VTHE RHINE

The bugles went while it was still as dark as the inside of a dog. There was swearing and sickly yellow candle-light in the billets, mean houses in a mean little Rhine-Province town, and the chow lines formed on the company galleys in an icy December rain. The rain pattered on helmets and mess-kits, and fell in slanting lines through the smoky circles of light where the cooking-fires burned feebly. The faces of the Marines, as they filed out of the dark for food, were gray and frowsy. The cooks issued corn-bill hash, and dared any man to growl on the coffee. How the hell could it be biled enough, with wet wood and very little of that—been up all night as it is—you sports just pull in your necks! The companies gulped their ration in sullen silence, rolled damp blankets into the prescribed pack, and when the bugles squawked assembly, they fell in without confusion or enthusiasm. Platoon sergeants, with flash-lights or lanterns, called the rolls; somewhere out in front, first-sergeants received the reports; officers clumped along the lines to their units, grumbling.—“All here, first sergeant?”—“Beg the capt’n’s pardon—couldn’t see you in the dark, sir—all present-counted-for, sir!—” “Nice day for a hike. Major says, goin’ to the Rhine to-day. Eighteen or twenty kilomets—don’t know exactly. Dam’ such a war! I’d like the old kind, where youwent into winter quarters—Brrr—” The captain pulled his collar around his ears.

Presently a bad-tempered drawling voice bayed “Squads right—march!—” There was a shuffle of hobnails in the mud, and the rattle of rifle-slings. The 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines took the road.

These German roads were all honestly metalled, but the inch or so of mud on the surface was like soup underfoot, and the overcoats soaked up the rain like blotting-paper. It was the kind of a morning with no line between night and daylight. The blackness turned to gray, and, after a while, the major, on his horse, could look back and see the end of his column. The battalion, he reflected, was up to strength again. It hadn’t been this large since it went to Blanc Mont, the end of September. He shut his eyes on that thought—a hundred and thirty men that came out, where a thousand went in—then replacements, and, after the Armistice, more replacements. Perhaps the quality was running down a little. The new chaps didn’t seem as tall and broad as the old men, the tall, sunburnt leathernecks that went out the road from Meaux, toward Château-Thierry, in the spring. Odd, just six months since the spring.... But a few veterans and hard drilling between fights would keep the temper in an outfit ... one remembered a phrase in an order of the division commander’s—“The 2d Division has never failed to impose its will upon the enemy....” And to-day it crossed the German Rhine.... He swung out of his saddle and stood by the road to watch them pass; 1,200 men, helmets and rifles gleaming a little in the wet gray light....

The cooks issued corn-bill hash and dared any man to growl.

The road led eastward through a country of low hills, sodden in the rain. Untidy clouds sprawled on the crests and spilled wet filaments into the valleys. The land was all in cultivation, laid off in precise squares and oblongs; some newly ploughed, some sparsely green with turnips and rape. It looked ugly and ordered and sullenly prosperous. There was slow conversation in the column.

A nice day for a hike.

“—Anybody know where we goin’ to-day?” “Damfino—naw—I did hear the skipper’s orderly say we’d make the Rhine, some time—” “How far—” “Some guy was lookin’ at a map at battalion. Said it was about thirty kilomets.” “Jesus on his golden throne!—It’s always ’bout thirty kilomets in this dam’ country—” “Yeh! But I remember one time it was twelve kilomets. The night we hiked up to Verdun, back last March. Had a Frawg guide—little shrimp wit’ a forked beard. Ask him how far, all he’d say was: ‘Dooz kilomets—dooz kilomets—’ Hiked all night in the rain, like this, an’ at daylight we come to a sign, wit’ the name of the place we’re goin’ to, an’ it said ‘Dooz kilomets’—that guide, he let on that he was right su’prised—” But there were very few men in the column who remembered the hike to Verdun, in the early spring of 1918; in one company eight, in another eleven; in the whole battalion the barest handful. It had been a long road. The first way-station was the Bois de Belleau; a lot of people stopped there, and were there yet. And there were more, comfortably rotting in the Forêt de Retz, south of Soissons. And more yet, well dead around Blanc Mont. And a vast drift of them back in hospitals. Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.... Twelve hundred men hiking to the Rhine, and how many ghosts.... The mist rolled around the column.

“—You replacements never knew Corp’ral Snair, that got bumped off at Soissons, dallyin’ with a Maxim gun. He was a musical cuss, an’ he uster sing a song to the tune of the ‘Old Gray Mare—She Ain’t What She Uster Be’—somethin’ like

‘The U. S. flag will fly over GermanyLess than a year from now——’

‘The U. S. flag will fly over Germany

Less than a year from now——’

Men walked silent, remembering the old dead.

—and now it is, an’ it’s a pity he ain’t here to see it—” “Well, but he’s restin’ easy where he is—me, I’m cold as hell an’ this dam’ drizzle is drainin’ down my neck——”

There was nothing but the mist and the rain, and a mean, cold little wind with a bite in it. North and south, from the edge of Holland to the Metz gateway, all the armies were marching. Ahead, just out of contact, went the German armies. The battalion passed a dense little wood of firs—Christmas-tree woods, the battalion called them. This clump showed unmistakably that it had been a camp; but there was no litter; the Boche who bivouacked there had left it neat and clean. Along the road in orderly piles were some hundreds of the round German helmets, and parked precisely in a cleared place, where horse-lines had been, was a battery of 105 field howitzers. The old Boche was jettisoning what he didn’t need. The battalion observed and was thoughtful.

“What about the ole Boche?—You think he was licked enough?” “No, I don’t. That stuff back there, they laid it down under orders, like they do everything. It’s stacked—it ain’t just thrown away. An’ look how they police up behind themselves—” “Yeh! Remember the other day, when we was advance-guard, we could see their rear-guard, sometimes—perfect order, an’ all that—not like a defeated outfit, at all!” “Sure! I hope to spit in yo’ mess-kit it ain’t! An’ those little towns back yonder, with the arches an’ the flags and the welcome returnin’ heroes stuff—none o’ that was for us—” “They ain’t licked enough. Look at this country—winter ploughin’ done—everything ship-shape—no shell-holes—no trenches—nobarb’ wire—who in hell won this war, anyway?” “You said it. We oughter got up in here an’ showed the old Boche what it was like, to have a war in his own yard.” “Well, I’ve been in all of it, an’ pers’nally I was glad when the shootin’ stopped. I got me some sleep an’ a full belly, an’ a pair of new shoes—an’ some fireman’s underwear, too. An’ I was right proud not to be killed. I ain’t prepared to die—” “We know you ain’t, sergeant—we know—” “Aw, belay that—I mean, I was glad, myself, but we oughter gone on—oughter’ve finished it while we was at it. He wasn’t licked enough, an’ now he’s goin’ home like a peacock wit’ seven tails——!”

This was the consensus of opinion, delivered with consideration in the rain. The replacements, especially those who had joined up after the Armistice, in Belgium, were savagely regretful. The chaps who had come in after the Champagne, and been among those present at one fight, were bloodthirsty, but to a lesser degree. Only the veterans were entirely calm.

The rain fell, the road grew heavier. The battalion, soaked and miserable, plodded on. They passed through many villages, all alike; all ugly and without character. The houses were closed and shuttered. You saw few people, but you always had the feeling of eyes behind the shutters. One thick-bodied Boche, in uniform—an artilleryman, by his leather breeches—stood in the doorway of a house, smoking a porcelain pipe that hung to his knee. His face was set in a cast of hate. He stood and stared, and the battalion, passing, looked him over with respect.

One thick-bodied Boche.... His face in a cast of hate.

“Understand a bird like that.” “Yeh—he’s honest. Those dam’ Heinies in the billet last night, they made me sick. That fellow that talked English. Says he was glad his American frien’s, present by agreement in the Rheinlan’, to welcome—says that to me, an’ would the Herr Soldier like a good cup of coffee?” “Dam’ his remarks—how ’bout the coffee?” “Well, it tasted funny, but it was hot.” “Old guy at our billet gave us some cognac. Hot stuff! He didn’t let on, though.—You know those trick certif’cates a soldier’s family gets in Germany?—Colored picture like a Croi’ Guerre certif’cate, shows a fat, beer-drinkin’-Heinie angel standin’ over a dead Boche—signed Wilhelm I. R.—you know. Well, this bird had six of them in his front room, all framed on the wall. I gathered they was his sons. Four bumped off at Verdun in 1916. One very recent—Soissons, July.—Wonder if we met that fella? He stood there an’ looked at me while I was readin’ them, an’ he looked like a wolf. I don’t blame him—. But howcome he gave us the cognac—?” Later the battalion learned that the Boche had orders to be hospitable....

Toward noon the clouds lifted, and the rain slowed to a thin drizzle, although it did not stop. The battalion filed between hills toward a great valley, dimly seen. The hills towered over them, dark, menacing—“No wonder the ole Boche has such a mean disposition, livin’ in a country like this—” The battalion came into a town with paved streets and trolley-cars and tall factory chimneys that did not smoke. Platoon commanders said it was Remagen; those towers to the right would be the bridge. There was a bridge, a great steel structure of high black arches. The battalion filed upon it. Under it black water flowed swiftly, with surges and eddies dimpled by the rain. High rocky hills came down out of the mist on the farther side.

“So this is the Rhine,” remarked the battalion. “Hell!” A few files were interested. A lank Texan said: “I don’t see much to make a fuss about. You boys ever see the Trinity in overflow time? Ten miles from bank to bank, in the McKenzie Bend country—why, we’d call this a creek down where I come from—” “Naw, it ain’t much river—an’ no more is your dam’ Trinity! I was raised in Sent Louie—Ole Miss’sip’, now—” “Well, rivers in this country are mainly over-touted. That Marne, it wouldn’t be much more’n a branch, down South. I never saw that there Vesle River, but a guy in the 32d Division, that was with me in Neuilly, he says you could mighty near jump across it.” “Heard anything about chow?—Galleys went on ahead awhile ago—when do we eat——”

For four years no hostile troops with arms in their hands had seen this river; only sad files of prisoners had crossed it, under German guard. The battalion turned right on the eastern bank and went up the river, on a broad road between a cliff and the swift black water. There were many houses, a continuous town. It was past noon of a Friday, the 13th December, and the Boche school-children were out. They gathered to look at the passing column. The Marines eyed them keenly. These kids were different. They did not point or talk or cry out, after the manner of children. They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced, with unwinking pale-blue eyes. The boys were nearly all in field-gray uniform cloth—cut down, perhaps, from the cast-off clothes of an elder. Some of them wore boots and round soldier-caps. They carried books and lunch-boxes, knapsack fashion, on their shoulders.—“Look, will you—that kid there ain’t more’n a yearlin’, and they’ve got him in heavy marchin’ order a’ready!” “Yeh,—they start ’em early—that’s howcome they’re the way they are—these Boche.” There were round-faced little girls with straw-colored braids, in cloaks. They did not look poorly fed, like the waxen-faced children the battalion remembered in France. And at every corner there were more of them. The battalion was impressed.—“Say—you see all those kids—all those little square-heads! Hundreds of ’em, I’ll swear! Something’s got to be done about these people. I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children——”

They stood in stolid groups, wooden-faced.

“I tell you, these Boche are dangerous! They have too many children.”

The 1st Battalion of the Rhine—5th Marines took the road.

SONGSFIVE“LONG BOY”

One of the very few soldier songs that survived the Atlantic voyage—although it suffered some sea change—was “Long Boy.” It ran (with variations):

“Good-bye, Maw! Good-bye, Paw!Good-bye, mule, with your old hee-haw....· · · · ·I’ll bring you a Turk an’ a Kaiser too,And that’s about all one fellow can do....”

“Good-bye, Maw! Good-bye, Paw!Good-bye, mule, with your old hee-haw....

“Good-bye, Maw! Good-bye, Paw!

Good-bye, mule, with your old hee-haw....

· · · · ·

I’ll bring you a Turk an’ a Kaiser too,And that’s about all one fellow can do....”

I’ll bring you a Turk an’ a Kaiser too,

And that’s about all one fellow can do....”

This file is cheering his soul in the angle of the bridge at Silly-le-Long, just outside of Cognac Pete’s buvette. In a little while an M. P. with no ear for music will run him in.

[Soldier]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESTypos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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