Part 8

“Here we are, in the Essen Trench—seems that the Marines move down to the left to here—and the 9th and 23rd move to the right—to here. These pencil lines show the direction of attack—then we jump off, angling a little to the right, compass bearing—and the infantry outfits point about as much to the left. That brings us together up here about three kilometres, and we go on straight, a little west of north from there, to Blanc Mont——

[Illustration:

In the Essen trench—a runner. ]

“Essen Hook and Bois de Vipre are the first objectives—Blanc Mont final objective.... That means we pass to the flank of the Hook and join up behind the Viper Woods—we’ll get some flanking fire, but we will cut both positions off from the rear, and we won’t get near as many men shot up as we would in frontal attack. Might be worse——”

“That’s all we know about the division orders— For the battalion, the major says the 5th Regiment will follow the 6th in support at the jump-off, and the zero hour will be communicated later—some time in the morning, I reckon. That’s all.”

The morning of October 3 [1918] came gray and misty. From midnight until dawn the front had been quiet at that point—comparatively. Then all the French and American guns opened with one world-shaking crash. From the Essen Trench the ground fell away gently, then rose in a long slope, along which could be made out the zigzags of the German trenches. The Bois de Vipre was a bluish mangled wood, two kilometres north. Peering from their shelters, the battalion saw all this ground swept by a hurricane of shell-fire. Red and green flames broke in orderly rows where the 75s showered down on the Boche lines; great black clouds leaped up where the larger shells fell roaring. The hillside and the wood were all veiled in low-hanging smoke, and the flashes came redly through the cloud. Far off, Blanc Mont way, a lucky shell found and exploded a great ammunition-dump—the battalion felt the long tremor from the shock of it come to them through the earth and watched, minutes after the high crimson flare of the explosion, a broad column of smoke that shot straight up from it, hundreds of feet, and hung in air, spreading out at the top like some unearthly tree.

The men crowed and chortled in the trench. “Boy, ain’t Heinie gettin’ it now!” “Hear that shell gurglin’ as she goes?—That’s gas.” “Listen to them 75s. You know, I never see one of them little guns that I don’t want to go up and kiss it. Remember that counter-attack they smeared in front of us at Soissons?”

The heavens seemed roofed over with long, keening noises—sounds like the sharp ripping of silk, magnified, running in swift arcs from horizon to horizon. These were the quickfiring 75s, the clear-cut bark of the discharges merging into a crashing roar. Other sounds came with them, deeper in key, the whine growing to a rumble—these were the heavier shells—105s, 155s, 210s. Almost, one expected to look up and see them, like swift, deadly birds, some small, some enormous, all terrible. Gas-shells could be distinguished from the high explosive by the throaty gurgle of the liquid in them. “Move down the trench to the left,” came the order.

The battalion moved, filing around the traverses with judicious intervals between men, so that the Boche shells might not include too many in their radius of death. For Heinie was beginning to shoot back. He had the range of his vacated trench perfectly, and, holding the high ground, he could see what he was shooting at. Shells began to crash down among the companies, whole squads were blotted out, and men choked and coughed as the reek of the high explosive caught at their windpipes.

[Illustration:

The morning of October 3d came gray and misty—a patrol. ]

“Lordy, ain’t we ever goin’ to get outa this dam’ place an’ get at ’em—?” A shell with a driving-band loose came with a banshee scream, and men and pieces of men were blown into the air. “That was in the first platoon,” said the second-in-command, shaking the dirt off his gas-mask. “Something ought to be done about that gunner, El Capitan!” Another landed in the opposite lip of the trench where the two officers crouched, half-burying them both. “My God, cap’n! You killed?” “Hell, no! Are you?”

[Illustration:

“Lordy, ain’t we ever goin’ to get outa this dam’ place an’ get at ’em—?” ]

“Far enough to the left,” the major sent word. “We will wait here. The 6th leads—we’re the last battalion in support to-day.”

Coming from the maze of trenches in the rear, the assault regiment began to pass through the 5th, battalion following battalion at 500-yard distances. A number of French “baby” tanks started with the assaulting waves, but it was an evil place for tanks. Tank traps, trenches so wide that the little fellows went nose-down into them and stuck, and direct fire from Boche artillery stopped the most of them. Wave after wave, the 6th went forward. For a moment the sun shone through the murk, near the horizon—a smouldering red sun, banded like Saturn, and all the bayonets gleamed like blood. Then the cloud closed again.

When an attack is well launched it is the strategy of the defenders to concentrate their artillery fire on the support waves that follow the assault troops, leaving the latter to be dealt with by machine-gun and rifle fire. So the battalion, following on in its turn, was not happy.

“Wish to Gawd we wuz up forward,” growled the files. “’Nothin’ up there but machine-guns. This here shellin’ gets a man’s goat. Them bums in the 6th allus did have all the luck!...” “Lootenant, ain’t we ever gonna get a chance at them Boches? This bein’ killed without a chance to kill back is hell—that’s what it is!”

The battalion was out of the trench now, and going forward, regulating its pace on the battalion ahead. All at once there was a snapping and crackling in the air—a corporal spun round and collapsed limply, while his blouse turned red under his gas-mask—the man beside him stumbled and went down, swearing through grayish lips at a shattered knee—the men flattened and all faces turned toward the flank.

“Machine-guns on the left!”—“Hell! It’s that Essen Hook we’ve got to pass—thank God, it’s long range! Come on, you birds.” And the battalion went on, enduring grimly. Finally, when well past its front, which ran diagonally to the line of advance, the 17th Company, that had the left, turned savagely on the Essen Hook and got a foothold in its rear. A one-pounder from the regimental headquarters company was rushed up to assist them, and the men yelled with delight as the vicious little cannon got in direct hits on the Boche emplacements. Hopelessly cut off, the large body of Germans in this formidable work surrendered after a few sharp and bloody minutes, and the 17th, sending back its prisoners, rejoined the battalion.

[Illustration:

Others lay on the ground over which the battalion passed. ]

Prisoners began to stream back from the front of the attack, telling of the success of the 6th. Wounded came with them, some walking, some carried on improvised stretchers by the Boche “kamarads.” Most of them were grinning. “Goin’ fine up there, boys, goin’ fine!” “Lookit, fellers! Got a bon blighty—We’ll give ’em your regards in Paris!”

Others of the 6th lay on the ground over which the battalion passed. Some lay quietly, like men who rested after labor. Others were mangled and twisted into attitudes grotesque and horrible as the fury of the exploding shells had flung them. There were dead Germans, too. Up forward rifle-fire and machine-guns gave tongue, and all the Boche guns raged together. “Reckon the 6th is gettin’ to Blanc Mont now.” The second-in-command looked at his watch. Inconceivably, it was noon.

For a while now the battalion halted, keeping its distance from the unit ahead. The men lay on their rifles and expressed unreasonable yearnings for food. “Eat? Eat? Hell! Shock troops ain’t supposed to eat!” Officers cast anxious glances toward the utterly exposed left. The French attack had failed to keep abreast of the American.

The left company, the 17th, was in a cover of scrubby trees. The other companies were likewise concealed. Only the 49th lay perforce in the open, on a bleak, shell-pocked slope. A high-flying Boche plane spotted its platoon columns, asprawl eighty or a hundred yards apart on the chalky ground. “No good,” said the second-in-command, cocking his head gander-wise in his flat helmet, “is goin’ to come of that dam’ thing—guess all our noble aviators have gone home to lunch.” The plane, high and small and shining in the sky, circled slowly above them. Far back of the Boche lines there was a railroad gun that took a wireless from the wheeling vulture. “Listen,” said the captain, “listen to th——”

[Illustration:

“Oh, Lordy! They’ve got us bracketed!” ]

There were lots of shells passing over—the long, tearing whine of the 75s, the coarser voices of the Boche 77s replying, and heavy stuff, but most of it was breaking behind or in front of the battalion. Into this roof of sound came a deeper note—a far-off rumble that mounted to an enormous shattering roar, like a freight train on a down-grade. The company flattened against the ground like partridges, and the world shook and reeled under them as a nine-inch shell crashed into the earth fifty yards ahead, exploding with a cataclysmic detonation that rocked their senses. An appalling geyser of black smoke and torn earth leaped skyward, jagged splinters of steel whined away, and stones and clods showered down. Before the smoke had lifted from the monstrous crater the devastating rumble came again, and the second shell roared down fifty yards to the rear.

“Oh, Lordy! They’ve got us bracketed!”

“I saw that one! I saw it—look right where the next one’s gonna hit, an’—” “Look where it’s gonna hit! Lawd, if I jest knew it wasn’t gonna hit me—ahh——!”

The third shell came, and men who risked an eye could see it—a dark, tremendous streak, shooting straight down to the quivering earth. A yawning hole opened with thunder fairly between two platoon columns, and the earth vomited.... It was wonderful shooting. All the shells that followed dropped between the columns of prone men—but not a man was hit! The heavy projectiles sank far into the chalky soil, and the explosions sent the deadly fragments outward and over the company. More than a dozen shells were fired in all, the high sinister plane wheeling overhead the while. Then the company went forward with the battalion, very glad to move.

“Any one of those nine-inch babies would have blotted out twenty of us,” marvelled a lieutenant, leading his platoon around a thirty-foot crater that still smoked. “Or ripped the heart out of any concrete-and-steel fortification ever built—the good Lawd was certainly with us!”

To the company commanders, gathered at dark in a much disfigured Boche shelter in the Wood of Somme-Py, the major gave information. “The 6th took Blanc Mont, and they are holding it against heavy counter-attacks. Prisoners say they were ordered to hold here at any costs—they’re fighting damned well, too! The infantry regiments piped down the Bois de Vipre, just as we did the Essen Hook. The division is grouping around the Ridge, but we’re pretty well isolated from the French. To-night we are going on up and take the front line, and attack toward St.-Etienne-à-Arnes—town north of the Ridge and a little west. Get on up to Blanc Mont with your companies—P. C. will be there, along the road that runs across the Ridge.”

III

Not greatly troubled by the Boche shelling, that died to spasmodic bursts as the night went on, the battalion mounted through the dark to its appointed place. Here, beside a blasted road that ran along Blanc Mont, just behind the thin line of the 6th, the weary men lay down, and, no orders being immediately forthcoming, slept like the dead that were lying thickly there. Let the officers worry over the fact that the French had fallen behind on each flank, that the division was, to all purposes, isolated far out in Boche territory—let any fool worry over the chances of stopping one to-morrow—to-morrow would come soon enough. “The lootenant says to get all the rest you can—don’t—nobody need to—tell—me—tha——”

[Illustration:

Before zero hour. ]

In the deep dugouts behind the road the battalion commanders prodded at field-maps and swore wearily over the ominous gaps behind the flanks—three kilometres on one flank, five on the other, where the French divisions had not kept pace. Into these holes the Boche had all day been savagely striving to thrust himself, and his success would mean disaster. Already the 6th had a force thrown back to cover the left rear, disposed at right angles to the line of advance.... And orders were to carry the attack forward at dawn. On top of that, after midnight a Boche deserter crawled into the line with the cheering news that the Germans were planning an attack in force on the American flanks at dawn; a division of fresh troops—Prussians—had just been brought up for that purpose. It looked bad—it looked worse than that. “Well,” said Major George Hamilton of the 1st Battalion of the 5th, “orders are to attack, and, by God, we’ll attack”—a yawn spoiled the dramatic effect of his pronouncement—“and now I’m going to get some sleep. Coxy, wake me at 5.30—that will be an hour.”

And at dawn, while the Ridge shook and thundered under the barrage that went before the Boche flank attack, and the 6th held with their rifles the branch behind the left, the 5th Marines went forward to carry the battle to St.-Etienne.

They went in column of battalions, four companies abreast. For the 1st Battalion, still in support, the fourth day of October began as a weary repetition of the day before. Shells whooped down into the platoon columns as they waited for the 2d and 3d Battalions to get clear; machine-guns on the left took toll as they rose up to follow. Noon found them well forward of the Ridge, lying in an open flat, while the leading battalions disappeared in pine woods on a long slope ahead. It had fallen strangely quiet where they lay.

“Now what’s comin’, I wonder?” “Anything at all, ’cept chow.” “Boy, ain’t it quiet here? What do you reckon—” “Don’t like this,” said one old non-com to another. “Minds me of once when I was on a battle-wagon in the China Sea. Got still like this, and then all at once all the wind God ever let loose come down on us!” “Shouldn’t wonder—Hey! She’s opening up again! That there 2d Battalion has sure stuck its foot in somethin’!”

Up forward all hell broke loose. Artillery, machine-guns, rifles, even the coughing detonations of grenades, mounted to an inconceivable fury of sound. “Here comes a battalion runner—there’s the skipper, over there—what’s up, anyway?”

The second-in-command came through his company with a light in his eyes, and he sent his voice before him. “Deploy the first platoon, Mr. Langford. Three-pace interval, be sure. Where’s Mr. Connor? Oh, Chuck, you’ll form the second wave behind Tom. About fifty yards. Other two platoons in column behind the company flanks. On yo’ feet, chillun! We’re goin’ up against ’em!”

[Illustration:

Flanking fire. “Hey! She’s opening up again.” ]

[Illustration:

The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the flat and began to ascend the long gray slope ahead. ]

And so, all four companies in line, the 1st Battalion, a thousand men, went up against the Boche. “Capitan,” said the second-in-command, as they started, “we’re swingin’ half-left. This tack will take us right to St.-Etienne, won’t it? We were pointin’ a little one side of it before—major give you any dope?” “The Boche have come out of St.-Etienne—two full infantry regiments, anyhow, and a bunch of Maxim guns—and hit the second and third in the flank. Must be pretty bad. We’re goin’ up to hit them in the flank ourselves. ’Bout a kilometre, I’d say. Wait until their artillery spots this little promenade. None of ours in support, you know.”

The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the flat and began to ascend the long gray slope ahead, the crest of which was covered with a growth of pines. There was no cover on the slope—a few shell-holes, a few stunted bushes and sparse tufts of grass. Across a valley to the left, 800 to 1,000 yards away, rose another ridge, thickly clothed with underbrush, that ran back toward Blanc Mont. Forward and to the right was the heavy pine timber into which the other battalions had gone, and from which still came tumult and clangor. Tumult and clangor, also, back toward Blanc Mont, and further back, where the French attacks were pushing forward, and drumming thunder on the right, where the Saxons were breaking against the 9th and 23d Infantry—but here, quiet. Voices of non-coms, rasping out admonitions to the files, sounded little and thin along the line. Every man knew, without words, that the case was desperate, but to this end was all their strength and skill in war, all their cunning gained in other battles, and their hearts lifted up to meet what might come. “More interval—more interval there on the left! Don’t bunch up, you——”

“That ridge over yonder, capitan—” said the second-in-command softly. “It’s lousy with the old Boche! And forward—and behind the flank, too! This is goin’ to be—Ahhh—shrapnel!”

[Illustration:

The first shell came screaming down the line from the right. ]

The first shell came screaming down the line from the right, and broke with the hollow cough and poisonous yellow puff of smoke which marks the particular abomination of the foot-soldier. It broke fairly over the centre of the 49th, and every head ducked in unison. Three men there were who seemed to throw themselves prone; they did not get up again. And then the fight closed upon the battalion with the complete and horrid unreality of nightmare. All along the extended line the saffron shrapnel flowered, flinging death and mutilation down. Singing balls and jagged bits of steel spattered on the hard ground like sheets of hail; the line writhed and staggered, steadied and went on, closing toward the centre as the shells bit into it. High-explosive shells came with the shrapnel, and where they fell geysers of torn earth and black smoke roared up to mingle with the devilish yellow in the air. A foul murky cloud of dust and smoke formed and went with the thinning companies, a cloud lit with red flashes and full of howling death.

The silent ridge to the left awoke with machine-guns and rifles, and sibilant rushing flights of nickel-coated missiles from Maxim and Mauser struck down where the shells spared. An increasing trail of crumpled brown figures lay behind the battalion as it went. The raw smell of blood was in men’s nostrils.

Going forward with his men, a little dazed perhaps with shock and sound such as never were on earth before, the second-in-command was conscious of a strangely mounting sense of the unreality of the whole thing. Automatically functioning, as a company officer must, in the things he is trained to do, there was still a corner of his brain that watched detached and aloof as the scene unrolled. There was an officer rapped across the toe of his boot by a spent bullet—the leather wasn’t even scratched—who sat down and asserted that his foot was shot off. There was Lieutenant Connor, who took a shrapnel dud in his loins, and was opened horribly....

There was a sergeant, a hard old non-com of many battles, who went forward beside him. His face was very red, and his eyes were very bright, and his lean jaw bulged with a great chew of tobacco. His big shoulders were hunched forward, and his bayonet glinted at a thirsty angle, and his sturdy putteed legs swung in an irresistible stride. Then there was, oddly audible through the din, the unmistakable sound that a bullet makes when it strikes human flesh—and a long, crumpled, formless thing on the ground turned to the sky blind eyes in a crawling mask of red. There were five men with a machine-gun, barrel and mount and ammunition-boxes, and a girlish, pink-cheeked lieutenant went before them swinging a pair of field-glasses in his hand. Over and a little short of them a red sun flashed in a whorl of yellow smoke, and they were flattened into a mess of bloody rags, from which an arm thrust upward, dangling a pair of new, clean glasses by a thong, and remained so.... The woods on the crest were as far away as ever through the murk—their strides got them nowhere—their legs were clogged as in an evil dream—they were falling so fast, these men he had worked with and helped to train in war. There was a monstrous anger in his heart ... a five-inch shell swooped over his head, so near that the rush of air made his ear-drums pop and burst. He was picked up and whirled away like a leaf, breath and senses struck from him by the world-shattering concussion.

[Illustration:

“Here comes a battalion runner—what’s up, anyway?” ]

The second-in-command was pulled to his feet by Gunner Nice, who had taken the second platoon. His head lolled stupidly a moment, then he heard words—“an’ that shell got all the captain’s group, sir—all of ’em! An’ my platoon’s all casualties—” He pulled himself together as he went forward. His raincoat was split up the back, under his belt. His map-case was gone—the strap that had secured it hung loosely from his shoulder. There was blood on his hands, and the salt taste of it in his mouth, but it didn’t seem to be his. And the front of the battalion was very narrow, now. The support platoons were all in the line. Strangest of all, the gray slope was behind them—the trees on the crest were only a few yards away.

Behind and to the left the machine-guns still raved, but the artillery fell away. A greenish rocket flared from the pines ahead, and right in the faces of the panting Marines machine-guns and rifles blazed. In the shadow of the pines were men in cumbersome green-gray uniforms, with faces that looked hardly human under deep round helmets. With eyes narrowed, bodies slanting forward like men in heavy rain, the remnant of the battalion went to them.