Burying The Dead

Still, a lot of our men died fighting. You had to have bayonets. I did use them; I had to use them to be talking to you now. That’s hand-to-hand fighting. When you use your bayonet, you use your knife. When you shoot them, they’re dead. As long as they were living you had to fight them. Most of the men died of disease. Pneumonia. They got it in trenches and when you sleep on the wet ground. We didn’t have no barracks then, you know. Just pup tents. I didn’t get pneumonia, but I got gassed in the Army. Chlorine gas, the lung gas. It does make you sick. My friends got mustard gas; mustard gas was the worst gas. It never healed–wherever it was sore, it stayed sore. I guess in time the mustard gas killed them. You have to ask Germany why they used it. I don’t know. We didn’t use the gas–we didn’t have any.

I was in the Argonne Forest when it was all over. That’s the last battle we had, the Argonne-Meuse offensive. But we couldn’t go home until they took us home. The war was over nine months before they took us home. We spent nine months cleaning up. Cleaned up the dirt. Dead men and all the stuff. The war was over, but the dead were still there. You had to pick them up and bury them. Dog tags. They don’t put no names on them, just a number. That was your name. My name was 1018981.

title: “Burying The Dead” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “Hattie Ortiz”

Still, a lot of our men died fighting. You had to have bayonets. I did use them; I had to use them to be talking to you now. That’s hand-to-hand fighting. When you use your bayonet, you use your knife. When you shoot them, they’re dead. As long as they were living you had to fight them. Most of the men died of disease. Pneumonia. They got it in trenches and when you sleep on the wet ground. We didn’t have no barracks then, you know. Just pup tents. I didn’t get pneumonia, but I got gassed in the Army. Chlorine gas, the lung gas. It does make you sick. My friends got mustard gas; mustard gas was the worst gas. It never healed–wherever it was sore, it stayed sore. I guess in time the mustard gas killed them. You have to ask Germany why they used it. I don’t know. We didn’t use the gas–we didn’t have any.

I was in the Argonne Forest when it was all over. That’s the last battle we had, the Argonne-Meuse offensive. But we couldn’t go home until they took us home. The war was over nine months before they took us home. We spent nine months cleaning up. Cleaned up the dirt. Dead men and all the stuff. The war was over, but the dead were still there. You had to pick them up and bury them. Dog tags. They don’t put no names on them, just a number. That was your name. My name was 1018981.