There were lots of shells passing over—the long, tearing whine of the 75s, the coarser voices of the Boche 77s replying, and heavy stuff, but most of it was breaking behind or in front of the battalion. Into this roof of sound came a deeper note—a far-off rumble that mounted to an enormous shattering roar, like a freight train on a down-grade. The company flattened against the ground like partridges, and the world shook and reeled under them as a nine-inch shell crashed into the earth fifty yards ahead, exploding with a cataclysmic detonation that rocked their senses. An appalling geyser of black smoke and torn earth leaped skyward, jagged splinters of steel whined away, and stones and clods showered down. Before the smoke had lifted from the monstrous crater the devastating rumble came again, and the second shell roared down fifty yards to the rear.
“Oh, Lordy! They’ve got us bracketed!”
“I saw that one! I saw it—look right where the next one’s gonna hit, an’—” “Look where it’s gonna hit! Lawd, if I jest knew it wasn’t gonna hit me—ahh——!”
The third shell came, and men who risked an eye could see it—a dark, tremendous streak, shooting straight down to the quivering earth. A yawning hole opened with thunder fairly between two platoon columns, and the earth vomited.... It was wonderful shooting. All the shells that followed dropped between the columns of prone men—but not a man was hit! The heavy projectiles sank far into the chalky soil, and the explosions sent the deadly fragments outward and over the company. More than a dozen shells were fired in all, the high sinister plane wheeling overhead the while. Then the company went forward with the battalion, very glad to move.
“Any one of those nine-inch babies would have blotted out twenty of us,” marvelled a lieutenant, leading his platoon around a thirty-foot crater that still smoked. “Or ripped the heart out of any concrete-and-steel fortification ever built—the good Lawd was certainly with us!”
To the company commanders, gathered at dark in a much disfigured Boche shelter in the Wood of Somme-Py, the major gave information. “The 6th took Blanc Mont, and they are holding it against heavy counter-attacks. Prisoners say they were ordered to hold here at any costs—they’re fighting damned well, too! The infantry regiments piped down the Bois de Vipre, just as we did the Essen Hook. The division is grouping around the Ridge, but we’re pretty well isolated from the French. To-night we are going on up and take the front line, and attack toward St.-Etienne-à-Arnes—town north of the Ridge and a little west. Get on up to Blanc Mont with your companies—P. C. will be there, along the road that runs across the Ridge.”
III
Not greatly troubled by the Boche shelling, that died to spasmodic bursts as the night went on, the battalion mounted through the dark to its appointed place. Here, beside a blasted road that ran along Blanc Mont, just behind the thin line of the 6th, the weary men lay down, and, no orders being immediately forthcoming, slept like the dead that were lying thickly there. Let the officers worry over the fact that the French had fallen behind on each flank, that the division was, to all purposes, isolated far out in Boche territory—let any fool worry over the chances of stopping one to-morrow—to-morrow would come soon enough. “The lootenant says to get all the rest you can—don’t—nobody need to—tell—me—tha——”
Before zero hour.