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Over the Top

“Keep a stiff upper lip, Boy!” Merwin Silverthorn grimaced, remembering his father’s words as he lay wounded in a clover field with machine gun bullets cutting the tops of the grass only inches above his head.  Of the forty men who raced one hundred yards across No Man’s Land, he was one of four that reached the other side.  

He had gone over the top numerous times. It was a scene that would forever be vivid in his mind, of “friends, men young of years, plunging forward in that seething mass of Hell.” He reflected how in a few short months he had changed from an adventure seeking youth to a man who had shaken dice with death.  He thought of men that went over the top with a smile on their face, who now lay still with their eyes turned to God.  He had seen “the grim monster reach out his scaly hand and pick out so many brave men.”  “If there is any person who does not believe in God,” he stated. “Let that man go over the top just once.” 

The Allies were on the offensive, but there was a quagmire of fortifications with bunkers and machine gun nests to be dealt with.  Dean Warner of Killdeer stated it was a long, continuous grind through mud and shell holes, under constant bombardment.  Horses were killed or died from exhaustion.  Upon entering areas which had been under German control since 1914, Alex Rawitscher of Williston said local citizens hugged the Americans, and then rushed off.  Collecting their meager belongings, they fled their homes.  Germans artillery reduced these villages to rubble with not a building left standing, leaving nothing useful for the Allies.

The battlefields of France became meat-grinders.  With a quarter of a million American soldiers sent to France each month, there was little time for training.  Just one hundred days after he was inducted into the Army at Grand Forks, Martin Sanders of Mekinock was killed in France.  National Guard Regiments such as the 164th had been severely dismantled and pieced out where needed.  Of the Machine Gun Company of the First Division, only three men from Dickinson remained.  But morale ran high.  With ground now gained in miles and not yards, Lt. Duncan from Sanish stated that the boys in his command had a new battle cry, “Heaven, Hell or Hoboken by Christmas.”  For those North Dakota soldiers who had endured life at the front for almost eight months, it was more than a battle cry, it was a prayer. 

Dakota Datebook by Jim Davis

Sources:

Killdeer Herald, September 26, 1918

Sanish Sentinel, September 23, 1918

Plaza Pioneer, September 19, 1918

Williston Herald, October 24, 1918

Hope Pioneer, August 15, 1918

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