OCR Text |
Show The War at CUx Range Described in 4 Re- markabU Series by an Officer of lh Marines h . - STORY FROM THE START The author deacrlbea how the First battalion of the Firth marines ma-rines are quartered near Marlgny during the 6rst part of June, 1918, when they are suddenly sent up north to relieve the First division, bearing the brunt of the German offensive, fart of the Fifth wrest Hill lZ from th enerr.y and wait there for the German counter offensive they can see forming;. A terrific German Ger-man utiack soon develops, wreaking- fearful havoc anions" the marines, ma-rines, but not dinlodsing them. On the sixth of Juno the Fifth runs into bitter fighting in the vicinity of Champlllon and drives out the Boche, but at great cost. Then came the Bois de Belleau and again the marines acquitted themselves rnarvelously. Replacements Re-placements arrive to cover the heavy losses. The marines are relieved, but the respite is shortlived, short-lived, as they are soon ordered to the iSoissons sector, where a grreat German offensive is under way. On July 18, after a heavy barrage, the Americans, Senegalese Senegal-ese and French foreign legion go forward. All enemy positions are taken, though at fearful cosf, and the First Battalion of the Fifth marines are withdrawn for rest and replacements. Alter a short rest behind the Champagne front, the marines are again ad- j vanced, ' to assist the French in a terrific drive against the heights of Blanc Mont. I1 . CHAPTER VII Continued 10 Courteous and sauve, although he svrayed on his feet from weariness and his eyelids drooped from loss of sleep, the Frenchman summed up the situation for the marine captain. "We hold this fire trench. In your sector are four communication trenches running run-ning to the Essen work, which Is about a hundred meters distant. We hold most of the boyau on the extreme ex-treme right; the others we have barricaded. bar-ricaded. You cannot take this Essen trench by frontal assault !" "Why can't we?" growled the American. "When It Is light you will see, Mon Capitalnel Tou can only get forward by bombing your way In the boyaux. They are too strong In machine-guns, the Boche. Now I take my men and go. Seven days and nights we have been on our feet . . . those of us who are left ffre very tired It is well that you be watchful In this place, but do not stir up the Boche yonder. They shoot with mlnenwerfers when yon frighten them. Such a one finished fin-ished my pauvre capitaine and "six men with him. Bon chance, Mon Capitaine. Cap-itaine. Bon Jour 1" "Cheerful bird, wasn't he?" remarked re-marked the captain. "Wonder If that thing I stepped on Just outside this hole was his captain? John, before it gets good daylight, don't you want to take a look-see at this Essen trench? Take whoever you want and see how the land lies." The Essen trench bad been very active when the companies were being posted; staccato bursts- of machine-gun machine-gun fire hod ripped across the Intervening Inter-vening dark, and Springfields had answered. an-swered. There had been some bombing bomb-ing around traverses In the boyaux. But when In the creeping grayness of the dawn, the lieutenant from the Forty-ninth ventured across to It with his orderly and a sergeant; lie found the Boche retiring. Filing quickly through the communication trenches, the battalion occupied It without difficulty, diffi-culty, and, looking around them, were very glad they hadn't had to take It by storm. And the captain understood why the French lieutenant had said it couldn't he stormed. The French had tried the evening before to cross the scant distance dis-tance and get Into It Most of those ( who had charged lay as the Boche Maxims had cut thein down. In one place, between two boyaux that formed with the opposed lines a rough quare of perhaps one hundred yards, he counted eighty-three dead Frenchmen. French-men. Lying very thick near the lip of their ' own trench, the bodies formed a sort of wedge, thinning toward to-ward the point as they had been decimated, deci-mated, and that point was one great bearded Frenchman, his body all a mass of bloody rags, who lay with his eyes fiercely open to the enemy and his outhrus; bayonet almost In the emplacement where the Boche guns had been. Tne company, which had learned Its own bitter lesson In frontal Rtfacks on niachine-gims. gave passing tribute. "Them Frog", they eat machlne-cnins up. Figlitin' sons a' guns, they are. Wonder If any chow Is cumin" up today?" TIiut made themselves comfortable com-fortable among ti e dead and waited the next move with equanimity. Two hundred Riid thirty-one men. !r." reported the second-in-command, sliding Ir.to the shallow dugout where the captain was holed np. "Mighty Incky, so fnr. I'm coin' to sleep. There's some she!M:i especially toward to-ward the left, hut most of the out;lt Is pretty well under cover." Gourcud's battle roi'.n'd on to tte left with swell'r.g tumult. The Amer- ilccns. in tht'lr sector, passed the d:iy In ominous quiil. They wndered I what tha dclaj was. spe-TiiatCi on the ' strategy of hUack whicti Is a niatier I always sealed from the men who c!e- !!cr the ct.tack and wore through to the evening of Oetoher 2. At :nrk. ..-od came np In m:;r:n!te can? hecf 2T:rt potatoes and a Utile coffee, "rut I curs on that me-ss-Kn there."' dlre?v.l j tj':e seor.iMti-com:rti'.nd. as his orderly ' site 'j wi'-h t!s sr.ii tie cautala" r- Capt JOHN W. TH0MAS0N, Jr. (A br ths Bell Syndlcmt. Ic) tions. The captain sat up In his corner cor-ner a little later, when the attack orders came up. There was a brief penciled order from the major, and maps. The two officers bent over them eagerly. "Runner "Run-ner Platoon commanders report right away " . . . "What do you make of it, John? Looks like General Le-jeune Le-jeune was goin' to split his division nnd reunite it on the field. . . . Hmmm ! Ain't that the stunt you claim only Robert E. Lee and Napoleon Napo-leon could get away with? . . . All here? Get around the map's about oriented "Here we are, in the Essen trench seems that the marines move down to the left to here and the Ninth and Twenty-third move to the right to here. These pencil lines show the direction di-rection of attack then we Jump off, angling a little to the right, compass bearing and the infantry outfits point about as much to the left. That brings us together up here about three kilometers, and we go on straight, a little west of north from there, to Blanc Mont" The morning of October 3 (191S) came gray and misty. From midnight until dawn the front had been quiet at that point comparatively. Then all the French and American guns opened with one world-shaking crash. From the Essen trench the ground fell away gently, then rose In a long slope, along which eonld be made out the zigzags of the German trenches. The Bols de Vlpre was a bluish mangled man-gled wood, two kilometers north. Peering Peer-ing from their shelters, the battalion saw all this ground swept by a hurricane hur-ricane of shell-fire. "Move down the trench to the left," came the order. The battalion moved, filing around the traverses with judicious judi-cious intervals between men, so -that the Boche shells might not include too many In their radius of death. For Heinle was beginning to shoot back. He had the range of his vacated trench perfectly, and, holding the high ground, he could see what he was shooting at Shells began to crash down among the companies, whole squads were blotted out, and men choked and coughed as the reek of high explosive caught at their windpipes. wind-pipes. "Lordy, afn't we ever goln' to get outa this dam' place an' get at 'em " A shell with a driving-band loose came with a banshee scream, ani men and pieces of men were blown In the air. "That was In the first platoon," pla-toon," said the second-in-command, shaking the dirt off his gas-mask. "Something ought to he done about that gunner, El CapitanI" Another landed In the opposite lip of the trench where the two officers crouched, half-burying them both. "My God, cap'oT Yqu killed?'" "Hell, . no ! Are you ?" "Far enough to the left." "the major sent word. "We will wait here. The Sixth leads we're tht last battalion in support today." Coming from the maze of trenches In the rear, the assault regiment began to puss through the Fifth, bat- Pushed Their Way Onward. talion following battalion at f00-yard f00-yard distances. A number of French , "Baby" tanks started with the assaulting assault-ing waves, but It was an evil plact-for plact-for tanks. Tank traps, trenches so wide that the little fellows went nose-dawn nose-dawn into them and stuck, and direct ftre from Boche artillery stopped the j most of them. The battalion was out of the treuch J now, and going forward regulating Its pace on the battalion ahead. All at once there was a snapping nnd crackling crack-ling !n t lie nlr a corporal spun round I and collapsed limply, while his blouse turned rod under his gas mask the man beside him sturr.hled and went down, swearing through grayish lips at a shatte-ed ltntp the men fattened fat-tened and all faces turned toward tiie dark. "M ichlne-gtins on the left '." "flei! '. It's that Esn hook we've ?"t to pass thank Cod, It's Lm; riino! Ccme on, you birds." And the Ii irtallou wi-nt on, er.uu-ir - p-imiy. Clnaiiy. when i well past l'.s front, which ran dingon- j al'y to tilt iin oi" advt.ri' e. ti e Seventeenth Seven-teenth c'i::p.-.!iy. thsit l.a.l the k-'"t. tnru'.'d savag.-'y "ii the !. n Ivvk j and .ir a f.'oti-.o'd in !:s 'v.tr. A :ie- , pout.Cer from the NjiuuT.uJ Lead- I quarters company was rushed np to assist as-sist them, and the men yelled with delight de-light as the vicious little cannon got In direct hit3 on the Boche emplacements.- Hopelessly cut off. the large body of Germans In this formidable work surrendered after a few sharp and bloody minutes, and the Seventeenth, Seven-teenth, sending back Its prisoners, rejoined re-joined the battalion. Prisoners began to stream back from the front of the attack, telling of the success of the Sixth. Wounded came with them, some walking, some carried on improvised stretchers by the Boche "kamarads." Most of them were grinning. "Goin' fine up there, boys, goin' fine!" "I.ookit. fellers! Got a hon bllglity We'll give 'em your regards re-gards In Paris!" For awhile now the battalion halted, halt-ed, keeping its distance from the unit ahead. The men lay on their rifles and expressed unreasonable yearnings for food. "Eat? Eat? Hell! Shock troops a!n't supposed to eat!" Officers cast anxious glances toward the utterly utter-ly exposed left. The French attack had failed to keep abreast of tha American. The left company, the Seventeenth, was In a cover of scrubby trees. The other companies were likewise concealed. con-cealed. Only thfc Forty-ninth lay perforce per-force In the open, on a bleak, shell-pocked shell-pocked slope. A high-flying Boche plane spotted Its platoon columns, asprawl eighty or a hundred yards apart on the chalky ground. "No good," said the second-in-command, cocking his head gander-wise in his fiat helmet, "is goin' to come of that dam' thing guess all our noble aviators avia-tors have gone home to lunch." The plane, high and small and shining In the sky, circled slowly above them. Far back of the Boche lines there was a railroad gun that took a wireless wire-less from the wheeling vulture. "Listen," said the captain, "listen to th " There were lots of shells passing over the long tearing whine of the 75s, the coarser voices of the Boche 77s replying, and heavy stuff, but most of It was breaking behind or in front of the battalion. Into this roof of sound came a deeper note a far-off far-off rumble that mounted to an enormous enor-mous shattering roar, like a freight train on a down-grade. The company flattened against the ground like partridges, par-tridges, and the world shook and reeled nnder them as a nine-Inch shell crashed Into the earth fifty yards ahead, exploding with a cataclysmic detonation that rocked their senses. An appalling geyser of black smoke and torn earth leaped skyward, jagged splinters of steel whined away, and stones and clods showered down. Before Be-fore the smoke had lifted from the monstrous crater the devastating rumble rum-ble came again, and the second shell roared down fifty yards to the rear. "Oh, Lordy I They've got us bracketed brack-eted I" "I saw that one! I saw It look right where the next one's gonna hit, n' " "Look where It's gonna hit! Lawd, ff I just knew It wasn't gonna hit me ahh I' The third shell came, and men who risked an eye could see it a dark, tremendous streak, shooting straight down to the quivering earth. A yawning yawn-ing hole opened with thunder fairly between two platoon columns, and th earth vomited. ... It was wonderful won-derful shooting. All the shells that followed dropped between the columns of prone men hut not a man was hit 1 The heavy projectiles sank far Into the chalky soil, aud the explosions sent the deadly fragments outward nnd over the company. More than a dozen shells were fired In all, the high sinister plane wheeling overhead the while. Then the company went forward with the battalion, very glad to move. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |