There was a shout of rejoicing—“Vive la France!” Emotion swept the ranks and men wept without shame. The tremendous suggestion put into those thousands of minds had a terrible potency. Georges said that morning he felt as if he were intoxicated; he grew suddenly like a giant. It seemed as if nothing on earth could possibly resist them, now.
Bread and biscuits were handed out and the Twentieth Regiment was hurried to a wood two miles away. Already they had begun to move northward. But again it was their fate to be held in reserve, while the brunt of the attack was given to other troops. The Twentieth was held in the woods all day, all night, while the shells rained in from every direction. Most fell in front or behind, but occasionally a “marmite” would hit the column with devastating fury, and send its mutilated victims flying. There was nothing for it, however, but to stay and stay on, till the last man was killed if need were. Whatever happened, the Germans must not get by!
At dawn, they advanced to the edge of the woods; but, the instant they emerged into the fields, shells and shrapnel poured on them in a torrent. So they held their post. Monday passed without their stirring from those woods. No commissary wagons came with food—nothing could live in the open. They munched their emergency rations, dry biscuits. Monday night, Tuesday, Tuesday night, and still they stayed. A dispatch rider, wounded in the arm, brought orders for them to hold hard and never flinch.
Nothing to eat now but grains of coffee. The water was gone from their canteens, long ago; but the men stretched out their overcoats in the rain, and drank the pools of water as fast as they collected. And, always, night and day, the thunder of the German guns about them. The din was so terrific that the men had fairly to shout to each other—they were almost deaf.
XVII
On Wednesday morning another messenger got through with orders to advance. From that corpse-strewn wood there emerged a band of men that might have been taken for theatrical desperadoes. Uniforms in shreds, coats gone, shoes gone, knees sticking through trousers legs, and elbows through sleeves, all plastered with mud to a uniform gray, like khaki; wild-eyed with hunger and reckless now, everyone’s nerves on edge, cursing, weeping, mad, ready for anything except more inaction!
Forward! The men, famished as they were, yelled at the sound of that welcome word. Anywhere, out of that infernal wood—anywhere, through any hell, to get at the enemy! Forward they went on the run like hounds after hare, and the run warmed them up. The sun came out and they raced on, steaming. “We didn’t mind the shells at all, then,” said Coco. “Lying on the ground waiting for them at Bertrix we had nothing to do but be afraid—but now we had no time. All we thought of was to get at those cursed ‘Bosches’ as fast as we could.” And so through the bursting shells, across the wide field to rising ground.
It was there, on that hillside, they got a sight of what had happened during those deadly days along the Marne. First, rows and rows of twisted, limp-lying Frenchmen, dead for long, thrown by the shells into horribly fantastic groups; and sickening heads and limbs lying scattered alone. Bodies everywhere, mostly resting face up to the sky, eyes open, staring. In places they were stretched regularly in long straight lines; on other fields the corpses were dotted all about singly. “One had to jump over them every minute,” said Georges. Further on, the French dead were mingled with Germans, piled sometimes four high like a football scrimmage.
Then, in a sparsely wooded tract they passed the relics of a bayonet fight—fearful! Apparently, the French African troops had chased a battalion of retreating Germans up against a wall, and the bodies were, well—the “Turcos” do not stab merely in the breast—they do not stab merely to kill—they stab anywhere, they stab joyfully, like demons.