Part 10

The scout officer, leading, had out his canteen and wet his dry mouth. He was acutely conscious of his empty stomach. His mind dwelt yearningly on the mess-kit, freighted nobly with monkey-meat and tomatoes, awaiting him in the dependable Tommy’s musette. “Hope to God nothing happens to old Tommy!” The wheat caught at his ankles and he hated war. Lord, how these night operations make a man sweat! He went down a little gully and out of it, the sergeant at his shoulder, breathing on his neck. That crater—he visualized his map—it should be right yonder—two of them. A hundred metres forward the last shells burst, and he saw new dirt. Ahead, a spot darker than the dark; he went up to it. Away on the right a flare soared, and something gleamed dull in the black hole at his feet—a round, deep helmet with the pale blur of a face under it; a click, and the shadow of a movement there, and a little flicker; a matter of split seconds; the scout officer had a bayonet in his stomach, almost—Feldritter Kurt Iden, Company 6 of the Margrave of Brandenburg Regiment (this established later by brigade intelligence, on examination of the pay-book of the deceased), being on front post with his squad, heard a noise hard on the cessation of the shelling, and put out his neck. Dear God, shoot! Shoot quickly!

The scout officer was conscious of a monstrous surge of temper. He gathered his feet under him, and his hands crooked like claws, and he hurled himself. In the same breath there was a long, bright flash right under his arm, and the mad crack of a Springfield. The disillusioned sergeant had estimated the situation, loosed off from the hip at perhaps seven feet, and shot the German through the throat. Too late to stop himself, the scout officer went head first into the crater, his hands locking on something wet and hairy, just the size to fill them; and presently he was at the bottom of the crater, dirt in his mouth and a buzzing in his head, strangling something that flopped and gurgled and made remarkable noises under his hands. There were explosions and people stepped hard on his back and legs. He became sane again and realized that whatever it was it was dead. He groped in his puttees for his knife, and cut off its shoulder-straps and a button or two, and looted its bosom of such papers as there were—these being details the complete scout officer must attend to. More explosions, and voices bleating “Kamaraden!”—terribly anxious voices—in his ear.

The disillusioned sergeant, a practical man, had ducked into the crater right behind the scout officer. The raiding-party in his rear had immediately fired their weapons in all directions. A great many rifles on forward stabbed the dark with sharp flame, and some of these were very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted that Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his judgment; he now reflected that it was good business—“grenades—I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit they are—ask the man that used one—” It was good business, for it fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, where the rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the brave German men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled into the clever little tunnel that connected them with the Feldritter’s crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant’s very feet. Being a man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he dragged the scout officer standing. “We got our prisoners, sir. Le’s beat it,” he suggested. “Their lines is wakin’ up, sir. It’s gonna be bad here——”

The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barged into them. “Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give ’em here, young man!” and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook them violently. “Thought you’d start something, hey? Thought you’d start something, hey?”

The scout officer now blew his whistle, the sergeant shouted in a voice of brass, and the colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. The French captain, close alongside, delightedly registered further events for narrative. The raiding-party gathered itself—chaut-chaut gunners slamming out a final clip—and they all went back across the wheat. It is related by truthful Marines there present that every German in Von Boehn’s army fired on them as they went, but no two agree as to the manner of their return. It is, however, established that the colonel, bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto virgin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot—something in the nature of _un beau geste_. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, imagining pursuit. The colonel—and to this attest the scout officer and the sergeant—then shot the Frenchman through the—as sea-going Marines say—stern-sheets.

[Illustration:

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language. ]

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.

“If I had my time to do over, I’d learn this here Frog _habla_,” remarked the sergeant afterward. “I don’t know what the bird said, but it sure sounded noble. Ample, I called it. Powerful ample.”

By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own place, the French captain had lapsed into English. “As a wound, you perceive, it is good for a permission. But it is not a wound. It is an indignity! And, besides, my new breeches! _Ah, Dieu de Dieu! Ce sale colonel-ci!_ What will my wife say! That one, she chose the cloth herself! _Tonnerre de canon!_”—and he sank into stricken silence.

The raiding-party shook down in their several holes, praising God, and went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments of Battalion Headquarters and departed for brigade. The scout officer observed, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less than twenty minutes. “Where’s the 49th?” he wanted to know first. “Hell, Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the major sent for you. An’ the 17th. We’re moving Battalion Headquarters up there now. Get your people and come along. Attack or something.”

After a very full night, the scout officer crawled and scuttled along the last tip of the Bois de Belleau, looking for a hole that a battalion runner told him about. “Seen the lootenant diggin’ in just past that last Maxim gun, sir. Right at the nose of the woods where the big rocks is. There’s about a dozen dead Heinies layin’ by a big tree, all together. Can’t miss it, sir.” The scout officer had no desire to be moving in the cool of the morning, when all well-regulated people are asleep if possible, and if you moved here the old Boche had a way of sniping at you with 88s—that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun—but he followed an urge that only Tommie could supply. “The damn slum will be cold, but two sardines and a piece of chocolate ain’t filling!” He ducked low behind a rock as an 88 ripped by and burst on the shredded stump of a great tree; he tumbled into a shell-crater, atop an infantryman and three bloated Germans long dead; he scrambled out and fell over two lank cadavers in a shallow hole, who raised their heads and cursed him drowsily; and he came at last to a miserable shelter scooped in the lee of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook until the deplorable countenance of his brother officer emerged yawning.

“Say,” demanded the scout officer, “you save my slum? Gimme my slum.”

“Why, hello, Jim! Why didn’t you come back, like you said you was? Where you been? You said you was comin’ right back.”

“Didn’t you save me my monkey-meat? We went on a raid, damn it. I——”

“Raid? Raid? What raid?”

“Oh, we went over to Torcy. Gimme my monkey-meat.”

[Illustration:

“War—sure—is—hell.” ]

“Well, you see, Jim—the fact is—well, we got moved up here right after you left, and they attacked from in here, an’ we came on in after them. Just got to sleep——”

“I haven’t had any sleep or any chow or anything—two sardines, by the bright face of God!—” The scout officer pounced upon a frowsy musette bag which the other had used for a pillow and jerked out a fire-blackened mess-kit. He wrenched the lid off and snarled horribly. “Empty, by God!”

His hands fell lax across his knees. He looked sadly over the blasted fields to Torcy, and he said, with the cold bitterness of a man who has tried it all and come to a final conclusion: “War—sure—is—hell.”

SONGS FOUR “SWEET AD-O-LINE”

There were places like this down in the Touraine country, around the town Americans called St. Onion. Canals with poplars mirrored in them, where it was pleasant to loaf at the end of the day. The women were kindly and disposed to make friends; it is a pity that there were not enough to go around. They had, also, an eye for corporals and sergeants; the bored privates on the bank, sentimental souls, are singing “Sweet Ad-o-line....” or it may be something very different. The sergeant, a sensitive spirit, will presently see that they get some Extra Police Duty.

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

V THE RHINE

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

V THE RHINE

The bugles went while it was still as dark as the inside of a dog. There was swearing and sickly yellow candle-light in the billets, mean houses in a mean little Rhine-Province town, and the chow lines formed on the company galleys in an icy December rain. The rain pattered on helmets and mess-kits, and fell in slanting lines through the smoky circles of light where the cooking-fires burned feebly. The faces of the Marines, as they filed out of the dark for food, were gray and frowsy. The cooks issued corn-bill hash, and dared any man to growl on the coffee. How the hell could it be biled enough, with wet wood and very little of that—been up all night as it is—you sports just pull in your necks! The companies gulped their ration in sullen silence, rolled damp blankets into the prescribed pack, and when the bugles squawked assembly, they fell in without confusion or enthusiasm. Platoon sergeants, with flash-lights or lanterns, called the rolls; somewhere out in front, first-sergeants received the reports; officers clumped along the lines to their units, grumbling.—“All here, first sergeant?”—“Beg the capt’n’s pardon—couldn’t see you in the dark, sir—all present-counted-for, sir!—” “Nice day for a hike. Major says, goin’ to the Rhine to-day. Eighteen or twenty kilomets—don’t know exactly. Dam’ such a war! I’d like the old kind, where you went into winter quarters—Brrr—” The captain pulled his collar around his ears.

Presently a bad-tempered drawling voice bayed “Squads right—march!—” There was a shuffle of hobnails in the mud, and the rattle of rifle-slings. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines took the road.

These German roads were all honestly metalled, but the inch or so of mud on the surface was like soup underfoot, and the overcoats soaked up the rain like blotting-paper. It was the kind of a morning with no line between night and daylight. The blackness turned to gray, and, after a while, the major, on his horse, could look back and see the end of his column. The battalion, he reflected, was up to strength again. It hadn’t been this large since it went to Blanc Mont, the end of September. He shut his eyes on that thought—a hundred and thirty men that came out, where a thousand went in—then replacements, and, after the Armistice, more replacements. Perhaps the quality was running down a little. The new chaps didn’t seem as tall and broad as the old men, the tall, sunburnt leathernecks that went out the road from Meaux, toward Château-Thierry, in the spring. Odd, just six months since the spring.... But a few veterans and hard drilling between fights would keep the temper in an outfit ... one remembered a phrase in an order of the division commander’s—“The 2d Division has never failed to impose its will upon the enemy....” And to-day it crossed the German Rhine.... He swung out of his saddle and stood by the road to watch them pass; 1,200 men, helmets and rifles gleaming a little in the wet gray light....

[Illustration:

The cooks issued corn-bill hash and dared any man to growl. ]

The road led eastward through a country of low hills, sodden in the rain. Untidy clouds sprawled on the crests and spilled wet filaments into the valleys. The land was all in cultivation, laid off in precise squares and oblongs; some newly ploughed, some sparsely green with turnips and rape. It looked ugly and ordered and sullenly prosperous. There was slow conversation in the column.

[Illustration:

A nice day for a hike. ]

“—Anybody know where we goin’ to-day?” “Damfino—naw—I did hear the skipper’s orderly say we’d make the Rhine, some time—” “How far—” “Some guy was lookin’ at a map at battalion. Said it was about thirty kilomets.” “Jesus on his golden throne!—It’s always ’bout thirty kilomets in this dam’ country—” “Yeh! But I remember one time it was twelve kilomets. The night we hiked up to Verdun, back last March. Had a Frawg guide—little shrimp wit’ a forked beard. Ask him how far, all he’d say was: ‘Dooz kilomets—dooz kilomets—’ Hiked all night in the rain, like this, an’ at daylight we come to a sign, wit’ the name of the place we’re goin’ to, an’ it said ‘Dooz kilomets’—that guide, he let on that he was right su’prised—” But there were very few men in the column who remembered the hike to Verdun, in the early spring of 1918; in one company eight, in another eleven; in the whole battalion the barest handful. It had been a long road. The first way-station was the Bois de Belleau; a lot of people stopped there, and were there yet. And there were more, comfortably rotting in the Forêt de Retz, south of Soissons. And more yet, well dead around Blanc Mont. And a vast drift of them back in hospitals. Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.... Twelve hundred men hiking to the Rhine, and how many ghosts.... The mist rolled around the column.

“—You replacements never knew Corp’ral Snair, that got bumped off at Soissons, dallyin’ with a Maxim gun. He was a musical cuss, an’ he uster sing a song to the tune of the ‘Old Gray Mare—She Ain’t What She Uster Be’—somethin’ like

‘The U. S. flag will fly over Germany Less than a year from now——’

[Illustration:

Men walked silent, remembering the old dead. ]

—and now it is, an’ it’s a pity he ain’t here to see it—” “Well, but he’s restin’ easy where he is—me, I’m cold as hell an’ this dam’ drizzle is drainin’ down my neck——”

There was nothing but the mist and the rain, and a mean, cold little wind with a bite in it. North and south, from the edge of Holland to the Metz gateway, all the armies were marching. Ahead, just out of contact, went the German armies. The battalion passed a dense little wood of firs—Christmas-tree woods, the battalion called them. This clump showed unmistakably that it had been a camp; but there was no litter; the Boche who bivouacked there had left it neat and clean. Along the road in orderly piles were some hundreds of the round German helmets, and parked precisely in a cleared place, where horse-lines had been, was a battery of 105 field howitzers. The old Boche was jettisoning what he didn’t need. The battalion observed and was thoughtful.

“What about the ole Boche?—You think he was licked enough?” “No, I don’t. That stuff back there, they laid it down under orders, like they do everything. It’s stacked—it ain’t just thrown away. An’ look how they police up behind themselves—” “Yeh! Remember the other day, when we was advance-guard, we could see their rear-guard, sometimes—perfect order, an’ all that—not like a defeated outfit, at all!” “Sure! I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit it ain’t! An’ those little towns back yonder, with the arches an’ the flags and the welcome returnin’ heroes stuff—none o’ that was for us—” “They ain’t licked enough. Look at this country—winter ploughin’ done—everything ship-shape—no shell-holes—no trenches—no barb’ wire—who in hell won this war, anyway?” “You said it. We oughter got up in here an’ showed the old Boche what it was like, to have a war in his own yard.” “Well, I’ve been in all of it, an’ pers’nally I was glad when the shootin’ stopped. I got me some sleep an’ a full belly, an’ a pair of new shoes—an’ some fireman’s underwear, too. An’ I was right proud not to be killed. I ain’t prepared to die—” “We know you ain’t, sergeant—we know—” “Aw, belay that—I mean, I was glad, myself, but we oughter gone on—oughter’ve finished it while we was at it. He wasn’t licked enough, an’ now he’s goin’ home like a peacock wit’ seven tails——!”

This was the consensus of opinion, delivered with consideration in the rain. The replacements, especially those who had joined up after the Armistice, in Belgium, were savagely regretful. The chaps who had come in after the Champagne, and been among those present at one fight, were bloodthirsty, but to a lesser degree. Only the veterans were entirely calm.

The rain fell, the road grew heavier. The battalion, soaked and miserable, plodded on. They passed through many villages, all alike; all ugly and without character. The houses were closed and shuttered. You saw few people, but you always had the feeling of eyes behind the shutters. One thick-bodied Boche, in uniform—an artilleryman, by his leather breeches—stood in the doorway of a house, smoking a porcelain pipe that hung to his knee. His face was set in a cast of hate. He stood and stared, and the battalion, passing, looked him over with respect.

[Illustration:

One thick-bodied Boche.... His face in a cast of hate. ]

“Understand a bird like that.” “Yeh—he’s honest. Those dam’ Heinies in the billet last night, they made me sick. That fellow that talked English. Says he was glad his American frien’s, present by agreement in the Rheinlan’, to welcome—says that to me, an’ would the Herr Soldier like a good cup of coffee?” “Dam’ his remarks—how ’bout the coffee?” “Well, it tasted funny, but it was hot.” “Old guy at our billet gave us some cognac. Hot stuff! He didn’t let on, though.—You know those trick certif’cates a soldier’s family gets in Germany?—Colored picture like a Croi’ Guerre certif’cate, shows a fat, beer-drinkin’-Heinie angel standin’ over a dead Boche—signed Wilhelm I. R.—you know. Well, this bird had six of them in his front room, all framed on the wall. I gathered they was his sons. Four bumped off at Verdun in 1916. One very recent—Soissons, July.—Wonder if we met that fella? He stood there an’ looked at me while I was readin’ them, an’ he looked like a wolf. I don’t blame him—. But howcome he gave us the cognac—?” Later the battalion learned that the Boche had orders to be hospitable....

Toward noon the clouds lifted, and the rain slowed to a thin drizzle, although it did not stop. The battalion filed between hills toward a great valley, dimly seen. The hills towered over them, dark, menacing—“No wonder the ole Boche has such a mean disposition, livin’ in a country like this—” The battalion came into a town with paved streets and trolley-cars and tall factory chimneys that did not smoke. Platoon commanders said it was Remagen; those towers to the right would be the bridge. There was a bridge, a great steel structure of high black arches. The battalion filed upon it. Under it black water flowed swiftly, with surges and eddies dimpled by the rain. High rocky hills came down out of the mist on the farther side.

“So this is the Rhine,” remarked the battalion. “Hell!” A few files were interested. A lank Texan said: “I don’t see much to make a fuss about. You boys ever see the Trinity in overflow time? Ten miles from bank to bank, in the McKenzie Bend country—why, we’d call this a creek down where I come from—” “Naw, it ain’t much river—an’ no more is your dam’ Trinity! I was raised in Sent Louie—Ole Miss’sip’, now—” “Well, rivers in this country are mainly over-touted. That Marne, it wouldn’t be much more’n a branch, down South. I never saw that there Vesle River, but a guy in the 32d Division, that was with me in Neuilly, he says you could mighty near jump across it.” “Heard anything about chow?—Galleys went on ahead awhile ago—when do we eat——”

For four years no hostile troops with arms in their hands had seen this river; only sad files of prisoners had crossed it, under German guard. The battalion turned right on the eastern bank and went up the river, on a broad road between a cliff and the swift black water. There were many houses, a continuous town. It was past noon of a Friday, the 13th December, and the Boche school-children were out. They gathered to look at the passing column. The Marines eyed them keenly. These kids were different. They did not point or talk or cry out, after the manner of children. They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced, with unwinking pale-blue eyes. The boys were nearly all in field-gray uniform cloth—cut down, perhaps, from the cast-off clothes of an elder. Some of them wore boots and round soldier-caps. They carried books and lunch-boxes, knapsack fashion, on their shoulders.—“Look, will you—that kid there ain’t more’n a yearlin’, and they’ve got him in heavy marchin’ order a’ready!” “Yeh,—they start ’em early—that’s howcome they’re the way they are—these Boche.” There were round-faced little girls with straw-colored braids, in cloaks. They did not look poorly fed, like the waxen-faced children the battalion remembered in France. And at every corner there were more of them. The battalion was impressed.—“Say—you see all those kids—all those little square-heads! Hundreds of ’em, I’ll swear! Something’s got to be done about these people. I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children——”

[Illustration:

They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced. ]

[Illustration:

“I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children.” ]

[Illustration:

The 1st Battalion of the Rhine—5th Marines took the road. ]

SONGS FIVE “LONG BOY”

One of the very few soldier songs that survived the Atlantic voyage—although it suffered some sea change—was “Long Boy.” It ran (with variations):

“_Good-bye, Maw! Good-bye, Paw! Good-bye, mule, with your old hee-haw...._

· · · · ·

_I’ll bring you a Turk an’ a Kaiser too, And that’s about all one fellow can do...._”

This file is cheering his soul in the angle of the bridge at Silly-le-Long, just outside of Cognac Pete’s buvette. In a little while an M. P. with no ear for music will run him in.

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.