CHAPTER IV
“Into the Jaws of Death”
ON the platoons went, gaining the top of the low hill that crowned the valley slope and then—suddenly the terrors of real war descended with one swift stroke and bit and tore and gnashed with even more than their usual fury.
Captain Lowden had been walking with a French guide up the slope and not far from where Herbert preceded his men. A moment before the former had gained the top and come within sight of the enemy’s front-line defenses, hardly a second before the outburst of machine-gun fire from the entrenched foe, the captain had turned to his second lieutenant.
“He says,” meaning the guide, “that right over the hill is the edge of the famous Argonne Forest. It is a wild place; the Huns have chosen to make a stand in it and they have boasted that nothing will be able to dislodge them. But we shall see, my boy; we shall see!”
How false was this boast of the Germans has been well and repeatedly set forth in the history of the Great War. Among America’s most glorious deeds on the fields of battle; among the most heroic annals of all warfare the bitter fight for the possession of the Argonne Forest may be ranked with the highest. Perhaps nowhere on earth has the grit and bravery of men at war been so sorely put to the test as in this struggle of exposed attacking troops against thoroughly trained and efficient soldiers with the skill of expert snipers behind well masked machine guns.
The French, long practiced in the art of war, asserted that this wide tract which had been held by the Germans since 1914 had been made defensively impregnable. According to all previously held standards it was a place to avoid, but the Yanks took a different view of it; the Huns must be dislodged and the former were the lads who could, in their expressive slang, “make a stab at it,” and this in the early morning of the 26th of September, 1918, they were beginning to do.
Every soldier engaged in this stupendous undertaking had his work cut out for him and everyone knew this for a man’s size job. Therefore, each Yank went at the task as it deserved, do or die being virtually every fighter’s motto. Throughout the long, bent line made up of the four combat divisions of infantry and their machine-gun battalion that now advanced toward the densely wooded hills, backed by brigades of artillery, there was one simultaneous forward movement with the two other army corps stretching eastward between the Aire and the Meuse Rivers. And there was one common purpose: to rout the Huns, destroy them or drive them back the way they had come. Never before in the history of wars had there been a clearer understanding among all ranks as to what was expected of the army at large and just what this forward movement was meant to accomplish.
For the glory of America, for the honor of the corps, the division, the regiment, the battalion, the company, the platoon; for the sake of justice and humanity and for the joy of smashing a foe that had not played fair according to the accepted rules of warfare, the determination that led this force ahead could not have been excelled. And therein individual bravery and heroism enacted a very large and notable part in the victory over foes numerically almost as strong and having the great advantage of position.