After the usual amount of orders and rescinding of orders had been
accomplished the regiment was lined up in a column of three battalions
and awaited the command “forward.”
Just as the sun fell behind the green hills of Verdun and the shadows of
night began to fill the valleys a long column of American artillery
started rolling toward the lines of the St. Mihiel sector. Jimmy McGee
and William G. Preston, alias O. D., loaded down under their equipment
and carrying canes, followed behind Betsy, the third piece of Battery C,
humming the chorus of “Where Do We Go from Here, Boys?”
It was two o’clock in the morning when the regiment reached its
rendezvous in a wooded valley near Rupt-en-Woevre. The sky had become
clouded and the early morning was jet black.
“Guess we’ll get soaked, O. D.,” prophesied Jimmy when they halted and
got a chance to observe the weather conditions.
“Will we stay here now?” asked O. D.
“_Oui_. Might just as well scare up a place to _cushay_. Wait here; I’ll
look ’round.”
A little while later Jimmy returned with the news that there was nothing
to do but put the pup tent up again and sleep on the ground.
“There’s one barrack here, but the First Battalion guys grabbed that as
they got here first,” he explained.
Jimmy and O. D. put the tent up on the slope of a hill that formed the
eastern side of the valley in which the horses and _matériel_ of the
entire regiment were hidden.
O. D. heard, in a sort of indifferent manner, the growl of big guns that
seemed very near. He was startled once or twice by the crash of bombs
and the anti-air-craft guns. But he was too tired to lend ears and
thoughts to such things on his first night at the front, for the
regiment was only a few kilometers from the first lines. O. D. fell
asleep immediately and didn’t wake until three hours later when a
downpour of rain splashed him from head to foot.
The wind that accompanied the rain swept the tent away time and time
again. Everything that Jimmy and O. D. owned got soaked. The earth
beneath them turned into crawling slime. Finally, seeing the
impossibility of keeping the tent up, Jimmy told his friend to pull his
shelter-half over him, head and all. Jimmy did likewise with his
shelter-half and blankets. The two boys, wrapped in canvas and blankets,
lay in the deluge like two muffled mummies, trying to sleep.
Instead of moving into position at once the regiment made at least fifty
final preparations to do so, only to be ordered to remain in the valley
for further orders.
Four days passed. Rain fell incessantly. The bottom of the valley became
as slippery as glass. Men bogged up to their knees in mud. There were no
boots. The mess was a succession of “corned willy,” hardtack, and
sugarless coffee meals.
At last, when every man and officer had reached the point of absolute
disgust, the guns were dragged out of their mud-holes and hauled by
horse and man power to the positions from which they were scheduled to
launch their part of the drive.
Passing through the shell-torn village of Rupt-en-Woevre, the Second
Battalion, of which Jimmy’s battery was a part, swerved off the main
road and followed a woods trail that seemed to lead straight into the
noises and strange, mysterious lights of the front.
A gun barked out, not forty feet from the road. O. D. looked to Jimmy.
“Are we at the front now Jimmy?” he asked in a whisper.
“Don’t know myself. Guess there’s a battery in the woods near here.
We’ll be there soon now.”
The firing was not very heavy that night. Occasionally a big gun spoke
or the staccato voices of machine-guns stabbed the night air
intermittently. Flares and rockets went up frequently, causing the
darkness of the woods that bordered the road to accentuate. O. D. owned
some strange, indescribable feelings at times, but he could not identify
any of them as the sensations which he had expected to experience upon
his first intimacy with the things of the front.
The column halted at a crossroad. Orders to dismount came quickly and
were repeated down the line of guns in ordinary tones. Before O. D. had
a chance to ask what was going on platoon commanders had issued
instructions for the piece teams to haul the guns into certain positions
nearby.
“Well, we’re here. Now for the business,” declared Jimmy.
“You mean we are at the front,” gasped O. D., incredulously. “I
thought—”
“Sure, we all thought the same thing when we came up the first time.
Looked for signposts sayin’, ‘This is the front,’ or a bunch of Germans
tryin’ to get us. Just like that No-Man’s-Land stuff. I’d heard so much
about that place before comin’ to France that I thought it would be as
easy to find as a piece of choice real estate. Kinda expected that it
would be a square field, or somethin’ like that, between two story-book
trenches. First No Man’s Land I ran into was in the middle of a village.
Graveyard and church made most of it. The front’s built on the same
idea.”
Jimmy selected a spot near the third piece and arranged a place for
himself and O. D. Before O. D. fell asleep he mentioned that he wanted
to write some letters to his mother and Mary.
At the sound of Mary’s name Jimmy instinctively ran his hand over his
breast pocket to see if the picture was still there. It was.
“You can write to-morrow, O. D.”
“I can?” said O. D. “I thought it would be pretty hard to get a chance
to write at the front.”
“That’s what most of the guys spend their time doin’ when there ain’t no
firin’ or work,” assured Jimmy.
“Well, good night, old man.”
“_Bon swoir_, O. D.”
The mention of Mary made Jimmy forget about sleeping. Since the night
that he had spent in the French house with O. D. he had been
day-dreaming whenever the chance to do so came. He wondered if Mary was
in love with somebody back in America or in France. That idea disquieted
him a great deal, but judging from O. D.’s conversations, he felt at
liberty to hope that her heart was still free.
When he was sure that O. D. was sound asleep Jimmy lit a cigarette and
took Mary’s picture out of his pocket. By drawing hard on the cigarette
he caused a fire glow that was enough to enable him to catch glimpses of
her face.
“Gosh! She’s a pretty, slender somebody,” mused the Yank to himself.
“Bet she’s as sweet as she looks. It’ll be great gettin’ letters from
her. If I make this old _guerre_ I’m sure goin’ to know Mary O. D. But
I’m a nut. What business have I got thinkin’ that she’ll even look at a
bum like me? I’d disgrace her most likely in public, ’specially at a
dinnertable, as I’d forget and use the old knife. Got to put the brakes
on this cussin’ stuff, too. I can imagine her if I said ‘damn’ in front
of her. I’d be _fineed toot sweet_.” Jimmy put the picture away and
puffed on while his dreams mingled with his blue cigarette smoke.