MUCH TO DO AND MANY TO DO IT
“SAY, who is that fellow?” Don asked quickly.
“Don’t know; something funny about him. Don, I’m tickled to see you,
old top! Where’d you come from?”
“Headquarters. With the information force now, posing as messenger,
liaison, anything else but----. Detective work, you know. I’m glad to
see you, Herb. How’s the fight going?”
“Right ahead; all the time ahead!” declared Lieutenant Whitcomb. “The
Heinies are putting up a good scrap, though. This is only the first
round. Say, I wish we could chin awhile, but----”
“I know. And now you----?”
“Going to find some stretcher bearers to get a man of mine out.”
“I’ll do it; where’s the man. But first I must tell you to keep an eye
open for that liaison sergeant; I believe he’s bad medicine. He may
have been laying for you.”
“I know he was lying to me; said there were orders to withdraw. I ought
to have held him. Come with me now; then I must get back to my men.”
Herbert quickly led Don to where Merritt lay; then clasping Don’s hand
and saying that they’d meet again, shortly perhaps, went on a run in
the direction of the fighting.
Don knelt and at once saw that the youthful soldier’s wound had soon
proved fatal and so, folding the poor fellow’s arms and placing his
handkerchief over his face, the boy arose to again make his way through
the woods.
Suddenly he came to where a number of officers advanced together and
the boy asked for Captain Lowden. The company commander acknowledged
his own identity and receiving the note from Colonel Walton seemed
eager to talk to Don, explaining that the fight was going very well,
that it was a matter of breaking up machine-gun nests and capturing or
routing the enemy who manned them; the officers could have little part
in this, except to keep their men together and busy.
“We are ordered to proceed only due north and to maintain our
alignment,” he said, “but I’m afraid some units will meet and get
mixed. However, they’re bringing in the bacon.”
“I think you mean the wieniewursts, don’t you, Captain?” suggested Don.
The officer laughed. “Yes, but I wish we had some of the genuine
article,” he said. “Good eats get to us a little too slowly sometimes.
Well, the colonel gives you a fine send-off in this; you must be the
real thing. Now, as to this spy: my men have reported him several times
and I think he was seen around here this morning. But it is hard to
identify him fully and we don’t want to make a mistake; that is the
reason he hasn’t been arrested. We haven’t a very clear description of
him, either, and don’t know what rank he assumes. I rather think it is
several. But we do know that acting as a messenger he has carried some
false orders and he may be still at that.”
“Not ten minutes ago and to Lieutenant Whitcomb, for one; orders
to quit; retire. I think I know him; liaison officer, thick-set,
dark-skinned, cast in his eye. If anyone by that description runs into
you again hold him, please, by all means!”
“We shall, you may wager! I hope you get him. Hello! that sounds like
an extra heavy scrap over to the right. I guess that’s within our zone
of advance, gentlemen.” The captain addressed a first lieutenant and a
color sergeant: “Let’s hurry on and back the boys up!”
Merrily the bushwhacking fight in the Argonne Forest went on; that is,
it might be characterized as merry from the standpoint of the results
obtained by the determined Americans. The Germans had reason to regard
it quite otherwise. And so had both sides when they took into account
the resulting toll in lives and those maimed for life. Before nightfall
of that first day the Germans were routed or captured all along the
edge of the forest and upon the southeastern slopes of the Aire Valley,
the Yanks flanking these latter positions to the left and descending
upon them, instead of charging up the hills from the stream, a movement
that the Hun had never expected.
Then night came down and the attacking Yanks, eager to continue their
work on the day following, literally slept on their guns and in
numerous cases found need for so doing.
Don Richards had now one very special task to perform, though his
duty lay in apprehending anyone that might aid the enemy in any way,
particularly in gaining information. But the boy did not seem able to
land on concrete evidence of any kind, nor to meet up with those he
might suspect. Conscious that the task was a difficult one and also
that his superiors knew it so to be, he went about it with a calmness
and assurance that would have done credit to a veteran. No grand stand
plays for him; simply unqualified results were what he meant to obtain
and to this end he kept his mind alert as he had never done before.
Wherever he went and with whomever he talked, his pass gaining for him
complete access to all units and what information he desired, he was
generally received with courtesy and much consideration from commanders
of all ranks, for there is nothing so appealing to the universal sense
of justice as anti-spy work.
To the boy also there was large satisfaction connected with his
efforts; he gloried in the fact that at least he was endeavoring to
do something worth while for his country and the cause of justice and
right. Whether he succeeded or not, he was one among those who were
keeping their eyes open for a sly and watchful enemy’s attempts to
discover the Americans’ purpose in detail and thereupon deliver telling
counter-strokes.
All of that first day of the Argonne fight, Don had footed over many
miles just behind the fighting front, seeking to again encounter
the short, dark man uniformed as a liaison sergeant. The boy had
passed from one field of operations to another; he had gained many a
conference with officers, from non-coms to colonels; he had made them
all aware of the spy’s evident character and his disguise, so that
if he again tried to deliver false messages he would be forestalled
and arrested. At night Don returned to the position behind Captain
Lowden’s company and bunked with one of the Red Cross men in an injured
ambulance, the driver having known the boy on the Marne.
All that night the American-French artillery, both near and miles away,
was barking sometimes fitfully and now and then German heavy shells
would come over and burst too near for real comfort. Occasionally also
there were night raids, or German counter-attacks along and beyond
the Aire, but these never reached the proportions that the daylight
permitted.
Then, with the first coming of daylight, the opposing forces were at it
again, the Americans, as before, tearing the Hun defenses within the
forest to pieces and driving off their determined counter-attacks, now
being made in force and with selected shock troops.
Don gathered information from various sections of the forest, over the
area from the Aire westward to the end of the American left wing, that
sector covered by the First Army Corps. Reports came to the boy mostly
from persons not directly engaged in the fighting.
Lieutenant Whitcomb? Oh, he was strictly on the job. The lad, as
once before, seemed to bear a charmed life; he had not been so much
as scratched when last seen and he had been in the forefront of the
fighting almost continually, with pistol in hand, the weapon often
emptied and hot, leading, always leading his platoon, now a mere
handful of men. Captain Lowden? On the job also, though slightly hurt.
Two reports had come that he had been killed. Lieutenant Pondexter was
dead, killed in the early morning of this second day, and so were the
other officers of Lowden’s company. Thus Whitcomb and two sergeants
were the only ones left to assist their superior in directing the
company’s efforts and in keeping it in line with its supports.
How far had the Americans advanced from the edge of the woods? At least
a mile; in some places where the line bent forward it was much more
than that and they were still going; by night again it would be another
mile or more.
This opinion proved to be correct. The first part of the Argonne
attack, on the 26th, 27th and 28th of September, on a front of nearly
thirty miles, had succeeded in driving the Huns out of half the Argonne
Forest and from many small towns and villages along the Aire Valley and
between it and the Meuse River. Then, except when forcing minor attacks
on separate defenses and by an advance of the artillery making good
the ground gained, the Yanks prepared for a still stronger offensive
beginning on October 4th.
During this period of lesser offensive engagements there was evident
a sort of unrest on the part of under officers and men; the sweet
taste of victory had further nourished the spirit of daring. The
desire was to continue demonstrating that the supposedly invincible
and highly-trained Germans could be thoroughly beaten. Prove this the
Yanks did many times, when the numbers were even, or the odds slightly
in favor of the Huns; it remained for the Americans to show also in
some isolated cases that they were the masters of the enemy when he
was twice their strength. Again, with exceeding bravery and grit they
defied the foe when it outnumbered them many times.
It was this zeal for scrapping and the adventurous tendency that led
minor expeditions against German positions to exceed their orders
or to penetrate too far without support into the domain still held
by the enemy. Thus it occurred that a machine-gun squad went over a
hill, routed the Huns from an old stone ruins and then, after being
unmercifully pounded with shrapnel for an hour, were attacked by
ten times their number of infantry. How those Brownings, with their
record of six hundred shots per minute, did talk back and how nearly
every man in the bunch learned perforce to become a crack shot with
his Springfield-Enfield, is a record that the survivors who tried
unsuccessfully to compel the squad to surrender could well bear witness
to. And when the Huns were finally beaten off and dared not to make
another attempt to rout those few Yanks because of reinforcements, just
half of that little group of gritty dare-devils came out of the old
building alive and most of them were wounded. But they could still pull
triggers or turn a gun crank.
Who has not heard of the lost battalion, missing when the reports
were turned in on October 3d, a contingent of the Seventy-seventh
Division? It had been sent to rout out some gun nests that were proving
troublesome in the Argonne Forest. When this task was done they just
kept going and knew not when to stop until night shut down upon them.
Then they sent runners back to ask for instructions and these fellows
could not get through because of a flank movement of the Germans in
some force between the battalion and the main division. So Major
Whittlesey and his seven hundred men were trapped and for five days
those brave boys, having lost almost half their number in killed and
wounded, without food for three days and daring to get water only at
night and that from a dirty swamp, stood off the repeated assaults of
thousands of Huns upon the rocky hillside in the clefts and fissures
of which the Americans found some shelter. They were fired upon from
the hills on each side; enemy trench mortars smashed most of their
machine guns and their ammunition ran out. Many of their number
were captured also and one was induced to bring back a typewritten
message demanding surrender, but to this Major Whittlesey returned a
very decided refusal. Finally rescue came to the lost battalion; men
in the forefront of the second drive reached them and chased out the
Huns. Whereupon the dead that had been laid aside waiting burial that
could not have taken place because of the danger, were now peacefully
interred.