The Brighton Boys in the Trenches

by James R. Driscoll

The men who handled the gun were a mixed lot. Three had been in the Marines, two were Regular Army artillerymen, one was a recently enlisted man who possessed a special talent for hitting the mark with a cannon, another was a fighting cook for this outfit; and the corporal, James Letty, had been a football star.

Anyone could look over the platoon and see that they were a hard crowd to beat. Therefore, when Whitcomb sent Flynn and Marshall out on the first scouting and sniping duty, thus honoring them, and to Flynn said, "Go to it, old scout!" he felt most truly the importance of the statement that they were there for the purpose of warfare.

By "Go to it!" Herb meant that their first business was to let no German get into a position where he might drop bullets into the gun pit where the squad was operating so successfully as to actually threaten the maintenance of the German position at that point.

With Roy went Dave McGuire, one-time glove salesman in a city department store. He had shot one of the highest, very long range rifle scores at Camp Wheeler, and he possessed certain characteristics that did not seem to be at all in keeping with his former calling.

Herbert could not help wondering at the fellow's bravery. He possessed a manner that by some would have been termed "sissy;" he drawled his words and lisped a little, opened his mouth to speak with drawn lips, seemed to have the idea that army life should be on the order of a social gathering; and his khaki clothes, by long habit, were put on and worn with scrupulous neatness.

Could he stand the strain of being shot at, of living long in a muddy hole in the ground, under the constant expectation of something or other happening that might cost him and his companions their lives?

Not far down the hill several piles of heavy stones offered the American riflemen excellent shelter for observation and marksmanship. There were some shell holes also and at one spot a partly wrecked bomb canister of heavy sheet iron within which a man might crouch unseen by the enemy beyond.

All of these places offered a fair view of the zigzag German trenches for a distance of more than five hundred yards where the trench dipped behind a wooded rise of ground. Beyond this the enemy had their hands full opposing the extension of the American trench which wound about from near the gun pit to and also beyond the wooded slope.