Marines, and waved their hands with naïve Gallic friendliness. The
battalion came out of its weariness and responded in kind. “Say, where
do they get that stuff about little Frenchmen? Look at that long-sparred
horse soldier yonder—seven feet if he’s an inch!”—“Them gunners is fine
men, too. All the runts in the Frog army is in the infantry!”—“Well, if
these Frawgs fights accordin’ to their size, Gawd pity the old Boche
when that cavalry gets after him—lances an’ all!” “You said it! Them
little five-foot-nothin’ infantry, with enough on they backs, in the way
o’ tents an’ pots an’ pans, to set up light housekeepin’ wit’, and that
long squirrel gun they carry, an’ that knittin’-needle bayonet—!
Remember how they charged at Torcy, there on the left——?”
The French were cooking dinner beside the road. For your Frenchman never
fights without his kitchens and a full meal under his cartridge-pouches.
They go into the front line with him, the kitchens and the chow, and
there is always the coffee avec rhum, and the good hot soup that smells
so divinely to the hungry Americans, passing empty. “When we goes up to
hit the old Boche, we always says adoo to the galleys till we comes out
again—guess the idea is to starve us so we’ll be mad, like the lions in
them glad-i-a-tor-ial mills the corp’ril was tellin’ about.”—“Hell! we
don’t eat, it seems—them Frawgs might at least have the decency to keep
their home cookin’ where we can’t smell it!”
The highway led straight through the forest. Many roads emptied into it,
and from every road debouched a stream of horses, men, and guns. The
battalion went into column of twos, then into column of files, to make
room. On the left of the road, abreast of the Marines, plodded another
column of foot—strange black men, in the blue greatcoats of the French
infantry and mustard-yellow uniforms under them. Their helmets were
khaki-colored, and bore a crescent instead of the bursting bomb of the
French line. But they marched like veterans, and the Marines eyed them
approvingly. Between the foot, the road was level-full of guns and
transport, moving axle to axle, and all moving in the same direction. In
this column were tanks, large and small, all ring-streaked and striped
with camouflage, mounting one-pounders and machine-guns; and the big
ones, short-barrelled 75s.
The tanks were new to the Marines. They moved with a horrific clanging
and jangling, and stunk of petrol. “Boy, what would you do if you seen
one of them little things comin’ at you? The big ones is males, and the
little ones is females, the lootenant says....” “Chillun, we’re goin’
into somethin’ big— Dunno what, but it’s big!”
The sultry afternoon passed wearily, and at six o’clock the battalion
turned off the road, shambling and footsore, and rested for two hours.
They found water and filled canteens. A few of the hardier made shift to
wash. “Gonna smear soapsuds an’ lather all over me—the Hospital Corps
men say it keeps off mustard-gas!” But most of the men dropped where the
platoon broke ranks and slept. Battalion H. Q. sent for all company
commanders.
Presently the lieutenant of the 49th returned, with papers and a map. He
called the company officers around him, and spread the map on the
ground. He spoke briefly.
“We’re in the Villers-Cotterets woods—the Forêt de Retz. At H hour on D
day, which I think is to-morrow morning, although the major didn’t say,
we attack the Boche here”—pointing—“and go on to here—past the town of
Vierzy. Eight or nine kilomètres. Three objectives—marked—so—and so. The
2d Division with one of the infantry regiments leading, and the 5th
Marines, attacks with the 1st Moroccan Division on our left. The Frog
Foreign Legion is somewhere around too, and the 1st American Division.
It’s Mangin’s Colonial Army—the bird they call the butcher.
“The 49th Company has the division’s left, and we’re to keep in touch
with the French over there. They’re Senegalese—the niggers you saw on
the road, and said to be bon fighters. The tanks will come behind us
through the woods, and take the lead as soon as we hit the open.
“No special instructions, except, if we are held up any place, signal a
tank by wavin’ a rag or something on a bayonet, in the direction of the
obstacle, and the tank will do the rest.
“No rations, an’ we move soon. See that canteens are filled. Now go and
explain it all to your platoons, and—better take a sketch from this
map—it’s the only one I have. Impress it on everybody that the job is to
maintain connection between the Senegalese on the left and our people.
Tritt, I’m goin’ to catch a nap—wake me when we move——”
It was dark when the battalion fell in and took the road again. They
went into single file on the right, at the very edge of it, for the
highway was jammed with three columns of traffic, moving forward. It
began to rain, and the night, there under the thick branches, was
inconceivably black. The files couldn’t see the man ahead, and each man
caught hold of the pack in front and went feeling for the road with his
feet, clawing along with the wheels and the artillery horses and
machine-gun mules. On the right was a six-foot ditch, too deep in mud to
march in. The rain increased to a sheeted downpour and continued all
night, with long rolls of thunder, and white stabs of lightning that
intensified the dark. The picked might of France and America toiled on
that road through the Villers-Cotterets forest that night, like a great
flowing river of martial force....
And after the 5th Marines have forgotten the machine-guns that sowed
death in the wheat behind Hill 142, and the shrapnel that showered down
at Blanc Mont, before St. Étienne, they will remember the march to the
Soissons battle, through the dark and the rain....
As guns and caissons slewed sideways across the files, or irate
machine-gun mules plunged across the tangle, the column slowed and
jammed and halted on heavy feet; then went on again to plunge blindly
against the next obstacle. Men fell into the deep ditch and broke arms
and legs. Just to keep moving was a harder test than battle ever
imposed. The battalion was too tired to swear. “I’m to where—I have to
think about movin’ my feet—! Plant—the left foot—an’—advance the
right—an’—bring up the—left foot—an’——”
[Illustration:
“Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and go forward....”
4.30 A. M., July 18, 1918.
]
No battle ever tried them half as hard as the night road to Soissons....
The rain ceased, and the sky grew gray with dawn. The traffic thinned,
and the battalion turned off on a smaller road, closed up, and hurried
on. Five minutes by the side of the road to form combat packs and strip
to rifle and bayonet. “Fall in quickly! Forward!”
Overhead the clouds were gone; a handful of stars paled and went out;
day was coming. The battalion, lightened, hastened. They perceived,
dimly, through a mist of fatigue, that a cloudless day was promised and
that the world was wonderfully new washed and clean—and quiet! Not a gun
anywhere, and the mud on the road muffled the sound of hobnailed boots.
“Double time! Close up! Close up, there!”
There had been fighting here; there were shell-holes, scarred and
splintered trees. The battalion panted to a crossroads, where stone
buildings lay all blasted by some gale of shell-fire. And by the road
what looked like a well! The files swayed toward it, clutching at dry
canteens—“Back in ranks! Back in ranks, you——!”
Then, barbed wire across the roadway, and battered shallow trenches to
right and left, and a little knot of French and American officers, Major
Turrill standing forward. The leading company turned off to the left,
along the trenches. The 49th followed in column. “Turn here,” ordered
the major. “Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and go
forward....” The 49th went beyond the trench, still in column of route,
picking its way through the woods. The lieutenant looked back at his men
as he went; their faces were gray and drawn and old; they were
staggering with weariness—“Fix bayonets—” and the dry click of the steel
on the locking-ring ran along the ragged column, loud in the hush of
dawn.
III
It was 4.35, the morning of July 18.
Miles of close-laid batteries opened with one stupendous thunder. The
air above the tree-tops spoke with unearthly noises, the shriek and
rumble of light and heavy shells. Forward through the woods, very near,
rose up a continued crashing roar of explosions, and a murk of smoke,
and a hell of bright fires continually renewed. It lasted only five
minutes, that barrage, with every French and American gun that could be
brought to bear firing at top speed. But they were terrible minutes for
the unsuspecting Boche. Dazed, beaten down, and swept away, he tumbled
out of his holes when it lifted, only to find the long bayonets of the
Americans licking like flame across his forward positions, and those
black devils, the Senegalese, raging with knives in his rifle-pits. His
counter-barrage was slow and weak, and when it came the shells burst
well behind the assaulting waves, which were already deep in his
defenses.
[Illustration:
Listening-post rushed by Senegalese.
]
The 49th Company, running heavily, sodden with weariness, was plunging
through a line of wire entanglements when the guns opened. A French
rifleman squatted in a hole under the wire, and a sergeant bent over him
and shouted: “Combien—how far—damn it, how you say?—combien—kilomètre—à
la Boche?” The Frenchman’s eyes bulged. He did violent things with his
arms. “Kilomèt’? _kilomètres?_ Mon Dieu, cent mètres! Cent mètres!” Half
the company, still in column, was struggling in the wire when, from the
tangle right in front, a machine-gun dinned fiercely and rifle-fire ran
to left and right through the woods.
It was well that the woods were a little open in that spot, so that the
lieutenant’s frantic signals could be seen, for no voice could have been
heard. And it was more than well that every man there had been shot over
enough not to be gun-shy. They divined his order, they deployed to the
left, and they went forward yelling. That always remained, to the
lieutenant, the marvel of the Soissons fight—how those men, two days
without food, three nights without sleep, after a day and a night of
forced marching, flung off their weariness like a discarded piece of
equipment, and at the shouting of the shells sprang fresh and eager
against the German line.
Liaison—to keep the touch—was his company’s mission—the major’s last
order. To the left were only the smoky woods—no Senegalese in sight—and
to the left the lieutenant anxiously extended his line, throwing out the
last two platoons, while the leading one shot and stabbed among the
first Boche machine-guns. He himself ran in that direction, cursing and
stumbling in wire and fallen branches, having no time for certain Boches
who fired at him over a bush.... Finally, Corbett, the platoon
commander, leading to the left, turned and waved his arms. And through
the trees he saw the Senegalese—lean, rangy men in mustard-colored
uniforms, running with their bayonets all aslant. He turned back toward
his company with the sweetest feeling of relief that he had ever known;
he had his contact established; his clever and war-wise company would
attend to keeping it, no matter what happened to him.
The battle roared into the wood. Three lines of machine-guns, echeloned,
held it. Here the Forêt de Retz was like Dante’s wood, so shattered and
tortured and horrible it was, and the very trees seemed to writhe in
agony. Here the fury of the barrage was spent, and the great trunks,
thick as a man’s body, were sheared off like weed-stalks; others were
uprooted and lay gigantic along the torn earth; big limbs still crashed
down or swayed half-severed; splinters and débris choked the ways
beneath. A few German shells fell among the men—mustard-gas; and there
in the wet woods one could see the devilish stuff spreading slowly, like
a snaky mist, around the shell-hole after the smoke had lifted.
Machine-guns raved everywhere; there was a crackling din of rifles, and
the coughing roar of hand-grenades. Company and platoon commanders lost
control—their men were committed to the fight—and so thick was the going
that anything like formation was impossible. It was every man for
himself, an irregular, broken line, clawing through the tangles,
climbing over fallen trees, plunging heavily into Boche rifle-pits. Here
and there a well-fought Maxim gun held its front until somebody—officer,
non-com, or private—got a few men together and, crawling to left or
right, gained a flank and silenced it. And some guns were silenced by
blind, furious rushes that left a trail of writhing khaki figures, but
always carried two or three frenzied Marines with bayonets into the
emplacement; from whence would come shooting and screaming and other
clotted unpleasant sounds, and then silence.
[Illustration:
A fighting swirl of Senegalese.
]
From such a place, with four men, the lieutenant climbed, and stood
leaning on his rifle, while he wiped the sweat from his eyes with a
shaking hand. Panting, white or red after their nature—for fighting
takes men differently, as whiskey does—the four grouped around him. One
of them squatted and was very sick. And one of them, quite young and
freckled, explored a near-by hole and prodded half a dozen Boches out of
it, who were most anxious to make friends. The other three took interest
in this, and the Boches saw death in their eyes. They howled like
animals, these big hairy men of Saxony, and capered in a very ecstasy of
terror. The freckled Marine set his feet deliberately, judging his
distance, and poised his bayonet. The lieutenant grasped his arm—“No!
No! take ’em back—they’ve quit. Take ’em to the rear, I tell you!” The
freckled one obeyed, very surly, and went off through the tangle to the
rear. The lieutenant turned and went on.
To left and right he caught glimpses of his men, running, crawling,
firing as they went. In a clearing, Lieutenant Appelgate, of the 17th
Company, on the right, came into view. He waved his pistol and shouted
something. He was grinning.... All the men were grinning ... it was a
bon fight, after all....
Then little Tritt, his orderly, running at his side, went down, clawing
at a bright jet of scarlet over his collar. The war became personal
again—a keening sibilance of flesh-hunting bullets, ringing under his
helmet. He found himself prone behind a great fallen tree, with a
handful of his men; bark and splinters were leaping from the round trunk
that sheltered them.
“You”—to a panting half-dozen down the log—“crawl back to the stump and
shoot into that clump of green bushes over there, where you see the new
dirt—it’s in there! Everything you’ve got, and watch for me up ahead.
Slover”—to Sergeant Robert Slover, a small, fiery man from
Tennessee—“come on.”
They crawled along the tree. Back toward the stump the Springfields
crackled furiously. Somewhere beyond the machine-gun raved like a mad
thing, and the Boches around it threw hand-grenades that made much smoke
and noise. The two of them left the protection of the trunk, and felt
remarkably naked behind a screen of leaves. They crawled slowly,
stopping to peer across at the bushes. The lieutenant caught the dull
gleam of a round gray helmet, moved a little, and saw the head and the
hands of the Boche who worked the gun. He pushed the sergeant with his
foot and, moving very carefully, got his rifle up and laid his cheek
against the stock. Over his sights, the German’s face, twenty metres
away, was intent and serious. The lieutenant fired, and saw his man
half-rise and topple forward on the gun.
Then things happened fast. Another German came into view straining to
tear the fallen gunner off the firing mechanism. Slover shot him. There
was another, and another. Then the bush boiled like an ant-heap, and a
feldwebel sprang out with a grenade, which he did not get to throw. It
went off, just the same, and the Marines from the other end of the tree
came with bayonets.... Presently they went on.... “There’s a squad of
them bastards to do orderly duty for the corp’ral an’ little Tritt,”
said the sergeant. “Spread out more, you birds.”
[Illustration:
Fighting from tree to tree in the woods south of Soissons.
A chaut-chaut automatic rifle in action.
]
Afterward, sweating and panting, the freckled one who had started back
with prisoners caught up with the lieutenant. “Lootenant, sir!” he
gasped, wiping certain stains from his bayonet with his sleeve. “Them
damn Heinies tried to run on me, an’ I jest natcherly had to shoot ’em
up a few—” and he looked guilelessly into the officer’s eyes. “Why
you—Hell! ... fall in behind me, then, an’ come along. Need another
orderly.”
He pondered absently on the matter of frightfulness as he picked his way
along. There were, in effect, very few prisoners taken in the woods that
morning. It was close-up, savage work. “But speakin’ of frightfulness,
one of these nineteen-year-olds, with never a hair to his face—” A
spitting gust of machine-gun bullets put an end to extraneous musings.
Later, working to the left of his company, he was caught up in a
fighting swirl of Senegalese and went with them into an evil place of
barbed wire and machine-guns. These wild black Mohammedans from West
Africa were enjoying themselves. Killing, which is at best an acquired
taste with the civilized races, was only too palpably their mission in
life. Their eyes rolled, and their splendid white teeth flashed in their
heads, but here all resemblance to a happy Southern darky stopped. They
were deadly. Each platoon swept its front like a hunting-pack, moving
swiftly and surely together. The lieutenant felt a thrill of
professional admiration as he went with them.
The hidden guns that fired on them were located with uncanny skill; they
worked their automatic rifles forward on each flank until the doomed
emplacement was under a scissors fire; then they took up the matter with
the bayonet, and slew with lion-like leaps and lunges and a shrill
barbaric yapping. They took no prisoners. It was plain that they did not
rely on rifle-fire or understand the powers of that arm—to them a rifle
was merely something to stick a bayonet on—but with the bayonet they
were terrible, and the skill of their rifle grenadiers and
automatic-rifle men always carried them to close quarters without too
great loss.
They carried also a broad-bladed knife, razor-sharp, which disembowelled
a man at a stroke. The slim bayonet of the French breaks off short when
the weight of a body pulls down and sidewise on it; and then the knives
come out. With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living,
and the lieutenant saw in those woods unwounded fighting Germans who
flung down their rifles when the Senegalese rushed, and covered their
faces, and stood screaming against the death they could not look upon.
And—in a lull, a long, grinning sergeant, with a cruel aquiline face,
approached him and offered a brace of human ears, nicely fresh, strung
upon a thong. “B’jour, Americain! Voilà! Beaucoup souvenir ici—bon!
Désirez-vous? Bon——!”
Later, on the last objective, there was a dignified Boche major of
infantry, who came at discretion out of a deep dugout, and spoke in
careful English: “Und I peg of you, Herr leutnant, to put me under
trusty guard of your Americans true-and-tried! Ja! These black savages,
of the art of war most ignorant, they would kill us prave Germans in
cold plood!... The Herr General Mangin, that”—here a poignant string of
gutturals—“I tell you, Herr leutnant, der very name of Mangin, it is
equal to fünf divisions on unser front!”
[Illustration:
With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living.
]
Back with his own men again, the company whittled thin! Was there no
limit to the gloomy woods?... Light through the trees yonder!——
The wood ended, and the attack burst out into the rolling wheatland,
where the sun shone in a cloudless sky and poppies grew in the wheat. To
the right, a great paved road marched, between tall poplars, much
battered. On the road two motor-trucks burned fiercely, and dead men lay
around them. Across the road a group of stone farm-buildings had been
shelled into a smoking dust-heap, but from the ruins a nest of never-die
machine-guns opened flanking fire. The khaki lines checked and swirled
around them, and there was a mounting crackle of rifle-fire ... and the
bayonets got in. The lines went forward to the low crest beyond, where,
astride the road, was the first objective; and the assault companies
halted here to reform. A few Boche shells howled over them, but the
Boche was still pounding the wood, where the support battalions
followed. The tanks debouched from the forest and went forward through
the infantry.
In a hollow just ahead of the reformed line something was being dealt
with by artillery, directed by the planes that dipped and swerved above
the fight. The shells crashed down and made a great roaring murk of
smoke and dust and flickering flames of red and green. The lieutenant,
his report to the major despatched, and his company straightened out,
along with men from other units and a handful of Senegalese who had
attached themselves to him, ran an expert eye along his waiting squads,
and allowed his mind to settle profoundly on breakfast. “Let’s see—it’s
July, an’ in Texas they’ll be havin’ cantaloupes, and coffee, an’ eggs,
an’ bacon, an’—” Second Lieutenant Corbett, beside him, groaned like a
man shot through the body, and he realized that he had been thinking
aloud. Then Corbett seized his arm, and gasped: “Lordy! Look at——”
The shelling forward had abated, but the smoke and murk of it still hung
low. Into this murk every man in the line was now peering eagerly.
Advancing toward them, dimly seen, was a great body of Germans, hundreds
upon hundreds, in mass formation——
Pure joy ran among the men. They took out cartridges, and arranged them
in convenient piles. They tested the wind with wetted fingers, and set
their sights, and licked their lips. “Range three-fifty—Oh, boy, ain’t
war wonderful! We been hearin’ about this mass-formation stuff, an’ now
we gets a chance at it——!”
Then: “Aw, hell! Prisoners!” “The low-life bums, they all got their
hands up!” “Lookit! One o’ them tanks is ridin’ herd over them—” It was
the garrison of a strong point.
The artillery had battered them, and when it lifted, and they had come
out of their holes, they found a brace of agile tanks squatting over
their defenses with one-pounders and machine-guns. They had very
sensibly surrendered, en masse, and were now ambling through the
attacking lines to the rear.
[Illustration:
The fighting in the woods at Soissons was close and savage.
]
The officers’ whistles shrilled, and the attack went on. The woods fell
away behind, and for miles to left and right across the rolling country
the waves of assault could be seen. It was a great stirring pageant
wherein moved all the forces of modern war. The tanks, large and small,
lumbered in advance. Over them the battle-planes flew low, searching the
ground, rowelling the Boche with bursts of machine-gun fire. The
infantry followed close, assault waves deployed, support platoons in
column, American Marines and Regulars, Senegalese and the Foreign Legion
of France, their rifles slanting forward, and the sun on all their
bayonets. And behind the infantry, straining horses galloped with
lean-muzzled 75s, battery on battery—artillery, over the top at last
with the rifles. On the skirts of the attack hovered squadrons of
cavalry the Marines had seen the day before, dragoons and lancers,
marked from afar by the sparkle and glitter of lanceheads and sabres.
And forward through the wheat, the Boche lines broke and his strong
points crumbled; standing stubbornly in one place; running in panic at
another; and here and there attempting sharp counter-attacks; but
everywhere engulfed; and the battle roared over him. The Boche was in
mixed quality that day. Some of his people fought and died fighting; a
great many others threw down their arms and bleated “Kamaraden” at the
distant approach of the attackers.