Sgt. Frank L. Carbaugh's 1918 Poem "The Fields of the Marne"

Sgt. Frank L. Carbaugh, 7th M.G. Battalion, 3rd Division

By Connie Ruzich

Frank Carbaugh was a Doughboy from Greencastle, a small town in central Pennsylvania.  A non-commissioned officer with the 7th Machine Gun Battalion, Carbaugh was wounded at the Second Battle of the Marne late in July of 1918. While in hospital, he wrote a poem that looks ahead to the war’s aftermath.

  The Fields of the Marne

The fields of the Marne are growing green,

  The river murmurs on and on;

No more the hail of mitrailleuse,

  The cannon from the hills are gone.

The herder leads the sheep afield,

  Where grasses grow o'er broken blade;

And toil-worn women till the soil

  O'er human mold, in sunny glade.

The splintered shell and bayonet

  Are lost in crumbling village wall;

No sniper scans the rim of hills,

  No sentry hears the night bird call. 

From blood-wet soil and sunken trench,

   The flowers bloom in summer light;

And farther down the vale beyond,

  The peasant smiles are sad, yet bright.

The wounded Marne is growing green,

  The gash of Hun no longer smarts;

Democracy is born again,

   But what about the troubled hearts?

                                                      —Sgt. Frank Carbaugh

Battle of Marne (detail) by Harvey Dunn (Smithsonian)

The poem imagines a time when peace has returned to the world, yet so many French soldiers have died that women must continue to work in the fields. They till the land that has been fertilized by the bodies of the slain. At the site of the Battle of the Marne, snipers, sentries, and sounds of gunfire have been replaced by the song of night birds and the green of newly grown grass. Though wounded and scarred by battle, the land is healing, and Democracy rises like a phoenix from the ashes. 

 But there are some hurts that can never be healed—the broken hearts of those who mourn.

 “The Fields of the Marne” was first published in Stars and Stripes on 16 August 1918. A brief note under Carbaugh’s name simply stated, “Written while lying wounded in hospital; died August, 1918.”  Franklin L. Carbaugh was 22. Nearly three years later, in May of 1921, his parents met the train that brought their youngest son's body back to Pennsylvania for burial in the family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Franklin County. 

An anonymous source later posted an account of Carbaugh’s death and its effect on the men who knew him to the Benton Scott County Democrat of Benton, Missouri. The details of the story suggest that it was also sent to his mother by those who were with Frank during the last weeks of his life:

Sergeant loses his last fight.

Soldier wins admiration of comrades through cheerfulness in hospital.

He was game till the end.

Four operations were too much for strength of non-com who was wounded in action at Chateau-Thierry.

An American Hospital in France.

"No, they're not going to bring the sergeant back to the ward, boys."

These were exactly the words the nurse used. But the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes said more.

The little group in the ward, which had been playing cards on one of the beds to forget the tension they felt while the sergeant's operation was taking place, stopped suddenly, all attention, all hungering for good news.

"You don't mean the sergeant's gone, do you? exclaimed one.

"Yes, boys, the sergeant's gone. Four operations were just too much for his strength. He never regained consciousness."The little group of patients and the nurse were silent.

The chap with one leg gone had half a deck of cards in his hands. Dazed, he relaxed, and the cards fell to the floor, scattering over half the ward. The chap with one leg gone never noticed them.

"Gee, the sergeant's gone," he said huskily, "He sure was a game boy." 

"He was the best fellow I ever knew," said another, "and the cheerfullest, too. I've seen them dressing his leg time and again, and gosh! but it hurt. But did the sergeant ever say anything? Not the sergeant--he never batted an eye.""Just to think," mused a third, "it wasn't half an hour ago when we saw him go out. I shouted, "Good luck, Sarge," when the stretcher was carried through the door, and he smiled and said, "Thanks, I'll be back in a few minutes with you." 

The sergeant was Frank Carbaugh of Greencastle, Pa., a member of the Seventh Machine-Gun Sanitary detachment. No mother ever reared a braver boy.  The sergeant, who was a mathematics teacher before the war, was wounded when his outfit was rushed into action near Chateau Thierry. None of his bunkies knew just how, because, as one of them explained, "The sergeant wasn't the kind of a fellow who'd talk of himself. You can bet he was wounded doing something for somebody, though."

They did know that the sergeant lay out in the open a long time after he was wounded. Medical records show that his left leg was badly slashed, and they operated at the first hospital he reached. But gangrene had set in, and four operations had followed in an effort to save him. They have had lots of brave patients that doctors and nurses and patients admired alike in that hospital, but never one just like the sergeant, who said little, was always joking and cheerful, and never had a complaint. The rest of the boys in the ward would do anything in the world for "the sarge."

The little group sitting on the cots, with the nurse, had been talking of the sergeant for a long time when one of the boys said, "You ought to write to his mother, Miss Cutter. The sarge thought the world of his mother." " I'm going to," replied the nurse. "You boys write out what you think of the sergeant, and I'll send that, too."

This article by Connie Ruzich was originally published in her own blog Behind Their Lines: Poetry of the Great War (LINK) and by the World War One Centennial Commission.  Images from Find a Grave, the Smithsonian, and Behind Their Lines.