CHAPTER TWO
Most of the time while we were dragging our exhausted, diminishing numbers ahead of the German wave of shot and steel, I was on scout duty. For a while, I was “connecting file” between the Black Watch and the Munster Fusiliers who were in rear of us and almost constantly in touch with the enemy. I had more than one narrow escape from capture or death.
On one occasion the regiment had been deployed to beat off a flank attack. When we resumed the march I was sent back to get in touch with the Fusiliers. My orders were to go to the rear until I got in touch with them. I was proceeding cautiously along the road when suddenly around a curve something appeared before me. My rifle was at my shoulder ready to fire. Then I recognized what had been a uniform of the Fusiliers.
Have you ever read Kipling’s “Man Who Came Back”? If you have, you will have a better idea than I can give you of what this human being looked like. His face was covered with blood. One arm hung limply. Just as he made toward me, he fell exhausted by the roadside, like a dog that is spent. Literally, his tongue hung from his mouth. His shoes were cut up and his clothes dangled in ribbons beneath which red gashes showed in his flesh where he had torn it in the barbed-wire fences he had encountered, crossing fields.
I asked him what had happened. His lips moved and his breath came in more difficult gasps, but no word could he utter. I wiped his face, and then I recognized in him an officer who had been a crack athlete when the Munsters were in India and against whom I had competed more than once. I pressed my water bottle to his lips. After a few moments he was able to speak.
“They are gone!” he gasped; “all of them are gone! By God, they died like men; but—they—died.”
“Let me understand you, sir,” I begged him. “Tell me just what happened.”
“Where are you going?” he almost shouted.
“I am going back to get in touch with the Munster Fusiliers,” I said.
“You can’t make the journey,” he panted. “You’d have to go to heaven—or to hell. They caught them in a pocket. Shrapnel and machine-guns. There are no Munster Fusiliers any more.”
He was right, practically. The Germans had caught them between fires and the regiment was cut to pieces.
Helping the officer as best I could, I hurried forward to catch up with my own regiment. When I got in touch with it I left the Fusilier officer with the commander of the first company I met. Then I hurried to the Company commander.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I am here, to report, sir,” I said. “There is no use trying to get in touch with the Fusiliers. They have been cut off.”
“Your orders were to go back until you got in touch with them,” he said gruffly. “Consider yourself under arrest.”
A non-commissioned officer and two men, with fixed bayonets, were put on guard over me. I had disobeyed orders, technically, and during those first days in France many a stern act was necessary, for the army had to learn the discipline of war.
I would have been tied to a spare wheel at the back of an artillery caisson, but as they were leading me away I asked to speak to my sergeant. I explained to him what had happened and he told my company commander, who found the officer of the Fusiliers. The latter, meanwhile, had been taken care of by our officers and was now in condition to talk. He spoke to the colonel (Col. Grant Duff), explaining just what had happened and telling him that he had directed me to return to my regiment. I was liberated, but it was a mighty close escape from disgrace, which, after all, is worse than death, especially to a soldier.
After that I was sent out to scout on the left flank with my partner, Troolen, who was of a daredevil disposition and worked in a noisy fashion, and so when I saw something moving in the brushwood on a ridge we were approaching, and heard a sound like the trample of horses on the other side, I cautioned him to remain where he was while I explored it. Troolen swore he could hear nothing and was for muddling ahead and running into anything that might be there, but I was in command and I ordered him to wait. Sneaking from stone to stone and from tree to tree, I worked myself to a little pocket which seemed scalloped out of the crest of the ridge and found the ground there all freshly trampled, with other signs that horses had left it recently. There were no wheel marks, so I knew that it was cavalry, not artillery. From the marks of the iron shoes I could tell that they were of a different type from ours.
Uhlans had been there.
I signalled to Troolen and he joined me. Climbing to the crest of the ridge we saw the enemy in large numbers moving toward the road on which we were marching, and they were ahead of us. As we hurried toward our regiment we heard others in the rear.
As fast as I could, I made my way to the Company commander and reported what I had seen. Almost at the same moment we were fired upon. The rifle fire was immediately followed by artillery shelling. Patrols on the other flank had made sketches of the country and orders were issued for the regiment to take cover in a gully which was across some fields and the other side of a small woods. The men ducked through a wire fence which was at the side of the road and sections of it were torn to let the combat wagons through.
As we retreated we kept up a steady fire, forcing the Uhlans close to their cover, but the artillery continually sprayed over the field.
Thus began for us the Battle of the Oise.
We had little hope of any support. We knew we had to fight it out alone, and there was little enough ammunition. I was running and ducking for the next bit of cover from behind which I could use my rifle, when a shell exploded behind me. It threw me from my feet but I was unhurt and as I jumped up I heard a crashing and splintering a few feet away. One of the horses on an ammunition wagon had been struck. He was plunging on the ground, terrifying his team mate and kicking the wagon to pieces. The transport officer, C. R. B. Henderson, drew his revolver and shot the animal.
The Uhlans must have had reinforcements for they were getting bolder. The bullets were cutting up little spurts of dust and turf all about us. They were singing overhead like a gale in the ropes and spars of a transport at sea. The Germans were firing at the ammunition wagon in the hope of blowing it up.
I was just about to run for cover again when I saw Lieut. Henderson—he who had shot the transport horse—walk calmly up (leading his own animal) and cut the dead one from the traces. I didn’t care about being killed, but I couldn’t leave this officer, who was standing there as though he were on parade, except that his hands were working ten times as fast as they ever did at drill. Together we got the dead animal free and harnessed the lieutenant’s horse to the wagon. We used one of the lieutenant’s spiral puttees to mend the cut and broken harness. The driver of the ammunition wagon was holding the head of the other horse, shaking his fist at the Germans, and swearing at them with a heavy Scotch burr.
Men were running past us like rabbits. Some of them were tumbling like rabbits, too, when a steel-nosed bullet found its mark. I saw others stoop, just long enough to get an arm under the shoulders of a comrade and then drag him along. A few lay still and a single look into their faces showed that it would be useless to carry them. The running men dropped behind stones, hillocks, trees—anything that was likely to afford cover and stop bullets—and their rifles snapped angrily at the Germans whose fire was getting heavier, but who still did not dare an open attack.
At last the harness was ready. The ammunition driver leaped to his seat and the wagon went careening toward the ravine, swaying crazily, with a storm of shots tearing up the turf around its wheels. We needed that wagon badly. In a moment it would be over the crest of the rise and we would be sure of that much ammunition to fight with.
“Get on to the wagon, sir,” I shouted to the officer, as it dashed forward; but he did not heed me.
“In a second we shall be where we can fight them off,” was all he said.
A Uhlan’s horse, with empty saddle, galloped up to us. I seized the dangling reins.
“Mount him, sir,” I shouted. He took the reins from my hand and attempted to leap into the saddle. The horse was cut and bleeding, and unmanageable from terror. He backed toward the ammunition wagon, which had not yet made the ridge, dragging the officer with him. I followed.
Just as we thus neared the wagon, a shell exploded close at hand. The wagon humped up in the middle as if it had been made of whalebone. It rocked from side to side, almost upsetting. Then it settled back upon its wrecked wheels. A high explosive shell had struck directly under it. The two horses fell, dead from shrapnel or shock, and the driver toppled from his seat, dead, between them, a red smear across his face.
The small-arms ammunition in the wagon had not been exploded. The doors of the wagon were thrown open by the concussion of the shell, causing the bandoliers of cartridges to scatter. The officer motioned to me to help distribute the ammunition to our men as they ran past; upon finishing this task we joined the last of our party and were very soon over the crest. We had only a few machine guns, but we got them in place. The Uhlans were charging across the field.
A shrill whistle blew.——The machine guns began to rattle. Down went horses and riders, plunging about where some of our own men lay. Our rifle fire, too, was getting stronger, better controlled, more co-ordinated. We were sheltered; the enemy was in the open. His artillery was useless, for we were coming to grips. Line after line, they broke into the field, lances set. The horses were stretching out low over the turf—over the turf where a moment later they were to kick out the last of their breath, pinning under them many a rider to whom we were paying the debt of the Munster Fusiliers.
A bugle sounded.——Those that were left of the Uhlans galloped off. The little machine guns had done their work.
Our attention was then attracted to a heavy fire, directed from some unknown quarter upon a near-by field in which was confined a large herd of light brown cattle, their colour identical with that of our khaki uniforms. The animals were milling about madly; a dozen of them already were down and others were falling each moment. Here was one of the humours of war. We laughed, believing that the Germans were firing upon the dying beasts, mistaking them for us—“The Ladies from Hell,” as they called us.
The Scots Greys, which regiment had come up at this critical moment to occupy the high ground on our right flank about six hundred yards away, through the fierceness of their enfilading fire, managed to keep the enemy at a standstill and so allowed the Black Watch to retreat to safety.
We owed our lives to kind fate in bringing the Scots Greys to our timely aid, and to them all honour! But for them we should have met the fate of the Munster Fusiliers.
Crawling on their bellies, some of our men went out and brought in those of the Black Watch who were lying wounded. The others we left, for their own men would be there presently. For us, it was retreat again. After traversing ditches, ravines and barbed-wire fences, we finally assembled on the road. The artillery was beginning to pound once more. We had to trudge on, watching for the next attack, planting one bleeding foot before another, with nobody knew how many days of forced marching before us—marching (so we thought) to let the Russians get to Berlin. I don’t think anything else would have induced us to resume our retreat after the brush with the Uhlans.
At evening we found ourselves at the village of Oise about six miles from the abovementioned scene. As we arrived at the bridge over the River Oise, the engineers who were on the other side, and who had fused the bridge, shouted to us to keep back, but our colonel gave us the order to double. We had cleared the bridge by about only two hundred yards, when it blew up into atoms!
After trudging, mostly uphill, in a downpour of rain, we reached a place called Guise at 2 A.M. Here we managed to get some food. I was glad enough to throw my waterproof sheet over me and fall asleep. On being awakened, I felt as though I had slept for weeks, but found it had only been for one hour and twenty minutes. We then received some “gunfire” and our first issue of rum. We resumed the march. On arriving at La Grange, the Camerons, or what was left of them, joined us, taking the place of the annihilated Fusiliers in our brigade.
We were so tired that night that I could have slept on a bed of nails, points up, but we had not been in our billets very long when we were ordered out, as the outpost had reported the approach of Uhlans in considerable numbers.
We were half asleep as we ran down into the street to our allotted posts. One of the first persons we encountered in the town was a Frenchman, raving mad. We asked him what was the matter, but he could not reply. He jibbered like an ape; his twitching lips slavered and foamed. Some of his neighbours took him in hand and led him away. One of them told us his story:
“The Prussians came in here yesterday. There was no one to resist them. They posted sentries. Then those who were not on duty broke into cellars. Casks of wine were rolled up into the streets, and, where squads gathered together, there were piles of bottles. The soldiers did not stop to pull the corks. They knocked off the necks of the bottles and filled their aluminum cups with red wine and white, mixing one type with another, and swilling it in as fast as they could drink. Dozens of them fell in the gutters, drunk. Others reeled through the village, abusing and insulting men and women alike. If a man resisted, he was shot. This poor fellow, whom you have seen, was in his door yard with his wife. A Prussian seized her about the waist. She struggled. He crushed her to him with his brutish arm. His companions, all drunk, laughed and jeered. The woman’s clothes were ripped from her shoulders in her struggle. Meanwhile others bound the husband to one of his own fruit trees, so that he could not escape the horror of it. One—more drunken, more bestial than the others—slashed off the woman’s breasts and threw them to a dog. The woman died.”
This of itself was enough to have made us rage against the enemy whom hitherto we had regarded as an honourable foe, but it was not all. I, with other members of my own company, came upon a nail driven into the wall of a barn from which hung, by the mouth, the lifeless form of a baby. The child was dead when we found it, but it had died hanging from the rusty nail. I know it had, because I saw upon the wall the marks of finger-nails where the baby had clawed and scratched. And besides, a dead body would not have bled. An officer ordered the removal of the child’s body.
I do not tell these things for the sake of the horror of them. I would rather not tell them. I have spent months trying to forget them. Now that I have recalled them, I wake in the night so horrified that I cannot move. But to relate them may serve one useful purpose. There are those in America, as there were in England, who believed that war to repel invasion was justified, but who were not enthusiastic for war abroad. America entered the war after her patience was absolutely exhausted, and Americans should be devoutly thankful that they can fight abroad and not have to endure the presence of a single Prussian soldier on American soil. What we saw and learned in Guise galvanized our weary bodies to new efforts against the vandals whom we were fighting. With clenched teeth and curses we turned to fight again.
The Uhlans got into the outskirts of the town and cut down a number of our men, but, inch by inch, as they drove toward the centre of the village, our resistance became stiffer and stiffer. It was like a nightmare. The charging horses, the gruff shouts of the enemy, the groans of the men who fell beside me, were like their counterparts in a dream. My finger pressed the trigger of the rifle feverishly. Even when I saw the men I fired at topple from their saddles and sprawl on the cobblestones, I had only a dull sense that I had scored a hit.
Just as we were throwing the enemy back in some confusion, a party of British worked round a back street and fired on them from the rear. A second later a machine gun began strewing the ground with horses and men. Squads of them threw up their hands and cried: “Kamerad! Kamerad!”—which was not a new cry on the part of the Prussians. A young fellow by my side stopped firing for a moment, but the rest of us knew better. The Camerons had lost a score of men the day before because they had taken the Germans at their word, and, when they went to make them prisoners, a whole company of Prussians had risen from behind the crest to a hill and shot the Camerons down. So bullets from our rifles answered the cries of “Kamerad!”
A few of the enemy escaped down side streets, and a number of them remained lying where they had been shot. While we were on our way back to quarters, a Frenchman came up out of his basement and motioned us to follow him. We went into the cellar and found half a dozen Prussians lying there dead drunk. We made them prisoners and sent them to headquarters.