TEN THOUSAND SHALL FALL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 971, 14 May 1930, Page 5

TEN THOUSAND SHALL FALL

By

DAVID W. KING

(Copyright 1020, by Dufficld and Co. Distributed by the King Features Syndicate Inc.)

SYNOPSIS In IDI4, Davkl Ivinsr leaves Harvard to join the French Foreign Legion. In tl'% heterogeneous battalion of Russians, Germans, Arabs and Poles, King has two buddies, “Phil.” an ex-elephant hunter, ;<n<l Alan Seeger, the American poet. In their first lighting they wear scarlet trousers. “Phil” dies after a brawl between the Americans and some foreign hegionaires. King’s battalion under "Jo Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy,” is now in the thick of the lighting in the battle of Champagne. It is like a scene from the underworld: ghostly columns picking their way through shell-torn trees in the smoke and fog of high explosives. In the next attack, King, wriggling through mud and other corpses, under heavy shell-tire, loses the; sight of his right eye. lie transfers his rifle to his left shoulder. King's battalion is transferred to Verdun. In the heavy fighting at Fort Vaux, the vvotanded are carried out in briskets—mere trunks, both arms and legs shot off, some of them blind. Following a fierce bombardment. King s battalion files out of the fort to reinforce the first line against the oncoming, green-clad wave of German infantry. Suffering from hunger and thirst, the defenders of Verdun scodped up snow” *nd ate it adding dysentery to thirst. CHAPTER XVIII. The long blue column trudged In silence through the town; shoulders hunched, jaws thrust forward—dogged resignation. On the outskirts of the Faubourg Pave a mechanical piano in a ruined cafe came suddenly to life under the ministrations of some Zouaves, and jangled out “Mariette.” Magic! Squad after squad took up the refrain and with roars of laughter waltzed tip the road. A hundred yards further on the music died away, aud gloom settled down once more. Past Souville, down through Fleury (now nothing but a hole in the ground), swinging to the right of Douaumont we finally halted on the other side of the valley of the Bois de Chapitres. Then came the weary business ot a relief. Then steps forward. Stop Ten minutes wait punctuated by rak-

ing shell fire groans of the wounded and curses from the rest of us. Finally however, by shuffling and pushing, it was over. Ole and I found ourselves in a shallow dugout along the Decauville ledge. He had forgotten a lot of his trench warfare cunning, and his rage was comical on discovering that someone in the other regiment had exchanged a filthy, mudcrusted rifle lor his own nice clean one which he had left outside the dugout. All morning shells howled over the crest of the hill back of us and burst in the valley below. Ole was an optimist. By yiminy Dave, I tink we're in a dead angle. Dey can’t reach 113 here!” My gloomy reply, “There ain't no such animal in this damn war,” was drowned by a formidable explosion ten yards off. Three seconds later there was a dull thud just outside and going out to investigate we discovered a 210 shell, which fortunately had not exploded A slow smile crept over Ole's face and he burst out laughing. “By yiminy you bane right. Dere ain’t no such animal!” For two days preparations were made for a counter attack. All the work was done under heavy bombardment and losses were according. An old quarry was turned into an ammunition dump and filled with small arms, 37 hand grenades and trench mortar bombs, as reserve ammunition for the attack. Next day a shell lit bang in the middle of it and the ammunition went skyward in one glorious explosion, taking twenty men with it. We seemed to be dogged by bad luck. As we stood to, ready to go over, the company on our right was practically annihilated by four 153 shells from French batteries —shorts. Result —when we went over, our right flank was dangling in the air. We gained our objective and dug in, but were exposed to galling enfilading fire and were outflanked by a counter attack of grenadiers of the Prussian guard. They came forward running zig-zag, hurling potato-masher grenades. It was a wonderful occasion for sport from the point of view of shooting—either you got the man before he threw the grenade, or the grenade got you. The support troops came up on tne right flank and the serious business of consolidating the position began. Ole was now in his stride. During a food fatigue once, the detail ran into a barrage. Six men were killed and one wounded. The others waited

in shell holes, hoping for it to lift. Not so Ole. Carefully depositing his soup kettles in a shell hole, he picked up the wounded man and carried him to Fort Souville. The detail was still waiting when he got back. Announcing that the men in line were hungry, he picked his buckets up again, and walked straight on through the barrage. In three days he wen three citations. Meanwhile my backbone got in the way of a bit of shrapnel and I was ordered down with the next convoy of wounded, for treatment and rest. At nightfall we started. Somebody strapped my pack on' my shoulders for me, and I followed the walking cases. Down across the valley, stumbling into shell holes and tripping over the corpses that littered the narrow path, now in inky darkness, now in the blinding light of a rocket, we shoved along in fearful haste. The ground was swept, from time to time, by salvos of high explosive shells. Sometimes they took their toll, and the surgeons’ work was reduced. The Fort of Souville rose in front of us and in we all crowded. We found ourselves In a jumble of troops, horses and w agons, and stretcher bearers, waiting for the storm of shells to abate before continuing on their divers missions. I left the Fort and wandered back to the “Maison Blanche,” a clearing station, hoping for a ride on the running board of an ambulance to Faubourg Pave. The house was dark, but from somewhere in the back came low moans. Groping my way along, I opened a door and stepped into a medieval torture chamber. On tile floor writhed a huge black Moroccan, held down by four inflrmiers. The sweat of agony was on him. His eyes rolled white—he groaned through uis clenched teeth —bright red blood gushed over Uis black skin from a jagged wound in the groin. Two. white-coated surgeons worked with fiendish intensity. And flickering candies threw' grotesque, reaching shadows ou the ceiling . . . The post had evidently run out of morphia. Thirty yards down the road I saw the. | house go up in splinters as a salvo of heavy shells struck home. All that : pain and trouble for nothing! CHAPTER XIX. At the Faubourg Pave the search for quarters was a nightmare. The place was Infested with Algerian troops, none too friendly to a lone French soldier at and by now my arms were hanging limp and paralysed. I couldn’t light a candle; the only way to find a safe place for the night was to try the doors with my should- i ers, and if they opened, to listen for ; breathing. At last I found an empty j room, and went to sleep with my feet | planted against the door, and my sack still strapped to my back. Next day i I found the wagon train and a doctor, who patched me up in reccfrd time . . . ! In my absence Ole had been dis- j tinguishing himself further. During i a German counter attack, he recov- j ered one of our machine guns, turned i it on them, and when the ammunition {

was exhausted, retired carrying it with him. I was still on the sick list, but had volunteered to take a message to our major, in line. At Souville I was told the regiment was being relieved, but that the major was still in the trenches, go off again, with two Red Cross men as guides. We had barely started when all Hell broke loose. The stretcher bearers, pointing to the left, shouted some garbled directions and disappeared into the night. For a moment I was completely lost, but the flash of the next salvo showed me the path lined with dead, I was guided across the valley by the flash of shells and I knew, each time I stumbled over a corpse, that I was on the right road. Suddenly a rocket disclosed a

little procession twenty yards to my right. Four stretcher bearers with their usual load, followed by a lanky figure I would have known anywhere. “Ole!” “Py yiminy! Is that j-ou Dave? Dey tell me you're dead. See you later.” | Then, as an afterthought: “Py God, ; I'm glad you're not!” I We passed, on our lawful occasions. I heard the story later. During the : relief, the remains of the third sec- ! tion had been practically wiped out j by a barrage. Six men had been ; killed outright, the sergeant and anj other, wounded. The other man ran ■ for the dressing station, but Georges j was badly hit —eye, both wrists, and side. j At this point Ole stepped in. Sitting

calmly beside him, he cut the sergeant's equipment to pieces, made tourniquets of the straps, and stopped the bleeding of one wound after another. Then he waited. Presently four stretcher bearers hurried along and he hailed them. Georges was too weak from loss of blood, to walk, but on hearing he was not wounded in the legs, the stretcher bearers refused to carry him. Ole admitted having lost his temper. Georges told me afterward, he was afraid Neilsou was going to clean them up. Anyway, cocking his rifle, he convinced them it was healthier to carry the sergeant in-—they were (Joing so when I passed them. Spring—and six whole weeks in front line trenches in a quiet sector.

I Wild flowers grew along the edge of the trenches, and some little brown birds were nesting in the eave of our dugout. Between bombardments, came the calls of thrushes and blackbirds and finches—once I heard a lark. There were drawbacks of course, other than rats and shells. The Germans had three mines under our lines; we could hear their sappers working at others, and wondered, vaguely, when ; they would be touched off. The ; muffled subterranean tapping day and j night, might have got on our nerves, j but bow could we worry with the sun shining! Days of quiet reading, i bathing in the canal, endless games of “Manille,” and symphonies on cigar ; box fiddles. Besides, the battle of the Somme was raging, and we were wond-

ering when our turn would come. Before the end of July we pulled out of line and moved up to the Somme sector. All around us was activity and hustle; parks of Artillery waiting to go up into line, shell dumps, barbed wire duck boards and all sorts of stores, ammunition, and equipment. Narrow gauge railways spread out in all directions, and every ten minutes a toy train loaded with enormous shells puffed busily on its way to the forward ammunition dumps. The roar of guns was continuous night and day; and from dusk till dawn a flickering, red glare lit the horizon. July 25th, 1916. “Dear Gerald: . . . We are moving up again shortly. At present we are in wooden huts about seventeen miles from the front. The band is giving a concert, and over the music you can hear a continual booming—the most devilish bombardment I ever heard. It makes you feel as if you were at a comic opera, with a storm gathering, while the villagers stroll about the plaza. It would be funny if we had not been there before and did not know what all the cannonading meant. I hope I get plugged this time for better or worse. I’m tired of being the lone, last survivor of gory battlefields, the only human, civilised eye witness, so to speak. God! how those guns are roaring! 1 have never heard anything like it before. Wish we would hurry up and get into it. Funny—l’ll be nervous as a maj-mosette now till I get right into the first line, and they start bursting over us. Always the same—almost trembling till the riot starts, and then feeling like a kid going home for Christmas vacation . . July 28th. . . . The flag was decorated this morning, so we should be on our way ere long! I’m pleasantly confident that I’m going to be wounded this time— My God, it’s about time—two years without a rest is enough for any man July 30th. . . . Here we are, eight miles nearer. We can smell the powder and corpses. One regiment of our Division attacked last night. The 174th attacks tonight, and we will probably attack tomorrow August 2nd. . . . Hell of a big explosion just now. Whole sky red. Shells popping like a curtain flre c . . . It’s all hell to pay somewhere and no pennies hot ... August 3rd. . . . Know all about it. One of our shell and hand grenade depots went up in a blaze of glory, and killed about twenty men. Lucky it wasn't the 15-inch shell depot. The second Zouaves of our division have been relieved. Came down cut to pieces, one battalion cut up and captured: the other two with about 150 men apiece left . . August sth. i Seems we are to have the honour of ! attacking Clery. Whether we take it or not remains to be seen. It is the worse sector on the French front in these parts. This seems to be the devil’s own fight, but it can’t be one hell of a lot worse than Verdun . On August eleventh the regiment moved up. As night fell we trudged along the road, a high hill on one side

and a river and marshes on the other. Almost immediately we came under fire of the German long-range guns. Some of the shells plopped harmlessly into the river; others burst on the cliff above us, and some took their toll. Then we came out on the level, passing through the ruins of Veaux (Somme) —the ghastly skeleton of what had once been a village. Marching along its main street, we clambered out of one big shell hole full of ! water into another, finally reaching J the third line and effected the relief, : then out on a work party. CHAPTER XX. August 13th. . . Just got back from working between the first and second lines in plain day. Of course, we were shelled out by high explosives. Damn that fool Captain of ours . . . At present we are in reserve for two divisions. If anything goes wrong, we stop the gap. Hell of a job, for we will have to come up under heavy fire after the attack has started. There was a little fog this morning, so their fire on our trenches was poor, but now it is a beautiful day, and they are dropping them all around and into us. 11 a.m. August 13 (?) By golly, they wanted to send us out again. But the lieutenant sent us back. My Eord. those guns are busy. They are begins ning to strafe our part of the line now. They move up and down the line, concentrating, and giving each a bit of ■ music for a while, and then move on. This war gets worse and more terrible every day, Gerald. I don’t see how flesh and blood stands it. It makes me sick when some bloated profiteer sits in his armchair in Paris and talks about going on to the limit. If those people had to go through 16 hours shelling, and didn’t die of heart failure, we would have peace tomorrow. And don’t you believe all those hardy poilu yarns. They are spun by men in the reserve who spend all their time in quiet parts of the line, where they have shelters 40 feet deep and get about ten field gun shells a day. I think this war must be getting on my nerves, for every day I get more and more fretful, and I used to like these affairs . . . . . . The attack has started. The minute they saw our men on the parapet, a lot of Germans came running over, hands up, and cursing the Kaiser. They were knocking hell out of our trenches. August 14, 12.30 p.m. At five prompt, last evening, we started off. We had communication trenches for about 200 yards, and then they thinned out into mere ditches. Imagine lines of men, Indian file, rushing down the ditches, crouching in the deeper places to catch their breath, then rushing over the shallow ones, mouths coated with dust and powder fumes, and hearts as big as toy balloons from the running and excitement. Big shells dropping on each side of the trenches We climbed out to cross a road and had a glance at what was going on. The first and second waves were 500 yards j ahead, deployed in open order, an*l ; going like hell. But there was I machine gun tickling our flank, s<» we • rushed across the road to take advan- | tage of the bank on the other side. ! Then open country again, and catching ! it from everything. | The German machine gun nest on i the left began to cripple the attack.

This meant the regiments on our loft and right would go forward, flanks an the air.

Our major sized it up at a glance, and decided to sacrifice his battalion. “Face to the left! Open order! Grenadiers forward! Go and get ’em!” It cost six hundred men, but the battalion coming on behind us went through clear. Finally we got into position. The 2nd and 3rd battalions had tak» n the trenches, and we were four hundred yards back of ’em in an open fie ld as reserve. We were told to dig oui - selves in as best we could. I went bat to some Boche rifle pits to get some bv tools. You should have seen the work of our 73’s. Every damn pit was full of dead bodies. Disgusting sight—still pink and white instead of the yellow and black they will be —flies all over them. I found my tools and started digging with Xeilson, my fighting mate. Just as we got started he was called away to go on a water detail. At sundown, 8 o’clock, the Boch* « started a counter attack, and started bombarding the landscape. Their big high explosives were bursting two or three yards from my hole, but I so tired I went to sleep in spite of them. At midnight, someone land'd all fours on my chest, and lay down beside me. I thought it was Xeilson. but it was someone else. He lay there for a while, but they landed a couple of big ones near us, and he cleared out. ’ I was just getting to sleep when someone else crawled in. He stayed a while, till they began to get unpleasantly close, and then persuaded me to make a break for some rifle pits to the left. When we got there, h«* disappeared, and I spent a miserable quarter of an hour trying to find a place. Just then they began shelling the pits, and men dropped so fast that I decided to go home. There I found a friend who, while I was visiting, had had a shell drop on him, fortunately a dud. We dug out the pit and went to sleep. About 4 a.ni. another Boche attack broke loose. Next night Xeilson came back. He couldn’t get back the night before on account of continual | curtain firing. He had hardly arrived i before I was called up for a food df- ! tail. Two miles there and back. It s | bad enough scurrying over bad place*. I corpses, and marmite holes, with a rifle and equipment, but when you have : a couple of soup kettles, as well, it's | pure hell . . - 6.30 p.m. There is something up on | our* left. The 75’s are rolling like drums, and the Boches are bombardj ing to keep them quiet ar.d under : cover. I think we were to attack, but | the boches may have beat us to it. Their curtain fire is getting nearer a: d ! nearer our dugout. God help us no v. August 13th, 7.45 p.m. Well, they seem to have let up for a bit. They may begin again any : minute, and it only takes one shell to do the trick, but it's different from seeing those big shells creep nearer and nearer, exploding in perfect time. Hell, they are at it again. The worst of it ! is they don’t let up at sundown—on ! the contrary; and shell fire is twh~ as terrifying at night. At least to me . . . 31 ore later,' perhaps. Ding.” (To I s Continued Tomorrow.) Competition is the life of trade, a- I NO RUBBING LAUNDRY HELP the life cf the grocery trade. L.ar r _• i packet* Is eacli. All store*. —6.