To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [266]
Temple raised the brim of his helmet, propped himself up on his elbows. The man’s question was answered by soft grunts nearby, most coming from men Temple didn’t know were there. Hovey crawled up close to the mound of dirt by Temple’s trench, sat up, said, “Any officers?”
No one responded, and Hovey said, “How close is the enemy?”
One man emerged from a dark hole a few yards below Temple’s feet, slid forward, said, “Not more than a hundred yards, some probably less, if they’re moving around. Sound carries. They shoot at anything that makes a noise.”
Temple said, “One machine-gun nest, maybe seventy-five yards out that way.”
“You men have to hold this ground. Keep this position as secure as you can. Watch for infiltrators. The enemy might try to get closer before full daylight. The engineers are digging a good defensive line in those tall trees back there. If you need to fall back, it’s a strong position. I’m going back and gather as many men as I can find, send ’em up this way. Be ready. We can bet that the enemy will try to push us out of here.” He stopped, seemed to catch his breath, then slid back away from Temple’s trench, crawled away, the other men disappearing back into their own holes. Temple lay flat again, the helmet down over his eyes. The memories of the day before were clouds in his brain, the march across the wheat field, pushing the Germans out of the woods. Now, he thought, we’re just to . . . stay here. Hold this ground if we can. He felt angry now, thought of Dugan. He died so we could . . . hold this ground? Ballou’s words rolled through his mind, officers just keeping score. Is that what generals do? Is that what they’re doing now? Measuring how big a failure our attack was? He was furious now, sat up, surprising Ballou.
“What? See something?”
Temple felt himself breathing heavily, said, “We can’t just hold this ground. We still have a job to do.”
THE DAY PASSED WITH NO MAJOR FIGHT, BOTH SIDES PULLING themselves together, sorting through their strength, measuring their weakness. The Marines had probed and scouted as best as anyone could in the jumbled mess of the wood, and the commanders began now to understand that the Germans had entrenched themselves into three lines, each at slightly different angles. Out on the eastern side of Belleau Wood, other Marine battalions had captured the village of Bouresches, but with the wood itself still firmly in German control, Bouresches was difficult to defend, the Marines there absorbing a continuous bombardment from German artillery. The next day, June 8, the Marines in Belleau Wood began to press forward again. The Germans had added reinforcements to an already-strong position, fresh units moving southward into the wood from the main German lines to the north.
The fight was as it had been before, a chaotic nightmare, men fighting alone or in small groups, hand-to-hand confrontations, the enemy hidden in every crevice, machine guns nestled into every invisible hole. After two more days, the word was sent forward from headquarters. In the predawn darkness of June 11, the Marines were pulled back to the southern extreme of the wood, putting a safe distance between themselves and the German positions. Then, the massed strength of the French and American artillery began the crushing obliteration of the woods, the assault that the commanders had first dismissed. With the bombardment from dozens of cannon, the woods were changed completely, the barrage shattering the trees into a tangle of broken limbs, uprooted stumps tossed around blasted fragments of rock.
For the Marines, who endured the shelling from the relative safety of the trenches constructed by the engineers, there had been little time to reorganize the companies, and by now, many of the officers were gone, or if they survived, had lost contact with their commands. There was no time to sort through the devastating losses to companies and platoons, and once the artillery had done its job,