With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living.
Back with his own men again, the company whittled thin! Was there no limit to the gloomy woods?... Light through the trees yonder!——
The wood ended, and the attack burst out into the rolling wheatland, where the sun shone in a cloudless sky and poppies grew in the wheat. To the right, a great paved road marched, between tall poplars, much battered. On the road two motor-trucks burned fiercely, and dead men lay around them. Across the road a group of stone farm-buildings had been shelled into a smoking dust-heap, but from the ruins a nest of never-die machine-guns opened flanking fire. The khaki lines checked and swirled around them, and there was a mounting crackle of rifle-fire ... and the bayonets got in. The lines went forward to the low crest beyond, where, astride the road, was the first objective; and the assault companies halted here to reform. A few Boche shells howled over them, but the Boche was still pounding the wood, where the support battalions followed. The tanks debouched from the forest and went forward through the infantry.
In a hollow just ahead of the reformed line something was being dealt with by artillery, directed by the planes that dipped and swerved above the fight. The shells crashed down and made a great roaring murk of smoke and dust and flickering flames of red and green. The lieutenant, his report to the major despatched, and his company straightened out, along with men from other units and a handful of Senegalese who had attached themselves to him, ran an expert eye along his waiting squads, and allowed his mind to settle profoundly on breakfast. “Let’s see—it’s July, an’ in Texas they’ll be havin’ cantaloupes, and coffee, an’ eggs, an’ bacon, an’—” Second Lieutenant Corbett, beside him, groaned like a man shot through the body, and he realized that he had been thinking aloud. Then Corbett seized his arm, and gasped: “Lordy! Look at——”
The shelling forward had abated, but the smoke and murk of it still hung low. Into this murk every man in the line was now peering eagerly. Advancing toward them, dimly seen, was a great body of Germans, hundreds upon hundreds, in mass formation——
Pure joy ran among the men. They took out cartridges, and arranged them in convenient piles. They tested the wind with wetted fingers, and set their sights, and licked their lips. “Range three-fifty—Oh, boy, ain’t war wonderful! We been hearin’ about this mass-formation stuff, an’ now we gets a chance at it——!”
Then: “Aw, hell! Prisoners!” “The low-life bums, they all got their hands up!” “Lookit! One o’ them tanks is ridin’ herd over them—” It was the garrison of a strong point.
The artillery had battered them, and when it lifted, and they had come out of their holes, they found a brace of agile tanks squatting over their defenses with one-pounders and machine-guns. They had very sensibly surrendered, en masse, and were now ambling through the attacking lines to the rear.
The fighting in the woods at Soissons was close and savage.