World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
Promptly the boys made ready, slipping off packs, many even their
blouses. It was to be a bayonet rush up that hill, and the idea was to
feel as cold and shoulder free as possible. The pain of mustard gas is
not so intense if one's body is cool and dry. Officers as well as men
were lightly clothed; their only weapons, automatics. I substituted a
sweater for my blouse. All felt the tense strain, and throats grew dry
and temples throbbed.
At that moment was given a final General Absolution and Blessing.
Sharply, along the crouching line like a flash of fire, boomed the
command to advance--"Guns and bayonets now, boys, and give them hell!"
Instantly leaping forward, the men hurled themselves up the hill.
Helmeted, masked, their bayonets flashing, like the crested foam of some
giant wave they swept forward.
We had not advanced fifty feet when over the hillside there burst a hail
storm of lead. The enemy hurled into our faces every manner of
destruction; bullets and steel fragments screamed through the air,
"thudding" into every foot of ground!
The first boy to fall was Riorden of New Jersey, who pitched forward,
terribly torn, shortly to my right. Onward and upward swept the line. As
I paused a moment beside Riorden to absolve him, Walsh of Syracuse, New
York, running some thirty feet in advance, waved his arm for me to
hurry. "Holy Joe" was the name given the Chaplain. I never knew its
origin, but it was the title most generally used and always with the
utmost respect.
Even then could be heard the horrible crash of steel on steel, hand to
hand bayonet contact, screams of terror and pain, when the blade
dripping blood was withdrawn from its human scabbard. The advance soon
reached the hilltop and the gray-clad Germans resisted desperately. The
most terrible, horrible, and indescribable of all sights and sounds were
now before me. Wild-eyed, panting, fiercely visaged boys in American
khaki and German gray, feinting, parrying, and madly lunging with
glittering bayonets--the crash and shrill metallic stroke of steel on
steel, and Oh! the grunt and scream of agony when the blade sank to its
hilt in a blood-spurting human breast! Each boy, in that moment of
deadly shock, was fighting for his own life--it was destroy first or be
destroyed, and the first to get in a fatal blow survived. No alien
soldier lives however, who can withstand that most terrible and supreme
of all fighters--the American Doughboy! Hands were being raised and
cries of "Kamerad" heard from every side. The grim heights of
Rembercourt were ours; but, my God! see the price we have paid for that
eight minutes of struggle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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