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

the trains of those unseen things that make the air electric with their presence. We hear them coming, passing, going, but see not one of them.

"There's whole blacksmith's shops sailing over our heads on the way to Germany," Pat Guahn shouts in my ear. "I guess the Dutchman sure knows how to call for help. He doesn't care for that first wallop, and he thinks he would like about a half million reserves from the Russian front."

"That darkness out in No Man's Land don't make any hit with him either," Stanton contributes. "He's got it lit up so bright I'm homesick for Broadway."

Now comes the thunder of the shell arrivals. You know the old covered wooden bridges that are still to be found in the country. Have you ever heard a team of horses and a farm wagon thumping and rumbling over such a bridge on the trot?

Multiply the horse team a thousand times. Lash the animals from the trot to the wild gallop. Imagine the sound of their stampede through the echoing wooden structure and you approach in volume and effect the rumble and roar of the steel as it rained down on that little German salient that night.

"Listen to them babies bustin'," says Griffin. "I'm betting them groundhogs is sure huntin' their holes right now and trying to dig clear through to China."

That was the sound and sight of that opening salvo from all guns, from the small trench mortars in the line, the lightest field pieces behind them, the heavy field pieces about us and the ponderous railroad artillery located behind us.

Its crash has slashed the inkiness in front of us with a lurid red meridian. I don't know how many hands had pulled lanyards on exactly the same instant but the consequent spread of fire looked like one continuous flame.

Now the "seventy-fives" are speaking, not in unison, but at various speeds, limited only by the utmost celerity of the sweating gun crews.

But the German front line is not the only locality receiving unsolicited attention. Enemy gun positions far behind the lines are being plastered with high explosives and anesthetised with gas shells.

So effective is the American artillery neutralisation of the German batteries, that it is between fifteen and twenty minutes before the first enemy gun replies to the terrific barrage. And though expected momentarily, a German counter barrage fails to materialise.

In our tree top we wait for the enemy's counter shelling but the retaliation does not develop. When occupying an exposed position, the suspense of waiting for an impending blow increases in tenseness as the delay continues and the expectations remain unrealised. With no inclination to be unreasonable, one even prays for the speedy delivery of the blow in the same way that the man with the aching tooth urges the dentist to speed up and have it over with.

"Why in hell don't they come back at us?" Griffin asks. "I've had myself all tuned up for the last twenty minutes to have a leg blown off and be thankful. I hate this waiting stuff."

"Keep your shirt on, Pete," Stanton remarks. "Give 'em a chance to get their breath and come out of their holes. That barrage drove 'em down a couple hundred feet into the ground and they haven't any elevators to come up on. We'll hear from 'em soon enough."

We did, but it was not more than a whisper as compared with what they were receiving from our side of the line. The German artillery came into lethargic action after the American barrage had been in constant operation for thirty minutes and then the enemy's fire was only desultory. Only an occasional shell from Kulturland came our way, and even they carried a rather tired, listless buzz, as though they didn't know exactly where they were going and didn't care.

Six or eight of them hummed along a harmless orbit not far above our tree top and fell in the forest. It certainly looked as though we were shooting all the hard-stuff and the German end of the fireworks party was all coloured lights and Roman candles. Of the six shells that passed us, three failed to explode upon landing.

"That makes three dubs," said Guahn.

"You don't mean dubs," Stanton corrected him, "you mean duds and even then you are wrong. Those were gas pills. They just crack open quietly so you don't know it until you've sniffed yourself dead. Listen, you'll hear the gas alert soon."

Even as he spoke, we heard through the firing the throaty gurgling of the sirens. The alarm started on our right and spread from station to station through the woods. We adjusted the respirators and turned our muffled faces toward the firing line. Through the moisture fogged glasses of my mask, I looked first upon my companions on this rustic scaffold above the forest.

War's demands had removed our appearances far from the human. Our heads were topped with uncomfortable steel casques, harder than the backs of turtles. Our eyes were large, flat, round glazed surfaces unblinking and owl-like. Our faces were shapeless folds of black rubber cloth. Our lungs sucked air through tubes from a canvass bag under our chins and we were inhabiting a tree top like a family of apes. It really required imagination to make it seem real.

"Looks like the party is over," came the muffled remark from the masked figure beside me. The cannonading was dying down appreciably. The blinking line of lights in front of us grew less.

A terrific upward blast of red and green flame from the ground close to our tree, reminded us that one heavy still remained under firing orders. The flash seen through the forest revealed in intricate tracings the intertwining limbs and branches of the trees. It presented the appearance of a piece of strong black lace spread out and held at arm's length in front of a glowing grate.

From the German lines an increased number of flares shot skyward and as the cannon cracks ceased, save for isolated booms, the enemy machine guns could be heard at work, riveting the night with sprays of lead and sounding for all the world like a scourge of hungry woodpeckers.

"God help any of the doughboys that are going up against any of that stuff," Griffin observed through his mask.

"Don't worry about our doughboys," replied Stanton; "they are all safe in their trenches now. That's most likely the reason why our guns were ordered to lay off. I guess Fritzie got busy with his typewriters too late."

I descended the tree, leaving my companions to wait for the orders necessary for their departure. Unfamiliar with the unmarked paths of the forest and guided only as to general directions, I made my way through the trees some distance in search of the road back from the front.

A number of mud and water-filled shell holes intervened to make the exertion greater and consequently the demand upon lungs for air greater. After floundering several kilometres through a strange forest with a gas mask on, one begins to appreciate the temptation that comes to tear off the stifling nose bag and risk asphyxiation for just one breath of fresh air.

A babel of voices in the darkness to one side guided me to a log cabin where I learned from a sentry that the gas scare had just been called off. Continuing on the road, I collided head on in the darkness with a walking horse. Its rider swore and so did I, with slightly the advantage over him as his head was still encased. I told him the gas alarm was off and he tore away the mask with a sigh of relief. I left him while he was removing the horse's gas mask.

A light snow was beginning to fall as I said good-night to the battalion commander in front of his roadside shack. A party of mounted runners was passing on the way to their quarters. With an admirable lack of dignity quite becoming a national guard cavalry major in command of regular army artillery, he said:

"Good-night, men, we licked hell out of them."

The Toul sector, during its occupation by Americans, always maintained a high daily rating of artillery activity. The opposing forces were continually planning surprises on one another. At any minute of the night or day a terrific bombardment of high explosive or gas might break out on either side. Both sides operated their sound ranging apparatus to a rather high degree of efficiency.

By these delicate instruments we could locate the exact position of an unseen enemy battery. Following that location, the battery would immediately be visited with a concentrated downpour of hot steel intended to wipe it out of existence. The enemy did as much for us, so that in the artillery, when the men were not actually manning the guns in action, they were digging gun pits for reserve positions which they could occupy if the enemy happened to get the proper range of the old positions. In this casual counter battery work our artillery adopted a system by which many lives were saved.

If a German battery began shelling one of our battery positions, the artillerymen in that position were not called upon to stand by their guns and return the fire. The order would be given to temporarily abandon the position and the men would be withdrawn a safe distance. The German battery that was firing would be responded to, two to one, by other American batteries located nearby and which did not happen to be under fire at the time. By this system we conserved our strength.

Our infantry was strong in their praise of the artillery. I observed this particularly one day on the Toul front when General Pershing dropped in unexpectedly at the division headquarters, then located in the hillside village of Bourcq. While the commander and his party were awaiting a meal which was being prepared, four muddy figures tramped down the hallway of the Château. Through the doorway the general observed their entrance.

The two leading figures were stolid German soldiers, prisoners of war, and behind them marched their captors, two excusably proud young Americans. One of them carried his bayoneted rifle at the ready, while the second carried the equipment which had been taken from the prisoners. The American commander ordered the group brought before him and asked one of the Americans to relate the story of the capture.

"We in the infantry got 'em, sir," replied one, "but the artillery deserved most of the credit. It happened just at dawn this morning. Jim here, and myself, were holding down an advance machine gun post when the Germans laid down a flock of shells on our first line trench. We just kept at the gun ready to let them have it if they started to come over.

"Pretty soon we saw them coming through the mist and we began to put it to 'em. I think we got a bunch of them but they kept on coming.

"Then somebody back in our first line shot up the signal for a barrage in our sector. It couldn't have been a minute before our cannon cut loose and the shells began to drop right down in the middle of the raiding party.

"It was a good heavy barrage, sir, and it cut clean through the centre of the raiders. Two Germans were ahead of the rest and the barrage landed right in back of them. The rest started running back toward their lines, but the first pair could not go back because they would have had to pass through the barrage. I kept the machine gun going all the time and Jim showed himself above the trench and pointed his rifle at the cut-off pair.

"They put up their hands right quick and we waved to 'em to come in. They took it on the jump and landed in our trench as fast as they could. We