Tag Archives: Germany

World War I Recollections of Dr. Edwin M. Godby (1928)

24 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Huntington, Logan, World War I

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, comes this recollection of World War I by veteran Edwin M. Godby of Huntington, WV, dated July 10, 1928:

LOGAN BOY OF LOST BATTALION LIVED THRU SIX DAYS OF HELL

Dr. E.M. Godby, Now of Huntington, One of 150 Survivors of An Outstanding Episode of World War—Graphic Account of Harrowing Experiences

It has been a little less than 10 years since the story of the Lost Battalion thrilled and horrified the American people.

It was the story of an infantry battalion which pushed its way through in an advance into the German lines while the forces on either flank were being beaten back, writes Wiatt Smith for the Herald-Advertiser.

Of the 1,000 men who went in, only a remnant lived to tell the story of six days in a literal hell. Six days during which they crouched in shell holes and dugouts, without food or water, while the shells from the guns of their own army thundered over them or broke about them and the gas and machine gun fire of a sullen enemy harassed them.

One of those survivors lives in Huntington. He is a dentist and as he goes about his professional work and social life only a slight cough serves to mark him as one who breathed the deadly poison spewed over him by the Bosche.

Dr. Edwin M. Godby, of Fifth Avenue, with offices in the United Cigar Stores building, is the man in question. He told the story to one who had first learned from others of his part in this great drama of the war. Dr. Godby was an ambulance corps man, attached to the Seventy-Seventh division and at the time assigned to Major Whittlesey’s battalion of the 308th infantry for said duty.

Left Logan in 1918

Eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. James Godby of Logan, he was a student of dentistry in the University of Cincinnati when America entered the war. He went from Logan with a draft contingent in March 1918. He trained at Camp Greenleaf, Ga., was assigned to the Medical corps, and crossed the ocean in June as a casual.

Assigned at once to the Seventy-seventh division he first saw the front at post in Alsace-Lorraine.

“There was no action here,” said Dr. Godby. “We were within one kilometer of the enemy but there seemed to be almost an understanding that we wouldn’t bother each other. There was no firing. Occasionally one side or the other would send a raiding party into the others lines, but these were rarely fired upon.

“In July our division went in to replace another division which had helped take Chateau Thierry. We continued in the drive from the Marne to the Aisne. We would advance two or three days and then dig in for perhaps four or five. This went on from July to September.

“Then we moved from the Aisne to the Argonne. One date that stays with me is that of the great barrage which marked the opening of the Argonne drive on the night of September 26.

“On October 13 or 14 we got orders to advance from our position in a 30-mile strip of woods between the headwaters of the Aisne and the Meusc. The Ninety-second division flanked us on the left and two of our regiments and two of the Ninety-second were supposed to advance.

“The advance started as planned, early in the morning, but the right and left flanks were met by such resistance that they fell back to their original positions.

“Major Whittlessey’s men tore through the resisting German line and went forward. It was late in the forenoon before we discovered that we were unsupported on either flank and cut off from the rear.

“We spend six days before we were relieved by another regiment which was almost destroyed in the effort. The battalion was virtually at war strength, having been in only a little while. Of the 1,000 who went in only 150 came back.”

Dr. Godby tells a grim story of the last days. As soon as the soldiers found their situation they began to dig in. It was every man for himself. Dr. Godby says he and two others found a shell hole. They deepened it and were comparatively safe there. But one of the three got too venturesome and raised his head too far above the rim of the crater. His comrades used his body for an additional barricade.

The surviving companion of Dr. Godby was a man named Crane, who had gone in from Pennsylvania. He told Dr. Godby that he had a sister in Huntington whose husband worked for Gwinn Bros. & Co.

“I have often thought I’d try to get race of that sister,” said Dr. Godby, “but I never have.

“We just laid there,” the dentist said, detailing his experience. “Each man had less than a quart of water and no food. After the second day I didn’t have any water. We never missed the food, but of course the thirst was torture. It was terrible, too, to have to wear our gas masks continuously for that becomes torture after the first hour.

“For the first day or two the Germans tried charging us but we were strong enough to beat them back. After that they were content to keep their machine guns turned on us and subject us to a continuous barrage of gas. At the same time we were within the range of our own batteries.

Contemplated Suicide

“American planes passed over us and tried to drop us food, but the Germans got it.

“For the last two or three days nothing mattered. Crane and I tried to devise means of escape. We would work out a plan and then decide it was futile. We decided to commit suicide, but changed our minds. It was simply a matter of trying to keep alive as long as we could. On the fifth night I had only intervals of consciousness. But we had determined to make a dash for freedom and life when daylight came. It would not have been a dash for life, but a dash to death.

I know this is true because we were on the slope of a ravine, the battalion being pocketed on either side of it. We could see the water in the ravine and the bodies of the men who in their desperation had gone there to drink. Not one lived to taste the water.

“But as Crane and I planned to make the final desperate dash I lost consciousness. When I revived I was on a stretcher at a base hospital at Nantes. I never saw Crane again. I have often wondered what became of him.

“Did he,” I asked myself, “live to go for his death drink or was he too rescued?

“I have never talked to anyone who was with the battalion.”

A few days after Dr. Godby revived from his unconsciousness the armistice was signed. He was in the hospital from November 1 until late in December, recovering from the effects of gas. In January 1919, he came back to the United States, received his discharge and resumed his studies. He has been practicing in Huntington two years.

James Andrew Nighbert

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Civil War, Logan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From “Virginia and Virginians, 1606-1888,” published by H.H. Hardesty, we find this entry for James Andrew Nighbert, who resided at Logan, West Virginia:

Is descended on his father’s side from German ancestors who many years ago settled in America. They were a family of patriots, and as bravely served in the defense of their adopted country as they had done in their Fatherland. Both paternal and the maternal grandfathers of the subject of this sketch were Continental soldiers in the Revolutionary war. George W. Nighbert and his wife, Elizabeth Scaggs, are the parents of James Andrew Nighbert; the father was born in Wythe county and the mother in Montgomery county, Va.; their son, James Andrew, was born in Montgomery county, Va., and moved to Logan county, same State, in 1844. Here he has since resided. He espoused the Southern cause during the civil war, and served as first lieutenant in Co. B, 36th Va. Inf., and was major in 1st regiment Va. State Line; was member of the Virginia Legislature from 1863 until 1865; President of the County Court, Logan county, from 1880 to 1888; was one of the delegates to the National Democratic Convention in 1888; at the present time he is the largest resident land owner in Logan county, in the management of which he is at present engaged. He is a large-hearted, generous citizen, thoroughly interested in the progress of his State and county, always ready to devote his time, talents, means and influence to aid a progressive movement, and has contributed largely to render Logan one of the leading counties in the State. Mr. Nighbert is a member of the Knights of Honor.

Source: Dr. R.A. Brock, Virginia and Virginians, 1606-1888 (Richmond, VA: H.H. Hardesty, Publisher, 1888), p. 836.

In Search of Ed Haley 297

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Later that day, I went to see 88-year-old Abe Keibler in nearby South Shore, Kentucky. Abe was the last surviving member of the old fiddling Keiblers and a first cousin to fiddler Morris Allen, one of the sources for Parkersburg Landing.

“My grandfather, he was sixteen years old when he landed in here from Germany and he got a job out here at an old furnace,” Abe said. “He couldn’t even speak the language when he first come here, they said, and he didn’t play nothing.”

“Wow,” I said, “So fiddling started with your dad and uncles?”

“My uncles and dad, yeah,” Abe confirmed. “Jim was my dad’s name. He played a banjo — the old claw-hammer style.

Abe was raised up in a family of fiddlers, but he originally played the guitar. He began to play the fiddle at the age of 55. He wasted little time in showing me the old family fiddle, which he inherited from his uncle John Keibler. It was a good-looking instrument with a good tone, although the bridge was ready to collapse.

“Way back before I was born some fella came into Portsmouth when they had the old saloons in and he had this old fiddle and couldn’t play it,” Abe explained. “My uncle John, he seen that it was a good fiddle and he wanted to buy it and this guy wouldn’t talk about selling it. My uncle Charley, he was a left-handed fiddler. He said, ‘Now John, if you want that fiddle, I can buy it for ten dollars.’ So he bought it. It’s been in our family around ninety years or maybe close to a hundred.”

Abe said the old fiddle was hard to tune — it had seen some rough times.

“My uncle fell and busted the top all to pieces. I had a fella that made fiddles put that top off of another old fiddle on it. My uncle had patent keys put on it and I had them took out and wood keys put in it.”

I tuned the Keibler fiddle as best as I could, then reached it back with a request for a tune I’d heard Abe mention called “We’ll All Go to Heaven When the Devil Goes Blind”. He couldn’t remember it but said it was the same thing as “Stumptail Dolly”. He scratched out a melody in the key of G, then said, “Some of them called that the ‘Girl With the Blue Dress On’. ‘Old Coon Dog’ is all I ever heard it called.”

He also played “Boatin’ Up Sandy”, “Sally Goodin” (in G), “Rye Whiskey” (which he called “Cold Frosty Morning”), “Sally Got Drunk on Irish Potatoes”, “Cotton-Eyed Joe”, and “Susan’s Gone to the Ball With Her Old Shoes On” (key of G).

Every now and then, I joined in with my fiddle.

“I’m gonna learn you how to play a fiddle yet,” Abe said.

In Search of Ed Haley 111

17 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

After listening to the Lozier tape, I played a 1992 interview/jam session with Abe Keibler, last of the old fiddling Keiblers in South Shore, Kentucky.

“The first Keibler to come into this area was my grandfather, Henry C. Keibler,” Abe said. “He come here when he was 21 years old from Germany. I don’t know whether he played any music or not but they was some good ones in the uncles that raised me. The fiddlers was John and Sam and Henry and Charley but Uncle John Keibler, he was the best fiddler in the whole bunch. He won contest after contest. [When he was young and learning to play a fiddle,] his dad wouldn’t let him bring it into the house. My aunt told me he didn’t want to hear him screeking around on it, you know, so he took it out in the cornfield. My grandpap said, ‘Well, them boys is into something. I’m gonna slip out there to see what they’re into.’ And he sneaked out there and the old son was a picking the banjo, and him the fiddle and some a dancing. Then he said to him, ‘Well John, you can bring your fiddle in home now.’ Then he brought it in and it didn’t bother him no more. He was playing then good.”

Abe said, “Then I had an uncle, Charley ‘Shorty’ Keibler — they said he was an awful good left-handed fiddler, but I never heard him, see. Uncle Charley died young. He’s the one bought that old fiddle that I was raised with. Uncle Charley lived over in Portsmouth. Back then, they had old saloons and my other uncle John he tried to buy [this fiddle from a man there]. But [this man, he wouldn’t sell it to John. He] told Uncle Charley, he said, ‘Now, Charley, if you want that fiddle I’ll sell it to you for ten dollars.’ Well, he bought it [from the man] and Uncle John give him the money and he kept it over the years. He wouldn’t let me touch that fiddle though ’til I was sixteen years old. He didn’t want to hear me jigging around on it. He thought you ought to already know how to play, I guess. [Uncle John], he had a stroke and he tried to tune it up one day and he couldn’t tune it. And he told his nephew, said, ‘Take that fiddle and give it to Henry.’ Uncle John died on September 6, 1932. Then in ’55, I think it was, Uncle Henry said to his sister, ‘I’m gonna give old Abraham this fiddle. Next time he comes down I’ll give it to him.’ I went down and he said, ‘There’s the fiddle. She’s yours. Now, do whatever you want with it.’ He couldn’t play much then. He was sick. Henry died in 1959.”

On the tape, someone asked Abe about the Glenn Brothers, who I had heard about in connection with Clark Kessinger.

“Abe Glenn, I was named after him,” he said. “Bob Glenn, they said he was a real fiddler. I never heard either one — that was before my time. They said he was really about as good as you could find.”

Abe also remembered Asa Neal.

“When he first come here to play, he couldn’t play a hornpipe nor nothing — just them old blues. When I was about sixteen year old, he come there to my uncle’s and he learnt to play all of these old tunes. He used a lot of slip notes but he could get them in there, boy. He learnt to be a good fiddler, ol’ Asa.”

On the tape, Abe mostly played old standards — “Sally Goodin”, “Turkey in the Straw”, “Liza Jane” — but every now and then he came out with some obscure tunes, like “Portsmouth Airs”, “Headwaters of Tygart” and “Old Coon Dog”.