pale-lavender flame. The water in them began to boil, and he supplied
coffee—the coarse-ground, pale coffee of the Frogs—with a spoon that
shook a little. He considered: “S’pose I’d better boil the sugar in with
it,” he decided. “There isn’t so much of it, you know. We’ll taste it
more.” And he added the contents of a little muslin sack—heavy
beet-sugar that looked like sand. His face was pale and somewhat
troubled, and his week’s beard was straggling and unwholesome. He was
not an out-of-doors man—and he was battalion scout officer. A gentleman
over-sensitive for the rude business of war, he would continue to
function until he broke—and one sensed that he would suffer while about
it....
“I don’t like monkey-meat. Before this smell”—he waved his spoon
petulantly—“got into my nose I never could eat it. But now you can’t
smell but one thing, and, after all, you’ve got to eat.”
The smell he referred to lay through the wood like a tangible fog that
one could feel against the cheek and see. It was the nub-end of June,
and many battalions of fighting men had lain in the Wood Northwest of
Lucy, going up to the front a little way forward or coming out to stand
by in support. It was a lovely place for supports; you could gather here
and debouch toward any part of the sector, from Hill 142, on the left,
through the Bois de Belleau and Bouresches, to Vaux, where the infantry
brigade took on. Many men had lain in the wood, and many men lay in it
still. Some of these were buried very casually. Others, in hidden
tangles of it, along its approaches, and in the trampled areas beyond it
where attack and counter-attack had broken for nearly a month of days
and nights, hadn’t been buried at all. And always there were more, and
the June sun grew hotter as it made toward July.
[Illustration:
“Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up!”
]
Troops lay in the wood now; a battalion of the 6th and two companies of
the 5th Regiment outfit, half of which was still in line on the flank of
the Bois de Belleau. These companies had come out at dawn, attended by
shell-fire; they had plunged into the wood and slept where they halted,
unawakened—except the wounded—by the methodical shelling to which the
Boche treated the place every day. Now, in the evening, they were awake
and hungry. They squatted, each man in his hole, and did what they could
about it. A savage-looking lot, in battered helmets and dirty uniforms.
But you saw them cleaning their rifles....
The scout officer, with his hand out to lift away the coffee, which was,
in his judgment, boiled, heard: “Mr. Braxton? Yeh, he’s up thataway,
with the lootenant.” “Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s
up? Hey?” “Scout officer? Over yonder, him wit’ the green blouse—” and a
soiled battalion runner, identified by his red brassard and his air of
one laden with vital information, clumped up and saluted sketchily.
“Sir, the major wants to see the battalion scout officer at battalion
headquarters. The major said: Right away, sir.”
The scout officer swore, inexpertly, for he was not a profane fellow,
but with infinite feeling. “Good God, I hope it ain’t—If you can keep my
coffee hot, Tommie—Be right back as soon as I can. Save my slum. Don’t
let anything happen to my slum—” The words trailed in the air as he went
swiftly off, buckling his pistol-belt. The battalion commander was that
kind of an officer.
The lieutenant growled in sympathy: “Somebody’s always takin’ the joy
out of life. Jim, he’s hungry as I am, an’ that’s as hungry as a bitch
wolf. That’s the trouble with this war stuff; man misses too many
meals.” He took the cooking from the fire and replaced the lids on the
little alcohol-cans with care. Canned heat was quite hard to come by;
the Boche was much better provided with it; he was indebted for this to
a deceased German gentleman, and it was the last he had.
“No tellin’ what the old man wants. Glad I ain’t a scout officer. This
war’s hard on Jim—he takes it too serious. I’ll wait, though.” Absently
he drank the tomato juice left in the can. He tried his coffee, and
burned his mouth. “Wish I had the man here that invented this aluminum
canteen cup! Time the damn cup’s cool enough so you won’t burn the hide
off yo’ lip, the coffee’s stone cold.” Then, later: “Not boiled enough.
Jim, he’s used to bein’ waited on—never make a rustler, he won’t....
“Well, he’s long in comin’. Old man sent him forward to make a map or
something, most prob’ly.” He tasted the slum. “That Tompkins! Why the
hell he had to stop one—only man I ever knew that could make this
monkey-meat taste like anything! And he goes and gets bumped off. Hell!
That’s the way with these kids. This needs an onion.”
[Illustration:
“He takes the war too serious.”
]
He ate half the mess, with scrupulous exactness, and drank his coffee.
He put the lid on the mess-kit, and covered Jim’s coffee, now getting
cold. He smoked a cigarette and talked shop with his platoon sergeant.
He gave some very hard words and his last candle-end to a pale private
who admitted blistered heels, and then stood over the man while he
tallowed his noisome socks. He interviewed his chaut-chaut gunners, and
sent them off to beg new clips from the battalion quartermaster
sergeant. It grew into the long French twilight; Boche planes were
about, and all the anti-aircraft stuff in the neighborhood was furiously
in action. Strolling back to his hole, the lieutenant observed that the
pale private had resumed his shoes and was rolling his puttees with a
relieved look. At this moment the nose-cap of a 75 came whimpering and
hirpling down out of the heavens and gutted the fellow.... When that was
cleaned up, the lieutenant lay in his hole, weighing the half-empty
mess-kit in his hands, and trusted that nothing unseemly had happened to
Jim. He thought of going up to battalion to see what was doing—but the
major liked for you to stay with your men, unless he sent for you....
“Well! Might as well get some sleep....”
Toward dark the Boche began to slam 77s and 150s into the Wood northwest
of Lucy. It became a place of horror, with stark cries in the night,
between the rending crashes of the shells. About an hour before midnight
the word was passed and the two companies got out and went up across the
pestilential wheat-fields and into the Bois de Belleau.
That same afternoon an unassigned colonel had come up to Brigade
Headquarters. Wanted to go to Paris, he did, and the brigade commander
said that the only way to get there was to bring in a prisoner. One
prisoner; seven days’ leave. Be glad to get a prisoner. Intelligence had
word of a new division or so moved in over there last night;
identification not yet positive.
This colonel took steps. He was a man of parts and very desirous of the
fleshpots of the Place de l’Opéra. There was an elegant French captain
attached to brigade for no very evident reason—just attached—spoke
English and knew vintages. Said to be an expert on raids. The colonel
put it up to him in such and such a way: would he go? Yes, but
certainly. Just a small raid, my colonel? Oh, a very small raid. Now, as
to artillery support—a map was broken out.
Brigade artillery officer—chap the colonel knew out on the Asiatic
station—happened in. How about it—just about half as much stuff as you
fellows wasted on the Tartar Wall that time—eh? Sure: it could be
arranged. Ten minutes’ intensive; say, one battery; where you want it?
Brigade intelligence took thought: They’ve got some kind of a strong
point out from the ruined airdrome in front of Torcy. Their line is
through Torcy; battalion in there. Left of the Bois—see here? Our photos
show two big craters—some of the heavy stuff they shot at the railroad
the 29th of May, or the 30th, most likely—eh, m’sieur le capitaine?
Might look at that, colonel. Best jump-off is from Terry’s
battalion—about here—he has two companies here. Six hundred yards to go;
keep the Bois well away—well starboard, as you leathernecks say; come
back the same route. Wheat. Little gully here. Craters just beyond. Main
line at least a hundred metres back. Good? Let’s call up Terry and see
if he’ll give you the men.... Terry would give him twenty-five men and
two chaut-chauts and not a Marine more. Who wanted a raid, anyway?
Sending two support companies up to the Bois as soon as it’s dark. Looks
interestin’ on the right.... Good! All set. Start your covering fire at
23 hours 15. You jump off at 23 hours 19. Take you six minutes to get
over, huh? “All right, colonel, bonne chance!”
Just before dark the colonel and Captain de Stegur were at battalion
headquarters. “Whitehead will give you your men, and I’m sending my
scout officer along. Needs that sort of thing. Be sure you come back
where you went out. Crabbe’s to the right of there. You know Crabbe.
Shoots quick.”
“But, my colonel,” represented Captain de Stegur, “one should arrange,
one should explain, one should instruct—in effect, one should
rehearse——”
“Rehearse hell, sir! I’m due in Paris to-morrow night. Where those
Marines, major? I’ll tell ’em what I want——”
So it was that a wedge of men debouched into the wheat at 23 hours 19
minutes;[1] it being sufficiently dark.
Footnote 1:
11.19 P. M.
The battalion scout officer and a disillusioned sergeant, with hash
marks on his sleeve, were the point. The men were echeloned back, right,
and left with an automatic rifle on each flank. In the centre marched
the colonel, smoking, to the horror of all, a cigar. Smoking was not
done up there, after dark. With him was the elegant French captain, who
appeared to be very gallantly resigned to it. The story would, he
reflected, amaze and delight his mess—if he ever got back with it! These
droll Americans! He must remember just what this colonel said: a type,
_Nom de Dieu_! If only he had not worn his new uniform—the cloth chosen
by his wife, you conceive——
The 75s flew with angry whines that arched across the sky and smote with
red and green flames along a line.... There was a spatter of rifle-fire
toward the right; flares went up over the dark loom of the Bois; a
certain violence of machine-gun fire grew up and waxed to great volume,
but always to the right. Forward, where the shells were breaking, there
was nothing....
The scout officer, leading, had out his canteen and wet his dry mouth.
He was acutely conscious of his empty stomach. His mind dwelt yearningly
on the mess-kit, freighted nobly with monkey-meat and tomatoes, awaiting
him in the dependable Tommy’s musette. “Hope to God nothing happens to
old Tommy!” The wheat caught at his ankles and he hated war. Lord, how
these night operations make a man sweat! He went down a little gully and
out of it, the sergeant at his shoulder, breathing on his neck. That
crater—he visualized his map—it should be right yonder—two of them. A
hundred metres forward the last shells burst, and he saw new dirt.
Ahead, a spot darker than the dark; he went up to it. Away on the right
a flare soared, and something gleamed dull in the black hole at his
feet—a round, deep helmet with the pale blur of a face under it; a
click, and the shadow of a movement there, and a little flicker; a
matter of split seconds; the scout officer had a bayonet in his stomach,
almost—Feldritter Kurt Iden, Company 6 of the Margrave of Brandenburg
Regiment (this established later by brigade intelligence, on examination
of the pay-book of the deceased), being on front post with his squad,
heard a noise hard on the cessation of the shelling, and put out his
neck. Dear God, shoot! Shoot quickly!
The scout officer was conscious of a monstrous surge of temper. He
gathered his feet under him, and his hands crooked like claws, and he
hurled himself. In the same breath there was a long, bright flash right
under his arm, and the mad crack of a Springfield. The disillusioned
sergeant had estimated the situation, loosed off from the hip at perhaps
seven feet, and shot the German through the throat. Too late to stop
himself, the scout officer went head first into the crater, his hands
locking on something wet and hairy, just the size to fill them; and
presently he was at the bottom of the crater, dirt in his mouth and a
buzzing in his head, strangling something that flopped and gurgled and
made remarkable noises under his hands. There were explosions and people
stepped hard on his back and legs. He became sane again and realized
that whatever it was it was dead. He groped in his puttees for his
knife, and cut off its shoulder-straps and a button or two, and looted
its bosom of such papers as there were—these being details the complete
scout officer must attend to. More explosions, and voices bleating
“Kamaraden!”—terribly anxious voices—in his ear.
The disillusioned sergeant, a practical man, had ducked into the crater
right behind the scout officer. The raiding-party in his rear had
immediately fired their weapons in all directions. A great many rifles
on forward stabbed the dark with sharp flame, and some of these were
very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted
that Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his
judgment; he now reflected that it was good business—“grenades—I hope to
spit in yo’ mess-kit they are—ask the man that used one—” It was good
business, for it fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, where
the rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the brave
German men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled
into the clever little tunnel that connected them with the Feldritter’s
crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant’s very feet. Being a
man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he
dragged the scout officer standing. “We got our prisoners, sir. Le’s
beat it,” he suggested. “Their lines is wakin’ up, sir. It’s gonna be
bad here——”
The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barged into
them. “Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give ’em here,
young man!” and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook
them violently. “Thought you’d start something, hey? Thought you’d start
something, hey?”
The scout officer now blew his whistle, the sergeant shouted in a voice
of brass, and the colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. The
French captain, close alongside, delightedly registered further events
for narrative. The raiding-party gathered itself—chaut-chaut gunners
slamming out a final clip—and they all went back across the wheat. It is
related by truthful Marines there present that every German in Von
Boehn’s army fired on them as they went, but no two agree as to the
manner of their return. It is, however, established that the colonel,
bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto
virgin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot—something in the
nature of _un beau geste_. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his
rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, imagining pursuit. The
colonel—and to this attest the scout officer and the sergeant—then shot
the Frenchman through the—as sea-going Marines say—stern-sheets.
[Illustration:
The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled
with admiration at his language.
]
The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled
with admiration at his language.
“If I had my time to do over, I’d learn this here Frog _habla_,”
remarked the sergeant afterward. “I don’t know what the bird said, but
it sure sounded noble. Ample, I called it. Powerful ample.”
By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own
place, the French captain had lapsed into English. “As a wound, you
perceive, it is good for a permission. But it is not a wound. It is an
indignity! And, besides, my new breeches! _Ah, Dieu de Dieu! Ce sale
colonel-ci!_ What will my wife say! That one, she chose the cloth
herself! _Tonnerre de canon!_”—and he sank into stricken silence.
The raiding-party shook down in their several holes, praising God, and
went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments
of Battalion Headquarters and departed for brigade. The scout officer
observed, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less
than twenty minutes. “Where’s the 49th?” he wanted to know first. “Hell,
Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the major sent for you. An’
the 17th. We’re moving Battalion Headquarters up there now. Get your
people and come along. Attack or something.”
After a very full night, the scout officer crawled and scuttled along
the last tip of the Bois de Belleau, looking for a hole that a battalion
runner told him about. “Seen the lootenant diggin’ in just past that
last Maxim gun, sir. Right at the nose of the woods where the big rocks
is. There’s about a dozen dead Heinies layin’ by a big tree, all
together. Can’t miss it, sir.” The scout officer had no desire to be
moving in the cool of the morning, when all well-regulated people are
asleep if possible, and if you moved here the old Boche had a way of
sniping at you with 88s—that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun—but he
followed an urge that only Tommie could supply. “The damn slum will be
cold, but two sardines and a piece of chocolate ain’t filling!” He
ducked low behind a rock as an 88 ripped by and burst on the shredded
stump of a great tree; he tumbled into a shell-crater, atop an
infantryman and three bloated Germans long dead; he scrambled out and
fell over two lank cadavers in a shallow hole, who raised their heads
and cursed him drowsily; and he came at last to a miserable shelter
scooped in the lee of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a
brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook until the deplorable
countenance of his brother officer emerged yawning.
“Say,” demanded the scout officer, “you save my slum? Gimme my slum.”
“Why, hello, Jim! Why didn’t you come back, like you said you was? Where
you been? You said you was comin’ right back.”
“Didn’t you save me my monkey-meat? We went on a raid, damn it. I——”
“Raid? Raid? What raid?”
“Oh, we went over to Torcy. Gimme my monkey-meat.”
[Illustration:
“War—sure—is—hell.”
]
“Well, you see, Jim—the fact is—well, we got moved up here right after
you left, and they attacked from in here, an’ we came on in after them.
Just got to sleep——”
“I haven’t had any sleep or any chow or anything—two sardines, by the
bright face of God!—” The scout officer pounced upon a frowsy musette
bag which the other had used for a pillow and jerked out a
fire-blackened mess-kit. He wrenched the lid off and snarled horribly.
“Empty, by God!”
His hands fell lax across his knees. He looked sadly over the blasted
fields to Torcy, and he said, with the cold bitterness of a man who has
tried it all and come to a final conclusion: “War—sure—is—hell.”
SONGS
FOUR
“SWEET AD-O-LINE”
There were places like this down in the Touraine country, around the
town Americans called St. Onion. Canals with poplars mirrored in them,
where it was pleasant to loaf at the end of the day. The women were
kindly and disposed to make friends; it is a pity that there were not
enough to go around. They had, also, an eye for corporals and sergeants;
the bored privates on the bank, sentimental souls, are singing “Sweet
Ad-o-line....” or it may be something very different. The sergeant, a
sensitive spirit, will presently see that they get some Extra Police
Duty.
[Illustration: [Soldiers]]
V
THE RHINE
[Illustration: [Soldier]]
V
THE RHINE
The bugles went while it was still as dark as the inside of a dog. There
was swearing and sickly yellow candle-light in the billets, mean houses
in a mean little Rhine-Province town, and the chow lines formed on the
company galleys in an icy December rain. The rain pattered on helmets
and mess-kits, and fell in slanting lines through the smoky circles of
light where the cooking-fires burned feebly. The faces of the Marines,
as they filed out of the dark for food, were gray and frowsy. The cooks
issued corn-bill hash, and dared any man to growl on the coffee. How the
hell could it be biled enough, with wet wood and very little of
that—been up all night as it is—you sports just pull in your necks! The
companies gulped their ration in sullen silence, rolled damp blankets
into the prescribed pack, and when the bugles squawked assembly, they
fell in without confusion or enthusiasm. Platoon sergeants, with
flash-lights or lanterns, called the rolls; somewhere out in front,
first-sergeants received the reports; officers clumped along the lines
to their units, grumbling.—“All here, first sergeant?”—“Beg the capt’n’s
pardon—couldn’t see you in the dark, sir—all present-counted-for, sir!—”
“Nice day for a hike. Major says, goin’ to the Rhine to-day. Eighteen or
twenty kilomets—don’t know exactly. Dam’ such a war! I’d like the old
kind, where you went into winter quarters—Brrr—” The captain pulled his
collar around his ears.
Presently a bad-tempered drawling voice bayed “Squads right—march!—”
There was a shuffle of hobnails in the mud, and the rattle of
rifle-slings. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines took the road.
These German roads were all honestly metalled, but the inch or so of mud
on the surface was like soup underfoot, and the overcoats soaked up the
rain like blotting-paper. It was the kind of a morning with no line
between night and daylight. The blackness turned to gray, and, after a
while, the major, on his horse, could look back and see the end of his
column. The battalion, he reflected, was up to strength again. It hadn’t
been this large since it went to Blanc Mont, the end of September. He
shut his eyes on that thought—a hundred and thirty men that came out,
where a thousand went in—then replacements, and, after the Armistice,
more replacements. Perhaps the quality was running down a little. The
new chaps didn’t seem as tall and broad as the old men, the tall,
sunburnt leathernecks that went out the road from Meaux, toward
Château-Thierry, in the spring. Odd, just six months since the
spring.... But a few veterans and hard drilling between fights would
keep the temper in an outfit ... one remembered a phrase in an order of
the division commander’s—“The 2d Division has never failed to impose its
will upon the enemy....” And to-day it crossed the German Rhine.... He
swung out of his saddle and stood by the road to watch them pass; 1,200
men, helmets and rifles gleaming a little in the wet gray light....
[Illustration:
The cooks issued corn-bill hash and dared any man to growl.
]
The road led eastward through a country of low hills, sodden in the
rain. Untidy clouds sprawled on the crests and spilled wet filaments
into the valleys. The land was all in cultivation, laid off in precise
squares and oblongs; some newly ploughed, some sparsely green with
turnips and rape. It looked ugly and ordered and sullenly prosperous.
There was slow conversation in the column.
[Illustration:
A nice day for a hike.
]
“—Anybody know where we goin’ to-day?” “Damfino—naw—I did hear the
skipper’s orderly say we’d make the Rhine, some time—” “How far—” “Some
guy was lookin’ at a map at battalion. Said it was about thirty
kilomets.” “Jesus on his golden throne!—It’s always ’bout thirty
kilomets in this dam’ country—” “Yeh! But I remember one time it was
twelve kilomets. The night we hiked up to Verdun, back last March. Had a
Frawg guide—little shrimp wit’ a forked beard. Ask him how far, all he’d
say was: ‘Dooz kilomets—dooz kilomets—’ Hiked all night in the rain,
like this, an’ at daylight we come to a sign, wit’ the name of the place
we’re goin’ to, an’ it said ‘Dooz kilomets’—that guide, he let on that
he was right su’prised—” But there were very few men in the column who
remembered the hike to Verdun, in the early spring of 1918; in one
company eight, in another eleven; in the whole battalion the barest
handful. It had been a long road. The first way-station was the Bois de
Belleau; a lot of people stopped there, and were there yet. And there
were more, comfortably rotting in the Forêt de Retz, south of Soissons.
And more yet, well dead around Blanc Mont. And a vast drift of them back
in hospitals. Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.... Twelve
hundred men hiking to the Rhine, and how many ghosts.... The mist rolled
around the column.