''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' - Floyd Phillips Gibbons (fantasy books to read txt) 📗

their way through the storm of falling shells and in coming to the assistance of the first two. That made seven Americans in the fight. When the fighting ceased, every one of the seven had been accounted for in the three items, dead, wounded or captured.

That little handful of Americans, fought, died or were wounded in the positions which they had been ordered to hold. Although the engagement was an extremely minor one, it being the first of its kind on the American sector, it was sufficient to give the enemy some idea of the determination and fighting qualities of the individual American soldier. Their comrades were proud of them, and were inclined to consider the exploit, "Alamo stuff."

Two of the defenders were killed, four were wounded, and one was captured. The wounded men reported that the captured American continued to fight even after being severely wounded. He was the last to remain on his feet and when a bomb blew his rifle from his hand and injured his arm, he succumbed to superior numbers and was carried off by his captors.

After the hurried sortie, the Germans beat a hasty retreat so that the position was reoccupied immediately by another American detail.

The "Alamo" seven had not been taken by surprise. Through a downpour of rather badly placed shells, they held their position on the firing step and worked both their rifles and machine guns against the raiding party, which they could not see, but knew would be advancing behind the curtain of fire. Hundreds of empty cartridges and a broken American bayonet constituted impartial testimony to the fierceness of the fighting. After the first rush, in which the defenders accounted for a number of Germans, the fighting began at close quarters, the enemy peppering the listening post with hand-grenades.

In the meantime the German barrage had been lifted and lengthened until it was lowered again between the "Alamo" seven and their comrades in the rear.

There were calls to surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the hope that assistance soon would arrive from the American artillery.

But the Germans had planned the raid well. Their first barrage cut all telephone wires leading back from our front lines and the signal rocket which one of the men in the listening post had fired into the air, had been smothered in the dense mist. That rocket had called for a defensive barrage from American artillery and when no answer came to it, a second one was fired, but that also was snuffed out by the fog.

The net result of the raid was that the Germans had captured one of our wounded men and had thereby identified the organisation opposing them as the First Regular Division of the United States Army, composed of the 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Regular U. S. Infantry Regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Regular U. S. Army Field Artillery. The division was under the command of Major General Robert Lee Bullard.

In the days and weeks that followed, the daily exchange of shells on the sector increased to two and three times the number it had been before our men arrived there. There were nightly patrols in No Man's Land and several instances where these patrols met in the dark and engaged one another with casualties on both sides.

One night a little over a month later—the early morning of March 4th, to be exact—it was my privilege to witness from an exceptional vantage point, the first planned and concentrated American artillery action against the enemy. The German lines selected for this sudden downpour of shell, comprised two small salients jutting out from the enemy's positions in the vicinity of the ruined village of Lahayville, in the same sector.

In company with an orderly who had been despatched as my guide, I started from an artillery battalion headquarters shortly before midnight, and together we made our way up the dark muddy road that led through the dense Bois de la Reine to the battery positions. Half an hour's walk and O'Neil, the guide, led me off the road into a darker tunnel of overlaced boughs where we stumbled along on the ties of a narrow gauge railroad that conveyed heavy shells from the road to the guns. We passed through several gun pits and stopped in front of a huge abri built entirely above ground.

Its walls and roof must have been between five and seven feet thick and were made from layers of logs, sandbags, railroad iron and slabs of concrete reinforced with steel. It looked impenetrable.

"Battery commander's headquarters," O'Neil said to me as we entered a small hot room lighted by two oil lamps and a candle. Three officers, at two large map tables, were working on sheets of figures. Two wooden bunks, one above the other, and two posts supporting the low ceiling completed the meagre furnishings of the room. A young officer looked up from his work, O'Neil saluted, and addressed him.

"The Major sent me up with this correspondent. He said you could let him go wherever he could see the fun and that you are not responsible for his safety." O'Neil caught the captain's smile at the closing remark and withdrew. The captain showed me the map.

"Here we are," he said, indicating a spot with his finger, "and here's what we are aiming at to-night. There are two places you can stay to see the fun. You can stay in this shelter and hear the sound of it, or you can go up a little further front to this point, and mount the platform in our observation tree. In this abri you are safe from splinters and shrapnel but a direct hit would wipe us out. In the tree you are exposed to direct hits and splinters from nearby bursts but at least you can see the whole show. It's the highest point around here and overlooks the whole sector."

I sensed that the captain expected a busy evening and looked forward with no joy to possible interference from a questioning visitor, so I chose the tree.

"All right," he said, "you've got helmet and gas masks, I see. Now how's your watch? Take the right time off mine. We have just synchronised ours with headquarters. Zero is one o'clock. You had better start now."

He called for an orderly with a German name, and the two of us left. Before I was out of the room, the captain had returned to his mathematics and was figuring out the latest range variations and making allowances for latest developments in wind, temperature and barometer. The orderly with the German name and I plunged again into the trees and brought up shortly on the edge of a group of men who were standing in the dark near a large tree trunk. I could hear several other men and some stamping horses off to one side.

The party at the foot of the tree was composed of observers, signal linemen and runners. All of them were enlisted men. I inquired who were to be my comrades in the tree top and three presented themselves. One said his name was Pat Guahn, the second gave his as Peter Griffin and the third acknowledged Mike Stanton. I introduced myself and Griffin said, "I see we are all from the same part of Italy."

At twenty minutes to one, we started up the tree, mounting by rudely constructed ladders that led from one to the other of the four crudely fashioned platforms. We reached the top breathless and with no false impressions about the stability of our swaying perch. The tree seemed to be the tallest in the forest and nothing interfered with our forward view. The platform was a bit shaky and Guahn put my thoughts to words and music by softly singing—