CHAPTER XVIII The Death of Snooper Jones

ALTHOUGH what meagre reports there were to be had indicated that the long swing of the left wing of the American army was progressing favorably, the orders for the big push by the men in the pivotal sector did not come that day. The constant roar of the big guns, with occasionally a big German shell dropping near enough to do considerable damage, kept them on the tiptoe of expectancy and ready for any emergency; but aside from the rather routine work that falls to men of an army temporarily at a standstill, and which they were allowed to do in relays, the men got a longer and more beneficial rest than they had had since the drive was inaugurated on September 12th.

On the following morning, however, came orders which cast doubt upon the entire success of the project of bottling the Germans up in a pocket of the salient. Had that been accomplished, the artillery would have smashed away until the ambushed enemy either had surrendered or been annihilated. Instead, came orders to forge ahead with all speed, and gain contact at the earliest possible moment.

“We’re going to chase them clear to the Rhine this time,” Tom heard one officer say to another, and indeed the preparations that had been made, and the manner in which the orders to move were carried into effect, made that seem possible, even if not the actual intention of the present assault.

Indeed, the Americans pressing in from the west, and the French bearing down from the north, with other Americans bringing an even stronger upward pressure from the south, had so thoroughly routed the Hun armies that they were fleeing precipitately, abandoning guns and munitions as they went, but making every effort to so destroy these, as well as all roads, bridges, etc., that the Allies might not make use of any of them.

And with the enemy thus in costly and undignified flight, with never a chance to stop even for a few hours to reorganize, and with all the boasted discipline and morale of the German forces destroyed beyond all hope or possibility of re-establishment, the Allied commanders were well content for the time being to conserve their own men and supplies by vigorously prodding the Huns in their flight whenever and wherever they seemed to lag.

The orders to go forward came at about 8 o’clock on the second morning. They went in heavy marching order and with full rounds of rations. It looked, indeed, as if they were bound upon a long journey this time, and as it turned out they were.

As they swung off in a cloud of dust—for the ground had dried out pretty well during the preceding day—they were preceded overhead by flocks of scouting aeroplanes. With them along the roads and through the fields went trucks loaded with munitions and food, while behind these came the light artillery, and, far, far back, the heavies.

Two hours march brought them to a point where the entire army came to a halt while the scouts and pioneer infantry went ahead to reconnoitre and destroy the first of the wire entanglements thrown behind them by the fleeing Germans.

The quick pop of guns and the rattle of rapid fire as these men approached a thick wood which lay just ahead was ample proof that the artillery had not dislodged all of the Huns, and that snipers and machine gunners were hidden there as a rear guard to delay the American advance long enough to permit the main German army to get away.

The American fire from the north had died down to little more than an occasional bombardment, and necessarily directed at a long angle to prevent shelling the other troops which were now making the advance.

Company C was one of the five units deployed to attack and take the wood. As the men started forward the officers in command of the various companies again gave a warning which the men had heard repeatedly before going into an attack.

“Do not touch a dead German for any purpose whatever.”

It was not that the situation was any different here from what it had been in other battles in other places, but the order was issued as a matter of course and to keep it fresh in the minds of the advancing men.

At no time during the war were the Allied armies even accused of looting the dead; but where great masses of men are drawn together in thousands there are bound to be exceptions to any rule—men so selfish and unprincipled that they would place the gratification of personal desire above the sacred repute of their army and their country if they thought they could do so and escape detection.

And the Germans, knowing this, and probably expecting far more of it from the extent to which it was done without hindrance or scruple by their own officers as well as men, with that cupidity born of vicious minds had time after time used this very weakness of men as a means to their sure and sudden destruction.

In the dead of night they would send back electricians over the field on which a battle had raged, and, picking out German corpses, these workers would put cheap but costly-looking rings and other jewelry upon the dead men, and then attach these to wires, through which ran deadly electric currents as soon as the work was completed and the trap set.

Any man of the opposing army advancing on the following day who so far succumbed to the temptation thus deliberately set, as to attempt to take off any of this seemingly valuable jewelry, instantly got a death-dealing shock which invariably threw him into the air with sparks shooting from his body, after which he fell to the ground a seared and scorched and eternally disgraced corpse himself.

“They haven’t had time to doctor up any of those bodies along this route,” Ollie Ogden heard a man just ahead of him mutter, and looking up he recognized “Snooper” Jones, so nicknamed because he was constantly meddling in somebody else’s business and never attending to his own. He was the most despised man in the whole regiment for his lack of pride and patriotism, and knowing the feeling and lack of respect and esteem in which he was held, he did not seem in the least to care.

Nobody knew just where “Snooper” Jones’ home was, if he had any, but it was known that he had been a draft dodger and that he had been picked up by Government agents along with half a dozen others of that cowardly and disreputable character in a raid conducted one cold night upon the loungers in a railroad station in one of the large eastern cities.

In other words, “Snooper” Jones, to use a common expression, had been a bum. He was a drone bee in the industrial hive of organized society. He was a waster of his own time and energy and a burden upon others. He consumed without producing. He took, and gave nothing back.

“I’d like to know,” an exhausted and exasperated lieutenant once had flung at “Snooper” Jones, “what your aim is in life.”

And “Snooper,” consciously or unconsciously more truthful than he ever had been known to be before, answered, “I haven’t any.”

The army, that great purifier and energizer of most men of “Snooper” Jones’ character, had failed to make any visible change in him.

“Like the lily,” his top sergeant had said of him, “he toils not, neither does he spin. But unlike the lily, he is not good to look upon.”

All of this was passing through Ollie Ogden’s mind as they tramped along and from time to time he could hear “Snooper” Jones grumbling to the men on either side of him, neither of whom paid the slightest attention to him, except occasionally to cast upon him a withering glance of scorn which was at the same time a storm warning which kept him silent for a time.

Ollie’s contemplations were abruptly cut short as they seemed suddenly to jump right into the very maelstrom of battle.

In quick succession, as though by a time clock process, the Germans from their rearmost heavy guns had planted half a dozen highly destructive shells right into the ranks of the advancing Americans, and simultaneously, as they skirted what they thought an uninhabited wood, machine gun nests had opened up a devastating fire upon them.

It was not until later that they realized that their quick advance had brought them directly upon the rear guard of the German army which, encumbered as it was by the huge paraphernalia which it carried with it in its flight, could not move nearly so rapidly as did the pursuers.

The fighting was as bitter as any during the war, and over ground that already was littered with the bodies of dead Huns—victims of terrific shrapnel fire poured into their lines as they fled.

Every inch of ground was bitterly contested up to the point where the licked Germans saw it was useless to hold out further. To silence this fire it was necessary for the Americans to pick off the snipers and stalk and capture or demolish the machine gun nests. Bullets fell about them like hail.

Into the very thick of this Tom Walton and George Harper saw a man rush forth, rapidly set up a tripod on top of which was a black box affair, and start turning a crank.

He was a moving picture operator, officially designated with the American Expeditionary Forces and especially assigned with that brigade—one of scores of intrepid, courageous fellows who under circumstances of the greatest stress seemed to show the greatest calm. These were the men who were preserving to future generations the living, moving history of America’s participation in the World War, and a dozen times a day when the panorama of battle was swiftly moving they fearlessly and without the slightest evidence of outward concern, risked their lives in the performance of their duty.

Buck Granger once had remarked that this particular operator must bear a charmed life. Truly it had seemed so, for time and again the lads had seen him stand forth, motionless except for the regular rhythm of his right hand which turned the crank of the camera—a challenge and a target for every German sniper and machine gunner within range. And yet he had escaped, up to the present, without a scratch.

But here, for the time, the fire was more concentrated than either Tom Walton or George Harper ever had seen it before. An officer shouted to the movie operator to drop out of sight. But even if the latter heard, the warning came too late. A shower of bullets shattered and knocked over the camera, and in the same instant the operator himself pitched forward on his face. From where Tom lay he could see that the man did not move a muscle, after the first convulsion which followed his fall. He had been killed instantly.

Officers and men of the ranks were being picked off mercilessly as they crept forward to get within reach of the hidden machine guns. It was at this juncture that another branch of the service took a hand. It all showed, too, that the commanding officers were every instant in close touch with every changing development of the attack.

The order came for the Americans to fall back several hundred yards. To the mystified Germans it was a maneuvre not then to be explained. It was inconceivable that the Americans should be retreating, and yet that seemed to be exactly what was taking place. But the Germans in the wood had their visions obscured from their own approaching doom.

Up from out of the west, and straight for a point directly over the natural fort of the enemy, swooped a dozen heavy bombing planes. It is doubtful if any German in that wood ever knew what happened to him. Simultaneously every plane let go its full cargo of destruction, and these highly explosive bombs, descending straight as arrows, struck the ground at almost the same time, and with such a detonation as to shake the surrounding country as though by an earthquake. The entire wood was demolished. Trees were lifted from the ground and split to splinters. Nothing lived there after that work of death had been carried out. Devastating ruin had been wrought suddenly and completely. The ground was torn to great depths and a shower of wood and rock and other debris was shot fifty or more feet into the air.

It was after they had passed through this monumental wreckage, and were crawling forward upon the opposite side, that Ollie Ogden, intent upon getting around a clump of bushes so that he could get a view of a sniper he knew to be hidden there, found himself but a few yards away from “Snooper” Jones.

The latter was edging forward in a declivity of ground, and for an instant Ollie marveled at the courage and persistence of the man—but only for an instant. For looking slightly ahead, he saw that “Snooper,” thinking himself hidden from human sight, was crawling toward the body of a German, his intention obvious in his every movement.

Ollie could not shout a warning without attracting a concentration of bullets upon his own position. Unseen by “Snooper” Jones, all he could do was lie silent and watch. “Snooper” was now within a couple of feet of the body which lay with right hand outstretched, a ring upon the third finger.

With ghoulish greed Jones covered the short intervening distance and with a quick snatch reached out for the ring.

Even the German sniper hidden in the bushes gave a startled utterance of astonishment at the suddenness of what happened.

The body of “Snooper” Jones, shooting forth sharp streaks of bluish flame, was lifted two feet into the air, and then dropped back a scorched and withered and motionless mass.

“Snooper” Jones had paid the death penalty!