Gus was with the American Expeditionary Force at the Chateauvillain training area south of Paris on May 30 when the Third Division was ordered to help with the defense of the river Marne. Most of the division began to entrain, even though the battered French railway system might take several days to move them. However, Gus and Chuck and the machine guns set off by road immediately.
Gus was excited and fearful. This was not like boxing, where there was a referee to enforce the rules and stop the fight if it got dangerous. How would he act when someone actually fired a weapon at him? Would he turn and run away? What would prevent him? He generally did the logical thing.
Cars were as unreliable as trains, and numerous vehicles broke down or ran out of gas. In addition they were delayed by civilians traveling in the opposite direction, fleeing the battle, some driving herds of cows, others with their possessions in handcarts and wheelbarrows.
Seventeen machine guns arrived at the leafy small town of Chateau-Thierry, fifty miles east of Paris, at six P.M. on Friday. It was a pretty little place in the evening sunshine. It straddled the Marne, with two bridges linking the southern suburb with the northern town center. The French held both banks, but the leading edge of the German advance had reached the northern city limits.
Gus’s battalion was ordered to set up its armament along the south bank, commanding the bridges. Their crews were equipped with M1914 Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, each mounted on a sturdy tripod, fed by articulated metal cartridge belts holding 250 rounds. They also had rifle grenades, fired at a forty-five-degree angle from a bipod, and a few trench mortars of the British “Stokes” pattern.
As the sun set, Gus and Chuck were supervising the emplacement of their platoons between the two bridges. No training had prepared them to make these decisions: they just had to use their common sense. Gus picked a three-story building with a shuttered cafe on the ground floor. He broke in through the back door and climbed the stairs. There was a clear view from an attic window across the river and along a northward-leading street on the far side. He ordered a heavy machine-gun squad to set up there. He waited for the sergeant to tell him that was a stupid idea, but the man nodded approval and set about the task.
Gus placed three more machine guns in similar locations.
Looking for suitable cover for mortars, he found a brick boathouse on the riverbank, but was not sure whether it was in his sector or Chuck’s, so he went looking for his friend to check. He spotted Chuck a hundred yards along the bank, near the east bridge, peering across the water through field glasses. He took two steps that way, then there was a terrific bang.
He turned in the direction of the noise, and in the next second there were several more deafening crashes. He realized the German artillery had opened up when a shell burst in the river, sending up a plume of water.
He looked again to where Chuck stood, just in time to see his friend disappear in an explosion of earth.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, and he ran toward the spot.
Shells and mortars burst all along the south bank. The men threw themselves flat. Gus reached the place where he had last seen Chuck and looked around in bewilderment. He saw nothing but piles of earth and stone. Then he spotted an arm poking out from the rubble. He moved a stone aside and found, to his horror, that the arm was not attached to a body.
Was it Chuck’s arm? There had to be a way to tell, but Gus was too shocked to think how. He used the toe of his boot to push some loose earth aside ineffectually. Then he went down on his knees and began to dig with his hands. He saw a tan collar with a metal disc marked “US” and he groaned: “Oh, God.” He quickly uncovered Chuck’s face. There was no movement, no breath, no heartbeat.
He tried to remember what he was supposed to do next. Whom should he contact about a death? Something had to be done with the body, but what? Normally you would summon an undertaker.
He looked up to see a sergeant and two corporals staring at him. A mortar exploded on the street behind them, and they all ducked their heads reflexively, then looked at him again. They were waiting for his orders.
He stood up abruptly, and some of the training came back. It was not his job to deal with dead comrades, or even wounded ones. He was alive and well, and his duty was to fight. He felt a surge of irrational anger against the Germans who had killed Chuck. Hell, he thought, I’m going to fight back. He remembered what he had been doing: deploying the guns. He should get on with that. He would now have to take charge of Chuck’s platoon as well.
He pointed at the sergeant in charge of the mortars. “Forget the boathouse, it’s too exposed,” he said. He pointed across the street to a narrow alleyway between a winery and livery stables. “Set up three mortars in that alley.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant hurried off.
Gus looked along the street. “See that flat roof, corporal? Put a machine gun there.”
“Sir, pardon me, that’s an automobile repair shop, there may be a fuel tank below.”
“Damn, you’re right. Well spotted, Corporal. The tower of that church, then. Nothing but hymnbooks under that.”
“Yes, sir, much better, thank you, sir.”
“The rest of you, follow me. We’ll take cover while I figure out where to put everything else.”
He led them across the road and down a side street. A narrow pathway or lane ran along the backs of the buildings. A shell landed in the yard of an establishment selling farm supplies, showering Gus with clouds of powdered fertilizer, as if to remind him that he was not out of range.
He hurried along the lane, trying when he could to shelter from the barrage behind walls, barking orders at his NCOs, deploying his machine guns in the tallest and most solid-looking structures and his mortars in the gardens between houses. Occasionally his subordinates made suggestions or disagreed with him. He listened, then made quick decisions.
In no time it was dark, making the job harder. The Germans sent a storm of ordnance across the town, much of it accurately aimed at the American position on the south bank. Several buildings were destroyed, making the waterfront street look like a mouthful of bad teeth. Gus lost three machine guns to shelling in the first few hours.
It was midnight before he was able to return to battalion headquarters, in a sewing-machine factory a few streets south. Colonel Wagner was with his French opposite number, poring over a large-scale map of the town. Gus reported that all his guns and Chuck’s were in position. “Good work, Dewar,” the colonel said. “Are you all right?”
“Of course, sir,” Gus said, puzzled and a bit offended, thinking the colonel might believe he did not have the nerve for this work.
“It’s just that there’s blood all over you.”
“Is there?” Gus looked down and saw that there was indeed a good deal of congealed blood on the front of his uniform. “I wonder where that came from.”
“From your face, by the look of it. You’ve got a nasty cut.”
Gus felt his cheek, and winced as his fingers touched raw flesh. “I don’t know when that happened,” he said.
“Go along to the dressing station and get it cleaned up.”
“It’s nothing much, sir. I’d rather-”
“Do as you’re told, Lieutenant. It will be serious if it gets infected.” The colonel gave a thin smile. “I don’t want to lose you. You seem to have the makings of a useful officer.”
At four o’clock the next morning the Germans launched a gas barrage. Walter and his storm troopers approached the northern edge of the town at sunrise, expecting the resistance from the French forces to be as weak as it had been for the past two months.
They would have preferred to bypass Chateau-Thierry, but it was not possible. The railway line to Paris went through the town, and there were two key bridges. It had to be taken.
Farmhouses and fields gave way to cottages and smallholdings, then to paved streets and gardens. As Walter came close to the first of the two-story houses, a burst of machine-gun fire came from an upper window, dotting the road at his feet like raindrops on a pond. He threw himself over a low fence into a vegetable patch and rolled until he found cover behind an apple tree. His men scattered likewise, all but two who fell in the road. One lay still, the other moaned in pain.
