IVMONKEY-MEAT

In a mangled place called the Wood Northwest of Lucy-le-Bocage two lieutenants of the Marine Brigade squatted by a hole the size of a coffin and regarded with attention certain cooking operations. The older, and perhaps the dirtier of the two, was intent upon a fire-blackened mess-kit, which was balanced on two stones and two German bayonets over a can of solidified alcohol. In the mess-kit was simmering a grayish and unattractive matter with doubtful yellowish lumps, into which the lieutenant fed, discriminatingly, bits of hard bread and frayed tomatoes from a can.

“Do what you will with it,” he observed, “monkey-meat is monkey-meat. It’s a great pity that damn Tompkins had to get himself bumped off last night when we came out. He had a way with monkey-meat, the kid did—hell! I never have any luck with orderlies!” He prodded the mess of Argentine beef—the French army’s canned meat ration—and stared sombrely. His eyes, a little bloodshot in his sunburnt, unshaven face, were sleepy.

The other waited on two canteen cups stilted precariously over a pale-lavender flame. The water in them began to boil, and he supplied coffee—the coarse-ground, pale coffee of the Frogs—with a spoon that shook a little. He considered: “S’poseI’d better boil the sugar in with it,” he decided. “There isn’t so much of it, you know. We’ll taste it more.” And he added the contents of a little muslin sack—heavy beet-sugar that looked like sand. His face was pale and somewhat troubled, and his week’s beard was straggling and unwholesome. He was not an out-of-doors man—and he was battalion scout officer. A gentleman over-sensitive for the rude business of war, he would continue to function until he broke—and one sensed that he would suffer while about it....

“I don’t like monkey-meat. Before this smell”—he waved his spoon petulantly—“got into my nose I never could eat it. But now you can’t smell but one thing, and, after all, you’ve got to eat.”

The smell he referred to lay through the wood like a tangible fog that one could feel against the cheek and see. It was the nub-end of June, and many battalions of fighting men had lain in the Wood Northwest of Lucy, going up to the front a little way forward or coming out to stand by in support. It was a lovely place for supports; you could gather here and debouch toward any part of the sector, from Hill 142, on the left, through the Bois de Belleau and Bouresches, to Vaux, where the infantry brigade took on. Many men had lain in the wood, and many men lay in it still. Some of these were buried very casually. Others, in hidden tangles of it, along its approaches, and in the trampled areas beyond it where attack and counter-attack had broken for nearly a month of days and nights, hadn’t been buried at all. And always there were more, and the June sun grew hotter as it made toward July.

“Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up!”

Troops lay in the wood now; a battalion of the 6th and two companies of the 5th Regiment outfit, half of which was still in line on the flank of the Bois de Belleau. These companies had come out at dawn, attended by shell-fire; they had plunged into the wood and slept where they halted, unawakened—except the wounded—by the methodical shelling to which the Boche treated the place every day. Now, in the evening, they were awake and hungry. They squatted, each man in his hole, and did what they could about it. A savage-looking lot, in battered helmets and dirty uniforms. But you saw them cleaning their rifles....

The scout officer, with his hand out to lift away the coffee, which was, in his judgment, boiled, heard: “Mr. Braxton? Yeh, he’s up thataway, with the lootenant.” “Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you—what’s up? Hey?” “Scout officer? Over yonder, him wit’ the green blouse—” and a soiled battalion runner, identified by his red brassard and his air of one laden with vital information, clumped up and saluted sketchily.

“Sir, the major wants to see the battalion scout officer at battalion headquarters. The major said: Right away, sir.”

The scout officer swore, inexpertly, for he was not a profane fellow, but with infinite feeling. “Good God, I hope it ain’t—If you can keep my coffee hot, Tommie—Be right back as soon as I can. Save my slum. Don’t let anything happen to my slum—” The words trailed in the air as he went swiftly off, buckling his pistol-belt. The battalion commander was that kind of an officer.

The lieutenant growled in sympathy: “Somebody’s always takin’ the joy out of life. Jim, he’s hungry as I am, an’ that’sas hungry as a bitch wolf. That’s the trouble with this war stuff; man misses too many meals.” He took the cooking from the fire and replaced the lids on the little alcohol-cans with care. Canned heat was quite hard to come by; the Boche was much better provided with it; he was indebted for this to a deceased German gentleman, and it was the last he had.

“No tellin’ what the old man wants. Glad I ain’t a scout officer. This war’s hard on Jim—he takes it too serious. I’ll wait, though.” Absently he drank the tomato juice left in the can. He tried his coffee, and burned his mouth. “Wish I had the man here that invented this aluminum canteen cup! Time the damn cup’s cool enough so you won’t burn the hide off yo’ lip, the coffee’s stone cold.” Then, later: “Not boiled enough. Jim, he’s used to bein’ waited on—never make a rustler, he won’t....

“Well, he’s long in comin’. Old man sent him forward to make a map or something, most prob’ly.” He tasted the slum. “That Tompkins! Why the hell he had to stop one—only man I ever knew that could make this monkey-meat taste like anything! And he goes and gets bumped off. Hell! That’s the way with these kids. This needs an onion.”

“He takes the war too serious.”

He ate half the mess, with scrupulous exactness, and drank his coffee. He put the lid on the mess-kit, and covered Jim’s coffee, now getting cold. He smoked a cigarette and talked shop with his platoon sergeant. He gave some very hard words and his last candle-end to a pale private who admitted blistered heels, and then stood over the man while he tallowed his noisome socks. He interviewed his chaut-chaut gunners, and sent them off to beg new clips from the battalion quartermaster sergeant. It grew into the long French twilight; Boche planes were about, and all the anti-aircraft stuff in the neighborhood was furiously in action. Strolling back to his hole, the lieutenant observed that the pale private had resumed his shoes and was rolling his puttees with a relieved look. At this moment the nose-cap of a 75 came whimpering and hirpling down out of the heavens and gutted the fellow.... When that was cleaned up, the lieutenant lay in his hole, weighing the half-empty mess-kit in his hands, and trusted that nothing unseemly had happened to Jim. He thought of going up to battalion to see what was doing—but the major liked for you to stay with your men, unless he sent for you.... “Well! Might as well get some sleep....”

Toward dark the Boche began to slam 77s and 150s into the Wood northwest of Lucy. It became a place of horror, with stark cries in the night, between the rending crashes of the shells. About an hour before midnight the word was passed and the two companies got out and went up across the pestilential wheat-fields and into the Bois de Belleau.

That same afternoon an unassigned colonel had come up to Brigade Headquarters. Wanted to go to Paris, he did, and the brigade commander said that the only way to get there was to bring in a prisoner. One prisoner; seven days’ leave. Be glad to get a prisoner. Intelligence had word of a new division or so moved in over there last night; identification not yet positive.

This colonel took steps. He was a man of parts and verydesirous of the fleshpots of the Place de l’Opéra. There was an elegant French captain attached to brigade for no very evident reason—just attached—spoke English and knew vintages. Said to be an expert on raids. The colonel put it up to him in such and such a way: would he go? Yes, but certainly. Just a small raid, my colonel? Oh, a very small raid. Now, as to artillery support—a map was broken out.

Brigade artillery officer—chap the colonel knew out on the Asiatic station—happened in. How about it—just about half as much stuff as you fellows wasted on the Tartar Wall that time—eh? Sure: it could be arranged. Ten minutes’ intensive; say, one battery; where you want it? Brigade intelligence took thought: They’ve got some kind of a strong point out from the ruined airdrome in front of Torcy. Their line is through Torcy; battalion in there. Left of the Bois—see here? Our photos show two big craters—some of the heavy stuff they shot at the railroad the 29th of May, or the 30th, most likely—eh, m’sieur le capitaine? Might look at that, colonel. Best jump-off is from Terry’s battalion—about here—he has two companies here. Six hundred yards to go; keep the Bois well away—well starboard, as you leathernecks say; come back the same route. Wheat. Little gully here. Craters just beyond. Main line at least a hundred metres back. Good? Let’s call up Terry and see if he’ll give you the men.... Terry would give him twenty-five men and two chaut-chauts and not a Marine more. Who wanted a raid, anyway? Sending two support companies up to the Bois as soon as it’s dark. Looks interestin’ on the right.... Good! All set. Start your covering fire at 23 hours 15. You jump off at23 hours 19. Take you six minutes to get over, huh? “All right, colonel, bonne chance!”

Just before dark the colonel and Captain de Stegur were at battalion headquarters. “Whitehead will give you your men, and I’m sending my scout officer along. Needs that sort of thing. Be sure you come back where you went out. Crabbe’s to the right of there. You know Crabbe. Shoots quick.”

“But, my colonel,” represented Captain de Stegur, “one should arrange, one should explain, one should instruct—in effect, one should rehearse——”

“Rehearse hell, sir! I’m due in Paris to-morrow night. Where those Marines, major? I’ll tell ’em what I want——”

So it was that a wedge of men debouched into the wheat at 23 hours 19 minutes;[1]it being sufficiently dark.

1. 11.19P. M.

The battalion scout officer and a disillusioned sergeant, with hash marks on his sleeve, were the point. The men were echeloned back, right, and left with an automatic rifle on each flank. In the centre marched the colonel, smoking, to the horror of all, a cigar. Smoking was not done up there, after dark. With him was the elegant French captain, who appeared to be very gallantly resigned to it. The story would, he reflected, amaze and delight his mess—if he ever got back with it! These droll Americans! He must remember just what this colonel said: a type,Nom de Dieu! If only he had not worn his new uniform—the cloth chosen by his wife, you conceive——

The 75s flew with angry whines that arched across the skyand smote with red and green flames along a line.... There was a spatter of rifle-fire toward the right; flares went up over the dark loom of the Bois; a certain violence of machine-gun fire grew up and waxed to great volume, but always to the right. Forward, where the shells were breaking, there was nothing....

The scout officer, leading, had out his canteen and wet his dry mouth. He was acutely conscious of his empty stomach. His mind dwelt yearningly on the mess-kit, freighted nobly with monkey-meat and tomatoes, awaiting him in the dependable Tommy’s musette. “Hope to God nothing happens to old Tommy!” The wheat caught at his ankles and he hated war. Lord, how these night operations make a man sweat! He went down a little gully and out of it, the sergeant at his shoulder, breathing on his neck. That crater—he visualized his map—it should be right yonder—two of them. A hundred metres forward the last shells burst, and he saw new dirt. Ahead, a spot darker than the dark; he went up to it. Away on the right a flare soared, and something gleamed dull in the black hole at his feet—a round, deep helmet with the pale blur of a face under it; a click, and the shadow of a movement there, and a little flicker; a matter of split seconds; the scout officer had a bayonet in his stomach, almost—Feldritter Kurt Iden, Company 6 of the Margrave of Brandenburg Regiment (this established later by brigade intelligence, on examination of the pay-book of the deceased), being on front post with his squad, heard a noise hard on the cessation of the shelling, and put out his neck. Dear God, shoot! Shoot quickly!

The scout officer was conscious of a monstrous surge of temper.He gathered his feet under him, and his hands crooked like claws, and he hurled himself. In the same breath there was a long, bright flash right under his arm, and the mad crack of a Springfield. The disillusioned sergeant had estimated the situation, loosed off from the hip at perhaps seven feet, and shot the German through the throat. Too late to stop himself, the scout officer went head first into the crater, his hands locking on something wet and hairy, just the size to fill them; and presently he was at the bottom of the crater, dirt in his mouth and a buzzing in his head, strangling something that flopped and gurgled and made remarkable noises under his hands. There were explosions and people stepped hard on his back and legs. He became sane again and realized that whatever it was it was dead. He groped in his puttees for his knife, and cut off its shoulder-straps and a button or two, and looted its bosom of such papers as there were—these being details the complete scout officer must attend to. More explosions, and voices bleating “Kamaraden!”—terribly anxious voices—in his ear.

The disillusioned sergeant, a practical man, had ducked into the crater right behind the scout officer. The raiding-party in his rear had immediately fired their weapons in all directions. A great many rifles on forward stabbed the dark with sharp flame, and some of these were very near. The sergeant tossed a grenade at the nearest; he had toted that Frog citron grenade around for quite a while, somewhat against his judgment; he now reflected that it was good business—“grenades—I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit they are—ask the man that used one—” It was good business, for it fell fair in the other crater, thirty feet away, wherethe rest of that front-post squad were beginning to react like the brave German men they were. Two of these survived, much shaken, and scuttled into the clever little tunnel that connected them with the Feldritter’s crater, emerging with pacific cries at the sergeant’s very feet. Being a man not given to excitement, he accepted them alive, the while he dragged the scout officer standing. “We got our prisoners, sir. Le’s beat it,” he suggested. “Their lines is wakin’ up, sir. It’s gonna be bad here——”

The colonel, as gallant a man as ever lived, but not fast, barged into them. “Prisoners? Hey? How many? Two? Excellent, by God! Give ’em here, young man!” and he seized the unhappy Boches by their collars and shook them violently. “Thought you’d start something, hey? Thought you’d start something, hey?”

The scout officer now blew his whistle, the sergeant shouted in a voice of brass, and the colonel made the kind of remarks a colonel makes. The French captain, close alongside, delightedly registered further events for narrative. The raiding-party gathered itself—chaut-chaut gunners slamming out a final clip—and they all went back across the wheat. It is related by truthful Marines there present that every German in Von Boehn’s army fired on them as they went, but no two agree as to the manner of their return. It is, however, established that the colonel, bringing up the rear, halted about half-way over, drew his hitherto virgin pistol, and wheeled around for a parting shot—something in the nature ofun beau geste. Seeing this, the tall French captain, to his rear and left, drew his pistol and wheeled also, imagining pursuit. The colonel—and to this attest the scout officer and the sergeant—then shot the Frenchman through the—as sea-going Marines say—stern-sheets.

The scout officer and the sergeant got him back some way, both filled with admiration at his language.

“If I had my time to do over, I’d learn this here Froghabla,” remarked the sergeant afterward. “I don’t know what the bird said, but it sure sounded noble. Ample, I called it. Powerful ample.”

By the time they stumbled through the nervous outposts to their own place, the French captain had lapsed into English. “As a wound, you perceive, it is good for a permission. But it is not a wound. It is an indignity! And, besides, my new breeches!Ah, Dieu de Dieu! Ce sale colonel-ci!What will my wife say! That one, she chose the cloth herself!Tonnerre de canon!”—and he sank into stricken silence.

The raiding-party shook down in their several holes, praising God, and went to sleep. The colonel, with his prisoners, received the compliments of Battalion Headquarters and departed for brigade. The scout officer observed, to his amazement, that they had been out of their lines less than twenty minutes. “Where’s the 49th?” he wanted to know first. “Hell, Jim, they went up to the Bois right after the major sent for you. An’ the 17th. We’re moving Battalion Headquarters up there now. Get your people and come along. Attack or something.”

After a very full night, the scout officer crawled and scuttled along the last tip of the Bois de Belleau, looking for a hole that a battalion runner told him about. “Seen the lootenant diggin’ injust past that last Maxim gun, sir. Right at the nose of the woods where the big rocks is. There’s about a dozen dead Heinies layin’ by a big tree, all together. Can’t miss it, sir.” The scout officer had no desire to be moving in the cool of the morning, when all well-regulated people are asleep if possible, and if you moved here the old Boche had a way of sniping at you with 88s—that wicked, flat-trajectory Austrian gun—but he followed an urge that only Tommie could supply. “The damn slum will be cold, but two sardines and a piece of chocolate ain’t filling!” He ducked low behind a rock as an 88 ripped by and burst on the shredded stump of a great tree; he tumbled into a shell-crater, atop an infantryman and three bloated Germans long dead; he scrambled out and fell over two lank cadavers in a shallow hole, who raised their heads and cursed him drowsily; and he came at last to a miserable shelter scooped in the lee of a rock. Here two long legs protruded from under a brown German blanket, and here he prodded and shook until the deplorable countenance of his brother officer emerged yawning.

“Say,” demanded the scout officer, “you save my slum? Gimme my slum.”

“Why, hello, Jim! Why didn’t you come back, like you said you was? Where you been? You said you was comin’ right back.”

“Didn’t you save me my monkey-meat? We went on a raid, damn it. I——”

“Raid? Raid? What raid?”

“Oh, we went over to Torcy. Gimme my monkey-meat.”

“War—sure—is—hell.”

“Well, you see, Jim—the fact is—well, we got moved up here right after you left, and they attacked from in here, an’ we came on in after them. Just got to sleep——”

“I haven’t had any sleep or any chow or anything—two sardines, by the bright face of God!—” The scout officer pounced upon a frowsy musette bag which the other had used for a pillow and jerked out a fire-blackened mess-kit. He wrenched the lid off and snarled horribly. “Empty, by God!”

His hands fell lax across his knees. He looked sadly over the blasted fields to Torcy, and he said, with the cold bitterness of a man who has tried it all and come to a final conclusion: “War—sure—is—hell.”

SONGSFOUR“SWEET AD-O-LINE”

There were places like this down in the Touraine country, around the town Americans called St. Onion. Canals with poplars mirrored in them, where it was pleasant to loaf at the end of the day. The women were kindly and disposed to make friends; it is a pity that there were not enough to go around. They had, also, an eye for corporals and sergeants; the bored privates on the bank, sentimental souls, are singing “Sweet Ad-o-line....” or it may be something very different. The sergeant, a sensitive spirit, will presently see that they get some Extra Police Duty.

[Soldiers]

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