And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 15

Then came a crash unmistakably near. One of the horses in the forward end reared, and his head thumped the roof of the car. Once again on four feet, he pranced nervously and tossed his blood-wet forelock.

Immediately the other horses began stamping.

Another cras.h.!.+--this time almost directly overhead. In the light of the swinging lantern, I could see the terror in the eyes of the frightened brutes. We clung to their halters and tried to quiet them but they lifted us off our feet.

"Put a twitch on that one's nose and hold him down," Boyle ordered.

"Gosh," said Slater, obeying, "we must be right up on the front line.

Hope they don't stop this train in No Man's Land. Hold still, you crazy b----"

"Cousin Hans must have heard you talking," Watson shouted to Shoemaker.

"Maybe you're going to see him quicker than you expected."

The train was slowing down. The brakes shrieked and grated as we came to a jerky stop. Three of us braced ourselves at the heads of the four horses in the rear of the car and prevented them from sliding on top of us. Boyle and Slater were doing their best to quiet the forward four.

The explosions overhead increased. Now we heard the report of field pieces so close that they seemed to be almost alongside the track.

There came a sharp bang at one of the side doors, and I thought I recognised the sound of the lead-loaded handle of the captain's riding whip. His voice, coming to us a minute later above the trampling and kicking of the panic-stricken animals, verified my belief.

"Darken that lantern," he shouted. "Keep all lights out and keep your helmets on. Stay in the cars and hang on to the horses. There is an air raid on right above us."

"Yes, sir," replied Boyle, and we heard the captain run to the next car.

I blew out the light and we were in complete darkness, with eight tossing, plunging horses that kicked and reared at every crash of the guns nearby or burst of the sh.e.l.ls overhead.

We hung on while the air battle went on above. One horse went down on his knees and in his frantic struggles to regain his feet, almost kicked the feet from under the animal beside him.

At times, thunderous detonations told us that aerial bombs were doing their work near at hand. We supposed correctly that we were near some town not far behind the lines, and that the German was paying it a night visit with some of his heaviest visiting cards.

I opened one side door just a crack and looked out. The darkness above blossomed with blinding blotches of fire that flashed on and off. It seemed as though the sky were a canopy of black velvet perforated with hundreds of holes behind which dazzling lights pa.s.sed back and forth, flas.h.i.+ng momentary gleams of brilliance through the punctures. Again, this vision would pa.s.s as a luminous dripping ma.s.s would poise itself on high and cast a steady white glare that revealed cl.u.s.ters of grey smoke puffs of exploded shrapnel.

We had to close the door because the flashes added to the terror of the horses, but the aerial activity pa.s.sed almost as suddenly as it had come and left our train untouched. As the raiding planes went down the wind, followed always by the poppings of the anti-aircraft guns, the sound of the conflict grew distant. We got control over the horses although they still trembled with fright.

There came another rap at the door and I hurriedly accepted the captain's invitation to accompany him forward to a first-cla.s.s coach where I spent the remainder of the night stretched out on the cus.h.i.+ons.

As our train resumed its way into the darkness, I dreamed of racing before a stampede of wild horses.

CHAPTER VII

INTO THE LINE--THE FIRST AMERICAN SHOT IN THE WAR

A damp, chill, morning mist made the dawn even greyer as our battery train slid into a loading platform almost under the walls of a large manufacturing plant engaged in producing war materials.

In spite of the fact that the section chiefs reported that not a man had been injured, and not so much as a leg broken in the crowded horse cars, every man in the battery now declared the absence of any doubt but the air raid had been directly aimed at Battery A.

"There might be a spy in this here very outfit," said 'Texas' Tinsdale, the battery alarmist. "Else how could them German aviators have known that Battery A was on the road last night? They knew we was on the way to the front and they tried to get us."

"Hire a hall," shouted the gruffy top sergeant. "We've got two hours to unload. A lot of you fireside veterans get busy. Gun crews get to work on the flats and drivers unload horses. No chow until we're ready to move out."

The sign on a station lamp-post told us the name of the town. It was Jarville. But it jarred nothing in our memories. None of us had ever heard of it before. I asked the captain where we were.

"Just about thirty miles behind the front," he replied. "We are moving up to our last billets as soon as we unload and feed."

The horses had made the ride wearing their harness, some of which had become entangled and broken in transit. A number of saddles had slipped from backs and were down behind forelegs.

"We're learning something every minute," the captain exclaimed.

"American army regulations call for the removal of all harness from the horses before they are put into the cars, but the French have learned that that is a dangerous practice over here.

"You can't unload unharnessed horses and get them hitched to the guns as quick as you can harnessed horses. The idea is this. We're pretty close behind the lines. A German air party might make this unloading platform a visit at any time and if any of them are in the air and happen to see us unloading, they'd sure call on us.

"The French have learned that the only way to make the best of such a situation, if it should arise, is to have the horses already harnessed so that they can be run out of the cars quickly, hitched to the guns in a jiffy and hurried away. If the horses are in the cars unharnessed, and all of the harness is being carried in other cars, confusion is increased and there is a greater prospect of your losing your train, horses, guns and everything from an incendiary bomb, not to mention low flying machine work."

His explanation revealed a promising att.i.tude that I found in almost all American soldiers of all ranks that I had encountered up to that time in France. The foundation of the att.i.tude was a willingness to admit ignorance of new conditions and an eagerness to possess themselves of all knowledge that the French and British had acquired through bitter and costly experience.

Further than that, the American inclination pushed the soldier students to look beyond even those then accepted standards. The tendency was to improve beyond the French and British, to apply new American principles of time or labour-saving to simple operation, to save man-power and horseflesh by sane safety appliances, to increase efficiency, speed, accuracy--in a word, their aim was to make themselves the best fighting men in the Allied cause.

One instance of this is worthy of recounting. I came upon the young Russian who was the battery saddler. He was a citizen of the United States whose uniform he wore, but he was such a new citizen, that he hardly spoke English. I found him handling a small piece of galvanised iron and a horse shoe. He appeared to be trying to fit the rumpled piece of metal into the shoe.

In his broken English he explained that he was trying to fas.h.i.+on a light metal plate that could be easily placed between a horse's shoe and the hoof, to protect the frog of the foot from nails picked up on the road.

With all soldiers wearing hobnailed boots, the roads were full of those sharp bits of metal which had caused serious losses of horseflesh through lameness and blood poisoning.

The unloading had continued under the eyes of smiling French girls in bloomers who were just departing from their work on the early morning s.h.i.+ft in the munition factory beside the station. These were the first American soldiers they had seen and they were free to pa.s.s comment upon our appearance. So were the men of Battery A, who overlooked the oiled, grimed faces and hands of the bloomered beauties, and announced the general verdict that "they sure were fat little devils."

The unloading completed, a scanty snack consisting of two unb.u.t.tered slices of white bread with a hunk of cold meat and maybe the bite of an onion, had been put away by the time the horses' nose bags were empty.

With a French guide in the lead, we moved off the platform, rattled along under a railroad viaduct, and down the main street of Jarville, which was large enough to boast street car tracks and a sh.e.l.l-damaged cathedral spire.

The remaining townsfolk had lived with the glare and rumble of the front for three years now and the pa.s.sage back and forth of men and horses and guns hardly elicited as much attention as the occasional promenade of a policeman in Evanston, Illinois. But these were different men that rode through those streets that day.

This was the first battery of American artillery that had pa.s.sed that way. This was an occasion and the townspeople responded to it. Children, women and old men chirped "vivas," kissed hands, bared heads and waved hats and ap.r.o.ns from curb and shop door and windows overhead.

There was no cheering, but there were smiles and tears and "G.o.d bless you's." It was not a vociferous greeting, but a heart-felt one. They offered all there was left of an emotion that still ran deep and strong within but that outwardly had been benumbed by three years of nerve-rack and war-weariness.

Onward into the zone of war we rode. On through successive battered villages, past houses without roofs, windows with shattered panes, stone walls with gaping sh.e.l.l holes through them, churches without steeples, our battery moved toward the last billeting place before entering the line.

This was the ancient town of Saint-Nicolas-du-Port on the banks of the river Meurthe. Into the Place de la Republic of the town the battery swung with a clamorous advance guard of schoolchildren and street gamins.

The top sergeant who had preceded the battery into the town, galloped up to the captain upon our entry and presented him with a sheaf of yellow paper slips, which bore the addresses of houses and barns and the complements of men and horses to be quartered in each. This was the billeting schedule provided by the French major of the town. The guns were parked, the horses picketed and the potato peelers started on their endless task. The absence of fuel for the mess fires demanded immediate correction.

It was a few minutes past noon when the captain and I entered the office of the French Town Major. It was vacant. The officers were at _dejeuner_, we learned from an old woman who was sweeping the commandant's rooms. Where?--Ah, she knew not. We accosted the first French officer we met on the street.

"Where does the Town Major eat?" the Captain inquired in his best Indianapolis French. After the customary exchange of salutes, introductions, handshakes and greetings, the Frenchman informed us that Monsieur Le Commandant favoured the _pommard_, that Madame Larue served at the Hotel de la Fountaine.

We hurried to that place, and there in a little back room behind a plate-cluttered table with a red and white checkered table cloth, we found the Major. The Major said he spoke the English with the fluency.

He demonstrated his delusion when we asked for wood.

"Wood! Ah, but it is impossible that it is wood you ask of me. Have I not this morning early seen with my own eyes the wood ordered?"