One of Ours by Willa Cather (best romance ebooks .TXT) 📕

support. I’d have had you over here before, but I only got my orders to relieve yesterday. We may have to advance under shell fire. The enemy has been putting a lot of big stuff over; he wants to cut off that trench.”

Claude and David got into a fresh shell hole, under the half-burned scrub, and fell asleep. They were awakened at dusk by heavy artillery fire from the north.

At ten o’clock the Battalion, after a hot meal, began to advance through almost impassable country. The guns must have been pounding away at the same range for a long while; the ground was worked and kneaded until it was soft as dough, though no rain had fallen for a week. Barclay Owens and his engineers were throwing down a plank road to get food and the ammunition wagons across. Big shells were coming over at intervals of twelve minutes. The intervals were so regular that it was quite possible to get forward without damage. While B Company was pulling through the shell area, Colonel Scott overtook them, on foot, his orderly leading his horse.

“Know anything about that light over there, Wheeler?” he asked. “Well, it oughtn’t to be there. Come along and see.”

The light was a mere match-head down in the ground, Claude hadn’t noticed it before. He followed the Colonel, and when they reached the spark they found three officers of A Company crouching in a shell crater, covered with a piece of sheet-iron.

“Put out that light,” called the Colonel sharply. “What’s the matter, Captain Brace?”

A young man rose quickly. “I’m waiting for the water, sir. It’s coming up on mules, in petrol cases, and I don’t want to get separated from it. The ground’s so bad here the drivers are likely to get lost.”

“Don’t wait more than twenty minutes. You must get up and take your position on time, that’s the important thing, water or no water.”

As the Colonel and Claude hurried back to overtake the Company, five big shells screamed over them in rapid succession. “Run, sir,” the orderly called. “They’re getting on to us; they’ve shortened the range.”

“That light back there was just enough to give them an idea,” the Colonel muttered.

The bad ground continued for about a mile, and then the advance reached Headquarters, behind the eighth trench of the great system of trenches. It was an old farmhouse which the Germans had made over with reinforced concrete, lining it within and without, until the walls were six feet thick and almost shellproof, like a pillbox. The Colonel sent his orderly to enquire about A Company. A young Lieutenant came to the door of the farmhouse.

“A Company is ready to go into position, sir. I brought them up.”

“Where is Captain Brace, Lieutenant?”

“He and both our first lieutenants were killed, Colonel. Back in that hole. A shell fell on them not five minutes after you were talking to them.”

“That’s bad. Any other damage?”

“Yes, sir. There was a cook wagon struck at the same time; the first one coming along Julius Caesar’s new road. The driver was killed, and we had to shoot the horses. Captain Owens, he near got scalded with the stew.”

The Colonel called in the officers one after another and discussed their positions with them.

“Wheeler,” he said when Claude’s turn came, “you know your map? You’ve noticed that sharp loop in the front trench, in H 2; the Boar’s Head, I believe they call it. It’s a sort of spear point that reaches out toward the enemy, and it will be a hot place to hold. If I put your company in there, do you think you can do the Battalion credit in case of a counter attack?”

Claude said he thought so.

“It’s the nastiest bit of the line to hold, and you can tell your men I pay them a compliment when I put them there.”

“All right, sir. They’ll appreciate it.”

The Colonel bit off the end of a fresh cigar. “They’d better, by thunder! If they give way and let the Hun bombers in, it will let down the whole line. I’ll give you two teams of Georgia machine guns to put in that point they call the Boar’s Snout. When the Missourians come up tomorrow, they’ll go in to support you, but until then you’ll have to take care of the loop yourselves. I’ve got an awful lot of trench to hold, and I can’t spare you any more men.”

The Texas men whom the Battalion came up to relieve had been living for sixty hours on their iron rations, and on what they could pick off the dead Huns. Their supplies had been shelled on the way, and nothing had got through to them. When the Colonel took Claude and Gerhardt forward to inspect the loop that B Company was to hold, they found a wallow, more like a dump heap than a trench. The men who had taken the position were almost too weak to stand. All their officers had been killed, and a sergeant was in command. He apologized for the condition of the loop.

“Sorry to leave such a mess for you to clean up, sir, but we got it bad in here. He’s been shelling us every night since we drove him out. I couldn’t ask the men to do anything but hold on.”

“That’s all right. You beat it, with your boys, quick! My men will hand you out some grub as you go back.”

The battered defenders of the Boar’s Head stumbled past them through the darkness into the communication. When the last man had filed out, the Colonel sent for Barclay Owens. Claude and David tried to feel their way about and get some idea of the condition the place was in. The stench was the worst they had yet encountered, but it was less disgusting than the flies; when they inadvertently touched a dead body, clouds of wet, buzzing flies flew up into their faces, into their eyes and nostrils. Under their feet the earth worked and moved