World Battlefronts: MEN AT WAR: Baby Patrol

On the Third Army front in France, soldiers of the 35th Infantry Division eyed a bleak chateau in no man’s land and waited for night to fall. There were children in the house—81 of them, by best reports—and they had to be taken out.

After dark the 35th’s volunteer “baby patrol”—a French captain, an American officer and ten G.I.s—slipped across the line, sloshed across 1,000 yards of rainswept marsh, crept into the house.

The information, they found, was correct. There were 81 of them, the oldest six, the youngest two years old; they were frightened, without shoes and only half clothed. Each man picked up two toddlers, shepherded a group of the older moppets, headed back across the marsh.

Then there was trouble. The nervous Germans heard noises, opened up on the marsh with artillery and mortar fire. The baby patrol did not dawdle: it passed its youngsters across a creek, finally crossed the line and bundled them into trucks headed for Nancy and proper shelter. The expedition had had rare good luck. No one, soldier or child, was so much as scratched.