While the infantry were experiencing these initial thrills in the front line, our gunners were struggling in the mud of the black gun pits to get their pieces intoposition in the quickest possible time, and achieve the honour of firing that first American shot in the war.
Each battery worked feverishly in intense competition with every other battery. Battery A of the 6th Field, to which I had attached myself, lost in the race for the honour. Another battery in the same regiment accomplished the achievement.
That was Battery C of the 6th Field Artillery. I am reproducing, herewith, for what I believe is the first time, the exact firing data on that shot and the officers and men who took part in it.
By almost superhuman work through the entire previous day and night, details of men from Battery C had pulled one cannon by ropes across a muddy, almost impassable, meadow. So anxious were they to get off the first shot that they did not stop for meals.
They managed to drag the piece into an old abandoned French gun pit. The historical position of that gun was one kilometre due east of the town of Bathelemont and three hundred metres northeast of the Bauzemont-Bathelemont road. The position was located two miles from the old international boundary line between France and German-Lorraine. The position was one and one-half kilometres back of the French first line, then occupied by Americans.
The first shot was fired at 6:5:10 A. M., October 23rd, 1917. Those who participated in the firing of the shot were as follows:
Lieutenant F. M. Mitchell, U.S.R., acted as platoon chief.Corporal Robert Braley laid the piece.Sergeant Elward Warthen loaded the piece.Sergeant Frank Grabowski prepared the fuse for cutting.Private Louis Varady prepared the fuse for cutting.Private John J. Wodarczak prepared the fuse for cutting.Corporal Osborne W. De Varila prepared the fuse for cutting.Sergeant Lonnie Domonick cut the fuse.Captain Idus R. McLendon gave the command to fire.Sergeant Alex L. Arch fired first shot.
The missile fired was a 75 millimetre or 3-inch high-explosive shell. The target was a German battery of 150 millimetre or 6-inch guns located two kilometres back of the German first line trenches, and one kilometre in back of the boundary line between France and German-Lorraine. The position of that enemy battery on the map was in a field 100 metres west of the town which the French still call Xanrey, but which the Germans have called Schenris since they took it from France in 1870. Near that spot—and damn near—fell the first American shell fired in the great war.
Note: It is peculiar to note that I am writing this chapter at Atlantic City, October 23rd, 1918, just one year to the day after the event. That shot surely started something.
It was in the Luneville sector, described in the preceding chapter, that the first American fighting men faced the Germans on the western front. It was there that the enemy captured its first American prisoners in a small midnight raid; it was there that we captured some prisoners of theirs, and inflicted our first German casualties; it was there that the first American fighting man laid down his life on the western front.
In spite of these facts, however, the occupation of those front line posts in that sector constituted nothing more than a post-graduate course in training under the capable direction of French instructors who advised our officers and men in everything they did.
At the conclusion of the course, which extended over a number of weeks, the American forces engaged in it were withdrawn from the line and retired for a well-earned rest period and for reorganisation purposes in areas back of the line. There they renewed equipment and prepared for the occupation of the first all-American sector on the western front.
That sector was located in Lorraine some distance to the east of the Luneville front. It was north and slightly west of the city of Toul. It was on the east side of the St. Mihiel salient, then occupied by the Germans.
The sector occupied a position in what the French called the Pont-à-Mousson front. Our men were to occupy an eight-mile section of the front line trenches extending from a point west of the town of Flirey, to apoint west of the ruins of the town of Seicheprey. The position was not far from the French stronghold of Verdun to the northwest or the German stronghold of Metz to the northeast, and was equidistant from both.
That line changed from French blue to American khaki on the night of January 21st. The sector became American at midnight. I watched the men as they marched into the line. In small squads they proceeded silently up the road toward the north, from which direction a raw wind brought occasional sounds resembling the falling of steel plates on the wooden floor of a long corridor.
A half moon doubly ringed by mist, made the hazy night look grey. At intervals, phantom flashes flushed the sky. The mud of the roadway formed a colourless paste that made marching not unlike skating on a platter of glue.
This was their departure for the front—this particular battalion—the first battalion of the 16th United States Infantry. I knew, and every man in it knew, what was before them.
Each man was in for a long tour of duty in trenches knee-deep with melted snow and mud. Each platoon commander knew the particular portion of that battle-battered bog into which he must lead his men. Each company commander knew the section of shell-punctured, swamp land that was his to hold, and the battalion commander, a veteran American soldier, was well aware of the particular perils of the position which his one thousand or more men were going to occupy in the very jaw-joint of a narrowing salient.
All branches of the United States military forces may take special pride in that first battalion that went into the new American line that night. The commanderrepresented the U. S. Officers Reserve Corps, and the other officers and men were from the reserves, the regulars, West Point, the National Guard and the National Army. Moreover, the organisation comprised men from all parts of the United States as well as men whose parents had come from almost every race and nationality in the world. One company alone possessed such a babble of dialects among its new Americans, that it proudly called itself, the Foreign Legion.
For two days the battalion had rested in the mud of the semi-destroyed village of Ansauville, several miles back of the front. A broad, shallow stream, then at the flood, wound through and over most of the village site. Walking anywhere near the border of the water, one pulled about with him pounds of tenacious, black gumbo. Dogs and hogs, ducks and horses, and men,—all were painted with nature's handiest camouflage.
Where the stream left the gaping ruins of a stone house on the edge of the village, there was a well-kept French graveyard, clinging to the slope of a small hill. Above the ruins of the hamlet, stood the steeple of the old stone church, from which it was customary to ring the alarm when the Germans sent over their shells of poison gas.
Our officers busied themselves with, unfinished supply problems. Such matters as rubber boots for the men, duck boards for the trenches, food for the mules, and ration containers necessary for the conveyance of hot food to the front lines, were not permitted to interfere with the battalion's movements. In war, there is always the alternative of doing without or doing with makeshifts, and that particular battalion commander, after three years of war, was the kind of a soldier whomade the best of circumstances no matter how adverse they may have been.
That commander was Major Griffiths. He was an American fighting man. His military record began in the Philippine Insurrection, when, as a sergeant in a Tennessee regiment of National Guard, he was mentioned in orders for conspicuous gallantry. At the suppression of the insurrection, he became a major in the United States Constabulary in the Philippines. He resigned his majority in 1914, entered the Australian forces, and was wounded with them in the bloody landing at Gallipoli. He was invalided to England, where, upon his partial recovery, he was promoted to major in the British forces and was sent to France in command of a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. With them, he received two more wounds, one at the Battle of Ypres, and another during the fighting around Loos.
He was in an English hospital when America entered the war, but he hurried his convalescence and obtained a transfer back to the army of his own country. He hadn't regained as yet the full use of his right hand, his face still retained a hospital pallor, and an X-ray photograph of his body revealed the presence of numerous pieces of shell still lodged there. But on that night of January 21st, he could not conceal the pride that he felt in the honour in having been the one chosen to command the battalion of Americans that was to take over the first American sector in France. Major Griffiths survived those strenuous days on the Pont-à-Mousson front, but he received a fatal wound three months later at the head of his battalion in front of Catigny, in Picardy. He died fighting under his own flag.
Just before daylight failed that wintry day, three poilus walked down the road from the front and intoAnsauville. Two of them were helping a third, whose bandaged arm and shoulder explained the mission of the party. As they passed the rolling kitchens where the Americans were receiving their last meal before entering the trenches, there was silence and not even an exchange of greetings or smiles.
This lack of expression only indicated the depth of feeling stirred by the appearance of this wounded French soldier. The incident, although comparatively trivial, seemed to arouse within our men a solemn grimness and a more fervent determination to pay back the enemy in kind. In silence, our men finished that last meal, which consisted of cold corned beef, two slices of dry bread per man, and coffee.
The sight of that one wounded man did not make our boys realise more than they already did, what was in front of them. They had already made a forty mile march over frozen roads up to this place and had incurred discomforts seemingly greater than a shell-shattered arm or a bullet-fractured shoulder. After that gruelling hiking experience, it was a pleasant prospect to look forward to a chance of venting one's feelings on the enemy.
At the same time, no chip-on-the-shoulder cockiness marked the disposition of these men about to take first grips with the Germans,—no challenging bravado was revealed in the actions or statements of these grim, serious trail-blazers of the American front, whose attitude appeared to be one of soldierly resignation to the first martial principle, "Orders is orders."
As the companies lined up in the village street in full marching order, awaiting the command to move, several half-hearted attempts at jocularity died cold. One irrepressible made a futile attempt at frivolity byannouncing that he had Cherokee blood in his veins and was so tough he could "spit battleships." This attempted jocularity drew as much mirth as an undertaker's final invitation to the mourners to take the last, long look at the departed.
One bright-faced youngster tingling with the thrill of anticipation, leaped on a gun carriage and absently whistled a shrill medley, beginning with "Yaka-hula," and ending with "Just a Song at Twilight." There was food for thought in the progress of his efforts from the frivolous to the pensive, but there was little time for such thoughts. No one even told him to shut up.
While there was still light, an aerial battle took place overhead. For fifteen minutes, the French anti-aircraft guns banged away at three German planes, which were audaciously sailing over our lines. The Americans rooted like bleacherites for the guns but the home team failed to score, and the Germans sailed serenely home. They apparently had had time to make adequate observations.
During the entire afternoon, German sausage balloons had hung high in the air back of the hostile line, offering additional advantages for enemy observation. On the highroad leading from Ansauville, a conspicuous signL'enemie vous voitinformed newcomers that German eyes were watching their movements and could interfere at any time with a long range shell. The fact was that the Germans held high ground and their glasses could command almost all of the terrain back of our lines.
Under this seemingly eternal espionage punctuated at intervals by heavy shelling, several old women of the village had remained in their homes, living above the ground on quiet days and moving their knitting to thefront yard dugout at times when gas and shell and bomb interfered. Some of these women operated small shops in the front rooms of their damaged homes and the Americans lined up in front of the window counters and exchanged dirty French paper money for cannedpâté de foi grasor jars of mustard.
A machine gun company with mule-drawn carts led the movement from Ansauville into the front. It was followed at fifty yard intervals by other sections. Progress down that road was executed in small groups—it was better to lose one whole section than an entire company.
That highroad to the front, with its border of shell-withered trees, was revealed that night against a bluish grey horizon occasionally rimmed with red. Against the sky, the moving groups were defined as impersonal black blocks. Young lieutenants marched ahead of each platoon. In the hazy light, it was difficult to distinguish them. The only difference was that their hips seemed bulkier from the heavy sacks, field glasses, map cases, canteens, pistol holsters and cartridge clips.
Each section, as it marched out of the village, passed under the eye of Major Griffiths, who sat on his horse in the black shadow of a wall. A sergeant commanding one section was coming toward him.
"Halt!" ordered the Major. "Sergeant, where is your helmet?"
"One of the men in my section is wearing it, sir," replied the Sergeant.
"Why?" snapped the Major.
"Somebody took his and he hadn't any," said the Sergeant, "so I made him wear mine, sir."
"Get it back and wear it yourself," the Major ordered."Nothing could hurt the head of a man who couldn't hang on to his own helmet."
The order was obeyed, the section marched on and a bareheaded Irishman out of hearing of the Major said, "I told the Sergeant not to make me wear it; I don't need the damn thing."
Another section passed forward, the moonlight gleaming on the helmets jauntily cocked over one ear and casting black shadows over the faces of the wearers. From these shadows glowed red dots of fire.
"Drop those cigarettes," came the command from the all watchful, unseen presence mounted on the horse in the shadow of the wall. Automatically, the section spouted red arcs that fell to the road on either side in a shower of sparks.
"It's a damn shame to do that." Major Griffith spoke to me standing beside his horse. "You can't see a cigarette light fifty yards away, but if there were no orders against smoking, the men would be lighting matches or dumping pipes, and such flashes can be seen."
There was need for caution. The enemy was always watchful for an interval when one organisation was relieving another on the line. That period represented the time when an attack could cause the greatest confusion in the ranks of the defenders. But that night our men accomplished the relief of the French Moroccan division then in the line without incident.
Two nights later, in company with a party of correspondents, I paid a midnight visit to our men in the front line trenches of that first American sector. With all lights out, cigarettes tabooed and the siren silenced, our overloaded motor slushed slowly along the shell-pitted roads, carefully skirting groups of marching menand lumbering supply wagons that took shape suddenly out of the mist-laden road in front of us.
Although it was not raining, moisture seemed to drip from everything, and vapours from the ground, mixing with the fog overhead, almost obscured the hard-working moon.
In the greyness of the night sight and smell lost their keenness, and familiar objects assumed unnatural forms, grotesque and indistinct.
From somewhere ahead dull, muffled thumps in the mist brought memories of spring house cleaning and the dusting out of old cushions, but it was really the three-year-old song of the guns. Nature had censored observation by covering the spectacle with the mantle of indefiniteness. Still this was the big thing we had come to see—night work in and behind the front lines of the American sector.
We approached an engineers' dump, where the phantoms of fog gradually materialised into helmeted khaki figures that moved in mud knee-deep and carried boxes and planks and bundles of tools. Total silence covered all the activity and not a ray of light revealed what mysteries had been worked here in surroundings that seemed no part of this world.
An irregular pile of rock loomed grey and sinister before us, and, looking upward, we judged, from its gaping walls, that it was the remains of a church steeple. It was the dominating ruin in the town of Beaumont.
"Turn here to the left," the officer conducting our party whispered into the ear of the driver.
The sudden execution of the command caused the officer's helmet to rasp against that of the driver with a sound that set the cautious whispering to naught.
"Park here in the shadow," he continued. "Make nonoise; show no light. They dropped shells here ten minutes ago. Gentlemen, this is regimental headquarters. Follow me."
In a well buttressed cellar, surmounted by a pile of ruins, we found the colonel sitting at a wooden table in front of a grandfather's clock of scratched mahogany. He called the roll—five special correspondents, Captain Chandler, American press officer, with a goatee and fur coat to match; Captain Vielcastel, a French press officer, who is a marquis and speaks English, and a lieutenant from brigade headquarters, who already had been named "Whispering Willie."
The colonel offered sticks to those with the cane habit. With two runners in the lead, we started down what had been the main street of the ruined village.
"I can't understand the dropping of that shell over here to-night," the colonel said. "When we relieved the French, there had been a long-standing agreement against such discourtesy. It's hard to believe the Boche would make a scrap of paper out of that agreement. They must have had a new gunner on the piece. We sent back two shells into their regimental headquarters. They have been quiet since."
Ten minutes' walk through the mud, and the colonel stopped to announce: "Within a hundred yards of you, a number of men are working. Can you hear 'em?"
No one could, so he showed us a long line of sweating Americans stretching off somewhere into the fog. Their job was more of the endless trench digging and improving behind the lines. While one party swung pick and spade in the trenches, relief parties slept on the ground nearby. The colonel explained that these parties arrived after dark, worked all night, and then carefully camouflaged all evidences of new earth and departed beforedaylight, leaving no trace of their night's work to be discovered by prying airman. Often the work was carried on under an intermittent shelling, but that night only two shells had landed near them.
An American-manned field gun shattered the silence, so close to us that we could feel its breath and had a greater respect for its bite. The proximity of the gun had not even been guessed by any of our party. A yellow stab of flame seemed to burn the mist through which the shell screeched on its way toward Germany.
Correspondent Junius Woods, who was wearing an oversized pair of hip rubber boots, immediately strapped the tops to his belt.
"I am taking no chance," he said; "I almost jumped out of them that time. They ought to send men out with a red flag before they pull off a blast like that."
The colonel then left us and with the whispering lieutenant and runners in advance, we continued toward the front.
"Walk in parties of two," was the order of the soft-toned subaltern. "Each party keep ten yards apart. Don't smoke. Don't talk. This road is reached by their field pieces. They also cover it with indirect machine gun fire. They sniped the brigade commander right along here this morning. He had to get down into the mud. I can afford to lose some of you, but not the entire party. If anything comes over, you are to jump into the communicating trenches on the right side of the road."
His instructions were obeyed and it was almost with relief that, ten minutes later, we followed him down the slippery side of the muddy bank and landed in front of a dugout.
In the long, narrow, low-ceilinged shelter which completelytunnelled the road at a depth of twenty feet, two twenty-year-old Americans were hugging a brazier filled with charcoal. In this dugout was housed a group from a machine gun battalion, some of whose members were snoring in a double tier of bunks on the side.
Deep trenches at the other end of the dugout led to the gun pits, where this new arm of the service operated at ranges of two miles. These special squads fired over the heads of those in front of them or over the contours of the ground and put down a leaden barrage on the front line of the Germans. The firing not only was indirect but was without correction from the rectifying observation, of which the artillery had the benefit by watching the burst of their missiles.
Regaining the road, we walked on through the ruins on the edge of the village of Seicheprey, where our way led through a drunken colony of leaning walls and brick piles.
Here was the battalion headquarters, located underneath the old stones of a barn which was topped by the barest skeleton of a roof. What had been the first floor of the structure had been weighted down heavily with railroad iron and concrete to form the roof of the commander's dugout. The sides of the decrepit structure bulged outward and were prevented from bursting by timber props radiating on all sides like the legs of a centipede. A mule team stood in front of the dugout.
"What's that?" the whispering lieutenant inquired in hushed tones from a soldier in the road, as he pointed over the mules to the battalion headquarters.
"What's what?" the soldier replied without respect.
The obscurity of night is a great reducer of ranks. In the mist officer and man look alike.
"Why, that?" repeated "Whispering Willie" in lower,but angrier tones. "What's that there?" he reiterated, pointing at the mules.
"Can't you see it's mules?" replied the man in an immoderate tone of voice, betraying annoyance.
We were spared what followed. The lieutenant undoubtedly confirmed his rank, and the man undoubtedly proffered unto him the respect withheld by mistake. When "Whispering Willie" joined us several minutes later in the dugout, his helmet rode on the back of his head, but his dignity was on straight.
The Battalion Commander, Major Griffith, was so glad to see us that he sent for another bottle of the murky grey water that came from a well on one side of a well populated graveyard not fifty yards from his post.
"A good night," he said; "haven't seen it so quiet in three years. We have inter-battalion relief on. Some new companies are taking over the lines. Some of them are new to the front trenches and I'm going out with you and put them up on their toes. Wait till I report in."
He rang the field telephone on the wall and waited for an answer. An oil lamp hung from a low ceiling over the map table. In the hot, smoky air we quietly held our places while the connection was made.
"Hello," the Major said, "operator, connect me with Milwaukee." Another wait——
"Hello, Milwaukee, this is Larson. I'm talking from Hamburg. I'm leaving this post with a deck of cards and a runner. If you want me you can get me at Coney Island or Hinky Dink's. Wurtzburger will sit in here."
"Some code, Major," Lincoln Eyre, correspondent, said. "What does a pack of cards indicate?"
GRAVE OF FIRST AMERICAN KILLED IN FRANCE Translation: Here Lie the First Soldiers of the Great Republic of the United States of America, Fallen on French Soil for Justice and for Liberty, November 3rd, 1917GRAVE OF FIRST AMERICAN KILLED IN FRANCE Translation: Here Lie the First Soldiers of the Great Republic of the United States of America, Fallen on French Soil for Justice and for Liberty, November 3rd, 1917
"Why, anybody who comes out here when he doesn't have to is a funny card," the Major replied, "and it looksas if I have a pack of them to-night. Fritz gets quite a few things that go over our wires and we get lots of his. All are tapped by induction.
"Sometimes the stuff we get is important and sometimes it isn't. Our wire tapping report last night carried a passage something like this:—The German operator at one post speaking to the operator at another said:
"'Hello, Herman, where did that last shell drop?'
"Second operator replied, 'It killed two men in a ration party in a communicating trench and spilt all the soup. No hot food for you to-night, Rudolph.'
"Herman replying: 'That's all right. We have got some beer here.'
"Then there was a confusion of sounds and a German was heard talking to some one in his dugout. He said:
"'Hurry, here comes the lieutenant! Hide the can!'
"That's the way it goes," added the Major, "but if we heard that the society editor of theFliegende Blaetterand half a dozen pencil strafers were touring the German front line, we'd send 'em over something that would start 'em humming a hymn of hate. If they knew I was joy riding a party of correspondents around the diggin's to-night, they might give you something to write about and cost me a platoon or two. You're not worth it. Come on."
Our party now numbered nine and we pushed off, stumbling through uneven lanes in the centre of dimly lit ruins. According to orders, we carried gas masks in a handy position.
This sector had a nasty reputation when it comes to that sample of Teutonic culture. Fritz's poison shells dropped almost noiselessly and, without a report, broke open, liberating to enormous expansion the inclosed gases. These spread in all directions, and, owing to the lownessand dampness of the terrain, the poison clouds were imperceptible both to sight or smell. They clung close to the ground to claim unsuspecting victims.
"How are we to know if we are breathing gas or not?" asked the Philadelphia correspondent, Mr. Henri Bazin.
"That's just what youdon'tknow," replied the Major.
"Then when will we know it is time to adjust our masks?" Bazin persisted.
"When you see some one fall who has breathed it," the Major said.
"But suppose we breathe it first?"
"Then you won't need a mask," the Major replied, "You see, it's quite simple."
"Halt!" The sharp command, coming sternly but not too loud from somewhere in the adjacent mist, brought the party to a standstill in the open on the edge of the village. We remained notionless while the Major advanced upon command from the unseen. He rejoined us in several minutes with the remark that the challenge had come from one of his old men, and he only hoped the new companies taking over the line that night were as much on their jobs.
"Relief night always is trying," the Major explained. "Fritz always likes to jump the newcomers before they get the lay of the land. He tried it on the last relief, but we burnt him."
While talking the Major was leading the way through the first trench I had ever seen above the surface of the ground. The bottom of the trench was not only on a level with the surrounding terrain, but in some places it was even higher. Its walls, which rose almost to the height of a man's head, were made of large wicker woven cylinders filled with earth and stones.
Our guide informed us that the land which we weretraversing was so low that any trench dug in the ground would simply be a ditch brimful of undrainable water, so that, inasmuch as this position was in the first line system, walls had been built on either side of the path to protect passers-by from shell fragments and indirect machine gun fire. We observed one large break where a shell had entered during the evening.
Farther on, this communicating passage, which was more corridor than trench, reached higher ground and descended into the earth. We reeled through its zig-zag course, staggering from one slanting corner to another.
The sides were fairly well retained by French wicker work, but every eighth or tenth duck board was missing, making it necessary for trench travellers to step knee-deep in cold water or to jump the gap. Correspondent Eyre, who was wearing shoes and puttees, abhorred these breaks.
We passed the Major's post of command, which he used during intense action, and some distance on, entered the front line. With the Major leading, we walked up to a place where two Americans were standing on a firing step with their rifles extended across the parapet. They were silently peering into the grey mist over No Man's Land. One of them looked around as we approached. Apparently he recognised the Major's cane as a symbol of rank. He came to attention.
"Well," the Major said, "is this the way you let us walk up on you? Why don't you challenge me?"
"I saw you was an officer, sir," the man replied.
"Now, you are absolutely sure I amyourofficer?" the Major said slowly and coldly, with emphasis on the word "your." "Suppose I tell you I am a German officerand these men behind me are Germans. How do you know?"
With a quick movement the American brought his rifle forward to the challenge, his right hand slapping the wooden butt with an audible whack.
"Advance one, and give the countersign," he said with a changed voice and manner and the Major, moving to within whispering distance, breathed the word over the man's extended bayonet. Upon hearing it, the soldier lowered his gun and stood at attention.
It was difficult to figure whether his relief over the scare was greater than his fears of the censure he knew was coming.
"Next time anybody gets that close to you without being challenged," the Major said, "don't be surprised if it is a German. That's the way they do it. They don't march in singing 'Deutschland Über Alles.'
"If you see them first, you might live through the war. If they see you first, we will have wasted a lot of Liberty bonds and effort trying to make a soldier out of you. Now, remember, watch yourself."
We pushed on encountering longer patches of trench where duck boards were entirely missing and where the wading sometimes was knee-deep. In some places, either the pounding of shells or the thawing out of the ground had pushed in the revetments, appreciably narrowing the way and making progress more difficult. Arriving at an unmanned firing step large enough to accommodate the party, we mounted and took a first look over the top.
Moonlight now was stronger through the mist which hung fold over fold over the forbidden land between the opposing battle lines. At intervals nervous machine guns chattered their ghoulish gibberish or tut-tut-ted awaychidingly like finicky spinsters. Their intermittent sputtering to the right and left of us was unenlightening. We couldn't tell whether they were speaking German or English. Occasional bullets whining somewhere through that wet air gave forth sounds resembling the ripping of linen sheets.
Artillery fire was the exception during the entire night but when a shell did trace its unseen arc through the mist mantle, its echoes gave it the sound of a street car grinding through an under-river tunnel or the tube reverberations of a departing subway train.
We were two hundred yards from the German front lines. Between their trenches and ours, at this point, was low land, so boggy as to be almost impassable. The opposing lines hugged the tops of two small ridges.
Fifty yards in front was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without a remark from us.
The Major appeared to be itching for action and he got into official swing a hundred yards farther on, where a turn in the trench revealed to us the muffled figures of two young Americans, comfortably seated on grenade boxes on the firing step.
From their easy positions they could look over the top and watch all approaches without rising. Each one had a blanket wrapped about his legs and feet. They looked the picture of ease. Without moving, one, with his rifle across his lap, challenged the Major, advanced him, and received the countersign. We followed the Major in time to hear his first remark:
"Didn't they get the rocking chairs out here yet?" he said with the provoked air that customarily accompanies any condemnation of the quartermaster department.
"No, sir," replied the seated sentry. "They didn't get here. The men we relieved said that they never got anything out here."
"Nor the footstools?" the Major continued, this time with an unmistakable tone.
The man didn't answer.
"Do you two think you are taking moon baths on the Riviera?" the Major asked sternly. "You are less than two hundred yards from the Germans. You are all wrapped up like Egyptian mummies. Somebody could lean over the top and snake off your head with a trench knife before you could get your feet loose. Take those blankets off your feet and stand up."
The men arose with alacrity, shedding the blankets and removing the grenade box chairs. The Major continued:
"You know you are not sitting in a club window in Fifth Avenue and watching the girls go by. You're not looking for chickens out there. There's a hawk over there and sometimes he carries off precious little lambs. Now, the next time anybody steps around the corner of that trench, you be on your feet with your bayonet and gun ready to mix things."
The lambs saluted as the Major moved off with a train of followers who, by this time, were beginning to feel that these trenches held other lambs, only they carried notebooks instead of cartridge belts.
Stopping in front of a dugout, the Major gathered us about to hear the conversation that was going on within. Through the cracks of the door, we looked down a flight of steep stairs, dug deep into this battlefield graveyard.There were lights in the chamber below and the sound of voices came up to us. One voice was singing softly.
"Oh, the infantry, the infantry, with the dirt behind their ears,The infantry, the infantry, they don't get any beers,The cavalry, the artillery, and the lousy engineers,They couldn't lick the infantry in a hundred million years."
"I got a brother in the artillery," came another voice, "but I am ready to disown him. They talk a lot about this counter battery work, but it's all bunk. A battery in position has nice deep dugouts and hot chow all the time. They gets up about 9 o'clock in the morning and shaves up all nice for the day.
"'Bout 10 o'clock the captain says, 'I guess we will drop a few shells on that German battery on the other side of the hill.' So they pops off forty or fifty rounds in that general direction and don't hit anything 'cause the German battery immediately roots down into its nice, deep dugouts. As soon as our battery lays off and gets back into its holes, the German battery comes out and pops back forty or fifty at 'em and, of course, don't hurt them neither.
"Then it is time for lunch, and while both of these here batteries is eating, they get so sore about not having hit each other during the morning, that they just call off counter battery work for the day and turn their guns on the front lines and blow hell out of the infantry. I haven't got any use for an artilleryman. I'm beginning to think all of them Germans and Allies are alike and has an agreement against the doughboys."
The Major interrupted by rapping sharply on the door.
"Come in," was the polite and innocent invitation guilelesslyspoken from below. The Major had his helmet on, so he couldn't tear his hair.
"Come up here, you idiots, every one of you."
The Major directed his voice down into the hole in an unmistakable and official tone. There was a scurrying of feet and four men emerged carrying their guns. They were lined up against the trench wall.
"At midnight," the Major began, "in your dugout in the front line forty yards from the Germans, with no sentry at the door, you hear a knock on the door and you shout, 'Come in.' I commend your politeness, and I know that's what your mothers taught you to say when visitors come, but this isn't any tea fight out here. One German could have wiggled over the top here and stood in this doorway and captured all four of you single-handed, or he could have rolled a couple of bombs down that hole and blown all of you to smithereens. What's your aim in life—hard labour in a German prison camp or a nice little wooden cross out here four thousand miles from Punkinville? Why wasn't there any sentry at that door?"
The question remained unanswered but the incident had its effect on the quartet. Without orders, all four decided to spend the remainder of the night on the firing step with their eyes glued on the enemy's line. They simply hadn't realised they were really in the war. The Major knew this, but made a mental reservation of which the commander of this special platoon got full benefit before the night was over.
The front line from here onward followed a small ridge running generally east and west, but now bearing slightly to the northward. We were told the German line ran in the same general direction, but at this point bore to the southward.
The opposing lines in the direction of our course were converging and we were approaching the place where they were the closest in the sector. If German listening posts heard the progress of our party through the line, only a telephone call back to the artillery was necessary to plant a shell among us, as every point on the system was registered.
As we silently considered various eventualities immaterial to the prosecution of the war but not without personal concern, our progress was brought to a sudden standstill.
"Huh-huh-halt!" came a drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for a thrust.
"Huh-huh-huh-halt!" came the nervous, whispering command again, although we had been motionless since the first whisper.
We heard a click as the safety catch on the man's rifle lock was thrown off and the weapon made ready to discharge. The Major was watching the nervous hand that rested none too steadily on the trigger stop. He stepped to one side, but the muzzle of the gun followed him.
"Huh-huh-huh-halt! I tuh-tuh-tell you."
This time the whisper vibrated with nervous tension and there was no mistaking the state of mind of the sentry.
"Take it easy," replied the Major with attempted calm. "I'm waiting for you to challenge me. Don't get excited. This is the commanding officer."
"What's the countersign?" came from the voice in a hard strain.
"Troy," the Major said, and the word seemed to bring worlds of reassurance to the rifleman, who sighed with relief, but forgot to move his rifle until the Major said:
"Will you please take that gun off me and put the safety back in?"
The nervous sentry moved the gun six inches to the right and we correspondents, standing in back of the Major, looked into something that seemed as big as the La Salle street tunnel. I jumped out of range behind the Major. Eyre plunged knee-deep into water out of range, and Woods with the rubber boots started to go over the top.
The click of the replaced safety lock sounded unusually like the snap of a trigger, but no report followed and three hearts resumed their beating.
"There is no occasion to get excited," the Major said to the young soldier in a fatherly tone. "I'm glad to see you are wide-awake and on the job. Don't feel any fears for your job and just remember that with that gun and bayonet in your hands you are better than any man who turns that trench corner or crosses out there. You've got the advantage of him, and besides that you are a better man than he is."
The sentry, now smiling, saluted the Major as the latter conducted the party quietly around the trench corner and into a sap leading directly out into No Man's Land. Twice the trench passed under broad belts of barbed wire, which we were cautioned to avoid with our helmets, because any sound was undesirable for obvious reasons.
After several minutes of this cautious advance, we reached a small listening post that marked the closest point in the sector to the German line. Several silentsentries were crouching on the edge of the pit. Gunny sacks covered the hole and screened it in front and above. We remained silent while the Major in the lowest whisper spoke with a corporal and learned that except for two or three occasions, when the watchers thought they heard sounds near our wire, the night had been calm.
We departed as silently as we came. The German line from a distance of forty yards looked no different from its appearance at a greater distance, but since it was closer, it was carried with a constant tingle of anticipation.
Into another communicating trench and through better walled fortifications of splintered forest, the Major led us to a place where the recent shelling had changed twenty feet of trench into a gaping gulley almost without sides and waist-deep in water. A working detail was endeavouring to repair the damage. In parties of two, we left the trench and crossed an open space on the level. The forty steps we covered across that forbidden ground were like stolen fruit. Such rapture! Bazin, who was seeking a title for a book, pulled "Eureka!"
"Over the top armed with a pencil," he said. "Not bad, eh?"
Back in Seicheprey, just before the Major left us for our long trip back to quarters, he led the way to the entrance of a cemetery, well kept in the midst of surrounding chaos. Graves of French dead ranged row upon row.
"I just wanted to show you some of the fellows that held this line until we took it over," he said simply. "Our own boys that we've lost since we've been here, are buried down in the next village."
We silently saluted the spot as we passed it thirty minutes later.
As soon as our forces had made themselves at home in the Toul sector, it was inevitable that belligerent activity would increase and this, in spite of the issuance of strict orders that there should be no development of the normal daily fire. Our men could not entirely resist the temptation to start something.
As was to be expected, the Germans soon began to suspect that they were faced by different troops from the ones who had been confronting them. The enemy set out to verify his suspicions. He made his first raid on the American line.
It was in a dense mist on the morning of January 30th that the Germans lowered a terrific barrage on one of our advance listening posts and then rushed the position with a raiding party outnumbering the defendants ten to one.
Two Americans held that post—five more succeeded in making their way through the storm of falling shells and in coming to the assistance of the first two. That made seven Americans in the fight. When the fighting ceased, every one of the seven had been accounted for in the three items, dead, wounded or captured.
That little handful of Americans, fought, died or were wounded in the positions which they had been ordered to hold. Although the engagement was an extremely minor one, it being the first of its kind on the American sector, it was sufficient to give the enemy some idea of the determination and fighting qualities of the individual Americansoldier. Their comrades were proud of them, and were inclined to consider the exploit, "Alamo stuff."
Two of the defenders were killed, four were wounded, and one was captured. The wounded men reported that the captured American continued to fight even after being severely wounded. He was the last to remain on his feet and when a bomb blew his rifle from his hand and injured his arm, he succumbed to superior numbers and was carried off by his captors.
After the hurried sortie, the Germans beat a hasty retreat so that the position was reoccupied immediately by another American detail.
The "Alamo" seven had not been taken by surprise. Through a downpour of rather badly placed shells, they held their position on the firing step and worked both their rifles and machine guns against the raiding party, which they could not see, but knew would be advancing behind the curtain of fire. Hundreds of empty cartridges and a broken American bayonet constituted impartial testimony to the fierceness of the fighting. After the first rush, in which the defenders accounted for a number of Germans, the fighting began at close quarters, the enemy peppering the listening post with hand-grenades.
In the meantime the German barrage had been lifted and lengthened until it was lowered again between the "Alamo" seven and their comrades in the rear.
There were calls to surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the hope that assistance soon would arrive from the American artillery.
But the Germans had planned the raid well. Their first barrage cut all telephone wires leading back from our front lines and the signal rocket which one of the men in the listening post had fired into the air, had been smotheredin the dense mist. That rocket had called for a defensive barrage from American artillery and when no answer came to it, a second one was fired, but that also was snuffed out by the fog.
The net result of the raid was that the Germans had captured one of our wounded men and had thereby identified the organisation opposing them as the First Regular Division of the United States Army, composed of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Regular U. S. Infantry Regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Regular U. S. Army Field Artillery. The division was under the command of Major General Robert Lee Bullard.
In the days and weeks that followed, the daily exchange of shells on the sector increased to two and three times the number it had been before our men arrived there. There were nightly patrols in No Man's Land and several instances where these patrols met in the dark and engaged one another with casualties on both sides.
One night a little over a month later—the early morning of March 4th, to be exact—it was my privilege to witness from an exceptional vantage point, the first planned and concentrated American artillery action against the enemy. The German lines selected for this sudden downpour of shell, comprised two small salients jutting out from the enemy's positions in the vicinity of the ruined village of Lahayville, in the same sector.
In company with an orderly who had been despatched as my guide, I started from an artillery battalion headquarters shortly before midnight, and together we made our way up the dark muddy road that led through the dense Bois de la Reine to the battery positions. Half an hour's walk and O'Neil, the guide, led me off the road into a darker tunnel of overlaced boughs where we stumbled along on the ties of a narrow gauge railroadthat conveyed heavy shells from the road to the guns. We passed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a hugeabribuilt entirely above ground.
Its walls and roof must have been between five and seven feet thick and were made from layers of logs, sandbags, railroad iron and slabs of concrete reinforced with steel. It looked impenetrable.
"Battery commander's headquarters," O'Neil said to me as we entered a small hot room lighted by two oil lamps and a candle. Three officers, at two large map tables, were working on sheets of figures. Two wooden bunks, one above the other, and two posts supporting the low ceiling completed the meagre furnishings of the room. A young officer looked up from his work, O'Neil saluted, and addressed him.
"The Major sent me up with this correspondent. He said you could let him go wherever he could see the fun and that you are not responsible for his safety." O'Neil caught the captain's smile at the closing remark and withdrew. The captain showed me the map.
"Here we are," he said, indicating a spot with his finger, "and here's what we are aiming at to-night. There are two places you can stay to see the fun. You can stay in this shelter and hear the sound of it, or you can go up a little further front to this point, and mount the platform in our observation tree. In thisabriyou are safe from splinters and shrapnel but a direct hit would wipe us out. In the tree you are exposed to direct hits and splinters from nearby bursts but at least you can see the whole show. It's the highest point around here and overlooks the whole sector."
I sensed that the captain expected a busy evening and looked forward with no joy to possible interference from a questioning visitor, so I chose the tree.
"All right," he said, "you've got helmet and gas masks, I see. Now how's your watch? Take the right time off mine. We have just synchronised ours with headquarters. Zero is one o'clock. You had better start now."
He called for an orderly with a German name, and the two of us left. Before I was out of the room, the captain had returned to his mathematics and was figuring out the latest range variations and making allowances for latest developments in wind, temperature and barometer. The orderly with the German name and I plunged again into the trees and brought up shortly on the edge of a group of men who were standing in the dark near a large tree trunk. I could hear several other men and some stamping horses off to one side.
The party at the foot of the tree was composed of observers, signal linemen and runners. All of them were enlisted men. I inquired who were to be my comrades in the tree top and three presented themselves. One said his name was Pat Guahn, the second gave his as Peter Griffin and the third acknowledged Mike Stanton. I introduced myself and Griffin said, "I see we are all from the same part of Italy."
At twenty minutes to one, we started up the tree, mounting by rudely constructed ladders that led from one to the other of the four crudely fashioned platforms. We reached the top breathless and with no false impressions about the stability of our swaying perch. The tree seemed to be the tallest in the forest and nothing interfered with our forward view. The platform was a bit shaky and Guahn put my thoughts to words and music by softly singing—