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Toward the Flame

oks by HERVEY ALLEN

Prose

TOWARD THE FLAME: A WAR DIARY
ISRAFEL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
POE'S BROTHER (WITH THOMAS OLLIVE MABBOT)
ANTHONY ADVERSE

Poetry

WAMPUM AND OLD GOLD

CAROLINA CHANSONS (WITH DUBOSE HEYWARD)
THE BRIDE OF HUITZEL : AN AZTEC LEGEND
THE BLINDMAN

EARTH MOODS AND OTHER POEMS
SONGS FOR ANNETTE
SARAH SIMON
NEW LEGENDS

Toward the Flame

A WAR DIARY

By HERVEY ALLEN
Illustrated by Lyle Justis

FARRAR & RINEHART

INCORPORATED
Publishers New York

-5

990. W/?3

COPYRIGHT, I926, 1934, BY HERVEY ALLEN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, BOUND
BY THE HARRIS WOLFF ESTATE, NEW YORK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO SIDNEY HOWARD

8405 —

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2014

http://archive.org/details/towardflamewardiOOherv

PREFACE

I HAVE tried to reproduce in words my experience
in France during the great war. There is no plot,
no climax, no happy ending to this book. It is a narra-
tive, plain, unvarnished, without heroics, and true. It
is what I saw as nearly as memory has preserved it,
and I have set it down as a picture of war with no
comment, except a very little here and there by way
of explanation. This book shows how it looked "over
there."

The narrative covers the drive from the Marne to
the Vesle during the fateful months of July and
August, 1918, from about July first to August four-
teenth. It gives a glimpse of some of the fighting
about Chateau-Thierry and Fismes, but above all, it
shows how we lived and died, ate, cooked, looked,
thought and felt during that time. It is the intimate
detail of life at the front as I saw it, and pretends to

vii

Preface

be nothing more. As a personal narrative told in the
first person it is only natural that I appear in it myself.

About half of this material was written in a long
letter from a hospital in France immediately after
the events which it relates. The rest was set down
in 1919 just after my return to the United States when
the memories were still so strong as to be almost
photographic.

In reading over this account again six years after
the war, I find that I was mistaken at times as to
the reasons for certain troop movements and discipli-
nary measures, and in one or two instances even as
to my exact whereabouts on a given date. But I have
not changed the text in the light of after knowledge,
as the preservation of the exact state of mind and
even of the prejudices of the times and place are part
of the book's essential verity and have perhaps a minor
value in themselves. In some places, for obvious rea-
sons, personal names have been slightly changed and
some military terms and objects have been spoken
of in everyday language.

It is a purely personal narrative. Those who look
for a discussion of military policies or tactics will be
disappointed. This book is not propaganda of any
kind. It is much more than that; it is a picture of
war, broken off when the film burned out.

HERVEY ALLEN.

New York,
December, 1925.

viii

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

SINCE Toward the Flame was first published in
the spring of 1926 there have been several edi-
tions, including a number of reprints.

In a very quiet manner, unchampioned, unaccom-
panied by anything but the best critical comment-
that of one reader to another— the book has gradu-
ally taken its place as one of those volumes by an
American about the World War, which for one rea-
son or another continues to be widely read. So
gradual was the process, however, that the author
himself would not have been aware of it had it not
been for a constant trickle of letters from readers
all over the country. Nevertheless, over thirty thou-
sand copies have now been sold, the last reprint is
exhausted, and another is called for. The publishers
have therefore taken the opportunity of providing a
new format for the volume, which, it is hoped, will
be found for several reasons to be more attractive
than the old.

In particular it is thought that the illustrations of
Mr. Lyle Justis will not only help to bring home to
the reader the reality of the scenes here described,
but what is more difficult, serve to make evident the
general spirit animating those Americans who par-
ticipated in the great Allied offensive of the summer
of 1918.

ix

Preface to This Edition

The artist himself took part as a soldier in the
events he depicts. He knows his types, his locale,
and his atmosphere. His illustrations are therefore
the result of imagination drawing upon genuine per-
sonal experience.

So rapidly have the details and peculiar aspects of
the scenes of the Great War tended to fall into ob-
livion that it seems essential to point out at this
writing that Toward the Flame is not a story about
professional soldiers glorifying the exploits of some
particular unit. It is merely that of one of many of
the National Guard units of the American army.
But as such, it is that cross section of the citizens in
arms, and actually engaged in battle, which the nar-
rator observed and did his best to report.

In the preface to earlier editions, which is here in-
cluded, and which I wish new readers would read,
I refer to the fact that "This story ends where the
film burns out." That is quite literally true.

It was not the object of this book merely to relate
a personal adventure. I tried, insofar as anyone
can, to eliminate the big "I" of little ego and to sub-
stitute for it only the first person singular of the
fellow who happened, under certain circumstances,
to be around. Hence, I ended the story with the
night attack on the village of Fismette, when most
of the defenders of that place had ceased to exist.
If I did not inflict upon my readers certain personal
sufferings and physical indignities that followed, it

X

Preface to This Edition

was because I felt that they were important to me
alone In other words, I meant this to be a report of
what I saw on the battle line, and when the fighting
ends the story stops.

In answer, however, to many letters and innumer-
able questions as to what did happen to me, I can
now, after sixteen years, "hasten to add" that in the
early morning hours after the attack, and in the
company of one sergeant, I managed to return to
headquarters where I was promptly tagged by our
regimental surgeon and sent to a base hospital.

To him, and to that surgeon, whoever he was, who
in a certain field hospital saved my eyes from the
effect of mustard gas and tended other injuries, I
should like at this time to express what the word
"gratitude" only too coldly conveys. But that is
another story.

And since the story of behind the lines is essen-
tially different from the story of the battlefront this
book has nothing to do with the former.

A more general and official view of the fighting
about Fismes and Fismette, and of the events de-
scribed in the last chapters of this volume will be
found in the correspondence of some of the generals
in charge of the operations, which are included as
addenda at the back of the book.

These pages were originally rather hastily pre-
pared for the press, after they had lain about in manu-
script for some years. Indeed, they were not meant

XI

Preface to This Edition

to be a book at all. Most of the material was taken
from letters I had written home from the front or
from the hospital, describing experiences on the bat-
tle line, and from notes jotted in a rough diary — all
of which were very casual, and, I am afraid, rather
incoherent.

After returning home in 1919, I found myself much
troubled at night by memories of the war and often
unable to sleep. It occurred to me then that I might
rid myself of my subjective war by trying to make
it objective in writing. Taking in hand the material
mentioned above, and adding to it what I still so
vividly remembered, I whipped the whole into shape
without any thought at the time of publishing it.
The medicine worked, although perhaps the style of
the utterance suffered.

In preparing this edition for the press, however, I
have reread proofs, altered the sentence structure
here and there, removed some obscurities, and clari-
fied the punctuation. But remembering that the book
as a whole was set down at white heat with the full
vividness of the scene unbearably in mind, I have let
the text stand substantially unaltered.

H. A.

December, 1933.

«•
Xll

CONTENTS

Preface vu

Preface to This Edition ix

I. Route Marching 3

II. Behind the Front 25

III. In the Valley of the Shadow 41

IV. The March to Chateau-Thierry 59

V. A Day At Chateau-Thierry 79

VI. On the Edge of the Battle 101

VII. German Dugouts Ill

VIII. Courpoil 131

IX. An Air Battle 151

X. A Rest in the Woods 159

XI. A Grave in the Woods 168

XII. Another Night March 180

XIII. The March to the Vesle, and Fismes. . . 191

XIV. Into the Pit 200

XV. A Wild Day 222

XVI. Over the Bridge 232

XVII. Over the River Again 248

XVIII. Last Hours in Fismette 264

Addenda 278

xiii

Toward the Flame

CHAPTER I

ROUTE MARCHING

CAN ANY one who took part in those route
marches in France from the sea to the front
ever forget them? It seems to me that we were al-
ways marching along those splendid, shaded, French
roads with a gridiron of sunshine falling through the
tree trunks that stretched their endless, double row
along the white ribbon that disappeared forever and

3

Toward the Flame

forever over the edge of the next hill. Here, there
was a bright space and a row of stumps where the
necessities of war had cut down the precious shade
of the highway, and then, we were entering a long
vista where the branches met in a Gothic arch over-
head.

It was like a river flowing through a tunnel, a river
of men.

There is a glimpse of the major and his adjutant
on horses ahead; blotches of sunshine on the brown
khaki, like spots of paint on an autumn leaf; a tangle
of rifles at all angles and positions; the sweating neck
of the man in front of you, and the ceaseless swing
of legs like the drivers of some gigantic engine.

That was the way it looked in the summer before
we had much rain.

Then there were ten-minute halts, just long enough
for you to get stiff, but welcome nevertheless. And
what a throwing away of cigarette butts when the
word came to fall in! Then another plod of twenty
minutes, with that pack-strap and belt giving you a
toothache in the back, till the single long blast of the
bugle called the next halt and the brown squares of
men disappeared off the white road like magic— al-
ways to the right— so the important little side cars
and the colonels' automobiles could dash up and
down.

So it went many and many a time.

The route from St. Denis-Rebais to Petit Villiers,

4

Route Marching

which was to be our next halting place, lay through
the town of Rebais, twisting around through the nar-
row streets in a confusing fashion so that our con-
necting files had a busy time of it. It is no light
thing to turn a wrong corner when a whole division
is following you. Explanations might, to say the
least, be impracticable, so I was very glad to see the
figure of our connecting file at each corner and hear
a well-known voice say, "This way, lieutenant," —
then column right or left — and there was the rear of
"A" company with the smoking cooker just disap-
pearing around the next corner of the street.

Toward the Flame

The whole population turned out to see us. Wo-
men held up their babies to Les braves Americains as
we went by down the streets between the shuttered
stone houses. We remarked the absence of any-
cheap cries or "home town" cheers ; only a tense ex-
clamation once in a while, or the fierce exhortation of
some wounded poilu. For the most part there was
complete silence, except for the everlasting ring of
steel boot-nails on hard stones.

There was a sameness, a uniformity, about our
army that was new to the French, used to so many
different styles of uniforms; a Saxon vigor and stern-
ness, too, which for all their dash and gallantry, our
Latin allies lacked. This was a bigger race of men
passing, company after company, regiment after
regiment, brigade and division.

Rebais was not a very large town so it was not
long before we were out of its streets, and marching
up and down the light rises of the low, undulating,
cultivated country that lay beyond. Here for the
first time we became conscious that we were really
near the front. Miles away against the skyline
hung a captive balloon; the whole air was constantly
vibrating like a sympathetic bell with the whir-
ring sound of planes, too high to be visible; and
suddenly there was the far-off powder-puff burst of
anti-aircraft shells about the "sausage," followed
a long while later by faint double reports. They
were the first we had seen and heard. "So that was

6

Route Marching

the front up there!" Men looked at each other
significantly.

Presently the road zigzagged down into a steep
valley with a stream, a bridge, and an empty, gap-
ing town at the bottom, where we made a halt. The
mess sergeant brought me the unpleasant news that
the fire had gone out in our senile rolling kitchen;
the old grates couldn't stand the jolting of the road.
But since I knew this meant that the faithful kitchen
detail must have put up a brave but losing fight, I
could not have much to say except to join in with a
few hearty blessings on its former hapless owners,
H. M. Royal Scots.

Nevertheless, the news was unwelcome. The men
expected to be fed, and they looked to the officers to
feed them. To feed, clothe, equip, and pay the men, —
that is about all a line officer can do anyway, — pic-
tures of sword flourishers in battle notwithstanding.
Excuses make cold fare, and I had visions of our
outfit sitting alongside the road while "A" company
and "C" company fed full. A look into the boilers,
however, with pieces of half-raw meat and potatoes
floating in the lukewarm water, convinced me that
nothing could be done, for just1 about that time we
were on the move again. Such little things as this
are what make the soldier's life "so romantic," house-
keeping on the flowing road with 250 ravenous
children.

The deserted town we passed through looked very

7

Toward the Flame

desolate and lonely. It was the first place we had
seen which the inhabitants had abandoned, and it
gave one much the same sensation as passing through
a cemetery at night. The village had not been
shelled, but the balance was being held so precari-
ously at Chateau-Thierry just then that a good many
of the villages were being deserted. Any day the
line might swing one way or the other. Here the in-
habitants had left.

We toiled up the steep road toward the plateau on
the other side of the valley, and finally made a halt
near the top, where the subject of lunch once more
became acute. The men began to look suspiciously
at our "fireless" cooker, and I began to contemplate
making a dicker for some hot coffee with Captain
Williams of "A" company, when something occurred
which drove all ideas of eating completely out of
our minds.

There were no iron rations used on the sly that
day !

"The colonel desires to see you and Lieutenant
Shenkel, sir," said the colonel's chauffeur as he
drove up in the commanding officer's car. "Jump
in." I knew the "old man" must want to see us
pretty badly if he sent his car, and as we whirled
up the road, I anxiously passed in review my
conduct of the last few days, which I am bound
to say had been that of an officer and a gentleman.
I glanced at Shenkel, who looked as innocent as

8

Route Marching
even Well, we should soon know— here was the col-
onel now.

He was standing by the roadside with the adju-
tant and Captain Law,* where they had been having
a hurried bite to eat, and he looked at us rather
gravely as we came up and saluted him.

"The French general commanding at Chateau-
Thierry has asked for two platoons from the 28th
Division to cooperate with the French in an attack
which is to take place to-night at Hill 204," said the
colonel. "I have sent for you because we want this
regiment to participate, and I am going to send one
platoon from 'A' company under Lieutenant Bentz
and one from 'B' company under you, Lieutenant
Shenkel. You and the company
commander can decide what pla-
toon it is to be. We cannot con-
veniently get in touch with the
other battalions now, there is no
time to lose, so both platoons
will go from this battalion."

We both saluted and fairly
ran down the road back to the
company. Of course, Shenkel
would take his own platoon, the

♦This officer, the captain of the author's
company, was at this time acting battalion
commander during a temporary absence of the
major.

9

Toward the Flame

second. We lined them up on the road and made a
close inspection of equipment.

It was surprising even in a well-equipped com-
pany how many little things were lacking here and
there — now that the actual test had come. I stripped
one or two men in the other platoons of their am-
munition in order to supply missing clips where they
were necessary, picked out the best automatic rifles
and extra magazines; changed a few rifles which
were rather suspect, and made one or two shifts in
the personnel. In ten minutes the chosen platoon
was ready. Then we told the men what was before
them.

Instantly the lads of the other platoons crowded
around and for a minute or two there was a great
handshaking, exchange of keepsakes and little notes
— "Mail that to Bess, will you, Jim, and write them
home. . . ." There was a spirit and enthusiasm, and
yet a realization and lack of sentimentality about it
that was fine to see. The men hardly seemed to real-
ize that it was "good-bye" until they were swung
into column and actually began to march. Then
there was a storm of handshakes and farewells and
cheers as they swung up the road to join the platoon
from "A" company which had already gone on ahead.
Over a third of them never came back. That was
one thing you learned at the front; to be glad to see
people when you met them, just in case . . .

A few minutes later, after the excitement cooled

10

Route Marching

down, the main column got under way, and in about
an hour we reached our new billet, Le Petit Villiers.

"B" company was lucky at this little town, since
we had billets with lots of straw and a barn or so. I
found a real house with a fine room for an office, and
had the cooker just in front in a cow's "bedroom,"
that cow having gone the way of all flesh some time
previously, to judge by the evidence. We buried her,
while the cooks prepared a big meal, with fish for the
officers, obtained by throwing a hand grenade in the
creek near by — a trick we learned from the French
soldiers detailed with us. Then we set up the cots
and the company field desk in a room of the old farm-
house which had a pretty view across an orchard, the
red roofs of the village peeping over the trees just
beyond.

Here the men played baseball at leisure times, and
in a field near by one of the companies pitched pup
tents, as there were not enough billets to go around.
Battalion headquarters took up their office just across
the hall, where we could hear their typewriters click-
ing all day, for even at this time there was a good
deal of "paper-work" going on.

Our stay of about a week in this town was a god-
send, as during the captain's absence I got the com-
pany thoroughly reorganized. Handling 250 men is
no joke. I put my "headquarters platoon" in fine
shape — mechanics, runners, cooks, and clerks, and
appointed some more good non-commissioned offi-

1 1

Toward the Flame

cers, of whom there cannot be too many. It seems
impossible that Pennsylvania politics could reach to
France, even in a guard regiment, but they did. In
the old days, a lot of the men had been appointed
non-commissioned officers to salve up the folks at
home in the fourth ward, or for some such reason,
and it was necessary to change this now. I tried to
get the right man in the right place.

Very soon the new order of things began to tell.
When a runner left company headquarters for any
platoon, things started to happen right way. This
was very necessary. We would often get an order
to move, and turn out in the middle of the night, carts

harnessed and all loaded,
only to have the order coun-
termanded after standing
around in the chill of the
night for an hour. Some-
times this happened two or
three times a night. Few
can imagine what this does
to the morale of an outfit.
Making up packs in pitch
darkness, loss of sleep,
scrambling and hunting
around for things in the
dark — as, of course, a light
might bring down a bomb,
is a real trial. But it finally

12

Route Marching

got to be almost a joke. Soon we could turn out and
turn in in no time, and that, I suppose, was what they
wanted.

Regimental headquarters at this billet was at an
old "farm-chateau." This was the last place the band
played. I went over to see the colonel. He and the
adjutant had a room with some of those gigantic
beds with funereal urns carved at the top. The big
court was full of cows, sheep, chickens, and soldiers,
with messengers going and coming. The large
headquarters company camped just outside. Offi-
cers were shaving under the trees ; the cookers were
in full blast. Above all other sounds was the inces-
sant noise of wagons, trucks, side cars, and artillery
going and coming from the front along the highway
near by, one of the great French national routes.

At night the noise of wheels was the most charac-
teristic sound of war-time France. It sounded like
a river in flood, washing and rolling its stones over
the jagged boulders of its bed. At dawn all this
ceased. The wagons were backed into the nearest
bois, covered with branches and leaves, and the horses
tied to trees. All the men disappeared; that is, the
French did. The "Yanks" went wandering around
like a plumbers' picnic until they had enough men
killed off to "get wise." Our military police, the
"M.P.'s," directed traffic.

Petit Villiers was a scattered hamlet, two or three
disconnected little villages or groups of red-roofed

13

Toward the Flame

houses among fields and orchards, rambling along
green lanes that branched off at various angles from
the main road. Battalion headquarters, where we
had our company kitchen, was an old stone farm-
house situated on a crossroads about the center of
the hamlet. It was here that I slept and had the com-
pany office with the field desk. The platoons were
billeted on straw in various barns and empty sheds.
One platoon was down at the extreme end of the
village in a hay-filled barn. But its lieutenant had a
real bed, a deep feather bed, in an old peasant's
house with spiral stone stairs and heavy black oak
rafters. Madame was still living there, dressed in
her white cap and sabots. She would, if encouraged,
bring a little hot water with which to shave. The
few chickens about were guarded most jealously, and
eggs — an egg was a prize, indeed !

Our men were most forbearing in these billets;
very little was ever taken. They seemed to realize
that a small flock of chickens, or the scanty milk of an
old cow, was perhaps all that a mother and her little
family had. With one or two exceptions, in the bil-
lets that I saw, the men shared their rations with the
French, and every mess line dwindled down at the
last to the little tots in wooden shoes. Many a French
boy will remember to his dying day the white bread,
the sweet American coffee, and the good-natured
"Yanks," for in nearly all the villages where we
stopped the men were fast friends with the inhab-

H

Route Marching

itants, and all the way from Calais until the evacu-
ated zone began, the mail followed us up from the
sweethearts along the route behind.

All these little villages were carefully loopholed
for machine gun fire. At Petit Villiers, I remem-
ber, I took some of the sergeants around to give
them a talk on street and village fighting of which
so much was going on at the time. At every house
on a cross street or lane-end, or from sheds and barns
that looked out over the fields, there was a carefully
constructed loophole for a machine gun nest, and in
some places a concrete and stone covering like a lit-
tle vault to make it safe from shell fire. Several of
the men found a lot of Chauchat ammunition hidden
in the straw of one of the billets. We thought we
had a treasure trove, but it all proved to be defective.
Some of the French had probably hidden it to get rid
of it on their way to the front. Armies had passed
through here.

There was a good deal of air activity also. Bal-
loons and planes were generally visible along the
Marne.to the eastward. At morning and evening
the bombing squadrons went over, going and com-
ing from a raid, flying very high, and filling the air
with a pulsing hum of motors. The anti-air barrage
at the front was frequent, and occasionally there was
a chase and machine gun firing, after an enemy plane.

For the most part, though, everything lay very
quiet. The fields dreamed in bright sunshine and

15

Toward the Flame

summer peace, the men bathed along the cold
streams, or drilled in the fields, and only the traffic
and uniforms told of war. Each battalion was kept
to its own area here by the military police, so the
company clerk was worried to death by requests for
passes to the Y.M.C.A. canteen, only about a half
mile away, but just outside our bounds.

It was here that the two platoons that had gone
to the front came back to us. From time to time
we had heard rumors about them. The night before
their return, a number of their wounded, some in
very bad shape, had passed through the regimental
hospital on their way to the rear. At last the main
body arrived in trucks, about five o'clock one after-
noon, just in time for supper formation at which they
got a tremendous ovation. About 30 returned to
our company out of the 58 who had left. Some 12 of
these absentees were known to be wounded; the rest
were missing or dead.

These picked platoons had an extraordinary expe-
rience, having volunteered to aid the French in an at-
tack on the Germans at Hill 204 near Chateau-Thierry.
Here they met machine guns, hand-to-hand fighting,
and several hours of a German barrage. After the
battle, the French general at that point of the line
took them to his headquarters, complimented them
personally, gave them a long-remembered meal, and
recommended them all for the croix de guerre, which
the whole platoon received later on. Lieutenant Shen-

16

Route Marching

kel had shot a big, burly German officer, used his own
head like a veteran, and was simply idolized by his
men. They followed him around like a lot of sheep.

At supper that night the enthusiasm and excite-
ment were at fever heat. Men came from other com-
panies and stood around in tense little circles to hear
the wonderful stories "the veterans" had to tell, won-
derful but true, and the voices did not die away in the
billets till very late.

From this gallant exploit came a spirit that helped
us through trials to come. Yet many of those who
returned were worn out and unstrung for the strain
to come later on. Attrition had already begun its
work. There was no one who did not notice how
small the second platoon looked.

I was particularly impressed that night by Lieuten-
ant Shenkel. A man who comes out of battle does
not get over it for a long time afterward. I went with
him that night to his billet, "the billet of the feather
bed." While he turned in, I heard the story of the
attack on Hill 204. It was a story of agony and pain,
of death in the furnace. ... A wonderful tale, told
simply, yet a story of mad adventure. Shenkel was
still alive by a series of miracles. His face was
flushed, and his eyes wide and brilliant with excite-
ment. He was a different man. Something had come
to him which had not yet come to us. It was the
trial of battle. No one who passes through that is
ever quite the same again.

17

Toward the Flame

At Petit Villiers drills went on every day while
we lay there. We had a big field and woods in which
to move about and carry out various attack and de-
fense problems. Captain Thorn, who was waiting
to hear from delayed special orders of some weeks
before, laid out several problems. He had one of the
aptest tactical minds I ever ran across, which was
more to the point just then than faultless habits. It
was whispered about that there were several in the
battalion who rather feared his estimate of their own
ability. He was several months waiting for the re-
turn of his papers, and at Petit Villiers lived up a
winding staircase in a stone room with a groined ceil-
ing, broken-down furniture, and a candle in a bottle.
I used to sit with him evenings over a little some-
thing to eat and drink, when he was really brilliant
at times. His talk flashed around to all points of

the compass,
lighted with
sudden gleams
of humor and
touches of in-
sight, and the
truth that
men tell under
adversity as at
no other time.
Beneath was
a French fam-

Route Marching

ily living in cabinet beds around a kitchen ; an elderly
woman in granny cap, with heavy seams on each
side of her nose, two children, one of the loveliest
little girls I have ever seen— like a March rosebud —
and her little brother, who used to play house with
her in an overturned barrel. Their mother was a
soldier's good-looking wife. How they watched the
tide of refugees, asking them eager questions as to
the news! A slight swaying back and forth of the
lines meant life or death then to many a village.

One day a party of officers from the regiment
climbed into one of our ration wagons and drove
forward ten or twelve kilometers to reconnoiter a
new position. It was along the Paris Aqueduct below
Chateau-Thierry, about three miles from the German
lines. The nearest town was Nogent-l'Artaud-sur-
Marne. We jogged along the good road and stopped
where it crossed the aqueduct to go down into the
valley, where there was a charming water mill and
two men reaping. Just on the other side of the
stream lay a dead horse killed by a shell — very evi-
dent. Horses lie with their legs in the air, the stiff
muscles looking as if they were carved out of wood.
The curves of their bodies all grow peculiarly wooden
and formal in their rigidity.

We went up on the hill. A party of Italian sol-
diers was working with the French engineers, get-
ting wood for revetting, fascines, etc., and over on
the other side of the hill we could hear an occasional

19

Toward the Flame

shell whistle and fall with a smash, for the Germans
were attempting to shell the working parties along
the aqueduct.

I went down to the rear of the mountain with some
of the others to see if we could get rations in from
that direction. There we found a little village or
farm group by a stream where the houses were full
of French soldiers eating beans. A sergeant gave
me the information I wanted about the roads. I
went back and we reconnoitered "the mountain," a
curious place.

In peace times there had been a big sand quarry-
here. A small, narrow-gauge tram track ran all over
the hillside, with the rusty cars and engines standing
about like a deserted picnic park in the winter. There
were several good buildings on the hill, one full of
beds which was chosen for battalion headquarters,
and one at the very crest which was full of a litter of
tools and various cast-off junk. A track ran past it
along a green, grass-grown road to a long shed
around a curve. I chose this for company headquar-
ters— the fireplace was appealing.

From the aqueduct one could look for miles up
and down the Marne. We met General Weigel there
and our colonel, and watched Hill 204 vomiting
streams of shells at our batteries cleverly placed on
the opposite hills. One of the guns was under a big
tree on the flats where the Marne made a sharp bend.
You could see the nose of it sticking out through

20

Route Marching

the branches, and catch the flash. Every once in a
while a great geyser of earth shot up in the air from
one of our shells. We were looking at the German
lines.

Chateau-Thierry, a beautiful, white city, lay at
the foot of a hill a few miles awTay, and other towns
up and down the river valley. Not a soul could be
seen, no wagons on the roads, the railroads only a
rusty red line, the towns mere shells. The river
flowed down through the hills past the little patches
of crops and crimson poppies, white roads and green
woods. It was like an inland landscape, a mosaic of
grain and garden patches; the church spires like toy
towers, and a strange silence over all except for the
distant grumble of guns. Every one had fled. It was
only the ghost of a world that we were looking at.
The Marne twisted through it for miles, and there
was always the brilliant sunshine over it — the white
French sunshine that seemed almost wrong.

Along the river I found a lot of new trenches the
French were digging in case the "Boche" got that
far. It was these that we were to occupy as a sup-
port line. In fact, the whole mountain was to be a
strong-point. We laid it out, fields of fire, machine
gun support, company sectors and all. Sometimes I
feel sorry that the enemy did not try to take it; it
was such a little Gibraltar. What surprised 'us
though was the small number of men assigned to
defend it.

21

Toward the Flame

The French soldiery left everything they touched
dirty. All the woods were full of little bowers and
rustic seats littered with refuse, cast-off clothes, am-
munition cans, excrement, and old rifles. Little
signs tagged various places "Villa Bon Air" "Cha-
teau Incroyable," etc. The paths were wired with
a hand wire so you could follow them in the dark
— very necessary — and labeled "Chemin de Ronde,"
"Avenue de I'Etoile," and so forth.

Near the road I found a haunted little place, white
pebbles and garden walks with the print of big feet
in the flower beds. At one side was a wrecked dolls'
house and smashed dishes — a whole symbol of what
had overtaken civilization. I looked at the marks of
the big military boots among the crushed flowers.
I hope the owners have come back to take tea.

There were other interesting things about this
place, too. Near a well by a bridge was a cluster of
houses, just on "our side" of Nogent, numerous little
villas with cast-iron gates and gable roofs. One of
them had a court with a rather quaint warehouse on
one side. They had once packed moss there for
Christmas, and dyed it green. There were tons of
it. I do not doubt that we have bought some of it at
home. The business had been a prosperous one, as
the house was full of fine and tasteful things. It had
been looted, of course, and the safe shot full of holes.
Account books, old photographs, clothes, wrecked
chairs, letters, pieces of the splintered building, and

22

Route Marching

coats with their sleeves out, lay all about the floors
and up and down the stairs. A litter of soldiers'
cooking- added the last fine, little touch.

There were thousands and thousands of houses
like that in France. All the quiet, tender privacies
of family life turned out naked and shrieking to the
gaze of all. I billeted a platoon here where they
slept on the green dyed moss, but that was a day or
so later.

Just across the bridge was a big farm with one of
those enormous barns the French build. They were
still getting in the harvest here, and there were some
children playing about with gas masks hanging at
their sides. It was here too that the wagon waited
for us and we went back to Petit Villiers.

On the way down, a boy jumped onto the wagon
with us and rode for a while. He was going home
from his aunt's farm. In his particular commune of
Belleville there had been no school for two years.
He could read only what "mamma had taught." The
school was full of wounded. A very apt lad grow-
ing up ignorant. No wonder war makes people more
religious!

The schoolmaster came around and dined with us
at Petit Villiers. He was a sad, fat man with his hair
parted in the middle, who spoke a little intensely
grammatical English. Lunch was served out in the
open in front of a French house, on some boards laid
over a couple of saw horses. No cheese could be had

23

Toward the Flame

here. Each billet nearer the front saw some luxury-
cut off the dwindling list.

That night we left Petit Villiers hours before dawn.
The companies lined up in the dim moonlight, with
a child crying somewhere away off. There was a
devil of a mess at the road forks with an artillery
regiment trying to get ahead of us. I think this was
the evening of July the Fourth, 1918.

The men said we always moved on a holiday.

24

CHAPTER II

BEHIND THE FRONT

FTER leaving Petit Villiers we marched four

was to have been our next billet, and found that some
other organization had arrived there ahead of us. It
was a mistake on their part as they had been assigned
to another place, but that was cold comfort to us.
The whole battalion turned around like a snake,
marched back a little, and finally lay down right along
the road in a ditch and slept. Nick, my good Italian
striker, filled our portion of the gutter with grass and
hay, and we huddled up in it to keep warm.

near a large farm that

3 A o 5 - c^,

Toward the Flame

It is on such nights as this that one really sees the
stars. To lie and look up at them is to become more
sane. Somehow they always filled me with confi-
dence. Perhaps that is why generals took to wear-
ing them.

Next morning we got up from the roadside, rather
stiff, and moved over to two big farms, during which
time it rained violently. "A" company went into one
large barn, and "B" company into another, with some
crowding, and a remonstrance on the part of the
owner who was an old Alsatian and spoke German.
For that reason he got hustled for a while, until I
stopped it and explained the matter to the men.

A French farm in the country north of Paris is
simply an immense building around a court. It is at
once a dwelling, barn, lofts, stables, etc., with a ma-
nure heap of vast and nauseating proportions in the
center. We got the boys out of the streaming rain,
took away the ladders from the lofts, to keep them
from wandering, and started the cooker. Lieutenant
Shenkel and I found a dark little room next to another
hole in the wall where an immense sow lived. She
stuck her nose through to be fed, petted, or teased.
When the sun came out, the manure heap smoked in-
tolerably; my nails were so full of dirt as to be a
source of pain; the fires went out — and mess was
delayed.

A little later I went across to "A" company to see
Captain Williams. I was standing by "his" barn,

26

Behind the Front

when General King's car came around the corner
plumped down an absentee that the general had
picked up, and disgorged the general himself very
"wrathy." "Send for Captain Williams at once—
why did he let his men wander all over France like
that?" etc., etc. The wrath of God also fell on me,
as a man passed just then with a Red Cross sweater
worn on the outside of his shirt. The general, how-
ever, was really reasonable enough and must have
appreciated the kind of night we had been through.
It was necessary to have some one to keep the lid on.
I saluted and discreetly vanished.

By this time the mud was eighteen feet deep — at
least. I floundered home to my bedroom next to the
sow's and found that I was invited to lunch by the
farmer's wife, in the coziest little beechwood room
all glistening with copper kettles and pewter. We
had fried eggs and cheese, salad, and a bottle of
some fiery liquor, offered with much pride. I sent
out to our mess sergeant and got some coffee and
white bread for my hosts. Fraternity reigned. The
children and flies were in a dead heat for the molasses
when they brought us an order to move.

A big pile of clothes had just been brought in a
few minutes before. I had sent back our carts to
get them at Petit Villiers. These clothes began to
be a joke or a hoodoo. Every time they appeared,
we immediately moved before they could be issued.
The men fell in after a wild scramble for "size 6" or

27

Toward the Flame

a "32-27." Some were especially loath to leave, as
they really needed a change, so the first sergeant had
to resort to a little persuasion. In his own language
he "had to rap a few birds." Then order came at
last. We sloshed down the muddy road with our
boots sucking. I could see them creasing white
trousers at West Point!

There was a long march that day, passing over a
causeway that ran for miles over a shallow lake. At
one place, where we stopped, a peasant and his little
boy were fishing for frogs, with hooks and a red flan-
nel bait. The shadows of the willows lay very clear
on the ponds, and music from the band of one of the
other regiments came across the water. You could
hear the trumpets and drums.

At last we got out of this swamp country and
camped in a sort of open grove. The colonel called
the officers around him and read the congratulations
of the French general and the orders from the divi-
sion about our two platoons. There were fires going
here, and singing, as we were far enough away to do
that. Next day we marched again toward the hill
we had reconnoitered some time before, and camped
in a wood about two miles behind it.

We lay there for a week, long enough to get the
woods into living shape. The men pitched pup tents,
and I had a bower made for me. Nick had learned
to make baskets in Italy and he wove me a wonderful
little house. I paid the company off here under the

28

Behind the Front

trees a tremendous job-all in French money with
chan-e very scarce. Crap games immediately
started Thrre was no place to spend money except
an occasional Y.M.C.A. canteen. When these came
around, chocolate, cigarettes, little pasteboard boxes
of jam, matches and various other Christian luxuries
appeared, nor must I forget to mention the little pack-
ages of cakes so much desired. It was like being a
child again.

One day the colonel drove up to our entrance to
the woods, called for Shenkel, and told him to get
his stuff together right away as he was to be sent
home to train troops, and promoted captain. He
was a little bit dazed by good fortune, but he packed
his stuff, and the men got in line to say good-bye. In
the green light under the trees they filed by, shaking
hands and not saying very much.

Shenkel was a terrible loss to the company, our
only other lieutenant was off on detached service
with the Ninth Infantry at this time, which left me
the only officer with the company. The captain was
still commanding the battalion. Living as close to
them as I had to do in the woods, the men nearly
nagged me to death. Robin Hood must have had his
nerves shattered by forest intimacies.

A few nights later we moved to our assigned posi-
tion on the hill. The men were placed on duty where
they could turn out to man the trenches and strong-
points quickly. I got my little house at the top of

29

Toward the Flame

the hill cleaned out and a fire started in the fireplace,
with blankets over the windows. The cooker was
hidden under an old shed with a cast iron roof. Most
of the men were housed and the rest camped in the
woods. Battalion headquarters had the big stone
house and was quite comfortable. Shells fell here at
night, but in well-defined localities, and a gas bom-
bardment came over regularly every morning about
three o'clock. We got some old brass shells and
mounted them for alarms. This was really a joke,
as there was never enough gas to amount to any-
thing. Alarms were frequent, nevertheless, as the
men were nervous and overtrained in "gas."

"Fritz" was gunning steadily for the bridge at
Nogent. Every three minutes a shell whistled down
the valley. It often fell within a few feet of the
bridge or in the town, yet it never quite hit the
target.

The nerve strain began here, though. We had all
kinds of alarms and stand-to's, as at that time the
Germans were expected to start a new drive, and we
were to be in position if it came. We raced up and
down the hill at all hours of the day and night. "The
situation has changed" became a joke, but for the
most part things were quiet in the daytime.

I used to slip down and see the platoon that was
housed in the moss factory. The men had the place
halfway clean as the major general had lately vis-
ited us, and they could be found sleeping or sitting

3o

Behind the Front

along the wall cleaning their rifles. There would be
groups scattered about at one kind of gambling
game or another. Some were reading, some cooking
small potatoes they had dug themselves, mixed with
a few beans, some shaving and washing, while others
wrote home. The guard reliefs kept passing in and
out, and a lot of good-natured banter and tales of
"things I used to do at home" passed around. Lines
of packs stood against the walls made up ready to
move, the "U.S." staring from the flaps.

I went over into Nogent, about a mile away, one
day, with Paul, one of the French soldiers attached
to our company — eighteen of them were assigned to
the battalion. I made friends with them and got them
all attached to "B" company for rations.* They

♦This permitted "B" company to draw eighteen additional rations.

Toward the Flame

helped a lot, giving me sound advice and helping the
cooks. Their sergeant major was a fine fellow, proud
as a turkey cock, and justly so. He knew what all
the "Boche" flares meant, and so really saved me one.
night from walking over into "Fritz's" front yard.

So Paul and I went into Nogent.

The place had been shelled and deserted. I am not
going to describe it, as all these shelled towns were
more or less the same. Each, however, had its own
phase of tragedy. One touch here I remember: In
a bedroom, as we went in, a huge cat rose on the
lace-covered bed, arching her back, bottle-tailed; on
the floor were two small high-heeled shoes. Nogent
was not in such bad shape, just shot up generally.
A school had been hit horribly.*

We went up to what had been the restaurant at
the station and crawled in the back way. The shut-
ters were closed, and about twenty-five French sol-
diers were sitting around drinking. Some one had
brought in the big, wax, funeral candles from the
undertaker's opposite, and there was an unexpected
yellow illumination as one entered the room. Paul
explained my extreme affection for the French and
hinted at the possibility of my supplying some white
bread. Madame, a rather fat but still handsome
woman, in a coarse way, came forward followed by a
French sergeant who was evidently living on and
with her. There was much talk, handshaking and

* See the author's poem, The Blindman.

32

Behind the Front
smiles, a few toasts and Madame's story over a bottle
of wine.

She is the last woman in the place. Trade is gone
and tomorrow she leaves. Her husband and two
sons are dead— army, of course— there is nothing to
live for. This is the second time in four years that
the town has been wrecked.

French soldiers knocked and stamped in and out.
There was a parley at the door each time, as if we
were in a lodge, on account of the M.P.'s being near
by. I told her of the American Red Cross where
refugees could get help, while she gave me some eggs,
cheese, two bottles of excellent wine, and a huge fish,
killed by the Germans shelling the river, still fresh.
The shells bursting in the Marne brought everything
up for a long way. There was a great furor at the
officers' mess when I got back to camp, and admoni-
tions about not wandering off — over the fish and
wine. The major returned from school here and took
charge, but what was much more important to me,
I got a real hot bath.

There was an old iron bathtub under a sand shed.
I got Nick to heat some water by building a fire
under the tub, and after it cooled off considerably, I
had a "terribly" hot bath, coming out like new into
the cold night after a brisk rub, then clean clothes.
The old ones I buried.

We got an order to move that night, which was
later countermanded after we had lain about under

33

Toward the Flame

arms in the rain. Messing around, I found a cross
over a mock grave with "4th Infantry" carved on it,
so I knew my friend Francis Hogan, who was in that
regiment, was not very far off.

We moved at noon — very hot — and marched across
fields by an ancient signal tower left over from Na-
poleon's time, when news was semaphored across
France. At last we hit the paved road and passed
through a little town where the two colonels and the
general of our brigade saw us go by. A lot of weary
men, too tired to answer the usual, "What outfit,
boys?" soon passed us going towards the rear. The
platoons looked small. They had been at the front.
We could hear artillery constantly, and in the full
heat of the afternoon passed through a badly shelled
town. One stream of troops was going one way, and
one another. A big relief was in progress. The dust
simply smoked, and we got almost too tired to get
out of the way of trucks. We arrived in the town and
halted while some French soldiers brought us water
from the wells. They would not let our own men
leave ranks in the village. The road was lined with
artillery farther on, 75's firing now and then. We
would get the flash, the blast of air, and the blow of
sound every minute or so.

About five o'clock we moved into a wood. The
men lay right down where they were, some stripped,
and all slept. I went back to locate our cooker and
waited for it to turn up among the rest of the traffic

34

Behind the Front

at the crossroads. I fell to talking with the M.P.
there, a big, competent fellow who handled the traf-
fic professionally. While we were talking, there came
a droning sound. Some instinct moved us off the
road down behind a field dyke. There was a crash
like the world's end; dirt and stones like a landslide.
Everybody falls prone at a time like that. Then we
got up and looked. Just where we had been talking
was a pit about four feet deep still smoking. The
French came along and put a cartload of stone in it
right away, and the ambulances that had been held
up began streaming past immediately. Our own
cooker came up at last and we had supper quickly —
the last cooked meal we got for a long time. As it
was, we scarcely got that.

The major hustled us off in column of file about
twilight. We marched and turned and twisted,
scouts being at the corners for part of the way. The
captain had gone ahead with some of the other offi-
cers to locate our position. All that I knew was that
we were to relieve the 30th U. S. Infantry.

The earth and air trembled with artillery. We
did not know it, but one of the greatest barrages that
had ever been thrown, up to that time, was being put
over by the Germans. Planes were fighting over-
head, their machine guns flashing like fireflies. I re-
member passing a shelled farm where our boys were
drawing water and smoking. Lots of trucks passed
us, but pretty soon we wound out onto a moonlit

35

Toward the Flame

tableland, over the edge of which we could see the
great red and white German flares going up together
with all kinds of rockets.

A right-angle turn brought us to a sepulchral vil-
lage, where there were a few gleams of light from a
ration dump.

Some one gave a false gas alarm here. The men
put on their masks needlessly, and the two rear pla-
toons got confused and went up the wrong road.
Men kept yelling, "Gas! gas!" I found myself with
only two platoons, out on an earthen causeway,
headed toward an unknown woods across gas-smell-
ing fields, with shells falling ahead. I got the ser-
geants to go down the line to stop the men calling
"gas !" and got the masks off. I ran back myself and
got the last two platoons back in line, holding up the
company to do it. In ten minutes we were an army
again; for a while confusion had made us a mob.
Several men dropped out, done out or frightened. I
made the rest close up to keep liaison.

We moved on about a mile when I got news from
the front of the line, after a long halt, that "A" com-
pany had lost its front platoon and had no officers.
This meant that the leading platoon of the column
had marched on with the guide and left us. The
chain was broken at the first link. I was the only
officer with "B," and it was a long way rearward to
"C" company. I sent a runner back to Captain Hal-
ler to tell him that I had gone ahead, and took a hard-

36

Behind the Front

headed Forest County lad along with me to find out
the lay of the land. We searched a most desolate
stretch of country for an hour, but could find noth-
ing— only woods ahead. Finally I walked a long
distance and came across a main road lined with
poplars.

Bullets were droning through the trees now and
then and the road was full of cut limbs and branches.
I was very much frightened by this time and did not
even know where the enemy lay, except generally.
Finally I found a telephone station at a crossroads,
and two men. They were sleeping, and one was a
useless Italian. I threw some water over the opera-
tor from a bucket that was standing there, and
rustled him around generally till he got thoroughly
awake and could react consciously. He took me
down the road about five hundred yards to a place
called Fossoy, where there was a regimental head-
quarters, a famous old regular outfit, the Seventh
U. S. Infantry.

The officer on duty was just coming from the
latrine and desired to be sociable. He asked me
where the regiment came from and wanted to know
if I knew somebody in Pittsburgh. In the mean-
time, the whole battalion was lying out in shell fire
while this went on. It seemed impossible to get any
definite information. This is just the way things
happen. Men cannot realize the true situation, espe-
cially at night or after great fatigue, and some never

37

Toward the Flame

at all. Finally I made out that I had gone too far, a
whole regiment to the left, the regiment we were to
relieve was along the Paris road "somewhere," and
that was all they knew. I blessed them and departed.

It was very dark now; the moon had set. I got
back to the battalion, all lying down sleeping, and
then went along the Paris road down into a woods
where the trees were all cut off by artillery fire about
eight feet up. The white flares that went up from
the enemy lines showed me that it was full of dead
men in all conceivable contortions. Some had been
blown to pieces two or three times; others lay as if
asleep; some were just torsos. There was a head
with glasses still on. The gas masks added the last

devilish effect. Up

the road a little I
stumbled over a dead
mule and caught my-
self on its stiff leg.
Here I was ghastly
sick of heart and body
for a while. But I
managed to get on
and at last came to
a battalion headquar-
ters sign at a little
crossroads, where
there were a lot of
horses lying dead and

Behind the Front

already badly swollen. In the ground, a few yards
away, I saw a very faint gleam of light. I walked
over toward it, and found that it came from a dugout,
which I entered and tramped on a knot of sleeping
men. The place was full of gas, and those in it dead
from sleep.

I learned that battalion headquarters' was' in an-
other dugout next door, so I went jip , and then down
another stairs, and finally into a laii£ern«Ht cp.ve full
of vile air and packed with men. It was a hole . in the
earth banked and covered by logs, with a\ste£p pitch-
ing stairway of mud. The major's-eyes looked -like a
pink rabbit's from lack of sleep, and he talked- thick
and low. That our battalion was lost could mean
nothing to him. He gave me a guide, who, after
being awakened with the greatest of difficulty, took
me out and lost me. I got back in half an hour and
found our battalion scout officer. We went up and
found our own battalion. It had moved forward
some and the head of it was in the woods. We had
an officer from the 30th U. S. Infantry for a guide by
this time and got our whole outfit into the woods,
waking the men with great difficulty. In a few min-
utes there was daylight and we would have been in
full view of the German batteries and machine guns.
We were on one side of the valley and the "Boche"
on the other. Fighting was going on in the towns
that lay between. It sounded like riveting in a boiler.

The Germans had planned a great drive up this

39

Toward the Flame

valley from Chateau-Thierry and had laid down sud-
denly the greatest barrage in history up to that time
— greater than any at Verdun.* For many square
miles there was a shell-hole everywhere, every few
feet. It was this frightful fire that had caught
whole regiments ' of our men living in bowers in the
woods'. 'They were swept out, one regiment particu-
larly*/t-hat W'hicri, we were relieving. Theirs were the
dead 'njen tfratlhad seen, and had we come an hour
or sq7g$rKef| we should have been caught, too.

Tire: litter through those woods was unimaginable
to anyone who never saw its like. There was one
cheerful- thin^ about it, though. One hour before the
Germans started their great drive for Paris, Mar-
shal Foch started his for Berlin. Our artillery and
machine guns caught the Germans in column of
squads on pontoons on the Marne. Hundreds were
killed, and in the valley near Chateau-Thierry, where
lie the little towns of Crezancy and Connigis, a Yan-
kee regiment, the 39th Infantry Regulars, stopped
the Boche.

The French left their guns, by order, and our boys
got in the harness and hauled the 75's forward to
point-blank range and fired them like machine guns,
loading on the recoil. It was there that the last Ger-
man drive for Paris was stopped, the high water
mark of the 1918 Teuton flood.

After that the tide was on the ebb.

*This was what we were told and believed at the time.

40

CHAPTER III

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

INTO the valley, a few hours after the worst was
over, we came, filing down the mountainside in
single file, the whole battalion stretched out for a
mile or two. Because no one would have expected
us to do such a thing, we got in. I looked back at
several places and saw the snake-like line filing down
and down in the dusk of the morning.

Near the bottom of a hill we found some of the
30th Infantry lying in a sunken road along the Paris
Aqueduct, our old friend bobbing up again. Cap-

41

Toward the Flame

tain Law had met us by this time, and we sheltered
the men as best we could. The place was rotten with
vomiting gas. It is easy to imagine what took place.
There was some tear gas, too. Some of the men we
put in an old trench the engineers had dug, others in
the sunken road, and still others in defilade space *
as near as I could find it. The rest of the battalion
was strung out along the aqueduct in little valleys
where some started to dig in.

I tried to use all the brains I had in getting shelter,
and found a little arroyo about four or five feet deep
without a single shell mark. It seemed to be out of
. the line of fire. I got Nick to pitch my tent in this,
and the "top sergeant" crawled in with me. The
headquarters platoon camped near by. You must
imagine a lot of holes in the earth down a water
course, with canvas over them, covered by leaves.

The captain went back to the major's dugout
about a quarter of a mile up the hill. Some of the
boys dug in deep. Next morning I went down to
the aqueduct and broke into a man-hole with some
of the men, washed, shaved, and got the mustard gas
ofT me. The whole side of the hill was alive with sol-
diers. The place looked like an ant heap. Men were
coming along the aqueduct with clinking canteens
strung on poles and waiting in line at the man-holes
to fill them. None of us knew exactly where we were
or what to expect. Several airplanes flew over us,

* Protected position out of line of fire.

42

In the Valley of the Shadow

among them some enemy planes. The enemy had the
mastery of the air at this point; only a few of our
planes ever came near us.

It was a fine warm morning, and I went back and
crawled under my tent to sleep for the first time in
two days, first starting a detail up the hill for rations.
About five o'clock our batteries woke me up. I found
our hill was surrounded by batteries hidden on the
crest, mostly 75's. Each one had a sound of its own ;
one seemed to ring like a bell, and a nearer one shook
us with its explosion, while still another seemed to
bark. They were fighting batteries across the Marne
about eight or ten miles away.

Pretty soon German shells began to come back,
falling in line, but short. The worst thing was that
every shell fell in the woods where our men were.
We had a number wounded before dark. About dusk
we began to get three or four shells every minute or
so. The men left the areas where they fell, and we
turned in. It was pitch dark. The first sergeant and
I lay together in our little dugout in the water-
course. We were safe from everything but a direct
hit. To be shelled is the worst thing in the world.
It is impossible to imagine it adequately. In absolute
darkness we simply lay and trembled from sheer
nerve tension.

There is a faraway moan that grows to a scream,
then a roar like a train, followed by a ground-shak-
ing smash and a diabolical red light. In the valley

43

Toward the Flame

the echoes were tremendous. About eleven o'clock
the range shifted and shell after shell fell directly
among the men — the most awful screams and moans
— cries for stretchers from "C" company. We
couldn't find where they were in the dark.

Let me remark that if you are one of those who
think everybody is brave under shell fire like that,
you are wrong. "Everybody" simply shakes and
crawls. Of course, you go out and do what you can.
All this was simply a fight between the batteries:
"Yesterday all was quiet along the front except for
intermittent artillery duels," says the communique.

In the Valley of the Shadow

Thank God ! few can know what that really means.

Our batteries were throwing over ten to one.
There would be a half hour of quiet; then whistle—
smash-another shell from "Jerry"; then our bat-
teries barking like a lot of savage dogs, with the
howls of our own shells; rockets, falling trees,
screams, the flop-flop of gas shells ; white-faced men
digging like mad or standing up under it according
to their temperament — some cool, some shaking,
some weeping; a few grim jokes, but mostly just dull
endurance; a hunching of the shoulders when another
comes, and the thought— "How long, how long?"
There is nothing to do. Whether you get through
or not is just sheer chance and nothing more. You
may and you may not. C'est la guerre.

We stayed in that place — the men called it Death
Valley — for five days. I will not give a diary of it,
only one or two things.

In the morning we went around collecting the
dead. It was necessary to collect individuals blown
to pieces as well as whole men. The last two days
some of the men dug for me and the first sergeant a
hole between two layers of stone that went directly
into the sheer face of a hill about 500 feet high.
There was sand between the two layers about four
feet apart. The last two nights I slept, secure my-
self, with some of the men who were not able to
stand it out in the open any longer. By that time
everybody had dug in pretty well.

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Toward the Flame

One morning a French major with an American
captain came down the hill, asking for various items
of information. He had all necessary credentials and
had passed through battalion headquarters. He got
sketches of our positions. About an hour later a
lieutenant came down from regimental headquarters
with orders to arrest him. He was a German spy.
Both of them were, I feel sure, although the "Ameri-
can captain" must have lived a long time in the
United States as his accent was quite natural and
he was familiar with the streets in my home town.

Owing to this visit, the bombardment that night
was deadly and accurate. I tried to get Captain Law
to shift the men out of a trench the fourth platoon
occupied, but he could not see the advantage of leav-
ing cover to move forward into the open. About two
o'clock a poor "kid" came to my dugout, evidently
with something to say, but he couldn't say it. He
led me over to the fourth platoon trench. We hit
the ground about every thirty seconds. They had
the trench "cold"; the place was full of dead and
wounded. Three direct hits had accounted for fif-
teen.*

I was so frightened myself, I could scarcely get the
men together. One sergeant, cool as a cucumber,
came up and gave me an immense sense of help.
There were three or four maniacs from shell shock
whom we had to overpower. We dug some of the

* These men were not all killed.

46

In the Valley of the Shadow

poor devils out and started them up the hill. The
faint sounds and stirrings in the caved-in banks were
terrible. Some we could not reach in time, and one
of these was smothered. We had one party of
wounded all together and started up the hill once,
when a big shell fell right in their midst. I saw men
blown into the air. Awful confusion again. . . . The
state of a wounded man, wounded again, and still
under fire, is beyond description.

Two more shells hit the trench, and I sent the men
forward two or three hundred yards. They were in
perfect safety there, all shells sailing over them.

We got what wounded we could and dragged them
up to battalion headquarters. There were no stretch-
ers there, and I
could not get any
one to come out of
the dugouts. I
shouted at them,
but heard only
muffled voices in
reply. The dark-
ness was inky.
One of the men
was hit again.

That was the
first time in my
life that I ever
knew what it was

47

Toward the Flame

to be angry. If certain of the men in the dugouts had
come out then I believe I could have shot at them.
Lieutenant Sharpe, the scout officer, who was the
only one there who tried to do anything for us, finally
got a runner to send up to the dressing station and
ask for stretchers.

Sharpe and I in the meantime tried to bandage
some of the poor devils. The feel of warm human
bodies and blood, the quiet patience and confidence
of the men, brought a realization of life to me in that
hour that I shall never forget. "This is my body
which is given for you." What that really meant,
now I knew.

After half an hour the stretcher bearers came and
the men were taken up and borne away.

Going down the hill again, I got the nearest call;
a "big boy" came over and exploded in a drain be-
side the road. I had thrown myself down, of course,
but I got tossed and wafted some feet in sliding
debris. Nothing hit me. I went back to Sergeant
Davidson in the dugout after a while with a numb
feeling in my side, pretty well unnerved and shaken
up. Nick made me some hot coffee over an alcohol
lamp. I slept after a while, and next day came to,
rather than woke up, about eleven o'clock — beautiful
sunshine — it hardly seemed possible in those woods.

Lieutenant Glendenning and I took some men and
went back to the fourth platoon trench. We took
shelter halves and blankets and went through the

48

In the Valley of the Shadow
ditch and picked up arms and hands and everything
else Some things we just turned under, and he
most we buried in a great shell-hole. Then we pulled
out the men that were smothered in the dirt ; some
were cut in pieces by the shell fragments and came
apart when we pulled them out of the bank. Lieu-
tenant Quinn, a Pittsburgh boy, who had just got
his commission a week before* was so mixed with
the two men who had lain nearest to him that I do
not know yet whether we got things just right. But
we made three graves, and buried them in a very well-
marked position, one man on each side of the lieu-
tenant, just as they had died, between stones 132 and
133 on the Paris Aqueduct, looking toward, and
opposite the town of Connigis across the valley. A
Catholic priest, one of our chaplains, came and said
a few words, some of the boys knelt and it was all
over. I got Quinn's watch, which was still going,
and gave it to his brother a few weeks later on.

We did not feel this so much at the time. Trying
to get the identification tags is the worst, but you
get numbed after a while.

I took the priest up to my dugout. We had lunch,
hot, and he gave me some cigarettes and tobacco.
He was a human being. We talked for a long while
about Rome, which he knew well. That was a great
rest. Nick came in beaming to hear talk of his be-

* Quinn's promotion was a fatal one. A shell exploded exactly opposite
the platoon commander's dugout.

49

Toward the Flame

loved Italy; told us about the chestnuts roasting in
the ashes, and the girls' cheeks growing red in win-
tertime at home. About five o'clock they started to
shell again.

One night I went out on the side of the hill to
establish an observation post where there was a
sweeping view up and down the valley. That was
the first place where I really got an idea what a big
quarrel the war was. For miles and miles the crests
that extended back and back were lined with cannon,
all flashing and rumbling, too far away to hear except
like a far-off storm. Clear over the horizon the glare
showed like a steel converter, but shaking and licking
halfway across the sky. The valley which was other-
wise quiet and lovely, with white villages and roads,
had a sound in it like a great electric fan pulsing and
pulsing, and there were little lights flashing and
winking as if an invisible traffic were passing. These
were the shells with tracers, sailing down to Chateau-
Thierry and the heights beyond, where there was an
eternal red winking as they burst, too far off to sound.
Foch was blasting the enemy loose.

There was no answer coming back.

Along the aqueduct, a little to the west of our posi-
tion, one of our aviators had been shot down. He
had evidently been trying to make a get-away and
had lost control and swooped down among the trees.
The plane lay with its tail caught in the branches,
hung up like a gigantic mottled squid. The front

5o

In the Valley of the Shadow

was all smashed, but the aviator was sitting in his
chair burned to death. There was nothing left of him
but a blackened, egg-shaped mass, his arms and legs
having been burned away. The buttons, the hobnails
of his shoes, and a few other unburnable things were
scattered about the wreck of his machine, and there
was a throat-tightening stench of seared flesh. We
tried to get his tag but could not find it.

One of the captains of the 30th knew that Lieuten-
ant Roosevelt had been shot down near by so we did
our best to identify this man, but without result.
That he was an American, we knew by his buttons.
He had evidently been on a bombing expedition,
for there was a whole drift of bombs lying together
on the bank in front of the plane. We steered very
clear of them. A party from the 30th Infantry
buried him, I heard later on.

One afternoon I got orders to lead a combat patrol
to a town called Crezancy about three miles down
the valley nearer the Marne. We were to occupy it
that night with two platoons. I left with about
twelve men and carried a rifle myself. We went
down a sunken road and out of the rotten, gassed
woods into the blessed sunshine. The Germans were
supposed to be just across the valley, about a mile
away, so we went single file, keeping a good back-
ground of field for long enough to be sure we were
not under observation. Then we took the road un-
der the poplar trees and moved fast.

51

Toward the Flame

It was the big, straight highroad down the valley,
macadamized, and covered with a litter of branches
from shell-struck trees. Little villages we sneaked
upon, but they were empty — simply eggshells of
houses shelled to pieces, a few pigeons still about.
At one place we passed a wrecked Ford with a man
lying in the ditch beside it, without any head. Every-
body was in high spirits at getting into the light and
air, and I am afraid the headless man was rather
humorously dealt with.

We came into the town of Cresanzy by way of a
watercourse and an old springhouse, and nearly
scared the heart out of one of our own pickets, who
was much astonished at our advent. Every move
like that convinced me that the thing to do was the
unusual. It is always a surprise, and worked on the
enemy as well as it did on our own men. In this
case "F" and "E" companies of my own regi-
ment, or some of their platoons, were already in the
town.

Crezancy is, or was, a good-sized, prosperous and
delightful little town. It had been shelled and re-
occupied twice by both sides. The streets were full
of slate and bricks, fires burning here and there, walls
full of holes. The church was ripped open on one
side, but not much hurt on the interior, where a great
oil painting of the Passion hung. The bell lay on its
side in the tower, lolling out its clatter like a dog's
tongue. All windows were smashed, furniture and

52

In the Valley of the Shadow

all manner of articles wasted around, and a kind of
breathless air of dead expectancy hung over the
place. When one moved through the streets there
was a little crackle of slate and tinkle of broken glass
under the heavy footfalls.

We met a moving picture man here — where we
had expected to meet the enemy — war is full of sur-
prises. A lot of our men were living in cellars, scat-
tered about. They took me to what had been a fine
club of some kind with big vaults for wine. Here
Lieutenant Frank Mehrton, a good friend of mine,
had his command post. He and some other officers
of the old regiment were eating in the dining room,
blankets over the windows and candles aglow.

This was a magnificent room. It boasted a huge
chandelier, oak wainscoting, and leather screens,
wonderful upholstered chairs, and a silver service
which "Fritz" had had to leave in order to get out of
the town quickly enough when our troops moved in.

The joke of it was that he had left a great supply
of food, too. The club had evidently been a regi-
mental headquarters. We had an excellent meal
cooked in a big chafing dish with griffins on it. All
kinds of things, tinned but succulent, were plentiful.
The wine was a godsend. In the midst of the fes-
tivities the alcohol slopped over and started a fire
that threatened to envelop the sideboard for a min-
ute or two. Mehrton's platoon had come through
an awful baptism also, and we toasted each other,

53

Toward the Flame

after a manner, on still being alive. He had been at
the Langres School of Arms some months before
with me.

I turned the men loose for half an hour "to root,"
gave a rendezvous, and started with my sergeants
to lay out our positions for the two platoons that
were to come and occupy the town. It took us all of
two hours to do that. The place could have been
defended wonderfully, as there were trenches and
strong-points already built.

I then went over and connected with the 39th U. S.
Infantry at a little town called Moulin, on the right
of our position. There was a machine gun outfit
there, and a company of infantry. Another battalion
was nonchalantly stringing through the place in
single file, advancing to the attack; you could hear
rifle fire about a quarter of a mile way.

At Moulin I met a captain, who told me the usual
story about the losses in his outfit, and in those days
they were only too true. He showed me the coat of
a surgeon who had been sniped that morning. He
was standing at the door of his cellar when some
German got the telescopic sight on him. He must
have laid the cross-wires in the sight over the cross
on the doctor's arm. The bullet struck dead in the
center of the cross and came out at the doctor's neck.
He lived long enough very calmly to transfer some
records and dictate a little letter home. I should
like to have seen that letter.

54

In the Valley of the Shadow
The captain made arrangements to exchange run-
ners with me. I showed him my plan of defense, and
left just in time to see our men drive the Germans
over the edge of the hill near by. It was like an
Indian fight, sniping, crawling, rushing, and then
suddenly they had them on the run. I heard our
machine guns burst out on the other side of the hill;
their chattering echoed up and down the valley.
Finis Fritz. That was his last stand west of the
Marne. Just a few snipers that had been left behind.

Part of the garrison at Crezancy was living in the
old railroad station with about fifty beds in the cel-
lar. One of the first things that happens in an occu-
pied town is that the men go out and gather in all of
the mattresses. Most dugouts that "Fritz" left were
well provided. In order to keep from drawing a shell-
ing, the men had not moved anything in the yard.
There was a child's bicycle by the station and a little
wagon. To have moved these would have shown up
in aerial photos and might have brought a bombard-
ment on that part of the town. One learned quite a
few wrinkles like that by bitter experience.

I went back through the town, after carefully lay-
ing out an old ruined farm on the flank as part of our
scheme of defense. There was water there, good
shelter, and a fine flanking field of fire, had "Fritz"
cared to try to come back again. Uptown there
was a whole quartermaster dump abandoned. We
stripped and got new clothes from head to foot; the

55

Toward the Flame

men got new rifles; everything was plentiful. It was
like Christmas.

In what had been the big school I found the Red
Cross stores: boxes of tobacco, chocolate, paper,
typewriters, etc., etc., all half looted. I think the
quartermaster, Red Cross, and Y.M.C.A. stores were
all mixed and cluttered together here. We took our
needs and tried to carry a little extra back for the
boys in the woods. Upstairs there were some de-
lightful prints on the walls, old ones. I wanted one,
but it would have been folly to have carried it away
with no chance to preserve it. One had no compunc-
tion about taking things in these towns, as they were
doomed. There was a quiet bedroom here with a
gentleman's outfit in it; the curtains were blowing
in and out at the windows. Some one sat in the
chair. The droop of the jaw was not to be mistaken.
Half his back was shot away.

56

In the Valley of the Shadow

In the courtyard there was a ruined brick tower,
a litter of all known things, and two gassed horses,
their ribs sticking out like death and a white mucus
coming out of their blind eyes. They went around
nosing for water and bleating in their throats.

Every house in these ruined towns was a story in
itself, a tragedy. I shall tell you about some other
places later on and leave Crezancy. About six o'clock
one of our company buglers found me and told me to
rejoin the company, as Crezancy was to be reoccu-
pied by another regiment and ours was on the move.
So all our little scouting expedition and plans were
in vain, but it had been a nice little adventure.

We got back into the woods just in time to get
into a gas bombardment of about ten minutes' dura-
tion. Our first platoon got the worst dose and the
men suffered intensely as we moved up out of the
woods in single file; just as we had moved into them,
in fact. One of the greatest trials was having to
march gassed men when there was nothing else to
be done, although sometimes it was fatal.

We stirred up a lot of mustard gas getting out,
and had the usual trouble of alarms and men getting
lost when they put their masks on. Brown, one of
"B" company's sergeants, who was born on the
Brandywine in Pennsylvania and had spent nearly
all his life in the country and woods, led us out by
a short cut that avoided the shelled areas.

Our scout officer thought we were lost and came

57

Toward the Flame

up the line to stop us. He begged us in that intense
way that men do who are sure they are right and
know that they have no chance of being believed.
He was sadly unstrung from the strain, and it took
us a few minutes to assure him that we knew what
we were doing. Our commanding officers had lost
us so often that his scepticism was to be condoned.

After a while we came out onto the plateau above
into moonlight and pure air. A new spirit, one of
relief and release, seized us; we were free from that
death-hole at last! A mile or so took us past an old
chateau with a few gleams of lights about it. There
was a ration dump there, regimental headquarters;
autos were droning faintly on the road and men mov-
ing about freely. Death was not looking over our
shoulder any more.

>

58

CHAPTER IV

THE MARCH TO CHATEAU-THIERRY

THE march that night was a killer. We lay about
on the roads for a while letting a lot of machine
gun outfits pass us with their little horse carts
like Indian sledges made out of poles with the
tribal goods piled on them. Everybody was asking
everybody else where we were going, and nobody
knew.

There was a mist with the queer, frosty effect of
the moonlight on it, and through this, along the

59

Toward the Flame

glimmering roads, the endless train of men and carts
passed, dim, muffled figures with the glow of a pipe
or cigarette lighting up a face now and then. Some-
times there would be a halt and the impatient stamp-
ing and kicking of horses; a low-toned conversation,
then the grinding and rutting ahead that told that
the move was on again, and the indistinct column
would move forward into the wall of mist. It was
getting cold.

We moved out over the plateau. Every wood had
its battery, and it was here for the first time we ran
across our own divisional artillery. In front of every
patch of trees was the marker lantern glowing like a
wet firefly in the grass. You could hear the snorting,
grinding trucks going and coming back and forth
making the nightly trips for supply and ammunition.
We stood aside on many a muddy stretch to let them
thrash by.

The gassed men gave us great trouble, especially
when it came on to rain. We moved on, crept, drag-
ging the gasping gas cases along with us, carrying
their rifles, reassuring them, and doing everything
to get them to the end of the march. In the midst
of a violent shower we started to camp in a wood,
moving in by platoons. The major had lost his way
and had evidently decided to bunk up for the night.
Before all the men got into the woods, where we
could hear the sick fellows talking and crying out,
orders came to move out again. So I had to pull the

60

The March to Chateau-Thierry

poor chaps out into the field where they sat down in
lines in a resigned kind of way. The colonel had
come to lead us to our billet. I could dimly make
out his car down at the end of the field near the road,
and there was a group of officers standing about
waiting until the battalion could be hauled out of the
woods again.

Once get four or five hundred dead tired men into
a patch of thick, brambly, rain-soaked woods, and
getting them out is no light task.
' While our men were waiting I got permission from
the colonel for them to smoke. It was really touch-
ing to see how hungry they were for tobacco. I
never realized how much it could mean. I lit a ciga-
rette myself, and remember it was more like eating
something than smoking. The effect was so distinct
as to be felt in the pit of the stomach. After a few
puffs one felt the cold and damp less. Tobacco in
times of great fatigue, annoyance, and nervous stress
brings a slightly sleepy feeling of contentment and
does not seem to lower the faculties much. It en-
ables one to endure more.

After about an hour we marched, just a mile or so,
and came to an immense grange; this was a French
farm — barn, house, lofts, and everything — built in a
great hollow square about a court and big enough in
this case to billet the whole battalion.

We moved the men into various lofts filled with
straw, while I found a large room downstairs where

61

1

Toward the Flame

there were piles and piles of feather mattresses with
a few French soldiers on them.

The French had been using this farm as a billet for
some time, and a few of them were there when we
arrived. I picked some of these mattresses out, told
some of my friends about them, and after getting
some scrambled eggs, new milk, and a pull of cognac
in the kitchen (so much for speaking French), I
turned in on a feather bed, after locking the door to
keep all others out, and slept as I had never slept be-
fore. I was done — at the end. One slept so deeply
as to lose any idea of the lapse of time.

Next morning the colonel came around raising
Cain about our not attending to the gas cases. I
turned over and let the captain take the hell. He
was drawing the salary and the lieutenants had been
doing the work lately. I think the shot told, as from
then on he braced up and helped us out at every turn.

After breakfast a hint came around that we were
to make an attack that night, so it would be a good
thing to get reorganized.

Lieutenant Glendenning and I got the company
together and called the roll, checking every one off
carefully. We had lost so many that it was found
possible to make only three platoons. We felt
it was better to have three fairly strong platoons
in the outfit than four weak ones. I purposely told
the men what they were up against. A few of them
later dropped out and went to hospital. Some of

62

The March to Chateau-Thierry

these, of course, were "gold-brickers" and some were
really in bad shape. I cursed out the former, put
them on a truck, and gave them my "blessing." As
one of the sergeants remarked, "No half-baked birds
in a battle for mine." What we had left were starved,
hard and lean, and anxious to get a "swat" at "Fritz,"
after being pounded so unmercifully by his artillery.
We were down to about 140 out of the 270 in the
company* that had left New York — "attrition."
After about half an hour's work picking the per-
sonnel for the new platoons, everything was ready
for the move. We also took this occasion to sort
and distribute the equipment as equably as possible.
Then I went back and lay down again.

There was an old piano in the room with the
feather beds, and some fool came in and played a lot
of homesick airs. Everybody got that "Just Before
the Battle, Mother" feeling. I nearly wilted myself,
to tell the truth. Very often before we went out for
some attack or other, one got that way. The feeling
of utter yearning and despair, the fear of the last in-
dignities ahead, and the knowledge that the war
might go on for years and years, brought mental and
physical paralysis to the individual. It is only the
great machine of the army that then lays its iron
touch on mind and body and makes it possible to go
on — or it is a sense of responsibility. I know this is
so, for men have told me, and I have seen and felt it.

* Owing to various causes this company had more than the usual quota.

63 >

Toward the Flame

I stopped the pianist. Under the spell of music the
longing for persons one loves becomes so physical and
acute that it makes a man ill. At Langres I went to
a concert one afternoon, and certain melodies and
rhythms, very strong in memories and suggestion,
made me sweat as on a hot day, and finally, violently
dizzy and sick. There was a French officer standing
near who knew what was the matter, too. They had
been at war so long in France, they understood.

At noon we marched, and a very historic march it
- was. We moved out onto a flat plateau and then
stopped as they were shelling the road ahead. Once
we got the order "To the rear" and then went on
again. All the men laughed — some of the staff were
getting close to the shells for the first time, it was
rumored. The mules and horses got in great con-
fusion at "To the rear," some turning right and some
left, and stepping over the traces. But we finally got
straightened out and on our way.

A German "sausage balloon" could be seen miles
away. It must have been across the Marne. Once
with a great buzzing and whirr two enemy planes
sailed over us, coming up suddenly, looming black
and large over the woods. There were orders here
against firing at them in order to avoid being bombed.
We got a gas alarm and walked needlessly for a mile
or so with our masks on. Then they were taken off,
and we began to go down into the wide valley of the
Marne.

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The March to Chateau-Thierry

The road was pitted on both sides and repaired
from recent shell craters. We passed through a con-
siderable town all riddled, with a barricade at one
end, and camouflage over the road that made one
think of the whipcord signals over railroad tracks
just before a bridge or tunnel, but these were made of
painted canvas stretched on wire. There was a
brushwood screen for several miles going down the
hill here on one side of the road. The overhead
camouflage kept aviators from seeing down it for
any great stretch. The country here was very
sunny but deserted and still, crops standing in the
fields. There was no firing to be heard.

A lot of French wagons and
cavalry passed us going fast,
and at last we came down a
long hill, single file, into full
view of the Marne and Cha-
teau-Thierry, beautiful in the
distance, and by that time in
our hands.

It was the first time we
really knew of the great with-
drawal. The Germans had left
the day before, and we had the
railroad working already. It
was a great pleasure to see en-
gines again. They belonged to
a comfortable world.

65

Toward the Flame

After waiting on the bridge that crossed the rail-
road near a big factory, the roof of which was lit-
erally riddled with shrapnel and bullets, we began to
enter the town. It was fine to be in a city again,
even a deserted one. Chateau-Thierry was beauti-
ful even in its ruins. All the houses were looted as
usual, but the place was not so badly shelled as most
small villages we saw. The artillery had made some
effort to save it, it seems.

We passed the colonel in his car before a tempo-
rary headquarters, and marched up the broad, branch-
strewn street. At a turn we saw the town hall with
a beautiful formal garden down a court, and a gilded
clock tower with a big arch underneath. There were
white statues, but the usual shell-holes were plenti-
ful, of course. The streets were very wide, and the
houses of nice architectural quality; some of them
very fine, white, clean and handsome. The "All
Highest" had been there June 2nd, and there were
all kinds of evidences of German occupation. Most
of the dead had been buried. Then we turned the
corner suddenly and come out on the Marne.

I shall never forget that scene. It was late after-
noon, the sun just sinking toward a hill, casting long
shadows, and the river, which here made several
turns, was very blue, running between the white deso-
late houses of the town like a stream through a ceme-
tery. Farther down the Marne there was a vista of
red-tiled roofs, and a wonderful Gothic church tower

66

The March to Chateau-Thierry

almost lacelike in its grace. A pair of stone water-
horses were rearing under the stone bridge, which
was cut in two by shells, but downstream there was
a pontoon bridge, across which the army was moving
in single file like ants over a bare, sunny place. Little
groups of Frenchmen clad in blue were standing
around, and as we got nearer there was a general air
of gaiety discovered; some one was playing a march
on a mouth organ, one of those gay, lilting French
tunes. With the green grass, bright sun, and the
deep, blue river it was almost pastoral, except for the
endless line of men who walked across the pontoons,
rifles slung. There was a dull shuffling sound and a
clatter of boards as we crossed the floating bridge.
One Frenchman caused not a little confusion by try-
ing to cross with a bicycle — characteristically, try-
ing to come the "wrong way." But this was soon
stopped, and I crossed over and waited until the rear
of the company came by, talking to some of the poilus
on the bank in the meantime. There was a spirit of
rejoicing in the air, a consciousness that the German
tide was on the ebb. " ' Americains et franqais, bons
camarades," said one little soldier. I gave him a
cigarette. At last the rear of the company passed
with Lieutenant Glendenning cheering some of the
weary along while carrying one old man's rifle. I
got things straightened out a bit, and urged on the
men who were lagging. "Only half a mile more" —
a rough joke or two — and we went on.

67

Toward the Flame

The Germans were going, and going fast. So or-
ders came to halt at Chateau-Thierry. We went
up into a little suburb, a town called Brasles, along a
valley with a mill stream, and camped there in the
old houses. Some dug in. There were huge hills on
either side — "204" was just across the valley — hills
that had cost thousands of lives. The valley was full
of immense shell craters full of water, and their great
brown scars could be seen upon the hillsides. I found
a place for my tent in a mint patch which rather
mitigated a dead cow up the stream.

The houses were intensely interesting; full of all
kinds of things one would have liked to carry off, and
lots of "Boche stuff," too. They had got out in a
dreadful hurry. The little suburb must have been
delightful in peace: a lovely old church, charming
houses, an old mill, a priest's house, and a beautiful
view, — very much like the scenes on teacups.

We were all tickled to death at not having to go
into a battle that night. There was nothing to eat,
however, that is, no hot meal. Our kitchens had to
wait until the big bridge was repaired. I ate some
chocolate, and then just about the time we were
settled, an order came from the major to establish
an outpost.

This order was more or less of a formality as we
had no contact with the enemy, but Lieutenant Glen-
denning and I went up on a high hill behind Chateau-
Thierry, overlooking the camp, in order to place our

68

The March to Chateau-Thierry

outposts where they could see over the next ridge.
The hillside had a lot of abandoned German bat-
teries on it. Here the effect of our big guns, the ones
we had heard at Nogent, was apparent, for the Ger-
mans had been blown off the hill, literally. One
cleverly hidden battery after another had been
wrecked. One dugout in a granite pile had been
safe, and there was a wrecked farmhouse near by
which we entered to investigate.

As we got close three Germans slunk into the
woods. It was getting twilight and we felt rather
uneasy, not knowing how many there might be about.
Glen and I had left our pistols behind, and I had no
helmet. We whistled up the rest of the patrol pretty
lively, spread out in fan shape, and came in on the
house from all directions — no one!

A couple of minutes later a sergeant with another
American patrol came up. I knew by his use of the
third person in addressing me that he was a regular.
"Does the lieutenant desire," etc. It sounded very
Chinese at the front. He turned out to be from the
4th U. S. Infantry. Francis Hogan, a friend of mine,
was in that regiment, and I determined to see him
that night. It was one of those decisions that comes
of itself and leaves no doubt in your mind that it is
what you are going to do.

The boys from the 4th had had nothing to eat for
some time, so we went down to find what they might
have at brigade headquarters and to report to Gen-

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Toward the Flame

eral Weigel that we were in touch with the 4th In-
fantry. The general came out, much pleased to get
the information, and by a little verbal maneuvering
I got direct orders to complete liaison, find out where
the front line was, and carry a message to the colonel
of the 4th Infantry. The less men I had, the quicker
going, I thought. So I borrowed Sergeant David-
son's pistol and set out with Lieutenant Glendenning
to find the 4th Infantry all by ourselves. Our way
led directly through the forest.

The other regiment of our brigade was just coming
into camp and hindered us until we left them behind,
putting up their pup tents in the little wooded valley
in the rear of the town. We then followed a well-
marked road that led into the
woods, and we walked and walked.
I had questioned the sergeant of
the 4th and at first had some idea
of our direction. But after a while
it began to dawn on us that we
were getting into "No Man's
land."

German shells lay everywhere
in wicker baskets; we tripped over
old telephone wires; and now and
then there was a dead man lying
here and there at the edge of the
thickets. There was a good deal of
mustard gas about, too, our own,

70

The March to Chateau-Thierry

whHi we had thrown at the enemy, so at times we
had to wear our masks. Ahead of us there was a
great red light in the sky. I thought it was a burning
town. We passed across roads with German sign-
boards, "Ludendorff Strasse," and such names. I
once talked over turning back with Glen, but we were
so far already that we both determined to go ahead.
We tramped on and on.

Quite suddenly we came out onto a great wheat
field, with mist in the hollow places. They looked
like lakes in the moonlight. About a mile or so away
was the front line; big red flares going up (my burn-
ing town), "whizzbangs," and machine guns going
every now and then. We skirted along in the shadow
of the woods, and just where a promontory of trees
ran out into the field I saw a group of men. They
saw us, too! I watched their flankers go out with
the cold bayonets — there was nothing to be done —
so we walked over toward them. If they were Ger-
mans, we had met the enemy and we were theirs.
"Halt, youse guys," said an Irish voice. It was a
platoon of the 4th Infantry which like us had just
worked up through the woods.

I explained my mission to the lieutenant in charge
and both of us showed him our identification cards.
There were too many English-speaking Germans
about just then to take chances. Another platoon
emerged about this time and told us where the 4th
was. I also got a little idea how the war was being

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Toward the Flame

fought. No one knew for certain who was on either
flank, in front or behind. It seems the French were
actually on the line that night just a few thousand
yards ahead.

I swallowed a whole mouthful of gas and pride to
think that Glen and I were probably the only two
lieutenants in the whole division who really knew the
exact location and status of things at that time. This
gave me a curious insight, and I heard, when I got
back, certain officers, supposed to be tactical wizards,
holding forth on absolutely wrong premises. The

72

The March to Chateau-Thierry
only way is to run along and see for yourself. It is

a fine little habit.

I wish I could picture accurately the plateau above
Chateau-Thierry that night : the white, misty moon-
light, the sense of dread and mystery in the black
masses of woods ahead with the enemy's stars and
rockets curving over them, only to glimmer away;
the sullen glow of the giant red flare, the far-off
thunder toward Rheims, and the crimson splashes in
the sky. Across the liquid grain fields lay white
tomb-like villages loud with the sudden chatter or
thumping of machine guns that would suddenly sub-
side, leaving a few strange cries floating over the
dark figures of our own men, or the wind rippling the
lake-like wheat, — then the stars, and all-engulfing
silence.

About this time a French officer met us and told
us the 89th French Division was hustling "Fritz"
along. Fritz was still going east and now and then
celebrated his departure with a lot of fireworks. A
regular Chinese New Year's broke out in a little town
up the road, where the French were moving in. I
soon got word that there was a major near by com-
manding a battalion of the 4th Infantry who could
tell me where his regimental command post was lo-
cated, so we started back.

After skirting along an old German trench, and
getting on a blind track once, we met another platoon
of the 4th with German prisoners. The woods still

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Toward the Flame

had quite a number of stragglers in them. Glen and
I must have looked fine coming through all alone
with one pistol — dog luck!

At last we found the major of the 4th with a ma-
chine gun company all lined up along the side of the
hill just like a cut in the tactics book. They had
halted and were waiting for news from ahead. We
walked out of the mist onto these men, and I was
taken to the major.

He was glad to hear what I knew, and told me he
was out of touch with his colonel who was at a little
place called Gland farther down the valley. I got
the general direction of the town, after which Glen
and I took off down the hill, through some quarries,
and hit a road that led us into Gland, a small village
terribly wrecked. In the moonlight it reminded me
of some of the flat-roofed towns along the Mexican
border.

The colonel of the 4th Infantry had his command
post under the church in a deep vault. One entered
through a dark passageway from which every gleam
of light was carefully excluded, and then suddenly
came into the groined arches under the church, lit
with a mellow glow of candles, and very quiet on ac-
count of the telephone, although full of men. The
voice of an interpreter examining a German prisoner
by the colonel's table at the other end of the room
sounded harsh and grating. There were a good
many American officers standing about. The order-

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The March to Chateau-Thierry

lies and runners with their red armbands were sleep-
ing or sitting back in the farther recesses under the
arches. In the full light, by a map on the table, sat
the French liaison officer, conspicuous in his gold
and blue.

I delivered General Weigel's message to the col-
onel, and told him the disposition of his own men
of the 4th that we had seen coming through the
woods. My message was simply the information
that our own brigade was in support at Brasles. The
colonel questioned me closely, filling in on a map
now and then data which were evidently not com-
plete. Then he delivered a little homily to me and
Glen on the subject of wandering around the front
without helmets, and gave me, through one of his
officers, the exact situation of the enemy and of our
own troops that night. The Germans were retreat-
ing, but were still holding villages farther up the
valley by rear guard actions. The 4th certainly had
their liaison and general map information well in
hand just then.

I told the colonel that I wanted to see a friend in
"M" company of his regiment, so he gave me a ser-
geant major as guide. It turned out that Francis
Hogan's company was quartered just across the
street — if quartered you could call it.

On the other side of the street was a high, white
stone wall over which we could see the second story
of a large, ruined house against the sky. After some

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Toward the Flame

parley at the gate as to the location of my friend's
platoon, we entered and found ourselves in a garden
strewn with wreckage, with the big, blank walls of
the house looming above us and the stars shining
faintly through the gaping windows and shell-holes.
The men were sleeping all over the place, wrapped
close in their ghostly slickers. With the pale, glim-
mering walls and white stones scattered about by the
bombardment, it was like a cemetery. We found my
friend's lieutenant and wakened him. He was very
courteous although very tired, and, calling the ser-
geant on duty, told him to find Corporal Hogan.

We went around waking the men, apparently an
endless task. Some pretended to be asleep, thinking
a detail was being called. I worked in great haste,
with Glen helping me, as it was getting along to-
ward morning.

It seemed for a while that after coming all that
way I was not to find Frank. Then suddenly we
came across him sleeping by a great, white stone.
He sprang up as men do at the front on being awak-
ened, but he knew me instantly. He was looking
thin, but straight and wiry and hard. We peered
into each other's faces in the dark and sat down on
the stone together and had a close talk. He spoke
of letters he had written me that I had never received
and gave me the address of a friend, Dabney Frazier,
in the Marines, whom we had both known in happy
times. I did not tell him that I knew this lad

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The March to Chateau-Thierry

had been killed. We seemed too close to it all then.

While we were still talking they began to shell.
The shells passed so close over the garden that we
could feel their wind. They lit along the road be-
yond with a glare and a smash which compelled us
to fall each time by instinct. It was impossible to
talk any longer. We promised to try to see each
other at every opportunity. Glen and I stood up be-
tween shells to make a run for it. I remember I had
an impulse to take Frank with me, but I only shook
hands with him. As we said good-bye, he thrust a
letter into my hands. I never saw him again. He
was a brilliant and promising poet. He was killed in
the Argonne in October a few days before the ar-
mistice.

Glen and I timed the shells — every three minutes.
We ran for it, and ducked into the road ditch every
time one came. Luckily, they were passing over the
road by this time and falling into a swamp. Each
one spattered us with mud, but there were no solid
fragments. As we ran madly down the highway, we
passed a company cooker with its fire going, and
backed up against the bank with two quivering
horses. The cook had thoughtfully betaken himself
to parts unknown.

Glen and I snatched a cup of coffee and ran for it
again. The last shell nearly got us, but we got
through into Brasles. "Jerry" had skipped them right
down the road after us. It seemed as though he

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Toward the Flame

knew he was gunning for us. I met Orville Thomp-
son, an old home town boy, and captain of Company
"M," standing in the doorway of the village. It was
his company cooker that we had passed, and he was
watching the result of the shelling rather anxiously.
One hates to lose one's kitchen.

Another half hour and we were back again at bri-
gade headquarters. We found the general and his
adjutant sleeping in their automobile, and reported
the situation to them. The general was much pleased
to get the information. Then we went back to our
own colonel, wakened him in an old cellar, and told
him; after that, "home" to a ruined billet. By the
light of the setting moon some of our regiment's
cookers were coming up the white roads, smoking
and smelling deliciously of coffee. We found Nick
had something hot for us, and a bed on a mattress
in the cellar of the priest's house, safe from any pos-
sible shells. After such a tremendous night and day,
both of us turned in and slept like the dead on the
fields outside.

78

CHAPTER V

A DAY AT CHATEAU-THIERRY

FORTUNATELY, the day after we returned
from our reconnaissance, the brigade did not
move, but lay all day and well up into the next night
at Chateau-Thierry and in the little suburb of Brasles.
Glen and I slept long into the morning, and were
only wakened at last by faithful Nick coming into
our cellar with some steaming mess pans full of oat-
meal, and, wonderful to say, milk and sugar.

The mess sergeant had been lucky in finding a

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Toward the Flame

commissary where he could get some "tin cow," al-
ways a delicacy at the front.

The mattresses, which the Germans had taken
from some French bedroom, were luxurious. I can
remember yet lying in that damp, moldy-smelling
cellar and looking out at the bright sunlight and
green grass framed by the door where some one
passed now and then. What a luxury, a real bed!
To my dying day the damp odor of mold will always
bring to mind some dark hole of a dugout or a cellar
filled with old mattresses, but cool and restful, dark
and safe.

After a while Glen and I stretched, put on our
puttees and shoes, and went out. One never un-
dressed at the front. Of course, I felt especially dirty
and dusty from the trip of the night before, and so
began to speculate on clean clothes and a bath. So
far I had been lucky in having only a few weeks be-
tween sanitary opportunities.

The men were moving about over the little suburb.
Most of the small jobs of the morning were finished
by now, and, as the halt was obviously meant for a
rest, everybody was taking advantage of it.

Nick and I explored the priest's house in the cel-
lar of which we had been staying. It was full of piti-
ful reminders of the parish life. He must have been
rather a pleasant man I imagine, that priest. There
were little picture cards scattered everywhere: small
Bible scenes that took me back with a leap to my

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

own little Sunday school class as a lad— Jesus in a
red coat, surrounded by lambs, the Virgin,- tinsel
hearts, and prayer books. One of those Nick took
and kept with a simple Catholic faith that I envied
at that time.

Upstairs, in a wash stand, was a box with some old
coins, overlooked by the Germans by some miracle.
The priest had evidently collected them from time
to time. There was one with the prominent-nosed
profile of Louis XVI on it and the legend, "he Roi,
la Loi, la Foi," by which I judged it to be of a very
early revolutionary issue. There were also one or
two medallions: a swimming medal issued by some
French city to commemorate a long-forgotten event,
and several other old and curious ones. These I lost
later on, as one lost everything, from baggage to life,
somewhere between the Marne and the Vesle.

One's chief impression of these looted houses was
the litter of plaster, glass, and tramped articles
on the floor. The heavy hobnail shoes ground every-
thing to powder and came out slightly whitened from
the dust after each trip. It was not hard to tell
where a man had been. All you had to do was to
look at his shoes.

Downstairs, next door, there had been a carpen-
ter's or woodcarver's shop. Here the German sol-
diers had evidently been amusing themselves with
the Frenchman's tools, for a number of our men had
little carved wood figures that they had found and

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Toward the Flame

were keeping" as souvenirs, all rather well done, but
unmistakably Teutonic.

There is a peculiar quality about all things Ger-
man, a certain aspect, something in the very grin of
the carved cupids on their inkstands, that seems to
cry aloud, "We do not come from Rome, and Greece
is not our home." That was the way those little
manikins impressed me.

The men were tramping around through the
houses, and there seemed to be a general flow down
the road toward the Marne. As those coming back
reported the presence of both a Y.M.C.A. canteen
and a quartermaster distributing new clothes, I be-
took myself in that general direction.

In the valley the gigantic shell craters were as full
of rusty water as ever. And I noticed, as I passed
over the creek, which ran with a big volume of water,
that the smell of something dead was tremendous,
probably an old cow, whose bloated carcass lay half
concealed somewhere up the stream. Despite all
that, the spot was beautiful.

From a little footbridge one could look back and
see the line of white houses meeting the intense green
of the grass, with here and there a cooker smoking
under a shed. Along the road going up the valley,
a crowd was gathering to watch some prisoners that
were being marched down. Groups of our men were
sitting in the vacant windows, and for the first time
in many days, there seemed to be a feeling of relaxa-

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

tion in the air. The battle for the time being had
gone on.

I continued down the valley, meeting more and
more men, till I suddenly came out on the main road
where there was a great crowd gathered around a
number of trucks.

I pressed my way through, exchanging a few
greetings with officers, and friends among the men,
and after some little hustling, found myself gazing
up at a couple of very busy and harassed-looking
men on the Y.M.C.A. truck, who were engaged in
answering the same questions a million times while
trying to make change — an impossible task with the
French money. They were selling tobacco, confec-
tions, and toilet articles. The end-gate of the truck
was down, and over this was passed the merchandise
which had been piled up at the other end of the truck
ready for sale. I was unable to get any chocolate.

"Out of chocolate," the Y.M.C.A. "bird" said a
thousand times; so I made him say it for me, and
got some razor blades, a few cakes, and cigarettes
instead, afterward strolling over to the quartermas-
ter's trucks that were purring away by the roadside
in the midst of 500 men, naked, and in all stages of
undress. The quartermaster was issuing new clothes.

You walked up to a truck, and after waiting your
turn, got as near the proper size of clothing as pos-
sible. You then went aside, picked a comfortable
spot somewhere, and changed clothes, throwing the

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Toward the Flame

old dirty clothes on the respective pile for each article.
There were little mountains of shirts, coats, under-
wear, and shoes, salvage piles which later on would
be taken behind the lines to be cleaned and reno-
vated. I got a new outfit from head to foot, uniform
and all. By that time many of the officers had dis-
carded leather puttees and insignia. I was one of
those who aped the humble private most closely —
and a very wise thing it was to do.

Having clean socks and underwear and a tight-
fitting new uniform was a pleasant sensation that
needed only a bath to make it complete. The sight
of the Marne, about a quarter of a mile away, glanc-
ing merrily in the sun, made a suggestion too strong
to resist.

On my way down to the river I ran into the head-
quarters company and picked up Lieutenant "Bill"
Snow, who was having a vehement argument with
his captain about the mess. The one pound cannon
platoon wasn't getting fed, or its share, or some-
thing, or so I gathered. He got a towel, however,
and joined me. "Bill" was lately from Virginia and
knew how to enjoy life. The mess question could be
argued again. On the way down to the river the
French liaison officer with the regiment joined us
with one or two others.

Between Chateau-Thierry and the Marne there is
a flat that cost many lives to take. We came out on
this wide, grassy meadow from a little garden, where

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

there was a pear tree with a big, broken, white, splin-
tered limb near a shell-hole, and walked over to the
river, a gay enough little group, some of the luckier
ones with towels over their arms.

Near the river bank in a little screen of willows
was a pit sunk in the red earth where a German ma-
chine gun nest had been. The feet of a dead man
stuck out from the bushes near by, and there was the
usual litter of used shells and broken stuff about.
Evidently they had got him by artillery, for there
were lots of rather small shell-holes about. One
could imagine him waiting there, hoping against
hope, until that last one came. He looked to be
about 35 years old. "We shall all be changed . . .
in the twinkling of an eye," says the apostle. In
war-time the real meanings of old sayings revive with
new force. They were written in times when life
and death were not mere amenities.

Bathing was not so easy as we had imagined.
There was a rather steep little bank at the edge of
the water, about a four-foot drop, and then a ledge
of very sticky, white clay. We threw our clothes on
the grass and finally worked our way in, large gobs
of the putty-like material adhering to the humbler
portions of our frames. The water was cold and
very clear and blue. Once in, it was glorious. What
a sparkle and warmth to the sun! I could see almost
as far as Nogent. About 100 yards downstream one
of our men and a poilu were "fishing" by throwing

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Toward the Flame

hand grenades into the Marne. The wisdom of eat-
ing fish at this time was doubtful; the river must
have been full of dead Germans, and the conclusion,
at least for me, was obvious.

The French liaison officer was a fine swimmer and
had a ghastly scar where his shoulder had been
blown loose at the siege of Verdun. It had kept him,
he said, nine months in the hospital; but here he
was, a gay, strong, and rather handsome fellow,
swinging his heels carelessly on the muddy bank and
giving vent to his French wit in newly acquired and
profane Americanisms. A fine example of "decadent"
France.

After the usual trouble in scraping off the mud, we
returned to the town where there was the customary
rumor of a move going about. I left Bill Snow re-
newing his argument with his captain, just where
it had been left off. There was nothing else for him
to do. I, for my part, reported back to my company.

Supper was under way, but a very slim one I was
told. However, for some that was just as well.
Under the mill wheel just where we had been camp-
ing, the men found a dead German floating in a cov-
ered part of the mill race. This accounted for the
uncommon strength of the atmosphere in the vicin-
ity. We had really overrated the dead cow. The
German was swollen to an immense size. Only his
belt seemed to hold him together, and we disposed
of him in a good old Biblical fashion by hanging a

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

millstone around his neck and sinking him. If the
owner of that mill ever reads this, he will be satis-
fied, as a good Frenchman, I am sure, to know to
what use his nether millstone was put.

Rumor for once was right. About five o'clock the
order came from headquarters to move, and the mess
lines were hurried somewhat in order to get the roll-
ing kitchens in shape for the expected night's march.
This happened again and again. A great many times
the men were cut off from being served, in the middle
of a mess line, or had hastily to bolt their food in
order to appease a worried company commander who
was afraid that the order to march would find his
outfit in the midst of a meal. Mess gear would be
hastily cleared up, scrubbed out with a piece of paper
and some sand or earth, after which the usual delay
of several hours ensued. It seemed to be true,
though, that if we resumed the serving of the meal,
the order to march was sure to catch us in the middle
of the operation. "Play safe," is written on the
hearts of all captains, so we played safe — and hungry.

We moved out that night suspiciously promptly,
the major and his staff riding and bobbing on ahead,
as usual, up the little valley that led away from
Chateau-Thierry. They were followed by the stream-
ing column of men with packs, and rifles carried at
all angles. We were down in a deep rut of a vale
with immense hills on all sides, the famous "204" to-
ward Vaux rising to the left, and a high hill with the

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Toward the Flame

little town of Gland on the other side, to the right,
where I had found my friend the night before. Back
of us lay the white city with blank staring windows
and ruined church towers; on either side and in front,
dense woods with an air of twilight mystery over all,
a tender summer evening along the grassy Marne.

We marched a little while and then stopped, fall-
ing out along the road where another regiment of
the brigade was lined up ready to move after we
should pass them. The colonel of that command and
his staff came down the hillside out of one of the
dugouts near the gigantic shell-holes. I saw the old
deserted farmhouse where the Germans had sneaked
away only the night before. It looked more ghostly
and deserted than ever. Presently some of the offi-
cers wandered up and we began to have a little chat.

Every halt was the signal for the "rag chewers" to
gather. We were all much exercised in our battalion
that we were short of provisions which had not
caught us up, because the bridge over the Marne had
not been repaired yet. Bill Snow boasted that he
got his one-pounders over it by the old dodge of not
understanding the protests of the French, and apol-
ogizing after his guns were on the right side. He
had dragged them over the footbridge. There were
some fine rumors passed around as to hearing some-
thing the colonel let drop about appointing so-and-so
captain, and then a general growl at the policy of
getting rid of certain officers, not personally on the

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

right side of the powers, by sending them home to
train troops instead of sending us, "the hard work-

ers "

How we all hoped that we should be sent home !
Promotion, and nothing to worry about, a reprieve
from the imminence of death. All this was cut short
by the order to move on.

It took a long while to get started with the large
intervals between the platoons and companies, so
necessary in case a shell came.

We marched that night for several miles. It al-
ways seemed as if no one knew where we were going,
and very often they didn't. Perhaps to a vague name
on the map. Up the same roads and through the
same woods that Glen and I had traversed the night
before, we moved through the same mysterious
jumble of crossroads, German telephone lines, signs,
piles of ammunition, and the faint ghastly smell of
mustard gas to depress us. It was growing dark
now, and a storm seemed to be coming on. One won-
dered how and where the night was to be spent. We
were only too soon to find out.

In a sort of amphitheater in the hills we halted
near a crossroads. The road at right angles to ours
came down a hill and then shot up through the
woods on the other side like a sword-cut through the
forest. It seemed like the prism of a canal through
the wall of trees, and it disappeared mysteriously
over the crest of the hill into the beyond. Once in

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a while there was the faint, restless flicker of artil-
lery somewhere on the other side of the Marne, and
now and then a shell fell in the forest far away, but
just near enough to make one wonder a little — trust
"Fritz" for that. Our battalion turned off on the
side road, and the orders were to put the men in the
woods for the night.

Followed the usual hunt to find a place to conceal
the kitchen and horses. We found a good shelter,
but it was in the woods on the other side of a rather
bad ditch along the road. The platoons turned into
the woods with the usual grumbling. The men could
not understand why they had left comfortable billets
in Brasles to march out a few miles to camp in the
woods. Going to bed in a gas-smelling thicket is not
much fun. I heard the usual cracking of sticks,
swearing, driving of tent pegs ; one or two of the ser-
geants came out and reported that moving about so
much was kicking up a good deal of gas, and the
men were getting nervous about it. One of the hard-
est things an officer has to do is to enforce a stupid
order when the men are intelligent enough to know
better. That is where "discipline" generally and
fortunately breaks down in the American army. On
the other side of the road was an open field free
from gas.

Cries of "gas" began to go up on all sides. Pretty
soon some one in the valley, after one of the far-
away shells lit, gave the alarm by firing off a pistol

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry
or gun. The alarm spread like wildfire, and this time
I learned what wildfire meant. From every woods
and Vove around all that amphitheater of hills came
a surge of red spots and dots that marked the dis-
charge of rifles and pistols fired into the air; cries of
"gas" and a crackle of musketry sounded like a stage
battle. The effect was almost grand. It was also
grimly amusing and annoying.

To those who have never experienced the nerve
strain at the front, the psychology of such a false
alarm can scarcely be understood. The men had
been taught to put the gas mask on and to give the
alarm at the slightest indication or sniff. This, ot
course, was nonsense, as around the front one came
into contact with and breathed more or less gas of
one kind or another half the time, especially m the
woods* Given a condition such as existed, how-
ever, with the men trained to believe that a light sniff
might mean death, with nerves highly strung by
being shelled more or less for a month or so, and the
presence of not a few who really had been gassed, —
it is no wonder that a gas alarm went beyond all
bounds. It was remarked as a joke that when some
one yelled, "Gas!" everybody in France put on the
mask. At any rate, the alarm often spread for miles.

For instance, a stray shell would fall into or near
some group or outfit at night, and the alarm would
be given; automobile horns would be honked, empty

* The men had been trained for gas conditions in trench warfare.

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brass shells beaten, rifles emptied, and the mad cry
would be taken up* and passed on over hill and vale
till it sounded like the Chinese trying to chase off an
eclipse. For miles around, scared soldiers woke up
in the midst of the frightful pandemonium and
donned their gas masks, only to hear a few minutes
later the cry, "All safe,"— then they would take them
off again amid laughter and oaths. Two or three
such alarms a night were frequent. "Gas shock"
was really as frequent as shell shock.

It was such an alarm as this that had started in
the little amphitheater of hills where we were about
to bivouac. In a few minutes all the good of the rest
we had had at Brasle passed away. The men in the
woods thrashed around and did stir up some gas, and
as the large number of gas cases which our company
had suffered in "Death Valley" had made "B" com-
pany very leery, there ensued one of the worst nights
I ever spent.

Numbers of the non-commissioned officers came out
on the road to tell me that the woods where the pla-
toons were lying were full of "mustard." They
begged me to move the company out of the thicket.
One Italian sergeant, an excellent scout and rifle-
man, but rather flighty, became hysterical, and sev-
eral others followed. This man really had been
slightly gassed before, and the smell of it among the
leaves drove him frantic. It took several men to
hold him down, and I had to bring him out onto the

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

road Calls and cries came from the woods from all
directions, so finally the battalion gas officer ar-
rived to ascertain the state of affairs. He had just
come back from a British "gas school," and was so
full of chemical formulas that he couldn't apprehend
the fact that we were suffering from the fear of gas
rather than from the gas itself. It took a good deal
of bluster on my part to get him to allow me to move
the men into the ditch beside the road. As it was per-
fectly dark, there could have been no objection to it,
provided we went back into cover at dawn. Pretty
soon I had runners out to each platoon and the dark
bodies of men could be seen sleeping along the ditch.
A few of the more nervous ones began digging in.
The next thing was to get the cooker up the hill.

We hitched all four horses taken from both the
cooker and the carts to the kitchen, and then got them
on the run. With much swearing and cracking of
whips the big rolling steamer came up the hill, strik-
ing sparks from the stones, and coming to a violent
halt opposite the place we had chosen for it. Then
it was backed into the woods by main force and over
the ditch amid a great scrambling of horses' hoofs
and the grunts and efforts of a black mass of men
striving against the wheels and spokes with tense
arms and shoulders. What a relief, when the horses
were tethered at last and the comfortable crunching
in the nose bags began, and the men had gone back to
sleep! After that it started to drizzle, so the whole

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company had to be wakened again one by one to put
on slickers. I mention all these things just to show
what it meant even to make a halt.

I shall never forget that night. I crawled under
the cooker, still a little warm, to get out of the driz-
zle, and slept profoundly. It was like dying for an
hour or two. Then I woke up suddenly. One of the
horses was very near and the forest was dripping.
I walked out into the road, rather stiff, and started
to pace up and down the hill where the men were
sleeping. In the faint glimmer I could make out the
gray forms in the just visible slickers along the road
ditch. They were sleeping like the dead, literally.

The faces of a sleeping army are wonderful. All
the lines are relaxed, all the pettinesses, weaknesses,
vices, stand out. The weak jaws and chins fall open
and droop, the lines on both sides of the nose grow
deeper — only on a few, mostly the very young —
there comes a calm and a sweetness, a light grace in
the sleeping attitude that justifies the worship of
youth. Now and then a horse stamped with a faint
jingle of harness, and down at the crossroads once
or twice a side car chugged by. Something in the
air began to hint of morning, and the usual artillery
barrage was getting under way.

It was the insistence of the artillery that made me
suspect that we were soon to take part in a big move.
All the forest began to tremble with the sound of the
huge guns, many of them miles away across the

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry

Marne The sky wavered and slobbered bestially
with red. Towards the north, across a crest that
stood out dimly against the sky, there was the in-
fernal, scarlet glow that told where the big game was
on. Pretty soon a runner came to summon me to
battalion headquarters, so I wakened the first ser-
geant and told him to have the men ready to move
when I came back. I knew in my bones we must
move soon.

The major had his headquarters— the word might
be in quotation marks— by the crossroads at the bot-
tom of the hill. It consisted of a pup tent stretched
over some branches, and a hole in the ground in
which he was sitting like a man in a bathtub. The
adjutant was holding a lantern over some maps and
trying to shade it carefully at the same time. A
group of company commanders and officers were
sprawled about in all attitudes, trying to crawl into
the tent to get a look at the map and to hear the
orders which the major was reading. Some one at
the crossroads was calling, "Put out that light,"
while the major was insisting that it be kept lit in
order to read his orders which in the dark would be
manifestly impossible. All this, of course, kept the
adjutant in a great sweat, as there was an iron-clad
order not to show lights of any kind. Finally, we
came to understand that we were to move imme-
diately.

The captain, who had been with the major most

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of the night, went back with me to the company,
which was already lined up on the road. In a few
minutes, we were moving down the hill. It was
Company "B's" turn to lead.* We moved only as
far as the crossroads, however, and then halted again
in order to allow the other two battalions that were
coming up the road to pass us at the corners. The
colonel drove up in his car, and the staffs of the dif-
ferent battalions gathered around him.

At the crossroads there was a sort of circular clear-
ing in the woods, and here, while our men sat down,
I watched the other two battalions of the regiment
go by. With the colonel there, it seemed almost like
a review. They turned the corner and passed up the

road, each company halting to
allow the one ahead to gain
distance — then straight up the
steep hill where the road made
its knife-like cut through the
forest. It seemed a perpendic-
ular hill, with a gray streak of
dawn at the top, and a strange
abandoned enemy observation
tower, camouflaged with
leaves, rising out of the woods
against the sky. The brown

* The various companies in a battalion took
their respective turns in the order of march
from day to day, as did the battalions in a
regiment, etc., etc

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry
oblongs of men in column of squads crawled up it
and disappeared. .

While we watched there the dull gray east kept
getting lighter, and the cannonade, the fierce roar-
ing, barking sound of the barrage, grew till it was a
vast earth-shaking roar, a deep, vibrant thunder; the
red splashes of the guns breaking up out of the forest
at acute angles where here and there a new battery
went into action. Company after company reached
the corner, halted, and then went on. I was greatly
impressed that morning by the men.

It was the first time that I had seen the entire regi-
ment since we had been in action. Most of the men
who were passing by were by that time the "veter-
ans" of several battles. Some had been at Hill I wo
Hundred and Four, some near Vaux in the trenches,
and some in the Marne Valley and at Cemetery Hill
when the Germans came across the Marne on pon-
toon bridges one fateful July morning. They looked
seasoned, weighed, and not found wanting. The
equipment they carried told the tale. The little fun-
nel-mouthed Chauchats* the round ammunition pan-
niers for magazines, the bombs, the funnels for the
rifle grenades, all proved that this was no peace-time
review. But most significant of all were the set faces
under the "tin hats."

During one of the halts in the passing column,

Lieutenant Wyke came over and sat down beside me

* An automatic rifle of French design used by the American forces.

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for a little talk. He had been sent by General Weigel
a few days before to make a reconnaissance and a
report on Hill Two Hundred and Four after the
enemy had left it. Sitting there, he described it to
me. It was the great hill near Chateau-Thierry,
which had balked us so long, and cost so many good
French and American lives to take.

Wyke began to dribble souvenirs from his pockets.
There was a map of the defenses of the hill, which
he had taken from a dead German officer, probably
the one that Lieutenant Shenkel had shot. This
map showed the zones of machine gun fire, and an
arrangement of wooden machine guns in a copse that
drew the fire of our men, while the real guns were
actually situated over the crest of the hill and used
indirect fire. Wyke had also found the bodies of the
dead from the platoons of "A" and "B" companies
that had made the attack on the hill mentioned some-
time earlier. His was one of the most painful stories
I ever listened to; we had both known the men inti-
mately. They had remained unburied for about two
weeks and lay just as they had fallen, some had evi-
dently been trying to help a wounded comrade. One
man, a fine young bank clerk, who had kept our com-
pany books for us beautifully at Camp Hancock, had
been killed after being wounded. He first sat up to
try and dress his own wounds. Others had been
shredded by shrapnel beyond recognition, and all
were in terrible condition. The flesh had adhered to

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A Day at Chateau-Thierry
the identification tags which were corroded white
and hard to read. They smelled dreadfully m the
Llelope in which my friend delivered them £ me.
The folly of thinking that all the dead of the A.b.*.
could be brought home is too ghastly to be laughabl
even in its extreme nonsense. Wyke had given all
of these martyrs as decent a burial as he could.
There waS an affection and manliness about his story
that, as I looked at him, made me hope with all my
heart that he would get through.

He also told me about the Great German dugout at
the back of Hill Two Hundred and Four, where the
Germans had dragged the good things of Chateau-
Thierry—books from La Fontaine's library, crystal
chandeliers, wine and carpets. There were women s
clothes there, too. Then as his company moved, we
shook hands, and he went away.

In a few minutes our turn came, and we passed our
fine colonel looking firm-lined, capable, and positive,
yet kindly withal. I heard the cheery greeting of
Captain Gill, the regimental adjutant,— and we were
climbing the hill. The battle ahead was growing.
There was an immense volume of sound that morn-
ing like the hurtling noise that precedes an express
train. It was the drumfire of our barrage. By now
it was quite light.

At the top of the hill we passed the German obser-
vation tower. Some of the observing instruments
were still in it. With its leaf-covered porches and

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tree ladders, it looked like a house the Swiss Family
Robinson might have built. There was a litter of
personal belongings about, and one or two dugouts
near.

We had reached the crest now and began to march
over a rolling plateau quite flat at first, through miles
of woods all bearing evidence of the recent enemy-
occupation. Piles of shells lay every few hundred
yards in carefully woven, wicker receptacles; de-
serted chairs were scattered around through the
woods in friendly groups, gun pits, occasionally little
houses and arbors, with maybe a bureau or an odd
bit of furniture quite lonely — and always the little,
mound-like dugouts like a beaver colony, where the
batteries had been.

The march that morning was the worst we ever
made. Not that it was so long, but we had not eaten
much the night before. It had been a hard night and
a long wait, and it looked like a battle ahead. We
were on the east side of the river, headed north, and
as we rose higher and higher, we could look now and
then into the valley of the Marne. Once there was a
glimpse of the white town of Chateau-Thierry where
we had been the night before. How peaceful! Over
there, though, from the heights on the far side of the
Marne came the barrage that was passing over our
heads. They were blasting "Fritz" loose again.

100

CHAPTER VI

ON THE EDGE OF THE BATTLE

THAT a great battle was on just ahead of us be-
came increasingly evident. Not only the sounds,
but the sights along the roads bore witness to it.
The fight had evidently passed that way just a few
hours before. All the banks of the roads were pitted
with little man-holes where our men had frantically
dug themselves in. Now and then an exhausted man,
probably a runner at his post, or some electrician,
lay wrapped up in his blanket all curled into a hole
in the clay road bank like a locust in a stump. The

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freshly laid telephone wires followed the road, lead-
ing on and on to the front. We passed a few
wounded men coming back, too pale and tired to an-
swer questions. Side cars drove past like a shot out
of a gun. The poplar trees lining the roads were
shivered and torn and their branches littered the
ground.

After a while we passed one of those large brick
farmhouses, an immense hollow square of brick
buildings enclosing an inner court, so common to
the country between the Marne and the Vesle. There
had been a German headquarters here, but an Amer-
ican staff had now occupied it, and there was a stream
of cars and trucks replenishing the nearby dumps,
and messengers on motorcycles dashing back and
forth. The place had been terribly shelled. Portions
of the walls along the road were thrown down or had
great holes let in them, through which we could look
as through a window and see the garden inside. The
trees there were torn apart as if a cyclone had passed,
and the walls were chipped and pitted by machine
gun fire. A medical unit had established a dressing
station in a barn.

The wounded lay along the road in rows, some sit-
ting, and many blood-soaked and unattended. Some
were in a frightfully nervous state, shrieking when
a battery of 75's fired, which it did every few min-
utes. The guns were set right out in the fields and
along the road, with their trail pieces newly dug in.

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On the Edge of the Battle
The noise was terrific, making us stagger as we
passed It was like being close to a blast when it
unexpectedly goes off. They were shelling a wood
directly opposite, so the pieces were laid almost level.
Even in daylight there was a blinding glare like tak-
ing a flash-light photograph, then a blow of sound
and air followed as if one were being shoved by a

drunken man.

Backed into the ditch near one battery was a tord
ambulance which had been struck by shrapnel. The
driver had been killed. He was sitting with his head
resting on the wheel, his hands hanging down drip-
ping blood. A wounded man on the upper row of
stretchers was also dead. We could look in as we

passed. The stiff angle of the feet

was characteristic, and the dark

purple stains of the blood on his

khaki showed that he had been dead

some time. Old blood stains look

as though someone had wiped his

hands on brown clothes after pick-
ing elderberries — dark and purple.
Fatigue was beginning to tell on

us by this time. We had marched

miles. It was over twelve hours

since we had eaten, and then very

little. You must imagine us mov-
ing along both sides of the road in
single file with a couple of paces

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between the men, rifles slung and heads hung low,
every one trying to accomplish the next step with the
least expenditure of energy possible.

Each platoon and company had considerable dis-
tance between them, and kept touch by a thin thread
of connecting files. Thus the regiment was strung
out for miles. From a little rise we could look back
and see the officers on horseback standing out start-
lingly plain like cardboard miniatures. "Inch-high
horses and pea-sized men." It looked as though a
vast Indian tribe were on the move. Such a forma-
tion brought only a few men within the bursting
radius of a shell, in case the road were shelled, and
also allowed the traffic free way down the highways.

The captain became too exhausted to do anything
but plod right ahead. The spectacle of this middle-
aged man stumbling along towards battle, sick at
heart for his family at home, and sick of body from
an empty stomach, was one of the finest exhibitions
of real patriotism that I ever saw. What a pity there
was not some better use for it.

I walked up and down the line joking with the
men. They were game; even the weaker boys smiled
back at me, though too tired to move their jaws to
say anything. A few clowns at a time like this are
invaluable. One Pole we had enlisted began a Polish
song about something in Polish. It was, in fact, ab-
solutely Polish. Its rhythm and gibberish were irre-
sistibly funny and helped out a weary half mile.

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On the Edge of the Battle
Everything we wore began to trouble us. My pack
made my shoulders ache intolerably. The pistol
dragged down, rubbed my hip bone, and chafed a
so e place on my leg. Places on my feet and leg
began to smart. The outer world seemed to recede
to a vast distance; the landscape took on an odd gray
appearance. One became preoccupied with musing

upon one's self. ,

Halts were the worst. After each one it was harder
than ever to get the men on their feet. Some began
to gag. Slightly gassed men showed symptoms of
giving out, and the young boys seemed about to be
toppled over backward by their packs when they got
up. Nearly all the canteens were long ago dry.

At one halt Nick brought me a piece of bread and
a drink of wine. He must have been saving it for
the last. I ate it secretly to avoid the eyes of the
men, sharing some of it with Glendenning who came
up from the rear, evidently ghastly tired. He had
been carrying some of the weaker lads' rifles and was
loaded down. The wine and bread made a new world
for both of us and enabled me to pull through. I
must have walked a quarter again as much as the
men, going up and down the line, and had to keep
on my feet at halts to look after the sick. Some
simple medicines I carried helped a growing nausea
greatly.

We tackled another rise at last, which some of the
men could never have made had it not been that word

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came back we were near our halting place. The bat-
tle ahead had died down, news which, strange as it
may seem, cheered me up greatly. I was thirsting,
but not to go into battle. It started to mist about
eleven o'clock; the sun shone through the cloud in a

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On the Edge of the Battle

red ball of fire, growing gradually dimmer and dim-
mer and throwing out weird fingers of light through
the clouds. We could catch sight of the slanting
lines of rain across the valleys before they hit us,
which they soon did in violent showers. Columns of

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Toward the Flame

troops were coming back— New England boys of the
26th Division. We talked with some of them at the
halts.

One big fellow told me, while he dipped water out
of a puddle with a canvas bucket and filled a steam-
ing Ford, that the 26th had made an attack that
morning. The loss of life had been tremendous, as
the Germans had defended every wood and thicket
with their carefully placed machine guns. Not until
the 75's had been brought up and used almost point-
blank against the woods on the opposite ridge had
"Fritz" given way. Then our men followed. There
had been some bayonet work, of which more here-
after.

But "Fritz" had gone. Our brigade had come in
just too late. We were to have reenforced the at-
tack, and it was for this that we had made the killing
march. How it was with the others I do not know,
but personally I have always felt that I should never
have had the courage that morning, when we were
so weak with hunger, to make an attack. Courage
is not a fixed quantity — only with a few — they are
the born leaders. Only total physical collapse or
death stops them.

The colonel and his staff turned aside at another
big farm and there, with the headquarters company,
went into billets. We literally tottered on a little
farther under a soaking cold rain. Then on through
a gate, across a muddy field, great shaggy masses of

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On the Edge of the Battle

clay and grass attaching themselves to our shoes till
we had to pry the clods off, the men taking their
bayonets. Everything and everybody was streaming
rain from every angle. It fell straight and cold, ran
trickling down one's back under the pack, and finally
soaked us until the clammy clothes stuck to the shiv-
ering skin. I looked back and saw our cookers fol-
lowing, a great consolation. What we needed was
something to eat.

As usual, a patch of forest was to be our halting
place for the night. The platoons filed into the rot-
ten, muddy thicket. Nick began putting up my pup
tent right away. The forest was too much cut up to
attempt to camp the men in lines. Tents were scat-
tered around on the higher spots everywhere, the
men working doggedly and dully in the streaming
rain. Above the sound of the water on the leaves, I
could hear the clink and tapping of driving tent pegs.
Pretty soon the trample of hoofs, sound of blows,
swearing and cries announced the arrival of the kit-
chens and carts. Nick got my bedding roll, and over
a can of alcohol heated some soup. I drank it steam-
ing hot and crawled into my dry bed, not forgetting
to hang my puttees and shoes near by. Never had I
been so tired. Glen came and joined me. Lieutenant
Scott and the captain were preparing to do the same.
I was too done out to try to look after the men even,
but I fell asleep worrying about them.

The hot soup suffused a luxurious warmth. Aches

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and pains grew less, and through the trees the pun-
gent smoke of green, wet wood began to drift from
the kitchen. Thank God! the cooks were not too
tired to cook. Meanwhile, the rain streamed on the
dripping forest, the mud grew deeper, and the "army"
slept.

Not even a gas sentinel was posted.

1 10

CHAPTER VII

GERMAN DUGOUTS

I AWOKE to hear the pleasant clinking of mess
pans. The rain had stopped, but the forest was
still dripping, and the mud was deep and peculiarly-
slippery. The captain and I crawled out, both about
the same time, and made our way to the kitchen
where a savory mess was being dished out, smoking
hot gobs of bread and canned sweet potato, a favorite
and frequent delicacy at the front. Paul and some of
the other French soldiers were helping. By this time
the men were happy again. A little rest and some-

Toward the Flame

thing to eat were doing wonders. The captain and
I were not much behind the rest of the company as
trenchermen, although I avoided eating much meat
at the front.

We were issued beef in immense quantities, some-
times having to bury a whole quarter of it. It be-
came tainted very easily, where of course there was
no possible means of refrigeration. This meat ration
came wrapped in burlap, generally reasonably fresh ;
but once open, it had to be carried around in the
ration carts, and unless quickly cooked, it spoiled very
rapidly, especially in those summer days along the
Marne when the sun was hot.

Another thing which hastened the destruction of
perishable food was the immense amount of decay
all along the front. All those rotten woods were filled
with dead horses, dead men, the refuse, excrement
and the garbage of armies. The ground must have
been literally alive with pus and decay germs.
Scratch your hand, cut yourself in shaving, or get
a little abrasion on your foot, and almost anything
could happen. Bichloride tablets were invaluable;
I always threw one into my canvas basin for good
luck.

During the meal, Lieutenant Scott, who had been
assistant division gas officer for a while, but who
had now returned to the company, joined us, and
mentioned that he was making all arrangements for
a new gas alarm, having found some empty brass

1 12

German Dugouts

shells used for that purpose "over there"— and he
pointed to a cape of trees that ran out from a wood-
island into the surrounding fields.

That part of the world consisted of a great level
plateau, prairie-like fields interspersed with woods,
the "bois" of the French maps, like islands of all sizes
and shapes. We were then camped in one of these
wood "islands," and across "there," where the lieu-
tenant had pointed, was another "island" in which
were the remnants of a German battery. The cap-
tain and I strolled across after dinner, letting the
warm sun dry us off.

The guns were still in their pits, as "Fritz" had
left very suddenly here. The guns pointed their noses
up at a high angle like hounds baying the moon, but
they were silent now. The wood was full of little
dugouts, walks, and houses. The Germans had evi-
dently stayed here a long time. Out in the field were
a large number of big shell craters in a line, one, two,
three . . . where our 220's had evidently been rang-
ing on the battery. They had come quite near, within
fifty yards or so.

Along the edge of these thickets were a number of
graves. I was greatly impressed by them. The
crosses were well carved out of new wood, and the
grave mounds carefully spaded. Here were wreaths
of wax flowers, evidently sent from home, and a board
giving the epitaph of the deceased, with his rank and
honors: "He was a good Christian and fell in France

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fighting for the Fatherland, Hier ruht in Gott." Ver-
ily, these seemed to be the same Goths and Vandals
who left their graves even in Egypt; unchanged since
the days of Rome, and still fighting her civilization,
the woods-people against the Latins. Only the il-
luminating literary curiosity of a Tacitus was lack-
ing to make the inward state of man visible by the
delineation of the images of outer things.

We entered some of the dugouts, small, mound-
like structures with straw inside. Some of the of-
ficers' were larger. There was a little beer garden
in the middle of the wood with a chapel and a
wreathed cross near by, white stones and twisting
"rustic" paths. The railings and booths along these
paths were made from roots and branches cleverly
bent and woven, and sometimes carved. It reminded
me of American "porch furniture" of a certain type.
All quite German. Cast-off boots, shell-timers, one
or two coats, and shrapnel-bitten helmets lay about
with round Boche hats, "the little round button on
top." Picture post-cards and magazines, pistol hol-
sters, and one or two broken rifles completed this
cartoon of invasion.

All the litter of material thus left behind was use-
less. I noticed the pictures of some fat, and rather
jolly-looking German girls, and piles of a vast quan-
tity of shells. We looked around thoroughly, but
were very wary of traps. I remember making up my
mind to make for one of these dugouts in case we

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German Dugouts

were shelled. One always kept a weather eye open.

About all this stuff there was at that time the dire
taint of danger. Somehow everything German gave
one the creeps. It was connected so intimately with
all that was unpleasant, and associated so inevitably
with organized fear, that one scarce regarded its
owners as men. It seemed then as if we were fight-
ing some strange, ruthless, insect-beings from an-
other planet; that we had stumbled upon their nests
after smoking them out. One had the same feeling
as when waking up at night and realizing that there
are rats under the bed.

The captain and I walked along the edge of the
wood, encountering our French contingent on the
way. They were "at home" in an old German dug-
out, happily squatted around several small fires, pre-
paring their meal as they liked it. After a good deal
of difficulty, they had prevailed on our mess sergeant
to issue them their rations in bulk so that they could
do their own cooking. Such little differences of cus-
toms are in reality most profound. Our physical
habits were more like the Germans'!

The non-commissioned gas officer picked us up
here. He was carrying back the big brass shell for
a gas alarm. It gave forth a mellow musical note
when touched with a bar of iron or a bayonet. The
Germans had used this one themselves for that pur-
pose, so it already had the holes and wire for sus-
pending it.

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The sergeant regaled us with the tale of a battalion
of women machine gunners seen among the "Boche."
They were said to have worked their guns to the last,
of course, and to have died like true Amazons. I
heard this story several times, but was never able to
run it down. It was part of the romantic male gossip
of the battle front. It grew very circumstantial as
time went on. Occasionally pictures of German girls
in uniforms would turn up in the dugouts, which may
have been responsible for the origin of the tale. Be-
sides, it was such a nice story. Every soldier would
like to tame an Amazon. . . . We had been away
from women now for several weeks. Members of the
tribe of Amazons are to be encountered only upon
"the confines of glamour and of sleep."

Nothing happened that night. We were even out
of hearing of the guns, although a flickering could be
seen in the sky in the direction of Rheims. Glen and
I took some time off censoring letters, and trying to
get the company clerk to put some forwarding ad-
dresses on the hospital mail, which had accumulated
to the extent of several basketsful. It was now a
nuisance to cart around. Some of this mail must
have been destroyed on the sly by harassed company
clerks. Our clerk was a clerk, in every sense of the
word. War was not in his line, and ever since the
severe shelling in "Death Valley," he had let his
work slide. He was simply in a state of collapse. I
would often find him weeping, and was truly very

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German Dugouts

sorry for the poor chap, but I could really do nothing
for him. He was not acquainted with Lord Tenny-
son's remarks on tears.

We moved before it was light, which is very early
in summer time in France. The dim columns of men
coming out of the woods, the lines of carts and kit-
chens assembling in the early, gray dawn, all without
a light, and generally pretty silently, was always

impressive. >

In a few minutes we were headed back in the direc-
tion from which we had come. There was a full
moon, or one nearly so, hanging low in the west. As
I jolted along, on legs that seemed more like stilts
than limbs with knees, the heavy equipment sagged
at every step, and seemed to clink one's teeth together
weakly. At last the weariness and the jangle took
on a fagged rhythm that for me fell into the comfort
of rhyme.

We were beginning to be pretty tired by now and
even here needed relief. One no longer got up in
the morning full of energy. Hunger, dirt, and strain
were telling, and we felt more or less "all in" that day
in particular. One was consciously weak.

Nevertheless the country was beautiful; the full
moon just sinking in the west looked across the
smoking, misty valleys at the rising sun. There was
a gorgeous bloody-gold color in the sky, and the
woods and fields sparkled deliciously green, looking
at a little distance fresh and untouched. But that

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was only a distant appearance, for this was the coun-
try over which two days before the Americans had
driven the Germans from one machine gun nest to
another, and on from crest to crest. A nearer ap-
proach showed the snapped tree-trunks, the tossed
branches and shell-pitted ground, and at one halt that
we made, Nick called me down a little slope to see
something.

There was a small spring in a draw beside the road,
where two Germans were lying. One was a big,
brawny fellow with a brown beard, and the other a
mere lad. He looked to be about 14 or 15 with a
pathetically childish chin, but he carried potato-
masher bombs. They had evidently stopped here to
try to fill their canteens, probably both desperate
with thirst, when they were overtaken by our men.
The young boy must have sheltered himself behind
the man while the latter held our fellows back a little.
There was a scorched place up the side of the ravine
where a hand grenade had exploded, but the big Ger-
man had been surrounded, and killed by the bayonet
right through his chest. His hands were still clutch-
ing at the place where the steel had gone through.
He was one of the few I ever saw who had been killed
by the bayonet. The boy was lying just behind him.
His back appeared to have been broken, probably by
a blow with the butt of a rifle, and he was contorted
into a kind of arch, only his feet and shoulders rest-
ing on the ground. It was he who had probably

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German Dugouts

thrown the grenade that had exploded near by.
The little spring had evidently been visited by the
wounded, as there were blood and first-aid wrappings
about. I refused to have the company water tank
filled there.

Our water was carried in a two-horse cart with a
seat for the driver and a large barrel-like tank of steel
behind. This had a hand pump for sucking the liquid
into the tank, and brass spigots at the rear to draw
it off. Getting a good water supply was always a
problem and often impossible. It was best to drink
only the boiled water of the coffee ration.

We passed a great field that morning that was
rapidly filling up with artillery. There was evidently
a concentration on of some kind. Battery after bat-
tery could be seen moving up a side road for miles,
and the guns were being placed about in all the fields
and woods. In most cases no effort was made to
camouflage them. Once in a while from under some
tree, or from the edge of a wood, would come that
characteristic white puff and blinding flash, to be
followed a distinct moment later by a blow of sound.
The horses, the lines of caissons, and all the parapher-
nalia of artillery marshaled in the fields made a
great impression. To the poor "doughboy," there is
always something luxurious about artillery.

Toward noon we came into a little village — just a
few ruined houses scattered along the road, still full
of German relics and signs. A few men began to

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pick about among the ruins like chickens who don't
expect to find anything. There was an old spring
bed in one house, which some one carried out. About
twelve men tried to sit on it all at one time.

Here we again ran across some of the 26th U. S.
Division. At that time they had seen so much more
fighting than we, that they seemed veterans, by com-
parison. Their clothes were in very bad shape, the
set expression of their faces, and their small platoons
advertised what they had been through. They sat
along the roads and told us stories of the fights and
recounted details of their losses. I thought it dis-
heartening for our men, but the "Yanks" did not
seem to feel that way about it. They held an abso-
lutely fatalistic viewpoint, telling
us we would never get through
the game. "Wait," they said,
"wait." Later on I understood.
There was a great pride about
these fellows.

Men who have faced death
often and habitually can never
again have the same attitude to-
wards life. It is hard to be enthu-
siastic about little things again.
The fact that everybody is soon
going to die is a little more patent
than before. One sees behind the
scenes, the flowers and the grave-
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German Dugouts

blinds, the opiate of words read from the Good Book,
and the prayers. For there is Death, quiet, calm, in-
vincible, and there is no escape. Yet there are com-
pensations.

For instance, one loses one's horror of the dead
themselves. They have so patently lost all person-
ality, and to the soldier, the process of their incorpo-
ration with the mineral kingdom is a visible one.
Earth is claiming them again. It is my honest opinion,
a very humble one, that the sight of battlefields must
always be a great blow to the lingering belief in per-
sonal immortality. The least that can be said is
that the subject was never mentioned by any one,
contrary to the statements of religious enthusiasts
and the stock cant of journalism.

There is no man who is so totally absorbed by the
present as the soldier. It claims all his attention and
he lives from moment to moment in times of danger
with an animal keenness that absorbs him utterly.
This is a happy and saving thing. With time to
brood, conditions would often seem intolerable. To
the soldier, now is everything. It is in the piping
times of peace and leisure that man has had the time
to afford himself the luxury of an immortal soul.
When the present world is not engrossing enough,
we begin to ponder on another.

After lying around in the little town for an hour
or so, some of the 26th began to troop back. They
had been taken out to make an attack, but found that

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"Fritz" had not waited and they were naturally in
high spirits. One red-headed chap had found a big
German breastplate, and was wearing that and a
huge, painted helmet that he doffed now and then
to the vast joy of everybody he passed. He looked
like Sancho Panza, and roars of laughter and chaff
followed him up the road: "Where did you get that
hat?" and "Look out you don't fall overboard with
that iron life-preserver," or, "Where's the stove lid
for the seat of your pants?" etc., etc. To the Ameri-
can there is something humorous about armor; to
him it is always a stage property, not to be confused
with a real protective article of apparel such as an
undershirt. Even the "tin hat" was taken doubtfully
at first. Only experience justified it.

For some reason orders were changed here. In-
stead of going on, after we got the order to fall in
we countermarched, and then turned aside into the
usual field to bivouac in the inevitable wood. Some
of the 26th were also sharing with us these woods
which were usually dirty. Apparently a great num-
ber of "outfits" had camped here from time to time;
some for a considerable period I judged. The holes
which the men had dug for themselves were full of
old straw and newspapers. I found a Chicago Trib-
une which was the first newspaper I had seen for
some time. It was six weeks old or more. I read
even the advertisements with great pleasure. They

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German Dugouts
seemed to breathe a reality and matter-of-factness
about "home" that was delightful just then.

The kitchens drew up right beside the woods here,
and cooked lunch quickly, while the captain and I
rested on some old hospital litters that had been
abandoned in the woods. Some one had stolen a
good bed for a night or two.

That wood was one of the most "war-like" places
I ever saw. The litter of trash, newspapers, clothes,
old rifles, shoes, and all kinds of articles, together
with the pockmarked effect of the straw-filled holes
through the broken tangle of saplings and weeds,
gave an indescribably clatty atmosphere to the
place. Out in the field, here and there, the men
were relieving themselves or squatting down,
stripped to the waist, carefuly picking the vermin
out of their undershirts. There were a few dead
horses about and I suspected the water we drank.
The "romance and glamour of war" were certainly
lacking here.

During lunch the captain told me that an advance,
probably with an attack, was on for that afternoon.
Somehow the idea rather spoiled the meal. The
other two battalions had already gone ahead it
seemed. We had lost touch with them, and were to
move forward in support. The major had intrusted
"B" company with acting as advance, and I was in-
structed to take charge of the "point." A few min-
utes later we started.

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The major at the last moment changed all the
orders which the captain had given me, and handed
me a map as we moved out which had nothing what-
ever marked on it. He told me our objective, a town
called Courpoil, and said we were to proceed by way
of Epieds where the enemy had been in great force
that morning.

From his manner and description I thought that
we were moving through hostile country and so sent
my flankers out on either side into the fields, with
the "point," a corporal and a man, a considerable
distance ahead. I kept some men near me to keep
in touch with the rear if necessary.

At the risk of being a bit tedious, I am going to
relate the details of this march to show that in a
great many cases so-called military "science" and
training simply give a man a preconceived idea of
how a thing should be done, until in his eyes the
method is more important than the result. Both the
captain and the major were too well read in minor
tactics, and had attended too many schools to be able
to conduct even the simplest of operations without
the most elaborate procedure. To the very last, they
played at war like the men in the textbooks. Both
of them meant well, but others died.

The captain had an "ideal" advance guard in his
head. According to him, it must be disposed like a
triangle; while the major, God bless him! was strong
for flankers. Finally the major called me back. He

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German Dugouts

and the captain had evidently been having- an argu-
ment over it and were both very angry. The major
wanted to know why I hadn't gone with the point,
the most advanced party. He said he always ex-
pected his lieutenants to be "leaders," or words to
that effect. Now neither the captain nor major
could speak a word of French, and in the meantime
I had talked with a number of returning French
wagoners who gave me some real information. I
knew that the enemy had abandoned Epieds and
were miles ahead. Leaving them with this new
thought to digest, I returned to the point which I
now heroically led according to the major's order,
knowing the enemy to be at least ten miles away.

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Men have been decorated for less-if I had only been
a chaplain!

We turned down the road at right angles, follow-
ing the map, but at the corner our scout officer came
up and excitedly begged me not to do this, as he had
some other theory about our route. It was just
nearly right enough to be confusing, and I had to
argue with him in order to convince myself I was
right. Just then arrived one runner each from the
captain and the major with contrary orders about
disposing the advance party. I returned a sedative
answer to both officers and determined to take things
in my own hands and move ahead, or we would
never get anywhere. So I turned the corner and
went on.

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and we were
moving over -a rolling country dotted here and there
with wood-islets and, in the distance, a range of hills.
There was a long white ribbon of road with green
fields on either side that led down a gradual hill with
a little town at the bottom of the slope.

A few minutes later we entered this and found it
jammed with French wagon trains, not camions, but
horse-drawn wagons. The place had been slightly
shelled, and there was still a big German sign across
the road, "Nach Herrenhausen," which was the syn-
thetic name they had given to some little French
village. The congestion in the one little street,
which, by the way, twisted at right angles twice,

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German Dugouts

was terrific. Some of the French had halted and
were watering their horses at a small cross-marked
fountain; others had unhitched, and had their horses
tied along the street with the wagons standing there.
Men were sleeping everywhere, on the doorsteps,
under the wagons; and one could look in the half-
destroyed houses and see the poilus cooking. Some
of the old German camouflage rags were still wav-
ing over the streets. It looked as though long, long
ago there had been a gala day here, but now — the cir-
cus was over. The big show had, indeed, moved on.

At the corners I posted men to warn our fellows
which way to turn as they came along, but just in
the middle of the town we met another wagon train
on its way back, driving at a fast clip. The French
can drive, but expect you to get out of their way.
I saw trouble ahead when they met the main body
of the battalion ; some one would have to stop. There
would be a mess.

Sure enough, about halfway up the hill an order
came to halt, as the battalion was unable to get
through the town. I had sent a message back to
them warning them of the congestion in the town,
but it had never occurred to our "well-trained" offi-
cers to go around it.

About half an hour later the captain came up. He
was very angry about something and made a pass
at one of the men. The rest laughed. I suppose a
continuation of the advance-guard argument had

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caused this. The major must have prevailed as there
were lots of flankers. A platoon went out on either
side to scout the roads— full of nothing but French
wagon trains. When we started to advance again I
had to stop every few minutes to let our flankers
catch up because in the fields they had harder going
than on the road. This, of course, delayed the whole
brigade. Finally, to my great relief, a motorcycle
runner came up with a direct order from General
Weigel, whose car had just appeared in the rear, to
push on without delay.

By this time, we were descending the hill towards
Epieds which lay on a crossroads at the bottom of a
little valley.

The day before there had been a desperate fight in
and about Epieds. The little town was the worst-
shelled village that we had seen up to this time. Our
own artillery, and afterwards the guns of the re-
treating invader, had literally knocked the place to
pieces. Whole lines of houses were down, and one
could tell by the debris, shells, wrecked machine
guns, and machine gun belts scattered here and
there what an obstinate hand-to-hand combat it had
been. Places were still smoking in the ruins where
hand grenades had been used. In one little garden
I glanced at, there were still a lot of dead men, and
the snout of a machine gun was sticking through a
wall. The church at the corner had immense shell-
holes in it, and I think there was a headquarters or

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German Dugouts

dressing station here, as there was a good deal of
coming and going. Across the street a house was
burning, and some French soldiers were trying to
put it out in a languid sort of way.

The road turned again at Epieds and we started
going up a long hill. On one side of the dale was a
huge, empty-windowed chateau staring across the
valley-lands and frightfully shot up and ruined.

Our artillery fire had evidently overtaken the re-
treating enemy about here. There were dead horses
and human remains along the road, and hundreds
of shell-holes. The camouflage screen of old, brown
trees, which had stretched along the road for a mile,
was blasted away, and in one place a German had
been blown clear off the road and hung on the sag-
ging wire. Shrapnel had come along afterwards
and literally shredded him. He had no head but,
strangely enough, held his helmet in his hands. He
was blood-soaked and his bowels were hanging out.
The horses lay about in all sorts of contortions. I
was sorry for them. A number of the queer barge-
like German wagons had been abandoned here. Un-
der the seat of one was a well-thumbed Bible which
one of my sergeants took.

I looked back and saw that the general's car was
coming up near the head of the column. Putting
the glass on it, I could even see him and his staff.
This was one of the few occasions where I really
found a use for the double "E" binocular. Moving

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over the hills with the "point," they were excellent
to search out just what was going on. The occupa-
tion of little groups of men and the stir around small
towns or camps stood out startlingly clear as the glass
was put on them.

Somehow an exaltation came to us that afternoon
after we got up out of the death-strewn valley and
found ourselves walking over the clear, wind-swept
hills. The men felt it, too. We had a few songs, and
pressed on fast and merrily, always anxious to see
what was over the next crest. At last we came up
onto a plateau with little woods in the foreground
and in the distance one long, unbroken line of forest.
It was the Bois de la Fere. In that, somewhere, were
the other two battalions of the regiment.

One of the men pointed out a balloon to me, and
as we gathered around to look at it through the
glass, there came a nasty rattle of machine guns and
the faint bump of shells bursting away off. In one
place there was a white smoke going up from among
the trees. I sent a runner back to warn the com-
manding officer about the balloon, which I felt pretty
sure must be in the German lines. Farther along
the road we could also make out the red tiles on the
roofs of a town nestled amid the trees. I passed on,
and was rather surprised to see the general's gray
car coming right up the hill after us.

It was already far ahead of the leading battalion.

130

CHAPTER VIII

COURPOIL

THE little town just ahead of us was a place called
Courpoil, already occupied by the French.
It should be borne in mind that from the Marne to
the Vesle the Americans were incorporated with the
French Army; that is, the French generals had
charge of the major operations, the details, of course,
being left to our own officers. It is only just to add,
in view of recent criticism, that all during this time
our respect, liking and admiration for the French
were unqualified. The good nature of the poilu is

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apparently inexhaustible, and the French officer is
nearly always a gentleman, in all ordinary contacts
at least, which is not so universally true in our army,
unfortunately.

One of the French officers informed me, as we en-
tered Courpoil, that we were under direct observa-
tion, adding that the balloon I had seen farther back
was a German "sausage." He looked rather anxi-
ously at the general's automobile snorting up the
hill. We moved on farther till the road took a turn.
Some of the French were lying along it, but they got
up and ran among the houses as we approached.
There was the far-off roar and groaning shriek of a
shell and a deafening explosion about one hundred
yards down the road. The enemy had certainly seen
us. Shell after shell continued to arrive. Why they
did not toss them into the town I did not understand.

I sent back the signal to halt, as it was manifestly
impossible to proceed down that particular road, and
then took shelter with the rest of the "point" behind
the most solid stone house I could find, where I could
wait for orders. There I could look about me.

Courpoil was just an ordinary French village, its
houses built closely up to and along the road. They
were now torn by shell fire. A good many of them,
however, were still in fair shape. I could see some of
the French soldiers upstairs. Smoke was coming
out of one of the chimneys, and looking out across
the fields along a sort of low ridge, I saw the reserve

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C our poil

line of the French stretching away, their blue hel-
mets bobbing about like so many turtles among the
shell-holes. Now and then a group would get up and
move forward across the fields towards a line of little
copses, or wood-islets, a few hundred yards ahead.
\n "infiltration" was in progress.

We were far out of rifle shot here, but in fine artil-
lery range. "Fritz" was shelling with his 6 and 3
inch, and somewhere back in the Bois de la Fere,
whose sea of trees we could overlook from Courpoil,
there was the short vicious bark of an Austrian 77
every few minutes. Once in a while, there would be
a brief burst of rifle and machine gun firing. Other-
wise, it was a rather warm, pleasant July day with
the wind in the trees.
Just then

the gen-
eral's car

came over

the brow

of the hill

and tore

into the

town, fol-
lowed by

our whole

battalion.

A French

officer ran

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Toward the Flame

up to remonstrate about the automobile, but I told
him it was un general americain.

"Mon Dieu," said he, "au revoir."

The General stuck his head out of the window and
asked me about the situation. I told him all I knew:
"Boches est la," was all the French had told me,
pointing east.

"Jump in," said the general.

I hated to do it.

We cut right out into the fields along a sort of
cow lane in full view of the balloon, and finally
stopped behind a little clump of trees. There were
a few French in a shell-hole near by who got right
up and moved out. By the time the battalion had
arrived and was halted in the town, "Fritz" knew
that "something" was going on. They must, of
course, have seen the automobile. A few shells
skipped up the road where the machine had been.
I could see our men scatter.

The general and all of us swarmed out and made
along the ridge for about a quarter of a mile, leaving
the car in the trees. There in a wide field we came
across a shelter, logs piled across a ditch with rocks
on top. The inside was a shell-hole. There was an-
other brigadier-general in it with a telephone and
an adjutant. He was a general of artillery, part of
whose brigade was posted in the woods behind us,
and the rest, "coming up," as he expressed it, a whole
regiment of 120's on the way. Whether our general

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Courpoil

expected to meet him there or not I don't know. The
Artillery told us "the situation": _

The two other battalions of our regiment with the
colonel and some of the French were "lost", and ap-
parently cut off in the Bois de la Fere, which our ar-
tillery was of course afraid to shell. They, the bat-
talions, were supposed to be near a place called
Croix Rouge Farm about five or six miles away, but
nothing definite had been heard of them since early
that morning. Of the exact location of French, Ger-
mans, or Americans, no one knew anything for cer-
tain. Our own men had not moved up yet.

General Weigel sent me back to tell the major
to bring the battalion up, which was done. The
men were scattered out by companies and platoons
through the fields like the French. Some of them
started to dig in. A little later the kitchens and carts
came up through the town at a spanking clip and
bumped out over the fields into some woods about a
quarter of a mile in the rear. Our men kept moving
up and down the crest, and the shelling became
pretty lively. The French moved forward. In the
town a shell fell every few seconds with a monoto-
nous whistle and regularity. Despite this, a dress-
ing station was established there in a house.

After a little struggle with myself I determined to
go and try to locate the two battalions. The plan of
the general was to bring them back and form a gen-
eral line with our battalion. I volunteered to carry

135

Toward the Flame

the orders. He gave me a map with very little or no
data on it, and I started out, heading along the ridge
for some distance, in order to avoid the shelled areas
near the town. It was then about four o'clock in the
afternoon.

Directly in front and eastward lay a broad wheat-
field on the other side of which were little spaces of
dense woods. Far away over these peered the ugly
nose of the German balloon. Off to the right loomed
the dense forest of La Fere, and behind was the coun-
try of little fields, rolling hills, and thickets through
which we had just come.

I had hardly gone half a mile when out of one of
these thickets appeared about twenty of our own
men, led by Lieutenant Fletcher. Fletcher had been
a teacher of philosophy at home and despite the fact
was also somewhat of a philosopher himself, so I was
quite shocked at his appearance. He was obviously
used up; nearly numb with fatigue and anxiety, he
said.

Fletcher was scout officer of one of our lost bat-
talions. He and his scouts had been looking for it
since early morning without success. They had
found some wounded men and some stragglers who
had told them that the two battalions had run into a
lot of machine gun nests and heavy artillery fire in
the forest and were suffering heavy losses. That the
colonel was right on the firing line with the men,
that there was nothing to eat, and that ammunition

136

Courpoil

was running low, was also part of their story as well
as it could be pieced together.

Discounting these tales as much as I dared, he
situation still looked bad. Also I began to feel a
little worried about myself, an unimportant but ob-
trusive consideration. I questioned some of the tired
men further, and managed to get some idea of direc-
tion and distance out of their combined evidence. _

" T' company is down there," said one lad, point-
ing to a patch of woods about a mile away.

A sudden burst of shelling in that direction con-
firmed me in thinking that something was down
"that-a-way," so I started. Fletcher started with
me, but was so tired that he stumbled several times.
Finally I drew up and argued with him, pointing out
that his real duty was to take his men back to Gen-
eral Weigel and report to him, as they were all in,
and the general would want what information he
had at that time. The scout detail of the second bat-
talion, which had also been searching the woods,
joined us here with the same story. I told them it
would obviously be the general's desire that they
should report to him; informed them where he was,
and went on. Fletcher went back to his men rather
unwillingly. I never saw any one so tired. He must
have covered an immense distance trying to make
liaison that day.

I cut directly across the wheat field towards the
woods where "F" company was supposed to be. The

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Toward the Flame

grain was ripe. There was a great space of it there
rippling under the afternoon sun, but it made hard
going. The whole area was being gently shelled, but
the chance of a man's being hit in a field like that
was too remote to be considered. Nevertheless, one
considered it.

Just as I got down to the edge of the woods there
were several shells dropped into it. I could hear the
trees crashing, and was greatly surprised to see a
crowd of our men run out and then stop in the field
and look around. Some sat down. Soon the field
was all dotted with little groups. Then some more
shells fell, and some more men came out. This hap-
pened two or three times. On questioning the men
I found they were a company of our own regiment.
No one seemed to be in charge. It was just like a
picnic sitting around in a field.

I want to digress here, just in case some very "tac-
tical" person should ever read this book, to tell them
that this same company was one of the most faithful
that ever served the United States. Later on the
captain was killed leading his men. All of this par-
ticular day they had been cleaning out machine guns
in the Bois de la Fere. Fighting here was a great
man hunt, every little group for itself. In the dense
coverts all control was impossible. Here is where the
startling quality of our men came out. Whenever
"two or three of them were gathered together," the
fight went grimly on. Even the lonely individual

138

Courpoil

stuck to it, and somehow sooner or later, we went

forward. uw~,r"

It was the grim common sense of the doughbo>
and not our obsolete and impossible tactics that won
us ground. Oh! the precious time wasted in our
elaborate, useless, murderous "science" called "mus-
ketry " It is as much out of style as the musket from
which it takes its name. Teaching it should be made
a court-martial offense. It is murder in print. Bat-
tles were not fought in lines.

We forgot the trenches, too, and simply moved
forward in groups right through the cow lots, the
little villages and the woods, meeting "Fritz" in cel-
lars, in old outhouses, along road ditches, ensconced
in the middle of yon fine looking tree, hid in a hole

139

Toward the Flame

behind a coal heap, or in a haystack, waiting till we
had passed, and shooting us in the back. Sometimes
he lurked in a patch of weeds or in a pleasant green
woods, but never in line, seldom in force in any one
place, always doing the unexpected thing, and doing
it bravely and well.

Let us give even the Devil his due, such a wonder-
ful, delaying, rear-guard action was never seen, save
Mons! With machine gunners and his marvelous
artillery, "Fritz" held the world back for months and
died game, magazine stories written from rearward
dugouts and Paris to the contrary notwithstanding.
I disliked the Germans, but I disliked them because
I feared them, knowing full well their deadly capa-
bility. They had crushed individualism so thor-
oughly that they had the bravery and determination
of insects. That is why their courage was not en-
tirely admirable. But to resume:

By and by the captain of the scattered company
also came out of the woods and sat down in the field.
Every one sat there doing nothing because there was
nothing to do. They were dead, fagged out. The
shells continued to smash among the trees. I went
up to the captain and told him where our battalion
and the general was. He could see our men moving
along the little ridge, was much relieved to get his
orders to join the general, and began filtering his
men back. There was considerable difficulty in get-
ting them off the ground where they were sitting.

140

Courpoil

Everybody was too tired apparently to care. Just
what was the matter I do not know, as I had to move
on From some of the sergeants I got news of the
other battalions. One of them sketched in for me on
the map a road that I could follow.

I walked along the edge of the woods till it ran
out in kind of a point into the field. There I met a
medical corps chap coming across the wheat, tie
was carrying a message to "some one' for aid. 1
told him where our general was, and after pumping
him dry of all information, learned that part of our
lost men were only a mile or so away in the woods
but scattered through it in platoons and squads, and
that heavy fighting was going on about Croix Rouge
Farm. He also described to me the route he had
followed. There were still Germans where he had
crawled through, he said. I wrote a message telling
General Weigel of what I had learned so far and in-
formed him that I was pushing on. I sent it back
by the medical man. We had this talk in a big shell-
hole with a little shrapnel coming over now and
then.

Greatly helped by this last information, I was now
able to go ahead with more confidence. After cross-
ing about a half mile of field on a kind of road marked
by artillery wheels, I came into the outskirts of the
Bois de la Fere. The edge of the wood had a dyke
around it and a tangle of barbed wire. Getting
through it was not so easy. After working through,

141

Toward the Flame
I saw an open path I might have followed and marked
date a neWSpapen lt Was a Berlin PaPer of recent

Although it was past five o'clock, the late French
sun was still shining brightly, long columns of light
streaming down through the trees. It was very
silent in the woods, and instinct made me move
quietly as soon as I entered them.

Just at this point there was a small village of dug-
outs, little mounds of logs and stones covered with
earth. A German machine gun outfit had been here,
judging by the abandoned material. Souvenir hunt-
ers would have smacked their lips. I was much in-
terested myself, and entered two or three. Some-
how they impressed me as having been abandoned
only a few minutes. I grew more cautious; the feel-
ing of the nearness of danger overcame me. I was
afraid to step out of the dugout I had entered last,
and drew my pistol in a kind of panic. There were
two rooms in this one with a kind of door between.
When I went into the other room I got a distinct
shock and felt sure there must be some one there.
There was stale tobacco smoke still in the air! This
was one of the most profound scares I ever got. In
the middle of the quiet woods in that lonely room,
full of smoke that some German had just blown out
of his face a few minutes before, I stood still a long
time, listening for footsteps and to my own heart-
beat. But no one came. I got out of there like a

142

Courpoil

child out of a dark room and went on, sneaking very
carefully down the path.

Pretty soon I came on a lake glistening through
the trees On the far side there were a couple of
sood-looking brick farmhouses with some of our men
moving about them. A stretcher was carried up,
and I saw a doctor with his white armband come to
the door. Just then I saw my Germans, too.

They were about two hundred yards ahead of me
down the path, and moving off very stealthily
through the trees. They were carrying a tripod, not
a machine gun, and their helmets, I could see, were
painted with yellow and green spots like the sunlight
through the leaves. One broke away from the others
and started to run. After a while they all faded into
the shadows of the woods, but I took great care, mov-
ing from tree to tree, afraid of snipers.

It took me about half an hour thus to work down
to the farmhouses. I had found a dressing station,
as I surmised, with our fellows moving around freely
among the houses. It had been a German command
post a few hours before. There was a splendid deep
dugout in the rear. Our men were getting souvenirs.
About half a platoon of "L" company was sitting
along the edge of the wood near the lake kicking
their heels. I learned from them that the rest of the
company was up one of the many little roads
through the forest that branched away at this point,
and that they were coming our way.

143

Toward the Flame

Sure enough, a few minutes later the other pla-
toons emerged from the trees, led by their captain
1 hey had been pretty roughly handled in the forest
losing some men by shells, and running into some
bad machine gun trouble. Captain Keel was very
glad to hear where our battalion was, and led his
men out of the woods and up to the new line as the
general desired. My friend Wyke, who had been in
the forest with them, described later on some of their
experiences:

'I was doing some scouting on my own account
when I heard a noise and, looking up one of the roads
through the woods, saw a party of horsemen com-
ing down it. As I knew that we had no cavalry, I
ducked, and ducked quick! It was a party of Ger-
mans, about twelve of them, mounted, and carrying
two or three machine guns. They passed me talk-
ing low, but laughing and joking. Evidently they
thought it good fun to shoot up our fellows, and
then leave them to laboriously crawl around trying
to locate the machine gun nest. They were going to
the rear. I kept low in the ditch by the side of the
road, and they rode by me and never saw me, al-
though I could almost have touched them. Just
about this time some of 'L' company came wander-
ing up the road in single file. They had not gone very
far when a shell burst right in front of them. Some of
them squatted right where they were, but one chap
ran back along the road. As usual the enemy acted

144

Courpoil

on the theory that somebody would be running to
the rear and skipped shells up the road. It seemed
as if they were chasing this man, who yelled. Then
we heard another shell coming. He heard it too and
ran screaming. Then he ducked, but too late. It
sothim. There wasn't any use burying him. I went
up to the rest of the men and got them together and
pushed forward. The shells went through the woods
back of us. There was only a corporal with the
squad. A little later I saw Captain Keel and 'kidded'
him about the way his men went after things. He

didn't like it."

This is my friend's conversation verbatim* I give

* From a notebook memorandum made at the time.

145

Toward the Flame

it to show a little glimpse of what went on in those
woods. "Now what should Sergeant Doe have
done? as the tactic books say. Well, what should
he?

By now, however, two companies, "L" and "F"
were both out of the woods, so I felt somewhat en-
couraged. A bewildering thing at this forest farm
was to find men from nearly all the other companies
They each had a different version of the state of af-
fairs, so there was only one thing to do. Go and see
for myself.

To tell the whole story of that evening and night
would be monotonous, but it was a very exciting one
for me. When dark came on I had to be doubly cau-
tious. There were groups of men all through the
woods, mostly our own, but they were along the paths
for the most part. I avoided all of them, as I was
afraid of being mistaken for a German. I could tell
by the muttered conversation. Once, and once only,
I heard German, but French several times. Mostly
it was deadly quiet. You might expect to find groups
in pockets and ravines. I could hear the firing at
Croix Rouge Farm, and this gave me my direction,
as did also the moon. I had no compass, and would
not have used it if I had. I simply worked toward
the farm.

About eleven o'clock I came across a French major.
He was eating bread and onions, but I was glad to
see him, nevertheless. I had intended to work clear

146

C our p oil

up to Croix Rouge Farm, but to tell the truth my
nerves had given out and I was really afraid to go
farther without knowing where I was. The woods
with their shadows and sounds were too much for
me. Also I was weak from hunger and the miles
covered, and ate some of the major's bread and drank
of his wine with delight. Two or three other French
officers came around. In the middle of that forest
of death-traps, all awash with moon shadows, they
had not forgotten to be polite. I know they felt the
strain, because they were peculiarly alert, but they
shook hands, bade me welcome, and shared their food
and wine which must have been precious. I thanked
God my mother had made me learn a little French.
It saved some good French and American lives that
night. From the French I obtained information
which made further blundering through the forest
unnecessary.

The French major took my map and drew on it
the entire situation about Croix Rouge Farm. He
also showed me the German line as it had been at
six o'clock that evening, pointed out a town in front
of us, and told me the French were about to attack
it. I gave him what information of our positions
I had.

When I left him, I had a fairly clear story of the
whole forest laid out on my map. He was too clear
and certain about his information to leave any doubts
in my head about its not being correct ; also it checked

H7

Toward the Flame

up with mine. It took me only a short time to get
back. I went straight to the rear, guided by a French
soldier, till I got out of the woods and into the fields,
picked out a farm road, and within an hour's time
was at the general's headquarters in the shell-hole.
The major wanted to see the map first, but I took it
to the general. Time was important.

Both General Weigel and the general of artillery
were eager to get the information. They said noth-
ing to me, but asked a number of questions. They
were soon drawing in the coordinates on the map for
a barrage, and I heard enough to know that my work
made it possible for them to do so. Otherwise we
would have been held up much longer and the bar-
rage might have fallen on our own men, for barrage
there had to be. A good deal of shelling was still
going on about Courpoil. Our men were all dug in
in the wheat fields. One lad in "B" company had
been wounded in the foot.

I went out and hunted up Nick. He was just fin-
ishing his hole, but he made it larger for me. I
crawled into it with him. The warmth of his body
was welcome, as I was cold and tired. I was just
about to go to sleep when the captain came and told
me I had been detailed to guide Major Smathers of
the 109th Machine Gun Battalion down to the farm
at the head of the lake. This took another hour and
nearly did me out. The newspaper I had put at the
path through the wire showed up white and saved us

148

Courpoil

a lot of trouble. When I got back, I crawled in with
Nick Through the mist, the machine gunners with
their little mule carts were just moving out in a long
caravan-like line.

In a damp hole like this, one's warm, water-proof
trench coat came in excellently, except that it left
the feet uncovered. Again and again I had cause to
bless it; but sleep was not to be that night. After
about an hour's snooze in this damp grave, the cap-
tain again wakened me.

An attack was being planned. I was so sleepy, it
hardly mattered. I went over to the major's hole
and heard enough to learn that they didn't know the
French were in front of us, or anything else about
"the situation." The captain of "A" company, whose
humor was devastating, began to joke them about it,
and the captain of the headquarters company, which
had just moved in to Courpoil, joined in. The major
stood on his dignity, which was in this case purely
official. All this was around one little shaded can-
dle, with the shells going overhead. A great many
technical terms were used, but no conclusions were
reached, although maps were much in evidence.
There seemed to be considerable difficulty in always
getting them right side up. Wrangling ensued.
Pennsylvania-ese mated with military French, beget-
ting a strange mule-like jargon. Here was a quar-
rel about how to fight somebody else conducted in
solecisms in which the premises of all parties to the

149

Toward the Flame

controversy were entirely wrong. It was almost le-
gally magnificent. It was more than that— it was
military. I lit a cigarette.

Yet all this time I was too tired and sleepy to get
up much interest even in an attack, although I went
back and awakened the company and got them all
in platoon order ready to move off. Nothing hap-
pened. The argument of the professional strategists
was still going on, so I took the men and sheltered
them in a ditch along the little cow road, keeping
them together. They went to sleep by platoons. The
candle was still burning in the major's dugout, but it
was nearly down to the socket now. I looked out
across the moonlit fields and through the night mist
saw our machine gun battalion coming back like a
file of ghosts. Evidently their major had discovered
the uselessness of placing machine guns in a farm-
house in the middle of the woods with the French in
front of him. I laughed heartily to myself. There
would be no attack that night.

Nick and I turned in. The top sergeant joined us
in our corner of the ditch and we slept the sleep
of the just. When we woke it was a beautiful warm
morning.

150

CHAPTER IX

AN AIR BATTLE

WE lay at Courpoil nearly a whole day. Since it
was rather a typical day near the front, I shall
narrate it in some detail.

In the morning I went over with the first sergeant
and got a wash at the village fountain and talked to
one of our surgeons who had a dressing station in a
little house there. A lot of the wounded had been
brought to him out of the woods during the night,
and ambulances were tearing up and down the road.
A shell had burst in front of the house early that

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Toward the Flame

morning and torn a man's legs off. They generally
picked some place like this for a dressing station, a
crossroads or a church, or something equally con-
spicuous. This was easily found by our men, but also
easily located by the enemy. In many cases surgeons
who picked out such locations should have been rep-
rimanded for choosing them instead of decorated for
staying in them. A great many of our doctors and
others, be it said, were stupidly plucky; sometimes
exposed situations could not be avoided, however.

A great deal of ammunition and rations had now
been brought up to Courpoil, owing to the exertions
of our lieutenant colonel and the general, who had
already started some details through the forest to
relieve the hungry men there.

After a good wash in my canvas bucket, and a talk
with the doctor, I made off in the direction of the
kitchens ensconced in the shelter of a little wood
several hundred yards to the rear. The men were
just forming a mess line, clinking their pans as usual,
when there was a general scatterment as several air-
planes dashed over the top of the trees. They proved
to be our own, however, and pretty soon down the
line one of our sausage balloons poked its nose up
out of the bois.

The mess sergeant had a surprise for us that morn-
ing. A real breakfast, good steak, and hot cakes with
syrup. I was so hungry that the cakes made an un-
dying impression on me. It is good to eat with an

152

An Air Battle

appetite like that. Some of the pleasantest memories
of the army are of sitting around on the ground talk-
ing and eating, while passing the time of day with a
well-filled mess pan. It was a very pleasant green
woods that morning with horses standing about coz-
ily switching flies, and there were cigarettes, which
tasted fine after breakfast. The men were in high
spirits, too.

After breakfast, I went over and talked to Cap-
tain Haller and Lieutenant Kellar of "D" company.
They were leaning back in a kind of leaf shelter made
of logs, shelter-halves and branches. We gave each
other the latest "wrong" rumors and then had the
usual battalion gossiping bee. As we disliked the
same persons, we had quite a basis of friendship to
start with.

When I got back to the little ridge where the com-
pany had dug in, the major general and his staff had
arrived to talk things over with our brigadier and the
general of artillery. There were a number of staff
officers about in "Sam Browne" belts which always
looked curious at the front. The major general was
wearing one and did not have a helmet. Our major's
dugout and the general's were only a few feet apart
in the field. The dugouts consisting, as stated, of a
roofed-over hole in a drain. We could look over from
"our ditch" behind the road and see the powwow of
the bigwigs going on. It continued some time. You
must imagine the men scattered along a general line

153

Toward the Flame

in all kinds of holes, or sheltered in a rough series of
trenches about waist deep, dug in the fields over-
night.

About ten o'clock a whole regiment of artillery
moved in. It was always a spectacle to watch the
guns go by. These were very big howitzers, but
horse-drawn. The men rode the lead horses, walked,
or sat on the caissons. There was a rolling cloud of
dust up to the horses' knees; some of them were re-
markably fine gray beasts. The artillery cut across
fields and took up position in the woods. Some 75's
had just moved in. A battery of that caliber was just
behind us. It looked to me as though the pieces were
leveled right at us.

None of us gave much thought to these guns until
an hour or two later, when there was a frightful roar
that absolutely overpowered everything. This was
followed by several minutes of intense "drum fire."
Our barrage was on. The 75's just behind us were
especially insistent and painfully near. Every time
they fired, the wheat in front of them bowed down
as though a sudden wind had passed over it. Soon
there was the peculiar, acrid, thirsty taste of powder
in the air.

As time went on it became possible to recognize
the voices of the several guns. I noticed again the
bell-tolling effect of the 75's, and the belching of the
howitzers. A lot of metal was coming from away
in the rear, too. We could hear the shells shrieking

154

An Air Battle
and wailing overhead, and there was a constant
vibrant roar. All the leaves on the trees and the
bushes were trembling. One had to shout to be
heard. Suddenly all this ceased as instantly as it

had begun. ,

A few minutes later there was a drone and a bang,
and one poor little German shell broke in the field
out in front. Every one laughed, partly from relief
at our own noise being over. The 75's behind us im-
mediately started in and fired away again. Then two
or three more German shells came skipping over the
fields right in line toward the officers' dugout. There
was a general scatterment. Again the 75's.

The U. S. 42nd, the
famous "Rainbow Divi-
sion," came up to relieve
us that day. They had
come from the Toul
Sector, where they had
been in trenches, and this
open warfare was at first
new to them. Some of
their units passed us,
marching along the little
road where we lay along
the ridge. We noted the
six months' foreign serv-
ice stripes on their
sleeves, at that time un-

Toward the Flame

usual in our army, as well as the fact that they were
carrying unusually large and heavy packs with a lot
of cooking utensils. There was a lavish profusion of
pots and pans. The trench life they had been leading
must have been very different from our backwoods,
gypsy existence of constant moves. At that time the
"Rainbow" did not look nearly as war-worn as the
26th, at least that was our impression.

After lunch we had the most exciting incident of
a rather interesting day. Our observation balloon,
which was hanging over the trees about a mile away,
was evidently troubling the Germans, because about
three o'clock two enemy planes came over to put an
end to it. They were met by three or four of ours
and we could hear the machine guns talking madly.

Everybody took a crack at "Fritz" as he came past.
It sounded like an immense number of firecrackers
going off, rifles, even pistols; and under it all droned
the steady rivet-hammer rip-rip-rip-rip of the ma-
chine guns.

The planes circled around over the woods like a
flock of fighting birds, and then suddenly one black
plane broke away and made a swoop towards the bal-
loon, which was being frantically pulled down. The
German dived straight for it, shooting into it. Im-
mediately we saw the little black figure of the ob-
server dive out, followed by a long, streaming, white
thing that suddenly broke into a mushroom shape.
The parachute with the man clinging to it was blown

156

An Air Battle

quite a distance and drifted down among the trees
' h ie the balloon began to give forth a tremendous
volume of white smoke. Then it burst into an im-
meTe white flame, with flaming stops ailing : to-
Zrl the ground, trailing wisps of smoke _behmd
them. "Observing" is not such a passive thing as it

S00„deof the Germans, who was simply a decoy, made
back to his lines, while the other circled away into
ours A lot of anti-aircraft shells finally greeted him
and he headed back our way. While this had been
o-oing on, "Red" Griffin, one of our Irish sergeants,
who had been a Pittsburgh fireman, fitted a pan on
his Chauchat automatic rifle, and when the German
passed over us going back, he ran out from under the
trees firing a stream of bullets until the pan was
empty. "Red" was so much in earnest about it that
the generals, who saw the whole performance,
laughed. The plane, of course, was not touched. I
never saw one brought down, but ran across the
wrecks of a few here and there. Some were our own.
The Germans had conducted this raid skillfully, and
we were minus one balloon, while theirs continued
to peer at us. Luckily they were short of artillery.

The rumor was passed around that afternoon that
we were going back, and about five o'clock the word
came that the barrage had made "Fritz" move on
again, so that our "lost" battalions were able to leave
their difficult positions in the Bois de la Fere. They

157

An Air Battle

had been relieved by other troops. That we were to
have a rendezvous with the rest of the regiment in a
rest billet to the rear was the rumor's golden lure.

At any rate our supper was cut short, as usual by
an order to move "right away." So I fed the men
while the captain hung around uneasily, not want-
ing to stint the men but between the "deil and the
deep," as he was afraid of being caught unprepared.
In a couple of hours we moved. Courpoil had been
an interesting experience.

158

CHAPTER X

A REST IN THE WOODS

WE marched back from Courpoil the same way
we had come, as far as Epieds. Our friend, the
shredded German, was still holding on to his helmet.
I understood what "holding- on like grim death"
meant when I looked at him.

At Epieds there was an immense jam of truck
trains. Our own coming east were laden, while
empty French camions were going back to the rail-
head at Chateau-Thierry. We halted to let them
pass and almost lost connection with the rest of the

159

Toward the Flame

battalion. I kept slipping a man between the moving
trucks every now and then until the first platoons
were all deployed as connecting files. When the
trucks finally did get by, we saw our two platoons
strung out in Indian file for hundreds of yards down
the road, which distance we made up by marching
when the rest of the battalion rested at the next halt.

Later on, we halted for a rest in front of a farm-
house with several outbuildings and a court. Here
some French wagoners were turning in to stay for
the night. Curiously enough, there were a woman
and some children here — the first we had seen in
a long while. We remembered this place as a wagon
nearly ran over Captain Law, thus (nearly) "immor-
talizing" him.

The French drivers were absolutely regardless of
infantry, and cut right across a column wherever
they could. One of them tried this as he turned in
at right angles across our path, in order to drive into
the little farmyard. The wagon wheels passed so
close to the captain that they brushed his boots.
This made him mad as a hornet. So when the next
wagon swung in, quite as ruthlessly as the other,
he raised his cane and gave the horses a cut that
made them rear back. There was a terrible jab-
bering in French and a jarring and creaking of
brakes all down the line. One Frenchman, who
shouted something at the captain, was pulled down
off his wagon by one of our men and given a swift

160

A Rest in the Woods

kick The other Frenchmen gave him the laugh and
the whole thing blew over in friendly bantering.
Both our men and the poilus were too good-natured
really to make trouble. There was one war on

already. . ,

Towards dark we marched through a hamlet with
thatched roofs. It lay in a deep, little valley where
two streams met. The mud was terrific. Trucks
were mired here and there, and our shoes sucked and
squelched as we passed through. Some artillery out-
fit had already appropriated the houses. "Our
woods" lay just up the hill, rather decent ones. There
were some old German dugouts in them, with the
usual tangle of Boche telephone wire about, but the
place was pretty clean. We were soon hidden for
the night in the usual manner. But we did not dig
in. We pitched our pup tents, being far enough be-
hind the lines here to feel pretty safe. Despite that,
some one ran across some old gas and there was a
tremendous alarm that night. So many trucks and
machine gun Fords being about, the effect was more
than usually successful.

Next morning we moved out of this particular bois
into another patch about a mile away. It seems that
the woods we had occupied were supposed to be oc-
cupied by the 112th Infantry instead of by our own
regiment. What difference it made, God only knows.
Anyway, several thousand men moved, one regiment
passing the other to the tune of much chaff. In a

161

Toward the Flame

few hours we were all encamped again. Little paths
cut through the woods. Along these the men sat in
the doors of their tents cleaning their rifles as there
had been some oil doled out. Oil was a scarce article.
At first you could beg it from the truck drivers, but
very soon they hardened their hearts, and rifles rusted
away gaily. Then would come a great clean-up day.

Nick put my tent just on the edge of the woods,
not far from the cooker. We were able to have an
open fire here. A lot of my "friends" came around
for supper. The French sergeant major brought me
some wine, from where I do not presume to know,
but there was a good time, stories, firelight and to-
bacco. This was the only camp-fire I saw in France
from that time until after the Armistice.

In the field, under a few trees, was a battery of
75's almost at a forty-five degree angle, which told
of the extreme range at which they were firing.
They made sleep impossible. We always "rested"
next to a battery of artillery. I spent the night
working on some verse, as the rare chance of being
alone and using a candle was not to be neglected.
To keep the glow from showing through the tent
I threw a blanket or two over it. By two o'clock I
could stand the blasting and howls of the shells no
longer, so I got up and went over to the battery.

It was in charge of a second lieutenant, a humor-
ous Kentucky lad, who was getting his firing data
over the telephone. The guns were firing at extreme

162

A Rest in the Woods
range and using their heaviest charge. The flash
leaped high above the treetops, and the gun recoiled
and slid back into place like a piston rather than a
cannon The shocks of explosion were like blunder-
ing into some one on the street. It numbed my ear,
yet the artillery lieutenant was talking over the
telephone.

In an interval of firing I asked him if he happened
to know what he was firing at. He showed me the
map. The targets were mostly crossroads and vil-
lages. Just then some more data came over the wire.

"What is that?" he asked; then he gave some
orders.

The men readjusted the gun and changed the
charge. I think they put in a new gas ring and pads.

"Watch," said the lieutenant. "This is for an am-
munition dump." He pointed toward the eastern
horizon.

Then they fired — nothing happened.

Some further slight changes were made and again
came the explosion. As the shriek of the shell died
away, a great flower-pot of crimson light shot up
into the sky over the horizon. That was the German
ammunition dump.

You must imagine some crossroads in the woods
over in the German lines with a lot of big shells going
off, nitrose powder burning furiously, and darkness
finally settling down over some blackened fragments
of what had once been men.

163

Toward the Flame

All the roads to the rear of the German lines were
at that time crowded with men and wagon trains.
The scenes on those choked lines of retreat, as our
shells burst on their withdrawing columns, must have
been truly infernal. Over the edge of the world, ut-
tering their banshee wails like screams of vengeance,
and roaring like express trains, came the messengers
of the outraged republics. There would be a fright-
ful red flare, the bellow of an explosion, arms, legs,
trunks of men, death-dealing fragments of jagged
steel and whirling wreckage falling for miles along
the gray-helmeted, rearward-plodding columns.* No
use to cry "Kamarad" or shriek to Gott. It must
have been during those nights of horror when our
shells ate him up like cannibalistic devils that "Fritz"
at last came to realize that "the jig was up."

It rained next day, so all the low-lying fields and
roads were turned into a sea of sticky mud. The men
stayed pretty close in their tents, wrapping them-
selves in their blankets along with their rifles, and
only coming out for mess.

Rumors of a Y.M.C.A. canteen over at the little
village drew me out in the afternoon. I tramped
past the battery, silent now and out of range, and
slipped and slithered into the village, where in a cow-
shed the Y.M.C.A. man was selling cigarettes, choco-

* Some German officers, prisoners, I talked to afterwards, spoke feelingly
of the frightful scenes along the roads during the withdrawal from the
Marne salient.

164

A Rest in the Woods

lates and little cakes and butter biscuits. There was
a long helmeted line waiting patiently in the ram.
Officers were constantly thrusting themselves in, and
would take an unconscionable time choosing some
particular brand of cigarette and demanding change
while the rest of the line waited in the drizzle and
manure-soaked water. It was one of the tew priv-
ileges an officer had left to abuse.

One could look across the fields and see the men
coming out of the woods in all directions, dragging
their way across the heavy mud like brown flies over
fly paper. There were a few trucks here, mired, and
running their engines at a frightful rate, slipping and
sloshing, with blue smoke rolling out from behind,
and a deluge of water and mud flying off their vainly
whirling wheels. Hell is not paved with good inten-
tions but with mud.

This was one of the few places where the whole
regiment got together: the whole brigade in fact.
The colonel had his car and the headquarters com-
pany near him, bivouacked in a little cove in the
woods. One got an impression of lines of Ford cars
with their radiators all staring at one, for the ma-
chine gun company with its trucks was here too.
Then there was the equipment of the one-pound can-
non section, and the trench-mortar platoon lying
around, tripods, and little carts and chests, and per-
haps a tent here and there with clerks, and a type-
writer clicking in it. There were orderlies with red

165

Toward the Flame

armbands, and those privileged characters of the
regiment, the colonel's chauffeur and striker, the reg-
imental sergeant major, the intelligence officer, and
the statistical officer, ready to ask about that overdue
paper work. One generally met the chaplain here,
too, a kindly, lovable man, much saddened by things'
he had seen, and destined to make the last sacrifice
later on.

Such was headquarters.

Wyke and I went to pay a visit to Lieutenant
Fletcher, the scout officer of the third battalion, whom
I had met at Courpoil, searching for his outfit. I
describe him because he was the kind of man whose
essential strength of personality stood out clearly.
In all that mud and confusion, he was living under a
wagon, clean, clear-cut of feature, merry and wise,
with a few. good books around him, and something
succinct and amusing to say.

Fletcher was always commenting on things.
Under the wagon he was dry and clean, and that
was typical. No mud of any kind ever touched him.
All the filth and littlenesses of that vast experience of
war passed him by like the unremembered faces on
the street. Only its vastness, its youthful vigor, and
its sacrifices were real to him. Yet he was a better
man physically than most; a fast runner, a good shot,
handsome, a keen thinker, deeply conscientious, with
a broad sense of humor and a catching laugh. He
should have lived to have children instead of being

166

A Rest in the Woods
snuffed out later on in a miserable garret in Fismes

by a chance shell.

I went to pay him twenty francs I owed him and
to hear what he had to say. Wyke and I sat around
while his striker brought us something to eat, coffee
in big canteen cups, and white, bursting, boiled po-
tatoes in jackets. Fletcher waved his hands about
majestically and ironically quoted the Rubaiyat.
It seemed like spreading a Persian carpet in the
woods. We all laughed with Omar, taking his advice
about the wine literally, and applying it. Fletcher
had a canteenful hanging under the wagon.

Another night of wind and rain was followed by a
sultry morning. The fields steamed while we waited
for another regiment to move out ahead of us. The
"rest" was over. We had hoped to get back to a real
town to refit, such had been the wishful rumor, but it
was many a weary day before that came true, months
in fact.

167

CHAPTER XI

A GRAVE IN THE WOODS

SO much of our time at the front was spent in
marching and then lying around in the woods
that to recount it in detail would only give its main
impression, one of tiresome monotony.

That day we passed a German airplane shot down
in a field. At a halt, a lot of the men ran over to see
it, and I remember feeling too weak to stop them.
We moved on again up a corduroy road through the
woods, which the enemy was "sniping" with an Aus-
trian 77. These guns shot on a very flat trajectory

168

A Grave in the Woods
and there was no time to dodge. The report of the
cannon and the report of the shell came almost to-
gether "Bang-crash, bang-crash." There were
both German and American dead along here as the
fight had just passed that way. We were following
up in reserve, and it was said the infantry was hung
up" some miles ahead. The big noise we heard was
going on about Croix Rouge Farm, still held by the

enemy. ...

We had a long wait in a field where something
interesting happened. "Fritz's" planes had been
coming over without let or hindrance all day, ob-
serving the roads, and switching their artillery on
them. I went over to a little farm to hunt water
during this halt, where I found a French anti-air-
craft battery had just moved in. The men were sit-
ting around loafing, cooking, and sleeping. The of-
ficers were settling themselves in some of the vacant
rooms. Suddenly a whistle blew. Such a change
you never saw. Instantly, all was business. A Ger-
man plane was coming over pretty high and taking
its time. Suddenly the whole air went to pieces
about it. The French shells broke so near, it had to
drop, make a swoop, and turn tail. It was followed
for a long way by a trail of bursting shells like white
powder puffs, and the French shooting was good.
I remember hearing the pieces from the shells land-
ing a long time afterwards in the woods.

The next stage of our journey was a macadam-

169

Toward the Flame

ized road with the German arbor camouflage along
one side, with signs and painted canvas across it like
the "Welcome Home" signs of old home week But
these signs said it was "verboten" for more than four
wagons at a time to be on any given section of road
and also blazed forth the information, "This road
can be seen by your enemies."

At one place there was an unharmed and charm-
ing little villa, quite Japanese in its effect, whose
entire fenced-in garden made a well-kept German
cemetery with many rows of new crosses and mounds.
Here and there was a helmet on top of a grave. The
wounded were coming back along this road, and
some prisoners. One could look along it for miles,
the ambulances racing down its length, men passing
this way and that, ammunition carts, automobiles and
side cars. It was quite like a busy park street on a
fine day, only there was a different spirit here, where
every one was bound on the same errand, for there
was news of hot fighting ahead.

By evening, however, the firing had stopped, and
our lieutenant colonel met us and led us into an-
other woods, a grassy open one this time, with the
usual artillery near by. The Germans had been log-
ging here, and had marked all the best trees with a
ring of green paint. Graves, helmets and old machine
guns' debris were scattered through the tract. Here
we stayed for four or five days pretty comfortably.
Another division, the 32nd U. S., moved in near by.

170

A Grave in the W oods

I had a bed in a deep ditch at this place, covered
with logs, stones, and boughs. The men lived m
holes which they kept digging a little deeper every
day We heard a few shells fall in answer to our bat-
teries but none very near us. News of the fighting
came 'back from the other infantry brigade in our
division. We saw wounded and prisoners whenever
we went out on the main road. A sergeant of an-
other regiment told me that in one place the Germans
arrived on a train and got off almost in our lines—
where they were immediately taken prisoners. They
did not know we had moved up so far. After all,
there was nothing in the landscape to mark where
"Hunland" began.

The fighting eventually moved
entirely out of our ken, and we went
into pup tents.

An order for several hours' drill a
day now came around. The men
were not permitted to rest but were
taken out and bored by old training
camp stuff. I was surprised how
patient they were.

Dysentery began to show up here
due to the bad water we were forced
to drink. Some of the men were ab-
solutely prostrated and the condi-
tion of the woods became bad, flies
among other things. We had some

171

Toward the Flame

bad beans for supper one night that nearly floored
Lieutenant Glendenning and me. We were both
ghastly sick, and slept until about noon the next day,
waking up in a hot, sunny tent with flies buzzing!
both so weak and pale around the gills that we
laughed at each other. Memoranda had been sent
around warning us that the Germans had poisoned
wells and springs. Our water carts sometimes went
miles for good water, but it was impossible not to
catch something sooner or later with the vast deal of
decay going on.

At that place I saw a very curious thing, a lumi-
nous grave. A horse or mule had been buried hast-
ily, probably by the Germans, and quite near the
surface. You could see the barrel-like outline of the
ribs. One night I noticed, as I looked out of the tent
into the dark woods, something glowing faintly. It
was the grave. I called the attention of several of
the men to it and they distinctly saw it, too.

To give a diary of our life here would be uninter-
esting. The last two days the guns moved in and
shot right over our heads. I felt the ground shaking
all night. From here, however, I did make an in-
teresting trip.

I had some personal business to accomplish with
the division paymaster and got the colonel's per-
mission to visit division headquarters, then supposed
to be in a little hamlet only a few miles distant. I
passed brigade headquarters now ensconced in the

172

A Grave in the W oods

little villa with the cemetery in its garden. There
was some wash drying on some of the crosses, and
several automobiles and motorcycles drawn up be-
fore the gate. A staff conference of some kind, 1

^Walking down to the little village, I found that
division headquarters had moved that morning back
to a little town just up the Marne from Chateau-
Thierry, then about fifteen kilometers away. How-
ever, I determined to catch a truck and make the trip.

The roads in the rear of the armies were like a
great boulevard. All the corners were well pla-
carded, and the military police were on duty directing
traffic. Trucks, limousines, Fords, the horse-drawn
French wagons, and fast camions, artillery with huge
tractors, and bodies of men were going both ways in
a constant stream. Now and then an ambulance
hurtled by, going like lightning, and one would get a
glimpse of the feet of men lying on stretchers, or pale
bandaged fellows, arms in slings or heads bound up,
sitting and swaying on the seats, with the surgeon
in the front seat beside the chauffeur. Then there
were endless strings of trucks in trains, moving along
steadily all at the same pace, a limousine car at the
head with the motor transport officer inside wearing
his Sam Browne belt, like a dandy in a glass case.
The truck drivers were provided with rifles in a
leather sling, as were the side cars, little tin bath-
tubs on wheels that flashed by constantly.

173

Toward the Flame

Trucks would pick one up, and it was possible to
ride for miles and get back the same day. One of
the military policemen flagged a truck for me, and we
sped down over the white road toward the Marne
with troops camped on either side. The road turned
at Dormans, to which there was a long descent.

This town stands directly on the Marne. There
had been a terrific fight there a few weeks before. It
certainly showed it. Despite this, our men were liv-
ing in the houses, and the place had a busy aspect,
but there was no glass in the windows, few roofs, and
nothing but soldiers about. In the folds of the ground
up the high hillside, batteries of artillery were
camped. We stopped here and filled our radiator
from a garden well.

Once out of Dormans, we fairly raced down the
level road along the Marne, passing through the vil-
lages whose names had been made suddenly famous
during the battle along the river; then on through
Gland with its ruined church, across from which was
the garden where I had met my friend a few nights
before. I wondered where he was now. The place
looked different by daylight, and there was another
outfit billeted there.

Gland was as far as the truck went, so I got out
and was planning my next move when I met Colonel
Pucey of the division staff who had a car waiting.
He told me he would take me to division headquar-
ters. But first, he said, he had to go over to the other

174

A Grave in the Woods

side of the Marne with another colonel, as they were
trying to locate a place to park the ammunition trains
that were coming up from the base at Meaux. I was
only too pleased at the chance to go with him.

We had some little difficulty in finding a bridge
over the Marne, but finally crossed over on a pon-
toon structure near Chezy. It was intensely inter-
esting to see this country where we had been facing
the enemy a few weeks before. Chezy was just a lit-
tle way from Crezancy and those woods which the
men had called "Death Valley," where so many of
them had been killed by shell fire.

All the intensity and mystery that the presence of
the enemy lends to a place had gone. The towns
were full of our troops, the roads crowded with truck
trains, and every wood the parking place for ammu-
nition and ration trains. We ran up to Fossoy, which
had been the headquarters of the 7th Infantry, cross-
ing our old friend, the Paris Aqueduct, with some
difficulty, and running along it for a piece. Graves
were everywhere.

The French refugees were beginning to come back.
On one of the roads I saw a cart, a high-wheeled cart,
with a fat, little, dappled-gray horse plodding along
toward the Marne with an old French peasant in blue
blouse and wooden shoes driving, his grey-haired
wife holding on and dusting along beside him. The
French soldiers were reaping in some of the fields, a
harvest of a different sort than had been reaped there

175

Toward the Flame

a few days before. High up on the plateau back of
the Marne, near where we had been billeted in June
we met some of the officers of the ammunition train
for whom we had been looking. The two automo-
biles were stopped and in a short time both colonels
settled on the woods where it was to be parked.

Great care had to be exercised in such matters. If
a rain came on, mud might make it impossible for
the trucks to get out of the place where they were
parked, and consequent delay in bringing ammuni-
tion up to the front in a crisis might result. There
was rifle ammunition at this place, packed in bando-
liers in neat wooden boxes with a tin case receptacle
inside.

The business of parking once settled, we fairly tore
down to Chateau-Thierry, which was the railhead at
that time. And railheads were liable to be bombed.
As we came down the hill near the town an airplane
came swooping along the road. The colonel ordered
the car drawn up under a tree and said to the other
colonel, "Shall we get out, John?" John did not
reply. I stuck my head out of the window and saw
the red, white and blue circles and enjoyed the "sit-
uation." It was one of our own planes.

The roads leading into the town were tremen-
dously congested. They had the railroad working,
and we waited at the crossing by a mill whose iron
roof was a lacework of bullet holes, while train after
train went by; flat cars with guns blocked to the floor

176

A Grave in the Woods

and peering up at an angle at the sky, cattle cars with
horses looking out, a wisp of hay in their teeth, and
cattle cars full of men, the famous "40 hommes, 8
chevaux." The men had their shirts off; it was hot
and their feet were dangling over the edge, or they
were sitting or standing in groups by the door. Old
passenger cars bumped past, some compartments
empty with perhaps a smashed door, and others full
of harassed and tired-looking officers, their musette
bags and pistols hanging from the racks, and the tas-
sels and upholstering of the seats appearing inde-
scribably tawdry with big boots resting on them,
while the remains of food and tobacco was scattered
about. The trains backed and shifted with whoops
and coughs.
M e an while
the motor
trucks and
side cars
"inched up"
and stood
beating and
pulsing i n
rows until
there was an
opening
across the
tracks. Then
the whole

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Toward the Flame

mess poured like a flood over the railroad and into the
town. We had some difficulty in finding the right
bridge to cross over. The French guard stopped us
at one, but at the other, another pontoon structure,
there was no difficulty.

I was impressed to see how quickly Chateau-
Thierry was reviving. Already a few women and
children had returned. Despite the shell craters and
wreckage, it already looked like a habitable town.
In such a place division headquarters had no diffi-
culty in making themselves comfortable. They were
billeted in one of the suburbs. The different messes
each had a house to themselves, and after my home
in the ditch up in the woods, they looked very com-
fortable, with chairs and furniture, a set table, and
orderlies, and nicely made-up cots. Officers were
sitting around in gardens, talking and smoking, for
it was near dinner time. It looked almost peace-
ful. Under it all, though, pulsed the steady throb
and rumble of the trucks and the clatter of the
boards on the pontoon bridge, the throb of the motor
transport, which was indeed the heartbeat of the
army.

I quickly transacted my business and came out of
the town hall, where the offices were, into the glow
of a beautiful sunset, just in time to catch a captain
of engineers, the supply officer of his regiment, who
was going back to the lines in his dusty limousine
filled with cartons of cigarettes, chocolates, and cakes,

178

A Grave in the Woods

plunder from the Y.M.C.A. and Red Cross. Such
articles were always welcome at the front where sup-
plies were few and far between.

He dropped me at a little town on a crossroads
near my own regiment. And after a few minutes'
walk I found "our woods" with the men sitting-
around in the twilight, talking, smoking or gambling
in excited groups, whence came invocations to For-
tune and the snapping of fingers, while the dice
rolled out on the blankets. Nick had saved me some
supper piping hot in my mess pan, and I fell to, feel-
ing mentally and bodily refreshed by my little trip.
What a bright sun, what white towns along how blue
a river ! The guns were silent that night and we slept.

179

CHAPTER XII

ANOTHER NIGHT MARCH

I THINK I mentioned that the Germans had
marked all the best trees in this wood for log-
ging. Many of them they had already cut down, and
the huge logs, for they were very ancient oaks, lay
scattered about here and there. Between two of these
and under them, in a hole, the major had set up shop
and every once in a while he or the adjutant would
bob up like jacks-in-the-pulpit to bawl out an order
or give directions, to the quiet amusement of all in

180

Another Night March

the vicinity. In a curious way they lost much pres-
tige by this behavior.

The Y.M.C.A. man attached to our regiment came
and held his sale right in front of the major's quar-
ters on a little rutted road. He would have a few
cartons (called "cartoons" by the men) of cigarettes,
or baskets full of small jellies put up in pasteboard
cups, sometimes chocolates, boxes of cigars, and lit-
tle cakes wrapped in wax paper. There was always
a dense ring formed around him right away, and
things were bought up like mad, the officers snatch-
ing off the cigars, and every one wanting to get more
than his share. There was also much discontent at
prices, and haggling over change, which was very
difficult to make, the men's pay generally being in
franc notes of large denominations. The harassed
"Y" men were for the most part very patient, but the
nature of their business, selling gum drops and cakes
when civilization hung in the balance, was so petty
that they were bound to be despised by the very men
for whom they labored. All these things might have
been issued as part of the rations from the ration
dump or sold by accredited sutlers or a commis-
sary agent. A religious organization that found
its greatest field in purveying stationery, jelly, and
ginger snaps behind the lines of battle merited the
contempt which it so often received. As a matter of
fact, there was little else it could do, and that in itself
was a great comment.

181

Toward the Flame

It was here that we got the news of Fere-en-Tarde-
nois: how our men had met the Prussian Guards in
hand-to-hand fighting and worsted them, leaving the
streets full of bayoneted dead. We also saw the great
cloud in the sky when our aviators bombed the Ger-
man dump there, a vast, mushroom-shaped column
of black smoke that rushed up into the sky, and then
curled out like an umbrella all white at the edges.
That had been one of the main depots for the drive
"nach Paris." There was a German bond issue in
the umbrella-shaped cloud. About this time division
headquarters sent around a memorandum telling how
the roads back of the German lines were full of re-
treating troops singing, "We're going back to Ger-
many," and it was here that the first really persistent
rumor of an Austrian peace proffer began to be cir-
culated. We saw the New York Herald's edition
once in a while, but it was always many days old.
Nevertheless, there was elation and victory in the
air. Our fellows seemed to take this for granted,
though, from the first. It was well for us that we had
not met the Germans some years earlier.

In the training camps the British officers had
taught the bayonet and both British and French
trainers had instilled in us the idea of taking no pris-
oners. Aside from any other considerations, this
was a stupid policy, and I think it was about this
time that the major general directed in a memoran-
dum that quarter be given, as otherwise the enemy

182

Another Night March

resisted to the last, which cost us many unnecessary
casualties. Our men could not, and hardly ever did,
have the hatred for the Germans that the personnel
of the other allied armies were said to have had. On
the whole this was quite fortunate and encouraged
the Germans to surrender more easily*

We moved out after supper one night to the chorus
of the guns, which had been silent for several days.
They were firing at extreme range. I anticipated a
long march and was not disappointed. Next to the
march just after Chateau-Thierry, it was the hardest
test so far, and it was all at night, too.

We passed a battle-scarred farm with long French
guns folded down on their carriages in the fields close
by, the personnel billeted in the farm buildings. The
French officers I talked to here were much elated,
and, I noted, looked on our men with great respect.
One of them filled my canteen with wine, patting me
on the back. It would be over soon. "C'est fini
maintenant!" There were about twenty dead horses
there in a row. "To-morrow," said the Frenchman,

* Several former officers in the English army and others, inform me that
the idea of a personal hatred between the soldiers of the British and German
forces was a convention of the propaganda of the war period. They say that,
especially toward the last of the struggle, respect, and even a certain friend-
liness and mutual pity animated all concerned in the common misery. I can
only add that no such idea was taught by the instructors sent to the United
States by various foreign governments. The French taught war as a science,
the British like football coaches ; to the Americans war was a business enter-
prise on a national scale with life insurance, union wages and shower baths
for the employees. Occasionally one met a genuine soldier lost amid regi-
ments of employees. — H. A., 1934.

183

Toward the Flame

holding his nose and laughing. It seems they were
"German horses!" I wondered if his resentment ex-
tended even to the mineral kingdom.

This was another wooded, rolling plateau we were
entering upon. On and on, up and down, we
marched, the road leading past woods and fields with
a faint moon just showing — on through little ruined
towns with lights glimmering through cracks here
and there behind blanketed windows. There were
halts for the major to examine maps, twists, and
turns, and stops to let truck trains and automobiles
by. Nothing is more tiresome than constantly start-
ing and halting under heavy equipment. The men
grumbled, and when it came on to drizzle, which it
did gradually, they lit matches to light cigarettes and
pipes, a dangerous thing in case of enemy planes
being near.

About three o'clock we stumbled into a little vil-
lage where the word was passed that there was to
be an hour's halt. It was utterly and profoundly
dark; a thick, wet, clammy dark with the rain fall-
ing steadily. We were ordered not to allow the men
to go into the houses, but as it was impossible to see
beyond your own hand, I knew that this could not be
stopped since the men were standing right next to
the open doors and windows of the buildings, built
as usual right along the edge of the street. To ex-
pect them to lie down in the streaming road was too
much. As a matter of fact, some of them did lie

184

Another Night March

down in the road ditch, too insensible to care. I got
some of the sergeants near me and climbed through
a window myself into a little room where I flopped
down in a corner. As I did so I noticed the faint out-
line of a man against the opposite window, but I
went off into a doze right away without speaking
to him.

For some reason the halt was shortened, and we
moved in about twenty minutes instead of an hour.
I heard the stir in the street and jumped up to go
out, but remembering the man next to the window,
I went over to wake him up. He was sitting in a
chair and he did not move when I spoke. As I leaned
forward to shake him, the peculiar shape of his hel-
met and a faint deathly odor told me the tale. It was
a dead German.

Once in line, there was a long delay. Strange as
it may seem, I did not go back into that room, but
propped myself up in the window and went to sleep.
We were all numb with fatigue. The men simply
sat in the road helplessly. They were as wet as they
could get. My trench coat kept me dry about the
body, and my tin hat shed rain. Sitting dripping in
the window, I had one of the most vivid dreams of
home and carefree boyhood times that a man could
have. It unnerved me so much that I really had no
bark in my voice when it came to getting the men on
their feet again. That was certainly one miserable
night.

185

Another Night March

We scrambled on for about a hundred yards, and
then halted again. Everybody made a rush for the
houses this time. I got into a corner with Lieuten-
ant Glendenning, where he slept. Tired as I was, I
could not. Leaning up against me, Glen talked in
his sleep. The room was jammed, men kept coming
in and out, stepping on the sleepers. One fellow, a
young lad, has a terrible cough that ended in a mad-
dening gag and a wheeze. He began to cry out after
a while, frightened by it. There was nothing to do
for him. Some of the hopeless began telling putrid
stories. At the first gray of the morning we moved,
but several of the sleepers were left behind. It was
impossible to wake them all, scattered as they were

through the village, and a few
were staying purposely, intend-
ing to catch up later, perhaps.

Deliberate straggling like this
seemed the worst of crimes at
this time. The captain was a
pillar of strength on that march.
Glen and I were tuckered out
with dysentery and tottered
along together.

I was in hopes that we were
going to get a good woods or a
village to billet in, but we had
no such luck. We passed a lot
of dead Germans in one place

186

Another Night March

at the top of a hill. It looked as though there had
not been much quarter given there. The road slith-
ered two feet deep in mud down a hillside and onto
a flat space, across which we could see some old Ger-
man hangars and barracks. There was a narrow-
gauge railway here with overthrown cars like an
abandoned coal-mine working. At the bottom of the
valley was a tremendous grange or farm, all knocked
to pieces. We headed for this and I had hopes — but
it was not to be.

As we expected, the order came, and we marched
right out into the muddy wheat stubble. The men
did not attempt to pitch shelter tents but just sat
down, too fagged and indifferent to care. The kitch-
ens were not in sight yet, and it was still raining.
We sat and sat. After a while the sun came up. It
seemed a useless proceeding on its part. I went down
to the farm to try and wash up and scrub the dirt
and mustard gas out of my fingers, which were pain-
ful with raw and festering hangnails. That farm, a
huge place, was almost a perfect symbol of war.

The big sheds outside were full of cases of potato-
masher bombs and all manner of curious signal-light
material left by the Germans. The ground around
the great, square, brick building had been trampled
into a welter of mud. Inside the courtyard a thick
cast-iron spigot with its handle broken off was run-
ning constantly, making pools all over the place.
French soldiers were slushing back and forth, cook-

187

Toward the Flame

ing, or asleep in the rooms that opened onto the
court. Part of the upper story had been shot away.
Giant chimneys and staring windows looked at one
from the roofless rooms, filled with a devil's medley
of charred tables, broken china, old clothes and wea-
pons. There was a hot, fetid breath from the stables,
where the French had too many horses crowded into
filthy stalls, and a plague of flies crawled over every-
thing, making sleep impossible and eating nauseous.
This farm must have been a well-run plant at one
time. There was an engine room with wheels and
shafts twisted into a writhing mass by the flames,
and a water tank riddled by bullets. Over every-
thing was a glistening film of black sewer-like mud,
mingled with plaster dust, fragments of red roof
tiles, horse manure, and broken furniture. Despite
all of this, though, it was better than the lake of mud
in the fields.

Nick got the solid alcohol, heated a can of salmon
he had been carrying, and some French "monkey
meat." With this and some hard-tack we made a
meal. We got a corner in the stable, drew the
blankets over our faces to keep off the flies, and went
to sleep. When I got up, the sun had come out
strong and the men were putting up their pup tents
in the fields. But best of all, the kitchens had come.
I had my shelter tent put up close to our cooker.

While I was eating mess I noticed a square lead
plate that the cooks were using to set things on.

188

Another Night March

The mess sergeant told me they had picked it up at
Chateau-Thierry in one of the houses — "where there
was a row on the wall." On turning it over I found
it to be a lead plaque with very excellent Italian re-
naissance figures depicting the most frankly porno-
graphic scene I ever looked at. I was so tired that I
remember the antique exuberance of the thing struck
me as being incredible. It had, however, the unusual
merit of being too heavy to carry around, which is
more than similar modern postcards possess.

We soon moved again, in the rain, to a woods over-
looking a valley in which there was a balloon com-
pany and two or three machine guns posted to keep
off the enemy's planes. The woods were filled with
artillery here. At our next move — we were being
held in reserve while an attack went on some miles
away — the barrage was weirdly magnificent.

There was no longer any pretense of hiding the
guns; they simply stood out in fields or at the edge
of woods; and that night the "display" was unusually
intense. The Germans were making a stand on the
Vesle, a few kilometers away. When the drumfire
was at its height there was one wood that seemed to
be a grove of lightnings with a constant seething
flame along its front, and everywhere through the
meadows great jets and tongues of fire cut the dark-
ness like knife stabs. The officers gathered into a
little hushed group and watched it. After the thun-
der ceased suddenly, the silence seemed strange.

189

Toward the Flame

That night saw us in another woods, always nearer
the Vesle River. I slept under a French wagon with
the top sergeant. Peeping in the body of it at first,
we dislodged some of the canvas on top, and a lot of
water that had collected in one of the folds ran down
onto the sleeping French inside. There was consid-
erable hard feeling for a while, which died away in
snores. On the ground it was cold. The men slept
huddled together in their slickers.

We were joined next day by three lieutenants from
the 77th Division, which accession helped out con-
siderably, as our company was short of officers.
They were all fine fellows, anxious to do their share,
and more. Here it was, too, that we saw the end of
the observation balloon that now lay behind us.

About four o'clock one afternoon a German plane
came over and shot it down in a whirl of flame and
smoke. The observer escaped by the parachute, and
the enemy headed back straight for home, heedless
of the jabber of machine guns and the popping of a
million rifles. There was great indignation. It
seemed too easy. That night we made the distance
clear to the Vesle, a memorable march for us.

190

CHAPTER XIII

THE MARCH TO THE VESLE, AND FISMES

BY THE flickering light of the cannon on a hun-
dred hills, we started on our march to the Vesle.
We were fast catching up with the battle line now
as the Germans had halted on the river, and as we
advanced over the plateau, winding down into the
valleys, and across the hills, we began gradually to
get into the shelled area again.

At one place the road descended into a steep ravine
and made a sudden turn, where under a rocky ledge
there was an immense cavern capable of holding, it

191

Toward the Flame

was said, an entire battalion. In the dark of the
night it was a strange thing to look back into its re-
cesses and see the lanterns and lights moving as if in
a subterranean world. Of course, in there, they were
free from all observation. There were also a good
many ambulances and trucks coming and going, and
the place seemed to be used for a general storehouse.

As we came up out of the valley, we saw a flat
plain beyond, and in the distance, lighting up a line
of black woods for an instant, I saw the unwelcome
wink of a falling shell. Away off over the hills some
German flares went up. We were getting close
again !

That whole flat was saturated with gas. By this
time, however, we had learned not to put our masks
on until the order came. One or two places the gas
was choking, then on another little rise it would
clear up again. Everything went well until we
came to a crossroads, which the enemy was evi-
dently gunning for, as several gas shells fell very
close by in the fields with their characteristic "flop."

A few seconds later the gas was so strong there
was no need for an order. Every one shouted, "gas !"
and put on his mask, with the usual result of great
trouble. Platoons and companies lost touch with
each another, and there was great difficulty in giving
orders or having them understood.

As a matter of fact, there was no real need of a
mask even after the shells fell, as I left mine off,

192

The March to the Vesle, and Fismes

and so did several of the other officers, without any-
ill effects except a little choking sensation at the
time. One sad thing did happen that night, how-
ever.

A big high explosive shell came over so close to
us we felt sure from its sound it was going to burst
very near. There is nothing worse than listening
to the increasing howl of a shell and realizing that
this time it really is going to burst near you. How
near? That is the vital question. This particular
shell burst several hundred yards away, tearing
through the trees and crashing with a red flash that
lit up the road and the columns of troops. Then we
heard those awful agonized screams and cries for
help that so often followed. It is impossible to make
people at home understand what listening to them
does to your brain. You can never get rid of them
again.

What had happened was this: the big chap who
rode the horses on our company kitchen had been
caught in the burst and mortally hurt. Every bit
of flesh from his waist down had been blown off his
legs and yet he lived for some time. The splendid
big grays were killed. I heard about all this next
day.

Very late that night we camped in a field for some
hours. It was the coldest weather we had felt and
I slept little, trying in vain to keep my feet and legs
covered, and wondering what it would be like in

193

Toward the Flame

January if we was cold in August. As day began
to break, the captain and I moved the men over into
a trench along a road that disappeared over the edge
of the hill about two hundred yards away. The
"trench" was simply the road ditch dug deeper and
full of man-holes. I found a pit in it with a fine piece
of sheet iron for a roof. To judge by the star shells,
there was only a half mile or so of valley between us
and the enemy. At daybreak, to our left, we saw the
gaunt skeleton of a shelled church with a cluster of
ruined houses around it. This was Mont Saint-
Martin, according to the map. And in the valley,
just over the slope of the hill, lay Fismes.

We were almost on the verge of that slope and
overlooked quite an amphitheater of hills behind us.
In front there was a field, a stretch of a few hundred
yards, and then the ground fell away steeply to the
Vesle. From our trench as far as I could see the
road was lined on both sides with bobbing "tin hats."
Here are some notes I took at the time showing
exactly how it appeared.

"I can look down the trench from here and see
a dirty mess pan crawling with flies, and a fat rusty
canteen attached to a belt. An old helmet, like a
hurt turtle on the parapet, is dragging a chin strap
tied to a bloody rag, and the eye of a machine gun
stares at me from its tripod in perpetual surprise.
There are alternate bands of shadow and white sun-
light across the trench, and down its long vista I see

194

The March to the V esle, and Fismes

many men in a row. A fat soldier is sleeping with
his back in the air like a pile of clothes, another, in
profile, is staring across the fields, and the feet of a
dead man stick out stiffly over a stretcher. His hands
are raised to his gas mask in rigid protest, where
there is blood. There is a blank air of utter idleness
about. It is a lonesome land full of the sense of im-
pending disaster."

All that day we lay along the road and heard ma-
chine gun fire and trench mortars from Fismes in
the valley. There was a constant harassing artillery
fire, too, from both sides. Our position was under
direct observation, and every once in a while "Fritz"
would skip a few shells over the fields at the working
parties or grub details
that passed constantly
up and down the road.
Every now and then
a man was carried by
on a stretcher, limp
and gassed. They
were bringing them
up out of the valley
all day long. Such
groups were always
the purveyors of
"news." Wounded
men were eagerly
questioned, but very

195

Toward the Flame

few lucid accounts could be gotten. Naturally
enough, each man knew only how the fight went at
his own little corner.

Ambulances tore back and forth, for which the
enemy gunned regularly. The doctors and drivers
showed great skill in braving one stretch of road in
particular. Just as they came up over the brow of
the hill out of the valley, there was a place where
they were in full view of the other side of the river.
Then there was a little dip, a swale of ground, down
which the cars came hurtling at full speed. The Ger-
mans calculated on this, and they would drop a shell
a little in advance down the road, and exactly into
the little hollow, hoping the car would run into it.
There were some breathless escapes. One fellow, I
remember, stopped just on the brow of the hill, let
the shell burst ahead of him, and then tore down the

road, leaning out to shout as he swooped past, "

them that time!" It took cool nerve to do that.

Another exhibition of German gunnery took place
later on in the day. Most of our rolling kitchens had
been left near the cave we had passed the night be-
fore. But those belonging to the outfits fighting in
Fismes were kept hidden in the woods above the
town, whence from time to time one would try to
get down near enough for the mess details to come
up to meet it and carry down a hot meal.* To do

♦As a great deal has been said in this narrative about cookers, eating,
etc., it may not be out of place to remark here that only the soldiers of
romances are strong enough nobly to do without food.

I96

The March to the Vesle, and Fismes

that, the cookers very often had to expose them-
selves, as the whole slope of the plateau could be
seen by the enemy.

I saw a kitchen come down a road, driving very
fast, and smoking like a fire-engine. Just as it got
near a big tree, a shell burst in front of it. They tried
to turn around, but luckily did not succeed as another
shell fell right behind them. By this time the horses
were frantic and tore off through the fields with the
mess sergeant and his men taking after them. This
was the safest thing they could do, for in the fields
they were comparatively safe. Several bodies of men
coming down this same road were also scattered.

Sitting on the hill and observing all this as a spec-
tator, I could not help but think that much loss
might have been avoided by cutting across fields
oftener. Men are so prone to follow a beaten path
that they would almost rather be killed on it than
take a new one. "Whither thou goest, I will go,"
seems to be written on the heart of the average sol-
dier. Seeing how all the roads were covered by Ger-
man artillery, I remembered this Scripture against
a future time.

Our kitchen came up about four o'clock, but stayed
back a little way in a grove and out of sight. We
had to carry the meal about a mile in the clumsy re-
ceptacles provided, because we could not risk (after
the tragedy of the night before) drawing shells and
thus perhaps losing more men and horses. This was

197

Toward the Flame

the first meal we had eaten for about twenty-four
hours, so it went well. It was the last hot meal we
got for many a day. I sent some of it over to the
captain of "A" company, who was sitting with one
of his lieutenants just across the road looking rather
hungry. His kitchen had not yet appeared. Little
incidents like this were remembered, as the captain
was badly wounded and the lieutenant killed a day
or so later. They were very gay then, although I
knew both of them were ill.

Meals were carried from the rolling kitchens by
sticking a pole through the handle of the cook pans,
or pouring the food into large galvanized receptacles
like milk cans with handles. No convenient vessels
were provided for our mess details, who had to carry
unwieldy and heavy contrivances, often slushing out
half of the contents en route and forced to make slow
going under fire. Our splendid system of supply
broke down at the last link, in carrying the food from
the kitchens to the lines. To be in the front line in
the American Army at that time was to go hungry.
Vessels that could have been swung on hooks from
poles, tanks to be strapped to the back, anything
would have been better than what we had, and the
large number of men necessary on a mess detail to
carry a hot meal increased the chance of casualties
manifold.*

Late that afternoon we were issued rockets of

* Such articles were supplied later on in the war.

198

The March to the Vesle, and Fismes

different kinds for signals, so that it was not difficult
to prognosticate a move. Nevertheless, at dark all
the men crawled into their holes and went to sleep.
I remember feeling quite snug under my iron roof
when a slight rain came on.

The time was now at hand when we were to look
back on that quiet trench as a place of luxury and
ease.

199

CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE PIT

ATE that night the captain wakened me and

going to move. The platoon leaders went down the
trench, wakening the men with the help of the ser-
geants, and in a few moments the dark masses of
the platoons could be dimly made out standing on
the gleaming white road. Each platoon was pro-
vided with its own rockets, which, for the most part,
none of us had the slightest idea how to use. No in-
struction was provided. That a red rocket was at

company ready, as we were

Into the Pit

that time the call for a barrage was the extent of
our knowledge. It was pitch black, but in the velvet
darkness the battalion began to move down the hill
toward Fismes.

The road fell away quite rapidly from the plateau
with a high bank on our left, screening us from the
Germans and the valley, on the far side of which
they lay. There were shelter holes and dugouts in
places along the bank, but at the bottom we emerged
into a deep side valley with a railroad track. A
stream ran down this through Fismes and emptied
into the Vesle beyond. The town itself lay on the
flat between the hills and the river.

As we emerged onto the flat, we could look back
at the heights and see the machine guns spitting fire
from the woods at the Germans on the other side of
the river. There were shots coming back too. At
one place, just off the road in a wood, the enemy's
shells had fallen into the ammunition dump of our
machine guns, and the ammunition was burning
fiercely, making a bright glow and exploding like a
lot of firecrackers. I think we must have been ob-
served as we passed this fire, for they started to shell
the road so as to make it very lively. Just at the foot
of the hill, where the little stream flowed into the
Vesle and emerged onto a flat, our engineers were
repairing a bridge. "Fritz" had been gunning stead-
ily for this, arousing with each shell a violent chat-
tering from the nests of machine guns on our side

201

Toward the Flame

of the valley. The engineers had not yet finished
repairing the bridge, so there was only a narrow foot-
path over it as yet, and here the battalion halted in
the dark. The major turned aside into a roofless
ruin for a while. The whole place was redolent
of gas.

By the light of the burning ammunition I saw a
man's legs lying by the road, buttocks up. The
whole upper part of the body had been taken off by
a shell, and the two naked legs looked exactly like a
giant frog's. Things started to happen here. I was
talking to Charley Wright, the company artificer,
when a spent rifle bullet hit him on the helmet right
above the eyes. It glanced off after tearing the front

rim from his helmet, and then
bounced off mine. Just then the
enemy started gunning for the
woods in dead earnest.

A large number of shells
passed right over our heads and
burst immediately beyond — a
few yards lower, and they
would have cleaned the highway.
Everybody at first lay flat. We
crawled forward a few yards and
gained the shelter of some stone
piles and logs just off the road.
The gas seemed like a fog, and
we put on our masks. I lay there
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Into the Pit

for several minutes. The explosion and red glare were
terrific, but after a while I saw that no shells fell on
the road. Taking heart at this, Sergeant Griffin and
I got up and ran along it for a short distance. Small
pieces of iron fragments rattled off us several times.
A little way along the road I met Lieutenant Horner
of "C" company.

"We must tell the major we can't lie here," I
shouted.

"We're supposed to go into Fismes and relieve the
112th Infantry," he replied. This was the first time I
had heard what our mission was.

I told the captain I would go ahead and try to find
our way and some shelter. None of us had any idea

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what lay on the other side of the little bridge. I ran
along the road with Sergeant Griffin and found Lieu-
tenant Horner again, who said he would go with us,
so we headed for the bridge.

I must say that road was terrific. Four or five
shells a minute were coming. There was always one
in the air. These burst with an earth-rocking smash
on the other side of the road, just on the far side of
the railway embankment. On the "safe" side of the
road were the prone figures of the men hugging the
ground. Branches, stones, iron fragments, and all
manner of debris was hurtling about us; trees were
crashing, and over our heads the machine guns were
firing in a frenzy of chattering rage.

We found the engineers working frantically at
their bridge, an old stone approach that they were
trying to repair with planks. I questioned the engi-
neer officer in a series of shouts, and he gave us a
guide to take us to the dugout of the major of the
112th, whose battalion was occupying the town. We
crossed the bridge on one plank, which was all that
was ready, and found ourselves immediately among
the houses and on the paved street of a good-sized
town.

Behind us was the pandemonium of the barrage
and the hammers of the engineers working feverishly
at the bridge, all of which echoed up the empty street,
mingled with the crackle of roof slates, and the tiles
and bricks over which we stumbled. Pressing on

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for about two blocks, we turned suddenly into the
main street of the town.

The fronts of large and handsome houses, built
wall to wall, looked blindly across at each other
with rows of open doors and yawning windows, as
far as the eye could reach. It was a city of the
dead, only wakened by the noise of firing, the glare
of strange lights, and the flicks of rifle fire here and
there.

At our backs the street ran out into the country
onto the usual white tree-lined road, down which, a
few hundred yards beyond, a furious rifle fight was
in progress. Some of our men were sniping diligently
from a house near by. There were strange lulls at
times when an appalling silence would settle down
over everything.

We turned up another side street. At a place
where it cut through a little hill between two walls
of rock, the guide turned aside. Lifting up a blanket
that revealed a gleam of light, we entered what had
once been a big wine cellar, a cave in the rock, now
being used as a command post dugout. By the yel-
low light of several guttering candles and a carefully
shaded lantern a group of officers were dozing about
a table on which lay a map and the remnants of a
meal. Back in the shadows could be dimly seen the
forms of the sleeping runners and scouts who were
always so numerous at any headquarters. Every-
body, of course, who had the slightest excuse, and

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some slackers, invariably crowded into such a place
of safety. Among the crowd of runners and orderlies
it was indeed hard to separate the sheep from the
goats. Consequently the air in there was fetid, and
so tainted with gas that everybody felt drowsy.

I reported myself to a captain of the 112th In-
fantry, who, it turned out, was commanding the bat-
talion in Fismes at that time; told him where we
were, and asked him what he wanted us to do.

I learned from him that the situation was some-
thing like this: Part of the 112th Infantry were in a
little town across the river called Fismette, where
they were directly in touch with the enemy, fighting
day and night. Fismes itself was for the most part
ours. Germans were thought still to be in some of
the houses sniping, or scattered along the railroad
near the river. Most of the captain's battalion was
scattered through Fismes in the cellars, and there
was a part of the 109th Machine Gun Battalion near
the town hall. During the day, a more or less
stealthy man hunt went on from house to house, with
occasional brisk fights, while the enemy shelled the
town constantly from the heights across the river,
throwing shells down into Fismes, sometimes in a
barrage and sometimes intermittently. There was
scarcely any time when you could not hear one burst-
ing somewhere, followed by the slide and crumbling-
sound of brick and plaster or the tinkle of glass. Hav-
ing occupied the town for so long himself, "Fritz"

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Into the Pit

was disgustingly familiar with it, and knew all the
best places to shell.

The captain told me our best plan would be to
find some more or less safe cellars, bring our men in,
and leave them there for the night; after which he
would move out when he could. The men over the
river in Fismette would have to be relieved the next
night, as it was too late to attempt it now, only a
few hours before dawn.

Lieutenant Horner and I both left on the run and
began to hunt for some convenient places. Up the
street a house was burning, and as it flared up from
time to time, I could see the tower of the town hall
stand out, and the fronts of whole lines of empty
houses up the street. Then the shadows would
swoop down and engulf all.

I crossed the street and ran through what was evi-
dently the gate of a big house. There was a large
garden stretching several hundred yards down to
the river in which a wrecked automobile was stand-
ing, and in the rear of the house I came across a
dome-shaped structure made of large cut stones,
cement, and railroad rails ; this I knew was a dugout.
Over the door was a board with a four-leaf clover on
it and "Villa Bremen" in German letters. This I saw
next day. A flight of carefully winding stone steps
led down into the dark cement cavern, into which
opened a wooden door. Holding up a lighted match,
I discovered numerous old mattresses lying around

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and the dim outline of a door beyond that led into the
depths of a large cellar, judging by the cold draft.
Place number one — this would do! Running out, I
met Horner hurrying up the street. He had found
a big cellar vault under a seminary for his men, and
was in luck.

There was no time to lose. No time to consider
whether or not some enemy might not still be lurk-
ing about. Our men were out there by the bridge
under fire, and every minute might mean lives. The
next place I hit was a big club or hotel with a huge
white, wooden gate that swung in. One look there
was enough to assure me that there was room for an
army, and best of all, a spigot was running in the
court, gushing freely. That would be a godsend.
Horner and I came out of our second places about
the same time, and meeting up with the rest of the
party, we raced down the littered street toward the
bridge, where I was relieved to see that the barrage
had lifted. So many stray shells were falling here
and there that it was not till we got quite near that
we could be sure of this.

Just on the other side of the bridge I met Captain
Law. "I have a fine place, captain," I cried. "Thank
God !" he said fervently, and the men near by scram-
bled to their feet expectant of the move. It must
have been ticklish work lying there doing nothing.
Horner ran back to his company. I sent a runner to
inform the major, and we moved off in single file over

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Into the Pit

the bridge, cautioning the men to be as silent as they
could. As it was, the ring of the iron hobnails on the
littered stone pavement seemed to make enough noise
to alarm all the Germans between Fismes and Berlin.

I showed the captain the dugout I had found, and
while he posted one platoon there, in the cellar, I
went up the street with the others to put them to
bed in the big club which, as I expected, had an ample
cave-like vaulted cellar underneath. Sometimes I
think the cellars of France did as much to win the
war as the generals.

We certainly felt elated on having got the men into
Fismes with so little loss. A few of the men were
wounded by the barrage along the road, which, had
it fallen a little to the left, would have landed on the
highway with results appalling to think of. Such
are the fortunes of war. A few feet one way or an-
other is the difference between life and death. Get-
ting such snug and safe places for the night, we also
considered fortunate.

When I returned to the "Villa Bremen," I found
everybody preparing to turn in. One dim little can-
dle was burning in the place, which was like a nice
family tomb paved with mattresses. Beyond, in the
dark cellar, the men could be heard stirring and clink-
ing around from time to time, but most of them slept.
It was very quiet down there. Even the sound of
shells breaking in the street near by came only as
dull thuds, shocks felt more than heard.

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Toward the Flame

Our fortunate escape from the barrage, and the
successful hunt for billets through the dark town,
had so elated me that I remember boasting like a
Turk about not seeing much to be afraid of in shell
fire. I must really have made quite a cad of myself,
as I remember some of the others, the poor captain
particularly, who had had to lie still through all that
rain of shells, looking at me rather disgustedly. My
excitement and fatigue were beginning to tell. I
actually plumped down on a mattress in the best cor-
ner, and when I accidentally put my feet on the cap-
tain, who had stretched out on the floor, I took his
quiet remonstrance without feeling it. I had the
best bed, too.

A few hours later, I woke up after a sound sleep

210

;

Into the Pit

and, seeing him so uncomfortable on the floor, in-
sisted on his coming over onto the mattress, with an
excess of remorse for my callousness that nearly
overcame me. He shook me by the hand. I shall
never get over putting my feet on him that night.
He was not to live very long.

Next morning it was quite late when I got up. Of
course, no light penetrated the dugout, and in the
cellar the worn-out men slumbered on night and day.

A little salmon and bread for breakfast — food was
getting scarce — then I sallied out into the intense
sunlight and the ruined town of Fismes.

It was nearly quiet at the time, only once in a while
the long drone of a shell would pass overhead fol-
lowed by a smash far off
among the labyrinth of de-
serted houses. Now and then
from over the river came the
crack of a rifle. Crossing a
street warily, I descended sev-
eral flights of stone steps into
a subcellar where I found Lieu-
tenant Horner with his com-
pany. We decided to take a
little walk about the town, and
find out where we were.

Walking up the street, we
were very wary and hugged
the houses closely. The first

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place we dropped into was the clubhouse where I had
billeted two of our platoons in the cellar the night
before. Not a soul was to be seen when I pushed in
the big, white gate that led into the court. The hy-
drant was still gushing away, but a hail brought some
of the men out, blinking in the sunlight. They had
been rummaging and showed us the house.

It had been the home of some club or society.
Fismes was a large and rich town, and the "club"
was luxuriously furnished. The Germans had been
living here. Sofas and chairs sat around in vacant-
looking groups. Tapestries and dirty, torn hang-
ings flapped from the walls, where all the mirrors
were cracked. The clocks and frescoes were defaced
and names and vile pictures scribbled on the walls.
Plaster dust was stamped all over the carpets that
were covered with torn books and trash and ripped
up in some places. The rear of the clubhouse opened
onto a garden. Instead of a porch there was a partly
demolished sun parlor with little iron tables and chairs
like a French cafe. These sat around looking most
forlorn. There were some empty bottles and glasses
on them, dusty and full of flies. At the foot of the
garden was a barn. Through the cracks in the rear
door of it there was the vista of a path leading down
through the interior of a partly demolished and
abandoned steel mill. Beyond that lay the railroad,
coal piles, and the sparkling river, then in flood. I
established an observation post, and remembered

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Into the Pit

that here was a short cut down this path to the
river.

Across the street was a Roman Catholic seminary,
a big building with wide, sweeping stairs and high
ceilings. Here, too, had been a German billet. There
was a hodgepodge of cast-off clothes and junk in the
dormitories, where the Germans had slept in the
rows of iron beds. We went up into the garret to
get a view of the town. From the front windows we
had a view of the handsome Hotel de Ville with
its clock tower, and the main square, very badly
wrecked. The other windows showed us nothing but
acres of slate roofs, with a cone-shaped hill in the
distance. But the garret was quite interesting on
account of its contents. Horner went down and left
me alone for a while.

There was a poor little foot-organ that had been
played to death, boxes of tinsel cards, plaster images
of the saints, a portable altar, prayer books, school
texts, vestments, a little English-French dictionary,
which I took, and queer pious pictures. Some Ger-
man soldier had come up there and changed his
shoes, leaving the old worn-out boots with no toes
standing side by side as mute witnesses of his visit.
In one corner we found a small print shop with type
already set, and the proof sheets of some strange
little religious journal scattered about. How utterly
futile it all seemed. The Virgin's heart, it seems, was
yearning over the boys in the seminary who said

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Toward the Flame

their prayers to her. I added a footnote in penciled
English about Mars. I wonder who read it :

"The Virgin is plucking asphodels in Heaven with
little Saint John and the angels;
Mars is walking the meadows of France, cutting

the throats of God's sheep ;
The laughter of children has departed from this
town. It is bereft forever."

A German printer had come in and set something
in German. The grinning, inked type stood fixed
like tiny black teeth in the sheet which would never
be finished. There were also piles and piles of
wreaths of tinsel and paper flowers. Then I came
downstairs and found some of our men stamping
about. One platoon of "C" company was in the
cellar.

While the place was so quiet, I felt determined to
see the town, partly from curiosity and partly from
a desire to know my way about the place in case of
future necessity. I left Horner standing on the cor-
ner near the town hall, and made toward the cone-
shaped hill I had seen from the garret windows of
the seminary.

Imagine your own home town without a single
soul in it, wrecked after a great storm, and partly
burned, with all the evidences of the familiar activi-
ties of everyday life about, but that life and move-

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Into the Pit

ment cut off suddenly, turned off like a light, and you
will have a little idea of Fismes.

The looted stores stood gaping vacantly around
the main square, where I met part of the machine
gun battalion. They had their gun set up about half-
way down a long hall that commanded a view of the
street leading to the bridge. Rocks and earth were
piled up as a sort of breastwork on the floor before
it, and the ammunition was in the library. A cor-
poral here warned me about the streets. One corner
was bad for snipers. I could see it from the window
upstairs and there was a dead runner lying there
with the red band on his arm.

We dodged across the street to the town hall.
This was a lovely white stone Hotel de Ville with a
mansard roof. There was a big wooden sign over
the door in German, proclaiming it the Zone Kom-
mandator's
headquar-
ters. The in-
s i d e was
badly wreck-
ed. A mess
o f German
and French
town records
lay all over
the place. I
found a chart

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Toward the Flame

there showing a German plan of defense for Fismes
and several maps of the town which I rolled up for
our major. There were also several recent issues of
German magazines.* Die Woche, and others.
There was indeed a great deal of interesting German
material. Among other things I picked up a post-
card with the King of Saxony peering out between
draped flags up in one corner, and below H. M., a
rural scene with two little children hand in hand look-
ing at a field full of cows. Underneath it said, "Lit-
tle ones, do without milk so we can keep our col-
onies." How that must have appealed to the chil-
dren !

I did not linger around the town hall very long
as they were shelling that region pretty often, but
headed back into some of the smaller streets, and
edged over toward the hill, not so far off as I had
thought.

Passing through the utterly empty streets was an
eery experience. At one corner a German gunner
lay dead by his machine gun. I think he had been
hit by a big shell fragment, for his head was kicked
in like a rotten pumpkin. He was short and thickset,
a Bavarian, I think, with warts on his hands. Beside
him was a gummy piece of bread made out of brown
bran. Near by lay a number of empty cartridges,
probably the last he had fired. The tremendously
heavy boots and the iron helmet always lent the Ger-

* July, 1918, and a few months earlier.

2l6

Into the Pit

mans a peculiarly brutal aspect. This man had turned
the same dull gray as his coat, he had been dead so
long. Poor devil, his interest in colonies had lapsed.

I felt pretty certain that that part of Fismes was
no longer occupied by the enemy as it was too far
back from the river, so I took a good many short
cuts through the little lanes and finally, after cross-
ing a spur of the railroad, I came out directly behind
my little hill where there were several coal piles.
The "Boche" had some curious shallow trenches dug
on this elevation and there were several enormous
shell craters near the top. This must at one time
have been an observation station. I crawled when I
got near the summit and, lying on my stomach, had
an excellent view over the town. Its roofs stretched
away from me to the bridge, beyond which lay the
hillside and country on the other side of the Vesle.
That was "Hunland" I was looking at over there.

A railroad ran along the river's edge, and there
was a badly damaged stone bridge over the Vesle,
with a hamlet on the far side stretching along a road
paralleling the stream. Above all this rose the steep
hillside occupied by the enemy, with draws here and
there leading back to a sort of tableland behind, green
with orchards and farms, but crossed now and then
by a road. There was not a soul to be seen. Only
now and then came a "boom," and a great geyser of
mud and water shot up into the air beside the bridge.

I lay and examined the hill carefully and after

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Toward the Flame

a while saw a man walking across a field. He came
out of a clump of bushes, passed on down a path,
moved over a field till he struck a road — up this he
walked and disappeared. He was a German and
looked like a pigmy over there on the great lone hill.
That was all I saw of the enemy, although I watched
for nearly an hour.

On the way back I noticed several very deep dug-
outs. The door of the house instead of opening into
the hall had been made to open directly down a steep
stairway that descended some thirty or forty feet.
I think these had been built by the French inhabi-
tants, as Fismes had been more or less under fire
since the early days of the war. Alan Seeger speaks
about that in his letters in 1914.

I found the major sheltered in the house right
across the street from the "Villa Bremen," and it
was not long before a dressing station was estab-
lished in the house above our dugout. The major
looked over my town maps, but said he had a better
one. By that time it was getting on toward noon,
and the Germans began to shell the town violently,
as they must have seen a lot of our men moving
about the streets. The engineers had repaired the
little bridge and an ambulance drove into the town
and stopped before the door of the dressing station
as if it were driving up to a house at home. Then
two or three big shells went off" in the house across
the road and another fell directly into the street

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Into the Pit

with a tremendous detonation. The major went into
the cellar and I dodged across into the "Villa
Bremen." I found that the Germans shelled our
garden pretty often on account of the broken auto-
mobile there and because the ambulances could be
seen coming up to "our door."

I found our cellar next to the dugout full of cases
of potato-masher bombs and barrels of signal-lights
which "Fritz" had left. These made us very uncom-
fortable. If a shell had come through the roof into
that cellar, we would all have gone to glory in a burst
of fireworks During the lulls the men therefore set
these out in the garden, or shoved them into the street
through the cellar windows. I went upstairs to take
a shave while this was being done.

The house had evidently belonged to a well-to-do
man, who had conducted some kind of an agricul-
tural league or society, as near as I could make out.
It was pitiable to see the desks and beautifully kept
records and accounts all forced open and wasted
around. In the office was a set of maps showing the
growth of Paris from Roman times to the Third Em-
pire. It was made from old prints and quaintly inter-
esting. Private letters lay around in piles or strewn
on the floor. To dip into these was always like tasting
forbidden sweets or peeping in over a stranger's tran-
som. "Before the war letters" — what a serene world
that seemed now, to be sure: "Cher Adolph: Le prin-
temps est venu ici, nous" . . . ridiculous!

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Toward the Flame

I tried to shave at the kitchen sink; the water still
ran in Fismes although somewhat feebly. There
was the remains of the last meal the German orderly
had prepared, yellow mayonnaise dressing and let-
tuce leaves in a pile of dirty plates. Outside was a
glimpse of the old broken automobile in the yard,
and the men carrying crates of bombs out of the cel-
lar. Beyond was a vista down to the river bank.

I was only halfway through the shave when I
heard a shell that I knew was coming very near. It
burst in the yard and started the bombs going.
There was a frightful series of explosions, during
which I returned to the cellar, lather and all. Our
dugout was proof against even a direct hit. I spent

most of the rest of the day in it,
or in the cellar with the men.
Food was already very scarce.
The road into the town was being
shelled so skillfully as to make it
difficult for mess details to get in
or out. We sent one detail, but it
was impossible to spare a good
leader at the time, so it came back.
I could not spare the sergeants
for mess details. The 112th had
left that morning, all but the men
across the river in Fismette, whom
we found it impossible to relieve
that day.

• 220

Into the Pit
Intense firing could be heard over there from time
to time.

The rumor here was that when we drove the enemy
over the hill on the other side of the Vesle, we were
to go back for a rest. "The general had said so"—
as usual just what general was not specified. At any
rate we were to make an attack, and the captain was
going with the major next morning to make a recon-
naissance. We went to sleep early with very little
supper. It seemed already as if we had been in
Fismes a great many days.

221

CHAPTER XV

A WILD DAY

AFTER the strafing of the day before, the ma-
jor moved his headquarters to the cave where
I had first found the captain of the 112th on the night
we entered Fismes. I found a short cut to it from
our own hole in the ground through several connect-
ing gardens and down a little pair of steps. In the
largest of these gardens there were one or two graves
of men of the 110th U. S. Infantry. The short cut
kept us off the streets away from snipers and
shells.

222

A Wild Day

That morning the major and the captain, with some
of the other company commanders, left on the recon-
naissance, going down the river to an old tannery
a mile or so away. A lot of the men were ordered
out on detail to carry wounded back from Fismette.
This left me, with the mess details that were already
out, about thirty men altogether. Some were bil-
leted in the "Villa Bremen" and some in the cellar
at the "club." There was a great deal of firing all
morning over in Fismette, and enemy planes came
over Fismes several times, after which a bombard-
ment more or less intense would follow.

The German artillery back among the hills must
have had a good time shelling their old homes. Our
house was gunned for persistently on account of the
dressing station being there, and about one o'clock
they made a direct hit on the dugout. Several of us
were sitting around smoking on the mattresses, when
there was a noise and a skull-cracking jar that al-
most stunned us. It was hard to think for a minute
or so afterwards. Our ears were so numbed that
everything seemed very silent for some time. Every-
body cowered down; there was the trickle of dirt on
us from the ceiling, and dust in the air. But the tre-
mendously thick stone, cement, and iron rails still
held. Only a few of the outer layers were dislodged
although it was a 6-inch shell.

We kept pretty "close" after that for some time.
I opened a precious tin of beef, and we were just

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Toward the Flame

going to eat it when some one opened the door and
called down. It was very silent in the dugout, but
as soon as any one opened the door there came down
the stairs a tremendous din of firing, machine guns
chattering, the crack of rifles, and the smash of shells
booming among the houses. It was the major at
the door.

"The Germans are making a counter attack!" cried
he, "get the men out, and in line!" I left the top
sergeant tumbling the men out of our cellar, while I
ran up the street to the "club," where part of another
platoon was billeted. Both the major and the adju-
tant kept begging me, almost beseeching me, to
hurry. I supposed, of course, that the Germans had
penetrated the town again.

A very few moments sufficed to get the men to-
gether at the "club." The sergeants exerted them-
selves to the utmost, hauling men out of the dark
cellars and getting the equipment on them like har-
nessing fire horses. As soon as we were sure we
had the cellar clear, we started on a run for the
"Villa Bremen," where I found the rest of the men
waiting in the garden. These were tag ends of all
the platoons, as the mess details, the men detailed
to carry wounded, and those detached to battalion
headquarters had left us with a very small remnant
of our three-platoon company, already small to begin
with.

224

A Wild Day

With what non-coms I had, we formed the men
rapidly into squads and made on a run for the lower
part of the garden. There we crawled through a
fence and went into skirmish line, deploying in a field
that led straight down to the river and the railroad
track. On our right was the old steel mill and the
rear of the houses that faced on the street going
down to the bridge. On our left, near the river, was
a big factory of some kind. I took all this in at a
glance. The excitement photographed it forever on
my retina. Danger makes one live intensely.

It was our intention to take up a position along
the river, using the railway embankment as a trench
to resist the enemy should they attempt to cross the
stream. I instructed the first sergeant, who had
about half the men, to move over into the factory on
the left as we advanced. After taking a few seconds
to get the automatic rifle teams* and the skirmish
line properly disposed, we started forward on the
double.

The sergeant led his men off to the left, while we
made straight for the river, a stretch of about two
hundred yards. About halfway the enemy turned
his machine guns on us. The air suddenly seemed to
be alive with a swarm of vicious wasps and I saw the
dust cut up all about our feet. There were one or
two cries, but we were moving too fast to find out
who it was that had been hit. I thought the fire was

* These men were armed with the French Chauchat automatic rifle.

225

Toward the Flame

coming from behind a huge coal pile directly in front
of us and led the way straight for it. We were all
greatly bewildered and the men bunched. There was
a dreadful second or two when I could not get them
started toward the pile. Then Sergeant Griffin
jumped out and started with me, and the rest closed
in with their bayonets. We came onto the pile with
a fierce rush. There was nothing there!

I got the platoon sheltered behind it and looked
about me. About fifty yards back were three or four
quiet bundles that had been men a few seconds be-
fore. I watched them from time to time, but there
was no more movement. They were dead, not
wounded. That coal pile was about thirty feet high,
made of brickets and slack which stopped shells ex-
cellently. It stretched along the railroad track for
some seventy-five feet or so. Just behind us was a
very deep hole, a little railroad switchman's house;
the upper part of which was was glass, and a long,
low dugout, like an Eskimo's igloo, that was capable
of sheltering twenty or thirty men.

The air was still full of the vicious ttt-ang of bul-
lets over our heads, and, of course, the Germans had
seen us take shelter behind the coal. The machine
gun fire which had caught us came from guns across
the river, high up on the hillside almost a mile away.
There was no attack on at all. Everything was quiet-
ing down, but we were in such a position that we
would have to wait till dark to get back to the town.

226

A Wild Day

To move back in any numbers meant to be shot up
again.

I sent a runner back to the captain with a sketch
of our position and got one of the men to crawl over
to Sergeant Davidson in the factory telling him where
we were and our plans. About an hour later the
runner to the captain returned, having crept through
the steel mill and along the railroad track. The
enemy sniped at us continually. To put one's helmet
over the top of the pile was to draw bullets instantly.
We saw some of our men attacking a house on the
other side of the river. Several of them were brought
down and Sergeant Griffin located a German sniper
who was standing back in a room out of our fellows'
line of sight calmly firing at them. Griffin took a
rifle and after long and careful aim from the side of
the coal pile brought the German down. He hung
down out of the window. Our men on the other side
instantly closed in on the house which was near the
bridgehead
in Fismette.

Our own
position
was absurd.
The river
in front of
us was too
deep to be
crossed i n

227

Toward the Flame

force, and the little footbridge was nearly wrecked.
There was no counter attack. If there ever had been
any, it was across the river in Fismette, and it had
now subsided. We were simply caught in the open
space between the town and the river and had to wait
till dark, keeping behind the coal pile. In the mean-
time I shifted all the men I could move back into the
dugout on the other side of the ditch, and put the
rest of the men in the ditch where I crawled myself.
This was simply a rather deep cut worn by the rain-
water where it had run down to a little drainage cul-
vert under the tracks. It was well we moved there.

All the activity the Germans had seen on our side
of the river, crossing the fields in skirmish order,
etc., had alarmed them. I think they must have

228

A Wild Day

thought an attack was preparing on our part, for
just about twilight they poured a barrage along the
river front and into the town. In the waning light
we sat huddled in the ditch while the wailing shells
came over.

An experience of that kind can never be described.
Death is very near. There is a constant howling
shuddering the air, and shells were dropping every-
where about us. I expected a direct hit every min-
ute, but the coal pile saved us. It mercifully cut off
the shells just in the angle of their drop. Then some
shrapnel came over. One of our men, a big Montene-
grin, who had been wounded by a machine gun bullet
in the arm during the futile rush on the coal pile, was
hit by shrapnel fragments in the other arm, while
several of the men got other wounds in various
places. Slivers and rocks rattled off our tin hats
constantly. Finally one lad, who had crawled half-
way into the drain partly to shelter his body, got a
sickening shrapnel cut in the leg. We had a hard
time to stop the hemorrhage, the blood spurted all
over us; naturally enough, he was terrorized. Jack,
the Montenegrin, was as brave as he could be and
sat with set jaw. He must have been in extreme pain.

The roar of the explosions about us was almost
continuous. The air was full of peculiar black smoke,
dust, debris, and the stifling odor of high explosive,
luckily no gas. During one of the short lulls we saw
some of our men running along the railroad track

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Toward the Flame

like figures in a fog. These were some of the lads
the first sergeant had led to the factory. They had
been shelled out of that, and came scudding through
the haze and dust like birds in a storm, plunging
down into our little ditch and filling it to the point of
crowding. I had to take stern measures here to make
place for all. Some of them we shouted to, or they
would never have seen us. I shall never forget how
weird and weak our voices sounded in that great
uproar. One or two of those who had been in the
factory were wounded too. They lay quiet and
shook through the rest of the barrage which fol-
lowed. About dark it let up with an occasional shell
howling now and then, but these finally died away,

230

A Wild Day

leaving a heavy silence. I waited till I was sure that
it was over and then sent the men back by twos and
threes, getting- the wounded out first. Through the
darkness, shaking and quivering, we sneaked back
to the ghostly, white town.

The men who had been killed had had their lives
wasted after a certain manner. Boys playing Indian
would have known enough to stick to the houses if
there had been an attack. But there is an aphorism
about the reticence of dead men who are the only
competent witnesses to this kind of fooling.

231

CHAPTER XVI

OVER THE BRIDGE

ONE can well imagine that after the experience
of the afternoon we were pretty well fagged
out mentally and physically, so that when the cap-
tain told me we were to cross the bridge that night
into Fismette, relieve the 112th there, and make an
attack, I was not exactly enthusiastic.

Nothing was said to the men. There is no use
worrying soldiers in advance. Somehow, I could not
fully realize that after the miracle of coming through

232

Over the Bridge

unharmed that afternoon, the whole process would
have to be repeated. One always felt subconsciously,
"Surely, surely, this is enough!" Then we were
tired, very tired, so I lay down on one of the mat-
tresses and slept — more than slept — I died for a few
hours.

About two o'clock I wakened to find the captain
shaking me in the dim yellow light of one candle
burning without a flicker in the calm and silence of
the dugout. The feeling that we were going into
battle was so distasteful and so strong that it was
like mental indigestion. One felt weak, and I real-
ized that the only thing to do was to get moving and
doing something quickly. The captain was telling
me the plans.

We were to cross the bridge into Fismette, march
down the river about a mile to an old Tannery, where
we were to join hands with our second battalion, and
then move up the hill in attack.

"Get the men ready," said the captain. "Issue
extra ammunition and bombs."

There was no ration to issue. Our mess detail
had failed to get through to the ration dump that
afternoon for the second time. We knew that there
was still some of the emergency, or "iron ration,"
as it was called, left among the men, although many
must have eaten much of this during the hungry time
of the last three or four days.

The emergency ration consisted of two or three

233

Toward the Flame

little red cans full of corned beef, known as "monkey
meat," and hard crackers in long pasteboard boxes
the hard bread, or "hard-tack," of fame. Sometimes
we got the French hard bread that was like a round
rusk and was issued loose. All this the men were
not supposed to eat without a direct order, but under
actual conditions, with the companies scattered about
in cellars, very hungry, and in no fear of inspections,
it was almost impossible to prevent nibbling. One
can scarcely court-martial a man on the firing line
for eating a cracker after having gone without food
for many hours. It takes a professional martinet to
punish a man for that.

I went into the adjoining cellar and wakened the
top sergeant, who in a few minutes had the men
stirring. They were to come up the street to the
"club" and rendezvous with the rest of the platoons
there. I learned that the captain would really be
in charge of the battalion, as the major did not in-
tend to accompany us in the attack. He was to re-
main in his command post in Fismes.

As I ran up the street to the club, I could hear the
din of the firing in Fismette, and see the white glare
made by the German flares. Getting the men out of
the huge, dark cellar was not easy. They were all
worn out and kept dropping off to sleep again. At
last we got them lined up in the court and started to
issue ammunition and grenades. The excitement
now swept me along so I was going strong. Getting

234

Over the Bridge

the grenades open was difficult as they were in
wooden boxes tightly screwed down. We split these
with our bayonets and found inside the deadly pear-
shaped objects. These were French citron gren-
ades with a tin cylinder at one end which you pulled
off, exposing a spring and plunger. The plunger,
when struck on your helmet or any convenient ob-
ject, set off the grenade, the explosion following five
or six seconds later. The men had been taught in
grenade school, but I made sure they all knew how
to operate these.

Then we took our precious rockets, now much the
worse for wear, looking like a leftover from last
Fourth of July. I begged the ammunition officer for
some rifle grenades, but none were issued. Most of
the men had thrown away their tromblones* anyway.
I found this often happened in other commands. In
the darkness the court seemed to swarm with the
men. As they filed out the gate the seeming con-
fusion died down and each man received his grenade.
That seemed to sober them. It looked like business.
At the last, two or three stragglers ran up the steps
from the cellar followed by the sergeants, who had
done their best to turn everybody out. Despite this,
a few remained, some asleep, and some slackers, well-
hidden in the long vaulted cellar. There was no time
to hunt through this. Some men of the machine gun

* Funnel-shaped caps fitted on the end of a rifle from which the grenade
was thrown by shooting the gun.

235

Toward the Flame

battalions were also sleeping down there. Our little
three-platoon company was down to one hundred
and twenty men that night. We led the column.

I found the captain waiting in the street until the
platoons came out of the gate. He was impatient
at the time we had taken to fall in, which doubtless
seemed long to him waiting there in suspense. We
moved off down the street in single file, hugging the
side of the houses to avoid being seen when the flares
went up. I could hear the shuffle and crackle of the
men's feet among the loose slate and debris, while
the long caterpillar of "the relief" wound around the
corner at the city hall and started down toward the
bridge. As we got near the bridge, where flares went
up from time to time, the whole stealthy line would
stop, lost in the waning, flickering, monstrous sha-

236

Over the Bridge

dows cast by the Very lights that floated in a string
of little parachutes for a few seconds and then drifted
to earth, to quench themselves in a sea of ink. Then
darkness shut down like a lid. There were no orders
needed when to halt; the men did it by instinct, the
old instinct that keeps the rabbit still even when the
hound comes sniffing near. The Germans were very
close.

There was a halt for a minute or two at the bridge
before we left the shelter of the last house. This, in
order to see that the column was well "closed up."
Then we started over, making a tremendous noise it
seemed.

At the end of the town there was the flash and
crackle of rifle fire. The Germans had been bursting
shells on the bridge for several days and the stone
above the arch had in one place been blown through,
making an oval dip about the middle of the bridge
with half of the roadway blown away, showing the
river underneath. Big stones from the coping lay
scattered about on the top of the bridge itself, and in
one place only was there a section about two feet
wide on which to cross. The river below was a
tangle of debris, a snarl of old wire. The mud banks
were splashed and pitted with shell-holes where the
mud geysers had spouted over everything when the
shells lit. Over this bridge we started, hoping fer-
vently the enemy machine gunners would not see us.
About fifty yards up the road, on the other side, some

237

Toward the Flame

of our men in a ruin were fighting the Germans across
the street in another house. The firing through win-
dows and from between cracks in the walls lit the
night fitfully.

The captain crossed first, and turned to the left on
the other side followed by the men in file. We went
through a gutted house and out into the village street
beyond. I stood at the bridge, keeping the men
closed up until our last platoon was over, and I saw
"A" company following. As the captain turned to
the left, I heard two or three rifle cracks but paid no
attention to them at the time. As soon as the com-
pany was over I hastened to catch up with him again.

But when I turned the corner into the single lonely
street of Fismette, I found three or four of our lads
gathered about the body of one of our own men. It
was Charley Wright, from whose helmet the spent
bullet had glanced when we came into Fismes. He
had been shot by one of our own men, having for some
reason or other stepped out into the street between
the houses where the fighting had been going on. He
was certainly dead. It seemed tremendously futile.

I ran on down the street past our own men, now
halted and hugging the houses closely, till I came to
the head of the column. The captain was standing
shouting at an officer of the 112th. The din ahead
was tremendous. About a square away a trench
mortar shell was falling every fifteen seconds.

We were, as you may remember, supposed to move

238

Over the Bridge

on down the river a mile and join hands with the
second battalion at the Tannery, to make an attack.
The orders, of course, had been written by some one
looking at a map, and typed in a comfortable billet
some twenty or thirty kilometers in the rear.

I heard the lieutenant of the 112th roar, "Mile!
nothing! You can only go another block. We have
only half the town; 'Fritz' owns the rest. The Prus-
sian Guard is right across the street." His remarks
were punctuated by the rocking explosions of the
trench mortar shells. In the gray light I looked
about me.

We were in a straight village street packed solid
with houses on either side. The back doors of one
line of houses opened out onto a field that stretched
on a gentle slope about two hundred yards down to
the river. From the back yards of the buildings on
the other side of the street rose a steep hill. The
Germans were up there somewhere. Ahead was a
cross street where there was the almost constant
flash of mortar shells. A whole battery was playing
on it from the heights above. There was only one
thing to do, occupy all the town that we could, and
hold it. The 112th man was too impatient to leave
to give us much information. I didn't blame him.
I wished he were relieving us.

The captain and I went with him along the street
for another block, and at the end of this, a little
way back from the street crossing, was a low half

239

Toward the Flame

breastwork, half barricade of barrels, furniture, and
big stones across the street. Several of the 112th
were lying behind this, firing up the street. I caught
a glimpse of some skulking gray figures up there in
the doorways. We turned aside into a house, went
upstairs and looked out of the rear windows.

It was very early dawn, almost dark yet, and in
the dust drifting back from the shell bursts we could
see very little. Right below our window there was
the beginning of a thin line of our men that stretched
at right angles to the village street almost down to
the river. Some were in shell-holes, and others in
little pits that they had dug. In the obscurity there
was only the dim outline of the prone figures, but
from them, and beyond into the darkness, sprang

240

Over the Bridge

out the stabbing jets from the rifles and the flash,
flash, flash from the automatics.

We could see nothing of the Germans, but by now
there was the constant shuddering of shells passing
overhead and the crash where they burst in great
columns of water and mud down at the bridge. The
red flash of one would light up the spurts of those
already exploding. By this time, though, our men
were all over the bridge. We stood there only a few
seconds watching, awed by the tremendousness of
the spectacle, but, I remember, quite calm. That it
was impossible to push on to the Tannery was too
evident to be even discussed.

"What do you think we had better do?" I asked
the captain. I was thinking of an attack by the Ger-
mans from the rear hillside and pointed this possi-
bility out to him.

He ordered me to lead the first two platoons up
the hill, back of the houses on the other side of the
street, and take the best position I could find. I was
also to relieve the men of the 112th that we saw from
the window with our third platoon, all that we had
in Company "B." This meant simply that at the
barricade two platoons turned to the right up the hill
on one side of the street, and one platoon to the left
down toward the river. The captain himself went
back to instruct the other company commanders of
the change in plans.

I lost no time, but dodged across the street and

241

Toward the Flame

through one of the half-ruined houses on the other
side. There was a long hall, but the back door
opened on a garden with high walls and a barn be-
tween it and the cross street, so we were hidden
The garden was very steep, going up the hill about
fifty yards to a wall with some scraggly trees along
it that seemed to extend along all the back yards
of the village, parallel with the street. To jump back
into the street and beckon the men toward me was
the work of a few seconds only.

Glendenning led the way, a tower of strength in
time of need as usual. I scarcely had to say anything
to him. He took in the plan of taking up position
behind the wall at a glance. I had to stay in the door-
way to turn the third platoon the opposite way when
it came up. It was in charge of a young lieutenant
of the 77th Division who had just joined us. I for-
get his name. He was a little chap, but one of the
bravest, gamest, little fellows that ever lived, and he
handled his men like a veteran. I told him what his
position was to be and saw some of our men lie down
beside the 112th at the barricade across the street.
Just then the captain joined me. As we went
down the long hall to the garden, I saw a pic-
ture on the wall by the flash of a shell that lit in
the garden ahead. A lot of plaster fell behind us.

We ran up the garden as fast as we could, for the
shell had knocked part of a barn down. The ascent
was very steep at the back. The last of the men were

242

Over the Bridge

just scrambling up this when another shell lit in the
barn again right behind us. After that they con-
tinued to fall there for some time.

It was a very near thing. The Germans must have
seen us passing there. They evidently had wonder-
ful liaison with their trench mortars to switch the
fire so quickly. The captain went right up to the
wall and told me to work down to the right and see if
we were connecting with "C" company there. It was
the last time I ever saw him.

The wall was only about knee-high in places, some-
times only a few stones for quite a stretch. Behind
this our men lay firing at nothing. From somewhere
was coming a perfect hail of machine gun bullets,
mostly over our heads, but the worst of it was that
some of it was coming from the flanks. We were
beautifully enfiladed, probably by some guns away
up on the hills above us a mile away. In the darkness
this could not have been foreseen. It was plain right
away that to keep the men in line along that wall
was suicidal, but, of course, I could do nothing as I
was not in command. I tried to stop the men from
firing at nothing as I went along, but control was out
of the question. One had to hug the ground close,
backing down the slope a little in order to crawl to-
ward the right. In a little hollow I came across a
group. Lieutenant Glendenning and one or two ser-
geants were stooping over Lieutenant Larned, an-
other of the 77th officers. He had been shot in the

243

Toward the Flame

throat and was choking in his own blood. He lay
quiet but was still alive. There was nothing we
could do. I spoke to him, but he shook his head.
Then I told Glendenning where I was going, and
crawled on. It was the last time I ever saw him
alive.

When I finally reached the left flank of our com-
pany line I found the wall had gaps in it here and
there. Through these the machine gun barrage
poured, striking the roofs of the houses at the bottom
of the garden. The slate slithered off like scales.
Behind one clump of rocks and stones was a squad
of our men firing at a haystack, while in a sort of
hollow of the hill, and just rising above its crest, was
the roof mass of another hamlet. I felt sure some of
the fire must be coming from there. The men said
there was a machine gun in the haystack. Away to
the left was a half-burnt house. There was barbed
wire about it. The rest was just orchards and fields.
Not a sign of any living thing. Out of this apparent
void was coming the deadly hail that was killing us.
Here and there along the wall I saw men tearing open
their first-aid packages. That something must be
done was evident. A change of position would have
to be made, or there would be no one to change.

Just then I saw the men getting up from the left
all along the line, waver a minute and then move
forward.

I motioned forward to the line ahead of me and

244

Over the Bridge

jumped up with them leading out into the fields up
the hill. The machine guns were like a hundred riv-
eters going all at once, such a chattering I never
heard. Just where we were there was a little draw
in the hill which seems to have saved us. At that
part of the line we advanced about fifty yards, I
judged. Looking back, I saw the rest of the line re-
turning. There was absolutely no place to advance
to. It was a brave but senseless attack. Some of the
men lay down and fired where they were. I think I
took about six men back with me behind the wall in
my section of the line. Most of those who lay out in
the fields were killed, but a few crawled back that
night. The captain was killed in this attack, but I

Toward the Flame

did not know that until hours later. He had or-
dered it.

It was so evident that another position would have
to be taken up quickly that I determined to find Lieu-
tenant Horner of "C" company and make arrange-
ments with him, captain or no captain. It was no
longer a question of waiting for orders but of holding
the town. Accordingly, I told one of the sergeants
of "C" company where I was going, and gave him
strict orders to hold until he got word to move. I
then crawled down a path between the houses to the
street. If it was bad by the wall, it was worse in the
street. A stream of machine gun bullets was racing
past. It sounded like sawing. I crawled along close
to the houses where Lieutenant Glendenning was
afterwards killed, and got across the street by a rain
ditch. By this time crawling like a turtle seemed to
be the most natural form of movement in the world.
Any other method I could not even think of. I met
Horner with one runner moving along in the rear of
the houses evidently trying to pick a new and more
sheltered position. We held a very hasty but very
serious consultation.

Comparing notes, it was perfectly evident that
there could no longer be any question of attack, and
that if we did not receive reinforcements and ammu-
nition and get the help of a barrage on the hillside
to clean the enemy out, we should not long be able
to hold the town. Both of us felt that a message

246

Over the Bridge

could not explain the situation which had already-
been so utterly misunderstood on the other side of
the river. Tf an officer could get across, it might be
made clear and the coordinates could be given for the
barrage. It would not do to trust that to an enlisted
man. Horner could not swim, so it was up to me.

I left a message for the captain, telling him what
I was going to try to do. Horner shook hands,
wished me good luck, and I started.

247

CHAPTER XVII

OVER THE RIVER AGAIN

IT had been my intention at first to cross by the
bridge, but one look at the barrage falling there
marked it off the slate of possibilities. There was a
barrage all along the river front, but especially heavy
at the bridge. The shells arriving there and along
the stream were very large ones, throwing up im-
mense fountains of liquid mud and exploding in the
water with a peculiar muffled crack and roar. As I
watched them I nearly turned back; it seemed such

248

Over the River Again

a futile task. Only a fool would have dashed out.

A little study showed that away from the bridge
there were considerable intervals of time between
shells, and that they were pretty well scattered. I
also noted a small drainage ditch across the field run-
ning down to the river. Along this was the path
which led to the ruined wooden footbridge, now
floating level with the water and partly shot away.
I could see the tangle of it from Fismette. Through
the barrage haze Fismes looked miles away, the white
houses standing out more plainly in the sun.

The ditch was the only thing that could enable one
to reach the river. My body lay in the hollow, so the
machine gun barrage went over me. . . .

It took me about half an hour to crawl to the river.
I had to put my mask on at the last, as the mustard
gas was strong in the little hollow in which I lay.
My hands were smarting. Some of the shells brought
my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for
them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be
blown to pieces. The river was very nearly in flood
and so there was no bank, the field gradually getting
so&gy an<3 swampy till it sloped out into the water.
Th ere was a lot of submerged barbed wire that made
going ahead very painful and slow. I had, of course,
to throw away my mask as it got full of water. My
pistol went also. It was too heavy to risk.

Once in the water, I worked under the single board
of the footbridge, shifting along hand over hand,

249

Toward the Flame

which took me halfway across. There I struck out,
plunging in a few strokes to the other side and work-
ing through the wire.* Swimming with shoes was
not so difficult as I had thought, but the cold water
seemed to take all my courage, which was what I
needed more than ever. Our own machine guns were
playing along the railroad track on our side of the
river. After getting across, it seemed for a while that
I would be caught between the two fires.

I lay there in the river for a minute and gave up.
When you do that something dies inside.

Then I saw the culvert under the track leading
into the hole where we had lain during the barrage
of the night before. I crawled through this and into
the dugout at its edge, taking great care not to show
myself for fear some of our own snipers might pick
me up.

The luxury of that place was immense. I was safe
there, safe, for a few minutes! I forgot everything
but my own escape. The river had washed most of
the mustard gas off, too. Only my eyes still smarted.
A very few minutes, however, brought on a nausea
that made me afraid I should not be able to cover the
rest of my trip. I crawled out of the dugout very
warily, still afraid of our own machine guns and the
guns across the river that had picked us up the day

* It should be remembered that the Vesle is not a "river" in the American
sense of the word; it is really a "creek" across which one could shy a
stone.

250

Over the River Again

before, and finally made way through the ruined steel
mill which kept me out of sight most of the distance.
It had a long shed. Then I took the little path
straight up to the barn behind the "club" which we
had occupied, and shoving the door aside, stepped
into the courtyard and sat down.

Some of the machine gun men there jumped up
rather startled, and then came over to give me a lift,
but I was able to go on all right after a few minutes'
breathing, and made my own way to the major's
dugout.

They must have been shelling Fismes very heavily
that morning, for the little lane leading to the wine
cave was literally strewn with dead runners. The air

251

Toward the Flame

was heavy with gas, the effect of which I could now
plainly feel, a sort of tightening across the lungs and
a burning rawness. Not Having a mask worried me
greatly. There was an old blanket over the door to
keep out the gas, and as I went in I noticed a big unex-
ploded air bomb just on the bank above. How it got
there I do not know. I lifted the blanket and stepped
inside.

The major was telephoning to the colonel as I
came in, using the line which the signal corps had
established with great difficulty. The different tele-
phones had queer names in order to give no informa-
tion in case the enemy listened in. I remember the
major was talking to "Hindu" something. He was
telling the colonel that the attack was so far going
well and that we were taking prisoners. I believe
some Germans had been taken somewhere, which
gave him the impression that we were having a great
success. It did not take me very long to give him
the real situation, and a very different story went
over the wire than had been started. The gravity of
affairs was at once apparent.

That dugout was absolutely packed. All the
battalion scouts, the runners from all the different
organizations in liaison with us,* a good many
wounded, and some simply taking shelter filled the
place to the stifling point. In addition there were
a good many officers — the captain of our machine

* Runners were interchanged.

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Over the River Again

gun company, which had just moved into Fismes,
our battalion scout officer, and several others from
the third battalion that was just then entering the
town. Runners were coming and going.

The major and his adjutant sat at a table with
a map on which we were soon drawing the lines for
the barrage with an artillery liaison officer super-
intending the job. We drew them in a horseshoe
curve well above the town to avoid the possibility
of "shorts" among our own men. Pretty soon the
artillery lieutenant was telephoning to the batteries,
but the line was cut about this time and there was
a maddening delay. I asked for a gas mask and

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Toward the Flame

one was taken from a dead man near the door. There
were no extras about.

Things began to get pretty hazy for me about this
time. I remember giving a book of notes and poems
to our scout officer. It was soaked with water but
not ruined. Some of the men helped me out of my
pack. The river water I had swallowed was the last
touch.

Major Donnely, the commanding officer of the
third battalion, came in now. He grew very angry
at the crowded condition of the dugout and made
some of the men move out to other shelter, order-
ing them to keep away from the door where they
cut off what little air there was. Shells were fall-
ing outside every few minutes. Between them God-
frey Wyke skipped in, neat, lively, and the same as
ever. He and the other company commanders of
the third battalion were called in for a little council,
and it was decided that after dark an attempt would
be made to reenforce the first battalion in Fismette.
About this time a runner came in from the other side
of the river. He had gotten across the bridge in a
lull. The intensity of the barrage after our attack
had now relaxed greatly. The message told us that
Captain Law of my company had been killed, that
the captain of "A" company was wounded, and that
the men had been safely withdrawn to the town, but
needed reinforcements and ammunition. I said I
would guide the reinforcing companies back that

254

Over the River Again

night. There was some good news, though. A
platoon of the 109th machine gun battalion had
crossed the river higher up and worked into Fis-
mette.

After an hour or two the nausea passed off, and
the major gave me some cornbeef hash, but I was
not quite able to get away with it. After sitting
around an hour, I got up and went out with our am-
munition officer to see if we could get down to the
river and "ferry" some boxes across, near to the little
footbridge.

We moved very carefully, cutting across the road
just behind an ambulance that drove by at reckless
speed. Another was loading just across the street
from the house above the "Villa Bremen." The
lieutenant and I went up to the "club" and took a
peep at the river from the barn. The whole bank
was still being torn up by the shells, a lot of
which were also falling in the fields and through
the town.

As soon as I saw that hell-hole, I knew abso-
lutely that I didn't have the courage to try it again.
Whether we ever could have carried ammunition
boxes through that gantlet and then floated them
across the river on planks I do not know. But I do
know I didn't have the courage then to head the
gang that was going to try it. The ammunition offi-
cer said nothing one way or the other. I was so
tired I didn't care what he thought. While we stood

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there looking, our own barrage fell around Fismette
Imagine that little white town up on the hillside,
and just above and around it in a semi-horseshoe a
great waving cloud of black dust, spurting earth
fountains, smoke and flying dirt as though giants
were throwing wagonloads of it into the air. There
was a howling and whistling overhead and a steady
roar from the other side of the river. This kept up
for about a half hour, after which there was a dead
silence for a long time. I hated to tell the major
that I couldn't get the ammunition across, so I went
over to the "Villa Bremen" and slept. The quiet,
the coolness, the sense of isolation in the dugout was
grateful. One of the medical men was there. Now
and then we could hear the dull thud of a shell. It
seemed far away. "Doc" got me a little cornbeef
hash. I slept till four o'clock, it being impossible to
stay awake any longer.

When I woke I seemed to have slept off most of
the dizzy feeling of the morning. I had pretty well
breathed myself clear of the sick gas feeling and was
able to think clearly again. I went over to the
major's dugout and found two engineer officers there
with the two majors. We talked over the possibility
of rebuilding the little footbridge across the river. I
thought that it might be possible to slip down at
night and reconstruct this bridge out of the material
lying around near by, light trusses from the near by
steel mill and heavy fence planks. It was a very short

256

Over the River Again

span. Things had quieted down now, and I took the
two engineer officers, a major and a captain to look
at the footbridge. We tried to get as near as pos-
sible without being seen.

The landscape about Fismes and Fismette that
mellow summer afternoon about the middle of Au-
gust is indelibly printed on my memory. We went
down through the "club" again. A shell had broken
all the glass out of the little sun parlor. It lay about
in great sword-like splinters sparkling and twinkling
on the iron wine tables and chairs. Then we cut out
through the barn and down the path through the
steel mill towards the railroad. Here I could point
out the wreck of the little plank suspension bridge
floating on the turbid, muddy current rolling by so
rapidly. Across there was the little town of Fis-
mette, just then so quiet, so white on the green va-
cant hillside, and the ruined buildings and back lots
of Fismes with the railroad stretching along the
river. Almost any moment one could expect a train
to come puffing around the curve. It seemed so
peaceful. But there was a caution, a fear that kept
us from showing ourselves, that made us glide
quietly, quickly by open spaces between buildings,
an expectancy, a breathlessness, an unnatural calm
that meant war.

We went back to the command post. The engi-
neers were to try that night to build the bridge, but
we could not wait for that, and it was decided to

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attempt the reinforcement of Fismette by sending
over "L" and "M" companies of the third battalion,
with part of "I" company equipped with stretchers!
to bring out the wounded as soon as it was thor-
oughly dark. We were going to try to cross by the
ruined stone bridge, hoping we could sneak in. I
was to guide them, since I had been over once and
knew the ropes.

Supper was very intense that night. Ten or
twelve men of our own battalion who had remained
behind the night before, for one reason or another,
were to go over with us also, and they were not very
cheerful. The ration was very scarce. Some salmon
and half-raw canned sweet potatoes. I took leave
of "Villa Bremen" again with regret, and went across
the street to find Captain Keel of "L" company with
his outfit. He was lining them up in the courtyard
of the seminary ready to march. In the fast-failing
light they looked tremendously grim and business-
like. "L" company was about the finest body of men
I ever saw. A few houses up the street "M" com-
pany was waiting under Captain Thompson, a fiery,
determined little soldier; to talk to him for a few
minutes in the street gave one renewed nerve. He
had an intrepid personality. With him in charge, we
were halfway over already.

He gave the word and the two companies came
filing out of the houses in single file, just as we had
moved the night before.

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Over the River Again

We started to make stealthily for the bridge. The
men had all been warned, and this time moved with
great care. As we got near the river the flares be-
gan to stop us. Again and again came the green-
white light, and again and again we froze into silence
and stillness. One saw the skeleton houses, win-
dows agape, the rows on rows of slate roofs, the
tense, silent line of white faces under the helmets —
swoop came the shadows, blackness and night — then
we moved on again.

About a block from the bridge one of the platoon
on guard there came back to tell us that the Ger-
man machine guns played on it whenever the slight-
est noise was made by any one crossing. He told us
an encouraging tale of several runners who had been
killed that afternoon trying to get across. The story
completely sickened me. I lost for a moment all the
resolution I had. "No more machine guns, no
more!" I kept saying to myself against my will.
Just then a flare went up, and we halted. I told the
news to Captain Thompson, who kept the men halted
and ordered them to sit down. Captain Keel came
up and suggested sending a message back to the
major to apprise him of the situation. This gave
some excuse to ourselves for a delay. At least we
needed a little time to con the affair over. To be
stopped at the bridge would be to bring down a bar-
rage that would make the reenforcement of Fismette
impossible. Captain Thompson wanted to get some

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Toward the Flame

information from the machine gun outfit who had
been near the bridge all day. So one of the machine
gun company stationed near here led us into a big
house. The outer doors were closed fast after we
entered. Then we went through a hall and another
door was closed. After this a light was lit and we
descended into a big cellar. The whole machine gun
company seemed to be there, and very comfortable.
Lieutenant Dan Brooks, a light-hearted, generous
youth, was in charge. We drank some white wine,
of which there were several barrels about. It was
the last time I ever saw Dan Brooks. He laughed,
gave us some information, wished us good luck, and
shook hands. Thompson and I looked at each
other — there was no excuse for any further delay.
Now was as good as any other time.

We left Brooks in the cheerful candlelight and
sallied out through the big door of the house and
down the steps to our men sitting silently along the
sides of the houses as we had left them. Thompson
gave the word, and in a moment we were under way
again, making rapidly but carefully for the bridge.
At the bridge we halted sheltering behind the last
houses.

Keel, who was leading "L" company, and I went
first. I remembered passing two of our snipers at
the bridgehead, lying behind a stone with their rifles
ready. They were going to fire at the flash if a gun
spoke. One of them whispered to me, "Don't

260

Over the River Again

stoop down, lieutenant, they are shooting low when
they cut loose." Then we went out onto the bridge.

It was much more damaged than the night be-
fore, big stones blown loose all over it, holes in the
middle, the pit of the night before much enlarged.
As we descended into this a flare went up. That was
undoubtedly the most intense moment I ever knew.
For me, it was the great moment of the war. I was
sure we must be seen. We stood rigid. The flare
rose, drifted to the ground, and went out — not a
shot! The last half we made in a silent but brief
scramble.

There was not a soul on the other side, but I am
afraid to say how many dead lay around the house
at the head of the bridge. I threw a stone back, which
was the signal agreed upon, and the men began to
come over, three at a time and very quietly, crouch-
ing so that they looked like the big stones when a
flare went up. After about twenty were over I
started into the town by the back way, leading the
file through several houses and twists and turns to
a barricade across the street. At every corner a man
was left to keep saying, "This way, this way." It
was essential not to lose contact here. The line kept
feeding across without a hitch, man after man crouch-
ing down to cross the village street behind the bar-
rels filled with stone that led over into the doorway
of a big barn. It was a combination barn and house
around a big central court. At the upper end of it

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Toward the Flame

was a wine cave that went into the almost perpen-
dicular hill.

Out of this came Captain Haller, who was in
charge of what was left of the first battalion in Fis-
mette. He was rather startled at first at seeing so
many silent figures in the courtyard, but his wel-
come was more than hearty. In a few minutes the
new men were being stationed. Some were sent up
on the line to relieve the tired watchers there, others
to sleep in lofts, a cellar or a house, but all ready
for instant call. We brought in with us several

262

Over the River Again

bags of ammunition, grenades, and litters to carry-
out the wounded, whose evacuation was started
immediately.

It was half an hour before the Germans "got
wise" and started to gun for the bridge. In the
meantime the town had been reenforced.

"Fritz" was very near here. From a little hamlet,
the cluster of roofs just up the hill back of our barn
and cave, he shot flares right down into the court.
Captain Haller came out and put up a red rocket.
I remember him standing in that court with the
stars above, and now and then the green glare of the
German flare freezing us all into statues, then the
sudden spurt of his match, and the hiss of the rocket
soaring up over the roofs. A few minutes later our
own barrage came down about our own ears. The
shells came perilously close. That morning they
had caught some of our own men falling short, I was
told. Under cover of the fire from our batteries the
evacuation of the wounded went on.

263

CHAPTER XVIII

LAST HOURS IN FISMETTE

IN THAT great time there was never any rest or
let-up until the body was killed, or it sank ex-
hausted.

That night we set to work immediately to try to
get Captain Williams of "A" company across the
river before daylight. He had been struck by a
machine gun bullet in the attack that morning. The
bullet had travelled around his ribs and, lodging un-
der the spine, had paralyzed him.

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Last Hours in Fistnette

He lay in another little dugout — a wine cave, too—
about ten houses up the street from the big cave in
the court. I made my way up to him through the
houses and tried to cheer him by telling him we had
come to get him. He was so cheerful and kindly and
glad to see us, it would have brought the tears to our
eyes — at any other time. Getting him out was not
such an easy task.

It was impossible even to appear in the street.
Lieutenant Glendenning lay dead there, shot through
the heart, fine brave heart, I couldn't help crying
when I heard of that — and we would have to knock
holes through the walls of the houses to get Captain
Williams' stretcher through from house to house.

We picked some strong Italians and started work-
ing through the big court, battering away with logs
and picks, dislodging rocks from the mud plaster
and working like mad in a race against time — for if
it was morning before we reached the captain, he
would have to stay another day in Fismette — and
that might be fatal. We could use no lights. I can
still see those dark figures battering away, then
crawling through, choosing the space in the next
wall for the tunneling, and going on and on. At last
towards morning the passageway was ready and we
carried the captain down as far as the court, lifting
him through the holes in the wall with great care,
sliding the stretcher from room to room, but it was
too late. We had to stay in the big cave with Cap-

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Toward the Flame

tain Haller's command post, where they brought a
great many other wounded.

In there was a dressing station. One of the hos-
pital corps worked night and day, poor lad ! He was
almost all in. The place had rows of wounded in it,
moaning, and he had little with which to help them.
Bandages were running out. In the cave there was
a light, and hay on the floor. It ran far back into the
hill. Some of us crawled in there and towards morn-
ing got some sleep. The last thing I heard was Cap-
tain Williams cheering some of the wounded, espe-
cially one Italian lad who was in great pain.

That night, and part of the next day, was fairly
quiet. There was nothing to eat. Yes — something —
one of my own men, who had heard that I had got
back, brought me some fish, about half a cupful,
and asked me to share it. He was so much in earnest
about it, that I ate it with him like a sacrament.

Next morning not a shot could be heard, and it
was warm and sunny. I got up and walked up the
line of houses between the street and the hill, work-
ing from back yard to back yard. The little dugout
where Captain Williams had been the night before,
I determined to make my headquarters, and as a
sign of authority carried my officer's raincoat there.
There were one or two men sleeping in it and some
wounded. Up above it on the hillside was a house
which overlooked the fields beyond. There we had
an observation post. A garret in one of the houses

266

Last Hours in Fismette

along the street sheltered one of our invaluable ma-
chine guns and its valiant crew. A few of our lads
were still lying along the wall as sentries. The rest
were down in the houses. The wall and the space
in front of it for many yards had dead men lying
every here and there.

Farther along near the cross street, I found some
of our men in a house which had a spring in it. Here
one of our wounded sergeants, Davidson, lay near the
water. A fine chap and very glad to see me. He
had heard I had been killed. We moved him down to
the big cave and got him across the river later. Lieu-
tenant Horner was holding this end of the line. The
men were sitting around in the rooms of the little
deserted houses, waiting for anything that might

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Toward the Flame

happen, and hoping that nothing would. Night was
the time we all dreaded. The days seemed easy in
comparison.

As we could not use the street, I felt the need of
quick communication up and down the line and set
some of the men to completing the knocking of holes
between houses. In the barn by the court, I started,
with Captain Haller's sanction, a number of men
digging a tunnel under the narrow street so we could
cross into the houses on the other side and occupy
them also. Captain Thompson and I went up a few
houses and tried to "fish" Lieutenant Glendenning's
body from the street where it was lying face down-
ward, by making a loop, getting it around him, and
then dragging him in through the window, but we
could not make it. It was impossible to show oneself
even for a minute in the street and the rope we had
was a miserable stiff piece of old hemp that forever
slipped. We had to give it up. I went back to see
how the tunnel was coming on.

The men were digging, standing in one room of
the barn while some of us stood talking in the next,
when, without any warning but a swift whistle, a
trench mortar shell fell through the roof and ex-
ploded in the room where the men were working,
killing and wounding about eight or nine. A lot of
fragments came through the door into our room and
one struck me on the knee. It seemed nothing at the
time with so many killed. One or two of the poor

268

Last Hours in Fismette

lads who had been digging were carried into the
cave, one fellow had his face blown full of dirt and
stones, and was frightfully shell shocked, jerking
and crying out pitifully.

There is certainly such a thing as shell shock, and
a very terrible thing it is, not to be explained away
by doctors who write articles for the library table
magazines. The rest of the poor, black, dust-covered
bodies were buried in the pit they had dug for them-
selves, or in the hole the shell had made. All those
dead faces were covered with an ashen-gray dust,
and there was a hellish scent of high explosive in the
air. That was about noon.

About three o'clock Major Donnely appeared
among us, having crossed the bridge, like the brave
man he was, in daylight. He had orders to make an-
other attack. That is, his battalion was to attack
while what was left of ours was to hold the town.

It was a frightful order, murder. All of us knew
that. I tried to explain the situation to the major,
thinking he did not know that he was flinging three
companies against the German army, but I left off,
seeing that he did know and was only carrying out
what he had been ordered to do.*

The companies that had come into town the night

* The orders for this attack and for the whole Fismette fiasco, it now ap-
pears, had come from the French Army Commander through the 3rd Corps
headquarters. The tactical reason seems to have been that the Fismes-
Fismette bridgehead was worth all that it might cost. See Major General
Bullard's Memoirs and his letter to General Pershing of August 28, 1918.

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Toward the Flame

who came up looking very grave and sad over it. I
remember he looked at me significantly as the men
filed out. Captain Thompson led. That was the last
time I ever saw either him or Fletcher.

We of the first battalion left in Fismette got our
men sheltered as well as we could for the barrage
which we knew was sure to follow, and at the same
time kept up a sharp watch. The other companies
marched out of the town to the left and made an at-

270

Last Hours in Fismette

tack up the hill. It was not hard to tell when the
battle was on.

I took my station in the observation house above
the little dugout. One of our scouts was there.
"Look here, lieutenant," said he, and between the
cracks in the roof pointed out a haystack about fifty
yards away. I looked at it carefully through his
glass. From it poked the ugly nose of a machine
gun from which went up a faint blue haze. Oh! if
we had only had rifle grenades then!

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Toward the Flame

The whole hill seemed to be alive with machine
guns and artillery. Such a barrage fell on Fismette
that we were instantly driven from our posts into
the dugout. In the yard beside us shell after shell
smashed. We closed the iron door to our cave to
keep out the fragments, but the choking gas and the
smell of high explosives came in. Above all the roar
suddenly sounded, seemingly right above our heads,
the sharp bark of our own single machine gun.
Brave lads, they were still sticking to it in the garret.
We knew they had only one box of ammunition left.
Houses along the street were blown up and disap-
peared inwardly in a cloud of dust and a sliding
noise. I hopped out once to see Major Donnely at
the big cave.

"Hang on," he said.

After what seemed an eternity, some one came
and said our men were coming back — then our own
barrage fell. It was the greatest we had thrown
around there. The hillside was tossed about for an
hour and the German shells had ceased. As always,
when it lifted, there followed the silence of the dead.
We were all breathing in relief when what was left
of the other companies returned. It was a miserable
remnant. The loss had been terrific. Some of the
companies were down to a few men. The gain had
been nothing and we had exposed the smallness of
our force to the Germans. A German plane came
down so close it seemed to glide along the roofs. All

272

Last Hours in Fismette

was silent in the courts and houses till it passed. The
aviator could have counted our buttons. No one was
fool enough to shoot at him. As usual at that time,
the Germans owned the air.

Captain Thompson had been killed, hit by a shell,
some of his men said, while he was shouting to them
to rally for the third time. The survivors were all
in no shape to stand any further strain, having borne
all that flesh and blood could, and more. The town
was choked with dead and wounded. Even my own
little dugout was full of them by this time.

About nightfall the little lieutenant,* who had
our third platoon on the left flank, came up to tell
me there was nobody left there. He was badly
wounded and half out of his head. The story of his
platoon is an heroic one. All alone on the left flank,
they held on and on, the little groups at the barri-
cade and in the shell-holes gradually becoming less
and less, till no one was left. My fine little Italian
striker, Nick de Saza, had his head taken off by a
shell, working his Chauchat automatic to the last.
I sent the lieutenant over with some of the other
wounded. They got back that night into Fismes.
He was too young to die miserably of gas after being
wounded.

That night — unforgettable — darkness settled down
on a despairing but determined little group of sur-
vivors in Fismette. Every now and then one of our

* Lieutenant Francis Welton, I have since learned.

273

Toward the Flame

machine guns barked from the roof, and, as ever at
dark, the German flares began. There were very
few of us left to hold the line. We got instructions
irom the major about dusk, and some hope of relief
but I knew that it was only to hearten us. On the
other side of the river no one knew what was going
on. I tried to string my men out along the wall, but
there were so few, I felt it was better to keep most in
shelter and some sentries along the wall. We could
at least rush out then and make a stand. The last
of our remaining officers in "B" company, Lieuten-
ant Gerald, came up and joined me with a remnant
of men. He was all in, almost out of his head with
fatigue and two days on the line without sleep or
food, but still wonderfully game. The dugout filled
up with wounded and gassed men, two layers deep.
It was a crazy house in there.

I went up in the little house on the hill just above,
where we had been observing. A shell fell in the gar-
den, and by its red flash I saw a picture of Christ on
the wall. The thorn-crowned face leaped suddenly
out of the frame at each devil's candle. Simple-
hearted Catholic peasants had lived there once. I
saw that picture by the same light a good many times
that night. It was a real piece of melodrama.

We arranged a regular system of reliefs, the men
taking turns on the line and then in the dugout. To
crawl out onto that line among the dead men by the
wall in the tense darkness, shells whistling and fall-

274

Last Hours in Fismette

ing, and now and then a flare of a corpse-like light,
was a terrific test for a man. It grew harder and
harder to get the men to leave the dugout as the
shelling kept up.

Towards morning the shelling stopped. I began
to realize that all the men by the wall were dead.
One young Italian whose turn it was to go on post
whimpered and begged — he was sick, he said. God
knows, we all were! I was numbly trying to think
what I could do with him, when the barrage fell.
All that were still outside made for the dugout. We
crawled in over the wounded and sat shaking. I
knew when it lifted that we must meet an attack.

In all that awful uproar I heard some one at the
door. The men next to it did not want to open it.
It took me some time to give orders to let him in.
I was getting very hazy. The poor devil came in
shaking and crying. It seemed as though the place
was afire outside. We slammed the door again —
"gas !" "gas !" — on went the masks. It was real this
time. The wounded begged piteously to be helped
into theirs and everybody did what they could. A
shell-shocked man was shouting and jumping about.
Some one held him down, cursing him. Then came
the direct hit — a great stunning blow on the top of
the dugout; everybody was quieted by that, and the
smell of explosive was intense! Gradually I heard
the faint stir in the darkness again and the voices
through the gas masks. The cave had held. "Open

275

Toward the Flame

the door!" cried somebody, "and beat out the gas."
We did so and I saw that it was quiet again outside.

That meant only one thing. I felt — an attack —
but I seemed to know it without being able to do
anything about it. It was a long time seemingly be-

276

Last Hours in Fismette

fore I moved myself with great effort. Then I tried
to get the men up on the line again. We were all
choking with gas. I heard Gerald pleading and re-
monstrating; he was trying to be very logical. "Don't
you see?" I heard him say. "All right, I'll go then,"
and he started up in the darkness after a few of the
others who had gone already to man the line. I
stood trying to get the men out of the dugout, half
wondering what I was trying to do at times and then
remembering. It was strangely quiet.

Some one came and said, "They are all dead up
there along the wall, lieutenant, and there's no one
between us and 'C company. The machine gun is
knocked out." I tried to think this out.

Suddenly along the top of the hill there was a puff,
a rolling cloud of smoke, and then a great burst of
dirty, yellow flame. By its glare I could see Gerald
standing halfway up the hill with his pistol drawn.
It was the Flammenwerfer, the flame throwers; the
men along the crest curled up like leaves to save
themselves as the flame and smoke rolled clear over
them. There was another flash between the houses.
One of the men stood up, turning around outlined
against the flame — "Oh! my God!" he cried. "Oh!
God !"

Here ends this narrative.

2J7

ADDENDA

npHE following extract, taken from a newspaper
A clipping- of First War Memoirs of an A.E.F.
Commander, by Major General R. L. Bullard, U. S.
A., gives a more "official" version of the fighting
about Fismes and Fismette with some interesting
side-lights on the affair from "higher up":

In Fismette, the portion of the village of Fismes
on the north side of the Vesle, I had a single com-
pany of infantry, 150 men of the 28th (Pennsyl-
vania) Division. One day I was ordered to make
a raid with this company. It was made with great
determination, but the bluffs of the river to the east,
north and northwest were lined with enemy machine
guns, and the company, thus covered on three sides

278

Addenda

by the enemy's fire, had no success. It was driven
back into its cellars in Fismette.

This company could be reinforced and fed at night
only across a broken bridge, now not even a foot-
bridge. This crossing was swept from two direc-
tions by enemy machine-gun fire, and men crossed,
whether by day or night, only at intervals, and then
only a man at a time. In short, men could not cross.
It was evident that whenever the enemy desired he
could wipe out the company on the north bank of
the Vesle.

After its failure in the raid, as ordered by our
French general, I ordered that company withdrawn
to the south bank of the Vesle River, man by man,
at night. My chief-of-staff, who was very much in
favor of the general's idea of bridge-heads, knew of
the order which I was going to give. When I re-
turned from Fismes late in the afternoon I found
our French general at my corps headquarters, and
that my chief-of-staff had informed him of my order
to withdraw the company. The French army com-
mander ordered me at once to replace it. It was done.

COMPANY IS WIPED OUT

Three or four days after this affair, without my
ability to reinforce it or save it, completely at the
mercy of the enemy, this company was wiped out
by an enemy attack. Then I noticed that the French
communique of the day reported that my 3rd Corps

279

Toward the Flame
had repulsed an enemy attack. When the French

terr7he°Tanider * m? ^ head^r-

ters he offered me as consolation for his error this

French communique. It was at least acknowledg-
ment of the responsibility for the mistake

But it did not console me for the only accident of
my military career. I reported it at once to the
American Commander-in-Chief, General Pershing
in the following letter:

^ Headquarters 3rd Army Corps,
American Expeditionary Forces, France,
A.P.O. 754, August 28, 1918.
General J. W. McAndrew, G.H.Q., A.E.F.:
My Dear General:

I am informed that to-day's German communique
(which I have not seen) states that the Germans cap-
tured at Fismette yesterday 250 Americans. A part
of my command until yesterday occupied Fismette.
I had there some 190 officers and men altogether in-
fantry. If you will look upon the map you will see
the position of Fismes, a large village on the south
bank of the Vesle. Just opposite Fismes, on the
north bank, is the small village of Fismette. Oppo-
site Fismes the village of Fismette, and no more, was
occupied by us. Ten days ago, after a German at-
tack upon Fismette, which almost succeeded,* I saw

* This refers to the time and the events described in the last two chapters

above.

280

Addenda

that Fismette could not be held by us against any
real attempt by the Germans to take it, and that to
attempt to continue to hold it would, on account of
the lay of the surrounding terrain, involve the sure
sacrifice of its garrison, to which help could not be
sent except by driblets at night. I therefore decided
to withdraw the garrison of Fismette some 300
metres back across the Vesle River into Fismes. Be-
fore this was finished the French general command-
ing the 6th Army, to which I belong, arrived at my
headquarters, and, learning of my orders for with-
drawal from Fismette, himself, in person, directed
me to continue to hold Fismette and how to hold it.
My orders were changed in his presence and his or-
ders were obeyed. Yesterday morning, the Germans
made a strong attack upon Fismette from two direc-
tions, taking the village and killing or capturing al-
most all of our men who were in it.

I request that the Commander-in-Chief be ac-
quainted with the facts in this case.

R. L. BULLARD,
Major-General, N.A., Com-
manding 3rd Army Corps.

PERSHING IRRITATED

A few days later I saw General Pershing himself.
He told me that he had seen rthe 'letter,; thjat he un-
derstood. He was much if rifa'tecf ahd'-aske'd me with
vehemence: . '•' : *V* •.**•.:. :

Toward the Flame

"Why did you not disobey the order?"

I did not answer. It was not necessary to answer.
The general had spoken in the vehemence of his
irritation.

While I recall this incident with some bitterness,
I must still give the French general credit for being
ever ready to help and helping me and my corps.
And he was a fighting man. He never ceased to
press the enemy.

THE END

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