Chapter XIII A Night Attack
Two or three of us had a sort of camp beside the ditch far up along the alamos. Our car, with its food supply, clothes and blankets, was still twenty miles back. Most of the time we went without meals. When we could manage to beg a few cans of sardines or some flour from the commissary train we were lucky. Wednesday one of the crowd had managed to get hold of tinned salmon, coffee, crackers and a big package of cigarettes; and as we cooked dinner Mexican after Mexican, passing on his way to the front, dismounted and joined us. After the most elaborate exchange of courtesies, in which we had to persuade our guest to eat hugely of the dinner we had painfully foraged for ourselves, and he had to comply out of politeness, he would mount and ride away without gratitude, though full of friendliness.
We stretched out on the bank in the golden twilight, smoking. The first train, headed by a flat-car upon which was mounted the cannon “El Niño,” had now reached a point opposite the end of the second line of trees—scarcely a mile from town. As far as you could see ahead of her, the repair gang toiled on the track. All at once there came a terrific boom, and a little puff of smoke lifted from the front of the train. Far cheering scattered among the trees and fields. “El Niño,” the darling of the army, had got within range at last. Now the Federals would sit up and take notice. She was a three-inch gun—the largest we had.... Later we found out that an exploratory engine had sallied forth from the Gomez roundhouse, and that a shot from “El Niño” had hit her square in the middle of the boiler and blown her up....
We were to attack that night, they said, and long after dark I got on my horse, Bucephalus, and rode down front. The sign was “Herrera” and the countersign “Chihuahua number four.” So as to be sure of recognition as one of “ours,” the command was to pin your hat up behind. Everywhere the strictest orders had been sent out that no fires should be lit in the “zone of fire,” and that anyone striking a match until the battle began should be shot by the sentries.
Bucephalus and I jogged slowly along in the moonless and absolutely silent night. Nowhere was there a light or a stir all over the vast plain before Gomez, except the far hammering of the tireless repair gang working on the track. In the town itself the electric lights shone brightly, and even a street car bound for Lerdo lost itself behind the Cerro de la Fila.
Then I heard a tiny murmuring of human voices in the darkness near the ditch ahead—evidently an outpost.
“Quien vive?” came a shout. And before I had a chance to answer, BANG! He fired. The bullet went past my head. Biou!
“No, no, you fool,” drawled an exasperated voice. “Don’t shoot as soon as you challenge! Wait until he gives the wrong answer! Listen to me, now.” This time the formality was satisfactory to both sides and the officer said, “Pase Usted!” But I could hear the original sentry growling, “Well, I don’t see what difference it makes. I never hit anybody when I shoot....”
Feeling my way carefully through the darkness, I stumbled into the rancho of San Ramon. I knew that the pacificos had all fled, so it surprised me to see light shining around the chinks of a door. I was thirsty and didn’t care to trust the ditch. I called. A woman appeared, with a little brood of four babies clinging to her skirts. She brought water, and all of a sudden burst out with, “O señor, do you know where the guns of the Brigada Zaragosa are? My man is there, and I haven’t seen him for seven days.”
“Then you are not a pacifico?”
“Truly I am not,” she returned indignantly, pointing to her children. “We belong to the artillery.”
Down front the army lay stretched along the ditch at the foot of the first line of trees. In absolute darkness they whispered to each other, waiting until the word of Villa to the advance guard a quarter of a mile ahead should precipitate the first rifle shots.
“Where are your rifles?” I asked.
“This brigade is to use no rifles to-night,” answered a voice. “Over on the left, where they are to attack the intrenchments, there are rifles. But we must capture the Brittingham Corral to-night, and rifles are no good. We are Contreras’ men, the Brigada Juarez. See, we have orders to walk up to the walls and throw these bombs inside!” He held out the bomb. It was made of a short stick of dynamite sewed in a strip of cowhide, with a fuse stuck in one end. He went on: “General Robles’ gente are over there on the right. They, too, have granados, but rifles also. They are going to assault the Cerro de la Pila....”
And now down the warm, still night came suddenly the sound of heavy firing from the direction of Lerdo, where Maclovio Herrera was going in with his brigade. Almost simultaneously from dead ahead rifle fire awoke sputtering. A man came down the line with a lighted cigar glowing like a firefly in the hollow of his hands.
“Light your cigarettes from this,” he said, “and don’t set fire to your fuses until you’re right up under the wall.”
“Captain, carramba! It’s going to be very, very duro! How shall we know the right time?”
Another voice, deep, rough, spoke up in the dark.
“I’ll tell you. Just come along with me.”
A whispered, smothered shout of “Viva Villa!” burst from them. On foot, holding a lighted cigar in one hand—for he never smoked—and a bomb in the other, the General climbed the bank of the ditch and plunged into the brush, the others pouring after him....
All along the line now the rifle fire roared, though down behind the trees I could see nothing of the attack. The artillery was silent, the troops being too close together in the dark to permit the use of shrapnel by either side. I rode back and over to the right, where I climbed my horse up the steep ditch bank. From there I could see the dancing tiny fires of the guns at Lerdo, and scattered spurts like a string of jewels all along our front. Over to the extreme left a new and deeper noise told where Benavides was making a demonstration against Torreon proper with quick-firing guns. I stood tensely awaiting the attack.
It came with the force of an explosion. In the direction of the Brittingham Corral, which I could not see, the syncopated rhythm of four machine guns and a continuous inhuman blast of volleying rifles made the previous noise seem like the deepest silence. A quick glare reddened the heaven above, and then the shocking detonations of dynamite. I could imagine the yelling savages sweeping up the street against that withering flame, wavering, pausing, struggling on again, with Villa just in front, talking to them back over his shoulder, as he always did. Now more furious firing over to the right indicated that the attack against the Cerro de la Pila had reached the foot of the hill. And all at once on the far end of the ridge toward Lerdo, there were flashes. Maclovio must have taken Lerdo! Lo! All at once appeared a magical sight. Up the steep slope of the Cerro, around three sides of it, slowly rose a ring of fierce light. It was the steady flame of rifle fire from the attackers. The summit, too, streamed fire, which intensified as the ring converged toward it, raggeder now. A bright glare burst from the top—then another. A second later arrived the dreadful reports of cannon. They were opening upon the little line of climbing men with artillery! But still they rose upon the black hill. The ring of flame was broken now in many places, but it never faltered. So until it seemed to merge with the venomous spitting blaze at the summit. Then all at once it seemed to wither completely, and little single fireflies kept dropping down the slope—all that were left. And when I thought that all was lost, and marveled at the useless heroism of these peons who walked up a hill in the face of artillery, behold! The ring of flame was creeping slowly upward again.... That night they attacked the Cerro seven times on foot, and at every attack seven-eighths of them were killed.... All this time the infernal roaring and the play of red light over the Corral did not stop. Occasionally there seemed to come a lull, but it recommenced only more terribly. They assaulted the Corral eight times.... The morning that I entered Gomez, although the Federals had been steadily burning bodies for three days, they were so thick in the wide space before the Brittingham Corral that I could hardly ride through on horseback, and around the Cerro were seven distinct ridges of rebel dead....
The wounded began creeping through the plain obscurely in the dense darkness. Their cries and groans could be distinctly heard, though the battle noise drowned every other sound—you could even hear the rustle of the bushes as they crept through, and their dragging feet on the sand. A horseman passed along the path below me, cursing furiously that he must leave the battle because his arm was broken, and weeping between curses. Then came a footman, who sat at the foot of my bank and nursed a hand, talking without cessation about all sorts of things to keep from a nervous breakdown.
“How brave we Mexicans are,” he said drolly. “Killing each other like this!...”
I soon went back to camp, sick with boredom. A battle is the most boring thing in the world if it lasts any length of time. It is all the same.... And in the morning I went to get the news at headquarters. We had captured Lerdo, but the Cerro, the Corral and the cuartel were still the enemy’s. All that slaughter for nothing!