Quietly we lined up at the edge of the forest, shoulder to shoulder, bayonets fixed. Quietly each corporal examined the rifles of his men, inspected the magazines, and saw that each chamber also held a cartridge with firing-pin down. As silently as possible we entered between the trees, and carefully kept in touch with each other. It was dark in there, and we had moved along some little distance before our eyes were used to the blackness. As I picked my steps I prepared myself for the shock every man experiences at the first sound of a volley. Twice I fell down into shell-holes and cursed my clumsiness and that of some other fellows to my right. 'The "Dutch" must be asleep,' I thought, 'or else they beat it.' Hopefully the latter!
We were approaching the farther edge of the tooth-brush 'bristle,' and breathlessly we halted at the edge of the little open space before us. About eighty metres across loomed the black line of another 'row of hairs.'
The captain and second section to our right moved on and we kept in line, still slowly and cautiously, carefully putting one foot before the other. Suddenly from the darkness in front of us came four or five heavy reports like the noise of a shot-gun, followed by a long hiss. Into the air streamed trails of sparks. Above our heads the hiss ended with a sharp crack, and everything stood revealed as if it were broad daylight.
At the first crash, the major, the captains—everybody, it seemed to me—yelled at the same time, 'En avant! Pas de charge!'—and in full run, with fixed bayonets, we flew across the meadow. As we neared the woods, we were met by solid sheets of steel balls. Roar upon roar came from the forest; the volleys came too fast, it shot into my mind, to be well aimed. Then something hit me on the chest and I fell sprawling. Barbed wire! Everybody seemed to be on the ground at once, crawling, pushing, struggling through. My rifle was lost and I grasped my parabellum. It was a German weapon, German charges, German cartridges. This time the Germans were to get a taste of their own medicine, I thought. Lying on my back, I wormed through the wire, butting into the men in front of me and getting kicked in the head by Mettayer. As I crawled I could hear the ping-ping of balls striking the wire, and the shrill moan as they glanced off and continued on their flight.
Putting out my hand, I felt loose dirt, and, lying flat, peered over the parapet. 'Nobody home,' I thought; and then I saw one of the Collette brothers in the trench come running toward me, and ahead of him a burly Boche. I could see Joe make a one-handed lunge with the rifle, and the bayonet showed fully a foot in front of the German’s chest.
Re-forming, we advanced toward the farther fringe of the little forest. Half-way through the trees, we lay down flat on our stomachs, rifle in right hand, and slowly, very slowly, wormed our way past the trees into the opening between us and our goal. Every man had left his knapsack in front, or else hanging on the barbed wire, and we were in good shape for the work that lay ahead. But the sections and companies were inextricably mixed. On one side of me crawled a lieutenant of the One Hundred and Seventy-Second and on the other a private I had never seen before. Still we were all in line, and when some one shouted, 'Feu de quatre cartouches!' we fired four rounds, and after the command all crawled again a few paces nearer.
Several times we halted to fire, aiming at the sheets of flame spurting toward us. Over the Germans floated several parachute magnesium rockets, sent up by our own men, giving a vivid light and enabling us to shoot with fair accuracy. I think now that the German fire was too high. Anyway, I did not notice any one in my immediate vicinity getting hit. Though our progress was slow, we finally arrived at the main wire entanglement.
All corporals in the French Army carry wire-nippers, and it was our corporals' business to open a way through the entanglement. Several men to my right I could see one—he looked like Mettayer—lying flat on his back and, nippers in hand, snipping away at the wire overhead, while all of us behind kept up a murderous and constant fire at the enemy. Mingled with the roar of the rifles came the stuttering rattle of the machine-guns, at moments drowned by the crash of hand-grenades. Our grenadiers had rather poor success with their missiles, however, most of them hitting trees in front of the trench. The lieutenant on my left had four grenades. I could see him plainly. With one in his hand, he crawled close to the wire, rolled on his back, rested an instant with arms extended, both hands grasping the grenade, then suddenly he doubled forward and back and sent the bomb flying over his head. For two, three seconds—it seemed longer at the time—we listened, and then came the roar of the explosion. He smiled and nodded to me, and again went through the same manœuvre.
In the meantime I kept my parabellum going. I had nine magazines loaded with dum-dum balls I had taken from some dead Germans, and I distributed the balls impartially between three créneaux in front of me. On my right, men were surging through several breaks in the wire. Swiftly I rolled over and over toward the free lane and went through with a rush. The combat had become a hand-grenade affair. Our grenadiers crawled alongside the parapet and at regular intervals tossed one of their missiles into it, while the others, shooting over their heads, potted the Germans as they ran to the rear.
Suddenly the fusillade ceased, and with a crash, it seemed, silence and darkness descended upon us. The sudden cessation of the terrific rifle-firing and of the constant rattling of the machine-guns struck one like a blow. Sergeant Altoffer brought me some information about one of my men, and almost angrily I asked him not to shout! 'I’m not deaf yet,' I assured him. 'Mon vieux,' he raged, 'it’s you who are shouting!'