And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 29

Forced to a recognition solely of intrinsic values, our men made prompt utilisation of much of the material abandoned by the civilian population. Home in the field is where a soldier sleeps and after all, why not have it as comfortable as his surroundings will afford? Those caves and vegetable cellars, many with walls and vaulted ceilings of clean red brick or white blocks of chalk, const.i.tuted excellent shelters from sh.e.l.l splinters and even protected the men from direct hits by missiles of small calibre.

Beyond the villages, our riflemen found protection in quickly sc.r.a.ped holes in the ground. There were some trenches but they were not contiguous. "No Man's Land" was an area of uncertain boundary. Our gunners had quarters burrowed into the chalk not far from their gun pits. All communication and the bringing up of sh.e.l.ls and food were conducted under cover of darkness. Under such conditions, we lived and waited for the order to go forward.

Our sector in that battle of the Somme was so situated that the opposing lines ran north and south. The enemy was between us and the rising sun.

Behind our rear echelons was the main road between Amiens and Beauvais.

Amiens, the objective of the German drive, was thirty-five kilometres away on our left, Beauvais was the same distance on our right and two hours by train from Paris.

We were eager for the fight. The graves of our dead dotted new fields in France. We were holding with the French on the Picardy line. We were between the Germans and the sea. We were before Cantigny.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RUSH OF THE RAIDERS--"ZERO AT 2 A. M."

While the First U. S. Division was executing in Picardy a small, planned operation which resulted in the capture of the German fortified positions in the town of Cantigny, other American divisions at other parts along the line were indulging in that most common of frontal diversions--the raid.

I was a party to one of these affairs on the Toul front. The 26th Division, composed of National Guard troops from New England, made the raid. On Memorial Day, I had seen those men of the Yankee Division decorating the graves of their dead in a little cemetery back of the line. By the dawning light of the next morning, I saw them come trooping back across No Man's Land after successfully decorating the enemy positions with German graves.

It was evening when we dismissed our motor in the ruined village of Hamondville and came into first contact with the American soldiers that had been selected for the raid. Their engineers were at work in the street connecting sections of long dynamite-loaded pipes which were to be used to blast an ingress through the enemy's wire. In interested circles about them were men who were to make the dash through the break even before the smoke cleared and the debris ceased falling. They were to be distinguished from the village garrison by the fact that the helmets worn by the raiders were covered with burlap and some of them had their faces blackened.

In the failing evening light, we walked on through several heaps of stone and rafters that had once been villages, and were stopped by a military policeman who inquired in broad Irish brogue for our pa.s.ses.

These meeting with his satisfaction, he advised us to avoid the road ahead with its dangerous twist, known as "Dead Man's Curve," for the reason that the enemy was at that minute placing his evening contribution of sh.e.l.ls in that vicinity. Acting on the policeman's suggestion, we took a short cut across fields rich with sh.e.l.l holes. Old craters were grown over with the gra.s.s and mustard flowers with which this country abounds at this time of year. Newer punctures showed as wounds in the yellow soil and contained pools of evil-smelling water, green with sc.u.m.

Under the protection of a ridge, which at least screened us from direct enemy observation, we advanced toward the jagged skyline of a ruined village on the crest. The odour of open graves befouled the sheltered slope, indicating that enemy sh.e.l.ls had penetrated its small protection and disturbed the final dugouts of the fallen.

Once in the village of Beaumont, we followed the winding duckboards and were led by small signs painted on wood to the colonel's headquarters.

We descended the stone steps beneath a rickety looking ruin and entered.

"Guests for our party," was the Colonel's greeting. The command post had a long narrow interior which was well lighted but poorly ventilated, the walls and floor were of wood and a low beamed ceiling was supported by timbers. "Well, I think it will be a good show."

"We are sending over a little party of new boys just for practice and a 'look-see' in Hunland. We have two companies in this regiment which feel they've sorter been left out on most of the fun to date, so this affair has been arranged for them. We put the plans together last week and pushed the boys through three days of training for it back of the lines. They're fit as fiddlers to-night and it looks like there'll be no interruption to their pleasure.

"No one man in the world, be he correspondent or soldier, could see every angle of even so small a thing as a little raid like this," the Colonel explained. "What you can't see you have got to imagine. I'm suggesting that you stay right in here for the show. That telephone on my adjutant's desk is the web centre of all things occurring in this sector to-night and the closer you are to it, the more you can see and learn. Lieutenant Warren will take you up the road first and give you a look out of the observatory, so you'll know in what part of Germany our tourists are going to explore."

Darkness had fallen when we emerged, but there were sufficient stars out to show up the outline of the gaping walls on either side of our way. We pa.s.sed a number of sentries and entered a black hole in the wall of a ruin. After stumbling over the uneven floor in a darkened pa.s.sage for some minutes, we entered a small room where several officers were gathered around a table on which two burning candles were stuck in bottles. Our guide, stepping to one end of the room, pulled aside a blanket curtain and pa.s.sed through a narrow doorway. We followed.

Up a narrow, steep, wooden stairway between two walls of solid masonry, not over two feet apart, we pa.s.sed, and arrived on a none too stable wooded runway with a guide rail on either side. Looking up through the ragged remains of the wooden roof frame, now almost nude of tiles, we could see the starry sky. Proceeding along the runway, we arrived, somewhere in that cl.u.s.ter of ruins, in a darkened chamber whose interior blackness was relieved by a lighter slit, an opening facing the enemy.

Against the starry skyline, we could see the black outline of a flat tableland in the left distance which we knew to be that part of the heights of Meuse for whose commanding ridge there have been so many violent contests between the close-locked lines in the forest of Apremont. More to the centre of the picture, stood Mont Sec, detached from the range and pushing its summit up through the lowland mist like the dorsal fin of a porpoise in a calm sea. On the right the lowland extended to indistinct distances, where it blended with the horizon.

In all that expanse of quiet night, there was not a single flicker of light, and at that time not a sound to indicate that unmentionable numbers of our men were facing one another in parallel ditches across the silent moor.

"See that clump of trees way out there?" said the lieutenant, directing our vision with his arm. "Now then, hold your hand at arm's length in front of you, straight along a line from your eyes along the left edge of your hand to that clump of trees. Now then, look right along the right edge of your hand and you will be looking at Richecourt. The Boche hold it. We go in on the right of that to-night."

We looked as per instructions and saw nothing. As far as we were concerned Richecourt was a daylight view, but these owls of the lookout knew its location as well as they knew the streets of their native towns back in New England. We returned to the colonel's command post, where cots were provided, and we turned in for a few hours' sleep on the promise of being called in time.

It was 2 A. M. when we were summoned to command post for the colonel's explanation of the night's plans. The regimental commander, smoking a long pipe with a curved stem, sat in front of a map on which he conducted the exposition.

"Here," he said, placing his finger on a section of the line marking the American trenches, "is the point of departure. That's the jumping off place. These X marks running between the lines is the enemy wire, and here, and here, and here are where we blow it up. We reach the German trenches at these points and clean up. Then the men follow the enemy communicating trenches, penetrate three hundred metres to the east edge of Richecourt, and return.

"Zero hour is 2:30. It's now 2:10. Our raiders have left their trenches already. They are out in No Man's Land now. The engineers are with them carrying explosives for the wire. There are stretcher bearers in the party to bring back our wounded and also signal men right behind them with wire and one telephone. The reports from that wire are relayed here and we will also be kept informed by runners. The whole party has thirty minutes in which to crawl forward and place explosives under the wire.

They will have things in readiness by 2:30 and then the show begins."

Five minutes before the hour, I stepped out of the dugout and looked at the silent sky toward the front. Not even a star sh.e.l.l disturbed the blue black starlight. The guns were quiet. Five minutes more and all this was to change into an inferno of sound and light, flash and crash.

There is always that minute of uncertainty before the raiding hour when the tensity of the situation becomes almost painful. Has the enemy happened to become aware of the plans? Have our men been deprived of the needed element of surprise? But for the thousands of metres behind us, we know that in black battery pits anxious crews are standing beside their loaded pieces waiting to greet the tick of 2:30 with the jerk of the lanyard.

Suddenly the earth trembles. Through the dugout window facing back from the lines, I see the night sky burst livid with light. A second later and the crash reaches our ears. It is deafening. Now we hear the whine of sh.e.l.ls as they burn the air overhead. The telephone bell rings.

"Yes, this is Boston," the Adjutant speaks into the receiver. We listen breathlessly. Has something gone wrong at the last minute?

"Right, I have it," said the Adjutant, hanging up the receiver and turning to the Colonel; "X-4 reports barrage dropped on schedule."

"Good," said the Colonel. "Gentlemen, here's what's happening. Our sh.e.l.ls are this minute falling all along the German front line, in front of the part selected for the raid and on both flanks. Now then, this section of the enemy's position is confined in a box barrage which is pounding in his front and is placing a curtain of fire on his left and his right and another in his rear. Any German within the confines of that box trying to get out will have a d.a.m.n hard time and so will any who try to come through it to help him."

"Boston talking," the Adjutant is making answer over the telephone. He repeats the message. "233, all the wire blown up, right."

"Fine," says the Colonel. "Now they are advancing and right in front of them is another rolling barrage of sh.e.l.ls which is creeping forward on the German lines at the same pace our men are walking. They are walking in extended order behind it. At the same time our artillery has taken care of the enemy's guns by this time so that no German barrage will be able to come down on our raiders. Our guns for the last three minutes have been dumping gas and high explosives on every battery position behind the German lines. That's called 'Neutralisation.'"

"Boston talking." The room grows quiet again as the Adjutant takes the message.

"2:36. Y-1 reports O. K."

"Everything fine and dandy," the Colonel observes, smiling.

"Boston talking." There is a pause.

"2:39. G-7 reports sending up three red rockets east of A-19. The operator thinks it's a signal for outposts to withdraw and also for counter barrage."

"Too late," snaps the Colonel. "There's a reception committee in Hades waiting for 'em right now."

At 2:40 the dugout door opens and in walks Doc Comfort from the Red Cross First Aid Station across the road.

"Certainly is a pretty sight, Colonel. Fritzies' front door is lit up like a cathedral at high ma.s.s."

At 2:41. "A very good beginning," remarks a short, fat French Major who sits beside the Colonel. He represents the French army corps.

2:43. "Boston talking,--Lieutenant Kernan reports everything quiet in his sector."

2:45. "Boston talking," the Adjutant turns to the Colonel and repeats, "Pittsburgh wants to know if there's much coming in here."

"Tell them nothing to amount to anything," replies the Colonel and the Adjutant repeats the message over the wire. As he finished, one German sh.e.l.l did land so close to the dugout that the door blew open. The officer stepped to the opening and called out into the darkness.

"Gas guard. Smell anything?"

"Nothing, sir. Think they are only high explosives."