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Show I)ieUkrl Close Ranee - "' ' Described In a cmnrf v Jeriw Dy an Officer of f lie i TJiomajoivJr. Jtlb51 ,tV ' foulr ted by the AulW from- 5 poUce work. Rumors of great battles In the north. Glum and aad civilians -they were glum and aad everywhere in France, that spring of 1919 talking la anxlona groupa after the . town crier with his dram passed. Another troop train maybe the same train that waa carelessly left alongside a train containing the wine ration for some French division, the papera la whkfe ease are probably atlll accu-nwUtlnf. accu-nwUtlnf. Cantons after that The eptacementa debaseed late ef a Jane aftemeea and went np a great white road between exactly spaced poplars. . Tbey marched first In column col-umn ot , squads, then In column of files, platoons en opposite sides of the empty road. At the crest of a slope the column stopped. Ton could aee, hanging above the skyline to the north and east, curious shapes "Look Uke a elephant's head, bows on, wit' his ears oat don't they, sergeant ser-geant r The tall non-com replacement replace-ment officer la charge: "We'll atop here, sir. Boche sausages yonder-observation yonder-observation balloons see the whole country. We'll wait till dark." The detachment was glad to fall out off the road. The sun aet after a while, and the day drowaed Into the long twilight Presently the sergeant ser-geant said: "We can move now, sir." The replacements moved, making mak-ing no conversation. A little country road led them off the highway. They passed a shattered shat-tered farmhouse where a few soldiers lounged In the dusk, "Regimental, sir. Gets shelled a lot Vo, sir, they dont expect yon to report Somebody Some-body on the road to meet yon. . . . "A llttie group of officers rose out of the ditch, yawning. They looked slack and tired. "Replacement column? col-umn? Ton In charget Yes assignment assign-ment made back In Brigade. You'll go too, Henry: Yonr battalion gets a hundred and seventy, with five officers. offi-cers. Take 'em off the bead of the column tell Major Tun-Ill" The detachment followed the officer colled Henry, who set what they considered con-sidered an Immoderate pace. He passed the word: "Don't bunch up; If a plane comes over low, don't look np at It he can aee your faces; no araokln', an' don't talk" Tbey went through a gap In a hedge and were at another crossroads. cross-roads. "Fall out here, an' form combat com-bat paoka. Leave your stuff under the hedge. Take one blanket Come on quickly, now I an don't bunch opt The replacements formed combat packs expertly, remembering Parrls Island and Quantlco. "Smartly, "Smart-ly, now I Come by here, fill your pockets each man take two boxes hard bread Wherell you carry themt How In hell do I know-There know-There I" Two goods boxes eat close together, and the men filed between them. One box had dried prunes In It the other bread. "Don't stop I Don't stopl Right down that road, an' keep movln' I" Out over the woods a sound started, start-ed, a new sound. It was a rumbling whine, It grew to a ronr. and a 77 crashed down Jnst beyond the crossroads. cross-roads. A cloud blacker than the night leaped up, shot with red fire "Lie down, all hands 1" Another landed at once; the air was full of singing particles. par-ticles. The men, fiat 00 their faces, In the dark, waited numbly for the next order. There were a dosen ot so shells all around the place. The last one hit between the two goods boxes, where a man was lying. The boxes and the man vanished In a ruddy cloud better than If he'd got ten It In the belly and rolled around ' screaming. ... There were no more shells "Say, you know, I saw a arm an a rifle goln np wir that burst I who was be, anyway! " "Keep quiet, there I All right I on your feet right down that road " the officer ordered, and added to himself him-self "Dam it I -Should have remembered remem-bered they shell La Vole du Chatelle every night this time but they acted fine. . . A voice spoke op, excited, amused t "Say I " Sergeant McGee anything like that In Vera Crux" "Pipe, down, you Boot" They went down a wood-road, black as a pocket Jnst ahead came a bright flash and a roar, and fragments frag-ments ripped through the woods, and they heard a lamentable crying, getting get-ting weaker: "First aldl first aid" The column came to a dead mule and the wreck of a cart lying athwart the road, and a smoking hole, and a smell of high explosive, and the sharp reek of blood. There was a - struggling group, somebody working swiftly In the dark, a whiteness of bandages, and the white blur of a man's torso. "Lie etUl, damn your "O, Ahhhhhl Go easy, yon " "Hell, I know It hurts, guy, but I got to get this bandage ban-dage on, havent It Come on quit klckln' " Passing around the mule, a man stepped on something neither hard nor soft-rnothlng else on earth fwls that wav and he floundered to ! SYNOPSIS ! CHAPTER l Th author 4or!b hew th Flnt battalion ot th Fifth tnartu ar quartered naar Marian? Carina; tt flnt part ot June, II 11, When they are suddenly sent up north te relieve tb F1rt dlvlalon, beartnc th brunt ot a tidal wave of German )at breaking through tor a rreat er-teaalv. er-teaalv. Fart f the Fifth wret Kill 141 treat the enemy and wait there for th ! aouater offensive thr aa formlas. While tbr He aep- Crlac th Seek a Ataohnat ef o( eoalaeer eoaiea to tkelr SUtaaee. CHAPTER H X l The Boche wanted Hill 143; he J came, and the rifles broke him, and he eame again. All hla batteries were In action, and always his machine-guns machine-guns scourged the place, but he could Dot make head against the rifles. Guns he eoald understand; be knew all about bombs and aato-rlflta and ma-eblne-guna and treneb-mortara, but aimed, suetained rifle fire, that cornea from aewhere In particular and picks eff men it brought the war home to the individual and demoralised htm. Toward uld-day, this sixth of June, lOlt, the condition around Hill 142 stabilised. A small action, Uught by battalions ever a Umlted area of no special Importance, It gave the Boche aomethlng new te think out and It may be that people who write histories his-tories will date an era from It : Between attacka the atretcher-bearera atretcher-bearera and the Red Cross men on both aides did their atmost for the wounded who were scattered through the wheat around the bill, and who now, under the torture of stiffening wounds and the hot sun, began to cry out As the afternoon advanced, you heard pitiful voices, little and thin across the fields: "Ach, Hlmmel, hllf, bUfl Braadlghal . .. Llebe Gott brsndigher . . . "First-aid this way, Flrst-eld, for the love of God I" . . . Lat In the afternoon a great up-rear up-rear arose to the right There was mere artillery up now, more machlne-t machlne-t guns, more ef everything. The Third battalion of the Sixth marines and the Third battalion of the Fifth at tacked the town called Bouresches and the wood known as Bols de Bel-lean. Bel-lean. They attacked across the open, losing hideously. Platoons were shot down entire. Lieutenant Robinson got Into Bouresches, with twenty men out of some hundred who started, threw th Boche out and held it Tbey gained a footing In the rocky ledges at the edge of the Bola de Belleau, suffering much from what was believed to be a machine-gun nest at this point Thej tried to leave It and go on, with s containing force to watch it; the; found that the whole wood waa a machine-gun nest Night descended over a tortured area ef wheat and woodland, lit by flares and gun-flashes, flailed by machine-guns, and In two many places pitiful with crying of wounded who had lain at) the day untended In a merciless sua. Stretcher bearers and . combat patrols roamed over It In the dark. Water parties and ration parties groped back from forward positions over unknown trails. There were dogfights aU over the place, wild alarms, . and hysterical out-- out-- breaks ef rifle-fire. It waa the same with the Boche ; be knew the ground better, and he waa determined to repossess re-possess it Hla people filtered back through the American strong points, for the marine did not hold a continuous con-tinuous line ; Isolated positions were connected by patrols and machine-guns machine-guns laid for Interlocking fire.- . j At the southern angle ot Hill 142' the Forty-ninth company put out a listening postone man down the elope a little way, to watch for vlsl-tors. vlsl-tors. In the night there waa a trampling, tramp-ling, a grunt and one scream "Boche f At once the hill blazed Into action weary men, overspent, they fired Into the dark nntll their pieces were hot. And after, they found the listening post fellow, bayoneted. bayon-eted. And down the bill a little huddle hud-dle of new dead. Not all the rifle-fire rifle-fire had gone astray. Back in brigade, officers bent over maps and framed orders for a stronger attack on the Bols de Bel-lean Bel-lean at dawn. ... Brigade was writing writ-ing also to Division: "... casualties severe . . . figures on which to bnse call for replacements will be submitted sub-mitted aa aoon as possible. . . . e e At the crossroads beyond La Vole du . Chatelle the replacements met the war. Behind them, crammed somehow Into weeks, were Quantlco, the transport, trans-port, Brest a French troop train. Then there waa the golden country around St . Algnan, the "Saint Onion" of Americana The war waa represented by demoniac de-moniac non-coma, instructors In this and that Bayonet drills "Come on, now; lemme bear you 'What do we wash our bar'neta in) German one side, cursing hysterically. "Quiet back there pass the word, no talking T The flies obediently passed the word. Tbe column groped on In the dark. It came out of the woods Into a pale stone town Champlllon. There were no lights In the houses; the place had an air of death about It There was a Fh.D. from Harvsrd In that sweating file, a big, pale, nn-- nn-- handy private, bounded habitually by sergeants and troubled with Indigestion Indiges-tion and patriotism. For all hla traln-(Coatlaued traln-(Coatlaued oat peg, four). blood r Aw sing out Uke yon meant It yon dam' replacements I m swear, Ifa a shame to feed animals ani-mals like yon to the Germans" Gas-mask drill "Take more than Ave seconds, an your maw , gets s gold star Now I the gas-alert position posi-tion O, tor Gawd's sake, you guy, yon wtf the two left feet" "But sergeant I find that I have a certain difficult Sergeanta also awear terribly. . . . There waa every kind ef drill, eight hours a day of It, and ' w : 'iV I7" I FIX BAYONETS! rog, a pact wai not at noma on bit shoulders or a rifle eaay In his hands. Be thoDgbt of the pleasant study back Cambridge way, of the gold-end-blue sergeant under the "First to right I" recruiting poster Tour Job, too, fella I Coma on an' belp lick the Hani Ton dont wanta wait to be drafted, a big goy like yon I We can nee yon In the marines " A hearty, red-necked ruffian extremely competent com-petent in bla vocation, no doubt Good enough cbapa. Tea . . . 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 assaya on neb things for the more discriminating reviews ... scholarly abstractions. abstrac-tions. . . . Of all the stupid. Ignorant, nnclvll-Used nnclvll-Used things, a war I Who coined that phase, civilized warfare There was no such thing I , . , nere, In the moat civilized country on earth. . . . Th neighborhood of Chateau-Thierry . . Montaigne's town, wasn't It? Th kings of Prance bad a chateau near It, once. And yet It waa always a cockpit . . . since Aettus rolled back Attila In the battle of the nations, at Chalons Napoleon fought Champ-I Champ-I Aubert and Montmlrall around here always war I 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 bole, and the doctor of philosophy, sometime private of marines, lay beside be-side it, very neatly beheaded, with the I rifle, that bad been such a bore to keep dean, across bis knees, and dried prunes spilling out of the pock-I pock-I eta that be never bad learned to button. but-ton. The column went on. At dawn a naval medico attached to the marina ma-rina brigade, with a staff officer, I passed that way. I Odd, the wounds yon see," ob-served ob-served the naval man, professionally Interested. Be looked curiously. "I Sketehea Prom Captain Thomason's Notebook. couldnt have done a neater decapitation decapita-tion than that myself. Wonder who took bis identification tags with It" 1 see, Beplacement, by bis uniform " (For the Fifth and Bbrth regiments bad long since worn out their forester-green marine uniforms, and wars wearing army khaki, while the replacements re-placements came In new green clothing.) cloth-ing.) The staff officer picked np thi ! rifle, snapped back the bolt, and squinted expertly down the bora "DlsTitiny be said. "Sure ba wai replacement Ton never catch an old-timer with bora like that- j fluty I Bet there naant been a rag j through it In week. Ton know, sur- j son, I was looking at some of the j rifles of that bunch of machine-gun- i ners lying In the brush hist acroaa from Battalion: they were beautiful. Naver saw, better kept plecea. Fine oldlere In a lot of ways, these Bocae!" Meantime the column had passed Into heavier woods, and halted where the rifles ahead Bounded very near. They aaw dugouts, betrayed by the thread of candlelight around the dges of the blankets that cloaked their entrances. One was a dressing-station, dressing-station, by the sound and the smell of it The officer named Henry ducked Into th other. There a stocky major sat np on the floor and rolled a dg-retto, dg-retto, which he lighted at a guttering gutter-ing candle. "Replacements In? Well, what do they look like?'' "Same men I saw la the training reas last month, sir. A sprinkling Of old-time marines Sergeant McOee, that wa broke for something or other la Panama, la with 'em and the rest of them are young college lads and boys off the farm One material, sir. Not much drill, but they probably know how to shoot, they take orders, ad they dont scare worth a cent I 8helled coming In. at Vole du Cha-telle, Cha-telle, and some more this side of Champtllon several casualties. No confusion nothing like a panic-Laid panic-Laid down and waited for orders ld exactly as they were told fine men, sir!" (To be continued) |