IITHE CHARGE AT SOISSONS

The 1st Battalion lay in Croutte-sur-Marne. It drank deep of the golden July weather, and swam noisily in the Marne, which swung a blue and shining loop below the town. The battalion took but little interest in the war, which could be heard growling and muttering intermittently to the north and east. Indeed, the unpleasant Bois-de-Belleau-Bouresches area was only a few hours’ march distant, and Château-Thierry was just up the river. The guns were loud and continuous in that direction.

But the 2d American Division—Marines and troops of the Regular Army—had just finished a hitch of some thirty-eight days attacking and holding and attacking again, from Hill 142, on the left, through that ghastly wood which the French now called the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine,” to Vaux, on the right; and in this battalion, as in the other units of the division, such men as had survived were quite willing to think about something else.

Division Headquarters were over Montreuil way, and thither certain distinguished individuals were ordered, to return with crosses on their faded blouses. This furnished pleasant food for gossip and speculation. Then, vin rouge and vin blanc were tobe had, as well as fresh milk for the less carnally minded, and such supplements to the ration were always matters of interest. Also, there were certain buxom mademoiselles among the few civilian families who lingered here in the teeth of the war, and although every girl was watched by lynx-eyed elders early and late, their very presence was stimulating and they were all inclined to be friendly.

The most delightful diversion of all was discussion of the rumor that rose up and ran through the companies: “Got it hot from a bird that was talkin’ to a dog-robber at Brigade H. Q.—the division is gonna be sent back to St. Denis for a month’s rest, an’ leaves, an’ everything!” “Yeh! we gonna parade in Paris, too.” It was ascertained that St. Denis was right near Paris. Platoon commanders were respectfully approached: “Beggin’ the lootenant’s pardon, but does the lootenant think that we—” The lieutenants looked wise and answered vaguely and asked the captains. All ranks hung upon the idea.

July 14 came. “Sort o’ Frog Fourth o’ July,” explained a learned corporal, standing in line for morning chow.

“In Paris, they’s parades, an’ music, an’ fireworks, an’ all that kinder thing. Speakin’ an’ barbecues, like back home. Celebratin’ the time the Frogs rose agin ’em an’ tore down some noted brig or other they had. Now, if I wuz in Paree now, sittin’ in front of the Caffey de Pay——!”

“Don’t try to go there, Corp. J’seen the cellar they’s got fer a brig here?— If you——”

“Don’t see no flag-wavin’ or such celebrations here. Seen one little Frog kid with his gas-mask an’ a Frog flag down thestreet—no more. Why back home, even in tank towns like this, on the Fourth——”

As a matter of fact, Croutte took on this day no especial joy in the far-off fall of the Bastille. Croutte was in range of the Boche heavy artillery; one could perceive, at the end of this street where, in effect, the house of M’sieu’ le Maire had been! An obus of two hundred and twenty centimètres. And others, regard you, near the bridge. Some descended into the river, the naughty ones, and killed many fish. Also, the avions——

Did it not appear to Messieurs les Officiers that the cannon were louder this day, especially toward Rheims? And as the day went on, it did appear so. In the afternoon a Boche came out of a cloud and shot down in flames the fat observation balloon that lived just up the river from Croutte. The rumor of St. Denis and fourteen-day leaves waned somewhat. Certainly there grew to be a feeling in the air....

About one o’clock the morning of the 15th the Boche dropped nine-inch shells into the town. The battalion was turned out, and stood under arms in the dark while the battalion gas officer sniffed around busily to see if the shells were the gas variety. They were not, but the battalion, after the shelling stopped and the casualties were attended to, observed that in the east a light not of the dawn was putting out the stars. The eastern sky was all aflame with gun-flashes, and a growing thunder shook the still air.

The files remarked that they were glad not to be where all that stuff was lightin’, and after breakfast projected the usual swimming parties. Aquatic sports were then vetoed by regretfulplatoon commanders, since it appeared that Battalion H. Q. had directed the companies to hold themselves in readiness for instant movement to an unspecified place. Thereupon the guns eastward took on a more than professional interest. The civilians looked and listened also. Their faces were anxious. They had heard that noise before. The hot July hours passed; the battalion continued to be held in readiness, and got practically no sleep in consequence. There was further shelling, and the guns were undoubtedly louder—and nearer.

Breakfast on the 16th was scant, and the cooks held out little encouragement for lunch. Lunch was an hour early, and consisted of beans. “Boys, we’re goin’ somewhere. We always gets beans to make a hike on.” “Yeh! an’ you always gets more than two-men rates—standin’ in line for fourths, now!”—“What’s that sergeant yellin’ about—fill yo’ canteens? Gonna get ving blonk in mine!”

At noon, the rolling kitchens packed up and moved off, nobody knew where. The battalion regarded their departure soberly. “Wish I hadn’t et my reserve rations....” The shadows were lengthening when the bugles blew “assembly” and the companies fell in, taking the broad white road that led down the river. At the next town—towns were thick along the Marne from Château-Thierry to Meaux—they passed through the other battalions of the 5th Marines, jeeringly at ease beside the road. Greetings were tossed about, and the files gibed at each other. “Where you bums goin’?” “Dunno—don’ care— But you see the ole 1st Battalion is leadin’, as usual!” “Aw—.... Close up! close up!”

Beyond them was the 6th Regiment of Marines, arms stacked in the fields by the river. Each battalion took the road in turn, and presently the whole Marine Brigade was swinging down the Marne in the slanting sunlight. Very solid and businesslike the brigade was, keen-faced and gaunt and hard from the great fight behind them, and fit and competent for greater battles yet to come. The companies were under strength, but they had the quality of veterans. They had met the Boche and broken him, and they knew they could do it again. The rumble of the guns was behind them, and the rumor of the leave area still ran strong enough to maintain a slow volubility among the squads. They talked and laughed, but they did not sing. Veterans do not sing a great deal.

It was getting dusk when the 1st Battalion of the 5th, leading, rounded a turn in the road and came upon an endless column of camions, drawn up along the river road as far as one could see. The companies became silent.

“Camions! They rode us to Chatto-Terry in them busses—” “Yeh! an’ it was a one-way trip for a hell of a lot of us, too!” “Close up! Close up an’ keep to the right of the road.”

“Camions! That’s a sign they want us bad, somewhere on the line,” commented the lean first lieutenant who hiked at the head of the 49th Company. “Walter”—to the officer beside him—“I wonder what happened yesterday an’ to-day, with all that shooting.” “Don’t know—but this Château-Thierry salient is mighty deep an’ narrow, unless the Boche spread himself yesterday.... If we were to break into it, up near one of the corners....” “Yes! Well, we’re right on the tip of it here—canjump either way—Lord there’s a lot of these conveyances.”

Later the battalion knew what had happened on July 15, when the Boche made his final cast across the Champagne country toward Rheims and Épernay; and his storm divisions surged to the Marne, and stayed, and lapped around the foot of the gray Mountain of Rheims, and stayed. Just now the battalion cared for none of these things. It had no supper; it faced a crowded trip of uncertain duration, and was assured of various discomforts after that.

Well accustomed to the ways of war, the men growled horribly as they crammed into their appointed chariots, while the officers inexorably loaded the best part of a platoon into each camion, the dusk hiding their grins of sympathy. “Get aboard! get aboard! Where’ll you put yo’ pack? Now what the hell do I know about yo’ pack—want a special stateroom an’ a coon vallay, do yuh, yuh—!” The sergeants didn’t grin. They swore, and the men swore, and they raged altogether. But, in much less time than it took to tell about it afterward, the men were loaded on. The officers were skilled and prompt in such matters.

Wizened Annamites from the colonies of France drove the camions. Presently, with clangor and much dust, they started their engines, and the camion train jolted off down the river road. A red moon shone wanly through the haze. The Marne was a silver thread through the valley of a dream, infinitely aloof from the gasoline-smelling tumult.... “Valley of the Marne! ... the Marne ... some of us will not see you again....”

The automatic-rifle men.

A camion, as understood by the French, is a motor-vehicle with small wheels and no springs to speak of. It finds every hole in the road, and makes an unholy racket; but it covers ground, the roadbed being of no consequence, as the suffering files bore witness. To the lieutenant of the 49th, nursing his cane on the driver’s seat of a lurching camion, beside two Annamitish heathen who smelt like camels and chattered like monkeys, came scraps of conversation from the compressed platoon behind him. “Sardines is comfortable to what we is!...” “Chevawz forty—hommes eight! Lord forgive me, I uster kick about them noble box cars. They say it wuz taxicabs an’ motor-trucks that won the first battle of the Marne—yeh! If they rushed them Frogs up packed like this, you know they felt like fightin’ when they got out!”... “I feel like fightin’ now!—take yo’ laigs outer my shortribs, you big embus-kay.”

“Night before last they shelled us, an’ we stood by last night—when do we sleep?—that’s what I wanna know—” But sleeping isn’t done in camions. The dust on the road rose thick and white around the train, and rode with it through the night. The face of the moon, very old and wise, peered down through the dust. They left the river, and by the testimony of the stars it seemed to the lieutenant that they were hurrying north. Always, on the right, the far horizon glowed with the fires of war—flares, signal-lights, gun-flashes from hidden batteries; the route paralleled the line. The lieutenant visualized his map: “Followin’ the salient around—to the north—the north—Soissons way, or Montdidier.... The Boche took Soissons....”

Quiet French villages along the road, stone houses like grayghosts under the pale moon, and all lights hooded against Boche planes. Long, empty stretches of road. Shadowy columns of French infantry, overtaken and passed. Horse-drawn batteries of 75s on the move. Swift staff cars that dashed by, hooting. Then, long files of horsemen, cloaked and helmeted, with a ghostly glint of lanceheads over them—French cavalry. Presently, dawn, with low clouds piling up in the rosy sky. And along the road, wherever there were groves, more cavalry was seen, at ease under the trees. Horses were picketed, lances and sabres stuck into the ground, and cooking-fires alight.

The Marines had not met the French horse before. They now looked approvingly upon them. Men and horses were alike big and well-conditioned. All morning the camions passed through a country packed with troops and guns, wherever there was cover from the sky. Something big was in the air.

It was mid-forenoon when the train stopped, and the battalion climbed out on cramped legs. “Fall in on the right of the road.... Platoon commanders, report.... Keep fifty yards’ distance between platoons.... Squads right.... March!” and the companies moved off stiffly, on empty stomachs. The little dark Annamites watched the files pass with incurious eyes. They had taken many men up to battle.

Company by company, the 1st Battalion passed on, and behind them the other battalions of the 5th Marines took the road and, after them, the 6th. “None of the wagons, or the galleys—don’t see the machine-gun outfits, either,” observed the lieutenant of the 49th Company, looking back from the crest of the first low hill. Here the battalion was halted, having marched for half an hour, to tighten slings and settle equipment for the real business of hiking. “They may get up to-night, chow an’ all—wonder how far we came, an’ where we’re goin’. No, sergeant—can’t send for water here—my canteen’s empty, too. All I know about it is that we seem to be in a hurry.”

Prussians from Von Boehn’s divisions in and around the Bois de Belleau.A page from Captain Thomason’s sketch-book.

The dust of the ride had settled thick, like fine gray masks, on the men’s faces, and one knew that it was just as thick in their throats! Of course the canteens, filled at Croutte, were finished. The files swore through cracked lips.

The battalion moved off again, and the major up forward set a pace all disproportionate to his short legs. When the first halt came, the usual ten-minute rest out of the hour was cut to five. “Aw hell! forced march!” “An’ the lootenant has forgot everything but ‘close up! close up!’— Listen at him——”

The camions had set them down in a gently rolling country, unwooded, and fat with ripening wheat. Far across it, to the north, blue with distance, stood a great forest, and toward this forest the battalion marched, talkative, as men are in the first hour of the hike, before the slings of the pack begin to cut into your shoulders.... “Look at them poppies in the wheat.”—“They ain’t as red as the poppies were the mornin’ of the 6th of June, when we went up to Hill 142—” “Yep! Beginnin’ to fade some. It’s gettin’ late in the season.” “Hi—I’m beginnin’ to fade some myself—this guerre is wearin’ on a man ... remember how they looked in the wheat that mornin’, justbefore we hit the Maxim guns?—red as blood—” “Pore old Jerry Finnegan picked one and stuck it in the buckle of his helmet—I seen it in his tin hat after he was killed, there behin’ the Hill.... I’ll always think about poppies an’ blood together, as long as I live—” This last from little Tritt, the lieutenant’s orderly.

“Long as you live—that’s good!” gibed Corporal Snair, of the Company Headquarters group. “Don’t you know by now how expendable you bucks are?”—The lieutenant heard, and remembered it, oddly enough, in a crowded moment the next day, when he lost the two of them to a hard-fought Maxim gun.

No wind moved across the lonely wheatland; the bearded stalks waved not at all, and the sun-drenched air was hot and dead. Sweat made muddy runnels through the thick white dust that masked the faces of the men. Conversation languished; what was said was in profane monosyllables. Clouds came up, and there were showers of rain, with hot sunshine between. Uniforms steamed after each shower, and thirst became a torture. The man who had the vin blanc in his canteen fell out and was quite ill. “Hikin’—in—a dam’—Turkish bath——”

After interminable hours, the column came to the forest and passed from streaming sunshine into sultry shades. It was a noble wood of great high-branching trees, clean of underbrush as a park. Something was doing in the forest. Small-arms ammunition was stacked beside the road, and there were dumps of shells and bombs under the trees. And French soldiers everywhere. This road presently led into a great paved highway, and along it were more of the properties of war—row upon row of every caliber of shell, orderly stacks of winged aerial bombs, pile afterpile of rifle and machine-gun ammunition, and cases of hand-grenades and pyrotechnics. There were picket-lines of cavalry, and park after park of artillery, light and heavy. There were infantrymen with stacked rifles.

Gunner and horseman and poilu, they looked amicably upon the sweating Marines, and waved their hands with naïve Gallic friendliness. The battalion came out of its weariness and responded in kind. “Say, where do they get that stuff about little Frenchmen? Look at that long-sparred horse soldier yonder—seven feet if he’s an inch!”—“Them gunners is fine men, too. All the runts in the Frog army is in the infantry!”—“Well, if these Frawgs fights accordin’ to their size, Gawd pity the old Boche when that cavalry gets after him—lances an’ all!” “You said it! Them little five-foot-nothin’ infantry, with enough on they backs, in the way o’ tents an’ pots an’ pans, to set up light housekeepin’ wit’, and that long squirrel gun they carry, an’ that knittin’-needle bayonet—! Remember how they charged at Torcy, there on the left——?”

The French were cooking dinner beside the road. For your Frenchman never fights without his kitchens and a full meal under his cartridge-pouches. They go into the front line with him, the kitchens and the chow, and there is always the coffee avec rhum, and the good hot soup that smells so divinely to the hungry Americans, passing empty. “When we goes up to hit the old Boche, we always says adoo to the galleys till we comes out again—guess the idea is to starve us so we’ll be mad, like the lions in them glad-i-a-tor-ial mills the corp’ril was tellin’ about.”—“Hell! we don’t eat, it seems—them Frawgs mightat least have the decency to keep their home cookin’ where we can’t smell it!”

The highway led straight through the forest. Many roads emptied into it, and from every road debouched a stream of horses, men, and guns. The battalion went into column of twos, then into column of files, to make room. On the left of the road, abreast of the Marines, plodded another column of foot—strange black men, in the blue greatcoats of the French infantry and mustard-yellow uniforms under them. Their helmets were khaki-colored, and bore a crescent instead of the bursting bomb of the French line. But they marched like veterans, and the Marines eyed them approvingly. Between the foot, the road was level-full of guns and transport, moving axle to axle, and all moving in the same direction. In this column were tanks, large and small, all ring-streaked and striped with camouflage, mounting one-pounders and machine-guns; and the big ones, short-barrelled 75s.

The tanks were new to the Marines. They moved with a horrific clanging and jangling, and stunk of petrol. “Boy, what would you do if you seen one of them little things comin’ at you? The big ones is males, and the little ones is females, the lootenant says....” “Chillun, we’re goin’ into somethin’ big— Dunno what, but it’s big!”

The sultry afternoon passed wearily, and at six o’clock the battalion turned off the road, shambling and footsore, and rested for two hours. They found water and filled canteens. A few of the hardier made shift to wash. “Gonna smear soapsuds an’ lather all over me—the Hospital Corps men say it keepsoff mustard-gas!” But most of the men dropped where the platoon broke ranks and slept. Battalion H. Q. sent for all company commanders.

Presently the lieutenant of the 49th returned, with papers and a map. He called the company officers around him, and spread the map on the ground. He spoke briefly.

“We’re in the Villers-Cotterets woods—the Forêt de Retz. At H hour on D day, which I think is to-morrow morning, although the major didn’t say, we attack the Boche here”—pointing—“and go on to here—past the town of Vierzy. Eight or ninekilomètres. Three objectives—marked—so—and so. The 2d Division with one of the infantry regiments leading, and the 5th Marines, attacks with the 1st Moroccan Division on our left. The Frog Foreign Legion is somewhere around too, and the 1st American Division. It’s Mangin’s Colonial Army—the bird they call the butcher.

“The 49th Company has the division’s left, and we’re to keep in touch with the French over there. They’re Senegalese—the niggers you saw on the road, and said to be bon fighters. The tanks will come behind us through the woods, and take the lead as soon as we hit the open.

“No special instructions, except, if we are held up any place, signal a tank by wavin’ a rag or something on a bayonet, in the direction of the obstacle, and the tank will do the rest.

“No rations, an’ we move soon. See that canteens are filled. Now go and explain it all to your platoons, and—better take a sketch from this map—it’s the only one I have. Impress it on everybody that the job is to maintain connection between theSenegalese on the left and our people. Tritt, I’m goin’ to catch a nap—wake me when we move——”

It was dark when the battalion fell in and took the road again. They went into single file on the right, at the very edge of it, for the highway was jammed with three columns of traffic, moving forward. It began to rain, and the night, there under the thick branches, was inconceivably black. The files couldn’t see the man ahead, and each man caught hold of the pack in front and went feeling for the road with his feet, clawing along with the wheels and the artillery horses and machine-gun mules. On the right was a six-foot ditch, too deep in mud to march in. The rain increased to a sheeted downpour and continued all night, with long rolls of thunder, and white stabs of lightning that intensified the dark. The picked might of France and America toiled on that road through the Villers-Cotterets forest that night, like a great flowing river of martial force....

And after the 5th Marines have forgotten the machine-guns that sowed death in the wheat behind Hill 142, and the shrapnel that showered down at Blanc Mont, before St. Étienne, they will remember the march to the Soissons battle, through the dark and the rain....

As guns and caissons slewed sideways across the files, or irate machine-gun mules plunged across the tangle, the column slowed and jammed and halted on heavy feet; then went on again to plunge blindly against the next obstacle. Men fell into the deep ditch and broke arms and legs. Just to keep moving was a harder test than battle ever imposed. The battalion was too tired to swear. “I’m to where—I have to think about movin’ my feet—! Plant—the left foot—an’—advance the right—an’—bring up the—left foot—an’——”

“Keep on to the left until you meet the Moroccans, and go forward....” 4.30A. M., July 18, 1918.

No battle ever tried them half as hard as the night road to Soissons....

The rain ceased, and the sky grew gray with dawn. The traffic thinned, and the battalion turned off on a smaller road, closed up, and hurried on. Five minutes by the side of the road to form combat packs and strip to rifle and bayonet. “Fall in quickly! Forward!”

Overhead the clouds were gone; a handful of stars paled and went out; day was coming. The battalion, lightened, hastened. They perceived, dimly, through a mist of fatigue, that a cloudless day was promised and that the world was wonderfully new washed and clean—and quiet! Not a gun anywhere, and the mud on the road muffled the sound of hobnailed boots. “Double time! Close up! Close up, there!”

There had been fighting here; there were shell-holes, scarred and splintered trees. The battalion panted to a crossroads, where stone buildings lay all blasted by some gale of shell-fire. And by the road what looked like a well! The files swayed toward it, clutching at dry canteens—“Back in ranks! Back in ranks, you——!”

Then, barbed wire across the roadway, and battered shallow trenches to right and left, and a little knot of French and American officers, Major Turrill standing forward. The leading company turned off to the left, along the trenches. The 49th followed in column. “Turn here,” ordered the major. “Keep on to theleft until you meet the Moroccans, and go forward....” The 49th went beyond the trench, still in column of route, picking its way through the woods. The lieutenant looked back at his men as he went; their faces were gray and drawn and old; they were staggering with weariness—“Fix bayonets—” and the dry click of the steel on the locking-ring ran along the ragged column, loud in the hush of dawn.

It was 4.35, the morning of July 18.

Miles of close-laid batteries opened with one stupendous thunder. The air above the tree-tops spoke with unearthly noises, the shriek and rumble of light and heavy shells. Forward through the woods, very near, rose up a continued crashing roar of explosions, and a murk of smoke, and a hell of bright fires continually renewed. It lasted only five minutes, that barrage, with every French and American gun that could be brought to bear firing at top speed. But they were terrible minutes for the unsuspecting Boche. Dazed, beaten down, and swept away, he tumbled out of his holes when it lifted, only to find the long bayonets of the Americans licking like flame across his forward positions, and those black devils, the Senegalese, raging with knives in his rifle-pits. His counter-barrage was slow and weak, and when it came the shells burst well behind the assaulting waves, which were already deep in his defenses.

Listening-post rushed by Senegalese.

The 49th Company, running heavily, sodden with weariness, was plunging through a line of wire entanglements when the guns opened. A French rifleman squatted in a hole under the wire, and a sergeant bent over him and shouted: “Combien—how far—damn it, how you say?—combien—kilomètre—à la Boche?” The Frenchman’s eyes bulged. He did violent things with his arms. “Kilomèt’?kilomètres?Mon Dieu, cent mètres! Cent mètres!” Half the company, still in column, was struggling in the wire when, from the tangle right in front, a machine-gun dinned fiercely and rifle-fire ran to left and right through the woods.

It was well that the woods were a little open in that spot, so that the lieutenant’s frantic signals could be seen, for no voice could have been heard. And it was more than well that every man there had been shot over enough not to be gun-shy. They divined his order, they deployed to the left, and they went forward yelling. That always remained, to the lieutenant, the marvel of the Soissons fight—how those men, two days without food, three nights without sleep, after a day and a night of forced marching, flung off their weariness like a discarded piece of equipment, and at the shouting of the shells sprang fresh and eager against the German line.

Liaison—to keep the touch—was his company’s mission—the major’s last order. To the left were only the smoky woods—no Senegalese in sight—and to the left the lieutenant anxiously extended his line, throwing out the last two platoons, while the leading one shot and stabbed among the first Boche machine-guns. He himself ran in that direction, cursing and stumbling in wire and fallen branches, having no time for certain Boches who fired at him over a bush.... Finally, Corbett, the platooncommander, leading to the left, turned and waved his arms. And through the trees he saw the Senegalese—lean, rangy men in mustard-colored uniforms, running with their bayonets all aslant. He turned back toward his company with the sweetest feeling of relief that he had ever known; he had his contact established; his clever and war-wise company would attend to keeping it, no matter what happened to him.

The battle roared into the wood. Three lines of machine-guns, echeloned, held it. Here the Forêt de Retz was like Dante’s wood, so shattered and tortured and horrible it was, and the very trees seemed to writhe in agony. Here the fury of the barrage was spent, and the great trunks, thick as a man’s body, were sheared off like weed-stalks; others were uprooted and lay gigantic along the torn earth; big limbs still crashed down or swayed half-severed; splinters and débris choked the ways beneath. A few German shells fell among the men—mustard-gas; and there in the wet woods one could see the devilish stuff spreading slowly, like a snaky mist, around the shell-hole after the smoke had lifted.

Machine-guns raved everywhere; there was a crackling din of rifles, and the coughing roar of hand-grenades. Company and platoon commanders lost control—their men were committed to the fight—and so thick was the going that anything like formation was impossible. It was every man for himself, an irregular, broken line, clawing through the tangles, climbing over fallen trees, plunging heavily into Boche rifle-pits. Here and there a well-fought Maxim gun held its front until somebody—officer, non-com, or private—got a few men together and, crawling to left or right, gained a flank and silenced it. And some guns were silenced by blind, furious rushes that left a trail of writhing khaki figures, but always carried two or three frenzied Marines with bayonets into the emplacement; from whence would come shooting and screaming and other clotted unpleasant sounds, and then silence.

A fighting swirl of Senegalese.

From such a place, with four men, the lieutenant climbed, and stood leaning on his rifle, while he wiped the sweat from his eyes with a shaking hand. Panting, white or red after their nature—for fighting takes men differently, as whiskey does—the four grouped around him. One of them squatted and was very sick. And one of them, quite young and freckled, explored a near-by hole and prodded half a dozen Boches out of it, who were most anxious to make friends. The other three took interest in this, and the Boches saw death in their eyes. They howled like animals, these big hairy men of Saxony, and capered in a very ecstasy of terror. The freckled Marine set his feet deliberately, judging his distance, and poised his bayonet. The lieutenant grasped his arm—“No! No! take ’em back—they’ve quit. Take ’em to the rear, I tell you!” The freckled one obeyed, very surly, and went off through the tangle to the rear. The lieutenant turned and went on.

To left and right he caught glimpses of his men, running, crawling, firing as they went. In a clearing, Lieutenant Appelgate, of the 17th Company, on the right, came into view. He waved his pistol and shouted something. He was grinning.... All the men were grinning ... it was a bon fight, after all....

Then little Tritt, his orderly, running at his side, went down,clawing at a bright jet of scarlet over his collar. The war became personal again—a keening sibilance of flesh-hunting bullets, ringing under his helmet. He found himself prone behind a great fallen tree, with a handful of his men; bark and splinters were leaping from the round trunk that sheltered them.

“You”—to a panting half-dozen down the log—“crawl back to the stump and shoot into that clump of green bushes over there, where you see the new dirt—it’s in there! Everything you’ve got, and watch for me up ahead. Slover”—to Sergeant Robert Slover, a small, fiery man from Tennessee—“come on.”

They crawled along the tree. Back toward the stump the Springfields crackled furiously. Somewhere beyond the machine-gun raved like a mad thing, and the Boches around it threw hand-grenades that made much smoke and noise. The two of them left the protection of the trunk, and felt remarkably naked behind a screen of leaves. They crawled slowly, stopping to peer across at the bushes. The lieutenant caught the dull gleam of a round gray helmet, moved a little, and saw the head and the hands of the Boche who worked the gun. He pushed the sergeant with his foot and, moving very carefully, got his rifle up and laid his cheek against the stock. Over his sights, the German’s face, twenty metres away, was intent and serious. The lieutenant fired, and saw his man half-rise and topple forward on the gun.

Then things happened fast. Another German came into view straining to tear the fallen gunner off the firing mechanism. Slover shot him. There was another, and another. Then the bush boiled like an ant-heap, and a feldwebel sprang out with a grenade, which he did not get to throw. It went off, just the same, and the Marines from the other end of the tree came with bayonets.... Presently they went on.... “There’s a squad of them bastards to do orderly duty for the corp’ral an’ little Tritt,” said the sergeant. “Spread out more, you birds.”

Fighting from tree to tree in the woods south of Soissons.A chaut-chaut automatic rifle in action.

Afterward, sweating and panting, the freckled one who had started back with prisoners caught up with the lieutenant. “Lootenant, sir!” he gasped, wiping certain stains from his bayonet with his sleeve. “Them damn Heinies tried to run on me, an’ I jest natcherly had to shoot ’em up a few—” and he looked guilelessly into the officer’s eyes. “Why you—Hell! ... fall in behind me, then, an’ come along. Need another orderly.”

He pondered absently on the matter of frightfulness as he picked his way along. There were, in effect, very few prisoners taken in the woods that morning. It was close-up, savage work. “But speakin’ of frightfulness, one of these nineteen-year-olds, with never a hair to his face—” A spitting gust of machine-gun bullets put an end to extraneous musings.

Later, working to the left of his company, he was caught up in a fighting swirl of Senegalese and went with them into an evil place of barbed wire and machine-guns. These wild black Mohammedans from West Africa were enjoying themselves. Killing, which is at best an acquired taste with the civilized races, was only too palpably their mission in life. Their eyes rolled, and their splendid white teeth flashed in their heads, but here all resemblance to a happy Southern darky stopped. They were deadly. Each platoon swept its front like a hunting-pack, moving swiftly and surely together. The lieutenant felt a thrill of professional admiration as he went with them.

The hidden guns that fired on them were located with uncanny skill; they worked their automatic rifles forward on each flank until the doomed emplacement was under a scissors fire; then they took up the matter with the bayonet, and slew with lion-like leaps and lunges and a shrill barbaric yapping. They took no prisoners. It was plain that they did not rely on rifle-fire or understand the powers of that arm—to them a rifle was merely something to stick a bayonet on—but with the bayonet they were terrible, and the skill of their rifle grenadiers and automatic-rifle men always carried them to close quarters without too great loss.

They carried also a broad-bladed knife, razor-sharp, which disembowelled a man at a stroke. The slim bayonet of the French breaks off short when the weight of a body pulls down and sidewise on it; and then the knives come out. With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living, and the lieutenant saw in those woods unwounded fighting Germans who flung down their rifles when the Senegalese rushed, and covered their faces, and stood screaming against the death they could not look upon. And—in a lull, a long, grinning sergeant, with a cruel aquiline face, approached him and offered a brace of human ears, nicely fresh, strung upon a thong. “B’jour, Americain! Voilà! Beaucoup souvenir ici—bon! Désirez-vous? Bon——!”

Later, on the last objective, there was a dignified Boche major of infantry, who came at discretion out of a deep dugout, and spoke in careful English: “Und I peg of you, Herr leutnant, to put me under trusty guard of your Americans true-and-tried! Ja! These black savages, of the art of war most ignorant, they would kill us prave Germans in cold plood!... The Herr General Mangin, that”—here a poignant string of gutturals—“I tell you, Herr leutnant, der very name of Mangin, it is equal to fünf divisions on unser front!”

With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living.

Back with his own men again, the company whittled thin! Was there no limit to the gloomy woods?... Light through the trees yonder!——

The wood ended, and the attack burst out into the rolling wheatland, where the sun shone in a cloudless sky and poppies grew in the wheat. To the right, a great paved road marched, between tall poplars, much battered. On the road two motor-trucks burned fiercely, and dead men lay around them. Across the road a group of stone farm-buildings had been shelled into a smoking dust-heap, but from the ruins a nest of never-die machine-guns opened flanking fire. The khaki lines checked and swirled around them, and there was a mounting crackle of rifle-fire ... and the bayonets got in. The lines went forward to the low crest beyond, where, astride the road, was the first objective; and the assault companies halted here to reform. A few Boche shells howled over them, but the Boche was still pounding the wood, where the support battalions followed. The tanks debouched from the forest and went forward through the infantry.

In a hollow just ahead of the reformed line something was being dealt with by artillery, directed by the planes that dipped and swerved above the fight. The shells crashed down and made a great roaring murk of smoke and dust and flickering flames of red and green. The lieutenant, his report to the major despatched, and his company straightened out, along with menfrom other units and a handful of Senegalese who had attached themselves to him, ran an expert eye along his waiting squads, and allowed his mind to settle profoundly on breakfast. “Let’s see—it’s July, an’ in Texas they’ll be havin’ cantaloupes, and coffee, an’ eggs, an’ bacon, an’—” Second Lieutenant Corbett, beside him, groaned like a man shot through the body, and he realized that he had been thinking aloud. Then Corbett seized his arm, and gasped: “Lordy! Look at——”

The shelling forward had abated, but the smoke and murk of it still hung low. Into this murk every man in the line was now peering eagerly. Advancing toward them, dimly seen, was a great body of Germans, hundreds upon hundreds, in mass formation——

Pure joy ran among the men. They took out cartridges, and arranged them in convenient piles. They tested the wind with wetted fingers, and set their sights, and licked their lips. “Range three-fifty—Oh, boy, ain’t war wonderful! We been hearin’ about this mass-formation stuff, an’ now we gets a chance at it——!”

Then: “Aw, hell! Prisoners!” “The low-life bums, they all got their hands up!” “Lookit! One o’ them tanks is ridin’ herd over them—” It was the garrison of a strong point.

The artillery had battered them, and when it lifted, and they had come out of their holes, they found a brace of agile tanks squatting over their defenses with one-pounders and machine-guns. They had very sensibly surrendered, en masse, and were now ambling through the attacking lines to the rear.

The fighting in the woods at Soissons was close and savage.

The officers’ whistles shrilled, and the attack went on. The woods fell away behind, and for miles to left and right across the rolling country the waves of assault could be seen. It was a great stirring pageant wherein moved all the forces of modern war. The tanks, large and small, lumbered in advance. Over them the battle-planes flew low, searching the ground, rowelling the Boche with bursts of machine-gun fire. The infantry followed close, assault waves deployed, support platoons in column, American Marines and Regulars, Senegalese and the Foreign Legion of France, their rifles slanting forward, and the sun on all their bayonets. And behind the infantry, straining horses galloped with lean-muzzled 75s, battery on battery—artillery, over the top at last with the rifles. On the skirts of the attack hovered squadrons of cavalry the Marines had seen the day before, dragoons and lancers, marked from afar by the sparkle and glitter of lanceheads and sabres.

And forward through the wheat, the Boche lines broke and his strong points crumbled; standing stubbornly in one place; running in panic at another; and here and there attempting sharp counter-attacks; but everywhere engulfed; and the battle roared over him. The Boche was in mixed quality that day. Some of his people fought and died fighting; a great many others threw down their arms and bleated “Kamaraden” at the distant approach of the attackers.

The rest was no connected story. Only the hot exaltation of the fight kept the men on their feet. Wheat waist-high is almost as hard to get through as running water, and the sun was pitiless. To the left of the battalion, and forward, machine-guns fired from the Chaudun farm; the 17th Company went in and stampedthe Maxims flat. In a little hollow there was a battery of 105s that fired pointblank upon the Marines, the gunners working desperately behind their gun-shields. The Marines worked to right and left and beat them down with rifle-fire, and later a gunnery sergeant and a wandering detachment of Senegalese turned one of these guns around and shelled the Vierzy ravine with it—range 900 yards—to the great annoyance of the Boche in that place.

Further, a hidden strong point in the wheat held them, and a tank came and sat upon that strong point and shot it into nothing with a one-pounder gun. Another place, hidden Saxons, laired behind low trip-wires in high wheat, raked the line savagely. There was crawling and shooting low among the poppies, and presently hand-to-hand fighting, in which the freckled boy saw his brother killed and went himself quite mad among the wounded and the corpses with his bayonet....

Then, without being very clear as to how they got there, the lieutenant and his company and a great many others were at the Vierzy ravine, in the cross-fire of the machine-guns that held it.

The ravine was very deep and very precipitous and wooded. A sunken road led into it and, while the riflemen stalked the place cannily, a tank came up and disappeared down the sunken road. A terrific row of rifles and grenades arose, and a wild yelling. Running forward, the Marines observed that the tank was stalled, its guns not working; and a gray, frantic mass of German infantry was swarming over it, prying at its plates with bayonets and firing into such openings as could be found. One beauty of the tank is that, when it is in such a difficulty, you can fire without fearing for your friends inside. The automatic-rifle men especially enjoyed the brief crowded seconds that followed. Then all at once the farther slope of the ravine swarmed with running Boches, and the Americans knelt or lay down at ease, and fired steadily and without haste. As they passed the tank a greasy, smiling Frenchman emerged head and shoulders and inquired after a cigarette. There were very many dead Germans in the ravine and on its slope when they went forward.

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