DUTY IN FRANCE

The cold wind blew unmercifully, as Harmon snugged his coat collar closer to his neck, stomped his feet, beat his hands on his thighs and walked to and fro beside the Holt tractor trying to keep warm in the late Fall of 1918. The temperature had steadily fallen since eleven o'clock the previous evening. It was now four-thirty AM. The ground had frozen to steel hardness making his numb feet hurt all the more. He could hear the faint rumbling thunder of the German artillery exploring the front lines and see the lightning-like flashes on the horizon towards no-man's land as well as the closer American artillery's reply. Since the firing range was up in the high hills about 185 miles south of Paris, the view on the horizon was spectacular. Their range was at Montmorillon, France. The 64th Regiment was one of the three regiments of the 34th Coast Artillery Brigade, the other regiments being the 70th and the 71s.t. Being up high, and in early November it was rather chilly. Add the clear, moonless night and a steady wind of about fifteen miles per hour it seemed much colder than it really was.

"Man! Oh! Man! It sure is cold, cold enough to freeze tha' horns off a brass billygoat!" Harmon said to himself. He and his brother, Ralph, are wagoners in Battery B, 64th Coast Artillery Regiment. The 64th was in the last stages of their training and nearly ready to be deployed to the western front. They had been training at Montmorillon forever, it seemed. Harmon muttered just loud enough so that his helper, eighteen-year-old Private William (Willy) Charles Stone could not hear, "I'll be frozen before our tour is over."

Harmon and Willy have been on duty for about one and one-half hours. And he and Willy have one last run to make and then have about 15 minutes left on this tour. He and Willy are about talked out and have little or nothing to say to each other. Now each is deep in thought in the silence of the night. Harmon's thoughts are drawn to what many a soldier draws near to when to they have some time just to try and forget their misery when in a damp and cold situation–warm thoughts of home!

Harmon mulls over in his mind how it was when he and Ralph left home. "Weedie is 10 years old now 'n she has dark black hair, which she wears in braids. O! How she cried when we left home to enlist. I can just see her standing there, holding her dolly and hugging it tightly and sobbing an' tugging at my hand. I sure hope she's got over by it now. When we left out the gate, she ran back, up the steps, opened the door, turned around looking so miserable, shouting through her sobs `I don't want you to go, Harmon, I really, really, don't!' She ran inside and slammed the door. She is such a sweet child. Someone will get a sweet wife when she grows up and marries. Speaking of marrying, when we get back, I am going to hunt for me a beautiful, sweet, loving 'n gentle 'n kind girl for a wife, one I can live with forever!" Little did Harmon know that he would find two such girls and the joy and grief that he would experience.

Harmon's thoughts now drifted to his three older sisters. He mused to himself. Well, let's see, my older sisters were not there to see Ralph and me off to the war. Let's see now, Willie Ola left home and married Jim Martin when I was about ten. I can't remember much about her except she looked a lot like Mama, rather short and stout. She wore her hair like Mama did, put up in a bun. I recall that. An' that's about all. Now, I remember Constance getting married to a fella with a strange last name – Olive. Let's see, believe she married him when I was fifteen n' that would have been in the summer of 13, n' that would have been in July or August. I thought the preacher would never finish and have them kiss. That stiff, high, starched collar itched so much, an' I tugged and pulled at it till I thought I'd go nuts. An' she went with him to Panama City, Florida. They had their first baby there, an' named her `Zora.' Man! Who could forget a name like that one? I wonder where it came from. Then there was Marge. Now, she was the pretty one of the bunch and she really liked to have fun with us boys and then she got all grown-uppity, changed her pants for a skirt, and about two years ago, married this really nice fella, Lawson Phillips. But, nobody called him Lawson. Everyone called him `Eggy'–that's an odd nick-name. Wonder why he is called that?

Climbing up onto the open seat of the Holt tractor, Harmon thought about his brother, Ralph Was he still alive? Calling to his helper, Private William (Willy) Charles Stone, to turn the crank while he was advancing the spark and pulling out the choke, he wondered where they had taken his older brother. (Ralph had become one of the victims of the world-wide endemic of influenza.)

He thought, once again. This is the last run for our tour. Then to his helper, "let's move to the next one, Willy. This one'' gonna stay runnin, I think." Harmon stepped across to the top of the track of the next tractor and climbed to the seat, while Willy moved over to the crank on the second tractor. They continued this way until they had finished and then Harmon went back to the first tractor and cut the engine and made the trip back over the tracks, cutting each one in turn. Then they had ten minutes or so, until their tour was over. It was an endless routine as long as the temps were down.

Every thirty minutes the engines had to be started to keep radiators from freezing so that the tractor would be warmed up and ready to drive from the tractor line over to the artillery park, only a short distance away. There, the gun crews would hook up the big 8-inch howitzers and the limbers for the move to the firing lines. And, if the 64th ever finished practice firing their guns, they would move out to the western front. Exactly where they would go was dependent upon which way the war was moving. If German troops made a breakthrough, then they would move towards the new German line, which would be only a few hundred yards or maybe even a half mile or a little less, at most, from its previous position. Then the Allies would take it back. All of this at a horrible cost in lives and maimed for both sides. What a high cost for so little real estate which was worthless, because it was so torn up. The war virtually had been stalled after the first month of hostilities in 1914, just a little over four years ago.

Left to their own thoughts, once again, each man retired where they were. Harmon sat in the seat of the last tractor on line and Willy had already sat down by its track. Willy had started doing some serious thinking about himself, at least serious for him. Boy-O-Boy! That Harmon really has a great family from what he's already told me. I know that he has a lot of brothers and sisters. He told me that one of his brothers died at age fifteen and nobody knew why he died. I mean, if I had a brother to die like that, I know it would be hard..... I wonder how Mom is feeling. In her last letter she said that she was starting to cough some, but she thought it was not anything. Gosh, I really hope the consumption ain't a'comin' back. She said that Daddy was thinking about retiring, but she didn't think he would. She said he'd just keep workin' 'till one day he'd just lay down and die on the job. I guess that would be better than being sick a long time and knowing that there was not much that could be done for you, like Mom. I really love Mom and I know she loves me and wants me to do something besides logging and living in Sopchoppy. There ain't nothin' else to do there and I surely don't wont to work at Jernigan's Ice Cream Parlor. Ain't no future there, and I could never get married 'cause I'd never save up enough money. If it wasn't for the tourists on their way to Miami or Tampa, there wouldn't be no business a'tall. You can't make any money selling stuff to 'bout seventy-five people, if you count the dogs, cats and chickens. Harmon's really had a nice life, so far. I mean to go somewhere else when I get out. I really mean it!

With those thoughts he nodded off leaning back against the last tractor Harmon had just cut off. They had four tractors to start and run for ten to fifteen minutes every thirty minutes. He and Harmon would start one then start another and then another until they had all four of them running and then it was time to cut them all off. That left about ten or fifteen minutes they could talk or rest. Usually they would start out talking and by the time they got to the last "run" of their shift, they were silent, like they were tonight or rather, this morning.

Reflecting, once again, on the day he and Ralph left for the Army, Harmon remembered: Doc, Man! Was he really wanting to go with us? He said "I'll lie about my age. Even if I'm only fifteen, I'm big enough that I can pass for eighteen! 'N nobody'd ever know". But, Papa said NO and Mama said they'd find out anyway! So they would not let him even try. Well, he hasn't grown up enough yet 'n he's so gullible that h''d be picked on continuously by all the rest, so he'd a'been miserable all tha' time. He's a good-looking youngster an' a jolly boy, but he don't act like a man, yet.

Then, there's Jones. Now, he would have been old enough, soon, but with that little straight, stiff leg n' the way he walked, they wouldn't have taken him anyway. But he's strong enough to throw an ox down. I really believe he could! He wanted to go, but didn't say a thing about going, 'cause, he knew he'd never pass the physical, if he even got that far. Man! It's cold! Look at those stars. Makes you know that God really does exist. He continued to look up at the sky marveling at how close they seemed. Looks like you could just reach up and get one!

Still quietly sitting there in the dark and looking up at the luminous star-spangled glory of the sky, Harmon saw a star fall through the clear night sky. There had been a moon earlier in the evening, before he and Willy had come on duty, but, it had set about an hour ago. Now the stars sparkled in all their twinkling glory. Seeing a star falling reminded him of Harry [John Harrison, his closest older brother]. Many nights in their boyhood the two of them would sit out in the meadow staring up at the beautiful vista of the heavens, naming the constellations and simply talking about the earth and how God had made such a wonderful place for men to live and about life in general and what they would be when they grew up. Before he had died, Harmon and Harry had been almost like twins, being only 20 months apart, with Harry being the older. Since Harmon was two and Harry was four, they had slept together. Harmon felt a real loss, when Harry got sick and seemingly, in a moment, just wilted away in only a few short weeks.

Not one person seemed to know what was wrong. The doctor didn't, n' Papa and Mama didn't, Harmon thought. It seemed to the thirteen-year-old Harmon that, He just up and died for no-good reason. It was a devastating blow to Harmon.

"I kept expecting my buddy and pal to come back. It seemed like a horrible dream n' he was only fifteen! If it hadn't been for Ralph, sort of taking care to comfort me, I don't think that I would have made it. I still miss him, but it's not like it was yesterday that he left." Ralph had taken special care to keep Harmon close and include him in any activities that he usually did by himself as he was six years senior to Harmon. And thus it was, that Harmon, nineteen, and Ralph, twenty-five, came to be so close and the reason they enlisted together.

"Heads-up! Willy, here comes our relief."

HOW IT ALL GOT STARTED

It was June 28, 1914, mid-morning. Lurking in a food shop, fate was waiting for the motorcade to pass by. In the open third car, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife rode blissfully and majestically oblivious to the impending threat.

Earlier that day a member of the Black Hand had hurled a hand grenade towards the Archduke's car. When the grenade bounced under another car, the attempt failed to accomplish its purpose: The purpose of this attack was the elimination of a perceived threat to the plan for Serbia to become the leader of a pan-Slav state. The Archduke, also the Inspector General of the army, had accepted the invitation of General Oskar Potiorek to visit the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo, to inspect army maneuvers. After the attempted assassination, the Archduke had interrupted the Mayor's welcome speech at city hall, complaining about the bombs being thrown at him. Afterward the motorcade preceded toward the observation point and stalled at an intersection because the lead vehicle's driver was uncertain about the direction that the motorcade was to take.

Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand, was inside Schiller's delicatessen, mad at his girlfriend. He could see that the open car stalled at the intersection, the Archduke and his wife relishing the adoration of the people who had lined the streets. I will not miss he said silently. Concealing his gun in his coat, he rushed out of the deli, at just the right time, stepped upon the running board, bringing his pistol out of his coat, he pistol-whipped a nearby pedestrian and fired two shots from a distance of five feet, mortally wounding both the Archduke and his wife Sophie. Gavrilo was arrested immediately. The Black Hand had done its duty. Serbia would no longer be threatened by Austria.

However, the ripples of this event would reach most of the rest of the world. A month later, Austria declared war on Serbia. And so, a World War began. The actions of a single man acting upon the opportunity presented to him by an accident, succeeded where carefully made plans had failed.

When Austria declared war against Serbia, it set off a domino effect in Europe and eastern Asia because of the existing treaties in the area. Of course the spark that started the war was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian fanatic in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. A month to the day later, on July 28, 1914 the dominos began to fall:

(1) Austria declared war on Serbia, and because

(2) Russia was an ally of Serbia, Russia entered the war

(3) Germany was an ally of Austria, Germany entered the war

(4) France was an ally of Russia as well as a traditional enemy of Germany, so France entered the war,

(5) Great Britain, an ally of France, entered the war.

In a flash the whole continent was at war. War broke out into a seething European brouhaha over the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian, June 28, 1914. An over-two-million-man German army marched into Belgium, threatening France, which was still suffering from the humiliating loss of the industrially rich Alsace-Lorraine territory in 1871 to Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II dreamed of a political and imperial role in world affairs using their industrial strength to challenge Britain's world-wide dominance of trade. This action caused Britain to enter the war to aid the French.

When war broke out in July of 1914, people all over Europe were saying, "our troops will be home before Christmas!" It would be before Christmas (November 11) – the Christmas of 1918. People are usually optimistic about a war being short before a war gets started or right after it starts. However, wars have a tendency to last longer than people think they will. The Korean War started Sunday, June 25, 1950 and as of this day in November of 2013, North Korea has declared that the peace talks are over, a state of war still exists and has threatened to launch atomic missiles targeting the United States. Wars sometime have a life of their own.

The Central Powers as they were called consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, The manpower they could collectively muster was a little more than 25.25 million men. The total casualties were 16.4 million including KIA, WIA, and MIA (killed, wounded, and missing in action). This was a terrible price to pay for eventually losing the war.