BLASTING THE ENEMY OUT
THE cheer which greeted Major Sweeney’s speech was of itself a pledge.
The first of the men in the second wave were arriving by that time at
that point where Company C, a little frazzled, but with renewed
determination, had rallied those of its men who had come through the
first attack uninjured. The new arrivals gave fresh energy and impetus
to those who thus far had borne the brunt of the original contact, and
again they made ready to resume the big push.
The sun had come out for the first time in more than a week, and those
who were aware of it, who were cheered and strengthened by its genial
glow, believed that they saw in the incident something significant of
success for the attack that had been so auspiciously launched.
Undoubtedly, from the first trend that the battle had taken, the Germans
had been caught unawares, and there was little doubt, either, that the
onslaught, coming as it did upon the fourth anniversary of their
undisputed possession of the St. Mihiel salient, contributed further
toward disorganizing the enemy and completely breaking down his
much-vaunted discipline and morale. The wisdom of American generalship
dictated that he should not be given a moment’s rest in which to
recover.
By re-formed platoons and companies, the vacancies filled in by the new
arrivals, officers and men began to move forward again to hasten the Hun
in his precipitate retreat.
They had not gone many more yards, picking their way from knoll to
knoll, when they began to sense something of the real horror of warfare
as the Germans waged it. Sticking out here and there above the surface
of the ground like grim and ghastly monuments were battered heaps of
stone and mortar—all that remained of houses which once had stood there.
This site had been a village once!
But what ruin had been wrought there! What scenes of carnage, of
brutality and outright murder had been enacted here upon this spot that
the Americans were now traversing? How many innocent noncombatants—aged
men and women, defenseless little children—had had their lives snuffed
out, or were tortured to death, or were driven like haunted wild beasts
before that relentless, pitiless advance of the Boches four years
before?
Tom Walton, asking himself these things, horrified by the thoughts and
the terrible picture they conjured, even as he threw himself forward
with the rest could not help comparing this barren desolation of what
once had been a thriving, happy, harmless community, with the peace and
quiet of his own country, even though it was at war, and with the
content and safety which he and his kin always had known there. To Tom
the wretched scene about him was like a terrible nightmare, and yet he
knew that it was in fact all too tragic reality.
Unquestionably the day—not _Der Tag_, of which the Germans had so
brutally and boastfully spoken for four long years—but a far different
day, the Day of Retribution, was now near at hand. It could not come too
swiftly or severely to avenge the horrors which German invasion, Hun
brutality and Boche atrocity had inflicted upon the people and the land
of Belgium and eastern France.
Stirring as were these reflections, thrown with lightning-like rapidity
across the mind of Tom Walton and perhaps scores of others who were
fighting side by side with him, they were but passing thoughts which
speedily gave way to the stern and hazardous realities of the moment as
a hail of machine bullets from a dozen hidden nests again challenged,
and for a time halted, their further advance.
It was another of those long, narrow, intermittent stretches of wooded
land that they were approaching, and somehow, by the exertion of almost
superhuman efforts, the Germans had thrown a hasty but temporarily
effective barbed wire entanglement in front of it. It was another of
those obstacles which cost lives to overcome, but which had to be thrown
aside with the least delay in order that the enemy might not have time
to marshal a recouped strength against the oncoming line.
But of the great fleet of aeroplanes that kept dashing back and forth
above, one which had been especially assigned to watch and report their
progress, hovering over them like a powerful winged guardian, had seen
their predicament and even as the cloud of machine gun bullets mowed the
first unfortunate ones down the message had been flashed to brigade
headquarters, and almost in the same instant an order to action had been
flashed to the commander of a nearby squadron of heavy tanks that just
had performed a like service a short distance up the line.
Prostrate upon the ground, but with no other protection than an
occasional shell hole afforded the luckiest of them, the men saw the
tanks swerve in their course and come in their direction. Crawling,
rolling, both right and left, they opened an avenue through which they
might pass.
With a loud and joyous shout that rose high above the dismal song of
death of the bullets, the harried soldiers greeted the lumbering,
jolting approaching of the “Treat ’em Rough” branch of the American
service.
Dipping into ditches and shell holes, but just as majestically taking
the sharp and rugged rises in the ground, bobbing, gliding, sliding like
antediluvian many-legged serpent-beasts, they came on at a jogging,
uneven pace, much as might a great herd of giant, iron-hided elephants,
puffing and snorting and spouting forth fire.
To avoid casualties they slowed up and proceeded cautiously through the
little lane created for them, flanked on either side by indomitable
doughboys, only awaiting their passage through to be up and at the enemy
again, and who now, prostrate upon the ground, were taking pot shots at
the sheltered Germans operating the machine guns.
But once past that point where they might hit or run down their own men,
the tanks proceeded with all the power and speed they possessed straight
for the sapling wood and the wire entanglements in front of it. Machine
gun bullets pelted against their tops and sides as harmlessly as drops
of rain upon a roof. Invincible to everything but the larger guns, which
had not yet made their range, so viciously did the Americans in the
skies fight off the enemy observers, they plodded on, barbed wire
twisting and snapping, trees cracking off and falling before their
terrible assault.
Some of the men already were up and running in the path of the iron
monsters when the shrill whistle of their captain brought them to the
ground. The tanks were coming backward. To the uninitiated it seemed
that they were in full and precipitate retreat. For a distance of
perhaps forty feet they backed, while many wide-eyed Americans looked on
in wonder; then they as suddenly halted, and a second later again went
forward.
They had returned for a renewed momentum with which to mow down the
heavier trees which had obstructed their course already slowed down by
contact with the outer fringe of the wood.
Suddenly, as though from out the sky, there was a veritable avalanche of
fire and shell. Projectiles exploded everywhere, annihilating men in the
terrible force of their concussion, laying others low with the deadly
rain of bullets and jagged chunks of shrapnel.
Tom with a sinking heart saw Ollie go down like a log, but a couple of
moments later he was on his knees, adjusting his helmet and putting more
ammunition into his rifle. Hours afterward Tom learned that Ollie’s
helmet had saved him, a piece of iron having been driven against it with
such force as to knock him down and for the moment stun him.
But even as Ollie at the time was getting to his feet, Tom felt
something hit him in the chest with a tremendous blow, and he went
staggering backward, feeling for the wound. His blouse was torn, almost
over the heart, and as he regained his breath he felt cautiously inside,
certain he would withdraw his hand covered with blood. Instead he felt
something hard and flat, with a sharp dent nearly in the middle. He drew
it forth. It was a piece of metal plate nearly circular in shape and
fully three inches in diameter. It was the piece of German shrapnel he
had dropped into his blouse pocket hours before while in the trench, and
undoubtedly it had saved his life.
But it was only an inwardly muttered word of gratitude that Tom had time
for then, though he had seen his chum and himself almost miraculously
escape death within the same minute. There was no living in the terrific
downpour of shells with which the Germans desperately were trying to
halt the American advance. To go backward was almost like admitting
defeat, and no man had even a thought of that. There was but one course
open, and that immediately was ordered by Major Sweeney, in charge of
that particular part of the line.
Of the five hundred men who had been hurled at that particular position,
at least ten per cent had been killed off or wounded in that fiery
concentration of Hun artillery. There was no time to move the wounded
then; it was a case of get the uninjured out as soon and as safely as
possible. In the stress of bitter battle conservation of fighting
strength, man-power, often becomes the biggest consideration.
Therefore the units were divided into two groups, one to strike eastward
and the other westward, to flank the wood in a northward movement and at
the same time to advance more rapidly than German air scouts could trace
and report their position to the artillery that was blasting away at
them.
Tom and George Harper were in a squad chosen immediately to go forward
as scouts on the enemy’s eastern wing to endeavor to ascertain the exact
strength there, and, if possible, to learn the location of the machine
gun nests from which the Boche were adding to the havoc wrought by their
artillery further back. Their work was most hazardous. Only the most
cautious advance could obscure their movements from dozens of snipers
hidden in the thick foliage of the trees. Most of the tanks either had
been crippled by the shell fire or had been ordered to a safer distance
back, and only the best strategy could bring the infantry into a
position where it could storm and take the woods.
Under the leadership of a sergeant the scouts crept forward. They
attempted to make a detour, but there was no cover of darkness to
obscure them; there was but a scattering growth of scraggly weeds and
upturned rocks, and when but a short distance on their mission a
fusilade of bullets that tore up the ground directly before them gave
them ample notice that they were not unnoticed—in fact were about to be
the especial targets of German marksmanship.
Tom tumbled into the shell hole nearest him, and he saw Harper do the
same only a few feet away. But as Tom rolled himself into his place of
safety he landed upon something cushiony and soft. His landing also was
accompanied by an angry grunt. It came from directly beneath him. In a
flash Tom had turned and at the same time maneuvered himself to his
hands and knees. He was directly astraddle a fat German.
The American lad took in the situation in a glance. The Boche was
bleeding from a wound in the left hand, but otherwise, so far as Tom
could see, he was uninjured. But if he had deliberately flopped into
that hole to avoid further fighting and surrender himself in safety to
the advancing American troops, at least he had not forgotten the
characteristic treachery of his training, for apparently he felt it
would be a good piece of work first to deprive the United States of one
more fighting man.
He already had his revolver in his hand when Tom managed to turn around,
and with a quick upward jerk he sought to bring it into range. But Tom
Walton had not been the champion wrestler at Brighton for nothing, nor
had he forgotten any of the jiujutsu movements which made him the peer
of any of his pals in any rough-and-tumble contest. With a quick upward
movement of his right hand he gave the German’s arm a twist which made
the shot a harmless one as he pulled the trigger. At the same moment he
brought his knee down in the man’s stomach with a force that jolted the
breath almost completely out of him. But the German was a powerful man,
despite his excess flesh, and as he made a grab for Tom’s arm he also
partly rolled over in a way to endanger the younger man’s balance. Again
he tried to bring the gun into play, but with a forward dive Tom took
the only desperate course open to him and sunk his teeth deep into the
Hun’s wrist.
With a howl of rage and pain the fellow began to yell “Kamarad!
Kamarad!” but Tom had experienced enough by this time to know that his
own life was not safe there so long as that treacherous German remained
able to inflict an injury upon him.
Pinning the German’s gun arm down to the ground, Tom suddenly raised his
head, and as suddenly lowered it again and with all his weight smashed
into the Boche’s face, billy-goat fashion. With a string of gutteral
sounds which Tom took to be oaths, his enemy tried in vain to avoid this
new attack. It was an entirely new brand of fighting to him, and what
was worse in view of his whole training, he was fast in close quarters
and could not hit and run. Before he had fully recovered from this last
shock Tom had managed to draw his own gun. He fired, but without time
for any deliberate aim. The German was just raising his own revolver,
but his arm dropped back limp and his eyes rolled up into his head.
With a shudder—for he had not yet become accustomed to seeing men
die—Tom suddenly leaned forward, a feeling of sorrow overcoming him,
despite himself. But there was no need of asking questions. The German
was no longer a menace to any man. The bullet had hit him almost
directly over the heart, and his death had been instantaneous.
Further consideration was cut short, however, when the sergeant crawled
over to the same shell hole.
“I’ve reported to the major,” he said, “and there’s no use of our
attempting to go further alone. Be ready for a sudden rush attack and
join in. What’s that you’ve got there?” he asked, suddenly becoming
aware of the German under Tom.
“He’s done,” came the even answer. “He tried to get me first when I
rolled in here, and we had quite a set-to, but I was just a little
quicker on the trigger than he was.”
“Good!” the sergeant exclaimed, and then, in the same breath, “Our
fellows are coming now. Be ready to jump out when they’re about
alongside. We’re going to take that wood and every living German in it.”
And as the sergeant a few seconds later gave the word, Tom leapt out and
joined in the rush upon the wood. As he did so he saw Ollie Ogden coming
along with the rest. But he looked in vain for his Brighton friend and
fellow scout, George Harper. He was nowhere about.
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