After the attack came the hurry call for artillery fire on points which had checked our advance; the summoning of reserves to add more pressure; the eagerness for exact reports from out of the woods and ravines where our men were struggling; the hurried flight of messengers running the gamut of machine-gun bullets; the glad news of gallant charges going home; the sad news of companies "shot to pieces"; the filtering back of the walking wounded, and the stretcher-bearers carrying those who could not walk; prostrate forms waiting on ambulances, and busy doctors at the triages; all so habitual that its wonder had ceased even for our young army.
If you were wary, studying your ground, eyes and ears alert, you might travel far in that region beyond the dead line of transport; or you might invite a burst of machine-gun fire at the outset of your journey. When it came, or the scream of a shell announced that it would burst in close proximity, as you sought the nearest protection with an alacrity that increased with experience, you indulged in that second of prayer, blasphemy, or fatalistic philosophy which suited your mood. Some men laughed and smiled; I do not think, however, that they were really amused. The farther you went, the more deadly the monotony. When you had seen the front once, you had seen it all, in one sense; in another, little. After that, going under fire was in answer to duty or the desire to be nearer the realities. Every man was subjective at intervals. The less time he had to think of anything but his work, the more objective he was. One man might be killed when he left the parapet the first time he was under fire; another might go through showers of missiles again and again, and never receive a scratch. I have marveled, considering the number of men whom I have seen fall, how chance had favored me. The high-explosive shell I always found the most hateful with its suggestion of maiming for life. Bullets were merciful. They meant death, or a wound from which, except in rare cases, you would recover. Fighting in the open as our men did in the Meuse-Argonne, all their bodies exposed to machine-gun nests, the percentage of dead was often only one in six or seven, and in some cases only one in ten, to the wounded. In the Ypres salient, conspicuously, and elsewhere in the old days of trench warfare, when only heads were exposed above the parapet, and shells mashed in dugouts and struck in groups of men, the percentage was one in three, and even one in two.
Those who saw our returned veterans parading in clean uniforms have little idea of their appearance in battle, their clothes matted with mud, their faces grey as the shell-gashed earth from exhaustion, when they had given the last ounce of their strength against the enemy. This picture of them makes a march over pavements, between banks of people rewarding them with cheers for what they had endured, seem exotic pageantry. No one can know except by feeling it the physical and mental fatigue of this siege battle. There was always the contrast of effort at high nervous pitch and the utter relaxation of moments of inaction. Memories of weary men prone on the earth, or lying on caissons or gun limbers, go hand in hand with memories of our bursts of "speed" when orders summoned weariness to another impulse of effort. Nature compelled sleep at times, even in the cold; and men awoke to find that they had pneumonia or "flu." It was not only the wounded, but the sick, who were dripping, painfully hobbling shadows along the muddy roads. The medical corps accomplished a wonder I do not understand in the low percentage of mortality.
The battle was a treadmill. If there were men of faint hearts or dazed by fatigue, they had to keep on going. The number with an inclination to straggle was infinitely fewer than in the Civil War. Not only battle police but something stronger held them in their places in the machine: public opinion. We were all in it; we must all do our share. The spirit of the draft was applied by the common feeling. A soldier who might sham illness or shell-shock—which was rare indeed—if his malingering were not understood at a glance, must pass the test of a searching diagnosis. I have in mind such a case, of a soldier who came into a triage.
"Well, what's the matter with you?" asked the medico, looking at him in gimlet intensity as their eyes met.
"Nothing, except tired, I guess. I'm feeling better. I'm going back to the front," was the reply.
The wonder is that there were not more men who succumbed, not to fear or fire but to the strain. There were instances of insanity, of temporary illusion, of mind losing control over body—shell-shock, or whatever you choose to call it—which sent a soldier back through sifting processes for specific treatment; but no soldier well enough to fight might escape his duty. Never, I repeat, were there so few who had any such thought; and this under conditions worse than Valley Forge. Where heroes of that day only knew want and cold in camp, they did not have to fight at the same time. The lack of warm food was alone enough to weaken initiative in men used to comforts and to being well fed. We tried to force the rolling kitchens up to the front, but it was impossible on many occasions. Division staffs might say they were up—and they were, in some parts of the line, but not in all. The men growled, of course. They had a right to growl. They growled about many things. The lack of artillery fire, the failure of our planes to stop enemy planes from flying low with bursts of machine-guns, orders that made them march and counter-march without apparent reason. They growled, but they kept on the job.
I always think of three words to characterize the battle. Will, endurance, and drive: the will to win, the endurance which could bear the misery necessary to win, and the drive which by repeated attacks would break the enemy's will. It was the old accepted system; but its application is the test of the soldier in every cell of brain and body. The high command could supply the orders, but the men must supply the qualities which could carry out the orders.
"It's drive, drive, drive!" as one of the soldiers said. "All the way down from Washington, through Pershing, to the lieutenants, to us—and there's nobody for us to drive except the Boche"—an enemy who was a mighty soldier. We tried our steel against no inferior metal. To say otherwise is not to allow just tribute to ourselves.
All our national energy, our pride, came to a head in the fields of the Argonne. We can be ruthless with ourselves and with one another. We consumed man-power like wood in a furnace. Some men and divisions gave their all in the first period of the battle; others in a later period; others in the final period. The thing was to give your all. For officers there was always the fear of Blois; of being sent to the rear. I know of an officer who staggered at the door of division headquarters; and then stiffened and drew in his chin as he entered.