There were French soldiers in the rout, too. Nearly all were_Fix bayonets!

FIX BAYONETS!

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

[Illustration:

Flare—Front Line, Champagne.

That night, lying in its shallow, hastily dug holes, the remnant of

the battalion descended through further hells of shelling.

]

FIX BAYONETS!

JOHN W. THOMASON, JR.

_Captain, U. S. Marine Corps_

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

NEW YORK · LONDON

1927

Printed in the United States of America

Published March, 1926

Reprinted April, May, September, 1926

[Illustration: [Icon]]

THE MEN OF THE FIRST BATTALION

FIFTH REGIMENT

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

1918

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

INTRODUCTION

THE LEATHERNECKS

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

INTRODUCTION

THE LEATHERNECKS

They tell the tale of an American lady of notable good works, much

esteemed by the French, who, at the end of June, 1918, visited one of

the field-hospitals behind Degoutte’s Sixth French Army. Degoutte was

fighting on the face of the Marne salient, and the 2d American Division,

then in action around the Bois de Belleau, northwest of Château-Thierry,

was under his orders. It happened that occasional casualties of the

Marine Brigade of the 2d American Division, wounded toward the flank

where Degoutte’s own horizon-blue infantry joined on, were picked up by

French stretcher-bearers and evacuated to French hospitals. And this

lady, looking down a long, crowded ward, saw on a pillow a face unlike

the fiercely whiskered Gallic heads there displayed in rows. She went to

it.

“Oh,” she said, “surely you are an American!”

“No, ma’am,” the casualty answered, “I’m a Marine.”

The men who marched up the Paris-Metz road to meet the Boche in that

spring of 1918, the 5th and 6th Regiments of United States Marines, were

gathered from various places. In the big war companies, 250 strong, you

could find every sort of man, from every sort of calling. There were

Northwesterners with straw-colored hair that looked white against their

tanned skins, and delicately spoken chaps with the stamp of the Eastern

universities on them. There were large-boned fellows from Pacific-coast

lumber camps, and tall, lean Southerners who swore amazingly in gentle,

drawling voices. There were husky farmers from the corn-belt, and

youngsters who had sprung, as it were, to arms from the necktie counter.

And there were also a number of diverse people who ran curiously to

type, with drilled shoulders and a bone-deep sunburn, and a tolerant

scorn of nearly everything on earth. Their speech was flavored with navy

words, and words culled from all the folk who live on the seas and the

ports where our war-ships go. In easy hours their talk ran from the

Tartar Wall beyond Pekin to the Southern Islands, down under Manila;

from Portsmouth Navy Yard—New Hampshire and very cold—to obscure

bushwhackings in the West Indies, where Cacao chiefs, whimsically

sanguinary, barefoot generals with names like Charlemagne and

Christophe, waged war according to the precepts of the French Revolution

and the Cult of the Snake. They drank the _eau de vie_ of Haute-Marne,

and reminisced on saki, and vino, and Bacardi Rum—strange drinks in

strange _cantinas_ at the far ends of the earth; and they spoke fondly

of Milwaukee beer. Rifles were high and holy things to them, and they

knew five-inch broadside guns. They talked patronizingly of the war, and

were concerned about rations. They were the Leathernecks, the Old

Timers: collected from ship’s guards and shore stations all over the

earth to form the 4th Brigade of Marines, the two rifle regiments,

detached from the navy by order of the President for service with the

American Expeditionary Forces. They were the old breed of American

regular, regarding the service as home and war as an occupation; and

they transmitted their temper and character and view-point to the

high-hearted volunteer mass which filled the ranks of the Marine

Brigade.

[Illustration:

The Leathernecks, the Old Timers.

]

It is a pleasure to record that they found good company in the army. The

2d Division (U. S. Regular was the official designation) was composed of

the 9th and 23d Infantry, two old regiments with names from all of our

wars on their battle-flags, the 2d Regiment of Engineers—and engineers

are always good—and the 12th, 15th, and 17th Field Artillery. It was a

division distinguished by the quality of dash and animated by an

especial pride of service. It carried to a high degree _esprit de

corps_, which some Frenchman has defined as esteeming your own corps and

looking down on all the other corps. And, although it paid heavily in

casualties for the things it did—in five months about 100 per cent—the

2d Division never lost its professional character.

Seven years after, across the world from France, I met a major of the

American General Staff, who was on the Paris-Metz road that last week in

May, 1918, and saw the Marine Brigade. “They looked fine, coming in

there,” he said. “Tall fellows, healthy and fit—they looked hard and

competent. We watched you going in, through those little tired

Frenchmen, and we all felt better. We knew something was going to

happen—” and we were silent, over Chilean wine, in a place on the South

Pacific, thinking of those days and those men....

There is no sight in all the pageant of war like young, trained men

going up to battle. The columns look solid and businesslike. Each

battalion is an entity, 1,200 men of one purpose. They go on like a

river that flows very deep and strong. Uniforms are drab these days, but

there are points of light on the helmets and the bayonets, and light in

the quick, steady eyes and the brown young faces, greatly daring. There

is no singing—veterans know, and they do not sing much—and there is no

excitement at all; they are schooled craftsmen, going up to impose their

will, with the tools of their trade, on another lot of fellows; and

there is nothing to make a fuss about. Battles are not salubrious

places, and every file knows that a great many more are going in than

will come out again—but that is along with the job. And they have no

illusions about the job.

There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with

killing tools, going along to fight. And yet—such a column represents a

great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All

that is behind those men is in that column, too: the old battles, long

forgotten, that secured our nation—Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown,

San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El

Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly

every year—in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap was in

the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such

as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of

women; and that abstract thing called patriotism, which I never heard

combat soldiers mention—all this passes into the forward zone, to the

point of contact, where war is girt with horrors. And common men endure

these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of

the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think,

is glory.

[Illustration:

“They looked fine, coming in there ... through those little tired

Frenchmen.”

]

In Charles the Second’s time the English formed the first sea

regiment—soldiers equipped as infantry, to serve on the sea in the

fleet; to clear with musketry the enemy’s decks and fighting-tops when

the ships of the line went into close action; to go ashore and take up

positions when the naval forces would seize a base preliminary to land

operations of the army.

Here, by the way, comes the quip of old time: “Tell it to the Marines.”

They relate of Charles the Second that at Whitehall a certain

sea-captain, newly returned from the Western Ocean, told the king of

flying fish, a thing never heard in old England. The king and the court

were vastly amused. But, the naval fellow persisting, the Merry Monarch

beckoned to a lean, dry colonel of the sea regiment, with a seamed

mahogany face, and said, in effect: “Colonel, this tarry-breeks here

makes sport with us stay-at-homes. He tells us of a miraculous fish that

forsakes its element and flies like a bird over the water!” “Sire,” said

the colonel of Marines, “he tells a true thing. I myself have often seen

those fish in your Majesty’s seas around Barbados—” “Well,” decided

Charles, “such evidence cannot be disputed. And hereafter, when we hear

a strange thing, we will tell it to the Marines, for the Marines go

everywhere and see everything, and if they say it is so, we will believe

it!”

The Continental Congress, on 10 November, 1775, authorized a corps of

American Marines. This was the first Federal armed force to be raised by

the young nation, and it antedated both the Federal army and navy, which

had, until that time, been matters of individual commonwealths. And

since that date Marines have participated honorably in all American

wars, and in some affairs, more or less interesting, where powder was

burnt but which do not rate as wars. (Under international law Marines

can be landed to protect the lives and property of nationals without a

declaration of war.)

Captain Richard Dale’s Marines served with John Paul Jones on the

_Bonhomme Richard_, and it was a grenade thrown from the tops that set

off the powder-magazine of H. M. S. _Serapis_ and turned the tide of

events in favor of the poor old _Richard_, in the fight off Flamborough

Head. There were United States Marines in Barney’s naval force, formed

across the Bladensburg Road when Admiral Cockburn’s people marched to

burn Washington; and they stayed there until the line was turned by

British regulars and they were all, including Barney, casualties; it was

the only material resistance the British met. Marines marched to Mexico

City in 1846; the red stripe on the blue trousers of officers and

non-commissioned officers commemorates to this day service in that war.

They served in the Civil War very widely: Marines died on Henry Hill, at

First Manassas, and on the fire-swept beaches in front of Fort Fisher,

and on the Mississippi around Vicksburg and Island No. 10. Colonel

Huntington’s Marines took Guantanamo, landing from U. S. S. _Marblehead_

in 1898. They marched to Pekin in 1900, and were in the legation guard

shut up there during the Boxer trouble. Cuba knows them, and the

Philippines. They were ashore at Vera Cruz in 1914; every uneasy and

volatile West Indian and Central American republic has become acquainted

with them in a professional way, and their appearance at storm centres

has always produced, very presently, a sweet tranquillity. The navy

takes them there, and sends bluejackets and chow along always. Every

capital ship carries a guard of them. Aboard ship, besides forming the

nucleus of the ship’s landing-force, they man the secondary batteries,

the five-inch guns; furnish guards of honor for the comings and goings

of the admiral and distinguished visitors, and so forth; perform all

manner of curious and annoying details; and post ship’s sentries whose

meticulous ideas about the enforcement of orders lacerate the souls of

jolly mariners, seamen, and engineer ratings. Normally, the strength of

the corps is twenty per cent of the navy; just now there are about

19,000. They constitute an organization within an organization, with

their own commandant, who functions under the secretary of the navy. The

rank and file are good enough Latinists to know what “Semper

Fidelis”—which is their word—means; and any private will assure you that

the Marines are a corps d’élite.

In 1917, when trained soldiers in the United States were at a premium,

the navy offered a brigade of Marines for service in France; it was

regarded desirable for Marine officers to have experience in large

operations with the army; for it is certain that close co-operation

between the army and the navy is a necessary thing in these days of

far-flung battle lines. The British distress at Gallipoli is a crying

witness to this principle. In a navy transport, therefore, U. S. S.

_Henderson_, the 5th Regiment of Marines embarked for France in June,

1917, with the first armed American forces. The 6th Marines followed.

The two regiments constituted the 4th Brigade, and served in the 2d

Division, U. S. Regular, until the division came home, in August, 1919.

About 30,000 Marines were sent to France; some 14,000 of these went as

replacements to maintain the two regiments of the 4th Brigade. A brigade

musters some 7,500 officers and men; this brigade took part in some very

interesting events.

Hereafter I have written of the Marines in the war with Germany; how

they went up, and what they did there, and how some of them came out

again. Being a Marine, I have tried to set forth simple tales without

comment. It is unnecessary to write what I think of my own people, nor

would it be, perhaps, in the best taste.

And I have written of Marines in this war because they are the folks I

know about myself. Those battle-fields were very large, and a man seldom

saw much or very far beyond his own unit, if he had a job in hand. As a

company officer, I always had a job. There is no intent to overlook

those very gallant gentlemen, our friends, the army. Their story is

ours, too.

JOHN W. THOMASON, JR.

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. BATTLE-SIGHT 1

II. THE CHARGE AT SOISSONS 73

III. MARINES AT BLANC MONT 131

IV. MONKEY-MEAT 199

V. THE RHINE 227

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

ILLUSTRATIONS

Flare—Front Line, Champagne _Frontispiece_

PAGE

The Leathernecks, the Old Timers _Facing page_

“They looked fine, coming in there ... through those _Facing page_

little tired Frenchmen” xiv

Occasional wounded Frenchmen drifted back 3

Sketches from Captain Thomason’s note-book _Facing page_

Platoon column in support, Champagne, 1918 _Facing page_

“Catch some alive——” _Facing page_

The 2d Engineers _Facing page_

A tortured area ... lit by flares and gun-flashes _Facing page_

The hill blazed into action—not all the rifle-fire had _Facing page_

gone astray 28

Pencil sketches made on scraps of paper, in Belleau Wood _Facing page_

Combat patrol _Facing page_

A sprinkling of old-time Marines _Facing page_

Some of them had been this way before 47

Boche grenadier _Facing page_

So many chaps were not with the brigade very long 51

The Boche had out his pistol _Facing page_

Certain designated individuals watched 57

Men fought in its corpse-choked thickets. 59

Bringing in German prisoners at St. Mihiel _Facing page_

Ration parties always sweated mightily and

anticipated exciting incidents 63

“Bang away, Lulu——” _Facing page_

The automatic-rifle men _Facing page_

Prussians from Von Boehn’s divisions in and around the _Facing page_

Bois de Belleau 82

“Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and _Facing page_

go forward....” 4.30 A. M., July 18, 1918 90

Listening-post rushed by Senegalese _Facing page_

A fighting swirl of Senegalese _Facing page_

Fighting from tree to tree in the woods south of _Facing page_

Soissons 102

With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything _Facing page_

living 106

The fighting in the woods at Soissons was close and _Facing page_

savage 110

A lieutenant of Marines and a German major, hand to hand _Facing page_

114

Sketches made by Captain Thomason at Soissons on scraps _Facing page_

of paper taken from a feldwebel’s note-book 118

Fighting north of Blanc Mont, Champagne 124

“Carry me back to Ole Virginny” _Facing page_

126

French grenadier—Blanc Mont _Facing page_

136

Those sawed-off shotguns they gave us at St. Mihiel _Facing page_

142

The shells began to drop into the trench 149

A flare during shelling in the front-line trenches _Facing page_

150

In the Essen trench—a runner _Facing page_

154

The morning of October 3d came gray and misty—a patrol _Facing page_

158

“Lordy, ain’t we ever goin’ to get outa this dam’ place

an’ get at ’em—?” 161

Others lay on the ground over which the battalion passed 163

“Oh, Lordy! They’ve got us bracketed!” _Facing page_

164

Before zero hour _Facing page_

168

Flanking fire _Facing page_

172

The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the

flat and began to ascend the long gray slope ahead 175

The first shell came screaming down the line from the _Facing page_

right 176

“Here comes a battalion runner—what’s up anyway?” _Facing page_

180

A few iron-souled Prussians—the Boche had such men—stood _Facing page_

up to meet bayonet with bayonet, and died that way 184

The last few men are always the most difficult to kill 187

A machine-gunner, Champagne 189

“Mademoiselle from Armentières” _Facing page_

194

“Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up!” _Facing page_

200

“He takes the war too serious” _Facing page_

204

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some _Facing page_

way, both filled with admiration at his language 212

“War—sure—is—hell” _Facing page_

216

“Sweet Ad-o-line” _Facing page_

222

The cooks issued corn-bill hash and dared any man to _Facing page_

growl 228

A nice day for a hike 231

Men walked silent, remembering the old dead _Facing page_

232

One thick-bodied Boche ... His face in a cast of hate _Facing page_

236

They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced _Facing page_

240

“I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too _Facing page_

many children.” 243

The 1st Battalion of the Rhine—5th Marines took the road 245

“Long Boy” _Facing page_

248

FIX BAYONETS!

BATTLE SIGHT

THE FIGHTING AROUND THE BOIS DE BELLEAU

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

BATTLE-SIGHT

THE FIGHTING AROUND THE BOIS DE BELLEAU

ATTACK

In the fields near Marigny Marines of the 1st Battalion of the 5th found

an amiable cow. There had been nothing in the way of rations that day;

there were no prospects. All hands took thought and designated a robust

Polish corporal as executioner. He claimed to have been a butcher in a

former existence. He was leading the cow decently away from the road

when a long gray car boomed up, halted with the touch of swank that

Headquarters chauffeurs always affect, and disgorged a very angry

colonel. The colonel’s eye was cold upon the interested group around the

cow. They stood now to attention, the cow alone remaining tranquil, with

a poppy dangling from her languid mouth.

“Lieutenant, what are you doing there——?”

“Sir, you see, the men haven’t had anything to eat, and I thought,

sir—we found this cow wanderin’ around—we couldn’t find any owner—we’d

like to chip in and buy her—we were goin’ to——”

“I see, sir, I see! You were going to kill this cow, the property of

some worthy French family. You will bear in mind, lieutenant, that we

are in France to protect the lives and property of our allies from the

Germans—Release that animal at once! Your rations will be distributed as

soon as possible—carry on—” The colonel departed, and four or five 77s

crashed into a little wood two hundred yards up the road. There were

more shells in the same place. “Hi! Brother Boche must think there’s a

battery over there!”—“Well, there ain’t—” The Marines sat down in the

wheat and observed the cow.

“Property of our gallant allies—yeh!—” “Old man’s in an awful

humor—wonder what—” The lieutenant sucked a straw reflectively. His

sergeant solaced himself with tobacco. The cow ruminated, quite content.

She had nourished herself at will for three delightful days, since her

people, in a farm over toward Torcy—where, at the minute, the Boche was

killing off a battalion of French territorials—had incomprehensibly

turned her out and vanished. Full-fed, she eyed the strangers without

emotion.

“I was a quartermaster sergeant once, sir,” said the platoon sergeant

dreamily. “I remember just what the cuts of beef are. There’d be fine

sirloin on that cow-critter, now.... Mr. Ashby (another flight of 77s

burst in the wood), if we was to take that cow over an’ tie her in that

brush—she oughten to be out here in the open, anyway—might draw fire ...

shell’s liable to hit anything, you know, sir——”

“Sergeant, you heard what the colonel said. But if you think she’d be

safer—I’d suggest volunteers. And by the way, sergeant, I want a piece

of tenderloin—the T-bone part——”

[Illustration:

Occasional wounded Frenchmen drifted back.

]

The cow was duly secured in the wood, men risking their lives thereby.

The Boche shelled methodically for two hours, and the Marines were

reduced to a fearful state of nerves—“Is that dam’ heifer gonna live

forever?—” Two or three kilometres away fighting was going on. The

lieutenant, with his glass, picked up far, running figures on the slope

of a hill. You caught a flicker, points of light on the gray-green

fields—bayonets. Occasional wounded Frenchmen wandered back, weary,

bearded men, very dirty. They looked with dull eyes at the

Americans—“_Très mauvais, là-bas! Beaucoup Boche, là_—” The Marines were

not especially interested. Their regiment had been a year in France,

training. Now they, too, were dirty and tired and very hungry. The war

would get along ... it always had.

A week ago, Memorial Day, there had been no drills. The 2d Division, up

from a tour in the quiet Verdun trenches, rested pleasantly around

Bourmont. Rumors of an attack by the 1st Division, at Cantigny, filtered

in. Cantigny was a town up toward Montdidier. Notions of geography were

the vaguest—but it was in the north, where all the heavy fighting was.

It appeared that the 2d was going up to relieve the 1st.... “Sure! we’ll

relieve ’em. But if they wanted a fight, why didn’t they let us know in

the first place?—We’d a-showed ’em what shock troops can do!”

The division set out in camions; in the neighborhood of Meaux they were

turned around and sent out the Paris-Metz road, along which the civilian

population from the country between the Chemin des Dames and the Marne,

together with the débris of a French army, was coming back. No man who

saw that road those first days of June ever forgot it. A stream of old

men and children and old and young women turned out of their homes

between two sunrises, with what they could carry in their hands. You saw

an ancient in a linen smock and sabots, trundling a wheelbarrow, whereon

rode a woman as old as himself, with a feather-bed and a selection of

copper pots and a string of garlic. There were families in amazing

horse-drawn vehicles, models of the Third Empire, and horses about as

old, clutching unreasonable selections of household effects—onyx clocks

and bird-cages and rabbits—what you like. Women carrying babies.

Children—solemn little boys in black pinafores, and curly-headed,

high-nosed little girls, trudging hand-in-hand. People of elegance and

refinement on inadequate shoes. Broad-faced peasants. Inhabitants of a

thousand peaceful little villages and farms, untouched by the war since

1914. Now the Boche was out again, and those quiet places, that had

drowsed in obscurity while generations lived and worked and died, were

presently to be known to all the world—names like Bouresches, and

Belleau, and Fismes, and Vierzy, and Fismettes. They walked with their

faces much on their shoulders, these people, and there was horror in

their eyes. The Marines took notice of another side of war.... “Hard on

poor folks, war is.” “You said it!”—“Say—think about my folks, an’ your

folks, out on the road like that!...” “Yeh. I’m thinkin’ about it. An’

when we meet that Boche, I’m gonna do something about it—Look—right

nice-lookin’ girl, yonder!”

There were French soldiers in the rout, too. Nearly all were wounded, or

in the last stages of exhaustion. They did not appear to be first-line

troops; they were old, bearded fellows of forty and forty-five,

territorials; or mean, unpleasant-looking Algerians, such troops as are

put in to hold a quiet sector. Seven or eight divisions of them had been

in the line between Soissons and Rheims, which was, until 27 May, a

quiet sector. On that day forty-odd divisions, a tidal wave of fighting

Germans, with the greatest artillery concentration the Boche ever

effected, was flung upon them, and they were swept away, as a levee goes

before a flood. They had fought; they had come back, fighting,

thirty-five miles in three days; and the Boche, though slowed up, was

still advancing. They were holding him along the Marne, and at

Château-Thierry a machine-gun battalion of the American 3d Division was

piling up his dead in heaps around the bridgeheads, but to the northwest

he was still coming. And to the northwest the 2d Division was gathering.

During the 2d, the 3d, and the 4th of June it grouped itself, first the

4th Brigade of Marines, with some guns, and then the regular infantrymen

of the 9th and 23d. Already, around Hautevesnes, there had been a brush

with advancing Germans, and the Germans were given a new experience:

rifle-fire that begins to kill at 800 yards; they found it very

interesting. This was 5 June; the battalion near Marigny, on the left of

the Marine Brigade, had a feeling that they were going in to-morrow....

The men thought lazily on events, and lounged in the wheat, and watched

that clump of trees—and at last an agonized bellow came on the echo of a

bursting shell—“Well—she’s stopped one! Thought she musta dug in—Le’s go

get it——”

Presently there was lots of steak, and later a bitter lesson was

repeated—mustn’t build cooking-fires with green wood, where the Boche

can see the smoke. But everybody lay down on full bellies. Before dark

the last French were falling back. Some time during the night Brigade

sent battle orders to the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines, and at dawn

they were in a wood near Champillon. Nearly every man had steaks in his

mess-pan, and there was hope for cooking them for breakfast. Instead....

[Illustration:

Sketches from Captain Thomason’s note-book.

]

Those were before the days of lavish maps, to which the Americans

afterwards attained. There was one map to each company, exclusive

property of the captain. Platoon commanders had a look at it—“You’re

here. The objective is a square patch of woods a kilometre and a half

northeast, about. See?—this. Form your platoons in four waves—the guide

will be right. Third Battalion is advancing their flank to conform.

French on the left....” Platoons were formed in four waves, the attack

formation taught by the French, a formation proved in trench warfare,

where there was a short way to go, and you calculated on losing the

first three waves and getting the fourth one to the objective. The

Marines never used it again. It was a formation unadapted for open

warfare, and incredibly vulnerable. It didn’t take long to learn better,

but there was a price to pay for the learning.

The platoons came out of the woods as dawn was getting gray. The light

was strong when they advanced into the open wheat, now all starred with

dewy poppies, red as blood. To the east the sun appeared, immensely red

and round, a handbreadth above the horizon; a German shell burst black

across the face of it, just to the left of the line. Men turned their

heads to see, and many there looked no more upon the sun forever. “Boys,

it’s a fine, clear mornin’! Guess we get chow after we get done

molestin’ these here Heinies, hey?”—One old non-com—was it Jerry

Finnegan of the 49th?—had out a can of salmon, hoarded somehow against

hard times. He haggled it open with his bayonet, and went forward so,

eating chunks of goldfish from the point of that wicked knife.

“Finnegan”—his platoon commander, a young gentleman inclined to

peevishness before he’d had his morning coffee, was annoyed—“when you

are quite through with your refreshments, you can—damn well fix that

bayonet and get on with the war!” “Aye, aye, sir!” Finnegan was an old

Haitian soldier, and had a breezy manner with very young

lieutenants—“Th’ lootenant want some?”—Two hours later Sergeant Jerry

Finnegan lay dead across a Maxim gun with his bayonet in the body of the

gunner....

It was a beautiful deployment, lines all dressed and guiding true. Such

matters were of deep concern to this outfit. The day was without a

cloud, promising heat later, but now it was pleasant in the wheat, and

the woods around looked blue and cool. Pretty country, those rolling

wheat-lands northwest of Château-Thierry, with copses of trees and

little tidy forests where French sportsmen maintained hunting-lodges and

game-preserves. Since the first Marne there had been no war here. The

files found it very different from the mangled red terrain around

Verdun, and much nicer to look at. “Those poppies, now. Right pretty,

ain’t they?”—a tall corporal picked one and stuck it in his helmet

buckle, where it blazed against his leathery cheek. There was some

shelling—not much, for few of the German guns had caught up, the French

had lost all theirs, and the American artillery was still arriving.

[Illustration:

Platoon column in support, Champagne, 1918.

Drawn by Captain Thomason from notes made in front of Blanc Mont.

]

Across this wheat-field there were more woods, and in the edge of these

woods the old Boche, lots of him, infantry and machine-guns. Surely he

had seen the platoons forming a few hundred yards away—it is possible

that he did not believe his eyes. He let them come close before he

opened fire. The American fighting man has his failings. He is prone to

many regrettable errors. But the sagacious enemy will never let him get

close enough to see whom he is attacking. When he has seen the enemy,

the American regular will come on in. To stop him you must kill him. And

when he is properly trained and has somebody to say “Come on!” to him,

he will stand as much killing as anybody on earth.

The platoons, assailed now by a fury of small-arms fire, narrowed their

eyes and inclined their bodies forward, like men in heavy rain, and went

on. Second waves reinforced the first, fourth waves the third, as

prescribed. Officers yelled “Battle-sight! fire at will”—and the

leaders, making out green-gray, clumsy uniforms and round pot-helmets in

the gloom of the woods, took it up with Springfields, aimed shots.

Automatic riflemen brought their chaut-chauts into action from the hip—a

chaut-chaut is as accurate from the hip as it ever is—and wrangled

furiously with their ammunition-carriers—“Come on, kid—bag o’ clips!—”

“Aw—I lent it to Ed to carry, last night—didn’t think—” “Yeh, and Ed

lent it to a fence-post when he got tired—get me some off a casualty,

before I—” A very respectable volume of fire came from the advancing

platoons. There was yelling and swearing in the wheat, and the lines,

much thinned, got into the woods. Some grenades went off; there was

screaming and a tumult, and the “taka-taka-taka-taka” of the Maxim guns

died down. “Hi! Sergeant!—hold on! Major said he wanted some prisoners—”

“Well, sir, they looked like they was gonna start somethin’—” “All

right! All right! but you catch some alive the next place, you hear?—”

“Quickly, now—get some kind of a line—” “Can’t make four waves—” “Well,

make two—an’ put the chaut-chauts in the second—no use gettin’’em bumped

off before we can use ’em—” The attack went on, platoons much smaller,

sergeants and corporals commanding many of them.

A spray of fugitive Boche went before the attack, holding where the

ground offered cover, working his light machine-guns with devilish

skill, retiring, on the whole, commendably. He had not expected to fight

a defensive battle here, and was not heavily intrenched, but the place

was stiff with his troops, and he was in good quality, as Marine

casualty lists were presently to show. There was more wheat, and more

woods, and obscure savage fighting among individuals in a brushy ravine.

The attack, especially the inboard platoons of the 49th and 67th

Companies, burst from the trees upon a gentle slope of wheat that

mounted to a crest of orderly pines, black against the sky. A

three-cornered coppice this side of the pines commanded the slope; now

it blazed with machine-guns and rifles; the air was populous with wicked

keening noises. Most of the front waves went down; all hands, very

sensibly, flung themselves prone. “Can’t walk up to these babies—”

“No—won’t be enough of us left to get on with the war—” “Pass the word:

crawl forward, keepin’ touch with the man on your right! Fire where you

can—” That officer, a big man, who had picked up a German light

machine-gun somewhere, with a vague idea of using it in a pinch, or, in

any case, keeping it for a souvenir, received the attention of a heavy

Maxim and went down with a dozen bullets through his chest.

[Illustration:

“Catch some alive——”

]

Men crawled forward; the wheat was agitated, and the Boche, directing

his fire by observers in tree-tops, browned the slope industriously. Men

were wounded, wounded again as the lines of fire swept back and forth,

and finally killed. It helped some to bag the feldwebels in the trees;

there were men in that line who could hit at 750 yards, three times out

of five. Sweating, hot, and angry with a bleak, cold anger, the Marines

worked forward. They were there, and the Germans, and there was nothing

else in the clanging world. An officer, risking his head above the

wheat, observed progress, and detached a corporal with his squad to get

forward by the flank. “Get far enough past that flank gun, now, close as

you can, and rush it—we’ll keep it busy.”... Nothing sounds as mad as

rifle-fire, staccato, furious—The corporal judged that he was far

enough, and raised with a yell, his squad leaping with him. He was not

past the flank; two guns swung that way, and cut the squad down like a

grass-hook levels a clump of weeds.... They lay there for days, eight

Marines in a dozen yards, face down on their rifles. But they had done

their job. The men in the wheat were close enough to use the

split-second interval in the firing. They got in, cursing and stabbing.

Meanwhile, to the left a little group of men lay in the wheat under the

very muzzle of a gun that clipped the stalks around their ears and

riddled their combat packs—firing high by a matter of inches and the

mercy of God. A man can stand just so much of that. Life presently

ceases to be desirable; the only desirable thing is to kill that gunner,

kill him with your hands! One of them, a corporal named Geer, said: “By

God, let’s get him!” And they got him. One fellow seized the spitting

muzzle and up-ended it on the gunner; he lost a hand in the matter.

Bayonets flashed in, and a rifle-butt rose and fell. The battle tore

through the coppice. The machine-gunners were brave men, and many of the

Prussian infantry were brave men, and they died. A few streamed back

through the brush, and hunters and hunted burst in a frantic medley on

the open at the crest of the hill. Impartial machine-guns, down the hill

to the left, took toll of both. Presently the remnants of the assault

companies were panting in the trees on the edge of the hill. It was the

objective of the attack, but distance had ceased to have any meaning,

time was not, and the country was full of square patches of woods. In

the valley below were more Germans, and on the next hill. Most of the

officers were down, and all hands went on.

They went down the brushy slope, across a little run, across a road

where two heavy Maxims were caught sitting, and mopped up and up the

next long, smooth slope. Some Marines branched off down that road and

went into the town of Torcy. There was fighting in Torcy, and a French

avion reported Americans in it, but they never came out again ... a

handful of impudent fellows against a battalion of Sturm-truppen....

Then the men who mounted the slope found themselves in a cleared area,

full of orderly French wood-piles, and apparently there was a

machine-gun to every wood-pile. Jerry Finnegan died here, sprawled

across one of them. Lieutenant Somers died here. One lieutenant found

himself behind a wood-pile, with a big auto-rifleman. Just across from

them, very near, a machine-gun behind another wood-pile was searching

for them. The lieutenant, all his world narrowed to that little place,

peered vainly for a loophole; the sticks were jumping and shaking as the

Maxim flailed them; bullets rang under his helmet. “Here, Morgan,” he

said, “I’ll poke my tin hat around this side, and you watch and see if

you can get the chaut-chaut on them—” He stuck the helmet on his

bayonet, and thrust it out. Something struck it violently from the

point, and the rifle made his fingers tingle. The chaut-chaut went off,

once. In the same breath there was an odd noise above him ... the

machine-gun ... he looked up. Morgan’s body was slumping down to its

knees; it leaned forward against the wood, the chaut-chaut, still

grasped in a clenched hand, coming to the ground butt first. The man’s

head was gone from the eyes up; his helmet slid stickily back over his

combat pack and lay on the ground.... “My mother,” reflected the

lieutenant, “will never find my grave in this place!” He picked up the

chaut-chaut, and examined it professionally, noting a spatter of little

thick red drops on the breech, and the fact that the clip showed one

round expended. The charging handle was back. He got to his feet with

deliberation, laid the gun across the wood-pile, and sighted ... three

Boche with very red faces; their eyes looked pale under their deep

helmets.... He gave them the whole clip, and they appeared to wilt. Then

he came away from there. Later he was in the little run at the foot of

the hill with three men, all wounded. He never knew how he got there. It

just happened.

Later in the day the lieutenant was back on the pine-crested hill, now

identified as Hill 142. Captain Hamilton was there, one or two other

officers, and a handful of the 49th and 67th Companies; a semblance of a

line was organized. “Nothing on the right or left; all right, we’ll just

stay here—” Some people from the 8th Company had a Hotchkiss gun, and

some Boche Maxims were put in position. It was said that Blake, of the

17th, had been up, and was bringing the company in. The Boche indulged

himself in violent shelling and raked the hill savagely with all the

machine-guns in the world. From the direction of Torcy a counter-attack

developed; the Boche was filtering cleverly forward and forming

somewhere on the Torcy road, in cover. The Marines were prone, slings

adjusted, killing him. “It’s a quarter-point right windage—” “Naw! not a

breath of air! Use zero—” A file of sweating soldiers, burdened with

picks and shovels in addition to bandoleers and combat gear, came

trotting from the right. A second lieutenant, a reddish, rough-looking

youngster, clumped up and saluted. “You in charge here?” he said to the

Marine officer. “I’m Lieutenant Wythe of the 2d Engineers, with a

detachment. I’m to report to you for orders.” “Well—captain’s right up

yonder—how many men you got?” “Twenty-two, sir—” “Fine! That makes

thirty-six of us, includin’ me—just flop right here, and we’ll hold this

line. Orders are to dig in here—but that can wait—see yonder——?”

Those Engineers, their packs went one way and their tools another, and

they cast themselves down happily. “What range, buddy?—usin’ any

windage—?” A hairy non-com got into his sling and laid out a little pile

of clips.... There was always good feeling between the Marines of the 2d

Division and the Regular Army units that formed it, but the Marines and

the 2d Engineers—“Say, if I ever got a drink, a 2d Engineer can have

half of it!—Boy, they dig trenches and mend roads all night, and they

fight all day! An’ when us guys get all killed off, they just come up

an’ take over the war! They’s no better folks anywhere than the

Engineers....”

[Illustration:

The 2d Engineers.

]

The Boche wanted Hill 142; he came, and the rifles broke him, and he

came again. All his batteries were in action, and always his

machine-guns scourged the place, but he could not make head against the

rifles. Guns he could understand; he knew all about bombs and

auto-rifles and machine-guns and trench-mortars, but aimed, sustained

rifle-fire, that comes from nowhere in particular and picks off men—it

brought the war home to the individual and demoralized him.

And trained Americans fight best with rifles. Men get tired of carrying

grenades and chaut-chaut clips; the guns cannot, even under most

favorable conditions, keep pace with the advancing infantry. Machine-gun

crews have a way of getting killed at the start; trench-mortars and

one-pounders are not always possible. But the rifle and bayonet goes

anywhere a man can go, and the rifle and the bayonet win battles. Toward

midday, this 6th of June, 1918, the condition around Hill 142

stabilized. A small action, fought by battalions over a limited area of

no special importance, it gave the Boche something new to think about,

and it may be that people who write histories will date an era from it.

Between attacks the stretcher-bearers and the Red Cross men on both

sides did their utmost for the wounded who were scattered through the

wheat around the hill, and who now, under the torture of stiffening

wounds and the hot sun, began to cry out. As the afternoon advanced, you

heard pitiful voices! little and thin across the fields: “_Ach, Himmel,

hilf, hilf! Brandighe!... Liebe Gott, brandighe!_”... “First-aid—this

way, First-aid, for the love of God!”... From most wounds men do not

appear to suffer greatly at first. There is the hot impulse of the

attack, and perhaps a certain shock from the missile, so that the nerves

are numb. One has gone forward with the tide at the highest; life is a

light thing to lay down, death a light thing to venture; yonder is the

enemy; one has come a long way to meet him, and now the affair can be

taken up personally. Then something hits—the wheat cuts off all the

world. An infernal racket goes on somewhere—Springfields and Mausers,

Maxim guns and Hotchkiss—sometimes closer, sometimes receding. Bullets

zip and drone around. There may be shells, shrapnel, and H. E.,

searching the ground, one can hear them coming. “Is it gonna hit me—is

it gonna hit me, O Lawd—Christ! that was close!” Presently pain, in

recurring waves. Pride may lock a man’s lips awhile ... left long

enough, most men break, and no blame to them. A hundred brave dead,

lying where the guns cut them down, are not so pitiful as one poor

wailing fellow in a dressing-station....

[Illustration:

A tortured area ... lit by flares and gun-flashes.

]

Forward of the hill, German stretcher-bearers moved openly, unmolested,

at first. The Marines watched them curiously. The enemy, his works are

always interesting. A sergeant said: “Hi! Look at those Fritzies yonder,

right off the road, there—” A lieutenant got his glass on them; two big

men, one with a yellow beard, wearing Red Cross brassards. They carried

a loaded stretcher; it looked like a man lying with his knees drawn up,

under a blanket. “Humph! Got him well covered—officer, probably.” One

stumbled, or the wind blew, and an end of the blanket flapped back,

disclosing unmistakably the blunt snout of a heavy Maxim.—“So that’s it,

eh? Slover—Jennings—Heald—got a rifle, Cannon? Range 350—let ’em have

it—we can play that game, too—” Thereafter it was hard on Red Cross men

and wounded; hard, in fact, on everybody. Like reasonable people, the

Americans were willing to learn from the Boche, from anybody who could

teach them; and if the Boche played the game that way—they could meet

him at it. “Schrechlichkeit—if he wants frightfulness, we can give it to

him—” Later there was a letter, taken from a dead feldwebel in the Bois

de Belleau—“The Americans are savages. They kill everything that

moves....”

Late in the afternoon a great uproar arose to the right. There was more

artillery up now, more machine-guns, more of everything. The 3d

Battalion of the 6th Marines and the 3d Battalion of the 5th attacked

the town called Bouresches and the wood known as Bois de Belleau. They

attacked across the open, losing hideously. Platoons were shot down

entire. The colonel commanding the 6th Regiment, farther forward than

regimental commanders have any business being, was shot and evacuated.

Lieutenant Robertson got into Bouresches, with twenty men out of some

hundred who started, threw the Boche out, and held it. They gained a

footing in the rocky ledges at the edge of the Bois de Belleau,

suffering much from what was believed to be a machine-gun nest at this

point. They tried to leave it and go on, with a containing force to

watch it; they found that the whole wood was a machine-gun nest.

Night descended over a tortured area of wheat and woodland, lit by

flares and gun-flashes, flailed by machine-guns, and in too many places

pitiful with crying of wounded who had lain all the day untended in a

merciless sun. Stretcher-bearers and combat patrols roamed over it in

the dark. Water parties and ration parties groped back from forward

positions over unknown trails. There were dog-fights all over the place,

wild alarms, and hysterical outbreaks of rifle-fire. It was the same

with the Boche; he knew the ground better, and he was determined to

repossess it. His people filtered back through the American strong

points, for the Marines did not hold a continuous line; isolated

positions were connected by patrols and machine-guns laid for

interlocking fire.

At the southern angle of Hill 142 the 49th Company put out a

listening-post—one man down the slope a little way, to watch for

visitors. In the night there was a trampling, a grunt, and one

scream—“Boche!”—At once the hill blazed into action—weary men overspent,

they fired into the dark until their pieces were hot. And after they

found the listening-post fellow, bayoneted. And down the hill a little

huddle of new dead. Not all the rifle-fire had gone astray.

Back in Brigade, officers bent over maps and framed orders for a

stronger attack on the Bois de Belleau at dawn.... Brigade was writing

also to Division: “... casualties severe ... figures on which to base

call for replacements will be submitted as soon as possible....”

[Illustration:

The hill blazed into action—not all the rifle-fire had gone astray.

]

REPLACEMENTS

At the crossroads beyond La Voie du Chatelle they met the War.

Behind them, crammed somehow into weeks, were Quantico, the transport,

Brest, a French troop-train. Then there was the golden country around

St. Aignan, the “Saint Onion” of Americans, a country full of growing

wheat and fields of red-topped clover, picture-book houses, and neat

little forests. A country stripped of men, where the women were

competent and kindly. Almost any place you could get noble omelets and

white wine that tasted better than chlorinated water—good kick in it,

too. “I tell you, Boots, an’ you remember it, this here France is a fine

place to have a war in. Now, Haiti, an’ in Nicaragua, an’ in China, it’s

nowhere near as good. I hope Germany will be as good, when—” So Sergeant

McGee, with his double rows of ribbons and his hash marks, over a

canteen full of _eau de vie_—old-timer he was.

The war was represented by demoniac non-coms, instructors in this and

that. Bayonet drills—“Come on, now; lemme hear you—‘_What do we wash our

bay’nets in?—German blood!_’—Aw—sing out like you meant it, you dam’

replacements! I’ll swear, it’s a shame to feed animals like you to the

Germans—” Gas-mask drill—“Take more than five seconds, an’ your Maw gets

a Gold Star—Now!—the gas-alert position—O, for Gawd’s sake, you guy, you

wit’ the two left feet—” “But, sergeant, I find that I have a certain

difficulty—” Sergeants also swear terribly.... There was every kind of

drill, eight hours a day of it, and police work.