along our own front in that direction”—he pointed south—“until you come
to the row of willow stumps that runs across from our line to theirs.
(It’s an old turnpike, really.) Examine our wire all the way along, and
see if it has been monkeyed with. If you catch sight of an enemy patrol,
Gillette will stay and watch while Thompson gets back here and reports
to the sergeant. Gillette, you will _not_ take any notice of them”—Eddie
sighed brokenly—“unless they show signs of wanting to come too close
to our trenches.” (Eddie’s spirits rose again.) “Then use your own
judgment. Your best plan will probably be to get home by the shortest
route and warn the officer in charge. But don’t start any trouble if you
can help it, because I shall be over on the other side with Gogarty, and
we want to get home too! In any case we must all be back in an hour,
because the artillery have a date with the German back areas at two,
and we don’t want to get mixed up in any retaliation that may be going.
Gogarty, follow me up this dry ditch. It leads right to the German wire,
and we may find a German sentry-post halfway across. So come quietly.”
The two little expeditions crept away, on routes at right angles to one
another. We will follow Boone and Mr. James Gogarty, who has not hitherto
been introduced to the reader.
Jimmy Gogarty was twenty years of age, of wizened appearance, and raucous
voice. He looked and sounded exactly like what he was—a bell-hop. He had
exchanged livery for uniform at the first breath of hostilities, and was
now reckoned one of the smartest scouts in Boone’s Company. He was a
New Yorker born and bred, and had fought his way steadily up the social
ladder of Second Avenue by the exercise of five remarkably sharp wits and
two unpleasantly hard fists. He was devoted to Boone Cruttenden.
The trenches were about two hundred yards apart. Progress along the ditch
was not easy, for it was choked with undergrowth and refuse. Moreover,
there were here and there unburied Germans whom it were wiser to avoid.
Occasionally the ditch was intersected by other routes—old trenches,
and the like. Here they Stopped, Looked, and Listened, as they had been
warned to do all their lives at more peaceful cross-roads far away. But
all was quiet. Too quiet, Boone thought. On his previous excursions
he had usually been aware of much life—furtive, guttural, inquisitive
life—all around him. But to-night No Man’s Land seemed a desert.
Boone whispered his suspicions to his squire.
“I guess dat means de bums is goin’ to start somethin’,” observed Mr.
Gogarty hoarsely. (He was regrettably tough in his speech. The thin
veneer of hotel civilization had long been rubbed off him.)
“We are fairly close to their wire now,” whispered Boone. “I am going to
get out of this drain and prospect along their front. You go straight
ahead, and watch out in case they come crawling down the ditch. If
they do, give a whistle—just one—to warn me, and then beat it for the
Sergeant. Otherwise, expect me here in ten minutes.”
“I get you,” said James agreeably.
Ten minutes later the pair met in the appointed spot. Boone was covered
with mud and panting heavily; Gogarty was quiescent, except that he was
emitting a peculiar noise. If he had been a cat, you would have said he
was purring.
“Seen anything?” asked Boone.
“Yep.”
“What?”
“Two Dutchmen! Dey was in dis ditch—’bout thoity yards along. Keepin’
watch, I guess. _Some_ watch!”
“Where are they now?”
“Still there. Quite still—there!”
“You mean,—?”
“Well, I ain’t one to blow, but—I’m here, and dey are not! You seen
anything, Captain?”
“Yes; listen! There’s a German raiding-party, or something, mustering
outside their wire. I saw them creeping into line, one by one, when the
moon came out just now. They are coming across, and soon!”
“How are dey going to get through our wire?” enquired practical James.
“Either break it up with a five-minute trench-mortar bombardment, or
creep forward and blow a few gaps with dynamite torpedoes. Now, I am
going to wait here until they start moving. Then I shall get back, quick.
Meanwhile”—Boone tugged at his field despatch-book—“I want you to take a
note to Major Powers.”
Flat on his stomach, Boone was squirming deep into the rank undergrowth
of the ditch.
“Hold this electric torch right down over the paper,” he said, “while I
write. Keep a good look-out at the same time, and if you see any one,
switch it off.”
For two minutes Boone scribbled frantically. The fighting blood of all
the Cruttendens was coursing in his veins. He forgot the official form of
address: he omitted certain prescribed formulæ—the date, the hour, his
own geographical position but he overlooked nothing else. The despatch,
when completed, read:
_Dear Major, the Hun is going to raid you. So far as I can see
it will be between the points A and B on attached sketch. I
suggest you send out a m.-g. to shell-hole marked X, from which
you can enfilade whole front in danger. Come to shell-hole
yourself, or send some one, and I will come along and warn you
as soon as I see them start._
“Take that to Major Powers right away,” he said. “As you pass through the
shell-hole warn the Sergeant, and tell him to expect a machine gun there.
But whatever you do, find the Major! Try Battalion Headquarters first—in
the support-line. If he is not there, he’ll be in the firing-trench. But
find him, whatever you do, and quick!”
“I’ll find him,” replied the retired bell-hop, confidently. “Why, I found
people in the Biltmore before now!”
He began to creep away.
“Come back here, of course,” added Boone.
Mr. Gogarty chuckled hoarsely.
“Cap,” he replied, “you betcher!”
* * * * *
Ten minutes passed. Boone, tingling like an induction coil, watched
the progress of the raiding-party. They were moving very methodically,
keeping a beautiful line. Whenever a Verey light burst above them, or the
moon asserted herself, they were flat on their faces in a moment; but
during the next period of darkness they always seemed to cover another
twenty yards. They were halfway across now, almost exactly opposite to
Boone.
[Illustration]
Another ten minutes. Still no Gogarty.
“I wonder where he is,” muttered Boone restlessly. “We ought to have a
watch on the far end of this ditch. If they come creeping along it, as
they _ought_ to do—Gee whizz!”
From behind the German line came a chorus of sharp discharges; then a
whirring and a humming over Boone’s head. Then the earth rocked beneath
the tremendous detonation, and the skies were lit up with the flash of a
barrage of German trench-mortar bombs, exploding along two hundred yards
of American wire.
The barrage lasted just one minute. Directly after, three things
happened, almost simultaneously. The line of raiders rose to its feet
and dashed with a yell through the writhing remnants of the wire. The
voice of a machine gun—nay, a pair of machine guns—broke into steady
reverberation from the shell-crater, seventy yards to Boone’s right.
Lastly, a rocket shot up from the American support-line.
“That’s for our artillery,” said Boone to himself. “They’ll be putting
down a heavy barrage on No Man’s Land in a moment—right here. Good-night,
nurse!”
He began to run swiftly back along the ditch, crouching low. In this
posture he rounded a slight bend, and two steel helmets clashed together.
Boone, standing up to massage his ringing head, realized that the
faithful Gogarty had returned to duty.
“We got dem guys fixed this time!” announced the scout triumphantly.
“_Two_ Vickers guns in de shell-hole, to give ’em hell comin’ and goin’!”
It was true. Major Powers had done marvels in the twenty scant minutes
at his disposal. He had decided to send two machine guns over to the
shell-hole; for ammunition-belts sometimes jam, and it was essential
that a continuous stream of bullets should be maintained along the wire
during the fateful moment of attack. He had also warned the Artillery
and Brigade Headquarters of impending events. Finally, he had withdrawn
his trench garrison from the front line as a precaution against a
trench-mortar bombardment, and had aligned them, with bayonets fixed, in
the support-trench behind, with orders to dash forward to their original
positions the moment the signal was given.
They were hasty preparations, but six weeks’ rehearsal could not have
made their success more complete. It was just such an undertaking as
suits the American soldier—without cohesion or direct leadership,
and depending almost entirely upon quick grasp of the situation and
spontaneous team-work. The German attacking party, plunging forward
through the broken defences, came right into line with the Vickers guns,
with the result that it found itself wading through a river of lead
flowing at the rate of five hundred bullets per minute at a distance
of eighteen inches from the ground. Many went down at once: the others
stumbled on gallantly enough, and reached the American trench just in
time to see a wave of yelling American soldiers break into it from the
ground behind.
Some of the raiders leapt down into the trench, and were submerged at
once. A few threw bombs, most of which were deftly caught and thrown back
before they could explode. Others were engaged upon the parapet itself.
The rest, making heavy weather in the wire and tortured by the stream
of bullets, broke back, only to find that the second machine gun was
maintaining a steady enfilade fire across their line of retreat.
At the height of the turmoil the sky far behind the American lines was
suddenly illuminated by flashes. Next moment, with a rush and a roar, the
American retaliatory barrage was tearing up No Man’s Land and the German
fire-trenches beyond. The raiders were completely isolated.
For four minutes the tempest of shells raged. Then, with stunning
suddenness, came silence, grim as death, broken only by a few hoarse
cries and a little sympathetic uneasiness farther down the line. The raid
was over. How it had fared the Germans over the way never knew, for not a
single raider came back to tell them.
The dead and wounded enemy were disentangled from the wire, where most of
them had fallen. American casualties, thanks to Boone’s warning and Major
Powers’s dispositions, had been comparatively slight, though the bombs
had taken a certain gruesome toll. Eddie Gillette, who with Al Thompson
had returned from his tour of inspection just in time to take part in
the defence of the trench, was suffering from abraded knuckles, due to an
encounter with a set of Teutonic teeth. Otherwise, none of our particular
friends had received a scratch, though Boone and Gogarty had escaped
their own artillery barrage by four seconds.
An hour later the life of the line had reverted once more from Hell to
Monotony. A working-party was out in front, repairing wire and replacing
sandbags. Patrols were out again, in case the enemy should feel disposed
to throw good money after bad. The artillery stood to, prepared to resume
the argument if need be. But not a German gun cheeped all night. Possibly
they were surprised about something.
Meanwhile a string of prisoners was filing back to Regimental
Headquarters, down a communication-trench—or _boyau_, to employ the
expressive phrase of its Gallic constructors—muddy, dishevelled, and
sulky. German prisoners in these days are not usually sulky: most of them
are frankly delighted to be counted out of the War. But this particular
consignment were distinguished, under their grime, by a certain peculiar
and awful air of outraged majesty.
On arrival at Headquarters the mystery was revealed. An American Staff
Officer, an expert linguist, took charge of the party, and issued the
usual orders.
“Sergeant, find out if there are any officers among them, and put them by
themselves. Then search the others.”
He was answered—in tolerable English—by a lanky youth who stood at the
end of the long line of prisoners.
“We are _all_ officers!” he announced, with dignity.
It was a simple enough explanation, really. This was no common or
vulgar raiding-party. It was a junior officers’ Instruction Class, sent
over to gain a little experience and confidence in the delicate art of
trench-raiding on this “quiet sector of the line.” It was a genuine and
painful shock to them to find that the line was held by the Americans
in force—the Americans, who, according to the Great General Staff at
Headquarters, were still at home, chasing buffaloes down Broadway. Too
bad!
* * * * *
But already these small diversions are swept into the limbo of the Things
that do not Matter. Word has just come that our period of trench warfare
is over, and that we are to proceed to the Argonne, to take part in the
Great Offensive.
Evidently some one at the top has decided that this War has gone on long
enough.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FOREST OF THE ARGONNE
During the past fortnight we have been learning the difference between
Warfare of Position and Warfare of Movement, and we are very, very tired.
Moreover, the end of our labour is not yet. But we have made good. The
Divisional General himself has informed us of the fact, in an official
Order. So has the enemy, in an even more flattering fashion. He has
fallen back—steadily and stubbornly—but back.
The fighting began more than a fortnight ago. But first of all we had
to get to the scene of action. That involved endless marches, through
undulating, heavily wooded, exhausting country. It is the fall of the
year. Rain is abundant, roads are not too numerous, and these are packed
from end to end with traffic so close that it is sometimes impossible for
a vehicle to find turning-space in ten miles.
These roads, though well constructed and constantly reënforced, are
none too good. They were never built to carry such traffic as this,
and since the inevitable ditch on either side deprives them of lateral
support, the effect of a constant stream of monstrously heavy vehicles
upon the surface of one of them is that of a rolling-pin upon a strip of
dough—it makes it wider. Not only wider, but thinner; for the edges of
the road are squeezed out into the ditch, and the whole fabric loses
cohesion. Almost anywhere, but in particular near the sides, a wheel is
apt suddenly to find a soft spot and sink up to the axle, with consequent
congestion and tumult.
It is a double tide of traffic. Both streams are made up of similar
constituents, with certain necessary contrasts. There are bodies of
infantry, either going up into action or else coming out. There is no
mistaking the latter. Their uniforms are splashed, their faces are caked,
and their eyes are red for lack of sleep. They are obviously “all in,”
but they hobble manfully along, with the comfortable satisfaction of men
who have left behind them a task well and truly performed. They exchange
ironic greetings with the full-fed, boisterous bands of adventurers whom
they encounter hastening in the opposite direction.
Ambulances, again. Those going forward are empty and trim: those
returning are travel-stained and crowded. It is rumoured that the
American Army has suffered over a hundred thousand casualties during the
past few weeks. The fighting in the Argonne Forest has been terrific.
Grandpré, through which we expect to pass, has been taken and lost
half a dozen times. Each of the ambulances carries a full complement
of stretcher-cases; and usually beside the driver sits a gaunt, miry
statue with his arm in a sling, or a blood-soaked rag about his head.
Occasionally, too, there occurs a civilian farm-wagon, containing a
dozen or so less serious cases, with tickets tied to their buttons, on
their way to an Evacuation Station. There are also women and children
passengers; for the battle zone is extending daily, and it is needful,
from sheer humanity, to remove the civil population to safer ground. On
the box-seat of one of these wagons sits a small French boy. Perhaps he
is eight years old. He is easily the proudest and happiest person in all
this dolorous procession, for his right wrist is swathed in a slightly
encrimsoned bandage, gloriously conspicuous.
Then there are motor wagons, also full. Those going up contain
ammunition, barbed wire, galvanized iron sheeting, engineering
material, or rations. Those returning are heaped with salvage of every
kind—furniture, the property of the refugees; battlefield _dèbris_,
and, wherever an available chink presents itself, men—footsore men,
stragglers, or regular working-parties. The latter are usually coloured,
and, with steel helmets balanced at every angle upon their woolly pates,
smile upon the seething activity beneath them with the simple enjoyment
of a child at its first circus.
These wagons—or camions—are of two types. There are big Thorneycroft
lorries, holding three tons and made in England, and smaller vehicles
of American design, known as “Quads.” These possess the unusual feature
of a drive upon either axle; so that if your rear wheels slip backwards
into a ditch or quagmire, your front wheels will continue to function and
will extricate you in no time. Heaven knows how these contraptions are
steered, but steered they are, and with remarkable skill.
Then there are guns—and more guns. These are mainly French seventy-fives
and hundred-and-fifty-fives, with American gun teams. Those going up are
workmanlike, but inconspicuous. They are newly painted with the usual
red, green, and yellow splashes. The fishing-nets which will be spread
above them when they get into action, intersticed with grass, leaves, and
twigs, are at present neatly furled and lashed along the barrels. The
gunners sprawl anywhere but upon their hard little iron seats. The guns
coming out look different. All are plastered with mud; some are on the
casualty list, and are being towed upon trolleys by fussy little traction
engines.
Here and there in the procession wallow British tanks. These are either
“Heavies,” weighing nearly thirty tons and carrying a crew of seven or
eight, or “Whippets,” which only require three men and can move at the
rate of twelve miles an hour.
The tank is the humourist of this unhumorous War. Its method of joining
a close-packed procession of road traffic is characteristic. It appears
suddenly out of a wood in a field beside the road, obliterates thirty
yards of a hedge, squeezes a ditch flat, and insinuates itself sideways,
with jolly _abandon_, into that part of the procession which happens
to be passing at the moment—the whole in a manner reminiscent of that
heavy-footed and determined individual who is accustomed by similar
tactics to secure for himself a good place in the queue outside a movie
pay-box. On the other hand, should you be ditched or disabled in any
way, to your own discomfort and the congestion of traffic, a tank is
always willing to swing good-humouredly out of the line, scramble across
country for a field or so, lurch heavily into the roadway again, harness
itself to a tow-rope, and extract you from your present predicament as
easily and as suddenly as a mastodon might extract a cork from a bottle.
Certainly our march gave us a comprehensive view of the ingredients of
modern warfare. American soldiers, white and black—mostly cheerful;
French refugees—all sad. Guns, limbers, camions, carts, ambulances,
tanks—all moving in an endless, tumultuous, profane stream. At
cross-roads, traffic policeman struggling manfully with an impossible
job. Automobiles everywhere—Cadillacs, Fords, and Dodges—all trying to
make openings and steal a march upon the rest of Creation. Above us, the
sky of France, weeping for her lost children. Around us, the undulating,
rain-blurred hillsides of the Argonne Forest. Beneath our feet, Mud, Mud,
Mud.
Day after day we tramped—through Toul, the northwest corner of the great
rectangle of French soil which has been an American military colony since
the summer of nineteen-seventeen; across the trench lines of the old days
of stationary warfare, where Frenchmen faced the Boches for three long
years. American troops have fought there too. Here, in what was once No
Man’s Land, stand the ruins of Seicheprey, famed as having been the scene
of the first clash between American and German troops. (It was a raid,
and we lost our first prisoners there. Well, we have plenty of Germans
now to barter for them, when the time comes—and then some!) Then on past
Montfaucon, the Crown Prince’s headquarters at the Battle of Verdun, now
an American stronghold; through miles and miles of devastated country,
with here and there a little American graveyard (to which we pay due
reverence), to Grandpré. This is a mere fragment of a village, clinging
to the face of a rock looking south, and is shelled out of recognition.
Then on, through the Bois des Loges, following the tide of victory
northward, towards Mézières and Sedan. Somewhere to our right lies
Verdun, garrisoned by American soldiers—all, that is, save the Citadel,
a wondrous Gibraltar dug into the interior of a hill, containing miles
of illuminated passageways; barracks, a bakery, an arsenal, a chapel, a
theatre. Here the French maintain their own garrison—and maybe their own
secrets. Secrets or no, it was that Citadel and that garrison which broke
the back of the German assault in the critical days of nineteen-sixteen.
Somewhere on our left marches the Army of the French General Gouraud,
keeping pace with our own in the great enveloping movement of which our
attack forms the extreme right.
* * * * *
And there we were sent into the battle. It being our first, our
impressions are somewhat confused. In theory, our own particular part
in the enterprise was a simple one. A wood lay upon our front, and we
were ordered to capture it. And we did so—all save the far edge. But
at a price. When our barrage lifted in the early dawn, and we dashed
forward to the assault which we had rehearsed so often, our consciousness
was mainly of barbed wire and machine-gun bullets. These were in unholy
alliance everywhere, and took grievous toll. Buck Stamper, the biggest
man in the Battalion, was the first one to go down. He was shot in
the legs, and another bullet passed through his heart as he struggled
forward, crippled but game, on his hands and knees. But a hundred men had
seen him die, and the gun which had knocked him out was in their hands
three minutes later. Still, formations were broken up, communication with
the rear was cut, and the brunt of the battle began to fall upon the
individual. Now it is as an individual fighter that the American soldier
excels. He has his faults. To-day attacks have to be carefully rehearsed;
battles are fought on a strict time-table. The eager young fighter is
too apt to jump off the mark before the signal is given, and overrun
his objective when he reaches it. This gets him into trouble with his
best friend, the Gunner; for under these circumstances the latter must
either forbear to fire or else risk hitting his own Infantry. But it is
a fault on the right side, and is soon corrected by painful experience.
On the other hand, it develops in its owner that most priceless quality
of the soldier, initiative. Some of the finest work in this War has
been accomplished by small bodies of troops—particularly British and
American—working forward under a young officer, or a sergeant, or very
often under no leader at all, to the capture of some vital point long
after they have lost touch with the directing force behind.
The upshot of it all was that after a week of hand-to-hand fighting and
bloody murder we cleared the tenacious Hun right out of the wood—at this
point more than a mile thick—leaving him possessed of nothing but the far
edge. We are terribly exhausted, and our losses do not bear thinking of;
but we have begged, before we are withdrawn, to be permitted to capture
that far edge and consolidate the whole position. Our prayer has been
granted. We attack to-morrow, refreshed by a lull of four days.
“And,” observed Colonel Graham to his assembled officers, “if we
Americans on the right can do our part, and swing our horn of the line
clear around through Metz and Sedan, we shall have the whole German Army
in a pocket. And then—may the Lord have mercy on them, for we will not!”