Not Dead but Fighting
Jim Gardener Quit the Trolley to Do His Bit and Did It Thoroughly
“When we went to war,” said James C. Gardener, “I figured it out this way: ‘I’m single and healthy and lots of other fellows are going over, and doggone me if I don’t go along and do my bit.’”
So he went down to the Marines’ recruiting office, in Baltimore, and enlisted. He was sent to Philadelphia and on June 6, 1917, he was one of 250 men put aboard the Hancock which went to New York for orders and on June 13 sailed for France.
Gardener had been a motorman on the Baltimore trolley, and when some months after he went to France the War Department, which did not then publish addresses, reported “J. C. Gardener killed in action” the Trolley Topics wrote an obituary of the motorman esteemed of his fellows; but as there was some uncertainty whether the J. C. Gardener killed was really the Baltimore boy, the obituary was withheld for more definite information. “Jimmie,” however, was mourned by his pals until there began to trickle through from one source and another rumors and reports that confirmed the doubt that the J. C. Gardener killed was really their “Jimmie.”
Then one day, the war over, there walked into a group of trolley-men at the Baltimore car barns a strapping fellow, six feet three, weighing 195, wearing a khaki uniform with three gold service chevrons and three gold wound stripes, a division citation cord for bravery on his left shoulder and the Croix de Guerre with palm on his breast, and the boys were doggone certain that Jimmie Gardener, motorman, was very much alive and able to give an account of himself. The Trolley Topics lost no time in possessing itself of that account, and to that semi-monthly organ of the United Railways and Electric Company we are indebted for some of the details of the fighting experience of this trolley hero whom the great Foch kissed on either cheek.
The Hancock, says Gardener was his twice by torpedoes on the way over, which “messed up both ends without crippling her very much.” He first saw action in a position “down below” St. Mihiel. He is quoted:
“It was about 4 a.m. of March 31st that they opened up with artillery. Right ahead of us was a graveyard. The shells first fell on the far side of the graveyard. Then they fell in the graveyard and tore up graves and generally ruined it. Then the shells began to crawl closer to us.
“There were four of us on guard and we reported the coming of the Germans to the officers, and the men were routed out of the dugouts. One little fellow named Roach—we called him the boy scout—was so excited that he put his trousers on backward and got his shoes on the wrong feet.
“He started with a box of ammunition for a gun and ran into another fellow with another box. The collision knocked him down and he rolled clear down a hill to the very place the gun crew was waiting for the ammunition.
“Some of us had been joking and I remember a fellow named Clark who said he wondered which of us would live to take the story back home. A buddy of mine named Hanky said, ‘You fellows write your notes to your mothers and sweethearts and I’ll take ’em back to them.’ Poor Hanky was killed in that fight.
“The fight lasted two hours. The point where I was had thirteen men to defend it. We had two Stokes guns.
“There were five hundred men in the party that attacked this point, or, to be exact, 498, according to the officers. We cleaned up the whole business. Seven of our thirteen men were killed.”