A Maxim Gun, an Abandoned French Tank, and One Determined American

 

In his youth, Private First Class John Lewis Barkley was a bit of a troublemaker. He was known to sneak liquor into his unit area and had a not inconsiderable weakness for women both French and German. Interestingly, when he had originally attempted to enlist he was denied due to a severe stutter.

 

 

Later, at age 22, Barkley found his way into the US Army after the need for troops became severe. Barkley was an otherwise typical young American hailing from a small town in Missouri. In World War 1 he found the greatest adventure of his life.

 

 

John Barkley served with Company K of the 4^th Regiment of the 3d Infantry Division in most of the major American engagements during the First World War. A reconnaissance specialist and sharpshooter, Barkley spilled more than his share of German blood. However, he understood the war to be a fight between good and evil and he had few qualms about the violence he visited upon the enemy. Barkley was satisfied with his lot as a private soldier and eschewed promotion when the opportunity arose. His job was to kill Germans pure and simple, and he threw himself into it.

 

 

During the Second Battle for the Marne, artillery fire splintered a nearby tree and dropped a heavy branch onto him, leaving him unconscious for several hours. He awoke without his stutter. His mom viewed this as a miracle conjured from amidst a veritable sea of blood.

 

Beginnings

 

 

John Barkley was born in Blairstown, Missouri, in August of 1895. A hard man from a nation of hard men, Barkley grew up knowing austerity and deprivation. When he went off to war he was enthusiastic, driven, and dangerous.

 

 

As is always the case, Barkley’s introduction to practical war was both shocking and stark. On board a troop train packed with wounded these were his initial observations, “The train was packed with men. Men lying as still as if they were already dead. Men shaking with pain. One man raving, jabbering, yelling, in delirium. Everywhere bandages . . . bandages . . . bandages . . . and blood.”

 

The Medal of Honor

 

 

On October 7, 1918, World War 1 had just over a month to go before it bled itself dry. John Barkley found himself this fateful day in an observation post some five hundred meters from the German lines.

 

 

Before the war had blasted everything to hell, there had been a small picturesque French community nearby called Cunel. This particular bloodbath came later to be known as the battle for the Argonne Forest.

 

 

Artillery, machine guns, and poison gas transformed the World War 1 battlefields into something out of Dante. This late in the war the toxic combination of tanks and desperation drove men to truly extraordinary efforts. That desperation became the soil from which true heroes are raised.

 

 

An earlier assault had left a small French tank destroyed near Barkley’s fighting position.

 

 

Among the detritus of combat, he also found himself in possession of an inoperative German Maxim gun and an ample supply of belted ammunition. Like most men of his generation, John Barkley was fairly adept at fixing things. Throwing stuff away when it no longer works is a recent disease.

 

 

In relatively short order he had the German MG08 up and running. It turned out that on this particularly bloody day he would soon have desperate need of that captured German gun.

 

 

A man in combat develops a sixth sense for trouble.

 

 

John Barkley could tell the Huns were up to no good, so he climbed into the disabled French armored vehicle and mounted his captured German gun where it gave him a generous field of fire. In short order the Germans slathered his position with artillery fire, driving his comrades back or to ground.

 

 

Throughout it, Barkley crouched inside the derelict French tank awaiting the inevitable Infantry assault that he could feel was coming.

 

 

Barkley waited patiently until the advancing German troops were in line abreast his position.

 

 

When the moment was perfect he leaped up from the tank and triggered the German gun, mowing down the shocked Hun soldiers by the bushel. John Barkley’s audacious surprise attack splintered the German assault, killing or wounding dozens of enemy soldiers.

 

 

Desperate for a breakthrough, the German commanders directed concentrated artillery fire on Barkley’s already ventilated tank at point blank range. One 77mm high explosive round struck the tank’s drive wheel and exploded, rocking the little vehicle and showering the surrounding area with dirt. Throughout it all John Barkley remained in position, manning his gun singlehandedly in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

 

Satisfied that this one American soldier with his captured German gun had been silenced, the Huns launched a second massive assault on Barkley’s position. The lone American repeated his performance a second time, shattering the attack and leaving more than a hundred German dead surrounding his position.

 

 

The resolute defense PFC Barkley established enabled American troops to advance and seize the strategic hilltop near John Barkley’s last stand. When fresh troops retook the area they found more than four thousand expended shell casings inside John Barkley’s ruined French tank.

 

The Human Cost

 

 

John Barkley sent his brother a letter soon after his heroic defense of that forlorn moonscape. His words explain what a close thing that engagement actually was. Time, distance, and the limitations of the language conspire to mute the horror of that day.

 

 

“Don’t think I’m going to tell you anything about that tank deal. It is too bad to tell a civilized man. I played them dirty every chance I got, and this is not the first time I ever did this.”

 

“I fired my last round of ammunition from the machinegun but kept my automatic pistol for hand-to-hand fighting: plunged out of that tank with a sudden dash. I had three bullet marks in my clothes and a burnt legging string.”

 

The Guns

 

 

The MG08 Maxim gun revolutionized the way men killed each other. The brainchild of American-born British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, the infamous Maxim gun armed both sides throughout World War 1. While the Germans employed what may be seen as the definitive model, the British Vickers was based upon the same internal mechanism.

 

 

The Maxim was a recoil-operated weapon and was actually one of the first recoil-operated guns ever devised. The Maxim in its ground configuration was a water-cooled beast that fired at around 600 rounds per minute.

 

 

The Maxim ultimately saw service with the English, Russians, Germans, Finns, Chinese, Americans, and many more.

 

 

The Maxim gun was sinfully heavy by modern standards and was typically crewed by between four and six men. However, when properly stoked and supplied with an ample supply of water for the barrel jacket the gun could fire almost indefinitely. The end result was carnage on an unprecedented scale.

 

 

The automatic pistol John Barkley carried was an early example of the legendary Colt 1911 in .45ACP. Designed by the firearms luminary John Moses Browning, the 1911 was the finest combat handgun of the war. Offering superb reliability, exceptional accuracy, and unrivaled knockdown power, the 1911 remains in service with some specialized military units even today.

 

 

The combat handgun has evolved profoundly in the past century. However, John Barkley’s 1911 set a standard for battlefield effectiveness that has not since been bested. Despite indescribable gore and deprivation aplenty, Barkley could take solace in the fact that the pistol that rode on his hip in October of 1918 was the best combat sidearm on the planet.

 

Denouement

 

 

PFC John Barkley received his Medal of Honor in 1919 from the legendary General John “Blackjack” Pershing.

 

 

He also received the Medaille Militaire from French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foche. When Foche kissed him on the cheeks, per the French custom, his bushy mustache brushed Barkley’s face and caused him to sneeze violently. A young American officer named Douglas Macarthur was in attendance and nearly disrupted the proceedings with laughter.

 

 

Barkley published an autobiographical work in 1930 titled “No Hard Feelings.” In more recent years the book has been edited and republished as “Scarlet Fields: The Combat Memoir of a World War 1 Medal of Honor Hero.”

 

 

John Barkley came home from the war and settled into a humble life, farming two hundred acres around Johnson County, Missouri. Barkley died in 1966 at the age of 70.

 

 

He is buried in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

 

John Barkley has been described by those who knew him as unassuming, likable, and modest. On a particularly dark day in October of 1918, Barkley singlehandedly stopped an aggressive German Infantry assault using a captured German machinegun and a knocked-out French tank. John Barkley personified American heroism and courage.

 

The Guns

 

	MG08 Maxim	Colt 1911
Caliber	7.92x57mm	.45ACP
Weight	60 lbs	2.4 lbs
Length	42.5 in	8.25 in
Barrel Length	26.5 in	5.03 in
Action	Recoil-Operated	Short Recoil
Cyclic Rate of Fire	550-600 rpm	N/A
Feed System	250-rd Canvas Belt	7-rd Box Magazine