Coco wondered why they had to call on _him_; but, well, it had to be
done, his duty, and he did it. With a man on either side of him he
walked forward gingerly through a field where cows were grazing, nearer
and nearer that horrible wood. He didn’t dare look at the ground; as
he stumbled on his eyes never left that wood, so deathly still and
mysterious. _Were_ there Germans hidden in those trees? It was his
duty to find out. Bracques and Lemaitre didn’t falter; so Coco didn’t
falter. He kept right on, nearer and nearer. His one idea was the
importance of first seeing the enemy.
Then, suddenly, he heard a high, sharp whistling through the air, and
the bullet spattered the earth viciously in front of him. A report
cracked lazily out from the trees. Another whistle, another, and the
pattering grew nearer. Coco dropped flat on the ground, and crawled
cautiously up to a big rock and looked over the top, watching. Still
nothing was visible. The balls came faster now; but he crawled warily
forward, dragging himself along the ground a little further.
Lemaitre yelled, “Come on back! we’ve drawn their fire—that’s enough,”
and Coco, with his heart thumping, was glad enough to return, running
for all he was worth till he had reached his company. The men were
fretful and restless with excitement, nervous, exclamatory. With a
high, snoring drone, a German shell came driving through the air—a boom
from the woods—then a sudden, terrifying crash as of thunder let loose
as it burst in the rear. Coco turned to see a volcano of black smoke
and earth behind him. “_Lie down!_” shouted the officers, and the men
only too willingly dropped flat in the road. “At first,” said Coco,
“the men lay looking up into the air trying to see the shells—imagining
that they really could! But when the things dropped closer, they began
to dodge—as if one could escape them _that_ way!” More shells came,
and more, buzzing through the air in a screeching crescendo, bursting
with appalling smashes nearer and nearer the line. Then a whistle blew.
_Forward!_ All along the front men jumped up, ran ahead, dropped, then
rose and ran further in a long, irregular skirmish line, toward that
vicious wood. As they advanced, the cannonading burst into a double,
triple fury, and the harsh barking of machine guns began—and never once
stopped. A hundred yards from the trees the whistle blew again to
halt, and then the din grew unbearable, a crashing thunder with shells
bursting here, there, in front, behind, in continual explosion. Swept
by that murderous tornado, they had to lie down and wait. And wait. And
wait. And wait....
A scream of agony! Coco saw on his left a geyser of débris—clods of
earth, stones, dust, and smoke, and two men thrown bodily upward.
Another crash—_nearer_—he saw men’s heads and torn-off limbs flying
past him. Coco himself, when he rose on one knee to fire (for he was
emptying his rifle madly into the wood now), was thrown down again
and again by the concussion of the air. He saw sudden upheavals
appear—dirt, maimed bodies, rocks, knapsacks, rifles, thrown every
way—and a hole would be left big enough for half a dozen men to take
refuge in. Once he himself was buried up to his waist with flying
dirt, his eyes were filled with dust and he could hardly breathe—the
noxious fumes of the lyddite choked him. And always in his ears the
incessant crash, bang, crash of the devastating, bursting shells
till he couldn’t think. “_Lie down! Lie down!_” the officers shouted
continually, but the men were now frenzied with the slaughter; they
were on their knees, on their feet, shooting insanely into that secret,
hellish wood, screaming curses.
And, all the time, where was the enemy? Nobody knew. Oh, if it had
only come to a reckless charge against no matter what force, it would
at least have been a chance for revenge; they would have gone forward
like mad dogs. But instead, they had to wait—wait—wait to be killed!
Coco saw his friends wounded one by one. Coco said: “Each man when he
was hit would throw his arms up over his head—always, it was that same
gesture—and then he would fall, bleeding.”