The A.E.F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces Part 15

"No," answered the officer, "I just gave 'em the range and then I said 'ready to fire' and then, 'fire.' It was just like this afternoon. We made it perfectly regular."

"In the army a thing like that's just part of the day's work," the lieutenant added, with an attempted a.s.sumption of great sophistication in regard to war matters, as if this was at least his twentieth campaign.

And yet I think that if we had heard our little quarterback give his order at six twenty-seven on that misty morning there would have been something in his voice when he said "fire" which would have betrayed him to us. I think it must have been a little sharper, a little faster and a little louder for this first shot than it will be when he calls "fire"

for the thousand-and-tenth round.

The guns had decided to call it a day by this time and so we headed for the trenches. We had to travel across a big bare stretch of country which was wind-swept and rain-soaked on this particular afternoon. Every now and then somebody fell into a sh.e.l.l hole, for the meadow was well slashed up, although there didn't seem to be anything much to shoot at.

On the whole, the sector chosen for the first Americans in the trenches might well be called a quiet front. There was sh.e.l.ling back and forth each day, but many places were immune. Some villages just back of the French lines had not been fired at for almost a year, although they were within easy range of field pieces, and the French in return didn't fire at villages in the German lines. This was by tacit agreement. Both sides had held the lines in this part of the country lightly and both sides were content to sit tight and not stir up trouble.

Things livened up after the Americans came in because the Germans soon found out that new troops were opposing them and they wanted to identify the units. Some of the increasing liveliness was also due to the fact that American gunners were anxious to get practice and fired much more than the French had done. Indeed, an American officer earned a rebuke from his superiors because he fired into a German village which had been hitherto immune. This was a mistake, for the Germans immediately retaliated by sh.e.l.ling a French village and the civilian population was forced to move out. For more than a year they had lived close to the battle lines in comparative safety. On the night the American troops moved in to the trenches a baby was born in a village less than a mile from one of our battalion headquarters. Major General Sibert became her G.o.dfather and the child was christened Unis in honor of Les Etats Unis.

The increase in artillery activity had hardly begun on the day we paid our visit. No German sh.e.l.ls fell near us as we crossed the meadow, but when we reached a battalion headquarters the major in charge pointed with pride to a German sh.e.l.l which had landed on top of his kitchen that morning. The rain had played him a good service, for the sh.e.l.l simply buried itself, fragments and all. He did not seem properly appreciative of the weather. "All Gaul," he said, "is divided into three parts and two of them are water."

Still, we found ourselves drier in the trenches than out of them. They were floored with boards and well lined. As trenches go they were good, but, of course, that isn't saying a great deal. We were the first newspapermen to enter the American trenches and so we wanted to see the first line, although it was growing dark. We wound around and around for many yards and it was hard walking for some of us, as the French had built these trenches for short men. It was necessary to walk with a crouch like an Indian on the movie warpath. This was according to instructions, but we may have been unduly cautious, for not a hostile shot was fired while we were in the first line. It was barely possible to see the German trenches through the mist and still more difficult to realize that there was a menace in the untidy welts of mud which lay at the other side of the meadow. But the point from which we looked across to the German line was the very salient where the Germans made their first raid a week later and captured twelve men, killed three, and wounded five.

The doughboys wouldn't let us go without pointing out all the sights. To the right was the apple tree. Here the Germans used to come on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and the French on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sat.u.r.days, and gather fruit without molestation so long as not more than two came at a time. This was another tacit agreement in this quiet front, for the tree was in easy rifle range. One of the doughboys unwittingly broke that custom by taking a shot at two Germans who went to get apples.

"I like apples myself," he said, "and I just couldn't lie still and watch a squarehead carry them away by the armful."

The Hindenburg Rathskeller lay to the left of our trench, but it was only dimly visible through the rain. This battered building was once a tiny roadside cafe. Now patrols take shelter behind its walls at night and try to find cheer in the room where only a few broken bottles remain. The poilus maintain that on dark nights the ghosts of cognac, of burgundy and even champagne flit about in and out of the broken windows and that a lucky soldier may sometimes detect, by an inner warmth and tingle, the ghost of some drink that is gone. Sometimes it is a German patrol which spends the night in No Man's Cafe. It is more or less a custom to allow whichever side gets to the cafe first to hold it for the night, since it is a strong defensive position in the dark. The night before our visit an American patrol reached the cafe and found that the Germans who had been there the night before had placed above the shattered door of the little inn a sign which read: "Hindenburg Rathskeller." Silently but swiftly one of the doughboys scratched out the name with a pencil and left a sign of his own. When next the Germans came they found that Hindenburg Rathskeller had become the Baltimore Dairy Lunch.

Several hundred yards behind the Baltimore Dairy Lunch is another ruined house and it was here that the Americans killed their first German. Even on clear days Germans in groups of not more than two would sometimes come from their trenches to the house. The French thought that they had a machine gun there, but it was not worth while to waste sh.e.l.ls on parties of one or two and as the range was almost 1700 yards the Germans felt comparatively immune from rifle fire. Two doughboys saw a German walking along the road one bright morning and as they had telescopic sights on their rifles they were anxious to try a shot. One of the men was a sergeant and the other a corporal.

"That's my German," said the sergeant.

"I saw him first," objected the corporal, and so they agreed to count five and then fire together. One or both of them hit him, for down he came.

When we got back to the second line the men were having supper. The food supplied to the soldiers in the trenches was hot and adequate and moderately abundant. A few of the men complained that they got only two meals a day, but I found that there was an early ration of coffee and bread which these soldiers did not count as enough of a breakfast to be mentioned as a meal. This comes at dawn and then there are meals at about eleven and five. One of the men with whom I talked was mournful.

"We don't get anything much but slum," he said, when I asked him, "How's the food?" That did not sound appetizing until I found out that slum was a stew made of beef and potatoes and carrots and lots of onions. We ate some and it was very good, but perhaps it does pall a little after the third or fourth day. It forms the main staple of army diet in the trenches, for it is not possible to give the men in the line any great variety of food. The most tragic story in connection with food which we heard concerned a company which was just beginning dinner when a gas alarm was sounded. The men had been carefully trained to drop everything and adjust their masks when this alarm was sounded. So down went their mess tins, spilling slum on the trench floor as the masks were quickly fastened. Five minutes later word came that the gas alarm was a mistake.

Before we left we saw a patrol start out. The doughboys took to patrolling eagerly and officers who asked for volunteers were always swamped with requests from men who wanted to go. One lieutenant was surprised to have a large fat cook come to him to say that he would not be happy unless allowed to make a trip across No Man's Land to the German wire. When the officer asked him why he was so anxious to go, he said: "Well, you see, I promised to get a German helmet and an overcoat for a girl for Christmas and I haven't got much time left."

It was dark when we left the trenches and started cross country. The German guns had begun to fire a little. They were spasmodically sh.e.l.ling a clump of woods half a mile away and seemed indifferent to correspondents. But by this time the weather was actively hostile. The rain had changed to snow and the wind had risen to a gale. Every sh.e.l.l hole had become a trap to catch the unwary and wet him to the waist.

Little brooks were carrying on like rivers and amateur lakes were everywhere. We walked and walked and suddenly the French lieutenant who was guiding us paused and explained that he hadn't the least idea where we were. Nothing could be seen through the driving snow and there was no certainty that we hadn't turned completely around. We wondered if there were any gaps in the wire and if it would be possible to walk into the German lines by mistake. We also wondered whether the Kaiser's three hundred marks for the first American would stand if the prisoner was only a reporter. Just then there was a sudden sharp rift in the mist ahead of us. A big flash cut through the snow and fog and after a second we heard a bang behind us.

"Those are American guns," said our guide, and we made for them. We were lost again once or twice, but each time we just stood and waited for the flash from the battery until we reached our base. Shortly after we arrived the sh.e.l.ling ceased. There was hardly a warlike sound. It was a quiet night on a tranquil front. The weather was too bad even for fighting.

We went to the hospital in the little town and were allowed to look at the first German prisoner. He was a pretty sick boy when we saw him. He gave his age when examined as nineteen, but he looked younger and not very dangerous, for he was just coming out of the ether. The American doctors were giving him the best of care. He had a room to himself and his own nurse. The doughboys had captured him close to the American wire. There had been great rivalry as to which company would get the first prisoner, but he came almost unsought. The patrol was back to its own wire when the soldiers heard the noise of somebody moving about to the left. He was making no effort to walk quietly. As he came over a little hillock his outline could be seen for a second and one of the Americans called out to him to halt. He turned and started to run, but a doughboy fired and hit him in the leg and another soldier's bullet came through his back. The patrol carried the prisoner to the trench. He seemed much more dazed by surprise than by the pain of his wounds.

"You're not French," he said several times as the curious Americans gathered about him in a close, dim circle illuminated by pocket flash lamps. The prisoner next guessed that they were English and when the soldiers told him that they were Americans he said that he and his comrades did not know that Americans were in the line opposite them.

Somebody gave him a cigarette and he grew more chipper in spite of his wounds. He began to talk, saying: "Ich bin ein esel."

There were several Americans who had enough German for that and they asked him why. The prisoner explained that he had been a.s.signed to deliver letters to the soldiers. Some of the letters were for men in a distant trench which slanted toward the French line, and so to save time he had taken a short cut through No Man's Land. It was a dark night but he thought he knew the way. He kept bearing to the left. Now, he said, he knew he should have turned to the right. He said it would be a lesson to him. The next morning we heard that the German had died and would be buried with full military honors.

There was another patient whom we were interested in seeing. Lieutenant Devere H. Harden was the first American officer wounded in the war. His wound was not a very bad one and the doctors allowed us to crowd about his bed and ask questions. In spite of the British saying, "you never hear a sh.e.l.l that hits you," Harden said he both saw and heard his particular sh.e.l.l. He thought it would have scored a direct hit on his head if he had not fallen flat. As it was the projectile exploded almost fifty feet away from him and his wound was caused by a fragment which flew back and lodged behind his knee. He did not know that he had been hit, but sought shelter in a dugout. Just as he got to the door he felt a pain in his knee and fell over. He noticed then that his leg was bleeding a little. A French officer ran over to him and said: "You are a very lucky man."

"How is that?" asked Harden.

"Why, you're the first American to be wounded and I'm going to recommend to the general that he put up a tablet right here with your name on it and the date and 'first American to shed his blood for France.'"

The thought of the tablet didn't cheer the lieutenant up half so much as when we prevailed on the doctors to let him take some cigarettes from us and begin smoking again. By this time we had almost forgotten about the slum of earlier in the evening and so we stopped at the first cafe we came to on the road back to the correspondents' headquarters. Several American soldiers were sitting around a small stove in the kitchen, and although they said nothing, an old woman was cooking omelettes and small steaks and distributing them about to the rightful owners without the slightest mistake. At least there were no complaints. Perhaps the doughboys were afraid of the old woman for whenever one of them got in her way she would say nothing but push him violently in the chest with both hands. He would then step back and the cooking would go on.

Presently a noisy soldier came roaring into the kitchen. It took him just half a minute to get acquainted and about that much more time to tell us that he was driving a four mule team with rations. We asked him if he had gotten near the front and he snorted scornfully. He told us that the night before he had almost driven into the German lines.

According to his story, he lost his way in the dark and drove past the third line trench, the second line and the first line and started rumbling along an old road which cut straight across No Man's Land and into the German lines.

"I was going along," he said, "and a doughboy out in a listening post, I guess it must have been, jumped up and waved both his hands at me to go back. 'What's the matter?' I asked him, just natural, like I'm talking to you, and he just mumbles at me. 'You're going right toward the German lines,' he says. 'For G.o.d's sake turn round and go back and don't speak above a whisper.'

"'Whisper, h.e.l.l!' I says to him, kind of mad, 'I gotta turn four mules around.'"

CHAPTER XXI

THE VETERANS RETURN

When the first contingent of doughboys came out of the trenches I went to a French officer whom I knew well and asked him what he thought of the Americans.

"Remember," I told him, "I don't want you to dress up an opinion for me.

Tell me what you really thought of our men when you saw them up there.

What did the French say about them?"

"Truly, I think they are very good," the Frenchman told me. Then he corrected himself. "I mean I think they will be very good. They are something like the Canadians. They were pretty jumpy at first, but that doesn't do any harm. The soldiers up there, they wanted to fire when the gra.s.s was moving and they did sometimes, without getting any orders.

They got over that pretty soon. By the third night they were pretty well settled. Of course, they can shoot better than our men and they are bigger and stronger, but in some things we have the advantage. You Americans are much more excitable than we French."

As a rule French and British officers were inclined to be optimistic about the Americans. They were impressed by their physique. The first of the Canadians were probably a little huskier than the Americans and the early contingents of Australians and New Zealanders were at least as good, but now all the rest are falling off in their physical standards on account of losses, while the most recent American arrivals in France are better than any of our earlier contingents.

The American is potentially a good soldier, but it is a long cry of preeminence. Any nation which establishes itself as the best in the field will have to perform marvelous deeds. The chances are that n.o.body will touch the high water mark of the French. After all, in her finest moments, France has a positive genius for warfare. Her best troops possess a combination of patience in defense and dash in attack. France has a fighting tradition which we do not possess. We must gain that before we can rival her.

From the point of view of the newspaperman the Frenchman is the ideal soldier of the world. Not only can he fight, but he can tell you about it. There is no trouble in getting a poilu to talk. He has opinions on every subject under the sun. The only difficulty is in understanding him once you have got him started. The doughboys, on the other hand, are usually reticent. They're always afraid of being detected in some sentimental or heroic pose and so they adopt a belittling att.i.tude toward anything which happens as protection. The first men who came back from the trenches were not quite like that. These doughboys were more like Rossetti's angels. "The wonder was not yet quite gone from that still look" of theirs.

They did not minimize their experiences. I think I understand now what Secretary Baker meant when he said that some of the most thrilling stories of the war would come in letters from the soldiers. We went to the major of a battalion which had just come back from the front to its billets.

"No, nothing much happened while we were up there," he said. "They didn't sh.e.l.l us very hard; they didn't try any raids or any gas and the aeroplanes let us alone."

Then we tried the soldiers. "Yes, sir, we certainly did see some aeroplanes," said a doughboy. "Why, one day there was two hundred and twenty-five flew over my head. I think the French brought down twenty of them, but I didn't see that." Another told how two hundred and fifty Germans had started to attack the Americans. "Our artillery put a barrage on them and in a couple of minutes all but three of them were dead."

"Did you see those Germans yourself?" we asked him sternly.

"No," he admitted, "it was a little bit down to our left but I heard about it."

There were other stories which may have grown in the telling, but they sounded more plausible. One concerned a soldier who had his hyphen shot away at the front. This man was of German parentage and his father was in the German army. Before he went to the trenches he used to dwell on what a terrible thing it was for him to be fighting against his father and Fatherland. He declared that if it were possible he was going to play a pa.s.sive part in the war. But in the course of time he went into the first line and no sooner was he in than he peeked over the top to have a look at the folks from the old home. "Pat, pat, pat!" a stream of bullets from a machine gun went by his head. The German-American gave a grunt of surprise and then a yell of rage and jumped over the parapet and began firing his rifle in the direction of the machine gun. He must have made a lucky hit for by some chance or other the machine gun ceased firing and the doughboy crawled back into the trench unharmed. He was still mad and kept mumbling, "I didn't do anything but look at 'em and they went and shot at me."

A story better authenticated concerns a visit which General Pershing paid to the trenches. A young captain took his responsibilities much to heart and wanted to leave nothing to his subordinates. He was on the rush constantly from one point to another and at the end of fifty-two hours of unceasing toil he went to his dugout to get three hours' sleep.

He had hardly started to snore when there was a knock and a doughboy came in to complain that he had sore feet and what should he do. A few minutes later it was another who wanted to know where he could get additional candles. Rid of him, the captain really began to sleep, only to be awakened by a knock at the door and a voice, "Is this the company commander?"

"Yes," said the irritated captain, "and what the h.e.l.l do you want?"