“All of us was too busy rammin’ shells in our piece and firin’ the thing to notice much that was goin’ on, but the flames from the burstin’ shells and the flares made it almost as bright as day ever gets to be in this country. The yellow light was kinda blindin’ as it came in spurts and jerks. I looked ahead of us, down toward the trenches and No Man’s Land. The Boche infantry was coming straight at us with fixed bayonets. I ain’t jokin’ you, boy, but there was some kind of a cold thing chasin’ up and down my old spine for a few minutes. I could almost see our doughboys strainin’ down in their trenches waitin’ to get up and at ’em.
“At last they let ’em go to it. It was some smash-up when they hit them Germans. The Boches was at least five to one stronger than us and their weight counted enough to make us fall back to the streets of Seicheprey.
“I speak of streets and Seicheprey as if it might have been a regular village. But it wasn’t. Seicheprey was just like a village ghost. Not a house standin’ up—everythin’ littered about. Stones, bricks, wood heaps, rubbish, barbed-wire entanglements were in the streets and every place. The fightin’ down there was all hand to hand.
“We had been told to fall back with the infantry in case it was necessary to let the Boches come on so that our reinforcements could get up and give us a hand. But Lieutenant Davis, who was runnin’ our battery, was off that fallin’-back stuff. He says, ‘Stick to it, boys, and give ’em hell!’ We stuck all right, but it was hot stickin’.
“There was one boy only about eighteen years old in our crew, and when Johnson got his arm ripped off by shrapnel and it flew off and hit Jackson, the kid, he got up from the blow a wild man. That’s one of the worst things I’ve seen in this guerre.
“Jackson’s face was drippin’ blood and he was swingin’ Johnson’s arm around to hit the boys that was tryin’ to get him out of the pit. It’s damn hard to work with a madman next to you cursing and prayin’ in the same breath. Finally they cornered him and carried him out. Johnson was stone dead, o’ course, and they had to get him out, as we was steppin’ all over him and trippin’ up. Sergeant Broadhead and Shorty Williams picked poor Johnson up and was gettin’ back toward a dug-out, when high explosive got ’em both—scooped Broadhead’s stomach right off him and gashed the legs off of Shorty. Course we heard ’em groanin’ as the noise of the battle would go up and down just like a piece of music. But they quit sufferin’ soon, as both the lads went west toot sweet.
“All liaison with the other outfits was shot to hell, and we could only guess at what was goin’ on with the doughboys and batteries. From the rifle and machine-gun firin’ and the shoutin’ and cursin’, too—for there was beaucoup of that, and it sounded worse than the barrages, I judged that there must be some awful battlin’ down in topsy-turvy Seicheprey. Accordin’ to doughboys that I saw later, the Boches got mashed up all over that place.
“You see, when the scrappin’ started down in Seicheprey it wasn’t in formation. Everybody was by himself—or almost that way. That made it rotten for the Boches, as they ain’t got any guts once they’re alone. So the doughboys whaled ’em for a bunch of ghouls. Tell me they stripped right down from helmets on and started in bare fist or with bayonets.
“The Boches got some kind of a signal back to their batteries to throw over gas, and all of a sudden it looked as if the night had gone green. Green is the gas warnin’, you know.
“‘Gas! Gas!’ You could hear that cry everywhere when the noise of the battle would let you. We stopped workin’ our piece long enough to jerk gas-masks on. I swear but we looked like a bunch of devils with them things on, ’specially when the flames would shoot up around us.