And so, all four companies in line, the 1st Battalion, a thousand men, went up against the Boche. “Capitan,” said the second-in-command, as they started, “we’re swingin’ half-left. This tack will take us right to St.-Etienne, won’t it? We were pointin’ a little one side of it before—major give you any dope?” “The Boche have come out of St.-Etienne—two full infantry regiments, anyhow, and a bunch of Maxim guns—and hit the second and third in the flank. Must be pretty bad. We’re goin’ up to hit them in the flank ourselves. ’Bout a kilometre, I’d say. Wait until their artillery spots this little promenade. None of ours in support, you know.”
The hush still hung around them as they moved out of the flat and began to ascend the long gray slope ahead, the crest of which was covered with a growth of pines. There was no cover on the slope—a few shell-holes, a few stunted bushes and sparse tufts of grass. Across a valley to the left, 800 to 1,000 yards away, rose another ridge, thickly clothed with underbrush, that ran back toward Blanc Mont. Forward and to the right was the heavy pine timber into which the other battalions had gone, and from which still came tumult and clangor. Tumult and clangor, also, back toward Blanc Mont, and further back, where the French attacks were pushing forward, and drumming thunder on the right, where the Saxons were breaking against the 9th and 23d Infantry—but here, quiet. Voices of non-coms, rasping out admonitions to the files, sounded little and thin along the line. Every man knew, without words, that the case was desperate, but to this end was all their strength and skill in war, all their cunning gained in other battles, and their hearts lifted up to meet what might come. “More interval—more interval there on the left! Don’t bunch up, you——”
“That ridge over yonder, capitan—” said the second-in-command softly. “It’s lousy with the old Boche! And forward—and behind the flank, too! This is goin’ to be—Ahhh—shrapnel!”
The first shell came screaming down the line from the right.
The first shell came screaming down the line from the right, and broke with the hollow cough and poisonous yellow puff of smoke which marks the particular abomination of the foot-soldier. It broke fairly over the centre of the 49th, and every head ducked in unison. Three men there were who seemed to throw themselves prone; they did not get up again. And then the fight closed upon the battalion with the complete and horrid unreality of nightmare. All along the extended line the saffron shrapnel flowered, flinging death and mutilation down. Singing balls and jagged bits of steel spattered on the hard ground like sheets of hail; the line writhed and staggered, steadied and went on, closing toward the centre as the shells bit into it. High-explosive shells came with the shrapnel, and where they fell geysers of torn earth and black smoke roared up to mingle with the devilish yellow in the air. A foul murky cloud of dust and smoke formed and went with the thinning companies, a cloud lit with red flashes and full of howling death.
The silent ridge to the left awoke with machine-guns and rifles, and sibilant rushing flights of nickel-coated missiles from Maxim and Mauser struck down where the shells spared. An increasing trail of crumpled brown figures lay behind the battalion as it went. The raw smell of blood was in men’s nostrils.
Going forward with his men, a little dazed perhaps with shock and sound such as never were on earth before, the second-in-command was conscious of a strangely mounting sense of the unreality of the whole thing. Automatically functioning, as a company officer must, in the things he is trained to do, there was still a corner of his brain that watched detached and aloof as the scene unrolled. There was an officer rapped across the toe of his boot by a spent bullet—the leather wasn’t even scratched—who sat down and asserted that his foot was shot off. There was Lieutenant Connor, who took a shrapnel dud in his loins, and was opened horribly....
There was a sergeant, a hard old non-com of many battles, who went forward beside him. His face was very red, and his eyes were very bright, and his lean jaw bulged with a great chew of tobacco. His big shoulders were hunched forward, and his bayonet glinted at a thirsty angle, and his sturdy putteed legs swung in an irresistible stride. Then there was, oddly audible through the din, the unmistakable sound that a bullet makes when it strikes human flesh—and a long, crumpled, formless thing on the ground turned to the sky blind eyes in a crawling mask of red. There were five men with a machine-gun, barrel and mount and ammunition-boxes, and a girlish, pink-cheeked lieutenant went before them swinging a pair of field-glasses in his hand. Over and a little short of them a red sun flashed in a whorl of yellow smoke, and they were flattened into a mess of bloody rags, from which an arm thrust upward, dangling a pair of new, clean glasses by a thong, and remained so.... The woods on the crest were as far away as ever through the murk—their strides got them nowhere—their legs were clogged as in an evil dream—they were falling so fast, these men he had worked with and helped to train in war. There was a monstrous anger in his heart ... a five-inch shell swooped over his head, so near that the rush of air made his ear-drums pop and burst. He was picked up and whirled away like a leaf, breath and senses struck from him by the world-shattering concussion.
