His face was ghostlike, his eyes were large, staring, vacant. Bonsecours stepped nearer and studied him, bellowing in a tone that had made more than one man obey:
"There are twenty thousand fine fellows, _mon chere enfant_, each about to spring from his trench with the firm belief that if he gets. .h.i.t we shall bring him in. No man dares break faith with a friend who thus relies on him!" He had put both hands on Jeb"s shoulders and now continued to look steadfastly, honestly into his eyes. Then quickly he kissed him on both cheeks, saying: "I"ll believe in you tonight, to do as I would do were my duty not back here!"
A strange feeling of warmth and strength pa.s.sed through Jeb"s veins, but he was given no time for reply, because this man of iron turned to the a.s.sembled unit, shouting:
"At dawn this curtain of sh.e.l.ls will be lifted and dropped on the Boche second line. That instant our boys go over the top, across No Man"s Land. But Germans burrow under ground in a _barrage_, or run out forward and lie down to escape it; so there will still be many with machine-guns left to rake the open stretch, and not all of our brave fellows will get across. It is those," he added, in a voice of thunder, "whom the good G.o.d expects us to bring in!"
There was no disobeying this man. Jeb felt sick through and through, but as the others filed out, every second one with a folded stretcher, he, also, followed. Yet he wanted to hold back; he wanted to dash into the darkest niche of the dug-out, bury his face there and--well, die! To die at once, outright, was preferable to the mental torture of expected laceration and suffering; nor could even the great Bonsecours have convinced him that these two monsters were not crouching, waiting especially for the moment when he should step forth.
While the dressing-station shelters opened into a roomy quadrangle, that in turn connected with trenches, there had also been cut narrow roadways up past the side of each dug-out, ascending sharply toward the front. By this rough and gravelly, though more direct, means, stretcher-bearers could be upon the crest in a twinkling, thence forward and downward over narrow bridges spanning the first line trench to No Man"s Land itself.
As the stretcher-bearers of Barrow"s unit poured out beneath the sky--or what would have been a sky had not incarnate fiends usurped it--Jeb found himself moving next to Bonsecours. Even in this strain, when men were thinking in terms of armies, the famous surgeon with infinite tact went about supporting the props of one human atom. After all, he had been trained to mend one man at a time! He spoke no word until they had climbed the sloping roadway and laid flat, peeping over; then, with his lips close to Jeb"s ear, he shouted:
"Have no fear! When man calls on the highest expression of his will, he becomes indomitable; he succeeds in the highest terms of success--and thus will you succeed, _mon pauvre enfant_! Look!"
He sprang up, pointing where the fringe of that French fire curtain touched this great stage. The blinding lights flickered over his face and made him supreme at that moment. In the continuous, head-splitting noises of three thousand sh.e.l.ls per minute, bursting on an eight-mile segment, he looked more like a war G.o.d than an agent of mercy.
The German position was crumbling--rather, it was being blasted out of existence. To Jeb it might have marked the very brink of h.e.l.l. The flashes were almost as a steady white and greenish-orange blaze, and showed the earth spurting in great bunches upward; stiff winds that had sent clouds scurrying the day before now caught the ground smoke and drew it, as a sweeping prairie fire, back upon the enemy. This was a propitious wind, and on its wings the death gas sped.
Between the armies lay No Man"s Land in utter desolation, but each little detail, each inconspicuous bit of wreckage left from earlier struggles, stood boldly outlined in the calcium glare. This was the stretch of ground he would be searching when the curtain lifted--except that its surface would then be strewn with men; some drawn up in pain, some moaning, some whimpering, some cursing, some terribly still. Had ever a curtain lifted on more poignant tragedy! Was there a parallel in crime to this wholesale slaughter which a treacherous nation thrust upon a peaceful world! Jeb tried to wonder how many dead might be there, but found that his mind would not leave the point of destruction; it had become riveted, as a bird is said to be mesmerized by a slowly approaching snake.
Lying just behind the ridge, feeling the earth tremble beneath his body, waiting for Bonsecours" command to dash into that c.o.c.kpit of suffering and there mingle with the torn, the dying and the dead, he repeated over and over the great surgeon"s words which bit into him like acid: "It is those whom the good G.o.d expects us to bring in!"
The dawn was coming! No sun appeared, but the flashes grew less blinding; the ground close to his face began to show natural browns where formerly had been flickering greens, and his hands looked more alive than dead. Also did the whole scene change as sky and earth increased their fury in this blending of the real and unreal; for, now added to the noises and fitful lights, were huge b.a.l.l.s of white smoke, and brown, springing into quick existence; some expanded to balloon size and swept majestically onward, upward; some, caught in a vortex of madness,--swirling, writhing, darting,--formed devilishly gruesome arabesques that yet were formless; some burst like pon-pons; some released long streamers and darted earthward. Jeb"s eyes were held by this appalling grandeur; his soul was chained, numbed, by its unlicensed braggadocio.
As though some invisible hand touched the spring of a jumping-jack box eight miles in length and released twenty thousand monkeys, the trench beneath Jeb seemed to open with a snap. Even above the cannonading he could hear men give vent to savage cheering. But his blood congealed and his fingers dug into the earth, his breath came in agonized gasps, as he watched them rush pell-mell, with bayonets fixed, across that deadly strip of ground.
Then suddenly the artillery ceased. The far-off German guns still roared, but they were as taps of rain upon a roof to ears that had almost bled from other detonations. For a moment Jeb thought he had been stricken deaf, and turned a questioning glance at Bonsecours, whose eyes were staring ahead in strained expectancy.
"See, Americans! The curtain has raised for our brave fellows, and it will now fall on the second line!"
In the immediate silence his voice seemed to be bellowing--then the mighty guns, having lifted the range, crashed out again. Yet, mingled with the blasting of this second line, could be heard the spiteful rattling of machine-guns, the fusillade of rifle fire, as the enemy, scrambling to places from the punishment they had just been through, poured death into the headlong charge.
The scene to Jeb now became a phantasmagoria of horrors. Men running with the speed of deer suddenly, and without apparent cause, pitched forward, rose and again went down; some stumbled awkwardly and did not try to rise. But the great wave, like a breaker rolling inward, swept irresistibly. Tired and enc.u.mbered though each man was who made up this wave, in a prodigiously short time they were pouring into the German trench.
Such is the accuracy of modern warfare--and of the French, who are the finest artillerymen in the world--that at the expiration of six minutes another appalling silence filled the air. The curtain of fire had again been lifted, to fall this time still farther back; even as the sweeping wave of infantry, without apparently a check, rolled on to take the second German line just emerging from its bath of fire.
Bonsecours seemed too fascinated to give or think of orders, yet he knew the time was not quite ripe, for part of a division had yet to come up from the a.s.sembly trenches in the rear, to form another wave which would go barging after the first.
Streams of these steel-helmeted fellows now began to pa.s.s--as the fluid line had pa.s.sed in yesterday"s twilight--close below Jeb. In the broadening daylight he could distinctly see their bronzed, immobile faces; their swinging gait, suggesting abundant reserve power, and their eyes that bespoke an utter disregard of dangers. They were men, second to none in determination and reckless personal valor, who did not endure hardship, but rode upon it; who did not work, without first laughing it into play. If the sun was hot, they sweated good humor; and, if the sky rained torrents, good humor trickled in rivulets down their backs. They had learned to treat flying sh.e.l.ls with contempt, except when any of their comrades fell--and then a cold fury would burst amidst their ranks, exploding, not into tears, but oaths! Those oaths!--snapped barkingly from mouth to mouth while death was bursting right and left and overhead, and bayonets were fixing for a greater toll!
Jeb felt, with an uncanny sense of prophecy, that in this marching line was depicted a new phase of man growing out of war. The individual preferment which many of them enjoyed four years ago had thinned to nothingness in the welding of this great warrior-force of comrades, who never again would quite resume their former status. For, when a clubman eats and sleeps and jokes and fights beside the waiter who used to bring his c.o.c.ktail, he learns to love that man, and the love is mutual; when a millionaire is dragged to shelter by the husky grocer"s boy who used to leave a basket at his kitchen door, he also loves that boy, and the boy loves him. Each finds in the other values which are not measured by worldly goods, or the stamp of birth, or family influence; each sees in the naked soul of each truer riches which transcend what formerly had been false. And thus, in the armies of those supermen who after the war march home to lasting peace, the stamp of aristocracy will be the Aristocracy of Worth. It was many months before Jeb realized that, almost unconsciously, he had read this prophecy in the fire of death-dealing sh.e.l.ls.
Again the range lifted, this time past a hamlet that stood in partial ruins on a hill. It had been spared complete destruction at German hands, doubtless because the enemy had left it hurriedly, and now the French artillerymen carefully avoided it lest a few old folk and children might be there. The human wave would sweep it clean enough of aliens! Yet that wave had come upon a rocky sh.o.r.e, and Jeb imagined he could hear the metallic clash and rasp of bayonet on bayonet, the gasps and sobs and curses of men fighting without quarter.
The new division just brought up now scrambled over the top, but No Man"s Land had been largely stripped of dangers. Victory sparkled in the air; safety smiled at Jeb; with these fellows carrying the battle ever away from him, performing the unbelievable in pluck and endurance, he did not so much mind the thought of going for the wounded! But the uplift was transient--it fled in a panic as Bonsecours called:
"Quick, _mes chere enfants_, be after them! Overlook no one! Let the walking cases get in alone, and bring the others with all haste!
There"s one of your American girls in my unit who bids you G.o.d-speed!
Go!"
The time had come! Dripping sweat from every pore, desperately seized again with trembling, Jeb staggered to his feet and started forward.
CHAPTER XI
Bonsecours" command had been well timed, for up and down the line other men bearing stretchers bounded forward. Jeb"s partner in this work, a lanky middle-westerner, called "Omaha" for love--although "John Hastings" was stamped in his identification disk--sprang out at a dog-trot, crossing the trench bridge and quickly getting into the plain below as if he were an old hand at this game instead of undertaking it now for the first time.
Jeb, following closely at his heels, had become utterly terrified. His flesh was numb and his legs moved automatically, rather than by conscious effort. The former mite of courage had atrophied. He felt wretchedly alone and unprotected, as an atom of dust drifting across a sunbeam. He wanted to clutch at something--to hold himself back--to scream!
Half a mile to right and left the Germans were plastering No Man"s Land with a pitiless fire, but thus far the ground immediately about him remained scarcely touched. Sh.e.l.ls occasionally burst on the trenches just behind, but Barrow"s unit luckily was being permitted to go without serious embarra.s.sment. And yet Jeb knew that it was only a matter of time before he and Hastings would receive a blasting. He shivered, jabbering words he could not have recalled a minute later; once cursing himself for a coward, then calling himself a liar for having said it.
There were not as many p.r.o.ne men on the field as he had expected to find. To his bulging eyes which watched the first charge, men seemed to be falling everywhere, but as a matter of fact this was not so.
They had gone quite a third of the distance across when Hastings stopped and unrolled the stretcher, shouting:
"Here"s one! Lend a hand, Jeb!"
The coolness of the voice, its utmost naturalness, gave Jeb a most agreeable feeling, and before remembering again that men who drop in battle are things of blood and pain, he was easing one gently over on the brown canvas.
They started to come in, Hastings at the forward handles, he at the rear; moving as fast as the added weight permitted, skirting sh.e.l.l holes and stepping over fragments of barbed-wire. Crossing the first trench bridge a hundred faces looked up at them, steadily, unemotionally.
Another division had been brought up after the second wave swept out, and a few of these fellows now said quietly: "Bravo!" But their thoughts were with the chap who lay silent on the canvas.
Reaching the top of the gravelly roadway that sloped to the dressing-stations, burying their heels in the loose earth which rolled along with them as they descended, the stretcher-bearers saw Barrow in a white jacket, and several white-faced nurses expectantly waiting; for this had been the first man brought in. Even as he was stripped and laid upon the crude table, Jeb and Hastings were well on their way out again.
In four hours No Man"s Land had been fairly well cleared of suffering.
Although Jeb was growing indifferent to the sight of blood, several times, as a result of extreme fear, he had been actively sick. The sh.e.l.ls were as terrifying as ever; moreover, he and Hastings had to penetrate farther each time in search of wounded. Their last trip took them nearly to the scarp of blasted ground on which stood the half-destroyed hamlet. True, there had been sh.e.l.ls bursting within a hundred yards of Jeb; but it so happened that he was particularly engrossed with lifting or easing some of the wounded. Once, when a splinter of steel cut Hastings" sleeve, the lanky westerner gave a whistle.
"That was close," he said.
And Jeb, newly terrified by the words, looked up quickly, asking:
"Did one come by?"
"Well, if it did, it did," Hastings answered. "Cut out your chills, Jeb, and let"s get this feller in!"
But Jeb could not "cut out" the chill at once because another sh.e.l.l burst while he was looking, driving him into a panic so acute that Hastings began to swear.
Toward midday the wind fell and the heat became intense. Smoke, acrid and at times stifling, hung in the hollows like white- and brown-streaked palls, and the unwholesome smell of burning which infests battlefields was sickening. Jeb"s clothes were wringing wet, and each time he panted across the first trench bridge he noted how the waiting men under steel helmets were drenched with perspiration. One of them called up to him:
"It"s our turn next!--keep an eye open for me!"
The fellow was trying to grin, but succeeded only in making an ugly leer. Jeb read it in a flash--the man was afraid!--and a stinging sense of mortification came over him as he wondered if his own face had been as tell-tale--if it were now as tell-tale!
Over on the battle front, and especially around the half-destroyed hamlet, the Germans were contesting every foot that led to their third line of defense, while the Allies fought with stark madness to dislodge them. The airmen hovering above, having for the third time that day swept the sky of combatants, saw with surprise that armies on both sides were losing cohesion. Some units of the Allies had lost direction, others bored their way through the German line then, finding themselves hemmed in, fought out again; in many places were noticed small groups so intent upon their own little conflicts that they seemed to be having no part in the big game, at all. But these aerial observers realized that the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and resiliency, left the ma.s.s of wastage on the German side; for, with strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind which is more elastic, all things else being equal, wins the day--and, whatever other virtues the Boche may possess, his mind can hardly be said to expand spontaneously. At the same time, the enemy was dying hard: fortifying at a moment"s notice when forced into a corner, and making heroic resistance with machine-guns in patches of woods, craters, or other favorable moulding of the terrain.