To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [347]
Temple felt the pounding in his chest, so familiar, the cold chill from the wet air matched by the ice inside of him. He looked down the trench, the men in motion, the bayonets, was surprised to see Parker, the big man moving quickly toward him. Temple held up his hand, here, and Parker stopped, leaned against the quaking walls of the trench, breathing heavily. Temple could see, he did not have the chauchat gun, was carrying something different, odd, a short stub of a gun. Parker held it up toward him now, and Temple could see it was a shotgun. Parker slapped at his own chest, and Temple could see bandoliers, rows of fat shotgun shells. The questions rolled through him, but the barrage swept away any talk. Parker retrieved his bayonet from his belt, twisted it into place on the barrel of the strange gun, then looked at him, a brief smile, reached out a heavy hand, patted Temple on the side of the face.
Lucas was there again, Osborne beside him, and Temple could hear the words, the artillery barrage more distant now. Lucas said, “Only one way to go, Marines! Forward!”
Lucas moved away, and Osborne glanced at the men of his squad, and pointed up to the parapet.
HE BRACED HIMSELF FOR THE BURST OF FIRING FROM THE GERMAN trench, but the ground in front of them was silent, the wave of Marines pushing past a tumble of dirt and sandbags, broken timbers and rusted heaps of barbed wire. In front of the trench, the ground was dotted with the mangled bodies of men, black shapes, draped with the shreds of French and German uniforms. The signs of the weeklong fight lay everywhere, shell holes and caved-in trenches, men and their weapons scattered through pools of deep mud and chalky water. The Marines advanced at a walk, moved past the carnage, and Temple could see that more of the bodies were German now, fresh wounds, some men still moving, the stubborn or the unlucky, caught by the artillery barrage, or cut down by the first wave, the men of the Sixth. He continued to walk with the men around him, climbed up over the short choppy hills, dropped down into uneven brushy ground. The fight was out in front of them, and Temple saw more bodies now, men in khaki, the same men who had stood beside him in dark silence. The medics were there, men running with stretchers, already tending to the wounded. He tried to ignore the cries of the wounded, stepped past a German who was sitting upright, bareheaded, talking, a meaningless chatter of words, another man lying flat beside him, most of the man’s chest blown away. Temple stared ahead, heard the zip of rifle fire overhead, random, ricochets from the fight ahead.
They moved down through a line of low brush, more wounded, men from both sides, and he glanced to the side, saw Scarabelli, Parker out in front of him, holding the bizarre shotgun. They were climbing now, a low hill, the brush ending, the ground opening up into a wide clearing. He could hear machine-gun fire down to the right, where the infantry regiments were, the far right flank, and off to the left, the French, more strength pushing forward. The mist was blowing into his face now, the grass tall and wet, and as they walked out into the wide clear hillside, he could see glimpses of the horizon, the great ridge, the mass of ground that rose up, towering over them. The fight was still in front of them, and he could see movement, Germans, scrambling up through the gullies and thickets on the great hill itself.