Chapter IV: Coming Out

The battalion lay in unclean holes on the far face of Bois de Belleau, which was “now U. S. Marine Corps entirely.” The sun was low over Torcy, and all the battalion, except certain designated individuals, slept. The artillery, Boche and American, was engaged in counter-battery work, and the persecuted infantry enjoyed repose. The senior lieutenant of the 49th Company, bedded down under a big rock with his orderly, came up from infinite depths of slumber with his pistol out, all in one swift motion. You awoke like that in the Bois de Belleau.... Jennings, company runner, showed two buck-teeth at him and said: “Sir, the cap’n wants to see you——”

They crawled delicately away from the edge of the wood, to a trail that took you back under cover, and found the captain frying potatoes in bacon grease. “Going out to-night, by platoons. Start as soon as it’s dark, with the 17th. We are next. 6th Regiment outfit makin’ the relief—96th Company for us. They’ve been here before, so you needn’t leave anybody to show them the ground. Soon as they get to you, beat it. Got a sketch of the map? Have your platoon at Bois Gros-Jean—you know, beyond Brigade, on the big road—at daylight. Battalion has chow there.—Got it?—Good——”

The lieutenant went happily back to his men. The word had already gotten around, by the grape-vine route, and grinning heads stuck out of every hole. “Well, sergeant, pass the word to get set—goin’ out to-night—” “Yes, sir! Ready right now! Is the division bein’ relieved?”—“No, 6th Regiment comin’ in—” “Well, sir, I hope to God they ain’t late. Did you hear, sir, anything about us goin’ back to St. Denis, and gettin’ liberty in Paris, an’ a month’s rest—” That unaccountable delusion persisted in the Marine Brigade through all of June and into July. It never happened. “No, I didn’t hear any such thing. But it’s enough to get out of here. This place is like the wrath of God!”

Certain designated individuals watched.
]

It was. To begin with, it had been a tangled, rocky wood of a few kilometres, the shooting-preserve of a French family in happier days. Even now you could see where a sort of hunting-lodge had been; they said some Marines had crawled in and bombed a Boche headquarters out of it. The first of June it was rather a pretty place, with great trees and flowery underbrush, all green and new in the full tide of spring. It was a place of no particular military importance other than local. But the chance of war made it a symbol. The German rolled down to it like a flood, driving before him forlorn fragments of wrecked French divisions, all the way from the Chemin des Dames. It was the spearhead of his last great thrust on Paris. The Americans of the 2d Division were new troops, untried in this war, regarded with uneasy hopefulness by the Allies. Their successes came when the Allies very greatly needed a success; for not since 1914 had the Boche appeared so terrible as in this, the spring of 1918. For a space the world watched the Bois de Belleau uneasily, and then with pride and an awakened hope. Men saw in it, foreshadowed, Soissons, and the 8th of August, that Ludendorf was to call “the black day of the war,” and an event in a car on a railroad siding, in the misty November forest of Senlis.

But the men who fought here saw none of these things. Good German troops, with every device of engineering skill, and all their cunning gained in war, poured into the wood. Battalions of Marines threw themselves against it. Day and night for nearly a month men fought in its corpse-choked thickets, killing with bayonet and bomb and machine-gun. It was gassed and shelled and shot into the semblance of nothing earthly. The great trees were all down; the leaves were blasted off, or hung sere and blackened. It was pockmarked with shell craters and shallow dugouts and hasty trenches. It was strewn with all the débris of war, Mauser rifles and Springfields, helmets, German and American, unexploded grenades, letters, knapsacks, packs, blankets, boots; a year later, it is said, they were still finding unburied dead in the depths of it. Finally it was taken, by inches.

Men fought in its corpse-choked thickets....
]

Now the battalion turned its backs to the tangle and watched with languid interest the shrapnel that one of the batteries of our 15th Field was showering on the ruined airdrome in front of Torcy. The white puff-balls were tinged pink by the setting sun, and jets of reddish dust went up from the ground under the bursts. A Boche battery was replying, and heavy shells rumbled far above, searching transport lines. Those nights, up in northern France, came late and went early. A man could sit on the edge of his hole, prairie-dog fashion, and write a letter at 10.30; it was not safe to move in the open until after 11.00; it was nearly midnight when the relieving troops came in. The lieutenant’s opposite number reported, chap he hadn’t seen since Quantico, back in another lifetime.—“Well, here we are! Out you go—” “I say, is it you, Bob? Heard you were killed—” “Oh, not at all—heard the same thing about you—not strange; lot of serious accidents have happened around here—” “Well, good luck—” “Sure—bon chance, eh?—so-long——”

Bringing in German prisoners at St. Mihiel.

Drawn on the field by Captain Thomason.
]

Ration parties ... always sweated mightily and anticipated exciting
incidents....
]

The platoon left the wood and angled down to the Torcy road. A string of shells howled overhead, 88s by the sound of them, and broke on the road. The lieutenant halted and watched: “Dam’ unusual, shellin’ here this time of night—must know it’s a relief—” It was the conviction of all that the Boche knew everything, down to the movements of the lowest corporal.—“I think we’ll cut a corner, and take a chance of gettin’ through the line over yonder—” He led away from the road, through the trampled wheat to his right, away from the shelling. This was really No Man’s Land, for the line curved back from the wood, and thrust out again along the line of another crest, also wooded. Such intervals were watched by day and patrolled by night, and ration parties, carrying details, and other wretches who had to traverse them always sweated mightily and anticipated exciting incidents. It was full of smells and mysterious horrors in the starlight, that wheat. Once the platoon came upon a pig, feeding unspeakably.... The woods ahead grew plain; the men walked gingerly, straining their eyes at the shadows.... “Eighth machine-gun in there—take it easy, you—risky business, this—wish to God I’d—” The platoon stopped, frozen, as they heard the charging handle of a Hotchkiss snick back. A small, sharp voice barked: “Halt—who’ there?”—“Platoon of the 49th—can we get through here?” “My God, I dam’ near gave you a clip! What the hell, comin’ up here—don’t you know you ain’t supposed to come bustin’ around a machine-gun position you—” “All right—all right!—shellin’ the road down there”—and the platoon scuttled past the Hotchkiss gun, while its crew reviled them. Machine-gunners are a touchy lot, prone to shoot first and inquire afterward; the platoon gave thanks for a man who didn’t scare.

They turned left now, and went swiftly through the woods northwest of Lucy. They passed a place where the midnight harassing fire had caught a ration party; a shell had hit a pushcart loaded with loaves of the round French war bread which was the main item of the ration on this front; bread was scattered over an acre or so, and a frenzied sergeant was routing his ration party out of several holes and trying to collect it again. Otherwise, an outfit up in the Bois de Belleau wouldn’t eat for another twenty-four hours. The platoon was amused. They took the road to La Voie du Chatelle, stepping out. They’d be well behind the usual shelling, if the Boche was on schedule. Far enough back to talk now, and relax their hunched shoulders.

Down the road they heard a trampling, and the wind brought a smell of unwashed men. “Hi! Relief of Frogs comin’ in—!” “Yeh—Frogs. They smell like camels. We smell like goats.” “Hope this relief carries a bath wit’ it! Me, I’ve got blue mould all up my back.” “Well, next time we come in, we’ll put showers in that goddam place. Been there long enough to, already—” “How long we been there?—Le’s see—this is the 5th of July, ain’t it?—” “Je’s, I don’t keep count of no days! I can’t remember when we was anywhere else—” This was in a tone so mournful that the file’s neighbors laughed. “What you doin’ in this war, anyway? Dam’ replacement, jus’ joined up after Hill 142—” “Man,” said the file very earnestly, “I’ll tell you. So help me Gawd, I wuz dodgin’ the draft!”

The French column came up and passed. Its horizon-blue uniform was invisible in the dark, but the stars glinted a little on its helmets and bayonets. “V’la! Yanquis! B’soir, Americains!” “Dam’ right, Frenchie! Bon chance, huh?” They went on without lagging, well closed up. A man’s feet dragged going in; there are no such things on a battle-field as fresh troops, for you always approach by forced marches, infinitely weary—“but comin’ out—boy, we make knots!—” They reached La Voie du Chatelle, where Regimental was, and there the old Boche always shelled. It was a little farm, pretty well knocked to pieces now, but Regimental was reported to prefer it to a change; they had the Boche’s system down so that they could count on him. His shelling always fell into method when he had long enough, and the superior man could, by watching him a few days, avoid unpleasantness. La Voie du Chatelle, as the world knew, received his attention from 11.45 to 12.10 every night. Then he laid off until 3, when his day-shift came on. You could set your watch by it. The platoon went cheerfully past.

A full kilometre farther they hiked, at a furious pace. Then the lieutenant considered that they might catch a rest; they had come a long way and were in a safe spot. Ten minutes’ rest out of every hour was the rule when possible. He passed the word: “Fall out to the right of the road,” and sat down himself, a little way off, feeling for his chewing-tobacco. You didn’t smoke on the front at night—lights were not safe. And chewin’ was next best. Then he observed that the platoon was not falling out. They stood in groups on the road, and an angry mutter reached him. “What th’ell?—Goin’ out, an’ then he wants to rest!” “Yeh, ‘fall out on the right of the road,’ he says, the goddam fool—” The lieutenant knew his men, as you know men you live in hell with. He got up, chuckling.—“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it—come on, you birds!” and he set them a killing step, at which no man complained.

The dawn was coming when they rendezvoused with the battalion in Bois Gros-Jean—beans for breakfast, and hot coffee, and tins of jam! That afternoon they had off their clothes for the first time in three weeks or so, and swam in the Marne at a place called Croutte. And at formation they heard this order published:

VI Armée
État-Major
6930/2

Au QGA le 30 Juin, 1918.

In view of the brilliant conduct of the 4th Brigade of the 2nd U. S.
Division, which in a spirited fight took Bouresches and the important
strong point of Bois de Belleau, stubbornly defended by a large enemy
force, the General commanding the VIth Army orders that, henceforth,
in all official papers, the Bois de Belleau shall be named “Bois de la
Brigade de Marine.”

The General of Division Degoutte
Commanding VIth Army
(Signed) DEGOUTTE.

“Yeh,” said the battalion. “Now, about this liberty in Paris—” But they didn’t go to Paris. They took a road that led through Soissons, and St. Mihiel, and Blanc Mont, and the Argonne-Meuse, to Nieuwied, on the far side of the Rhine.

SONGS
ONE
“BANG AWAY, LULU”

The Marines have a very noble song: the Marine Corps Hymn. It is taught, along with close order drill and things like that, to recruits at Parris Island and on the West Coast. It begins:

“_From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli,
We have fought our country’s battles
On the land and on the sea_....”

and it closes, gloriously:

“_If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on heaven’s scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines_....”

This platoon, however, led by a brazen-throated gunnery sergeant, is roaring out:

“_Bang away, Lulu_....”

]