ex-ample: The French have advanced 20 miles at Verdun, the Americans Ameri-cans have taken Ostend, and are on their way to Zeebrucce, and a great naval battle has been fought in the North sea. All I know Is that on this part of the front the Gfrmans attacked us In overwhelming over-whelming numbers, in places t3n divisions divi-sions to our one; that they suffered terrible losses, but finally broke through our lines of defense, one after another, and fighting for the most part, a rear guard action, we have retired about 15 miles in a straight line. For a week before the battle started we had ben expecting it; we were ready to move on 30 minutes' notice. no-tice. I had been out with combatant as well as medical officers on tours of reconnaissance, definite methods of evacuation of ihe wounded had been worked out, and our plans of counterattack counter-attack been made. After four or five days of waiting, the storm finally broke. The Boche opened up on us at 5 a. m March 21, with the heaviest barrage I have ever heard. "Stand to," was sounded, we turned out dressed, and had all our equipment packed in 30 minutes. Then we sat down and waited for orders to move. The barrage bar-rage kept up continuously, sometimes heavier and then of less intensity, sometimes it seemed to be to the north of us and then suddenly it switched to the south. Our balloons were up as soon as it was light and the airplanes were buzzing buz-zing over our heads. The ground mist gradually cleared and the Germans put a hail of shrapnel on our camp and we all took cover, but three men were hit. Why It Is a fellow always feels safer with a roof over his head, even if he knows bullets and shrapnel and pieces of shell will go through boards and corrugated Iron just like paper. Ordered to Move. Our orders to move finally came and we marched off to the brigade assembly assem-bly point several miles away. This assembly as-sembly point wns in a little bunch of trees about the size of Allen park and behind and separated from a larger wood in front. In the larger wood there was a battery of heavy artillery and shells were dropping in there two or three to a minute, and it was heavy Btuff, too. Sometimes they overshot the big wood and shells were landing in the open around the little wood where my brigade had its assembly point. As we approached our little copse we could make all this out from some distance dis-tance away and it wasn't a pleasant sensation to feel that we were marching march-ing straight into it. All the "battalions arrived and In that little copse there must have been at least two thousand men. What a chance If the Germans only knew ! But the shells continued to drop In front of us and on either side, but none landed among us, and after waiting there for three hours, expecting to be blown to bits any second, we finally moved forward. for-ward. Just as we left the copse, from behind us, up over a ridge, came a stream of galloping horses. "It's the cavalry," someone shouted, but soon I made out Umbers and field guns. They galloped past us, going like mad, took up a position to our right, swung into position, unlinibered, and in two minutes were blazing away. It was a thrilling sight. Torn by Shells. In going forward we went around the end of the larger wood in front of us, over ground that was torn to bits by the heavy shell fire that had just preceded, over another edge, across a valley, and under the eivst of a hill. And here we found the tanks going over ihe top of the hill to take up their position. At this point we were still about a mile from the front line. At this place I opened up an aid post under the crest of the hill to take care of what wounded came In while we wore getting Into position. I looked hack across the valley we had just tra versed. Shrapnel was bursting In the air, shells were whizzing overhead, and our guns behind me were belching forth ihe lire. The noise was deafening. A railroad ran through the valley ami an engine pulling a couple of flat cars. was going by. A couple of soldiers sol-diers were sitting on the rear truck swinging their feet. A shell burst on the track nnd only missed the last car about fifteen yards. Neither man was hit and the train went blithely on. By this time it was getting along toward evening, the sun was sinking in the west, and finally went down a great ball of fire. At the time, I remember, re-member, I noticed Its color. It was blood red nnd bad a sinister look. Was it my imagination, or might It have been a premonition? At any rate, I shall never forget the color of the sun as It set that night at the end of the first day of probably one of the greatest great-est battles in history. It certainly didn't look good to me. The drumming of the guns continued, contin-ued, twilight gradually deepened Into night, the signalers stopped their wigwagging wig-wagging and took up their flash sig nals, a fog dropped down on us and put the lights out of business, nnd when we left to go forward under the cover of darkness they were busy putting put-ting out their telephone lines signalers signal-ers and runners don't have an easy time. Shell Dump Goes Up. Behind us a shell landed in an ammunition am-munition dump and it went up with a roar-; then the ri lie ammunition started going off like a great bunch of firecrackers, fire-crackers, and great tongues of flame lit up the sky. It is reported that the Germans had broken through our line and we were to counter-attack in the morning. We got into positions without a single casualty. I opened an aid post in an old dugout and settled down to sleep until morning. You may think It funny fun-ny that one could sleep under such conditions, but I had been up since 5:30, had tramped about six or seven miles, had had a rather trying day and was dog tired. So I settled down on the rough plank door and was soon asleep. I must have been asleep a couple of hours when a runner came from headquarters headquar-ters and told us we were to move off immediately. I looked at my watch and it was 1 :30 a. m. on the second day. We went back to the railroad, followed fol-lowed it around to a position some six miles to the north of us, landing there about 4 in the morning nnd flopped down on the floor of some abandoned huts to wait further orders. Our orders or-ders came along about 9 o'clock. We marched up across the open prairie, the sun shining, and it was really hot. Just like some of the warm days we get the last of March at home. In going forward it was necessary for us to march seventy-five yards In front of three batteries of field guns. There are six guns to a battery. They shoot an eighteen-pound shell and while we were " there each gun was shooting twice to the minute. You can imagine the racket when I tell you that the discharge of one gun can be heard about four miles. In addition addi-tion the Boche was trying to knock out this battery and he was dropping his six inch shells a little too close for comfort. Nearly In a Trap. Then I made a lovely mistake. I was to establish an aid post near battalion bat-talion headquarters and went blithely on when I met a company commander and nsked him where to go. "Back there about a quarter of a mile," he replied. "This is the front center company. If you keep on In the direction you are going you are going up over that ridge and Fritz will be waiting for you with a machine gun."" So my sergeant and orderly nnd myself didn't waste any time In clearing. clear-ing. On the way back I found a gallon can full of water, got Into a corrugated Iron shelter and had a wash and a shave. It certainly felt good. I don't believe I had washed for thirty-six hours. It was warm and bright. 1 could look out of my shelter and see our support lines digging themselves In several hundred yards away. The cannon fire ceased, the machine guns settled down to an occasional fitful burst and It was midday of a beautiful spring day. A couple of partridge Hew over me. What did they know or care about all this noise and racket and men getting up in line and killing each other? Along about three o'clock things began be-gan to liven up again. In the meantime mean-time headquarters had been established establish-ed In a sunken road with banks nhnul fifteen feet high on either side (later this cut was half filled with dead). My aid post was In a dugout near by and gradually things got hotter and hotter. Our men had dug themselves In and were popping awny with their rides. The field batteries beldnd us were putting up a barrage, airplanes were circling overhead, both ours and the Germans'. Tbe Germans put up a counter-barrage, the machine guns were going II Ue mad. I was standing with the colonel on a little rise of ground above the sunken road when the Germans broke through about a mile to the north of us. They could be plainly seen pouring over the ridge in close formation. Tanks Get Into Action. Then the tanks came up, nnd you should have seen them run I Just like rabbits! Tbe tanks retired; the Bodies reformed and came at it again. They tell me that nt certain places our men withstood fifteen successive suc-cessive attacks and that the Germans went down in thousands. One Welshman Welsh-man told me that his gun accounted for 75 in three minutes during one wave. Machine-gun bullets were nipping around me, the shell fire was getting hotter, and even though It was a wonderful won-derful sight to watch I decided "discretion "dis-cretion was the better part of valor," or something like that, and got down In my dugout. I was sitting there smoking a cigarette cig-arette when my orderly came down nnd said I was being relieved and was to go back and work with the ambulance. ambu-lance. Fifteen hours Inter the man that relieved me was captured. But I am getting ahead of my story. I went back to the advanced dressing dress-ing station through the hottest shell fire I ever experienced. More than once I went down on my face when a shell burst nnd the pieces went whizzing whiz-zing over my head. I spent the night in a mined village where the advanced dressing station wns located, and all night they shelled It to blazes. It was remarkable how few casualties we had. About eleven o'clock the morning of the third day a shell blew in the side of our post, but luckily no one was hurt. We stuck to It until about four in the afternoon, when we saw our men retiring over a ridge In front of us, keeping up a continuous machine gun and rifle fire, and we beat it back to another village and opened another anoth-er post. The Begrimed Lord. About ten o'clock on the morning of the fourth day Lord Thyme, my colonel col-onel when I was with the battalion, stumbled into the shack where I was sitting. He looked like a ghost. He had lost his hat, his face was covered with a four days' beard, the sweat had traced tracks In the dust from his forehead to his chin. His sleeve was torn and bloody and he had a gash in his arm where he had been struck by a piece of flying shell case. "My God, doc, are you here?" he said. "You got out just In time. The battalion is all gone. The sunken road Is filled with dead mostly Huns, damn 'em. The line broke on the right ; we were surrounded, and at the last we were fighting back and back. Only thirty of us got away." So we knew the Boche had broken through to our right and our left, and it was a question of how long It would be before we, too, were surrounded, but we wanted to stick it out as long as we could. But not more than an hour later a medical officer rushed in from one of the battalions and between gasps for breath told us the Germans were on the edge of the village, had shot him through the sleeve with a machine gun bullet (luckily that was all), and for us to beat it. The ninth day, sitting around the fire in our mess after the best dinner we had had In days, the commanding officer handed me some papers and said, "Here Is something that will Interest In-terest you, Pettit. I want to say we shall be sorry to lose you." And this is what it was: "Lieut. Roswell T. Pettit, M. R. C, Is relieved from duty with the British army and will proceed to the A. E. F where be will report for duty." I leave for Paris In the morning. This has been a long tale, but the half of It hasn't been told. I hope I haven't strung it out too much. I have just been informed that all my kit had to be burned to prevent it falling Into the hands of the enemy. I shall probably want you to send me' some things from home, but will see what I can get here first. Your son, ROSWELL. |