Chapter 12
We arrived at camp late, as battle-scarred warriors, and found the peaceful first battalion already encamped. At once we pitched tents and then hastily fed; at home, after hours of such exertion, I should have had a half hour's rest before eating. But the food was ready and hot; if I did not take it at once I could not get it at all; so my stomach took the risk, and I had my meal first and my rest afterward. Then a wash in oh! such a soft-bottomed sluggish brook, where many shaved, and others to my amazement cleaned their teeth. For that ceremony I keep my canteen water, which is served out to us at the head of the company street in proper dippers by orderlies; it is all I shall have, I foresee, both for drink and for absolutely necessary washing. We have better holding-ground for our tent-pins tonight, but the sky is cloudless and again we have not trenched. There are northern lights--a change in weather? The hay today cost but ten cents, and the adjutant assures us of that tariff in future.
Imagine the camp as yesterday, and me well. Love from
DICK.
EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF ERASMUS CORDER, ASSISTANT-PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, HIGH PRIVATE IN COMPANY H, 10TH TRAINING REGIMENT, TO HIS WIFE. SAME DATE
... Instead of yesterday's steady marching, with the first battalion driving the enemy away for our convenience, duties were today reversed, and our battalion took the advance-guard work, ending in a very bloody skirmish, in which, I regret to report, one dear to you was slain. We marched--and it was marching!--at a good pace after the first few miles, having no one ahead to hold us back except when we had to duck into the roadside ditches to avoid machine-gun fire. Our advance guard had died gallantly and cheered (jeered?) us as we went forward to dislodge the enemy. The problem was explained to us: the enemy was 800 yards ahead, having command of a shallow valley, which we must cross. This we did by rushes, squads or platoons at a time, three companies abreast no sooner achieving a new line than they sent forward more feelers. In this action it was very interesting for a time to simulate real firing, shooting with blank cartridges at an enemy behind a stone wall.
And yet shooting from behind hard heaps of stone, or lying on rough ground, through grass and leaves that obscured the sights, all the time troubled by a heavy pack that burdened the shoulders, poked the hat over the eyes, and hampered the free action of the arms, began to wear on me. Try as I may, I cannot master the little sidewise shift of the pack which the captain showed us, and which Godwin says makes shooting prone "just as easy!" Looking at the other men, I often saw them flop on their faces to rest; they were working as hard as on the range. The pretense of firing, when our cartridges were gone, took away some of the excitement. Then at about the fifth dash, which the others took with some briskness but which I had to finish at a slow jog, I began to get pumped. When the first sergeant asked me how I was I told him that I was shot through both lungs. Nevertheless, I finished (though at a walk) the next to last charge, but our dash had been so exposed that, by the time I had thrown myself panting on some particularly jagged stones, an umpire came along and announced that all rear-rank men were to fall out, of course as being dead. Godwin was disgusted, and evidently seeing my envy in my face, swapped places with me. Never was anyone so willing to be killed. Quite at my leisure I watched the spirited advance of the thin line of o. d. men to storm the enemy's position. And I was perfectly willing not to be killed twice.
Our little club of middle-aged men still holds its impromptu sessions, members comparing experiences and solicitously inquiring as to each other's condition. So far as I can see we are keeping up pretty well, except for the ability to make such awful repeated dashes as today's work required. And even then a few minutes' rest sets us on our feet again.
Pitching the tents, making camp, etc., is now routine work. The encampment is as picturesque as before. Tomorrow night we also spend here; whether or not we shall mercifully be permitted to leave the tents pitched, the morning will decide. But I am well, and blisterless, and refreshed, and tomorrow shall be ready to die again.
Lovingly,
ERASMUS.
FROM PRIVATE GODWIN TO HIS MOTHER
Sciota, Wednesday the 27th.
DEAR MOTHER:--
You need not worry about my sleeping warm. When I go to bed I take off my shoes and leggings, put on an extra pair of socks, and crawl into the bag which each afternoon I make up afresh by pinning the folded blankets together with the biggest safety pins you ever saw, and buttoning my poncho around them. Over me thus there is the poncho, and as many layers of blankets as I please, up to five. Besides I have two sweaters, if I need them. So I sleep snug.
This morning it is pleasant and windless, as I wait for the order to start.
An instance of the change of orders under which we labor. (As I recall the Civil War memoirs that I have read, it seems to me that conditions are much the same.) We were assembled in line at 5.25, reported, stacked arms, and were ordered (remember that we are to camp on this same ground tonight) "Strike tents and make packs. Make up blanket rolls and squad bags, and bring them to the head of the street." Oh, the disgust! The orders were proper for the first battalion, which marches on to Altona today; but for us it seemed needless. But the promptest fell to work, took down their tents, and began to make up the packs. Then the word came travelling down the street, "Leave tents standing!" Luckily Bann and I had not got to the work of striking the tent, and so we jubilated while some others cussed. But we went on with making up the rolls and bags. Then the order was transmitted, "Leave blankets and extra kits in tents!" Perhaps someone blundered in the first place, and we got the order intended for the first battalion. And I do not complain, for today we travel light, with many things not in our packs.
The call has come, "Squad leaders to the head of the street." That means a talk preparatory to setting out. So I have put on my pack, so as to wait without worry. Having marched very dry yesterday, and a pebble which I hastily scooped up proving large and rough, I have provided myself (per one buzzard) with a package of chewing gum. Oh for the old-fashioned spruce, with no sweetness or artificial flavor!--The first battalion, having packed entirely, is assembling for the march. My map is buttoned in my shirt, for consultation at halts. The day is warm, with the wind from the west; but there are gathering clouds, and I am going to use the time which is left in digging with my bayonet a ditch around the tent.
(In West Sciota? At any rate, an inhabited crossroads.) I am lying on my back in the wet grass, while the captain explains that the sound at a little distance, as of a lot of carpenters nailing at the boarding of a new house, is our patrols firing at a party of cavalry that is opposing our advance.
We left our tents buttoned, and started out in gray weather. I was glad that I had, with bayonet and fingers, dug a shallow ditch along the upper side of our pup and across the front, when this light rain began. It is not bad, and so long as I have my pack between me and the ground I cannot get chilled. Again and again I have used it so, and have seen fellows at halts napping all around me. Truly the pack is a life saver.--"Fall in!"
(North of Sciota, on the road to Mooers, near crossroads 79, the weather now dry.) We are resting after a skirmish, and as my position is somewhat more comfortable, since I am lolling in a ditch instead of lying on my back, perhaps these jottings will be more legible than the last. The skirmish went thus.
We left our resting-place at crossroads 72, and followed the popping of our advance guard, I company, while at the same time we heard at a greater distance the heavy firing of the first battalion as it fought its way westward toward Altona, we ourselves going north. As we advanced beyond a corner, suddenly fire from the left broke out upon the column behind us. At once we were halted, and Captain Kirby, ranging down the line of the company, picked out our squad and sent us at the double over the fence and into the field north of the road that we had passed, our enemy being in a thick wood to the south of it. Here we streamed along, poor Corder as usual soon being pumped and dropping behind, while eager David was only kept from outdistancing the rest by a sharp word from Knudsen. We scrambled through a wire fence, then in a pasture with scattered heavy cedars we assembled behind a tree to survey the ground, all of us pouring out our advice upon poor Bann--to go to the road, to go further west, to plunge into the woods and attack the enemy by ourselves. This last from David, who is keen at every fight. Someone urging to send a message back to the captain, Bann got out the brand-new despatch book and pencil which since the conference this morning had been sticking out of his pocket, but put them up again for lack of something definite to say. So he took us across the road and into the field behind the enemy's wood, where it being evident that the foe had no reserves, Bann began once more to write.
Now we heard Kirby's voice, who having led the company along the road, and finding himself plainly behind the enemy's fire, was putting the men, in squad columns, into the wood to search them out. We climbed the wire fence and followed through the densest undergrowth, where poor Corder, stumbling behind and having to protect his glasses, often found himself quite out of sight of the man in front. But we were too late. We heard shouts ahead, the firing ceased, and when we desperately broke through the last of the thicket and found ourselves in the open, there stood a line of men with white bands on their hats (the sign of the opposing forces) quietly regarding us. Rumor said that they were captured, and Squad 9, being first on the ground, was feeling proud of their work. Then the rumor ran that not only was the enemy not captured, but we were killed. Squad 9 was cursing, "not loud but deep," when the captain came along and was passionately appealed to. "We got them," he assured us. "They were firing away from us when we broke through the wood. A single picket on that flank, firing a single shot on seeing us, would have saved them. And besides, we have their horses. Sergeant Barker has just come in reporting that he has the bunch." Satisfied, we marched out to our present resting-place.
The cavalry has just emerged from their unsuccessful ambush, with the two machine guns, and have started northward in a hurry, an umpire warning them, "You have only five minutes before we start after you." The men around me are laughing and talking, well content, and I have just seen the major congratulating the captain on a brisk piece of work.
(In camp again, and settled for the night at our old tents, the weather having cleared.)
A cavalryman (by the way, there was pointed out to me today the fellow with the broken jaw, jouncing along with the rest, and looking neither thin nor pale) a cavalryman has just settled down to discuss the skirmish with us. "We got some beautiful shots at you fellows. In our first position we let the point of I company walk by, and then fired into them at about fifty yards. I company drove us, and then we settled in that little wood, with the machine guns. I company's flanking patrol came right up to the edge of the woods without seeing us. We let them go by and then fired into you. Didn't you duck into the ditches quick!" He is talking now of a cavalryman's work. "Here you fellows are grumbling because you have a gun to clean. I wish I got off as easily. I have my gun and my equipment; it takes a lot of time, and today I had to clean and water two horses, another fellow's and mine. The other man got hurt, one of the regulars. His horse fell on him."
The major, at conference, told us that he and Captain Kirby had been expecting an attack at that point, as the lay of the land was right for it. They were surprised when the flanking patrol found nothing.
Our next work was quite different, and illustrates the fact that the man in the ranks can only tell what he sees, and often cannot understand that. On our fresh advance northward our company was the advance guard, I company falling to our rear. The first platoon marched ahead as the "point," with communicating files, and we watched its operations for a while as we followed along.
The work of the "point," my dear mother, when you are advancing to engage the enemy, is one of the most dangerous in warfare. When the Germans sent out their advance guards as they overran Belgium, they considered that the men in each point had been given their death warrants. The object of the point, as it proceeds along the road, is to hunt for the enemy and engage him. The men of the detail march at intervals of about twenty-five yards on alternate sides of the road, the corporal about halfway of the squad, and the rearmost, or "get-away man," having the task of falling back as soon as any serious obstacle is encountered, in order to communicate with the support. As in enemy's country the roads are likely to be waylaid, patrols are sent out to investigate any flanking hill, or wood, or group of buildings, behind which a party could be hiding. You can imagine the grim interest in trying to walk into an ambuscade. I company's patrols having failed to locate the enemy in his last concealment, we were particularly anxious to make no such error.
As we marched up each rise in ground I could see the point ahead of us, and the patrols working their way through the country to the right and left of the road. As the point naturally went faster than the patrols it would gradually leave them behind, the corporal or sergeant commanding would send back for more men, the message would come through the communicating files, and men would be sent ahead for the work. Patrols outdistanced, and still finding nothing, would drop back to the road and rejoin their command as soon as they could.
After a while this work of the point had used up the first platoon, and began to eat into ours. It was then recalled and our platoon took its place, with Squad 6 as point, Squad 7 providing the patrols and communicating files, and our squad as immediate reserve. Word coming for more men, Clay and Reardon were sent forward, and I saw them despatched off to the right, Clay toward a nearby sugar-bush, a little grove with its sugar house at its edge, and Reardon further forward, toward a suspicious hollow behind which was a railroad embankment which might conceal a regiment. I was plainly among the next to go, and waited impatiently. Then we halted, and remained so for some time.
The men grumbled. Why stop? Why wasn't the support following more closely? Where was the enemy, anyway? Hoping to be right in the middle of the next scrap, we were disappointed at any delay. Meanwhile Clay, having found nothing in his sugar-bush, returned, and attention was fixed on our flanking patrol to the left, who having discovered that we had stopped, likewise became stationary, and leaving un-rummaged the thick little growth of birch ahead of him, sat himself down in the midst of an apple orchard, and visibly regaled himself on something red.
This was exasperating, we having already had to leave untouched so many trees laden with fruit. Roars from the sergeant failing to dislodge our resting patrol, a man was starting out to order him on, when he was observed to start, crouch behind a tree, make ready to shoot, and then to fall back from cover to cover, continually presenting his gun at an unseen enemy. He rejoined us out of breath, and feverishly reported having heard men in the scrub, and a voice ordering him to surrender. The sergeant was hastily sending out our squad to investigate the birches, when a bunch of men were seen to break cover from them. As they wore no white hat-bands we knew they must be our men; and when they came nearer we saw them to be Squad 9, which a quarter hour before the captain had despatched on special flanking duty, and which, being full of energy, had done their work and more too, coming back after a practical joke on our patrol.
And then we were ordered to return! Instead of the support marching to fill the gap between us, we were to go back to it. Bannister objected that a man was missing, Reardon through excess of zeal having vanished in the distance along the railroad. "Send out a man after him," said the sergeant. All the squad offered to go; Corder was a little the slowest, being leg-weary, but who do you think was first? David! So he was despatched, and went very eagerly, while we turned our backs and went south.
When the company had joined the battalion there was much rearranging of disjointed commands, squads continually coming in from detail duty, so that it was plain that between us we had pretty well investigated the whole landscape. David and Reardon were missing still, even after we had rested for some time. We started south again, and it was not till after another march that the lost men rejoined us, David triumphant, but Reardon very hot and weary. Said the poor fellow, "I have thought before now that I was pretty tired, but this beats everything."
There was no rest for him, however. We turned north again, having J company in front, and after a mile heard the familiar firing. The captain sent us headlong into the field on the right, where soon we were part of a skirmish line, and for a minute were blazing away at a fence in front of us, behind which I glimpsed a single white hat-band. But Kirby was not to be caught as the cavalry had allowed themselves to be. Squad 8 was sent off at the double to the end of the line, and there at wide intervals we made a flank guard extending to the rear, where poor Reardon was allowed to rest at last, as we waited hidden behind what cover we could find, gazing across some pasture land with scattered bushes at a belt of pine in front.
As we waited we heard the voice of an umpire; I snatched a glimpse of him as he stood behind us watching. "Any enemy you see represents twenty-five men." A cool statement that made our task perplexing, for while with one bullet I might slay so many men, conversely if one shot at us first he could wipe out the squad. But though we lay very low and watched very keenly, while the battalion banged away at our left, no one appeared in front of us. To my left was Reardon, and to my right David, very intent on spotting the first foe. It is a pleasure to see how seriously he takes the work. Pickle, beyond him, was constantly chewing gum and whispering slang, the sort of city clerk one reads about in Civil War memoirs, tough physically and mentally.
(I have thrown my chewing gum away. Too much swallowing of saliva makes you (me!) hungry. Me for a pebble from the next brook!)
We were at last called back by a whistle, and the distant cry, "Assemble on the left!" Once more we marched south, and presently were resting again at West Sciota. As we lolled there, buying apples from native buzzards, who take to the extortion of the professional without any coaching, some trucks came to the crossroads, and men began to climb into them. Watching one group, I was surprised to recognize a man of A company, at the same time that Corder exclaimed, "Those men are from the first battalion!" whose firing, you remember, we had already heard at least a couple of miles away. We did not get the explanation until battalion conference, some hours later. It seems that the umpires, during our northward march, had reinforced the cavalry with an imaginary battalion of infantry, before which we had been obliged to retreat. By motorcycle messenger a call for help was sent to the first battalion commander, who was now four miles away on the road to Altona. Having sixteen empty motor-trucks, in four minutes he had filled them with two companies, and seventeen minutes later they were behind our lines, forming for our support. As we saw or guessed none of this, it only illustrates the remark with which I began, that the private soldier knows but a little of what is going on.
I would not write this to you in such detail, except that I think it will interest you to see that the hike is more than a mere march, and that it is making every one of us advance in his department of the war game. We squads, I hope, are learning to do as we are told, though you see how blind everything is to us. The intricate problems of the officers come out in conference. There the men sit on the ground in a great three-quarter-circle, grouping themselves whenever possible around the men with maps. The major likewise has hisn, and the officers theirn. The major makes a general statement of the work of the day, and the captains then report on their particular operations. When you see what exact notes they have taken of every operation: the precise moment of sending out parties and of receiving reports, the minuteness with which they locate every action, the science with which they carry out the work that falls to them, and the team-play that animates them, you see that this is no old-style cut-and-dried "sham battle," but an actual study, of course on a small scale, of fighting seriously carried out by well-trained officers. It has deeply impressed me with the long and hard work necessary to make an officer; and then, turning to the man's side of it, it becomes plainer and plainer that it takes time, much time, to train a private or a corporal into a reliable man on patrol.
One hard thing for us amateurs to learn is the proper writing of messages containing military information. It is hard to decide what is important enough to send, and then how to word the despatch. Tradition from an earlier camp has handed down this model: "The enemy are in sight and are about to do something." Where, when, how many, some notion, however vague, of the enemy's disposition--all forgotten between excitement and too great responsibility.
The march home was the hardest part of the day. The interest of the skirmish kept us going; but the three miles back to camp at a quick pace took it out of us all. I had not known I was so tired; the strain wore hard on me; it seemed ages before we sighted camp, and then ages and ages before we reached it. But this experience was the same as on Monday, for though the very vigorous ones were able to whistle and sing, to the help of us all, again I began to hear grumbling all about me. We reached camp at last, and poor Reardon when we broke ranks dropped on the ground at his tent door, without the energy to unbutton the flaps, and in a minute was fast asleep there.
We had our dinner, which I put in my meat-can under the hay to keep hot while I rested, then ate and felt refreshed. Then the afternoon we had to ourselves, if you can so consider it when we have to clean our guns, clean ourselves, come to conference, and come to Retreat. For my own part, having yesterday sampled the slimy brook and having no taste for it again, I washed my face and hands (after cleaning my gun) in a little water from the canteen. Thus I am staying dirty. It is no more than I have done before, in the deep woods.