THE AMERICAN ARMY MARCHES TO THE TRENCHES
THE chief press officer told us that we could spend the first night in
the trenches with the American army. There were eight correspondents and
we went jingling up to the front with gas masks and steel helmets hung
about our necks and canned provisions in our pockets. It was dusk when
we left ----. Bye-and-bye we could hear the guns plainly and the villages
through which we traveled all showed their share of shelling. The front
was still a few miles ahead of us, but we left the cars in the square of
a large village and started to walk the rest of the way. We got no
further than just beyond the town. An American officer stood at the foot
of an old sign post which gave the distance to Metz, but not the
difficulties. He asked us our destination and when we told him that we
were going to spend the first night in the trenches with the American
army he wouldn't hear of it.
"There'll be trouble enough up there," he said, "without newspapermen."
He was a nervous man, this major. Every now and then he would look at
his watch. When he looked for the fourth time within two minutes he felt
that we deserved an explanation.
"I'm a little nervous," he said, "because the Boches are so quiet
tonight. I've been up here looking around for almost a week and every
night the Germans have done some shelling." He looked at his watch
again. "The first company of my battalion must be going in now." He
stood and listened for six or seven seconds but there wasn't a sound. "I
wonder what those Germans are up to?" he continued. "I don't like it. I
wish they'd shoot a little. This business now doesn't seem natural."
We turned back toward the town and left the major at his post still
listening for some sound from up there. Soon we heard a noise, but it
came from the opposite direction. Soldiers were coming. There was a bend
in the road where it straightened out in the last two miles to the
trenches. It was so dark that we could not see the men until they were
almost up to us. The Americans were marching to the front. The French
had instructed them and the British and now they were ready to learn
just what the Germans could teach them.
The night was as thick as the mud. The darkness seemed to close behind
each line of men as they went by. Even the usual marching rhythm was
missing. The mud took care of that. The doughboys would have sung if
they could. Shells wouldn't have been much worse than the silence. One
soldier did begin in a low voice, "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are
marching." An officer called, "Cut out that noise." There was no tramp,
tramp, tramp on that road. Feet came down squish, squish, squish. There
was also the sound of the wind. That wasn't very cheerful, either, for
it was rising and beginning to moan a little. It seemed to get hold of
the darkness and pile it up in drifts against the camouflage screens
which lined the road.
At the spot where the road turned there was a café and across the road
a military moving picture theater. The door of the café was open and a
big patch of light fell across the road. The doughboys had to go through
the patch of light and it was almost impossible not to turn a bit and
look through the door. There was red wine and white to be had for the
asking there, and persuasion would bring an omelette. The waitress was
named Marie, but they called her Madelon. She was eighteen and had black
hair with red ribbons. She could talk a little English, too, but nobody
came to the door of the café to see the soldiers go by. There had been a
good many who passed the door of that café in three years.
The pictures could not be seen from the road, but we could hear the hum
of the machine which made them move. Presently, we went to the door and
looked. The theater was packed with French soldiers who were back from
the front to rest. American troops were going into the trenches for the
first time. Our little group of civilians had come thousands of miles to
see this thing, but the poilus did not stop to watch marching men. They
paid their 10 centimes and went into the picture show. They had an
American Western film that night, and French soldiers who only the day
before had been face to face with Germans, shelled and gassed and
harassed from aeroplanes, thrilled as Indians chased cowboys across a
canvas screen. It grew more exciting presently, for the United States
cavalry came riding up across the screen and at the head of the
cavalcade rode Lieutenant Wallace Kirke. The villain had spread the
story that he wasn't game, but there was nothing to that. The poilus
realized that before the film was done and so did the Indians.
Meanwhile the doughboys were marching by as silently as the soldiers on
the screen, for this wasn't a movie-house where they synchronized bugle
calls and rifle fire to the progress of the film. At one point in the
story there was some gun thunder, but it came at a time when the
orchestra should have been playing "Hearts and Flowers" for the love
scene in the garden. Of course, these were German guns, and they were
fired with the usual German disregard for art.
Probably the men who were marching to the trenches would have enjoyed
the scene of the home-coming of the cavalry, when Lieutenant Wallace
Kirke confounded the villain, who actually held a commission as major in
the United States army. However, the doughboys might have spotted him
for a villain from the beginning, on account of his wretched saluting.
The director should have spoken to him about that.
The marching men looked at the theater as they passed by, but only one
soldier spoke. He said: "I certainly would like to know for sure whether
I'll ever get to go to the movies again."
They went a couple of hundred yards more without a word, and then a
soldier who couldn't stand the silence any longer shouted, "Whoopee!
Whoopee!" It was too dark to conduct an investigation and too close to
the line to administer any rebuke loud enough to be effective, and so
the nearest officer just glared in the general direction of the
offender. A little bit further on the soldiers found that the road was
pock-marked here and there with shell holes. They began to realize the
importance of silence then, for they knew that where a shell had gone
once it could go again. It was necessary to walk carefully, for the road
was covered with casual water in every hollow, and there was no seeing a
hole until you stepped in it. They managed, however, to avoid the deeper
holes and to jump most of the pools.
That is, the infantry did. Late that night a teamster reported that he
had driven his four mules into a shell hole and broken the rear axle of
his wagon.
"Why didn't you send a man out ahead to look out for shell holes?" asked
the officer.
"I did," said the soldier. "He fell in first."
Presently the marching men came to the beginning of the trench system,
and they were glad to get a wall on either side of them. There was no
scramble, however, to be the first man in, and even the major of the
battalion has forgotten the name of the first soldier to set foot in the
French trenches. Some twenty or thirty men claim the honor, but it will
be difficult to settle the matter with historical accuracy. A Middle
Western farm boy, an Irishman with red hair or a German-American would
seem to fit the circumstances best, but it's all a matter of choice. As
the Americans came in the French marched out.
A trench during a relief is no good place for a demonstration, but some
of the poilus paused to shake hands with the Americans. There were
rumors that one or two doughboys had been kissed, but I was unable to
substantiate these reports. Probably they are not true, for it would not
be the sort of thing a company would forget.
Although the trenches for the most part were far from the German lines,
there was noise enough to attract attention over the way. The Germans
did not seem to know what was going on, but they wanted to know, and
they sent up a number of star shells. These are the shells which explode
to release a bright light suspended from a little silk parachute. These
parachutes hung in the air for several minutes and brightly illumined No
Man's Land. It was impossible to keep the Americans entirely quiet then.
Some said "Oh!" and others exclaimed "Ah!" after the manner of crowds at
a fire-works show.
Persiflage of this kind helped to make the men feel at home. Indeed,
the trenches did not seem altogether unfamiliar, after all their days
and nights in the practice trenches back in camp. The men were a little
nervous, though, and took it out in smoking one cigarette after another.
They shielded the light under their trench helmets. After an hour or so
a green rocket went up and all the soldiers in the American trenches put
on their gas masks. They had been drilled for weeks in getting them on
fast and a green rocket was the signal agreed upon as the warning for an
attack. Presently the word came from the trenches that the masks were
not necessary. There had been no attack. The rocket came from the German
trenches. It was quiet then all along the short trench line with the
exception of an occasional rifle shot. The wind was making a good deal
of noise out in the mess of weeds just beyond the wire and it sounded
like Germans to some of the boys. It was clearer now and a sharp eyed
man could see the stakes of the wire. They were a bit ominous, too.
"I was looking at one of those stakes," a doughboy told me, "and I kept
alooking and alooking and all of a sudden it grew a pair of shoulders
and a helmet and I let go at it."
There were others who suffered from the same optical illusion that
night, but let it be said to their credit that when a working party
examined the wire several days later they found some stakes which had
been riddled through and through with bullets.