by noon of the next day battery c’s guns had all been securely emplaced. o. d. wrote three letters in the morning, all of which centered around jimmy mcgee and the front. in his letter to mary he said, in part:
you’ll love jimmy, he’s so big and kind. if he ever got all cleaned and dressed he’d sure be handsome, but the boys don’t have time for that kind of life up here.
mary, jimmy never gets any letters, except from a few boys that work where he used to. his folks are all dead. i told him that you would write to him. he is sending you a german officer’s helmet that he took from a german at chateau-thierry. you see, jimmy has been at the front for a long time.
i am at the front with him now. but, somehow, i don’t feel like i thought i would. it doesn’t seem so terribly different from a place that we stopped at about twenty miles from here. of course the guns make a lot of noise when they go off and there’s all kinds of mysterious lights at night that make you think of ghosts at work. but the airplanes and bombs are what scare me most....
before supper was served on the afternoon of september 11th the guns of jimmy mcgee’s regiment had registered on their targets and everything was in readiness to participate in the greatest effort that the first american army was destined to make on the fields of france.
that night there were no certain indications that the drive would start immediately. the ordinary precautions were taken. but they alone did not suggest to the men that something big was about to happen. yet, in the blood of them all, a fever was present which brought its presentiments.
“o. d., i got a hunch. nothin’ certain in this guerre, you know. but i’ve got a feelin’ in my fingers that we’re goin’ to use old betsy to-night,” spoke jimmy.
“jimmy—jimmy.” neil was calling him.
“oui. what’s up?”
“how do things look to you?” asked neil, crawling in the little shelter tent.
“i was just sayin’ to o. d. that i’ve got a hunch—just like the one before the battle of seicheprey—that somethin’ is goin’ to come off. mighty damn quiet, though. but it’s always that way before a real racket.”
“what time have you got, o. d.?” asked neil.
“darn near midnight. jimmy and i have been sittin’ around talking a good deal. what are you doing up?”
“i’m on guard to-night.”
the shrill blast of a pocket whistle interrupted him and caused the three of them to jump a little.
“callin’ to the guns, boys,” whispered jimmy. “i knew somethin’ was in the wind. get ready, o. d.”
“i’ve got to beat it, then,” said neil, getting out.
in a few seconds jimmy and o. d. were running toward their gun-pit. soon afterward the other members of the crew were at their stations.
just as the executive officer was giving out the firing data the world seemed caught in the vortex of a terrible electrical storm. up in front of battery c’s position a barrage from the seventy-five’s crashed into life. big guns away behind the position began to bay.
jimmy got orders to fire. the darkness of night was lost in blinding flashes of yellow flames that came from the thundering guns. shells whined and whistled on their way toward the german trenches and positions. o. d. rammed the shells home, wondering if the world was coming to an end. the roar of the pieces, the rattle of machine-guns, the earth that quivered beneath him and the skies that seemed to be blazing with varicolored fires assailed his ears, his eyes, and his soul with a violence that he had never dreamed of. he looked to jimmy for confidence. jimmy was working his sights and traversing the piece as if he were listening to a jazz victrola record. o. d. bit his lips. he knew that one of his real trials was at hand.
the din of battle became a unison of wild, barbaric music. out where the doughboys were going over, under the barrages, rockets crawled against the livid heavens. o. d. thought of dragons and unearthly monsters as he watched these things.
the scream of a shell, more sinister than the rest, caused o. d.’s hair to stand up straight.
“that one’s comin’ in,” bawled out jimmy.
another shell whistled in the same fashion.
b—a—n—g!
the sound of an explosion new to the ears of o. d. throttled the vicinity of his piece. a human cry made itself heard above the angry roaring of the guns.
“somebody got it—poor guy!” shouted jimmy. o. d. nodded and kept on placing the shells on the tray and ramming them in the smoking breech.
for four hours the battle storm raged incessantly. during those hours jimmy’s gun crew worked away with straining muscles. there was no mental or spiritual strain attached to their labor. they were hardened to the unnatural sounds and sights of modern fighting. but o. d., new to the things of big action, face to face with the relentless fury of war for the first time, had to contend with both the physical and spiritual conditions which presented themselves. he was naturally strong; but four hours of work, under stress of fighting, made his arms and back feel as if they were breaking. no man, however iron of will and nerves, can go through his first battle without some demoralization of his mental forces. o. d. was only an ordinary boy. naturally he suffered his share of spiritual anguish in the trying moments of competition for the control of his soul powers before the onslaught of terrors that threatened to smash his nerve and courage.
when orders to cease firing came o. d. was tired and a bit wan. but he had found himself. that alone counted with him. a few moments later, when jimmy asked him how he liked it, o. d. found himself answering:
“it kind of got me at first—especially when that wounded man cried out. but when i didn’t stop to think, and kept on working, i didn’t mind it so much.”
“that’s the stuff. now you’ve heard all the noise that they can make in this war, so you’re done with that experience. the rest of the stuff is only incidental-like,” said jimmy. “course somebody’s got to get killed or wounded. there wouldn’t be no war if that didn’t happen. but it won’t be us. it’s always the other guy. compree?”
“oui,” answered o. d.
“get yourself together, boys, we’re pullin’ right out. o. p.’s report that the germans are hauling it fast. hardly any resistance. beaucoup prisoners comin’ in. thousands, they say. the old doughboys are goin’ like hell,” shouted neil, running up to o. d. and jimmy.
“that’s the old pep. come on, o. d., we’re off to another fight,” and jimmy started on the run for the tent.
the first few sharp points of dawn were piercing the haze of early morning as jimmy, o. d., and the rest of the outfit started across the decaying stretch of land southeast of wrecked mouilly. for four long years the ground that the yankees trampled underfoot had been the no man’s land between the german and french lines. there was no real road, just a winding succession of shell-holes and gaping craters, bordered on one side by a water-filled trench that had been the late target of american guns. on the other side of the ruined road stretched a bumpy, chaotic plain, out of which the snags of shell-smashed trees lifted jagged points and shattered limbs. rusty barbed wire was strung in baffling tangles from every charred stump and smoking post. demolished guns, rifles, bayonets, and sundry articles of equipment were littered over the grim terrain. gray desolation, destruction, and barrenness abounded.
“this is what they call the grande tranchée, o. d. never seen anything like this, even in the movin’ pictures, did you?” questioned jimmy.
o. d.’s eyes were fastened on a gruesome heap of headless men whose bodies were torn, twisted, and partly covered by debris. he shuddered before answering.
“no, jimmy. look down there,” pointing to the dead.
“oui, boches,” responded jimmy, casually. “sure tore up this place some. our old betsy was landin’ ’em down here. ain’t nothin’ over three feet high ’round here.”
a long column of german prisoners filed by under guard of american doughboys.
“what outfit, buddy?” asked jimmy of a guard.
“first division,” answered the man.
“seen much of the twenty-sixth doughboys?” questioned jimmy.
“oui, they beat us into vigunelles. those guys sure bagged some boches,” and the guard picked up a faster step with his prisoners.
the attack was still in force and shells were plowing up the broken ground in every direction when the battery arrived opposite a german cemetery. orders were received at that point for the regiment to go into position behind the hills of st. rémy. the tired and worn columns entered the woods by a road that had been used by the germans only the day before.
“the boches must have thought that they was here to stay, by the looks of this joint,” said jimmy, pointing to the graveyard with its high stone fence and tall tombstones. “the boches got in here four years ago and never moved till last night. that accounts for all this stuff. guess they had regular funerals and church services for the guys that got knocked off. just goes to show how they was fightin’ the guerre up here. livin’ the life of riley and didn’t know it.”
he and o. d. climbed over the fence and inspected some of the tombstones. they came to an exceptionally big one.
“guess this gink must have been a general. can’t read boche, but most likely all the stuff reads, ‘he died for god and country.’ see that ‘gott’ business on ’em all. everybody pulls the same line when a guy gets killed. funny thing, but there ain’t many shell-holes in cemeteries. now and then you see one all turned upside down from shell-fire. but most of ’em that i’ve seen get by somehow. maybe the shells get superstitious.”
“there is where one shell hit.” o. d. showed jimmy a grave that had been dug out by a shell.
“oui. even the dead don’t get no rest in this guerre,” declared jimmy.
the whine of an incoming shell caused them both to fall flat on their bellies. an explosion followed. dirt and stones covered them from head to foot.
“beat it toot sweet. this joint ain’t no place for a live man, o. d.,” and jimmy started for the wall at double-time. they caught up with the battery a few minutes before the order to halt came.
“we’re goin’ to use an old german position here,” said neil, coming up to jimmy. “you never saw such stuff in your life. the boches have got dug-outs fifty feet deep. regular places, beds, sofas, everything. you’d think they had bought the place for a resort.
“that’s nothin’,” broke in pop rigney. “down at the foot of the hill in hattonville they’ve got regular theaters built up. boche cafés. they say boche women used to live here with the officers. joyce found some silk stockings and a woman’s hat in one dug-out.”
jimmy and o. d. went on an exploration tour immediately. they found that the dug-outs were all built of cement and stone and must have necessitated months in construction. a piano, all smashed up, was found in one. there were various kinds of mysterious cords and wires in most of the abris. o. d. said that he thought they must be attached to bells, but jimmy warned him that the boches had most likely left them tied to some kind of death-dealing engine and to keep his hands off. that same day a member of the outfit tampered with a string and had his left hand mangled by a hand grenade which fell to the stone floor as a result and exploded on contact.
the germans had fled so precipitately from their positions that they even left all the guns behind them. the men found souvenirs galore, but threw most of them away, as they had no means of carting around extra stuff.
“i’m off the souvenir stuff. i’ll be good enough souvenir if i get myself back,” said jimmy as he discarded some german belts that he had picked up.
“guess we’ll get back and monjay. ’ain’t had any breakfast yet, you know,” suggested neil.
in the mess-line the talk was running fast. samson and johnson, who had been up in the o. p.’s with the doughboys and had just returned to the outfit, told about the capture of st. mihiel and the speed with which the boches were evacuating the salient.
“we’re in a hell of a fix, though,” said samson. “can’t move another inch forward. there’s a plain twenty kilometers deep in front of us. the boches have got high ground behind it and we couldn’t go across it without losing the whole division. guess we’ll have to stand pat awhile. ain’t that hell?”
his words panned out true. before the guns of the yankee division lay a great deep plain. to send men out into that plain meant to expose them to certain death with no possibility of a military advantage being obtained by so doing. consequently, with the exception of a sacrifice attack planned against the enemy to divert his attention from the major operations being launched in the argonne forest, the division remained in its victorious tracks for nearly six weeks. the sacrifice attack succeeded, but it cost the division almost the entire one hundred and second infantry regiment.
during this time o. d. drank to the dregs of the front. he became able to distinguish the difference between the whine of an ordinary shell and the whistle of a gas shell. whizz-bangs got to be a part of his vocabulary, and he knew enough to duck toot sweet when he heard one coming. the mud stuck to him as neil told him it would. he became friendly with cooties.
“damn it all, jimmy,” said o. d. five weeks after the st. mihiel salient had been nipped off by the pinchers of the first american army, “if they’d only lay off that ‘canned willy’ once in a while this guerre wouldn’t be half bad. say, i lost my gas-mask two days ago, wonder if joyce has got any in yet. the boches are puttin’ gas over right along now.”
“hope the hell we get up to a regular front again soon,” replied jimmy, offering o. d. a cigarette. “since austria blew up we ought to get behind the boches and push ’em right in the rhine.”
