Fix Bayonets! by Captain John W. Thomason Jr

Author:Captain John W. Thomason, Jr. [Captain John W. Thomason, Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Europe, Great Britain, General, Germany, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781786257246
Google: T0tvCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Lucknow Books
Published: 2015-11-06T05:08:01+00:00

With reason the Boche feared them worse than anything living.

Later, on the last objective, there was a dignified Boche major of infantry, who came at discretion out of a deep dugout, and spoke in careful English: “Und I peg of you, Herr leutnant, to put me under trusty guard of your Americans true-and-tried! Ja! These black savages, of the art of war most ignorant, they would kill us prave Germans in cold plood!...The Herr General Mangin, that”—here a poignant string of gutturals—“I tell you, Herr leutnant, der very name of Mangin, it is equal to fünf divisions on unser front!”

Back with his own men again, the company whittled thin! Was there no limit to the gloomy woods?...Light through the trees yonder!——

The wood ended, and the attack burst out into the rolling wheat-land, where the sun shone in a cloudless sky and poppies grew in the wheat. To the right, a great paved road marched, between tall poplars, much battered. On the road two motor-trucks burned fiercely, and dead men lay around them. Across the road a group of stone farm-buildings had been shelled into a smoking dust-heap, but from the ruins a nest of never-die machine-guns opened flanking fire. The khaki lines checked and swirled around them, and there was a mounting crackle of rifle-fire...and the bayonets got in. The lines went forward to the low crest beyond, where, astride the road, was the first objective; and the assault companies halted here to reform. A few Boche shells howled over them, but the Boche was still pounding the wood, where the support battalions followed. The tanks debouched from the forest and went forward through the infantry.

In a hollow just ahead of the reformed line something was being dealt with by artillery, directed by the planes that dipped and swerved above the fight. The shells crashed down and made a great roaring murk of smoke and dust and flickering flames of red and green. The lieutenant, his report to the major despatched, and his company straightened out, along with men from other units and a handful of Senegalese who had attached themselves to him, ran an expert eye along his waiting squads, and allowed his mind to settle profoundly on breakfast. “Let’s see—it’s July, an’ in Texas they’ll be havin’ cantaloupes, and coffee, an’ eggs, an’ bacon, an’—“Second Lieutenant Corbett, beside him, groaned like a man shot through the body, and he realized that he had been thinking aloud. Then Corbett seized his arm, and gasped: “Lordy! Look at——”

The shelling forward had abated, but the smoke and murk of it still hung low. Into this murk every man in the line was now peering eagerly. Advancing toward them, dimly seen, was a great body of Germans, hundreds upon hundreds, in mass formation——

Pure joy ran among the men. They took out cartridges, and arranged them in convenient piles. They tested the wind with wetted fingers, and set their sights, and licked their lips. “Range three-fifty—Oh, boy, ain’t war wonderful! We been hearin’

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