“Oh, it took courage and steady nerves to do that in the face of the
enemy’s machine gun fire. Men fell there in the open, but the advance
kept steadily on to the woods. It was then that discipline and training
counted. Their minds were concentrated not on the enemy’s fire but on
the thing they had to do and the necessity for doing it right. They
were listening for orders and obeying them. In this frame of mind the
soldier can perhaps walk with even more coolness and determination than
he can run. In any case it was an admirable exhibition of military
precision and it gladdened their Colonel’s heart.
“The Marines have a war cry that they can use to advantage when there
is need of it. It is a blood-curdling yell calculated to carry terror
to the heart of the waiting Hun. I am told that there were wild
yells in the woods that night, when the Marines charged the machine
gun nests, but there was no yelling when they went in. Some one has
reported that they advanced on those woods crying, ‘Remember the
_Lusitania_!’ If they did so, I failed to hear it. Somehow that doesn’t
sound like the sort of things the Marine says under the conditions. So
far as I could observe not a sound was uttered throughout the length
of those four lines. The men were saving their breath for what was to
follow.
[Illustration:
© _Leslie’s Weekly._