Part 4

“No, no. It wasn’t that at all. But we were going to save these people’s homes—and now we’re killing their chickens.”

“You can’t be so damned finicky. This is war.”

“He’s right, Hicks.” Bullis nodded sagely. “If we didn’t get it the Squareheads would.”

The party, all but Ryan, tilted back in their chairs, their tunics unbuttoned and their belts unfastened. Their eyes having proved larger than their appetites, much of the food remained on the table untouched. But there was room in their bellies for wine, and bottle after bottle was opened and emptied.

“There,” said Bullis, pointing to an empty bottle, “is a good soldier. He has done his duty and he is willing to do it again.”

Foolishly, the men raised their hands to their forehead in a gesture of homage.

VII

They lurched out into the street. The day was hot and still, and the men, exhilarated by the wine and satiated with the food, were planning for other banquets as sumptuous. Around the corner of the crooked street marched an orderly, wearing his inevitable look of having the responsibility of the war on his shoulders.

“Are you men from C Company of the Sixth?”

“You’re damned right we are, buddy. Have you got anything to say about it?”

“No. Only you’d better hurry up and join them or you’ll be up for a shoot for desertion.”

“Why, whaddya mean? Where are they?” Several men spoke at once.

“Well,” said the orderly importantly, “they were getting ready to go over the top when I left.”

“Great Christ!” Ryan lamented. “We’d better hurry. Lead the way, orderly.”

Flanked by rows of waving wheat, the party plodded along the dusty, narrow road.

“Now we are in it for sure,” Hicks thought. “And me especially. If Major Adams hears about this I’ll be hung higher than a kite.” But he forgot the possibility of a court martial in his thinking of the platoon and of where they were and of where he was soon to be.

The platoon was found in a clump of woods, a little to the left of the road. In front of them was the spectacle of what a French village looked like after it had been subjected to long-range artillery fire for three days. The spire of the inevitable little church had been blown off; there was not a house or barn whose side or roof had not been pierced by a shell. Mortar and glass were strewn about the streets, where they mingled with articles of household use. Beside the door of one of the houses a Red Cross flag had been fastened, and inside the medical detachment were making preparations for visitors.

Old King Cole sat hunched up, his helmet over his eyes, looking down at his heavy shoes. Kahl, a light-weight boxer from Pennsylvania, was attacking a tin of corned beef, trying to open it with his bayonet. Wormrath, from Cleveland, who carried a khaki-colored handkerchief which he had used for three months, sat with his arms around his knees, his eyes looking far away and moist.

“What’s the matter, King?” Hicks called, anxious somehow to make himself again a part of the platoon as soon as he could.

“Oh, this damned war makes me sick. Always movin’ around. They never let you stay one place a minute.”

“Join the marines and see the world,” some one called.

“Through the door of a box car,” some one else amended.

“You’ll be up here long enough, old fellow. You ought to come from my part of the country, King. They do a lot of cutting and shooting there.”

“Yeh.” King Cole was ironic. “They do a lot of cuttin’ and shootin’. They cut around the corner and shoot for home.”

Kahl laughed exultantly. He felt that at last the time he had given to training was to be of some purpose. He abandoned trying to open the tin of meat because he feared that he would dull his bayonet. And he wanted it to be sharp, so sharp. Those dirty Huns. He drew his finger along the edge of the shiny piece of steel. That would cut, all right. That wouldn’t be deflected by a coat-button from piercing the intestines.

Lieutenant Bedford, bent forward as usual, the end of his nose wiggling nervously, came among them with Sergeants Ryan and Harriman.

“There won’t be any smoking or any matches lighted after dark to-night, fellows. We are only about a mile from the German front line. As near as I can make out they are advancing and it is our job to stop them. We’ll probably move forward some time after dark, so have your stuff by your side.”

“When do we eat? Won’t we get any chow all night?”

“The galley is in the town back of us. They are cooking up some slum, and it ought to be brought up here pretty soon.” He walked away.

“There’s nothing like a good kick in the face to make you forget your little troubles.” Bullis summed up the feeling of the platoon.

Kahl, industriously, was working the bolt of his rifle back and forth, pouring drops of oil in the chamber and upon the lock. He leaned toward Hicks and remarked in an undertone: “Hicks, old fellow, if Kitty Kahl doesn’t earn a Croix de Guerre to-morrow his mother will be without a son.”

“What do you want one of those things for, Kahl? You can buy ’em for five francs.”

“But you can’t earn one of them with five francs.”

“But what do you want with one of them? What good are they?”

Hicks, perhaps, was insincere. One might want a decoration and be delighted to have it, but intentionally to go after it appealed to him in the light of absurdity.

As Lieutenant Bedford departed, each man drew inside himself. Merely to observe them, one would have believed that they were concerned with profound thoughts. A Y. M. C. A. secretary would have told himself that the men were thinking of their homes and families, praying to God, and the Y. M. C. A. General Pershing would have charged them with possessing a fierce, burning desire to exterminate the Germans. The regimental chaplain—he had come to the regiment from an Episcopal pulpit—would have said that they were capitulating their sins and supplicating God for mercy.

While it was yet light Sergeants Harriman and Ryan and Lieutenant Bedford discussed aloud the plans that had been tentatively given them for the night, but as objects in their line of vision lost their distinctness and became vague, mysterious figures, they lowered their voices to a whisper. Lieutenant Bedford peered at his wrist-watch.

“It’s time to go. Better break out the men, Harriman.” Sergeant Harriman crept along the road to the clump of woods where the platoon was huddled.

“All right, men,” he whispered hoarsely; “it’s time to shove off. Has everybody got his trench tools?”

“I’ve lost my shovel.”

“I didn’t mean you, Gillespie. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t fastened on. Is any one missing any of their equipment?”

There was no answer.

“All right. Form in a column of twos and follow me.” Sergeant Harriman started off, and the men, who had risen, fell in behind him.

Until this time all had been quiet, but now the machine-guns, unmistakably Maxims, began an intermittent fire. It seemed to be a signal for the rifles, for now and again one of them would crack pungently somewhere in the dark.

The platoon was marching cautiously over the hill to the town in front of them.

“Stand fast!” Sergeant Ryan called out sharply. A rocket was fired, rose high in the air, and then, the parachute spreading out, floated slowly to earth, lighting up the ground for several hundreds of yards on each side. As soon as it had reached the ground the platoon marched on. They passed through the town, and, as they were leaving, a covey of shells whirred softly over their heads and landed among the ruins with a terrific explosion. The remaining walls seemed to reverberate. It sounded as if they were rocking back and forth from the concussion.

At the military crest of the hill the platoon stopped, joined on its left by the rest of the company. The company commander walked along the line, repeating, so that each man could hear: “You’ll have to hurry and dig in, men. It’s three hours until dawn, and if you haven’t got yourselves a place of safety by that time you will be unfortunate.”

The men threw off their packs, unstrapped their trench tools, and set to work to make holes in the ground sufficiently deep to protect their bodies from rifle fire and from pieces of flying shell. As there were only four men in each squad equipped with trench tools, the other half commenced digging with their bayonets and scraping the dirt from the hole that they were making with the lid of their mess gear. But they worked furiously, and with the aid of the company commander and all of the subofficers, which consisted in telling them that they had just so much longer until dawn, each pair of men had made for themselves a hole in the ground from which they could manipulate their rifles without exposing their bodies to direct fire.

When dawn broke the company presented to the enemy a slightly curved front of newly made holes, with the dirt thrown up in front of them for further protection.

Across the valley, perhaps five hundred yards, was a thickly wooded hill, from which, as the light strengthened, the platoon could see figures running out into the field and then back again among the trees. Then, to the right, the Hotchkiss machine-guns began their wavering patter.

From another woods, in front and to the left of the platoon, ran soldiers in frayed and dirty horizon-blue uniforms. Harriman pointed to the wooded hill where the scurrying figures had been seen. “Boche?” he asked.

“Oui, Boche,” the men in the soiled uniforms answered.

“Boche, Paris?” some one asked.

“Oui.” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. “Ce ne fait rien.”

Doubtless the Frenchmen, Hicks thought, did not care; for seven days they had been forced to fall back, slowly and with heavy losses. There was little opportunity for sleep; and food, despite the conscientious efforts of the French cooks, was difficult to procure. They felt beaten.

Another group of French soldiers hurried out of the woods, and, as the others had done, disappeared through the ruins of the village.

It was quite light now, and the German artillery awoke. The first salvo of shells struck in the town. The second fell in the field to the right of the village.

Overhead the wings of an airplane whirred. Under its wings were painted large black crosses. It fired a signal, rose again in the air, wheeled, and flew back.

“Duck your heads,” shouted Sergeant Ryan, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. “They’ve got our range for sure.”

They had. A moment later and a number of shells began a leisurely journey in the direction of the platoon. As they approached they lost their tardiness and fell shrieking, like some maddened demons, along the line of freshly dug dirt.

“Anybody get hit?” Sergeant Ryan rose and looked around.

“Stretcher bearer on the right!” Hicks yelled.

In the hole next to his a curious thing had happened. A shell had grazed the top of the hole, buried itself in the dirt, and then backfired. When the stretcher-bearers arrived they found that Hayes, one of the men in the hole, had part of his back torn off. Quickly they laid him prone on the stretcher and started for the town as swiftly as the weight of their burden would permit. The other man, Hartman, was still crouched in the position he had assumed when Sergeant Ryan called the warning.

Hicks jumped over beside him. “Hartman,” he called. Hartman failed to respond. He put his arm around him and lifted him up. Hartman began to laugh horribly. Then great tears coursed through the mud on his cheeks.

“Hartman, what’s the matter?”

Hartman laughed again in the same manner. He had completely lost control of his muscles and would have fallen face downward if Hicks had not held him up.

“Tell Lieutenant Bedford that there’s something the matter with Hartman,” Hicks shouted.

The word was passed along.

“Lieutenant Bedford says for you to get somebody else and take him back to the first-aid station. He’s probably shell-shocked.”

“Oh, Gillespie,” Hicks called. “Come and help me take Hartman back to the first-aid station.”

“Oh, Hicks, I can’t. I’m sick at my stomach. I couldn’t help carry anything.”

“Well, Pugh—come on, Pugh, you help me.”

And Pugh got out of his hole, a few yards away, and ran over. Both men, one holding his legs and the other his shoulders, tried to dodge the stream of machine-gun bullets as they hurried the shell-shocked man to the dressing station.

In the village there was greater safety—cellars to hide in, and there to escape the flying pieces of shells that fell into the town at short intervals.

Hicks and Pugh rested for a moment, filled their canteens with water, and started back. Half-way to the platoon they found a Frenchman lying upon his back.

“À moi, à moi,” he was groaning scarcely above a whisper.

“What’s the mattah, buddy,” Pugh asked.

“ ... par le gaz ... par le gaz.”

“He says he’s been gassed, Pugh. Let’s take him back, too.”

“Here, buddy, do you want a drink of watah?” Pugh asked.

The Frenchman drank greedily.

“By God,” Pugh said, “that’s the first Frog I’ve ever seen that would drink water.”

They carried him to the dressing station, and after they had explained to the captain of the Medical Corps where they had found him, in what a desperate condition he was, and that there was nothing else to do with him, the Frenchman was finally accepted.

“We can’t fill this place up with all kinds of people,” the medical officer objected. “We’ll have a hard-enough time taking care of our own men in a few minutes.”

Pugh, disgusted, emitted a stream of tobacco juice, shrugged his shoulder, turned on his heel.

“Come on, Hicksy, let’s get back where there’s white men.”

Their hearts racing madly, they reached their holes without being struck by the machine-gun bullets that sang deadly songs all around. After the first terrific salvo, the German artillery, for some unknown reason, had stopped.

The skirmishing on the right, which the platoon had witnessed in the early morning, seemed to have been carried within the woods. A few waves of pigmy-like figures had walked slowly toward the wooded hill, and by the time their lines arrived, although considerably thinned, the gray defenders of the hill were to be seen no more.

Now that they were no longer targets, Hicks walked over to where Ryan was squatted in his hole.

“This is a hell of a note, isn’t it, Ryan? To have to lie like this all day and not get to fire a shot?”

“You’ll get a chance to fire plenty of shots, damn it. Some poor fool is making our regiment attack without a barrage. Did you see the outfit over on the right that went up that hill? That was the third battalion, and I’ll bet there’s not a third of the men left. Well, we’ll go over most any time.”

“But, Ryan, that’s murder, not to have a barrage. What can these fool officers be thinking of?”

“Glory,” Ryan answered.

Late in the afternoon the company commander passed the word along the line that the men would be permitted to eat one of their boxes of hard bread, but nothing else.

“Who the hell wants to eat any of that damned stuff?”

“God, my hardtack laid in the trenches for six weeks, and even them damned rats wouldn’t eat it.”

The platoon had recovered its spirits, its “morale,” as the white-collared fighters for democracy often spoke of it.

* * * * *

As night was coming on, a noise was heard in the grass between the men and the ruined village. It coughed tentatively, then decisively.

“Who’s back there?”

“A runner from battalion headquarters,” the voice answered cautiously. “Don’t shoot.”

“Oh, come ahead.”

“What the hell are you afraid of?”

“We’re not as fierce as we look.”

“Where’s your company commander?” the voice asked.

“He went over to ask the Squareheads to stop shootin’. There’s a man here that’s got a headache,” Pugh informed the voice.

“No, where is he, fellows?” By this time the voice had become Fosbrook. Hicks recognized him.

“Hello, Fosbrook.”

“Oh!” Fosbrook walked over to Hicks’s hole and jumped in. “Hello, William.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you were interpreter for the colonel.”

“I was, William, but I drank too much one night and he fired me,” Fosbrook answered sadly.

“What do you want with the company commander?”

“I don’t know whether I should tell you.”

“Hell, I’ll find it out in a minute, anyway.”

“Well, your company is to move to another position as soon as it gets dark enough.”

“What for? Are we going to attack?”

“I don’t know, William, I’m sure. Where is your captain?”

“He’s over between the third and second platoons, about fifteen holes down that way.”

Fosbrook got up, and, stooping over until his head was parallel with his hips, trotted in the direction Hicks had indicated.

An hour later the orders came for the men to sling their packs and be ready to move again. And great was the outcry when the men heard the news.

“Are we going to dig up the whole of France?”

“I’ll get my old man to buy some ploughs if we are. I wasn’t cut out to be a ditch digger.”

“This is a hell of a note. Diggin’ a hole for one day. I was jist gittin’ mine so’s I could sleep in it.”

The company lined up in single file and marched off.

* * * * *

After manœuvring around for a couple of hours they came to another woods. On the way they had been joined by a section of the machine-gun company that was attached to their battalion. In a measure, this annexation was responsible for their slow progress. There were the carts to be hidden, and then the men of the machine-gun detail carried their guns and their ammunition in their arms. But they were halted at last, and amid much muttering and cursing were shooed into the woods and told that they might go to sleep for the night.

It was noon of the next day before they received any food. Then a detail had to be sent back to the village after it. And when they returned they brought with them cold boiled potatoes, cold coffee, and black French bread.

“Don’t eat too many of these damned potatoes,” Pugh warned all and sundry. “I was ridin’ on a box car for three days once, and I didn’t have nothin’ but these things to eat, an’ I got col’ sores all over my mouth.”

Cigarettes were scarce, so the butts of them were passed around and in that way shared by all.

The firing during the day was slight. Scattered rifle fire was heard on both sides, but the artillery was dumb. The men spent the day speculating upon whether their own artillery would arrive and get into position before they were ordered to attack.

Time after time Kahl nervously paced the length of the woods. He had done all that he could to his rifle. The bolt worked smoothly with a satisfying “click.” The bore had been swabbed free of the oil, which had been put there to keep the metal from rusting. The chamber held five meticulously clean shells and there was one in the bore.

Lepere and Harriman were telling each other of what they used to do “on the outside,” by which phrase they meant before they had enlisted. Ryan was cursing because there was no water to be had. His canteen was half empty, and he knew better than not to hoard water. He decided that he would have to shave without water, and this angered him still more. Then he divided the water equally, using a portion for lather.

Thus they passed the day.

* * * * *

To the weary platoon, their thinned ranks huddled all day long in the small clump of woods, night came on slowly and inexorably. The sun had disappeared, and, one by one, elf-like stars became apparent, twinkling like shaking jewels through the black curtain of the heavens. At sunset orders had been received for the platoon to be prepared to leave at any moment. Their rifles were lying by their sides, the men were sprawled on the damp ground, their heads resting on their combat packs.

Some one touched a lighted match to a cigarette. It glowed softly in the darkness, a bright, inquisitive eye.

“Put out that God-damned light,” Lieutenant Bedford whispered hoarsely. “Do you want us all to get shot up?”

Soon at the edge of the woods the branches were parted and a tense voice called: “Where is Lieutenant Bedford?”

It was a messenger from battalion headquarters carrying orders for the platoon to move. The summons was passed along from squad to squad, a disagreeable secret hurriedly disposed of. The men slung their packs and, holding their rifles in front of them, filed slowly and carefully out of the woods to form in a column of twos.

Lieutenant Bedford in front and Sergeant Ryan in rear—as if, Hicks thought, some of the men were thinking of deserting—the men marched off, joining the other platoons in the middle of the field. Lieutenant Bedford called:

“Pass the word along to keep quiet; we’re within hearing distance of the front lines.”

On both sides the artillery was silent. Occasionally a machine-gun would fire a string of bullets the sound of which died in the stillness without an echo.

The platoon dragged slowly on, their legs soaked around the knees from the dew nestling on the tall wheat. For perhaps a mile they had marched, and the platoon, like a sensitive instrument, was beginning to have an unaccountable perception of danger, when shoes were heard swishing through the heavy wheat, and a voice said:

“Turn around, you damned fools. Do you want to walk straight into the German trenches!”

The men breathed relievedly. Apparently they were not going immediately to attack. Recovering, they began audibly to curse the lieutenant.

“The dirty German spy. What the hell does he think he’s doin’?”

“Ought to be back at G. H. Q. with the rest of the dummies.”

The lieutenant, unable to distinguish the mumbling voices as belonging to any particular persons, vowed to himself that when the platoon was relieved and back in a rest camp, he would give them extra fatigue duty for a month.

They were coming to another woods, and within a few yards of its fringes some officers stepped out and halted them.

“All right, here you are.”

“Lieutenant, swing your men right in here and don’t let any one get out of the woods.”

The men backed in among the trees and lay down, their packs, raising their shoulders from the ground, protecting them from the moisture. They lay silent, with their rifles cradled in their arms. No one seemed to mind the wet of the grass or the chill of the air. They were all silent and rather full of fear. Time was unknown. They might have been there a year—a minute—an æon.

Just as the trees, in a clump of woods, perhaps a mile away, were beginning to come out against the sluggish sky like sharp, delicate etchings, the batteries awoke. After the first flock of shells, sounding like black, screaming spirits, were fired, the men in the woods were fully aroused and many of them were standing.

“Uh-h-h, did you hear that bunch of sandbags?”

“They sounded as if they came from a thousand miles.”

Another salvo was fired, the shells droning lazily over the heads of the men and crashing terrifically more than a mile distant.

And then the smaller guns were unlimbered. The spiteful crack of the seventy-fives turned the funereal music into a scherzo. In retaliation the German batteries, the heavier ones, began, their shells flying high overhead.

Lieutenant Bedford jumped up. “All right, Third Platoon. Up you come. Keep straight ahead and remember your three-yard interval. If any one gets hit, let him lie.” And then, as if he were uncertain, as if he wanted to convince himself of the actuality of the words he had just spoken, he added: “Those are the orders.”

“I always knew they hated the Third,” said Lepere, “but blamed if I knew they hated our guts so much that they put us in the first wave.”