“I saw that one! I saw it—look right where the next one’s gonna hit,
an’—” “Look where it’s gonna hit! Lawd, if I jest knew it wasn’t gonna
hit me—ahh——!”
The third shell came, and men who risked an eye could see it—a dark,
tremendous streak, shooting straight down to the quivering earth. A
yawning hole opened with thunder fairly between two platoon columns, and
the earth vomited.... It was wonderful shooting. All the shells that
followed dropped between the columns of prone men—but not a man was hit!
The heavy projectiles sank far into the chalky soil, and the explosions
sent the deadly fragments outward and over the company. More than a
dozen shells were fired in all, the high sinister plane wheeling
overhead the while. Then the company went forward with the battalion,
very glad to move.
“Any one of those nine-inch babies would have blotted out twenty of us,”
marvelled a lieutenant, leading his platoon around a thirty-foot crater
that still smoked. “Or ripped the heart out of any concrete-and-steel
fortification ever built—the good Lawd was certainly with us!”
To the company commanders, gathered at dark in a much disfigured Boche
shelter in the Wood of Somme-Py, the major gave information. “The 6th
took Blanc Mont, and they are holding it against heavy counter-attacks.
Prisoners say they were ordered to hold here at any costs—they’re
fighting damned well, too! The infantry regiments piped down the Bois de
Vipre, just as we did the Essen Hook. The division is grouping around
the Ridge, but we’re pretty well isolated from the French. To-night we
are going on up and take the front line, and attack toward
St.-Etienne-à-Arnes—town north of the Ridge and a little west. Get on up
to Blanc Mont with your companies—P. C. will be there, along the road
that runs across the Ridge.”
III
Not greatly troubled by the Boche shelling, that died to spasmodic
bursts as the night went on, the battalion mounted through the dark to
its appointed place. Here, beside a blasted road that ran along Blanc
Mont, just behind the thin line of the 6th, the weary men lay down, and,
no orders being immediately forthcoming, slept like the dead that were
lying thickly there. Let the officers worry over the fact that the
French had fallen behind on each flank, that the division was, to all
purposes, isolated far out in Boche territory—let any fool worry over
the chances of stopping one to-morrow—to-morrow would come soon enough.
“The lootenant says to get all the rest you can—don’t—nobody need
to—tell—me—tha——”
[Illustration:
Before zero hour.
]
In the deep dugouts behind the road the battalion commanders prodded at
field-maps and swore wearily over the ominous gaps behind the
flanks—three kilometres on one flank, five on the other, where the
French divisions had not kept pace. Into these holes the Boche had all
day been savagely striving to thrust himself, and his success would mean
disaster. Already the 6th had a force thrown back to cover the left
rear, disposed at right angles to the line of advance.... And orders
were to carry the attack forward at dawn. On top of that, after midnight
a Boche deserter crawled into the line with the cheering news that the
Germans were planning an attack in force on the American flanks at dawn;
a division of fresh troops—Prussians—had just been brought up for that
purpose. It looked bad—it looked worse than that. “Well,” said Major
George Hamilton of the 1st Battalion of the 5th, “orders are to attack,
and, by God, we’ll attack”—a yawn spoiled the dramatic effect of his
pronouncement—“and now I’m going to get some sleep. Coxy, wake me at
5.30—that will be an hour.”
And at dawn, while the Ridge shook and thundered under the barrage that
went before the Boche flank attack, and the 6th held with their rifles
the branch behind the left, the 5th Marines went forward to carry the
battle to St.-Etienne.
They went in column of battalions, four companies abreast. For the 1st
Battalion, still in support, the fourth day of October began as a weary
repetition of the day before. Shells whooped down into the platoon
columns as they waited for the 2d and 3d Battalions to get clear;
machine-guns on the left took toll as they rose up to follow. Noon found
them well forward of the Ridge, lying in an open flat, while the leading
battalions disappeared in pine woods on a long slope ahead. It had
fallen strangely quiet where they lay.
“Now what’s comin’, I wonder?” “Anything at all, ’cept chow.” “Boy,
ain’t it quiet here? What do you reckon—” “Don’t like this,” said one
old non-com to another. “Minds me of once when I was on a battle-wagon
in the China Sea. Got still like this, and then all at once all the wind
God ever let loose come down on us!” “Shouldn’t wonder—Hey! She’s
opening up again! That there 2d Battalion has sure stuck its foot in
somethin’!”
Up forward all hell broke loose. Artillery, machine-guns, rifles, even
the coughing detonations of grenades, mounted to an inconceivable fury
of sound. “Here comes a battalion runner—there’s the skipper, over
there—what’s up, anyway?”
The second-in-command came through his company with a light in his eyes,
and he sent his voice before him. “Deploy the first platoon, Mr.
Langford. Three-pace interval, be sure. Where’s Mr. Connor? Oh, Chuck,
you’ll form the second wave behind Tom. About fifty yards. Other two
platoons in column behind the company flanks. On yo’ feet, chillun!
We’re goin’ up against ’em!”
[Illustration:
Flanking fire. “Hey! She’s opening up again.”
]
[Illustration:
The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the flat and
began to ascend the long gray slope ahead.
]
And so, all four companies in line, the 1st Battalion, a thousand men,
went up against the Boche. “Capitan,” said the second-in-command, as
they started, “we’re swingin’ half-left. This tack will take us right to
St.-Etienne, won’t it? We were pointin’ a little one side of it
before—major give you any dope?” “The Boche have come out of
St.-Etienne—two full infantry regiments, anyhow, and a bunch of Maxim
guns—and hit the second and third in the flank. Must be pretty bad.
We’re goin’ up to hit them in the flank ourselves. ’Bout a kilometre,
I’d say. Wait until their artillery spots this little promenade. None of
ours in support, you know.”
The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the flat and began
to ascend the long gray slope ahead, the crest of which was covered with
a growth of pines. There was no cover on the slope—a few shell-holes, a
few stunted bushes and sparse tufts of grass. Across a valley to the
left, 800 to 1,000 yards away, rose another ridge, thickly clothed with
underbrush, that ran back toward Blanc Mont. Forward and to the right
was the heavy pine timber into which the other battalions had gone, and
from which still came tumult and clangor. Tumult and clangor, also, back
toward Blanc Mont, and further back, where the French attacks were
pushing forward, and drumming thunder on the right, where the Saxons
were breaking against the 9th and 23d Infantry—but here, quiet. Voices
of non-coms, rasping out admonitions to the files, sounded little and
thin along the line. Every man knew, without words, that the case was
desperate, but to this end was all their strength and skill in war, all
their cunning gained in other battles, and their hearts lifted up to
meet what might come. “More interval—more interval there on the left!
Don’t bunch up, you——”
“That ridge over yonder, capitan—” said the second-in-command softly.
“It’s lousy with the old Boche! And forward—and behind the flank, too!
This is goin’ to be—Ahhh—shrapnel!”
[Illustration:
The first shell came screaming down the line from the right.
]
The first shell came screaming down the line from the right, and broke
with the hollow cough and poisonous yellow puff of smoke which marks the
particular abomination of the foot-soldier. It broke fairly over the
centre of the 49th, and every head ducked in unison. Three men there
were who seemed to throw themselves prone; they did not get up again.
And then the fight closed upon the battalion with the complete and
horrid unreality of nightmare. All along the extended line the saffron
shrapnel flowered, flinging death and mutilation down. Singing balls and
jagged bits of steel spattered on the hard ground like sheets of hail;
the line writhed and staggered, steadied and went on, closing toward the
centre as the shells bit into it. High-explosive shells came with the
shrapnel, and where they fell geysers of torn earth and black smoke
roared up to mingle with the devilish yellow in the air. A foul murky
cloud of dust and smoke formed and went with the thinning companies, a
cloud lit with red flashes and full of howling death.
The silent ridge to the left awoke with machine-guns and rifles, and
sibilant rushing flights of nickel-coated missiles from Maxim and Mauser
struck down where the shells spared. An increasing trail of crumpled
brown figures lay behind the battalion as it went. The raw smell of
blood was in men’s nostrils.
Going forward with his men, a little dazed perhaps with shock and sound
such as never were on earth before, the second-in-command was conscious
of a strangely mounting sense of the unreality of the whole thing.
Automatically functioning, as a company officer must, in the things he
is trained to do, there was still a corner of his brain that watched
detached and aloof as the scene unrolled. There was an officer rapped
across the toe of his boot by a spent bullet—the leather wasn’t even
scratched—who sat down and asserted that his foot was shot off. There
was Lieutenant Connor, who took a shrapnel dud in his loins, and was
opened horribly....
There was a sergeant, a hard old non-com of many battles, who went
forward beside him. His face was very red, and his eyes were very
bright, and his lean jaw bulged with a great chew of tobacco. His big
shoulders were hunched forward, and his bayonet glinted at a thirsty
angle, and his sturdy putteed legs swung in an irresistible stride. Then
there was, oddly audible through the din, the unmistakable sound that a
bullet makes when it strikes human flesh—and a long, crumpled, formless
thing on the ground turned to the sky blind eyes in a crawling mask of
red. There were five men with a machine-gun, barrel and mount and
ammunition-boxes, and a girlish, pink-cheeked lieutenant went before
them swinging a pair of field-glasses in his hand. Over and a little
short of them a red sun flashed in a whorl of yellow smoke, and they
were flattened into a mess of bloody rags, from which an arm thrust
upward, dangling a pair of new, clean glasses by a thong, and remained
so.... The woods on the crest were as far away as ever through the
murk—their strides got them nowhere—their legs were clogged as in an
evil dream—they were falling so fast, these men he had worked with and
helped to train in war. There was a monstrous anger in his heart ... a
five-inch shell swooped over his head, so near that the rush of air made
his ear-drums pop and burst. He was picked up and whirled away like a
leaf, breath and senses struck from him by the world-shattering
concussion.
[Illustration:
“Here comes a battalion runner—what’s up, anyway?”
]
The second-in-command was pulled to his feet by Gunner Nice, who had
taken the second platoon. His head lolled stupidly a moment, then he
heard words—“an’ that shell got all the captain’s group, sir—all of ’em!
An’ my platoon’s all casualties—” He pulled himself together as he went
forward. His raincoat was split up the back, under his belt. His
map-case was gone—the strap that had secured it hung loosely from his
shoulder. There was blood on his hands, and the salt taste of it in his
mouth, but it didn’t seem to be his. And the front of the battalion was
very narrow, now. The support platoons were all in the line. Strangest
of all, the gray slope was behind them—the trees on the crest were only
a few yards away.
Behind and to the left the machine-guns still raved, but the artillery
fell away. A greenish rocket flared from the pines ahead, and right in
the faces of the panting Marines machine-guns and rifles blazed. In the
shadow of the pines were men in cumbersome green-gray uniforms, with
faces that looked hardly human under deep round helmets. With eyes
narrowed, bodies slanting forward like men in heavy rain, the remnant of
the battalion went to them.
It was the flank of the Boche column which had come out of St.-Etienne
and struck the leading battalions of the 5th. It had watched first with
keen delight, then with incredulity, the tortured advance of the
battalion. It had waited too long to open its own fire. And now, already
shaken by the sight of these men who would not die, it shrank from the
long American bayonets and the pitiless, furious faces behind the steel.
A few Brandenburger zealots elected to die on their spitting Maxim guns,
working them until bayonets or clubbed rifles made an end. A few
iron-souled Prussians—the Boche had such men—stood up to meet bayonet
with bayonet, and died that way. The second-in-command saw such a one, a
big feldwebel, spring against one of his sergeants with the long
Prussian lunge that throws the bayonet like a spear to the full reach of
the arm. It is a spectacular thrust, and will spit like a rabbit what
stands in its way. But the sergeant, Bob Slover, a little fiery man with
a penchant for killing Germans, ran under it and thrust from the ground
for the Boche’s throat. And as his point touched, he pulled the trigger.
The feldwebel’s helmet flew straight into the air, and the top of his
head went with it.
A great many more flung away their arms and bleated “Kamaraden” to men
who in that red minute knew no mercy. Some hid in holes, or feigned
death, to be hunted out as the press thinned. And the rest scuttled
through the fringe of trees and back down toward St.-Etienne, while the
Marines, lying prone or taking rest for their Springfields, killed them
as they ran. This same rifle-fire, directed against the flank and rear
of the column which had pushed to the right against the other battalions
of the 5th, broke that force and dispersed it. There was a battery of
field-guns down the slope, 500 yards or so. The gunners—those who were
lucky—took to cover after the first burst of fire. “Thank Gawd fer a
shot at them dam’ artillerymen! Battle-sight, an’ aim low, you
birds—don’t let any of them bastards get away!”... “Sergeant, reckon the
lootenant would let us go down an’ take them 77s?”—“Shut up an’ work yo’
bolt, you dam’ fool!—Whatinell you think you are—a army core?”—“Besides,
Mr. Connor’s dead....” On the hill beyond St.-Etienne new trenches
scarred the slope; there were many Germans milling there, some 1,500
yards away. “Save your ammunition and lay low,” the word was passed.
“We’re on our own out here.” And the battalion, a very small battalion
now, little more than a hundred men, lay along the crest they had
stormed, with their dead and wounded and the Boche dead and wounded
around them.
[Illustration:
A few iron-souled Prussians—the Boche had such men—stood up to meet
bayonet with bayonet, and died that way.
]
[Illustration:
The last few men are always the most difficult to kill.
]
Almost immediately the Boche began to react. He opened on them a storm
of fire, high explosive and shrapnel, and his machine-guns dinned
fiercely. A counter-attack began to form toward St.-Etienne. Sweating
gunners struggled into position with the two machine-guns that were left
in the battalion, and these, with their crews, were knocked out by
shell-fire before either had been in action long enough to fire a clip.
But the rifles gave tongue and continued to speak—the last few men are
always the most difficult to kill—and the Boche had little taste for
rifle-fire that begins to kill at 700 yards. That counter-attack shortly
returned whence it came, and the one that followed it went back also.
The rifles fell silent, for the Boche infantry was in cover, or too far
away to waste scant ammunition on. “O Lord, for one battery of 75s or a
machine-gun outfit! All the Boches in the world, an’ nothin’ to reach
’em with!” lamented the captain of the 49th. “We’re clean away from our
guns, and those devils seem to know it—look at ’em, yonder! Heard a
shell from ours to-day, John? I haven’t.”—“Plenty from the other side,
though—damn few of us left, capitan. Eastin’s got it, Tom Langford’s got
it—Chuck Connor, and Matthews. Don’t know where Geer is. Guess I’m the
only officer you have left—here’s Captain Whitehead.”
Whitehead, of the 67th Company, plumped down beside them. Small, very
quick and wiry, with his helmet cocked on the side of his head, he gave
the impression of a fierce and warlike little hawk. “Hunt’s comin’ over,
Francis,” he said. “Bad place; worst I ever saw. Got about thirty men
left. Hell that our machine-guns got knocked out so quick, wasn’t
it?—must be two regiments of Fritzies on our front yonder!”
Captain Hunt, senior in the field, a big, imperturbable Californian,
came, and Lieutenant Kelly, promoted by casualties in the last hour to
command of the 66th Company. “How does it look to you, gentlemen?” said
Hunt. “Damn bad” was the consensus of opinion, with profane
embellishments. Followed some technical discussion. “Well,” concluded
the senior captain, “we’ve accomplished our mission—broke up their
attack—better hook up with the rest of the regiment. We’ll find them
through the woods to the right. Move off your companies—Kelly, you go
first.”
[Illustration:
A machine-gunner, Champagne.
A sketch made on the field.
]
Nobody remembers very clearly that swing to the right, through a hail of
machine-gun fire and an inferno of shelling. They found the companies of
the 2d Battalion digging in astride a blasted road, and went into
position beside them.
“I’ve organized the company sector with twenty men—all we’ve got
left—you and I make twenty-two,” reported the second-in-command,
dropping wearily into the shell-hole where the captain had established
himself. “Lord, I’m tired ... and what I can’t see,” he added in some
wonder, fingering the rents in his raincoat, “is why we weren’t killed
too....”
That night, lying in its shallow, hastily dug holes, the remnant of the
battalion descended through further hells of shelling. The next night
tins of beef and bread came up. There was some grim laughter when it
came. “Captain,” reported the one remaining sergeant, after distributing
rations in the dark, “they sent us chow according to the last strength
report—three days ago—230-odd rations. The men are building breastworks
out of the corned-willy cans, sir!—twenty of ’em——”
Some runners got through, and Division H. Q., well forward in a
pleasantly exposed spot on the Souain road, built up a picture of a
situation sufficiently interesting. Four infantry regiments were thrust
saw-wise northwest to northeast of Blanc Mont; all were isolated from
each other and from the French, who had lagged behind the flanks. Four
little islands in a turbulent Boche sea, and the old Boche doing his
damnedest. The Marine major-general commanding, Lejeune, it is related,
went serenely to sleep. And they relate further that a staff colonel
who, like Martha, was careful and troubled about many things, came to
rouse him with a tale of disaster: “General, general, I have word from
the front that a regiment of Marines is entirely surrounded by the
Germans!”
“Yes, colonel? Well, sir,” said the general, sadly and sleepily, “I am
sorry for those Germans!”—and returned to his slumbers.
More days and nights, slipping, characterless, into each other. Being
less than a company in strength, the 1st Battalion of the 5th was not
called on to attack again. They lay in their holes and endured. “Until
the division has accomplished its mission,” said the second-in-command,
rubbing his dirt-encrusted and unshaven chin. “That means, until the
rest of the outfit is killed down as close as we are. Then we’ll be
relieved, an’ get a week’s rest and a gang of bloodthirsty replacements,
an’ then we can do it all over again.” “Yes,” replied the captain,
turning uneasily in the cramped, coffin-shaped hole in which they lay.
He scratched himself. “I have cooties, I think. In plural quantities.”
“Well, you would have that orderly strip the overcoats off a covey of
dead Boches to furnish this château of ours. The Boche is such an
uncleanly beast.... I have cooties, too, my capitan. Hell ... ain’t war
wonderful!”
And after certain days the division was relieved. The battalion marched
out at night. The drumming thunder of the guns fell behind them and no
man turned his face to look again on the baleful lights of the front. On
the road they passed a regiment of the relieving division—full, strong
companies of National Guardsmen. They went up one side of the road; and
in ragged column of twos, unsightly even in the dim and fitful light,
the Marines plodded down the other side. They were utterly weary, with
shuffling feet and hanging heads. The division had just done something
that those old masters in the art of war, the French, and the world
after them, including Ludendorff, were to acknowledge remarkable. They
had hurled the Boche from Blanc Mont and freed the sacred city of
Rheims. They had paid a price hideous even for this war. And they were
spent. If there was any idea in those hanging heads it was food and
rest.
The Guard companies gibed at the shrunken battalion as they passed.
Singing and joking they went. High words of courage were on their lips
and nervous laughter. Save for a weary random curse here and there, the
battalion did not answer.... “Hell, them birds don’t know no better....”
“Yeh, we went up singin’ too, once—good Lord, how long ago!... They
won’t sing when they come out ... or any time after ... in this war.”...
“Damn you, can’t you march on your own side the road? How much room you
need?”
SONGS
THREE
“MADEMOISELLE FROM ARMENTIÈRES”
It was nice, back in billets, resting between battles, to sit on a bench
in the sun and watch the world go by. Odette, the strapping and genteel
daughter of the baker of Croutte-sur-Marne, here herds the duck Anatole
into the courtyard of her mother’s bakery. (M. Boulanger was last heard
from on the Chemin des Dames; Mme. Boulangère keeps the establishment
going.) The duck Anatole has been ordered for dinner by two lieutenants
of the 1st Battalion, the consideration being 37 francs 80 centimes. Two
privates of the 49th Company are choiring softly “Mademoiselle from
Armentières” as she passes. It is just as well that neither Odette nor
Anatole comprend l’anglais.
[Illustration: [Soldiers]]
IV
[Illustration: [Hands rolling a cigarette]]
At various times and places in 1918 the 2d Marine Division was subsisted
on the French ration, a component part of which was preserved Argentine
beef with carrots in it. This was called monkey-meat by the Marines of
the 4th Brigade. Men ate it when they were very hungry.
IV
MONKEY-MEAT
In a mangled place called the Wood Northwest of Lucy-le-Bocage two
lieutenants of the Marine Brigade squatted by a hole the size of a
coffin and regarded with attention certain cooking operations. The
older, and perhaps the dirtier of the two, was intent upon a
fire-blackened mess-kit, which was balanced on two stones and two German
bayonets over a can of solidified alcohol. In the mess-kit was simmering
a grayish and unattractive matter with doubtful yellowish lumps, into
which the lieutenant fed, discriminatingly, bits of hard bread and
frayed tomatoes from a can.
“Do what you will with it,” he observed, “monkey-meat is monkey-meat.
It’s a great pity that damn Tompkins had to get himself bumped off last
night when we came out. He had a way with monkey-meat, the kid did—hell!
I never have any luck with orderlies!” He prodded the mess of Argentine
beef—the French army’s canned meat ration—and stared sombrely. His eyes,
a little bloodshot in his sunburnt, unshaven face, were sleepy.