To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [365]
The men around him worked methodically, some of them survivors of Blanc Mont Ridge, men who knew how to use the land, how to find the cover, how to work their way close enough to throw the grenades. For most of the day, the fog and rain had sheltered them in the wide fields, but by midafternoon, the wet air began to clear, and so the rifles became the most effective weapon. Temple had made good use of the Springfield, the others in the squad already knowing that this farm boy was a crack marksman. As they climbed each ridge, they would move carefully, making sure there was no ambush beyond, no cluster of the enemy waiting to spring a deadly trap. The Maxim guns were there, as they were always there, and the best response the company had were the marksmen like Roscoe Temple. From field to valley, the conditions of the ground and the positions of the machine guns had driven the Marines to a routine in their assault. From each low place, they would crawl slowly to the crests of the next rise, would scan the distant cover, drawing fire any way they could, forcing the Maxims to reveal themselves. The other men in Temple’s squad would spot for him, picking out the flickers of fire, while he settled himself into a comfortable place, resting the rifle on a firm bed, the careful aim, the precise shot. Each man contributed cartridges, and after Temple had emptied the rifle three or four times, the task had been accomplished. Usually the Marines would see the enemy falling back, the German foot soldiers escaping from the terrifying accuracy of the enemy they couldn’t see, the Maxim guns falling silent as their crews were struck down one by one. With the ground in front of them clear, the squad would move forward again.
They were close to the main German trench line now, a long ridge that was pockmarked by concrete bunkers, behind acres of barbed wire. The division had moved forward piecemeal, each battalion pressing the attack along its own front, backed up by another battalion a quarter mile to its rear. Each platoon was ordered to maintain some contact with the units on both flanks, but the uneven ground kept the men in small pockets, out of sight of each other, hidden whenever possible from the enemy in front of them. What they couldn’t see, they could hear, bursts of fire from machine-gun nests, from the concrete bunkers, small field cannon blasting glimpses of targets.
Temple hadn’t seen the new lieutenant for over an hour, the platoon scattered, a sudden firefight breaking out to the right, men scrambling from that way, bringing word to Osborne of a close fight with a perfectly concealed machine-gun nest. The men who escaped were following Osborne now, the only sergeant left among them.
As they approached the barbed wire, they could see the ridgeline clearly, and the enemy in their concrete bunkers obliged them with withering machine-gun fire. Osborne divided the men, left a dozen rifles back in the field, who had dug themselves into some kind of protection. Those men would make some attempt at covering fire, while Osborne led the rest of the men in a frantic dash through the barbed wire. The artillery gunners far behind them had given the Marines an extraordinary gift, a gap in the wire blown open by the perfect strike of an artillery shell. Beyond the wire, the grounds dropped off into a ravine, another blessing, a stretch of ground below the field of fire of the enemy gunners in their concrete shelters.
They jumped and darted from shell hole to shell hole, freshly churned dirt from the work of the artillery hours before. The wire was only yards in front of them, the blessed gap looming wide. Temple crouched low, ran his hand over the ammo belt, a silent count, twenty . . . thirty. Enough for now. He touched the grenades on his chest, something the men were