Chapter Ten
Chauchat in Action
Near Meurcy Farm, France
July 1918
Sigi hit the ground just as an unforgiving shell exploded near enough that dirt and rock clattered against his helmet. His inner ear was set wildly askew as the concussive force of the blast rippled over him. The dizziness and nausea yielded to Sigi’s will after only a brief struggle, and he turned his attention back to the battlefield before him.
Donovan, Ames, Kilmer, and Sigi lay in the prone below the forward crest of a hill overlooking Meurcy Farm. Amidst the fields of the farm stood half a dozen buildings facing a courtyard encompassed by a large wall, all constructed of hard, gray stone. The windows of the buildings occasionally sparked with the muzzle flash of a rifle; the Irishmen’s return fire pinged and ricocheted off the stones of the wall.
“I told them we needed more artillery,” Donovan said. “Damn.”
Sigi shoved his fear aside and focused on deciphering the chaos of the battle. Three hundred yards short of their objective, the men of the A and B Company were stalled. The preparatory fires had apparently been insufficient. From within the farmhouses, and amongst the trees on the ridges south of the farmhouse, the Germans winnowed the staggered line of advancing Americans with devastatingly accurate rifle and machine gun fire.
Men perforated by bullets dropped like marionettes with their strings cut, the screams of the wounded audible even at this distance. Driven to hide behind what scant cover was available in the green fields between the stream and the farmhouses, the German artillery barrage caught the battalion stationary and practically in the open.
With three companies deployed abreast in the attack, Sigi couldn’t pick out the men of C Company on their extreme right, advancing through the wooded hills to their East. He saw only vague shapes and flashes of fire moving between the trees. Glancing at Donovan’s expression, Sigi marveled at the man’s apparent calm. Only a scowl of concentration betrayed Donovan’s frustration and worry at having hundreds of men, many of them out of his sight, pinned under German direct and indirect fire.
A few minutes into the attack, a brown-uniformed figure sprinted out of the woods from C Company’s position. The runner zigged and zagged, occasionally dropping to the ground. Sigi wondered what he was doing for a moment, then as puffs of dirt from impacting rounds followed his progress, he realized that the soldier was running in erratic patterns and getting up and down to make himself harder to hit.
Huh, they should probably be teaching that at West Point . . .
“What is it, Mills?” Donovan shouted as the man crawled the last few feet to join them.
“Sir, Captain Bootz is wounded, bad,” the man said between panting breaths. “The Boche sure have lot of machine guns here for a rear-guard action, and they’re dug in and camouflaged real good. We can’t see ’em ’til they open up.”
Donovan looked over to the woods, then to the field where his other two companies were stalled out. His brow furrowed for only a few seconds, then he nodded.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Donovan said. “Mills, go back and tell Thornton to take charge and hold his position for now. Abramovich, head back to the CP and get us some more artillery support. Oliver, you, and Kilmer stay here and coordinate. I’m going to go pull A and B Companies back out of range of the farmhouse and have them set up a base of fire against the woods.”
Donovan pushed himself to his feet and ran toward his beleaguered men. In contradiction of his orders, Oliver Ames likewise shot up and began to follow.
“He’ll get himself blown away if no one’s there to watch out for him,” the young lieutenant shouted.
Sigi stood and turned to leave but as he did a crack-hiss-thunk split the air, a rifle shot so close that it was gut-wrenchingly audible even amidst the din of battle. Terror gripped Sigi, a quick, chilling thrill, but it was Oliver Ames who crumpled to the ground perhaps a dozen yards from where they’d all been lying.
The realization that he was still alive, but unlikely to stay that way if he didn’t get down, hit Sigi’s brain just in time. He dropped to the ground, just as another near miss kicked up a small geyser of dirt a few feet behind him. Sigi crawled to where Oliver lay, unmoving. Donovan met him there, put a hand to his adjutant’s neck and shook his head, a fleeting twist of sorrow contorted his face, but his expression hardened immediately.
“Carry out your orders, Abramovich,” Donovan shouted. “Get us that goddamn artillery!”
“Yes, sir!”
Hank darted to the next tree, drawing a hail of rifle fire as he did so—but no machine gun fire. The New Yorkers responded in kind, their bolt action Enfield 1917 rifles flinging hefty .30-06 rounds through the trees at the Krauts who had just tried to shoot their new lieutenant. The initial bloody flurry of automatic fire that had greeted C Company upon entering the woods had died down now, as both sides sought to preserve their precious machine guns until they could be most effective.
Hank hit the ground next to an automatic rifle team.
“Remember, hold your fire unless you can see one of their MGs, or if you see a cluster of four or more infantry,” he said.
The man behind the automatic rifle was solidly built and appeared to be in his thirties under the dirt layered on his face. He looked at Hank with unrecognizing brown eyes, but seeing Hank’s lieutenant’s bars, the brim of his helmet dipped as he nodded acknowledgement.
“Yes, sir.”
Hank continued his harrowing circuit through the woods, sprinting, crawling, sprinting again, hiding behind trees and rocks until he was sure he’d reached every automatic rifleman alive in the company. That done, he lay down and shouldered his rifle, a thick tree between him and the direction of the enemy. His breath came in shuddering gasps as his mind raced furiously for something else to do, but Mills had relayed Donovan’s orders.
Hold your position.
Another rattling chorus of rifle fire shattered the stillness in the forest, and a scream of agony from his own lines let Hank know the Germans had struck true somewhere on that volley.
I hope you’re faring better than me, Sigi.
The spool of wire strapped to Sigi’s pack weighed damn near as much as he did, but he struggled with it all the way back to the front despite the ponderous weight. The only saving grace was that the spool got steadily lighter as he unrolled it over the hundreds of yards of his journey.
Finally, he reached the reverse slope of the hill where Sergeant Kilmer and two junior enlisted runners maintained the battalion’s forward CP. Realizing that a highly visible spool of wire on his back would make him any sniper’s favorite target, Sigi dropped the spool before he started to crawl up the hill and unwound enough wire to make it the rest of the way over. He cut the length, looped the smaller coil of wire over his right shoulder and continued the agonizing crawl uphill, careful to maintain the connection as he did so.
Kilmer started when the young lieutenant crested the rise and started rolling down the forward slope, but he relaxed upon recognizing him.
“Welcome back, sir,” Kilmer said. “Would we be receiving any artillery support, and what is it you’ve got there?”
Making sure to stay low to the ground to reduce the chance the Germans could see what he was doing, Sigi retrieved the field phone from his pack and hooked it up to the telephone wire.
“Working on your artillery now, Sergeant,” Sigi said, as he cranked the handset.
Kilmer’s eyes widened.
“You do know anyone with a field phone this far forward is a magnet for sniper fire, do you not?”
“Well, then you better stay in front of me,” Sigi said. “Because I can’t very well adjust artillery if I’m dead, now, can I?”
“You’re an artillery observer?” Kilmer asked.
“Well, no, but I did really well when we trained on it at West Point,” Sigi said, then held up a hand as he heard the other end of the phone line come to life.
“Major Ericson, 149th Field Artillery.”
“Major Ericson, this is Abramovich, 42nd Headquarters,” Sigi said. “I’m forward with the 165th Regiment, we need a concentrated fire mission on Meurcy Farm while we readjust our lines, then we’ll need a creeping barrage to support the attack.”
“Abramovich, I need proper release authority from the division commander or chief of staff—”
“Major, the chief of staff is forward with the 84th Brigade, and by the time you get a hold of General Lenihan, this attack will have failed and the 165th will have lost half its strength. Can you hear what’s going on here?” Sigi held the receiver out for a moment then brought it back to his ear. “We need artillery support right goddamn now or you’re going to be responsible for a dead regiment.”
Kilmer glanced sidelong at him, with eyebrows raised. Sigi just shook his head.
“Send it, Abramovich,” Ericsson said.
Sigi relayed his position and angle to the target, as well as the target’s coordinates and estimated elevation. The first round landed well north and west of the farmhouse.
“Drop five hundred, right one hundred,” Sigi said. The artillery fire direction center acknowledged the adjustment, and a minute later another round landed, quite a bit closer. Sigi made two more adjustments before a round detonated amidst the stone farmhouses.
“Target, Fire for Effect!” Sigi shouted into the phone.
Sixty seconds later, massive blasts from six-inch shells shook the farmhouses and took chunks out of the stone wall surrounding it. The German fire slackened as it was their turn to experience the closest facsimile to God’s Wrath yet conceived by man. Sigi grinned as the steel rain continued and the Fighting Irish were able to pull back out of effective range. Kilmer gave him a nod of approval.
“Well, sir, you may have questionable taste in books, but there’s no denying you’re a fair hand with a call for fire,” Kilmer said.
“Why, thank you, Sergeant Kilmer,” Sigi said. “I’ll try not to let such compliments go to my head.”
Donovan found his way back to them, covered in mud and no small amount of blood, but grinning nonetheless as he clapped Sigi on the shoulder.
“Damn fine work, Abramovich,” Donovan said. “I’m going to take D Company through the woods with C Company. We’ll clear out the woods, then D and C can form a base of fire against the farm itself while A and B Company renew the attack.”
“Sir, if you can figure out some way to mark your position that will show up through the woods, I can adjust the artillery ahead of you,” Sigi said.
Donovan looked thoughtful for a long moment.
“There were some smoke grenades in the crates you brought,” Donovan said. “We’ll use them to mark our forward position. Keep the artillery two hundred yards in front of the smoke. We’ll advance about a hundred-fifty yards, then pop another smoke grenade for you to adjust off of.”
Sigi looked at Donovan with raised eyebrows.
“Sir, with the circular error probability, two hundred meters could put you within the burst radius of any short shells . . .”
“And if the shells land too far behind the Germans, they’ll stick it out, keep their wits about them and cut us to shreds. We found out the hard way that the Spirit of the Bayonet only gets you so far,” Donovan said. “These are hardened veterans; we’re not going to dislodge them from prepared defenses by playing it safe.”
Sigi nodded and started cranking on the phone again.
“Yes, sir, one creeping barrage coming up,” Sigi said.
In an hour, Hank lost four more men killed and seven more wounded too badly to keep fighting. Perhaps later it would bother him that he didn’t know the men’s names, but for the moment he was too busy with his inherited command responsibilities.
The ranges at which they were engaging were too long and the trees between them too densely arrayed to have a good idea of how many Germans they’d shot in return. His men were already digging shallow fighting positions per doctrine, but the relative stability of their position over the last sixty minutes gave Hank no comfort.
It was only a matter of time until the Germans brought their artillery to bear on his newly inherited company. A cavalry officer by training, moreover a horseman since his sixth birthday, Hank’s instinct was to maneuver, and this was the exact opposite.
Rustling leaves and underbrush from behind signaled the approach of D Company. Hank reached out to tap the man on the other side of the tree from him. The soldier looked back at him, and Hank gestured for him to head back, away from the Germans.
“That’s D Company. Head back and tell them to stay low,” Hank said. “Don’t want our reinforcements cut to pieces just getting here.”
The man obeyed, running back toward the approaching troops at a crouch.
As the men of D Company started to take up positions amongst C Company, Donovan crawled up to Hank.
“Thornton, what’s our situation?”
“Sir, we’ve been holding this line for more than an hour. We have eighty-three effectives left and we’re running low on ammunition.”
“We brought some more for the rifles and machine guns. More importantly, your friend Abramovich has a line back to the artillery.” Donovan pulled six smoke grenades from his pack and handed them one by one to Hank. Hank accepted them with some confusion.
“I don’t think we have enough smoke grenades to screen our advance, sir.”
Donovan shook his head.
“They’re not for screening, they’re for marking. I’m going to go to the extreme right flank, you’re going to take the left. We’re each going to toss smoke to visually mark our forward line for Abramovich.”
Hank began securing the grenades to his person.
“Understood, sir. Umm . . . sir . . . these are Mk. II grenades, phosphorus. Hard to throw them further than the burst radius.”
Donovan paused a moment; he hadn’t thought of that. Finally, after half a minute’s reflection, he said, “Tie cord to them and use it to sling them ahead of you. Pull the pin; release the spoon; one complete twirl above your head, two at the most, and let fly.”
“Yes, sir,” Hank agreed. Clever, if it works.
“Make sure your NCOs understand how important it is to dress their lines properly,” Donovan said. “In between each bound, troop the line until you meet me in the center, then we’ll head back to the flanks to pop smoke. Godspeed.”
Two plumes of gray blossomed out of the treetops. Sigi peered at them intently, estimating distance and direction from his position to each smoke cloud, from the clouds to Meurcy Farm, and from the clouds to the top of Hill 137. He plotted his estimates on the map and cranked the field phone again.
“We need a linear sheaf between the following coordinates,” Sigi said. “Adjust each successive volley 200 meters along a line orientation 6100 mils.”
The Fire Direction Center acknowledged his mission data and sent a time of flight of two minutes. Sigi held his breath as a ragged line of sixteen explosions ripped through the forest, shredding trees, and sending black clouds of smoke and frag into the air. The concussion of the volley washed over him even hundreds of yards away. The rounds were north of the marking smoke, but without the ability to talk directly to the troops in contact, he was still operating on faith.
Kilmer must have seen Sigi’s worried expression.
“Looks like you’ve landed another well-plotted fire mission, sir,” he offered by way of comfort.
“I hope so, Sergeant Kilmer,” Sigi said. “Because if I screwed this up, I could’ve killed them all.”
In between the earth-tremoring impact of the artillery, the forest came alive once again with rifles and machine guns. Sigi watched and listened for several heart-wrenching minutes until two new plumes of gray smoke emerged from the treetops. Sigi groaned in relief; a knot of painful tension unclenched in his shoulders.
On their third bound forward, one shell burst short of the rest in the volley. The explosion was a mere fifty yards from one of C Company’s squads, peppering them with metal shards and splintered tree. Two men fell to the ground clutching wounds, their mouths open in screams that were barely audible over the thundering detonations of the barrage.
“Hang on, C Company,” Hank screamed at the top of his lungs. “Get down and wait for the volley to shift forward. GET DOWN.”
Three men from first platoon started to run south, away from the friendly shelling and the enemy, but Hank ran up to the lead man, grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to the ground. Kneeling on the man’s back, he pointed his pistol at the other men who had run.
“Get down, but stay here,” Hank shouted. “We’ll need to hit the Germans while they’re still rattled!”
The remaining two men shared a quick glance between themselves. Apparently deciding that the crazed lieutenant pointing a gun at them was more dangerous than their own artillery, they dropped to the ground, rifles pointed north again toward the enemy.
“Good boys! Stay here until you hear the whistle!”
Hank ran up and down C Company’s line, repeating the order, ignoring the watery sensation in his gut every time a tree was shattered by an artillery round. Only after he was sure his company was down, neither retreating nor advancing until the barrage moved farther north, did Hank find a piece of cover for himself, lying down behind a wide, low rock.
Duty accomplished for the moment, Hank squeezed his eyes shut and prayed silently as the world shook and heaved about him under the pounding of the guns.
Lord, deliver us. Bless me, bless these men, and bless Sigi’s big ole brain. Put the Boche under our bayonets . . . and if I could live to see Lubbock again, that’d be right nice, too. In your Son’s name and for his sake, Amen.
Finally, the shelling stopped, the guns needing to adjust to their new linear target further north. Relative silence fell over the wood and the smoke and dust began to clear. There, no more than fifty or sixty yards away, lay a line of German machine gun nests. Many of the gray-clad troops lay dead or wounded, but more were dazedly returning to their firing positions.
No time to wait for Donovan to order the attack.
Hank pulled the whistle Captain Bootz had given him, pressed it to his lips and gave a long loud blast, then dropped it to dangle on its chain and screamed, “FOLLOW ME!”
Hank sprinted forward, not daring to look behind to see if the men were following him.
Ten yards. The Germans were rallying, machine gun bullets began to kick up dirt and chip away at the bark of trees about him. The bursts filled the air with sonic cracks and a vicious buzz akin to a hornet’s nest.
Twenty yards, and thirty, return fire from C Company’s automatic riflemen flew past him toward the enemy.
Forty yards, the muzzle of a German machine gun, flashing fire, tracked toward him. He dropped to a knee, took aim, and fired. The powerful .30-06 round kicked the rifle butt into his shoulder. A clean miss, a searing pain in his left thigh. Hank worked the action on his Enfield furiously, but it was too late—
Two rifle shots from his right, and the German fell away from his machine gun. Hank glanced right; it was the man he’d thrown to the ground and one of his comrades. No time to celebrate—another German dove for the machine gun.
Hank covered the remaining ten yards faster than he’d ever managed back at West Point’s football field, adrenaline dulling the reports of pain in his left leg. He fired from the hip, taking the man behind the machine gun in the shoulder. The man fell back, his hand scrabbling at his belt for a pistol.
Without time to work the action on his rifle, Hank drove forward, ramming his bayonet into the German. The blade pierced cloth and flesh and sawed against his victim’s ribs with a sickening, grating sound. The German let loose a guttural scream and writhed violently to the left, wrenching the rifle from Hank’s hands.
From the right, three more Germans charged. One went down to a rifle shot, a C Company man intercepted the second with a bayonet into his guts, but the third closed the distance. He swung a short-handled shovel in a vicious overhand arc at Hank’s head.
Hank threw himself to the right and tugged furiously to free his holstered pistol. The sharpened shovel whistled through the air past Hank’s face and buried itself in the mud where he’d been a split second before. Hank tripped and fell on his back against the side of the German machine gun nest behind his assailant. The German pulled his shovel free from the earth and turned to continue his assault.
Instinctively, Hank raised his left hand to ward off the blow even as he raised his pistol in his right hand. He jerked the trigger, momentarily forgetting everything he’d ever been taught about shooting a pistol, but at this range the round still took the man in the knee, breaking the German’s momentum as he screamed in pain.
The shovel fell with far less force than before. Hank clamped down on the tool’s haft with his left hand and ripped it out of his enemy’s hands. Hank punched the muzzle of his pistol into the German’s chest, eliciting from him an inarticulate cry of pain. He yanked the trigger and nothing happened; the slide being pushed back by the German’s chest, it was incapable of firing. Pulling the pistol back slightly, enough to let it go back into battery, he jerked the trigger four times. The shovel-wielding attacker fell to the ground, limp, but Hank’s pistol jammed on the fourth round, a cartridge caught and deformed by the slide-action.
Before he could drop the shovel to clear the malfunction on his weapon, another German charged, bayonet leveled at Hank’s chest. Hank swung his new shovel in an awkward up-stroke parry. The impact reverberated through the handle into Hank’s arm as the haft intersected the rifle’s barrel. It was enough to knock the point of the blade off target.
In the gap, Hank swung the jammed pistol in a lateral arch, smashing the slide of the pistol into the German’s teeth as violently as he could in the confines of the MG nest. The weapon connected with a crack and a squelch; the German spun around from the blow, a shower of blood and teeth spurting from his mouth onto the corpses of his dead comrades.
His pistol now further fouled, Hank dropped it, took up the shovel in a downward grip with both hands and drove the point down with all his might into the back of the German’s neck. Spine, esophagus, and windpipe gave way, leaving the German’s head attached by only threads of flesh and sinew.
The sound of more bootsteps squelching through the mud, snapping twigs and brush sent Hank scrabbling for his pistol. He brushed away the tissue caught in the ejection port then yanked back on the slide. The jammed round still didn’t eject so Hank slammed the palm of his left hand into the weapon repeatedly, finally knocking it free. The slide flew forward, chambering another round, but as Hank raised the weapon to address the new threat, he realized that he was surrounded not by field gray, but by doughboy brown uniforms.
The men of the 69th surged past him, shooting and stabbing, bludgeoning and slashing. Finally, the Germans broke, running from the murderous Irishmen or throwing their rifles down in surrender. Hank smiled dazedly for a moment, but the adrenaline was fading and suddenly his left thigh was screaming in pain.
“Oh, hot darn,” he said between gritted teeth. He slid to sit against the side of the MG nest. His left pant leg was soaked in blood.
The big familiar face of Major Donovan, medals on his breast, smoking M1911 pistol in his hand, filled Hank’s vision. Donovan took one look at his condition and shouted for a medic.
“Sorry I didn’t wait for you, sir,” Hank said. “There wasn’t time—”
“No need, son,” Donovan cut him off. “You did just right. Lie still and let Doc work on you. A and C Company are taking the farmhouse as we speak. It looks like a win today, lieutenant.”
A boy younger than Hank appeared next to Donovan. He cut away Hank’s pant leg with a pair of scissors and examined his wound with a frown of professional concentration. He prodded around it, eliciting a hiss of pain from Hank.
“You’re lucky, lieutenant.” The medic began to clean the wound. “An inch left, and this would have broken your femur, two inches and it might have severed the artery and you’d already be dead.”
“Well, I gotta give these German fellers credit, they die tough,” Hank said.
Donovan looked around at the carnage in the hole, gave a short, sharp laugh and clapped Hank on the shoulder.
“Not tougher than a Texan, it appears.”
Hank gasped as the medic started packing the wound. The boy stopped and looked up at him.
“You need some morphine, sir?”
The pain in his leg was stabbing and throbbing at the same time, but a memory of the boys who caught a piece of the artillery flashed in his mind. Hank shook his head.
“Nah, save it for someone really dinged up. I’ll manage.”
The medic shrugged and went back to work. “If you say, so, Lieutenant,” he said. “Major Donovan, sir, we do need to get him back to a field hospital so they can give it a better cleaning and sew it up. And he’ll need to stay off it for a while.”
Hank’s heart sank.
“Is that necessary? Just give me a couple days off the line—”
“If you want to lose your goddamn leg, Lieutenant, then yeah, a couple days off the line,” the medic said, laconically. “If you’d like to avoid infection and amputation, then you’ll shut up and go back to the hospital. You also probably need a pint of blood.”
“Easy, Doc,” Donovan remonstrated before turning to Hank. “It’s all right, Thornton. Go to the hospital, get patched up. When you’re ready, if you can escape Colonel MacArthur, you’re always welcome back here with the 69th.”