FOUR KILOS ON HOBNAILS
“Battalion!” called out the major.
“Company!” the captain followed, as it were, with the next breath.
“Attention!” continued the battalion commander.
The line was quickly formed, two deep, officers in position, the major
in attitude of review.
“At ease!” was the next order which indicated “something coming.”
“Men,” he said with an incisiveness of tone indicating that his words
would be brief, “word has just reached me that the officers of the enemy
division that you are soon to meet welcome you with expressions of
contempt. They say you are soft and will melt before the Hun armies like
wax over white heat. Will you show them you can go through fire hot
enough to melt steel?”
The yell that greeted this question set at rest all doubt that may have
inspired the “wonder” which came to Phil’s mind a few minutes before as
to their courage. And nobody yelled louder or more fiercely than Phil
did. After it was over he heaved a sigh of relief.
“That’s what we needed,” he muttered.
“What did we need?” asked Tim, who heard the remark.
Phil had no opportunity to reply. The major was giving orders again.
“Attention!”
“Squads, right!” the superior officer added, and immediately there was a
swinging half-about along the line, and a column of American Marines,
four abreast, was marching up the street that led away from the
detrucking point.
Then followed a hike of four kilometers (two and a half miles) along the
Paris-Metz road. After journeying on hobnailed soles this distance, the
order was given to fix bayonets.
Phil and Tim were good enough soldiers by this time to accept everything
as it came and not to look for too much that was not in evidence. They
had had try-out experience at Verdun and, along with other rapidly
seasoning warriors of their regiment, had given a good account of
themselves. And yet, in spite of all this curiosity-crushing experience,
they could not help looking just a little expectantly for a camouflaged
line of “bloomin’ boches” upon whom to use their one-tined pitchforks
when the order was given to “fix bayonets.”
“Does it mean charge?” both of them longed to ask somebody, and after
this question they realized must follow another equally important:
Where was the mysterious enemy?
It proved, however, to be only a precautionary move to guard against
surprise while advancing through a wheatfield. There might be a score or
two of machine-gun nests in that field, Phil reasoned. But then, he
wondered how that could very well be, as it must mean that the gunners
had made their way undiscovered through the front line, which was a mile
farther on. However, the surmise proved to be in error, for nothing of
livelier nature than a flock of hens and turkeys was encountered.
Presently a halt was ordered at a group of deserted farm buildings,
where quarters were established pending the development of further
plans.
Meanwhile there were other battalions following, and the country round
about was rapidly becoming a concentration camp of reserves, who were
sent forward in sections to take positions in the front line as rapidly
as way was prepared for them, the French moving out to take positions in
other sections. Phil and Tim were pleased when it became apparent that
they would not be ordered ahead before the next day, for they were weary
from exertion and loss of sleep and longed as much as anything else to
be in vigorous, fresh condition when it came their time to meet the
merciless, unscrupulous foe in battle.
There was nothing radically new in this experience to any of the Marines
billeted at this place less than two kilometers from the front line,
which was being pressed hard, by the enemy. All of them had seen a very
real kind of practice service along with the French at Verdun, and so
there was little to arouse their wonder in the sights and sounds of
rumbling camions, tanks and artillery as they were rushed hither and
thither, the shouts of officers and drivers, aeroplanes soaring
overhead, and the whistle of an occasional shell fired with apparent
random purpose and exploding far beyond the range of serious mischief.
These sights and sounds were fast merging into the obscurity and quiet
of darkness and inaction as Phil and Tim lay down under a large apple
tree, resolved to get as much rest as possible before the next daybreak.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you a question ever since we detrucked from
those lorries four kilos up the road,” said Tim after the two boys had
lodged themselves in the privacy of a “ten-foot sector” of the orchard.
As he spoke, he picked up a full-grown apple from the ground and sunk
his teeth into it.
“This apple isn’t very ripe,” he observed, indicating by his digression
that the question on his mind was not as vital as the importance of
appeasing his appetite or of winning the war. “But the juice is sweet
and pungent and I’m going to make a cider press of my jaws and squeeze
the beverage down my throat.”
“If you haven’t forgotten your question, you may put it to me,” Phil
returned more to the point.
“I was wondering what you meant when you remarked, ‘That’s what we
needed,’ after the major made his little speech to us and we yelled our
throats hoarse to prove we weren’t soft,” said Tim. “Were you afraid we
really were soft?”
“No, not exactly,” Phil replied. “But I just had a kind o’ longing for
proof that we weren’t.”
“But we’d proved ourselves at Verdun, hadn’t we?” Tim reasoned.
“Yes and no,” answered Phil. “At Verdun we fought all right, but we had
a lot o’ French vets right at our elbows to ginger our nerve. Here, I
understand, they’re going to give us a front all our own, ten or fifteen
miles. I was talking to Corporal Ross about it. He’s been doing
messenger service at the major’s headquarters and picked up a good deal
of information. He says we’re bound for a place called Belleau Wood. The
French call it Bois de Belleau. The Huns, you know, have been pressing
the French pretty hard all the way from Rheims to Soissons, and we’ve
been sent to relieve the French at this point so that they can stop the
enemy at other points. But I’ve got a suspicion that a lot more American
boys will be thrown in about here and we’re going to have a chance to
make ourselves famous in the next few days.”
“It’s up to us to make good,” declared Tim with characteristic
bullet-headed doggedness. “The Marines have been criticised a good deal
lately. Some say we ought to be eliminated from the service.”
“We’ve got to make good,” Phil echoed emphatically. “The reputation of
the Marines is at stake.”