Bonsecours' command had been well timed, for up and down the line other
men bearing stretchers bounded forward. Jeb's partner in this work, a
lanky middle-westerner, called "Omaha" for love--although "John
Hastings" was stamped in his identification disk--sprang out at a
dog-trot, crossing the trench bridge and quickly getting into the plain
below as if he were an old hand at this game instead of undertaking it
now for the first time.
Jeb, following closely at his heels, had become utterly terrified. His
flesh was numb and his legs moved automatically, rather than by
conscious effort. The former mite of courage had atrophied. He felt
wretchedly alone and unprotected, as an atom of dust drifting across a
sunbeam. He wanted to clutch at something--to hold himself back--to
scream!
Half a mile to right and left the Germans were plastering No Man's Land
with a pitiless fire, but thus far the ground immediately about him
remained scarcely touched. Shells occasionally burst on the trenches
just behind, but Barrow's unit luckily was being permitted to go without
serious embarrassment. And yet Jeb knew that it was only a matter of
time before he and Hastings would receive a blasting. He shivered,
jabbering words he could not have recalled a minute later; once cursing
himself for a coward, then calling himself a liar for having said it.
There were not as many prone men on the field as he had expected to
find. To his bulging eyes which watched the first charge, men seemed to
be falling everywhere, but as a matter of fact this was not so.
They had gone quite a third of the distance across when Hastings stopped
and unrolled the stretcher, shouting:
"Here's one! Lend a hand, Jeb!"
The coolness of the voice, its utmost naturalness, gave Jeb a most
agreeable feeling, and before remembering again that men who drop in
battle are things of blood and pain, he was easing one gently over on
the brown canvas.
They started to come in, Hastings at the forward handles, he at the
rear; moving as fast as the added weight permitted, skirting shell holes
and stepping over fragments of barbed-wire. Crossing the first trench
bridge a hundred faces looked up at them, steadily, unemotionally.
Another division had been brought up after the second wave swept out,
and a few of these fellows now said quietly: "Bravo!" But their thoughts
were with the chap who lay silent on the canvas.
Reaching the top of the gravelly roadway that sloped to the
dressing-stations, burying their heels in the loose earth which rolled
along with them as they descended, the stretcher-bearers saw Barrow in a
white jacket, and several white-faced nurses expectantly waiting; for
this had been the first man brought in. Even as he was stripped and laid
upon the crude table, Jeb and Hastings were well on their way out again.
In four hours No Man's Land had been fairly well cleared of suffering.
Although Jeb was growing indifferent to the sight of blood, several
times, as a result of extreme fear, he had been actively sick. The
shells were as terrifying as ever; moreover, he and Hastings had to
penetrate farther each time in search of wounded. Their last trip took
them nearly to the scarp of blasted ground on which stood the
half-destroyed hamlet. True, there had been shells bursting within a
hundred yards of Jeb; but it so happened that he was particularly
engrossed with lifting or easing some of the wounded. Once, when a
splinter of steel cut Hastings' sleeve, the lanky westerner gave a
whistle.
"That was close," he said.
And Jeb, newly terrified by the words, looked up quickly, asking:
"Did one come by?"
"Well, if it did, it did," Hastings answered. "Cut out your chills, Jeb,
and let's get this feller in!"
But Jeb could not "cut out" the chill at once because another shell
burst while he was looking, driving him into a panic so acute that
Hastings began to swear.
Toward midday the wind fell and the heat became intense. Smoke, acrid
and at times stifling, hung in the hollows like white- and
brown-streaked palls, and the unwholesome smell of burning which infests
battlefields was sickening. Jeb's clothes were wringing wet, and each
time he panted across the first trench bridge he noted how the waiting
men under steel helmets were drenched with perspiration. One of them
called up to him:
"It's our turn next!--keep an eye open for me!"
The fellow was trying to grin, but succeeded only in making an ugly
leer. Jeb read it in a flash--the man was afraid!--and a stinging sense
of mortification came over him as he wondered if his own face had been
as tell-tale--if it were now as tell-tale!
Over on the battle front, and especially around the half-destroyed
hamlet, the Germans were contesting every foot that led to their third
line of defense, while the Allies fought with stark madness to dislodge
them. The airmen hovering above, having for the third time that day
swept the sky of combatants, saw with surprise that armies on both sides
were losing cohesion. Some units of the Allies had lost direction,
others bored their way through the German line then, finding themselves
hemmed in, fought out again; in many places were noticed small groups so
intent upon their own little conflicts that they seemed to be having no
part in the big game, at all. But these aerial observers realized that
the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and
resiliency, left the mass of wastage on the German side; for, with
strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench
warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind
which is more elastic, all things else being equal, wins the day--and,
whatever other virtues the Boche may possess, his mind can hardly be
said to expand spontaneously. At the same time, the enemy was dying
hard: fortifying at a moment's notice when forced into a corner, and
making heroic resistance with machine-guns in patches of woods, craters,
or other favorable moulding of the terrain.
When Jeb sweated in behind Hastings at one o'clock he staggered down the
road without seeing it. From lack of food, and the horrible wrenching
nausea he had suffered, as well as the terror gnawing more and more
into his soul, he was pretty well done for.
Barrow, noting this with the eye of a skilful physician, sent a nurse
for black coffee and a bowl of soup, but Jeb rebelled in disgust at the
thought of it.
"Come, now," his chief said commandingly, when the nurse returned, "shut
your eyes and drink them down, I tell you! We need you, Jeb; you mustn't
kick up sick the first day!"
We need you! The words stirred new life in him. Then came a vision of
the great Bonsecours as he had pointed toward No Man's Land and cried:
"It is those whom the good God expects us to bring in!"
He swallowed the soup and coffee, doggedly turned and followed Hastings
up the slope again. But, behind the back of his lanky partner, he was
whimpering softly. Never before had the battle scene beyond inspired him
with so much terror as now, for its ebb and flow was leaving a greater
human wreckage than the Red Cross men could handle. The wounded were
arriving at longer periods, because the stretcher-bearers were having
farther and farther to go for them; and the disturbing fact was
becoming evident that there were less stretcher-bearers than had started
out in the morning.
Before Jeb's eyes now the third division barged over the top, leaving
the front trench deserted. He saw the line hold beautifully for the
first hundred yards, then become more and more phantom-like as it
plunged deeper into the pall of smoke. He wondered dully if the fellow
who had said: "Watch for me!" had found his nerve, or was still grinning
the sickly leer of cowardice.
"That smoke ain't such a bad screen, Jeb," Hastings shouted. "Come on;
let's get busy!"
Into it again they passed; many times that afternoon they came out and
passed again into it. The last trip took them nearly to the old German
first line--since morning blasted level with the ground--before they
found a man who had not passed the point of aid. There were plenty about
them of the other kind, for machine-guns here had done frightful work.
Leading the way back, confused by sounds and smoke, Hastings lost
direction, coming within a trice of being picked up and carried by a
sudden rush of the French troops. Jeb, more insane with fear than
anger, cursed him with every oath he had ever heard, but the forward
stretcher-bearer, making allowances, went indifferently on.
They had got about halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up,
clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles
and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little
more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings,
turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed
with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load,
but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. He was obsessed
with the idea that it had been the omen of Death reaching for him; he
was gasping pitifully, ever alert for shell fire, and cringing at
detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his
feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until
Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and
a memory of the ennobling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a
new spurt; yet both soon began to lose efficiency.
They had found a wounded chap and were well on their way out, crossing
the crater-scarred stretch which had been No Man's Land that
morning--for No Man's Lands shift from day to day. They moved slowly,
and Jeb was dragging; yet in an effort to keep going he had riveted his
gaze on the shoulders of Hastings. Then, suddenly, although Hastings'
shoulders remained unchanged, his head disappeared; evaporating into
air.
For an instant it seemed to Jeb as though his eyes were playing a trick,
but the next second the lanky middle-westerner crumpled up. A warm mist
settled upon Jeb's face. With a piercing shriek of uncontrollable terror
he dropped the handles and sprang into the nearest shell hole; cowering
close under its side, pressing his mouth against the earth and moaning.