They lurched out into the street. The day was hot and still, and the men, exhilarated by the wine and satiated with the food, were planning for other banquets as sumptuous. Around the corner of the crooked street marched an orderly, wearing his inevitable look of having the responsibility of the war on his shoulders.
“Are you men from C Company of the Sixth?”
“You’re damned right we are, buddy. Have you got anything to say about it?”
“No. Only you’d better hurry up and join them or you’ll be up for a shoot for desertion.”
“Why, whaddya mean? Where are they?” Several men spoke at once.
“Well,” said the orderly importantly, “they were getting ready to go over the top when I left.”
“Great Christ!” Ryan lamented. “We’d better hurry. Lead the way, orderly.”
Flanked by rows of waving wheat, the party plodded along the dusty, narrow road.
“Now we are in it for sure,” Hicks thought. “And me especially. If Major Adams hears about this I’ll be hung higher than a kite.” But he forgot the possibility of a court martial in his thinking of the platoon and of where they were and of where he was soon to be.
The platoon was found in a clump of woods, a little to the left of the road. In front of them was the spectacle of what a French village looked like after it had been subjected to long-range artillery fire for three days. The spire of the inevitable little church had been blown off; there was not a house or barn whose side or roof had not been pierced by a shell. Mortar and glass were strewn about the streets, where they mingled with articles of household use. Beside the door of one of the houses a Red Cross flag had been fastened, and inside the medical detachment were making preparations for visitors.
Old King Cole sat hunched up, his helmet over his eyes, looking down at his heavy shoes. Kahl, a light-weight boxer from Pennsylvania, was attacking a tin of corned beef, trying to open it with his bayonet. Wormrath, from Cleveland, who carried a khaki-colored handkerchief which he had used for three months,[73] sat with his arms around his knees, his eyes looking far away and moist.
“What’s the matter, King?” Hicks called, anxious somehow to make himself again a part of the platoon as soon as he could.
“Oh, this damned war makes me sick. Always movin’ around. They never let you stay one place a minute.”
“Join the marines and see the world,” some one called.
“Through the door of a box car,” some one else amended.
“You’ll be up here long enough, old fellow. You ought to come from my part of the country, King. They do a lot of cutting and shooting there.”
“Yeh.” King Cole was ironic. “They do a lot of cuttin’ and shootin’. They cut around the corner and shoot for home.”
Kahl laughed exultantly. He felt that at last the time he had given to training was to be of some purpose. He abandoned trying to open the tin of meat because he feared that he would dull his bayonet. And he wanted it to be sharp, so sharp. Those dirty Huns. He drew his finger along the edge of the shiny piece of steel. That would cut, all right. That[74] wouldn’t be deflected by a coat-button from piercing the intestines.
Lieutenant Bedford, bent forward as usual, the end of his nose wiggling nervously, came among them with Sergeants Ryan and Harriman.
“There won’t be any smoking or any matches lighted after dark to-night, fellows. We are only about a mile from the German front line. As near as I can make out they are advancing and it is our job to stop them. We’ll probably move forward some time after dark, so have your stuff by your side.”
“When do we eat? Won’t we get any chow all night?”
“The galley is in the town back of us. They are cooking up some slum, and it ought to be brought up here pretty soon.” He walked away.
“There’s nothing like a good kick in the face to make you forget your little troubles.” Bullis summed up the feeling of the platoon.
Kahl, industriously, was working the bolt of his rifle back and forth, pouring drops of oil in the chamber and upon the lock. He leaned toward Hicks and remarked in an undertone: “Hicks, old fellow, if Kitty Kahl[75] doesn’t earn a Croix de Guerre to-morrow his mother will be without a son.”
“What do you want one of those things for, Kahl? You can buy ’em for five francs.”
“But you can’t earn one of them with five francs.”
“But what do you want with one of them? What good are they?”
Hicks, perhaps, was insincere. One might want a decoration and be delighted to have it, but intentionally to go after it appealed to him in the light of absurdity.
As Lieutenant Bedford departed, each man drew inside himself. Merely to observe them, one would have believed that they were concerned with profound thoughts. A Y. M. C. A. secretary would have told himself that the men were thinking of their homes and families, praying to God, and the Y. M. C. A. General Pershing would have charged them with possessing a fierce, burning desire to exterminate the Germans. The regimental chaplain—he had come to the regiment from an Episcopal pulpit—would have said that they were capitulating their sins and supplicating God for mercy.
While it was yet light Sergeants Harriman and Ryan and Lieutenant Bedford discussed[76] aloud the plans that had been tentatively given them for the night, but as objects in their line of vision lost their distinctness and became vague, mysterious figures, they lowered their voices to a whisper. Lieutenant Bedford peered at his wrist-watch.
“It’s time to go. Better break out the men, Harriman.” Sergeant Harriman crept along the road to the clump of woods where the platoon was huddled.
“All right, men,” he whispered hoarsely; “it’s time to shove off. Has everybody got his trench tools?”
“I’ve lost my shovel.”
“I didn’t mean you, Gillespie. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t fastened on. Is any one missing any of their equipment?”
There was no answer.
“All right. Form in a column of twos and follow me.” Sergeant Harriman started off, and the men, who had risen, fell in behind him.
Until this time all had been quiet, but now the machine-guns, unmistakably Maxims, began an intermittent fire. It seemed to be a signal for the rifles, for now and again one of them would crack pungently somewhere in the dark.
The platoon was marching cautiously over the hill to the town in front of them.
“Stand fast!” Sergeant Ryan called out sharply. A rocket was fired, rose high in the air, and then, the parachute spreading out, floated slowly to earth, lighting up the ground for several hundreds of yards on each side. As soon as it had reached the ground the platoon marched on. They passed through the town, and, as they were leaving, a covey of shells whirred softly over their heads and landed among the ruins with a terrific explosion. The remaining walls seemed to reverberate. It sounded as if they were rocking back and forth from the concussion.
At the military crest of the hill the platoon stopped, joined on its left by the rest of the company. The company commander walked along the line, repeating, so that each man could hear: “You’ll have to hurry and dig in, men. It’s three hours until dawn, and if you haven’t got yourselves a place of safety by that time you will be unfortunate.”
The men threw off their packs, unstrapped their trench tools, and set to work to make holes in the ground sufficiently deep to protect their bodies from rifle fire and from pieces of flying[78] shell. As there were only four men in each squad equipped with trench tools, the other half commenced digging with their bayonets and scraping the dirt from the hole that they were making with the lid of their mess gear. But they worked furiously, and with the aid of the company commander and all of the subofficers, which consisted in telling them that they had just so much longer until dawn, each pair of men had made for themselves a hole in the ground from which they could manipulate their rifles without exposing their bodies to direct fire.
When dawn broke the company presented to the enemy a slightly curved front of newly made holes, with the dirt thrown up in front of them for further protection.
Across the valley, perhaps five hundred yards, was a thickly wooded hill, from which, as the light strengthened, the platoon could see figures running out into the field and then back again among the trees. Then, to the right, the Hotchkiss machine-guns began their wavering patter.
From another woods, in front and to the left of the platoon, ran soldiers in frayed and dirty horizon-blue uniforms. Harriman pointed to[79] the wooded hill where the scurrying figures had been seen. “Boche?” he asked.
“Oui, Boche,” the men in the soiled uniforms answered.
“Boche, Paris?” some one asked.
“Oui.” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “Ce ne fait rien.”
Doubtless the Frenchmen, Hicks thought, did not care; for seven days they had been forced to fall back, slowly and with heavy losses. There was little opportunity for sleep; and food, despite the conscientious efforts of the French cooks, was difficult to procure. They felt beaten.
Another group of French soldiers hurried out of the woods, and, as the others had done, disappeared through the ruins of the village.
It was quite light now, and the German artillery awoke. The first salvo of shells struck in the town. The second fell in the field to the right of the village.
Overhead the wings of an airplane whirred. Under its wings were painted large black crosses. It fired a signal, rose again in the air, wheeled, and flew back.
“Duck your heads,” shouted Sergeant Ryan,[80] pulling a cigarette from his pocket. “They’ve got our range for sure.”
They had. A moment later and a number of shells began a leisurely journey in the direction of the platoon. As they approached they lost their tardiness and fell shrieking, like some maddened demons, along the line of freshly dug dirt.
“Anybody get hit?” Sergeant Ryan rose and looked around.
“Stretcher bearer on the right!” Hicks yelled.
In the hole next to his a curious thing had happened. A shell had grazed the top of the hole, buried itself in the dirt, and then backfired. When the stretcher-bearers arrived they found that Hayes, one of the men in the hole, had part of his back torn off. Quickly they laid him prone on the stretcher and started for the town as swiftly as the weight of their burden would permit. The other man, Hartman, was still crouched in the position he had assumed when Sergeant Ryan called the warning.
Hicks jumped over beside him. “Hartman,” he called. Hartman failed to respond. He put his arm around him and lifted him up. Hartman began to laugh horribly. Then great tears coursed through the mud on his cheeks.
“Hartman, what’s the matter?”
Hartman laughed again in the same manner. He had completely lost control of his muscles and would have fallen face downward if Hicks had not held him up.
“Tell Lieutenant Bedford that there’s something the matter with Hartman,” Hicks shouted.
The word was passed along.
“Lieutenant Bedford says for you to get somebody else and take him back to the first-aid station. He’s probably shell-shocked.”
“Oh, Gillespie,” Hicks called. “Come and help me take Hartman back to the first-aid station.”
“Oh, Hicks, I can’t. I’m sick at my stomach. I couldn’t help carry anything.”
“Well, Pugh—come on, Pugh, you help me.”
And Pugh got out of his hole, a few yards away, and ran over. Both men, one holding his legs and the other his shoulders, tried to dodge the stream of machine-gun bullets as they hurried the shell-shocked man to the dressing station.
In the village there was greater safety—cellars to hide in, and there to escape the flying[82] pieces of shells that fell into the town at short intervals.
Hicks and Pugh rested for a moment, filled their canteens with water, and started back. Half-way to the platoon they found a Frenchman lying upon his back.
“à moi, à moi,” he was groaning scarcely above a whisper.
“What’s the mattah, buddy,” Pugh asked.
“ ... par le gaz ... par le gaz.”
“He says he’s been gassed, Pugh. Let’s take him back, too.”
“Here, buddy, do you want a drink of watah?” Pugh asked.
The Frenchman drank greedily.
“By God,” Pugh said, “that’s the first Frog I’ve ever seen that would drink water.”
They carried him to the dressing station, and after they had explained to the captain of the Medical Corps where they had found him, in what a desperate condition he was, and that there was nothing else to do with him, the Frenchman was finally accepted.
“We can’t fill this place up with all kinds of people,” the medical officer objected. “We’ll have a hard-enough time taking care of our own men in a few minutes.”
Pugh, disgusted, emitted a stream of tobacco juice, shrugged his shoulder, turned on his heel.
“Come on, Hicksy, let’s get back where there’s white men.”
Their hearts racing madly, they reached their holes without being struck by the machine-gun bullets that sang deadly songs all around. After the first terrific salvo, the German artillery, for some unknown reason, had stopped.
The skirmishing on the right, which the platoon had witnessed in the early morning, seemed to have been carried within the woods. A few waves of pigmy-like figures had walked slowly toward the wooded hill, and by the time their lines arrived, although considerably thinned, the gray defenders of the hill were to be seen no more.
Now that they were no longer targets, Hicks walked over to where Ryan was squatted in his hole.
“This is a hell of a note, isn’t it, Ryan? To have to lie like this all day and not get to fire a shot?”
“You’ll get a chance to fire plenty of shots, damn it. Some poor fool is making our regiment attack without a barrage. Did you see the outfit over on the right that went up that[84] hill? That was the third battalion, and I’ll bet there’s not a third of the men left. Well, we’ll go over most any time.”
“But, Ryan, that’s murder, not to have a barrage. What can these fool officers be thinking of?”
“Glory,” Ryan answered.
Late in the afternoon the company commander passed the word along the line that the men would be permitted to eat one of their boxes of hard bread, but nothing else.
“Who the hell wants to eat any of that damned stuff?”
“God, my hardtack laid in the trenches for six weeks, and even them damned rats wouldn’t eat it.”
The platoon had recovered its spirits, its “morale,” as the white-collared fighters for democracy often spoke of it.
As night was coming on, a noise was heard in the grass between the men and the ruined village. It coughed tentatively, then decisively.
“Who’s back there?”
“A runner from battalion headquarters,” the voice answered cautiously. “Don’t shoot.”
“Oh, come ahead.”
“What the hell are you afraid of?”
“We’re not as fierce as we look.”
“Where’s your company commander?” the voice asked.
“He went over to ask the Squareheads to stop shootin’. There’s a man here that’s got a headache,” Pugh informed the voice.
“No, where is he, fellows?” By this time the voice had become Fosbrook. Hicks recognized him.
“Hello, Fosbrook.”
“Oh!” Fosbrook walked over to Hicks’s hole and jumped in. “Hello, William.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were interpreter for the colonel.”
“I was, William, but I drank too much one night and he fired me,” Fosbrook answered sadly.
“What do you want with the company commander?”
“I don’t know whether I should tell you.”
“Hell, I’ll find it out in a minute, anyway.”
“Well, your company is to move to another position as soon as it gets dark enough.”
“What for? Are we going to attack?”
“I don’t know, William, I’m sure. Where is your captain?”
“He’s over between the third and second platoons, about fifteen holes down that way.”
Fosbrook got up, and, stooping over until his head was parallel with his hips, trotted in the direction Hicks had indicated.
An hour later the orders came for the men to sling their packs and be ready to move again. And great was the outcry when the men heard the news.
“Are we going to dig up the whole of France?”
“I’ll get my old man to buy some ploughs if we are. I wasn’t cut out to be a ditch digger.”
“This is a hell of a note. Diggin’ a hole for one day. I was jist gittin’ mine so’s I could sleep in it.”
The company lined up in single file and marched off.
After man?uvring around for a couple of hours they came to another woods. On the way they had been joined by a section of the machine-gun company that was attached to their battalion. In a measure, this annexation was responsible for their slow progress. There were the carts to be hidden, and then the men[87] of the machine-gun detail carried their guns and their ammunition in their arms. But they were halted at last, and amid much muttering and cursing were shooed into the woods and told that they might go to sleep for the night.
It was noon of the next day before they received any food. Then a detail had to be sent back to the village after it. And when they returned they brought with them cold boiled potatoes, cold coffee, and black French bread.
“Don’t eat too many of these damned potatoes,” Pugh warned all and sundry. “I was ridin’ on a box car for three days once, and I didn’t have nothin’ but these things to eat, an’ I got col’ sores all over my mouth.”
Cigarettes were scarce, so the butts of them were passed around and in that way shared by all.
The firing during the day was slight. Scattered rifle fire was heard on both sides, but the artillery was dumb. The men spent the day speculating upon whether their own artillery would arrive and get into position before they were ordered to attack.
Time after time Kahl nervously paced the length of the woods. He had done all that he[88] could to his rifle. The bolt worked smoothly with a satisfying “click.” The bore had been swabbed free of the oil, which had been put there to keep the metal from rusting. The chamber held five meticulously clean shells and there was one in the bore.
Lepere and Harriman were telling each other of what they used to do “on the outside,” by which phrase they meant before they had enlisted. Ryan was cursing because there was no water to be had. His canteen was half empty, and he knew better than not to hoard water. He decided that he would have to shave without water, and this angered him still more. Then he divided the water equally, using a portion for lather.
Thus they passed the day.
To the weary platoon, their thinned ranks huddled all day long in the small clump of woods, night came on slowly and inexorably. The sun had disappeared, and, one by one, elf-like stars became apparent, twinkling like shaking jewels through the black curtain of the heavens. At sunset orders had been received for the platoon to be prepared to leave at any moment. Their rifles were lying by their sides,[89] the men were sprawled on the damp ground, their heads resting on their combat packs.
Some one touched a lighted match to a cigarette. It glowed softly in the darkness, a bright, inquisitive eye.
“Put out that God-damned light,” Lieutenant Bedford whispered hoarsely. “Do you want us all to get shot up?”
Soon at the edge of the woods the branches were parted and a tense voice called: “Where is Lieutenant Bedford?”
It was a messenger from battalion headquarters carrying orders for the platoon to move. The summons was passed along from squad to squad, a disagreeable secret hurriedly disposed of. The men slung their packs and, holding their rifles in front of them, filed slowly and carefully out of the woods to form in a column of twos.
Lieutenant Bedford in front and Sergeant Ryan in rear—as if, Hicks thought, some of the men were thinking of deserting—the men marched off, joining the other platoons in the middle of the field. Lieutenant Bedford called:
“Pass the word along to keep quiet; we’re within hearing distance of the front lines.”
On both sides the artillery was silent. Occasionally[90] a machine-gun would fire a string of bullets the sound of which died in the stillness without an echo.
The platoon dragged slowly on, their legs soaked around the knees from the dew nestling on the tall wheat. For perhaps a mile they had marched, and the platoon, like a sensitive instrument, was beginning to have an unaccountable perception of danger, when shoes were heard swishing through the heavy wheat, and a voice said:
“Turn around, you damned fools. Do you want to walk straight into the German trenches!”
The men breathed relievedly. Apparently they were not going immediately to attack. Recovering, they began audibly to curse the lieutenant.
“The dirty German spy. What the hell does he think he’s doin’?”
“Ought to be back at G. H. Q. with the rest of the dummies.”
The lieutenant, unable to distinguish the mumbling voices as belonging to any particular persons, vowed to himself that when the platoon was relieved and back in a rest camp, he would give them extra fatigue duty for a month.
They were coming to another woods, and within a few yards of its fringes some officers stepped out and halted them.
“All right, here you are.”
“Lieutenant, swing your men right in here and don’t let any one get out of the woods.”
The men backed in among the trees and lay down, their packs, raising their shoulders from the ground, protecting them from the moisture. They lay silent, with their rifles cradled in their arms. No one seemed to mind the wet of the grass or the chill of the air. They were all silent and rather full of fear. Time was unknown. They might have been there a year—a minute—an ?on.
Just as the trees, in a clump of woods, perhaps a mile away, were beginning to come out against the sluggish sky like sharp, delicate etchings, the batteries awoke. After the first flock of shells, sounding like black, screaming spirits, were fired, the men in the woods were fully aroused and many of them were standing.
“Uh-h-h, did you hear that bunch of sandbags?”
“They sounded as if they came from a thousand miles.”
Another salvo was fired, the shells droning[92] lazily over the heads of the men and crashing terrifically more than a mile distant.
And then the smaller guns were unlimbered. The spiteful crack of the seventy-fives turned the funereal music into a scherzo. In retaliation the German batteries, the heavier ones, began, their shells flying high overhead.
Lieutenant Bedford jumped up. “All right, Third Platoon. Up you come. Keep straight ahead and remember your three-yard interval. If any one gets hit, let him lie.” And then, as if he were uncertain, as if he wanted to convince himself of the actuality of the words he had just spoken, he added: “Those are the orders.”
“I always knew they hated the Third,” said Lepere, “but blamed if I knew they hated our guts so much that they put us in the first wave.”
But Kahl only grinned. He was conscious of a feeling as if his face had become frozen and as if his chin were about to drop off. It hung slackly and his teeth came unnaturally together when he clinched his jaws. He tightened the chin-strap of his helmet, guarding against the chance of losing his chin. Next, his feet felt so awfully heavy. They would barely permit themselves to be lifted from the[93] ground. They had become separate identities, and as he became conscious of them he felt them to be unfamiliar.
“Damn this mud,” he told himself, though knowing well that there was no mud weighing down his feet.
After pounding away for fifteen minutes, the smaller artillery stopped. The whistle blew and the men advanced, stepping out in the open where the risen sun made them hideously conspicuous. The field separating the woods stretched far on either side, and was covered with green-stemmed wheat that reached hip-high.
Kahl, glancing over his shoulder, saw the rays of the sun flashing from the clean bayonets, the bayonets the men so often had jabbed into sacks of sand and straw.
The sergeant in charge of the first wave set the pace, which was frightfully slow. Somewhere, farther down the line, men began to object to the snail-like progress.
“Yes,” thought Kahl, “it’s amusing that we walk so slowly when we are right out in plain sight.” It struck him as odd that the line was not being fired upon, and then he explained it to himself by the notion that the heavy barrage[94] had driven the enemy back. But what if it hadn’t—what if the Germans are just waiting until we get right almost into the woods. Wouldn’t that be a mess! And what a bore, this moping through the wet smoky wheat. He wondered whether his knees were bleeding. Curse it! His neck was stiff. Maybe he could limber it up if he shook his head.... No, it couldn’t be done. It didn’t work.
The first wave entered the woods where the enemy was without firing a shot or being fired at. The second wave entered, and the third, and the fourth.
Kahl, parting the leaves with his bayonet, unexpectedly looked out upon a clearing, and the sight he saw made him exclaim to the man next to him:
“Oh, Jimmy, this must be some joke. Look at all those fellows asleep there.”
In the clearing, lying flat on their backs, were five soldiers, their legs stretched out. They wore no shoes over their heavy woollen hose.
Hicks drew over toward him and looked.
“You better get down, you lumphead,” Hicks cautioned; “they aren’t asleep.”
Together they crawled out toward the motionless figures. By this time Lepere, Cole, and[95] Pietrzak had come to the clearing and started to follow.
“Je-sus, Kahl! Here’s a fellow out of the Eighty-third Company that I enlisted with. And he’s dead as hell.”
Rat-t-t-t——
It was a Maxim and the men dropped to their bellies.
“Hey, you poor fool, can’t you shut up?” Kahl said. “That’s a Maxim.”
Hicks made for behind a tree as fast as he could crawl.
“Hey, Pete,” he called in an undertone “where’s the rest of the outfit?”
“I don’t know,” Pietrzak answered him. “That’s the reason we come over here where you fellers are.”
Hicks turned to Kahl. “By God, Kahl, we’re lost!”
The machine-gun bullets shaved the bark from the trunk of the tree behind which Hicks was lying. He flattened out, his face pressed into the grass.
“Oh, Kahl, we’re lost!”
But Kahl did not hear him. Possibly he remembered what he had said earlier in the day. Possibly he was really a hero. Possibly he[96] again saw himself as a little boy playing Indian in the back yard. Whatever were his thoughts, he rose to one knee, and, after peering intently in the direction from which the bullets had come, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted along the shining barrel.
Rat-t-t-t-tat.
A Maxim, but from an oblique direction, was firing, and Kahl sprawled on his face, his right arm falling over the shiny barrel of his rifle. Then other machine-guns rained their bullets into the clearing, and the men clawed at the ground in an effort to lower their bodies beneath the sweep of the lead.
“What’ll we do, Hicks?” asked Pietrzak.
The tender green leaves from the trunk of the tree behind which Hicks was secure fluttered to the ground, clipped by the machine-gun fire.
“I don’t know, but we can’t stay here. Why don’t you find the rest of the gang?”
“Why don’t you?”
“Well....” Hicks started to crawl back from the clearing into the woods. After he had wriggled his body about fifty yards he rose to his feet and ran in the general direction of which he had last seen the company. Breaking through the woods, he met Captain Powers.
“Captain Powers, there’s a squad of us up there, and we’re lost. We don’t know what to do. The men are in a clearing, and they’re afraid to move because they’re right in sight of a nest of machine-guns. Do you know where the platoon is? What shall we do?”
And in a Shakespearian voice Captain Powers told Hicks to return to his squad and lead them in a charge on the machine-gun nest.
“Aye, aye, sir.” Hicks turned and squirmed back through the woods to the clearing. “Like hell we’ll advance,” he thought. “The poor fool.”
Hicks reached the clearing at the same time the German machine-guns momentarily stopped.
“Ja find ’em, Hicks?”
“No, but I saw Powers. If we made a half circle back to the left we might find ’em.”
“Sounds good enough to try.”
They were crawling, crawling on their bellies, in single file, when Pugh stopped and called with an exultant lilt in his voice:
“Oh-o, here’s one Squarehead that’s kissed his papa good-by. Right through the eye.”
The men in rear veered off so as not to see the dead body. A short distance away some[98] one was moaning weakly. Hicks stopped. “Another one of our guys hit, I betcha.”
They crawled eagerly and yet fearfully toward the noises. Seen through the trees bandy-legged Funk was supporting the head of little Halvorsen and trying to get him to open his eyes. Beside him was Lieutenant Bedford, saying:
“You’re crazy, Funk. The kid’s gone, but we’ll see if anything can be done.”
Funk was softly calling: “Hank, oh, Hank, ain’t you got anything to say?”
Hicks got to his feet and came beside the group that was staring at the dead face of Halvorsen.
“What’s that? Little Hank get it? Je’s, that’s bad.”
And Pugh: “Poor little fellah. I give him a hunnerd francs the other day. But he sure is welcome to it.”
Funk straightened his body, letting the head of Halvorsen touch the ground. Clinching his fist, he raised it above his head and shook it toward the woods: “We’ll get you, you dirty—” He could not find the word with which he wanted to characterize the inhumanity of the Germans.
Bedford grasped at his arm: “Get down, you damned fool. Do you want to get hit, too?”
The platoon had begun the advance through the woods in good order, but after it had reached the more dense part the German machine-guns commenced firing and four men fell. They tramped on, unable to see the enemy. Suddenly they realized that they had broken contact between themselves and the platoon on their left. Advancing, they wedged themselves into the German lines and made a target for enfillade fire. Then, little more to be done except get killed, they halted.
An orderly from battalion headquarters crawling through the woods carried with him the information for Captain Powers that the company was to intrench for the night. When the news reached them the platoon failed even to comment. For once their garrulous selves were stilled. The realization that they were to spend a night freighted with experiences totally new, that through the darkness they were to lie powerless to defend themselves, stunned them.
A curving line was described by Lieutenant Bedford, and the men were deployed along it at intervals. They unslung their packs, their[100] extra bandoliers of ammunition, and began furiously to dig holes in the ground, deep enough for them to lie in without exposing their bodies. Some used their hand shovels and picks, while others, more careless with their equipment, used their bayonets to loosen the dirt and their mess-kit lids to scoop it out.
Dusk, like powder of old blue, sifted through the trees and wrapped the shallow burrows in a friendly mystery. In their fresh-made beds, peeping through the boughs with which they had covered the tops of their holes, the men waited.
Through the long night that stretched interminably before them they peered into the darkness, fancying, as they had in the trenches, that each tree trunk was an enemy. The least noise was sufficient for overworked nerves to press the trigger of a rifle and send a volley of bullets through the leaves of the trees. The calling of a frightened bird would cause their hearts to throb violently against their ribs. When they spoke it was in the smallest of whispers, and even so conversation was peculiarly lacking.
Hicks, at times, would think of a letter that his mother had written him in which she had[101] offered to send him a quantity of cyanide of potassium. “You know, son,” she had written, “this war is not like the war that grandpapa used to tell you about. Those frightful Germans have liquid fire and deadly gases, and it is only when I think of how you would suffer if you were burned by their infernal liquid fire that I offer to send it. If you want it, just mark a cross at the bottom of your next letter.” But Hicks had not marked any cross. He had laughed at the notion at first, and then, as the months slipped by, he had forgotten entirely about it. Now he wondered if he had done wisely. Suppose he were shot like the fellow in the trench the other day? Or gassed as badly as the Frenchman whom he and Pugh had carried back to the first-aid station. Yes, it would have been comforting.... But he revolted at the thought of poisoning himself. His early religion had been that a suicide does not better his condition. He simply lives in purgatory. It would be hellish to lie gasping forever in purgatory, Hicks thought. Dear old mother. How she had cried when he told her that he had enlisted and was to be sent almost immediately to France. “But, mother, you were such a good patriot before I enlisted, and[102] now you don’t want me to go. What kind of patriotism is that?” he remembered having asked her. And how badly she had felt that he only spent an hour with her before he left for the training camp.
He was amused at the notion of digging holes to lie in. It is insulting, he thought, to ask a person to dig his own grave. It is barbaric.
The leaves of the trees were silvered above by the rays of the sun playing upon the dew. Morning had come.
Somewhere—and it seemed as if it were only ten yards away, a bugle blew a short and unfamiliar call.
“All right, Third Platoon!” Lieutenant Bedford’s voice was hoarse with excitement. “Forward, Third Platoon.”
Hesitatingly and half-whimpering, the platoon climbed out from their holes, over which they had carefully placed boughs of trees to keep reconnoitering airplanes from seeing the freshly dug dirt.
Hicks’s helmet felt as if it were about to come off. It wabbled from one side to the other. His face was frozen, and when he wanted to speak out he felt that he could not because the[103] muscles that controlled his mouth refused to respond. At first he was intensely aware of his legs, but, surging along with the rest of the platoon, he soon forgot them.
Three Germans were rising up in front of him. “Don’t those queer little caps of theirs look funny?” he thought, and, from the hip, he fired his automatic rifle at them. One fell and the others lifted their hands in the air and bellowed: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” Hicks passed by them, unheeding. More Germans. The woods were filled with Germans. But the rest of them wore heavy steel helmets that covered their foreheads and ears.
“You dirty bastards!” Hicks heard some one scream.
By God, he wouldn’t have any liquid fire poured on him. “Johnston!” he called. But Johnston, his leader, was not there. Hicks’s last clip had been emptied of shells. There were no more in his musette bag. It wasn’t possible! Johnston must be some place near, ready to give him more clips. But no! He threw his rifle away in disgust. A few yards farther he saw the back of an olive-drab uniform, and by one of the hands that was connected to the uniform was clutched a rifle.[104] Hicks snatched the rifle, unbuckled the cartridge-belt from the uniform, and hurried blindly on. A deep ravine was in front of him. He half jumped, half stumbled across it, and found himself once more in a wheat-field. There was no one in sight. He scrambled back over the ravine and through the woods again, frightened but defiant. Wherever he looked, as he went back through the woods, men were lying. Some of them lay quite still. Others moaned and cried alternately. But Hicks paid no heed. He was still hurrying on, his head up and his nostrils wide, when some one called:
“Here, Hicks, get busy and round up some of these Squareheads.” It was Ryan.
Hicks felt as if he had been struck in the stomach with a brick. He laughed nervously. “Sure.”
Nine Germans stood together with their hands raised high above their heads. Their knees were shaking badly and they looked first to one side and then to the other. Docile sheep, he led them back to the village where he turned them over to a reserve regiment.
On the way back to join his platoon he met a man who looked familiar. “Say, fellow, don’t you belong to A Company, of the Fifth?”
The man turned. “I did,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any more A Company.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, we attacked this morning through an open space in the woods,” the man told him.
“And they’re all dead? Fellah, I’ve got a cousin in that outfit. Show me where they went over.”
They walked back to the clearing together. Men were lying around in all manner of postures, and much more thickly than the men in the woods.
“What was your cousin’s name, buddy?”
“Williams, Paul Williams,” Hicks jerked out. “He was a tall, dark-haired fellow, about nineteen?”
“Nope. Might have seen him, but I don’t remember his name.”
Hicks covered the entire field, stopping closely to peer into the face of each of the men who was not a German soldier. As he was turning away from a man who was lying upon his back, his arms and legs stretched wide, and over whom he had stood longer than usual because the face reminded him somewhat of his cousin, the man’s eyelids partly opened, and in a voice in which there was little strength, called:[106] “Soldier! Oh, soldier! Don’t let that damned Squarehead get me. Don’t leave me alone with him. He’ll kill me.”
“No, he won’t, buddy. He’s all right.” Hicks spoke reassuringly. For a moment he could not think whom the man was speaking of, but then he recollected that a German Red Cross attendant had been busy in the field, binding the wounds of the soldiers. Hicks looked around and saw the attendant a few yards off. He beckoned to him, and tried to illustrate by motions that he wanted the soldier carried back to the first-aid station.
The German came over, lowered his head to the soldier’s chest. “Nein. Caput.” He pointed to a rust-colored spot on the soldier’s tunic over the heart. While Hicks was standing there, wondering what to do, the soldier’s eyelids fluttered, he breathed once and deeply—and died.
Hicks gave up hope of finding his cousin. He had either been taken prisoner, and that was not at all likely, or else he had been sent back wounded, he thought.
Hicks tramped back through the thick woods that suddenly had become quiet. The rays of[107] the noonday sun were filtering through the boughs of the trees, seeking out the now inanimate bodies, which would soon turn black and bloat out of shape under the intense heat. Before him, on a knoll of green, was a pile of heavy boulders, and, peeping through a crevice, stuck the nose of a Maxim. Climbing the knoll to the right, he looked into the machine-gun nest. Three bodies, motionless as the rocks themselves, were stretched at length. One had fallen face forward, an arm thrown over the stock of the weapon. His back, that swelled under the gray coat, was turned reproachfully toward the sky. Another was sprawled on his back, his hands and legs frozen in a gesture of complete negation. His chin had fallen heavily on his breast and upon his head his small trench cap was tilted forward at a rakish angle. The other man’s face was a clot of blood. Death, camera-like, had caught and held him fast, his body supported by the rocks, his face like a battered sunflower in the evening.
Hicks stooped over and gently drew the Maxim away from the man who had been firing it when he had been killed. Shouldering it, and carrying an extra belt of cartridges and the water-cooler, he left the knoll and walked[108] toward the ravine. The spectacle that he had just witnessed left very little impression upon him.
The platoon was gathered closely together in the ravine. The ravine was deep and wide, and every so often passage along it was obstructed by a huge stone over which the men would have to climb. Evidently, a few days before, the French soldiers had used the ravine as a trench from which to conceal themselves while they fought against the onslaught of the enemy. Little holes had been dug in the side of the ravine nearest to the field in which men could throw themselves to be protected from the bursting shell casings and shrapnel. As he approached, three of the men were scuffing dirt over the body of a dead French soldier who had fallen near one of the small burrows in the ravine.
Sergeant Ryan was pacing along the ravine, pulling at the ends of his pointed mustache. Lieutenant Bedford, chewing speculatively at a sprig of wheat, and Sergeant Harriman were seated on the ground, apparently immersed in a discussion.
Sergeant Ryan walked over to them.
“This is damned foolishness,” he called.[109] “Before very long there are going to be so many shells flying into this place that you won’t be able to count them. And where will we be? In hell, if we loaf around like this much longer.”
Lieutenant Bedford rubbed with the palm of his hand the stubble on his pallid face. “If I knew how much longer we were to be here, Ryan, I would have had the men digging in long ago.”
The company commander broke through the edge of the woods, and stood on the edge of the ravine. “Lieutenant Bedford. I want six of your men right away.”
“Yes, sir,” Bedford answered. “You, Hicks; you, Cole; you, Bullis; you, Johnston; you, Lepere, and Haight. Follow Captain Powers.”
Joined by details from the three other platoons, the men followed along through the woods again and out into a field which was very near to the place where Hicks had searched for Williams that morning.
“Have all of you men your rifles loaded?”
They responded in the affirmative.
“Well,” he hesitated, “you see that little bunch of woods over there? There’s a number of Germans there and we’re going after them.”
Swishing through the heavy wheat, the men now advanced in skirmish order. They were very cautious and, although the sun was making a glaring light and they were directly in an open field, they walked as though they were sneaking toward the enemy. Captain Powers, forgetting his impressive dignity, slunk along, one shoulder low and his hand grasping by the middle a rifle. His eyes were narrowed as if he were registering for the motion-pictures “extreme wariness.” As gently and softly as wading through heavy grass permitted, Captain Powers placed one foot after the other. His manner infected the men. One by one they adopted the crouching attitude, ready to spring upon their unsuspecting prey. They could almost be seen to flex the muscles in the calves of their legs and in their upper arms, rising majestically on their toes when they walked, instead of using the customary flat-footed form of perambulation.
Captain Powers, abandoning his duties as instructor of English at the Texas college, had learned modern warfare from the books supplied by the nearest officers’ training camp. He had learned how to order men about, that he was an officer and a gentleman, as the officer[111] who commissioned him had phrased it. But yet he felt a slight interest in the men of his command. In the officers’ training-school and in the course of the practice skirmishes through which he had been he had learned that the way in which an attack was made by a small party moving forward in full daylight was by running forward in spurts until the objective had been reached.
Being a professor of English, and especially a professor of English in Texas, he sentimentalized the attack. How much finer it is, he thought, to attack as General Sam Houston attacked; to march steadfastly upon the enemy and make them surrender at the point of a sword or a bowie-knife. The only rift came in his realization that he had no sword, not even a bowie-knife.
When the party was still several yards from the edge of the woods, a mass of Germans, outnumbering them twice, emerged with their hands held high in the air and blithely calling: “Kamerad.”
The captain’s disappointment at not being able to make another attack worthy of a Texan was soon lost in his exultant emotion at the thought of the number of prisoners he had captured.[112] Selecting one of the men to go with him, he herded the prisoners back to the regimental headquarters, where he proudly delivered them to another officer.