He was one of the first to roll over into that improvised German trench.
No, we could not have failed; we could not have stopped. As one of our young boys said afterward: "Fellows, I'd have followed him to Hell and then some!"
It was Hell all right, but no matter; we had gone through it, and got what we had come for—the German trench.
Out of the seven hundred and fifty of us who advanced, a little over two hundred and fifty gained the German trench; and of that number twenty-five or more fell dead as soon as they reached the enemy, and got that revenge for which they had come.
I doubt if there will again be a battle fought in this war where the feeling of the men will be as bitter as at St. Julien. Men were found dead with their bayonets through the body of some Hun, men who had been shot themselves thirty yards down the field of advance. Their bodies were dead, as we understand death, but the God-given spirit was alive, and that spirit carried the earthbound flesh forward to do its work, to avenge comrades murdered and womanhood outraged. It was marvelous—it may have been a miracle. It was done, and for all time has proved to the boys who fought out there the power of the spirit over the flesh.
We had seen atrocities on the Belgians the day before. We had seen young girls who were mutilated and horribly maltreated. We had been gassed, we had seen our comrades die in an awful horror. We had had our sergeants crucified, and we were outnumbered ten to one. After all this, and after all the Hell through which we had passed from six that morning until after two, when we reached the enemy trench and presented the bright ends of our bayonets, Mr. Fritz went down on his knees and cried, "Kamerad! Kamerad!"
What did we do? We did exactly what you would have done under like circumstances. "Kamerad!"—Bah!
There is no doubt that the German soldier is a good soldier as far as he goes. He is good in a charge and if he had not done the despicable things—the dreadful outrages which he has done—he could be admired as a fighting machine. But there is one department where we of the Allies have him licked to a frazzle. Talk to any man who has been out there and he will say the same. The German soldier can not hold in a hand-to-hand fight. He can't face the cold steel. The second he glimpses the glint of a bayonet he is whimpering and asking for mercy.
The German bayonet is a fiendish weapon. It is well its owner can not use it. For myself I do not know of one case where a comrade has been wounded by enemy steel. His bayonet is longer than ours, and from the tip for a few inches is a saw edge. This facilitates entrance into the body, but on turning to take it out it tears and rends savagely.
It is impossible to describe the work of every battalion in a battle. In a charge, a concerted charge, such as we went through on April twenty-third, there was not one battalion that did better than another. There was not one officer who did better than another, there was not one man who outdistanced his fellow in valor. We all fought like the devil. It is only possible to convey the doings of the whole by telling the achievements of the few.