The final chapter in the war record of E.P. Dudley (pictured above with his “pal” Cecil) was written some forty years after the end of the war, following his retirement from the Santa Fe Railroad, as he prepared his personal memoirs for his three grandchildren. This final narrative has the benefit of his maturity, experience and perspective on the other side of the twentieth century’s second World War.
The Attack on St. Mihiel
In 1918 our country began sending vast numbers of men and supplies to build our own army. The First American Army began concentrating in the late summer and a plan for the attack on the St. Mihiel salient was made. The initial assault began on September 12, 1918.
The St. Mihiel salient had been a dent into the French lines about 25 miles deep and about the same distance long, for the sole purpose of cutting the important double track railway line between Paris and the Verdun front. The Germans had held this important salient since 1917, which required the French to resort to trucks to supply their armies on the Verdun front on a road called the “sacred way.” There was one small narrow gauge line which helped them out with supplies and another single track line was later built and which had been operated by us. But the cutting of the double track line was a very serious thing, and the first effort the Americans were asked to make was to attack this salient and release this railroad for use. Our regiment was called on to play an important part in this attack as we were to establish the railroad the first minute we could do so as the attack developed.
Senegalese Troops
I was one of a group of officers sent to the St. Mihiel attack to restore the railroad and to organize men and materials for its immediate repair, starting on the morning of the attack. The Germans would undoubtedly try and destroy as much of it as they could if they retreated and we had to have ready plans and much material assembled to restore it. My headquarters had been moved to Commercy, close by the salient, where much of the material had been concentrated, and where we had also gathered several hundred black Senegalese troops from French African colonies to do the labor work on the track.
We started to restore the railroad under artillery fire the morning of the attack, September 12, and by the following night the double track railroad between Paris and Verdun was operating, rather slowly at first due to cribbed up bridges and temporary tracks across destroyed areas, but the operation was certain and sure, and the vast array of supply trains started using that efficient route.
Raymond Poincaré’s House
I must relate here an action by the Germans which I thought brought on such a bitter hatred toward them on the part of President Poincaré of France that I always thought it changed the course of history.
A short distance from Commercy was the little hamlet of Sampigny which we released early the morning of the attack. It was a very small village on the railroad but it was the home of President Poincaré. Whenever the president of France is chosen, the railroad always builds him a private waiting room next to the depot so he and his party need not mix with the other passengers, and Sampigny had such a private depot set apart from the other depot but adjacent to it. The Poincaré home was a beautiful large structure about a mile from the village and sitting on a hillside which faced the German lines. It had a long set of stab1es of the most modern type and we had billeted a number of men in these stables.
The house itself, however, had been practically destroyed by the enemy artillery; little else in the town was touched. Ammunition is never wasted, and unless there are reasons to anticipate the enemy having forces in the smaller villages, they were not generally shelled.
It was obvious that the Germans had very deliberately set out to destroy the Poincaré home for no military reason whatever. It had long been a courtesy of war that the headquarters or personal possessions of opposing generals and leaders were respected and not molested so long as they were not used for military purposes. The Poincaré home had not been within the salient during the years, as the enemy line lay about three miles beyond it which was about perfect for artillery range. The destroyed structure indicated the Germans had merely used it for target practice during their stay. The first day the home was rescued from artillery range by the German retreat the Poincarés had returned to see it and apparently were angered at its unnecessary damage. I was in charge of getting the railroad through and of course knew nothing about the Poincaré home, except we received instructions whose home it was and we could use the stables for billeting as soon as it was released from artillery range. It was sixty days later, or eight days after the Armistice that I had first hand personal knowledge of the deep and bitter hatred this incident had wrought in the Poincarés.
It was on November 21, 1918, that President Poincaré made a trip in his private train from Paris to Sedan to meet General Pétain for a trip via auto out of that point. I had charge of the operation between Verdun and the front, and rode the train. While the distance was not over sixty miles from Verdun to Sedan, it was an all night run as the movement on the railroad was very slow due to the bad condition of tracks and bridges. The Armistice had been signed ten days earlier, but the fighting and the slaughter had been very severe between Dun-sur-Meuse and Sedan in the last few days, and the Germans had badly damaged the railroad as they retreated. They destroyed all the water stations and facilities. They had used a demolition cartridge which fit on the ends of the rails in the track and on the toe of the frogs which put a severe kink in the rails’ ends and took out a chunk of rail in the frogs. All these had to be replaced and the roadbed did not permit a speed greater than ten or twelve miles per hour. We had to take water on the engine by means of a small pump on the tank which could lift water out of the several creeks we passed.
At one small creek called Forges Creek it took us one hour to get enough water in the tank to proceed. It was well after daylight that the train arrived in Sedan where a guard of a complete company was thrown around it as there were many German fanatics behind the lines still roaming around even after the guns had stopped firing.
General Pétain drove up a little after daylight in a large sedan with the flag of the commander-in-chief of the French army flying from a staff on the fender. He was accompanied by several other cars with members of his staff. We had been watching for his party and as he drove to the train, the company captain of the guards called his men to “Attention” and, as the general got out of his car, the captain and I saluted him while the men stood with “Present Arms.” He smiled and walked a few steps to the platform of President Poincaré’s private car, then turned and faced us all to give us a formal return salute. He then entered Poincaré’s private car to remain a few minutes. When the two men came out we again stood formally before them.
President Poincaré came over to the captain and me and chatted a few minutes. He spoke English but quite broken. My principal recollection of Poincaré is that he was the only man I ever saw in the zone of the armies who wore civilian clothes.
They then departed on a trip that took Pétain to the height of his great career, for today they were driving to Metz where there were assembled the commanders-in-chief of the British and American Armies, Haig and Pershing, together with Premier Clemenceau.
At that formal ceremony on November 21, Pétain was given his baton as a Marshal of France. The party returned to the train late in the afternoon and the company guarding the train drew up again at formal attention and this time we saluted a marshal of France. A group of photographers had accompanied them and numerous pictures were taken before they entrained and left for Paris.
It was later that morning, after the president had gone, that an orderly from the train came to me and told me Madame Poincaré wanted to see me. I did not know she was on the train until that moment and I followed him into the private car. She did not accompany the party to Metz but remained with the train at Sedan.
President Poincaré and his wife visit St. Mihiel
Madame Poincaré was attired in an outing dress with smart boots and a French helmet on her head. She was a small woman and spoke perfect English without the trace of accent. Her manner was charming and she asked me to accompany her on a little walk through the deserted town. I told her the surroundings were most unpleasant. The slaughter had been very high and the dead had not been buried. The streets were full of dead soldiers of all groups which participated in that last frenzied battle. It was cold at night but the sun came out during the day and melted dust enough to make a most foul mud. The grave platoons were trying to get the dead identified and buried, but the bodies were frozen in the mud and the work was slow and depressing.
I told her I thought she would prefer not see these grisly sights, but she insisted and took my arm to get help over the mud holes. It was on this walk that I saw a woman in the most terrible passion I ever thought could come from her sex.
As we walked along the road the bodies of the soldiers, mostly German, but some French and American, had been pulled to the side of the road to let truck traffic through and they were splashed and covered with mud and filth. Madame Poincaré would step over to a German soldier and kick him in the face with her boot hissing “Filthy Boche” at his dead form. She did this several times, then an amazing contradiction showed up in her temperament.
She came across a dead French captain with the ribbon of the croix-de-guerre on his tunic. She stooped down, wiped his muddy face with her handkerchief, then left it lying across his face in reverence. When she stood up, she was in tears and said, “vive la France.” I found the trip so depressing I suggested we return, which we did.
I summoned up enough courage to ask her why she hated the individual soldiers of the enemy with such personal loathings and she quickly told me, “Did you not see the way they destroyed the home of the president of France at Sampigny? The French army would never have shelled the home of the Kaiser. Don’t tell me they did not know whose home it was. Their maps are as good as ours and they know every building and tree in the staff studies. It was a personal act and would not have been done by the general if he had not had orders to do it.” She was a woman enraged beyond anything I had ever seen but she could change moods quickly. When I left her at the steps of her car, she thanked me graciously for escorting her on the trip.
I have always felt that the deep and bitter hatred of the German by the Poincarés for destroying their home at Sampigny changed the course of world history. It was Poincaré, as Premier of France in 1923, who took Belgium by the hand and invaded the Ruhr to attempt to secure the payment of reparations. Poincaré was president from 1913 until 1920, then returned to the Premiership in 1922. There was a clause in the peace treaty which gave the allied governments authority to invade Germany if they failed to pay reparations assessed against them for war damages. On so trivial an excuse as Germany’s failure to deliver a carload of telegraph poles, France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr.
There they met a sullen and defiant ex-enemy which staged a sit down strike and failed to pay anything. The German mark collapsed and carried the French franc with it. The invasion solidified the German people as no other act could have done and, in fact, within 60 days, Hitler was to stage his first putsch to take over the government of Bavaria with Ludendorff at his side. The effort failed but it finally brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation to bring on another war. Many historians believe this invasion of the Ruhr triggered the great world depression by its results direct and indirect. Kaltenborn, an astute observer of the times and who had met all the principal leaders in the war says in his book Fifty Fabulous Years the action was due in part to “wartime hatreds.” I have always believed Poincaré was thinking of that home in Sampigny when he signaled the French army to invade the Ruhr in 1923 to collect money which Germany did not have to give.
General Henri-Philippe Pétain
The story of the triumph and tragedy of Marshal Pétain has always deeply affected me. I had served under him as head of the French army. I lived almost a year on the battlefield which brought him his fame. I knew every nick and corner of the ruined city of Verdun and the environs where we operated our railroad. On every wall and building was chalked his flaming call, Ils ne passeront pas (they shall not pass), which held the French army there against the Germans until it had suffered 775,000 French soldiers lost, missing or prisoners, but had saved France. No soldier who lived under the halo of Pétain could forget him.
Our regiment at Verdun was serving under the Second French army and were held ready to retreat in a tragic retirement if the enemy made much more progress. We had demolition trains under steam at all times to destroy the railroad as we fell back. We waited with anxiety for the orders. This particular order which I kept was copied for our regiment on the artillery telephone by a lieutenant named Doud and passed around to us at 11:00 p.m. the night of June 1, 1918. To those who lived and breathed from day to day under the tremendous pressure of events it was a thrilling document:
Soldiers:
The enemy is striking another blow in overwhelming numbers. They have for the last three days stormed our front line. But our reserves are coming to the rescue who will strike back. ‘Heroes of the Marne,’ for your homes — for France — FORWARD.
Pétain
General Pétain
It is not difficult to understand the deep feeling of pity and compassion I have over the tragic life of Marshal Pétain of France. I saw him in the moment of his greatest glory and eminence when I saluted him at Sedan on the late afternoon of November 21, 1918, after he had been given his baton as a Marshal of France at a ceremony earlier in the day at Metz. I lived to follow every detail of his agony years later. I had only seen him on that one day though later I handled his private train from Verdun to Conflans on January 9, 1918, during the night when he did not appear. The orders I received about this latter trial are also pasted in Pétain’s book Verdun along with other orders relating to that campaign.
When Hitler invaded France in World War II and the French army collapsed in his path, Pétain was called to the head of the French state to secure the best terms possible for the surrender of France. He was then 84 years of age, but it was thought his relations with Germany and the respect Hitler might have for him as a soldier would secure more moderate terms. Pétain descended to the depths of degradation when, on June 22, 1940, he was taken to the forest of Compiègne at the exact spot and in the same railroad car where Germany had surrendered to the allies in the First World War and accepted for France the terms of surrender demanded by Hitler. He then watched Hitler overturn and destroy the monument which the French had erected on the spot of their victory when Germany signed terms for surrender on November 10, 1918. Twenty-two years had passed for Pétain between the two dates and he had participated in both ceremonies, one as a victor the other as the head of a beaten army. But this was not to be his final drink in the cup of degradation and abasement. He was to be condemned to death six years later by his own countrymen for collaboration with the enemy while he was head of the State at Vichy after the surrender.
How tragic was his life and his career. He was made prime minister of defeated France after the surrender and humiliation of the French army. He was 84 years old and unstable of mind and resolution. At his side were two younger men to influence him: Laval, a certain traitor to his country by his collaboration with Germany and Darlan, the admiral of the fleet who had an implacable hatred toward England.
After the invasion of the conquering armies of the Allies on June 6, 1944, the citizens of France, who long had suffered under the Vichy regime, again sprang to arms and joined the victorious allies. They tried Laval for treason, sentenced him to death and shot him. Darlan was assassinated by one of his countrymen in Africa where he was trying to make amends by helping us in our African invasion. Pétain was put in the dock and tried for treason for collaborating with the enemy during the occupation of France. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in April 1946. His sentence of death was commuted to life imprisonment by the new French Premier Charles de Gaulle. It was ironic that Pétain had previously agreed to a sentence of death in absentia against de Gaulle for the latter’s failure to obey the Vichy Government, but who instead spent his time during the war trying to rally the Free French forces to resist Hitler. But de Gaulle never looked at the death sentence which the Pétain government had imposed upon him. All he could see was the fact that he, de Gaulle, had served under Pétain in the First World War, was wounded several times, and his great reverence for the Marshal of France overcame his personal revenge and he gave Pétain a further lease on life even in imprisonment. It was de Gaulle’s finest hour.
I could not help but shed tears when the photographs of Marshal Pétain on trial in Paris reached this country and were published in all the papers. There he sat in the prisoners dock on trial for his life. He was in uniform of a Marshal of France with seven stars on his uniform. He wore no ribbons of conquest — Arras, Champagne, Verdun. On his breast was but one decoration — the Medal of the Legion of Honor, the highest French decoration which Napoleon had initiated. He was then 90 years of age. When he was asked the first question as to his name, his reply was, “Henri Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France.” That was all. To him that was enough. But he was sentenced to die and was kept alive a few years longer under imprisonment because de Gaulle commuted the sentence.
The tragic story of Pétain will never leave my mind and my memory. I saluted him in his great day as Marshal of France. I followed him to the very depths of his humiliation and despair. Nothing will ever convince me that he ever had a sparkle of disloyalty to France. He fairly embodied the great and glorious spirit of that nation. What he did a Chief of State at Vichy, he must have thought it was for France. No one in their eighties can be fully conscious of what is taking place. He was under the influence of sinister people like Laval. To me, Pétain stands as a symbol of France in her agony and nothing will ever convince me of his disloyalty.
