Fix bayonets!

by Jr. John W. Thomason

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.”

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’——”

“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.