In this final episode of the three-part series, “Over the Top with the 80th,” private Rush Young watches from the front lines as World War I intensifies, and the Allies finally begin to push back, but how is this North Carolina mountain boy going to make it through?
Young was one of over one million U.S. Army soldiers in the Argonne Forest offensive, the largest and second-deadliest battle of the entire war.
As Young and his fellow soldiers leapt from trench to shell hole and from one boundary of trees to the next, they sometimes got ahead of their supply chain and artillery support. But the upside of having heard the constant shelling, both night and day, is that they could tell directions by listening to the sounds of the shells flying over their heads.
Along with what they called German whiz bangs, some of the enemy’s shells made an ominous, “you, you, you, you” sound as they whistled through the air!
The fields and roads looked like honeycombs from all the bombing. More unbearable even than the lean rations, the green blow flies, and the brazen trench rats were the cries of the wounded, “I’m hit, I’m hit, for God sakes please help me!” and the wild screams of the shell-shocked who were going mad from the constant explosions.
During a short break from the front lines, Young said his unit looked like train tramps, with bloody, ragged uniforms, hobbling to the rear just like those battle-hardened Brits they saw when they first arrived.
New troops taunted these shell-shocked fellas, “You call yourself American soldiers? Just wait ‘til we get to the front, we’ll show you how to fight!” Young and his mates just laughed and said, “Keep marching boys…you’ll find what you’re looking for, the Huns are waiting for you.”
Just a week before the Armistice or end of the war, Young took a devastating shot to the lower leg from a machine gun nest 1,000 yards away. After crawling 50 yards to cover and a quick field dressing of the wound he was told to lie in a ditch for safety, which he did for the rest of the day.
He was still a mile away from the first aid station and as he was being carried back, the orderlies dumped him on the ground and dove for cover every time a plane flew over!
In camp hospital #33, which Young described as floating in a sea of mud, his leg was surgically repaired but he caught diphtheria, a bacterial infection you never hear of anymore because of effective vaccines, but he survived that and 2 months later was on a boat for New York.
As he watched the French shoreline slowly fade, the lump in his throat wouldn’t go away. Instead of thinking of the joy of returning home to America and his home in the mountains of North Carolina, all he could think of were all of his friends, friends that he was leaving behind, friends who would never come home.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this personal look inside an Appalachian boy’s experiences in the First World War!