CHAPTER VIII Much to Do and Many to Do It

“SAY, who is that fellow?” Don asked quickly.

“Don’t know; something funny about him. Don, I’m tickled to see you, old top! Where’d you come from?”

“Headquarters. With the information force now, posing as messenger, liaison, anything else but——. Detective work, you know. I’m glad to see you, Herb. How’s the fight going?”

“Right ahead; all the time ahead!” declared Lieutenant Whitcomb. “The Heinies are putting up a good scrap, though. This is only the first round. Say, I wish we could chin awhile, but——”

“I know. And now you——?”

“Going to find some stretcher bearers to get a man of mine out.”

“I’ll do it; where’s the man. But first I must tell you to keep an eye open for that liaison sergeant; I believe he’s bad medicine. He may have been laying for you.”

“I know he was lying to me; said there were orders to withdraw. I ought to have held him. Come with me now; then I must get back to my men.”

Herbert quickly led Don to where Merritt lay; then clasping Don’s hand and saying that they’d meet again, shortly perhaps, went on a run in the direction of the fighting.

Don knelt and at once saw that the youthful soldier’s wound had soon proved fatal and so, folding the poor fellow’s arms and placing his handkerchief over his face, the boy arose to again make his way through the woods.

Suddenly he came to where a number of officers advanced together and the boy asked for Captain Lowden. The company commander acknowledged his own identity and receiving the note from Colonel Walton seemed eager to talk to Don, explaining that the fight was going very well, that it was a matter of breaking up machine-gun nests and capturing or routing the enemy who manned them; the officers could have little part in this, except to keep their men together and busy.

“We are ordered to proceed only due north and to maintain our alignment,” he said, “but I’m afraid some units will meet and get mixed. However, they’re bringing in the bacon.”

“I think you mean the wieniewursts, don’t you, Captain?” suggested Don.

The officer laughed. “Yes, but I wish we had some of the genuine article,” he said. “Good eats get to us a little too slowly sometimes. Well, the colonel gives you a fine send-off in this; you must be the real thing. Now, as to this spy: my men have reported him several times and I think he was seen around here this morning. But it is hard to identify him fully and we don’t want to make a mistake; that is the reason he hasn’t been arrested. We haven’t a very clear description of him, either, and don’t know what rank he assumes. I rather think it is several. But we do know that acting as a messenger he has carried some false orders and he may be still at that.”

“Not ten minutes ago and to Lieutenant Whitcomb, for one; orders to quit; retire. I think I know him; liaison officer, thick-set, dark-skinned, cast in his eye. If anyone by that description runs into you again hold him, please, by all means!”

“We shall, you may wager! I hope you get him. Hello! that sounds like an extra heavy scrap over to the right. I guess that’s within our zone of advance, gentlemen.” The captain addressed a first lieutenant and a color sergeant: “Let’s hurry on and back the boys up!”

Merrily the bushwhacking fight in the Argonne Forest went on; that is, it might be characterized as merry from the standpoint of the results obtained by the determined Americans. The Germans had reason to regard it quite otherwise. And so had both sides when they took into account the resulting toll in lives and those maimed for life. Before nightfall of that first day the Germans were routed or captured all along the edge of the forest and upon the southeastern slopes of the Aire Valley, the Yanks flanking these latter positions to the left and descending upon them, instead of charging up the hills from the stream, a movement that the Hun had never expected.

Then night came down and the attacking Yanks, eager to continue their work on the day following, literally slept on their guns and in numerous cases found need for so doing.

Don Richards had now one very special task to perform, though his duty lay in apprehending anyone that might aid the enemy in any way, particularly in gaining information. But the boy did not seem able to land on concrete evidence of any kind, nor to meet up with those he might suspect. Conscious that the task was a difficult one and also that his superiors knew it so to be, he went about it with a calmness and assurance that would have done credit to a veteran. No grand stand plays for him; simply unqualified results were what he meant to obtain and to this end he kept his mind alert as he had never done before. Wherever he went and with whomever he talked, his pass gaining for him complete access to all units and what information he desired, he was generally received with courtesy and much consideration from commanders of all ranks, for there is nothing so appealing to the universal sense of justice as anti-spy work.

To the boy also there was large satisfaction connected with his efforts; he gloried in the fact that at least he was endeavoring to do something worth while for his country and the cause of justice and right. Whether he succeeded or not, he was one among those who were keeping their eyes open for a sly and watchful enemy’s attempts to discover the Americans’ purpose in detail and thereupon deliver telling counter-strokes.

All of that first day of the Argonne fight, Don had footed over many miles just behind the fighting front, seeking to again encounter the short, dark man uniformed as a liaison sergeant. The boy had passed from one field of operations to another; he had gained many a conference with officers, from non-coms to colonels; he had made them all aware of the spy’s evident character and his disguise, so that if he again tried to deliver false messages he would be forestalled and arrested. At night Don returned to the position behind Captain Lowden’s company and bunked with one of the Red Cross men in an injured ambulance, the driver having known the boy on the Marne.

All that night the American-French artillery, both near and miles away, was barking sometimes fitfully and now and then German heavy shells would come over and burst too near for real comfort. Occasionally also there were night raids, or German counter-attacks along and beyond the Aire, but these never reached the proportions that the daylight permitted.

Then, with the first coming of daylight, the opposing forces were at it again, the Americans, as before, tearing the Hun defenses within the forest to pieces and driving off their determined counter-attacks, now being made in force and with selected shock troops.

Don gathered information from various sections of the forest, over the area from the Aire westward to the end of the American left wing, that sector covered by the First Army Corps. Reports came to the boy mostly from persons not directly engaged in the fighting.

Lieutenant Whitcomb? Oh, he was strictly on the job. The lad, as once before, seemed to bear a charmed life; he had not been so much as scratched when last seen and he had been in the forefront of the fighting almost continually, with pistol in hand, the weapon often emptied and hot, leading, always leading his platoon, now a mere handful of men. Captain Lowden? On the job also, though slightly hurt. Two reports had come that he had been killed. Lieutenant Pondexter was dead, killed in the early morning of this second day, and so were the other officers of Lowden’s company. Thus Whitcomb and two sergeants were the only ones left to assist their superior in directing the company’s efforts and in keeping it in line with its supports.

How far had the Americans advanced from the edge of the woods? At least a mile; in some places where the line bent forward it was much more than that and they were still going; by night again it would be another mile or more.

This opinion proved to be correct. The first part of the Argonne attack, on the 26th, 27th and 28th of September, on a front of nearly thirty miles, had succeeded in driving the Huns out of half the Argonne Forest and from many small towns and villages along the Aire Valley and between it and the Meuse River. Then, except when forcing minor attacks on separate defenses and by an advance of the artillery making good the ground gained, the Yanks prepared for a still stronger offensive beginning on October 4th.

During this period of lesser offensive engagements there was evident a sort of unrest on the part of under officers and men; the sweet taste of victory had further nourished the spirit of daring. The desire was to continue demonstrating that the supposedly invincible and highly-trained Germans could be thoroughly beaten. Prove this the Yanks did many times, when the numbers were even, or the odds slightly in favor of the Huns; it remained for the Americans to show also in some isolated cases that they were the masters of the enemy when he was twice their strength. Again, with exceeding bravery and grit they defied the foe when it outnumbered them many times.

It was this zeal for scrapping and the adventurous tendency that led minor expeditions against German positions to exceed their orders or to penetrate too far without support into the domain still held by the enemy. Thus it occurred that a machine-gun squad went over a hill, routed the Huns from an old stone ruins and then, after being unmercifully pounded with shrapnel for an hour, were attacked by ten times their number of infantry. How those Brownings, with their record of six hundred shots per minute, did talk back and how nearly every man in the bunch learned perforce to become a crack shot with his Springfield-Enfield, is a record that the survivors who tried unsuccessfully to compel the squad to surrender could well bear witness to. And when the Huns were finally beaten off and dared not to make another attempt to rout those few Yanks because of reinforcements, just half of that little group of gritty dare-devils came out of the old building alive and most of them were wounded. But they could still pull triggers or turn a gun crank.

Who has not heard of the lost battalion, missing when the reports were turned in on October 3d, a contingent of the Seventy-seventh Division? It had been sent to rout out some gun nests that were proving troublesome in the Argonne Forest. When this task was done they just kept going and knew not when to stop until night shut down upon them. Then they sent runners back to ask for instructions and these fellows could not get through because of a flank movement of the Germans in some force between the battalion and the main division. So Major Whittlesey and his seven hundred men were trapped and for five days those brave boys, having lost almost half their number in killed and wounded, without food for three days and daring to get water only at night and that from a dirty swamp, stood off the repeated assaults of thousands of Huns upon the rocky hillside in the clefts and fissures of which the Americans found some shelter. They were fired upon from the hills on each side; enemy trench mortars smashed most of their machine guns and their ammunition ran out. Many of their number were captured also and one was induced to bring back a typewritten message demanding surrender, but to this Major Whittlesey returned a very decided refusal. Finally rescue came to the lost battalion; men in the forefront of the second drive reached them and chased out the Huns. Whereupon the dead that had been laid aside waiting burial that could not have taken place because of the danger, were now peacefully interred.