“Now, men, go for ’em in our own way! Trees and rocks—you know how to make use of them! Give them a taste of their own medicine, only make it ten times worse! Forward!”
CHAPTER V
Kill or Be Killed
TREES and rocks. Lieutenant Whitcomb had always loved the woods and the wild places, but now, with quite a different reason, a sentiment based on a more concrete purpose, he could almost have worshiped these dim aisles of the forest, these noble maples, oaks and spruces and the rocky defiles that appeared on every side. Here was a place where an aggressor might be on nearly even terms with his enemy; at least there was less danger of being hit if one might shield a larger portion of his body behind some natural object the while he located his foe, or exposed himself only for a few seconds in his rush to overcome him.
Anticipating what the fighting would be like and anxious to do all the execution he could where mere directing could be of little avail, Herbert had possessed himself of the rifle and ammunition no longer needed by a grievously wounded comrade and behind the stout trunk of a low tree had begun to pepper away at the greenish helmets of a number of men who were sending their fire from a deep fissure in the rocks against the line to the right. Skilled as the boy was with the rifle, and we remember how he had been chosen in the training camp at home as the instructor in marksmanship and afterward given duty as a sniper or sharpshooter in the trenches, there was every chance of that machine gun nest of the enemy suffering somewhat.
This was war and there could be no holding off in the manner of winning; there could be no sentiment against any means of destroying an enemy who was eager to destroy, no matter if it were against one man or an army that the fire was directed. The boy felt few or no scruples at the time, though he always hated to think of the occasion and he rarely spoke of it subsequently. Warfare is not a pleasant matter; there are few really happy moments even in victory. There may be certain joys, but they can be only relative to the mind endowed with human ideas and schooled to right thinking. Old Brighton labored to teach its lads altruism, charity, gentleness and kindness and these qualities cannot be lightly cast aside, even under stress of battle, which must be regarded mostly as a matter of self-defense, even in offensive action. If you don’t kill or wound the enemy, so called, he will kill or wound you, and as long as the governmental powers have found it necessary to declare that another people must be considered as an enemy, there is nothing else to do. As against aggression, injustice, injury made possible by constitutional declaration, wars are, beyond argument, often most justifiable, even necessary. This idea must impel every patriotic soldier to do his best in the duties assigned him, even though he must rid the earth of his fellow men.
Herbert had a clear aim at about sixty yards distance through an open space in the foliage; he could see no more than the shoulders of any of the Germans. He emptied his rifle with three shots, slipped in another clip, fired five of these cartridges, replaced the clip and turned to see what else menaced. That gun nest was no longer in action; when a corporal and the two men remaining in his squad reached the spot there was one wounded man and one fellow untouched and eager to surrender out of the seven; the others were dead. But there must have been other Americans shooting at them; Herbert always liked to think that, anyway. And now he frowned when one of the men who had remained with him remarked:
“By the Kaiser’s whiskers, Lieutenant, that was great work! Nobody in the army, not even General Pershing, could beat it! Say, if we had all like you in this reg’lar fellers’ army, it would take only this platoon to open the way to Berlin.”
Herbert ducked; so did his companion. Not fifty feet in front of them three Huns came quickly though clumsily in their big shoes, over the mossy rocks, dragging a machine gun. They meant to set it up behind a fallen tree trunk and in the shelter of a spruce; from their position they had not discerned the Americans near by.