Part 1

Chapter 14,239 wordsPublic domain

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THE FLEDGLING

CHARLES BERNARD NORDHOFF

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1919

CONTENTS

I. A WATCHER OF THE SKIES 1

II. THE FLEDGLING 70

III. FULL-FLEDGED 94

THE FLEDGLING

A WATCHER OF THE SKIES

_January 22, 1917_

We were put on active duty at the front about the first of the year; in fact, I spent New Year's night in a dugout within pistol-shot of the Germans. It was quite a celebration, as the French Government had provided champagne, cakes, and oranges for all, and every one was feeling in a cheery mood. When dinner was over, each of us chipped in his day's ration of army wine (about a pint), and with a little brandy, some oranges, sugar, and a packet of spices I had been commissioned to get, we brewed a magnificent bowl of hot punch, or mulled wine. First "The Day of Victory" was toasted, then, "France"; then, with typical French consideration, "The United States." After that, each man's family at home received a health; so you may be interested to know that your health and happiness for 1917 were drunk in a first-class abri by a crowd of first-class fellows, as all French soldiers are.

The next day was a typical one, so I will sketch it for you, to give an idea of how we live and what we do. When the party broke up it was late, so we turned in at once, in a deep strong dugout, which is safe against anything short of a direct hit by a very heavy shell. Once or twice, as I dropped off to sleep, I thought I heard furtive scamperings and gnawings, but all was quiet until just before daybreak, when we were awakened by a terrifying scream from a small and inoffensive soldier who does clerical work in the office of the médecin chef. The poor fellow has a horror of rats, and usually sleeps with head and toes tightly bundled up. I flashed on my electric torch at the first scream and caught a glimpse of an enormous rat--fully the size of a small fox terrier, I assure you!--streaking it for his hole. The next minute I made out the unfortunate little soldier holding with both hands one ear, from which the nocturnal visitor had bitten a large mouthful, while he did a frantic dance around the floor. First came a titter, then a choked laugh, and finally the whole dugout howled with uncontrollable mirth, until the victim wound on his puttees and stalked out, much offended, to get some iodine for his ear.

As we had laughed ourselves wide awake, I passed around some cigarettes, while another fellow went down for a pot of coffee. Dressing consists of putting on one's shoes, puttees, and tunic--when I feel particularly sybaritic I take off my necktie at night.

For once the sun came up in a clear blue sky and shone down frostily on a clean white world--a metre of snow on the ground, and pines like Christmas trees. It was wonderfully still: far away on a hillside some one was chopping wood, and beyond the German lines I could hear a cock crow. After stopping to ask the telephonist if there were any calls, I took towel and soap and tooth-brush and walked to the watering trough, where a stream of icy water runs constantly. As I strolled back, a thumping explosion came from the trenches--some enthusiast had tossed a grenade across as a New Year's greeting to the Boche. Retaliatory thumps followed, and suddenly a machine-gun burst out with its abrupt stutter. Louder and louder grew the racket as gusts of firing swept up and down the lines, until a battery of 75's took a hand from the hills half a mile behind us. _Crack-whang-crack_, they went, like the snapping of some enormous whip, and I could hear their shells whine viciously overhead.

An orderly appeared shortly, to inform me that I must make ready to take out a few wounded. My load consisted of one poor fellow on a stretcher, still and invisible under his swathing of blankets, and two very lively chaps,--each with a leg smashed, but able to sit up and talk at a great rate. We offered them stretchers, but they were refused with gay contempt. They hopped forward to their seats, smiling and nodding good-bye to the stretcher-bearers. Despite my efforts one of them bumped his wounded leg and a little involuntary gasp escaped him. "Ça pique, mon vieux," he explained apologetically; "mais ça ne fait rien--allez!"

At the hospital, several miles back, there was the usual wait for papers, and as I handed cigarettes to my two plucky passengers, I explained that hospital book-keeping was tiresome but necessary. Suddenly the blood-stained blankets on the stretcher moved and a pale, but calm and quizzical face looked up into mine: "Oh, là là! C'est une guerre de papier; donnez-moi une cigarette!" You can't down men of this caliber.

Just before bedtime another call came from a dressing-station at the extreme front. It was a thick night, snowing heavily, and black as ink, and I had to drive three kilometres, without light of any kind, over a narrow winding road crowded with traffic of every description. How one does it I can scarcely say. War seems to consist in doing the impossible by a series of apparent miracles. Ears and eyes must be connected in some way. Driving in pitchy blackness, straining every sense and calling every nerve to aid one's eyes, it seems that vision is impaired if ears are covered.

At the posts, just behind the lines, where one waits for wounded to come in from the trenches, I spend idle hours, chatting or playing dominoes. Our little circle comprises a remarkable variety of types: one hears French of every patois, from the half-Spanish drawl of the Mediterranean to the clipped negatives and throaty _r_ of Paris.

As inventors of racy slang we Americans are miles behind the French. Your pipe is "Mélanie" (also your sweetheart, for some unknown reason). One's mess is "la popote," a shrapnel helmet is a "casserole," a machine-gun is a "moulin à café." Bed is ironically called "plumard"; and when a bursting shell sends out its spray of buzzing steel, the cry is "Attention aux mouches!" [Look out for the flies!] Government tobacco is known, aptly, as "foin" [hay]. If one wants a cigarette, and has a paper but no tobacco, one extends the paper toward a better-provided friend saying, "Kindly sign this." And so on.

_February 18_

I had an interesting day yesterday. The commandant asked for a car--he is the head medical officer--to visit some posts, and I was lucky enough to land the job. He is a charming, cultivated man, and made it very pleasant for his chauffeur. We visited a number of posts, inspecting new dugout emergency hospitals, and vaccinating the stretcher-bearers against typhoid--a most amusing process, as these middle-aged fellows have the same horror of a doctor that a child has of a dentist. Reluctant was scarcely the word.

Finally we left the car (at the invitation of the artillery officer) and walked a couple of miles through the woods to see a new observation post. The last few hundred yards we made at a sneaking walk, talking only in whispers, till we came to a ladder that led up into the thick green of a pine tree. One after another the officers went up, and at length the gunner beckoned me to climb. Hidden away like a bird's nest among the fragrant pine-needles, I found a tiny platform, where the officer handed me his binoculars and pointed to a four-inch hole in the leafy screen. There right below us were two inconspicuous lines of trenches, zigzagging across a quiet field, bounded by leafless pollard willows. It was incredible to think that hundreds of men stood in those ditches, ever on the alert. At a first glance the countryside looked strangely peaceful and unhampered--farm-houses here and there, neatly hedged fields, and, farther back, a village with a white church. Look closer, though, and you see that the houses are mere shells, with crumbling walls and shattered windows; the fields are scarred and pitted with shell-holes, the village is ruined and lifeless, and the belfry of the church has collapsed. Above all, there is not an animal, not a sign of life in the fields or on the roads. Not a sound, except the distant hornet buzzing of an aeroplane.

On clear days there is a good deal of aeroplane activity in our section, and one never tires of watching the planes. The German machines do not bomb us in this district, for some reason unknown to me, but they try to reconnoiter and observe for artillery fire. It is perfectly obvious, however, that the French have the mastery of the air, by virtue of their skillful and courageous pilots and superb fighting machines, and their superior skill in anti-aircraft fire. To watch a plane at an altitude of, say, nine thousand feet under shrapnel fire, one would think the pilot was playing with death; but in reality his occupation is not so tremendously risky.

Consider these factors: he is a mile and a half to two miles from the battery shooting at him, he presents a tiny mark, and his speed is from eighty to one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. Above all, he can twist and turn or change his altitude at will. The gunner must calculate his altitude and rate of speed, and after the lanyard is pulled, considerable time elapses before the shell reaches its mark. Meanwhile, the aviator has probably come down or risen or changed his course. It is like trying to shoot a twisting snipe with very slow-burning powder--the odds are all in favor of the snipe.

All the same, the spectacle never quite loses its thrill. High and remote against the sky you see the big reconnaissance machine going steadily on its way, its motor sending a faint drone to your ears. Keeping it company, darting around it like a pilot-fish around a shark, is the tiny, formidable appareil de chasse, a mere dot against the blue.

_Crack! Whang! Boom!_ goes a battery near by, and three white puffs spring out suddenly around the distant machines, above, behind, below. Another battery speaks out, another and another, till the sky is filled with downy balls of smoke. Suddenly the firing ceases, and the big German aero slants down swiftly toward its base. A sharper droning hits your ears. There, directly above us, a French fighting machine is rushing at two hundred kilometres an hour to give battle to the little Fokker. Close together, wheeling and looping the loop to the rattle of their mitrailleuses, they disappear into a cloud, and we can only guess the result.

_One day later_

I finished the paragraph above just as a wave of rifle and machine-gun fire rolled along the lines. Running out of the abri to see what the excitement was about, I saw two French aeros skimming low over the German trenches--where every one with any kind of a fire-arm was blazing away at them. Fortunately, neither one was hit, and after a couple of retaliatory belts, they rose and flew off to the south. The Germans began to waste shrapnel on the air, and indiscreetly revealed the location of a battery, which the French promptly bombarded with heavy guns. Pretty soon all hands were at it--a two-hour Fourth of July.

I was on the road all day yesterday, afternoon and evening, getting back to the post at 10 P.M. One of the darkest nights I remember--absolutely impossible to move without an occasional clandestine flash of my torch. Far off to the right (twenty or thirty miles) a heavy bombardment was in progress, the guns making a steady rumble and mutter. I could see a continuous flicker on the horizon. The French batteries are so craftily hidden that I pass within a few yards of them without a suspicion. The other day I was rounding a familiar turn when suddenly, with a tremendous roar and concussion, a "380" went off close by. The little ambulance shied across the road and I nearly fell off the seat. Talk about "death pops"--these big guns give forth a sound that must be heard to be appreciated.

Another break here, as since writing the above we have had a bit of excitement, in the shape of a raid, or coup de main. In sectors like ours, during the periods of tranquillity between more important attacks, an occasional coup de main is necessary in order to get a few prisoners for information about the enemy. We are warned beforehand to be ready for it, but do not know exactly when or where. I will tell you the story of the last one, as related by a slightly wounded but very happy poilu I brought in beside me.

"After coffee in the morning," he said, "our battalion commander called for one platoon of volunteers to make the attack--each volunteer to have eight days' special leave afterwards. It was hard to choose, as every one wanted to go--for the 'permission,' and to have a little fun with the Boches. At noon we were ordered to the first line. Our rifles and equipment were left behind, each man carrying only a little food, a canteen of wine, a long knife, and a sack of grenades. Our orders were to advance the moment the bombardment ceased, take as many prisoners as possible, and return before the enemy had recovered from his surprise. At the point of attack the German trench is only twenty yards from ours--several nights before, they had rolled out a line of portable wire-entanglements. At 4.30 in the afternoon our 75's began to plough up the Boche trench and rip their wire to shreds. It was wonderful--along the line in front of us hundreds of our shells, bursting only twenty metres off, sent earth and wire and timbers high into the air--while not one of us, watching so close by, was hurt.

"At 5.15 the guns ceased firing and the next instant we were over the parapet, armed with knives, grenades, and a few automatic pistols. After the racking noise of the bombardment, a strange quiet, a breathless tranquillity, seemed to oppress us as we ran through the torn wire and jumped into the smoking ruins of the enemy trench. In front of me there was no one,--only a couple of bodies,--but to the right and left I could hear grenades going, so it was evident that a few Germans had not retreated to the dugouts. Straight ahead I saw a boyau leading to their second lines, and as I ran into this with my squad, we came on a German at the turn. His hands were up and he was yelling, 'Kamerad, Kamerad!' as fast as he knew how. Next minute, down went his hand and he tossed a grenade into our midst. By luck it struck mud, and the time-fuse gave us a moment's start. The corporal was killed and my pal, Frétard, who lies on the stretcher behind, got an éclat through the leg. We did not make a prisoner of the Boche.

"The abris of the second line were full of Germans, but all but one were barricaded. A few grenades persuaded the survivors to come out of this, with no fight left in them; but how to get into the others? In vain we invited them to come out for a little visit--till some one shouted, 'The stove-pipes!' Our barrage fire was now making such a fuss that the Boches farther back could not use their machine-guns, so we jumped on top of the dugouts and popped a half-dozen citrons into each chimney. That made them squeal, mon vieux--oh, là là! But it was time to go back--our sergeant was shouting to us; so, herding our prisoners ahead, we made a sprint back to our friends."

One of the prisoners was wounded, and he was hauled to the hospital by the chap with whom I share my quarters. I went to have a look at the German--always an object of curiosity out here. Had to shoulder my way through a crowd to get there. He lay on a stretcher, poor devil, hollow-eyed, thin, with a ragged beard--an object of pity, suffering and afraid for his life. His gray overcoat lay beside him and near it stood his clumsy hobnailed boots. German or no German, he was a human being in a bad situation--a peasant obviously, and deadly afraid.

Suddenly, a half-baked civilian--always the most belligerent class--reached up and plucked contemptuously at his leg, with an unpleasant epithet. Then a fine thing happened. A French soldier, lying near by on a stretcher, severely wounded, raised up his head and looked sternly at the crowd. "Enough," he said, "he is a Boche, I grant you; but first of all remember that he is a soldier, wounded and in your power!"

We were at lunch yesterday when a friend rushed in to say that an aeroplane fight was starting, almost directly overhead. A big French reconnaissance plane was diving for safety, with a Fokker close behind and German shrapnel bursting all around, when a tiny French fighting machine appeared far above, plunging down like a falcon on its quarry. The Fokker turned too late: the Nieuport, rushing downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, looped the loop around the German. Two bursts of machine-gun fire came down faintly to our ears, and the next moment it was evident that the German was hit. Slowly at first, the Fokker began to fall--this way and that, like a leaf falling in still air, growing larger each moment before our eyes, until it disappeared behind a hill. High over the lines, scorning burst after burst of German shrapnel, the tiny Nieuport sailed proudly back and forth, as if daring any Boche pilot to rise and try his luck. In the thrill of the superb spectacle, one forgot that the poor chap (a good sportsman, if he was a German!) had lost his life.

_April, 1917_

I have met some interesting types lately. One is Jean B----, a sergeant of infantry. Jean has been about the world a good bit, and when the war broke out was just finishing a contract in Spain. He promptly came to France and volunteered, and had only fifteen days of training before being sent to the front for a big attack. Knowing nothing of military matters and having distinguished himself in the first day's fighting, he was made a corporal at once; and next day, when the attack began again, he and his squad were the first to jump into a section of German trench. There, abandoned in the hasty retreat, was a brand-new German machine-gun and forty sacks of ammunition. Jean is a canny boy, and before the officers had got to where he was, he had his men hide gun and cartridges in a clump of bushes.

The French made a gain of about two miles at this point, and owing to the nature of the ground,--artillery emplacements, and so forth,--the new lines were nearly a mile apart. Under these conditions, both sides were constantly making daylight patrols in the broken country between the trenches; and as Jean's captain was a good judge of men, he let him take his squad out daily, to do pretty much as he pleased. Pledging his men to absolute secrecy, Jean had them hide machine-gun and ammunition a little way in front of the new French lines, and then gave them a brief drill, in mounting and dismounting the gun, tripod, and so forth. (He had worked in an ordnance factory, by the way.) Each man carried either a part of the gun or a few belts of cartridges.

One morning, just before dawn, they crawled up close to the Germans and hid themselves in a brushy watercourse--mitrailleuse set up and ready for action. Presently there were sounds of activity in front, and as day broke, they made out thirty or forty Germans, who, so far away and out of sight of the French, were out in the open, working on a new trench. Jean's men began to get excited and wanted action, but he calmed them, whispering to be patient. He himself is the most excitable man in the world--except in emergencies; a jovial type, with black hair and a pair of merry gray eyes set in a red, weather-beaten face.

Hour after hour they bided their time, until the Germans, only seventy-five yards away, assembled in a group for a rest. Lying on his belly behind the gun, Jean sighted and pulled the lever, spraying lead into the unfortunate Boches until the last belt of two hundred cartridges had raced through. Then it was all hands dismount the gun and retreat at top speed. Sneaking "home" by devious ways, they smiled to see shells begin to smash into the position they had so lately left.

At supper that evening (the meal known universally as "la soupe"), the colonel came strolling down the trench with Jean's subaltern. The lieutenant nodded and pointed, then called Jean over.

"Ah," said the colonel, smiling, "so this is the type who was on patrol this morning--hum. I was in an advanced observation post on the hill above you and saw the whole affair with my glasses. And how many of those poor Germans did you kill?"

"I did not wait to count, my colonel."

"I will tell you, then; six escaped, out of thirty-eight--most remarkable rifle-fire I remember seeing. It sounded almost like a mitrailleuse at work. How many in your patrol? Five? Remarkable! Remarkable! Eh bien, good day, _sergeant_."

"He was a type not too severe," remarked the ex-corporal, in telling the tale; "in short, un bon garçon."

This is the highest compliment a poilu can pay his officer; in fact, I once heard an ancient Territorial say it irreverently of Marshal Joffre, whom he had known in younger days, somewhere in the Orient.

Jean is at home in several languages, speaking perfectly French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I usually chat with him in the last, as in it I get the fine points of his narrative better than in French. His German was the means of getting him into an adventure such as very few men in the war have experienced. I cannot, of course, vouch for the truth of what follows, but I have no reason to doubt his word, and know him to be capable of any foolhardy rashness. Such a thing would be impossible at the present time.

One dark night, shortly after midnight Jean--on a solitary patrol--was lying just outside the wire, about ten metres from the German trench, listening to locate the sentries. There was a faint starlight. Suddenly a whisper came from beyond the wire, a low voice speaking in broken French.

"Why do you lie so quiet, my friend? I saw you crawl up and have watched you ever since. I don't want to shoot you; I am a Bavarian."

"Good-evening, then," Jean whispered back in his perfect German.

"So," said the sentry, "you speak our language. Wait a moment, till I warn the rest of my squad, and I will show you the way through the wire; there are no officers about at this hour."

Probably not one man in a thousand would have taken such a chance, but he did, and ten minutes later was standing in the trench in a German cloak and fatigue cap (in case of passing officers), chatting amiably with a much interested group of Bavarian soldiers. They gave him beer, showed him their dugouts, and arranged a whistle signal for future visits, before bidding him a regretful good-night. "We are Bavarians," they said; "we like and admire the French, and fight only because we must."

With characteristic good sense, Jean went at once to his captain the following morning and told him the whole story. The officer knew and trusted him and said without hesitation, "Go as often as you want, and keep your ears open."

So he made many a midnight crawl through the wires, after whistling the soft signal. He carried with him each time a few litres of wine (a great luxury to the German soldiers), and in return they took him on long excursions through their trenches. Once he was in the German third line, more than a mile back. The sector was a very quiet one, though the trenches were close together, and one morning a crude arrow dropped into the French trench, bearing a note to Jean.

"Get into your dugouts at five this afternoon," it read; "there will be a bombardment, but no attack, we hope."

Another time, after a French bombardment, a similar note dropped in: "Don't send so many torpedoes--shells are all right, but your torpedoes have ruined some of our best sleeping-places. Remember we are not Prussians, but Bavarians."