The Brighton Boys in the Argonne Forest
Page 9
CHAPTER VIII
MUCH TO DO AND MANY TO DO IT
“SAY, who is that fellow?” Don asked quickly.
“Don’t know; something funny about him. Don, I’m tickled to see you,old top! Where’d you come from?”
“Headquarters. With the information force now, posing as messenger,liaison, anything else but----. Detective work, you know. I’m glad tosee you, Herb. How’s the fight going?”
“Right ahead; all the time ahead!” declared Lieutenant Whitcomb. “TheHeinies are putting up a good scrap, though. This is only the firstround. Say, I wish we could chin awhile, but----”
“I know. And now you----?”
“Going to find some stretcher bearers to get a man of mine out.”
“I’ll do it; where’s the man. But first I must tell you to keep an eyeopen for that liaison sergeant; I believe he’s bad medicine. He mayhave been laying for you.”
“I know he was lying to me; said there were orders to withdraw. I oughtto have held him. Come with me now; then I must get back to my men.”
Herbert quickly led Don to where Merritt lay; then clasping Don’s handand saying that they’d meet again, shortly perhaps, went on a run inthe direction of the fighting.
Don knelt and at once saw that the youthful soldier’s wound had soonproved fatal and so, folding the poor fellow’s arms and placing hishandkerchief over his face, the boy arose to again make his way throughthe woods.
Suddenly he came to where a number of officers advanced together andthe boy asked for Captain Lowden. The company commander acknowledgedhis own identity and receiving the note from Colonel Walton seemedeager to talk to Don, explaining that the fight was going very well,that it was a matter of breaking up machine-gun nests and capturing orrouting the enemy who manned them; the officers could have little partin this, except to keep their men together and busy.
“We are ordered to proceed only due north and to maintain ouralignment,” he said, “but I’m afraid some units will meet and getmixed. However, they’re bringing in the bacon.”
“I think you mean the wieniewursts, don’t you, Captain?” suggested Don.
The officer laughed. “Yes, but I wish we had some of the genuinearticle,” he said. “Good eats get to us a little too slowly sometimes.Well, the colonel gives you a fine send-off in this; you must be thereal thing. Now, as to this spy: my men have reported him several timesand I think he was seen around here this morning. But it is hard toidentify him fully and we don’t want to make a mistake; that is thereason he hasn’t been arrested. We haven’t a very clear description ofhim, either, and don’t know what rank he assumes. I rather think it isseveral. But we do know that acting as a messenger he has carried somefalse orders and he may be still at that.”
“Not ten minutes ago and to Lieutenant Whitcomb, for one; ordersto quit; retire. I think I know him; liaison officer, thick-set,dark-skinned, cast in his eye. If anyone by that description runs intoyou again hold him, please, by all means!”
“We shall, you may wager! I hope you get him. Hello! that sounds likean extra heavy scrap over to the right. I guess that’s within our zoneof advance, gentlemen.” The captain addressed a first lieutenant and acolor sergeant: “Let’s hurry on and back the boys up!”
Merrily the bushwhacking fight in the Argonne Forest went on; that is,it might be characterized as merry from the standpoint of the resultsobtained by the determined Americans. The Germans had reason to regardit quite otherwise. And so had both sides when they took into accountthe resulting toll in lives and those maimed for life. Before nightfallof that first day the Germans were routed or captured all along theedge of the forest and upon the southeastern slopes of the Aire Valley,the Yanks flanking these latter positions to the left and descendingupon them, instead of charging up the hills from the stream, a movementthat the Hun had never expected.
Then night came down and the attacking Yanks, eager to continue theirwork on the day following, literally slept on their guns and innumerous cases found need for so doing.
Don Richards had now one very special task to perform, though hisduty lay in apprehending anyone that might aid the enemy in any way,particularly in gaining information. But the boy did not seem able toland on concrete evidence of any kind, nor to meet up with those hemight suspect. Conscious that the task was a difficult one and alsothat his superiors knew it so to be, he went about it with a calmnessand assurance that would have done credit to a veteran. No grand standplays for him; simply unqualified results were what he meant to obtainand to this end he kept his mind alert as he had never done before.Wherever he went and with whomever he talked, his pass gaining for himcomplete access to all units and what information he desired, he wasgenerally received with courtesy and much consideration from commandersof all ranks, for there is nothing so appealing to the universal senseof justice as anti-spy work.
To the boy also there was large satisfaction connected with hisefforts; he gloried in the fact that at least he was endeavoring todo something worth while for his country and the cause of justice andright. Whether he succeeded or not, he was one among those who werekeeping their eyes open for a sly and watchful enemy’s attempts todiscover the Americans’ purpose in detail and thereupon deliver tellingcounter-strokes.
All of that first day of the Argonne fight, Don had footed over manymiles just behind the fighting front, seeking to again encounterthe short, dark man uniformed as a liaison sergeant. The boy hadpassed from one field of operations to another; he had gained many aconference with officers, from non-coms to colonels; he had made themall aware of the spy’s evident character and his disguise, so thatif he again tried to deliver false messages he would be forestalledand arrested. At night Don returned to the position behind CaptainLowden’s company and bunked with one of the Red Cross men in an injuredambulance, the driver having known the boy on the Marne.
All that night the American-French artillery, both near and miles away,was barking sometimes fitfully and now and then German heavy shellswould come over and burst too near for real comfort. Occasionally alsothere were night raids, or German counter-attacks along and beyondthe Aire, but these never reached the proportions that the daylightpermitted.
Then, with the first coming of daylight, the opposing forces were at itagain, the Americans, as before, tearing the Hun defenses within theforest to pieces and driving off their determined counter-attacks, nowbeing made in force and with selected shock troops.
Don gathered information from various sections of the forest, over thearea from the Aire westward to the end of the American left wing, thatsector covered by the First Army Corps. Reports came to the boy mostlyfrom persons not directly engaged in the fighting.
Lieutenant Whitcomb? Oh, he was strictly on the job. The lad, asonce before, seemed to bear a charmed life; he had not been so muchas scratched when last seen and he had been in the forefront of thefighting almost continually, with pistol in hand, the weapon oftenemptied and hot, leading, always leading his platoon, now a merehandful of men. Captain Lowden? On the job also, though slightly hurt.Two reports had come that he had been killed. Lieutenant Pondexter wasdead, killed in the early morning of this second day, and so were theother officers of Lowden’s company. Thus Whitcomb and two sergeantswere the only ones left to assist their superior in directing thecompany’s efforts and in keeping it in line with its supports.
How far had the Americans advanced from the edge of the woods? At leasta mile; in some places where the line bent forward it was much morethan that and they were still going; by night again it would be anothermile or more.
This opinion proved to be correct. The first part of the Argonneattack, on the 26th, 27th and 28th of September, on a front of nearlythirty miles, had succeeded in driving the Huns out of half the ArgonneForest and from many small towns and villages along the Aire Valley andbetween it and the Meuse River. Then, except when forcing minor attackson separate defenses and by an advance of the artillery making goodthe ground gained, the Yanks prepared for a sti
ll stronger offensivebeginning on October 4th.
During this period of lesser offensive engagements there was evidenta sort of unrest on the part of under officers and men; the sweettaste of victory had further nourished the spirit of daring. Thedesire was to continue demonstrating that the supposedly invincibleand highly-trained Germans could be thoroughly beaten. Prove this theYanks did many times, when the numbers were even, or the odds slightlyin favor of the Huns; it remained for the Americans to show also insome isolated cases that they were the masters of the enemy when hewas twice their strength. Again, with exceeding bravery and grit theydefied the foe when it outnumbered them many times.
It was this zeal for scrapping and the adventurous tendency that ledminor expeditions against German positions to exceed their ordersor to penetrate too far without support into the domain still heldby the enemy. Thus it occurred that a machine-gun squad went over ahill, routed the Huns from an old stone ruins and then, after beingunmercifully pounded with shrapnel for an hour, were attacked byten times their number of infantry. How those Brownings, with theirrecord of six hundred shots per minute, did talk back and how nearlyevery man in the bunch learned perforce to become a crack shot withhis Springfield-Enfield, is a record that the survivors who triedunsuccessfully to compel the squad to surrender could well bear witnessto. And when the Huns were finally beaten off and dared not to makeanother attempt to rout those few Yanks because of reinforcements, justhalf of that little group of gritty dare-devils came out of the oldbuilding alive and most of them were wounded. But they could still pulltriggers or turn a gun crank.
Who has not heard of the lost battalion, missing when the reportswere turned in on October 3d, a contingent of the Seventy-seventhDivision? It had been sent to rout out some gun nests that were provingtroublesome in the Argonne Forest. When this task was done they justkept going and knew not when to stop until night shut down upon them.Then they sent runners back to ask for instructions and these fellowscould not get through because of a flank movement of the Germans insome force between the battalion and the main division. So MajorWhittlesey and his seven hundred men were trapped and for five daysthose brave boys, having lost almost half their number in killed andwounded, without food for three days and daring to get water only atnight and that from a dirty swamp, stood off the repeated assaults ofthousands of Huns upon the rocky hillside in the clefts and fissuresof which the Americans found some shelter. They were fired upon fromthe hills on each side; enemy trench mortars smashed most of theirmachine guns and their ammunition ran out. Many of their numberwere captured also and one was induced to bring back a typewrittenmessage demanding surrender, but to this Major Whittlesey returned avery decided refusal. Finally rescue came to the lost battalion; menin the forefront of the second drive reached them and chased out theHuns. Whereupon the dead that had been laid aside waiting burial thatcould not have taken place because of the danger, were now peacefullyinterred.