THE FIRST AMERICAN SECTOR
It was in the Luneville sector, described in the preceding chapter, that
the first American fighting men faced the Germans on the western front.
It was there that the enemy captured its first American prisoners in a
small midnight raid; it was there that we captured some prisoners of
theirs, and inflicted our first German casualties; it was there that the
first American fighting man laid down his life on the western front.
In spite of these facts, however, the occupation of those front line
posts in that sector constituted nothing more than a post-graduate
course in training under the capable direction of French instructors who
advised our officers and men in everything they did.
At the conclusion of the course, which extended over a number of weeks,
the American forces engaged in it were withdrawn from the line and
retired for a well-earned rest period and for reorganisation purposes in
areas back of the line. There they renewed equipment and prepared for
the occupation of the first all-American sector on the western front.
That sector was located in Lorraine some distance to the east of the
Luneville front. It was north and slightly west of the city of Toul. It
was on the east side of the St. Mihiel salient, then occupied by the
Germans.
The sector occupied a position in what the French called the
Pont-a-Mousson front. Our men were to occupy an eight-mile section of
the front line trenches extending from a point west of the town of
Flirey, to a point west of the ruins of the town of Seicheprey. The
position was not far from the French stronghold of Verdun to the
northwest or the German stronghold of Metz to the northeast, and was
equidistant from both.
That line changed from French blue to American khaki on the night of
January 21st. The sector became American at midnight. I watched the men
as they marched into the line. In small squads they proceeded silently
up the road toward the north, from which direction a raw wind brought
occasional sounds resembling the falling of steel plates on the wooden
floor of a long corridor.
A half moon doubly ringed by mist, made the hazy night look grey. At
intervals, phantom flashes flushed the sky. The mud of the roadway
formed a colourless paste that made marching not unlike skating on a
platter of glue.
This was their departure for the front--this particular battalion--the
first battalion of the 16th United States Infantry. I knew, and every
man in it knew, what was before them.
Each man was in for a long tour of duty in trenches knee-deep with
melted snow and mud. Each platoon commander knew the particular portion
of that battle-battered bog into which he must lead his men. Each
company commander knew the section of shell-punctured, swamp land that
was his to hold, and the battalion commander, a veteran American
soldier, was well aware of the particular perils of the position which
his one thousand or more men were going to occupy in the very jaw-joint
of a narrowing salient.
All branches of the United States military forces may take special pride
in that first battalion that went into the new American line that night.
The commander represented the U. S. Officers Reserve Corps, and the
other officers and men were from the reserves, the regulars, West Point,
the National Guard and the National Army. Moreover, the organisation
comprised men from all parts of the United States as well as men whose
parents had come from almost every race and nationality in the world.
One company alone possessed such a babble of dialects among its new
Americans, that it proudly called itself, the Foreign Legion.
For two days the battalion had rested in the mud of the semi-destroyed
village of Ansauville, several miles back of the front. A broad, shallow
stream, then at the flood, wound through and over most of the village
site. Walking anywhere near the border of the water, one pulled about
with him pounds of tenacious, black gumbo. Dogs and hogs, ducks and
horses, and men,--all were painted with nature's handiest camouflage.
Where the stream left the gaping ruins of a stone house on the edge of
the village, there was a well-kept French graveyard, clinging to the
slope of a small hill. Above the ruins of the hamlet, stood the steeple
of the old stone church, from which it was customary to ring the alarm
when the Germans sent over their shells of poison gas.
Our officers busied themselves with, unfinished supply problems. Such
matters as rubber boots for the men, duck boards for the trenches, food
for the mules, and ration containers necessary for the conveyance of hot
food to the front lines, were not permitted to interfere with the
battalion's movements. In war, there is always the alternative of doing
without or doing with makeshifts, and that particular battalion
commander, after three years of war, was the kind of a soldier who made
the best of circumstances no matter how adverse they may have been.
That commander was Major Griffiths. He was an American fighting man. His
military record began in the Philippine Insurrection, when, as a
sergeant in a Tennessee regiment of National Guard, he was mentioned in
orders for conspicuous gallantry. At the suppression of the
insurrection, he became a major in the United States Constabulary in the
Philippines. He resigned his majority in 1914, entered the Australian
forces, and was wounded with them in the bloody landing at Gallipoli. He
was invalided to England, where, upon his partial recovery, he was
promoted to major in the British forces and was sent to France in
command of a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. With them, he received
two more wounds, one at the Battle of Ypres, and another during the
fighting around Loos.
He was in an English hospital when America entered the war, but he
hurried his convalescence and obtained a transfer back to the army of
his own country. He hadn't regained as yet the full use of his right
hand, his face still retained a hospital pallor, and an X-ray photograph
of his body revealed the presence of numerous pieces of shell still
lodged there. But on that night of January 21st, he could not conceal
the pride that he felt in the honour in having been the one chosen to
command the battalion of Americans that was to take over the first
American sector in France. Major Griffiths survived those strenuous days
on the Pont-a-Mousson front, but he received a fatal wound three months
later at the head of his battalion in front of Catigny, in Picardy. He
died fighting under his own flag.
Just before daylight failed that wintry day, three poilus walked down
the road from the front and into Ansauville. Two of them were helping a
third, whose bandaged arm and shoulder explained the mission of the
party. As they passed the rolling kitchens where the Americans were
receiving their last meal before entering the trenches, there was
silence and not even an exchange of greetings or smiles.
This lack of expression only indicated the depth of feeling stirred by
the appearance of this wounded French soldier. The incident, although
comparatively trivial, seemed to arouse within our men a solemn grimness
and a more fervent determination to pay back the enemy in kind. In
silence, our men finished that last meal, which consisted of cold corned
beef, two slices of dry bread per man, and coffee.
The sight of that one wounded man did not make our boys realise more
than they already did, what was in front of them. They had already made
a forty mile march over frozen roads up to this place and had incurred
discomforts seemingly greater than a shell-shattered arm or a
bullet-fractured shoulder. After that gruelling hiking experience, it
was a pleasant prospect to look forward to a chance of venting one's
feelings on the enemy.
At the same time, no chip-on-the-shoulder cockiness marked the
disposition of these men about to take first grips with the Germans,--no
challenging bravado was revealed in the actions or statements of these
grim, serious trail-blazers of the American front, whose attitude
appeared to be one of soldierly resignation to the first martial
principle, "Orders is orders."
As the companies lined up in the village street in full marching order,
awaiting the command to move, several half-hearted attempts at
jocularity died cold. One irrepressible made a futile attempt at
frivolity by announcing that he had Cherokee blood in his veins and was
so tough he could "spit battleships." This attempted jocularity drew as
much mirth as an undertaker's final invitation to the mourners to take
the last, long look at the departed.
One bright-faced youngster tingling with the thrill of anticipation,
leaped on a gun carriage and absently whistled a shrill medley,
beginning with "Yaka-hula," and ending with "Just a Song at Twilight."
There was food for thought in the progress of his efforts from the
frivolous to the pensive, but there was little time for such thoughts.
No one even told him to shut up.
While there was still light, an aerial battle took place overhead. For
fifteen minutes, the French anti-aircraft guns banged away at three
German planes, which were audaciously sailing over our lines. The
Americans rooted like bleacherites for the guns but the home team failed
to score, and the Germans sailed serenely home. They apparently had had
time to make adequate observations.
During the entire afternoon, German sausage balloons had hung high in
the air back of the hostile line, offering additional advantages for
enemy observation. On the highroad leading from Ansauville, a
conspicuous sign _L'enemie vous voit_ informed newcomers that German
eyes were watching their movements and could interfere at any time with
a long range shell. The fact was that the Germans held high ground and
their glasses could command almost all of the terrain back of our lines.
Under this seemingly eternal espionage punctuated at intervals by heavy
shelling, several old women of the village had remained in their homes,
living above the ground on quiet days and moving their knitting to the
front yard dugout at times when gas and shell and bomb interfered. Some
of these women operated small shops in the front rooms of their damaged
homes and the Americans lined up in front of the window counters and
exchanged dirty French paper money for canned _pate de foi gras_ or jars
of mustard.
A machine gun company with mule-drawn carts led the movement from
Ansauville into the front. It was followed at fifty yard intervals by
other sections. Progress down that road was executed in small groups--it
was better to lose one whole section than an entire company.
That highroad to the front, with its border of shell-withered trees, was
revealed that night against a bluish grey horizon occasionally rimmed
with red. Against the sky, the moving groups were defined as impersonal
black blocks. Young lieutenants marched ahead of each platoon. In the
hazy light, it was difficult to distinguish them. The only difference
was that their hips seemed bulkier from the heavy sacks, field glasses,
map cases, canteens, pistol holsters and cartridge clips.
Each section, as it marched out of the village, passed under the eye of
Major Griffiths, who sat on his horse in the black shadow of a wall. A
sergeant commanding one section was coming toward him.
"Halt!" ordered the Major. "Sergeant, where is your helmet?"
"One of the men in my section is wearing it, sir," replied the Sergeant.
"Why?" snapped the Major.
"Somebody took his and he hadn't any," said the Sergeant, "so I made him
wear mine, sir."
"Get it back and wear it yourself," the Major ordered. "Nothing could
hurt the head of a man who couldn't hang on to his own helmet."
The order was obeyed, the section marched on and a bareheaded Irishman
out of hearing of the Major said, "I told the Sergeant not to make me
wear it; I don't need the damn thing."
Another section passed forward, the moonlight gleaming on the helmets
jauntily cocked over one ear and casting black shadows over the faces of
the wearers. From these shadows glowed red dots of fire.
"Drop those cigarettes," came the command from the all watchful, unseen
presence mounted on the horse in the shadow of the wall. Automatically,
the section spouted red arcs that fell to the road on either side in a
shower of sparks.
"It's a damn shame to do that." Major Griffith spoke to me standing
beside his horse. "You can't see a cigarette light fifty yards away, but
if there were no orders against smoking, the men would be lighting
matches or dumping pipes, and such flashes can be seen."
There was need for caution. The enemy was always watchful for an
interval when one organisation was relieving another on the line. That
period represented the time when an attack could cause the greatest
confusion in the ranks of the defenders. But that night our men
accomplished the relief of the French Moroccan division then in the line
without incident.
* * * * *
Two nights later, in company with a party of correspondents, I paid a
midnight visit to our men in the front line trenches of that first
American sector. With all lights out, cigarettes tabooed and the siren
silenced, our overloaded motor slushed slowly along the shell-pitted
roads, carefully skirting groups of marching men and lumbering supply
wagons that took shape suddenly out of the mist-laden road in front of
us.
Although it was not raining, moisture seemed to drip from everything,
and vapours from the ground, mixing with the fog overhead, almost
obscured the hard-working moon.
In the greyness of the night sight and smell lost their keenness, and
familiar objects assumed unnatural forms, grotesque and indistinct.
From somewhere ahead dull, muffled thumps in the mist brought memories
of spring house cleaning and the dusting out of old cushions, but it was
really the three-year-old song of the guns. Nature had censored
observation by covering the spectacle with the mantle of indefiniteness.
Still this was the big thing we had come to see--night work in and
behind the front lines of the American sector.
We approached an engineers' dump, where the phantoms of fog gradually
materialised into helmeted khaki figures that moved in mud knee-deep and
carried boxes and planks and bundles of tools. Total silence covered all
the activity and not a ray of light revealed what mysteries had been
worked here in surroundings that seemed no part of this world.
An irregular pile of rock loomed grey and sinister before us, and,
looking upward, we judged, from its gaping walls, that it was the
remains of a church steeple. It was the dominating ruin in the town of
Beaumont.
"Turn here to the left," the officer conducting our party whispered into
the ear of the driver.
The sudden execution of the command caused the officer's helmet to rasp
against that of the driver with a sound that set the cautious whispering
to naught.
"Park here in the shadow," he continued. "Make no noise; show no light.
They dropped shells here ten minutes ago. Gentlemen, this is regimental
headquarters. Follow me."
In a well buttressed cellar, surmounted by a pile of ruins, we found the
colonel sitting at a wooden table in front of a grandfather's clock of
scratched mahogany. He called the roll--five special correspondents,
Captain Chandler, American press officer, with a goatee and fur coat to
match; Captain Vielcastel, a French press officer, who is a marquis and
speaks English, and a lieutenant from brigade headquarters, who already
had been named "Whispering Willie."
The colonel offered sticks to those with the cane habit. With two
runners in the lead, we started down what had been the main street of
the ruined village.
"I can't understand the dropping of that shell over here to-night," the
colonel said. "When we relieved the French, there had been a
long-standing agreement against such discourtesy. It's hard to believe
the Boche would make a scrap of paper out of that agreement. They must
have had a new gunner on the piece. We sent back two shells into their
regimental headquarters. They have been quiet since."
Ten minutes' walk through the mud, and the colonel stopped to announce:
"Within a hundred yards of you, a number of men are working. Can you
hear 'em?"
No one could, so he showed us a long line of sweating Americans
stretching off somewhere into the fog. Their job was more of the endless
trench digging and improving behind the lines. While one party swung
pick and spade in the trenches, relief parties slept on the ground
nearby. The colonel explained that these parties arrived after dark,
worked all night, and then carefully camouflaged all evidences of new
earth and departed before daylight, leaving no trace of their night's
work to be discovered by prying airman. Often the work was carried on
under an intermittent shelling, but that night only two shells had
landed near them.
An American-manned field gun shattered the silence, so close to us that
we could feel its breath and had a greater respect for its bite. The
proximity of the gun had not even been guessed by any of our party. A
yellow stab of flame seemed to burn the mist through which the shell
screeched on its way toward Germany.
Correspondent Junius Woods, who was wearing an oversized pair of hip
rubber boots, immediately strapped the tops to his belt.
"I am taking no chance," he said; "I almost jumped out of them that
time. They ought to send men out with a red flag before they pull off a
blast like that."
The colonel then left us and with the whispering lieutenant and runners
in advance, we continued toward the front.
"Walk in parties of two," was the order of the soft-toned subaltern.
"Each party keep ten yards apart. Don't smoke. Don't talk. This road is
reached by their field pieces. They also cover it with indirect machine
gun fire. They sniped the brigade commander right along here this
morning. He had to get down into the mud. I can afford to lose some of
you, but not the entire party. If anything comes over, you are to jump
into the communicating trenches on the right side of the road."
His instructions were obeyed and it was almost with relief that, ten
minutes later, we followed him down the slippery side of the muddy bank
and landed in front of a dugout.
In the long, narrow, low-ceilinged shelter which completely tunnelled
the road at a depth of twenty feet, two twenty-year-old Americans were
hugging a brazier filled with charcoal. In this dugout was housed a
group from a machine gun battalion, some of whose members were snoring
in a double tier of bunks on the side.
Deep trenches at the other end of the dugout led to the gun pits, where
this new arm of the service operated at ranges of two miles. These
special squads fired over the heads of those in front of them or over
the contours of the ground and put down a leaden barrage on the front
line of the Germans. The firing not only was indirect but was without
correction from the rectifying observation, of which the artillery had
the benefit by watching the burst of their missiles.
Regaining the road, we walked on through the ruins on the edge of the
village of Seicheprey, where our way led through a drunken colony of
leaning walls and brick piles.
Here was the battalion headquarters, located underneath the old stones
of a barn which was topped by the barest skeleton of a roof. What had
been the first floor of the structure had been weighted down heavily
with railroad iron and concrete to form the roof of the commander's
dugout. The sides of the decrepit structure bulged outward and were
prevented from bursting by timber props radiating on all sides like the
legs of a centipede. A mule team stood in front of the dugout.
"What's that?" the whispering lieutenant inquired in hushed tones from a
soldier in the road, as he pointed over the mules to the battalion
headquarters.
"What's what?" the soldier replied without respect.
The obscurity of night is a great reducer of ranks. In the mist officer
and man look alike.
"Why, that?" repeated "Whispering Willie" in lower, but angrier tones.
"What's that there?" he reiterated, pointing at the mules.
"Can't you see it's mules?" replied the man in an immoderate tone of
voice, betraying annoyance.
We were spared what followed. The lieutenant undoubtedly confirmed his
rank, and the man undoubtedly proffered unto him the respect withheld by
mistake. When "Whispering Willie" joined us several minutes later in the
dugout, his helmet rode on the back of his head, but his dignity was on
straight.
The Battalion Commander, Major Griffith, was so glad to see us that he
sent for another bottle of the murky grey water that came from a well on
one side of a well populated graveyard not fifty yards from his post.
"A good night," he said; "haven't seen it so quiet in three years. We
have inter-battalion relief on. Some new companies are taking over the
lines. Some of them are new to the front trenches and I'm going out with
you and put them up on their toes. Wait till I report in."
He rang the field telephone on the wall and waited for an answer. An oil
lamp hung from a low ceiling over the map table. In the hot, smoky air
we quietly held our places while the connection was made.
"Hello," the Major said, "operator, connect me with Milwaukee." Another
wait----
"Hello, Milwaukee, this is Larson. I'm talking from Hamburg. I'm leaving
this post with a deck of cards and a runner. If you want me you can get
me at Coney Island or Hinky Dink's. Wurtzburger will sit in here."
"Some code, Major," Lincoln Eyre, correspondent, said. "What does a pack
of cards indicate?"
[Illustration: GRAVE OF FIRST AMERICAN KILLED IN FRANCE
Translation: Here Lie the First Soldiers of the Great Republic of the
United States of America, Fallen on French Soil for Justice and for
Liberty, November 3rd, 1917]
"Why, anybody who comes out here when he doesn't have to is a funny
card," the Major replied, "and it looks as if I have a pack of them
to-night. Fritz gets quite a few things that go over our wires and we
get lots of his. All are tapped by induction.
"Sometimes the stuff we get is important and sometimes it isn't. Our
wire tapping report last night carried a passage something like
this:--The German operator at one post speaking to the operator at
another said:
"'Hello, Herman, where did that last shell drop?'
"Second operator replied, 'It killed two men in a ration party in a
communicating trench and spilt all the soup. No hot food for you
to-night, Rudolph.'
"Herman replying: 'That's all right. We have got some beer here.'
"Then there was a confusion of sounds and a German was heard talking to
some one in his dugout. He said:
"'Hurry, here comes the lieutenant! Hide the can!'
"That's the way it goes," added the Major, "but if we heard that the
society editor of the _Fliegende Blaetter_ and half a dozen pencil
strafers were touring the German front line, we'd send 'em over
something that would start 'em humming a hymn of hate. If they knew I
was joy riding a party of correspondents around the diggin's to-night,
they might give you something to write about and cost me a platoon or
two. You're not worth it. Come on."
Our party now numbered nine and we pushed off, stumbling through uneven
lanes in the centre of dimly lit ruins. According to orders, we carried
gas masks in a handy position.
This sector had a nasty reputation when it comes to that sample of
Teutonic culture. Fritz's poison shells dropped almost noiselessly and,
without a report, broke open, liberating to enormous expansion the
inclosed gases. These spread in all directions, and, owing to the
lowness and dampness of the terrain, the poison clouds were
imperceptible both to sight or smell. They clung close to the ground to
claim unsuspecting victims.
"How are we to know if we are breathing gas or not?" asked the
Philadelphia correspondent, Mr. Henri Bazin.
"That's just what you DON'T know," replied the Major.
"Then when will we know it is time to adjust our masks?" Bazin
persisted.
"When you see some one fall who has breathed it," the Major said.
"But suppose we breathe it first?"
"Then you won't need a mask," the Major replied, "You see, it's quite
simple."
"Halt!" The sharp command, coming sternly but not too loud from
somewhere in the adjacent mist, brought the party to a standstill in the
open on the edge of the village. We remained notionless while the Major
advanced upon command from the unseen. He rejoined us in several minutes
with the remark that the challenge had come from one of his old men, and
he only hoped the new companies taking over the line that night were as
much on their jobs.
"Relief night always is trying," the Major explained. "Fritz always
likes to jump the newcomers before they get the lay of the land. He
tried it on the last relief, but we burnt him."
While talking the Major was leading the way through the first trench I
had ever seen above the surface of the ground. The bottom of the trench
was not only on a level with the surrounding terrain, but in some places
it was even higher. Its walls, which rose almost to the height of a
man's head, were made of large wicker woven cylinders filled with earth
and stones.
Our guide informed us that the land which we were traversing was so low
that any trench dug in the ground would simply be a ditch brimful of
undrainable water, so that, inasmuch as this position was in the first
line system, walls had been built on either side of the path to protect
passers-by from shell fragments and indirect machine gun fire. We
observed one large break where a shell had entered during the evening.
Farther on, this communicating passage, which was more corridor than
trench, reached higher ground and descended into the earth. We reeled
through its zig-zag course, staggering from one slanting corner to
another.
The sides were fairly well retained by French wicker work, but every
eighth or tenth duck board was missing, making it necessary for trench
travellers to step knee-deep in cold water or to jump the gap.
Correspondent Eyre, who was wearing shoes and puttees, abhorred these
breaks.
We passed the Major's post of command, which he used during intense
action, and some distance on, entered the front line. With the Major
leading, we walked up to a place where two Americans were standing on a
firing step with their rifles extended across the parapet. They were
silently peering into the grey mist over No Man's Land. One of them
looked around as we approached. Apparently he recognised the Major's
cane as a symbol of rank. He came to attention.
"Well," the Major said, "is this the way you let us walk up on you? Why
don't you challenge me?"
"I saw you was an officer, sir," the man replied.
"Now, you are absolutely sure I am YOUR officer?" the Major said slowly
and coldly, with emphasis on the word "your." "Suppose I tell you I am a
German officer and these men behind me are Germans. How do you know?"
With a quick movement the American brought his rifle forward to the
challenge, his right hand slapping the wooden butt with an audible
whack.
"Advance one, and give the countersign," he said with a changed voice
and manner and the Major, moving to within whispering distance, breathed
the word over the man's extended bayonet. Upon hearing it, the soldier
lowered his gun and stood at attention.
It was difficult to figure whether his relief over the scare was greater
than his fears of the censure he knew was coming.
"Next time anybody gets that close to you without being challenged," the
Major said, "don't be surprised if it is a German. That's the way they
do it. They don't march in singing 'Deutschland Ueber Alles.'
"If you see them first, you might live through the war. If they see you
first, we will have wasted a lot of Liberty bonds and effort trying to
make a soldier out of you. Now, remember, watch yourself."
We pushed on encountering longer patches of trench where duck boards
were entirely missing and where the wading sometimes was knee-deep. In
some places, either the pounding of shells or the thawing out of the
ground had pushed in the revetments, appreciably narrowing the way and
making progress more difficult. Arriving at an unmanned firing step
large enough to accommodate the party, we mounted and took a first look
over the top.
Moonlight now was stronger through the mist which hung fold over fold
over the forbidden land between the opposing battle lines. At intervals
nervous machine guns chattered their ghoulish gibberish or tut-tut-ted
away chidingly like finicky spinsters. Their intermittent sputtering to
the right and left of us was unenlightening. We couldn't tell whether
they were speaking German or English. Occasional bullets whining
somewhere through that wet air gave forth sounds resembling the ripping
of linen sheets.
Artillery fire was the exception during the entire night but when a
shell did trace its unseen arc through the mist mantle, its echoes gave
it the sound of a street car grinding through an under-river tunnel or
the tube reverberations of a departing subway train.
We were two hundred yards from the German front lines. Between their
trenches and ours, at this point, was low land, so boggy as to be almost
impassable. The opposing lines hugged the tops of two small ridges.
Fifty yards in front was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The
Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost
seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he
had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without a
remark from us.
The Major appeared to be itching for action and he got into official
swing a hundred yards farther on, where a turn in the trench revealed to
us the muffled figures of two young Americans, comfortably seated on
grenade boxes on the firing step.
From their easy positions they could look over the top and watch all
approaches without rising. Each one had a blanket wrapped about his legs
and feet. They looked the picture of ease. Without moving, one, with his
rifle across his lap, challenged the Major, advanced him, and received
the countersign. We followed the Major in time to hear his first
remark:
"Didn't they get the rocking chairs out here yet?" he said with the
provoked air that customarily accompanies any condemnation of the
quartermaster department.
"No, sir," replied the seated sentry. "They didn't get here. The men we
relieved said that they never got anything out here."
"Nor the footstools?" the Major continued, this time with an
unmistakable tone.
The man didn't answer.
"Do you two think you are taking moon baths on the Riviera?" the Major
asked sternly. "You are less than two hundred yards from the Germans.
You are all wrapped up like Egyptian mummies. Somebody could lean over
the top and snake off your head with a trench knife before you could get
your feet loose. Take those blankets off your feet and stand up."
The men arose with alacrity, shedding the blankets and removing the
grenade box chairs. The Major continued:
"You know you are not sitting in a club window in Fifth Avenue and
watching the girls go by. You're not looking for chickens out there.
There's a hawk over there and sometimes he carries off precious little
lambs. Now, the next time anybody steps around the corner of that
trench, you be on your feet with your bayonet and gun ready to mix
things."
The lambs saluted as the Major moved off with a train of followers who,
by this time, were beginning to feel that these trenches held other
lambs, only they carried notebooks instead of cartridge belts.
Stopping in front of a dugout, the Major gathered us about to hear the
conversation that was going on within. Through the cracks of the door,
we looked down a flight of steep stairs, dug deep into this battlefield
graveyard. There were lights in the chamber below and the sound of
voices came up to us. One voice was singing softly.
"Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears,
The infantry, the infantry, they don't get any beers,
The cavalry, the artillery, and the lousy engineers,
They couldn't lick the infantry in a hundred million years."
"I got a brother in the artillery," came another voice, "but I am ready
to disown him. They talk a lot about this counter battery work, but it's
all bunk. A battery in position has nice deep dugouts and hot chow all
the time. They gets up about 9 o'clock in the morning and shaves up all
nice for the day.
"'Bout 10 o'clock the captain says, 'I guess we will drop a few shells
on that German battery on the other side of the hill.' So they pops off
forty or fifty rounds in that general direction and don't hit anything
'cause the German battery immediately roots down into its nice, deep
dugouts. As soon as our battery lays off and gets back into its holes,
the German battery comes out and pops back forty or fifty at 'em and, of
course, don't hurt them neither.
"Then it is time for lunch, and while both of these here batteries is
eating, they get so sore about not having hit each other during the
morning, that they just call off counter battery work for the day and
turn their guns on the front lines and blow hell out of the infantry. I
haven't got any use for an artilleryman. I'm beginning to think all of
them Germans and Allies are alike and has an agreement against the
doughboys."
The Major interrupted by rapping sharply on the door.
"Come in," was the polite and innocent invitation guilelessly spoken
from below. The Major had his helmet on, so he couldn't tear his hair.
"Come up here, you idiots, every one of you."
The Major directed his voice down into the hole in an unmistakable and
official tone. There was a scurrying of feet and four men emerged
carrying their guns. They were lined up against the trench wall.
"At midnight," the Major began, "in your dugout in the front line forty
yards from the Germans, with no sentry at the door, you hear a knock on
the door and you shout, 'Come in.' I commend your politeness, and I know
that's what your mothers taught you to say when visitors come, but this
isn't any tea fight out here. One German could have wiggled over the top
here and stood in this doorway and captured all four of you
single-handed, or he could have rolled a couple of bombs down that hole
and blown all of you to smithereens. What's your aim in life--hard
labour in a German prison camp or a nice little wooden cross out here
four thousand miles from Punkinville? Why wasn't there any sentry at
that door?"
The question remained unanswered but the incident had its effect on the
quartet. Without orders, all four decided to spend the remainder of the
night on the firing step with their eyes glued on the enemy's line. They
simply hadn't realised they were really in the war. The Major knew this,
but made a mental reservation of which the commander of this special
platoon got full benefit before the night was over.
The front line from here onward followed a small ridge running generally
east and west, but now bearing slightly to the northward. We were told
the German line ran in the same general direction, but at this point
bore to the southward.
The opposing lines in the direction of our course were converging and we
were approaching the place where they were the closest in the sector. If
German listening posts heard the progress of our party through the line,
only a telephone call back to the artillery was necessary to plant a
shell among us, as every point on the system was registered.
As we silently considered various eventualities immaterial to the
prosecution of the war but not without personal concern, our progress
was brought to a sudden standstill.
"Huh-huh-halt!" came a drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer,
weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted
in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot
was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for a thrust.
"Huh-huh-huh-halt!" came the nervous, whispering command again, although
we had been motionless since the first whisper.
We heard a click as the safety catch on the man's rifle lock was thrown
off and the weapon made ready to discharge. The Major was watching the
nervous hand that rested none too steadily on the trigger stop. He
stepped to one side, but the muzzle of the gun followed him.
"Huh-huh-huh-halt! I tuh-tuh-tell you."
This time the whisper vibrated with nervous tension and there was no
mistaking the state of mind of the sentry.
"Take it easy," replied the Major with attempted calm. "I'm waiting for
you to challenge me. Don't get excited. This is the commanding
officer."
"What's the countersign?" came from the voice in a hard strain.
"Troy," the Major said, and the word seemed to bring worlds of
reassurance to the rifleman, who sighed with relief, but forgot to move
his rifle until the Major said:
"Will you please take that gun off me and put the safety back in?"
The nervous sentry moved the gun six inches to the right and we
correspondents, standing in back of the Major, looked into something
that seemed as big as the La Salle street tunnel. I jumped out of range
behind the Major. Eyre plunged knee-deep into water out of range, and
Woods with the rubber boots started to go over the top.
The click of the replaced safety lock sounded unusually like the snap of
a trigger, but no report followed and three hearts resumed their
beating.
"There is no occasion to get excited," the Major said to the young
soldier in a fatherly tone. "I'm glad to see you are wide-awake and on
the job. Don't feel any fears for your job and just remember that with
that gun and bayonet in your hands you are better than any man who turns
that trench corner or crosses out there. You've got the advantage of
him, and besides that you are a better man than he is."
The sentry, now smiling, saluted the Major as the latter conducted the
party quietly around the trench corner and into a sap leading directly
out into No Man's Land. Twice the trench passed under broad belts of
barbed wire, which we were cautioned to avoid with our helmets, because
any sound was undesirable for obvious reasons.
After several minutes of this cautious advance, we reached a small
listening post that marked the closest point in the sector to the German
line. Several silent sentries were crouching on the edge of the pit.
Gunny sacks covered the hole and screened it in front and above. We
remained silent while the Major in the lowest whisper spoke with a
corporal and learned that except for two or three occasions, when the
watchers thought they heard sounds near our wire, the night had been
calm.
We departed as silently as we came. The German line from a distance of
forty yards looked no different from its appearance at a greater
distance, but since it was closer, it was carried with a constant tingle
of anticipation.
Into another communicating trench and through better walled
fortifications of splintered forest, the Major led us to a place where
the recent shelling had changed twenty feet of trench into a gaping
gulley almost without sides and waist-deep in water. A working detail
was endeavouring to repair the damage. In parties of two, we left the
trench and crossed an open space on the level. The forty steps we
covered across that forbidden ground were like stolen fruit. Such
rapture! Bazin, who was seeking a title for a book, pulled "Eureka!"
"Over the top armed with a pencil," he said. "Not bad, eh?"
Back in Seicheprey, just before the Major left us for our long trip back
to quarters, he led the way to the entrance of a cemetery, well kept in
the midst of surrounding chaos. Graves of French dead ranged row upon
row.
"I just wanted to show you some of the fellows that held this line until
we took it over," he said simply. "Our own boys that we've lost since
we've been here, are buried down in the next village."
We silently saluted the spot as we passed it thirty minutes later.