Since there is a WWI exhibit going on at the Brown County History Center, we thought it fitting to share Fred C. Miller’s account of the war, as he lived it, in his own words. He begins:
In World War I, I was inducted into service in May of 1918. I was taken by train from Martinsville, Indiana, to Camp Taylor at Louisville, Kentucky.
We were organized, given a uniform and a serial number. Mine was 2898778, stamped on my “dog tags” which were aluminum and were worn at all times for identification.
After about two weeks in Camp Taylor, we were sent to Camp Johnson at Jacksonville, Florida, to take truck driver training, as that was what I put in for, because I had driven a truck for a few years prior to entering the service. We were told how to drive, which I already knew. One of our instructors tried to qualify for driver and couldn’t pass the test — a really amusing incident.
In July, we went to Newport News, Virginia, to take ship transport to France. We landed at Brest, France, after about 20 days on the Atlantic Ocean. We sailed a zigzag course to dodge the U-boats.
We went to the front lines in about six days in freight cars, a size to hold 40 men or eight horses. We had benches to sit on in the freight cars, but there was not enough room. We threw the benches out and sat on the floor.
We got to the front and I was given a very large truck, as were all of our drivers. We were assigned to the French Third Army to haul shells and powder to the 3-inch and 6-inch guns. Our trucks had solid rubber tires — cushioned tires, they were called. They were hard to ride, but there was no chance of a flat tire.
We were in the Saint-Mihiel offensive and we drove day and night for 72 hours with no sleep and one meal consisting of “canned Willie,” which was corned beef. We also had canned tomatoes to go with the beef.
The drive started on Sept. 1, 1918. After that successful drive, we were assigned to our own army and got ready for the Meuse-Argonne offensive. We drove mostly at night with no lights. We drove at night because those German gunners were very good marksmen. They could drop their Austrian 88 shells in your hip pocket at a distance of eight to 10 miles.
It rained most of the time.
One day, I was coming back past a first aid station and was stopped by military police and asked if I would take a load of wounded back to the field hospital, as they were short on ambulances. Of course, I did. We loaded the stretcher patients in the back and took men who could walk on the seat with me. After all, we came over to do away with “Kaiser Bill,” and it was a duty that we couldn’t resist. On one trip, on our way up to the front lines, we met General Pershing coming back. He was with a driver in a car that had no tires.
One trip, we were held up for a little while by some German prisoners who were being taken by some of our infantry to a barbed wire barricade. One of the prisoners handed me his steel helmet and said, “Bosch kaput” and “Finilaguerre,” which meant, “Germans finished” and “War is over.” I don’t know why he picked me out of the ammunition convoy and surrendered his steel helmet to me.
Well, I took the helmet and wired it on my truck radiator and fully intended to bring it home. Later, after the Armistice, our first lieutenant, Garvy, stole it from my truck.
We were back from the front about three or four miles at a little town called Dunn-Sur-Meuse. On Nov. 11, at 11 a.m., we had heard that there had been an Armistice signed, but you could hear the artillery going full blast. All of a sudden, all was quiet. We looked at each other. It was really strange, for we were used to a lot of noise. Someone said, “We have outlived the war. “
I remember when the fighting was going on and we were at the front, or near it, the noise of our shells “going out” and the German shells “coming in” combined with machine guns and rifles, made such a roar and explosive noise that you could hardly hear what anybody said.
On the way up to the front, I remember I saw a Frenchman in a field near the road using a bucksaw to cut some wood. He had the blade of the saw turned up and was holding it between his knees and rubbing the wood over the blade. It amused me very much, being I was a boy brought up in the country.
I found a picture in a shell-torn house. It was what was left of a three-piece army occupation, and they chose our outfit. I drove the lead truck in our convoy. After several days we reached the Rhine River at a point near Coblenz. The bridge had been blown out in our effect to win the war. The engineers had constructed a pontoon bridge across and had just finished it when we drove up. I asked the officer if it was ready and he said, “Yes, go ahead.” It was a shaky drive, but I made it across and the other drivers followed. We went on to our destination, which was Horchheim on the east bank, near the Erinbrichtstein Fortress which I managed to find time to explore later on.
We were the victors and did about as we pleased. We parked our trucks on the east bank of the Rhine River on the 15 day of December, 1918. We didn’t have anywhere else to go, so we stayed by our trucks before going to our quarters at 16 Haupt Strasse. On the second floor, we had good beds and nice, clean rooms. A Mrs. Snider owned the place.
One day on the street, a German man traded a bottle of liquor for a bar of soap. Supplies in Germany were low right after the war.
While we were stationed in Horchheim, we took a trip up the Rhine about 300 kilometers and saw some very fine castles and countryside.
We had a German man with a rowboat take two of us across the Rhine and we went through Stasenfels Castle one day. It was a wonderful old castle.
When I received special orders from the army to return to the United States, I sailed from the Rock of Gibraltar on my way to New York City and home.
— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
