Altsheler Joseph Alexander
The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne
They advanced another mile, two hundred thousand men, afire with zeal, a whole vast army moved forward as the other French armies were by the hidden hand which they could not see, of which they knew nothing, but the touch of which they could feel.
John heard a whizzing sound, he caught a glimpse of a dark object, rushing forward at frightful velocity, and then he and his wheel reeled beneath the force of a tremendous explosion. The shell coming from an invisible point, miles away, had burst some distance on his right, scattering death and wounds over a wide radius. But Vaugirard's brigades did not stop for one instant. They cheered loudly, closed up the gap in their line, and went on steadily as before. Some one began to sing the Marseillaise, and in an instant the song, like fire in dry grass, spread along a vast front. John had often wished that he could have heard the armies of the French Revolution singing their tremendous battle hymn as they marched to victory, and now he heard it on a scale far more gigantic than in the days of the First French Republic.
The vast chorus rolled for miles and for all he knew other armies, far to right and left, might be singing it, too. The immense volume of the song drowned out everything, even that tremor in the air, caused by the big guns. John's heart beat so hard that it caused actual physical pain in his side, and presently, although he was unconscious of it, he was thundering out the verses with the others.
He was riding by the side of de Rougemont, and he stopped singing long enough to shout, at the top of his voice:
"No enemy in sight yet?"
"No," de Rougemont shouted back, "but he doesn't need to be. The German guns have our range."
From a line on the distant horizon, from positions behind hills, the German shells were falling fast, cutting down men by hundreds, tearing great holes in the earth, and filling the air with an awful shrieking and hissing. It was all the more terrible because the deadly missiles seemed to come from nowhere. It was like a mortal hail rained out of heaven. John had not yet seen a German, nothing but those tongues of fire licking up on the horizon, and some little whitish clouds of smoke, lifting themselves slowly above the trees, yet the thunder was no longer a rumble. It had a deep and angry note, whose burden was death.
They must maintain their steady march directly toward the mouths of those guns. John comprehended in those awful moments that the task of the French was terrible, almost superhuman. If their nation was to live they must hurl back a victorious foe, practically numberless, armed and equipped with everything that a great race in a half-century of supreme thought and effort could prepare for war. It was spirit and patriotism against the monstrous machine of fire and steel, and he trembled lest the machine could overcome anything in the world.
He was about to shout again to de Rougemont, but his words were lost in the rending crash of the French artillery. Their batteries were posted on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range. All along the front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened forever.
The sight, at first magnificent, now became appalling. The shells came in showers and the French ranks were torn and mangled. Companies existed and then they were not. The explosions were like the crash of thunderbolts, but through it all the French continued to advance. Those whose knees grew weak beneath them were upborne and carried forward by the press of their comrades. The French gunners, too, were making prodigious efforts but with cannon of such long range neither side could see what its batteries were accomplishing. John was sure, though, that the great French artillery must be giving as good as it received.
He was conscious that General Vaugirard was still going forward along the long white road, sweeping his glasses from left to right and from right to left in a continuous semi-circle, apparently undisturbed, apparently now without human emotion. He was no figure of romance, but he was a man, cool and powerful, ready to die with all his men, if death for them was needed.
Still the invisible hand swept them on, the hand that a million men in action could not see, but which every one of the million, in his own way, felt. The crash of the guns on both sides had become fused together into one roar, so steady and continued so long that the sound seemed almost normal. Voices could now be heard under it and John spoke to de Rougemont.
"Can you make anything of it?" he asked. "Do we win or do we lose?"
"It's too early yet to tell anything. The cannon only are speaking, but you'll note that our army is advancing."
"Yes, I see it. Before I've only beheld it in retreat before overwhelming numbers. This is different."
General Vaugirard beckoned to his aides, and again sent them out with messages. John's note was to the commander of a battery of field guns telling him to move further forward. He started at once through the fields on his motor cycle, but he could not go fast now. The ground had been cut deep by artillery and cavalry and torn by shells and he had to pick his way, while the shower of steel, sent by men who were firing by mathematics, swept over and about him.
Shivers seized him more than once, as shrapnel and pieces of shell flew by. Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in spite of the shells, in spite of the deadly nausea that assailed him at times, he went on. The rush of air from a shell threw him once from his motor cycle, but as he fell on soft clodded earth he was not hurt, and, springing quickly back on his wheel, he reached the battery.
The order was welcome to the commander of the guns, who was anxious to go closer, and, limbering up, he advanced as rapidly as weapons of such great weight could be dragged across the fields. John followed, that he might report the result. They were now facing toward the east and the whole horizon there was a blaze of fire. The shells were coming thicker and thicker, and the air was filled with the screaming of the shrapnel.
The commander of the battery, a short, powerful Frenchman, was as cool as ice, and John drew coolness from him. One can get used to almost anything, and his nervous tremors were passing. Despite the terrible fire of the German artillery the French army was still advancing. Many thousands had fallen already before the shells and shrapnel of the invisible foe, but there had been no check.
The cannon crossed a brook, and, unlimbering, again opened a tremendous fire. To one side and on a hill here, a man whom the commander watched closely was signaling. John knew that he was directing the aim of the battery and the French, like the Germans, were killing by mathematics.
He rode his cycle to the crest of a little elevation behind the battery and with his newfound coolness began to use his glasses again. Despite the thin, whitish smoke, he saw men on the horizon, mere manikins moving back and forth, apparently without meaning, but men nevertheless. He caught, too, the outline of giant tubes, the huge guns that were sending the ceaseless rain of death upon the French.
He also saw signs of hurry and confusion among those manikins, and he knew that the French shells were striking them. He rode down to the commander and told him. The swart Frenchman grinned.
"My children are biting," he said, glancing affectionately at his guns. "They're brave lads, and their teeth are long and sharp."
He looked at his signal man, and the guns let loose again with a force that sent the air rushing away in violent waves. Batteries farther on were firing also with great rapidity. In most of these the gunners were directed by field telephones strung hastily, but the one near John still depended upon signal men. It was composed of eight five-inch guns, and John believed that its fire was most accurate and deadly.
Using his glasses again, he saw that the disturbance among those manikins was increasing. They were running here and there, and many seemed to vanish suddenly—he knew that they were blown away by the shells. To the right of the great French battery some lighter field guns were advancing. One drawn by eight horses had not yet unlimbered, and he saw a shell strike squarely upon it. In the following explosion pieces of steel whizzed by him and when the smoke cleared away the gun, the gunners and the horses were all gone. The monster shell had blown everything to pieces. The other guns hurried on, took up their positions and began to fire. John shuddered violently, but in a moment or two, he, too, forgot the little tragedy in the far more gigantic one that was being played before him.
He rode back to General Vaugirard and told him that his order had been obeyed. The general nodded, but did not take his glasses from the horizon, where a long gray line was beginning to appear against the green of the earth. "It goes well so far," John heard him say in the under note which was audible beneath the thunder of the battle.
In a quarter of an hour the great batteries limbered up again, and once more the French army went forward, the troops to lie down and wait again, while the artillery worked with ferocious energy. It was yet a battle of big guns, at least in the center. The armies were not near enough to each other for rifles; in truth not near enough yet to be seen. John, even with his glasses, could only discern the gray line advancing, he could make little of its form or order or of what it was trying to do.
But a light wind was now bringing smoke from one flank where the battle was far heavier than in the center, and the concussion of the artillery at that point became so frightful that the air seemed to come in waves of the utmost violence and to beat upon the drum of the ear with the force of a hammer. Owing to the wind John could not hear the battle on the other flank so well, but he believed that it was being fought there with equal fury and determination.
He was watching with such intentness that he did not hear the sweep of an aeroplane behind him, but he did see Lannes run to General Vaugirard's car and give him a note.
While the general read and pondered, Lannes turned toward the wheel on which John sat. Although he tried to preserve calm, John knew that he was tremendously excited. He had taken off his heavy glasses and his wonderful gray eyes were flashing. It was obvious to his friend, who now knew him so well, that he was moved by some tremendous emotion.
John rode up by the side of Lannes and said:
"What have you seen, Philip? You can tell a little at least, can't you?"
"More than a little! A lot! The Arrow and I have looked over a great area, John! Miles and miles and yet more miles! and wherever we went we gazed down upon armies locked in battle, and beyond that were other armies locked in battle, too! The nations meet in wrath! You can't see it here, nor from anywhere on the earth! It's only in the air high overhead that one can get even a partial view of its immensity! The English army is off there on the flank, a full thirty miles away, and you're not likely to see it today!"
He would have said more, but General Vaugirard beckoned to him, gave him a note which he had written hastily, and in a few more minutes Lannes was flitting like a swallow through the heavens. Then General Vaugirard's car moved forward and brigade after brigade of the French army resumed its advance also.
John felt that the great German machine had been met by a French machine as great. Perhaps the master mind that thrills through an organism of steel no less than one of human flesh was on the French side. He did not know. The invisible hand thrusting forward the French armies was still invisible to him. Yet he felt with the certainty of conviction that the eye and the brain of one man were achieving a marvel. In some mysterious manner the French defense had become an offense. The Republican troops were now attacking and the Imperial troops were seeking to hold fast.
He seemed to comprehend it all in an instant, and a mighty joy surged over him. De Rougemont saw his glistening eye and he asked curiously:
"What is it that you are feeling so strongly, Mr. Scott?"
"The thrill of the advance! The unknown plan, whatever it is, is working! Your nation is about to be saved! I feel it! I know it!"
De Rougemont gazed at him, and then the light leaped into his own eyes.
"A prophet! A prophet!" he cried. "Inspired youth speaks!"
A great crisis may call into being a great impulse, and de Rougemont's words were at once accepted as truth by all the young aides. Words of fire, words vital with life had gone forth, predicting their triumph, and as they rode among the troops carrying orders they communicated their burning zeal to the men who were already eager for closer battle.
The storm of missiles from the cannon was increasing rapidly. John now distinctly saw the huge German masses, not advancing but standing firm to receive the French attack, their front a vast line of belching guns. He knew that they would soon be within the area of rifle fire and he knew with equal truth that it would take the valor of immense numbers, wielded by the supreme skill of leaders to drive back the Germans.
The guns, some drawn by horses and others by motors, were moving forward with them. When the horses were swept away by a shell, men seized the guns and dragged them. Then they stopped again, took new positions and renewed the rain of death on the German army.
They began to hear a whistle and hiss that they knew. It was that of the bullets, and along the vast front they were coming in millions. But the French were using their rifles, too, and at intervals the deep thundering chant of the Marseillaise swept through their ranks. In spite of shell, shrapnel and bullets, in spite of everything, the French army in the center was advancing and John believed that the armies on the other parts of the line were advancing, too.
The bullets struck around them, and then among them. One aide fell from his cycle, and lay dead in the road, two more were wounded, but two hundred thousand men, their artillery blazing death over their heads, went on straight at the mouths of a thousand cannon.
Companies and regiments were swept away, but there was no check. Nor did the other French armies, the huge links in the chain, stop. A feeling of victory had swept along the whole gigantic battle front. They were fighting for Paris, for their country, for the soil which they tended, alive, and in which they slept, dead, and just at the moment when everything seemed to have been lost they were saving all. The heroic age of France had come again, and the Third Republic was justifying the First.
The battle deepened and thickened to an extraordinary degree, as the space between the two fronts narrowed. John for the first time saw the German troops without the aid of glasses. They were mere outlines against a fiery horizon, reddened by the mouths of so many belching cannon, but they seemed to him to stand there like a wall.
Another giant shell burst near them, and two more members of the staff fell from their cycles, dead before they touched the ground. That convulsive shudder seized John again, but the crash of tremendous events was so rapid that fear and horror alike passed in an instant. A piece of the same shell struck General Vaugirard's car and put it out of action at once. But the general leaped lightly to the ground, then swung his immense bulk across one of the riderless motor cycles and advanced with the surviving members of his staff. Imperturbable, he still swept the field with his glasses. Two aides were now sent to the right with messages, and a third, John himself, was despatched to the left on a similar errand.
It was John's duty to tell a regiment to bear in further to the left and close up a vacant spot in the line. He wheeled his cycle into a field, and then passed between rows of grapevines. The regiment, its ranks much thinned, was now about a hundred yards away, but shell and bullets alike were sweeping the distance between.
Nevertheless, he rode on, his wheel bumping over the rough ground, until he heard a rushing sound, and then blank darkness enveloped him. He fell one way, and the motor cycle fell another.
CHAPTER V
SEEN FROM ABOVE
John's period of unconsciousness was brief. The sweep of air from a gigantic shell, passing close, had taken his senses for a minute or two, but he leaped to his feet to find his motor cycle broken and puffing out its last breath, and himself among the dead and wounded in the wake of the army which was advancing rapidly. The turmoil was so vast, and so much dust and burned gunpowder was floating about that he was not able to tell where the valiant Vaugirard with the remainder of his staff marched. In front of him a regiment, cut up terribly, was advancing at a swift pace, and acting under the impulse of the moment he ran forward to join them.
When he overtook the regiment he saw that it had neither colonel, nor captains nor any other officers of high degree. A little man, scarcely more than a youth, his head bare, his eyes snapping fire, one hand holding aloft a red cap on the point of a sword, had taken command and was urging the soldiers on with every fierce shout that he knew. The men were responding. Command seemed natural to him. Here was a born leader in battle. John knew him, and he knew that his own prophecy had been fulfilled.
"Geronimo!" he gasped.
But young Bougainville did not see him. He was still shouting to the men whom he now led so well. The point of the sword, doubtless taken from the hand of some fallen officer, had pierced the red cap which was slowly sinking down the blade, but he did not notice it.
John looked again for his commander, but not seeing him, and knowing how futile it was now to seek him in all the fiery crush, he resolved to stay with the young Apache.
"Geronimo," he cried, and it was the last time he called him by that name, "I go with you!"
In all the excitement of the moment young Bougainville recognized him and something droll flashed in his eyes.
"Did I boast too much?" he shouted.
"You didn't!" John shouted back.
"Come on then! A big crowd of Germans is just over this hill, and we must smash 'em!"
John kept by his side, but Bougainville, still waving his sword, while the red cap sank lower and lower on the blade, addressed his men in terms of encouragement and affection.
"Forward, my children!" he shouted. "Men, without fear, let us be the first to make the enemy feel our bayonets! Look, a regiment on the right is ahead of you, and another also on the left leads you! Faster! Faster, my children!"
An angle of the German line was thrust forward at this point where a hill afforded a strong position. Bullets were coming from it in showers, but the Bougainville regiment broke into a run, passed ahead of the others and rushed straight at the hill.
It was the first time that men had come face to face in the battle and now John saw the French fury, the enthusiasm and fire that Napoleon had capitalized and cultivated so sedulously. Shouting fiercely, they flung themselves upon the Germans and by sheer impact drove them back. They cleared the hill in a few moments, triumphantly seized four cannon and then, still shouting, swept on.
John found himself shouting with the others. This was victory, the first real taste of it, and it was sweet to the lips. But the regiment was halted presently, lest it get too far forward and be cut off, and a general striding over to Bougainville uttered words of approval that John could not hear amid the terrific din of so many men in battle—a million, a million and a half or more, he never knew.
They stood there panting, while the French line along a front of maybe fifty miles crept on and on. The French machine with the British wheels and springs coöperating, was working beautifully now. It was a match and more for their enemy. The Germans, witnessing the fire and dash of the French and feeling their tremendous impact, began to take alarm. It had not seemed possible to them in those last triumphant days that they could fail, but now Paris was receding farther and farther from their grasp.
John recovered a certain degree of coolness. The fire of the foe was turned away from them for the present, and, finding that the glasses thrown over his shoulder, had not been injured by his fall, he examined the battle front as he stood by the side of Bougainville. The country was fairly open here and along a range of miles the cannon in hundreds and hundreds were pouring forth destruction. Yet the line, save where the angle had been crushed by the rush of Bougainville's regiment, stood fast, and John shuddered at thought of the frightful slaughter, needed to drive it back, if it could be driven back at all.
Then he glanced at the fields across which they had come. For two or three miles they were sprinkled with the fallen, the red and blue of the French uniform showing vividly against the green grass. But there was little time for looking that way and again he turned his glasses in front. The regiment had taken cover behind a low ridge, and six rapid firers were sending a fierce hail on the German lines. But the men under orders from Bougainville, withheld the fire of their rifles for the present.
Bougainville himself stood up as became a leader of men, and lowered his sword for the first time. The cap had sunk all the way down the blade and picking it off he put it back on his head. He had obtained glasses also, probably from some fallen officer, and he walked back and forth seeking a weak spot in the enemy's line, into which he could charge with his men.
John admired him. His was no frenzied rage, but a courage, measured and stern. The springs of power hidden in him had been touched and he stood forth, a born leader.
"How does it happen," said John, "that you're in command?"
"Our officers were all in front," replied Bougainville, "when our regiment was swept by many shells. When they ceased bursting upon us and among us the officers were no longer there. The regiment was about to break. I could not bear to see that, and seizing the sword, I hoisted my cap upon it. The rest, perhaps, you saw. The men seem to trust me."
"They do," said John, with emphasis.
Bougainville, for the time at least, was certainly the leader of the regiment. It was an incident that John believed possible only in his own country, or France, and he remembered once more the famous old saying of Napoleon that every French peasant carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack.
Now he recalled, too, that Napoleon had fought some of his greatest defensive battles in the region they faced. Doubtless the mighty emperor and his marshals had trod the very soil on which Bougainville and he now stood. Surely the French must know it, and surely it would give them superhuman courage for battle.
"I belong to the command of General Vaugirard," he said to Bougainville. "I'm serving on his staff, but I was knocked off my motor cycle by the rush of air from a shell. The cycle was ruined and I was unconscious for a moment or two. When I revived, my general and his command were gone."
"You'd better stay with me a while," said Bougainville. "We're going to advance again soon. When night comes, if you're still alive, then you can look for General Vaugirard. The fire of the artillery is increasing. How the earth shakes!"
"So it does. I wish I knew what was happening."
"There comes one of those men in the air. He is going to drop down by us. Maybe you can learn something from him."
John felt a sudden wild hope that it was Lannes, but his luck did not hold good enough for it. The plane was of another shape than the Arrow, and, when it descended to the ground, a man older than Lannes stepped out upon the grass. He glanced around as if he were looking for some general of division for whom he had an order, and John, unable to restrain himself, rushed to him and exclaimed:
"News! News! For Heaven's sake, give us news! Surely you've seen from above!"
The man smiled and John knew that a bearer of bad news would not smile.
"I'm the friend and comrade of Philip Lannes," continued John, feeling that all the flying men of France knew the name of Lannes, and that it would be a password to this man's good graces.
"I know him well," said the air scout. "Who of our craft does not? My own name is Caumartin, and I have flown with Lannes more than once in the great meets at Rheims. In answer to your question I'm able to tell you that on the wings the soldiers of France are advancing. A wedge has been thrust between the German armies and the one nearest Paris is retreating, lest it be cut off."
Bougainville heard the words, and he ran among the men, telling them. A fierce shout arose and John himself quivered with feeling. It was better, far better than he had hoped. He realized now that his courage before had been the courage of despair. Lannes and he, as a last resort, had put faith in signs and omens, because there was nothing else to bear them up.
"Is it true? Is it true beyond doubt! You've really seen it with your own eyes?" he exclaimed.
Caumartin smiled again. His were deep eyes, and the smile that came from them was reassuring.
"I saw it myself," he replied. "At the point nearest Paris the gray masses are withdrawing. I looked directly down upon them. And now, can you tell me where I can find General Vaugirard?"
"I wish I could. I'm on his staff, but I've lost him. He's somewhere to the northward."
"Then I'll find him."
Caumartin resumed his place in his machine. John looked longingly at the aeroplane. He would gladly have gone with Caumartin, but feeling that he would be only a burden at such a time, he would not suggest it. Nevertheless he called to the aviator:
"If you see Philip Lannes in the heavens tell him that his friend John Scott is here behind a low ridge crested with trees!"
Caumartin nodded, and as some of the soldiers gave his plane a push he soared swiftly away in search of General Vaugirard. John watched him a moment or two and then turned his attention back to the German army in front of them.
The thudding of the heavy guns to their left had become so violent that it affected his nerves. The waves of air beat upon his ears like storm-driven rollers, and he was glad when Bougainville's regiment moved forward again. The Germans seemed to have withdrawn some of their force in the center, and, for a little while, the regiment with which John now marched was not under fire.
They heard reserves now coming up behind them, more trains of motor cars, bearing fresh troops, and batteries of field guns advancing as fast as they could. Men were busy also stringing telephone wires, and, presently, they passed a battery of guns of the largest caliber, the fire of which was directed entirely by telephone. Some distance beyond it the regiment stopped again. The huge shells were passing over their heads toward the German lines, and John believed that he could hear and count every one of them.
The remains of the regiment now lay down in a dip, as they did not know anything to do, except to wait for the remainder of the French line to advance.
Something struck near them presently and exploded with a crash. Steel splinters flew, but as they were prone only one man was injured.
"They're reaching us again with their shell fire," said John.
"Not at all," said Bougainville. "Look up."
John saw high in the heavens several black specks, which he knew at once were aeroplanes. Since the bomb had been dropped from one of them it was obvious that they were German flyers, and missiles of a like nature might be expected from the same source. Involuntarily he crouched close to the ground, and tried to press himself into it. He knew that such an effort would afford him no protection, but the body sought it nevertheless. All around him the young French soldiers too were clinging to Mother Earth. Only Bougainville stood erect.
John had felt less apprehension under the artillery fire and in the charge than he did now. He was helpless here when death fell like hail from the skies, and he quivered in every muscle as he waited. A crash came again, but the bomb had struck farther away, then a third, and a fourth, each farther and farther in its turn, and Bougainville suddenly uttered a shout that was full of vengeance and exultation.
John looked up. The group of black specks was still in the sky, but another group was hovering near, and clapping his glasses to his eyes he saw flashes of light passing between them.
"You're right, Bougainville! you're right!" he cried, although Bougainville had not said a word. "The French flyers have come and there's a fight in the air!"
He forgot all about the battle on earth, while he watched the combat in the heavens. Yet it was an affair of only a few moments. The Germans evidently feeling that they were too far away from their base, soon retreated. One of their machines turned over on its side and fell like a shot through space.
John shuddered, took the glasses down, and, by impulse, closed his eyes. He heard a shock near him, and, opening his eyes again, saw a huddled mass of wreckage, from which a foot encased in a broad German shoe protruded. The ribs of the plane were driven deep into the earth and he looked away. But a hum and swish suddenly came once more, and a sleek and graceful aeroplane, which he knew to be the Arrow, sank to the earth close to him. Lannes, smiling and triumphant, stepped forth and John hailed him eagerly.
"I met Caumartin in an aerial road," said Lannes, in his best dramatic manner, "and he described this place, at which you were waiting. As it was directly on my way I concluded to come by for you. I was delayed by a skirmish overhead which you may have seen."
