The disillusioned sergeant, a practical man, had ducked into the crater right behind the scout officer. The raiding-party in his rear had immediately fired their weapons in all directions. A great many rifles on forward stabbed the dark with sharp flame, and some of these were very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted that Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his judgment; he now reflected that it was good business—“grenades—I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit they are—ask the man that used one—” It was good business, for it fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, where the rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the brave German men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled into the clever little tunnel that connected them with the Feldritter’s crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant’s very feet. Being a man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he dragged the scout officer standing. “We got our prisoners, sir. Le’s beat it,” he suggested. “Their lines is wakin’ up, sir. It’s gonna be bad here——”
The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barged into them. “Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give ’em here, young man!” and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook them violently. “Thought you’d start something, hey? Thought you’d start something, hey?”
The scout officer now blew his whistle, the sergeant shouted in a voice of brass, and the colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. The French captain, close alongside, delightedly registered further events for narrative. The raiding-party gathered itself—chaut-chaut gunners slamming out a final clip—and they all went back across the wheat. It is related by truthful Marines there present that every German in Von Boehn’s army fired on them as they went, but no two agree as to the manner of their return. It is, however, established that the colonel, bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto virgin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot—something in the nature of un beau geste. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, imagining pursuit. The colonel—and to this attest the scout officer and the sergeant—then shot the Frenchman through the—as sea-going Marines say—stern-sheets.
The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.
The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.
“If I had my time to do over, I’d learn this here Frog habla,” remarked the sergeant afterward. “I don’t know what the bird said, but it sure sounded noble. Ample, I called it. Powerful ample.”
By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own place, the French captain had lapsed into English. “As a wound, you perceive, it is good for a permission. But it is not a wound. It is an indignity! And, besides, my new breeches! Ah, Dieu de Dieu! Ce sale colonel-ci! What will my wife say! That one, she chose the cloth herself! Tonnerre de canon!”—and he sank into stricken silence.
The raiding-party shook down in their several holes, praising God, and went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments of Battalion Headquarters and departed for brigade. The scout officer observed, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less than twenty minutes. “Where’s the 49th?” he wanted to know first. “Hell, Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the major sent for you. An’ the 17th. We’re moving Battalion Headquarters up there now. Get your people and come along. Attack or something.”
After a very full night, the scout officer crawled and scuttled along the last tip of the Bois de Belleau, looking for a hole that a battalion runner told him about. “Seen the lootenant diggin’ in just past that last Maxim gun, sir. Right at the nose of the woods where the big rocks is. There’s about a dozen dead Heinies layin’ by a big tree, all together. Can’t miss it, sir.” The scout officer had no desire to be moving in the cool of the morning, when all well-regulated people are asleep if possible, and if you moved here the old Boche had a way of sniping at you with 88s—that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun—but he followed an urge that only Tommie could supply. “The damn slum will be cold, but two sardines and a piece of chocolate ain’t filling!” He ducked low behind a rock as an 88 ripped by and burst on the shredded stump of a great tree; he tumbled into a shell-crater, atop an infantryman and three bloated Germans long dead; he scrambled out and fell over two lank cadavers in a shallow hole, who raised their heads and cursed him drowsily; and he came at last to a miserable shelter scooped in the lee of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook until the deplorable countenance of his brother officer emerged yawning.