Читать книгу: «And they thought we wouldn't fight», страница 10

"No, sir," replied the seated sentry. "They didn't get here. The men we relieved said that they never got anything out here."

"Nor the footstools?" the Major continued, this time with an unmistakable tone.

The man didn't answer.

"Do you two think you are taking moon baths on the Riviera?" the Major asked sternly. "You are less than two hundred yards from the Germans. You are all wrapped up like Egyptian mummies. Somebody could lean over the top and snake off your head with a trench knife before you could get your feet loose. Take those blankets off your feet and stand up."

The men arose with alacrity, shedding the blankets and removing the grenade box chairs. The Major continued:

"You know you are not sitting in a club window in Fifth Avenue and watching the girls go by. You're not looking for chickens out there. There's a hawk over there and sometimes he carries off precious little lambs. Now, the next time anybody steps around the corner of that trench, you be on your feet with your bayonet and gun ready to mix things."

The lambs saluted as the Major moved off with a train of followers who, by this time, were beginning to feel that these trenches held other lambs, only they carried notebooks instead of cartridge belts.

Stopping in front of a dugout, the Major gathered us about to hear the conversation that was going on within. Through the cracks of the door, we looked down a flight of steep stairs, dug deep into this battlefield graveyard. There were lights in the chamber below and the sound of voices came up to us. One voice was singing softly.

 
"Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears,
The infantry, the infantry, they don't get any beers,
The cavalry, the artillery, and the lousy engineers,
They couldn't lick the infantry in a hundred million years."
 

"I got a brother in the artillery," came another voice, "but I am ready to disown him. They talk a lot about this counter battery work, but it's all bunk. A battery in position has nice deep dugouts and hot chow all the time. They gets up about 9 o'clock in the morning and shaves up all nice for the day.

"'Bout 10 o'clock the captain says, 'I guess we will drop a few shells on that German battery on the other side of the hill.' So they pops off forty or fifty rounds in that general direction and don't hit anything 'cause the German battery immediately roots down into its nice, deep dugouts. As soon as our battery lays off and gets back into its holes, the German battery comes out and pops back forty or fifty at 'em and, of course, don't hurt them neither.

"Then it is time for lunch, and while both of these here batteries is eating, they get so sore about not having hit each other during the morning, that they just call off counter battery work for the day and turn their guns on the front lines and blow hell out of the infantry. I haven't got any use for an artilleryman. I'm beginning to think all of them Germans and Allies are alike and has an agreement against the doughboys."

The Major interrupted by rapping sharply on the door.

"Come in," was the polite and innocent invitation guilelessly spoken from below. The Major had his helmet on, so he couldn't tear his hair.

"Come up here, you idiots, every one of you."

The Major directed his voice down into the hole in an unmistakable and official tone. There was a scurrying of feet and four men emerged carrying their guns. They were lined up against the trench wall.

"At midnight," the Major began, "in your dugout in the front line forty yards from the Germans, with no sentry at the door, you hear a knock on the door and you shout, 'Come in.' I commend your politeness, and I know that's what your mothers taught you to say when visitors come, but this isn't any tea fight out here. One German could have wiggled over the top here and stood in this doorway and captured all four of you single-handed, or he could have rolled a couple of bombs down that hole and blown all of you to smithereens. What's your aim in life – hard labour in a German prison camp or a nice little wooden cross out here four thousand miles from Punkinville? Why wasn't there any sentry at that door?"

The question remained unanswered but the incident had its effect on the quartet. Without orders, all four decided to spend the remainder of the night on the firing step with their eyes glued on the enemy's line. They simply hadn't realised they were really in the war. The Major knew this, but made a mental reservation of which the commander of this special platoon got full benefit before the night was over.

The front line from here onward followed a small ridge running generally east and west, but now bearing slightly to the northward. We were told the German line ran in the same general direction, but at this point bore to the southward.

The opposing lines in the direction of our course were converging and we were approaching the place where they were the closest in the sector. If German listening posts heard the progress of our party through the line, only a telephone call back to the artillery was necessary to plant a shell among us, as every point on the system was registered.

As we silently considered various eventualities immaterial to the prosecution of the war but not without personal concern, our progress was brought to a sudden standstill.

"Huh-huh-halt!" came a drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for a thrust.

"Huh-huh-huh-halt!" came the nervous, whispering command again, although we had been motionless since the first whisper.

We heard a click as the safety catch on the man's rifle lock was thrown off and the weapon made ready to discharge. The Major was watching the nervous hand that rested none too steadily on the trigger stop. He stepped to one side, but the muzzle of the gun followed him.

"Huh-huh-huh-halt! I tuh-tuh-tell you."

This time the whisper vibrated with nervous tension and there was no mistaking the state of mind of the sentry.

"Take it easy," replied the Major with attempted calm. "I'm waiting for you to challenge me. Don't get excited. This is the commanding officer."

"What's the countersign?" came from the voice in a hard strain.

"Troy," the Major said, and the word seemed to bring worlds of reassurance to the rifleman, who sighed with relief, but forgot to move his rifle until the Major said:

"Will you please take that gun off me and put the safety back in?"

The nervous sentry moved the gun six inches to the right and we correspondents, standing in back of the Major, looked into something that seemed as big as the La Salle street tunnel. I jumped out of range behind the Major. Eyre plunged knee-deep into water out of range, and Woods with the rubber boots started to go over the top.

The click of the replaced safety lock sounded unusually like the snap of a trigger, but no report followed and three hearts resumed their beating.

"There is no occasion to get excited," the Major said to the young soldier in a fatherly tone. "I'm glad to see you are wide-awake and on the job. Don't feel any fears for your job and just remember that with that gun and bayonet in your hands you are better than any man who turns that trench corner or crosses out there. You've got the advantage of him, and besides that you are a better man than he is."

The sentry, now smiling, saluted the Major as the latter conducted the party quietly around the trench corner and into a sap leading directly out into No Man's Land. Twice the trench passed under broad belts of barbed wire, which we were cautioned to avoid with our helmets, because any sound was undesirable for obvious reasons.

After several minutes of this cautious advance, we reached a small listening post that marked the closest point in the sector to the German line. Several silent sentries were crouching on the edge of the pit. Gunny sacks covered the hole and screened it in front and above. We remained silent while the Major in the lowest whisper spoke with a corporal and learned that except for two or three occasions, when the watchers thought they heard sounds near our wire, the night had been calm.

We departed as silently as we came. The German line from a distance of forty yards looked no different from its appearance at a greater distance, but since it was closer, it was carried with a constant tingle of anticipation.

Into another communicating trench and through better walled fortifications of splintered forest, the Major led us to a place where the recent shelling had changed twenty feet of trench into a gaping gulley almost without sides and waist-deep in water. A working detail was endeavouring to repair the damage. In parties of two, we left the trench and crossed an open space on the level. The forty steps we covered across that forbidden ground were like stolen fruit. Such rapture! Bazin, who was seeking a title for a book, pulled "Eureka!"

"Over the top armed with a pencil," he said. "Not bad, eh?"

Back in Seicheprey, just before the Major left us for our long trip back to quarters, he led the way to the entrance of a cemetery, well kept in the midst of surrounding chaos. Graves of French dead ranged row upon row.

"I just wanted to show you some of the fellows that held this line until we took it over," he said simply. "Our own boys that we've lost since we've been here, are buried down in the next village."

We silently saluted the spot as we passed it thirty minutes later.

CHAPTER IX
THE NIGHT OUR GUNS CUT LOOSE

As soon as our forces had made themselves at home in the Toul sector, it was inevitable that belligerent activity would increase and this, in spite of the issuance of strict orders that there should be no development of the normal daily fire. Our men could not entirely resist the temptation to start something.

As was to be expected, the Germans soon began to suspect that they were faced by different troops from the ones who had been confronting them. The enemy set out to verify his suspicions. He made his first raid on the American line.

It was in a dense mist on the morning of January 30th that the Germans lowered a terrific barrage on one of our advance listening posts and then rushed the position with a raiding party outnumbering the defendants ten to one.

Two Americans held that post – five more succeeded in making their way through the storm of falling shells and in coming to the assistance of the first two. That made seven Americans in the fight. When the fighting ceased, every one of the seven had been accounted for in the three items, dead, wounded or captured.

That little handful of Americans, fought, died or were wounded in the positions which they had been ordered to hold. Although the engagement was an extremely minor one, it being the first of its kind on the American sector, it was sufficient to give the enemy some idea of the determination and fighting qualities of the individual American soldier. Their comrades were proud of them, and were inclined to consider the exploit, "Alamo stuff."

Two of the defenders were killed, four were wounded, and one was captured. The wounded men reported that the captured American continued to fight even after being severely wounded. He was the last to remain on his feet and when a bomb blew his rifle from his hand and injured his arm, he succumbed to superior numbers and was carried off by his captors.

After the hurried sortie, the Germans beat a hasty retreat so that the position was reoccupied immediately by another American detail.

The "Alamo" seven had not been taken by surprise. Through a downpour of rather badly placed shells, they held their position on the firing step and worked both their rifles and machine guns against the raiding party, which they could not see, but knew would be advancing behind the curtain of fire. Hundreds of empty cartridges and a broken American bayonet constituted impartial testimony to the fierceness of the fighting. After the first rush, in which the defenders accounted for a number of Germans, the fighting began at close quarters, the enemy peppering the listening post with hand-grenades.

In the meantime the German barrage had been lifted and lengthened until it was lowered again between the "Alamo" seven and their comrades in the rear.

There were calls to surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the hope that assistance soon would arrive from the American artillery.

But the Germans had planned the raid well. Their first barrage cut all telephone wires leading back from our front lines and the signal rocket which one of the men in the listening post had fired into the air, had been smothered in the dense mist. That rocket had called for a defensive barrage from American artillery and when no answer came to it, a second one was fired, but that also was snuffed out by the fog.

The net result of the raid was that the Germans had captured one of our wounded men and had thereby identified the organisation opposing them as the First Regular Division of the United States Army, composed of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Regular U. S. Infantry Regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Regular U. S. Army Field Artillery. The division was under the command of Major General Robert Lee Bullard.

In the days and weeks that followed, the daily exchange of shells on the sector increased to two and three times the number it had been before our men arrived there. There were nightly patrols in No Man's Land and several instances where these patrols met in the dark and engaged one another with casualties on both sides.

One night a little over a month later – the early morning of March 4th, to be exact – it was my privilege to witness from an exceptional vantage point, the first planned and concentrated American artillery action against the enemy. The German lines selected for this sudden downpour of shell, comprised two small salients jutting out from the enemy's positions in the vicinity of the ruined village of Lahayville, in the same sector.

In company with an orderly who had been despatched as my guide, I started from an artillery battalion headquarters shortly before midnight, and together we made our way up the dark muddy road that led through the dense Bois de la Reine to the battery positions. Half an hour's walk and O'Neil, the guide, led me off the road into a darker tunnel of overlaced boughs where we stumbled along on the ties of a narrow gauge railroad that conveyed heavy shells from the road to the guns. We passed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a huge abri built entirely above ground.

Its walls and roof must have been between five and seven feet thick and were made from layers of logs, sandbags, railroad iron and slabs of concrete reinforced with steel. It looked impenetrable.

"Battery commander's headquarters," O'Neil said to me as we entered a small hot room lighted by two oil lamps and a candle. Three officers, at two large map tables, were working on sheets of figures. Two wooden bunks, one above the other, and two posts supporting the low ceiling completed the meagre furnishings of the room. A young officer looked up from his work, O'Neil saluted, and addressed him.

"The Major sent me up with this correspondent. He said you could let him go wherever he could see the fun and that you are not responsible for his safety." O'Neil caught the captain's smile at the closing remark and withdrew. The captain showed me the map.

"Here we are," he said, indicating a spot with his finger, "and here's what we are aiming at to-night. There are two places you can stay to see the fun. You can stay in this shelter and hear the sound of it, or you can go up a little further front to this point, and mount the platform in our observation tree. In this abri you are safe from splinters and shrapnel but a direct hit would wipe us out. In the tree you are exposed to direct hits and splinters from nearby bursts but at least you can see the whole show. It's the highest point around here and overlooks the whole sector."

I sensed that the captain expected a busy evening and looked forward with no joy to possible interference from a questioning visitor, so I chose the tree.

"All right," he said, "you've got helmet and gas masks, I see. Now how's your watch? Take the right time off mine. We have just synchronised ours with headquarters. Zero is one o'clock. You had better start now."

He called for an orderly with a German name, and the two of us left. Before I was out of the room, the captain had returned to his mathematics and was figuring out the latest range variations and making allowances for latest developments in wind, temperature and barometer. The orderly with the German name and I plunged again into the trees and brought up shortly on the edge of a group of men who were standing in the dark near a large tree trunk. I could hear several other men and some stamping horses off to one side.

The party at the foot of the tree was composed of observers, signal linemen and runners. All of them were enlisted men. I inquired who were to be my comrades in the tree top and three presented themselves. One said his name was Pat Guahn, the second gave his as Peter Griffin and the third acknowledged Mike Stanton. I introduced myself and Griffin said, "I see we are all from the same part of Italy."

At twenty minutes to one, we started up the tree, mounting by rudely constructed ladders that led from one to the other of the four crudely fashioned platforms. We reached the top breathless and with no false impressions about the stability of our swaying perch. The tree seemed to be the tallest in the forest and nothing interfered with our forward view. The platform was a bit shaky and Guahn put my thoughts to words and music by softly singing —

 
"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top,
When the shell comes the runners all flop,
When the shell busts, good-bye to our station,
We're up in a tree, bound for damnation."
 

The compass gives us north and we locate in the forward darkness an approximate sweep of the front lines. Guahn is looking for the flash of a certain German gun and it will be his duty to keep his eyes trained through the fork of a certain marked twig within arm's reach.

"If she speaks, we want to know it," Guahn says; "I can see her from here when she flashes and there's another man who can see her from another place. You see we get an intersection of angles on her and then we know where she is just as though she had sent her address. Two minutes later we drop a card on her and keep her warm."

"Is that that gun from Russia we heard about?" Griffin asks.

"No," answers Guahn, "we are not looking for her from that station. Besides, she isn't Russian. She was made by the British, used by the Russians, captured by the Germans and in turn is used by them against Americans. We have found pieces of her shell and they all have an English trade mark on them. She fires big eight inch stuff."

Griffin is watching in another direction for another flash and Stanton is on the lookout for signal flares and the flash of a signal light projector which might be used in case the telephone communication is disturbed by enemy fire. It is then that the runners at the base of the tree must carry the message back by horse.

Only an occasional thump is heard forward in the darkness. Now and then machine guns chatter insanely as they tuck a seam in the night. At infrequent intervals, a star shell curves upward, bursts, suspends its silent whiteness in mid-air, and dies.

In our tree top all seems quiet and so is the night. There is no moon and only a few stars are out. A penetrating dampness takes the place of cold and there is that in the air that threatens a change of weather.

The illuminated dial of my watch tells me that it is three minutes of one and I communicate the information to the rest of the Irish quartet. In three minutes, the little world that we look upon from our tree top is due to change with terrific suddenness and untold possibilities.

Somewhere below in the darkness and to one side, I hear the clank of a ponderous breech lock as the mechanism is closed on a shell in one of the heavy guns. Otherwise all remains silent.

Two minutes of one. Each minute seems to drag like an hour. It is impossible to keep one's mind off that unsuspecting group of humans out there in that little section of German trench upon which the heavens are about to fall. Griffin leans over the railing and calls to the runners to stand by the horses' heads until they become accustomed to the coming roar.

One minute of one. We grip the railing and wait.

Two flashes and two reports, the barest distinguishable interval, and the black horizon belches red. From extreme left to extreme right the flattened proscenium in front of us glows with the ghastliness of the Broockon.

Waves of light flush the dark vault above like the night sky over South Chicago's blast furnaces. The heavens reflect the glare. The flashes range in colour from blinding yellow to the softest tints of pink. They seem to form themselves from strange combinations of greens and mauves and lavenders.

The sharp shattering crash of the guns reaches our ears almost on the instant. The forest shakes and our tree top sways with the slam of the heavies close by. The riven air whimpers with the husky whispering of the rushing load of metal bolts passing above us.

Looking up into that void, we deny the uselessness of the act and seek in vain to follow the trains of those unseen things that make the air electric with their presence. We hear them coming, passing, going, but see not one of them.

"There's whole blacksmith's shops sailing over our heads on the way to Germany," Pat Guahn shouts in my ear. "I guess the Dutchman sure knows how to call for help. He doesn't care for that first wallop, and he thinks he would like about a half million reserves from the Russian front."

"That darkness out in No Man's Land don't make any hit with him either," Stanton contributes. "He's got it lit up so bright I'm homesick for Broadway."

Now comes the thunder of the shell arrivals. You know the old covered wooden bridges that are still to be found in the country. Have you ever heard a team of horses and a farm wagon thumping and rumbling over such a bridge on the trot?

Multiply the horse team a thousand times. Lash the animals from the trot to the wild gallop. Imagine the sound of their stampede through the echoing wooden structure and you approach in volume and effect the rumble and roar of the steel as it rained down on that little German salient that night.

"Listen to them babies bustin'," says Griffin. "I'm betting them groundhogs is sure huntin' their holes right now and trying to dig clear through to China."

That was the sound and sight of that opening salvo from all guns, from the small trench mortars in the line, the lightest field pieces behind them, the heavy field pieces about us and the ponderous railroad artillery located behind us.

Its crash has slashed the inkiness in front of us with a lurid red meridian. I don't know how many hands had pulled lanyards on exactly the same instant but the consequent spread of fire looked like one continuous flame.

Now the "seventy-fives" are speaking, not in unison, but at various speeds, limited only by the utmost celerity of the sweating gun crews.

But the German front line is not the only locality receiving unsolicited attention. Enemy gun positions far behind the lines are being plastered with high explosives and anesthetised with gas shells.

So effective is the American artillery neutralisation of the German batteries, that it is between fifteen and twenty minutes before the first enemy gun replies to the terrific barrage. And though expected momentarily, a German counter barrage fails to materialise.

In our tree top we wait for the enemy's counter shelling but the retaliation does not develop. When occupying an exposed position, the suspense of waiting for an impending blow increases in tenseness as the delay continues and the expectations remain unrealised. With no inclination to be unreasonable, one even prays for the speedy delivery of the blow in the same way that the man with the aching tooth urges the dentist to speed up and have it over with.

"Why in hell don't they come back at us?" Griffin asks. "I've had myself all tuned up for the last twenty minutes to have a leg blown off and be thankful. I hate this waiting stuff."

"Keep your shirt on, Pete," Stanton remarks. "Give 'em a chance to get their breath and come out of their holes. That barrage drove 'em down a couple hundred feet into the ground and they haven't any elevators to come up on. We'll hear from 'em soon enough."

We did, but it was not more than a whisper as compared with what they were receiving from our side of the line. The German artillery came into lethargic action after the American barrage had been in constant operation for thirty minutes and then the enemy's fire was only desultory. Only an occasional shell from Kulturland came our way, and even they carried a rather tired, listless buzz, as though they didn't know exactly where they were going and didn't care.

Six or eight of them hummed along a harmless orbit not far above our tree top and fell in the forest. It certainly looked as though we were shooting all the hard-stuff and the German end of the fireworks party was all coloured lights and Roman candles. Of the six shells that passed us, three failed to explode upon landing.

"That makes three dubs," said Guahn.

"You don't mean dubs," Stanton corrected him, "you mean duds and even then you are wrong. Those were gas pills. They just crack open quietly so you don't know it until you've sniffed yourself dead. Listen, you'll hear the gas alert soon."

Even as he spoke, we heard through the firing the throaty gurgling of the sirens. The alarm started on our right and spread from station to station through the woods. We adjusted the respirators and turned our muffled faces toward the firing line. Through the moisture fogged glasses of my mask, I looked first upon my companions on this rustic scaffold above the forest.

War's demands had removed our appearances far from the human. Our heads were topped with uncomfortable steel casques, harder than the backs of turtles. Our eyes were large, flat, round glazed surfaces unblinking and owl-like. Our faces were shapeless folds of black rubber cloth. Our lungs sucked air through tubes from a canvass bag under our chins and we were inhabiting a tree top like a family of apes. It really required imagination to make it seem real.

"Looks like the party is over," came the muffled remark from the masked figure beside me. The cannonading was dying down appreciably. The blinking line of lights in front of us grew less.

A terrific upward blast of red and green flame from the ground close to our tree, reminded us that one heavy still remained under firing orders. The flash seen through the forest revealed in intricate tracings the intertwining limbs and branches of the trees. It presented the appearance of a piece of strong black lace spread out and held at arm's length in front of a glowing grate.

From the German lines an increased number of flares shot skyward and as the cannon cracks ceased, save for isolated booms, the enemy machine guns could be heard at work, riveting the night with sprays of lead and sounding for all the world like a scourge of hungry woodpeckers.

"God help any of the doughboys that are going up against any of that stuff," Griffin observed through his mask.

"Don't worry about our doughboys," replied Stanton; "they are all safe in their trenches now. That's most likely the reason why our guns were ordered to lay off. I guess Fritzie got busy with his typewriters too late."

I descended the tree, leaving my companions to wait for the orders necessary for their departure. Unfamiliar with the unmarked paths of the forest and guided only as to general directions, I made my way through the trees some distance in search of the road back from the front.

A number of mud and water-filled shell holes intervened to make the exertion greater and consequently the demand upon lungs for air greater. After floundering several kilometres through a strange forest with a gas mask on, one begins to appreciate the temptation that comes to tear off the stifling nose bag and risk asphyxiation for just one breath of fresh air.

A babel of voices in the darkness to one side guided me to a log cabin where I learned from a sentry that the gas scare had just been called off. Continuing on the road, I collided head on in the darkness with a walking horse. Its rider swore and so did I, with slightly the advantage over him as his head was still encased. I told him the gas alarm was off and he tore away the mask with a sigh of relief. I left him while he was removing the horse's gas mask.

A light snow was beginning to fall as I said good-night to the battalion commander in front of his roadside shack. A party of mounted runners was passing on the way to their quarters. With an admirable lack of dignity quite becoming a national guard cavalry major in command of regular army artillery, he said:

"Good-night, men, we licked hell out of them."

The Toul sector, during its occupation by Americans, always maintained a high daily rating of artillery activity. The opposing forces were continually planning surprises on one another. At any minute of the night or day a terrific bombardment of high explosive or gas might break out on either side. Both sides operated their sound ranging apparatus to a rather high degree of efficiency.

By these delicate instruments we could locate the exact position of an unseen enemy battery. Following that location, the battery would immediately be visited with a concentrated downpour of hot steel intended to wipe it out of existence. The enemy did as much for us, so that in the artillery, when the men were not actually manning the guns in action, they were digging gun pits for reserve positions which they could occupy if the enemy happened to get the proper range of the old positions. In this casual counter battery work our artillery adopted a system by which many lives were saved.