The battalion moved, filing around the traverses with judicious intervals between men, so that the Boche shells might not include too many in their radius of death. For Heinie was beginning to shoot back. He had the range of his vacated trench perfectly, and, holding the high ground, he could see what he was shooting at. Shells began to crash down among the companies, whole squads were blotted out, and men choked and coughed as the reek of the high explosive caught at their windpipes.
The morning of October 3d came gray and misty—a patrol.
“Lordy, ain’t we ever goin’ to get outa this dam’ place an’ get at ’em—?” A shell with a driving-band loose came with a banshee scream, and men and pieces of men were blown into the air. “That was in the first platoon,” said the second-in-command, shaking the dirt off his gas-mask. “Something ought to be done about that gunner, El Capitan!” Another landed in the opposite lip of the trench where the two officers crouched, half-burying them both. “My God, cap’n! You killed?” “Hell, no! Are you?”
“Lordy, ain’t we ever goin’ to get outa this dam’ place an’ get at ’em—?”
“Far enough to the left,” the major sent word. “We will wait here. The 6th leads—we’re the last battalion in support to-day.”
Coming from the maze of trenches in the rear, the assault regiment began to pass through the 5th, battalion following battalion at 500-yard distances. A number of French “baby” tanks started with the assaulting waves, but it was an evil place for tanks. Tank traps, trenches so wide that the little fellows went nose-down into them and stuck, and direct fire from Boche artillery stopped the most of them. Wave after wave, the 6th went forward. For a moment the sun shone through the murk, near the horizon—a smouldering red sun, banded like Saturn, and all the bayonets gleamed like blood. Then the cloud closed again.
When an attack is well launched it is the strategy of the defenders to concentrate their artillery fire on the support waves that follow the assault troops, leaving the latter to be dealt with by machine-gun and rifle fire. So the battalion, following on in its turn, was not happy.
“Wish to Gawd we wuz up forward,” growled the files. “’Nothin’ up there but machine-guns. This here shellin’ gets a man’s goat. Them bums in the 6th allus did have all the luck!...” “Lootenant, ain’t we ever gonna get a chance at them Boches? This bein’ killed without a chance to kill back is hell—that’s what it is!”