And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 22

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 American soldier. 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 succ.u.mbed 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 const.i.tuted 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 b.u.t.t. The defenders fought on in the hope that a.s.sistance 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 smothered in 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 railroad that conveyed heavy sh.e.l.ls from the road to the guns. We pa.s.sed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a huge _abri_ built 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 this _abri_ you 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--

"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top, When the sh.e.l.l comes the runners all flop, When the sh.e.l.l busts, good-bye to our station, We're up in a tree, bound for d.a.m.nation."

The compa.s.s gives us north and we locate in the forward darkness an approximate sweep of the front lines. Guahn is looking for the flash of a certain German gun and it will be his duty to keep his eyes trained through the fork of a certain marked twig within arm's reach.

"If she speaks, we want to know it," Guahn says; "I can see her from here when she flashes and there's another man who can see her from another place. You see we get an intersection of angles on her and then we know where she is just as though she had sent her address. Two minutes later we drop a card on her and keep her warm."

"Is that that gun from Russia we heard about?" Griffin asks.

"No," answers Guahn, "we are not looking for her from that station.

Besides, she isn't Russian. She was made by the British, used by the Russians, captured by the Germans and in turn is used by them against Americans. We have found pieces of her sh.e.l.l and they all have an English trade mark on them. She fires big eight inch stuff."

Griffin is watching in another direction for another flash and Stanton is on the lookout for signal flares and the flash of a signal light projector which might be used in case the telephone communication is disturbed by enemy fire. It is then that the runners at the base of the tree must carry the message back by horse.

Only an occasional thump is heard forward in the darkness. Now and then machine guns chatter insanely as they tuck a seam in the night. At infrequent intervals, a star sh.e.l.l curves upward, bursts, suspends its silent whiteness in mid-air, and dies.

In our tree top all seems quiet and so is the night. There is no moon and only a few stars are out. A penetrating dampness takes the place of cold and there is that in the air that threatens a change of weather.

The illuminated dial of my watch tells me that it is three minutes of one and I communicate the information to the rest of the Irish quartet.

In three minutes, the little world that we look upon from our tree top is due to change with terrific suddenness and untold possibilities.

Somewhere below in the darkness and to one side, I hear the clank of a ponderous breech lock as the mechanism is closed on a sh.e.l.l in one of the heavy guns. Otherwise all remains silent.

Two minutes of one. Each minute seems to drag like an hour. It is impossible to keep one's mind off that unsuspecting group of humans out there in that little section of German trench upon which the heavens are about to fall. Griffin leans over the railing and calls to the runners to stand by the horses' heads until they become accustomed to the coming roar.

One minute of one. We grip the railing and wait.

Two flashes and two reports, the barest distinguishable interval, and the black horizon belches red. From extreme left to extreme right the flattened proscenium in front of us glows with the ghastliness of the Broockon.

Waves of light flush the dark vault above like the night sky over South Chicago's blast furnaces. The heavens reflect the glare. The flashes range in colour from blinding yellow to the softest tints of pink. They seem to form themselves from strange combinations of greens and mauves and lavenders.

The sharp shattering crash of the guns reaches our ears almost on the instant. The forest shakes and our tree top sways with the slam of the heavies close by. The riven air whimpers with the husky whispering of the rushing load of metal bolts pa.s.sing above us.

Looking up into that void, we deny the uselessness of the act and seek in vain to follow the trains of those unseen things that make the air electric with their presence. We hear them coming, pa.s.sing, going, but see not one of them.

"There's whole blacksmith's shops sailing over our heads on the way to Germany," Pat Guahn shouts in my ear. "I guess the Dutchman sure knows how to call for help. He doesn't care for that first wallop, and he thinks he would like about a half million reserves from the Russian front."

"That darkness out in No Man's Land don't make any hit with him either,"

Stanton contributes. "He's got it lit up so bright I'm homesick for Broadway."

Now comes the thunder of the sh.e.l.l arrivals. You know the old covered wooden bridges that are still to be found in the country. Have you ever heard a team of horses and a farm wagon thumping and rumbling over such a bridge on the trot?

Multiply the horse team a thousand times. Lash the animals from the trot to the wild gallop. Imagine the sound of their stampede through the echoing wooden structure and you approach in volume and effect the rumble and roar of the steel as it rained down on that little German salient that night.

"Listen to them babies bustin'," says Griffin. "I'm betting them groundhogs is sure huntin' their holes right now and trying to dig clear through to China."

That was the sound and sight of that opening salvo from all guns, from the small trench mortars in the line, the lightest field pieces behind them, the heavy field pieces about us and the ponderous railroad artillery located behind us.

Its crash has slashed the inkiness in front of us with a lurid red meridian. I don't know how many hands had pulled lanyards on exactly the same instant but the consequent spread of fire looked like one continuous flame.

Now the "seventy-fives" are speaking, not in unison, but at various speeds, limited only by the utmost celerity of the sweating gun crews.

But the German front line is not the only locality receiving unsolicited attention. Enemy gun positions far behind the lines are being plastered with high explosives and anesthetised with gas sh.e.l.ls.

So effective is the American artillery neutralisation of the German batteries, that it is between fifteen and twenty minutes before the first enemy gun replies to the terrific barrage. And though expected momentarily, a German counter barrage fails to materialise.

In our tree top we wait for the enemy's counter sh.e.l.ling but the retaliation does not develop. When occupying an exposed position, the suspense of waiting for an impending blow increases in tenseness as the delay continues and the expectations remain unrealised. With no inclination to be unreasonable, one even prays for the speedy delivery of the blow in the same way that the man with the aching tooth urges the dentist to speed up and have it over with.