Chapter 9

The men were awakened as quietly as the corporals could manage, often with a toe in the ribs or a shake of the shoulder. "Drop your cocks and grab your socks," was one of the favorite themes as the word spread down the grumbling line in hoarse whispers. "Rise and shine, you friggin apes," was another common hiss as hundred of young headed for the latrines. Spitting and cursing marked the wake-up call for the unbloodied 29th Division. Thousands of men met the day with groans and curses after the call for them to "roll out, rise and shine."

Sammy rubbed his itching back on the ground beneath him, pushed aside the canvas and looked up at the sky. He shivered and stretched. It was dark and cold as usual, like February on the Rockville Pike. A few stars could still be seen. Light clouds filtered slowly past the shattered tree under which he lay and the world smelled mossy and bitter, moldy and rotten and full of horse manure. This was the day, thought Sammy, scratching his hairy groin.

The young man wished he had a radium-dial watch and as he made his way toward the makeshift latrine ditch he found that it was just past four o'clock on that dark morning as ground fog wrapped about his ankles. It was the 8th of October in the Year of Our Lord 1918 and although they tried not to think about it, almost all of them knew that a lot of soldiers, both Jerry and Yank, would not see October 9th.

Sammy pissed but could not defecate into the slit, promised himself he would do it later, and moved on in the dark taking a hunk of crusty bread and a piece of hard cheese from the mess men standing beside flickering lanterns at a lateral trench with heaping baskets of food. An iron ration was promised but never delivered that dank morning. The "Sam Brownes" stalked through the trenches, sucking their teeth, checking equipment, wishing men good luck and telling them to keep their peckers up and their arse holes tight. Packs were lightened, shelter halves and entrenching tools set aside, and belts recinched. Noncoms checked and rechecked, often looking into men's eyes. Almost everybody smoked and tried to spit; everybody itched and a few men prayed, kneeling in the mud.

At 5 am the whole brigade went into action on the flank of the main attack, part of the last major offensive of World War I. A thunderous rolling barrage preceded them, walking its way back through line after line of enemy entrenchments and fortifications, the heavy shells roaring overhead from several directions and throwing up fountains of earth, trees and debris along the wooded skyline. Both the sound and the concussion were frightening and impressive, shaking the ground and assaulting the ears, drying the throat and lighting the sky. Several men threw up, and one ran screaming toward the rear.

This was not an "over the top" frontal assault and for that most men were grateful. Sammy and his companions came out of their zigzag trench and moved quietly forward along paths marked with white tape, surprised by the relative silence. Their goal was to infiltrate the German lines, moving through ravines and using all the sparse copses of trees and brush and worn the rolling hillocks available to reach their objectives unseen.

They heard machine guns open up to their left and paced a bit quicker, five or six abreast with good spacing, bent low, using all the cover they could find in the remaining woods and proceeded by recently-trained sappers with huge wire cutters. Some men shed equipment as they moved along, even dropping the lightened packs. Occasionally, to the right, they could see other units of their division moving like an irregular wave toward the waiting enemy. Intermittent light flickered off bayonets and wet helmets. Shells crumped into the ground and flares rose into the sky. Fourth of July thought Sammy.

At first the resistance in their area was light, a few mortar rounds and some desultory rifle fire for the most part, and they reached and occupied the first enemy trench with surprising ease, dropping in like oversized crows, landing with knees bent. Sammy stood gasping, his back to the wooden wall of the deep trench, looking about, seeing the firing steps and the litter, aware that he had not fired his weapon, smelling the sweat of his fellow soldiers, the odor of cordite and blood. I did it, he said to himself as he got his breath. I'm here and I didn't piss myself. He did not recognize the man beside him, the man who spat twice and then vomited between his feet. Sammy though of his guts and hoped he could wait.

Whistles blew and the corporals and sergeants yelled, "Up and out! Let's go, let's go! Keep moving! Keep moving, damn you, move you fuckers, move, move!" They clambered out of the first German trench and trotted forward, most bent at the waist as if they were bucking a head wind, many gritting their teeth, half expecting a heavy bullet. Some men actually cheered as they advanced, a worbling sound, but that did not last long.

Sammy felt his calf muscles complaining and then something snapped and pulled in his groin making him shudder. His mended leg felt fine but the left one ached. He briefly wondered if he had been hit by shrapnel or a spent bullet, but the pain passed as he kept moving, putting one foot in front of the other, stretching his sinews, blanking his mind. He stopped thinking about his feet and legs and tried to think about Millie and home. The ache in his upper thigh slowly disappeared. He could not remember Millie's face, not even her nose. He tasted something vile deep in his throat and felt the growing desire to defecate. His mind conjured up an image of when he fouled himself at school, and the old embarrassment washed over him like a passing cloud of incense.

Shells began bursting in their general area, some air bursts up in the treetops and others high-velocity rounds they called whiz-bangs because you barely heard them coming before they exploded. No one had said the word "gas" yet, and all the men were happy for that, flat canisters bouncing on their chests. It was still very dark with only a faint pink haze on the eastern horizon, a fuzzy line blanketed in smoke and flames. The barrage roared on ahead, buffeting the air and surrounding them with thunder.

Sammy tripped over the edge of a helmet that was sticking up out of the ground a few inches. He fell, rolled over and cursed, reminding himself as he had done several times recently that when he got home he would have to change his vocabulary. He sat and untied his loosened boot, rubbed his bruised instep, yanked up his heavy socks, tucked in his legging, pulled the shoe on again and retied his leather shoestring, wrapping it about his ankle.

He looked at the helmet that had tripped him and then, as the clouds shifted and the light got better, saw that it rested on the brow of a bony skull emerging from a shallow grave after the recent downpours, the remains of a soldier who had fought on this field months or even years before. From the shape of the helmet, Sammy guessed the skeleton was French. He said a brief prayer asking forgiveness for the dead man and for himself and then pushed his body upright, wincing as a shell passed nearby, disturbing the air. He snorted and spat. He had prayed, actually prayed, and he smiled and chuckled.

By about 6:30 that morning the second German trench fell to the men and boys of the 29th with relative ease. They had taken a few casualties and inflicted some as well. Company B was the first to take prisoners. Sammy sat on a wooden firing step and looked at all the debris in the German trench as several wounded prisoners were led away. It, he decided, was much like the trenches that had been his home over the last month; even the rats that scurried about looked the same. The names and crude graffiti scrawled on the wooden walls were the only thing different that he could see.

"Rest, drink some water, check your weapon," said the non-coms and the young officers, the ones some soldiers called "Sears and Roebuckers," as they prowled up and down, their strained faces painted purple and orange by the tardy dawn.

Some men started a search for souvenirs and one tow-headed boy, less than a hundred yards from where Sammy slumped and gasped, found a mortar shell, assumed it was a dud, tossed it aside and killed himself and three other men standing nearby in a geyser of dirt, boards and body parts. The screams of the wounded unnerved many as stretcher-bearers hurried to the bloody scene.

What are they waiting for, Sammy wondered, as the minutes dragged by and the noise of the big guns on both sides rumbled like a distant summer storm. When the breeze shifted, they could hear machine guns, but still they smelled no gas. Color returned to the world, but the colors were mostly blacks, grays and browns.

It was nearly nine o'clock and the sun was well up when the orders came and the men clicked off the safeties on their rifles, clamped on their blade bayonets when they were told to do so and climbed up on the torn ground pushing to the back of their minds the idea of a bullet with their name on it. One foot in front of the other, thought Sammy, one step and then another, left-right, left-right, hut-two, hut-two. Don't think; don't think. His guts hurt; his thighs burned.

First came the wire, great rusty entanglements of it, some that could be skirted but several areas that had to be pierced, plucking at their uniforms and tearing at their skin even where paths had been cut open. Then came the machine guns, Maxims and Spandaus, the heavy ones hammering away and the lighter ones with their chugging sounds. Then there was screaming.

As Sammy ran forward, planting his feet carefully, his bayonet fixed as he had been ordered, his gas mask bouncing on his chest, the man ahead of him and slightly to his right took two rounds in the upper body, flailing open the back of his blouse and knapsack as if hit by a sudden wind. He dropped his rifle, staggered forward a step, dropped to one knee, keened out, "I'm hit" and then fell on his face, his right arm bent oddly under him, his white face to the side, one eye looking right at Sammy.

"Don't stop, don't stop," the corporal to his left yelled as Sammy hesitated, lowering his weapon from port arms. "Keep moving. Move, move!" An officer carrying a .45 pistol trotted by, seemingly ignoring the world around him, a pipe gripped in his teeth, his boots highly polished.

A tremendous explosion off to Sammy's right threw clods of dirt and bits of other things over him, wet things some of which stuck to his helmet and rifle. He was aware that some of the "other things" raining down were pieces of men, but he kept going forward, looking for something to shoot at. Find a target, find a target, he said over and over to himself.

In a sudden flare of bright light, he saw a man silhouetted before him spin about like a dancer, throw both arms in the air and fall backwards, and just as the man struck the ground and the light faded, Sammy stepped over a mound of earth, fell into a shell hole he had not seen and lost his grip on his Springfield.