Then came the orders to dig in, and the marines fell to.
They had no time to dig anything but individual rifle pits that June day, before they got their first chance to give “Fritz” a taste of the unexpected. With their bayonets and mess gear they scraped shallow holes in the ground, and along that afternoon the Germans marched confidently out of the woods, across the green wheatfield, in two perfect columns.
Then the marines opened fire.
Hardly a marine in that regiment, and other regiments behind—in fact hardly a man in the two divisions of marines that soon were to battle desperately, hand-to-hand, with the Germans, that did not boast a “marksman’s badge”; many were qualified as sharpshooters and expert riflemen. These men did not simply raise their rifles and shoot in the general direction of Germany. They adjusted their sights, coolly took aim and shot to kill. The Prussians dropped as if death was wielding a scythe in their midst, rank after rank.
Then the flower of the German army broke ranks and took refuge in the woods. But the impudence of the Americans could not be allowed to go unpunished. The Germans whipped and slashed that field of waist-high wheat with such a concentrated machine-gun fire as neither Hal nor Chester ever expected to encounter again.
But once again the unexpected.
Wave after wave of marines rose up in perfect alignment and charged!
Foolhardy? Of course. The marines dropped in twos, threes and fours, but they advanced. Whole platoons were wiped out, but the waves never broke.
At a certain point, say books on tactics, the remnants of decimated forces must waver, give way and retire. Never were ranks cut up so before, perhaps, but the book of tactics went awry when those American youngsters charged! Handfulls of them reached the trees and put the Boche to flight. Then they entrenched at the edge of the woods.
But the end was not yet. The advance of the marines continued through the woods.