And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 24

The prisoner made no reply, but later made a full confession of his act, and also gave to his interrogators much valuable information, which, however, did not save him from paying the penalty in front of a firing squad. When he faced the rifles, he was not wearing the stolen uniform.

CHAPTER X

INTO PICARDY TO MEET THE GERMAN PUSH

Toward the end of March, 1918, just at the time when the American Expeditionary Forces were approaching the desired degree of military effectiveness, the fate of civilisation was suddenly imperilled by the materialisation of the long expected German offensive.

This push, the greatest the enemy had ever attempted, began on March 21st, and the place that Hindenburg selected for the drive was Picardy, the valley of the Somme, the ancient c.o.c.kpit of Europe. On that day the German hordes, scores upon scores of divisions, hurled themselves against the British line between Arras and Noyon.

Before that tremendous weight of manpower, the Allied line was forced to give and one of the holding British armies, the Fifth, gave ground on the right flank, and with its left as a hinge, swung back like a gate, opening the way for the Germans toward Paris.

There have been many descriptions of the fierce fighting put up by the French and British to stem the German advance, but the most interesting one that ever came to my notice, came from one of the few American soldiers that partic.i.p.ated in the defence. Two weeks after the opening of the battle and at a time when the German advance had been stopped, I came upon this American in a United States Military Hospital at Dijon.

An interne led me to the bedside of Jimmy Brady, a former jockey from the Pimlico turf in Baltimore, and now a proud wearer of Uncle Sam's khaki. In his own quaint way, Jimmy told me the story of what a little handful of Americans did in the great battle in Picardy. Jimmy knew.

Jimmy had been there.

"Lad," he said, "I'm telling you it was a real jam. I learned one h.e.l.l of a headful in the last ten days that I'll not be forgetting in the next ten years. I've got new ideas about how long this war is goin' to last. Of course, we're going to lick the Boches before it ends, but I've sorter given up the picture I had of myself marching up Fifth Avenue in a victory parade on this coming Fourth of July. I'll say it can't be done in that time.

"Our outfit from old ---- engineers, and believe me there's none better, have been working up in the Somme country for the last two months. We were billeted at Brie and most of our work had been throwing bridges across the Ca.n.a.l du Nord about three miles south of Peronne. I'm telling you the Somme ain't a river. It's a swamp, and they just hardly squeeze enough water outer it to make a ca.n.a.l which takes the place of a river.

"We was working under the British. Their old bridges over the ca.n.a.l were wooden affairs and most of them had signs on them reading, 'This bridge won't hold a tank,' and that bridge wouldn't bear trotting horses, and so on. Some of 'em we tore down must have been put in for scenery purposes only. We were slamming up some husky looking steel structures like you see in the States, and believe me it makes me sick to think that we had to blow 'em all up again before the Boches got to 'em.

"I see by the papers that the battle began on the 21st, but I've got no more idea about the date of it than the King of Honolulu. They say it's been on only about ten days, but I couldn't swear it hadn't been on since New Year's Eve. It sure seemed a long time. As I told you, we were working just south of Peronne on the main road between St. Quentin and Amiens. She started on a foggy morning and for two days the music kept getting closer. On the first day, all traffic was frontward, men, guns, and camions going up towards the lines, and then the tide began to flow back.

"Ambulances and camions, full of poor wounded devils, filled the road, and then came labour battalions of chattering c.h.i.n.ks, Egyptians, and Fiji Islanders and G.o.d knows what. None of these birds were lingering, because the enemy was sprinkling the roads with sh.e.l.ls and sorter keeping their marching spirits up. Orders came for us to ditch our packs and equipment all except spades, rifles, belts and canteens, and we set off toward the rear.

"Do you mind your map of the Somme? Well, we pulls up at Chaulnes for a breath. It was a big depot and dump town--aeroplanes and everything piled up in it. We were ordered onto demolition work, being as we was still cla.s.sed as non-combatants. I don't know how many billions of dollars' worth of stuff we blew up and destroyed, but it seemed to me there was no end of it. Fritz kept coming all the time and they hiked us on to Aubercourt and then to Dormant, and each place we stopped and dug trenches, and then they shoots us into camions and rushes us north to a town not far out of Amiens.

"With about forty men, we marched down the road, this time as non-combatants no longer. We stopped just east of the village of Marcelcave and dug a line of trenches across the road. We had twenty machine guns and almost as many different kinds of ammunition as there was different nationalities in our trench. Our position was the fifth line of defence, we was told, but the guns kept getting closer and a lot of that long range stuff was giving us h.e.l.l. Near me there was a squad of my men, one c.h.i.n.k, three Canadians, and we two Dublin fusileers.

"Then we begin to see our own guns, that is, British guns, beginning to blow h.e.l.l out of this here village of Marcelcave right in front of us.

It made me wild to see the artillery making a mistake like that, so I says to one of these here Dublin fusileers:

"'Whatinell's 'matter wid dose guns firing on our own men up there in the village? If this is the fifth line, then that must be our fourth line in the village?'

"'Lad,' says the Dublin fusileer to me, 'I don't want to discourage you for the life of me, but this only used to be the fifth line. We are in the first line now and it's up to you and me and the c.h.i.n.k and the rest of us to keep the Fritzes out of Amiens. At this moment we are all that's between.'

"We started to the machine guns and began pouring it in on 'em. The minute some of 'em would start out of the town we would wither them.

Holy mother, but what a beautiful murder it was!

"I didn't know then, and don't know yet, what has become of all the rest of our officers and men, but I sorter felt like every shot I sent over was paying 'em back for some of their dirty work. We kept handing it to 'em hot. You oughter seen that c.h.i.n.k talking Mongolian to a machine gun, and, believe me, he sure made it understand him. I'm here to say that when a c.h.i.n.k fights, he's a fighting son-of-a-gun and don't let anybody kid you different.

"Well, our little mob held 'em off till dark and then British Tommies piled in and relieved us. We needed it because we hadn't had a bite in seventy hours and I had been lying in the mud and water for twice that time. Just before relief comes on, two skulking figures comes over the top. I was thinking that maybe these was Hindus or Eskimos coming to join our little international party and we shouts out to 'em and asks 'em where they hails from. Both of 'em yelled back, 'Kamerad,' and then I knew that we'd not only held the fort, but had captured two prisoners even if they was deserters.

"I marched 'em back that night to the next town and took 'em into a grocery store, where there was a lot of Tommies helping themselves to the first meal in days. While we were eating bread and cheese and sardines and also feeding me two prisoners, we talks to them and finds out that, as far as they are concerned, the Kaiser will never get their vote again.

"One Tommy says to one of my prisoners: 'Kaiser no good--pas bon, ain't it?' and the prisoner said, 'Yah,' and I shoved my elbow into his ribs and right quick he said, 'Nein.' Then the Tommy said: 'Hindenburg dirty rotter, nacy pa?' and the Fritz said, 'Yah. Nein,' and then looked at me and said 'Yah' again. They was not bad prisoners and I marched 'em twenty miles that night, just the three of us--two of them in front and me in back with the rifle over me arm.

"And the joke of it was that both of them could have taken the gun and killed me any minute for all I could have done."

"How do you figure that, Corporal?" I asked.

For reply, Jimmy Brady drew from beneath the blankets a pair of knotted hands with fingers and thumbs stiffened and bent in and obviously impossible to use on a trigger. Brady is not in the hospital for wounds.

Four days and nights in water and mud in the battle of battles had twisted and shrunken him with rheumatism. But he is one rheumatic who helped to save Amiens.

Upon the heels of the German successes in Picardy, developments followed fast. Princ.i.p.al among these, was the materialisation of a unified command of all the armies of the Allies. General Ferdinand Foch was selected and placed in supreme command of every fighting man under the Allied flags.

One of the events that led up to this long delayed action, was the unprecedented action of General Pers.h.i.+ng, when he turned over the command of all the American forces in France to General Foch. He did this with the words:

"I come to say to you that the American people would hold it a great honour for our troops were they engaged in the present battle. I ask it of you in my name and in that of the American people.

"There is at this moment no other question than that of fighting.

Infantry, artillery, aviation--all that we have are yours to dispose of as you will. Others are coming which are as numerous as will be necessary. I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history."

The action met with the unqualified endors.e.m.e.nt of every officer and man in the American forces. From that minute on, the American slogan in France was "Let's go," and every regiment began to hope that it would be among the American organisations selected to do battle with the German in Picardy. Secretary of War Baker, then in France, expressed his pleasure over General Pers.h.i.+ng's unselfish offer with the following public statement on Mar. 30th:

"I am delighted with the prompt and effective action of General Pers.h.i.+ng in placing all American troops at the disposal of the Allies in the present situation. His action will meet with hearty approval in the United States, where the people desire their Expeditionary Force to be of the utmost service to the common cause.

"I have visited practically all the American troops in France, some of them quite recently, and had an opportunity to observe the enthusiasm with which the officers and men receive the announcement that they may be used in the present conflict. Regiments to which the announcement was made, broke spontaneously into cheers."

Particularly were there cheers when the news spread through the ranks of the First United States division, then on duty on the line in front of Toul, that it had been the first American division chosen to go into Picardy. I was fortunate enough to make arrangements to go with them.

I rode out from old positions with the guns and boarded the troop train which took our battery by devious routes to changes of scenery, gratifying both to vision and spirit. We lived in our cars on tinned meat and hard bread, washed down with swallows of _vin ordinaire_, hurriedly purchased at station _buvettes_. The horses rode well.

Officers and men, none of us cared for train schedule simply because none of us knew where we were going, and little time was wasted in conjecture. Soldierly curiosity was satisfied with the knowledge that we were on our way, and with this satisfaction, the hours pa.s.sed easily.

In fact, the blackjack game in the officers' compartment had reached the point where the battery commander had garnered almost all of the French paper money in sight, when our train pa.s.sed slowly through the environs of Paris.

Other American troop trains had preceded us, because where the railroad embankment ran close and parallel to the street of some nameless Faubourg, our appearance was met with cheers and cries from a welcoming regiment of Paris street gamins, who trotted in the street beside the slow moving troop train and shouted and threw their hats and wooden shoes in the air. Sous and fifty centime pieces and franc pieces showered from the side doors of the horses' cars as American soldiers, with typical disregard for the value of money, pitched coin after coin to the scrambling mob of children. At least a hundred francs must have been cast out upon those happy, romping waves of childish faces and up-stretched dirty hands.

"A soldier would give his s.h.i.+rt away," said a platoon commander, leaning out of the window and watching the spectacle, and surrept.i.tiously pitching a few coins himself. "Hope we get out of this place before the men pitch out a gun or a horse to that bunch. Happy little devils, aren't they? It's great to think we are on our way up to meet their daddies."

Unnumbered hours more pa.s.sed merrily in the troop train before we were shunted into the siding of a little town. Work of unloading was started and completed within an hour. Guns and wagons were unloaded on the quay, while the animals were removed from the cars on movable runways or ramps. As each gun or wagon reached the ground, its drivers. .h.i.tched in the horses and moved it away. Five minutes later we rode out of the yards and down the main street of the town.

Broad steel tires on the carriages of the heavies b.u.mped and rumbled over the clean cobbles and the horses pranced spryly to get the kinks out of their legs, long fatigued from vibrations of the train. Women, old and young, lined the curbs, smiling and throwing kisses, waving handkerchiefs and ap.r.o.ns and begging for souvenirs. If every request for a b.u.t.ton had been complied with, our battery would have reached the front with a shocking shortage of safety pins.

Darkness came on and with it a fine rain, as we cleared the town and halted on a level plain between soft fields of tender new wheat, which the horses sensed and snorted to get at. In twenty minutes, Mess Sergeant Kelly, from his high altar on the rolling kitchen, announced that the last of hot coffee had been dispensed. Somewhere up ahead in the darkness, battery bugle notes conveyed orders to prepare to mount.

With the rattle of equipment and the application of endearing epithets, which horses unfortunately don't understand, we moved off at the sound of "forward."

Off on our left, a noiseless pa.s.senger train slid silently across the rim of the valley, blue dimmed lights in its coach windows glowing like a row of wet sulphur matches. Far off in the north, flutters of white light flushed the night sky and an occasional grumbling of the distant guns gave us our first impression of the battle of battles. Every man in our battery tingled with the thrill. This was riding frontward with the guns--this was rolling and rumbling on through the night up toward the glare and glamour of war. I was riding beside the captain at the head of the column. He broke silence.

"It seems like a far cry from Honolulu with the moon playing through the palm trees on the beach," he said quizzically, "to this place and these scenes and events to-night, but a little thing like a flip of coin decided it for me, and I'm blessing that coin to-night.