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Page 34
He was riding by the side of de Rougemont, and he stopped singing long
enough to shout, at the top of his voice:
"No enemy in sight yet?"
"No," de Rougemont shouted back, "but he doesn't need to be. The German
guns have our range."
From a line on the distant horizon, from positions behind hills, the
German shells were falling fast, cutting down men by hundreds, tearing
great holes in the earth, and filling the air with an awful shrieking
and hissing. It was all the more terrible because the deadly missiles
seemed to come from nowhere. It was like a mortal hail rained out of
heaven. John had not yet seen a German, nothing but those tongues of
fire licking up on the horizon, and some little whitish clouds of smoke,
lifting themselves slowly above the trees, yet the thunder was no longer
a rumble. It had a deep and angry note, whose burden was death.
They must maintain their steady march directly toward the mouths of
those guns. John comprehended in those awful moments that the task of
the French was terrible, almost superhuman. If their nation was to live
they must hurl back a victorious foe, practically numberless, armed and
equipped with everything that a great race in a half-century of supreme
thought and effort could prepare for war. It was spirit and patriotism
against the monstrous machine of fire and steel, and he trembled lest
the machine could overcome anything in the world.
He was about to shout again to de Rougemont, but his words were lost in
the rending crash of the French artillery. Their batteries were posted
on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range. All along the
front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions
that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened
forever.
The sight, at first magnificent, now became appalling. The shells came
in showers and the French ranks were torn and mangled. Companies existed
and then they were not. The explosions were like the crash of
thunderbolts, but through it all the French continued to advance. Those
whose knees grew weak beneath them were upborne and carried forward by
the press of their comrades. The French gunners, too, were making
prodigious efforts but with cannon of such long range neither side could
see what its batteries were accomplishing. John was sure, though, that
the great French artillery must be giving as good as it received.
He was conscious that General Vaugirard was still going forward along
the long white road, sweeping his glasses from left to right and from
right to left in a continuous semi-circle, apparently undisturbed,
apparently now without human emotion. He was no figure of romance, but
he was a man, cool and powerful, ready to die with all his men, if death
for them was needed.
Still the invisible hand swept them on, the hand that a million men in
action could not see, but which every one of the million, in his own
way, felt. The crash of the guns on both sides had become fused together
into one roar, so steady and continued so long that the sound seemed
almost normal. Voices could now be heard under it and John spoke to de
Rougemont.
"Can you make anything of it?" he asked. "Do we win or do we lose?"
"It's too early yet to tell anything. The cannon only are speaking, but
you'll note that our army is advancing."
"Yes, I see it. Before I've only beheld it in retreat before
overwhelming numbers. This is different."
General Vaugirard beckoned to his aides, and again sent them out with
messages. John's note was to the commander of a battery of field guns
telling him to move further forward. He started at once through the
fields on his motor cycle, but he could not go fast now. The ground had
been cut deep by artillery and cavalry and torn by shells and he had to
pick his way, while the shower of steel, sent by men who were firing by
mathematics, swept over and about him.
Shivers seized him more than once, as shrapnel and pieces of shell flew
by. Now and then he covered his eyes with one hand to shut out the
horror of dead and torn men lying on either side of his path, but in
spite of the shells, in spite of the deadly nausea that assailed him at
times, he went on. The rush of air from a shell threw him once from his
motor cycle, but as he fell on soft clodded earth he was not hurt, and,
springing quickly back on his wheel, he reached the battery.
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