129th Field Artillery Regiment D Company

Battery D of the 2nd Battalion, 129th Field Artillery, known by reputation as “Dizzy D,” was a four-gun unit of 194 men that Harry S. Truman was ordered to command in France in July 1918. Many of its soldiers were Irish Catholics from Kansas City, and earlier officers had struggled to control them. Truman’s arrival began with visible fear and suspicion on both sides; his response to that difficult first meeting helped turn the battery into a unit that respected him and followed his lead under fire.

Composition and a new commander

At Camp Coëtquidan, the 129th Regiment was completing its training before entering action. Truman, then a captain, was summoned by Colonel Karl D. Klemm and told to take command of Battery D immediately. The appointment fulfilled his highest ambition, but he was frightened by the prospect of leading 194 men and four guns. The battery’s reputation offered little reassurance: Lieutenant Edgar Hinde recalled that several previous captains had been unable to handle its men, whom he described as a wild group.

The soldiers, in turn, did not expect much from their new officer. Truman appeared short, serious, and bespectacled; to some he looked more like a store clerk or professor than a commander. One man thought he looked like “a sitting duck.” The men had been through a succession of officers and assumed this would be another brief and unsuccessful attempt to take charge. The scene thus opened with a mismatch between the authority of Truman’s new position and the authority he had yet to establish among the battery.

On the morning of July 11, 1918, Truman faced the men on the parade field. He looked along the line several times but, according to Private Albert Ridge, said nothing for what seemed a long while. The men expected a reprimand for their past conduct. Truman later wrote that he was too badly frightened to speak. At last he dismissed them; as he turned away, they gave him a Bronx cheer. Their defiance was quickly made tangible: they staged a sham stampede of the horses, and after taps a fight in the barracks sent several men to the infirmary.

Discipline and mutual obligation

Truman acted the next morning. He posted the names of noncommissioned officers who had been reduced in rank, including, as Private Vere Leigh recalled, the first sergeant at the top of the list. The speed of the decision made clear that Truman had not mistaken the previous day’s disorder for a harmless joke. He then told the remaining noncommissioned officers that they were responsible for straightening the battery out. His warning was direct: “I didn’t come over here to get along with you,” he said. “You’ve got to get along with me. And if there are any of you who can’t, speak up right now and I’ll bust you right back now.”

The firmness did not make his command impersonal. Truman took an interest in the men, and one private remembered that the food improved noticeably. The men later described him as friendly and warm rather than arrogant or domineering, while also remembering him as a fair disciplinarian. His approach joined accountability to reciprocity: “You soldier for me, and I’ll soldier for you,” he told them. In his recollection, after the confrontation, “We got along.” The battery’s change was not presented as a sudden transformation in temperament; it emerged through explicit standards, attention to the men, and a working relationship built on mutual service.

Under fire

Battery D’s first major firing mission came on August 29. Ordered to a position closer to the German lines, it was to fire a gas barrage at German batteries about four miles away, suppressing their activity rather than necessarily destroying their positions. At precisely 8:00 p.m., four batteries of the 129th opened fire. Battery D fired 500 rounds in half an hour. The firing ended in stillness and rain, but the battery was supposed to move quickly before German guns could answer.

The withdrawal became confused. The first sergeant responsible for bringing up the horses was delayed; men and animals struggled in darkness, some soldiers wearing gas masks and others trying to fit masks on the horses. Half the horses and two guns went over a hill in the wrong direction and became stuck in mud. When German shells arrived, Truman was mounted on a horse. A shell burst within fifteen feet of him, and the horse fell into a shell hole and pinned him beneath it. Lieutenant Vic Housholder pulled him free, nearly breathless.

The panic spread as Sergeant Glen Wooldridge shouted that the Germans had a bracket on the battery and urged everyone to run. Accounts differed afterward about how many men fled: Private Walter Menefee said he himself led the retreat, while Leigh thought few went beyond Wooldridge. In the confusion of rain, darkness, and gas masks, it was difficult to tell who was where. Truman, once he had recovered his breath, stood his ground and shouted at the men. His outburst startled them because it came from the officer they had known as reserved and proper. At the time, the episode was frightening and dangerous; only later did reunions turn it into the jokingly named “Battle of Who Run.”

Reputation and wartime record

The battery’s conduct during the Meuse-Argonne offensive strengthened the respect Truman had earned. After the regiment was pulled back to rest, the men looked like scarecrows, but Leigh said their regard for their captain had never been greater. He recalled Truman as a leader who earned respect without theatricality or showmanship. Truman had lost twenty pounds and described the campaign as the most intense experience of his life, while taking pride that his men remained alive and in one piece.

In mid-October, the battery occupied concealed positions on the bleak heights east of Verdun above the Meuse River Valley, preparing for the final drive. Its camouflage became so effective that Truman himself had trouble finding the battery after dark. The regiment suffered 129 battlefield casualties during the war. Battery D had only three men wounded, one of whom later died; they had been on a special detail with an ammunition train, not under Truman’s command, when they were wounded. Leigh attributed the battery’s relative good fortune partly to luck and partly to leadership, contrasting it with batteries that had not been as well led. The account leaves both elements in view: survival was not simply a commander’s achievement, but the unit’s experience made the value of leadership unmistakable to the men who served in it.