IVCOMING OUT

Some of them had been this way before.

One such group, over to the left, followed a big young officer, a replacement, too, but a man who had spent a week in Bouresches and was to be considered a veteran, as such things went in those days, when so many chaps were not with the brigade very long. He had not liked Bouresches, which he entered at night, and where he lived obscenely in cellars with the dead, and saw men die in the orange flash of minenwerfer shells, terribly and without the consolation of glory. Here, at last, was attack.... He thought, absently watching his flank to see that it guided true—guide centre was the word—of the old men who had brought him up to tales of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, in the War of the Southern Confederacy. Great battles, glamorous attacks, full of the color and the high-hearted élan of chivalry. Jacksonat Chancellorsville; Pickett at Gettysburg—that was a charge for you—the red Southern battle-flags, leading like fierce bright-winged birds the locked ranks of fifteen gray brigades, and the screeching Rebel yell, and the field-music, fife and drum, rattling out “The Girl I Left Behind Me”:

“Oh, if ever I get through this war,And the Lincoln boys don’t find me,I’m goin’ to go right back againTo the girl I left behind me——”

“Oh, if ever I get through this war,

And the Lincoln boys don’t find me,

I’m goin’ to go right back again

To the girl I left behind me——”

No music here, no flags, no bright swords, no lines of battle charging with a yell. Combat groups of weary men, in drab and dirty uniforms, dressed approximately on a line, spaced “so that one shrapnel-burst cannot include more than one group,” laden like mules with gas-masks, bandoleers, grenades, chaut-chaut clips, trudging forward without haste and without excitement, they moved on an untidy wood where shells were breaking, a wood that did not answer back, or show an enemy. In its silence and anonymity it was far more sinister than any flag-crowned rampart, or stone walls topped with crashing volleys from honest old black-powder muskets—he considered these things and noted that the wood was very near, and that the German shells were passing high and breaking in the rear, where the support companies were waiting. His own artillery appeared to have lifted its range; you heard the shells farther in, in the depths of the wood.

Boche grenadier.

So many chaps were not with the brigade very long.

The air snapped and crackled all around. The sergeant beside the lieutenant stopped, looked at him with a frozen, foolish smile, and crumpled into a heap of old clothes. Something took the kneecap off the lieutenant’s right knee and his leg buckled under him. He noticed, as he fell sideways, that all his men were tumbling over like duck-pins; there was one fellow that spun around twice, and went over backward with his arms up. Then the wheat shut him in, and he heard cries and a moaning. He observedcuriously that he was making some of the noise himself. How could anything hurt so? He sat up to look at his knee—it was bleeding like the deuce!—and as he felt for his first-aid packet, a bullet seared his shoulder, knocking him on his back again. For a while he lay quiet and listened to odd, thrashing noises around him, and off to the left a man began to call, very pitifully. At once he heard more machine-gun fire—he hadn’t seemed to hear it before—and now the bullets were striking the ground and ricocheting with peculiar whines in every direction. One ripped into the dirt by his cheek and filled his eyes and his mouth with dust. The lamentable crying stopped; most of the crawling, thrashing noises stopped. He himself was hit again and again, up and down his legs, and he lay very still.

Where he lay he could just see a tree-top—he was that near the wood. A few leaves clung to it; he tried to calculate, from the light on them, how low the sun was, and how long it would be until dark. Stretcher-bearers would be along at dark, surely. He heard voices, so close that he could distinguish words:

“Caput?”

“Nein—nicht alles—”

The Boche had out his pistol.

Later, forgetting those voices, he tried to wriggle backward into a shell-hole that he remembered passing. He was hit again, but somehow he got into a little shell-hole, or got his body into it, head first. He reflected that he had bled so much that a head-downward position wouldn’t matter, and he didn’t want to be hit again. Men all dead, he supposed. He couldn’t hear any of them. He seemed to pass out, and then to have dreamy periods of consciousness. In one of these periods he saw the sky over him was dark, metallic blue; it would be nearly night. He heard somebody coming on heavy feet, and cunningly shut his eyes to a slit ... playing dead.... A German officer, a stiff, immaculate fellow, stood over him, looking at him. He lay very still, trying not to breathe. The Boche had out his pistol, a short-barrelled Luger, rested it on his left forearm, and fired deliberately. He felt the bullet range upward through the sole of his foot, and something excruciating happened in his ankle. Then one called, and the German passed from his field of vision, returning his pistol as he went....

Later, trying to piece things together, he was in an ambulance, being jolted most infernally. And later he asked a nurse by his bed: “I say, nurse, tell me—did we get the Bois de Belleau?”—“Why, last June!” she said. “It’s time you were coming out of it! This is August....”

IVCOMING OUT

The battalion lay in unclean holes on the far face of Bois de Belleau, which was “now U. S. Marine Corps entirely.” The sun was low over Torcy, and all the battalion, except certain designated individuals, slept. The artillery, Boche and American, was engaged in counter-battery work, and the persecuted infantry enjoyed repose. The senior lieutenant of the 49th Company, bedded down under a big rock with his orderly, came up from infinite depths of slumber with his pistol out, all in one swift motion. You awoke like that in the Bois de Belleau.... Jennings, company runner, showed two buck-teeth at him and said: “Sir, the cap’n wants to see you——”

They crawled delicately away from the edge of the wood, to a trail that took you back under cover, and found the captain frying potatoes in bacon grease. “Going out to-night, by platoons. Start as soon as it’s dark, with the 17th. We are next. 6th Regiment outfit makin’ the relief—96th Company for us. They’ve been here before, so you needn’t leave anybody to show them the ground. Soon as they get to you, beat it. Got a sketch of the map? Have your platoon at Bois Gros-Jean—you know, beyond Brigade, on the big road—at daylight. Battalion has chow there.—Got it?—Good——”

The lieutenant went happily back to his men. The word had already gotten around, by the grape-vine route, and grinning heads stuck out of every hole. “Well, sergeant, pass the wordto get set—goin’ out to-night—” “Yes, sir! Ready right now! Is the division bein’ relieved?”—“No, 6th Regiment comin’ in—” “Well, sir, I hope to God they ain’t late. Did you hear, sir, anything about us goin’ back to St. Denis, and gettin’ liberty in Paris, an’ a month’s rest—” That unaccountable delusion persisted in the Marine Brigade through all of June and into July. It never happened. “No, I didn’t hear any such thing. But it’s enough to get out of here. This place is like the wrath of God!”

Certain designated individuals watched.

It was. To begin with, it had been a tangled, rocky wood of a few kilometres, the shooting-preserve of a French family inhappier days. Even now you could see where a sort of hunting-lodge had been; they said some Marines had crawled in and bombed a Boche headquarters out of it. The first of June it was rather a pretty place, with great trees and flowery underbrush, all green and new in the full tide of spring. It was a place of no particular military importance other than local. But the chance of war made it a symbol. The German rolled down to it like a flood, driving before him forlorn fragments of wrecked French divisions, all the way from the Chemin des Dames. It was the spearhead of his last great thrust on Paris. The Americans of the 2d Division were new troops, untried in this war, regarded with uneasy hopefulness by the Allies. Their successes came when the Allies very greatly needed a success; for not since 1914 had the Boche appeared so terrible as in this, the spring of 1918. For a space the world watched the Bois de Belleau uneasily, and then with pride and an awakened hope. Men saw in it, foreshadowed, Soissons, and the 8th of August, that Ludendorf was to call “the black day of the war,” and an event in a car on a railroad siding, in the misty November forest of Senlis.

But the men who fought here saw none of these things. Good German troops, with every device of engineering skill, and all their cunning gained in war, poured into the wood. Battalions of Marines threw themselves against it. Day and night for nearly a month men fought in its corpse-choked thickets, killing with bayonet and bomb and machine-gun. It was gassed and shelled and shot into the semblance of nothing earthly. The great trees were all down; the leaves were blasted off, or hung sere and blackened. It was pockmarked with shell craters andshallow dugouts and hasty trenches. It was strewn with all the débris of war, Mauser rifles and Springfields, helmets, German and American, unexploded grenades, letters, knapsacks, packs, blankets, boots; a year later, it is said, they were still finding unburied dead in the depths of it. Finally it was taken, by inches.

Men fought in its corpse-choked thickets....

Now the battalion turned its backs to the tangle and watched with languid interest the shrapnel that one of the batteries of our 15th Field was showering on the ruined airdrome in front of Torcy. The white puff-balls were tinged pink by the setting sun, and jets of reddish dust went up from the ground under the bursts. A Boche battery was replying, and heavy shells rumbled far above, searching transport lines. Those nights, up in northern France, came late and went early. A man could sit on the edge of his hole, prairie-dog fashion, and write a letter at 10.30; it was not safe to move in the open until after 11.00; it was nearly midnight when the relieving troops came in. The lieutenant’s opposite number reported, chap he hadn’t seen since Quantico, back in another lifetime.—“Well, here we are! Out you go—” “I say, is it you, Bob? Heard you were killed—” “Oh, not at all—heard the same thing about you—not strange; lot of serious accidents have happened around here—” “Well, good luck—” “Sure—bon chance, eh?—so-long——”

Bringing in German prisoners at St. Mihiel.Drawn on the field by Captain Thomason.

Ration parties ... always sweated mightily and anticipated exciting incidents....

The platoon left the wood and angled down to the Torcy road. A string of shells howled overhead, 88s by the sound of them, and broke on the road. The lieutenant halted and watched: “Dam’ unusual, shellin’ here this time of night—must know it’s a relief—” It was the conviction of all that the Boche knew everything, down to the movements of the lowest corporal.—“I think we’ll cut a corner, and take a chance of gettin’ through the line over yonder—” He led away from the road, through the trampled wheat to his right, away from the shelling. This was really No Man’s Land, for the line curved back from the wood, and thrust out again along the line of another crest, also wooded. Such intervals were watched by day and patrolled by night, and ration parties, carrying details, and other wretches who had to traverse them always sweated mightily and anticipated exciting incidents. It was full of smells and mysterious horrors in the starlight, that wheat. Once the platoon came upon a pig, feeding unspeakably.... The woods ahead grew plain; the men walked gingerly, straining their eyes at the shadows.... “Eighth machine-gun in there—take it easy, you—risky business, this—wish to God I’d—” The platoon stopped, frozen, as they heard the charging handle of a Hotchkiss snick back. A small, sharp voice barked: “Halt—who’ there?”—“Platoon of the 49th—can we get through here?” “My God, I dam’ near gave you a clip! What the hell, comin’ up here—don’t you know you ain’t supposed to come bustin’ around a machine-gun positionyou—” “All right—all right!—shellin’ the road down there”—and the platoon scuttled past the Hotchkiss gun, while its crew reviled them. Machine-gunners are a touchy lot, prone to shoot first and inquire afterward; the platoon gave thanks for a man who didn’t scare.

They turned left now, and went swiftly through the woods northwest of Lucy. They passed a place where the midnight harassing fire had caught a ration party; a shell had hit a pushcart loaded with loaves of the round French war bread which was the main item of the ration on this front; bread was scattered over an acre or so, and a frenzied sergeant was routing his ration party out of several holes and trying to collect it again. Otherwise, an outfit up in the Bois de Belleau wouldn’t eat for another twenty-four hours. The platoon was amused. They took the road to La Voie du Chatelle, stepping out. They’d be well behind the usual shelling, if the Boche was on schedule. Far enough back to talk now, and relax their hunched shoulders.

Down the road they heard a trampling, and the wind brought a smell of unwashed men. “Hi! Relief of Frogs comin’ in—!” “Yeh—Frogs. They smell like camels. We smell like goats.” “Hope this relief carries a bath wit’ it! Me, I’ve got blue mould all up my back.” “Well, next time we come in, we’ll put showers in that goddam place. Been there long enough to, already—” “How long we been there?—Le’s see—this is the 5th of July, ain’t it?—” “Je’s, I don’t keep count of no days! I can’t remember when we was anywhere else—” This was in a tone so mournful that the file’s neighbors laughed. “What you doin’ in this war, anyway? Dam’ replacement, jus’ joined up after Hill142—” “Man,” said the file very earnestly, “I’ll tell you. So help me Gawd, I wuz dodgin’ the draft!”

The French column came up and passed. Its horizon-blue uniform was invisible in the dark, but the stars glinted a little on its helmets and bayonets. “V’la! Yanquis! B’soir, Americains!” “Dam’ right, Frenchie! Bon chance, huh?” They went on without lagging, well closed up. A man’s feet dragged going in; there are no such things on a battle-field as fresh troops, for you always approach by forced marches, infinitely weary—“but comin’ out—boy, we make knots!—” They reached La Voie du Chatelle, where Regimental was, and there the old Boche always shelled. It was a little farm, pretty well knocked to pieces now, but Regimental was reported to prefer it to a change; they had the Boche’s system down so that they could count on him. His shelling always fell into method when he had long enough, and the superior man could, by watching him a few days, avoid unpleasantness. La Voie du Chatelle, as the world knew, received his attention from 11.45 to 12.10 every night. Then he laid off until 3, when his day-shift came on. You could set your watch by it. The platoon went cheerfully past.

A full kilometre farther they hiked, at a furious pace. Then the lieutenant considered that they might catch a rest; they had come a long way and were in a safe spot. Ten minutes’ rest out of every hour was the rule when possible. He passed the word: “Fall out to the right of the road,” and sat down himself, a little way off, feeling for his chewing-tobacco. You didn’t smoke on the front at night—lights were not safe. And chewin’ was next best. Then he observed that the platoon was not falling out.They stood in groups on the road, and an angry mutter reached him. “What th’ell?—Goin’ out, an’ then he wants to rest!” “Yeh, ‘fall out on the right of the road,’ he says, the goddam fool—” The lieutenant knew his men, as you know men you live in hell with. He got up, chuckling.—“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it—come on, you birds!” and he set them a killing step, at which no man complained.

The dawn was coming when they rendezvoused with the battalion in Bois Gros-Jean—beans for breakfast, and hot coffee, and tins of jam! That afternoon they had off their clothes for the first time in three weeks or so, and swam in the Marne at a place called Croutte. And at formation they heard this order published:

VI ArméeÉtat-Major6930/2

VI Armée

État-Major

6930/2

Au QGA le 30 Juin, 1918.

In view of the brilliant conduct of the 4th Brigade of the 2nd U. S. Division, which in a spirited fight took Bouresches and the important strong point of Bois de Belleau, stubbornly defended by a large enemy force, the General commanding the VIth Army orders that, henceforth, in all official papers, the Bois de Belleau shall be named “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

The General of Division DegoutteCommanding VIth Army(Signed)Degoutte.

The General of Division Degoutte

Commanding VIth Army

(Signed)Degoutte.

“Yeh,” said the battalion. “Now, about this liberty in Paris—” But they didn’t go to Paris. They took a road that led through Soissons, and St. Mihiel, and Blanc Mont, and the Argonne-Meuse, to Nieuwied, on the far side of the Rhine.

SONGSONE“BANG AWAY, LULU”

The Marines have a very noble song: the Marine Corps Hymn. It is taught, along with close order drill and things like that, to recruits at Parris Island and on the West Coast. It begins:

“From the Halls of MontezumaTo the shores of Tripoli,We have fought our country’s battlesOn the land and on the sea....”

“From the Halls of Montezuma

To the shores of Tripoli,

We have fought our country’s battles

On the land and on the sea....”

and it closes, gloriously:

“If the Army and the NavyEver look on heaven’s scenes,They will find the streets are guardedBy United States Marines....”

“If the Army and the Navy

Ever look on heaven’s scenes,

They will find the streets are guarded

By United States Marines....”

This platoon, however, led by a brazen-throated gunnery sergeant, is roaring out:

“Bang away, Lulu....”

[Soldiers]

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