CHAPTER XVIII
A RAID ON THE ENEMY
As has been seen in foregoing chapters, we were now fighting beside the French in northern France, and holding a sector in the world’s great conflict.
Infantry, artillery, machine-guns, and other branches of the service were awaiting the resumption of the great German drive, by which the enemy were hoping to obtain a victorious decision and give to their brutal government supremacy in the world.
While we recognized how serious would be our failure to ward off the impending blow, we were keen and alert for action, and proud that we had been chosen to defend this half-ruined but quaintly beautiful city.
“Where do you expect the Huns will strike us next?” I asked a staff officer of our division.
“I do not know, and can only guess it will be right on this southern line in a drive towards Paris; but, meanwhile, I think that we will do a little fighting before he begins. You know that it is the policy of our general-in-chief to keep up an incessant nibbling along their lines, not only to gain information, but to break up their combinations—disrupt their plans.”
“Yes, I suppose that it is good tactics,” I replied, “to do the things the enemy don’t want you to do; and just now they seem to be willing to be let alone.”
Shortly after this conversation our regiment, with others, began rehearsing movements that looked as though we were to cross the river.
Before daylight one morning we were marched a quarter of a mile or more up the river, where light canvas pontoons were unloaded near us, with balk (string pieces) and chess (floor covering) for a pontoon bridge. An abutment of a single timber set into the ground and secured by pegs for the five claw balks, one end of which grasped the abutment and the other the gunwale of the boat nearest to the shore. Then a section of the bridge was built on the shore, launched and swung into the river and anchored. Then, still in comparative darkness, our artillery laid down a terrible barrage, under cover of which the pontoons were anchored, balks fastened to the boats by the pontooniers, and covered with chess with inconceivable rapidity, until the bridge reached the opposite shore. Then with a rush we went over.
All this had been done with such clock-like precision that but little opposition had been met: and the crossing had been planned so well and so quickly executed, that it had been a complete surprise to the enemy.