OCR Text |
Show FIX vJJieNrai Cloe Ranje Described In a Rernarkab1s"-& Series Dy an Officer of "fW, illustrated by the Author from " - ykelchj MaAs on the Battlefield) observed progress, and detached a corporal with his squad to get forward for-ward by the flank. "Get far enoirrh past the flank gun, now. close as you can, and rush it we'll keep It busy." . . . Nothing sounds as mad as rifle-fire, rifle-fire, staccato, furious The corporal judged that he was far enough, and raised with a yell, his squad leaping with him. He was not past the flank ; two guns swung that way, and cut the squad down like a grass-hook levels a clump of weeds. . . . They lay there for days, eight marines In a dozen yards, face down on their rifles. But they had done their job. . The men in the wheat were close enough to use the split-second interval inter-val in the firing. They got in, cursing curs-ing and stabbing. Meanwhile, to the left n little group of men lay In the wheat under the very muzzle of a gun that clipped the stalks around their e.-irs and riddled rid-dled their combat yacks tiring high by a matter of inches and the mercy of God. A rauD can stand Just so much of that. Life presently ceases to be desirable ; the only desirable thing is to kill that gunner, kill him with your hands 1 One of them, a corporal named Geer, said : "By God, let's get him!" And they got him. One fellow seized the spitting muzzle muz-zle and up-ended It on the gunner ; he lost a hand In the matter. Bayonets flashed in, and ti ritle-butt rose and fell. The battle tore through the coppice. cop-pice. The machine-gunners were brave men, and many of the Prussian infantry were brave men, and they died. A few streamed back through the brush, and hunters and hunted burst in a frantic medley on the open at the crest of the hill. Impartial machine-guns, down the hill to the left, took toll of both. Presently the remnants rem-nants of the nssnult companies were panting in the trees on' the edge of the hill. It was the objective of the attack, but distance had ceased to have any meaning, time was not, and the country was full of square patches of woods. In the valley below were more Germans, and on the next hill. Most of. the officers were down, and all hands went on. They went down the brushy slope, across a little run, across a road where two heavy Maxims were caught sitting, and mopped up and up the next long, smooth slope. Some marines branched off down that road and went into the town of Torcy. There was fighting in Torcy, and a French avion reported Americans Ameri-cans in it, but they never came out again ... a handful of impudent fellows against a battalion of Sturm-truppen. Sturm-truppen. . . . Then the men who mounted the slope found themselves in a cleared area, full off orderly French wood piles, and apparently there was a machinergnn In every woodpile. Jerry Finnegan died here, sprawled across one of them. Lieutenant Somers died here. Ona lieutenant found himself behind a woodpile, with a big auto-rifleman. Just across from them, very near, a machine-gun behind another woodpile wood-pile was searching for them. The lieutenant, all his world narrowed to that little place, peered vainly for a more woods, and in the edge of these woods the old Boche, lots of him, Infantry In-fantry and machine-guns. Surely he had seen the platoons forming a few hundred yards away it Is possible that he did not believe his eyes. He let them come close before he opened fire. The American fighting man has his fallings. He is prone to many regrettable re-grettable errors. But the sagacious enemy will never let him get close enough to see whom he Is attacking. When he has seen the enemy, the American regular will come on In. To stop him you must kill him. And when he Is properly trained and has somebody to say "Come on I" to him, he will stand as much kilting as anybody any-body on earth. The platoons, assailed now by a fury of small-arms fire, narrowed their eyes and inclined their bodies forward, tike men In heavy rain, and went on. Second waves reinforced the first, fourth waves the third, as prescribed. Officers yelled "Battle-sight "Battle-sight ! fire at will" and the leaders, making out trreen-gray. clumsy uniforms uni-forms and round pot-helmets In the gloom of the woods, took It up with Springflelds, aimed shots. Automatic riflemen brought their chnut-chauts into action from the hip a chnut-ehaut chnut-ehaut is as accurate from the hip na it ever is and wrangled furiously with their ammunition-carriers "Come on, kid bag o' clips ! " "Aw I lent it to Ed to carry, last night didn't think" "Yeh, and Ed lent it to a fence-post when he got tired get me some off a casualty, before I " A very respectable volume of fire came from the advancing pla- j toons. There was yelling and swearing swear-ing in the wheat, and the lines, much thinned, got Into the woods. Some grenades went off ; there was scream- j ing and a tumult, and the "taka-taka-takn-taka" of the Maxim guns died down, "Hi ! Sergeant ! hold on I Major said he wanted some prisoners prison-ers " "Well, sir, they looked like they was gonna start somethin' " "All right! All right! but you catch some alive the next place, you hear? "Quickly, now get some kind of a line " "Can't make four waves " "Well, make two an' put the chaut-chauts in the second no use gettin' 'em bumped off before we STORY FROM THE START Th Author describes how the First battalion of the Fifth marines ma-rines are quartered near Marlgny during the first part of June, 1918, when they are suddenly sent up north to relieve the First division, bearing: the brunt of the German offensive. CHAPTER I Continued -2 j The division set out In camions; In j the neighborhood of Meaux they were turned around and sent out the Paris- I Metz road, along which the civilian population from the country between . the Chemln des Dames and the i Marne, together with the debris of a French army, was coming back. The civilians walked with their faces much on their shoulders, and there was horror in their eyes. The marines took notice of another side of war. . . . "Hard on poor folks, war is." "You said it!" "Say think about my folks, an' your folks, out on the road like that! . . ." "Yeh. I'm thinkin' about, it. An' when we meet that Boche, I'm gonna do something about it Look right nlce-lookln' girl, yonder!" There were French soldiers in the rout, too. Nearly all were wounded, or In the last stages of exhaustion. They did not appear to be first-line troops; they were old bearded fellows fel-lows of forty and forty-live, territorials; territor-ials; or mean, unpleasant-looking Algerians, Al-gerians, such troops as are put in to hold a quiet sector. Seven or eight divisions of them had been in the line between Soissons and Rhelms, which was, until May 27, a quiet sector. On that day forty-odd divisions, a tidal wave of fighting Germans, with the greatest artillery concentration the Boche ever effected, were flung -upon them, and they were swept away, as a levee goes before a flood. They had fought; they had come back, fighting, thirty-five miles in three days; and the Boche, though slowed up, was still advancing. They were holding him along the Marne, and at Chateau-Thierry a machine-gun machine-gun battalion of the American Third division was piling up his dead in can use 'em " The attack went on, platoons much smaller, sergeants and corporals commanding many of them. A spray of fugitive Boche went before be-fore the attack, holding where the ground offered cover, working his light machine-guns with devilish skill, retiring, on the whole, commendably. He had not expected to fight a defensive defen-sive battle here, and was not heavily intrenched, but the place was stiff with his troops, and he was In good quality, as marine casualty lists were presently to show. There was more wheat, and more woods, and obscure savage fighting among individuals In the brushy ravine. ra-vine. Tho attack, especially the Inboard In-board platoons of the Forty-ninth and Sixty-seventh companies, burst from the trees upon a gentle slope of wheat that mounted to a crest of orderly pines black against the sky. A three- i cornered coppice this side of the pines commanded the slope ; now It blazed with machine-guns and rifles; the air was populous with wicked keening noises. Most of the front waves went down ; all hands, wry sensibly, flung themselves prone. "Can't walk tip to these babies " "No won't be enough of us left to get on with the war " "Pass the word : crawl forward, for-ward, keepln' touch with the man on your right ! Fire where you cun " Swe ting, hot, and angry with a bleak, cold linger, the marines worked forward. They were there, and the Germans were there. An officer, offi-cer, risking his head above the wheat. loophole; the sticks were pumping and shaking as the Maxim flailed them ; bullets rang under his helmet "Here, Morgan," he said, "I'll poke mj tin hat around this side, and yon watch and see If you can get the chaut-chaut on them " He stuck the helmet on his bayonet, and thrust It out. Something struck It violently from the point, and the rifle made hi fingers tingle. The chaut-chaut went off, once. In the same breath there was. an odd noise above him. . . the machine-gun ... he looked up. Morgan's Mor-gan's body was slumping down to its knees; It leaned forward against the wood, the chaut-chaut, still grasped in a clenched hand, coming to the ground buTt first. The man's head was gone from the eyes up; his helmet hel-met slid stickily back over his combat com-bat pack and lay on the ground. . . "My mother," reflected the lieutenant "will never find my grave In this place!" He picked up the chaut-chaut, chaut-chaut, and examined It professionally, noting a spatter of little red drops ou the breech and the fact that the clip showed one round expended. The charging handle was back. He got to his feet with deliberation, laid the gun across the woodpile, and sighted . . . three Boche with very red faces ; their eyes looked pale under their deep helmets. . . . He gave them the whole clip, and they appeared to wilt Then he came away from there. Later he was In the little run at the foot of the hill with three men, all wound- ed. He never knew how he got there. It Just happened. TO BE CONTINUED.) x-:-xx-x-:-x-x-:-x-:-x-;-x-:-x-x-x-i heaps around the bridge-heads but to the northwest he was still coming. And to the northwest the Second Division Di-vision was gathering. During the second, third and fourth of June It grouped itself, first the Fourth brigade bri-gade of marines, with some guns, and then the regular Infantrymen of the Ninth and Twenty-third. Already, around Hautevesnes, there had been n brush with advancing Germans, and tho Germans were given a new experience: rifie-fire that begins to kill at 800 yards; they found It very interesting. This was June !; the battalion bat-talion near Marigny, on the left of ihe Marine Brigade, had a feeling that they were going in tomorrow. ...The men thought, lazily on events, and lounged In the wheat, and watched that clump of trees and at last an agonized bellow came on the echo of a bursting shell "Well (die's stopped one! Thought she nmsta dug in "Le's go get it" Presently there was lots of steak, and later a bitter lesson was repeated i mustn't build cooking-fires with green wood, where the Boche can see the smoke. But everybody lay down m full bellies. Before dark the last French werw fHing back. Some time during the night Brigade sent battle orders to the First battalion of the Fifth marines, and at dawn they were la a wood near Ohsmplllon. Nearly every man had steaks In his mess prn, nnd there was hope for cooking them lor breakfast. Instead. . . . -The platoons came out of the woods as dawn was getting gray. The light was strong when they advanced tnto the open wheat, now all starred with dewy poppies, red as blood. To the east the sun appeared. Immensely red and round, a handbreadth above the horizon : a German shell hurst black across the face of it. Just to the left of the line. Men turned their heads to see, nhd many there looked no more upon the sun forever. "Boys, It's a line, clear mornln' I Guess we can chow after we get done molestln' thetie here Hrlnles, hey?" One old nou coiii was It Jerry Finnegan of the Forty-ninth? had out a can of ealmon, hoarded somehow against hird times. Ho haggled It open with his bayonet, and went forward so, e;itlng chunks of goldfish from oft that wicked knif?. Two hours later Sergeant Jerry Finneg:ui lay. dead " across a Maxim pun with his bp.yonet in the body of The gunner. . . . It was n beautiful deployment, lines all dressed and guiding true. Such matters wore of deep concern to this outfit. The day win without a cloud, promising heat later, but now It was pleasant in tho wheat, and the woods around looked blue and cool. Across this wheatfleld there wer |