They lurched out into the street. The day was hot and still, and the
men, exhilarated by the wine and satiated with the food, were planning
for other banquets as sumptuous. Around the corner of the crooked
street marched an orderly, wearing his inevitable look of having the
responsibility of the war on his shoulders.
“Are you men from C Company of the Sixth?”
“You’re damned right we are, buddy. Have you got anything to say about
it?”
“No. Only you’d better hurry up and join them or you’ll be up for a shoot
for desertion.”
“Why, whaddya mean? Where are they?” Several men spoke at once.
“Well,” said the orderly importantly, “they were getting ready to go over
the top when I left.”
“Great Christ!” Ryan lamented. “We’d better hurry. Lead the way, orderly.”
Flanked by rows of waving wheat, the party plodded along the dusty,
narrow road.
“Now we are in it for sure,” Hicks thought. “And me especially. If Major
Adams hears about this I’ll be hung higher than a kite.” But he forgot
the possibility of a court martial in his thinking of the platoon and of
where they were and of where he was soon to be.
The platoon was found in a clump of woods, a little to the left of the
road. In front of them was the spectacle of what a French village looked
like after it had been subjected to long-range artillery fire for three
days. The spire of the inevitable little church had been blown off; there
was not a house or barn whose side or roof had not been pierced by a
shell. Mortar and glass were strewn about the streets, where they mingled
with articles of household use. Beside the door of one of the houses a
Red Cross flag had been fastened, and inside the medical detachment were
making preparations for visitors.
Old King Cole sat hunched up, his helmet over his eyes, looking down
at his heavy shoes. Kahl, a light-weight boxer from Pennsylvania, was
attacking a tin of corned beef, trying to open it with his bayonet.
Wormrath, from Cleveland, who carried a khaki-colored handkerchief which
he had used for three months, sat with his arms around his knees, his
eyes looking far away and moist.
“What’s the matter, King?” Hicks called, anxious somehow to make himself
again a part of the platoon as soon as he could.
“Oh, this damned war makes me sick. Always movin’ around. They never let
you stay one place a minute.”
“Join the marines and see the world,” some one called.
“Through the door of a box car,” some one else amended.
“You’ll be up here long enough, old fellow. You ought to come from my
part of the country, King. They do a lot of cutting and shooting there.”
“Yeh.” King Cole was ironic. “They do a lot of cuttin’ and shootin’. They
cut around the corner and shoot for home.”
Kahl laughed exultantly. He felt that at last the time he had given to
training was to be of some purpose. He abandoned trying to open the tin
of meat because he feared that he would dull his bayonet. And he wanted
it to be sharp, so sharp. Those dirty Huns. He drew his finger along
the edge of the shiny piece of steel. That would cut, all right. That
wouldn’t be deflected by a coat-button from piercing the intestines.
Lieutenant Bedford, bent forward as usual, the end of his nose wiggling
nervously, came among them with Sergeants Ryan and Harriman.
“There won’t be any smoking or any matches lighted after dark to-night,
fellows. We are only about a mile from the German front line. As near as
I can make out they are advancing and it is our job to stop them. We’ll
probably move forward some time after dark, so have your stuff by your
side.”
“When do we eat? Won’t we get any chow all night?”
“The galley is in the town back of us. They are cooking up some slum, and
it ought to be brought up here pretty soon.” He walked away.
“There’s nothing like a good kick in the face to make you forget your
little troubles.” Bullis summed up the feeling of the platoon.
Kahl, industriously, was working the bolt of his rifle back and forth,
pouring drops of oil in the chamber and upon the lock. He leaned toward
Hicks and remarked in an undertone: “Hicks, old fellow, if Kitty Kahl
doesn’t earn a Croix de Guerre to-morrow his mother will be without a
son.”
“What do you want one of those things for, Kahl? You can buy ’em for five
francs.”
“But you can’t earn one of them with five francs.”
“But what do you want with one of them? What good are they?”
Hicks, perhaps, was insincere. One might want a decoration and be
delighted to have it, but intentionally to go after it appealed to him in
the light of absurdity.
As Lieutenant Bedford departed, each man drew inside himself. Merely
to observe them, one would have believed that they were concerned with
profound thoughts. A Y. M. C. A. secretary would have told himself that
the men were thinking of their homes and families, praying to God, and
the Y. M. C. A. General Pershing would have charged them with possessing
a fierce, burning desire to exterminate the Germans. The regimental
chaplain—he had come to the regiment from an Episcopal pulpit—would have
said that they were capitulating their sins and supplicating God for
mercy.
While it was yet light Sergeants Harriman and Ryan and Lieutenant Bedford
discussed aloud the plans that had been tentatively given them for the
night, but as objects in their line of vision lost their distinctness and
became vague, mysterious figures, they lowered their voices to a whisper.
Lieutenant Bedford peered at his wrist-watch.
“It’s time to go. Better break out the men, Harriman.” Sergeant Harriman
crept along the road to the clump of woods where the platoon was huddled.
“All right, men,” he whispered hoarsely; “it’s time to shove off. Has
everybody got his trench tools?”
“I’ve lost my shovel.”
“I didn’t mean you, Gillespie. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t fastened
on. Is any one missing any of their equipment?”
There was no answer.
“All right. Form in a column of twos and follow me.” Sergeant Harriman
started off, and the men, who had risen, fell in behind him.
Until this time all had been quiet, but now the machine-guns,
unmistakably Maxims, began an intermittent fire. It seemed to be a signal
for the rifles, for now and again one of them would crack pungently
somewhere in the dark.
The platoon was marching cautiously over the hill to the town in front of
them.
“Stand fast!” Sergeant Ryan called out sharply. A rocket was fired, rose
high in the air, and then, the parachute spreading out, floated slowly to
earth, lighting up the ground for several hundreds of yards on each side.
As soon as it had reached the ground the platoon marched on. They passed
through the town, and, as they were leaving, a covey of shells whirred
softly over their heads and landed among the ruins with a terrific
explosion. The remaining walls seemed to reverberate. It sounded as if
they were rocking back and forth from the concussion.
At the military crest of the hill the platoon stopped, joined on its left
by the rest of the company. The company commander walked along the line,
repeating, so that each man could hear: “You’ll have to hurry and dig in,
men. It’s three hours until dawn, and if you haven’t got yourselves a
place of safety by that time you will be unfortunate.”
The men threw off their packs, unstrapped their trench tools, and set
to work to make holes in the ground sufficiently deep to protect their
bodies from rifle fire and from pieces of flying shell. As there were
only four men in each squad equipped with trench tools, the other half
commenced digging with their bayonets and scraping the dirt from the hole
that they were making with the lid of their mess gear. But they worked
furiously, and with the aid of the company commander and all of the
subofficers, which consisted in telling them that they had just so much
longer until dawn, each pair of men had made for themselves a hole in the
ground from which they could manipulate their rifles without exposing
their bodies to direct fire.
When dawn broke the company presented to the enemy a slightly curved
front of newly made holes, with the dirt thrown up in front of them for
further protection.
Across the valley, perhaps five hundred yards, was a thickly wooded hill,
from which, as the light strengthened, the platoon could see figures
running out into the field and then back again among the trees. Then, to
the right, the Hotchkiss machine-guns began their wavering patter.
From another woods, in front and to the left of the platoon, ran soldiers
in frayed and dirty horizon-blue uniforms. Harriman pointed to the
wooded hill where the scurrying figures had been seen. “Boche?” he asked.
“Oui, Boche,” the men in the soiled uniforms answered.
“Boche, Paris?” some one asked.
“Oui.” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “Ce ne fait rien.”
Doubtless the Frenchmen, Hicks thought, did not care; for seven days they
had been forced to fall back, slowly and with heavy losses. There was
little opportunity for sleep; and food, despite the conscientious efforts
of the French cooks, was difficult to procure. They felt beaten.
Another group of French soldiers hurried out of the woods, and, as the
others had done, disappeared through the ruins of the village.
It was quite light now, and the German artillery awoke. The first salvo
of shells struck in the town. The second fell in the field to the right
of the village.
Overhead the wings of an airplane whirred. Under its wings were painted
large black crosses. It fired a signal, rose again in the air, wheeled,
and flew back.
“Duck your heads,” shouted Sergeant Ryan, pulling a cigarette from his
pocket. “They’ve got our range for sure.”
They had. A moment later and a number of shells began a leisurely journey
in the direction of the platoon. As they approached they lost their
tardiness and fell shrieking, like some maddened demons, along the line
of freshly dug dirt.
“Anybody get hit?” Sergeant Ryan rose and looked around.
“Stretcher bearer on the right!” Hicks yelled.
In the hole next to his a curious thing had happened. A shell had grazed
the top of the hole, buried itself in the dirt, and then backfired. When
the stretcher-bearers arrived they found that Hayes, one of the men in
the hole, had part of his back torn off. Quickly they laid him prone on
the stretcher and started for the town as swiftly as the weight of their
burden would permit. The other man, Hartman, was still crouched in the
position he had assumed when Sergeant Ryan called the warning.
Hicks jumped over beside him. “Hartman,” he called. Hartman failed to
respond. He put his arm around him and lifted him up. Hartman began to
laugh horribly. Then great tears coursed through the mud on his cheeks.
“Hartman, what’s the matter?”
Hartman laughed again in the same manner. He had completely lost control
of his muscles and would have fallen face downward if Hicks had not held
him up.
“Tell Lieutenant Bedford that there’s something the matter with Hartman,”
Hicks shouted.
The word was passed along.
“Lieutenant Bedford says for you to get somebody else and take him back
to the first-aid station. He’s probably shell-shocked.”
“Oh, Gillespie,” Hicks called. “Come and help me take Hartman back to the
first-aid station.”
“Oh, Hicks, I can’t. I’m sick at my stomach. I couldn’t help carry
anything.”
“Well, Pugh—come on, Pugh, you help me.”
And Pugh got out of his hole, a few yards away, and ran over. Both men,
one holding his legs and the other his shoulders, tried to dodge the
stream of machine-gun bullets as they hurried the shell-shocked man to
the dressing station.
In the village there was greater safety—cellars to hide in, and there
to escape the flying pieces of shells that fell into the town at short
intervals.
Hicks and Pugh rested for a moment, filled their canteens with water, and
started back. Half-way to the platoon they found a Frenchman lying upon
his back.
“À moi, à moi,” he was groaning scarcely above a whisper.
“What’s the mattah, buddy,” Pugh asked.
“ ... par le gaz ... par le gaz.”
“He says he’s been gassed, Pugh. Let’s take him back, too.”
“Here, buddy, do you want a drink of watah?” Pugh asked.
The Frenchman drank greedily.
“By God,” Pugh said, “that’s the first Frog I’ve ever seen that would
drink water.”
They carried him to the dressing station, and after they had explained
to the captain of the Medical Corps where they had found him, in what a
desperate condition he was, and that there was nothing else to do with
him, the Frenchman was finally accepted.
“We can’t fill this place up with all kinds of people,” the medical
officer objected. “We’ll have a hard-enough time taking care of our own
men in a few minutes.”
Pugh, disgusted, emitted a stream of tobacco juice, shrugged his
shoulder, turned on his heel.
“Come on, Hicksy, let’s get back where there’s white men.”
Their hearts racing madly, they reached their holes without being struck
by the machine-gun bullets that sang deadly songs all around. After the
first terrific salvo, the German artillery, for some unknown reason, had
stopped.
The skirmishing on the right, which the platoon had witnessed in the
early morning, seemed to have been carried within the woods. A few waves
of pigmy-like figures had walked slowly toward the wooded hill, and by
the time their lines arrived, although considerably thinned, the gray
defenders of the hill were to be seen no more.
Now that they were no longer targets, Hicks walked over to where Ryan was
squatted in his hole.
“This is a hell of a note, isn’t it, Ryan? To have to lie like this all
day and not get to fire a shot?”
“You’ll get a chance to fire plenty of shots, damn it. Some poor fool is
making our regiment attack without a barrage. Did you see the outfit over
on the right that went up that hill? That was the third battalion, and
I’ll bet there’s not a third of the men left. Well, we’ll go over most
any time.”
“But, Ryan, that’s murder, not to have a barrage. What can these fool
officers be thinking of?”
“Glory,” Ryan answered.
Late in the afternoon the company commander passed the word along the
line that the men would be permitted to eat one of their boxes of hard
bread, but nothing else.
“Who the hell wants to eat any of that damned stuff?”
“God, my hardtack laid in the trenches for six weeks, and even them
damned rats wouldn’t eat it.”
The platoon had recovered its spirits, its “morale,” as the
white-collared fighters for democracy often spoke of it.
* * * * *
As night was coming on, a noise was heard in the grass between the men
and the ruined village. It coughed tentatively, then decisively.
“Who’s back there?”
“A runner from battalion headquarters,” the voice answered cautiously.
“Don’t shoot.”
“Oh, come ahead.”
“What the hell are you afraid of?”
“We’re not as fierce as we look.”
“Where’s your company commander?” the voice asked.
“He went over to ask the Squareheads to stop shootin’. There’s a man here
that’s got a headache,” Pugh informed the voice.
“No, where is he, fellows?” By this time the voice had become Fosbrook.
Hicks recognized him.
“Hello, Fosbrook.”
“Oh!” Fosbrook walked over to Hicks’s hole and jumped in. “Hello,
William.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were interpreter for the colonel.”
“I was, William, but I drank too much one night and he fired me,”
Fosbrook answered sadly.
“What do you want with the company commander?”
“I don’t know whether I should tell you.”
“Hell, I’ll find it out in a minute, anyway.”
“Well, your company is to move to another position as soon as it gets
dark enough.”
“What for? Are we going to attack?”
“I don’t know, William, I’m sure. Where is your captain?”
“He’s over between the third and second platoons, about fifteen holes
down that way.”
Fosbrook got up, and, stooping over until his head was parallel with his
hips, trotted in the direction Hicks had indicated.
An hour later the orders came for the men to sling their packs and be
ready to move again. And great was the outcry when the men heard the news.
“Are we going to dig up the whole of France?”
“I’ll get my old man to buy some ploughs if we are. I wasn’t cut out to
be a ditch digger.”
“This is a hell of a note. Diggin’ a hole for one day. I was jist gittin’
mine so’s I could sleep in it.”
The company lined up in single file and marched off.
* * * * *
After manœuvring around for a couple of hours they came to another woods.
On the way they had been joined by a section of the machine-gun company
that was attached to their battalion. In a measure, this annexation was
responsible for their slow progress. There were the carts to be hidden,
and then the men of the machine-gun detail carried their guns and their
ammunition in their arms. But they were halted at last, and amid much
muttering and cursing were shooed into the woods and told that they might
go to sleep for the night.
It was noon of the next day before they received any food. Then a detail
had to be sent back to the village after it. And when they returned they
brought with them cold boiled potatoes, cold coffee, and black French
bread.
“Don’t eat too many of these damned potatoes,” Pugh warned all and
sundry. “I was ridin’ on a box car for three days once, and I didn’t have
nothin’ but these things to eat, an’ I got col’ sores all over my mouth.”
Cigarettes were scarce, so the butts of them were passed around and in
that way shared by all.
The firing during the day was slight. Scattered rifle fire was heard on
both sides, but the artillery was dumb. The men spent the day speculating
upon whether their own artillery would arrive and get into position
before they were ordered to attack.
Time after time Kahl nervously paced the length of the woods. He had
done all that he could to his rifle. The bolt worked smoothly with a
satisfying “click.” The bore had been swabbed free of the oil, which had
been put there to keep the metal from rusting. The chamber held five
meticulously clean shells and there was one in the bore.
Lepere and Harriman were telling each other of what they used to do “on
the outside,” by which phrase they meant before they had enlisted. Ryan
was cursing because there was no water to be had. His canteen was half
empty, and he knew better than not to hoard water. He decided that he
would have to shave without water, and this angered him still more. Then
he divided the water equally, using a portion for lather.
Thus they passed the day.
* * * * *
To the weary platoon, their thinned ranks huddled all day long in the
small clump of woods, night came on slowly and inexorably. The sun had
disappeared, and, one by one, elf-like stars became apparent, twinkling
like shaking jewels through the black curtain of the heavens. At sunset
orders had been received for the platoon to be prepared to leave at any
moment. Their rifles were lying by their sides, the men were sprawled on
the damp ground, their heads resting on their combat packs.
Some one touched a lighted match to a cigarette. It glowed softly in the
darkness, a bright, inquisitive eye.
“Put out that God-damned light,” Lieutenant Bedford whispered hoarsely.
“Do you want us all to get shot up?”
Soon at the edge of the woods the branches were parted and a tense voice
called: “Where is Lieutenant Bedford?”
It was a messenger from battalion headquarters carrying orders for the
platoon to move. The summons was passed along from squad to squad, a
disagreeable secret hurriedly disposed of. The men slung their packs and,
holding their rifles in front of them, filed slowly and carefully out of
the woods to form in a column of twos.
Lieutenant Bedford in front and Sergeant Ryan in rear—as if, Hicks
thought, some of the men were thinking of deserting—the men marched off,
joining the other platoons in the middle of the field. Lieutenant Bedford
called:
“Pass the word along to keep quiet; we’re within hearing distance of the
front lines.”
On both sides the artillery was silent. Occasionally a machine-gun would
fire a string of bullets the sound of which died in the stillness without
an echo.
The platoon dragged slowly on, their legs soaked around the knees from
the dew nestling on the tall wheat. For perhaps a mile they had marched,
and the platoon, like a sensitive instrument, was beginning to have
an unaccountable perception of danger, when shoes were heard swishing
through the heavy wheat, and a voice said:
“Turn around, you damned fools. Do you want to walk straight into the
German trenches!”
The men breathed relievedly. Apparently they were not going immediately
to attack. Recovering, they began audibly to curse the lieutenant.
“The dirty German spy. What the hell does he think he’s doin’?”
“Ought to be back at G. H. Q. with the rest of the dummies.”
The lieutenant, unable to distinguish the mumbling voices as belonging
to any particular persons, vowed to himself that when the platoon was
relieved and back in a rest camp, he would give them extra fatigue duty
for a month.
They were coming to another woods, and within a few yards of its fringes
some officers stepped out and halted them.
“All right, here you are.”
“Lieutenant, swing your men right in here and don’t let any one get out
of the woods.”
The men backed in among the trees and lay down, their packs, raising
their shoulders from the ground, protecting them from the moisture. They
lay silent, with their rifles cradled in their arms. No one seemed to
mind the wet of the grass or the chill of the air. They were all silent
and rather full of fear. Time was unknown. They might have been there a
year—a minute—an æon.
Just as the trees, in a clump of woods, perhaps a mile away, were
beginning to come out against the sluggish sky like sharp, delicate
etchings, the batteries awoke. After the first flock of shells, sounding
like black, screaming spirits, were fired, the men in the woods were
fully aroused and many of them were standing.
“Uh-h-h, did you hear that bunch of sandbags?”
“They sounded as if they came from a thousand miles.”
Another salvo was fired, the shells droning lazily over the heads of the
men and crashing terrifically more than a mile distant.
And then the smaller guns were unlimbered. The spiteful crack of the
seventy-fives turned the funereal music into a scherzo. In retaliation
the German batteries, the heavier ones, began, their shells flying high
overhead.
Lieutenant Bedford jumped up. “All right, Third Platoon. Up you come.
Keep straight ahead and remember your three-yard interval. If any one
gets hit, let him lie.” And then, as if he were uncertain, as if he
wanted to convince himself of the actuality of the words he had just
spoken, he added: “Those are the orders.”
“I always knew they hated the Third,” said Lepere, “but blamed if I knew
they hated our guts so much that they put us in the first wave.”
But Kahl only grinned. He was conscious of a feeling as if his face had
become frozen and as if his chin were about to drop off. It hung slackly
and his teeth came unnaturally together when he clinched his jaws. He
tightened the chin-strap of his helmet, guarding against the chance
of losing his chin. Next, his feet felt so awfully heavy. They would
barely permit themselves to be lifted from the ground. They had become
separate identities, and as he became conscious of them he felt them to
be unfamiliar.
“Damn this mud,” he told himself, though knowing well that there was no
mud weighing down his feet.
After pounding away for fifteen minutes, the smaller artillery stopped.
The whistle blew and the men advanced, stepping out in the open where the
risen sun made them hideously conspicuous. The field separating the woods
stretched far on either side, and was covered with green-stemmed wheat
that reached hip-high.
Kahl, glancing over his shoulder, saw the rays of the sun flashing from
the clean bayonets, the bayonets the men so often had jabbed into sacks
of sand and straw.
The sergeant in charge of the first wave set the pace, which was
frightfully slow. Somewhere, farther down the line, men began to object
to the snail-like progress.
“Yes,” thought Kahl, “it’s amusing that we walk so slowly when we are
right out in plain sight.” It struck him as odd that the line was not
being fired upon, and then he explained it to himself by the notion that
the heavy barrage had driven the enemy back. But what if it hadn’t—what
if the Germans are just waiting until we get right almost into the woods.
Wouldn’t that be a mess! And what a bore, this moping through the wet
smoky wheat. He wondered whether his knees were bleeding. Curse it! His
neck was stiff. Maybe he could limber it up if he shook his head.... No,
it couldn’t be done. It didn’t work.
The first wave entered the woods where the enemy was without firing a
shot or being fired at. The second wave entered, and the third, and the
fourth.
Kahl, parting the leaves with his bayonet, unexpectedly looked out upon a
clearing, and the sight he saw made him exclaim to the man next to him:
“Oh, Jimmy, this must be some joke. Look at all those fellows asleep
there.”
In the clearing, lying flat on their backs, were five soldiers, their
legs stretched out. They wore no shoes over their heavy woollen hose.
Hicks drew over toward him and looked.
“You better get down, you lumphead,” Hicks cautioned; “they aren’t
asleep.”
Together they crawled out toward the motionless figures. By this time
Lepere, Cole, and Pietrzak had come to the clearing and started to
follow.
“Je-sus, Kahl! Here’s a fellow out of the Eighty-third Company that I
enlisted with. And he’s dead as hell.”