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{
    "localId": "17343226",
    "label": "The Memoirs of Sergeant Verne Chaney",
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{
    "id": "17343226",
    "sourceUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/17343226",
    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "The Memoirs of Sergeant Verne Chaney",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/17343226",
    "collections": [
        "Verne E. Chaney Papers",
        "Subject Files"
    ],
    "subjects": [
        "Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972",
        "Spina, Frank E., 1887-1972",
        "Klemm, Karl D., 1880-",
        "Wooldridge, Glenwood F., 1893-1977",
        "Pershing, John J. (John Joseph), 1860-1948",
        "Thacher, John H., 1872-1960",
        "Miles, John L., 1878-1961",
        "Soldiers",
        "World War, 1914-1918",
        "Artillery"
    ],
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            "logicalDate": "1919-01-01",
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    "seq": 21,
    "pageIndex": 0,
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    "ocrText": "21\ngoing back to our old position. I managed to ride an offlead horse and will\nsay I nearly fell off a hundred times.56 Once I tried walking behind the guns\nbut would go to sleep walking, in spite of my efforts to keep awake. I would\nmake an effort to see something ahead and all I could make out was tall\noffice buildings and large residences. I knew then I was seeing things, optical\nillusions. I had often read of men dying of thirst, seeing rivers and lakes\nahead of them.\nIt was after 48 sleepless hours that we returned to our old position.57\nWe slept all that day and had a big feed, bacon, gravy, bread and coffee, but\nnot near enough to satisfy our appetites. When rations came up that night\nthey brot the news that the 1st Sgt. and the one man we thot missing,\nturned up in echalon the morning after the shelling. As a result he was\nrelieved of his job and reduced to private.58 The chief of the second section,\nalong with his cannoneers and drivers were sent back to get the gun that\nwas stuck. They brot back the news that three horses were killed and our\nposition was badly shot up, also that some other battery must have have had\nsome trouble in the darkness as a gun was run over an embankment. So\nended our first baptism of fire, a result of which every one benefited a great\ndeal. This battle was called by the battery, \"The Battle of Who Run.\"59\nINATIONAL\nN ARCHIVES RECORDS ADMIN.*\nCOVERAMENT\n56\nThe left forward horse is the lead horse, the offlead is the right forward horse. The horses in\nthe middle are the swing horses and the horses closest to the limber are the wheel horses.\nnot\nfind out twhat the enter Horses were callfed.\n57\nThe old position was on Mount Herrenberg. The battery had taken only its guns, ammunition\ncaissons and water tank into the firing position.\n58\nColonel Karl Klemm, the commanding officer of the 129th, insisted Captain Harry S.Truman\ncourt-martial Sergeant Wooldridge. Captain Truman was content to bust him to private and then transfer him\nto another battery. Ex Sergeant Wooldridge performed well for the remainder of the war.\n59\nCaptain Harry S. Truman describes this engagement in a very similar manner to Sergeant Chaney's\ndescription. \"The Battle of Who Run\" is an obvious pun on the Civil War battle of Bull Run. The Union Army\nwas defeated at Bull Run and left the field with unmilitary like alacrity."
}