Chapter FOURTEEN: The Forest of the Argonne

During the past fortnight we have been learning the difference between Warfare of Position and Warfare of Movement, and we are very, very tired. Moreover, the end of our labour is not yet. But we have made good. The Divisional General himself has informed us of the fact, in an official Order. So has the enemy, in an even more flattering fashion. He has fallen back—steadily and stubbornly—but back.

The fighting began more than a fortnight ago. But first of all we had to get to the scene of action. That involved endless marches, through undulating, heavily wooded, exhausting country. It is the fall of the year. Rain is abundant, roads are not too numerous, and these are packed from end to end with traffic so close that it is sometimes impossible for a vehicle to find turning-space in ten miles.

These roads, though well constructed and constantly reënforced, are none too good. They were never built to carry such traffic as this, and since the inevitable ditch on either side deprives them of lateral support, the effect of a constant stream of monstrously heavy vehicles upon the surface of one of them is that of a rolling-pin upon a strip of dough—it makes it wider. Not only wider, but thinner; for the edges of the road are squeezed out into the ditch, and the whole fabric loses cohesion. Almost anywhere, but in particular near the sides, a wheel is apt suddenly to find a soft spot and sink up to the axle, with consequent congestion and tumult.

It is a double tide of traffic. Both streams are made up of similar constituents, with certain necessary contrasts. There are bodies of infantry, either going up into action or else coming out. There is no mistaking the latter. Their uniforms are splashed, their faces are caked, and their eyes are red for lack of sleep. They are obviously “all in,” but they hobble manfully along, with the comfortable satisfaction of men who have left behind them a task well and truly performed. They exchange ironic greetings with the full-fed, boisterous bands of adventurers whom they encounter hastening in the opposite direction.

Ambulances, again. Those going forward are empty and trim: those returning are travel-stained and crowded. It is rumoured that the American Army has suffered over a hundred thousand casualties during the past few weeks. The fighting in the Argonne Forest has been terrific. Grandpré, through which we expect to pass, has been taken and lost half a dozen times. Each of the ambulances carries a full complement of stretcher-cases; and usually beside the driver sits a gaunt, miry statue with his arm in a sling, or a blood-soaked rag about his head. Occasionally, too, there occurs a civilian farm-wagon, containing a dozen or so less serious cases, with tickets tied to their buttons, on their way to an Evacuation Station. There are also women and children passengers; for the battle zone is extending daily, and it is needful, from sheer humanity, to remove the civil population to safer ground. On the box-seat of one of these wagons sits a small French boy. Perhaps he is eight years old. He is easily the proudest and happiest person in all this dolorous procession, for his right wrist is swathed in a slightly encrimsoned bandage, gloriously conspicuous.

Then there are motor wagons, also full. Those going up contain ammunition, barbed wire, galvanized iron sheeting, engineering material, or rations. Those returning are heaped with salvage of every kind—furniture, the property of the refugees; battlefield _dèbris_, and, wherever an available chink presents itself, men—footsore men, stragglers, or regular working-parties. The latter are usually coloured, and, with steel helmets balanced at every angle upon their woolly pates, smile upon the seething activity beneath them with the simple enjoyment of a child at its first circus.

These wagons—or camions—are of two types. There are big Thorneycroft lorries, holding three tons and made in England, and smaller vehicles of American design, known as “Quads.” These possess the unusual feature of a drive upon either axle; so that if your rear wheels slip backwards into a ditch or quagmire, your front wheels will continue to function and will extricate you in no time. Heaven knows how these contraptions are steered, but steered they are, and with remarkable skill.

Then there are guns—and more guns. These are mainly French seventy-fives and hundred-and-fifty-fives, with American gun teams. Those going up are workmanlike, but inconspicuous. They are newly painted with the usual red, green, and yellow splashes. The fishing-nets which will be spread above them when they get into action, intersticed with grass, leaves, and twigs, are at present neatly furled and lashed along the barrels. The gunners sprawl anywhere but upon their hard little iron seats. The guns coming out look different. All are plastered with mud; some are on the casualty list, and are being towed upon trolleys by fussy little traction engines.

Here and there in the procession wallow British tanks. These are either “Heavies,” weighing nearly thirty tons and carrying a crew of seven or eight, or “Whippets,” which only require three men and can move at the rate of twelve miles an hour.

The tank is the humourist of this unhumorous War. Its method of joining a close-packed procession of road traffic is characteristic. It appears suddenly out of a wood in a field beside the road, obliterates thirty yards of a hedge, squeezes a ditch flat, and insinuates itself sideways, with jolly _abandon_, into that part of the procession which happens to be passing at the moment—the whole in a manner reminiscent of that heavy-footed and determined individual who is accustomed by similar tactics to secure for himself a good place in the queue outside a movie pay-box. On the other hand, should you be ditched or disabled in any way, to your own discomfort and the congestion of traffic, a tank is always willing to swing good-humouredly out of the line, scramble across country for a field or so, lurch heavily into the roadway again, harness itself to a tow-rope, and extract you from your present predicament as easily and as suddenly as a mastodon might extract a cork from a bottle.

Certainly our march gave us a comprehensive view of the ingredients of modern warfare. American soldiers, white and black—mostly cheerful; French refugees—all sad. Guns, limbers, camions, carts, ambulances, tanks—all moving in an endless, tumultuous, profane stream. At cross-roads, traffic policeman struggling manfully with an impossible job. Automobiles everywhere—Cadillacs, Fords, and Dodges—all trying to make openings and steal a march upon the rest of Creation. Above us, the sky of France, weeping for her lost children. Around us, the undulating, rain-blurred hillsides of the Argonne Forest. Beneath our feet, Mud, Mud, Mud.

Day after day we tramped—through Toul, the northwest corner of the great rectangle of French soil which has been an American military colony since the summer of nineteen-seventeen; across the trench lines of the old days of stationary warfare, where Frenchmen faced the Boches for three long years. American troops have fought there too. Here, in what was once No Man’s Land, stand the ruins of Seicheprey, famed as having been the scene of the first clash between American and German troops. (It was a raid, and we lost our first prisoners there. Well, we have plenty of Germans now to barter for them, when the time comes—and then some!) Then on past Montfaucon, the Crown Prince’s headquarters at the Battle of Verdun, now an American stronghold; through miles and miles of devastated country, with here and there a little American graveyard (to which we pay due reverence), to Grandpré. This is a mere fragment of a village, clinging to the face of a rock looking south, and is shelled out of recognition. Then on, through the Bois des Loges, following the tide of victory northward, towards Mézières and Sedan. Somewhere to our right lies Verdun, garrisoned by American soldiers—all, that is, save the Citadel, a wondrous Gibraltar dug into the interior of a hill, containing miles of illuminated passageways; barracks, a bakery, an arsenal, a chapel, a theatre. Here the French maintain their own garrison—and maybe their own secrets. Secrets or no, it was that Citadel and that garrison which broke the back of the German assault in the critical days of nineteen-sixteen.

Somewhere on our left marches the Army of the French General Gouraud, keeping pace with our own in the great enveloping movement of which our attack forms the extreme right.

* * * * *

And there we were sent into the battle. It being our first, our impressions are somewhat confused. In theory, our own particular part in the enterprise was a simple one. A wood lay upon our front, and we were ordered to capture it. And we did so—all save the far edge. But at a price. When our barrage lifted in the early dawn, and we dashed forward to the assault which we had rehearsed so often, our consciousness was mainly of barbed wire and machine-gun bullets. These were in unholy alliance everywhere, and took grievous toll. Buck Stamper, the biggest man in the Battalion, was the first one to go down. He was shot in the legs, and another bullet passed through his heart as he struggled forward, crippled but game, on his hands and knees. But a hundred men had seen him die, and the gun which had knocked him out was in their hands three minutes later. Still, formations were broken up, communication with the rear was cut, and the brunt of the battle began to fall upon the individual. Now it is as an individual fighter that the American soldier excels. He has his faults. To-day attacks have to be carefully rehearsed; battles are fought on a strict time-table. The eager young fighter is too apt to jump off the mark before the signal is given, and overrun his objective when he reaches it. This gets him into trouble with his best friend, the Gunner; for under these circumstances the latter must either forbear to fire or else risk hitting his own Infantry. But it is a fault on the right side, and is soon corrected by painful experience. On the other hand, it develops in its owner that most priceless quality of the soldier, initiative. Some of the finest work in this War has been accomplished by small bodies of troops—particularly British and American—working forward under a young officer, or a sergeant, or very often under no leader at all, to the capture of some vital point long after they have lost touch with the directing force behind.

The upshot of it all was that after a week of hand-to-hand fighting and bloody murder we cleared the tenacious Hun right out of the wood—at this point more than a mile thick—leaving him possessed of nothing but the far edge. We are terribly exhausted, and our losses do not bear thinking of; but we have begged, before we are withdrawn, to be permitted to capture that far edge and consolidate the whole position. Our prayer has been granted. We attack to-morrow, refreshed by a lull of four days.

“And,” observed Colonel Graham to his assembled officers, “if we Americans on the right can do our part, and swing our horn of the line clear around through Metz and Sedan, we shall have the whole German Army in a pocket. And then—may the Lord have mercy on them, for we will not!”

Colonel Graham is a comparatively new arrival among us, but we are children in his sight when it comes to experience of actual fighting. Our own commander has gone home sick, and Colonel Graham reigns in his stead. He is a regular of the old school. Soldiering is the breath of his nostrils, and the Army is his father and mother. He has been over here more than twelve months, and has seen much service with our Allies farther north.

Behold him in his headquarters, lately the property of some German gentlemen compelled for business reasons to move farther east—thick-set, hard as nails, and twinkling humorously through his spectacles upon his battle-stained disciples. Most of our friends are present—but not all. Jim Nichols is there; so is Major Floyd, who has no particular call to be there at all, for we are within a few hundred yards of the German front line, and we are to attack at dawn. It is now nearly four o’clock in the morning.

Another transient visitor is present—a young officer of the Air Service, by name Harvey Blane. His present duty is to maintain connection between the forces on the ground and the forces of the air. He has come into the line to-night in order to inform the Colonel of the arrangements concluded between the Artillery and the aeroplanes for the protection of the Infantry in the coming attack. Aviators do not vary much as a class. They are all incredibly young; they are all endowed with the undefinable but clear-cut individuality which comes to earth-dwellers who have learned to maintain themselves in some other element—sailors possess it in similar degree—and they are all intensely reticent in the presence of laymen about their experiences in the air. Such an one was young Harvey Blane.

There was a full muster of officers in the crowded dugout, for the Colonel was outlining the morrow’s operations, and pencils were busy. But Major Powers, that wise and kindly Ulysses, was not there. He was lying in one of a cluster of newly made American graves at the back of the wood which he had helped to capture.

Neither was Boone Cruttenden.