Part 40 (2/2)
Glancing to the right, I saw that we were getting too close to the second section, so I gave the signal for a left oblique. We bore away from them until once again at our thirty paces distance. All at once my feet tangled up in something and I almost fell. It was long gra.s.s! Just then it seemed to grow upon my mind that we were down in the valley and out of range of the enemy. Then I glanced ahead, and not over a hundred metres away I saw the second company lying in the gra.s.s and watching us coming. As we neared, they shouted little pleasantries at us and congratulated us upon our speed.
'Why this unseemly haste?' one wants to know.
'You go to the devil!' answers Haeffle.
'_Merci, mon ami_!' retorts the first; 'I have just come through his back kitchen.'
Counting my section, I missed Dubois, St. Hilaire, and Schueli.
Collette, Joe told me, was left on the hill.
The company had lost two sergeants, one corporal, and thirteen men coming down that short stretch! We mustered but forty-five men, all told. One, Sergeant Terisien, had commanded my section, the 'American Section,' for four months, but was transferred to the fourth. From where we rested we could see him slowly descending the hill, bareheaded and with his right hand clasping his left shoulder. He had been severely wounded in the head, and his left arm was nearly torn off at the shoulder. Poor devil! He was a good comrade and a good soldier. Just before the war broke out he had finished his third enlistment in the Legion, and was in line for a discharge and pension when he died.
Looking up the awful slope we had just descended, we could see the bodies of our comrades, torn and mangled and again and again kicked up into the air by the sh.e.l.ls. For two days and nights the h.e.l.lish hail continued to beat upon that blood-soaked slope, until we finally captured the b.u.t.te de Souain and forced an entire regiment of Saxons to the left of the b.u.t.te to capitulate.
Again we a.s.sembled in column of fours, and this time began the climb up hill. Just then I happened to think of the blow I had received under the jaw, and, feeling of the spot, discovered a slight wound under my left jaw-bone. Handing my rifle to a man, I pressed slightly upon the sore spot and pulled a steel splinter out of the wound. A very thin, long sliver of steel it was, half the diameter of a dime and not more than a dime's thickness, but an inch and a half long. The metal was still hot to the touch. The scratch continued bleeding freely, but I did not bandage it at the time because I felt sure of needing my emergency dressing farther along.
Up near the crest of the hill we halted in an angle of the woods and lay down alongside the One Hundred and Seventy-Second Regiment of infantry.
They had made the attack in this direction on the 25th, but had been severely checked at this point. Infantry and machine-gun fire sounded very close, and lost bullets by the hundreds flicked through the branches overhead. The One Hundred and Seventy-Second informed us that a battalion of the _Premier etranger_ had entered the forest and was at that moment storming a position to our immediate left. Through the trees showed lights, brighter than day, cast from hundreds of German magnesium candles shot into the air.
Our officers were grouped with those of the other regiment, and after a very long conference they separated, each to his command. Our captain called the officers and subalterns of the company together, and in terse sentences explained to us our positions and the object of the coming a.s.sault. It was to be a purely local affair, and the point was the clearing of the enemy from the hill we were on. On a map drawn to scale he pointed out the lay of the land.
It looked to me a hard proposition. Imagine a tooth-brush about a mile long and three eighths to one half a mile wide. The back is formed by the summit of the hill, which is densely wooded, and the hairs of the brush are represented by four little ridges rising from the valley we had just crossed, each one crowned with strips of forest and uniting with the main ridge at right angles. Between each two lines of hair are open s.p.a.ces, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty metres wide. We, of the second regiment, were to deliver the a.s.sault parallel with the hairs and stretching from the crest down to the valley.
The other column was to make a demonstration from our left, running a general course at right angles to ours. The time set was eight o'clock at night.
Returning to our places, we informed the men of what they were in for.
While we were talking, we noticed a group of men come from the edge of the woods and form into company formation, and we could hear them answer to the roll-call. I went over and peered at them. On their coat-collars I saw the gilt No. 1. It was the _Premier etranger_.
As the roll-call proceeded, I wondered. The sergeant was deciphering with difficulty the names from his little _carnet_, and response after response was, 'Mort.' Once in a while the answer changed to 'Mort sur le champ d'honneur,' or a brief 'Tombe.' There were twenty-two men in line, not counting the sergeant and a corporal, who in rear of the line supported himself precariously on two rifles which served him as crutches. Two more groups appeared back of this one, and the same proceeding was repeated. As I stood near the second group I could just catch the responses of the survivors. 'Duvivier': 'Present.'--'Selonti': 'Present.'--'Boismort': 'Tombe.'--'Herkis': 'Mort.'--Carney': 'Mort.'--'MacDonald': 'Present.'--'Farnsworth': 'Mort sur le champ d'honneur,' responded MacDonald. Several of the men I had known, Farnsworth among them. One officer, a second lieutenant, commanded the remains of the battalion. Seven hundred and fifty men, he informed me, had gone in an hour ago, and less than two hundred came back.
'Ah, mon ami,' he told me, 'c'est bien chaud dans le bois.'
Quietly they turned into column of fours and disappeared in the darkness. Their attack had failed. Owing to the protection afforded by the trees, our aerial scouts had failed to gather definite information of the defenses constructed in the forest, and owing also to the same cause, our previous bombardment had been ineffective.
It was our job to remedy this. One battalion of the One Hundred and Seventy-Second was detached and placed in line with us, and at eight P.M. sharp the major's whistle sounded, echoed by that of our captain.
Quietly we lined up at the edge of the forest, shoulder to shoulder, bayonets fixed. Quietly each corporal examined the rifles of his men, inspected the magazines, and saw that each chamber also held a cartridge with firing-pin down. As silently as possible we entered between the trees, and carefully kept in touch with each other. It was dark in there, and we had moved along some little distance before our eyes were used to the blackness. As I picked my steps I prepared myself for the shock every man experiences at the first sound of a volley. Twice I fell down into sh.e.l.l-holes and cursed my clumsiness and that of some other fellows to my right. 'The ”Dutch” must be asleep,' I thought, 'or else they beat it.' Hopefully the latter!
We were approaching the farther edge of the tooth-brush 'bristle,' and breathlessly we halted at the edge of the little open s.p.a.ce before us.
About eighty metres across loomed the black line of another 'row of hairs.'
The captain and second section to our right moved on and we kept in line, still slowly and cautiously, carefully putting one foot before the other. Suddenly from the darkness in front of us came four or five heavy reports like the noise of a shot-gun, followed by a long hiss. Into the air streamed trails of sparks. Above our heads the hiss ended with a sharp crack, and everything stood revealed as if it were broad daylight.
At the first crash, the major, the captains--everybody, it seemed to me--yelled at the same time, 'En avant! Pas de charge!'--and in full run, with fixed bayonets, we flew across the meadow. As we neared the woods, we were met by solid sheets of steel b.a.l.l.s. Roar upon roar came from the forest; the volleys came too fast, it shot into my mind, to be well aimed. Then something hit me on the chest and I fell sprawling.
Barbed wire! Everybody seemed to be on the ground at once, crawling, pus.h.i.+ng, struggling through. My rifle was lost and I grasped my _parabellum_. It was a German weapon, German charges, German cartridges.
This time the Germans were to get a taste of their own medicine, I thought. Lying on my back, I wormed through the wire, b.u.t.ting into the men in front of me and getting kicked in the head by Mettayer. As I crawled I could hear the _ping-ping_ of b.a.l.l.s striking the wire, and the shrill moan as they glanced off and continued on their flight.
Putting out my hand, I felt loose dirt, and, lying flat, peered over the parapet. 'n.o.body home,' I thought; and then I saw one of the Collette brothers in the trench come running toward me, and ahead of him a burly Boche. I could see Joe make a one-handed lunge with the rifle, and the bayonet showed fully a foot in front of the German's chest.
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