Part 4
The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for every inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, were forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with rifle and machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, they held the advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back again, doggedly establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande Place. Neither British nor Germans were dropping shells into that village now, each side fearful of damaging its own men.
A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a German bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at dusk an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more.
McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, and viewed it with surprise. “That war has been here ag'in an' me aslape,” said McDermott. “I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid it--but 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it wid no weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?”
He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening to the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward Messines and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess the lightning of big guns flickered along the sky.
“Anny way I w'u'd go,” mused McDermott, “I w'u'd run into that war if I was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan I want to do, here will I sthay.”
He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more.
“The hotel here,” he remarked, “is filled wid hospitality and midical tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?”
And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came still nearer to McDermott.
The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall the struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with a Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up floating flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and the bodies of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and whimpered in the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still could crawl, to whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary shelter and praying for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still McDermott slept.
At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun into the Hôtel Fauçon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from the window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy bottle beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the floor and murmured: “An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't belave there is anny war!”
And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap of ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake McDermott.
By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses at the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the village, and between was a “no man's land,” of which the Grande Place was a part. What was left of the Hôtel Faucon, with the sleeping McDermott in it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. In the streets to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed with grenade and bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further advance in any force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more men; no doubt, with the first morning light, they would move forward a regiment or two, possibly even a division, against the British who still clung stubbornly to the western side of the town. All the way from Wytschaete south to Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many little bitter struggles of this sort, the British at every point facing great odds.
When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south side of that part of “no man's land” which was the Grande Place, entered the open door of the Hôtel Fauçon.
One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and dreaming of the war he had come to look at.
McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially was he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When this coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, upon McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, instinctively and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, rose as burning rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, upset the man attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet accurately upon the back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went to Valhalla. McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a barroom fighter of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive and spontaneous maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one motion when a cat in a cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon a rat, and sinks her teeth into a vital spot. The second German and the third German hung back an instant toward the door, and then came on toward the moving shadow in the midst of shadows. For their own good they should have come on without hanging back that second; but perhaps their training, otherwise so efficient, did not include barroom tactics. Their hesitation gave McDermott just the time he needed, for when he faced them he had the first German's gun in his hands.
“No war,” said McDermott, “can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!”
With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second German. The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again. The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and knocked it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on the barrel of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for it.
There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. At any rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the stomach while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than trying to depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and kick were as well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of McDermott's late mules.
The Boche went to the floor of the Hôtel Faucon with a groan. “Gott!” he said.
“A stomach f'r a stomach,” said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the rifle. “Git up!”
The German painfully arose.
“Ye are me prisoner,” said McDermott, “an' the furst wan I iver took. Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but over y'r head!”
The Boche complied hurriedly.
“I see ye understhand United States,” said McDermott. “I was afraid ye might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye.”
“_Kamerad!_” exclaimed the man.
“Ye are no comrade av mine,” said McDermott, peering at the man's face through the eery halflight of early morning, “an' comrade av mine ye niver was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye tinded bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!”
The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then recollection slowly came to him.
“MagDermodd!” he said. “Batrick MagDermodd!”
“The same,” said McDermott.
“_Gott sei dank!_” said the German. “I haf fallen into der hands of a friend.” And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his hands.
“Put thim up!” cried McDermott. “Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd av mine!”
The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on the German's face.
“Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone,” said McDermott. “An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad company ag'in!”
“Looking?” said the German with quite sincere perplexity. “You gome here _looking_ for me?”
The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German wonder. “And phwy sh'u'd I not?” he said.
The German thought intensely for a while. “Why _should_ you gome all der vay agross der Adlandic looking for _me?_” he said finally.
“Ye have a short mimory,” said McDermott. “Ye do not recollict the time ye hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!”
“But dot was nudding,” said the German. “Dot bung-starder business was all a bart of der day's vork.”
“But ye cript up behint me,” said McDermott; “an' me soused!”
“But dot was der bractical vay to do it,” said the German. “Dot was nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long ago!”
“The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer,” said McDermott. “An' b' rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid ye. But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise.”
“You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der head mit a bung starder?” persisted the German, still wondering. “Dot, MagDermodd, I cannot belief--_Nein!_”
“And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across the Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers,” said McDermott. “That I c'n belave! Yis!”
“But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers--_Nein!_” exclaimed the German, earnestly. “Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight for mein Faderland--dot vas orders. _Ja!_ But mein American cidizenship papers I haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to Brooklyn and once more an American citizen be, undill der next war. _Ja!_ You haf not understood, but dot is der vay of it. _Ja!_”
“Goostave,” said McDermott, “ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye. But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now--do ye get that? C'n ye play that musical insthrumint there by the window?”
“_Ja!_” said Gustave. “Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine gun. Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf been a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun.”
“Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave,” said McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, “but this mornin' I'll be afther seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', later, ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a third country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang av the mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But furst, ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'.”
Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head.
“I've been thinkin',” said McDermott, “will I jine this war, or will I not jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye not is to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this mornin', if anny more av it comes my way.”
More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the small British force which held the village, had brought up the better part of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for their favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack _en masse_. The British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north and from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But they were not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist the massed assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would surely come with dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were no less needed on the lines that flanked it. The little town, which had been the scene of so much desperate skirmishing the day before and during the first half of the night, was now about to become the ground of something like a battle.
“There's a French division on the way,” said the British colonel in command in the village to one of his captains. “If we can only hold them for an hour----”
He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes of the town and the railroad line behind, searching for the hurriedly-digged and shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the shell holes, the cellars and the embankments where the British lay. The British guns to the rear of the village made answer, and the uproar tore the mists of dawn to tatters. A shell fell short, into the middle of the Grande Place, and McDermott saw the broken motor car against which the sleeping lieutenant had leaned the day before vanish into nothingness; and then a house directly opposite the Hôtel Fauçon jumped into flame and was no more. Looking out across the back of the stooping Gustave at the window, McDermott muttered, “I dunno as I w'u'd want to jine that war.” And then he bellowed in Gustave Schmidt's ear: “Cut loose! Cut loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!”
“I vill not!” shrieked Gustave. “Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!”
“Ye lie!” shouted McDermott. “Ye will!” He thrust a bit of bayonet into the fleshiest part of the German's back.
“I vill! I vill!” cried Gustave.
“Ye will that,” said McDermott, “an' the less damned nonsinse I hear from ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me own ordhers till I c'n make up me mind about this war.” The mists were rising. In the clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if other clouds were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first gray wave of the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, three deep, they came, almost filling the space from side to side of the Grande Place, moving across that open stretch against the British fire with a certain heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything before them. Ten steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught them. The first wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing windrow, across the east end of the square, and in the instant that he saw it squirm and toss before the trampling second wave swept over it and through it, the twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded McDermott of the heaps of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of his bait-can when he went fishing as a boy.
“Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!” he yelled to his captive. “Spray thim! Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' Dutchman, ye!”
“_Gott!_” cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to his uncongenial task.
And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night before, or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which always throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted him for an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no instants free from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing Gustave.
“Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self,” he cried.
As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his rifle; before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon swung upward in the air and--just then a shell burst outside the open window of the Hôtel Fauçon.
Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor. Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the other extended, as if in entreaty.
“_Kamerad_,” he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and the dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott struck--once. Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a groan, lifeless. McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, looked at what he held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had wielded so instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter of the Hôtel Fauçon.
“Goostave niver knowed what hit him,” said McDermott. And if there had been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave never knew might have been remarked in his voice.
McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its tripod, had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below the level of the window sill, and looked it over.
“'Tis not broken,” he decided, after some moments of examination. “Did Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?” He removed his helmet and rubbed the scar under his red hair reflectively. “If I was to make up me mind to jine that war,” mused McDermott, “this same w'u'd be a handy thing to take wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here pull this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! He pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now--do they feed in so? Or do they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!”
And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green vines withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the Hôtel Fauçon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not hurry; he felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up his mind whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he had learned how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans for a while, he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that particular subject. It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he was an extremely cautious sort of man, though many of his acquaintances thought of him differently, and he told himself that he must not get too far into this war until he was sure that it was going to be congenial. So far, it promised well.
And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite the normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had been awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather busy ever since; so many things had taken place in his immediate neighborhood, and were still taking place, that he was not quite sure of their reality. As he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was actually, from moment to moment, more than half convinced that he was dreaming--he might awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. Perhaps he is scarcely to be chided for being in what is sometimes known as a state of mind.
And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British commander prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed one time, for assistance, only this one did not pray for night or Blucher as Wellington had done. Night was many hours beyond all hope and would probably bring its own hell when it came, and as for Prussians, there were too many Prussians now. His men would hold on; they had been holding on for epic days and unbelievable nights, and they would still hold while there was breath in their bodies, and when their bodies were breathless they would hold one minute more. But--God! For Foch's _poilus!_ There is a moment which is the ultimate moment; the spirit can drag the body until--until spirit and body are wrenched into two things. No longer. His men could die in their tracks; they were dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by dozens and by scores and by heroic hundreds--but when they were dead, who would bar the way to Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel ports?
That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let the enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in the bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and in the shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, at that weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, insensate, the Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks.
The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks had broken down in the Grande Place itself--and now a sixth was forming. Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should he retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But to do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he would take a toll of them, at least--but the moment was coming--
“I have ut!” cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window.
“It is time to retire,” said the British colonel, and was about to give the order.
“Right in their bloody backs,” said McDermott to himself.