Part 12 (2/2)
We followed the students from bombs to bayonets. The men with the cold steel were charging into dummies marked with circles to represent spots where hits were likely to be vital. It looked for all the world like football practice and the men went after the dummies as the tacklers used to do at Soldiers' Field of an afternoon when the coach had pinned blue sweaters and white ”Y's” on the straw men. There was the same severely serious spirit. In a larger field a big cla.s.s was having instruction in attack. Before them were three lines of trenches protected by barbed wire ankle high. At a signal they left their trench and darted forward to the next one. Here they paused for a moment and then set sail for the second trench. At another signal they were out of that and into a third trench. From here they blazed away at some targets on the hill representing Germans and consolidated their positions.
Instructors followed the charge along the road which bordered the instruction field. They mingled praise and blame, but ever they shouted for speed. ”Make this go now,” would be the cry, and to a luckless wight who had been upset by barbed wire and sent sprawling: ”What do you mean by lying there, anyhow?”
It was a New Zealand company which I saw, and in the cla.s.s were a number of Maoris. These were fine, husky men of the type seen in the Hawaiian Islands. All played the game hard, but none seemed so imaginatively stirred by it as the Maoris. They were fairly carried away by the enthusiasm of a charge, and left their trenches each time shouting at top voice. The capture of the third trench by no means satisfied them.
They wanted to go on and on. If the officer had not called a halt there's no telling but that they might have invaded the next field and bayoneted the bombardiers. Over the hill there was a rattle of machine guns and beyond that a more scattering volume of musketry. We stopped and watched the men at their rifle practice.
”You wouldn't believe it,” said the instructor, ”but we've got to keep hammering it home to men that rifles are meant to shoot with. For a time you heard nothing but bayonets. A gun might have been nothing more than a pike. Later everything was bombs, and sometimes soldiers just stood and waited till the Boches got close, so that they could peg something at 'em. But when these men go away they're going to know that the bombs and the bayonet are the frill. It's the shooting that counts.”
We saw a good deal of the British army during our trip but the thing which gave me the clearest insight into the fundamental fighting, sporting spirit of the army was a story which an officer told me of an incident which occurred in the sector where he was stationed. An enlisted man and an officer were trapped during a daylight patrol when a mist lifted and they had to take shelter in a sh.e.l.l hole. They lay there for some hours, and then the soldier endeavored to make a break back for his own trenches. No sooner had his head and shoulders appeared above the sh.e.l.l hole than a German machine gun pattered away at him. He was. .h.i.t and the officer started to climb up to his a.s.sistance.
”No, don't come,” said the soldier. ”They got me, sir.” He put his hand up and indicated a wound on the left hand side of his chest. ”It was a d.a.m.n good shot,” he said.
CHAPTER XVII
BACK FROM PRISON
France has a better right to fight than any nation in the world because she can wage war, even a slow and bitter war, with a gesture. Misery does not blind the French to the dramatic. Even the tears and the heartache are made to count for France. We saw wounded men come back from German prison camps and Lyons made the coming of these wrecked and shattered soldiers a pageant. Gray men, grim men, silent men stood up and shouted like boys in the bleachers because there was someone there to greet them with the right word. There is always somebody in France who has that word.
This time it was a lieutenant colonel of artillery. He was a man big as Jess Willard and his voice boomed through the station like one of his own huge howitzers as he swung his arm above his head and said to the men from Germany: ”I want you all to join with me in a great cry. Open your throats as well as your hearts. The cry we want to hear from you is one that you want to give because for so long a time you have been forbidden to cry 'Vive la France.'” The big man shouted as he said it, but this time the howitzer voice was not heard above the roar of other voices.
The French soldiers who came back from Germany had been for some little time in a recuperation camp in Switzerland. A few were lame, many were thin and peaked and almost all were gray, but the Lyonnaise said that this was not nearly so bad as the last train load of men from German prisons. There were no madmen this time.
The windows of the cars were crowded with faces as the train came slowly into the station. There was no shouting until the big man made his speech. Some of the returned prisoners waved their hands, but most of them greeted the soldiers and the crowds which waited for them with formal salutes. A file of soldiers was drawn up along the platform and outside the station was a squad of cavalry trying to stand just as motionless as the infantry. There were horns and trumpets inside the station and out and they blew a nipping, rollicking tune as the train rolled in. The wounded men, all but a few on stretchers, descended from the cars in military order. Lame men with canes hopped and skipped in order to keep step with their more nimble comrades.
There was an old woman in black who darted out from the crowd and wanted to throw her arms around the neck of a young soldier, but he waved to her not to come. You see she still thought of him as a boy, but that had been three years ago. He was a marching man now and it would never do to break the formation. Group by group they came from the train with a new blare of the trumpets for each unit. There were 416 French soldiers, thirty-seven French officers and seventeen Belgians. They marched past the receiving group of officers and saluted punctiliously, though it was a little bit hard because their arms were full of flowers. When they had all been gathered in the waiting room of the station the big colonel made his speech. He did not speak very long because the returned soldiers could see out of the corner of their eyes that just across the room were big tables with scores of expectant and antic.i.p.atory bottles of champagne. But there was fizz, too, to the talk of the big colonel. I had the speech translated for me afterwards but I guessed that some of it was about the Germans, for I caught the phrase ”inhuman cruelty.”
”You have a right to feel now that you are back on the soil of France after all these years of inhuman cruelty that your work is done,” said the colonel, ”but there is still something that you must do. There is something that you ought to do. You will tell everybody of the wrongs the Germans have inflicted upon you. You will tell exactly what they have done and you will thus serve France by increasing the hatred between our people and their people.”
The soldiers and the crowd cheered then almost as loudly as they did later in the great shout of ”Vive la France.” The gray men, the grim men and the silent men were stirred by what the colonel said because they did and will forever have a quarrel with the German people.
”We are doubly glad to welcome you back to France because our hearts have been so cheered by the coming of America,” continued the colonel.
”Victory seems nearer and nearer and vengeance for all the things you have endured.” It was then that he s.n.a.t.c.hed the great shout of ”Vive la France” from the crowd.
As the din died down the corks began to pop and men who a little time before had not even been sure of a proper ration of water began to gulp champagne out of tin cups. The sting of the wine, the excitement and the din were too much for one returned prisoner. He had scarcely lifted his gla.s.s to his lips than he fell over in a heap and there was one more weary wanderer to make his return sickabed in a stretcher. But the rest marched better as they came out of the station with band tunes blaring in their ears and G.o.d knows what tunes singing in their hearts as they clanked along the cobbles. For they had been dead men and they were back in France and there was sun in the sky. When they crossed the bridge they broke ranks. The old woman in black was there and for just a minute the marching man became a boy again.
CHAPTER XVIII
FINIs.h.i.+NG TOUCHES
The American army had begun to find itself when October came round.
Perhaps it had not yet gained a complete army consciousness, but there could be no doubt about company spirit. Chaps who had been civilians only a few months before now spoke of ”my company” as if they had grown up with the outfit. They were also ready to declare loudly and profanely in public places that H or L or K or I, as the case might be, was the best company in the army. Some were willing to let the remark stand for the world.
Too much credit cannot be given to the captains of the first American Expeditionary Force. A captain commands more men now than ever before in the American army and he has more power. This was particularly true in France where many companies had a little village to themselves. The captain, therefore, was not only a military leader, a father confessor, and a gents' furnisher, but also an amba.s.sador to the people of a small section of France. The colonels and majors and the rest are the fellows who think up things to be done, but it is the captains who do them.
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