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Page 33
Yet he knew afterward that the sound of the battle did increase in
volume as he flew over the short distance to the regiment. Both east and
west were shaking with the tremendous concussion. One crash he heard
distinctly above the others and he believed it was that of a forty-two
centimeter.
He reached the field, his cycle spun between the eager soldiers, and as
he leaped off in the presence of the colonel he fairly thrust the note
into his hand, exclaiming at the same time in his zeal, "It's an order
to advance! The whole Army of the Center is about to attack."
He called it the Army of the Center at a guess, but names did not matter
now. The colonel glanced at the note, waved his sword above his head and
cried in a loud voice:
"My lads, up and forward!"
The regiment arose with a roar of cheering and began to advance across
the fields. John caught a glimpse of a petty officer, short and small,
but as compact and fierce as a panther, driving on men who needed no
driving. "Geronimo is going to make good," he said to himself. "He'll do
or die today."
As he raced back for new orders, if need be, he knew now that fact not
fancy told him the battle was growing. The earth shook not only on right
and left but in front also. A hasty look through the glasses showed
little tongues of fire licking up on the horizon before them and he knew
that they came from the monster cannon of the Germans who were surely
advancing, while the French were advancing also to meet them.
General Vaugirard sprang into his automobile, taking only two of his
senior officers with him, while the rest followed on their motor cycles.
As far as John could see on either side the vast rows of French swept
across hills and fields. There was little shouting now and no sound of
bands, but presently a shout arose behind them: "Way for the artillery!"
Then he heard cries, the rumble of wheels and the rapid beat of hoofs.
With an instinctive shudder, lest he be ground to pieces, he pulled from
the road, and saw the motor of General Vaugirard turn out also. Then the
great French batteries thundered past to seek positions soon in the
fields behind low hills. He saw them a little later unlimbering and
making ready.
The French advance changed from a walk to a trot. John saw the Parisian
regiment, not far away, but at the very front and he knew that among all
those ardent souls there was none more ardent than that of the little
Apache, Bougainville. Meanwhile, Vaugirard in his motor kept to the
road and the staff on their motor cycles followed closely.
On both flanks the thunder of massed cannon was deepening, and now John,
who used his glasses occasionally, was able to see wisps and tendrils of
smoke on the eastern and northern horizons. The tremor in the air was
strong and continuous. It played incessantly upon the drums of his ears,
and he found that he could not hear the words of the other aides so well
as before. But there was no succession of crashes. The sound was more
like the roaring of a distant storm.
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.
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