The Right Qualities There
“Oh, it took courage and steady nerves to do that in the face of the enemy’s machine gun fire. Men fell there in the open, but the advance kept steadily on to the woods. It was then that discipline and training counted. Their minds were concentrated not on the enemy’s fire but on the thing they had to do and the necessity for doing it right. They were listening for orders and obeying them. In this frame of mind the soldier can perhaps walk with even more coolness and determination than he can run. In any case it was an admirable exhibition of military precision and it gladdened their Colonel’s heart.
“The Marines have a war cry that they can use to advantage when there is need of it. It is a blood-curdling yell calculated to carry terror to the heart of the waiting Hun. I am told that there were wild yells in the woods that night, when the Marines charged the machine gun nests, but there was no yelling when they went in. Some one has reported that they advanced on those woods crying, ‘Remember the Lusitania!’ If they did so, I failed to hear it. Somehow that doesn’t sound like the sort of things the Marine says under the conditions. So far as I could observe not a sound was uttered throughout the length of those four lines. The men were saving their breath for what was to follow.
“I am afraid I have given but a poor picture of that splendid advance. There was nothing dashing about it like a cavalry charge, but it was one of the finest things I have ever seen men do. They were men who had never before been called upon to attack a strongly held enemy position. Before them were the dense woods effectively sheltering armed and highly trained opponents of unknown strength. Within its depths the machine guns snarled and rattled and spat forth a leaden death. It was like some mythical monster belching smoke and fire from its lair. And straight against it marched the United States Marines, with heads up and the light of battle in their eyes.
“Well, they made it. They reached the woods without breaking. They had the advantage of slightly better cover than Berry’s men and the defensive positions at the lower end of the woods had not been so well organized by the Germans as those on the western side. The first wave reached the low growth at the edge of the woods and plunged in. Then the second wave followed, and the third and the fourth, and disappeared from view.”
About an hour later Catlin had the attention of a surgeon, but while he lay there gas shells began bursting nearby and they put the gas mask on him. “I never knew before how uncomfortable one of those things could be. It is hard enough for a man to breathe with a lung full of blood without having one of those smothering masks clapped over his face.” He was got to Lucy for treatment and then taken to Paris, where quarts of blood were drawn from his pleural cavity. The wonder is that he came through it at all.