The Flag Part 26

It was while they were in this trench that Pen had his "baptism of fire." Late one afternoon the German artillery began sh.e.l.ling fiercely the first line of Allied trenches. Aleck and Pen were both on sentry duty. Just beyond them Lieutenant Davis stood at an advanced lookout post intent on studying the outside situation by means of his periscope. At irregular intervals machine guns, deftly hidden from the sight of the enemy, poked their menacing mouths toward the Boche lines. Now and then, finding its mark at some point in the course of the winding trench, an enemy sh.e.l.l would explode throwing clouds of dust and debris into the air, wrecking the earthworks where it fell, taking its toll of human lives and limbs. Twice Pen was thrown off his feet by the shock of near-by explosions, but he escaped injury, as did also Aleck. It was apparent that the Germans were either making a feint for the purpose of attacking at some unexpected point, or else that they were preparing for a charge on the trenches which they were bombarding. It developed that the latter theory was the correct one, for, after a while, they directed their fire to the rear of the first line trenches, and set up a still more furious bombardment. This, as every one knew, was for the purpose of preventing the British from bringing up reinforcements, and to give their own troops the opportunity to charge into the Allied front. The charge was not long delayed. A gray wave poured over the parapet of the German first line trench, rolled through the prepared openings in their own barbed-wire entanglements, and advanced, alternately running and creeping, toward the Allied line. But when the Germans were once in the open a terrible thing happened to them. The machine guns from all along the British trenches met them with a rain of bullets that mowed them down as grain falls to the blades of the farmer's reaper. The rifles of the men in khaki, resting on the benches of the parapet, spit constant and deadly fire at them. The artillery to the rear, in constant telephone touch with the first line, quickly found the range and dropped sh.e.l.ls into the charging ma.s.s with terrible effect. A second body of gray-clad soldiers with fixed bayonets swarmed out of the German trenches and came to the help of their hard-beset comrades, and met a similar fate.

Then a third platoon came on, and a fourth. The resources of the enemy in men seemed endless, their persistence remarkable, their recklessness in the face of sure death almost unbelievable. The noise was terrific; the constant rattle of the machine guns, the spitting of rifles, the booming of the artillery, the whining and cras.h.i.+ng of sh.e.l.ls, the yells of the charging troops, the shrieks of the wounded.

In the British trenches the men were a.s.sembled, ready to pour out at the whistle and repel the a.s.sault on open ground; but it was not necessary for them to do so. The German ranks, unable to withstand the fire that devoured them as they met it, a fire that it was humanly impossible for any troops to withstand, turned back and sought the shelter of their trenches, leaving their dead and wounded piled and sprawled by the hundreds on the ground they had failed to cross.

The casualties among the Canadian troops were not large, and they had occurred mostly before the charge had been launched, but it was in deep sorrow that the men from across the ocean gathered up from the shattered trenches the pierced and broken bodies of their comrades, and sent them to the rear, the living to be cared for in the hospitals, the dead to be buried on the soil of France where they had bravely fought and n.o.bly died.

CHAPTER XII

The great Somme drive began on July 1, 1916, after a week's devastating bombardment of the German lines. The enemy trenches had been torn and shattered, and when the Allied armies, in great numbers and with abundant ammunition, swept out and down upon them, the impetus and force of the advance were irresistible. Trenches were blotted out. Towns were taken. The German lines melted away over wide areas. Victory, decisive and permanent, rested on the Allied banners.

On the third of the month the British took La Boiselle and four thousand three hundred prisoners. But on the fourth the enemy troops turned and fought like wild animals at bay. This was the day on which Aleck received his wounds. In the morning, as they lay sprawled in a ravine which had been captured the night before, waiting for orders to push still farther on, Aleck had said to Pen:

"You know what day this is, comrade?"

"Indeed I do!" was the reply, "it's Independence Day."

"Right you are. I wish I could get sight of an American flag. It will be the first time in my life that I haven't seen 'Old Glory' somewhere on the Fourth of July."

"True. Back yonder in the States they'll be having parades and speeches, and the flag will be flying from every masthead. If only they could be made to realize that it's really that flag that we're fighting for, you and I, and drop this cloak of neutrality, and come over here as a nation and help us, wouldn't that be glorious?"

Pen's face was grimy, his uniform was torn and stained, his hair was tousled; somewhere he had lost his cap and the times were too strenuous to get another; but out from his eyes there shone a tenderness, a longing, a determination that marked him as a true soldier of the American Legion.

The cannonading had again begun. Sh.e.l.ls were whining and whistling above their heads and exploding in the enemy lines not far beyond.

Off to the right, a village in flames sent up great clouds of smoke, and the roar of the conflagration was joined to the noise of artillery. Back of the lines the ground was strewn with wreckage, pitted with sh.e.l.l-holes, ghastly with its harvest of bodies of the slain. With rifles gripped, bayonets ready, hand grenades near by, the boys lay waiting for the word of command.

"Aleck?"

"Yes, comrade."

"Over yonder at Chestnut Hill, on the school-grounds, the flag will be floating from the top of the staff to-day."

"Yes, I know. It will be a pretty sight. I used to be ashamed to look at it. You know why. To-day I could stare at it and glory in it for hours."

"That flag at the school-house is the most beautiful American flag in the world. I never saw it but once, but it thrilled me then unspeakably. I have loved it ever since. I can think of but one other sight that would be more beautiful and thrilling."

"And what is that?"

"To see 'Old Glory' waving from the top of a flag-staff here on the soil of France, signifying that our country has taken up the cause of the Allies and thrown herself, with all her heart and might into this war."

"Wait; you will see it, comrade, you will see it. It can't be delayed for long now."

Then the order came to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It was a death grapple, with decisive victory on neither side. In the wild onrush and terrific clash, Pen lost touch with his comrade. Only once he saw him after the charge was launched. Aleck waved to him and smiled and plunged into the thick of the carnage. Two hours later, staggering with shock and heat and superficial wounds, and choking with thirst and the smoke and dust of conflict, Pen made his way with the survivors of his section back over the ground that had been traversed, to find rest and refreshment at the rear. They had been relieved by fresh troops sent in to hold the narrow strip of territory that had been gained.

Stumbling along over the torn soil, through wreckage indescribable, among dead bodies lying singly and in heaps, stopping now and then to aid a dying man, or give such comfort as he could to a wounded and helpless comrade, Pen struggled slowly and painfully toward a resting spot.

At one place, through eyes half blinded by sweat and smoke and trickling blood, he saw a man partially reclining against a post to which a tangled and broken ma.s.s of barbed wire was still clinging. The man was evidently making weak and ineffectual attempts to care for his own wounds. Pen stopped to a.s.sist him if he could. Looking down into his face he saw that it was Aleck. He was not shocked, nor did he manifest any surprise. He had seen too much of the actuality of war to be startled now by any sight or sound however terrible. He simply said:

"Well, old man, I see they got you. Here, let me help."

He knelt down by the side of his wounded comrade, and, with shaking hands, endeavored to staunch the flow of blood and to bind up two dreadful wounds, a gaping, jagged hole in the breast beneath the shoulder, made by the thrust and twist of a Boche bayonet, and a torn and shattered knee.

Aleck did not at first recognize him, but a moment later, seeing who it was that had stopped to help him, he reached up a trembling hand and laid it on his friend's face. Something in his mouth or throat had gone wrong and he could not speak.

After exhausting his comrade's emergency kit and his own in first aid treatment of the wounds, Pen called for a.s.sistance to a soldier who was staggering by, and between them, across the torn field with its crimson and ghastly fruitage, with fragments of shrapnel hurtling above them, and with bodies of soldiers, dead and living, tossed into the murky air by constantly exploding sh.e.l.ls, they half carried, half dragged the wounded man across the ravine and up the hill to a captured German trench, and turned him over to the stretcher-bearers to be taken to the ambulances.

It was after this day's fighting that Pen, "for conspicuous bravery in action," was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He wore his honor modestly. It gave him, perhaps, a better opportunity to do good work for Britain and for France, and to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of his own countrymen; otherwise it did not matter.

So the fighting on the Somme went on day after day, week after week, persistent, desperate, b.l.o.o.d.y. It was early in August, after the terrific battle by which the whole of Delville Wood pa.s.sed into British control, that Pen's battalion was relieved and sent far to the rear for a long rest. Even unwounded men cannot stand the strain of continuous battle for many weeks at a stretch. The nervous system, delicate and complicated, must have relief, or the physical organization will collapse, or the mind give way, or both.

At the end of the first night's march from the front the battalion camped in the streets of a little, half-wrecked village on the banks of the Avre. Up on the hillside was a long, rambling building which had once been a convent but was now a hospital. Pen knew that somewhere in a hospital back of the Somme Aleck was still lying, too ill to be moved farther to the rear. It occurred to him that he might find him here. So, in the hazy moonlight of the August evening, having obtained the necessary leave, he set out to make inquiry. He pa.s.sed up the winding walk, under a canopy of fine old trees, and reached the entrance to the building. From the porch, looking to the north, toward the valley of the Somme, he could see on the horizon the dull gleam of red that marked the battle line, and he could hear the faint reverberations of the big guns that told of the fighting still in progress. But here it was very quiet, very peaceful, very beautiful.

For the first time since his entrance into the great struggle he longed for an end of the strife, and a return to the calm, sweet, lovely things of life. But he did not permit this mood to remain long with him. He knew that the war must go on until the spirit that launched it was subdued and crushed, and that he must go with it to whatever end G.o.d might will.

He found Aleck there. He had felt that he would, and while he was delighted he was not greatly surprised. There was little emotion manifested at the meeting of the two boys. The horrors of war were too close and too vivid yet for that. But the fact that they were glad to look again into one another's eyes admitted of no doubt. Aleck had recovered the use of his voice, but he was still too weak to talk at any length. The bayonet wound in his shoulder had healed nicely, but his shattered knee had come terribly near to costing him his life.

There had been infection. Amputation of the leg had been imminent. The surgeons and the nurses had struggled with the case for weeks and had finally conquered.

"I shall still have two legs," said Aleck jocosely, "and I'll be glad of that; but I'm afraid this one will be a weak brother for a long time. I won't be kicking football this fall, anyway."

"It's the fortune of war," replied Pen.

"I know. I'm not complaining, and I'm not sorry. I've had my chance.

I've seen war. I've fought for France. I'm satisfied."

He lay back on the pillow, pale-faced, emaciated, weak; but in his eyes was a glow of patriotic pride in his own suffering, and pride in the knowledge that he had entered the fight and had fought bravely and well.

"America ought to be proud of you," said Pen, "and of all the other boys from the States who have fought and suffered, and of those who have died in this war. I told you you'd be no coward when the time came to fight, and, my faith! you were not. I can see you now, with a smile and a wave of the hand plunging into that b.l.o.o.d.y chaos."

"Thank you, comrade! I may never fight again, but I can go back home now and face the flag and not be ashamed."

"Indeed, you can! And when will you go?"

"I don't know. They'll take me across the channel as soon as I'm able to leave here, and then, when I can travel comfortably I suppose I'll be invalided home."

"Well, old man, when you get there, you say to my mother and my aunt Milly, and my dear old grandfather Butler, that when you saw me last I was well, and contented, and glad to be doing my bit."

"I will, Pen."

"And, Aleck?"

"Yes, comrade."

"If you should chance to go by the school-house, and see the old flag waving there, give it one loving glance for me, will you?"

"With all my heart!"

"So, then, good-by!"

"Good-by!"