To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [364]
The faces around Temple were mostly familiar, mainly veterans. The company had been reorganized again, the men assembled into new platoons, new squads, with new sergeants, and a new lieutenant, a man fresh from officer training. To Temple’s enormous relief, Lieutenant Lucas had indeed survived Blanc Mont Ridge, had been discovered among the rocks by the medics of the Thirty-sixth. But he was in the hospital now, a message coming to the platoon that he had lost the leg, would be on his way home before Christmas. The new man was named Yancey, a small splinter of a man who spoke in a high reedy voice; despite the best hopes and prayers of the men, Yancey was, by all accounts, a Ninety-Day Wonder. But the grousing was minor. By now, the veterans knew what they would find on the battlefield, and if Yancey could not lead them, they would find a way to lead themselves.
The Second Division was back home with the First Army, and it was surprising to no one that Pershing had chosen them to lead the new attack. In all, twenty-two American divisions were prepared to renew their drive northward, to push the Germans out of their last strongholds west of the Meuse River. In the predawn hours of November 1, the artillery would begin again, another three hours of continuous bombardment on the already battered German positions. At five-thirty, the infantry would surge forward in a front over ten miles wide. In the center of the line, the Second Division was placed beside the Eighty-ninth, the same men they had fought beside at St. Mihiel. The two divisions now comprised the Fifth Corps, commanded by one of Pershing’s most trusted subordinates, Major General Charles Summerall. As the army resumed its massed assault on the German lines, the Second Division was in the center of the entire line, the point of the spear.
As the Marines advanced, there was nothing new, nothing they had not already experienced in every major fight. No matter the artillery barrage that preceded them, the troops advanced into the withering fire of the Maxim guns, manned by the die-hard men who somehow always survived the shelling, the machine-gunners who hunkered down in their hidden nests.
The Maxim gunners were a different kind of soldier, who manned their posts with a dedication that rivaled anything the Marines brought to the field. They were chosen not by chance, and not just because they could handle a machine gun. The duty called for more than obedience and training, more than pride. The gunners had been selected by their officers because they had shown a grim dedication to the job they had to do, that no matter the opposition, they would hold their ground to the last. There were fewer of them now, but not so few that the Americans wouldn’t feel the effect of their guns. The machine-gunners were as veteran as any Marine, had survived tank assaults and artillery barrages, had survived four years of assaults by the French. They knew nothing of the political turmoil behind their own lines, knew nothing of the despair and diplomatic outrage that rolled through Berlin. Despite the collapse of so many of the German units that had once made the Hindenburg Line the impenetrable fortress, here, in the rolling hills west of the Meuse River, the men at the Maxim guns knew only that across the way, there would be another attack, another great wave of men sent out to confront them. Every man carried the tradition: before any man surrendered, or abandoned his machine gun, he was supposed to die.
NEAR FOSSE—NOVEMBER 1, 1918
The fight had been as so many fights before, men pressing ahead through the mist and fog, across grassy fields and sloping hillsides. The enemy lay in every thicket, every line of brush, old trenches that had become a part of the landscape.
Temple crested yet another low rise, the sounds of the fight echoing around him from all directions. The battalion