Our sector in that battle of the Somme was so situated that the opposing lines ran north and south. The enemy was between us and the rising sun. Behind our rear echelons was the main road between Amiens and Beauvais. Amiens, the objective of the German drive, was thirty-five kilometres away on our left, Beauvais was the same distance on our right and two hours by train from Paris.
We were eager for the fight. The graves of our dead dotted new fields in France. We were holding with the French on the Picardy line. We were between the Germans and the sea. We were before Cantigny.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RUSH OF THE RAIDERS—"ZERO AT 2 A. M."
While the First U. S. Division was executing in Picardy a small, planned operation which resulted in the capture of the German fortified positions in the town of Cantigny, other American divisions at other parts along the line were indulging in that most common of frontal diversions—the raid.
I was a party to one of these affairs on the Toul front. The 26th Division, composed of National Guard troops from New England, made the raid. On Memorial Day, I had seen those men of the Yankee Division decorating the graves of their dead in a little cemetery back of the line. By the dawning light of the next morning, I saw them come trooping back across No Man's Land after successfully decorating the enemy positions with German graves.
It was evening when we dismissed our motor in the ruined village of Hamondville and came into first contact with the American soldiers that had been selected for the raid. Their engineers were at work in the street connecting sections of long dynamite-loaded pipes which were to be used to blast an ingress through the enemy's wire. In interested circles about them were men who were to make the dash through the break even before the smoke cleared and the débris ceased falling. They were to be distinguished from the village garrison by the fact that the helmets worn by the raiders were covered with burlap and some of them had their faces blackened.
In the failing evening light, we walked on through several heaps of stone and rafters that had once been villages, and were stopped by a military policeman who inquired in broad Irish brogue for our passes. These meeting with his satisfaction, he advised us to avoid the road ahead with its dangerous twist, known as "Dead Man's Curve," for the reason that the enemy was at that minute placing his evening contribution of shells in that vicinity. Acting on the policeman's suggestion, we took a short cut across fields rich with shell holes. Old craters were grown over with the grass and mustard flowers with which this country abounds at this time of year. Newer punctures showed as wounds in the yellow soil and contained pools of evil-smelling water, green with scum.
Under the protection of a ridge, which at least screened us from direct enemy observation, we advanced toward the jagged skyline of a ruined village on the crest. The odour of open graves befouled the sheltered slope, indicating that enemy shells had penetrated its small protection and disturbed the final dugouts of the fallen.