Part 6

The hidden guns that fired on them were located with uncanny skill; they worked their automatic rifles forward on each flank until the doomed emplacement was under a scissors fire; then they took up the matter with the bayonet, and slew with lion-like leaps and lunges and a shrill barbaric yapping. They took no prisoners. It was plain that they did not rely on rifle-fire or understand the powers of that arm—to them a rifle was merely something to stick a bayonet on—but with the bayonet they were terrible, and the skill of their rifle grenadiers and automatic-rifle men always carried them to close quarters without too great loss.

They carried also a broad-bladed knife, razor-sharp, which disembowelled a man at a stroke. The slim bayonet of the French breaks off short when the weight of a body pulls down and sidewise on it; and then the knives come out. With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living, and the lieutenant saw in those woods unwounded fighting Germans who flung down their rifles when the Senegalese rushed, and covered their faces, and stood screaming against the death they could not look upon. And—in a lull, a long, grinning sergeant, with a cruel aquiline face, approached him and offered a brace of human ears, nicely fresh, strung upon a thong. “B’jour, Americain! Voilà! Beaucoup souvenir ici—bon! Désirez-vous? Bon——!”

Later, on the last objective, there was a dignified Boche major of infantry, who came at discretion out of a deep dugout, and spoke in careful English: “Und I peg of you, Herr leutnant, to put me under trusty guard of your Americans true-and-tried! Ja! These black savages, of the art of war most ignorant, they would kill us prave Germans in cold plood!... The Herr General Mangin, that”—here a poignant string of gutturals—“I tell you, Herr leutnant, der very name of Mangin, it is equal to fünf divisions on unser front!”

[Illustration:

With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living. ]

Back with his own men again, the company whittled thin! Was there no limit to the gloomy woods?... Light through the trees yonder!——

The wood ended, and the attack burst out into the rolling wheatland, where the sun shone in a cloudless sky and poppies grew in the wheat. To the right, a great paved road marched, between tall poplars, much battered. On the road two motor-trucks burned fiercely, and dead men lay around them. Across the road a group of stone farm-buildings had been shelled into a smoking dust-heap, but from the ruins a nest of never-die machine-guns opened flanking fire. The khaki lines checked and swirled around them, and there was a mounting crackle of rifle-fire ... and the bayonets got in. The lines went forward to the low crest beyond, where, astride the road, was the first objective; and the assault companies halted here to reform. A few Boche shells howled over them, but the Boche was still pounding the wood, where the support battalions followed. The tanks debouched from the forest and went forward through the infantry.

In a hollow just ahead of the reformed line something was being dealt with by artillery, directed by the planes that dipped and swerved above the fight. The shells crashed down and made a great roaring murk of smoke and dust and flickering flames of red and green. The lieutenant, his report to the major despatched, and his company straightened out, along with men from other units and a handful of Senegalese who had attached themselves to him, ran an expert eye along his waiting squads, and allowed his mind to settle profoundly on breakfast. “Let’s see—it’s July, an’ in Texas they’ll be havin’ cantaloupes, and coffee, an’ eggs, an’ bacon, an’—” Second Lieutenant Corbett, beside him, groaned like a man shot through the body, and he realized that he had been thinking aloud. Then Corbett seized his arm, and gasped: “Lordy! Look at——”

The shelling forward had abated, but the smoke and murk of it still hung low. Into this murk every man in the line was now peering eagerly. Advancing toward them, dimly seen, was a great body of Germans, hundreds upon hundreds, in mass formation——

Pure joy ran among the men. They took out cartridges, and arranged them in convenient piles. They tested the wind with wetted fingers, and set their sights, and licked their lips. “Range three-fifty—Oh, boy, ain’t war wonderful! We been hearin’ about this mass-formation stuff, an’ now we gets a chance at it——!”

Then: “Aw, hell! Prisoners!” “The low-life bums, they all got their hands up!” “Lookit! One o’ them tanks is ridin’ herd over them—” It was the garrison of a strong point.

The artillery had battered them, and when it lifted, and they had come out of their holes, they found a brace of agile tanks squatting over their defenses with one-pounders and machine-guns. They had very sensibly surrendered, en masse, and were now ambling through the attacking lines to the rear.

[Illustration:

The fighting in the woods at Soissons was close and savage. ]

The officers’ whistles shrilled, and the attack went on. The woods fell away behind, and for miles to left and right across the rolling country the waves of assault could be seen. It was a great stirring pageant wherein moved all the forces of modern war. The tanks, large and small, lumbered in advance. Over them the battle-planes flew low, searching the ground, rowelling the Boche with bursts of machine-gun fire. The infantry followed close, assault waves deployed, support platoons in column, American Marines and Regulars, Senegalese and the Foreign Legion of France, their rifles slanting forward, and the sun on all their bayonets. And behind the infantry, straining horses galloped with lean-muzzled 75s, battery on battery—artillery, over the top at last with the rifles. On the skirts of the attack hovered squadrons of cavalry the Marines had seen the day before, dragoons and lancers, marked from afar by the sparkle and glitter of lanceheads and sabres.

And forward through the wheat, the Boche lines broke and his strong points crumbled; standing stubbornly in one place; running in panic at another; and here and there attempting sharp counter-attacks; but everywhere engulfed; and the battle roared over him. The Boche was in mixed quality that day. Some of his people fought and died fighting; a great many others threw down their arms and bleated “Kamaraden” at the distant approach of the attackers.

The rest was no connected story. Only the hot exaltation of the fight kept the men on their feet. Wheat waist-high is almost as hard to get through as running water, and the sun was pitiless. To the left of the battalion, and forward, machine-guns fired from the Chaudun farm; the 17th Company went in and stamped the Maxims flat. In a little hollow there was a battery of 105s that fired pointblank upon the Marines, the gunners working desperately behind their gun-shields. The Marines worked to right and left and beat them down with rifle-fire, and later a gunnery sergeant and a wandering detachment of Senegalese turned one of these guns around and shelled the Vierzy ravine with it—range 900 yards—to the great annoyance of the Boche in that place.

Further, a hidden strong point in the wheat held them, and a tank came and sat upon that strong point and shot it into nothing with a one-pounder gun. Another place, hidden Saxons, laired behind low trip-wires in high wheat, raked the line savagely. There was crawling and shooting low among the poppies, and presently hand-to-hand fighting, in which the freckled boy saw his brother killed and went himself quite mad among the wounded and the corpses with his bayonet....

Then, without being very clear as to how they got there, the lieutenant and his company and a great many others were at the Vierzy ravine, in the cross-fire of the machine-guns that held it.

The ravine was very deep and very precipitous and wooded. A sunken road led into it and, while the riflemen stalked the place cannily, a tank came up and disappeared down the sunken road. A terrific row of rifles and grenades arose, and a wild yelling. Running forward, the Marines observed that the tank was stalled, its guns not working; and a gray, frantic mass of German infantry was swarming over it, prying at its plates with bayonets and firing into such openings as could be found. One beauty of the tank is that, when it is in such a difficulty, you can fire without fearing for your friends inside. The automatic-rifle men especially enjoyed the brief crowded seconds that followed. Then all at once the farther slope of the ravine swarmed with running Boches, and the Americans knelt or lay down at ease, and fired steadily and without haste. As they passed the tank a greasy, smiling Frenchman emerged head and shoulders and inquired after a cigarette. There were very many dead Germans in the ravine and on its slope when they went forward.

[Illustration:

A Lieutenant of Marines and a German major, hand to hand. ]

Wearily now, the exaltation dying down, they left the stone towers of Vierzy to the right, in the path of the Regulars of the 9th and 23d. On line northeast of it they halted and prepared to hold. It was a lonesome place. Very thin indeed were the assault companies; very far away the support columns.... “Accordin’ to the map, we’re here. Turn those Boche machine-guns around—guess we’ll stay. Thank God, we must have grabbed off all their artillery, ’cept the heavies....”

“Lootenant, come up here, for God’s sake! Lord, what a slew o’ Boches!” Beyond rifle-shot a strong gray column was advancing. There were machine-guns with it. It was not deployed, but its intention was very evident.... Here were thirty-odd Marines and a few strays from one of the infantry regiments—nobody in sight, flanks or rear——

But to the rear a clanging and a clattering, and the thudding of horse-hoofs!—“Graves, beat it back an’ flag those guns.” Graves ran frantically, waving his helmet. The guns halted in a cloud of dust, and a gunner lieutenant trotted up, jaunty, immaculate. He dismounted, in his beautiful pale-blue uniform and his gleaming boots and tiny jingling spurs, and saluted the sweating, unshaven Marine officer. He looked with his glasses, and he consulted his map, and then he smiled like a man who has gained his heart’s desire. He dashed back toward his guns, waving a signal.

The guns wheeled around; the horses galloped back; there was a whirl and bustle behind each caisson, and two gunners with a field-telephone came running. It all happened in seconds.

The first 75 barked, clear and incisive, and the shell whined away ... the next gun, and the next.... The little puff-balls, ranging shots, burst very near the Boche column. Then the battery fired as one gun—a long rafale of fire, wherein no single gun could be heard, but a drumming thunder.

Smoke and fire flowered hideously over the Boche column. A cloud hit it for a space. When the cloud lifted the column had disintegrated; there was only a far-off swarm of fleeing figures, flailed by shrapnel as they ran. And the glass showed squirming heaps of gray flattened on the ground....

The gunner officer looked and saw that his work was good. “Bon, eh? Soixante-quinze—!” With an all-embracing gesture and a white-toothed smile, he went. Already his battery was limbered up and galloping, and when the first retaliatory shell came from an indignant Boche 155, the 75s were a quarter of a mile away. The Boche shelled the locality with earnestness and method for the next hour, but he did not try to throw forward another column.... “Man, I jest love them little 75s! Swa-sont-cans bon? Say, that Frog said a mouthful!”

[Illustration:

Sketches made by Captain Thomason at Soissons on scraps of paper taken from a feldwebel’s note-book. ]

The lieutenant wrote and sent back his final report: “... and final objective reached, position organized at....” and stopped and swore in amazement when he looked at his watch—barely noon! Sergeant Cannon’s watch corroborated the time—“But, by God! The way my laigs feel, it’s day after to-morrow, anyway!—” “Wake those fellows up—got to finish diggin’ in—No tellin’ what we’ll get here—” Some of his people were asleep on their rifles. Some were searching for iron crosses among the dead. A sergeant came with hands and mouth full. “Sir, they’s a bunch of this here black German bread and some stuff that looks like coffee, only ain’t—in that dugout—” And the company found that Kriegsbrot and Kaffee Ersatz will sustain life, and even taste good if you’ve been long enough without food....

The shadows turned eastward; in the rear bloated observation balloons appeared on the sky-line. “Them fellers gets a good view from there. Lonesome, though....” “Wonder where all our planes went—don’t see none—” “Hell! Went home to lunch! Them birds, they don’t allow no guerre to interfere with they meals. Now, that’s what I got against this fighting stuff—it breaks into your three hots a day.” “Boy, I’m so empty I could button my blouse on the knobs of my spine! Hey—yonder’s a covey o’ them avions now—low—strung out—Boche! Hit the deck!”

They were Boche—sinister red-nosed machines that came out of the eye of the sun and harrowed the flattened infantry, swooping one after another with bursts of machine-gun fire. Also they dropped bombs. Some of them went after the observation balloons, and shot more than one down, flaming, before they could be grounded. And not an Ally plane in sight, anywhere! To be just, there was one, in the course of the afternoon; he came from somewhere, and went away very swiftly, with five Germans on his tail. The lieutenant gathered from the conversation of his men that they thought the Frenchman used good judgment.

That afternoon the Boche had the air. He dropped bombs and otherwise did the best he could to make up, with planes, for the artillery that he had lost that morning. On the whole, he was infinitely annoying. There’s something about being machine-gunned from the air that gets a man’s goat, as the files remarked with profane emphasis. Much futile rifle-fire greeted his machines as they came and went, and away over on the right toward Vierzy the lieutenant saw one low-flying fellow crumple and come down like a stricken duck. This plane, alleged to have been brought down by a chaut-chaut automatic rifle, was afterward officially claimed by four infantry regiments and a machine-gun battalion. Late in the afternoon the French brought up anti-aircraft guns on motor-trucks and the terror of the air abated somewhat; but, while it lasted, the lieutenant heard——

“There comes—” (great rending explosion near by) “Goddamighty! ’nother air-bomb?”

“Naw, thank God! That was only a shell!”

As dusk fell, the French cavalry rode forward through the lines. The lieutenant thoughtfully watched a blue squadron pass—“If spirits walk, Murat and Marshal Ney an’ all the Emperor’s cavalry are ridin’ with those fellows....”

In the early dawn of the next day the cavalry rode back. One squadron went through the company’s position. It was a very small squadron, indeed, this morning. Half the troopers led horses with empty saddles. A tall young captain was in command. They were drawn and haggard from the night’s work, but the men carried their heads high, and even the horses looked triumphant. They had, it developed, been having a perfectly wonderful time, riding around behind the German lines. They had shot up transport, and set fire to ammunition-dumps, and added greatly to the discomfort of the Boche. They thought they might go back again to-night.... They did.

The night of the 19th the galleys got up, and the men had hot food. Early the morning of the 20th the division was relieved and began to withdraw to reserve position, while fresh troops carried the battle on. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines marched back, in a misty dawn, across the ground they had fought over two days before. In the trampled fields, where the dead lay unburied, old French territorials were mowing the ripe wheat and shocking it up. The battle was far away....

The battalion entered the woods and turned off the road toward the blue smoke of the galleys, from which came an altogether glorious smell of food. One of the company officers ran ahead of the 49th to find a place to stack arms and pile equipment. Presently he beckoned, and the lieutenant led his people to the place—a sort of clearing, along one side of which lay a great fallen tree. Under an outthrust leafy branch something long and stiff lay covered with a blanket.

“Stack arms ... fall out!”

Graves, the officer who had gone ahead, was standing by the blanket. “Do you know who’s under this?” he said. The lieutenant stooped and looked. It was little Tritt....

After breakfast, some of the men enlarged the pit where the machine-gun had been and tidied it up.... They wrapped the body in a blanket and two German water-proof sheets that were handy, and buried the boy there.

“... But before he got it, he knew that we were winning.” The men put on their helmets and went away, to look for others who had stopped in the woods ... to gather souvenirs.

“Well, he’s where he ain’t hungry, an’ his feet don’t hurt from hikin’, an’ his heavy marchin’ order won’t never cut into his shoulders any more....” “No, nor no damn Boche buzzards drop air-bombs on him——”

“Wonder where we’ll hit the old Boche next——”

[Illustration:

Fighting north of Blanc Mont, Champagne. ]

SONGS TWO “CARRY ME BACK TO OLE VIRGINNY”

The old Boche helmet made an excellent thing to cook with. You jabbed a few holes in it with a bayonet, so’s to have a draft, and a mess-kit fitted over it beautifully. When you could get it, strips of high explosive, picked up around a 155-mm. gun position, made the best fuel, giving you a fine, hot, smokeless fire. Smoke was not desirable on the front.

The chap on the opposite page is frying hard bread in bacon grease; he will sprinkle a little beet-sugar on it and have a real delicacy. Filling, too. As he goes about this domestic labor, he is humming “Carry me back to Ole Virginny.” But the files in the background are attracted by the smell—not the song.

[Illustration: [Soldiers]]

III

[Illustration: [Soldier]]

The taking of Blanc Mont is the greatest single achievement of the 1918 campaign—the Battle of Liberation.

—MARSHAL PÉTAIN.

III MARINES AT BLANC MONT

The battalion groped its way through the wet darkness to a wood of scrubby pines, and lay down in the slow autumn rain. North and east the guns made a wall of sound; flashes from hidden batteries and flares sent up from nervous front-line trenches lighted the low clouds; occasional shells from the Boche heavies whined overhead, searching the transport lines to the rear. It lacked an hour yet until dawn, and the companies disposed themselves in the mud and slept. They had learned to get all the sleep they could before battle.

A few days before, this battalion, the first of the 5th Regiment of Marines, a unit of the 2d Division, had pulled out of a pleasant town below Toul, in the area where the division rested after the Saint-Mihiel drive, and had come north a day and a night by train, to Chalons-sur-Marne. Thence, by night marches, the division had gathered in certain bleak and warworn areas behind the Champagne front, and here general orders announced that the 2d was detached from the American forces and lent by the Generalissimo as a special reserve to Gouraud’s 4th French Army.

Forthwith arose gossip about General Gouraud, the one-armed and able defender of Rheims, who had broken the German offensive in July. “A big bird with a beak of a nose and one of these here square beards on ’im—holds hisself straighter than the run of Frog generals,” confided a motorcycle driver from division headquarters. “Seen him in Challawns. They say he fights.”

“Yeh, ole Foch has picked the right babies this time,” observed the files complacently. “Special reserve—that’s us all over, Mable! Hope they keep us in reserve—but we know they won’t! The Frogs have got something nasty they want us to get outa the way for them. An’ we see Chasser d’Alpinos and Colonials around here. Somethin’ distressin’ is just bound to happen.”

“Roll your packs, you birds! The lootenant passed the word we’re goin’ up in camions to-night!”

The battalion got aboard in its turn, just as dusk deepened into dark, rode until the camion train stopped, and marched through the rain to its appointed place.

I

The dawn came very reluctantly through the clouds, bringing no sun with it, although the drizzle stopped. The battalion rose from its soggy blankets, kneading stiffened muscles to restore circulation, and gathered in disconsolate shivering groups around the galleys. These had come up in the night, and from them, standing under the dripping pines, came a promising smell of hot coffee. Something hot was the main consideration in life just now. But the fires were feeble, and something hot was long in coming. The cooks swore because dry wood couldn’t be found, and wet wood couldn’t be risked, because it would draw shell-fire. The men swore at the weather and the slowness of the kitchen force, and the war in general, and they all growled together.

“Quite right—entirely fitting and proper!” said the second-in-command of the 49th Company, coming up to where his captain gloomed beside the galley. “We wouldn’t know what to do with Marines who didn’t growl. But, El Capitan, if you’ll go over to that ditch yonder, you’ll find some Frog artillerymen with a lovely cooking-fire. They gave me hot coffee with much rum in it. A great people, the Frogs—” But the captain was already gone, and the second-in-command, who was a lean first lieutenant in a mouse-colored raincoat, had to run to catch up with him.

They returned in time to see their company and the other companies of the battalion lining up for chow. This matter being disposed of, the men cast incurious eyes about them.

The French artillerymen called the place “the Wood of the Seven Pigeons.” There were no pigeons here now. Only hidden batteries of 105s, with their blue-clad attendants huddled in shelters around them. The wood was a sparse growth of scrubby pines that persisted somehow on the long slope of one of the low hills of Suippes, in the sinister Champagne country. Many of the pines were blackened and torn by shell-fire, and the chalky soil was pockmarked with shell craters from Boche counter-battery work, searching for the French guns camouflaged there. Trenches zigzagged through the pines, old and new, with belts of rusty wire. There were graves.