CHAPTER X
WAR IS--WAR!
Yes, it was war. There could be no question about its being the realthing, with all the frills and thrills that go along with a gigantic,brain-taxing, muscle-straining attempt to kill an enemy and not bekilled by him.
If Sherman designated the kind of war practised two generations ago ashaving a resemblance to the infernal regions, what would he call war aspractised in this generation? A combination it is of dozens of variedHades, with all the little devils of hate and villainy and slow torturethrown in.
Corporal Herbert Whitcomb, though a mere boy, had been placed in thecommand he held, however small, because of his wonderful skill inshooting, together with his manliness, strength of character and thereputation he had earned for doing everything well that he was set to doat the training camp back in the dear old United States.
With his introduction to the combined trench and gun pit on the Frenchfront and the duties he was compelled to assume as commander of a squadof snipers, he was at once impressed with the fact that this was war;and in a very short time thereafter that war is hell.
Lieutenant Jackson, of the old Regular Army and a veteran of longservice, who was in command of the pit and was Herbert's superiorofficer, had told him enough to render such a verdict and to impress himwith the seriousness of the job before the Allies, the American Army andtheir small body of men, fifty-seven in all, in the pit. These comprisedthe platoon of Regulars, thirty-two men, four corporals, two sergeantsand the lieutenant, the artillery squad of eight men and one corporal,and the sniper squad of an equal number.
The Regular Army men were generally rough-and-ready fellows, admirablyfitted for any duty of war, except that only two or three of them wereadmittedly expert shots. These had tried sniping, but were too few innumbers to awe the German long-distance sharpshooters making attempts tokill off the artillerymen.
The men who handled the gun were a mixed lot. Three had been in theMarines, two were Regular Army artillerymen, one was a recently enlistedman who possessed a special talent for hitting the mark with a cannon,another was a fighting cook for this outfit; and the corporal, JamesLetty, had been a football star.
Anyone could look over the platoon and see that they were a hard crowdto beat. Therefore, when Whitcomb sent Flynn and Marshall out on thefirst scouting and sniping duty, thus honoring them, and to Flynn said,"Go to it, old scout!" he felt most truly the importance of thestatement that they were there for the purpose of warfare.
By "Go to it!" Herb meant that their first business was to let no Germanget into a position where he might drop bullets into the gun pit wherethe squad was operating so successfully as to actually threaten themaintenance of the German position at that point.
With Roy went Dave McGuire, one-time glove salesman in a city departmentstore. He had shot one of the highest, very long range rifle scores atCamp Wheeler, and he possessed certain characteristics that did not seemto be at all in keeping with his former calling.
Herbert could not help wondering at the fellow's bravery. He possessed amanner that by some would have been termed "sissy;" he drawled his wordsand lisped a little, opened his mouth to speak with drawn lips, seemedto have the idea that army life should be on the order of a socialgathering; and his khaki clothes, by long habit, were put on and wornwith scrupulous neatness.
Could he stand the strain of being shot at, of living long in a muddyhole in the ground, under the constant expectation of something or otherhappening that might cost him and his companions their lives?
Not far down the hill several piles of heavy stones offered the Americanriflemen excellent shelter for observation and marksmanship. There weresome shell holes also and at one spot a partly wrecked bomb canister ofheavy sheet iron within which a man might crouch unseen by the enemybeyond.
All of these places offered a fair view of the zigzag German trenchesfor a distance of more than five hundred yards where the trench dippedbehind a wooded rise of ground. Beyond this the enemy had their handsfull opposing the extension of the American trench which wound aboutfrom near the gun pit to and also beyond the wooded slope.
Herbert saw his two boys go out on the hill with a feeling of nothingelse than sorrow. To be sure this was the game of war, but he could nothelp feeling a marked aversion for the possibilities uppermost in thisdeath-grapple business.
For his men particularly and for all his fellows in battle, companionsin discomfort, danger, suffering, perhaps death, was the lad concerned.Especially did he feel this now regarding Roy. His chum, ever bright,smiling, jesting, never grumbling nor down-hearted, was going out thereto be the target for men trained in this wholesale killing business andeager to play their part. It was true that the boy could hardly becaught napping and he would probably give a little better than he wassent, but still there were the chances of warfare, often more potent,more death-dealing than the best laid plans.
Herb had never since babyhood known anything of a mother's teachingsthat to the many well-balanced, gentle-dispositioned lads often mean somuch for good. His father had well cared for him when he was a littlefellow and then he, too, had died without ever having rightly influencedthe boy at a time when this would have counted best. And thoughHerbert's inclinations had all been healthy, clean, vigorously manly andhonest, it is doubtful if he had said or thought a prayer a half dozentimes in his life, or that he really knew how to pray in the commonlypractised manner of those who habitually turn to a Higher Power.
But now, watching Roy and Dave ascend the stepped slope out of the pitand by Herb's order begin to slip off cautiously, screening themselvesbehind various obstacles and making for the objects of shelter below,the young corporal was suddenly overcome with a dejection very unseemlyfor an officer engaged in fighting. Unseen, the boy bowed his headagainst one of the timber stanchions of the shelter.
"Oh, God, if you're willing, if it isn't laid down in the Book of Fateotherwise, don't let that chum of mine get killed! He's too fine a chap;he brings too much happiness to others in this world and does too muchgood generally for him to become the victim of a bullet or bayonet, oranything like that! And the other fellow, too; he seems like a good sortof fellow. Most of my men are; all in this pit are worth being keptalive. I'm sure of it! But, of course, some of us must get it; bekilled or wounded some way. So don't think I mind being one, if thatwould spare the percentage and spare these other fellows who have homesand people to mourn for them. Anyway, God, above all, no matter what maybe going to happen, see to it that we all do our duty and give us whatought to be coming to us if we don't."