Chapter VII: Introduction: Bravery (1)

By RUPERT HUGHES

Formerly Major United States Army

Bravery is the beautiful, impatient gesture of the soul at its highest reach, baring its own breast to a fatal wound in its eagerness to deal a fatal blow at something it abhors.

Bravery is poetry, drama in deed instead of word. It has always been lovable and beloved.

There is distinguished valor as there is distinguished art, for there are degrees of courage as of intelligence and talent. Many people think beautiful thoughts: a few express them. Someone frames an old idea with an exquisite twist of phrase and a universal proverb results. So some one citizen expresses in one felicitous act an ideal of his people and is accepted as their national hero.

Conspicuous bravery always owes part of its success to good fortune. At the cry of a leader—or in this war at the arrival of “zero hour” on the wrist watches—a whole regiment went forward, nearly every man doing his duty with complete courage. Some heroes were dogged and unimaginative; some revealed ingenuity or invention. But to a single man fell the opportunity and the inspiration to do some extra task with a certain picturesque felicity. His unluckier companions and his generals rejoiced to celebrate him, diminishing their own prestige to enhance his. And the story of his happy thought becomes the delight of his nation, and perhaps of many nations.

There is a kind of injustice in it as there generally is in awards and preferments. Where all have forgotten selfishness and comfort and cast their lives into the furnace, it seems a pity that only a few should emerge with fame. And yet since we can no more remember all our heroes than we can call the roll of the stars in our sky, it would be a mistake to favor no one, to have no crosses of war.

The schoolboys cherish the name of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ. But they ignore the 700 Platæans who perished also, and as bravely. This is regrettable, and yet it is better to make a watchword of the name Leonidas than to forget the whole event because it is more than the brain will carry.

Fame is a lottery with a few capital prizes. The winners show perhaps no more wisdom, no more courage than all the other gamblers. In the baseball phrase they simply “luck in.” Yet they will get their names in the papers, people will boast of knowing them; prestige and fortune will be theirs and oblivion will absorb the others. But if you are going to have lotteries succeed, you must offer capital prizes and pay them. And war is the lottery of lotteries.

There have always been wars and, unless hope shall triumph over experience at last, there always will be wars; and there will always be an appetite for tales of heroism. The earliest literature records them and so must the latest.

Since no man has any more lives to give for his country than our schoolteacher spy had, all heroisms are in a sense equal; for, since a man risks the only life he has, it matters little how, whether from a cave-man’s axe or a shell that shoots eighty miles.

Bravery is no new thing. It cannot be listed as one of the inventions of this war. It is matter for enough pride that there was no failure of it in quality, but rather an unheard-of versatility in it, and an unequaled quantity; for never before was there a war in which so many soldiers were engaged, or so incessantly engaged or under such hardships, or such varied dangers. To an extent unapproached hitherto, nations were mobilized _en masse_. For the first time they settled down at grips in continuous lines from frontier to frontier with no relaxation of vigilance or activity through long years of sun, snow, rain, and mud.

It is curious to note that in this war, innumerable hosts of brave men were dragged into glory—one might say “kicked upstairs”—by conscription.

In America we had the small Regular Army, the slightly larger and very irregular National Guard; then armies of volunteers, followed by armies recruited willy-nilly through the exemption boards. Not only did the draft compel enlistment, but the very prospect of it drove many men to volunteer before they were drawn. This is said in no derogation, for obligations vary and many a man who could not find the way to volunteer was glad to be coerced. And some of the men who volunteered at once would better have stayed at home.

Though the American Armies began in various strata, in a very short time all distinctions were abolished and everybody was “U. S.”

The glory was similarly shuffled. In the records of achievements in ground gained, prisoners taken, casualties endured, the Regular Army, the National Guard divisions and the draft divisions were rivals of such close conclusion that disputes continue as to the actual priorities. In any case the margins are narrow. Here also luck played its part, for the morale of the enemy and the ground to be taken varied enormously from day to day and from place to place.

Curiously, the most successful American hero of the war, judging by the score, was a “conscientious objector,” Sergeant York. His conscience did not lead him to the fanatic lengths of many others who defied the government and refused to obey any commands whatever; strange perverse creatures who were such lovers of liberty that they would do nothing to defend it, men who abhorred the thought of killing their fellow creatures so utterly that they would not lift a finger to put a stop to slaughter and disarm the German butchers. Sergeant York’s religious scruples did not carry him so far, yet he was a reluctant and a tardy entrant into the war, and he was with difficulty persuaded to accept the immortal fame awaiting him.

Sergeant York was a straight-shooting open-living mountaineer. Yet there were city-bred heroes whose impetuosity led them to plunge into the war long before it spread to America. One of these was an actor and a dancer. Wallace McCutcheon, who pretended to British citizenship, got in at the start, and by sheer bravery and persistence rose from private to major. He would indeed have been a colonel if his second wound had caught him fifteen minutes later, for his colonel was killed then and he would have been automatically promoted.

There were sons of wealthy parents and sons of humble parents who joined the French, the Canadian or the British forces and fought in the skies, or on land or sea for years before the rest of the nation decided to follow them overseas.

This was a world war indeed, a universal struggle, and there was no race, color, condition, creed, or trade that was not represented and brilliantly represented. Clergymen, priests, waiters, polo-players, convicts, negroes, musicians, ditch-diggers, gunmen, farmers, chorusmen, gamblers—the entire list of heroes would exhaust any classification of the human race or its activities. A complete beadroll of heroes would fill a city directory, and make the most dismal reading.

The only way in which justice can be done to anybody at all, is by omitting even to mention the vast majority, and to select a few at random, like a clutch of sample red apples from an enormous harvest.

It is not feasible to attempt internationalism or non-partisanship. We must ignore the splendid heroism of other nations and leave them to the celebration of their own heroes and the neglect of ours.

Of our own there remains too great a multitude to permit a systematic selection of examples. Some are here because they had the luck to be observed by skillful observers and recorders, as many kings are remembered because their historians or poets were superior to those of other kings.

This volume, then, has all the faults of any other anthology. Yet the most imperfect anthology is better than no bouquet at all; and a bouquet is the happiest representative of a garden, as a framed canvas is the best memorial of a sunset.

In this connection, there is a quaint poem of Emily Dickinson’s; she attached it to some flowers she selected from her garden:

I send two sunsets—
Day and I in competition ran.
I finished two, and several stars,
While He was making one.
His own is ample—
But as I was saying to a friend,
Mine is the more convenient
To carry in the hand.

So it may be said of this volume: it does not contain the entire star-crowded firmament of the War of Wars, but it is “more convenient to carry in the hand.”

It would be belittling the bravery of our own men and the men of the Allies to pretend that the enemy lacked courage. The Germans and Austrians fought brilliantly, scientifically, ruthlessly. Individuals displayed the purest heroism and chivalry. But since it is impossible to catalogue everybody, I imagine that this omission, at least, will be indulgently regarded.

America entered the war late but at a time of peculiar desperation. Her appearance on the field changed the whole balance of power.

Before this time, the _generalissimo_, Foch, was like a gambler trying to break the bank with his last remaining gold pieces. Immediately after, he was a man with an inexhaustible supply of remittances. What would have been insane recklessness before now became good strategy, and he could at last follow out his life-motto: “Attack, attack, attack!”

On the other hand the Germans, having entered the war as cold-blooded business men, and conducted it with all the soullessness of the proverbial corporation, realized speedily that the investment was a failure and made every effort to get out as cheaply as possible.

The Allies realized that their victory would be wasted if Germany were permitted to retire with any prestige. A crushing and undeniable defeat was of the utmost importance. Hence the Americans were called upon to attack with human sledgehammers the hinges of the German defense and the strong points of rearguard action. Their losses were therefore huge for the brief time of engagement, since they ran to meet danger with an amazing fire.

Heroes sprang up, as from sown dragon’s teeth; so fast that there was no recording them. In air, on land and sea, and under the land and the sea, our men wrought so godlike well that it is pitiful to leave any of them without his meed of praise.

A word ought to be said also, for the prevented heroes, the unwilling absentees from the battle, those who ate their hearts out in America as instructors in camps, as dealers in supplies, plodders in paper work.

Of the Regular Army officers, who had dedicated their lives to valor, made bravery their profession, hardly more than one-third were even enabled to cross the sea, and a large mass of the small portion that got across was never permitted to come within earshot of the fighting line. War has no bitterer cruelties than the fate of such men.

There were National Guard men and officers, too, who had given a large part of their leisure to military training only to find themselves condemned to inaction. There was a vast amount of plucking by surgeons, for disabilities that had not prevented men from earning success in civil life. But trench life was so searching a test of strength that youth was almost as essential as in the prize ring.

Many of the stay-at-homes had a rightful share in the glory of the men they trained and sent as their delegates to the victory. Conspicuously absent were Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who did so much to inspire his countrymen with battle-ardor, and General Leonard Wood, who built up the whole system of officers’ training camps, advancing us incalculably along the road to preparedness.

Then there was the thwarted courage of the countless men who tried to volunteer from civil life and were refused in droves, or furnished with an almost ironical uniform to emphasize their domesticity. This was the swivel-chair army, and the badge of service was the silver chevron. At first granted as an honor, it proved so unwelcome that it had to be enforced by order.

Uniforms of a sort were worn also by Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army, and other semi-civilians, thousands of whom reached the battle front and many of whom displayed perfect gallantry.

Women to an extraordinary degree took part in this war. The Russian Battalion of Death was the most startling verification of the Amazonian myths, but in every country there were women unnumbered who courted danger with a superb consecration to duty.

There is no stranger or more persistent falsehood than the claim that women are less belligerent than men. It has been constantly reiterated that if women had the vote, or even the say, there would be no more wars. As if history had not abounded in women whose native ferocity or patriotism inspired them to frenzies of wrath, or self-sacrifice!

In this war as in all wars, mothers surrendered their boys with fortitude, or compelled them into the ranks. Mothers without sons to give envied their luckier sisters. Women made speeches, posters, wrote articles, poems, songs, did office work, drove ambulances, trucks, and toiled in munitions factories where danger was more unceasing than on the battle front.

The Red Cross women and their untrained aids, many of them women of noble birth or of the most delicate heritages, shared the hardships of the men. The Salvation Army women made doughnuts and pies in the front line trenches. The Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and numerous other organizations crowded to the front. Actors and actresses faced death in order to make cheer for the soldiers about to die.

The difficulty was always to keep the throngs back from the fighting-lines rather than to whip them forward.

The fighting-line was indeed a vague term, for children were killed in their cradles in cities far distant from the battle front. Worshipers in a Paris church were killed on a Good Friday by a shot from a German cannon fired eighty miles away.

The raids by Zeppelins and aeroplanes, the planting of explosives in factories, the sowing of mines in seas, the activities of spies and _saboteurs_ made it uncertain just where danger was. There was courage everywhere.

The variety of dangers was beyond anything hitherto recorded, and a certain supremacy in dauntlessness might be claimed by our generation; for men are most easily frightened by risks they are not used to, and every month seemed to bring some new astonishment. The submarine and the flying machine had never been employed in wars before. They were as terrifying to their passengers as to their targets. They brought remote civilians and non-combatants into their field of fire by intention or indifference.

The air-raids over London and Paris and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and various hospital ships horrified the world. The first gas attacks added a new shudder to war. The prolonged and hideous imprisonment in the trenches where men stood to arms in icy mud kept the soul and the body on the rack. The hand grenade came again into fashion with a new deadliness. The machine-gun literally sprayed the field with bullets, mowing men down as with the scythe of death. The tanks were such a prodigy as the first elephants brought into battle. Depth bombs for submarines, land-mines, cannon on railroad tracks, trench-knives, incendiary bullets, barbed wire charged with lightning—it would be impossible to enumerate the new devices for inflicting wounds and death.

Yet science could not invent a way to frighten men out of their wits or out of their patriotism. The men in danger simply took what came and held on while the scientists in the rear devised some new defense for the new offense.

Nothing was more spectacular than the development of the air-duel and the air-battle by whole fleets of airships. The penalty for bad luck in such an encounter was to fall thousands of feet in a blazing machine. But candidates for these super-chivalrous jousts were innumerable.

Naval warfare had its novelties in frightfulness as well. Vessels were subject to destruction by a planted or a drifting mine or by a torpedo shot from an unseen submersible. The destruction of a populous ship was like the cataclysm that annihilates a city. The tortures of patrol duty, the management or the pursuit of submarines, the combats with airships, the protection of convoys, and numberless new-fangled terrors were all superimposed on the ancient dangers of seafaring.

Besides the fighting navy there was the mercantile marine charged with the transportation of incredible amounts of supplies and millions of soldiers. With these ships the submarine worked fearful havoc, filling the Seven Seas with hulks and corpses.

Yet in spite of all the surprises of science, this war, like all other wars of the past—and it is safe to say of the future—was waged upon the most ancient lines, and its battle-technic was reducible to simple terms.

A, B and C attack D, E and F. A superiority in weapons must be met by a superiority in morale or a superiority in tactics. Ability to attack and to endure attack are the proofs of fitness to survive. The victor will be the latter one to quit fighting. While the war must be won by masses of men, the quality of the mass is the algebraic total of the individual qualities.

A hero is a man plus. A coward is a man minus. A few heroes will counteract the influence of many cowards or even lend them strength enough to become heroes also.

In its individual heroes, moral, spiritual and physical, lies therefore the prosperity of a nation. It is well that a nation should keep its eye on its heroes, and reward them well, at least with fame.

This volume devoted to accounts of individual achievements is something more than picturesque. It is as important to the record as the consideration of any of the larger aspects of war. It strikes the human note, and the human note is vital in so human a thing as a war; since war gives humanity its widest and fiercest vibration from the utmost baseness to the supreme nobility.

THE SOLDIER

_By_

Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_, Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company.

Deeds of Heroism and Daring

“AND A FEW MARINES”

Eye-witness Account of the Belleau Wood Action in the Marne Salient Beginning June 6th, 1918

It has been insisted that more than their share of glory was bestowed upon the Marines for their work at Château-Thierry, other units of the A.E.F. being entitled to share the honors of those terrible but wonderful days when the barbarians were stopped. That is of course true, for the battle generally described as Château-Thierry had to do with a region, not merely a town, and it was in Belleau Wood and at Bouresches that the Marines fought so splendidly and so successfully to save Paris. Honors conferred in the early and censored dispatches have since been more properly distributed, and the various divisions—the 1st and 2d, the 3d, the 26th and the 42d—engaged at different points and at different times, have had the just recognition of the honors due them. But the distribution has not in any degree diminished the proud record of the Marines in maintaining the place of honor to which they were assigned June 6th. A very voluminous and authoritative account of the 6th Regiment, 2d Division, and its service in France was written by its commander, Brig. Gen. A. W. Catlin under the title _With the Help of God and a Few Marines_. In that volume one may find the authentic details of the heroic exploits of the Marines. But we are now concerned only with the incidents and events that caused the French to change the name of Belleau Wood (Bois de Belleau) to “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

The first spring drive of the Germans began March 21, 1918. It swept across the Somme and over the plains of Picardy irresistibly. Foch seemed unable to check the advance and there was consternation among the Allied nations, and the men in the trenches were anxious and restless. The enemy were sweeping everything before them. “With forty divisions, including some 400,000 of their best troops, and with the greatest auxiliary force of tanks, machine guns and poison gas projectiles ever mobilized,” says Gen. Catlin, “they rolled on for thirty miles in spite of enormous losses, advancing at the rate of six or eight miles a day, capturing men and guns by the wholesale, and occupying 650 square miles of territory. There were simply not enough French and British to stop them. The Allies resisted heroically, but they were forced to yield to the unanswerable argument of superior weight. And where was the American aid that the French people had been building their failing hopes upon?

“Held at Rheims and west of Soissons, the Germans thrust a U-shaped salient clear down to the Marne, its rounded apex resting on a contracted six-mile front between Château-Thierry and Dormans, but thirty-five scant miles from Paris.

“Then the harried soldiers of France arose in their might for a last grim stand. The name of the Marne was a rallying cry for them. ‘They shall not,’ they muttered between gritted teeth; and they did not pass.”

Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French on the Marne at Château-Thierry was the 3rd Division of Regular troops who had arrived on May 31st in the nick of time in support of the French. On this occasion the 7th Machine Gun Battalion defended the bridge at Château-Thierry with the greatest heroism, suffering very heavy losses, and to them especially belongs the credit of checking the enemy’s attempt to cross the river.

To the northwest of the town lay Belleau Wood, a natural fortress which was full of Germans. Although the enemy had been checked in the attempt to cross the Marne, his position in Belleau Wood was a very strong one, constituting an excellent point of vantage for a sudden thrust against the Allied line along the river. Foch now decided to call upon American troops and the Marines of the 2nd Division were ordered up and sent into the line to capture Belleau Wood.

IN THE AMERICAN WAY

The delay occasioned by the French-American resistance at Château-Thierry gave time for the organization of the defensive strategy which culminated in the battle of Belleau Wood. It is interesting to know in connection with Château-Thierry that the Americans entered under the direction of the French. General Catlin says apropos of the Belleau Wood preparation:

“I think the French hesitated to trust us too far in this crisis. We were without tanks, gas shells, or flame projectors. We were untried in open warfare. But General Harbord begged to be allowed to tackle the job.

“‘Let us fight in our own way,’ said he, ‘and we’ll stop them.’

“The situation was acute; there seemed to be no alternative. General Harbord was given free rein, and in that moment we passed out from our French tutelage and acted as an American army fighting side by side with our hard-pressed Allies. The battle of Belleau Wood was fought by American troops, under American officers, supported by American guns, in a typically American manner. And the battle was won.”

The details of this battle in the wood are not to be given here. One or two of the facts that stand out must serve as illustrative of the whole splendid performance. The advance began with the 5th Battalion under Major Berry and the 6th Battalion under Major Holcomb holding the center, the French on the left and the 23d Infantry on the right, Sibley’s battalion supporting.

FACING THE MYSTERY

“We stood facing the dark, sullen mystery of Belleau Wood. It was a mystery, for we knew not what terrible destruction the Hun might be preparing for us within its baleful borders, nor at what moment it might be launched in all its fury against us. That the wood was strongly held we knew, and so we waited.

“No one knows how many Germans were in those woods. I have seen the estimate placed at 1,000, but there were certainly more than that. It had been impossible to get patrols into the woods, but we knew they were full of machine guns and that the enemy had trench mortars there. We captured five of their minenwerfers later. So far as we knew, there might have been any number of men in there, but we had to attack just the same, and with but a handful. Sibley and Berry had a thousand men each, but only half of these could be used for the first rush, and as Berry’s position was problematical, it was Sibley’s stupendous task to lead his 500 through the southern end of the wood clear to the eastern border if the attack was not to be a total failure. Even to a Marine it seemed hardly men enough.

“Orders had been given to begin the attack at 5 o’clock. The men knew in a general way what was expected of them and what they were up against, but I think only the officers realized the almost impossible task that lay before them. I knew, and the knowledge left me little comfort. But I had perfect confidence in the men; that never faltered. That they might break never once entered my head. They might be wiped out, I knew, but they would never break.

© _Leslie’s Weekly._

Where the Marines Made Their Début

This is the road where the Marines in the name of America served notice on the German war lords that they could not capture Paris.]

“It was a clear, bright day. At that season of the year it did not get dark till about 8.30, so we had three hours of daylight ahead of us.

“As soon as I received the orders I got Holcomb and Sibley together at the former’s headquarters, some 500 yards back of the line.

“With map in hand, I explained the situation to them without trying to gloss over any of its difficulties, and gave them their orders. The men seemed cool, in good spirits and ready for the word to start. Some one has asked me what I said, what final word of inspiration I gave those men about to face sudden death.

“I am no speech maker. If the truth must be told, I think what I said was, ‘Give ’em Hell, boys!’ It was the sort of thing the Marine understands. And that is about what they did.

A BULLET THROUGH THE LUNG

“Just about the time Sibley’s men struck the woods a sniper’s bullet hit me in the chest. It felt exactly as though some one had struck me heavily with a sledge. It swung me clear around and toppled me over on the ground. When I tried to get up I found that my right side was paralyzed.

“Beside me stood Captain Tribot-Laspierre, that splendid fellow who stuck to me through thick and thin. He had been begging me to get back to a safer place, but I was obstinate and he never once thought of leaving me. When I fell he came out of his cover and rushed to my side. He is a little man and I am not, but he dragged me head first back to the shelter trench some twenty or twenty-five feet away. My life has been spared and I owe much to that Frenchman.

© _Leslie’s Weekly._

The Bridge Across the Marne at Château-Thierry

Where the 7th Machine Gun Battalion of the 3rd Division Checked the German Drive.]

“I have heard of men getting wounded who said that it felt like a red-hot iron being jammed through them before the world turned black. None of these things happened to me. I suffered but little pain and I never for a moment lost consciousness. Nor did any thought of death occur to me, though I knew I had been hit in a vital spot. I was merely annoyed at my inability to move and carry on.

“The bullet went clean through my right lung, in at the front and out at the back, drilling a hole straight through me.

“No orders as to the adjustment of rifle sights had been given, as the range was point blank. Watches had been synchronized and no further orders were given. As the hands touched the zero hour there was a single shout, and at exactly 5 o’clock the whole line leaped up simultaneously and started forward, Berry’s 500 and Sibley’s 500, with the others in support.

“Instantly the beast in the wood bared his claws. The Boches were ready and let loose a sickening machine gun and rifle fire into the teeth of which the Marines advanced. The German artillery in the woods increased the fury of its fire, and the big guns at Belleau and Torcy, a mile and a half away, pounded our advancing lines.

“On Berry’s front there was the open wheat field, 400 yards or more wide—winter wheat, still green but tall and headed out. Other cover there was none. On Sibley’s left there was open grass land perhaps 200 yards wide; his right was close to the woods.

“Owing to the poor communications, the two battalions engaged in what were virtually independent actions, and, as I had feared, Berry got the worst end of it. He had to face that wide open space, swept by machine gun fire, with a flanking fire from the direction of Torcy.

AS SIBLEY’S MEN ADVANCED

“My eyes were on what Sibley’s men were doing, and I only knew in a general way what was happening to the battalion of the 5th. But Floyd Gibbons, the correspondent of the Chicago _Tribune_, was with Berry and saw it all. He was, in fact, seriously wounded himself, and has lost an eye as a result. Gibbons says that the platoons started in good order and advanced steadily into the field between clumps of woods. It was flat country with no protection of any sort except the bending wheat. The enemy opened up at once and it seemed, he says, as if the air were full of red-hot nails. The losses were terrific. Men fell on every hand there in the open, leaving great gaps in the line. Berry was wounded in the arm, but pressed on with the blood running down his sleeve.

“Into a veritable hell of hissing bullets, into that death-dealing torrent, with heads bent as though facing a March gale, the shattered lines of Marines pushed on. The headed wheat bowed and waved in that metal cloudburst like meadow grass in a summer breeze. The advancing lines wavered, and the voice of a Sergeant was heard above the uproar:

“‘Come on, you —— — ——! Do you want to live forever?’

“The ripping fire grew hotter. The machine guns at the edge of the woods were now a bare hundred yards away, and the enemy gunners could scarcely miss their targets. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. Our men were forced to throw themselves flat on the ground or be annihilated, and there they remained in that terrible hail till darkness made it possible for them to withdraw to their original position.

“Berry’s men did not win that first encounter in the attack on Belleau Wood, but it was not their fault. Never did men advance more gallantly in the face of certain death; never did men deserve greater honor for valor.

“Sibley, meanwhile, was having better luck. I watched his men go in and it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed. The battalion pivoted on its right, the left sweeping across the open ground in four waves, as steadily and correctly as though on parade. There were two companies of them, deployed in four skirmish lines, the men placed five yards apart and the waves fifteen to twenty yards behind each other.

“I say they went in as if on parade, and that is literally true. There was no yell and wild rush, but a deliberate forward march, with the lines at right dress. They walked at the regulation pace, because a man is of little use in a hand-to-hand bayonet struggle after a hundred yards dash. My hands were clenched and all my muscles taut as I watched that cool, intrepid, masterful defiance of the German spite. And still there was no sign of wavering or breaking.

THE RIGHT QUALITIES THERE

“Oh, it took courage and steady nerves to do that in the face of the enemy’s machine gun fire. Men fell there in the open, but the advance kept steadily on to the woods. It was then that discipline and training counted. Their minds were concentrated not on the enemy’s fire but on the thing they had to do and the necessity for doing it right. They were listening for orders and obeying them. In this frame of mind the soldier can perhaps walk with even more coolness and determination than he can run. In any case it was an admirable exhibition of military precision and it gladdened their Colonel’s heart.

“The Marines have a war cry that they can use to advantage when there is need of it. It is a blood-curdling yell calculated to carry terror to the heart of the waiting Hun. I am told that there were wild yells in the woods that night, when the Marines charged the machine gun nests, but there was no yelling when they went in. Some one has reported that they advanced on those woods crying, ‘Remember the _Lusitania_!’ If they did so, I failed to hear it. Somehow that doesn’t sound like the sort of things the Marine says under the conditions. So far as I could observe not a sound was uttered throughout the length of those four lines. The men were saving their breath for what was to follow.

© _Leslie’s Weekly._

What American Artillery Fire Did to Vaux

Captured German officers declared that the American fire was the most deadly and concentrated they had ever faced.]

© _Leslie’s Weekly._

American Soldiers in Vaux

The capture of Vaux, situated on the Château-Thierry-Paris highway, marked the beginning of the check to the Germans in their drive to the Marne in 1918. One of the big guns which fired on Paris was situated near here.]

“I am afraid I have given but a poor picture of that splendid advance. There was nothing dashing about it like a cavalry charge, but it was one of the finest things I have ever seen men do. They were men who had never before been called upon to attack a strongly held enemy position. Before them were the dense woods effectively sheltering armed and highly trained opponents of unknown strength. Within its depths the machine guns snarled and rattled and spat forth a leaden death. It was like some mythical monster belching smoke and fire from its lair. And straight against it marched the United States Marines, with heads up and the light of battle in their eyes.

“Well, they made it. They reached the woods without breaking. They had the advantage of slightly better cover than Berry’s men and the defensive positions at the lower end of the woods had not been so well organized by the Germans as those on the western side. The first wave reached the low growth at the edge of the woods and plunged in. Then the second wave followed, and the third and the fourth, and disappeared from view.”

About an hour later Catlin had the attention of a surgeon, but while he lay there gas shells began bursting nearby and they put the gas mask on him. “I never knew before how uncomfortable one of those things could be. It is hard enough for a man to breathe with a lung full of blood without having one of those smothering masks clapped over his face.” He was got to Lucy for treatment and then taken to Paris, where quarts of blood were drawn from his pleural cavity. The wonder is that he came through it at all.

IN THE BELLEAU WOOD

“The action was all in the hands of the platoon officers. Success or failure rested on their shoulders. It is not the general who wins such a battle as that, but the captain, the sergeant, the private.

“It has been called an exaggerated riot, that desperate conflict in the wood. It was hand-to-hand fighting from the first, and those Germans, hating cold steel as they do, soon learned what American muscle and determination are like. From tree to tree fought our Marines, from rock to rock, like the wild Indians of their native land. It is the sort of fighting the Marine has always gloried in. And in that fighting they beat the Germans on two points—initiative and daring, and accuracy of rifle fire. They picked the German gunners out of the trees like squirrels, and in innumerable fierce onslaughts that took place at the machine gun nests the Marines always struck the first blow and it was usually a knock-out. It was a wild, tempestuous, rough-and-tumble scrap, with no quarter asked or given. Rifles grew hot from constant firing and bayonets reeked with German gore. It was man to man, there in the dark recesses of the woods, with no gallery to cheer the gladiators, and it was the best man that won.

“The thick woods made the fighting a matter of constant ambuscades and nerve-racking surprises, but the Marines tore on. With Sibley at their head nothing could stop them. Machine gun nests whose crews held out formed little islands in the welter about which the Marine flood swept, eventually to engulf them. Some of the Germans turned and fled, abandoning their guns; others waited till caught in the rear and then threw up their hands and surrendered; some waited in huddled groups in the ravines till the gleaming-eyed devil dogs should leap upon them; some stuck to their guns till an American bullet or an American bayonet laid them low. One by one the guns were silenced or were turned in the opposite direction.

“They started in at 5 o’clock. At 6:45 the report was sent to headquarters that the machine gun fire at the lower end of the woods had been practically silenced. At 7:30 German prisoners began to come in.

“Night fell with the fighting still going on and only the flash of shooting to see by. But at 9 o’clock word came from Sibley by runner that he had got through and had attained the first objective, the eastern edge of the wood. In four hours he and his men had passed clear through the lower quarter of Belleau Wood, traversing nearly a mile, and had cleaned things up as they went. And only 500 of them started; I hesitate to mention the number that finished.

“At 10 o’clock reinforcements were sent in with orders to consolidate the position.”

THE TAKING OF BOURESCHES

In the meantime other Marines, the 96th Company of Major Holcomb’s battalion and one of Sibley’s reserve companies, were engaged with the task of ejecting the Germans from Bouresches, the town just east of the woods, as necessary to be cleared as Belleau Wood itself. Holcomb’s men got to Bouresches first and went in.

“Half of this little force was under Captain Duncan and the other half under Lieutenant Robertson. The enemy’s fire, as they neared the town, was frightful, and more men fell than kept going. Duncan was shot down while coolly advancing with his pipe in his mouth. Robertson, who, by the way, was afterward shot through the neck near Soissons, led the remnant on and entered the town.

“There were probably 300 to 400 Germans in that town and the place bristled with machine guns. There were guns at the street corners, behind barricades, and even on the housetops, but the Marines kept on. They attacked those machine guns with rifle, bayonet, and grenade in their bitter struggle for a foothold. They were outnumbered when they started, and one by one they were put out of the fighting. But they kept going, taking gun after gun, until the Germans, for all their numbers and advantage of position, began to fall back. And Lieutenant Robertson took Bouresches with twenty men!

“He sent back word at 9:45 that he had got in and asked for reinforcements, but he did not wait for them. Those twenty men started in to clean up that town in the approved Marine fashion, and he was well on his way when Captain Zane’s company of Holcomb’s battalion arrived to support him. Then Engineers were sent in to help consolidate the position.

“But the town was not yet fully won. The Germans began displaying counter-activity, and the Marines sent back word that they were running short of ammunition. Lieutenant William B. Moore, the Princeton athlete, and Sergeant Major John Quick (of whom more anon) volunteered to take in a truck load. With a small crew chosen from fifty who wanted to go, they started with their precious, perilous freight, over a torn road under a terrific fire. The whole way was brilliantly lighted by enemy flares and the solitary truck offered a shining mark to the German gunners. It rolled and careened fearfully over the gullies and craters, shells shrieked and whistled over their heads and burst on every hand, and as they neared the town they drove straight into the fire of the spouting machine guns. But John Quick bears a charmed life and they got through unscathed.

“That ammunition truck saved the day at Bouresches, for after it got in, Zane’s men proceeded to clean up the town. At 11 o’clock that night the report was sent in to headquarters to the effect that the Germans had been driven out of Bouresches. At 2:30 a.m. they made an attempt to get in again, but the counter-attack was smothered by our machine gun fire.

“The next day, with the help of the Engineers, our position in the town was made secure.

GERMAN TREACHERY

“There were evidences everywhere, during this fighting, of German treachery. Those Prussians were nasty fighters. The following is quoted from the letter of a quartermaster’s sergeant who talked with a number of our wounded in the hospital:

“‘If evidence were lacking of ingrained German untrustworthiness and treachery, the following from the lips of three men, one an officer, would be ample. During the progress of a hot engagement a number of Germans, hands aloft and crying “Kamerad!” approached a platoon of Marines who, justifiedly assuming it meant surrender, waited for the Germans to come into their lines as prisoners. When about three hundred yards distant, the first line of Germans suddenly fell flat upon their faces, disclosing that they had been dragging machine guns by means of ropes attached to their belts.

“‘With these guns the rear lines immediately opened fire and nearly thirty Marines went down before, with a yell of rage, their comrades swept forward, bent upon revenge. I am happy to state that not a German survived, for those who would have really surrendered when their dastardly ruse failed were bayoneted without mercy.

“‘As stated, I talked separately with three different Marines at different times, and have no doubt of the truth of the story. When it spreads through the Corps, it will be safe to predict that the Marines will never take a prisoner.

“‘Can they be blamed? As one man remarked, “A good German is a dead German.” Another said, “They are like wolves and can only hunt in packs. Get one alone, and he is easy meat.”

“‘Little of this sounds uplifting, and smacks of calloused sensibilities. But the business that brought these men to France is not a refined one. It is kill or be killed, perhaps both, and the duty of each man in the American army is to kill as many of the enemy as may be, before he, in turn, is killed.

“‘I will not deny that my nerves are tense with horror at what I have seen, and with pride at what our boys have done, even while my soul is sick with this closer view of the red monster, War.’”

The Marine brigade was cited by the French army for its work in the capture of Bouresches and Belleau Wood and the regimental colors have the Croix de Guerre with the palm; but, let it be recorded as evidence of what the Marines were that there were 518 individual citations for conspicuous valor and extraordinary heroism in action, including officers and privates.

“FORWARD, LANCERS!”

And Captain Grenfell’s Cavalry Troops Lived Over “the Charge of the Light Brigade”

The first officer in the British Army to win the Victoria Cross in the great war was Captain Francis O. Grenfell. He gained the coveted reward on August 24, 1914, almost at the commencement of the British fighting in Belgium, it was at the time of the great battle at Mons and the perhaps more momentous retreat that followed. The gallant little English army was struggling desperately to escape from the superior force of Germans, who gave it no rest. The cavalry was ordered to charge the enemy—to delay, head off and harass him as much as possible. Foremost among the Lancers—mounted soldiers carrying lances—who were always to the front in this dangerous and difficult undertaking, was Captain Grenfell of the 9th.

The German guns caused terrible execution. The German infantry came on in dense columns—like peas thrown out of a sack, as one soldier described it. They pressed hard on the whole of the main body of the army but especially dangerous was the position of the 5th Division. To relieve this section the 9th Lancers were ordered to charge.

“Although all knew they might be going to certain death,” as the story is told by G. A. Leask, “not one of the gallant men faltered. They sang and shouted like schoolboys as their horses thundered over the ground. They treated the charge in the spirit of sport. These dashing cavalrymen, as they rode straight at the German guns, presented one of the finest sights of the whole war. There has been little opportunity to engage in cavalry charges since. Grenfell rode at the head of his men, encouraging them by his coolness. One who took part in the charge has said that he was the life and soul of the squadron, shouting the loudest, always in the front, setting an example to his comrades by his fearless riding.

“At first all went well. Few of the Lancers had fallen, and the dashing cavalrymen were looking forward to a real fight at close quarters with the German gunners, who were playing such havoc among our troops. The men were in excellent spirits, although they knew their danger.

“INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH”

“Suddenly a murderous fire from the enemy pulled them up. Grenfell’s cheery voice rose above the awful din of bursting shells, urging his men to continue the charge. They recovered, and followed their leader. Then the enemy’s fire became hotter. It was like riding into the jaws of death. Twenty concealed German machine guns rained death on the horsemen at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Even then the gallant 9th did not waver, for they were led by a hero. Standing up in the stirrups and brandishing his sword Captain Grenfell called to his men to ride straight on. They cheered and obeyed. It now seemed as though nothing could stop this wild charge. Both men and horses had become infuriated.

© _New York Herald._

The Rifle Brigade Fighting Its Way Through Neuve Chapelle

This brigade is the youngest of regiments in the regular British Army. It was the first to enter the village of Neuve Chapelle.]

“Grenfell himself seemed to bear a charmed life, while all around him empty saddles told their terrible tale. He did not come through the charge unscathed, but his wounds were not serious.

“The Lancers continued to sweep forward until finally held up by the enemy’s barbed wire, cunningly concealed in the long grass. The German trap had succeeded. To proceed farther was impossible, and in order to escape total annihilation the gallant horsemen reluctantly turned their horses’ heads and rode back. Of the 9th Lancers not more than forty came out of the ordeal.

“The charge of the Lancers had failed, but it will live forever in military annals. It proved to the world that the British cavalry was as dashing and brave as in the days of old.”

GRENFELL RESCUES THE GUNS

Grenfell’s second great exploit came on the same day. It was equally daring. When the survivors of the 9th Lancers rode off the field the Captain, although not seriously wounded, was greatly in need of rest. That, however, was not yet to be. He had espied a railway embankment, and quickly made for it with the men under his charge. When they arrived at the shelter they found a number of men of the 119th Field Battery, which had been put out of action and abandoned. There was the danger of the guns being captured by the enemy and turned against the English. It had been a great day for the artillery, no less than for the cavalry.

“This battery had been in action earlier in the day with the object of delaying the German advance and relieving the terrible pressure on the harassed infantry, who were being driven back from Mons by superior forces. The 119th Battery had given and received a terrific fire. One Germany battery had been silenced by the gunners, who were afterward attacked by three of the enemy’s batteries from different directions. The unequal contest was very fierce while it lasted. All the gunners had been killed by shrapnel, and the survivors of the battery were ordered to seek safety.

“Up till now it had been found impossible to attempt the rescue of the guns. They remained exposed to the German shells and would have been captured but for the gallantry of Captain Grenfell. An officer of the 119th Battery, Lieutenant Geoffrey Blemell Pollard, who had been trying to devise means to save his guns, came to where the Lancers were resting, and put the matter before them. Would they assist him to get the guns away?”

Captain Grenfell heard the lieutenant’s request. He carefully climbed to the top of the embankment, surveyed the position, and returned. He had seen that the Germans had now captured the guns.

Grenfell determined to get the guns, regardless of the cost. He asked for volunteers and before he had done speaking two dozen Lancers had given in their names. They did not need to be told that Grenfell would lead—they had been in the charge with him and knew that he would not send others to do his work. They would have followed him anywhere.

Grenfell led his little party of troopers into the open. Bullets were flying around, shrapnel was bursting near. “He was as cool as if he was on parade,” said a corporal who took part.

He led his men right into the hurricane of shot and shell. Every few minutes they stopped for breath, then on again. Advancing at a rapid rate they reached the guns.

“So unexpected was the charge of Grenfell’s squadron that the Germans, taken by surprise, fled in panic. Grenfell gave quick directions; rapidity of action was essential, for the Germans in the rear of the guns were pouring in a rapid fire. One gun was safely man-handled out of action. Grenfell was not the man to leave a task half-finished, and, braving the shells, he galloped back to the guns. By the time he reached them some of the battery’s horses had been brought up, and Grenfell assisted to hitch them to the guns. This done, the latter were galloped off the field. Not one gun of the 119th Battery was lost, and most of the wagons were recovered. Only three men were hit during the rescue operations. Thus ended one of the quickest and most gallant gun-saving exploits of the war.

“Later in the day Captain Grenfell was wounded. A bullet struck him in the thigh, and two of his fingers were injured. He was brought back from the firing-line, and an ambulance was sent for.

“While awaiting the ambulance a motor-car dashed along. ‘That’s what I want,’ said Captain Grenfell. ‘What’s the use of an ambulance to me? Take me back to the firing-line.’ He entered the motor-car and went back to fight....