AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION RECEIVING NEWS FROM HOME
"Ah, mon ami," he told me, "c'est bien chaud dans le bois."
Quietly they turned into column of fours and disappeared in the darkness. Their attack had failed. Owing to the protection afforded by the trees, our aerial scouts had failed to gather definite information of the defenses constructed in the forest, and owing also to the same cause, our previous bombardment had been ineffective.
It was our job to remedy this. One battalion of the One Hundred and Seventy-second was detached and placed in line with us, and at 8 p.m. sharp the commandant's whistle sounded, echoed by that of our captain.
Quietly we lined up at the edge of the forest, shoulder to shoulder, bayonets fixed. Quietly each corporal examined the rifles of his men, inspected the magazines, and saw that each chamber also held a cartridge with firing-pin down. As silently as possible we entered between the trees and carefully kept in touch with each other. It was dark in there, and we had moved along some little distance before our eyes were used to the blackness. As I picked my steps I prepared myself for the shock every man experiences at the first sound of a volley. Twice I fell down into shell-holes and cursed my clumsiness and that of some other fellows to my right. "The 'Dutch' must be asleep," I thought, "or else they beat it." Hopefully, the latter!
We were approaching the farther edge of the "toothbrush bristles," and breathlessly we halted at the edge of the little open space before us. About eighty metres across loomed the black line of another "row of bristles." I wondered.
The captain and second section to our right moved on and we kept in line, still slowly and cautiously, carefully putting one foot before the other. Suddenly from the darkness in front of us came four or five heavy reports like the noise of a shotgun, followed by a long hiss. Into the air streamed trails of sparks. Above our heads the hiss ended with a sharp crack, and everything stood revealed as though it were broad daylight.
At the first crash, the major, the captains—everybody, it seemed to me—yelled at the same time, "En avant! Pas de charge!"—and in full run, with fixed bayonets, we flew across the meadow. As we neared the woods we were met by solid sheets of steel balls. Roar upon roar came from the forest; the volleys came too fast, it shot into my mind, to be well aimed. Then something hit me on the chest and I fell sprawling. Barbed wire! Everybody seemed to be on the ground at once, crawling, pushing, struggling through. My rifle was lost and I grasped my parabellum. It was a German weapon, German charges, German cartridges. This time the Germans were to get a taste of their own medicine, I thought. Lying on my back, I wormed through the wire, butting into the men in front of me and getting kicked in the head by Mettayer. As I crawled I could hear the ping, ping, of balls striking the wire, and the shrill moan as they glanced off and continued on their flight.
Putting out my hand, I felt loose dirt, and, lying flat, peered over the parapet. "Nobody home," I thought; and then I saw one of the Collette brothers in the trench come running toward me and ahead of him a burly Boche. I saw Joe make a one-handed lunge with the rifle, and saw the bayonet show fully a foot in front of the German's chest.
Re-forming, we advanced toward the farther fringe of the little forest. Half-way through the trees we lay down flat on our stomachs, rifle in right hand, and slowly, very slowly, wormed our way past the trees into the opening between us and our goal. Every man had left his knapsack in front or else hanging on the barbed wire, and we were in good shape for the work that lay ahead. But the sections and companies were inextricably mixed. On one side of me crawled a lieutenant of the One Hundred and Seventy-second, and on the other a private I had never seen before. Still we were all in line, and when some one shouted, "Feu de quatre cartouches!" we fired four rounds, and after the command all crawled again a few paces nearer.