It was a Maxim and the men dropped to their bellies.
“Hey, you poor fool, can’t you shut up?” Kahl said. “That’s a Maxim.”
Hicks made for behind a tree as fast as he could crawl.
“Hey, Pete,” he called in an undertone “where’s the rest of the outfit?”
“I don’t know,” Pietrzak answered him. “That’s the reason we come over
here where you fellers are.”
Hicks turned to Kahl. “By God, Kahl, we’re lost!”
The machine-gun bullets shaved the bark from the trunk of the tree behind
which Hicks was lying. He flattened out, his face pressed into the grass.
“Oh, Kahl, we’re lost!”
But Kahl did not hear him. Possibly he remembered what he had said
earlier in the day. Possibly he was really a hero. Possibly he again saw
himself as a little boy playing Indian in the back yard. Whatever were
his thoughts, he rose to one knee, and, after peering intently in the
direction from which the bullets had come, he raised his rifle to his
shoulder and sighted along the shining barrel.
Rat-t-t-t-tat.
A Maxim, but from an oblique direction, was firing, and Kahl sprawled on
his face, his right arm falling over the shiny barrel of his rifle. Then
other machine-guns rained their bullets into the clearing, and the men
clawed at the ground in an effort to lower their bodies beneath the sweep
of the lead.
“What’ll we do, Hicks?” asked Pietrzak.
The tender green leaves from the trunk of the tree behind which Hicks was
secure fluttered to the ground, clipped by the machine-gun fire.
“I don’t know, but we can’t stay here. Why don’t you find the rest of the
gang?”
“Why don’t you?”
“Well....” Hicks started to crawl back from the clearing into the woods.
After he had wriggled his body about fifty yards he rose to his feet
and ran in the general direction of which he had last seen the company.
Breaking through the woods, he met Captain Powers.
“Captain Powers, there’s a squad of us up there, and we’re lost. We don’t
know what to do. The men are in a clearing, and they’re afraid to move
because they’re right in sight of a nest of machine-guns. Do you know
where the platoon is? What shall we do?”
And in a Shakespearian voice Captain Powers told Hicks to return to his
squad and lead them in a charge on the machine-gun nest.
“Aye, aye, sir.” Hicks turned and squirmed back through the woods to the
clearing. “Like hell we’ll advance,” he thought. “The poor fool.”
Hicks reached the clearing at the same time the German machine-guns
momentarily stopped.
“Ja find ’em, Hicks?”
“No, but I saw Powers. If we made a half circle back to the left we might
find ’em.”
“Sounds good enough to try.”
They were crawling, crawling on their bellies, in single file, when Pugh
stopped and called with an exultant lilt in his voice:
“Oh-o, here’s one Squarehead that’s kissed his papa good-by. Right
through the eye.”
The men in rear veered off so as not to see the dead body. A short
distance away some one was moaning weakly. Hicks stopped. “Another one
of our guys hit, I betcha.”
They crawled eagerly and yet fearfully toward the noises. Seen through
the trees bandy-legged Funk was supporting the head of little Halvorsen
and trying to get him to open his eyes. Beside him was Lieutenant
Bedford, saying:
“You’re crazy, Funk. The kid’s gone, but we’ll see if anything can be
done.”
Funk was softly calling: “Hank, oh, Hank, ain’t you got anything to say?”
Hicks got to his feet and came beside the group that was staring at the
dead face of Halvorsen.
“What’s that? Little Hank get it? Je’s, that’s bad.”
And Pugh: “Poor little fellah. I give him a hunnerd francs the other day.
But he sure is welcome to it.”
Funk straightened his body, letting the head of Halvorsen touch the
ground. Clinching his fist, he raised it above his head and shook it
toward the woods: “We’ll get you, you dirty—” He could not find the word
with which he wanted to characterize the inhumanity of the Germans.
Bedford grasped at his arm: “Get down, you damned fool. Do you want to
get hit, too?”
* * * * *
The platoon had begun the advance through the woods in good order,
but after it had reached the more dense part the German machine-guns
commenced firing and four men fell. They tramped on, unable to see the
enemy. Suddenly they realized that they had broken contact between
themselves and the platoon on their left. Advancing, they wedged
themselves into the German lines and made a target for enfillade fire.
Then, little more to be done except get killed, they halted.
An orderly from battalion headquarters crawling through the woods carried
with him the information for Captain Powers that the company was to
intrench for the night. When the news reached them the platoon failed
even to comment. For once their garrulous selves were stilled. The
realization that they were to spend a night freighted with experiences
totally new, that through the darkness they were to lie powerless to
defend themselves, stunned them.
A curving line was described by Lieutenant Bedford, and the men were
deployed along it at intervals. They unslung their packs, their extra
bandoliers of ammunition, and began furiously to dig holes in the ground,
deep enough for them to lie in without exposing their bodies. Some used
their hand shovels and picks, while others, more careless with their
equipment, used their bayonets to loosen the dirt and their mess-kit lids
to scoop it out.
Dusk, like powder of old blue, sifted through the trees and wrapped the
shallow burrows in a friendly mystery. In their fresh-made beds, peeping
through the boughs with which they had covered the tops of their holes,
the men waited.
* * * * *
Through the long night that stretched interminably before them they
peered into the darkness, fancying, as they had in the trenches, that
each tree trunk was an enemy. The least noise was sufficient for
overworked nerves to press the trigger of a rifle and send a volley of
bullets through the leaves of the trees. The calling of a frightened bird
would cause their hearts to throb violently against their ribs. When they
spoke it was in the smallest of whispers, and even so conversation was
peculiarly lacking.
Hicks, at times, would think of a letter that his mother had written him
in which she had offered to send him a quantity of cyanide of potassium.
“You know, son,” she had written, “this war is not like the war that
grandpapa used to tell you about. Those frightful Germans have liquid
fire and deadly gases, and it is only when I think of how you would
suffer if you were burned by their infernal liquid fire that I offer to
send it. If you want it, just mark a cross at the bottom of your next
letter.” But Hicks had not marked any cross. He had laughed at the notion
at first, and then, as the months slipped by, he had forgotten entirely
about it. Now he wondered if he had done wisely. Suppose he were shot
like the fellow in the trench the other day? Or gassed as badly as the
Frenchman whom he and Pugh had carried back to the first-aid station.
Yes, it would have been comforting.... But he revolted at the thought of
poisoning himself. His early religion had been that a suicide does not
better his condition. He simply lives in purgatory. It would be hellish
to lie gasping forever in purgatory, Hicks thought. Dear old mother.
How she had cried when he told her that he had enlisted and was to be
sent almost immediately to France. “But, mother, you were such a good
patriot before I enlisted, and now you don’t want me to go. What kind
of patriotism is that?” he remembered having asked her. And how badly
she had felt that he only spent an hour with her before he left for the
training camp.
He was amused at the notion of digging holes to lie in. It is insulting,
he thought, to ask a person to dig his own grave. It is barbaric.
The leaves of the trees were silvered above by the rays of the sun
playing upon the dew. Morning had come.
Somewhere—and it seemed as if it were only ten yards away, a bugle blew a
short and unfamiliar call.
“All right, Third Platoon!” Lieutenant Bedford’s voice was hoarse with
excitement. “Forward, Third Platoon.”
Hesitatingly and half-whimpering, the platoon climbed out from their
holes, over which they had carefully placed boughs of trees to keep
reconnoitering airplanes from seeing the freshly dug dirt.
Hicks’s helmet felt as if it were about to come off. It wabbled from one
side to the other. His face was frozen, and when he wanted to speak out
he felt that he could not because the muscles that controlled his mouth
refused to respond. At first he was intensely aware of his legs, but,
surging along with the rest of the platoon, he soon forgot them.
Three Germans were rising up in front of him. “Don’t those queer little
caps of theirs look funny?” he thought, and, from the hip, he fired his
automatic rifle at them. One fell and the others lifted their hands
in the air and bellowed: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” Hicks passed by them,
unheeding. More Germans. The woods were filled with Germans. But the rest
of them wore heavy steel helmets that covered their foreheads and ears.
“You dirty bastards!” Hicks heard some one scream.
By God, he wouldn’t have any liquid fire poured on him. “Johnston!” he
called. But Johnston, his leader, was not there. Hicks’s last clip had
been emptied of shells. There were no more in his _musette_ bag. It
wasn’t possible! Johnston must be some place near, ready to give him more
clips. But no! He threw his rifle away in disgust. A few yards farther he
saw the back of an olive-drab uniform, and by one of the hands that was
connected to the uniform was clutched a rifle. Hicks snatched the rifle,
unbuckled the cartridge-belt from the uniform, and hurried blindly on. A
deep ravine was in front of him. He half jumped, half stumbled across it,
and found himself once more in a wheat-field. There was no one in sight.
He scrambled back over the ravine and through the woods again, frightened
but defiant. Wherever he looked, as he went back through the woods,
men were lying. Some of them lay quite still. Others moaned and cried
alternately. But Hicks paid no heed. He was still hurrying on, his head
up and his nostrils wide, when some one called:
“Here, Hicks, get busy and round up some of these Squareheads.” It was
Ryan.
Hicks felt as if he had been struck in the stomach with a brick. He
laughed nervously. “Sure.”
Nine Germans stood together with their hands raised high above their
heads. Their knees were shaking badly and they looked first to one side
and then to the other. Docile sheep, he led them back to the village
where he turned them over to a reserve regiment.
On the way back to join his platoon he met a man who looked familiar.
“Say, fellow, don’t you belong to A Company, of the Fifth?”
The man turned. “I did,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any more A
Company.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, we attacked this morning through an open space in the woods,” the
man told him.
“And they’re all dead? Fellah, I’ve got a cousin in that outfit. Show me
where they went over.”
They walked back to the clearing together. Men were lying around in all
manner of postures, and much more thickly than the men in the woods.
“What was your cousin’s name, buddy?”
“Williams, Paul Williams,” Hicks jerked out. “He was a tall, dark-haired
fellow, about nineteen?”
“Nope. Might have seen him, but I don’t remember his name.”
Hicks covered the entire field, stopping closely to peer into the face of
each of the men who was not a German soldier. As he was turning away from
a man who was lying upon his back, his arms and legs stretched wide, and
over whom he had stood longer than usual because the face reminded him
somewhat of his cousin, the man’s eyelids partly opened, and in a voice
in which there was little strength, called: “Soldier! Oh, soldier! Don’t
let that damned Squarehead get me. Don’t leave me alone with him. He’ll
kill me.”
“No, he won’t, buddy. He’s all right.” Hicks spoke reassuringly. For
a moment he could not think whom the man was speaking of, but then he
recollected that a German Red Cross attendant had been busy in the field,
binding the wounds of the soldiers. Hicks looked around and saw the
attendant a few yards off. He beckoned to him, and tried to illustrate by
motions that he wanted the soldier carried back to the first-aid station.
The German came over, lowered his head to the soldier’s chest. “Nein.
Caput.” He pointed to a rust-colored spot on the soldier’s tunic over
the heart. While Hicks was standing there, wondering what to do, the
soldier’s eyelids fluttered, he breathed once and deeply—and died.
Hicks gave up hope of finding his cousin. He had either been taken
prisoner, and that was not at all likely, or else he had been sent back
wounded, he thought.
* * * * *
Hicks tramped back through the thick woods that suddenly had become
quiet. The rays of the noonday sun were filtering through the boughs of
the trees, seeking out the now inanimate bodies, which would soon turn
black and bloat out of shape under the intense heat. Before him, on a
knoll of green, was a pile of heavy boulders, and, peeping through a
crevice, stuck the nose of a Maxim. Climbing the knoll to the right, he
looked into the machine-gun nest. Three bodies, motionless as the rocks
themselves, were stretched at length. One had fallen face forward, an arm
thrown over the stock of the weapon. His back, that swelled under the
gray coat, was turned reproachfully toward the sky. Another was sprawled
on his back, his hands and legs frozen in a gesture of complete negation.
His chin had fallen heavily on his breast and upon his head his small
trench cap was tilted forward at a rakish angle. The other man’s face was
a clot of blood. Death, camera-like, had caught and held him fast, his
body supported by the rocks, his face like a battered sunflower in the
evening.
Hicks stooped over and gently drew the Maxim away from the man who had
been firing it when he had been killed. Shouldering it, and carrying an
extra belt of cartridges and the water-cooler, he left the knoll and
walked toward the ravine. The spectacle that he had just witnessed left
very little impression upon him.
The platoon was gathered closely together in the ravine. The ravine was
deep and wide, and every so often passage along it was obstructed by a
huge stone over which the men would have to climb. Evidently, a few days
before, the French soldiers had used the ravine as a trench from which to
conceal themselves while they fought against the onslaught of the enemy.
Little holes had been dug in the side of the ravine nearest to the field
in which men could throw themselves to be protected from the bursting
shell casings and shrapnel. As he approached, three of the men were
scuffing dirt over the body of a dead French soldier who had fallen near
one of the small burrows in the ravine.
Sergeant Ryan was pacing along the ravine, pulling at the ends of his
pointed mustache. Lieutenant Bedford, chewing speculatively at a sprig
of wheat, and Sergeant Harriman were seated on the ground, apparently
immersed in a discussion.
Sergeant Ryan walked over to them.
“This is damned foolishness,” he called. “Before very long there are
going to be so many shells flying into this place that you won’t be able
to count them. And where will we be? In hell, if we loaf around like this
much longer.”
Lieutenant Bedford rubbed with the palm of his hand the stubble on his
pallid face. “If I knew how much longer we were to be here, Ryan, I would
have had the men digging in long ago.”
The company commander broke through the edge of the woods, and stood on
the edge of the ravine. “Lieutenant Bedford. I want six of your men right
away.”
“Yes, sir,” Bedford answered. “You, Hicks; you, Cole; you, Bullis; you,
Johnston; you, Lepere, and Haight. Follow Captain Powers.”
Joined by details from the three other platoons, the men followed along
through the woods again and out into a field which was very near to the
place where Hicks had searched for Williams that morning.
“Have all of you men your rifles loaded?”
They responded in the affirmative.
“Well,” he hesitated, “you see that little bunch of woods over there?
There’s a number of Germans there and we’re going after them.”
Swishing through the heavy wheat, the men now advanced in skirmish order.
They were very cautious and, although the sun was making a glaring light
and they were directly in an open field, they walked as though they were
sneaking toward the enemy. Captain Powers, forgetting his impressive
dignity, slunk along, one shoulder low and his hand grasping by the
middle a rifle. His eyes were narrowed as if he were registering for
the motion-pictures “extreme wariness.” As gently and softly as wading
through heavy grass permitted, Captain Powers placed one foot after the
other. His manner infected the men. One by one they adopted the crouching
attitude, ready to spring upon their unsuspecting prey. They could almost
be seen to flex the muscles in the calves of their legs and in their
upper arms, rising majestically on their toes when they walked, instead
of using the customary flat-footed form of perambulation.
Captain Powers, abandoning his duties as instructor of English at the
Texas college, had learned modern warfare from the books supplied by the
nearest officers’ training camp. He had learned how to order men about,
that he was an officer and a gentleman, as the officer who commissioned
him had phrased it. But yet he felt a slight interest in the men of
his command. In the officers’ training-school and in the course of the
practice skirmishes through which he had been he had learned that the
way in which an attack was made by a small party moving forward in full
daylight was by running forward in spurts until the objective had been
reached.
Being a professor of English, and especially a professor of English in
Texas, he sentimentalized the attack. How much finer it is, he thought,
to attack as General Sam Houston attacked; to march steadfastly upon the
enemy and make them surrender at the point of a sword or a bowie-knife.
The only rift came in his realization that he had no sword, not even a
bowie-knife.
When the party was still several yards from the edge of the woods, a mass
of Germans, outnumbering them twice, emerged with their hands held high
in the air and blithely calling: “Kamerad.”
The captain’s disappointment at not being able to make another attack
worthy of a Texan was soon lost in his exultant emotion at the thought of
the number of prisoners he had captured. Selecting one of the men to go
with him, he herded the prisoners back to the regimental headquarters,
where he proudly delivered them to another officer.