Part 12

Around him men were whining for stretcher bearers. Plaintive and despondent, their cries reached his ears. He did not care. A dead man was a dead man. He grew sulky, restive, at their repeated cries for assistance.

“Why can’t they let a fellow alone?” he thought. The enemy continued with their torrent of fire.

God, this was ticklish business, lying here like a bump on a log! Could nothing be done about it?

He crooked his neck, looking to the right, where the platoon commander lay. The platoon commander was so still that for a moment Hicks thought he was dead. Then something in his tense position informed him that he was alive.

“Why doesn’t he do something? What the devil is he good for?” Hicks wondered.

Pugh was lying in a spot thoroughly without shelter. Around him the bullets spat viciously, covering him with fine dirt. Ahead of him a small hump of ground enticed him. It was small, not much bigger than the crown of a hat, but to Pugh it looked mountainous. He had watched it now seemingly for hours, afraid to move, believing that if he lay quite still the enemy would think he was dead and not fire at him. But ever the bullets came closer. He wriggled a few inches on his belly, and stopped. He tried it again. If only the machine-guns would let up for a moment he was sure that he could make it. He twisted a few more inches, working his body snakelike. Now he could almost touch the mound of dirt. He reached out his hand and grasped at the hump. The fingers of his hand had been stretched out. Now they slowly crumpled, making a weak, ineffectual fist. His arm remained outstretched. His head flattened against the earth, his body relaxing. From the left side of his head blood dripped, forming a little pool that was quickly absorbed by the dirt. Slowly his body stiffened out.

Hicks had watched him, fascinated, wanting to cry out warning, yet fearing that his effort to help would be a hindrance. He felt himself, with Pugh, striving to attain shelter behind the absurd little mound. It was his hand that reached out to touch it!

“Pugh!” he called. “Oh, Pugh!” He was excited. “Can’t you make it, Pugh?” In his consciousness the thought pounded that Pugh was dead, but he combated it. “Why, Jack can’t be dead,” he argued with himself. “Why, he just gave me a cigarette last night!” There was total unbelief of the possibility of connecting death with Pugh in his tone. “Jack Pugh dead? Damn foolishness.” But he was dead, and Hicks knew it. It made him sick to think of it. “That’s right. It’s something you can’t fool yourself about.”

He rose straight as any of the posts from which was strung the fatal barbed wire. He stooped over and picked up his bandolier of ammunition. He looked around at the men lying there on the ground and a sneer came over his face. Methodically, as if he were walking home, he started, toward the end of the barbed-wire pen. A bullet neatly severed the fastening of his puttee. He was unmindful of the fact that it unrolled the folds of the cloth falling about his feet.

Now, along the line, other men had got to their feet. They were all in a daze, not knowing what was happening. They sensed an enemy in front of them, but they were not fully aware of his presence.

Whizzing past, the machine-gun bullets were annoying little insects. Hicks struck at his face, trying to shoo the bothering little creatures away. How damned persistent they were! He reached the strands of barbed wire which lay between him and the enemy and calmly picked out a place where the wire had been broken, and walked through. Now he had entered the fringe of the forest. Dimly he recognized a face before him to be that of a German. There was the oddly shaped helmet covering the head, the utilitarian gray of the German uniform. The face did not at all appear barbaric. It was quite youthful, the chin covered with a white down. He veered the muzzle of his rifle toward the face, and, without raising his rifle to his shoulder, pulled the trigger. The face disappeared.

Gray uniforms, with helmets like distorted flower-pots, fled through the woods, in front of the mass of men that now surged forward. Hicks followed after them, not particularly desirous of stopping them, but wanting to overtake them before they reached the crest of the hill.

Men poured into the woods, making a firm wall studded with bristling bayonets. On their faces was a crystallized emotion, presumably hate. Lying out on the ground but a short time ago they had been frozen with fear. They were hounds on a leash being tortured. The leash had snapped and the fear was vanishing in the emotion of a greater fear—the maddened fight for self-preservation. And so they scoured the woods, charging the Germans with a white fury, recklessly throwing hand-grenades in front of them.

Their cowardice made them brave men, heroes. Pushing on, they swung to the right toward the town. Through the open field they ran in little spurts, falling on their faces, rising and rushing on. From the windows of the houses and beside the walls bullets zinged past, stopping men and sending them headlong upon the ground. A small number of them rushed into the town.

Bullets flew in every direction. Men toppled down from the windows of houses. Others raced up the steps of the dwellings. Men ran through the streets, wild and tumultuous. They returned to the pavement, guarding their captives. Men poured the hate of their beings upon the town. They wept and cursed like lost souls in limbo. All of their fear, all of their anxiety, all of the restraint which had been forced on them during the morning when they lay like animals in a slaughter-house and their brains numbed with apprehension, came out in an ugly fury.

Once the Germans found that the town was invaded, that the men had broken through the woods and barbed wire, they offered a weak and empty resistance. They would readily have given themselves up to be marched in an orderly procession back to a prison camp. There was only a section holding the town. But the men did not know this. All of the stories of German frightfulness, of German courage, of the ruthlessness of the German foot troops, made them battle on in fear.

At last two squads of worn, frightened Germans were assembled in the town square and, threats following after them, were marched back to the rear. It was pitiful to see the Germans reaching in their breast pockets and bringing forth cigars which they cherished, and offering them to their captors as an act of amelioration. Some had bars of chocolate which they readily gave and which the men readily accepted. Some of the Germans tried even to smile, their efforts proving pathetic because of their fear.

The afternoon sun threw wan rays on the distorted bodies which fear and surprise had drawn out of shape. As had been the case with life, death had not fashioned their features identically. Some wore expressions of peace, as if they were about to enjoy a long and much-needed rest; others sprawled with sagging chins, from which a stream of saliva had flown; one face grinned like an idiot’s. The shadows lengthened, blanketing the unresisting bodies. The men marched out of the town, leaving it to the dead and the night.

The ground over which they were advancing looked stunted, blighted by the incessant bursting of shells, the yellow layers of gas that, now and again, had covered it. The grass was short and wiry, with bare spots of earth showing. A desultory firing was being kept up by the artillery; every now and then machine-guns would cut loose, spattering their lead through the air. But the front was comparatively quiet. In an hour at most the advancing line would have to halt. The sun already had made its retiring bow in a final burst of glory, and now dusk curtained the movements of the men.

Orderlies hurried wearily through the rough field, carrying messages which would affect the activities of the troops in the morning. Officers, indistinguishable from enlisted men, moved along, their air of command forgotten in the effort to keep spirit and flesh together. Their lineaments expressed a dumb horror, through which appeared an appreciation of the grim, comic imbecility of the whole affair. When spoken to, the men grinned awkwardly, trying to mask the horror of war with a joke.

Some of the more energetic among them attacked the hard ground with their shovels; the older and wiser men sought out shell holes large enough to protect their bodies in case of a counter-attack.

The front was still, save for a nervous tremor running through the opposing line and manifesting itself in the jerky firing of flare pistols.

Through the dull purple dusk three airplanes circled overhead, snowy angry geese. From their present altitude it was not discernible which were engaged in the assault, which the attacked. The motors, which distinguished to the experienced ear whether the airplane was German or Allied, were not to be heard. Red streaks traced a brilliant course through the sky, forming a network of crimson between the fluttering planes. The airplanes drew near each other, then darted away. They revolved in circles, each trying to rise higher, directly over the other, and pour from that point of vantage volleys of lead.

Detached, the men lying on the ground watched the spectacle, enjoying it as they would have enjoyed a Fourth of July celebration.

Without warning, the airplane that circled beneath the other two rose straight in the air. Above, it volleyed streams of bullets into the backs of the others. The pilot of one of the planes beneath seemed to lose control. Wing over wing, it fell like a piece of paper in a tempered wind. The two remaining planes raced each other out of sight.

XIV

Hicks had gone through the attack without an impression of it remaining with him. When the platoon was caught between the two lines of barbed wire and he had arisen, walking toward the enemy, he had been numb. At that time his act had been brought about more by a great tiredness than by any courage. He felt no heroism in him at all, only an annoyance at his having to lie there any longer. It all seemed so senseless. Then, dazed, he had followed through the woods and into the village because such action was the formula of his existence.

The sights of the dead in all of their postures of horror, the loss of those whom he had known and felt affection for, the odor of stinking canned meat and of dead bodies made alive again by the heat of the day, the infuriating explosion of artillery; the kaleidoscopic stir of light and color, had bludgeoned his senses. Now he lay, incapable of introspection or of retrospection, impervious to the demands of the dead and the living.

Somewhere in the Cimmerian darkness low voices emanated from vague, mysterious forms. They talked on and on in a sort of indefinable hum. Finally it came to Hicks that the platoon commander was searching for him.

“Hicks is over here,” he heard the man next to him say. The platoon commander approached and bent down beside him.

“Hicks, we’ve got to have an outpost. The captain’s afraid there will be an attack. Take your gun crew out about five hundred yards and keep your eye peeled.”

Hicks failed to reply.

“Hicks, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. All right.” Hicks rose and, followed by two other men, stolidly tramped off through the murk.

He strode along in the darkness, a little ahead of the others. Abruptly an illuminating rocket was fired from somewhere in front of them. Each man stopped motionless, as the incandescent arc fell slowly to the ground.

Stepping forward, Hicks’s foot encountered an empty can. It bumped over the ground cacophonously. The men behind cursed in a thorough and dispassionate manner.

For four years the earth over which they were walking had been beaten and churned by the explosions of shells. A labyrinth of trenches had been dug in it.

Their bodies brushed against stiff little bushes whose thin, wiry limbs grasped at their clothing like hands.

The men had reached the brink of a large cavity in the earth when another flare was fired. They jumped. The hole was wide and deep enough for them to be able to stand without their heads appearing above the bank.

“Let’s sit here a while. That damned flare didn’t seem to be more than a hundred yards from here.”

“Yeah, le’s. I don’t want to git my head shot off this late in the game.”

They talked on in undertones, while Hicks, silent, smiled serenely in the darkness. Suddenly he realized that they were not the only persons in the trench. A few feet before him two other bodies, huddled together, were discernible. He had no thought of the fact that he was between both lines, and that any other persons who were also there must be enemies. He only knew that he wanted to talk to these strangers in front of him.

“It’s a quiet night, what?”

“Don’t talk so loud,” the men beside him counselled.

He shook his head, annoyed at their interruption, and began again:

“What outfit do you fellows belong to?”

“Who are you talkin’ to, Hicks? What’s the matter with you?” his loader impatiently asked.

Hicks ignored him. “What outfit did you say you belonged to? What?”—as if they had answered indistinctly.

He rose and stood in front of them.

“I asked you a civil question. Why can’t you answer me?”

Their silence infuriated him.

“Answer me, damn it.” He grasped the shoulders of one of the bodies, shaking them. Beneath the clothing the flesh loosened from the body.

“Hell, you’re dead,” Hicks told the body disgustedly. He turned to his gun crew. “They’re dead. That’s why they didn’t answer me. No damned good.”

The loader turned to the other man.

“Le’s git outa here, Hicks is nuts.”

“Yeah. He gives me the creeps.”

They climbed out of the trench and scurried back to their places among the platoon.

Hicks sat down across from the two bodies. His elbows on his knees, his arms folded, he lowered his head and was soon asleep. He was awakened by voices crying:

“Hicks! What’s wrong?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Tryin’ to git a cru de geer by stayin’ out alone all night?”

He looked up and through the early dawn saw the faces of his own platoon. Without answering he picked up his automatic rifle which lay beside him, and joined them.

* * * * *

The ground over which they were advancing was flat for a long distance, then it rose in a steep hill that stood majestically in the dawn. Upon the ground many people had left their marks: a group of bones, a piece of equipment, a helmet, a rifle barrel from which the stock had rotted.

There was no hindrance to the advance of the platoon. From that point in the line which for miles was being attacked that morning, even the rear-guard had withdrawn. But the withdrawal had been made to the top of the hill, whose crest was a large plateau. Perhaps a thousand yards from the brink, where a ridge cut the flatness of the ground, the German lines had intrenched and lay waiting to be attacked.

As the platoon climbed up the hill they could hear the friendly explosion of their own barrage. It gave them strength to thread their way among the bushes on the hill, ever nearing the summit, and not knowing the sort of reception that was waiting for them.

A portly captain, puffing like a porpoise, clambered up with them. From time to time he would stop and take from his hip pocket a brightly colored paper sack of scrap tobacco. Then, with a generous amount in the side of his mouth, he would begin again the ascent. He offered the paper bag to some of the men nearer to him, and they accepted it gratefully, but not cramming their mouths so full as he. The portly captain also invented the fiction that he was a former brewery-wagon driver in St. Louis and that, “By God, he wished he was back on a brewery wagon again.”

The men laughed obligingly but hollowly.

The platoon reached the summit. Little curls of gray smoke, looking like shadowy question-marks, rose over the plateau in the distance. Beyond was the ridge, perhaps a mile from the brink over which the men were climbing. To the right of the ridge a long, white-sided, red-topped farmhouse rested. To the left the plateau ended in another hill.

It was not long after the platoon had arrived on the level ground that machine-guns began pouring a steady stream of lead over the field. Hesitatingly the platoon advanced. The machine-guns were pointing too high. Occasionally a bullet, probably a faulty one, struck the ground beside the slowly advancing line, but without force.

The portly captain shifted his wad of tobacco, spat a thin stream, and ordered the platoon to halt.

“How many of you men have got shovels?”

There were half a dozen shovels and two picks.

“All right, you men with shovels. Halt right here and dig a trench as long and as deep as you can. The rest of us—Forward!”

Slowly, warily, they set forth again. Now no one spoke, not even the garrulous and confidence-breeding captain.

The machine-guns aimed lower, but too low. Only the ricochetting bullets reached the platoon.

They advanced until they were half-way to the ridge. Then they discovered that there were Germans much nearer to them than they had supposed. From little humps on the ground rifle bullets pinged past, shaving near the ears of the men. From the hill on the left came a whining serenade of lead. Shots were being fired from every direction but from the rear. The men threw themselves upon the ground, not knowing what to do.

After a long wait the firing abated and the platoon started to creep forward. Instantly their movement was met with a hail of bullets. They lay quite still, their uniforms blending with the russet of the grass, on which the sun shone with intense vigor.

Hicks, lying at the extreme left of the platoon, was engaged in corralling those words which entered his mind and placing them into two classes—words with an even number of letters, words with an uneven number of letters. He had long held the view that the evenly lettered words were preponderant.

“P-l-a-t-o-o-n. Seven—that’s uneven. S-e-v-e-n—that’s uneven, too. U-n-e-v-e-n—six—even. Ha-a s-t-r-a-n-g-e—seven—again the mystic number. M-y-s-t-i-c—six—that’s even. And n-u-m-b-e-r—six, too. Let’s see, that’s five even and four—no, five”—he lost track of the number of unevenly lettered words he had thought of—his activity was interrupted by the ridiculous words—“oh, when I die—d-i-e—uneven—just bury me deep—d-e-e-p—even. Deeper, deeper, deeper where the croakers sleep. S-l-e-e-p—uneven, too, damn it. And tell all the boys that I died brave——”

He broke off. Behind a bush, a few hundred yards distant, an enormous olive that was supported by legs was hiding. Bellied to the ground, he started to crawl, his path describing a small arc. His automatic rifle, grasped in the middle by his right hand, interfered with his movements. His abstraction was so great that he bruised his knuckles between the rifle and the ground. The musette bag, filled with ammunition and suspended from his neck, was another annoyance. When he tried more quickly to move forward it got in his way.

The olive moved ever so slightly. It now seemed to be a combination of olive and turtle, with its queer hand rising above its body.

A jagged stone cut through Hicks’s trousers, bringing the blood. He crawled on, railing at the hot sun.

A shell hole yawned in front of him. Like an alligator slipping into the water, his body slid down to the bottom. He was almost directly across from the olive, and now he saw that it was neither olive nor turtle, but a German with a rifle pointing through the limbs of the bushes toward his platoon. He stuck the tripod in the bank a foot from the top of the hole. He adjusted the stock to his shoulder and fired.

The German scurried from his hiding-place out into the open. Hicks fired again. The German stopped, and, with a queer, hopeless gesture, his arms flung over his head, sprawled on the ground.

Hicks crawled out of the hole, moving forward. Nearly every one of the bushes concealed a German. Hicks anticipated a day’s occupation.

Now, other members of the platoon had worked their way along the ground and near to where Hicks lay. Bullets spattered furiously all around. Hicks minded them less than the perspiration which ran down his face in little, itching rivulets. He was near enough to the bullets for them to sound like breaking violin strings, as they whizzed past.

Wasn’t that another atrocious-looking helmet behind the bush to the left? He pressed the trigger, and a volley of shots heated the barrel of his automatic rifle. A bullet struck a few feet from him, kicking up a puff of dust.

He crawled on over the undulating ground. From another shell hole he poured out the last of his ammunition at the olive uniforms. Then he threw his rifle from him.

And now the platoon was scattered over the field, hiding behind bushes, behind little mounds of dirt, giving away their position by the slight curls of smoke from their rifle barrels. Not far ahead were the German snipers, waiting calmly and patiently and firing with rare judgment. The men on both sides might have been less human than Tin Woodmen, to judge from their silence.

Smoke from the artillery shells hung in gray volutes over the ridge. Puffs from the rifles curled thinly skyward, lost in the blue. The men were, to all appearances, motionless, soundless, only their rifles speaking for them.

Then, like an express-train rattling over loose ties, machine-guns broke loose from all sides. Their bullets struck the ground beside the men, covering the space where they were lying with a thick haze of dust.

The portly captain rose and blew his whistle, commanding the men to retreat. They needed no command. Already they were dashing off like frightened rabbits, scampering away to their burrows.

Hicks watched them for a while, felt the angry hail of bullets, then rose and followed after them.

* * * * *

In their desperation the men with the shovels and picks had dug a trench deep enough to protect prone bodies from fire, and into it the retreating platoon fell, released from the fear which, like an angry eagle, beat its wings behind them, against their heads, in their ears, urging them on. The men turned, narrowed out grooves in the thrown-up dirt for their rifles to rest on.

The portly captain walked back and forth behind them, admonishing them to quickness of action.

“Come on now. I’m a liar, or else the Dutchmen’ll be over here before we know it. They’ve got the dope on us now.”

He paced in front of them, offering advice, telling one man to dig a deeper barricade and another not to expose himself. He turned to Hicks, who was lying still, engaged in nothing.

“Are you an automatic rifleman?” he asked.

Hicks answered that he was.

“Then take your squad out a couple of hundred yards and establish an outpost. You can’t tell when them devils’ll come sneakin’ up on us.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Hicks turned away.

His loader of the night before approached the portly captain.

“Sir, you hadn’t better send Hicks out on that outpost.”

The captain spat. “Why the devil not?”

“Because, sir, he’s crazy. Last night he got to talkin’ to dead men, and when they didn’t answer he shook them as if he thought they was alive.”

“Be off with you,” the captain replied, giving the loader no more attention.

Hicks in the lead, the three men started off toward the German lines, to halt half-way, thus to be enabled to inform the platoon if the enemy were attacking. Perhaps four hundreds of yards from the German lines Hicks stopped beside a mound of earth wide enough to conceal the bodies of the three men.

“You fellows lie down here. I’ve got to get my gun.”

They looked at him agape as he strode toward the enemy’s line near which lay his discarded rifle.

* * * * *