INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH
As time went on the boys became quite expert in bayonet practice. A
French officer who had seen some of the bloodiest fighting on the Somme
was their instructor, and he was voluble in his praise of the "_esprit
de coeur_" the young men showed.
Of course in the beginning there were some laggards, but these were
promptly whipped into line by officers and comrades.
"It is maybe all right now to laugh and take the little interest," the
Frenchman was fond of saying to these few who lagged behind. "But when
you are in the trench, fighting hand to hand with your enemy, more
accomplished than you, it will not be so great a joke. You will not
laugh then!"
"He's right too," remarked Fred Anderson, one of the veteran members of
the regiment who had seen service in the Philippine Islands. "There
will be plenty of hand-to-hand fighting where it's cut and thrust, and
the man who can handle his weapon best will come out on top."
"I suppose most of your own experience has been along that line," said
Frank.
"Yes," replied Fred, as a reminiscent look came into his eyes. "Of
course that dinky little war in the Philippines wasn't to be compared
with this, but there was lots of savage fighting just the same. More
than once I've been within an ace of losing the number of my mess."
"What's the tightest place you were ever in?" asked Bart.
"The thing I remember most was a scrap we had with the Moros," replied
Fred. "That was pretty hot while it lasted.
"You see," he went on, "those fellows had been acting nasty and had
given a good deal of trouble to one of our outposts. So our lieutenant
was ordered to take a detachment in a launch and go up a little river
that led to a settlement of theirs and give them a lesson.
"We landed at the nearest point and had about five miles of jungle to
go through before we could get to their village. We did our best to
make it a surprise, but in some way they got wind of our coming and lay
in ambush. We were picking our way in single file when suddenly there
came a rain of bullets and several of our men went down. The rest of
us took to cover and the fight was on.
"The Moros you know are Mohammedans, and about as nifty fighters as you
can find anywhere. Like all men of their religion, they believe that
any one who dies on the battlefield goes straight to Paradise, and that
gives them an absolute contempt for death. They were well armed too
with Mauser rifles that they'd managed to get hold of somehow, but
luckily for us they hadn't learned to handle them well and most of
their shots went wild. If their shooting had been as good as their
hearts were stout, they might have wiped us out, as they outnumbered us
two or three to one.
"Has anybody got the makin's?" he inquired, as he stopped to roll a
cigarette.
"Give them to him, somebody," said Bart exasperatedly.
"For the love of Mike don't keep him waiting!" ejaculated Frank. "I
want to hear how Fred got out of it."
Fred, not a bit averse to the interest he had aroused, was
tantalizingly slow in taking his time.
"Keep your hair on," he drawled, as he struck a match. "I got through
all right, or I wouldn't be chinning to you now.
"Well," he resumed after a preliminary puff, "we kept picking them off
whenever a head showed itself until they found that we could outplay
them at that game, and then they resorted to other tactics. Throwing
aside their guns and grasping their machettes--those murderous knives
of theirs that will cut a man's head off with a single blow--they came
charging down upon us. We didn't propose to stand on the defensive,
and after a vast volley that swept a lot of them away we fixed bayonets
and rushed to meet them."
The group that had by this time gathered about Fred drew a little
closer.
"It was touch and go for a few minutes," continued Fred, "but our
weight and discipline told, and soon we were pushing them back. Just
then however I stumbled over a root and fell to the ground, striking my
head and stunning myself. At that same moment the Moros were
reinforced and came back with a wild rush that by sheer weight of
numbers forced our line back for twenty-five feet or more.
"I was trying to get to my feet when four or five of the nearest Moros,
brandishing their knives, swooped down upon me. It would have been all
over with me, if one of our fellows, a big fighting Irishman named
Hennessy, hadn't come plunging through the crowd swinging his rifle
round his head like a flail. They went down like bullocks hit with an
axe. They simply couldn't get inside the circle made by that gun and
by the time he had knocked down a half dozen or more, our boys had
rallied and had the beggars on the run."
"Phew, but that was a close shave!" ejaculated Frank.
"Close is right," agreed Fred. "I'd certainly have cashed in right
then and there if it hadn't been for Hennessy. I told him that he had
saved my life and that I owed him more than I could ever repay, but he
wouldn't have it so. The joke of it was that I think he was really
grateful to me for giving him a chance for such a lovely scrap. He
told me that he hadn't enjoyed himself so much since the last time he
had gone to the fair at Tipperary."
There was a general laugh.
"If it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't have had your chance now to
get a hack at the Huns," remarked Bart.
"No," assented Fred, "and that would certainly have been hard luck.
But to get back where we started from, I want to put it up to you
fellows that what the Frenchman said was true. We can't take this
practice too seriously. Especially bayonet practice. We've had lots
of proof that the Germans don't like cold steel. They're brave enough,
but the French and English put it all over them in bayonet work."
"That's right," agreed Frank, "and it's up to us to show that Uncle
Sam's boys can do the same."
The hand grenade throwing was of special interest to the boys and was
the one most readily mastered. This was due chiefly to the fact that
it had points in common with baseball. Many of the boys were
proficient in the great national game.
The firm of Moore and Thomas had maintained its own nine, and in the
season before they had carried off the championship of the commercial
teams in Camport. Frank had officiated in the pitcher's box and had an
assortment of curves and drops together with great speed that had been
the chief factors in the winning of the pennant. Bart had "dug them
out of the dirt" at first base.
Billy Waldon, too, had been as quick as lightning in "winging them
down" from short.
So that their throwing arms were fully developed and they took up this
new and grimmer game with the skill born of long practice.
"This ought to be nuts for us when we get to the trenches," remarked
Billy, as he cut loose with a grenade in practice that landed within
two feet of the object aimed at.
"It sure gives us a big advantage over the Germans," assented Frank.
"Of course they're drilled in throwing, but by the time they've started
in with it their muscles must seem strange to it. We've been throwing
a ball around ever since we were kids. It's in the blood. Our eyes
and arms have learned to work together. And then, too, a thing you've
learned to do from the love of it must be better done than when it's
forced on you."
"Imagine a crack pitcher with a grenade in his hand and the Kaiser a
hundred feet away," said Billy with a grin.
"An A1 pitcher wouldn't do a thing to him!" chuckled one of the other
recruits.
"Would he put over a bean ball or a fadeaway, do you think?" asked Bart.
"It would be a strike-out, whichever one he used," declared Frank.
"The Kaiser would do a fadeaway."
The bomb they used was the Mills bomb which had been adopted for
general use in the British army.
"Let's hope there'll be plenty of them, whatever else we're short of,"
remarked Bart.
"They're handy little things to have around when the Boches come over
for a friendly call," observed another lad.
"If we run short we can make some ourselves," declared Frank. "They
won't be quite so nifty as these Mills bombs, but they'll do the work."
"Listen to Edison talking," chaffed Billy.
"I'm not kidding," declared Frank. "I got the tip from one of the
Tommys who was wounded in the Ypres fighting and is over here on leave.
Hustle around some of you chaps and get me an old tin can and I'll show
you what the Tommy showed to me."
"What kind of a can?" asked Billy.
"Oh, any old kind," answered Frank. "An old soup can, tomato can, any
can that Eli hasn't eaten up already."
Eli was the big goat that served as the mascot of the regiment. He had
an omnivorous appetite and ate anything from cigarette butts to
washrags, and if anything was missing it was customary to charge it
against Eli. He was not only a billygoat but a scapegoat.
A little search however brought to light an old can that Eli had
spared, and the boys looked on with interest while Frank prepared his
homemade bomb.
"I'll roll up my sleeves, gentlemen, to show you that I have nothing
concealed there," said Frank, in his best conjurer's style. "Now watch
me carefully and I'll try to instill some scientific knowledge in those
thick noddles of yours."
He took a handful of clay from the edge of the trench where they had
been practising and lined the inside of the can with it.
"Now for the dirty work," joked Billy.
Frank withered him with a glance.
"Get me a lot of junk," he commanded.
"That's rather indefinite," suggested Bart. "Junk shops are not a part
of this regiment's equipment. Uncle Sam's had so much on his mind that
he hasn't got to them yet."
"A handful of nails or bits of iron or cartridge shells will do,"
returned Frank, putting a detonator and explosive in the can and
tamping it down in the clay. "Anything will do that will make Fritz
see stars when it hits him."
Bart volunteered a broken jack knife; one lad contributed a couple of
metal buttons; others handed over nails.
Frank arranged the miscellaneous collection in as compact a mass as
possible, put in more clay and then put on the tin cover, into which he
first punched a hole. Through this hole the top of the fuse protruded.
Then he wrapped wire around the can so that the top could not come off,
and the bomb was ready.
"There," he said, as he held his handiwork up for their inspection,
"when that is sent over to the enemy trenches there will be something
doing. It isn't much in the beauty line but it will get there just the
same."
"Great head!" said Bart admiringly.
"Not mine but the fellow's who first figured it out," said Frank. "But
it's a good thing to know, and you never can tell when it may come in
mighty handy."
"I hear we're going to be gassed to-morrow," remarked Bart, as they
made their way to their quarters.
Billy made a wry face.
"That's one of the most hideous things the Huns have brought into this
war," he said. "I can imagine Satan chuckling when he heard of the gas
attack."
"I don't think he chuckled," said Frank bitterly. "More likely he was
jealous to have a German think of it before he did. It isn't often
that he lets anyone get ahead of him."
"He'll have to step lively to keep ahead of the Huns," said Bart.
"They say there's no torture equal to that suffered by a man who has
been gassed."
"And even if they don't die of it after days of agony, they might
better have died," added another, "for it leaves them ruined for life."
"Surgeons get hardened in carrying on their profession," commented
Frank. "They have to be or they couldn't keep their nerve. But they
say that even the surgeons broke down when they stood beside the beds
on which the gas victims lay gasping for breath. They had never seen
such horrible anguish."
"Well, there's no use expecting Germans to carry on war like a
civilized nation," declared Frank. "They've thrown all decency and
humanity to the winds. They've raised the flag of the skull and
crossbones and want to make all the rest of the world walk the plank.
They're pirates and barbarians, and there'll be no peace or security
for mankind until they're punished for their crimes."
"It's a tough job that's put up to us Allies," said Bart. "A man's
job. But we'll put it through, no matter what the cost may be."
"Right you are," ejaculated Frank fervently. "It wasn't only Nathan
Hale who wished that he had more than one life to give for his country.
There are a million Nathan Hales among Uncle Sam's boys and millions
more to come."
As Bart had predicted, their squad was lined up the next day for a
practical test in gas defense. They had already had preliminary drills
in adjusting the masks, which had to be slipped on in six seconds. It
took a long time before this stage of excellence could be reached, for
some of the men were doubly slow, slow in thought and slow in action.
The quicker ones had soon acquired the habit of adjusting the masks in
the required time, and Frank and Bart could do it sometimes in five
seconds. But the drill went on unceasingly until all acted as one man,
for a single second's delay in fending off the infernal attack might
mean all the difference between life and death--and such a death!
It was not a pretty sight, for the masks were hideous and the men
looked like weird monsters from another planet.
"If only our friends could see us now!" murmured Bart to Frank in an
undertone.
"They'd drop dead from fright," returned the latter.
"Deep sea divers have nothing on us," chimed in a third lad.
"You're insulting the divers," said Billy. "If they went down looking
like this, the sharks would throw a fit."
At last the drill worked with clock-work precision, and the perspiring
lieutenant wiped his brow and gave vent to a sigh of relief as he
looked along the grotesque ranks.
"I guess they're ready now," he said, turning to the sergeant. "Take
them down half a dozen at a time and let them get a sniff of the gas."
"_Let_ them," murmured a lad. "What a blessed privilege. Anyone would
think that he was giving us a furlough for good conduct."
"Save your breath and come along," admonished Billy. "You'll need all
you've got in a little while."
The squad was marched off to a little hut that stood in a distant
corner of the camp. It was a crude creation with a door and only one
window. Long before they got to it the boys could detect a faint acrid
odor in the atmosphere.
"Now," said the sergeant halting his men at a little distance, "you
fellows break ranks and come along in single file."
The single room of the hut had been filled with the same kind of gas
that the Germans were using along the western front, but in greatly
diluted form.
"Take off your masks," commanded the sergeant, "and go along past that
window one by one. Make quick time too. I want you to learn just what
the gas smells like, so that you can detect it the minute it comes near
you after you get to the trenches."
The men obeyed orders, and, as they passed, each got a whiff of the gas
that was escaping through a slight opening of the window. There was a
gasp, a cough, a wry face and a hurried scuttling by as each man went
through the ordeal.
It is needless to say that there was no disposition to linger. Even
the slowest man of the squad displayed unsuspected capacity for speed.
"Look at Fatty Bates," chuckled Billy, alluding to the most ponderous
member of the company. "Talk about winged heels! Mercury has nothing
on him."
"It certainly got a rise out of Fatty," grinned Bart. "It's worth a
dollar to see him jump. Put a gas cloud after him and I'll bet he'd do
a hundred yards in ten seconds flat."
"You'll jump too when your turn comes," prophesied Frank. "You'll
think the lid has been taken off of the infernal regions."
The prophecy was verified, for though there was no danger, since the
gas had been vastly diluted, yet the odor was so vile and the death it
suggested was so horrible that they could not get away from it quickly
enough.
"It's like passing close to a rattlesnake whose fangs have been drawn,"
commented Frank. "You might know that he couldn't kill you, but if he
struck at you you'd jump instinctively, just because he was a
rattlesnake."
"Some perfume that," remarked Billy with an expression of dire disgust.
"New-mown hay--I don't think," growled Bart, sneezing as though he
would shake his head loose from his shoulders. "I got a bigger dose
than the rest of you slackers," he added with an air of superior virtue.
"Martyr to duty," mocked Frank. "But we're not through yet, fellows.
The worst is yet to come."
"Nothing can be worse," grumbled Fatty Bates, with profound conviction.
"Oh, yes, it can," said Billy, assuming the role of Job's comforter.
"We've got to go inside that Chamber of Horrors and stay there five
minutes by the clock."
"Will we come out on our feet or be carried out?" asked Fatty Bates
with a worried expression.
"You'll never be carried out, Fatty," chaffed Billy. "It would take
the whole regiment to do that. It'll be a crane and derrick for you
sure."
"We'll put a torpedo under him and blow him through the roof," added
Bart.
"Now men," said the sergeant, "put on your masks and go inside, one
after the other. There's no danger if you've learned to put them on
perfectly. But if there's any sloppy work, the fellow that's careless
will find it out soon enough, and he'll get all that's coming to him."
"Not much nourishment in that," muttered Billy under his breath.
"Suppose the mask's defective, got a hole in it or something like that."
"If it is, it's better to find it out now than when we're actually in
the trenches," answered Frank. "I suppose that's the real reason for
this test. Here's hoping that no shoddy contractor had put one over on
the government."
They filed into the grim little room after having adjusted their masks
with especial care and stood crowded closely together looking in their
ghostly attire like so many spectres.
It was a grisly five minutes that seemed more like an hour to each one
of them. The dead silence added to the discomfort of the occasion.
Death seemed to be all around them, reaching out to them with its
skeleton fingers. They were in the "valley of the shadow," and it
sobered them.
It was an immense relief when the knock of the sergeant on the door
summoned them forth and the test was over. And there was great
satisfaction when it was learned that all the masks had held and shown
that they could be relied on.
Once out in the clean, sweet air and under the blue sky that never
before had seemed so beautiful, the boys tore off their masks in a
hurry.
"Now I feel like a respectable member of society and not like one of
the Ku Klux Klan!" exclaimed Bart, as he looked around on the flushed
bronzed faces of his comrades. "My, but it's good to be out of this
hideous rig. I'd like to throw it into the river," he added digging
his fingers viciously into the unoffending mask.
"You'll be glad enough to have it some day before long," prophesied
Frank. "Then you'll count it the best friend you have."
"Isn't it pretty nearly time for mess?" asked Fatty Bates wistfully.
"Not yet, little one," remarked Billy. "The sergeant's got something
else up his sleeve, or I miss my guess."
A groan went up from Fatty, which was quickly suppressed when the
sergeant looked sternly at him.
"Form in single file, men," commanded the sergeant, "and make your way
through the trench. Bend over as you go, for you're supposed to be on
the enemy front, and not a head must show to be a mark for snipers."
They did as they were told, and after they had reached a designated
portion of the shallow trench they were halted by their leader.
"You're going to be gassed right and proper now," he said. "Some gas
shells are going to be thrown over toward you and it's up to you when
you see them coming to get those masks on mighty quick."
Crouching low and on the alert, the men waited until a gas shell with a
hiss and a scream came hurtling in their direction and broke a hundred
feet in front of the trench. A cloud of gas came rolling toward them.
On went their masks in the twinkling of an eye, and the vapor passed
over them harmlessly.
Several times this was repeated until the keen eye of the sergeant was
satisfied with the dexterity shown by the squad. And there was a
general sigh of relief when he summoned them out of the trench and
announced that drill was over for the morning.
"Phew, but that was some strenuous work," remarked Frank, as holding
their masks in their hands the men strolled back in groups of twos and
threes toward their quarters.
"I feel as though I had been drawn through a knothole," said Fatty
Bates.
The thought of Fatty being drawn through a knothole was so ludicrous
that it provoked a general roar.
"I guess we all feel pretty well used up," said Bart when the merriment
had subsided, "but all the same it's things like this that are going to
help us lick the Huns."
And so the days passed in learning the grim lessons of war, and the
shadows, lengthening into evening, brought supper, perhaps some special
musical entertainment, a vaudeville show, or moving pictures, sometimes
only bonfires with smoking, laughing, joking crowds about them. The
boys enjoyed these latter evenings most when the funny events of the
day could be passed in review and enjoyed by them all.
Then, promptly at nine the bugle called for "all lights out," and the
young soldiers, early as was the hour, obeyed it willingly. The
strenuous days in the open air made the narrow cots in the long
barracks particularly appealing.
"Did you hear that joke Jameson was telling about the Yankee soldier?"
Bart asked one night, when all the rest were either asleep or on the
way.
"No," said Frank, sleepily. "What was it?"
"It seems a guard challenged him," chuckled Bart, "with the regular,
'Who goes there?' and he answered, 'Aw, you wouldn't know if I told
you. I've only been here a couple o' days'."
"That's all very well here," yawned Frank. "But it wouldn't go in 'No
Man's Land'!"