There I took a dead man’s rifle and ammunition, and called for volunteers to go on a combat patrol to find the 2nd platoon. We needed them badly, for if the enemy got in on our left flank they could enfilade our ridge and shoot us down at pleasure.
I took Martocci and four other men—their names I can’t recall, though their faces stand out sharply in my memory. We advanced up the ridge on our left in skirmishing order. My Boche friend was waiting for us, and before we had gone fifty yards he cracked down on us from the woods above. We answered, firing by ear at the sound of his rifle. It was blind work; we couldn’t see fifty yards through the woods.
We worked up to the top of the ridge, and then along it toward the west. Two of the patrol were missing; lost or killed, I never knew which. We pushed on cautiously, a few yards at a time, stopping to look and listen. Now and again the enemy would spot us, and his bullets would snap past us viciously. The German rifle has a high, whip-like crack, easily distinguishable from that of our Enfield or Springfield; but the noise of the bullet passing by is much the same.
Suddenly I felt a sharp blow on my shoulder; one of the gentlemen had pinked me neatly. Down the ridge the bushes rustled; all four of us let drive at the sound. There was a shrill scream, and then silence. One of us had found a mark.
This was all very interesting, but my business was to find that 2nd platoon. My mind was working away industriously at that problem, with a peculiar detachment. I only remember feeling vaguely annoyed at our patrol’s unpleasant situation, and did my share of the shooting almost mechanically.
Of course, as we found out later, the 312th Inf. outpost made no advance at all that morning, and our patrol had pushed in behind the German line of outguards; to our mutual bewilderment and disgust. The Boche began to fall back through the woods, not stealthily as we were moving, but clumping and crashing along, and shouting to one another to know what in donner und blitzen was up.
We were now well beyond the left of our own regimental sector, and a long half kilo from the company. The withdrawing outguards of the enemy were passing all around us. For twenty minutes we played a desperate game of blind man’s buff with them. Occasionally we would catch a glimpse of a gray form or a green helmet through the trees, and our little messengers of death would speed him on his way. Then bullets would sing over our heads from all directions, and we would hug the ground until we could push on again, to repeat the performance from another position.
Finally I gave up hope of finding the 2nd platoon, and got out my compass to steer our course back to B Co. Cautiously we stole through the woods to the southeast. We could still hear the Boche trampling the bushes all around us.
Suddenly from the bushes ahead came a challenge, in the mechanical, drill-book German that means bullets are coming. We hit the dirt, just as a brisk rapid fire opened on us, cutting the twigs overhead. We let drive into the bushes in front, firing low. As I slipped a fresh clip into my magazine, I glanced at Martocci, his olive cheek white with excitement, but firing quite steadily and coolly from a kneeling position.
I signalled “Cease firing.” All was still, except for a trampling receding off to the right. Warily we circled round the bushes, and came upon a road—one of those straight German roads, with a 2-inch pipe line running along the side.