“There are two kinds of men here in France, especially those that are up where the gas is, quick men and dead men.”
FEW IF ANYONE today will remember the name William J. Graham.
The anonymous doughboy was just one of the more than four million Americans who fought in the First World War. Yet the 39-year-old Philadelphia native and private in the U.S. Army’s 28th Infantry Division kept a series of remarkably detailed diaries of his 16 months overseas. In fact, Graham hoped to one day get them published so he could share what he’d lived through with future generations. Unfortunately, he died in 1940 before he could make good on his promise.
Now, 100 years later, two book publishers are finally realizing Graham’s long-forgotten dream.
After an amazing 17-year quest to track down more than 900 pages from the cellars and attics of the late diarist’s far-flung descendants, Steve Badgley and Bruce Jarvis have assembled Graham’s complete wartime writings, distilling them into a single abridged volume.
Over There With Private Graham – The Compelling World War I Journal of an American Doughboy, which was released in late 2018, tracks with surprising clarity the author’s fascinating, harrowing and inspiring journey across the Western Front during the conflict’s final tumultuous year.
“We believe this work brings fresh insight,” Jarvis told MilitaryHistoryNow.com. “It represents an under-documented American contribution to the current and future body of work on the Great War.”
The editors at Badgley Publishing Company provided MHN the following selection of entries from Graham’s diary. Check them out below.
Wednesday, July 3rd, 1918
All hands up at 3:30. I never heard such a roaring of guns before. Something terrible. The heavens are lit up for miles around. Off in the distance, one can see towns on fire. The Hun is sending over one of his famous barrages. Our boys are answering him shell for shell and I know there must be some direct hits made by our boys. Fritz, old boy, you’ll get all that’s coming to you if you stay long enough. The wind is blowing at about 20 miles per hour and is in the German’s favor for gas. We have masks in alert position, ready in the required time of six seconds to put on. There are two kinds of men here in France, especially those that are up where the gas is, quick men and dead men.
Saturday, July 6th, 1918
The heavy artillery has been working since 1:30. It was wicked several times. I thought this old town would tumble down. Not that the Hun was shelling us direct, I am glad he did not have our range, but the shells dropping in nearby villages. The heavy explosion when they hit was terrible. The earth trembled and shook. The sky was afire for miles and miles around. Our boys were sending just as many shells back to the Hun as we were receiving. What a grand feeling comes over a person when they stand between the shell fire of two warring nations’ artillery. The screaming of the shells overhead, the whistling of the gas and shrapnel shells, the dropping of bombs from the heavens by the Hun air men, the trembling and quaking of the earth under the strain of high explosives, buildings being torn from their foundations, tumbling into piles of stone, wood and mortar. Then comes the fire. Town after town, villages and hamlets destroyed. Many families left homeless. And last but not least, the heavy toll in death. Men who stand and face these conditions, what a stout heart, what courage one must display to endure such trying conditions during this war and still the American boy goes through this agony of hell with a smile upon his face. The spirit is still unbroken.
Monday, July 8th, 1918
The 38th Infantry and the 4th Infantry are in the thickest of the fighting. It seems nothing human can stop the green-gray waves in the first impetus of this German assault across the Marne. At this point they have gained the bridge heads and are able to seek cover and spread along the river bank. The grim, gray lines, like an enormous unclean caterpillar, crept steadily across the river. When enough men had gained the southern bank, the assault was carried to the Franco-American lines. Machine guns in countless numbers shot venomously from both sides. Rifle fire and rifle grenades and hand grenade’s explosions rolled together in one tremendous cacophony. The appalling diapason of the big guns are thundering unceasingly. Up the wooded slope comes the Hun waves. The furious fire of our boys, the defenders of France, made no appreciable impress on these masses of gray-green clad soldiers of the German Empire. They swept to, and over the first lines. Then the American spirit showed itself. The American courage inherited from our forefathers appeared in the heart of every one of those boys in O.D. uniforms. As a man, they rose to heroic heights. Gone was the science and skill of warfare so painstaking inculcated in men through months of training. Truly it was kill or be killed. Hand to hand, often breast to breast, the contending force struggled. Men were locked in deadly embrace from which the only escape was death for one or both. Back to back they fired, thrust, hewed and hacked at the swarming enemy. No group knew how the other was doing. Many said afterwards that they believed it was the end of all things for them but they resolved to die fighting and to take as many Huns with them as possible.
Saturday, July 20th, 1918
I started on my way home. I jumped a truck which took me in another direction. The driver told me I would see some very sickening sights along the road. After we left Saulchery he was right. A company of American soldiers were burying the dead… boys laying along the roadside. Sometimes two or three Germans alongside of one of our boys. Kill or be killed. Hand-to-hand fighting. Those contending forces struggled locked in deadly embrace from which the only escape was death for one or both. I saw one lad, his rifle was knocked from his hands but still he had killed his man and on closer observation, I discovered he had run him through with a German bayonet. He had seized the enemy’s gun no doubt. As he was falling and the lessons of the training camp coming to fore, in his supreme moment, he gurgled out the ferocious “YAH!” which he had been taught to utter with each bayonet thrust. There were at least 10 German soldiers lying dead on the road or in the field to one American, some were torn from limb to limb… arms off, legs shot off… heads missing. One man was underneath a horse which was blown in half. One portion of the horse was hanging in a tree nearby. The ground was dug up for miles and miles. Large and small shell holes from the artillery fire. In many places we had to turn off the road and take across the fields. The road was hit and large holes made which made it impossible to drive the truck over. Between the dead… men and beast, who had laid there, no doubt for some time, the stench was more than a person could stand. It was terrible.
Thursday, August 1st, 1918
I started out on horse this a.m. beginning along the Marne from Chateau Thierry to Gland. There is a pontoon bridge across the Marne from Chateau Thierry to Blesmes which is used very much for convoys of trucks bringing supplies up from the various rail heads or supply stations. The Germans knew this bridge to be the key road on the west bank of the Marne as all other bridges had been destroyed by shell and bombs. This bridge must be destroyed according to the orders of the German High Command and I must admit the Hun air men tried very hard to accomplish the feat but so far have failed. There hasn’t been a day or night that from three to five [airplanes] have not flown over this old town trying to bomb this bridge. Sgt. John Harvey has charge of the mounted men of our company. My post was north of (the) pontoon bridge to Gland. Trooper John MacMillan was from bridge to Epieds Road. Trooper James Blattau was south of Epieds Road. Sgt. Harvey came up the road to see how things were going… met me then MacMillan at 11:25 a.m. Two German [planes] came over making one more try for the bridge. The French anti-aircraft guns opened up on them but the Huns just sailed through the hail of shells, dropped four bombs but failed to hit (the) bridge. The bombs dropped in the water, sending a spout a hundred feet in the air. When the Hun airmen saw they had failed to destroy the bridge, they then turned their attention along the road which followed the river bank. They came so low a person could almost see the whites of their eyes. Their machine guns were played along the road sweeping everything in front of them. I got under cover of an old arch way leading up to a mansion yard. Sgt. Harvey and Trooper MacMillan were caught in the open. The only escape they had was to dive into an open doorway. Both men and horses made a quick get-a-way right into the entry of this house, just in time. The front wall of the house was peppered with machine gun bullets. It was a very narrow escape for Harvey and MacMillan.
Friday, October 18th, 1918
There is heavy fighting along the line about three miles to the right of us. The artillery duel is raging. I mean to say, both sides are firing with their heavy guns. The earth is trembling. It’s now close to 5 p.m. French time… getting dark and I know we are in for a very bad night. Fritz will fly over us tonight. Not one but 50 planes will haul his load of bombs over us and try to make some hits on us here below. What a gruesome sight this is! The big guns are belching forth their death dealing missiles toward Hun land and the enemy answering shell for shell. The streak of red flame coming from the guns has the heavens lit up for miles around. God help the poor unfortunate men tonight… no matter who they may be. How many will be left to tell the tale? How many will have the good luck to see the light of day again? It looks bad for all of us who are assembled in this territory. Well…all we can do is trust to luck. The roads leading up to the front are jammed with troops. Boy! The Dutchman is in for a trouncing tomorrow. A report just came in that the boys are holding a sector where they can, if successful, break the German Army’s morale. From what we can learn in this particular sector, the Germans are strongly entrenched… modern trenches with reinforced concrete and ever so many machine gun nests made from cement. I recall only a few days ago, our boys had a very hard time taking a small town near this sector and the cost was heavy, both in killed and wounded. Of course, the doughboys were successful. When they drove the Germans out of their stronghold, the victory yielded hordes of ammunition, food and many clothing supplies and over 200 prisoners. Twenty machine guns were taken from one of these modern trenches… only 200 yards long so one can see what our boys are up against… every 10 feet… a machine gun capable of firing 250 bullets per minute!
Saturday, October 19th, 1918
Our troops are unquestionably up against the most genuinely stubborn and determined resistance from first class German troops our army has experienced. But they are still holding the upper hand over the best men the Germans can send, standing up against countless ruses and every kind of trickery imaginable by machine gunners and advancing, in most places, steadily and surely. One German division rushed from the Metz Sector was put into line and within an hour, prisoners taken from it enabled its identification as one of the best of the Kaiser’s armies.
It is known that the Germans have instructions not to fall back and at no matter what cost to hold on. I talked to dozens of our boys who have fought from one edge of the Argonne to the other and they told me at the height of the fighting, one never sees only a few German soldiers at one time. They are like a horde of ground moles. They are everywhere in the undergrowth, so thick in the part of the fields now being fought over, the doughboys have literally hacked their way through the growths of underbrush and forest which looks like a jungle.
The hard work our boys have to face in this war, and especially at this stage of the war game, is trying to fight something one can’t see. Give our boys a target and they’ll hit it (and how!) no matter where it is at. But this hunting something in the dark, something that has always got an eye on you and that you can’t see, is a weird sort of business. However, the boys are not afraid. They are going ahead although the ground they are gaining is mighty costly to the youth of our nation.
I hope the American people have faith in those that are over here fighting for our nation as our forefathers had done before us… to make America what it is today. Trust in the boys over here and America will be safe for Democracy. Those of us who have made the supreme sacrifice have not died in vain, they have died that our great nation might live and for those that call themselves Americans may enjoy that which they have died for… Freedom.
Check out Over There with Private Graham: The Compelling World War 1 Journal of an American Doughboy on Amazon.com.
