II
Gouraud’s battle roared on to the left with swelling tumult. The Americans, in their sector, passed the day in ominous quiet. They wondered what the delay was, speculated on the strategy of attack—which is a matter always sealed from the men who deliver the attack—and wore through to the evening of October 2. At dark, food came up in marmite cans—beef and potatoes and a little coffee. “Put ours on that mess-tin there,” directed the second-in-command, as his orderly slid in with his and the captain’s rations. The captain sat up in his corner a little later. “What th’ hell, John?”—sniff—sniff! “Has that dead Boche on the other side of you begun to announce hisself? Phew!” The second-in-command rose from the letter he was writing by the stub of a candle and sniffed busily—sniff—snnnn—“Damnation! Captain, it’s our supper!” With averted face he presented the grayish chunks of beef that reposed on the mess-tin. “Urggg—throw it out!” He disappeared up the crumbled steps to the entrance of the hole.
A few minutes later he slid down again, followed in a shower of dust and clods by a battalion runner. “All the beef was bad, El Capitan! What the young men are saying about the battalion supply would make your hair curl!—And here’s our attack orders.”
There was a brief pencilled order from the major, and maps. The two officers bent over them eagerly. “Runner!—Platoon commanders report right away—” ... “What do you make of it, John? Looks like General Lejeune was goin’ to split his division and reunite it on the field.... Hmmm! Ain’t that the stunt you claim only Robert E. Lee and Napoleon could get away with?... All here? Get around—the map’s about oriented——”
“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——
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.
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?”
“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.
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——”
“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.”