Before daybreak they arrived at the woods where the battalion had been
ordered to assemble. On entering the woods, Hicks was halted by one of
the company lieutenants who had offered to remain out of the attack in
order that, should the company be annihilated, he would be able to form
the nucleus of another company with the orderlies of the officers, the
soiled assistants of the kitchen, and the like. Hicks, having thrown
away most of his equipment, had annexed on the road to the woods parts
of uniforms of all descriptions. On his head was a bright red kepi which
formerly had belonged to a French Colonial. A pair of soft leather boots
that reached above the calves of his legs had been salvaged from some
officer’s bedding roll. His blouse had been discarded and his shirt was
unbuttoned at the throat. Hanging in cowboy fashion, a forty-five calibre
Colt flapped against his right hip. From his left side was a Luger pistol
that he had taken from a dead German officer.
Thus, he was a sight that no strictly military officer who had received
at least ninety days’ training in learning the commands of squads right,
slope and shoulder arms, at some officers’ training school could bear.
“Private!” the officer shouted indignantly. “What are you doing out of
uniform?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Truthfully, Hicks did not know. He only knew that he had thrown away much
of his own equipment and that he was highly pleased with the equipment he
had substituted for it.
“Don’t know?” The officer was scandalized. “Private, how long have you
been in the service?”
“Since war was declared,” Hicks answered promptly.
“And you don’t yet know how to dress? Nor how to address an officer?
Private, you have not saluted me!” The officer was horror-stricken; his
tone suggested an utter unbelief in Hicks’s existence.
“You don’t salute officers at the front, sir.”
The officer turned green. “Private, consider yourself under arrest.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Hicks started to walk away.
“And private,” the officer called. “If you aren’t back in uniform by
the next time I see you, a charge of disobedience will be added to your
offense.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Hicks muttered, walking away.
He sought out the coolest-looking spot in the woods and there lay down.
In a moment he was asleep. In another moment he was awakened by a
terrific noise. Unwittingly, he had selected for his bed a space not ten
yards from where a battery of long-range guns were concealed. When they
were fired the earth shook. He rose and fled farther into the woods.
Ahead of him, at the side of a green knoll, several old Frenchmen were
pottering around a field kitchen. The coals of the wood fire under a huge
black kettle glowed in a warming, friendly fashion. The aroma of black,
satisfying coffee steamed from the wide mouth of the caldron. Hicks was
enchanted, powerless to move, afraid to approach the benignant genii. He
felt like a vagrant, nose pressed against the window of a fashionable
restaurant. But no, not like a vagrant. Vagrants were only in cities,
in blessed civilizations. He was still undecided, when one of the squat
little figures, that somehow reminded him of the characters in “Rip Van
Winkle,” looked up. To Hicks he spoke unintelligibly, but his voice was
not forbidding. Hicks came nearer. He sniffed. “Café?” he questioned.
“Oui, café,” the man grunted, going on about his business.
“Café bon,” offered Hicks.
“Oui. Café bon, très bon,” the man conceded.
“J’ai faim.”
“O pardon. Vous avez faim. Voulez-vous café?” He scooped a ladleful of
hot coffee from the caldron and offered it to Hicks. How simple it was,
Hicks thought, as he drained the dipper.
The men gathered around Hicks. “Américain, oui?” They apparently had
decided before offering the question. “Pas Anglais? Anglais mauvais.”
They learned that he had been in the attack. “Boche pas bon aussi, non?”
From their bags cakes of chocolate and slices of bread were brought and
offered. Hicks ate shyly but greedily.
They were the first Frenchmen whom he had tried to talk with since the
day of the first attack of his platoon. Then they were disheartened, not
caring whether the Germans drank beer from the Arc de Triomphe or not.
Now they had regained heart and were willing to continue the struggle
of the advance toward Germany. Hicks learned that he had engaged in the
initial attack of a vast offensive, that the goal had been reached, that
Soissons had fallen under the storm of the First and Second Regular
Divisions, that Château-Thierry had at last been cleared of the enemy by
the Third and Twenty-sixth Divisions, that in between the Fourth Regular
Division had been successful in its attack. “Fini la guerre?” asked
Hicks, and he was frowned upon by the genii. No, they informed him, the
war had begun anew and would continue long. The genii spoke of the black
forest, of the Kriemhilde Stellung, which had never been passed save by
Allied prisoners, of the narrowing front the German retreat would make.
No, the war would last one year, two years, three years.
* * * * *
Hicks tramped through the forest, stumbling over large holes that had
been torn in the ground by the explosions of German long-range shells.
Now all was quiet. The green leaves of the trees fluttered unperturbed,
birds trilled from joy or shrieked messages to one another. The boughs
of the trees were kind, shielding the men from the rays of the hot summer
sun. Soldiers were bustling about, tugging ant-like at heavy caissons
which seemed unwilling to budge.
Thoroughly tired out, men were stretched upon the cool grass asleep,
forgetful of the void in their stomachs. Suddenly, in the distance,
a very erect form stalked through the trees. As it approached, a
thin, haughty face, above which a steel helmet jauntily set, was to
be seen. At the sight of him all of the sleeping men arose as if by
a signal earlier agreed upon. The tired, worn-out, hungry soldiers;
the dirty, blood-smeared, lousy soldiers; the red-eyed, gas-eaten,
mud-caked soldiers; the stupid, yellow, cowardly soldiers; the pompous,
authoritative corporals; the dreamy, valiant, faithful soldiers rose to
their feet and stood at attention. As the tall, spare figure advanced
nearer, tired hands were smartly raised to their helmets and dropped
quickly against the thigh.
Was it General Ulysses S. Pershing who had come? It was not. It was Major
Adams, Major John R. Adams, the battalion commander.
“What outfit is this?” The major’s tone was crisp.
“First battalion of the Sixth, sir.”
“Where are the rest of the men?”
“All the men are here, sir.”
“What! This is not a battalion, it’s a platoon. That was a hell of a way
to let a bunch of Germans treat you.”
He walked past. The men sank back on the ground, fully one-fifth of the
number that had attacked.
That afternoon beer was rationed by the mess sergeant, who had deprived
his safe dugout, far in the rear, of his pleasant company for a few
hours. The mess sergeant admitted that the beer had been provided by
Major Adams.
* * * * *
On this particular afternoon the woods of Villers Cotterets was as quiet
and peaceful as a statue of stone. Placid, motionless, the leaves of the
trees looked as if they were made of wax. Their branches curved solemnly
and prayerfully toward each other, meeting and forming successions
of arches. Planted in perpendicular rows, they aspired straight and
immutable, while overhead, fat plucked cotton tops, greatly expanded, lay
like dead below an impenetrable expanse of blue sky. Upon the fragile
blades of grass men were held in the vice of a sleep of exhaustion. Five
miles from the woods the guns along the front line, where men waited,
anxiously watching the movements of each other, were silent.
Somewhere among the solemn and still branches a huge limb cracked. It
fell rapidly and with a horrific sound through the foliage. Down, down
it came, rending the small sprigs of green as it fell. Below the limb
a soldier slept. When it reached the earth its heavier end struck the
soldier on the head, crushing his skull. Instantly the scene was changed
to one of frenzied activity. Men leaped to their feet and ran out of the
woods.
The treachery, the unexpectedness of the calamity remained unshakable
in the mind of Hicks. To him it seemed the height of cruelty, and in
some way he interpreted it as an intentional act of the enemy. He knew
better. He knew that a shell, probably the day before, during the heavy
bombardment, had struck the limb and partly severed it, and afterward its
great weight had brought itself down. It preyed upon him dreadfully. That
any one could have gone through the punishment of the attack unharmed
and then have returned to a place of safety only to be killed was more
than he could stand. It was an act of vengeance, and he believed it to be
the vengeance of an angry God.
Men returned to the woods from the field under orders of the officers,
who feared that their presence in the field might attract the attention
of the enemy. Nearly all of them returned and resumed their sleep. But
not Hicks. He was firmly decided against the woods. He would be at hand
for as many attacks as general headquarters could devise; he would do
his part in advancing the Allied cause; he would help save the world for
democracy; he would make war to end war; he would tolerate Y. M. C. A.
secretaries; he would go without food, clothing, and sleep—so he told the
officers—but he would not return to the woods. He lay down outside in
the wheat, every muscle twitching. For him, he felt, life had ended, the
world had come to a full stop.
Even the manœuvring of a small German plane around the big French
observation balloon failed to draw his attention from himself. The little
plane would draw away like some game-cock, and then dash for the balloon,
spurting a stream of incendiary bullets as it flew, then draw away again
and repeat the operation. At last the basket of the balloon was located
and the observer was struck by a piece of hot lead. High above the trees,
he leaned from the basket and dropped, clinging to his parachute. The
parachute caught in the top of one of the trees. From nowhere a low-hung
French automobile, with three men in the seats, dashed forward toward the
scene. The men got out, and, after a while, returned with the wounded
observer, the white bandage on his arm showing distinctly for a distance.
But the sight offered no titillations for Hicks.
* * * * *
Before dusk the battalion was formed and orders were given to march back
to the line of reserve. The news that the destination of the battalion
was farther from the front was sceptically received. The men adopted the
pose of feeling insulted at having been offered so poor a ruse. “Reserve,
my eye. Why don’t they say we’re goin’ to one of them rest camps you
always hear so much about?”
“Or else tell us that we’re goin’ to get thirty days’ leave each.”
“Yeh, where’s them boats we was goin’ to see?”
“I’d like to know.”
“We may go in reserve, but it’ll be in reserve of the Germans.”
Thus they offered their various comments upon the foolishness of
believing that they were to leave the front.
But the talk was borne on weak wings. For the moment the men had little
interest in their destination, save that they wanted it to be near. Their
legs felt as if they were to be separated from their bodies at the groin.
Their feet felt as if their shoes were full of small, sharp pebbles.
Major Adams, leading his horse and walking beside the men, encouraged
them, saying that they would halt in a short time.
If the battalion as a body troubled little about where they were going,
Hicks cared not at all. The incident of the falling tree had broken him.
He felt in danger of his life. Where he went mattered not. There was no
safety anywhere. He tramped along the road, an atom in the long, lean
line, his face showing white as paper through the dirt.
As night came on and a lopsided moon appeared, the battalion turned off
in a woods, was halted, and lay down.
In the dark Hicks and Pugh found a place where the grass was thickest.
They spread out their blankets and lay down. Pugh was restless, though
his body was scourged with fatigue. His was the foraging spirit. There
were no supply wagons in sight from which to pilfer, there were no field
kitchens, with the cooks stewing a barely edible mess of tomatoes,
beef-bones, potatoes, and onions. He got up and silently stole away.
Less than an hour afterward he returned, his arms laden with bottles and
condiments. He uncorked a bottle, placed the open end under Hicks’s nose,
and gently shook him.
“Oh, Hicks, Hicksy, look what daddy’s got.”
Hicks awakened with a start, almost knocking the bottle from Pugh’s hand.
“Cognac?” Hicks greedily asked.
“Naw,” deprecatingly, “but it’s pretty good champagne.”
Hicks drank, passed the bottle to Pugh. The bottle played shuttlecock
between them.
Suddenly Hicks felt impelled to talk.
“Jack, I’m all in. I feel sort of sick. I don’t believe I can go up to
the front any more.”
“What’s the matter?” sympathetically. “These Big Berthas got you fooled?”
“No,” thoughtfully. “That isn’t it. I can stand that all right. I can
even stand to see Kahl and the rest of those fellows get knocked off. I
suppose I could even stand it to get killed myself. You don’t make such
a hell of a fuss when you get killed. But it seems so damned ridiculous.
Take our going over the other day. A full battalion starting off and
not even a fifth of them coming back. And what did they do? What did we
do? We never even saw a German. They just laid up there and picked us
off—direct hits with their artillery every time! That’s hell, ... you
know. Think of being sent out to get killed, and the person who sends
you not knowing where you’re going! It looks crazy. Like goin’ up to the
Kaiser and saying: ‘Here, chop my head off.’ And I was talking to a Frog
to-day, a Frog that gave me some coffee, and he said that this damned
thing might keep up for years. Now, it’d be all right if we could go up
and clean things up with one big smash, but it’s pretty mean when you go
up and come back, go up and come back, until you get knocked off. Gimme
another drink.
“And Jack, you know that Frog I was tellin’ you about? When he gave me
the coffee he asked me if I was an American. I guess he thought at first
that I was an Englishman, and when I told him I wasn’t he looked sort of
glad. Then he looked as if he expected me to agree with him and said that
the Englishmen were no good.”
“Well, you did, didn’t you? I’d like to take a crack at them
lime-juicers.”
“What difference does that make? The point is, the French hate the
English and the English hate the Americans and the Americans hate the
Germans, and where the hell is it all goin’ to end? Gimme another drink.
“I guess that fellow being killed this afternoon got on my nerves,” he
finished.
Hicks drank until he was drunk, not sickeningly drunk, but until his
brain was numbed.
Pugh sat awake, watching the stars through the trees and listening to one
of the new men singing low some Italian love-songs that he had learned in
Rome.
* * * * *
The battalion slept until noon. When they awoke, the field kitchens,
drawn up not far from them, were concocting the rations into that
particular delicacy known to army folk as slum. The men fell in line
before the large metal containers, where soiled-looking ragamuffins
slopped a pale, watery substance into the dirty mess-kits that were held
out by the men as they passed. The bread was white, there was much coffee
that was hot. Further than that the desires of the men did not wing.
* * * * *
Late afternoon found the battalion on the road again, bound farther from
the front. They knew that they were leaving the front by the receding
boom of the artillery.
They were billeted in a small town from which all of the able-bodied
inhabitants had flown. Vacant houses were searched out, armsful of straw
were taken from the barns and arranged in neat piles on the stone floors
of the houses. By sleeping in pairs, they were able to use one blanket to
put over the straw, the other blanket to cover their bodies.
There began the regular soldier’s formula of reveille and morning
exercises; a scrawny breakfast and a morning of drill; a heavy, lumpy
dinner and an afternoon of skirmishing, alternating with lectures on
the manœuvres of war; a thin, skimpy supper, leaving the men free in
the evening to bribe the townspeople to sell them eggs, salads, rabbit,
cognac, and wine.
Of an evening they would gather in cafés, small, snug ones, with rough
boards for tables and several broken chairs and talk over the grievances
that the day had brought; of the rottenness of the Y. M. C. A., upon
which all but two were agreed; of what they did before they enlisted in
“this man’s army”; of the slackness of the mail delivery; of their hatred
and contempt for the military police, and especially those military
police in Paris of whom horrifying tales of cruelty were told; of what
they were going to do when they were released from the army; of the
vengeance they were planning against at least three officers; of how they
were going to circumvent being captured for the next war. One, now and
again, would shyly bring a pocket-worn photograph forth and show it to
those whom drink had made his closest friends. In all, a fairly pleasant
existence.
But Hicks was one of the more silent among them. After the first few
nights in the town he began making long, lonely pilgrimages to near-by
towns and returning later after taps, at which time he was supposed to
be in bed. He also began drinking more heavily, and one morning, when
the whistle was blown for drill, Hicks was still drunk from the effects
of the liquor of the night before. But being one of the handful of the
original members of the platoon, little by way of reprimand was said.