Saturday, September 29, 2018

A brief lull before the big battle

During a brief “period of stabilization” after the battle of St. Mihiel, Mike Hogg found time to write to Ima, describing with cheerful insouciance what had been a harrowing combat experience.
                           
                                                               Monday, September 23rd

         You should see me right now. Here I sit, just after having taken the most glorious bath I have ever had. Not that it was up to date, or that I had a good tub, or that I had lots of water. It was a bath--that is all. I am in an old, shell-torn town. The room here is about the only thing left of the house that is whole. The rest has been blown away by shells. This room, however, is great. It can’t rain in here. All my officers (four of us) are here.          You are wondering, no doubt, why that bath was so wonderful. Well, it is this way: I am just back from that big American “push”--St. Mihiel. We were in it up to our eyes. Almost two weeks, we dug, marched, fought and scrambled around in something I know was worse than Hell itself. But here we are, as happy as if we all had good sense --men and all.

         Captain Hogg and his Company D would soon be in the trenches again, in the greatest single battle in American history: the Meuse-Argonne offensive, with a battlefront 75 miles long, and involving more than a million U.S. soldiers, from September 26 until the armistice of November 11. 

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