OVER THERE WITH THE MARINES AT CHATEAU THIERRY

CHAPTER I PHIL AND TIM

Top Sergeant Phil Speed did not know exactly where he was when the long train of trucks bearing hundreds of khaki-clad American Marines stopped at a small town within easy gun-roar of the battle front in France. They were making little demonstration now. For weeks they had been cheering and been cheered until their throats became sore and well again—calloused, as it were. So spontaneous and so nearly universal had been the enthusiastic reception extended to them everywhere that it seemed as if every person who didn’t yell his head off must be pro-kaiser.

With the noise of battle becoming more and made distinct through the rumble, roar, and rattle of trucks and ordnance racing toward the scene of conflict into which they themselves 8were about to plunge, the hearts of these messengers of liberty were not so gay as they had been for weeks, aye, months, before. Everywhere, among all sorts and conditions of men, even among fighting patriots, there are bound to be a few “smart” ones who forget the proprieties sometimes as their bright ideas go skyrocketing. And this sort of gay wight was not lacking even among the pick of America’s young manhood; but for once the gayest of them were serious and sober minded.

The person who would joke in the face of death, or with a messenger of eternity lurking in the vicinity must be a philosopher “to get away with it.” Phil had no idea of putting the thing in such language, but if somebody had stepped up close to him and whispered the conceit in his ear, he probably would have responded, “That fits the situation exactly.” Still a considerable period of time elapsed before he was able to dispel all doubt as to the occasion of such unwonted sobriety.

“I wonder if we’re not all cowards, and if that isn’t the reason we’ve all stopped our noise,” he mused. “I hope we don’t turn tail and run lickety-cut when we see a big bunch o’ boches swinging over the top at us.”

As if in reply to his musing, Timothy Turner, a training-camp chum, who stood at his elbow 9in the midst of the throng of soldiers waiting for orders to move along, spoke thus rather grimly:

“We’re quite a solemn bunch, aren’t we, Phil? I guess what we need is the explosion of a few bombs in our midst to get us good and mad.”

“Maybe,” Phil replied, regarding his friend meditatively. “Well, it won’t be very long before we’ll have a chance to find out. Do you think an explosion a few feet away from you would make you mad, Tim?”

“Yes, I do,” the latter replied unhesitatingly. “I believe it would make me want to telescope with the next shell that came whistling along.”

Tim was a kind of bullet-headed Yank, “built on the ground,” his school-boy friends used to say. Really he looked as if he might be accepted as a personification of that irresistible force which would create “the most powerful standstill” if it struck an immovable object. But in spite of his bullet-headness, Tim was anything but dull. Both officers and fellow soldiers regarded him hopefully as one of the prospective star fighters of the regiment because of his mental keenness as well as his physical prowess.

Phil was built along different lines. He was 10strong and athletic, but he would hardly have been expected to be able to push over a stone wall. Whether or not he was more intelligent than Tim may be a matter for debate. It may be admitted, perhaps, that he was not so shrewd, but if they had both lived in the middle ages, Phil undoubtedly would have listened with interest to the first declaration that the world was round, while Tim would just as surely have repelled it with derision. But in business Phil might have fallen a comparatively easy victim to the wiles of a trickster, where as the cleverest “con man” would have had to get up very early in the morning to catch Tim napping.

So here we have a double-barreled standard for measuring intelligence among men and among boys. Shall we call Phil more intelligent than Tim, or vice versa? Let us dismiss the debatable question without answer, while we admit that they were both intelligent, but different; and in spite of their difference—some would say “in consequence of their difference”—they were very good friends.

CHAPTER II FOUR KILOS ON HOBNAILS

“Battalion!” called out the major.

“Company!” the captain followed, as it were, with the next breath.

“Attention!” continued the battalion commander.

The line was quickly formed, two deep, officers in position, the major in attitude of review.

“At ease!” was the next order which indicated “something coming.”

“Men,” he said with an incisiveness of tone indicating that his words would be brief, “word has just reached me that the officers of the enemy division that you are soon to meet welcome you with expressions of contempt. They say you are soft and will melt before the Hun armies like wax over white heat. Will you show them you can go through fire hot enough to melt steel?”

The yell that greeted this question set at rest all doubt that may have inspired the “wonder” which came to Phil’s mind a few minutes before as to their courage. And nobody yelled louder or more fiercely than Phil 12did. After it was over he heaved a sigh of relief.

“That’s what we needed,” he muttered.

“What did we need?” asked Tim, who heard the remark.

Phil had no opportunity to reply. The major was giving orders again.

“Attention!”

“Squads, right!” the superior officer added, and immediately there was a swinging half-about along the line, and a column of American Marines, four abreast, was marching up the street that led away from the detrucking point.

Then followed a hike of four kilometers (two and a half miles) along the Paris-Metz road. After journeying on hobnailed soles this distance, the order was given to fix bayonets.

Phil and Tim were good enough soldiers by this time to accept everything as it came and not to look for too much that was not in evidence. They had had try-out experience at Verdun and, along with other rapidly seasoning warriors of their regiment, had given a good account of themselves. And yet, in spite of all this curiosity-crushing experience, they could not help looking just a little expectantly for a camouflaged line of “bloomin’ boches” upon whom to use their one-tined pitchforks when the order was given to “fix bayonets.”

13“Does it mean charge?” both of them longed to ask somebody, and after this question they realized must follow another equally important:

Where was the mysterious enemy?

It proved, however, to be only a precautionary move to guard against surprise while advancing through a wheatfield. There might be a score or two of machine-gun nests in that field, Phil reasoned. But then, he wondered how that could very well be, as it must mean that the gunners had made their way undiscovered through the front line, which was a mile farther on. However, the surmise proved to be in error, for nothing of livelier nature than a flock of hens and turkeys was encountered. Presently a halt was ordered at a group of deserted farm buildings, where quarters were established pending the development of further plans.

Meanwhile there were other battalions following, and the country round about was rapidly becoming a concentration camp of reserves, who were sent forward in sections to take positions in the front line as rapidly as way was prepared for them, the French moving out to take positions in other sections. Phil and Tim were pleased when it became apparent that they would not be ordered ahead before 14the next day, for they were weary from exertion and loss of sleep and longed as much as anything else to be in vigorous, fresh condition when it came their time to meet the merciless, unscrupulous foe in battle.

There was nothing radically new in this experience to any of the Marines billeted at this place less than two kilometers from the front line, which was being pressed hard, by the enemy. All of them had seen a very real kind of practice service along with the French at Verdun, and so there was little to arouse their wonder in the sights and sounds of rumbling camions, tanks and artillery as they were rushed hither and thither, the shouts of officers and drivers, aeroplanes soaring overhead, and the whistle of an occasional shell fired with apparent random purpose and exploding far beyond the range of serious mischief. These sights and sounds were fast merging into the obscurity and quiet of darkness and inaction as Phil and Tim lay down under a large apple tree, resolved to get as much rest as possible before the next daybreak.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you a question ever since we detrucked from those lorries four kilos up the road,” said Tim after the two boys had lodged themselves in the privacy of a “ten-foot sector” of the orchard. As he spoke, he 15picked up a full-grown apple from the ground and sunk his teeth into it.

“This apple isn’t very ripe,” he observed, indicating by his digression that the question on his mind was not as vital as the importance of appeasing his appetite or of winning the war. “But the juice is sweet and pungent and I’m going to make a cider press of my jaws and squeeze the beverage down my throat.”

“If you haven’t forgotten your question, you may put it to me,” Phil returned more to the point.

“I was wondering what you meant when you remarked, ‘That’s what we needed,’ after the major made his little speech to us and we yelled our throats hoarse to prove we weren’t soft,” said Tim. “Were you afraid we really were soft?”

“No, not exactly,” Phil replied. “But I just had a kind o’ longing for proof that we weren’t.”

“But we’d proved ourselves at Verdun, hadn’t we?” Tim reasoned.

“Yes and no,” answered Phil. “At Verdun we fought all right, but we had a lot o’ French vets right at our elbows to ginger our nerve. Here, I understand, they’re going to give us a front all our own, ten or fifteen miles. I was talking to Corporal Ross about it. He’s been 16doing messenger service at the major’s headquarters and picked up a good deal of information. He says we’re bound for a place called Belleau Wood. The French call it Bois de Belleau. The Huns, you know, have been pressing the French pretty hard all the way from Rheims to Soissons, and we’ve been sent to relieve the French at this point so that they can stop the enemy at other points. But I’ve got a suspicion that a lot more American boys will be thrown in about here and we’re going to have a chance to make ourselves famous in the next few days.”

“It’s up to us to make good,” declared Tim with characteristic bullet-headed doggedness. “The Marines have been criticised a good deal lately. Some say we ought to be eliminated from the service.”

“We’ve got to make good,” Phil echoed emphatically. “The reputation of the Marines is at stake.”

CHAPTER III DIGGING IN

Sergeant Phil was a year older than Corporal Tim. The latter, unbeknown to anybody except himself and his parents, had entered the Marine Service in not the most regular manner, but it was real patriotism that had caused him to misrepresent his age, which was the only bar to his eligibility. A wait of eight months longer would have put him “over the top” in this respect but he decided not to wait. He looked 18 years old, and boldly declared this to be his age, and, as some of his slangy boy friends would have said, he got away with it. When his Philadelphia father learned of his enlistment, the bullet-headed youngster was already on his way for probation at the Paris Island, South Carolina, recruit depot.

Then Mr. Turner thought twice and decided not to interfere. He was thoroughly patriotic and concluded that if his son had put over anything on anybody it was on the kaiser.

Phil was a more regular sort of fellow in such matters. He would never have misrepresented 18his age in order to gain admittance into Uncle Sam’s fighting force. If he had not been able to pass all the tests on merit, he would have sought to aid the government in some other branch of service. This is not intended, by contrast, as a serious reflection on Tim. The latter was different. He saw no particular harm in adding a year on his age if thereby he might help to shorten the reign of the Prussian despot.

Tim kept his secret religiously, fearing lest he be sent home or assigned to disgrace service if it should come to the knowledge of his superior officers.

Phil and Tim were disappointed in their expectation that they would move early in the morning following their arrival at the deserted farm to a position in the front line. But they were not disappointed in their anticipation of thrilling activities before the close of the day. Until late in the afternoon the entire battalion was busy perfecting arrangements for relieving the Frenchies in this sector.

The excitement of the day came at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The firing at the front was heavy, but not of intensity such as they had witnessed at Verdun. But it seemed to grow hotter and nearer, so that the only conclusion the Americans could draw was that 19the boches were driving the French back through the woods.

Suddenly the company to which Phil and Tim belonged was thrown into confusion by the bursting of a shell on the roof of the barn in which they had sought shelter. This would have been a poor place for them if they had been under constant fire from the enemy. But it had served well enough against injury from shrapnel, and still better from flying debris heaved in all directions by the explosion of bombs dropped from hostile aeroplanes. That the wrecking of the roof of the barn was effected by the bursting of a cannon shell was evidenced by the shriek that immediately preceded the explosion.

None of those in the barn was killed or injured so severely that he had to be taken to the rear for surgical treatment, but the lieutenant was severely cut on his right arm. Phil sprang to his assistance and helped him to bandage the limb; then they rushed out after the rest of the company. The wounded officer now gave order for all to take to the woods and dig in.

The Marines thus deprived of a shelter rushed back into the roofless building, grabbed up a supply of entrenching tools and then made a dash for the woods. Most of them had 20snatched up their guns before making their hurried exit. About halfway between the barn and the woods another shell burst in their midst, killing five and severely wounding a score of others. Almost as if by magic a corps of stretcher-bearers were on the scene. The uninjured scarcely hesitated, and almost in less time than is required to tell it the order to “dig in” was being obeyed with the skill and speed of long practiced teamwork.

The digging-in process was a simple though strenuous task. All of the members of the company not seriously injured by the bursting of the shell were presently spading in the earth for dear life a short distance within the timber. They worked as if according to a systematic, prearranged schedule. If they had been going through a drill performance, under instruction from manual and teacher, their work could hardly have been more nearly true to military form.

Each of these Marines quickly scratched off a rectangular plot about three by five feet and then began to dig. Phil and Tim, who always endeavored to keep as near together as possible in all emergencies where they might be able to aid each other, “dug in” a few feet apart. After they had cut roots and scooped the dirt out to a depth of three or four feet, they dashed 21about here and there in the immediate vicinity and gathered dead limbs and brushwood with which each built a shelter at one end of his funk hole, or “stub trench.” These shelters were rendered more stable and impervious to rain by heaping on them mounds of loose earth that had been shoveled out of the trenches.

But the disastrous explosion of the two shells seemed to have served as a false alarm as to what ought to be expected for some time thereafter. The fact of the matter is, “nothing happened.” Three days they remained “dug in” and not another shell or bomb struck within two hundred yards of any point of the sheltered “stub trenches” of the recently bombarded regiment.

On the evening of the third day they received an order to make a quick march to a shell-shattered village on the front line.

“Now we’re going to see some real fighting,” Tim prophesied to his friend, as they prepared to obey the order.

He was not mistaken.

CHAPTER IV GAS MASKS

Phil and Tim had made good use of their time while in training at Paris Island, so that when they were ordered on board a transport to steam for “somewhere in France,” they could boast of being “Jacks of all trades and masters of all” in the hyperbolic parlance of Sea Soldier excellence. They could do pretty nearly everything from the fitting of gun gear to the operation of a wireless outfit or a portable searchlight. Moreover, they were both well qualified to handle machine guns, and Phil was drawing an extra $3 a month as a rifle sharpshooter.

The company to which Phil and Tim belonged was stationed just outside the village. They reached this position at about 2 p. m. and had little more than completed their digging-in operations, when the word was passed along that they would “go over the top” at 4:30.

But this announcement was presently countered from headquarters, coupled with a “man-to-man message” that scouting aeroplanes and observation balloons had communicated to 23headquarters the information that the boches were evidently planning to “come over” at the Yanks. A hurried conference among the officers of the Marines decided then that it would be better strategy to let the enemy come on and get their fill and then counter their decimated forces with a good strong bayonet and hand-grenade drive.

Phil and Tim were near enough to each other to carry on a conversation in ordinary tones, and when the word reached them that they must wait for the enemy to attack them they expressed their disappointment vigorously.

“I hate this waiting business,” Phil declared. “We’ll never reach Berlin at this rate.”

“So do I,” responded Tim. “I wonder what those minions of the kaiser think they’re going to do. To my mind it’s a sign of weakness on their part, making a drive this time o’ the day.”

“Why?” Phil inquired. “I don’t see why it should be a sign of weakness on their part any more than our plan to go over the top at 4:30 is a sign of weakness.”

“Maybe not from their point of view. But we know what we’ve got behind us—millions of men and billions of money. We know, too, that we’ve got vastly more of these than the boches have. So you see, I have something 24more than suspicion to base my theory on that they like to make an attack late in the day so that if they fail they will have the darkness to cover their retreat. I bet that when our record is summed up you’ll find that we made most of our dashes against the enemy’s lines at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.”

“I hope I’m spared to contemplate such a record,” said Phil soberly.

“You don’t doubt it, do you?” Tim asked, for he was surprised and disappointed to hear his friend speak so diffidently.

“I was just wondering,” Phil replied meditatively.

“See here, Phil,” Tim said, shaking his hand toward his soldier comrade; “you’re making a big mistake. You’re meditating. Do you realize that a soldier should never meditate? He should never even think twice. He’s got to do his best thinking the first time.”

“What’s that got to do with my wondering whether I’m going to come out o’ this alive?” Phil inquired.