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——”

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!”

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

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!”

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.

“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.

It was the flank of the Boche column which had come out of St.-Etienne and struck the leading battalions of the 5th. It had watched first with keen delight, then with incredulity, the tortured advance of the battalion. It had waited too long to open its own fire. And now, already shaken by the sight of these men who would not die, it shrank from the long American bayonets and the pitiless, furious faces behind the steel. A few Brandenburger zealots elected to die on their spitting Maxim guns, working them until bayonets or clubbed rifles made an end. A few iron-souled Prussians—the Boche had such men—stood up to meet bayonet with bayonet, and died that way. The second-in-command saw such a one, a big feldwebel, spring against one of his sergeants with the long Prussian lunge that throws the bayonet like a spear to the full reach of the arm. It is a spectacular thrust, and will spit like a rabbit what stands in its way. But the sergeant, Bob Slover, a little fiery man with a penchant for killing Germans, ran under it and thrust from the ground for the Boche’s throat. And as his point touched, he pulled the trigger. The feldwebel’s helmet flew straight into the air, and the top of his head went with it.

A great many more flung away their arms and bleated “Kamaraden” to men who in that red minute knew no mercy. Some hid in holes, or feigned death, to be hunted out as the press thinned. And the rest scuttled through the fringe of trees and back down toward St.-Etienne, while the Marines, lying prone or taking rest for their Springfields, killed them as they ran. This same rifle-fire, directed against the flank and rear of the column which had pushed to the right against the other battalions of the 5th, broke that force and dispersed it. There was a battery of field-guns down the slope, 500 yards or so. The gunners—those who were lucky—took to cover after the first burst of fire. “Thank Gawd fer a shot at them dam’ artillerymen! Battle-sight, an’ aim low, you birds—don’t let any of them bastards get away!”... “Sergeant, reckon the lootenant would let us go down an’ take them 77s?”—“Shut up an’ work yo’ bolt, you dam’ fool!—Whatinell you think you are—a army core?”—“Besides, Mr. Connor’s dead....” On the hill beyond St.-Etienne new trenches scarred the slope; there were many Germans milling there, some 1,500 yards away. “Save your ammunition and lay low,” the word was passed. “We’re on our own out here.” And the battalion, a very small battalion now, little more than a hundred men, lay along the crest they had stormed, with their dead and wounded and the Boche dead and wounded around them.

A few iron-souled Prussians—the Boche had such men—stood up to meet bayonet with bayonet, and died that way.

The last few men are always the most difficult to kill.

Almost immediately the Boche began to react. He opened on them a storm of fire, high explosive and shrapnel, and his machine-guns dinned fiercely. A counter-attack began to form toward St.-Etienne. Sweating gunners struggled into position with the two machine-guns that were left in the battalion, and these, with their crews, were knocked out by shell-fire before either had been in action long enough to fire a clip. But the rifles gave tongue and continued to speak—the last few men are always the most difficult to kill—and the Boche had little taste for rifle-fire that begins to kill at 700 yards. That counter-attack shortly returned whence it came, and the one that followed it went back also.

The rifles fell silent, for the Boche infantry was in cover, or too far away to waste scant ammunition on. “O Lord, for one battery of 75s or a machine-gun outfit! All the Boches in the world, an’ nothin’ to reach ’em with!” lamented the captain of the 49th. “We’re clean away from our guns, and those devils seem to know it—look at ’em, yonder! Heard a shell from ours to-day, John? I haven’t.”—“Plenty from the other side, though—damn few of us left, capitan. Eastin’s got it, Tom Langford’s got it—Chuck Connor, and Matthews. Don’t know where Geer is. Guess I’m the only officer you have left—here’s Captain Whitehead.”

Whitehead, of the 67th Company, plumped down beside them. Small, very quick and wiry, with his helmet cocked on the side of his head, he gave the impression of a fierce and warlike little hawk. “Hunt’s comin’ over, Francis,” he said. “Bad place; worst I ever saw. Got about thirty men left. Hell that our machine-guns got knocked out so quick, wasn’t it?—must be two regiments of Fritzies on our front yonder!”

Captain Hunt, senior in the field, a big, imperturbable Californian, came, and Lieutenant Kelly, promoted by casualties in the last hour to command of the 66th Company. “How does it look to you, gentlemen?” said Hunt. “Damn bad” was the consensus of opinion, with profane embellishments. Followed some technical discussion. “Well,” concluded the senior captain, “we’ve accomplished our mission—broke up their attack—better hook up with the rest of the regiment. We’ll find them through the woods to the right. Move off your companies—Kelly, you go first.”

A machine-gunner, Champagne.
A sketch made on the field.

Nobody remembers very clearly that swing to the right, through a hail of machine-gun fire and an inferno of shelling. They found the companies of the 2d Battalion digging in astride a blasted road, and went into position beside them.

“I’ve organized the company sector with twenty men—all we’ve got left—you and I make twenty-two,” reported the second-in-command, dropping wearily into the shell-hole where the captain had established himself. “Lord, I’m tired ... and what I can’t see,” he added in some wonder, fingering the rents in his raincoat, “is why we weren’t killed too....”

That night, lying in its shallow, hastily dug holes, the remnant of the battalion descended through further hells of shelling. The next night tins of beef and bread came up. There was some grim laughter when it came. “Captain,” reported the one remaining sergeant, after distributing rations in the dark, “they sent us chow according to the last strength report—three days ago—230-odd rations. The men are building breastworks out of the corned-willy cans, sir!—twenty of ’em——”

Some runners got through, and Division H. Q., well forward in a pleasantly exposed spot on the Souain road, built up a picture of a situation sufficiently interesting. Four infantry regiments were thrust saw-wise northwest to northeast of Blanc Mont; all were isolated from each other and from the French, who had lagged behind the flanks. Four little islands in a turbulent Boche sea, and the old Boche doing his damnedest. The Marine major-general commanding, Lejeune, it is related, went serenely to sleep. And they relate further that a staff colonel who, like Martha, was careful and troubled about many things, came to rouse him with a tale of disaster: “General, general, I have word from the front that a regiment of Marines is entirely surrounded by the Germans!”

“Yes, colonel? Well, sir,” said the general, sadly and sleepily, “I am sorry for those Germans!”—and returned to his slumbers.

More days and nights, slipping, characterless, into each other. Being less than a company in strength, the 1st Battalion of the 5th was not called on to attack again. They lay in their holes and endured. “Until the division has accomplished its mission,” said the second-in-command, rubbing his dirt-encrusted and unshaven chin. “That means, until the rest of the outfit is killed down as close as we are. Then we’ll be relieved, an’ get a week’s rest and a gang of bloodthirsty replacements, an’ then we can do it all over again.” “Yes,” replied the captain, turning uneasily in the cramped, coffin-shaped hole in which they lay. He scratched himself. “I have cooties, I think. In plural quantities.” “Well, you would have that orderly strip the overcoats off a covey of dead Boches to furnish this château of ours. The Boche is such an uncleanly beast.... I have cooties, too, my capitan. Hell ... ain’t war wonderful!”

And after certain days the division was relieved. The battalion marched out at night. The drumming thunder of the guns fell behind them and no man turned his face to look again on the baleful lights of the front. On the road they passed a regiment of the relieving division—full, strong companies of National Guardsmen. They went up one side of the road; and in ragged column of twos, unsightly even in the dim and fitful light, the Marines plodded down the other side. They were utterly weary, with shuffling feet and hanging heads. The division had just done something that those old masters in the art of war, the French, and the world after them, including Ludendorff, were to acknowledge remarkable. They had hurled the Boche from Blanc Mont and freed the sacred city of Rheims. They had paid a price hideous even for this war. And they were spent. If there was any idea in those hanging heads it was food and rest.

The Guard companies gibed at the shrunken battalion as they passed. Singing and joking they went. High words of courage were on their lips and nervous laughter. Save for a weary random curse here and there, the battalion did not answer.... “Hell, them birds don’t know no better....” “Yeh, we went up singin’ too, once—good Lord, how long ago!... They won’t sing when they come out ... or any time after ... in this war.”... “Damn you, can’t you march on your own side the road? How much room you need?”

SONGS
THREE
“MADEMOISELLE FROM ARMENTIÈRES”

It was nice, back in billets, resting between battles, to sit on a bench in the sun and watch the world go by. Odette, the strapping and genteel daughter of the baker of Croutte-sur-Marne, here herds the duck Anatole into the courtyard of her mother’s bakery. (M. Boulanger was last heard from on the Chemin des Dames; Mme. Boulangère keeps the establishment going.) The duck Anatole has been ordered for dinner by two lieutenants of the 1st Battalion, the consideration being 37 francs 80 centimes. Two privates of the 49th Company are choiring softly “Mademoiselle from Armentières” as she passes. It is just as well that neither Odette nor Anatole comprend l’anglais.

IV

At various times and places in 1918 the 2d Marine Division was subsisted on the French ration, a component part of which was preserved Argentine beef with carrots in it. This was called monkey-meat by the Marines of the 4th Brigade. Men ate it when they were very hungry.

IV
MONKEY-MEAT

In a mangled place called the Wood Northwest of Lucy-le-Bocage two lieutenants of the Marine Brigade squatted by a hole the size of a coffin and regarded with attention certain cooking operations. The older, and perhaps the dirtier of the two, was intent upon a fire-blackened mess-kit, which was balanced on two stones and two German bayonets over a can of solidified alcohol. In the mess-kit was simmering a grayish and unattractive matter with doubtful yellowish lumps, into which the lieutenant fed, discriminatingly, bits of hard bread and frayed tomatoes from a can.

“Do what you will with it,” he observed, “monkey-meat is monkey-meat. It’s a great pity that damn Tompkins had to get himself bumped off last night when we came out. He had a way with monkey-meat, the kid did—hell! I never have any luck with orderlies!” He prodded the mess of Argentine beef—the French army’s canned meat ration—and stared sombrely. His eyes, a little bloodshot in his sunburnt, unshaven face, were sleepy.

The other waited on two canteen cups stilted precariously over a pale-lavender flame. The water in them began to boil, and he supplied coffee—the coarse-ground, pale coffee of the Frogs—with a spoon that shook a little. He considered: “S’pose I’d better boil the sugar in with it,” he decided. “There isn’t so much of it, you know. We’ll taste it more.” And he added the contents of a little muslin sack—heavy beet-sugar that looked like sand. His face was pale and somewhat troubled, and his week’s beard was straggling and unwholesome. He was not an out-of-doors man—and he was battalion scout officer. A gentleman over-sensitive for the rude business of war, he would continue to function until he broke—and one sensed that he would suffer while about it....

“I don’t like monkey-meat. Before this smell”—he waved his spoon petulantly—“got into my nose I never could eat it. But now you can’t smell but one thing, and, after all, you’ve got to eat.”

The smell he referred to lay through the wood like a tangible fog that one could feel against the cheek and see. It was the nub-end of June, and many battalions of fighting men had lain in the Wood Northwest of Lucy, going up to the front a little way forward or coming out to stand by in support. It was a lovely place for supports; you could gather here and debouch toward any part of the sector, from Hill 142, on the left, through the Bois de Belleau and Bouresches, to Vaux, where the infantry brigade took on. Many men had lain in the wood, and many men lay in it still. Some of these were buried very casually. Others, in hidden tangles of it, along its approaches, and in the trampled areas beyond it where attack and counter-attack had broken for nearly a month of days and nights, hadn’t been buried at all. And always there were more, and the June sun grew hotter as it made toward July.

“Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up!”

Troops lay in the wood now; a battalion of the 6th and two companies of the 5th Regiment outfit, half of which was still in line on the flank of the Bois de Belleau. These companies had come out at dawn, attended by shell-fire; they had plunged into the wood and slept where they halted, unawakened—except the wounded—by the methodical shelling to which the Boche treated the place every day. Now, in the evening, they were awake and hungry. They squatted, each man in his hole, and did what they could about it. A savage-looking lot, in battered helmets and dirty uniforms. But you saw them cleaning their rifles....

The scout officer, with his hand out to lift away the coffee, which was, in his judgment, boiled, heard: “Mr. Braxton? Yeh, he’s up thataway, with the lootenant.” “Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up? Hey?” “Scout officer? Over yonder, him wit’ the green blouse—” and a soiled battalion runner, identified by his red brassard and his air of one laden with vital information, clumped up and saluted sketchily.

“Sir, the major wants to see the battalion scout officer at battalion headquarters. The major said: Right away, sir.”

The scout officer swore, inexpertly, for he was not a profane fellow, but with infinite feeling. “Good God, I hope it ain’t—If you can keep my coffee hot, Tommie—Be right back as soon as I can. Save my slum. Don’t let anything happen to my slum—” The words trailed in the air as he went swiftly off, buckling his pistol-belt. The battalion commander was that kind of an officer.

The lieutenant growled in sympathy: “Somebody’s always takin’ the joy out of life. Jim, he’s hungry as I am, an’ that’s as hungry as a bitch wolf. That’s the trouble with this war stuff; man misses too many meals.” He took the cooking from the fire and replaced the lids on the little alcohol-cans with care. Canned heat was quite hard to come by; the Boche was much better provided with it; he was indebted for this to a deceased German gentleman, and it was the last he had.

“No tellin’ what the old man wants. Glad I ain’t a scout officer. This war’s hard on Jim—he takes it too serious. I’ll wait, though.” Absently he drank the tomato juice left in the can. He tried his coffee, and burned his mouth. “Wish I had the man here that invented this aluminum canteen cup! Time the damn cup’s cool enough so you won’t burn the hide off yo’ lip, the coffee’s stone cold.” Then, later: “Not boiled enough. Jim, he’s used to bein’ waited on—never make a rustler, he won’t....

“Well, he’s long in comin’. Old man sent him forward to make a map or something, most prob’ly.” He tasted the slum. “That Tompkins! Why the hell he had to stop one—only man I ever knew that could make this monkey-meat taste like anything! And he goes and gets bumped off. Hell! That’s the way with these kids. This needs an onion.”

“He takes the war too serious.”

He ate half the mess, with scrupulous exactness, and drank his coffee. He put the lid on the mess-kit, and covered Jim’s coffee, now getting cold. He smoked a cigarette and talked shop with his platoon sergeant. He gave some very hard words and his last candle-end to a pale private who admitted blistered heels, and then stood over the man while he tallowed his noisome socks. He interviewed his chaut-chaut gunners, and sent them off to beg new clips from the battalion quartermaster sergeant. It grew into the long French twilight; Boche planes were about, and all the anti-aircraft stuff in the neighborhood was furiously in action. Strolling back to his hole, the lieutenant observed that the pale private had resumed his shoes and was rolling his puttees with a relieved look. At this moment the nose-cap of a 75 came whimpering and hirpling down out of the heavens and gutted the fellow.... When that was cleaned up, the lieutenant lay in his hole, weighing the half-empty mess-kit in his hands, and trusted that nothing unseemly had happened to Jim. He thought of going up to battalion to see what was doing—but the major liked for you to stay with your men, unless he sent for you.... “Well! Might as well get some sleep....”

Toward dark the Boche began to slam 77s and 150s into the Wood northwest of Lucy. It became a place of horror, with stark cries in the night, between the rending crashes of the shells. About an hour before midnight the word was passed and the two companies got out and went up across the pestilential wheat-fields and into the Bois de Belleau.

That same afternoon an unassigned colonel had come up to Brigade Headquarters. Wanted to go to Paris, he did, and the brigade commander said that the only way to get there was to bring in a prisoner. One prisoner; seven days’ leave. Be glad to get a prisoner. Intelligence had word of a new division or so moved in over there last night; identification not yet positive.

This colonel took steps. He was a man of parts and very desirous of the fleshpots of the Place de l’Opéra. There was an elegant French captain attached to brigade for no very evident reason—just attached—spoke English and knew vintages. Said to be an expert on raids. The colonel put it up to him in such and such a way: would he go? Yes, but certainly. Just a small raid, my colonel? Oh, a very small raid. Now, as to artillery support—a map was broken out.

Brigade artillery officer—chap the colonel knew out on the Asiatic station—happened in. How about it—just about half as much stuff as you fellows wasted on the Tartar Wall that time—eh? Sure: it could be arranged. Ten minutes’ intensive; say, one battery; where you want it? Brigade intelligence took thought: They’ve got some kind of a strong point out from the ruined airdrome in front of Torcy. Their line is through Torcy; battalion in there. Left of the Bois—see here? Our photos show two big craters—some of the heavy stuff they shot at the railroad the 29th of May, or the 30th, most likely—eh, m’sieur le capitaine? Might look at that, colonel. Best jump-off is from Terry’s battalion—about here—he has two companies here. Six hundred yards to go; keep the Bois well away—well starboard, as you leathernecks say; come back the same route. Wheat. Little gully here. Craters just beyond. Main line at least a hundred metres back. Good? Let’s call up Terry and see if he’ll give you the men.... Terry would give him twenty-five men and two chaut-chauts and not a Marine more. Who wanted a raid, anyway? Sending two support companies up to the Bois as soon as it’s dark. Looks interestin’ on the right.... Good! All set. Start your covering fire at 23 hours 15. You jump off at 23 hours 19. Take you six minutes to get over, huh? “All right, colonel, bonne chance!”

Just before dark the colonel and Captain de Stegur were at battalion headquarters. “Whitehead will give you your men, and I’m sending my scout officer along. Needs that sort of thing. Be sure you come back where you went out. Crabbe’s to the right of there. You know Crabbe. Shoots quick.”

“But, my colonel,” represented Captain de Stegur, “one should arrange, one should explain, one should instruct—in effect, one should rehearse——”

“Rehearse hell, sir! I’m due in Paris to-morrow night. Where those Marines, major? I’ll tell ’em what I want——”

So it was that a wedge of men debouched into the wheat at 23 hours 19 minutes;[[1]] it being sufficiently dark.

[1]. 11.19 P. M.

The battalion scout officer and a disillusioned sergeant, with hash marks on his sleeve, were the point. The men were echeloned back, right, and left with an automatic rifle on each flank. In the centre marched the colonel, smoking, to the horror of all, a cigar. Smoking was not done up there, after dark. With him was the elegant French captain, who appeared to be very gallantly resigned to it. The story would, he reflected, amaze and delight his mess—if he ever got back with it! These droll Americans! He must remember just what this colonel said: a type, Nom de Dieu! If only he had not worn his new uniform—the cloth chosen by his wife, you conceive——

The 75s flew with angry whines that arched across the sky and smote with red and green flames along a line.... There was a spatter of rifle-fire toward the right; flares went up over the dark loom of the Bois; a certain violence of machine-gun fire grew up and waxed to great volume, but always to the right. Forward, where the shells were breaking, there was nothing....

The scout officer, leading, had out his canteen and wet his dry mouth. He was acutely conscious of his empty stomach. His mind dwelt yearningly on the mess-kit, freighted nobly with monkey-meat and tomatoes, awaiting him in the dependable Tommy’s musette. “Hope to God nothing happens to old Tommy!” The wheat caught at his ankles and he hated war. Lord, how these night operations make a man sweat! He went down a little gully and out of it, the sergeant at his shoulder, breathing on his neck. That crater—he visualized his map—it should be right yonder—two of them. A hundred metres forward the last shells burst, and he saw new dirt. Ahead, a spot darker than the dark; he went up to it. Away on the right a flare soared, and something gleamed dull in the black hole at his feet—a round, deep helmet with the pale blur of a face under it; a click, and the shadow of a movement there, and a little flicker; a matter of split seconds; the scout officer had a bayonet in his stomach, almost—Feldritter Kurt Iden, Company 6 of the Margrave of Brandenburg Regiment (this established later by brigade intelligence, on examination of the pay-book of the deceased), being on front post with his squad, heard a noise hard on the cessation of the shelling, and put out his neck. Dear God, shoot! Shoot quickly!

The scout officer was conscious of a monstrous surge of temper. He gathered his feet under him, and his hands crooked like claws, and he hurled himself. In the same breath there was a long, bright flash right under his arm, and the mad crack of a Springfield. The disillusioned sergeant had estimated the situation, loosed off from the hip at perhaps seven feet, and shot the German through the throat. Too late to stop himself, the scout officer went head first into the crater, his hands locking on something wet and hairy, just the size to fill them; and presently he was at the bottom of the crater, dirt in his mouth and a buzzing in his head, strangling something that flopped and gurgled and made remarkable noises under his hands. There were explosions and people stepped hard on his back and legs. He became sane again and realized that whatever it was it was dead. He groped in his puttees for his knife, and cut off its shoulder-straps and a button or two, and looted its bosom of such papers as there were—these being details the complete scout officer must attend to. More explosions, and voices bleating “Kamaraden!”—terribly anxious voices—in his ear.

The disillusioned sergeant, a practical man, had ducked into the crater right behind the scout officer. The raiding-party in his rear had immediately fired their weapons in all directions. A great many rifles on forward stabbed the dark with sharp flame, and some of these were very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted that Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his judgment; he now reflected that it was good business—“grenades—I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit they are—ask the man that used one—” It was good business, for it fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, where the rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the brave German men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled into the clever little tunnel that connected them with the Feldritter’s crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant’s very feet. Being a man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he dragged the scout officer standing. “We got our prisoners, sir. Le’s beat it,” he suggested. “Their lines is wakin’ up, sir. It’s gonna be bad here——”

The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barged into them. “Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give ’em here, young man!” and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook them violently. “Thought you’d start something, hey? Thought you’d start something, hey?”

The scout officer now blew his whistle, the sergeant shouted in a voice of brass, and the colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. The French captain, close alongside, delightedly registered further events for narrative. The raiding-party gathered itself—chaut-chaut gunners slamming out a final clip—and they all went back across the wheat. It is related by truthful Marines there present that every German in Von Boehn’s army fired on them as they went, but no two agree as to the manner of their return. It is, however, established that the colonel, bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto virgin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot—something in the nature of un beau geste. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, imagining pursuit. The colonel—and to this attest the scout officer and the sergeant—then shot the Frenchman through the—as sea-going Marines say—stern-sheets.

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.

“If I had my time to do over, I’d learn this here Frog habla,” remarked the sergeant afterward. “I don’t know what the bird said, but it sure sounded noble. Ample, I called it. Powerful ample.”

By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own place, the French captain had lapsed into English. “As a wound, you perceive, it is good for a permission. But it is not a wound. It is an indignity! And, besides, my new breeches! Ah, Dieu de Dieu! Ce sale colonel-ci! What will my wife say! That one, she chose the cloth herself! Tonnerre de canon!”—and he sank into stricken silence.

The raiding-party shook down in their several holes, praising God, and went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments of Battalion Headquarters and departed for brigade. The scout officer observed, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less than twenty minutes. “Where’s the 49th?” he wanted to know first. “Hell, Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the major sent for you. An’ the 17th. We’re moving Battalion Headquarters up there now. Get your people and come along. Attack or something.”

After a very full night, the scout officer crawled and scuttled along the last tip of the Bois de Belleau, looking for a hole that a battalion runner told him about. “Seen the lootenant diggin’ in just past that last Maxim gun, sir. Right at the nose of the woods where the big rocks is. There’s about a dozen dead Heinies layin’ by a big tree, all together. Can’t miss it, sir.” The scout officer had no desire to be moving in the cool of the morning, when all well-regulated people are asleep if possible, and if you moved here the old Boche had a way of sniping at you with 88s—that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun—but he followed an urge that only Tommie could supply. “The damn slum will be cold, but two sardines and a piece of chocolate ain’t filling!” He ducked low behind a rock as an 88 ripped by and burst on the shredded stump of a great tree; he tumbled into a shell-crater, atop an infantryman and three bloated Germans long dead; he scrambled out and fell over two lank cadavers in a shallow hole, who raised their heads and cursed him drowsily; and he came at last to a miserable shelter scooped in the lee of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook until the deplorable countenance of his brother officer emerged yawning.

“Say,” demanded the scout officer, “you save my slum? Gimme my slum.”

“Why, hello, Jim! Why didn’t you come back, like you said you was? Where you been? You said you was comin’ right back.”

“Didn’t you save me my monkey-meat? We went on a raid, damn it. I——”

“Raid? Raid? What raid?”

“Oh, we went over to Torcy. Gimme my monkey-meat.”

“War—sure—is—hell.”

“Well, you see, Jim—the fact is—well, we got moved up here right after you left, and they attacked from in here, an’ we came on in after them. Just got to sleep——”

“I haven’t had any sleep or any chow or anything—two sardines, by the bright face of God!—” The scout officer pounced upon a frowsy musette bag which the other had used for a pillow and jerked out a fire-blackened mess-kit. He wrenched the lid off and snarled horribly. “Empty, by God!”

His hands fell lax across his knees. He looked sadly over the blasted fields to Torcy, and he said, with the cold bitterness of a man who has tried it all and come to a final conclusion: “War—sure—is—hell.”

SONGS
FOUR
“SWEET AD-O-LINE”

There were places like this down in the Touraine country, around the town Americans called St. Onion. Canals with poplars mirrored in them, where it was pleasant to loaf at the end of the day. The women were kindly and disposed to make friends; it is a pity that there were not enough to go around. They had, also, an eye for corporals and sergeants; the bored privates on the bank, sentimental souls, are singing “Sweet Ad-o-line....” or it may be something very different. The sergeant, a sensitive spirit, will presently see that they get some Extra Police Duty.

V

THE RHINE

V
THE RHINE

The bugles went while it was still as dark as the inside of a dog. There was swearing and sickly yellow candle-light in the billets, mean houses in a mean little Rhine-Province town, and the chow lines formed on the company galleys in an icy December rain. The rain pattered on helmets and mess-kits, and fell in slanting lines through the smoky circles of light where the cooking-fires burned feebly. The faces of the Marines, as they filed out of the dark for food, were gray and frowsy. The cooks issued corn-bill hash, and dared any man to growl on the coffee. How the hell could it be biled enough, with wet wood and very little of that—been up all night as it is—you sports just pull in your necks! The companies gulped their ration in sullen silence, rolled damp blankets into the prescribed pack, and when the bugles squawked assembly, they fell in without confusion or enthusiasm. Platoon sergeants, with flash-lights or lanterns, called the rolls; somewhere out in front, first-sergeants received the reports; officers clumped along the lines to their units, grumbling.—“All here, first sergeant?”—“Beg the capt’n’s pardon—couldn’t see you in the dark, sir—all present-counted-for, sir!—” “Nice day for a hike. Major says, goin’ to the Rhine to-day. Eighteen or twenty kilomets—don’t know exactly. Dam’ such a war! I’d like the old kind, where you went into winter quarters—Brrr—” The captain pulled his collar around his ears.

Presently a bad-tempered drawling voice bayed “Squads right—march!—” There was a shuffle of hobnails in the mud, and the rattle of rifle-slings. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines took the road.

These German roads were all honestly metalled, but the inch or so of mud on the surface was like soup underfoot, and the overcoats soaked up the rain like blotting-paper. It was the kind of a morning with no line between night and daylight. The blackness turned to gray, and, after a while, the major, on his horse, could look back and see the end of his column. The battalion, he reflected, was up to strength again. It hadn’t been this large since it went to Blanc Mont, the end of September. He shut his eyes on that thought—a hundred and thirty men that came out, where a thousand went in—then replacements, and, after the Armistice, more replacements. Perhaps the quality was running down a little. The new chaps didn’t seem as tall and broad as the old men, the tall, sunburnt leathernecks that went out the road from Meaux, toward Château-Thierry, in the spring. Odd, just six months since the spring.... But a few veterans and hard drilling between fights would keep the temper in an outfit ... one remembered a phrase in an order of the division commander’s—“The 2d Division has never failed to impose its will upon the enemy....” And to-day it crossed the German Rhine.... He swung out of his saddle and stood by the road to watch them pass; 1,200 men, helmets and rifles gleaming a little in the wet gray light....

The cooks issued corn-bill hash and dared any man to growl.

The road led eastward through a country of low hills, sodden in the rain. Untidy clouds sprawled on the crests and spilled wet filaments into the valleys. The land was all in cultivation, laid off in precise squares and oblongs; some newly ploughed, some sparsely green with turnips and rape. It looked ugly and ordered and sullenly prosperous. There was slow conversation in the column.

A nice day for a hike.

“—Anybody know where we goin’ to-day?” “Damfino—naw—I did hear the skipper’s orderly say we’d make the Rhine, some time—” “How far—” “Some guy was lookin’ at a map at battalion. Said it was about thirty kilomets.” “Jesus on his golden throne!—It’s always ’bout thirty kilomets in this dam’ country—” “Yeh! But I remember one time it was twelve kilomets. The night we hiked up to Verdun, back last March. Had a Frawg guide—little shrimp wit’ a forked beard. Ask him how far, all he’d say was: ‘Dooz kilomets—dooz kilomets—’ Hiked all night in the rain, like this, an’ at daylight we come to a sign, wit’ the name of the place we’re goin’ to, an’ it said ‘Dooz kilomets’—that guide, he let on that he was right su’prised—” But there were very few men in the column who remembered the hike to Verdun, in the early spring of 1918; in one company eight, in another eleven; in the whole battalion the barest handful. It had been a long road. The first way-station was the Bois de Belleau; a lot of people stopped there, and were there yet. And there were more, comfortably rotting in the Forêt de Retz, south of Soissons. And more yet, well dead around Blanc Mont. And a vast drift of them back in hospitals. Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.... Twelve hundred men hiking to the Rhine, and how many ghosts.... The mist rolled around the column.

“—You replacements never knew Corp’ral Snair, that got bumped off at Soissons, dallyin’ with a Maxim gun. He was a musical cuss, an’ he uster sing a song to the tune of the ‘Old Gray Mare—She Ain’t What She Uster Be’—somethin’ like

‘The U. S. flag will fly over Germany

Less than a year from now——’

Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.

—and now it is, an’ it’s a pity he ain’t here to see it—” “Well, but he’s restin’ easy where he is—me, I’m cold as hell an’ this dam’ drizzle is drainin’ down my neck——”

There was nothing but the mist and the rain, and a mean, cold little wind with a bite in it. North and south, from the edge of Holland to the Metz gateway, all the armies were marching. Ahead, just out of contact, went the German armies. The battalion passed a dense little wood of firs—Christmas-tree woods, the battalion called them. This clump showed unmistakably that it had been a camp; but there was no litter; the Boche who bivouacked there had left it neat and clean. Along the road in orderly piles were some hundreds of the round German helmets, and parked precisely in a cleared place, where horse-lines had been, was a battery of 105 field howitzers. The old Boche was jettisoning what he didn’t need. The battalion observed and was thoughtful.

“What about the ole Boche?—You think he was licked enough?” “No, I don’t. That stuff back there, they laid it down under orders, like they do everything. It’s stacked—it ain’t just thrown away. An’ look how they police up behind themselves—” “Yeh! Remember the other day, when we was advance-guard, we could see their rear-guard, sometimes—perfect order, an’ all that—not like a defeated outfit, at all!” “Sure! I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit it ain’t! An’ those little towns back yonder, with the arches an’ the flags and the welcome returnin’ heroes stuff—none o’ that was for us—” “They ain’t licked enough. Look at this country—winter ploughin’ done—everything ship-shape—no shell-holes—no trenches—no barb’ wire—who in hell won this war, anyway?” “You said it. We oughter got up in here an’ showed the old Boche what it was like, to have a war in his own yard.” “Well, I’ve been in all of it, an’ pers’nally I was glad when the shootin’ stopped. I got me some sleep an’ a full belly, an’ a pair of new shoes—an’ some fireman’s underwear, too. An’ I was right proud not to be killed. I ain’t prepared to die—” “We know you ain’t, sergeant—we know—” “Aw, belay that—I mean, I was glad, myself, but we oughter gone on—oughter’ve finished it while we was at it. He wasn’t licked enough, an’ now he’s goin’ home like a peacock wit’ seven tails——!”

This was the consensus of opinion, delivered with consideration in the rain. The replacements, especially those who had joined up after the Armistice, in Belgium, were savagely regretful. The chaps who had come in after the Champagne, and been among those present at one fight, were bloodthirsty, but to a lesser degree. Only the veterans were entirely calm.

The rain fell, the road grew heavier. The battalion, soaked and miserable, plodded on. They passed through many villages, all alike; all ugly and without character. The houses were closed and shuttered. You saw few people, but you always had the feeling of eyes behind the shutters. One thick-bodied Boche, in uniform—an artilleryman, by his leather breeches—stood in the doorway of a house, smoking a porcelain pipe that hung to his knee. His face was set in a cast of hate. He stood and stared, and the battalion, passing, looked him over with respect.

One thick-bodied Boche.... His face in a cast of hate.

“Understand a bird like that.” “Yeh—he’s honest. Those dam’ Heinies in the billet last night, they made me sick. That fellow that talked English. Says he was glad his American frien’s, present by agreement in the Rheinlan’, to welcome—says that to me, an’ would the Herr Soldier like a good cup of coffee?” “Dam’ his remarks—how ’bout the coffee?” “Well, it tasted funny, but it was hot.” “Old guy at our billet gave us some cognac. Hot stuff! He didn’t let on, though.—You know those trick certif’cates a soldier’s family gets in Germany?—Colored picture like a Croi’ Guerre certif’cate, shows a fat, beer-drinkin’-Heinie angel standin’ over a dead Boche—signed Wilhelm I. R.—you know. Well, this bird had six of them in his front room, all framed on the wall. I gathered they was his sons. Four bumped off at Verdun in 1916. One very recent—Soissons, July.—Wonder if we met that fella? He stood there an’ looked at me while I was readin’ them, an’ he looked like a wolf. I don’t blame him—. But howcome he gave us the cognac—?” Later the battalion learned that the Boche had orders to be hospitable....

Toward noon the clouds lifted, and the rain slowed to a thin drizzle, although it did not stop. The battalion filed between hills toward a great valley, dimly seen. The hills towered over them, dark, menacing—“No wonder the ole Boche has such a mean disposition, livin’ in a country like this—” The battalion came into a town with paved streets and trolley-cars and tall factory chimneys that did not smoke. Platoon commanders said it was Remagen; those towers to the right would be the bridge. There was a bridge, a great steel structure of high black arches. The battalion filed upon it. Under it black water flowed swiftly, with surges and eddies dimpled by the rain. High rocky hills came down out of the mist on the farther side.

“So this is the Rhine,” remarked the battalion. “Hell!” A few files were interested. A lank Texan said: “I don’t see much to make a fuss about. You boys ever see the Trinity in overflow time? Ten miles from bank to bank, in the McKenzie Bend country—why, we’d call this a creek down where I come from—” “Naw, it ain’t much river—an’ no more is your dam’ Trinity! I was raised in Sent Louie—Ole Miss’sip’, now—” “Well, rivers in this country are mainly over-touted. That Marne, it wouldn’t be much more’n a branch, down South. I never saw that there Vesle River, but a guy in the 32d Division, that was with me in Neuilly, he says you could mighty near jump across it.” “Heard anything about chow?—Galleys went on ahead awhile ago—when do we eat——”

For four years no hostile troops with arms in their hands had seen this river; only sad files of prisoners had crossed it, under German guard. The battalion turned right on the eastern bank and went up the river, on a broad road between a cliff and the swift black water. There were many houses, a continuous town. It was past noon of a Friday, the 13th December, and the Boche school-children were out. They gathered to look at the passing column. The Marines eyed them keenly. These kids were different. They did not point or talk or cry out, after the manner of children. They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced, with unwinking pale-blue eyes. The boys were nearly all in field-gray uniform cloth—cut down, perhaps, from the cast-off clothes of an elder. Some of them wore boots and round soldier-caps. They carried books and lunch-boxes, knapsack fashion, on their shoulders.—“Look, will you—that kid there ain’t more’n a yearlin’, and they’ve got him in heavy marchin’ order a’ready!” “Yeh,—they start ’em early—that’s howcome they’re the way they are—these Boche.” There were round-faced little girls with straw-colored braids, in cloaks. They did not look poorly fed, like the waxen-faced children the battalion remembered in France. And at every corner there were more of them. The battalion was impressed.—“Say—you see all those kids—all those little square-heads! Hundreds of ’em, I’ll swear! Something’s got to be done about these people. I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children——”

They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced.

“I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children.”

The 1st Battalion of the Rhine—5th Marines took the road.

SONGS
FIVE
“LONG BOY”

One of the very few soldier songs that survived the Atlantic voyage—although it suffered some sea change—was “Long Boy.” It ran (with variations):

“Good-bye, Maw! Good-bye, Paw!

Good-bye, mule, with your old hee-haw....

· · · · ·

I’ll bring you a Turk an’ a Kaiser too,

And that’s about all one fellow can do....”

This file is cheering his soul in the angle of the bridge at Silly-le-Long, just outside of Cognac Pete’s buvette. In a little while an M. P. with no ear for music will run him in.

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