The road taken by this battalion as it followed other battalions is
something less than a mile long in its journey across a heavily-wooded
plain. It is greatly changed now,--in fact it was metamorphosed in two
days; but at that time it was a mere track through dense shrubbery,
from which rose great dignified arching trees. It was, in fact, a path
through a jungle.
The battalion had no sooner left the battery in rear when bullets began
to drive overhead. They made several different sounds, but as these
were mainly high shots it was usual for them to make the faint note of
a vibrant string, touched elusively, half-dreamily.
The military balloon, a fat, wavering, yellow thing, was leading the
advance like some new conception of war-god. Its bloated mass shone
above the trees, and served incidentally to indicate to the men at the
rear that comrades were in advance. The track itself exhibited for all
its visible length a closely-knit procession of soldiers in blue with
breasts crossed with white shelter-tents. The first ominous order of
battle came down the line. "Use the cut-off. Don't use the magazine
until you're ordered." Non-commissioned officers repeated the command
gruffly. A sound of clicking locks rattled along the columns. All men
knew that the time had come.
The front had burst out with a roar like a brush-fire. The balloon was
dying, dying a gigantic and public death before the eyes of two armies.
It quivered, sank, faded into the trees amid the flurry of a battle
that was suddenly and tremendously like a storm.
The American battery thundered behind the men with a shock that seemed
likely to tear the backs of their heads off. The Spanish shrapnel fled
on a line to their left, swirling and swishing in supernatural
velocity. The noise of the rifle bullets broke in their faces like the
noise of so many lamp-chimneys or sped overhead in swift cruel
spitting. And at the front the battle-sound, as if it were simply
music, was beginning to swell and swell until the volleys rolled like a
surf.
The officers shouted hoarsely, "Come on, men! Hurry up, boys! Come on
now! Hurry up!" The soldiers, running heavily in their accoutrements,
dashed forward. A baggage guard was swiftly detailed; the men tore
their rolls from their shoulders as if the things were afire. The
battalion, stripped for action, again dashed forward.
"Come on, men! Come on!" To them the battle was as yet merely a road
through the woods crowded with troops, who lowered their heads
anxiously as the bullets fled high. But a moment later the column
wheeled abruptly to the left and entered a field of tall green grass.
The line scattered to a skirmish formation. In front was a series of
knolls treed sparsely like orchards; and although no enemy was visible,
these knolls were all popping and spitting with rifle-fire. In some
places there were to be seen long grey lines of dirt, intrenchments.
The American shells were kicking up reddish clouds of dust from the
brow of one of the knolls, where stood a pagoda-like house. It was not
much like a battle with men; it was a battle with a bit of charming
scenery, enigmatically potent for death.
Nolan knew that Martin had suddenly fallen. "What----" he began.
"They've hit me," said Martin.
"Jesus!" said Nolan.
Martin lay on the ground, clutching his left forearm just below the
elbow with all the strength of his right hand. His lips were pursed
ruefully. He did not seem to know what to do. He continued to stare at
his arm.
Then suddenly the bullets drove at them low and hard. The men flung
themselves face downward in the grass. Nolan lost all thought of his
friend. Oddly enough, he felt somewhat like a man hiding under a bed,
and he was just as sure that he could not raise his head high without
being shot as a man hiding under a bed is sure that he cannot raise his
head without bumping it.
A lieutenant was seated in the grass just behind him. He was in the
careless and yet rigid pose of a man balancing a loaded plate on his
knee at a picnic. He was talking in soothing paternal tones.
"Now, don't get rattled. We're all right here. Just as safe as being in
church.... They're all going high. Don't mind them.... Don't mind
them.... They're all going high. We've got them rattled and they can't
shoot straight. Don't mind them."
The sun burned down steadily from a pale blue sky upon the crackling
woods and knolls and fields. From the roar of musketry it might have
been that the celestial heat was frying this part of the world.
Nolan snuggled close to the grass. He watched a grey line of
intrenchments, above which floated the veriest gossamer of smoke. A
flag lolled on a staff behind it. The men in the trench volleyed
whenever an American shell exploded near them. It was some kind of
infantile defiance. Frequently a bullet came from the woods directly
behind Nolan and his comrades. They thought at the time that these
bullets were from the rifle of some incompetent soldier of their own
side.
There was no cheering. The men would have looked about them, wondering
where was the army, if it were not that the crash of the fighting for
the distance of a mile denoted plainly enough where was the army.
Officially, the battalion had not yet fired a shot; there had been
merely some irresponsible popping by men on the extreme left flank. But
it was known that the lieutenant-colonel who had been in command was
dead--shot through the heart--and that the captains were thinned down
to two. At the rear went on a long tragedy, in which men, bent and
hasty, hurried to shelter with other men, helpless, dazed, and bloody.
Nolan knew of it all from the hoarse and affrighted voices which he
heard as he lay flattened in the grass. There came to him a sense of
exultation. Here, then, was one of those dread and lurid situations,
which in a nation's history stand out in crimson letters, becoming a
tale of blood to stir generation after generation. And he was in it,
and unharmed. If he lived through the battle, he would be a hero of the
desperate fight at ----; and here he wondered for a second what fate
would be pleased to bestow as a name for this battle.
But it is quite sure that hardly another man in the battalion was
engaged in any thoughts concerning the historic. On the contrary, they
deemed it ill that they were being badly cut up on a most unimportant
occasion. It would have benefited the conduct of whoever were weak if
they had known that they were engaged in a battle that would be famous
for ever.