After four days' rest in the rear, the Battalion went to the
front again in new country, about ten kilometers east of the
trench they had relieved before. One morning Colonel Scott sent
for Claude and Gerhardt and spread his maps out on the table.
"We are going to clean them out there in F 6 tonight, and
straighten our line. The thing that bothers us is that little
village stuck up on the hill, where the enemy machine guns have a
strong position. I want to get them out of there before the
Battalion goes over. We can't spare too many men, and I don't
like to send out more officers than I can help; it won't do to
reduce the Battalion for the major operation. Do you think you
two boys could manage it with a hundred men? The point is, you
will have to be out and back before our artillery begins at three
o'clock."
Under the hill where the village stood, ran a deep ravine, and
from this ravine a twisting water course wound up the hillside.
By climbing this gully, the raiders should be able to fall on the
machine gunners from the rear and surprise them. But first they
must get across the open stretch, nearly one and a half
kilometers wide, between the American line and the ravine,
without attracting attention. It was raining now, and they could
safely count on a dark night.
The night came on black enough. The Company crossed the open
stretch without provoking fire, and slipped into the ravine to
wait for the hour of attack, A young doctor, a Pennsylvanian,
lately attached to the staff, had volunteered to come with them,
and he arranged a dressing station at the bottom of the ravine,
where the stretchers were left. They were to pick up their
wounded on the way back. Anything left in that area would be
exposed to the artillery fire later on.
At ten o'clock the men began to ascend the water-course, creeping
through pools and little waterfalls, making a continuous spludgy
sound, like pigs rubbing against the sty. Claude, with the head
of the column, was just pulling out of the gully on the hillside
above the village, when a flare went up, and a volley of fire
broke from the brush on the up-hill side of the water-course;
machine guns, opening on the exposed line crawling below. The Hun
had been warned that the Americans were crossing the plain and
had anticipated their way of approach. The men in the gully were
trapped; they could not retaliate with effect, and the bullets
from the Maxims bounded on the rocks about them like hail.
Gerhardt ran along the edge of the line, urging the men not to
fall back and double on themselves, but to break out of the gully
on the downhill side and scatter.
Claude, with his group, started back. "Go into the brush and get
'em! Our fellows have got no chance down there. Grenades while
they last, then bayonets. Pull your plugs and don't hold on too
long."
They were already on the run, charging the brush. The Hun gunners
knew the hill like a book, and when the bombs began bursting
among them, they took to trails and burrows. "Don't follow them
off into the rocks," Claude kept calling. "Straight ahead! Clear
everything to the ravine."
As the German gunners made for cover, the firing into the gully
stopped, and the arrested column poured up the steep defile after
Gerhardt.
Claude and his party found themselves back at the foot of the
hill, at the edge of the ravine from which they had started.
Heavy firing on the hill above told them the rest of the men had
got through. The quickest way back to the scene of action was by
the same water-course they had climbed before. They dropped into
it and started up. Claude, at the rear, felt the ground rise
under him, and he was swept with a mountain of earth and rock
down into the ravine.
He never knew whether he lost consciousness or not. It seemed to
him that he went on having continuous sensations. The first, was
that of being blown to pieces; of swelling to an enormous size
under intolerable pressure, and then bursting. Next he felt
himself shrink and tingle, like a frost-bitten body thawing out.
Then he swelled again, and burst. This was repeated, he didn't
know how often. He soon realized that he was lying under a great
weight of earth; his body, not his head. He felt rain falling on
his face. His left hand was free, and still attached to his arm.
He moved it cautiously to his face. He seemed to be bleeding from
the nose and ears. Now he began to wonder where he was hurt; he
felt as if he were full of shell splinters. Everything was buried
but his head and left shoulder. A voice was calling from
somewhere below.
"Are any of you fellows alive?"
Claude closed his eyes against the rain beating in his face. The
same voice came again, with a note of patient despair.
"If there's anybody left alive in this hole, won't he speak up?
I'm badly hurt myself."
That must be the new doctor; wasn't his dressing station
somewhere down here? Hurt, he said. Claude tried to move his legs
a little. Perhaps, if he could get out from under the dirt, he
might hold together long enough to reach the doctor. He began to
wriggle and pull. The wet earth sucked at him; it was painful
business. He braced himself with his elbows, but kept slipping
back.
"I'm the only one left, then?" said the mournful voice below.
At last Claude worked himself out of his burrow, but he was
unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand, he got faint and
seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right
ankle, too--he couldn't bear his weight on it. Perhaps he had
been too near the shell to be hit; he had heard the boys tell of
such cases. It had exploded under his feet and swept him down
into the ravine, but hadn't left any metal in his body. If it had
put anything into him, it would have put so much that he wouldn't
be sitting here speculating. He began to crawl down the slope on
all fours. "Is that the Doctor? Where are you?"
"Here, on a stretcher. They shelled us. Who are you? Our fellows
got up, didn't they?"
"I guess most of them did. What happened back here?"
"I'm afraid it's my fault," the voice said sadly. "I used my
flash light, and that must have given them the range. They put
three or four shells right on top of us. The fellows that got
hurt in the gully kept stringing back here, and I couldn't do
anything in the dark. I had to have a light to do anything. I
just finished putting on a Johnson splint when the first shell
came. I guess they're all done for now."
"How many were there?"
"Fourteen, I think. Some of them weren't much hurt. They'd all be
alive, if I hadn't come out with you."
"Who were they? But you don't know our names yet, do you? You didn't
see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?"
"Don't think so."
"Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow?"
"Don't think so."
"Where are you hurt?"
"Abdominal. I can't tell anything without a light. I lost my
flash light. It never occurred to me that it could make trouble;
it's one I use at home, when the babies are sick," the doctor
murmured.
Claude tried to strike a match, with no success. "Wait a minute,
where's your helmet?" He took off his metal hat, held it over the
doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded
man had already loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his
bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side.
The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of
dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow's liver.
"I guess I've got mine," the Doctor murmured as the match went
out.
Claude struck another. "Oh, that can't be! Our fellows will be
back pretty soon, and we can do something for you."
"No use, Lieutenant. Do you suppose you could strip a coat off
one of those poor fellows? I feel the cold terribly in my
intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it's
buried."
Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside,
and began feeling about in the mud for the brandy. He wondered
why the poor man wasn't screaming with pain. The firing on the
hill had ceased, except for the occasional click of a Maxim, off
in the rocks somewhere. His watch said 12:10; could anything have
miscarried up there?
Suddenly, voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale. He began
shouting to them.
"Coming, coming!" He knew the voice. Gerhardt and his rifles ran
down into the ravine with a bunch of prisoners. Claude called to
them to be careful. "Don't strike a light! They've been shelling
down here."
"All right are you, Wheeler? Where are the wounded?"
"There aren't any but the Doctor and me. Get us out of here
quick. I'm all right, but I can't walk."
They put Claude on a stretcher and sent him ahead. Four big
Germans carried him, and they were prodded to a lope by Hicks and
Dell Able. Four of their own men took up the doctor, and Gerhardt
walked beside him. In spite of their care, the motion started the
blood again and tore away the clots that had formed over his
wounds. He began to vomit blood and to strangle. The men put the
stretcher down. Gerhardt lifted the Doctor's head. "It's over,"
he said presently. "Better make the best time you can."
They picked up their load again. "Them that are carrying him now
won't jolt him," said Oscar, the pious Swede.
B Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the
Company went off on a ten-day leave. Claude's sprained ankle was
twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital
he had to march to the railhead. Sergeant Hicks got him a giant
shoe he found stuck on the barbed wire entanglement. Claude and
Gerhardt were going off on their leave together.