Trench Knives and Mustard Gas: With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France

Chapter 15 Preparation

156 TRENCH KNIVES AND MUSTARD GAS CHAP TE R FI F TE E N Preparation M yriad hobnails pounded on toward the St. Mihiel salient through alternate stretches of murky darkness and pouring rain. The new men were holding their own, with the aid of veteran comrades , now loaded down with extra rifles and packs. My anxiety over the job ahead had grown steadily ever since the distracted soldier and his self-mutilated foot had been left behind. Visions of Tim and Owen, thoughts of home, spasms of hope that some miracle might change our course slumbered during endless periods of groggy sleepwalking and came to life with each telescoping halt. Now it was wagons mired on a hill that held us up. Now it was somebody’s doubt about the obscure road. Men griped at the end of palsied rests, “What th’ hell, we ain’t been here two minutes yet.” The solace of tobacco and all other lights were forbidden at night after we had left the misty fields of Battigney. An unexpected shower of priceless mail came to us at Crezilles, amid its surrounding furrows of mud. My share of long-waited-for news from home consisted of 171 pieces, by the count. Examined hurriedly under the supply wagon tarpaulin, shared with Wally, Wheeler, and two K.P.’s, the packets seemed to have traveled all over France. Jensen, Stradikopulos, Collard, and a group of new men scrambled from nearby pup tents to exclaim over my stupendous haul. Aged papers, filled with war news of a summer now P R E P A R A T I O N 157 gone, soon littered L company’s gypsy-like patch of Meurtheet -Moselle. My fingers trembled over letters whose chronology was twisted and contents garbled by the passage of months that could never be recalled. Last things came first, first things came last, things inbetween made little sense. But loving hands had written these very same messages, which I devoured at random and fondled with affectionate care—the hands of June and Dad, of relatives and other friends of Tom, of Ben, whose sole letter revealed that my younger brother had been “somewhere in France” for many weeks. How near, how hopelessly inaccessible Ben seemed. What wouldn’t I give just to see him once again? I had hardly made a dent in the pile of mail before it was time to hit the road for another stretch. Unopened packets went into my mildewed bedroll for consumption when and if ever fate would permit. The battalion was off in the late afternoon. Pangs of indefinable regret, spasms of foreboding, sprang to life with the sultry , enveloping night. I wrestled with a disturbing bit of news confided by John just before we left. Derringer had received no mail and was terribly downcast as a result. The new officer in K was talking much about death. Distant flashes of artillery and dull thunder added to the all-pervading gloom as my feet dragged along our invisible course. What aeons had passed since I had first seen belching guns at night. What ghastly, lurid memories the ominous spectacle revived. An endless void of sleepwalking lulled the visions into a jumbled dream. A reeling turn, a buckling halt, brought me to my senses again. Sleepy comment passed up and down the shadowy column. We were lost, it seemed. Rain came down in sheets. Shadowy neighbors griped, “For Christ’s sake, why don’t they get somebody up ‘ere that knows th’ road?” The column could hardly walk four abreast on the narrow bypath into which we had been led. We floundered along a winding slope. Rain pattered on my tin hat and ran down my neck. The head of the column seemed to be turning back on its mistaken course. Wagons, animals, and doughboys passed each other in 158 TRENCH KNIVES AND MUSTARD GAS a mystic maze, following wherever the unseen guides were determined to lead. We panted to the top of a slippery hill and wheeled on our path. I company’s kitchen, missing a bridge and plunging into a brook, caused an interminable halt. We groped on again through a dark congestion of snorting mules and swearing men. Shouting voices through the rain said that we were stuck for the night. I floundered off the road with the others and sought the shelter of...