It is a scientific war.
A few of the first company reached the Prussian trenches before us. We clubbed and stabbed and slashed with the long knives they had given to us. The legion does not take any prisoners, because legionnaires are not taken prisoners. The Boches feel that we have no business in the war.
The trench was so narrow I could not use my bayonet, so I used the knife. I do not know how long we had been fighting, but the Boches cleared out. We tried to get our squads together and prepare for what we knew would be coming. The enemy simply had retired to their second-line trenches to let their artillery turn upon us in their first-line shelter. All morning they hammered us, but we hung on, lying flat upon our bellies and clinging to our mother, the earth, as if she would protect us. Showers of dirt almost buried us alive. Sometimes bits of metal found a soft billet, and there was one fewer of us to withstand the attack that would come as surely as death awaits us all.
Suddenly quiet struck us like a blow. The echo of the guns had scarcely died away when we heard the twitter and whistling of birds that had survived the terrific shocks of the explosions.
Then we heard a different sound. It was the yelling of the Boches. They were coming! Some rushed through the crooked communication trenches which we had blocked a little bit with earth and stones. Others swarmed over the top of the ground. Some seemed to rise from beneath our very feet.
Have you ever kicked into an ant hill? If you have you know how the Boches fell upon us. I saw some one climb over the rim of the trench and run back toward the French lines.
I followed him.
I could not feel my legs. I seemed to be flying. The strumming of a machine gun broke upon my consciousness. I leaped headlong into a shell hole. Dead men were around me and wounded lay thrashing there. Other men leaped on me and fell into the pit. We lay there until the sound of the machine gun stopped, then we started madly again for our own lines. A star shell burst and merciless light made everything stand out with terrifying plainness. It is cadaverous light, like that from a mercury tube.
We plunged into another shell hole. When the rest of the men came tearing past us we leaped out and followed them. I am not proud of my conduct in my first fight.
After this assault I gradually became accustomed to the noise and shock of artillery fire. We could hear the shells coming, passing over our heads and speeding away in the distance. It is a strange fact that after a few weeks of artillery fire one develops a sort of instinct which distinguishes between a shell coming toward him and one just sailing off somewhere else in space.