In the meantime I had been called to Btn. Hdq., where Mr. Morse, our faithful old “Y” man, had brought up some chocolate and cigarettes. He was supposed by the regulations of the “Y” to sell them, but he refused to take any money from the Co. Cmdrs. at first, intending to account for them out of his own small pay. When we understood this, we insisted on paying for the stuff out of the company funds. The news got out that the “Y” was charging for chocolate and tobacco, and caused some bitterness, under the circumstances. But thereafter Mr. Morse made some arrangement whereby the stuff was issued free.
As for Mr. Morse himself, I think we should here express something of our appreciation of his faithful and unselfish devotion to the men of the battalion. A man well past the prime of life, he shared our hardships, hiked with us—not sticking like grim death to a Ford as some of his confreres were prone to do—; slept in mud and rain with us. Right under shell fire he would come plugging on up with his little bag of smokes and chocolate. The Red Cross, the Salvation Army, were only names to us. But the “Y,” which we cussed out so frequently, surely did us proud when they gave us Mr. Morse.
That night the 1st, 3rd and 4th platoons went out as separate working parties. Apparently the deaths of O’Hara and Farry had demonstrated even to our friends the Engineers that sporting about in sight of Hun balloons in the daytime was magnificent, but not war.
The Boche had the range, though, and shelled the area all night. The 1st platoon ran on an average schedule of dig two minutes and duck five. The 3rd was in no better case, and Barney O’Rourke got an ugly little piece of shell through his foot. He hobbled off between Hill and Weber, adjuring me as he left “Don’t let th’ byes get up too soon afther they bor-r-rst, sor-r-r.” And thereafter we didn’t.
Rifle bullets were cracking by over our heads now and then, and the rumor got about that snipers were concealed in the nearby woods. The whole sector had of course been in German hands five days before, and all sorts of tales were current about death traps found in dugouts, and lurking snipers, lying close in the daytime in cunning shelters, well provisioned, who came out at night to pot a few of us and eventually escape by underground passages.
Most of these tales I recognized as old friends originally met with in the Sat. Eve. Post. But digging was quite unpleasant enough as it was, and the source of the impression was not so important as the fact that it existed. So Osterweis, Woolley and I went forth to bag the franctireurs. We waded through a vast deal of mud, but couldn’t flush anything except a disgusted runner looking for Brigade Hdq.; so I sent the corporals back, and set out myself for the 4th platoon, which was stringing wire over on the left of the sector.
On the way I stumbled over the body of a 5th Division soldier. He had a red runner’s brassard on his arm, and was all ticketed for burial. His face seemed to be in shadow. There was a plug of chewing tobacco sticking out of his pocket and this seemed to be in the shadow too. Then I realized that his face had turned black—it was just the color of that plug of tobacco. The vicious shriek of a shell approached, and I hit the dirt. A bit of the shell hit the dead man by me, and he jumped as if alive. I got up and was on my way.
The majority of the 4th platoon had taken individual leases on shell holes; Sgt. Rogers and a few others were making valiant efforts to make some headway with the wire. The shelling quieted down after awhile, however, and we got down to business. Then I started back to see how the others were faring.
On the way I heard Capt. Fleischmann’s voice from the darkness; his men also were worried about the stray bullets overhead. As I came up, a couple of his sentinels thought they had spotted the snipers, and cracked down on some figures moving past a clump of bushes to their left. A few remarks in choice American made it clear that they were potting away at my 3rd platoon, which had decided that it was time to quit for the night. Privately I was heartily in sympathy with this view; but officially I had to lead the way back to the trench and set the boys to work again. Meanwhile the C. O. of the 4th platoon, laboring under a similar delusion, had taken his wiring party back to their bivvies. Sgt. Rogers, Slim Price and one or two others were still on deck, very much disgusted. So we had a good long trudge back, routed the lads out, and all hands returned to the hill.
At last 3 o’clock came, and we turned in tools and quit for the night. As Rogers, Hayden and I were crossing the belt of wire north of the Vieville road, four or five gas shells landed quite near by. We all got a pretty good snootful before we got our masks on; and Rogers, the Co. gas N. C. O., was so busy cussing the wire that he didn’t notice the gas soon enough, and got enough to put him in the hospital.