By noon of the next day Battery C’s guns had all been securely emplaced.
O. D. wrote three letters in the morning, all of which centered around
Jimmy McGee and the front. In his letter to Mary he said, in part:
You’ll love Jimmy, he’s so big and kind. If he ever got all
cleaned and dressed he’d sure be handsome, but the boys
don’t have time for that kind of life up here.
Mary, Jimmy never gets any letters, except from a few boys
that work where he used to. His folks are all dead. I told
him that you would write to him. He is sending you a German
officer’s helmet that he took from a German at
Château-Thierry. You see, Jimmy has been at the front for a
long time.
I am at the front with him now. But, somehow, I don’t feel
like I thought I would. It doesn’t seem so terribly
different from a place that we stopped at about twenty miles
from here. Of course the guns make a lot of noise when they
go off and there’s all kinds of mysterious lights at night
that make you think of ghosts at work. But the airplanes and
bombs are what scare me most....
Before supper was served on the afternoon of September 11th the guns of
Jimmy McGee’s regiment had registered on their targets and everything
was in readiness to participate in the greatest effort that the First
American Army was destined to make on the fields of France.
That night there were no certain indications that the drive would start
immediately. The ordinary precautions were taken. But they alone did not
suggest to the men that something big was about to happen. Yet, in the
blood of them all, a fever was present which brought its presentiments.
“O. D., I got a hunch. Nothin’ certain in this _guerre_, you know. But
I’ve got a feelin’ in my fingers that we’re goin’ to use old Betsy
to-night,” spoke Jimmy.
“Jimmy—Jimmy.” Neil was calling him.
“_Oui_. What’s up?”
“How do things look to you?” asked Neil, crawling in the little shelter
tent.
“I was just sayin’ to O. D. that I’ve got a hunch—just like the one
before the battle of Seicheprey—that somethin’ is goin’ to come off.
Mighty damn quiet, though. But it’s always that way before a real
racket.”
“What time have you got, O. D.?” asked Neil.
“Darn near midnight. Jimmy and I have been sittin’ around talking a good
deal. What are you doing up?”
“I’m on guard to-night.”
The shrill blast of a pocket whistle interrupted him and caused the
three of them to jump a little.
“Callin’ to the guns, boys,” whispered Jimmy. “I knew somethin’ was in
the wind. Get ready, O. D.”
“I’ve got to beat it, then,” said Neil, getting out.
In a few seconds Jimmy and O. D. were running toward their gun-pit. Soon
afterward the other members of the crew were at their stations.
Just as the executive officer was giving out the firing data the world
seemed caught in the vortex of a terrible electrical storm. Up in front
of Battery C’s position a barrage from the seventy-five’s crashed into
life. Big guns away behind the position began to bay.
Jimmy got orders to fire. The darkness of night was lost in blinding
flashes of yellow flames that came from the thundering guns. Shells
whined and whistled on their way toward the German trenches and
positions. O. D. rammed the shells home, wondering if the world was
coming to an end. The roar of the pieces, the rattle of machine-guns,
the earth that quivered beneath him and the skies that seemed to be
blazing with varicolored fires assailed his ears, his eyes, and his soul
with a violence that he had never dreamed of. He looked to Jimmy for
confidence. Jimmy was working his sights and traversing the piece as if
he were listening to a jazz victrola record. O. D. bit his lips. He knew
that one of his real trials was at hand.
The din of battle became a unison of wild, barbaric music. Out where the
doughboys were going over, under the barrages, rockets crawled against
the livid heavens. O. D. thought of dragons and unearthly monsters as he
watched these things.
The scream of a shell, more sinister than the rest, caused O. D.’s hair
to stand up straight.
“That one’s comin’ in,” bawled out Jimmy.
Another shell whistled in the same fashion.
B—A—N—G!
The sound of an explosion new to the ears of O. D. throttled the
vicinity of his piece. A human cry made itself heard above the angry
roaring of the guns.
“Somebody got it—poor guy!” shouted Jimmy. O. D. nodded and kept on
placing the shells on the tray and ramming them in the smoking breech.
For four hours the battle storm raged incessantly. During those hours
Jimmy’s gun crew worked away with straining muscles. There was no mental
or spiritual strain attached to their labor. They were hardened to the
unnatural sounds and sights of modern fighting. But O. D., new to the
things of big action, face to face with the relentless fury of war for
the first time, had to contend with both the physical and spiritual
conditions which presented themselves. He was naturally strong; but four
hours of work, under stress of fighting, made his arms and back feel as
if they were breaking. No man, however iron of will and nerves, can go
through his first battle without some demoralization of his mental
forces. O. D. was only an ordinary boy. Naturally he suffered his share
of spiritual anguish in the trying moments of competition for the
control of his soul powers before the onslaught of terrors that
threatened to smash his nerve and courage.
When orders to cease firing came O. D. was tired and a bit wan. But he
had found himself. That alone counted with him. A few moments later,
when Jimmy asked him how he liked it, O. D. found himself answering:
“It kind of got me at first—especially when that wounded man cried out.
But when I didn’t stop to think, and kept on working, I didn’t mind it
so much.”
“That’s the stuff. Now you’ve heard all the noise that they can make in
this war, so you’re done with that experience. The rest of the stuff is
only incidental-like,” said Jimmy. “Course somebody’s got to get killed
or wounded. There wouldn’t be no war if that didn’t happen. But it won’t
be us. It’s always the other guy. _Compree_?”
“_Oui_,” answered O. D.
“Get yourself together, boys, we’re pullin’ right out. O. P.’s report
that the Germans are hauling it fast. Hardly any resistance. _Beaucoup_
prisoners comin’ in. Thousands, they say. The old doughboys are goin’
like hell,” shouted Neil, running up to O. D. and Jimmy.
“That’s the old pep. Come on, O. D., we’re off to another fight,” and
Jimmy started on the run for the tent.
The first few sharp points of dawn were piercing the haze of early
morning as Jimmy, O. D., and the rest of the outfit started across the
decaying stretch of land southeast of wrecked Mouilly. For four long
years the ground that the Yankees trampled underfoot had been the No
Man’s Land between the German and French lines. There was no real road,
just a winding succession of shell-holes and gaping craters, bordered on
one side by a water-filled trench that had been the late target of
American guns. On the other side of the ruined road stretched a bumpy,
chaotic plain, out of which the snags of shell-smashed trees lifted
jagged points and shattered limbs. Rusty barbed wire was strung in
baffling tangles from every charred stump and smoking post. Demolished
guns, rifles, bayonets, and sundry articles of equipment were littered
over the grim terrain. Gray desolation, destruction, and barrenness
abounded.
“This is what they call the _Grande Tranchée_, O. D. Never seen anything
like this, even in the movin’ pictures, did you?” questioned Jimmy.
O. D.’s eyes were fastened on a gruesome heap of headless men whose
bodies were torn, twisted, and partly covered by debris. He shuddered
before answering.
“No, Jimmy. Look down there,” pointing to the dead.
“_Oui_, Boches,” responded Jimmy, casually. “Sure tore up this place
some. Our old Betsy was landin’ ’em down here. Ain’t nothin’ over three
feet high ’round here.”
A long column of German prisoners filed by under guard of American
doughboys.
“What outfit, buddy?” asked Jimmy of a guard.
“First Division,” answered the man.
“Seen much of the Twenty-sixth doughboys?” questioned Jimmy.
“_Oui_, they beat us into Vigunelles. Those guys sure bagged some
Boches,” and the guard picked up a faster step with his prisoners.
The attack was still in force and shells were plowing up the broken
ground in every direction when the battery arrived opposite a German
cemetery. Orders were received at that point for the regiment to go into
position behind the hills of St. Rémy. The tired and worn columns
entered the woods by a road that had been used by the Germans only the
day before.
“The Boches must have thought that they was here to stay, by the looks
of this joint,” said Jimmy, pointing to the graveyard with its high
stone fence and tall tombstones. “The Boches got in here four years ago
and never moved till last night. That accounts for all this stuff. Guess
they had regular funerals and church services for the guys that got
knocked off. Just goes to show how they was fightin’ the _guerre_ up
here. Livin’ the life of Riley and didn’t know it.”
He and O. D. climbed over the fence and inspected some of the
tombstones. They came to an exceptionally big one.
“Guess this gink must have been a general. Can’t read Boche, but most
likely all the stuff reads, ‘He died for God and Country.’ See that
‘Gott’ business on ’em all. Everybody pulls the same line when a guy
gets killed. Funny thing, but there ain’t many shell-holes in
cemeteries. Now and then you see one all turned upside down from
shell-fire. But most of ’em that I’ve seen get by somehow. Maybe the
shells get superstitious.”
“There is where one shell hit.” O. D. showed Jimmy a grave that had been
dug out by a shell.
“_Oui_. Even the dead don’t get no rest in this _guerre_,” declared
Jimmy.
The whine of an incoming shell caused them both to fall flat on their
bellies. An explosion followed. Dirt and stones covered them from head
to foot.
“Beat it _toot sweet_. This joint ain’t no place for a live man, O. D.,”
and Jimmy started for the wall at double-time. They caught up with the
battery a few minutes before the order to halt came.
“We’re goin’ to use an old German position here,” said Neil, coming up
to Jimmy. “You never saw such stuff in your life. The Boches have got
dug-outs fifty feet deep. Regular places, beds, sofas, everything. You’d
think they had bought the place for a resort.
“That’s nothin’,” broke in Pop Rigney. “Down at the foot of the hill in
Hattonville they’ve got regular theaters built up. Boche _cafés_. They
say Boche women used to live here with the officers. Joyce found some
silk stockings and a woman’s hat in one dug-out.”
Jimmy and O. D. went on an exploration tour immediately. They found that
the dug-outs were all built of cement and stone and must have
necessitated months in construction. A piano, all smashed up, was found
in one. There were various kinds of mysterious cords and wires in most
of the _abris_. O. D. said that he thought they must be attached to
bells, but Jimmy warned him that the Boches had most likely left them
tied to some kind of death-dealing engine and to keep his hands off.
That same day a member of the outfit tampered with a string and had his
left hand mangled by a hand grenade which fell to the stone floor as a
result and exploded on contact.
The Germans had fled so precipitately from their positions that they
even left all the guns behind them. The men found souvenirs galore, but
threw most of them away, as they had no means of carting around extra
stuff.
“I’m off the souvenir stuff. I’ll be good enough souvenir if I get
myself back,” said Jimmy as he discarded some German belts that he had
picked up.
“Guess we’ll get back and _monjay_. ’Ain’t had any breakfast yet, you
know,” suggested Neil.
In the mess-line the talk was running fast. Samson and Johnson, who had
been up in the O. P.’s with the doughboys and had just returned to the
outfit, told about the capture of St. Mihiel and the speed with which
the Boches were evacuating the salient.
“We’re in a hell of a fix, though,” said Samson. “Can’t move another
inch forward. There’s a plain twenty kilometers deep in front of us. The
Boches have got high ground behind it and we couldn’t go across it
without losing the whole division. Guess we’ll have to stand pat awhile.
Ain’t that hell?”
His words panned out true. Before the guns of the Yankee division lay a
great deep plain. To send men out into that plain meant to expose them
to certain death with no possibility of a military advantage being
obtained by so doing. Consequently, with the exception of a sacrifice
attack planned against the enemy to divert his attention from the major
operations being launched in the Argonne forest, the division remained
in its victorious tracks for nearly six weeks. The sacrifice attack
succeeded, but it cost the division almost the entire One Hundred and
Second Infantry Regiment.
During this time O. D. drank to the dregs of the front. He became able
to distinguish the difference between the whine of an ordinary shell and
the whistle of a gas shell. Whizz-bangs got to be a part of his
vocabulary, and he knew enough to duck _toot sweet_ when he heard one
coming. The mud stuck to him as Neil told him it would. He became
friendly with cooties.
“Damn it all, Jimmy,” said O. D. five weeks after the St. Mihiel salient
had been nipped off by the pinchers of the First American Army, “if
they’d only lay off that ‘canned willy’ once in a while this _guerre_
wouldn’t be half bad. Say, I lost my gas-mask two days ago, wonder if
Joyce has got any in yet. The Boches are puttin’ gas over right along
now.”
“Hope the hell we get up to a regular front again soon,” replied Jimmy,
offering O. D. a cigarette. “Since Austria blew up we ought to get
behind the Boches and push ’em right in the Rhine.”