Private Godwin's Daily Letter (7)

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Cherubusco, Saturday the 30th, evening.
In a farmhouse kitchen, where some of my things are
drying, and where I, sitting in a CHAIR, am writing
at a TABLE!

Dear Mother:—

Yesterday I said to Knudsen, while David listened, “The trouble with our platoon is that we don’t particularly care for our sergeants, and have got into the way of knocking them. I’ve done more or less of it myself. Now it may be no more than they deserve, but it’s bad for our discipline and our work. Don’t you suppose we could turn about and help the sergeants more? If you should lead in it, it would make a difference in the whole platoon, for I notice that everyone wants to know your opinion.” David’s face showed that he approved, so Knudsen agreed, and we three talking to our squad and Squad Nine, have started a little Good Government Association. I think today it did good.

Last night was a long one for me. I am still unable to get myself a woollen cap, and though I used the felt hat for both the cold and the rain, it rolled away at every excuse. To keep out the rain, I had laid my poncho on the windward side of the tent, buttoning it along the ridgepole; but it slapped a good deal of the time. The entrance-flaps, which some of the fellows always button, I had open for the air, and they thrashed all night. Beside me Bann slept like a child; but I was pretty damp when I went to bed, the rain and the wind came through, and every little thing waked me. Twice a peg pulled out, but the tent stood, and I was able to put it in again. So the night was long. Yet I got some sleep, and we were surely better off than our opposite neighbors, whose tent blew down soon after midnight, so that they had to crawl out and set it up in the dark and the driving rain.

There are camp tales of all kinds of hardships. Some stayed round the fires all night to keep warm; some, their tents collapsing, took refuge on a nearby piazza; some talk of washing their faces this morning in hoar frost. But I saw none of this.

The yowlings which usually greet the bugler on any unwelcome occasion were absent this morning, for most of us were ready to rise, or already risen. There was at first only a drizzle, in which I ate breakfast; it surely was better than last night, with the steady rain running from my hat into my stew as I bent over it, and cooling as well as diluting it, besides searching out vulnerable parts of my person, which a poncho does not truly protect. Yesterday I set my things down on a wet board; today I stood at the high running-board of an auto-truck, a very desirable position. Yet I thought my hands have seldom been colder than when I stood in line this morning, unable to give them the protection of gloves or pockets.

In the same drizzle we broke camp, packed our squad-bags and blanket-rolls, and made our packs. It rained as we started, and the whole outlook was bad—for to march ten miles in the wet, and then to make camp under these same conditions, was soldiering indeed.

Yet ten minutes after we had left camp, the advance guard of the battalion, we were staring at each other in new dismay. For pop-pop! Our point had found the enemy. Now for comfort a skirmish ought to be fought near the new camping ground: anticipation keeps us going till the fight begins, and then at the end, weary, we have but a short way to march. This was the deuce! In a moment we were turned aside into a field, and saw the white hat-bands beyond a fence in front. First deployment, then “Down, men!” and flat I threw myself into a six inch bed of clover, as wet as a sponge. From this couch I fired for a while, was ordered up, hurried with the squad forward to a new line, flopped again, fired, and then dashed once more.

For two hours, mother, this sort of thing continued. In a long line our company spread over the fields, now one part advancing, then the rest. Sometimes we were flat, sometimes we might squat on cold stones behind a wall, sometimes we were climbing walls and running forward. Discovering that it was wetter below me than above, I hung my poncho at my hip, and when we flopped, fell on it. We struck soft ground and formed in squad columns, then came to a place where the enemy was visible in a sugar-bush, across a ravine. Down into the gully I plunged among the rest, and in a confusion of men each seeking in a hurry the best way across, got through two wire fences, forced my way among a growth of alders, and splashed through a brook, luckily no deeper than my ankles. Then up the steep slope, and as soon as the platoon was gathered at the top Jones cried “Follow me,”—and those whose wind was poor began to lag. The enemy was driven from this position, then as we followed him he fired at us again from behind a stone wall, for there were plenty here, with others of all kinds. We drove him again, our laggards helping where they could, coming up to us as we paused to fire and falling down to pant. Poor Corder! Part of the charges he was in, part he had to plod after, out of breath. A minute’s rest would freshen him, and then he would keep up for a while. But the pace was hot, until suddenly the enemy vanished. In pursuit, we crossed a wide space with broad flat weatherworn ledges, then came upon soft ground, and were bogged.

The part that confronted our squad was a hog-wallow below a pig pen and nicely full of water from the rain. Light-footed David slipped across, but I, being heavier, plunged in up to my shin. Then came a barbed wire fence, with the wires so taut that they would not separate to let us through, nor sag to let us easily over. We were helping each other, as is the rule, and the sergeant was hurrying us, as was his duty, when he was answered back by a corporal—not of our platoon, but one who with his squad had become annexed in the confusion. A little back-talk with an audience of silent men; our fellows remembered the new agreement. Then on we went again, stormed another position, and at last, every cartridge spent (my head was ringing with the firing, and rings yet!) we were assembled in the muddy road.

A little interview, then while we rested, between the sergeant, the corporal, and the captain, who demanded the reason for our platoon’s delay. The corporal was explanatory; the captain had to silence him. Then the captain praised the company. (He also sent a message to us at Retreat, where the lieutenant commanded—we had done well; he would try to keep us out of brooks hereafter. I like these laconic statements; they mean much.) Then I company, with full cartridge belts, took up the advance-guard work along the road, and we saw them rummage out of a barn some cavalrymen who had hidden there. But soon, the day’s manoeuvre over, we began the hike to camp. I wish you could have seen it.

The rain was over, though it was still cloudy and the cold wind was strong. The road was a mass of mud; there was no walking in it. We made two long lines, one on each side of it, and took up our brisk walk. Mile after mile in every footing, through desolate country where the scrub was low, the land slightly rolling, bleak, uninhabited. The road ran mostly straight; as it dipped you could see ahead the two lines of men swiftly plodding on and on.

There was talk at first, and some jokes. “That road looks worse than this,” said one. “I wonder they didn’t take us down it.” The bushes looked very wet. “How about squad columns through that brush?” suggested one. “Try the prone position from the middle of the road,” retorted another, as we passed a great puddle. A later puddle, chocolate brown, roused another man’s regrets. “I’d like to stop and wash my breakfast kit. I used the water they provided at camp, but this looks better to me.” But gradually all talk died away, and we just drove on and on. There were questions, of occasional teams that we passed, as to the distance to Cherubusco. “Three miles,” and again after an hour “Three miles!” Well, it was a long hike, nearly two hours, and I am glad to say without halt, for in that wind we should have frozen. But we began to dry off. At last the sight of the trucks and the cook-tents cheered us, and we marched onto the ground where four companies were already finishing their dinner. We had driven off their enemy, and they had marched straight through.

The ground here holds the tent-pins well; the tent is secure. But I stood in line for half an hour in the wind, cold and ever colder in my poncho, while they let us in driblets into a barn and doled us out hay at high prices. I felt very cross against the good woman at whose table I now write, for not devising a quicker system—though she suffered from it too, for her teeth were chattering as she passed me through. But everything goes by; even while I shivered the wind dried my clothes; and I had cold feet for only a couple of hours, by which time I had dried out a pair of fresh stockings, and put them on with my dry boots. Since then I have been comfortably warm. We had fires, about which we sat; the sun at last came out (you should have heard the shout at the first thin rays!) and we have had a wonderful clear orange sunset, with spruces silhouetted against it, and the early setting of the young moon. Now it is clear and cold and quiet outside, with the northern lights flashing and glowing, violet and white, in cloud-like masses or shifting spires.

Well, such was the day, a hard one in many ways. Says a sergeant sitting by the stove, “I can describe it in two words, Damn nasty.” But I am no more than ordinarily tired, and am dry. The hardships of such a day are not to be compared with those of the poor devils in the trenches across the water.

I must close this letter and leave it at the Y.M.C.A., for the call to quarters has just sounded. In fact it is welcome, for I am very sleepy. I am leaving my wet shoes here to dry. We have just learned, to our sorrow, that we work tomorrow—Sunday! But there is one good piece of news—our overcoats are coming! Much love from

Dick.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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