Thomas Boyd

“ When he looked up, the platoon had passed. Farther, the resistance grew less. The bombardment of the night before had taken its toll of Germans. Bodies lay gawkily about on the grass. One body, headless, clutched a clay pipe between its fingers. Another lay flat on its back, a hole in its stomach as big as a hat. A heavy leather pack, which a shell had struck, was the centre of a ring of packages of Piedmont cigarettes which its owner had salvaged from some dead American.
The trees became sparse. Ahead, over an interminably long wheat-field, the platoon could see the horizon. ”

“ Bandoliers of ammunition slung over their shoulders, their pockets stuffed with heavy corrugated hand-grenades, carrying shovels and picks, the platoon followed along the muddy road in rear of a machine-gun company. Rudely awakened from an irresistible sleep beneath the trees, they had been marshalled before supply wagons, had been given articles of extra equipment to use in the attack. Now, whenever the body of troops before them halted, the lids closed readily over their sleepy eyes and their bodies swayed with fatigue. ”

“ Three days were spent by the platoon at the little village. On the evening of the third day, just as the men had formed in a long, impatient line before the field kitchen, with their aluminum food receptacles held out to catch the thin, reddish stew surlily thrown at them, the company commander walked among them bearing words of dour import. Captain Powers talked softly and gently, wringing the words from his heart, burnishing them with a note of sadness:
“Stay close to your billets to-night after chow, men. We’re moving up to the front some time to-night.” ”

“ From another shell hole he poured out the last of his ammunition at the olive uniforms. Then he threw his rifle from him.
And now the platoon was scattered over the field, hiding behind bushes, behind little mounds of dirt, giving away their position by the slight curls of smoke from their rifle barrels. Not far ahead were the German snipers, waiting calmly and patiently and firing with rare judgment. The men on both sides might have been less human than Tin Woodmen, to judge from their silence. ”

“ Colonials looked sullen, the French beaten and spiritless, the Americans dogged and conscientious, the English expressionless; the Germans seemed the most human of them all. For them the fighting was finished.
Miles from the place where the platoon had alighted from the camions another road split the deep wall of green forest, and at the crossing a large farmhouse stood in the middle of a large field. Whitewashed, all but the roof, it looked like a cheap but commodious burial vault, with the yard in the rear filled high with dead and wounded. ”

“ When spoken to, the men grinned awkwardly, trying to mask the horror of war with a joke.
Some of the more energetic among them attacked the hard ground with their shovels; the older and wiser men sought out shell holes large enough to protect their bodies in case of a counter-attack.
The front was still, save for a nervous tremor running through the opposing line and manifesting itself in the jerky firing of flare pistols. ”

“ A word spoken aloud, the jangling of metal, would infuriate them. From fear and habit, the explosion of a gun near them would cause them to stop, standing without a [229] tremor. A distance of less than two miles, the platoon crawled along like an attenuated turtle. They felt that dawn would find them still on the road, their feet struggling with the clinging mud. The night was as thick and black as coal-tar. Progress through it seemed impossible.
Behind the barely moving lines the guns continued their boom, boom, like the sound of distant thunder. ”

“ In his consciousness the thought pounded that Pugh was dead, but he combated it. “Why, Jack can’t be dead,” he argued with himself. “Why, he just gave me a cigarette last night!” There was total unbelief of the possibility of connecting death with Pugh in his tone. “Jack Pugh dead? Damn foolishness.” But he was dead, and Hicks knew it. It made him sick to think of it. “That’s right. It’s something you can’t fool yourself about.”
He rose straight as any of the posts from which was strung the fatal barbed wire. He stooped over and picked up his bandolier of ammunition. ”

“ From their sleepless nights on sentry duty, their lack of food, and the long, punishing march from the trenches, they were thoroughly exhausted. Many of the men were in such a state of fatigue that they dropped on the straw beds which had been provided for the French army in 1914, without stopping to take off their muddy shoes. And they slept dreamlessly, sodden beings with senses so dulled they could not think of food. The mess sergeant had passed through the bunk house, loudly and virtuously asserting that the daily fare was to be had. ”

“ The men, their feet striking against the cobblestones, clumped through the village streets and along the road.
The sector toward which the platoon was moving had once been the scene of violent conflict, but of late, with the more important military manœuvres taking place farther west, it had dropped into a peaceful desuetude. It lay a few miles from Verdun, among the green-covered concealed fortresses, from which the noses of mammoth artillery unexpectedly rose. Tops of thickly wooded hills reared evenly in an unbroken line. ”

“ Even the tops of wheat, standing stiffly in the field, looked as if they were covered with a fetid substance.
Occasionally, as the day advanced, a man would labor over the opening of a can of Argentina beef with the point of his bayonet. And then the contents would be exposed, green and sepulchrally white, the odor mingling and not quite immersed in the odor of decaying human flesh.
Laboring over the small blue can, sweat poured down their chests, the streams dislodging particles of dirt and sweeping them down their bodies. ”

“ Hicks watched them for a while, felt the angry hail of bullets, then rose and followed after them.
In their desperation the men with the shovels and picks had dug a trench deep enough to protect prone bodies from fire, and into it the retreating platoon fell, released from the fear which, like an angry eagle, beat its wings behind them, against their heads, in their ears, urging them on. The men turned, narrowed out grooves in the thrown-up dirt for their rifles to rest on. ”

“ There those whom an imaginary line had named Friend and Enemy shared a common lot. German bodies and Austrian mingling and touching French, Belgian; their positions a gruesome offering to the God of War. All day long the heavy hobnailed boots of hurriedly advancing men had beaten out a requiem.
The platoon filed along to the left upon the cross-road, marching as swiftly as their tired [183] legs would permit. The stream of wounded had stopped. The field kitchens and supply wagons had turned off in the woods in rear. For miles sounded the baffled roar of firing artillery. ”

“ When it reached the earth its heavier end struck the soldier on the head, crushing his skull. Instantly the scene was changed to one of frenzied activity. Men leaped to their feet and ran out of the woods.
The treachery, the unexpectedness of the calamity remained unshakable in the mind of Hicks. To him it seemed the height of cruelty, and in some way he interpreted it as an intentional act of the enemy. He knew better. He knew that a shell, probably the day before, during the heavy bombardment, had struck the limb and partly severed it, and afterward its great weight had brought itself down. ”

“ They had no more than started when a shell struck directly in rear of them. They plodded on with their burden, stumbling over the boulders in the gulley. A little farther on and another shell exploded. On they went until the mustard-like odor of gas filled their nostrils. Then they stopped to put on their masks. Letting his end of the stretcher sink slowly to the ground, Hicks asked the wounded man: “Can you wear a mask, buddy?”
“Yes, oh, yes, give it to me. I’ll die without it.” Fear in the man’s voice was stronger than pain. Hicks bent over the man’s chest for the familiar respirator. ”

“ In retaliation the German batteries, the heavier ones, began, their shells flying high overhead.
Lieutenant Bedford jumped up. “All right, Third Platoon. Up you come. Keep straight ahead and remember your three-yard interval. If any one gets hit, let him lie.” And then, as if he were uncertain, as if he wanted to convince himself of the actuality of the words he had just spoken, he added: “Those are the orders.”
“I always knew they hated the Third,” said Lepere, “but blamed if I knew they hated our guts so much that they put us in the first wave.”
But Kahl only grinned. ”

“ He would stay there with the platoon until he was killed, or, by a piece of luck, wounded. He looked at the combat-packs whose owners never would wear them again, at the pierced helmets and the blood-stained gas-masks. Pieces of equipment were scattered over the ground alongside the small, pitiful holes which had been dug for safety. The tall, straight trees grew thicker in the distance. Their shadows invited him. The grass acted as a continual spring-board, pushing his body forward into the thicket. ”

“ From time to time a man dropped, thinning the ranks and spreading them out to such an extent that contact on the right side of the moving line was lost.
Farther on in the woods a small trench had been dug, but through the fierceness and unexpectedness of the attack most of the enemy had been driven from it. The platoon, moving on feet that felt like wings, dashed toward the trench, some of the men sprawling into it. Before them, a few yards distant, a machine-gun poked its nose from between the crevice of two large rocks. ”

“ I don’t want any men to come down with gangrene.”
Ryan, reluctant, departed alone, his small reddish mustache still smartly waxed, his puttees neatly rolled, his helmet set jauntily on his head.
In the early morning light the outlines of the objects in front of the ravine were crisply apparent. The strands of barbed wire were blackly filigreed against the opaque light of the horizon. An aluminum moon hung waveringly in the sky. The stalks of wheat stood stiffly erect, their yellowness merging in the distance with the shadowy green of the trees. ”

“ Hicks bit at the leather strap of his helmet. The tree limbs crackled and falling branches fell hesitatingly through the foliage to the ground. Other shells burst. “Oh, my God, I’m hit!” some one cried. And before he had ended his words another group of shells pounded over. Hicks’s spine felt bare with scorpions parading along the flesh. “I won’t get killed. I can’t get killed. I’ve got too much to live for,” he thought, as the bursting shells continued and pieces of their steel casing ripped past and viciously over him. ”

“ Thoroughly tired out, men were stretched upon the cool grass asleep, forgetful of the void in their stomachs. Suddenly, in the distance, a very erect form stalked through the trees. As it approached, a thin, haughty face, above which a steel helmet jauntily set, was to be seen. At the sight of him all of the sleeping men arose as if by a signal earlier agreed upon. The tired, worn-out, hungry soldiers; the dirty, blood-smeared, lousy soldiers; the red-eyed, gas-eaten, mud-caked soldiers; the stupid, yellow, cowardly soldiers ”

“ To his leg he buckled his holster until it interfered with the circulation of his blood. He liked the feel of the pistol against his thigh. It made him feel equal to any danger. He was a Buffalo Bill, a Kit Carson, a D’Artagnan.
Progress, walking in the trench, was too dreary for his mood. He climbed out and commenced to stride along the field, his chest inflated, his chin high. He thought of the men lying along the trench, huddled together, three men under one blanket, and he felt motherly toward them. ”

“ The German trench had been abandoned. The main body of their troops was withdrawn and the hill had been protected only by a heavy rear-guard.
Through the woods men were running like mad, beating small, inoffensive bushes with the butts of their rifles, and calling: “Come out of there, you damned Boche.” Wherever they saw a dugout they hurled a pocketful of hand-grenades down the entrance, following them with threatening exclamations. They were the new men who had joined the platoon at the last village at which it had been billeted. ”

“ Bedford, much excited, cautioned each man on sentry duty to look sharply, for it was during the time of relief that the enemy often chose to attack. Finally each of the old sentries had given his special orders to the new sentry, and had slung on his pack and assembled where the platoon stood waiting. They plodded off, sloshing through the mud, with now and again a man slipping off the duck boards and floundering hip-deep in the mud. The communication trench was tortuous and long. It was morning before the last man had got out of it and upon the road that took them on their way. ”

“ Larson was nowhere to be seen. “Damn these tanks,” he fretted. “They’ll have us all killed, first thing we know.”
The dread of the attack was forgotten in the more immediate danger of the enemy artillery finding the exact range of the platoon by means of the sputtering tanks. A flock of shells left the long, black mouths of the German guns and began their journey toward Hicks. He winced, tied his muscles into knots, and threw himself flat on the ground, quite forgetful of the insects. The shells all struck within a radius of twenty yards, throwing up dirt, grain, a black cloud of smoke. ”