Many families can relate in some way to Veterans Day, November 11. World War One ended on the easy to remember eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, and one of my grandfathers, Andrew Sandvig, fought there, primarily in the Battle of Meuse-Argonne. I have been able to flesh out the following story of his participation in it.
An immigrant from Norway who’d not yet gained U. S. citizenship, he only needed to renounce allegiance to King Haakon VII of Norway and was inducted into the army on May 24, 1918. After a short training stint at Fort Lewis, WA, his division left for Europe already by July 6, arriving in Liverpool, England on July 17.
While in Europe he wrote some notes in the margins of a pocket-sized New Testament which gave basis for finding more information. He belonged to the 91st Division, 362nd Regiment made up of midwesterners from farms and ranches, which took on the nickname Wild West Division with the battle cry, “Powder River, let ‘er buck.”
Whether or not he was aboard the tragic train wreck in LeHavre isn’t known but when a loaded troop train sat on a siding at midnight, a freight train plowed into its rear end killing 32 men and injuring another 63. They were crowded into the small French boxcars.
Rain plagued the men to the point where their coats shrunk to better fit a 12 year old. They spent some days training and waiting and waiting some more. They finally marched 20 kilometers toward the front and heard the big guns booming. Still they waited and sat in reserve while other American forces straightened out the St. Mihiel Salient.
The 362nd Regiment kept moving closer to the action whereupon Grandpa made his first entry in the blank end pages of the Bible, “Today we are just a few miles from Hun lines.” Who knows what the waiting did to the men as they sat idle and listened to the nearby sounds of battle. Late in the afternoon of September 25th orders came telling them to attack and go “over the top” at 5:30 the next morning.
He wrote this the next day, “Sept. 26th 1918 5 in the morning We started the drive about 20 K. M. West of Verdun and we were in 17 days and we lost half [our men]. I’ve filled in his blank, but historical accounts validate my insert.
Historians tell us more of what they encountered. Big artillery guns opened up at 5 a. m., thousands of them, all aimed at German trenches but German artillery answered. During this shelling, the 362nd sat safely on the reverse slope of a hill. As they walked across “No Mans Land,” not a shot rang out, giving the men a false sense of security. But as they entered the woods, German machine guns and snipers opened up and inflicted the first significant casualties on them.
Epinonville loomed as the target for the 362nd. Supporting artillery fell short as they advanced and killed a number of them before they got word to the gunners to raise their trajectories. The Germans now realized the huge size of the American attack and shifted more men and equipment to meet them. After heavy fighting the regiment took the town and revelled in their victory which would not last long, however. Regiments on their flanks had not kept up, thereby leaving the 362nd exposed which necessitated their withdrawal.
With every foot of ground directly under the observation of the Germans, the 362nd suffered many casualties. Then their regimental commander received the order that the advance must be continued at all costs. He thought the order was suicidal and said he would join the men in the slaughter that was sure to occur. Someone has written, “A wild charge out across the open through a seething inferno began.” The regimental historian went on to write, “With shouts of ‘Powder River,’ they raced forward in thinning numbers through the storm of bullets, shrapnel, high explosives and gas shells, like wild men.” Their charge caused the Germans to retreat, but hundreds of dead and wounded were strewn across the battlefield.
The morning after their retreat, the count of casualties astounded them. One company of 179 men had only 18 men left. Finally, rolling kitchens caught up to them, and the first warm food in five days was served to them. They stayed in the Argonne four more days until Spanish flu struck and raged through their ranks. While Grandpa never said it, I believe he contracted the flu because he wrote in his Bible, “Oct 17 I went to the hospital. Was there about two weeks and one week in Concourt.”
In part that is Grandpa’s story. There is more, but this hits some of the high points. My mother said he would never talk about his wartime experience, something which seems to be a common thread running through the ranks of veterans. Someone like me can only read about these battles. Unfortunately Veterans Day gets skipped over and not taken seriously by everyone. Those veterans who were there certainly deserve remembrance.
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