A 1915 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Hervey Allen served in the 111th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division. His memoir Toward the Flame, published in 1926, described his regiment’s actions from early July to mid-August 1918 as it advanced from the Marne to the Vesle. In his preface, Allen explained that the book developed from wartime letters and recollections written in 1919 “when memories were so strong as to be almost photographic.” The final five chapters record his experiences on the Vesle in Fismes and Fismette from August 7 to 14, culminating in what Allen called “a picture of war, broken off when the film burned out.”
INTO THE PIT
LATE THAT NIGHT the captain wakened me and told me to get the company ready, as we were going to move. The platoon leaders went down the trench, wakening the men with the help of the sergeants, and in a few moments the dark masses of the platoons could be dimly made out standing on the gleaming white road. Each platoon was provided with its own rockets, which, for the most part, none of us had the slightest idea how to use. No instruction was provided. That a red rocket was at that time the call for a barrage was the extent of our knowledge. It was pitch black, but in the velvet darkness the battalion began to move down the hill toward Fismes.
The road fell away quite rapidly from the plateau with a high bank on our left, screening us from the Germans and the valley, on the far side of which they lay. There were shelter holes and dugouts in places along the bank, but at the bottom we emerged into a deep side valley with a railroad track. A stream ran down this through Fismes and emptied into the Vesle beyond. The town itself lay on the flat between the hills and the river.
As we emerged onto the flat, we could look back at the heights and see the machine guns spitting fire from the woods at the Germans on the other side of the river. There were shots coming back too. At one place, just off the road in a wood, the enemy’s shells had fallen into the ammunition dump of our machine guns, and the ammunition was burning fiercely, making a bright glow and exploding like a lot of firecrackers. I think we must have been observed as we passed this fire, for they started to shell the road so as to make it very lively. Just at the foot of the hill, where the little stream flowed into the Vesle and emerged onto a flat, our engineers were repairing a bridge. “Fritz” had been gunning steadily for this, arousing with each shell a violent chattering from the nests of machine guns on our side of the valley. The engineers had not yet finished repairing the bridge, so there was only a narrow foot-path over it as yet, and here the battalion halted in the dark. The major turned aside into a roofless ruin for a while. The whole place was redolent of gas.
By the light of the burning ammunition I saw a man’s legs lying by the road, buttocks up. The whole upper part of the body had been taken off by a shell, and the two naked legs looked exactly like a giant frog’s. Things started to happen here. I was talking to Charley Wright, the company artificer, when a spent rifle bullet hit him on the helmet right above the eyes. It glanced off after tearing the front rim from his helmet, and then bounced off mine. Just then the enemy started gunning for the woods in dead earnest.
A large number of shells passed right over our heads and burst immediately beyond—a few yards lower, and they would have cleaned the highway. Everybody at first lay flat. We crawled forward a few yards and gained the shelter of some stone piles and logs just off the road. The gas seemed like a fog, and we put on our masks. I lay there for several minutes. The explosion and red glare were terrific, but after a while I saw that no shells fell on the road. Taking heart at this, Sergeant Griffin and I got up and ran along it for a short distance. Small pieces of iron fragments rattled off us several times. A little way along the road I met Lieutenant Horner of “C” company.
“We must tell the major we can’t lie here,” I shouted.
“We’re supposed to go into Fismes and relieve the 112th Infantry,” he replied. This was the first time I had heard what our mission was.
I told the captain I would go ahead and try to find our way and some shelter. None of us had any idea what lay on the other side of the little bridge. I ran along the road with Sergeant Griffin and found Lieutenant Horner again, who said he would go with us, so we headed for the bridge.
I must say that road was terrific. Four or five shells a minute were coming. There was always one in the air. These burst with an earth-rocking smash on the other side of the road, just on the far side of the railway embankment. On the “safe” side of the road were the prone figures of the men hugging the ground. Branches, stones, iron fragments, and all manner of débris was hurtling about us; trees were crashing, and over our heads the machine guns were firing in a frenzy of chattering rage.
We found the engineers working frantically at their bridge, an old stone approach that they were trying to repair with planks. I questioned the engineer officer in a series of shouts, and he gave us a guide to take us to the dugout of the major of the 112th, whose battalion was occupying the town. We crossed the bridge on one plank, which was all that was ready, and found ourselves immediately among the houses and on the paved street of a good-sized town.
Behind us was the pandemonium of the barrage and the hammers of the engineers working feverishly at the bridge, all of which echoed up the empty street, mingled with the crackle of roof slates, and the tiles and bricks over which we stumbled. Pressing on for about two blocks, we turned suddenly into the main street of the town.
The fronts of large and handsome houses, built wall to wall, looked blindly across at each other with rows of open doors and yawning windows, as far as the eye could reach. It was a city of the dead, only wakened by the noise of firing, the glare of strange lights, and the flicks of rifle fire here and there.
At our backs the street ran out into the country onto the usual white tree-lined road, down which, a few hundred yards beyond, a furious rifle fight was in progress. Some of our men were sniping diligently from a house near by. There were strange lulls at times when an appalling silence would settle down over everything.
We turned up another side street. At a place where it cut through a little hill between two walls of rock, the guide turned aside. Lifting up a blanket that revealed a gleam of light, we entered what had once been a big wine cellar, a cave in the rock, now being used as a command post dugout. By the yellow light of several guttering candles and a carefully shaded lantern a group of officers were dozing about a table on which lay a map and the remnants of a meal. Back in the shadows could be dimly seen the forms of the sleeping runners and scouts who were always so numerous at any headquarters. Everybody, of course, who had the slightest excuse, and some slackers, invariably crowded into such a place of safety. Among the crowd of runners and orderlies it was indeed hard to separate the sheep from the goats. Consequently the air in there was fetid, and so tainted with gas that everybody felt drowsy.
I reported myself to a captain of the 112th Infantry, who, it turned out, was commanding the battalion in Fismes at that time; told him where we were, and asked him what he wanted us to do.
I learned from him that the situation was something like this: Part of the 112th Infantry were in a little town across the river called Fismette, where they were directly in touch with the enemy, fighting day and night. Fismes itself was for the most part ours. Germans were thought still to be in some of the houses sniping, or scattered along the railroad near the river. Most of the captain’s battalion was scattered through Fismes in the cellars, and there was a part of the 109th Machine Gun Battalion near the town hall. During the day, a more or less stealthy man hunt went on from house to house, with occasional brisk fights, while the enemy shelled the town constantly from the heights across the river, throwing shells down into Fismes, sometimes in a barrage and sometimes intermittently. There was scarcely any time when you could not hear one bursting somewhere, followed by the slide and crumbling-sound of brick and plaster or the tinkle of glass. Having occupied the town for so long himself, “Fritz” was disgustingly familiar with it, and knew all the best places to shell.
The captain told me our best plan would be to find some more or less safe cellars, bring our men in, and leave them there for the night; after which he would move out when he could. The men over the river in Fismette would have to be relieved the next night, as it was too late to attempt it now, only a few hours before dawn.
Lieutenant Horner and I both left on the run and began to hunt for some convenient places. Up the street a house was burning, and as it flared up from time to time, I could see the tower of the town hall stand out, and the fronts of whole lines of empty houses up the street. Then the shadows would swoop down and engulf all.
I crossed the street and ran through what was evidently the gate of a big house. There was a large garden stretching several hundred yards down to the river in which a wrecked automobile was standing, and in the rear of the house I came across a dome-shaped structure made of large cut stones, cement, and railroad rails; this I knew was a dugout. Over the door was a board with a four-leaf clover on it and “Villa Bremen” in German letters. This I saw next day. A flight of carefully winding stone steps led down into the dark cement cavern, into which opened a wooden door. Holding up a lighted match, I discovered numerous old mattresses lying around and the dim outline of a door beyond that led into the depths of a large cellar, judging by the cold draft. Place number one—this would do! Running out, I met Horner hurrying up the street. He had found a big cellar vault under a seminary for his men, and was in luck.
There was no time to lose. No time to consider whether or not some enemy might not still be lurking about. Our men were out there by the bridge under fire, and every minute might mean lives. The next place I hit was a big club or hotel with a huge white, wooden gate that swung in. One look there was enough to assure me that there was room for an army, and best of all, a spigot was running in the court, gushing freely. That would be a godsend. Horner and I came out of our second places about the same time, and meeting up with the rest of the party, we raced down the littered street toward the bridge, where I was relieved to see that the barrage had lifted. So many stray shells were falling here and there that it was not till we got quite near that we could be sure of this.
Just on the other side of the bridge I met Captain Law. “I have a fine place, captain,” I cried. “Thank God!” he said fervently, and the men near by scrambled to their feet expectant of the move. It must have been ticklish work lying there doing nothing. Horner ran back to his company. I sent a runner to inform the major, and we moved off in single file over the bridge, cautioning the men to be as silent as they could. As it was, the ring of the iron hobnails on the littered stone pavement seemed to make enough noise to alarm all the Germans between Fismes and Berlin.
I showed the captain the dugout I had found, and while he posted one platoon there, in the cellar, I went up the street with the others to put them to bed in the big club which, as I expected, had an ample cave-like vaulted cellar underneath. Sometimes I think the cellars of France did as much to win the war as the generals.
We certainly felt elated on having got the men into Fismes with so little loss. A few of the men were wounded by the barrage along the road, which, had it fallen a little to the left, would have landed on the highway with results appalling to think of. Such are the fortunes of war. A few feet one way or another is the difference between life and death. Getting such snug and safe places for the night, we also considered fortunate.
When I returned to the “Villa Bremen,” I found everybody preparing to turn in. One dim little candle was burning in the place, which was like a nice family tomb paved with mattresses. Beyond, in the dark cellar, the men could be heard stirring and clinking around from time to time, but most of them slept. It was very quiet down there. Even the sound of shells breaking in the street near by came only as dull thuds, shocks felt more than heard.
Our fortunate escape from the barrage, and the successful hunt for billets through the dark town, had so elated me that I remember boasting like a Turk about not seeing much to be afraid of in shell fire. I must really have made quite a cad of myself, as I remember some of the others, the poor captain particularly, who had had to lie still through all that rain of shells, looking at me rather disgustedly. My excitement and fatigue were beginning to tell. I actually plumped down on a mattress in the best corner, and when I accidentally put my feet on the captain, who had stretched out on the floor, I took his quiet remonstrance without feeling it. I had the best bed, too.
A few hours later, I woke up after a sound sleep and, seeing him so uncomfortable on the floor, insisted on his coming over onto the mattress, with an excess of remorse for my callousness that nearly overcame me. He shook me by the hand. I shall never get over putting my feet on him that night. He was not to live very long.
Next morning it was quite late when I got up. Of course, no light penetrated the dugout, and in the cellar the worn-out men slumbered on night and day.
A little salmon and bread for breakfast—food was getting scarce—then I sallied out into the intense sunlight and the ruined town of Fismes.
It was nearly quiet at the time, only once in a while the long drone of a shell would pass overhead followed by a smash far off among the labyrinth of deserted houses. Now and then from over the river came the crack of a rifle. Crossing a street warily, I descended several flights of stone steps into a subcellar where I found Lieutenant Horner with his company. We decided to take a little walk about the town, and find out where we were.
Walking up the street, we were very wary and hugged the houses closely. The first place we dropped into was the clubhouse where I had billeted two of our platoons in the cellar the night before. Not a soul was to be seen when I pushed in the big, white gate that led into the court. The hydrant was still gushing away, but a hail brought some of the men out, blinking in the sunlight. They had been rummaging and showed us the house.
It had been the home of some club or society. Fismes was a large and rich town, and the “club” was luxuriously furnished. The Germans had been living here. Sofas and chairs sat around in vacant-looking groups. Tapestries and dirty, torn hangings flapped from the walls, where all the mirrors were cracked. The clocks and frescoes were defaced and names and vile pictures scribbled on the walls. Plaster dust was stamped all over the carpets that were covered with torn books and trash and ripped up in some places. The rear of the clubhouse opened onto a garden. Instead of a porch there was a partly demolished sun parlor with little iron tables and chairs like a French café. These sat around looking most forlorn. There were some empty bottles and glasses on them, dusty and full of flies. At the foot of the garden was a barn. Through the cracks in the rear door of it there was the vista of a path leading down through the interior of a partly demolished and abandoned steel mill. Beyond that lay the railroad, coal piles, and the sparkling river, then in flood. I established an observation post, and remembered that here was a short cut down this path to the river.
Across the street was a Roman Catholic seminary, a big building with wide, sweeping stairs and high ceilings. Here, too, had been a German billet. There was a hodgepodge of cast-off clothes and junk in the dormitories, where the Germans had slept in the rows of iron beds. We went up into the garret to get a view of the town. From the front windows we had a view of the handsome Hôtel de Ville with its clock tower, and the main square, very badly wrecked. The other windows showed us nothing but acres of slate roofs, with a cone-shaped hill in the distance. But the garret was quite interesting on account of its contents. Horner went down and left me alone for a while.
There was a poor little foot-organ that had been played to death, boxes of tinsel cards, plaster images of the saints, a portable altar, prayer books, school texts, vestments, a little English-French dictionary, which I took, and queer pious pictures. Some German soldier had come up there and changed his shoes, leaving the old worn-out boots with no toes standing side by side as mute witnesses of his visit. In one corner we found a small print shop with type already set, and the proof sheets of some strange little religious journal scattered about. How utterly futile it all seemed. The Virgin’s heart, it seems, was yearning over the boys in the seminary who said their prayers to her. I added a footnote in penciled English about Mars. I wonder who read it:
“The Virgin is plucking asphodels in Heaven with
little Saint John and the angels;
Mars is walking the meadows of France, cutting
the throats of God’s sheep;
The laughter of children has departed from this
town. It is bereft forever.”
A German printer had come in and set something in German. The grinning, inked type stood fixed like tiny black teeth in the sheet which would never be finished. There were also piles and piles of wreaths of tinsel and paper flowers. Then I came downstairs and found some of our men stamping about. One platoon of “C” company was in the cellar.
While the place was so quiet, I felt determined to see the town, partly from curiosity and partly from a desire to know my way about the place in case of future necessity. I left Horner standing on the corner near the town hall, and made toward the cone-shaped hill I had seen from the garret windows of the seminary.
Imagine your own home town without a single soul in it, wrecked after a great storm, and partly burned, with all the evidences of the familiar activities of everyday life about, but that life and movement cut off suddenly, turned off like a light, and you will have a little idea of Fismes.
The looted stores stood gaping vacantly around the main square, where I met part of the machine gun battalion. They had their gun set up about halfway down a long hall that commanded a view of the street leading to the bridge. Rocks and earth were piled up as a sort of breastwork on the floor before it, and the ammunition was in the library. A corporal here warned me about the streets. One corner was bad for snipers. I could see it from the window upstairs and there was a dead runner lying there with the red band on his arm.
We dodged across the street to the town hall. This was a lovely white stone Hôtel de Ville with a mansard roof. There was a big wooden sign over the door in German, proclaiming it the Zone Kommandator’s headquarters. The inside was badly wrecked. A mess of German and French town records lay all over the place. I found a chart there showing a German plan of defense for Fismes and several maps of the town which I rolled up for our major. There were also several recent issues of German magazines.* Die Woche, and others. There was indeed a great deal of interesting German material. Among other things I picked up a postcard with the King of Saxony peering out between draped flags up in one corner, and below H. M., a rural scene with two little children hand in hand looking at a field full of cows. Underneath it said, “Little ones, do without milk so we can keep our colonies.” How that must have appealed to the children!
I did not linger around the town hall very long as they were shelling that region pretty often, but headed back into some of the smaller streets, and edged over toward the hill, not so far off as I had thought.
Passing through the utterly empty streets was an eery experience. At one corner a German gunner lay dead by his machine gun. I think he had been hit by a big shell fragment, for his head was kicked in like a rotten pumpkin. He was short and thickset, a Bavarian, I think, with warts on his hands. Beside him was a gummy piece of bread made out of brown bran. Near by lay a number of empty cartridges, probably the last he had fired. The tremendously heavy boots and the iron helmet always lent the Germans a peculiarly brutal aspect. This man had turned the same dull gray as his coat, he had been dead so long. Poor devil, his interest in colonies had lapsed.
I felt pretty certain that that part of Fismes was no longer occupied by the enemy as it was too far back from the river, so I took a good many short cuts through the little lanes and finally, after crossing a spur of the railroad, I came out directly behind my little hill where there were several coal piles. The “Boche” had some curious shallow trenches dug on this elevation and there were several enormous shell craters near the top. This must at one time have been an observation station. I crawled when I got near the summit and, lying on my stomach, had an excellent view over the town. Its roofs stretched away from me to the bridge, beyond which lay the hillside and country on the other side of the Vesle. That was “Hunland” I was looking at over there.
A railroad ran along the river’s edge, and there was a badly damaged stone bridge over the Vesle, with a hamlet on the far side stretching along a road paralleling the stream. Above all this rose the steep hillside occupied by the enemy, with draws here and there leading back to a sort of tableland behind, green with orchards and farms, but crossed now and then by a road. There was not a soul to be seen. Only now and then came a “boom,” and a great geyser of mud and water shot up into the air beside the bridge.
I lay and examined the hill carefully and after a while saw a man walking across a field. He came out of a clump of bushes, passed on down a path, moved over a field till he struck a road—up this he walked and disappeared. He was a German and looked like a pigmy over there on the great lone hill. That was all I saw of the enemy, although I watched for nearly an hour.
On the way back I noticed several very deep dugouts. The door of the house instead of opening into the hall had been made to open directly down a steep stairway that descended some thirty or forty feet. I think these had been built by the French inhabitants, as Fismes had been more or less under fire since the early days of the war. Alan Seeger speaks about that in his letters in 1914.
I found the major sheltered in the house right across the street from the “Villa Bremen,” and it was not long before a dressing station was established in the house above our dugout. The major looked over my town maps, but said he had a better one. By that time it was getting on toward noon, and the Germans began to shell the town violently, as they must have seen a lot of our men moving about the streets. The engineers had repaired the little bridge and an ambulance drove into the town and stopped before the door of the dressing station as if it were driving up to a house at home. Then two or three big shells went off in the house across the road and another fell directly into the street with a tremendous detonation. The major went into the cellar and I dodged across into the “Villa Bremen.” I found that the Germans shelled our garden pretty often on account of the broken automobile there and because the ambulances could be seen coming up to “our door.”
I found our cellar next to the dugout full of cases of potato-masher bombs and barrels of signal-lights which “Fritz” had left. These made us very uncomfortable. If a shell had come through the roof into that cellar, we would all have gone to glory in a burst of fireworks. During the lulls the men therefore set these out in the garden, or shoved them into the street through the cellar windows. I went upstairs to take a shave while this was being done.
The house had evidently belonged to a well-to-do man, who had conducted some kind of an agricultural league or society, as near as I could make out. It was pitiable to see the desks and beautifully kept records and accounts all forced open and wasted around. In the office was a set of maps showing the growth of Paris from Roman times to the Third Empire. It was made from old prints and quaintly interesting. Private letters lay around in piles or strewn on the floor. To dip into these was always like tasting forbidden sweets or peeping in over a stranger’s transom. “Before the war letters”—what a serene world that seemed now, to be sure: “Cher Adolph: Le printemps est venu ici, nous” . . . ridiculous!
I tried to shave at the kitchen sink; the water still ran in Fismes although somewhat feebly. There was the remains of the last meal the German orderly had prepared, yellow mayonnaise dressing and lettuce leaves in a pile of dirty plates. Outside was a glimpse of the old broken automobile in the yard, and the men carrying crates of bombs out of the cellar. Beyond was a vista down to the river bank.
I was only halfway through the shave when I heard a shell that I knew was coming very near. It burst in the yard and started the bombs going. There was a frightful series of explosions, during which I returned to the cellar, lather and all. Our dugout was proof against even a direct hit. I spent most of the rest of the day in it, or in the cellar with the men. Food was already very scarce. The road into the town was being shelled so skillfully as to make it difficult for mess details to get in or out. We sent one detail, but it was impossible to spare a good leader at the time, so it came back. I could not spare the sergeants for mess details. The 112th had left that morning, all but the men across the river in Fismette, whom we found it impossible to relieve that day.
Intense firing could be heard over there from time to time.
The rumor here was that when we drove the enemy over the hill on the other side of the Vesle, we were to go back for a rest. “The general had said so”—as usual just what general was not specified. At any rate we were to make an attack, and the captain was going with the major next morning to make a reconnaissance. We went to sleep early with very little supper. It seemed already as if we had been in Fismes a great many days.
A WILD DAY
AFTER THE strafing of the day before, the major moved his headquarters to the cave where I had first found the captain of the 112th on the night we entered Fismes. I found a short cut to it from our own hole in the ground through several connecting gardens and down a little pair of steps. In the largest of these gardens there were one or two graves of men of the 110th U. S. Infantry. The short cut kept us off the streets away from snipers and shells.
That morning the major and the captain, with some of the other company commanders, left on the reconnaissance, going down the river to an old tannery a mile or so away. A lot of the men were ordered out on detail to carry wounded back from Fismette. This left me, with the mess details that were already out, about thirty men altogether. Some were billeted in the “Villa Bremen,” and some in the cellar at the “club.” There was a great deal of firing all morning over in Fismette, and enemy planes came over Fismes several times, after which a bombardment more or less intense would follow.
The German artillery back among the hills must have had a good time shelling their old homes. Our house was gunned for persistently on account of the dressing station being there, and about one o’clock they made a direct hit on the dugout. Several of us were sitting around smoking on the mattresses, when there was a noise and a skull-cracking jar that almost stunned us. It was hard to think for a minute or so afterwards. Our ears were so numbed that everything seemed very silent for some time. Everybody cowered down; there was the trickle of dirt on us from the ceiling, and dust in the air. But the tremendously thick stone, cement, and iron rails still held. Only a few of the outer layers were dislodged although it was a 6-inch shell.
We kept pretty “close” after that for some time. I opened a precious tin of beef, and we were just going to eat it when some one opened the door and called down. It was very silent in the dugout, but as soon as any one opened the door there came down the stairs a tremendous din of firing, machine guns chattering, the crack of rifles, and the smash of shells booming among the houses. It was the major at the door.
“The Germans are making a counter attack!” cried he, “get the men out, and in line!” I left the top sergeant tumbling the men out of our cellar, while I ran up the street to the “club,” where part of another platoon was billeted. Both the major and the adjutant kept begging me, almost beseeching me, to hurry. I supposed, of course, that the Germans had penetrated the town again.
A very few moments sufficed to get the men together at the “club.” The sergeants exerted themselves to the utmost, hauling men out of the dark cellars and getting the equipment on them like harnessing fire horses. As soon as we were sure we had the cellar clear, we started on a run for the “Villa Bremen,” where I found the rest of the men waiting in the garden. These were tag ends of all the platoons, as the mess details, the men detailed to carry wounded, and those detached to battalion headquarters had left us with a very small remnant of our three-platoon company, already small to begin with.
With what non-coms I had, we formed the men rapidly into squads and made on a run for the lower part of the garden. There we crawled through a fence and went into skirmish line, deploying in a field that led straight down to the river and the railroad track. On our right was the old steel mill and the rear of the houses that faced on the street going down to the bridge. On our left, near the river, was a big factory of some kind. I took all this in at a glance. The excitement photographed it forever on my retina. Danger makes one live intensely.
It was our intention to take up a position along the river, using the railway embankment as a trench to resist the enemy should they attempt to cross the stream. I instructed the first sergeant, who had about half the men, to move over into the factory on the left as we advanced. After taking a few seconds to get the automatic rifle teams† and the skirmish line properly disposed, we started forward on the double.
The sergeant led his men off to the left, while we made straight for the river, a stretch of about two hundred yards. About halfway the enemy turned his machine guns on us. The air suddenly seemed to be alive with a swarm of vicious wasps and I saw the dust cut up all about our feet. There were one or two cries, but we were moving too fast to find out who it was that had been hit. I thought the fire was coming from behind a huge coal pile directly in front of us and led the way straight for it. We were all greatly bewildered and the men bunched. There was a dreadful second or two when I could not get them started toward the pile. Then Sergeant Griffin jumped out and started with me, and the rest closed in with their bayonets. We came onto the pile with a fierce rush. There was nothing there!
I got the platoon sheltered behind it and looked about me. About fifty yards back were three or four quiet bundles that had been men a few seconds before. I watched them from time to time, but there was no more movement. They were dead, not wounded. That coal pile was about thirty feet high, made of brickets and slack which stopped shells excellently. It stretched along the railroad track for some seventy-five feet or so. Just behind us was a very deep hole, a little railroad switchman’s house, the upper part of which was glass, and a long, low dugout, like an Eskimo’s igloo, that was capable of sheltering twenty or thirty men.
The air was still full of the vicious ttt-ang of bullets over our heads, and, of course, the Germans had seen us take shelter behind the coal. The machine gun fire which had caught us came from guns across the river, high up on the hillside almost a mile away. There was no attack on at all. Everything was quieting down, but we were in such a position that we would have to wait till dark to get back to the town. To move back in any numbers meant to be shot up again.
I sent a runner back to the captain with a sketch of our position and got one of the men to crawl over to Sergeant Davidson in the factory telling him where we were and our plans. About an hour later the runner to the captain returned, having crept through the steel mill and along the railroad track. The enemy sniped at us continually. To put one’s helmet over the top of the pile was to draw bullets instantly. We saw some of our men attacking a house on the other side of the river. Several of them were brought down and Sergeant Griffin located a German sniper who was standing back in a room out of our fellows’ line of sight calmly firing at them. Griffin took a rifle and after long and careful aim from the side of the coal pile brought the German down. He hung down out of the window. Our men on the other side instantly closed in on the house which was near the bridgehead in Fismette.
Our own position was absurd. The river in front of us was too deep to be crossed in force, and the little footbridge was nearly wrecked. There was no counter attack. If there ever had been any, it was across the river in Fismette, and it had now subsided. We were simply caught in the open space between the town and the river and had to wait till dark, keeping behind the coal pile. In the meantime I shifted all the men I could move back into the dugout on the other side of the ditch, and put the rest of the men in the ditch where I crawled myself. This was simply a rather deep cut worn by the rainwater where it had run down to a little drainage culvert under the tracks. It was well we moved there.
All the activity the Germans had seen on our side of the river, crossing the fields in skirmish order, etc., had alarmed them. I think they must have thought an attack was preparing on our part, for just about twilight they poured a barrage along the river front and into the town. In the waning light we sat huddled in the ditch while the wailing shells came over.
An experience of that kind can never be described. Death is very near. There is a constant howling shuddering the air, and shells were dropping everywhere about us. I expected a direct hit every minute, but the coal pile saved us. It mercifully cut off the shells just in the angle of their drop. Then some shrapnel came over. One of our men, a big Montenegrin, who had been wounded by a machine gun bullet in the arm during the futile rush on the coal pile, was hit by shrapnel fragments in the other arm, while several of the men got other wounds in various places. Slivers and rocks rattled off our tin hats constantly. Finally one lad, who had crawled halfway into the drain partly to shelter his body, got a sickening shrapnel cut in the leg. We had a hard time to stop the hemorrhage, the blood spurted all over us; naturally enough, he was terrorized. Jack, the Montenegrin, was as brave as he could be and sat with set jaw. He must have been in extreme pain.
The roar of the explosions about us was almost continuous. The air was full of peculiar black smoke, dust, débris, and the stifling odor of high explosive, luckily no gas. During one of the short lulls we saw some of our men running along the railroad track like figures in a fog. These were some of the lads the first sergeant had led to the factory. They had been shelled out of that, and came scudding through the haze and dust like birds in a storm, plunging down into our little ditch and filling it to the point of crowding. I had to take stern measures here to make place for all. Some of them we shouted to, or they would never have seen us. I shall never forget how weird and weak our voices sounded in that great uproar. One or two of those who had been in the factory were wounded too. They lay quiet and shook through the rest of the barrage which followed. About dark it let up with an occasional shell howling now and then, but these finally died away, leaving a heavy silence. I waited till I was sure that it was over and then sent the men back by twos and threes, getting the wounded out first. Through the darkness, shaking and quivering, we sneaked back to the ghostly, white town.
The men who had been killed had had their lives wasted after a certain manner. Boys playing Indian would have known enough to stick to the houses if there had been an attack. But there is an aphorism about the reticence of dead men who are the only competent witnesses to this kind of fooling.
OVER THE BRIDGE
ONE CAN well imagine that after the experience of the afternoon we were pretty well fagged out mentally and physically, so that when the captain told me we were to cross the bridge that night into Fismette, relieve the 112th there, and make an attack, I was not exactly enthusiastic.
Nothing was said to the men. There is no use worrying soldiers in advance. Somehow, I could not fully realize that after the miracle of coming through unharmed that afternoon, the whole process would have to be repeated. One always felt subconsciously, “Surely, surely, this is enough!” Then we were tired, very tired, so I lay down on one of the mattresses and slept—more than slept—I died for a few hours.
About two o’clock I wakened to find the captain shaking me in the dim yellow light of one candle burning without a flicker in the calm and silence of the dugout. The feeling that we were going into battle was so distasteful and so strong that it was like mental indigestion. One felt weak, and I realized that the only thing to do was to get moving and doing something quickly. The captain was telling me the plans.
We were to cross the bridge into Fismette, march down the river about a mile to an old Tannery, where we were to join hands with our second battalion, and then move up the hill in attack.
“Get the men ready,” said the captain. “Issue extra ammunition and bombs.”
There was no ration to issue. Our mess detail had failed to get through to the ration dump that afternoon for the second time. We knew that there was still some of the emergency, or “iron ration,” as it was called, left among the men, although many must have eaten much of this during the hungry time of the last three or four days.
The emergency ration consisted of two or three little red cans full of corned beef, known as “monkey meat,” and hard crackers in long pasteboard boxes, the hard bread, or “hard-tack,” of fame. Sometimes we got the French hard bread that was like a round rusk and was issued loose. All this the men were not supposed to eat without a direct order, but under actual conditions, with the companies scattered about in cellars, very hungry, and in no fear of inspections, it was almost impossible to prevent nibbling. One can scarcely court-martial a man on the firing line for eating a cracker after having gone without food for many hours. It takes a professional martinet to punish a man for that.
I went into the adjoining cellar and wakened the top sergeant, who in a few minutes had the men stirring. They were to come up the street to the “club” and rendezvous with the rest of the platoons there. I learned that the captain would really be in charge of the battalion, as the major did not intend to accompany us in the attack. He was to remain in his command post in Fismes.
As I ran up the street to the club, I could hear the din of the firing in Fismette, and see the white glare made by the German flares. Getting the men out of the huge, dark cellar was not easy. They were all worn out and kept dropping off to sleep again. At last we got them lined up in the court and started to issue ammunition and grenades. The excitement now swept me along so I was going strong. Getting the grenades open was difficult as they were in wooden boxes tightly screwed down. We split these with our bayonets and found inside the deadly pear-shaped objects. These were French citron grenades with a tin cylinder at one end which you pulled off, exposing a spring and plunger. The plunger, when struck on your helmet or any convenient object, set off the grenade, the explosion following five or six seconds later. The men had been taught in grenade school, but I made sure they all knew how to operate these.
Then we took our precious rockets, now much the worse for wear, looking like a leftover from last Fourth of July. I begged the ammunition officer for some rifle grenades, but none were issued. Most of the men had thrown away their tromblones‡ anyway. I found this often happened in other commands. In the darkness the court seemed to swarm with the men. As they filed out the gate the seeming confusion died down and each man received his grenade. That seemed to sober them. It looked like business. At the last, two or three stragglers ran up the steps from the cellar followed by the sergeants, who had done their best to turn everybody out. Despite this, a few remained, some asleep, and some slackers, well-hidden in the long vaulted cellar. There was no time to hunt through this. Some men of the machine gun battalions were also sleeping down there. Our little three-platoon company was down to one hundred and twenty men that night. We led the column.
I found the captain waiting in the street until the platoons came out of the gate. He was impatient at the time we had taken to fall in, which doubtless seemed long to him waiting there in suspense. We moved off down the street in single file, hugging the side of the houses to avoid being seen when the flares went up. I could hear the shuffle and crackle of the men’s feet among the loose slate and débris, while the long caterpillar of “the relief” wound around the corner at the city hall and started down toward the bridge. As we got near the bridge, where flares went up from time to time, the whole stealthy line would stop, lost in the waning, flickering, monstrous shadows cast by the Véry lights that floated in a string of little parachutes for a few seconds and then drifted to earth, to quench themselves in a sea of ink. Then darkness shut down like a lid. There were no orders needed when to halt; the men did it by instinct, the old instinct that keeps the rabbit still even when the hound comes sniffing near. The Germans were very close.
There was a halt for a minute or two at the bridge before we left the shelter of the last house. This, in order to see that the column was well “closed up.” Then we started over, making a tremendous noise it seemed.
At the end of the town there was the flash and crackle of rifle fire. The Germans had been bursting shells on the bridge for several days and the stone above the arch had in one place been blown through, making an oval dip about the middle of the bridge with half of the roadway blown away, showing the river underneath. Big stones from the coping lay scattered about on the top of the bridge itself, and in one place only was there a section about two feet wide on which to cross. The river below was a tangle of débris, a snarl of old wire. The mud banks were splashed and pitted with shell-holes where the mud geysers had spouted over everything when the shells lit. Over this bridge we started, hoping fervently the enemy machine gunners would not see us. About fifty yards up the road, on the other side, some of our men in a ruin were fighting the Germans across the street in another house. The firing through windows and from between cracks in the walls lit the night fitfully.
The captain crossed first, and turned to the left on the other side followed by the men in file. We went through a gutted house and out into the village street beyond. I stood at the bridge, keeping the men closed up until our last platoon was over, and I saw “A” company following. As the captain turned to the left, I heard two or three rifle cracks but paid no attention to them at the time. As soon as the company was over I hastened to catch up with him again.
But when I turned the corner into the single lonely street of Fismette, I found three or four of our lads gathered about the body of one of our own men. It was Charley Wright, from whose helmet the spent bullet had glanced when we came into Fismes. He had been shot by one of our own men, having for some reason or other stepped out into the street between the houses where the fighting had been going on. He was certainly dead. It seemed tremendously futile.
I ran on down the street past our own men, now halted and hugging the houses closely, till I came to the head of the column. The captain was standing shouting at an officer of the 112th. The din ahead was tremendous. About a square away a trench mortar shell was falling every fifteen seconds.
We were, as you may remember, supposed to move on down the river a mile and join hands with the second battalion at the Tannery, to make an attack. The orders, of course, had been written by some one looking at a map, and typed in a comfortable billet some twenty or thirty kilometers in the rear.
I heard the lieutenant of the 112th roar, “Mile! nothing! You can only go another block. We have only half the town; ‘Fritz’ owns the rest. The Prussian Guard is right across the street.” His remarks were punctuated by the rocking explosions of the trench mortar shells. In the gray light I looked about me.
We were in a straight village street packed solid with houses on either side. The back doors of one line of houses opened out onto a field that stretched on a gentle slope about two hundred yards down to the river. From the back yards of the buildings on the other side of the street rose a steep hill. The Germans were up there somewhere. Ahead was a cross street where there was the almost constant flash of mortar shells. A whole battery was playing on it from the heights above. There was only one thing to do, occupy all the town that we could, and hold it. The 112th man was too impatient to leave to give us much information. I didn’t blame him. I wished he were relieving us.
The captain and I went with him along the street for another block, and at the end of this, a little way back from the street crossing, was a low half breastwork, half barricade of barrels, furniture, and big stones across the street. Several of the 112th were lying behind this, firing up the street. I caught a glimpse of some skulking gray figures up there in the doorways. We turned aside into a house, went upstairs and looked out of the rear windows.
It was very early dawn, almost dark yet, and in the dust drifting back from the shell bursts we could see very little. Right below our window there was the beginning of a thin line of our men that stretched at right angles to the village street almost down to the river. Some were in shell-holes, and others in little pits that they had dug. In the obscurity there was only the dim outline of the prone figures, but from them, and beyond into the darkness, sprang out the stabbing jets from the rifles and the flash, flash, flash from the automatics.
We could see nothing of the Germans, but by now there was the constant shuddering of shells passing overhead and the crash where they burst in great columns of water and mud down at the bridge. The red flash of one would light up the spurts of those already exploding. By this time, though, our men were all over the bridge. We stood there only a few seconds watching, awed by the tremendousness of the spectacle, but, I remember, quite calm. That it was impossible to push on to the Tannery was too evident to be even discussed.
“What do you think we had better do?” I asked the captain. I was thinking of an attack by the Germans from the rear hillside and pointed this possibility out to him.
He ordered me to lead the first two platoons up the hill, back of the houses on the other side of the street, and take the best position I could find. I was also to relieve the men of the 112th that we saw from the window with our third platoon, all that we had in Company “B.” This meant simply that at the barricade two platoons turned to the right up the hill on one side of the street, and one platoon to the left down toward the river. The captain himself went back to instruct the other company commanders of the change in plans.
I lost no time, but dodged across the street and through one of the half-ruined houses on the other side. There was a long hall, but the back door opened on a garden with high walls and a barn between it and the cross street, so we were hidden. The garden was very steep, going up the hill about fifty yards to a wall with some scraggly trees along it that seemed to extend along all the back yards of the village, parallel with the street. To jump back into the street and beckon the men toward me was the work of a few seconds only.
Glendenning led the way, a tower of strength in time of need as usual. I scarcely had to say anything to him. He took in the plan of taking up position behind the wall at a glance. I had to stay in the doorway to turn the third platoon the opposite way when it came up. It was in charge of a young lieutenant of the 77th Division who had just joined us. I forget his name. He was a little chap, but one of the bravest, gamest, little fellows that ever lived, and he handled his men like a veteran. I told him what his position was to be and saw some of our men lie down beside the 112th at the barricade across the street. Just then the captain joined me. As we went down the long hall to the garden, I saw a picture on the wall by the flash of a shell that lit in the garden ahead. A lot of plaster fell behind us.
We ran up the garden as fast as we could, for the shell had knocked part of a barn down. The ascent was very steep at the back. The last of the men were just scrambling up this when another shell lit in the barn again right behind us. After that they continued to fall there for some time.
It was a very near thing. The Germans must have seen us passing there. They evidently had wonderful liaison with their trench mortars to switch the fire so quickly. The captain went right up to the wall and told me to work down to the right and see if we were connecting with “C” company there. It was the last time I ever saw him.
The wall was only about knee-high in places, sometimes only a few stones for quite a stretch. Behind this our men lay firing at nothing. From somewhere was coming a perfect hail of machine gun bullets, mostly over our heads, but the worst of it was that some of it was coming from the flanks. We were beautifully enfiladed, probably by some guns away up on the hills above us a mile away. In the darkness this could not have been foreseen. It was plain right away that to keep the men in line along that wall was suicidal, but, of course, I could do nothing as I was not in command. I tried to stop the men from firing at nothing as I went along, but control was out of the question. One had to hug the ground close, backing down the slope a little in order to crawl toward the right. In a little hollow I came across a group. Lieutenant Glendenning and one or two sergeants were stooping over Lieutenant Larned, another of the 77th officers. He had been shot in the throat and was choking in his own blood. He lay quiet but was still alive. There was nothing we could do. I spoke to him, but he shook his head. Then I told Glendenning where I was going, and crawled on. It was the last time I ever saw him alive.
When I finally reached the left flank of our company line I found the wall had gaps in it here and there. Through these the machine gun barrage poured, striking the roofs of the houses at the bottom of the garden. The slate slithered off like scales. Behind one clump of rocks and stones was a squad of our men firing at a haystack, while in a sort of hollow of the hill, and just rising above its crest, was the roof mass of another hamlet. I felt sure some of the fire must be coming from there. The men said there was a machine gun in the haystack. Away to the left was a half-burnt house. There was barbed wire about it. The rest was just orchards and fields. Not a sign of any living thing. Out of this apparent void was coming the deadly hail that was killing us. Here and there along the wall I saw men tearing open their first-aid packages. That something must be done was evident. A change of position would have to be made, or there would be no one to change.
Just then I saw the men getting up from the left all along the line, waver a minute and then move forward.
I motioned forward to the line ahead of me and jumped up with them leading out into the fields up the hill. The machine guns were like a hundred riveters going all at once, such a chattering I never heard. Just where we were there was a little draw in the hill which seems to have saved us. At that part of the line we advanced about fifty yards, I judged. Looking back, I saw the rest of the line returning. There was absolutely no place to advance to. It was a brave but senseless attack. Some of the men lay down and fired where they were. I think I took about six men back with me behind the wall in my section of the line. Most of those who lay out in the fields were killed, but a few crawled back that night. The captain was killed in this attack, but I did not know that until hours later. He had ordered it.
It was so evident that another position would have to be taken up quickly that I determined to find Lieutenant Horner of “C” company and make arrangements with him, captain or no captain. It was no longer a question of waiting for orders but of holding the town. Accordingly, I told one of the sergeants of “C” company where I was going, and gave him strict orders to hold until he got word to move. I then crawled down a path between the houses to the street. If it was bad by the wall, it was worse in the street. A stream of machine gun bullets was racing past. It sounded like sawing. I crawled along close to the houses where Lieutenant Glendenning was afterwards killed, and got across the street by a rain ditch. By this time crawling like a turtle seemed to be the most natural form of movement in the world. Any other method I could not even think of. I met Horner with one runner moving along in the rear of the houses evidently trying to pick a new and more sheltered position. We held a very hasty but very serious consultation.
Comparing notes, it was perfectly evident that there could no longer be any question of attack, and that if we did not receive reënforcements and ammunition and get the help of a barrage on the hillside to clean the enemy out, we should not long be able to hold the town. Both of us felt that a message could not explain the situation which had already been so utterly misunderstood on the other side of the river. If an officer could get across, it might be made clear and the coördinates could be given for the barrage. It would not do to trust that to an enlisted man. Horner could not swim, so it was up to me.
I left a message for the captain, telling him what I was going to try to do. Horner shook hands, wished me good luck, and I started.
OVER THE RIVER AGAIN
IT HAD been my intention at first to cross by the bridge, but one look at the barrage falling there marked it off the slate of possibilities. There was a barrage all along the river front, but especially heavy at the bridge. The shells arriving there and along the stream were very large ones, throwing up immense fountains of liquid mud and exploding in the water with a peculiar muffled crack and roar. As I watched them I nearly turned back; it seemed such a futile task. Only a fool would have dashed out.
A little study showed that away from the bridge there were considerable intervals of time between shells, and that they were pretty well scattered. I also noted a small drainage ditch across the field running down to the river. Along this was the path which led to the ruined wooden footbridge, now floating level with the water and partly shot away. I could see the tangle of it from Fismette. Through the barrage haze Fismes looked miles away, the white houses standing out more plainly in the sun.
The ditch was the only thing that could enable one to reach the river. My body lay in the hollow, so the machine gun barrage went over me. . . .
It took me about half an hour to crawl to the river. I had to put my mask on at the last, as the mustard gas was strong in the little hollow in which I lay. My hands were smarting. Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces. The river was very nearly in flood and so there was no bank, the field gradually getting soggy and swampy till it sloped out into the water. There was a lot of submerged barbed wire that made going ahead very painful and slow. I had, of course, to throw away my mask as it got full of water. My pistol went also. It was too heavy to risk.
Once in the water, I worked under the single board of the footbridge, shifting along hand over hand, which took me halfway across. There I struck out, plunging in a few strokes to the other side and working through the wire.§ Swimming with shoes was not so difficult as I had thought, but the cold water seemed to take all my courage, which was what I needed more than ever. Our own machine guns were playing along the railroad track on our side of the river. After getting across, it seemed for a while that I would be caught between the two fires.
I lay there in the river for a minute and gave up. When you do that something dies inside.
Then I saw the culvert under the track leading into the hole where we had lain during the barrage of the night before. I crawled through this and into the dugout at its edge, taking great care not to show myself for fear some of our own snipers might pick me up.
The luxury of that place was immense. I was safe there, safe, for a few minutes! I forgot everything but my own escape. The river had washed most of the mustard gas off, too. Only my eyes still smarted. A very few minutes, however, brought on a nausea that made me afraid I should not be able to cover the rest of my trip. I crawled out of the dugout very warily, still afraid of our own machine guns and the guns across the river that had picked us up the day before, and finally made way through the ruined steel mill which kept me out of sight most of the distance. It had a long shed. Then I took the little path straight up to the barn behind the “club” which we had occupied, and shoving the door aside, stepped into the courtyard and sat down.
Some of the machine gun men there jumped up rather startled, and then came over to give me a lift, but I was able to go on all right after a few minutes’ breathing, and made my own way to the major’s dugout.
They must have been shelling Fismes very heavily that morning, for the little lane leading to the wine cave was literally strewn with dead runners. The air was heavy with gas, the effect of which I could now plainly feel, a sort of tightening across the lungs and a burning rawness. Not having a mask worried me greatly. There was an old blanket over the door to keep out the gas, and as I went in I noticed a big unexploded air bomb just on the bank above. How it got there I do not know. I lifted the blanket and stepped inside.
The major was telephoning to the colonel as I came in, using the line which the signal corps had established with great difficulty. The different telephones had queer names in order to give no information in case the enemy listened in. I remember the major was talking to “Hindu” something. He was telling the colonel that the attack was so far going well and that we were taking prisoners. I believe some Germans had been taken somewhere, which gave him the impression that we were having a great success. It did not take me very long to give him the real situation, and a very different story went over the wire than had been started. The gravity of affairs was at once apparent.
That dugout was absolutely packed. All the battalion scouts, the runners from all the different organizations in liaison with us,¶ a good many wounded, and some simply taking shelter filled the place to the stifling point. In addition there were a good many officers—the captain of our machine gun company, which had just moved into Fismes, our battalion scout officer, and several others from the third battalion that was just then entering the town. Runners were coming and going.
The major and his adjutant sat at a table with a map on which we were soon drawing the lines for the barrage with an artillery liaison officer superintending the job. We drew them in a horseshoe curve well above the town to avoid the possibility of “shorts” among our own men. Pretty soon the artillery lieutenant was telephoning to the batteries, but the line was cut about this time and there was a maddening delay. I asked for a gas mask and one was taken from a dead man near the door. There were no extras about.
Things began to get pretty hazy for me about this time. I remember giving a book of notes and poems to our scout officer. It was soaked with water but not ruined. Some of the men helped me out of my pack. The river water I had swallowed was the last touch.
Major Donnely, the commanding officer of the third battalion, came in now. He grew very angry at the crowded condition of the dugout and made some of the men move out to other shelter, ordering them to keep away from the door where they cut off what little air there was. Shells were falling outside every few minutes. Between them Godfrey Wyke skipped in, neat, lively, and the same as ever. He and the other company commanders of the third battalion were called in for a little council, and it was decided that after dark an attempt would be made to reënforce the first battalion in Fismette. About this time a runner came in from the other side of the river. He had gotten across the bridge in a lull. The intensity of the barrage after our attack had now relaxed greatly. The message told us that Captain Law of my company had been killed, that the captain of “A” company was wounded, and that the men had been safely withdrawn to the town, but needed reënforcements and ammunition. I said I would guide the reënforcing companies back that night. There was some good news, though. A platoon of the 109th machine gun battalion had crossed the river higher up and worked into Fismette.
After an hour or two the nausea passed off, and the major gave me some cornbeef hash, but I was not quite able to get away with it. After sitting around an hour, I got up and went out with our ammunition officer to see if we could get down to the river and “ferry” some boxes across, near to the little footbridge.
We moved very carefully, cutting across the road just behind an ambulance that drove by at reckless speed. Another was loading just across the street from the house above the “Villa Bremen.” The lieutenant and I went up to the “club” and took a peep at the river from the barn. The whole bank was still being torn up by the shells, a lot of which were also falling in the fields and through the town.
As soon as I saw that hell-hole, I knew absolutely that I didn’t have the courage to try it again. Whether we ever could have carried ammunition boxes through that gantlet and then floated them across the river on planks I do not know. But I do know I didn’t have the courage then to head the gang that was going to try it. The ammunition officer said nothing one way or the other. I was so tired I didn’t care what he thought. While we stood there looking, our own barrage fell around Fismette.
Imagine that little white town up on the hillside, and just above and around it in a semi-horseshoe a great waving cloud of black dust, spurting earth fountains, smoke and flying dirt as though giants were throwing wagonloads of it into the air. There was a howling and whistling overhead and a steady roar from the other side of the river. This kept up for about a half hour, after which there was a dead silence for a long time. I hated to tell the major that I couldn’t get the ammunition across, so I went over to the “Villa Bremen” and slept. The quiet, the coolness, the sense of isolation in the dugout was grateful. One of the medical men was there. Now and then we could hear the dull thud of a shell. It seemed far away. “Doc” got me a little cornbeef hash. I slept till four o’clock, it being impossible to stay awake any longer.
When I woke I seemed to have slept off most of the dizzy feeling of the morning. I had pretty well breathed myself clear of the sick gas feeling and was able to think clearly again. I went over to the major’s dugout and found two engineer officers there with the two majors. We talked over the possibility of rebuilding the little footbridge across the river. I thought that it might be possible to slip down at night and reconstruct this bridge out of the material lying around near by, light trusses from the near by steel mill and heavy fence planks. It was a very short span. Things had quieted down now, and I took the two engineer officers, a major and a captain to look at the footbridge. We tried to get as near as possible without being seen.
The landscape about Fismes and Fismette that mellow summer afternoon about the middle of August is indelibly printed on my memory. We went down through the “club” again. A shell had broken all the glass out of the little sun parlor. It lay about in great sword-like splinters sparkling and twinkling on the iron wine tables and chairs. Then we cut out through the barn and down the path through the steel mill towards the railroad. Here I could point out the wreck of the little plank suspension bridge floating on the turbid, muddy current rolling by so rapidly. Across there was the little town of Fismette, just then so quiet, so white on the green vacant hillside, and the ruined buildings and back lots of Fismes with the railroad stretching along the river. Almost any moment one could expect a train to come puffing around the curve. It seemed so peaceful. But there was a caution, a fear that kept us from showing ourselves, that made us glide quietly, quickly by open spaces between buildings, an expectancy, a breathlessness, an unnatural calm that meant war.
We went back to the command post. The engineers were to try that night to build the bridge, but we could not wait for that, and it was decided to attempt the reënforcement of Fismette by sending over “L” and “M” companies of the third battalion, with part of “I” company equipped with stretchers, to bring out the wounded as soon as it was thoroughly dark. We were going to try to cross by the ruined stone bridge, hoping we could sneak in. I was to guide them, since I had been over once and knew the ropes.
Supper was very intense that night. Ten or twelve men of our own battalion who had remained behind the night before, for one reason or another, were to go over with us also, and they were not very cheerful. The ration was very scarce. Some salmon and half-raw canned sweet potatoes. I took leave of “Villa Bremen” again with regret, and went across the street to find Captain Keel of “L” company with his outfit. He was lining them up in the courtyard of the seminary ready to march. In the fast-failing light they looked tremendously grim and business-like. “L” company was about the finest body of men I ever saw. A few houses up the street “M” company was waiting under Captain Thompson, a fiery, determined little soldier; to talk to him for a few minutes in the street gave one renewed nerve. He had an intrepid personality. With him in charge, we were halfway over already.
He gave the word and the two companies came filing out of the houses in single file, just as we had moved the night before.
We started to make stealthily for the bridge. The men had all been warned, and this time moved with great care. As we got near the river the flares began to stop us. Again and again came the green-white light, and again and again we froze into silence and stillness. One saw the skeleton houses, windows agape, the rows on rows of slate roofs, the tense, silent line of white faces under the helmets—swoop came the shadows, blackness and night—then we moved on again.
About a block from the bridge one of the platoon on guard there came back to tell us that the German machine guns played on it whenever the slightest noise was made by any one crossing. He told us an encouraging tale of several runners who had been killed that afternoon trying to get across. The story completely sickened me. I lost for a moment all the resolution I had. “No more machine guns, no more!” I kept saying to myself against my will. Just then a flare went up, and we halted. I told the news to Captain Thompson, who kept the men halted and ordered them to sit down. Captain Keel came up and suggested sending a message back to the major to apprise him of the situation. This gave some excuse to ourselves for a delay. At least we needed a little time to con the affair over. To be stopped at the bridge would be to bring down a barrage that would make the reënforcement of Fismette impossible. Captain Thompson wanted to get some information from the machine gun outfit who had been near the bridge all day. So one of the machine gun company stationed near here led us into a big house. The outer doors were closed fast after we entered. Then we went through a hall and another door was closed. After this a light was lit and we descended into a big cellar. The whole machine gun company seemed to be there, and very comfortable. Lieutenant Dan Brooks, a light-hearted, generous youth, was in charge. We drank some white wine, of which there were several barrels about. It was the last time I ever saw Dan Brooks. He laughed, gave us some information, wished us good luck, and shook hands. Thompson and I looked at each other—there was no excuse for any further delay. Now was as good as any other time.
We left Brooks in the cheerful candlelight and sallied out through the big door of the house and down the steps to our men sitting silently along the sides of the houses as we had left them. Thompson gave the word, and in a moment we were under way again, making rapidly but carefully for the bridge. At the bridge we halted sheltering behind the last houses.
Keel, who was leading “L” company, and I went first. I remembered passing two of our snipers at the bridgehead, lying behind a stone with their rifles ready. They were going to fire at the flash if a gun spoke. One of them whispered to me, “Don’t stoop down, lieutenant, they are shooting low when they cut loose.” Then we went out onto the bridge.
It was much more damaged than the night before, big stones blown loose all over it, holes in the middle, the pit of the night before much enlarged. As we descended into this a flare went up. That was undoubtedly the most intense moment I ever knew. For me, it was the great moment of the war. I was sure we must be seen. We stood rigid. The flare rose, drifted to the ground, and went out—not a shot! The last half we made in a silent but brief scramble.
There was not a soul on the other side, but I am afraid to say how many dead lay around the house at the head of the bridge. I threw a stone back, which was the signal agreed upon, and the men began to come over, three at a time and very quietly, crouching so that they looked like the big stones when a flare went up. After about twenty were over I started into the town by the back way, leading the file through several houses and twists and turns to a barricade across the street. At every corner a man was left to keep saying, “This way, this way.” It was essential not to lose contact here. The line kept feeding across without a hitch, man after man crouching down to cross the village street behind the barrels filled with stone that led over into the doorway of a big barn. It was a combination barn and house around a big central court. At the upper end of it was a wine cave that went into the almost perpendicular hill.
Out of this came Captain Haller, who was in charge of what was left of the first battalion in Fismette. He was rather startled at first at seeing so many silent figures in the courtyard, but his welcome was more than hearty. In a few minutes the new men were being stationed. Some were sent up on the line to relieve the tired watchers there, others to sleep in lofts, a cellar or a house, but all ready for instant call. We brought in with us several bags of ammunition, grenades, and litters to carry out the wounded, whose evacuation was started immediately.
It was half an hour before the Germans “got wise” and started to gun for the bridge. In the meantime the town had been reënforced.
“Fritz” was very near here. From a little hamlet, the cluster of roofs just up the hill back of our barn and cave, he shot flares right down into the court. Captain Haller came out and put up a red rocket. I remember him standing in that court with the stars above, and now and then the green glare of the German flare freezing us all into statues, then the sudden spurt of his match, and the hiss of the rocket soaring up over the roofs. A few minutes later our own barrage came down about our own ears. The shells came perilously close. That morning they had caught some of our own men falling short, I was told. Under cover of the fire from our batteries the evacuation of the wounded went on.
LAST HOURS IN FISMETTE
IN THAT great time there was never any rest or let-up until the body was killed, or it sank exhausted.
That night we set to work immediately to try to get Captain Williams of “A” company across the river before daylight. He had been struck by a machine gun bullet in the attack that morning. The bullet had travelled around his ribs and, lodging under the spine, had paralyzed him.
He lay in another little dugout—a wine cave, too—about ten houses up the street from the big cave in the court. I made my way up to him through the houses and tried to cheer him by telling him we had come to get him. He was so cheerful and kindly and glad to see us, it would have brought the tears to our eyes—at any other time. Getting him out was not such an easy task.
It was impossible even to appear in the street. Lieutenant Glendenning lay dead there, shot through the heart, fine brave heart, I couldn’t help crying when I heard of that—and we would have to knock holes through the walls of the houses to get Captain Williams’ stretcher through from house to house.
We picked some strong Italians and started working through the big court, battering away with logs and picks, dislodging rocks from the mud plaster and working like mad in a race against time—for if it was morning before we reached the captain, he would have to stay another day in Fismette—and that might be fatal. We could use no lights. I can still see those dark figures battering away, then crawling through, choosing the space in the next wall for the tunneling, and going on and on. At last towards morning the passageway was ready and we carried the captain down as far as the court, lifting him through the holes in the wall with great care, sliding the stretcher from room to room, but it was too late. We had to stay in the big cave with Captain Haller’s command post, where they brought a great many other wounded.
In there was a dressing station. One of the hospital corps worked night and day, poor lad! He was almost all in. The place had rows of wounded in it, moaning, and he had little with which to help them. Bandages were running out. In the cave there was a light, and hay on the floor. It ran far back into the hill. Some of us crawled in there and towards morning got some sleep. The last thing I heard was Captain Williams cheering some of the wounded, especially one Italian lad who was in great pain.
That night, and part of the next day, was fairly quiet. There was nothing to eat. Yes—something—one of my own men, who had heard that I had got back, brought me some fish, about half a cupful, and asked me to share it. He was so much in earnest about it, that I ate it with him like a sacrament.
Next morning not a shot could be heard, and it was warm and sunny. I got up and walked up the line of houses between the street and the hill, working from back yard to back yard. The little dugout where Captain Williams had been the night before, I determined to make my headquarters, and as a sign of authority carried my officer’s raincoat there. There were one or two men sleeping in it and some wounded. Up above it on the hillside was a house which overlooked the fields beyond. There we had an observation post. A garret in one of the houses along the street sheltered one of our invaluable machine guns and its valiant crew. A few of our lads were still lying along the wall as sentries. The rest were down in the houses. The wall and the space in front of it for many yards had dead men lying every here and there.
Farther along near the cross street, I found some of our men in a house which had a spring in it. Here one of our wounded sergeants, Davidson, lay near the water. A fine chap and very glad to see me. He had heard I had been killed. We moved him down to the big cave and got him across the river later. Lieutenant Horner was holding this end of the line. The men were sitting around in the rooms of the little deserted houses, waiting for anything that might happen, and hoping that nothing would. Night was the time we all dreaded. The days seemed easy in comparison.
As we could not use the street, I felt the need of quick communication up and down the line and set some of the men to completing the knocking of holes between houses. In the barn by the court, I started, with Captain Haller’s sanction, a number of men digging a tunnel under the narrow street so we could cross into the houses on the other side and occupy them also. Captain Thompson and I went up a few houses and tried to “fish” Lieutenant Glendenning’s body from the street where it was lying face downward, by making a loop, getting it around him, and then dragging him in through the window, but we could not make it. It was impossible to show oneself even for a minute in the street and the rope we had was a miserable stiff piece of old hemp that forever slipped. We had to give it up. I went back to see how the tunnel was coming on.
The men were digging, standing in one room of the barn while some of us stood talking in the next, when, without any warning but a swift whistle, a trench mortar shell fell through the roof and exploded in the room where the men were working, killing and wounding about eight or nine. A lot of fragments came through the door into our room and one struck me on the knee. It seemed nothing at the time with so many killed. One or two of the poor lads who had been digging were carried into the cave, one fellow had his face blown full of dirt and stones, and was frightfully shell shocked, jerking and crying out pitifully.
There is certainly such a thing as shell shock, and a very terrible thing it is, not to be explained away by doctors who write articles for the library table magazines. The rest of the poor, black, dust-covered bodies were buried in the pit they had dug for themselves, or in the hole the shell had made. All those dead faces were covered with an ashen-gray dust, and there was a hellish scent of high explosive in the air. That was about noon.
About three o’clock Major Donnely appeared among us, having crossed the bridge, like the brave man he was, in daylight. He had orders to make another attack. That is, his battalion was to attack while what was left of ours was to hold the town.
It was a frightful order, murder. All of us knew that. I tried to explain the situation to the major, thinking he did not know that he was flinging three companies against the German army, but I left off, seeing that he did know and was only carrying out what he had been ordered to do.**
The companies that had come into town the night before were to make the attack. I talked to Fletcher, who came up looking very grave and sad over it. I remember he looked at me significantly as the men filed out. Captain Thompson led. That was the last time I ever saw either him or Fletcher.
We of the first battalion left in Fismette got our men sheltered as well as we could for the barrage which we knew was sure to follow, and at the same time kept up a sharp watch. The other companies marched out of the town to the left and made an attack up the hill. It was not hard to tell when the battle was on.
I took my station in the observation house above the little dugout. One of our scouts was there. “Look here, lieutenant,” said he, and between the cracks in the roof pointed out a haystack about fifty yards away. I looked at it carefully through his glass. From it poked the ugly nose of a machine gun from which went up a faint blue haze. Oh! if we had only had rifle grenades then!
The whole hill seemed to be alive with machine guns and artillery. Such a barrage fell on Fismette that we were instantly driven from our posts into the dugout. In the yard beside us shell after shell smashed. We closed the iron door to our cave to keep out the fragments, but the choking gas and the smell of high explosives came in. Above all the roar suddenly sounded, seemingly right above our heads, the sharp bark of our own single machine gun. Brave lads, they were still sticking to it in the garret. We knew they had only one box of ammunition left. Houses along the street were blown up and disappeared inwardly in a cloud of dust and a sliding noise. I hopped out once to see Major Donnely at the big cave.
“Hang on,” he said.
After what seemed an eternity, some one came and said our men were coming back—then our own barrage fell. It was the greatest we had thrown around there. The hillside was tossed about for an hour and the German shells had ceased. As always, when it lifted, there followed the silence of the dead. We were all breathing in relief when what was left of the other companies returned. It was a miserable remnant. The loss had been terrific. Some of the companies were down to a few men. The gain had been nothing and we had exposed the smallness of our force to the Germans. A German plane came down so close it seemed to glide along the roofs. All was silent in the courts and houses till it passed. The aviator could have counted our buttons. No one was fool enough to shoot at him. As usual at that time, the Germans owned the air.
Captain Thompson had been killed, hit by a shell, some of his men said, while he was shouting to them to rally for the third time. The survivors were all in no shape to stand any further strain, having borne all that flesh and blood could, and more. The town was choked with dead and wounded. Even my own little dugout was full of them by this time.
About nightfall the little lieutenant,†† who had our third platoon on the left flank, came up to tell me there was nobody left there. He was badly wounded and half out of his head. The story of his platoon is an heroic one. All alone on the left flank, they held on and on, the little groups at the barricade and in the shell-holes gradually becoming less and less, till no one was left. My fine little Italian striker, Nick de Saza, had his head taken off by a shell, working his Chauchat automatic to the last. I sent the lieutenant over with some of the other wounded. They got back that night into Fismes. He was too young to die miserably of gas after being wounded.
That night—unforgettable—darkness settled down on a despairing but determined little group of survivors in Fismette. Every now and then one of our machine guns barked from the roof, and, as ever at dark, the German flares began. There were very few of us left to hold the line. We got instructions from the major about dusk, and some hope of relief, but I knew that it was only to hearten us. On the other side of the river no one knew what was going on. I tried to string my men out along the wall, but there were so few, I felt it was better to keep most in shelter and some sentries along the wall. We could at least rush out then and make a stand. The last of our remaining officers in “B” company, Lieutenant Gerald, came up and joined me with a remnant of men. He was all in, almost out of his head with fatigue and two days on the line without sleep or food, but still wonderfully game. The dugout filled up with wounded and gassed men, two layers deep. It was a crazy house in there.
I went up in the little house on the hill just above, where we had been observing. A shell fell in the garden, and by its red flash I saw a picture of Christ on the wall. The thorn-crowned face leaped suddenly out of the frame at each devil’s candle. Simple-hearted Catholic peasants had lived there once. I saw that picture by the same light a good many times that night. It was a real piece of melodrama.
We arranged a regular system of reliefs, the men taking turns on the line and then in the dugout. To crawl out onto that line among the dead men by the wall in the tense darkness, shells whistling and falling, and now and then a flare of a corpse-like light, was a terrific test for a man. It grew harder and harder to get the men to leave the dugout as the shelling kept up.
Towards morning the shelling stopped. I began to realize that all the men by the wall were dead. One young Italian whose turn it was to go on post whimpered and begged—he was sick, he said. God knows, we all were! I was numbly trying to think what I could do with him, when the barrage fell. All that were still outside made for the dugout. We crawled in over the wounded and sat shaking. I knew when it lifted that we must meet an attack.
In all that awful uproar I heard some one at the door. The men next to it did not want to open it. It took me some time to give orders to let him in. I was getting very hazy. The poor devil came in shaking and crying. It seemed as though the place was afire outside. We slammed the door again—“gas!” “gas!”—on went the masks. It was real this time. The wounded begged piteously to be helped into theirs and everybody did what they could. A shell-shocked man was shouting and jumping about. Some one held him down, cursing him. Then came the direct hit—a great stunning blow on the top of the dugout; everybody was quieted by that, and the smell of explosive was intense! Gradually I heard the faint stir in the darkness again and the voices through the gas masks. The cave had held. “Open the door!” cried somebody, “and beat out the gas.” We did so and I saw that it was quiet again outside.
That meant only one thing. I felt—an attack—but I seemed to know it without being able to do anything about it. It was a long time seemingly before I moved myself with great effort. Then I tried to get the men up on the line again. We were all choking with gas. I heard Gerald pleading and remonstrating; he was trying to be very logical. “Don’t you see?” I heard him say. “All right, I’ll go then,” and he started up in the darkness after a few of the others who had gone already to man the line. I stood trying to get the men out of the dugout, half wondering what I was trying to do at times and then remembering. It was strangely quiet.
Some one came and said, “They are all dead up there along the wall, lieutenant, and there’s no one between us and ‘C’ company. The machine gun is knocked out.” I tried to think this out.
Suddenly along the top of the hill there was a puff, a rolling cloud of smoke, and then a great burst of dirty, yellow flame. By its glare I could see Gerald standing halfway up the hill with his pistol drawn. It was the Flammenwerfer, the flame throwers; the men along the crest curled up like leaves to save themselves as the flame and smoke rolled clear over them. There was another flash between the houses. One of the men stood up, turning around outlined against the flame—“Oh! my God!” he cried. “Oh! God!”
Here ends this narrative.
*July, 1918, and a few months earlier.
†These men were armed with the French Chauchat automatic rifle.
‡Funnel-shaped caps fitted on the end of a rifle from which the grenade was thrown by shooting the gun.
§It should be remembered that the Vesle is not a “river” in the American sense of the word; it is really a “creek” across which one could shy a stone.
¶Runners were interchanged.
**The orders for this attack and for the whole Fismette fiasco, it now appears, had come from the French Army Commander through the 3rd Corps headquarters. The tactical reason seems to have been that the Fismes-Fismette bridgehead was worth all that it might cost. See Major General Bullard’s Memoirs and his letter to General Pershing of August 28, 1918.
††Lieutenant Francis Welton, I have since learned.