THE NIGHT OUR GUNS CUT LOOSE
As soon as our forces had made themselves at home in the Toul sector, it
was inevitable that belligerent activity would increase and this, in
spite of the issuance of strict orders that there should be no
development of the normal daily fire. Our men could not entirely resist
the temptation to start something.
As was to be expected, the Germans soon began to suspect that they were
faced by different troops from the ones who had been confronting them.
The enemy set out to verify his suspicions. He made his first raid on
the American line.
It was in a dense mist on the morning of January 30th that the Germans
lowered a terrific barrage on one of our advance listening posts and
then rushed the position with a raiding party outnumbering the
defendants ten to one.
Two Americans held that post--five more succeeded in making their way
through the storm of falling shells and in coming to the assistance of
the first two. That made seven Americans in the fight. When the fighting
ceased, every one of the seven had been accounted for in the three
items, dead, wounded or captured.
That little handful of Americans, fought, died or were wounded in the
positions which they had been ordered to hold. Although the engagement
was an extremely minor one, it being the first of its kind on the
American sector, it was sufficient to give the enemy some idea of the
determination and fighting qualities of the individual American
soldier. Their comrades were proud of them, and were inclined to
consider the exploit, "Alamo stuff."
Two of the defenders were killed, four were wounded, and one was
captured. The wounded men reported that the captured American continued
to fight even after being severely wounded. He was the last to remain on
his feet and when a bomb blew his rifle from his hand and injured his
arm, he succumbed to superior numbers and was carried off by his
captors.
After the hurried sortie, the Germans beat a hasty retreat so that the
position was reoccupied immediately by another American detail.
The "Alamo" seven had not been taken by surprise. Through a downpour of
rather badly placed shells, they held their position on the firing step
and worked both their rifles and machine guns against the raiding party,
which they could not see, but knew would be advancing behind the curtain
of fire. Hundreds of empty cartridges and a broken American bayonet
constituted impartial testimony to the fierceness of the fighting. After
the first rush, in which the defenders accounted for a number of
Germans, the fighting began at close quarters, the enemy peppering the
listening post with hand-grenades.
In the meantime the German barrage had been lifted and lengthened until
it was lowered again between the "Alamo" seven and their comrades in the
rear.
There were calls to surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became
hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the
hope that assistance soon would arrive from the American artillery.
But the Germans had planned the raid well. Their first barrage cut all
telephone wires leading back from our front lines and the signal rocket
which one of the men in the listening post had fired into the air, had
been smothered in the dense mist. That rocket had called for a
defensive barrage from American artillery and when no answer came to it,
a second one was fired, but that also was snuffed out by the fog.
The net result of the raid was that the Germans had captured one of our
wounded men and had thereby identified the organisation opposing them as
the First Regular Division of the United States Army, composed of the
16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Regular U. S. Infantry Regiments and the 5th,
6th and 7th Regular U. S. Army Field Artillery. The division was under
the command of Major General Robert Lee Bullard.
In the days and weeks that followed, the daily exchange of shells on the
sector increased to two and three times the number it had been before
our men arrived there. There were nightly patrols in No Man's Land and
several instances where these patrols met in the dark and engaged one
another with casualties on both sides.
One night a little over a month later--the early morning of March 4th,
to be exact--it was my privilege to witness from an exceptional vantage
point, the first planned and concentrated American artillery action
against the enemy. The German lines selected for this sudden downpour of
shell, comprised two small salients jutting out from the enemy's
positions in the vicinity of the ruined village of Lahayville, in the
same sector.
In company with an orderly who had been despatched as my guide, I
started from an artillery battalion headquarters shortly before
midnight, and together we made our way up the dark muddy road that led
through the dense Bois de la Reine to the battery positions. Half an
hour's walk and O'Neil, the guide, led me off the road into a darker
tunnel of overlaced boughs where we stumbled along on the ties of a
narrow gauge railroad that conveyed heavy shells from the road to the
guns. We passed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a huge
_abri_ built entirely above ground.
Its walls and roof must have been between five and seven feet thick and
were made from layers of logs, sandbags, railroad iron and slabs of
concrete reinforced with steel. It looked impenetrable.
"Battery commander's headquarters," O'Neil said to me as we entered a
small hot room lighted by two oil lamps and a candle. Three officers, at
two large map tables, were working on sheets of figures. Two wooden
bunks, one above the other, and two posts supporting the low ceiling
completed the meagre furnishings of the room. A young officer looked up
from his work, O'Neil saluted, and addressed him.
"The Major sent me up with this correspondent. He said you could let him
go wherever he could see the fun and that you are not responsible for
his safety." O'Neil caught the captain's smile at the closing remark and
withdrew. The captain showed me the map.
"Here we are," he said, indicating a spot with his finger, "and here's
what we are aiming at to-night. There are two places you can stay to see
the fun. You can stay in this shelter and hear the sound of it, or you
can go up a little further front to this point, and mount the platform
in our observation tree. In this _abri_ you are safe from splinters and
shrapnel but a direct hit would wipe us out. In the tree you are exposed
to direct hits and splinters from nearby bursts but at least you can see
the whole show. It's the highest point around here and overlooks the
whole sector."
I sensed that the captain expected a busy evening and looked forward
with no joy to possible interference from a questioning visitor, so I
chose the tree.
"All right," he said, "you've got helmet and gas masks, I see. Now how's
your watch? Take the right time off mine. We have just synchronised ours
with headquarters. Zero is one o'clock. You had better start now."
He called for an orderly with a German name, and the two of us left.
Before I was out of the room, the captain had returned to his
mathematics and was figuring out the latest range variations and making
allowances for latest developments in wind, temperature and barometer.
The orderly with the German name and I plunged again into the trees and
brought up shortly on the edge of a group of men who were standing in
the dark near a large tree trunk. I could hear several other men and
some stamping horses off to one side.
The party at the foot of the tree was composed of observers, signal
linemen and runners. All of them were enlisted men. I inquired who were
to be my comrades in the tree top and three presented themselves. One
said his name was Pat Guahn, the second gave his as Peter Griffin and
the third acknowledged Mike Stanton. I introduced myself and Griffin
said, "I see we are all from the same part of Italy."
At twenty minutes to one, we started up the tree, mounting by rudely
constructed ladders that led from one to the other of the four crudely
fashioned platforms. We reached the top breathless and with no false
impressions about the stability of our swaying perch. The tree seemed to
be the tallest in the forest and nothing interfered with our forward
view. The platform was a bit shaky and Guahn put my thoughts to words
and music by softly singing--
"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top,
When the shell comes the runners all flop,
When the shell busts, good-bye to our station,
We're up in a tree, bound for damnation."
The compass gives us north and we locate in the forward darkness an
approximate sweep of the front lines. Guahn is looking for the flash of
a certain German gun and it will be his duty to keep his eyes trained
through the fork of a certain marked twig within arm's reach.
"If she speaks, we want to know it," Guahn says; "I can see her from
here when she flashes and there's another man who can see her from
another place. You see we get an intersection of angles on her and then
we know where she is just as though she had sent her address. Two
minutes later we drop a card on her and keep her warm."
"Is that that gun from Russia we heard about?" Griffin asks.
"No," answers Guahn, "we are not looking for her from that station.
Besides, she isn't Russian. She was made by the British, used by the
Russians, captured by the Germans and in turn is used by them against
Americans. We have found pieces of her shell and they all have an
English trade mark on them. She fires big eight inch stuff."
Griffin is watching in another direction for another flash and Stanton
is on the lookout for signal flares and the flash of a signal light
projector which might be used in case the telephone communication is
disturbed by enemy fire. It is then that the runners at the base of the
tree must carry the message back by horse.
Only an occasional thump is heard forward in the darkness. Now and then
machine guns chatter insanely as they tuck a seam in the night. At
infrequent intervals, a star shell curves upward, bursts, suspends its
silent whiteness in mid-air, and dies.
In our tree top all seems quiet and so is the night. There is no moon
and only a few stars are out. A penetrating dampness takes the place of
cold and there is that in the air that threatens a change of weather.
The illuminated dial of my watch tells me that it is three minutes of
one and I communicate the information to the rest of the Irish quartet.
In three minutes, the little world that we look upon from our tree top
is due to change with terrific suddenness and untold possibilities.
Somewhere below in the darkness and to one side, I hear the clank of a
ponderous breech lock as the mechanism is closed on a shell in one of
the heavy guns. Otherwise all remains silent.
Two minutes of one. Each minute seems to drag like an hour. It is
impossible to keep one's mind off that unsuspecting group of humans out
there in that little section of German trench upon which the heavens are
about to fall. Griffin leans over the railing and calls to the runners
to stand by the horses' heads until they become accustomed to the coming
roar.
One minute of one. We grip the railing and wait.
Two flashes and two reports, the barest distinguishable interval, and
the black horizon belches red. From extreme left to extreme right the
flattened proscenium in front of us glows with the ghastliness of the
Broockon.
Waves of light flush the dark vault above like the night sky over South
Chicago's blast furnaces. The heavens reflect the glare. The flashes
range in colour from blinding yellow to the softest tints of pink. They
seem to form themselves from strange combinations of greens and mauves
and lavenders.
The sharp shattering crash of the guns reaches our ears almost on the
instant. The forest shakes and our tree top sways with the slam of the
heavies close by. The riven air whimpers with the husky whispering of
the rushing load of metal bolts passing above us.
Looking up into that void, we deny the uselessness of the act and seek
in vain to follow the trains of those unseen things that make the air
electric with their presence. We hear them coming, passing, going, but
see not one of them.
"There's whole blacksmith's shops sailing over our heads on the way to
Germany," Pat Guahn shouts in my ear. "I guess the Dutchman sure knows
how to call for help. He doesn't care for that first wallop, and he
thinks he would like about a half million reserves from the Russian
front."
"That darkness out in No Man's Land don't make any hit with him either,"
Stanton contributes. "He's got it lit up so bright I'm homesick for
Broadway."
Now comes the thunder of the shell arrivals. You know the old covered
wooden bridges that are still to be found in the country. Have you ever
heard a team of horses and a farm wagon thumping and rumbling over such
a bridge on the trot?
Multiply the horse team a thousand times. Lash the animals from the trot
to the wild gallop. Imagine the sound of their stampede through the
echoing wooden structure and you approach in volume and effect the
rumble and roar of the steel as it rained down on that little German
salient that night.
"Listen to them babies bustin'," says Griffin. "I'm betting them
groundhogs is sure huntin' their holes right now and trying to dig clear
through to China."
That was the sound and sight of that opening salvo from all guns, from
the small trench mortars in the line, the lightest field pieces behind
them, the heavy field pieces about us and the ponderous railroad
artillery located behind us.
Its crash has slashed the inkiness in front of us with a lurid red
meridian. I don't know how many hands had pulled lanyards on exactly the
same instant but the consequent spread of fire looked like one
continuous flame.
Now the "seventy-fives" are speaking, not in unison, but at various
speeds, limited only by the utmost celerity of the sweating gun crews.
But the German front line is not the only locality receiving unsolicited
attention. Enemy gun positions far behind the lines are being plastered
with high explosives and anesthetised with gas shells.
So effective is the American artillery neutralisation of the German
batteries, that it is between fifteen and twenty minutes before the
first enemy gun replies to the terrific barrage. And though expected
momentarily, a German counter barrage fails to materialise.
In our tree top we wait for the enemy's counter shelling but the
retaliation does not develop. When occupying an exposed position, the
suspense of waiting for an impending blow increases in tenseness as the
delay continues and the expectations remain unrealised. With no
inclination to be unreasonable, one even prays for the speedy delivery
of the blow in the same way that the man with the aching tooth urges the
dentist to speed up and have it over with.
"Why in hell don't they come back at us?" Griffin asks. "I've had myself
all tuned up for the last twenty minutes to have a leg blown off and be
thankful. I hate this waiting stuff."
"Keep your shirt on, Pete," Stanton remarks. "Give 'em a chance to get
their breath and come out of their holes. That barrage drove 'em down a
couple hundred feet into the ground and they haven't any elevators to
come up on. We'll hear from 'em soon enough."
We did, but it was not more than a whisper as compared with what they
were receiving from our side of the line. The German artillery came into
lethargic action after the American barrage had been in constant
operation for thirty minutes and then the enemy's fire was only
desultory. Only an occasional shell from Kulturland came our way, and
even they carried a rather tired, listless buzz, as though they didn't
know exactly where they were going and didn't care.
Six or eight of them hummed along a harmless orbit not far above our
tree top and fell in the forest. It certainly looked as though we were
shooting all the hard-stuff and the German end of the fireworks party
was all coloured lights and Roman candles. Of the six shells that passed
us, three failed to explode upon landing.
"That makes three dubs," said Guahn.
"You don't mean dubs," Stanton corrected him, "you mean duds and even
then you are wrong. Those were gas pills. They just crack open quietly
so you don't know it until you've sniffed yourself dead. Listen, you'll
hear the gas alert soon."
Even as he spoke, we heard through the firing the throaty gurgling of
the sirens. The alarm started on our right and spread from station to
station through the woods. We adjusted the respirators and turned our
muffled faces toward the firing line. Through the moisture fogged
glasses of my mask, I looked first upon my companions on this rustic
scaffold above the forest.
War's demands had removed our appearances far from the human. Our heads
were topped with uncomfortable steel casques, harder than the backs of
turtles. Our eyes were large, flat, round glazed surfaces unblinking and
owl-like. Our faces were shapeless folds of black rubber cloth. Our
lungs sucked air through tubes from a canvass bag under our chins and we
were inhabiting a tree top like a family of apes. It really required
imagination to make it seem real.
"Looks like the party is over," came the muffled remark from the masked
figure beside me. The cannonading was dying down appreciably. The
blinking line of lights in front of us grew less.
A terrific upward blast of red and green flame from the ground close to
our tree, reminded us that one heavy still remained under firing orders.
The flash seen through the forest revealed in intricate tracings the
intertwining limbs and branches of the trees. It presented the
appearance of a piece of strong black lace spread out and held at arm's
length in front of a glowing grate.
From the German lines an increased number of flares shot skyward and as
the cannon cracks ceased, save for isolated booms, the enemy machine
guns could be heard at work, riveting the night with sprays of lead and
sounding for all the world like a scourge of hungry woodpeckers.
"God help any of the doughboys that are going up against any of that
stuff," Griffin observed through his mask.
"Don't worry about our doughboys," replied Stanton; "they are all safe
in their trenches now. That's most likely the reason why our guns were
ordered to lay off. I guess Fritzie got busy with his typewriters too
late."
I descended the tree, leaving my companions to wait for the orders
necessary for their departure. Unfamiliar with the unmarked paths of
the forest and guided only as to general directions, I made my way
through the trees some distance in search of the road back from the
front.
A number of mud and water-filled shell holes intervened to make the
exertion greater and consequently the demand upon lungs for air greater.
After floundering several kilometres through a strange forest with a gas
mask on, one begins to appreciate the temptation that comes to tear off
the stifling nose bag and risk asphyxiation for just one breath of fresh
air.
A babel of voices in the darkness to one side guided me to a log cabin
where I learned from a sentry that the gas scare had just been called
off. Continuing on the road, I collided head on in the darkness with a
walking horse. Its rider swore and so did I, with slightly the advantage
over him as his head was still encased. I told him the gas alarm was off
and he tore away the mask with a sigh of relief. I left him while he was
removing the horse's gas mask.
A light snow was beginning to fall as I said good-night to the battalion
commander in front of his roadside shack. A party of mounted runners was
passing on the way to their quarters. With an admirable lack of dignity
quite becoming a national guard cavalry major in command of regular army
artillery, he said:
"Good-night, men, we licked hell out of them."
The Toul sector, during its occupation by Americans, always maintained a
high daily rating of artillery activity. The opposing forces were
continually planning surprises on one another. At any minute of the
night or day a terrific bombardment of high explosive or gas might break
out on either side. Both sides operated their sound ranging apparatus
to a rather high degree of efficiency.
By these delicate instruments we could locate the exact position of an
unseen enemy battery. Following that location, the battery would
immediately be visited with a concentrated downpour of hot steel
intended to wipe it out of existence. The enemy did as much for us, so
that in the artillery, when the men were not actually manning the guns
in action, they were digging gun pits for reserve positions which they
could occupy if the enemy happened to get the proper range of the old
positions. In this casual counter battery work our artillery adopted a
system by which many lives were saved.
If a German battery began shelling one of our battery positions, the
artillerymen in that position were not called upon to stand by their
guns and return the fire. The order would be given to temporarily
abandon the position and the men would be withdrawn a safe distance. The
German battery that was firing would be responded to, two to one, by
other American batteries located nearby and which did not happen to be
under fire at the time. By this system we conserved our strength.
Our infantry was strong in their praise of the artillery. I observed
this particularly one day on the Toul front when General Pershing
dropped in unexpectedly at the division headquarters, then located in
the hillside village of Bourcq. While the commander and his party were
awaiting a meal which was being prepared, four muddy figures tramped
down the hallway of the Chateau. Through the doorway the general
observed their entrance.
The two leading figures were stolid German soldiers, prisoners of war,
and behind them marched their captors, two excusably proud young
Americans. One of them carried his bayoneted rifle at the ready, while
the second carried the equipment which had been taken from the
prisoners. The American commander ordered the group brought before him
and asked one of the Americans to relate the story of the capture.
"We in the infantry got 'em, sir," replied one, "but the artillery
deserved most of the credit. It happened just at dawn this morning. Jim
here, and myself, were holding down an advance machine gun post when the
Germans laid down a flock of shells on our first line trench. We just
kept at the gun ready to let them have it if they started to come over.
"Pretty soon we saw them coming through the mist and we began to put it
to 'em. I think we got a bunch of them but they kept on coming.
"Then somebody back in our first line shot up the signal for a barrage
in our sector. It couldn't have been a minute before our cannon cut
loose and the shells began to drop right down in the middle of the
raiding party.
"It was a good heavy barrage, sir, and it cut clean through the centre
of the raiders. Two Germans were ahead of the rest and the barrage
landed right in back of them. The rest started running back toward their
lines, but the first pair could not go back because they would have had
to pass through the barrage. I kept the machine gun going all the time
and Jim showed himself above the trench and pointed his rifle at the
cut-off pair.
"They put up their hands right quick and we waved to 'em to come in.
They took it on the jump and landed in our trench as fast as they could.
We took their equipment off them and we were ordered to march them back
here to headquarters. That's all there was to it, sir."
The enemy in front of Toul manifested an inordinate anxiety to know more
about the strength of our forces and the character of the positions we
occupied. A captured German document issued to the Fifth Bavarian
Landwehr infantry brigade instructed every observer and patrol to do his
or its best "to bring information about the new enemy."
"Nothing is known as yet about the methods of fighting or leadership,"
the document set forth, "and all information possible must be gathered
as to particular features of American fighting and outpost tactics. This
will then be used for extending the information bulletin. Any
observation or identification, however insignificant, may be of the
greatest value."
The document directed that data on the following questions be obtained:
"Are sentry posts sentry posts or stronger posts? Further advanced
reconnoitring patrols? Manner of challenging? Behaviour on post during
day and night? Vigilance? Ambush tactics and cunning?
"Do they shoot and signal on every occasion? Do the posts hold their
ground on the approach of a patrol, or do they fall back?
"Are the Americans careful and cautious? Are they noisy? What is their
behaviour during smoke screens?"
The enemy's keen desire to acquire this information was displayed in the
desperate efforts it made. One day the French troops occupying the
trenches on the right flank of the American sector, encountered a
soldier in an American uniform walking through their positions.
He was stopped and questioned. He said he had been one of an American
patrol that had gone out the night before, that he had lost his way in
No Man's Land and that he thought he was returning to his own trenches,
when he dropped into those held by the French.
Although the man wore our uniform and spoke excellent English and seemed
straightforward in his replies, as to his name and rank and
organisation, the French officer before whom he was brought was not
completely satisfied. To overcome this hesitancy, the suspected man
opened his shirt and produced an American identification tag verifying
his answers.
The French officer, still suspicious, ordered the man held while he
telephoned to the American organisation mentioned to ascertain whether
any man of the name given was missing from that unit.
"Yes," replied the American captain. "We lost him last October, when we
were in the front line down in the Luneville sector. He was captured
with eight others by the Germans."
"Well, we've got him over here on your right flank. He came into our
lines this morning--" the French officer started to say.
"Bully," came the American interruption over the wire. "He's escaped
from the Germans and has come clear through their lines to get back to
his company. He'll get a D. S. C. for that. We'll send right over for
him."
"But when we questioned him," replied the Frenchman, "he said he left
your lines only last night on patrol and got lost in No Man's Land."
"I'll come right over and look at that party, myself," the American
captain hastily replied.
He reached the French officer's dugout several hours later and the
suspect was ordered brought in.
"He must be crazy, sir," the French orderly said. "He tried to kill
himself a few minutes ago and we have had to hold him."
The man was brought into the dugout between two poilus who held his
arms. The American captain took a careful look and said:
"That's not our man. He wears our uniform correctly and that's our
regulation identification tag. Both of them must have been taken away
from our man when he was captured. This man is an impostor."
"He's more than that," replied the Frenchman with a smile. "He's a
German spy."
The prisoner made no reply, but later made a full confession of his act,
and also gave to his interrogators much valuable information, which,
however, did not save him from paying the penalty in front of a firing
squad. When he faced the rifles, he was not wearing the stolen uniform.