Part 12 (1/2)
General Vaugirard sprang into his automobile, taking only two of his senior officers with him, while the rest followed on their motor cycles.
As far as John could see on either side the vast rows of French swept across hills and fields. There was little shouting now and no sound of bands, but presently a shout arose behind them: ”Way for the artillery!”
Then he heard cries, the rumble of wheels and the rapid beat of hoofs.
With an instinctive shudder, lest he be ground to pieces, he pulled from the road, and saw the motor of General Vaugirard turn out also. Then the great French batteries thundered past to seek positions soon in the fields behind low hills. He saw them a little later unlimbering and making ready.
The French advance changed from a walk to a trot. John saw the Parisian regiment, not far away, but at the very front and he knew that among all those ardent souls there was none more ardent than that of the little Apache, Bougainville. Meanwhile, Vaugirard in his motor kept to the road and the staff on their motor cycles followed closely.
On both flanks the thunder of ma.s.sed cannon was deepening, and now John, who used his gla.s.ses occasionally, was able to see wisps and tendrils of smoke on the eastern and northern horizons. The tremor in the air was strong and continuous. It played incessantly upon the drums of his ears, and he found that he could not hear the words of the other aides so well as before. But there was no succession of crashes. The sound was more like the roaring of a distant storm.
They advanced another mile, two hundred thousand men, afire with zeal, a whole vast army moved forward as the other French armies were by the hidden hand which they could not see, of which they knew nothing, but the touch of which they could feel.
John heard a whizzing sound, he caught a glimpse of a dark object, rus.h.i.+ng forward at frightful velocity, and then he and his wheel reeled beneath the force of a tremendous explosion. The sh.e.l.l coming from an invisible point, miles away, had burst some distance on his right, scattering death and wounds over a wide radius. But Vaugirard's brigades did not stop for one instant. They cheered loudly, closed up the gap in their line, and went on steadily as before. Some one began to sing the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and in an instant the song, like fire in dry gra.s.s, spread along a vast front. John had often wished that he could have heard the armies of the French Revolution singing their tremendous battle hymn as they marched to victory, and now he heard it on a scale far more gigantic than in the days of the First French Republic.
The vast chorus rolled for miles and for all he knew other armies, far to right and left, might be singing it, too. The immense volume of the song drowned out everything, even that tremor in the air, caused by the big guns. John's heart beat so hard that it caused actual physical pain in his side, and presently, although he was unconscious of it, he was thundering out the verses with the others.
He was riding by the side of de Rougemont, and he stopped singing long enough to shout, at the top of his voice:
”No enemy in sight yet?”
”No,” de Rougemont shouted back, ”but he doesn't need to be. The German guns have our range.”
From a line on the distant horizon, from positions behind hills, the German sh.e.l.ls were falling fast, cutting down men by hundreds, tearing great holes in the earth, and filling the air with an awful shrieking and hissing. It was all the more terrible because the deadly missiles seemed to come from nowhere. It was like a mortal hail rained out of heaven. John had not yet seen a German, nothing but those tongues of fire licking up on the horizon, and some little whitish clouds of smoke, lifting themselves slowly above the trees, yet the thunder was no longer a rumble. It had a deep and angry note, whose burden was death.
They must maintain their steady march directly toward the mouths of those guns. John comprehended in those awful moments that the task of the French was terrible, almost superhuman. If their nation was to live they must hurl back a victorious foe, practically numberless, armed and equipped with everything that a great race in a half-century of supreme thought and effort could prepare for war. It was spirit and patriotism against the monstrous machine of fire and steel, and he trembled lest the machine could overcome anything in the world.
He was about to shout again to de Rougemont, but his words were lost in the rending crash of the French artillery. Their batteries were posted on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range. All along the front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened forever.
The sight, at first magnificent, now became appalling. The sh.e.l.ls came in showers and the French ranks were torn and mangled. Companies existed and then they were not. The explosions were like the crash of thunderbolts, but through it all the French continued to advance. Those whose knees grew weak beneath them were upborne and carried forward by the press of their comrades. The French gunners, too, were making prodigious efforts but with cannon of such long range neither side could see what its batteries were accomplis.h.i.+ng. John was sure, though, that the great French artillery must be giving as good as it received.
He was conscious that General Vaugirard was still going forward along the long white road, sweeping his gla.s.ses from left to right and from right to left in a continuous semi-circle, apparently undisturbed, apparently now without human emotion. He was no figure of romance, but he was a man, cool and powerful, ready to die with all his men, if death for them was needed.
Still the invisible hand swept them on, the hand that a million men in action could not see, but which every one of the million, in his own way, felt. The crash of the guns on both sides had become fused together into one roar, so steady and continued so long that the sound seemed almost normal. Voices could now be heard under it and John spoke to de Rougemont.
”Can you make anything of it?” he asked. ”Do we win or do we lose?”
”It's too early yet to tell anything. The cannon only are speaking, but you'll note that our army is advancing.”
”Yes, I see it. Before I've only beheld it in retreat before overwhelming numbers. This is different.”
General Vaugirard beckoned to his aides, and again sent them out with messages. John's note was to the commander of a battery of field guns telling him to move further forward. He started at once through the fields on his motor cycle, but he could not go fast now. The ground had been cut deep by artillery and cavalry and torn by sh.e.l.ls and he had to pick his way, while the shower of steel, sent by men who were firing by mathematics, swept over and about him.
s.h.i.+vers seized him more than once, as shrapnel and pieces of sh.e.l.l flew by. Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in spite of the sh.e.l.ls, in spite of the deadly nausea that a.s.sailed him at times, he went on. The rush of air from a sh.e.l.l threw him once from his motor cycle, but as he fell on soft clodded earth he was not hurt, and, springing quickly back on his wheel, he reached the battery.
The order was welcome to the commander of the guns, who was anxious to go closer, and, limbering up, he advanced as rapidly as weapons of such great weight could be dragged across the fields. John followed, that he might report the result. They were now facing toward the east and the whole horizon there was a blaze of fire. The sh.e.l.ls were coming thicker and thicker, and the air was filled with the screaming of the shrapnel.
The commander of the battery, a short, powerful Frenchman, was as cool as ice, and John drew coolness from him. One can get used to almost anything, and his nervous tremors were pa.s.sing. Despite the terrible fire of the German artillery the French army was still advancing. Many thousands had fallen already before the sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel of the invisible foe, but there had been no check.
The cannon crossed a brook, and, unlimbering, again opened a tremendous fire. To one side and on a hill here, a man whom the commander watched closely was signaling. John knew that he was directing the aim of the battery and the French, like the Germans, were killing by mathematics.
He rode his cycle to the crest of a little elevation behind the battery and with his newfound coolness began to use his gla.s.ses again. Despite the thin, whitish smoke, he saw men on the horizon, mere manikins moving back and forth, apparently without meaning, but men nevertheless. He caught, too, the outline of giant tubes, the huge guns that were sending the ceaseless rain of death upon the French.