Part 5
Quiet French villages along the road, stone houses like gray ghosts under the pale moon, and all lights hooded against Boche planes. Long, empty stretches of road. Shadowy columns of French infantry, overtaken and passed. Horse-drawn batteries of 75s on the move. Swift staff cars that dashed by, hooting. Then, long files of horsemen, cloaked and helmeted, with a ghostly glint of lanceheads over them—French cavalry. Presently, dawn, with low clouds piling up in the rosy sky. And along the road, wherever there were groves, more cavalry was seen, at ease under the trees. Horses were picketed, lances and sabres stuck into the ground, and cooking-fires alight.
The Marines had not met the French horse before. They now looked approvingly upon them. Men and horses were alike big and well-conditioned. All morning the camions passed through a country packed with troops and guns, wherever there was cover from the sky. Something big was in the air.
It was mid-forenoon when the train stopped, and the battalion climbed out on cramped legs. “Fall in on the right of the road.... Platoon commanders, report.... Keep fifty yards’ distance between platoons.... Squads right.... March!” and the companies moved off stiffly, on empty stomachs. The little dark Annamites watched the files pass with incurious eyes. They had taken many men up to battle.
II
Company by company, the 1st Battalion passed on, and behind them the other battalions of the 5th Marines took the road and, after them, the 6th. “None of the wagons, or the galleys—don’t see the machine-gun outfits, either,” observed the lieutenant of the 49th Company, looking back from the crest of the first low hill. Here the battalion was halted, having marched for half an hour, to tighten slings and settle equipment for the real business of hiking. “They may get up to-night, chow an’ all—wonder how far we came, an’ where we’re goin’. No, sergeant—can’t send for water here—my canteen’s empty, too. All I know about it is that we seem to be in a hurry.”
[Illustration:
Prussians from Von Boehn’s divisions in and around the Bois de Belleau.
A page from Captain Thomason’s sketch-book. ]
The dust of the ride had settled thick, like fine gray masks, on the men’s faces, and one knew that it was just as thick in their throats! Of course the canteens, filled at Croutte, were finished. The files swore through cracked lips.
The battalion moved off again, and the major up forward set a pace all disproportionate to his short legs. When the first halt came, the usual ten-minute rest out of the hour was cut to five. “Aw hell! forced march!” “An’ the lootenant has forgot everything but ‘close up! close up!’— Listen at him——”
The camions had set them down in a gently rolling country, unwooded, and fat with ripening wheat. Far across it, to the north, blue with distance, stood a great forest, and toward this forest the battalion marched, talkative, as men are in the first hour of the hike, before the slings of the pack begin to cut into your shoulders.... “Look at them poppies in the wheat.”—“They ain’t as red as the poppies were the mornin’ of the 6th of June, when we went up to Hill 142—” “Yep! Beginnin’ to fade some. It’s gettin’ late in the season.” “Hi—I’m beginnin’ to fade some myself—this guerre is wearin’ on a man ... remember how they looked in the wheat that mornin’, just before we hit the Maxim guns?—red as blood—” “Pore old Jerry Finnegan picked one and stuck it in the buckle of his helmet—I seen it in his tin hat after he was killed, there behin’ the Hill.... I’ll always think about poppies an’ blood together, as long as I live—” This last from little Tritt, the lieutenant’s orderly.
“Long as you live—that’s good!” gibed Corporal Snair, of the Company Headquarters group. “Don’t you know by now how expendable you bucks are?”—The lieutenant heard, and remembered it, oddly enough, in a crowded moment the next day, when he lost the two of them to a hard-fought Maxim gun.
No wind moved across the lonely wheatland; the bearded stalks waved not at all, and the sun-drenched air was hot and dead. Sweat made muddy runnels through the thick white dust that masked the faces of the men. Conversation languished; what was said was in profane monosyllables. Clouds came up, and there were showers of rain, with hot sunshine between. Uniforms steamed after each shower, and thirst became a torture. The man who had the vin blanc in his canteen fell out and was quite ill. “Hikin’—in—a dam’—Turkish bath——”
After interminable hours, the column came to the forest and passed from streaming sunshine into sultry shades. It was a noble wood of great high-branching trees, clean of underbrush as a park. Something was doing in the forest. Small-arms ammunition was stacked beside the road, and there were dumps of shells and bombs under the trees. And French soldiers everywhere. This road presently led into a great paved highway, and along it were more of the properties of war—row upon row of every caliber of shell, orderly stacks of winged aerial bombs, pile after pile of rifle and machine-gun ammunition, and cases of hand-grenades and pyrotechnics. There were picket-lines of cavalry, and park after park of artillery, light and heavy. There were infantrymen with stacked rifles.
Gunner and horseman and poilu, they looked amicably upon the sweating Marines, and waved their hands with naïve Gallic friendliness. The battalion came out of its weariness and responded in kind. “Say, where do they get that stuff about little Frenchmen? Look at that long-sparred horse soldier yonder—seven feet if he’s an inch!”—“Them gunners is fine men, too. All the runts in the Frog army is in the infantry!”—“Well, if these Frawgs fights accordin’ to their size, Gawd pity the old Boche when that cavalry gets after him—lances an’ all!” “You said it! Them little five-foot-nothin’ infantry, with enough on they backs, in the way o’ tents an’ pots an’ pans, to set up light housekeepin’ wit’, and that long squirrel gun they carry, an’ that knittin’-needle bayonet—! Remember how they charged at Torcy, there on the left——?”
The French were cooking dinner beside the road. For your Frenchman never fights without his kitchens and a full meal under his cartridge-pouches. They go into the front line with him, the kitchens and the chow, and there is always the coffee avec rhum, and the good hot soup that smells so divinely to the hungry Americans, passing empty. “When we goes up to hit the old Boche, we always says adoo to the galleys till we comes out again—guess the idea is to starve us so we’ll be mad, like the lions in them glad-i-a-tor-ial mills the corp’ril was tellin’ about.”—“Hell! we don’t eat, it seems—them Frawgs might at least have the decency to keep their home cookin’ where we can’t smell it!”
The highway led straight through the forest. Many roads emptied into it, and from every road debouched a stream of horses, men, and guns. The battalion went into column of twos, then into column of files, to make room. On the left of the road, abreast of the Marines, plodded another column of foot—strange black men, in the blue greatcoats of the French infantry and mustard-yellow uniforms under them. Their helmets were khaki-colored, and bore a crescent instead of the bursting bomb of the French line. But they marched like veterans, and the Marines eyed them approvingly. Between the foot, the road was level-full of guns and transport, moving axle to axle, and all moving in the same direction. In this column were tanks, large and small, all ring-streaked and striped with camouflage, mounting one-pounders and machine-guns; and the big ones, short-barrelled 75s.
The tanks were new to the Marines. They moved with a horrific clanging and jangling, and stunk of petrol. “Boy, what would you do if you seen one of them little things comin’ at you? The big ones is males, and the little ones is females, the lootenant says....” “Chillun, we’re goin’ into somethin’ big— Dunno what, but it’s big!”
The sultry afternoon passed wearily, and at six o’clock the battalion turned off the road, shambling and footsore, and rested for two hours. They found water and filled canteens. A few of the hardier made shift to wash. “Gonna smear soapsuds an’ lather all over me—the Hospital Corps men say it keeps off mustard-gas!” But most of the men dropped where the platoon broke ranks and slept. Battalion H. Q. sent for all company commanders.
Presently the lieutenant of the 49th returned, with papers and a map. He called the company officers around him, and spread the map on the ground. He spoke briefly.
“We’re in the Villers-Cotterets woods—the Forêt de Retz. At H hour on D day, which I think is to-morrow morning, although the major didn’t say, we attack the Boche here”—pointing—“and go on to here—past the town of Vierzy. Eight or nine kilomètres. Three objectives—marked—so—and so. The 2d Division with one of the infantry regiments leading, and the 5th Marines, attacks with the 1st Moroccan Division on our left. The Frog Foreign Legion is somewhere around too, and the 1st American Division. It’s Mangin’s Colonial Army—the bird they call the butcher.
“The 49th Company has the division’s left, and we’re to keep in touch with the French over there. They’re Senegalese—the niggers you saw on the road, and said to be bon fighters. The tanks will come behind us through the woods, and take the lead as soon as we hit the open.
“No special instructions, except, if we are held up any place, signal a tank by wavin’ a rag or something on a bayonet, in the direction of the obstacle, and the tank will do the rest.
“No rations, an’ we move soon. See that canteens are filled. Now go and explain it all to your platoons, and—better take a sketch from this map—it’s the only one I have. Impress it on everybody that the job is to maintain connection between the Senegalese on the left and our people. Tritt, I’m goin’ to catch a nap—wake me when we move——”
It was dark when the battalion fell in and took the road again. They went into single file on the right, at the very edge of it, for the highway was jammed with three columns of traffic, moving forward. It began to rain, and the night, there under the thick branches, was inconceivably black. The files couldn’t see the man ahead, and each man caught hold of the pack in front and went feeling for the road with his feet, clawing along with the wheels and the artillery horses and machine-gun mules. On the right was a six-foot ditch, too deep in mud to march in. The rain increased to a sheeted downpour and continued all night, with long rolls of thunder, and white stabs of lightning that intensified the dark. The picked might of France and America toiled on that road through the Villers-Cotterets forest that night, like a great flowing river of martial force....
And after the 5th Marines have forgotten the machine-guns that sowed death in the wheat behind Hill 142, and the shrapnel that showered down at Blanc Mont, before St. Étienne, they will remember the march to the Soissons battle, through the dark and the rain....
As guns and caissons slewed sideways across the files, or irate machine-gun mules plunged across the tangle, the column slowed and jammed and halted on heavy feet; then went on again to plunge blindly against the next obstacle. Men fell into the deep ditch and broke arms and legs. Just to keep moving was a harder test than battle ever imposed. The battalion was too tired to swear. “I’m to where—I have to think about movin’ my feet—! Plant—the left foot—an’—advance the right—an’—bring up the—left foot—an’——”
[Illustration:
“Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and go forward....” 4.30 A. M., July 18, 1918. ]
No battle ever tried them half as hard as the night road to Soissons....
The rain ceased, and the sky grew gray with dawn. The traffic thinned, and the battalion turned off on a smaller road, closed up, and hurried on. Five minutes by the side of the road to form combat packs and strip to rifle and bayonet. “Fall in quickly! Forward!”
Overhead the clouds were gone; a handful of stars paled and went out; day was coming. The battalion, lightened, hastened. They perceived, dimly, through a mist of fatigue, that a cloudless day was promised and that the world was wonderfully new washed and clean—and quiet! Not a gun anywhere, and the mud on the road muffled the sound of hobnailed boots. “Double time! Close up! Close up, there!”
There had been fighting here; there were shell-holes, scarred and splintered trees. The battalion panted to a crossroads, where stone buildings lay all blasted by some gale of shell-fire. And by the road what looked like a well! The files swayed toward it, clutching at dry canteens—“Back in ranks! Back in ranks, you——!”
Then, barbed wire across the roadway, and battered shallow trenches to right and left, and a little knot of French and American officers, Major Turrill standing forward. The leading company turned off to the left, along the trenches. The 49th followed in column. “Turn here,” ordered the major. “Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and go forward....” The 49th went beyond the trench, still in column of route, picking its way through the woods. The lieutenant looked back at his men as he went; their faces were gray and drawn and old; they were staggering with weariness—“Fix bayonets—” and the dry click of the steel on the locking-ring ran along the ragged column, loud in the hush of dawn.
III
It was 4.35, the morning of July 18.
Miles of close-laid batteries opened with one stupendous thunder. The air above the tree-tops spoke with unearthly noises, the shriek and rumble of light and heavy shells. Forward through the woods, very near, rose up a continued crashing roar of explosions, and a murk of smoke, and a hell of bright fires continually renewed. It lasted only five minutes, that barrage, with every French and American gun that could be brought to bear firing at top speed. But they were terrible minutes for the unsuspecting Boche. Dazed, beaten down, and swept away, he tumbled out of his holes when it lifted, only to find the long bayonets of the Americans licking like flame across his forward positions, and those black devils, the Senegalese, raging with knives in his rifle-pits. His counter-barrage was slow and weak, and when it came the shells burst well behind the assaulting waves, which were already deep in his defenses.
[Illustration:
Listening-post rushed by Senegalese. ]
The 49th Company, running heavily, sodden with weariness, was plunging through a line of wire entanglements when the guns opened. A French rifleman squatted in a hole under the wire, and a sergeant bent over him and shouted: “Combien—how far—damn it, how you say?—combien—kilomètre—à la Boche?” The Frenchman’s eyes bulged. He did violent things with his arms. “Kilomèt’? _kilomètres?_ Mon Dieu, cent mètres! Cent mètres!” Half the company, still in column, was struggling in the wire when, from the tangle right in front, a machine-gun dinned fiercely and rifle-fire ran to left and right through the woods.
It was well that the woods were a little open in that spot, so that the lieutenant’s frantic signals could be seen, for no voice could have been heard. And it was more than well that every man there had been shot over enough not to be gun-shy. They divined his order, they deployed to the left, and they went forward yelling. That always remained, to the lieutenant, the marvel of the Soissons fight—how those men, two days without food, three nights without sleep, after a day and a night of forced marching, flung off their weariness like a discarded piece of equipment, and at the shouting of the shells sprang fresh and eager against the German line.
Liaison—to keep the touch—was his company’s mission—the major’s last order. To the left were only the smoky woods—no Senegalese in sight—and to the left the lieutenant anxiously extended his line, throwing out the last two platoons, while the leading one shot and stabbed among the first Boche machine-guns. He himself ran in that direction, cursing and stumbling in wire and fallen branches, having no time for certain Boches who fired at him over a bush.... Finally, Corbett, the platoon commander, leading to the left, turned and waved his arms. And through the trees he saw the Senegalese—lean, rangy men in mustard-colored uniforms, running with their bayonets all aslant. He turned back toward his company with the sweetest feeling of relief that he had ever known; he had his contact established; his clever and war-wise company would attend to keeping it, no matter what happened to him.
The battle roared into the wood. Three lines of machine-guns, echeloned, held it. Here the Forêt de Retz was like Dante’s wood, so shattered and tortured and horrible it was, and the very trees seemed to writhe in agony. Here the fury of the barrage was spent, and the great trunks, thick as a man’s body, were sheared off like weed-stalks; others were uprooted and lay gigantic along the torn earth; big limbs still crashed down or swayed half-severed; splinters and débris choked the ways beneath. A few German shells fell among the men—mustard-gas; and there in the wet woods one could see the devilish stuff spreading slowly, like a snaky mist, around the shell-hole after the smoke had lifted.
Machine-guns raved everywhere; there was a crackling din of rifles, and the coughing roar of hand-grenades. Company and platoon commanders lost control—their men were committed to the fight—and so thick was the going that anything like formation was impossible. It was every man for himself, an irregular, broken line, clawing through the tangles, climbing over fallen trees, plunging heavily into Boche rifle-pits. Here and there a well-fought Maxim gun held its front until somebody—officer, non-com, or private—got a few men together and, crawling to left or right, gained a flank and silenced it. And some guns were silenced by blind, furious rushes that left a trail of writhing khaki figures, but always carried two or three frenzied Marines with bayonets into the emplacement; from whence would come shooting and screaming and other clotted unpleasant sounds, and then silence.
[Illustration:
A fighting swirl of Senegalese. ]
From such a place, with four men, the lieutenant climbed, and stood leaning on his rifle, while he wiped the sweat from his eyes with a shaking hand. Panting, white or red after their nature—for fighting takes men differently, as whiskey does—the four grouped around him. One of them squatted and was very sick. And one of them, quite young and freckled, explored a near-by hole and prodded half a dozen Boches out of it, who were most anxious to make friends. The other three took interest in this, and the Boches saw death in their eyes. They howled like animals, these big hairy men of Saxony, and capered in a very ecstasy of terror. The freckled Marine set his feet deliberately, judging his distance, and poised his bayonet. The lieutenant grasped his arm—“No! No! take ’em back—they’ve quit. Take ’em to the rear, I tell you!” The freckled one obeyed, very surly, and went off through the tangle to the rear. The lieutenant turned and went on.
To left and right he caught glimpses of his men, running, crawling, firing as they went. In a clearing, Lieutenant Appelgate, of the 17th Company, on the right, came into view. He waved his pistol and shouted something. He was grinning.... All the men were grinning ... it was a bon fight, after all....
Then little Tritt, his orderly, running at his side, went down, clawing at a bright jet of scarlet over his collar. The war became personal again—a keening sibilance of flesh-hunting bullets, ringing under his helmet. He found himself prone behind a great fallen tree, with a handful of his men; bark and splinters were leaping from the round trunk that sheltered them.
“You”—to a panting half-dozen down the log—“crawl back to the stump and shoot into that clump of green bushes over there, where you see the new dirt—it’s in there! Everything you’ve got, and watch for me up ahead. Slover”—to Sergeant Robert Slover, a small, fiery man from Tennessee—“come on.”
They crawled along the tree. Back toward the stump the Springfields crackled furiously. Somewhere beyond the machine-gun raved like a mad thing, and the Boches around it threw hand-grenades that made much smoke and noise. The two of them left the protection of the trunk, and felt remarkably naked behind a screen of leaves. They crawled slowly, stopping to peer across at the bushes. The lieutenant caught the dull gleam of a round gray helmet, moved a little, and saw the head and the hands of the Boche who worked the gun. He pushed the sergeant with his foot and, moving very carefully, got his rifle up and laid his cheek against the stock. Over his sights, the German’s face, twenty metres away, was intent and serious. The lieutenant fired, and saw his man half-rise and topple forward on the gun.
Then things happened fast. Another German came into view straining to tear the fallen gunner off the firing mechanism. Slover shot him. There was another, and another. Then the bush boiled like an ant-heap, and a feldwebel sprang out with a grenade, which he did not get to throw. It went off, just the same, and the Marines from the other end of the tree came with bayonets.... Presently they went on.... “There’s a squad of them bastards to do orderly duty for the corp’ral an’ little Tritt,” said the sergeant. “Spread out more, you birds.”
[Illustration:
Fighting from tree to tree in the woods south of Soissons.
A chaut-chaut automatic rifle in action. ]
Afterward, sweating and panting, the freckled one who had started back with prisoners caught up with the lieutenant. “Lootenant, sir!” he gasped, wiping certain stains from his bayonet with his sleeve. “Them damn Heinies tried to run on me, an’ I jest natcherly had to shoot ’em up a few—” and he looked guilelessly into the officer’s eyes. “Why you—Hell! ... fall in behind me, then, an’ come along. Need another orderly.”
He pondered absently on the matter of frightfulness as he picked his way along. There were, in effect, very few prisoners taken in the woods that morning. It was close-up, savage work. “But speakin’ of frightfulness, one of these nineteen-year-olds, with never a hair to his face—” A spitting gust of machine-gun bullets put an end to extraneous musings.
Later, working to the left of his company, he was caught up in a fighting swirl of Senegalese and went with them into an evil place of barbed wire and machine-guns. These wild black Mohammedans from West Africa were enjoying themselves. Killing, which is at best an acquired taste with the civilized races, was only too palpably their mission in life. Their eyes rolled, and their splendid white teeth flashed in their heads, but here all resemblance to a happy Southern darky stopped. They were deadly. Each platoon swept its front like a hunting-pack, moving swiftly and surely together. The lieutenant felt a thrill of professional admiration as he went with them.