Van Pelt was an infantry officer in the 7th Division, which was the last Regular Army division to arrive in France. He was rushed through in-country training to the trenches near Villers-en-haye (in north-east France) in October, 1918. His division was immediately tasked with reconnaissance and preparation for a massive offensive toward Metz by the newly activated Second Army. The offensive began on November 10, though was cut short by the Armistice called the following day.
Although composed in the final weeks of the war, there is no shortage of action. Van Pelt’s division were under constant attack by a German army in the final throes of defeat: “Terrific bombardment kept us awake practically all night … Trenches as muddy as the devil … Enemy plane flying around and ‘Archies’ [anti-aircraft guns] got busy. Shrapnel dropped around us in trench and in front of dugout.” The attacks weren’t limited to bombardment: “Had a devil of a bombardment during the night and early the next morning the enemy opens up … rifle and machine gun fire kept up at front for two hours.” And, again: “Quite a bit of small arms fire during early morning. Shelling continued … about 300 yards to our right … We went over to outpost … Capt and I get sniped at by a machine gun.” Almost snuck into this account, he mentions one of the cruellest forms of attack in the war: “About 9 o’clock … everything opened up until about 1:230am we got our first gas alarm.” Finally, we reach the war’s end, with Van Pelt’s preparation for going over the top halted: “Making final setting to go over. Get everything set to pull out for jumping off place on a minutes notice … Artillery continues to raise the devil … About 11am we hear that all hostilities and firing ceases at 11am.”
Van Pelt’s diary is full of detail on trench warfare and life in the field, there are other touching and more amusing moments, “Hear that Evans and Yeager were killed … Capt. Johnson gave me Evans ring which I will take to his mother after the war.” And there’s a vein of black humour never far from the surface: “Hear I was reported Dead for several days.”
Accompanying the diaries is a small collection of ephemera documenting Van Pelt’s life and post-war career. They give us a much fuller picture of Captain Van Pelt, who continued on active duty after the war until 1925 and died in 1928. Although his obituary stated that his death was a result of an injury in a gas attack, he did, in fact, die of tuberculosis which he contracted while in France.
