Skeleton Lake
The story of what Len Fairfield and his fellow Doughboys encountered while preparing to assault Mont Sec
The story below comes from Artillery Scout by James G. Bilder. The book is based on the diaries of American Soldier Len Fairfield, Bilder's grandfather.
Fairfield was an artillery scout with the 58th Artillery Brigade during World War One. He arrived in France in mid-1918 where he received further artillery training at Camp Le Valdahon.
Gear Up, and Move Out
After his time at Le Valdahon, Fairfield was abruptly deployed to an American line near the German salient of St. Mihiel.
Abruptly is a kind way to put it. Fairfield's unit was woken up at 2 a.m. with flood lights and shouting. Leadership yelled to gear up and get ready to move out at 0300 hours. The order had come down for the 58th to have their turn at the front. With rushed steps, Fairfield and his fellow Doughboys jumped from their bunks, packed their bags, and set out for an uncertain future. Fairfield proceeded to the stalls where he saddled up his scout horse, Annabell.
After a two-day march (two-day ride for Len), Fairfield and the 58th arrived at a staging area a few miles behind the frontline. By then, they'd put two and two together. Based on their position and rumors that had flowed through the grapevine, Len and his comrades realized they would be taking up the "unenviable task" of recapturing Mont Sec.
The infamous and historic Mont Sec was an observation point on the western tip of the St. Mihiel salient. It was used with malice by the Germans to spot Allied positions and call for shellfire. Germany took Mont Sec in the early months of the war and the French fought to regain it many times over. The fighting was ferocious. At times, "[the] use of artillery and machine guns in this area had been so intense that as many as one thousand men a minute had been killed in action."
Battle Preparations
Fairfield and the rest of the 58th got to work preparing for what they knew would be a bloody offensive. They dug casemates for their guns and hand-carried 234 artillery ammo boxes weighing 135 pounds each a quarter mile over the rough, muddy terrain to their casemate positions. The job left Fairfield and his comrades physically beaten.
After all that, Fairfield had a bit of a reprieve while battle preparations continued. Aside from a few gas attacks that turned out to be false alarms and one nearby shelling from the Germans, Fairfield documented only one other moment during the lead-up to their big push.
This moment, however, gave the 58th a glimpse at what the coming months at Mont Sec might have in store for the Doughboys:
The next day, Len’s Company A was nicely situated with a field mess converted from an old barn. A nearby lake provided fresh water for coffee and shaving and everything seemed just Jake.
Then, a problem arose when one of the boats bringing shells across the lake to a forward casemate overturned. Some Doughboys immediately stripped down and dove in after them. They surfaced with the shells and bleached white faces as they discovered to their horror that the entire lake bottom was covered with thousands of skeletons of dead French soldiers from the slaughter that had been Mont Sec.
There was no shortage of vomiting men, and the Doughboys couldn’t dump their coffee fast enough. They immediately dubbed the body of water “Skeleton Lake” and returned to the use of water from nearby wells for drinking and shaving.
The Magic Mirror
It was as if the doughboys had looked into a magic mirror, allowing them a glimpse at the sad future awaiting them.
What was so shocking is what "Skeleton Lake" said about the scale of the fighting that took place between France and Germany. There was no time, energy, or place to bury the massive amount of dead men, so they were given to the fish.
Not only was it sickening to know what was at the bottom of the lake and that they had drunk the water, but it was also a constant reminder to Fairfield and his comrades of the German power guided by Mont Sec.
What a sad true story. If we only knew the full picture of many things, we would be horrified. Thanking God for our soldiers who sacrificed for our freedom!