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Show i IS I FIX BAYONETS! ; aeejaeMi tarae ay Q0otr tflktUarimm :Jj I Ctpt i JOHN W. THOMASON, Jr. i ! tljrtnte W k A.lhw toe, 5 lHiin llJmtiliiililiill J 8T0RY FROM THE START The anther deeerlbes how the Ftrat battalion of tha Fifth ma-rtnaa ma-rtnaa aro quartered near Marlmy durlnir tha flret part of June, 1111, whan they ara euddenly aant up north to rallava tha Flrat dlvlalon, bearing- tha brunt of tha Qarman offensive. Part of tha Fifth wraat Hill 141 from tha enemy and wait thera for tha Qarman counter oftenalve . they can aea forming-. A terrific Oer-JTt Oer-JTt . man attack aoon developi, wreak- Ins fearful havoc among- tha ma- rlnee, but not dlelodglna" them. In tha Immediate vicinity other fierce ancountera ara reducing tha American troopa and forcing tha neceaalty of replarementa. and they don't scar worth a cent! Shelled coming In, at Vole da Cha-tell, Cha-tell, and ome more thla aide of Champlllon several casualties. No confusion nothing like a panic Laid down and waited for orders did exactly a they were told fine men, alrp CHAPTER HI The. Boi de Belleau; Coming Out. They tried new tactic to ret the bayonet Into the Bols de Belleau. Platoon very lean platoon now-formed now-formed in email combat group, deployed de-ployed In the wheat, and set out toward to-ward the gloomy wood. Fifty batter-te batter-te were working on It, all the field piece of the Second division, and what the French would lend. The (hells ripped overhead, and the wood wa full of leaping flame, and the moke of H. E. and ahrapnel. Th Ore from It edge died down. It waa late In the afternoon ; the un wa low enough to shine tinder the edge of your helmet The men went forward for-ward . at a walk, their shoulder hunched over, their bodies Inclined, their eye on the edge of the wood, where shrapnel was raising a bell of a dust. Some of them bad been tht way before; their face were set bleakly. Other were replacements, month or so from Quantlco; they were terribly anxlou to do the right thing, and they watched tenlouftly the sergeants and the corporals and the lieutenant who led the way with canes. One such group, over to the left, followed a big young officer, a replacement, re-placement, too, but a man who bad spent a week In Bouresche and wa to be considered a veteran, a such things went In those day, when ao many chap were not with the brigade bri-gade very long. He bad not liked companies were waiting. His own artillery ar-tillery appeared to have lifted It range; you heard the shells farther In, In the depth of the wood. The air snapped and crackled U around. The sergeant beside the lieutenant stopped,, looked at blm with a frosen, foolish smile, and crumpled Into a heap of old clothes. Something took the kneecap off the lieutenant's right knee and hi leg buckled under him. lie noticed, a he fell sideways, that all hi men were tumbling over like duck -pins; there was one fellow that spun around twice, and went over backward with hi arms up. Then the wheat shut blm In, and he heard cries and a moaning. moan-ing. He observed curiously that be wa making some of the noise himself. him-self. How could anything hurt sot He sat up to look at his knee It was bleeding like the deuce! and a be felt for his first-aid packet, a bullet seared bis shoulder, knocking him on his back again. For a while he lay quiet and listened to odd. thrashing thrash-ing noises around him, and off to the left a man began to call, very pitifully. piti-fully. At once he heard more machine-gun lire he hadn't eeenied to hear It before and now the bullets were striking the ground and ricocheting with peculiar whine In every direction. One ripped Into the dirt by bis cheek snd tilled his eye and bla mouth with dust The lamentable la-mentable crying (topped ; most of the crawling, thrashing noise slopped. He himself was hit again and again, up and down his legs, and he lay very still. Where he lay he could Just see a tree-top he was that near the wood. A few leaves clung to It; be tried to calculate, from the light on them, how low the sun was, and bow long It would be until dark. Stretcher bearers would be along at dark, surely. He heard voices, so close that be could distinguish words: 1 CHAPTER II Continued It came out of the woods Into a pale stone town Charaplllon, There were no lights in the houses; the ' place had an air of death about It There was a Ph.D. from Harvard In that sweating file, a big, pale, unhandy un-handy private, bounded habitually by sergeants snd troubled with Indigestion Indiges-tion and patriotism. For all his training, train-ing, a pack was not at home on his shoulders or a rifle easy in his hands. He thought of the pleasant study back Cambridge way, of the gold-and-blue sergeant under the "First to Fight I" recruiting poster "Your Job, too, fella I Come on an' help lick the Hun I Tou don't wanta wait to be drafted, a big guy like you I We can use you In the marines" A hearty, red-necked ruffian extremely competent com-petent In his vocation, no doubt Good enough chaps. Yes . . . but . . . . tea by a seal-coal fire In the New England Eng-land twilight, and clever talk of art and philosophic anarchism one wrote fastidious essays on such things for the more discriminating f review . . . scholarly abstrac- ( tlons. ... ' Of all the stupid. Ignorant uncivil- v. Ized things, a war I Who coined that phase, civilized warfare? There was no such thing I . . . Here, In the most civilized country on earth. . . . The neighborhood of Chateau-Thierry Montaigne's town, wasn't it? The kings of France had a chateau bear it once. And yet It was always a cockpit . . . since Aetlus rolled back Attn a In the battle of the nations, at Chalons Napoleon fought Champ-Aubert Champ-Aubert and Montmlrall around here always war ' The column was through Cham- plllon, dipping Into : a black hollow. More shellholes in the road here. . . . All at once there was a new shell hole, and the doctor of philosophy, sometime private of marines,' lay beside be-side it, very neatly beheaded, wtth the rifle, that had been such a bore to keep clean, across his knees, and dried prunes spilling out of the pockets pock-ets that he never bad learned to button. but-ton. The column went on. At dawn a naval medico attached to the marine ma-rine brigade, with a staff officer, passed that way. "Caput r "Neln-nlcht alle " Later, forgetting those voices, he tried to wriggle backward Into a shell-bole shell-bole that be remembered passing. He was hit again, but somehow he got Into a little shell-bole, or got his body Into It, head first He reflected that he bad bled so much that a bead-downward bead-downward position wouldn't matter, and be didn't want to be bit again. Men all dead, be uupposed. He couldn't hear any of them. He seemed to pass out, and then to have dreamy periods of consciousness. In cne of these periods he saw the sky over him was dark, metallic blue ; It would be nearly night He beard somebody coming on heavy feet and cunningly shut his eyes to a slit . . . playing play-ing dead. ... A German officer, a stiff, Immaculate fellow, stood over blm, looking at him. He lay very still, trying not to breathe. The Boche bad out his pistol, a short-barreled short-barreled Luger, rested It on his left forearm, and fired deliberately. He felt the bullet range npward through the sole of bis foot, and something excruciating happened In his ankle. Then one called, and the German passed from hi field of vision, returning re-turning hi pistol as be went . . . Later, trying to piece things together, to-gether, he was In an ambulance, being Jolted most Infernally. And later he asked a nurse by bis bed: "I say, nurse, tell me did we get the Bols de Belleau? "Why. last June I" she said. "It's time you were coming out of ttl This Is August" The battalion lay In unclean boles on the far face of Bols de Belleau, which was "now United States marine ma-rine corps entirely." The sun Was low over Torcy, and all the battalion, except certain designated Individuals, slept The artillery, Boche and American, Amer-ican, was engaged in counter-battery work, and the persecuted infantry enjoyed repose. The senior lieutenant of the Forty-ninth company, bedded down under a big rock with his orderly, or-derly, came up from Infinite depths of slumber with his pistol out all In one swift motion. You awoke like that In the Bols de Belleau. . . . Jennings, company runner, showed two buck-teeth at htm and said: Sir, the cap'n wanjs to see you" They crawled delicately away from the edge of the wood, to a trail that took you back under cover, and found the captain frying potatoes in bacon grease. "Going out tonight, by platoons. pla-toons. Start a aoon a It's dark, with tbe Seventeenth. We are next Sixth regiment outfit makln' the relief re-lief Ninety-sixth company for us. They've been here before, so you needn't leave anybody to show them the ground. Soon a they get to you, beat It Got a sketch of the map? Have your platoon at Bols Gros-Jean you know, beyond Brigade, on the big road at daylight. Battalion ba chow there. Got It? Good (TO BE CONTINUED.) Sketch From Captain Thomasen's Notebook. Bouresche, which be entered at night and where he lived obscenely In cellar wltb the dead, and caw men die In the orange flash of mlnen-werfer mlnen-werfer shells, terribly and without the consolation of glory. Here, at last was attack. ... He thought absently watching his flank to see that it guided true-guide center was the word of the old men who had brought him up to the tales of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, In the war of the Southern confederacy. Great battles, glamorous attacks, full of the color and the high-hearted elan of chivalry. Jackson at Chancellors-vllle; Chancellors-vllle; Pickett at Gettysburg that wa a charge for you the rel Southern South-ern battle-flags, leading like fierce bright-winged birds the locked ranks of fifteen gray brigades, and the screeching "Rebel" yell, and the fle'td-mustc, fle'td-mustc, fife and drum, rattling out "The Girl I Left Behind Me": Oh, If ever I set through this war, And tha Lincoln boya don't And me, I'm oin to go right back again To tha girl I left behind me No music here, no flags, no bright swords, no line of battle charging with a yell. Combat group of weary men, In drab and dirty uniforms, dressed approximately on a line, spaced "so that one shrapnel-burst cannot Include more than one group," laden like mules with gas-musks, bandoleers, ban-doleers, grenade, chaut-chaut clips, trudging forward without haste and without excitement they moved on an untidy wood where shell were breaking, a wood that did not answer back, or show an enemy. In It silence si-lence and anonymity It was far more sinister than any flag-crowned rampart ram-part "or stone walls topped with crashing volleys from honest old black-powder muskets he considered these things and noted that the wood was very near, and that the German shells were passing high and breaking break-ing In the rear, where the support I Odd, the wounds you see," ob- I served the naval man, professionally J Interested. He looked curiously. "I k couldn't have done a neater decapita tion than that myself. Wonder who took his identification tag with It I see. Replacement, by bis uniform " (For the Fifth and Sixth regiments bad long since worn out their forester-green marine uniforms, and were wearing army khaki, while the replacements re-placements came In new green clothing.) cloth-ing.) The staff officer picked up the rifle, snapped back the bolt and squinted expertly down the bore. "Disgustln"," he said. "Sure he was a replacement. You never catch an old-timer with a bore like that-filthy that-filthy I Bet there hasn't been a rag through it in a week. You know, surgeon, sur-geon, I was looking at some of the rifles of that bunch of machine-gunners lying In the brush Just across from Battalion; they were beautiful. Never saw better kept pieces. Fine soldier In a lot of ways, these Bocb 1" Meantime the column had passed Into heavier woods, and halted where the rifle ahead ounded very near. They saw dugouts, betrayed by the thread of candlelight around the edge of the blankets that cloaked their entrances. One was a nresslng-statlou, nresslng-statlou, by the sound and the smell of It The officer named Henry ducked Into the other. There a stocky major sat up on the floor and rolled a cigarette, cig-arette, which he lighted at a guttering gutter-ing candle. "Replacements In? Well, what do they look like?" I" "Same men I saw in the training j areas lust month, sir. A sprinkling I of old-time marines Sergeant McGee, that we broke for something or other In Panama, is with 'em and the rest of them are young college lads and boys off the farm fine material, sir. Not much drill, but they probably know how to shoot they take orders, 1 |