Huts in Hell

The cellar was cold, but he was no quitter! He was the only one in it, but company was not his chief concern! However, even a man of iron needs more than pajamas and bare feet to hold him steadfast through an unwarmed February night in a Paris abri. Before two hours had passed the cautious American was fully decided to risk all for warmth. He was a human iceberg when he crept up the quiet stairs and into his bed. The next morning he discovered that the signals he obeyed were the "All clear," that he had failed to hear the warning, and that he had slept through the raid.

But a few weeks later the German came clear in. Again I happened to be in the Gibraltar Hotel, in the hotel this time. I sat in the parlor with Dr. Robert Freeman of Pasadena, a master of the intricacies of Christian service in this war. The windows were iron-shuttered, and we listened in comparative safety. The guns of the defensive batteries roared about us, and above the sound of them crashed again and again the bombs of the city's despoilers. Explosions came quite near that night. A bloody night it was for women and babies.

Again I say it: there is and has been no excuse of even barbarous military science for the murder trips to London and Paris. In one abri that night, a shelter in a great station, nearly a hundred died.

Among those killed in a hospital was Miss Winona Martin of Long Island. She had been in France only a few days, having come across to serve as a Y. M. C. A. canteen worker. She was the first American Y. M. C. A. representative to die in action. "The devil loves a shining mark," but even frightfulness overshot its mark that night. Dr. Freeman conducted the funeral of the quiet woman who had travelled far to be a messenger of cheer and comfort. There was no sermon. On Miss Martin's record-card, in her own handwriting, are the words, "For the duration of the war and longer if necessary." Another has said:

"Her sacrifice spoke more eloquently than words. Longer than the duration of the war will linger the memory of the girl, the first American woman in Paris to lay down her life in this struggle against wrong, the first martyr among those wearers of the triangle who may be found living in every camp and trench of France."

Chapter IV
PERSHING

Persons about to be received by the great are invariably amusing; I know, for I have had the "funny feeling" of the man who waits without. A reception-room is a "first-aid station" in practical psychology. The nonchalance, perfectly transparent and that deceives no one, not even the man who feigns it; the effort to convince the other fellow of your own importance or the importance of your mission; the anxiety and nervousness that you hide behind venerable magazines—these are a few of the symptoms of the "about-to-be-ushered-into-the-presence-of."

I had stepped over to the general headquarters from the Y. M. C. A. hut, to ascertain when "The General" would see me, and had been surprised when Colonel Boyd, his secretary, said:

"Can you wait? He will meet you this afternoon."

And so in the plain but ample room separated from General Pershing's private office by a smaller room occupied by his secretary I entertained myself for two hours while the man upon whom the nation has placed so great a responsibility wrestled with his problems. And while I waited, I studied psychology. I began with a more or less complete analysis of my own mental state—but why discuss personal matters when there are other people to talk about?

I was particularly interested in a little group of Frenchmen. One of them was a general, I should judge, although uniforms and gold braid in France often mislead a civilian, and I had been saluting letter-carriers for a week before my attention was called to the mistake. He had with him two aids, one of whom was an interpreter. The French officers sat with their backs toward the entrance of the small room already referred to. Just within the entrance was a table on which were four hand-grenades, unloaded, but with their detonating-caps in place. However, the exact status of the grenades, which I have just revealed, was unknown to me until after it happened.

On one of the periodical excursions of my eyes about the bare walls of the room—a room overlooking a great barrack court, flanked on two sides and closed at one end by long, low gray stone buildings—they stopped with a shock at the grenades on the table. The table was directly in front of me and directly behind the French officers, who sat within ten feet of it. When my eyes were arrested in their aimless wandering, one of those hand-grenades was in the act of falling off that table. I knew nothing about the nature of grenades at the time, only that they were, potentially at least, small but effective engines of destruction. At any rate, there was nothing that I could do but brace myself against what might happen when that grenade met the floor.

What happened was this: the detonating-cap exploded. It was a relatively small noise as this war goes, but within the four walls of a quiet room it gave a pretty good account of itself. It was particularly disquieting to men without warning of it, men for several years accustomed to associate all such disturbances with the business of killing. The French general and his aids rose hurriedly and with ejaculations! Every man in the two rooms decreased the distance between himself and the ceiling. Only General Pershing remained unperturbed; at least, no sound came from within and his door was not opened.

After the field had been cleared and the composure of the innocent bystanders restored, I took up again my task of waiting. Colonel Boyd was courteous and interesting; indeed, the American officer overseas as I saw him was two things—busy, very busy, and always courteous. He has no time to waste, but he is efficient without being a "gump." His efficiency is branded with his Americanism; water-mains, railroads, and warehouses built by Uncle Sam's engineers carry no "made in America" label, but their origin is unmistakable. They look and they act the part! There are French cities now that remind one of a section of Bridgeport, Conn., or of Chicago.

And what romance walks with those who have come so far to make the paths straight for democracy! An Oregon company of engineers, while excavating in a certain city that nearly girdles a beautiful harbor, dug up a cache of Roman coins bearing the head of Marcus Aurelius. The tombs of the past are being opened in more ways than one by these soldiers of the present; the old and the new are joined together, and the West has come to the East.

But we have wandered far afield. In the meantime General Pershing has completed his schedule, and I am ushered into his presence. Perhaps I suggest the personality of the man when I confess that I carried away not the slightest recollection of the room in which our interview took place. He had just completed instructions to certain officers, and was dismissing them when I entered. He greeted me with the suggestion of a smile, and, after I had seated myself at his invitation and directly across the flat-top desk from him, he waited for me to speak.

When I faced General Pershing, I found a man who looks like his picture. He is slightly heavier than I had expected to find him, exceedingly well proportioned, and amply tall. He is erect without the conscious effort of those who begin soldiering after years in the undisciplined pursuits of peace. His eye is gray and clear, his close-cropped mustache accentuates the firmness of his mouth. His skin is of the ruddy texture of health, the health of vigorous action out-of-doors. I have not consulted "Who's Who in America," and I know that he is older than he appears; but he looks and acts virile fifty. His inches are all those of a soldier, and his presence carries the assurance of a man of action.

In the weeks which I spent in France following my hour with the commander-in-chief of the overseas forces the almost startling efficiency that I found everywhere, and in some instances under difficult and extreme circumstances, was at once associated with him, with the personality of this other "quiet man" who has soldiered in every place where the flag of his country floats, and who is now intrusted with what Lincoln gave to Grant. General Pershing's promptness is fast becoming proverbial. On October 19, 1917, he was requested to pass judgment upon the sawed-off shot-gun as a possible weapon of trench warfare. Seventeen days later the originator of the idea was notified that the gun had been adopted.

When General Pershing spoke, his first sentence clearly stated his attitude toward the matter being considered. It is my impression that no circumstance would find him able to cover his thoughts with words; his mind is hopelessly direct! His famous "speech" at the tomb of Lafayette, "Lafayette, we are here," was true to his best form, and what could have been more complete?

As to the opinion men have of him,—those who have been associated with him closely and those who have met him casually, as I did,—one word tells the whole story—confidence. A certain gentleman high in British political life said in my presence,

"General Pershing is a great re-assurance."

In the opinion of the writer he will be followed with enthusiasm and real affection by many, and all will have faith in his leadership.

When we discussed the morals of the soldiers in France, the General's face lighted; and well it might, for no nation has ever been represented by cleaner-living men than those who wear the uniform of the United States in France to-day; and the programme of the military authorities in France to safeguard and inform the country's fighters is a source of gratification and pride to all who believe that efficiency and morality are twin brothers. General Pershing said,

"When the report shows an increase in the venereal rate of one thousandth of a per cent, I learn the reason."

Army medical officers—and with two of these it was my privilege to have conferences—are constantly in the field investigating conditions that affect army morale and morals. Their findings and recommendations are the basis for orders and constructive activities that never relax their vigilance. Early one Sunday morning the General motored nearly thirty miles to a certain brigade headquarters, which while American authority was in control served both French and American troops. This situation made it embarrassing, to say the least, for any action to be taken affecting the recognized customs of our splendid allies. But General Pershing's trip was not a pleasure-jaunt. Several French wine-shops had been injuring the discipline of American soldiers. Conditions had not been improving. General Pershing permanently closed every wine-shop in the village, and so diplomatically did he proceed that the cordial relationship between the two armies was not disturbed.

His own attitude both toward alcohol for beverage purposes and toward vice is in harmony with the programme of the War Department and the Navy Department at home, and he is earnestly enthusiastic for that programme. Some of the details of the programme as applied in France must be worked out by indirect methods rather than by direct, but the programme shall not suffer. For instance, in the villages at the front where our leadership is in control I found no orders against the distribution or the use of the popular beverage of France, light wine; but neither did I find any light wine. It was not available.

GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES.

France, March 4, 1918.

To the Young People
of the Churches of America:

I am glad to have the opportunity of sending you greetings and hearty approval of the concerted support the church forces of the country, through you, are giving the Government. The great active moral influence of the churches of America cannot fail to add power to the Nation.

After all, it is to the young people, whose vision reaches far into the future, and whose aggressiveness of spirit gives force to their will, that the country looks for strength. Your efforts will serve to unite our people more closely in their determination to give the downtrodden throughout the world the same free democracy that we ourselves enjoy.

While the young people at home may be depended upon to do their full part, the soldiers who represent you, encouraged by your loyalty, may be depended upon to give a good account of themselves in this battle for the principles of liberty.

With very best wishes, I remain,

Yours sincerely,
John J. Pershing.

To Dr. Daniel A. Poling,
American Y. M. C. A.,
12 Rue d' Aggesslan,
Paris, France.

Our conference revealed General Pershing's own firm religious convictions and his determination to give to the army a religious leadership second to the leadership of no other branch of the service. He spoke with kindling eyes of what he hoped to secure for the men through the chaplains, and referred to the work of investigation he had committed to his old friend and the friend of his family, Bishop Brent. His words were the words of a constructer and prophet, as well as the words of a forward-driving warrior. He expressed his gratitude for the Y. M. C. A. and his appreciation of the support from the religious and moral agencies at home. He barely referred to the criticisms that some temperance leaders had visited upon him after his order against "spirits" was made public and before opportunity was given for the General himself to explain the order with reference to its silence on wine and beer, also its relation to circumstances associated with army life in France. He is too busy to give attention to small things and too big to misunderstand the real heart of the anxious men and women whose sons had been intrusted to him.

The last words spoken to me by this leader who represents so much of the idealism and faith of his country to-day were of the men. I shall not forget many things that were said in that interview, but with distinctness above everything else that was said I shall remember the dozen words with which the quiet soldier revealed his pride and his confidence in those who fight now to achieve a lasting peace.

General Pershing's life has had a great tragedy; under unspeakably sad circumstances his family—all but one boy—was destroyed in a fire while he was on duty on the Mexican border.

General Pershing's wife and children were received into the church by Bishop Brent when the bishop was presiding over the Philippine diocese, and while the General was stationed in Manila. Since his acceptance of the post in France the General himself has been welcomed into the fellowship of the church by his old friend, now serving as leader of the chaplains of the American army. There is something vastly re-assuring in the manifest poise of a man who is so transparently unaffected in great decisions and whose personal example is so high a challenge to acknowledge the authority of the spiritual.

It was after office-hours when I found my way down the ancient stairway and into the courtyard. Out through the guarded gates I passed, the gates through which Napoleon marched his legions when he turned them toward Moscow, the city of their destruction. And as I thought of Bonaparte and of his programme, of that unsated ambition and pride which brought about the overthrow of the military genius no time of the past or the present has duplicated, I was glad that America's man of the hour on the field of democracy's destiny has not forgotten to place first things first; that he retains so clear a conception of relative values in so disturbed a time.

Chapter V
SEICHEPREY

The head-lines that told the story of the battle of Seicheprey brought me a sensation entirely apart from the thrill of anxiety and pride with which we all read of the heavy attack, the loss of ground, the desperate fighting, the recapture of the village, and the gallantry of American troops in the most extensive assault yet directed against our lines on the western front. It was the name of the village that gripped me; gripped me with the memory of things that I shall never forget, of kaleidoscopic days that were eternities of supreme emotion.

It was about Seicheprey that our first division permanently in the line, our first division to be made fully responsible for a sector on the western front, experienced its first general gas attack and its first general raids. It was here that the American soldier established in fact what in his own soul he had never doubted, his ability to meet and defeat the finest shock troops of imperial Germany, and under conditions and in an event chosen by the German command to demonstrate America's military inferiority.

There will be a thousand greater occasions for American arms in this war than that which fell on Friday, the first of March, 1918, and than those which immediately preceded and followed it. But in the chronicles of this conflict those days will remain as the days which first sent back from the flaming front to every officer and every man in the ranks the triumphant message, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

It was the moment when the American army was baptized by fire into the sacrificial comradeship of democracy's international Calvary.

The village nestles among the hills in the shadow of Mount Sec, Mount Sec before which and on which so many thousands of gallant Frenchmen have laid down their lives, and within which now mass the German batteries that overlook the immediate plain where our forces lie intrenched. It rests, or did rest, well within our first line, a kilometer beyond the last battery of "75's," and at the same distance from the great camouflaged military road that the papers have announced was the objective of the recent attack. One catches occasional glimpses of it as he approaches it through the deep connecting trench, a picture of desolation framed with crumbling walls. From it the trenches lead on again, but not far, for Seicheprey is close to the German barbed wire. The officers and the men who hold it are constantly on the alert. German guns always command it, and perhaps a dozen times a day drop shells into it. No men are billeted there beyond the capacity of the bomb-proofs. These shelters, aside from the direct hits of high-power shells, give practically complete protection.

There are no villagers in Seicheprey; those who lived there and who tilled the fields round about are gone. It is a community without a woman, and from morning until night it does not hear the small voice of a child. It is a city of ruin, a place of most melancholy memories.

Seicheprey is holy ground; lying midway between Toul and Metz, it is in the heart of the salient that next to Verdun has witnessed the bloodiest fighting on the French front. It is an honor and a high trust for an army just to be there. It stands before one of the two gateways to the heart of France. It has seen the tide of war surge back and forth many times among its houses and up and down its street. Again and again it has been captured and surrendered and recaptured.

Out from it, or hard by, twenty thousand glorious Frenchmen have been buried by the hands of their comrades or the shells of their foe. I have seen the war planes high above it, German planes with shrapnel bursts about them, hurrying home from observation-trips behind our lines, and the silver planes of France in hot pursuit. From a blackened hill behind it I saw an air duel above the German lines, and a German flyer brought down in smoke and flames. I have seen our wounded carried out from it, German wounded brought into it; and stumbling through its single street I have watched the passing of our first prisoners of war. From it I have watched the chill winds of February driving through the shredded orchard trees on the hillside that dips into the open field where the poison gas has found so many victims and where it lies in ambush in the noisome shell-holes. Beyond the field is what was once a forest; the shattered tree-trunks now remind one of the broken columns in a cemetery.

I have seen Seicheprey under a barrage. Crouching in an abandoned trench by the side of a runner from battalion headquarters, to which we were returning and scarce one hundred yards away, I witnessed through terror-widened eyes that most appalling sight of modern warfare. Once I looked down from the summit of the Canadian Rockies upon a cloudburst in the Bow River Valley. Once in Oregon among the dunes of the Columbia I turned my pony's head away from an approaching storm, and flung myself headlong upon my face while with the sound of a hundred mountain torrents and in inky darkness the swirling tempest of sand swept over me. But this was a cloudburst of steel, an avalanche of iron; the pouring upward of the earth in sudden geysers, choked with trees and rocks and the fragments of houses; a continuous, mighty thunder in which were mingled the throaty roar of multiple discharges, the moan of the shells through the air, and the shock of the explosions at contact with the objective. It was an overwhelming noise filling all spaces.

Seicheprey! It was then a jagged scar. It must be now, after this fresh surge of the human flood, an open wound. There I saw heaven touch hell. There I beheld the soldiers of my country writing a new page in the book of her glory.

Seicheprey taught me the sacredness of comradeship. From a parapet near by one early afternoon I looked across the intervening 170 yards to the German lines. The snow was falling. Strangely out of place in No Man's Land were scores of crosses marking the graves of French soldiers. When the crosses were placed there, they were behind the men who reared them, but after the final adjustment of the lines they were found between the hostile trenches. Peaceful and white was the battle graveyard. Now the men who made it and who tended it for so many weary months are gone. Soldiers in khaki fill the trenches behind it, and the dugouts echo the words of an unknown tongue; but in another springtime, when the flowers bloom redder because of their long, rich watering, in the dark night the hands of the stealthy American patrol will straighten the crosses as tenderly as would the hands that put them there.

Seicheprey! I found a French gas-mask out from Seicheprey. It has sacred ground upon it, the soil of France. And where the face of its wearer pressed into it there are blood-spots. During the raid on the first of March our allies came down from the right, and dropped in behind our lines at a distance of five hundred yards. There in the open they lay, a reserve against a possible breaking through of the enemy. The enemy did not break through; but there a few hours later, after the raiders had been hurled back, terribly punished, I found this mask. I shall keep it as a token of the unity of free peoples which in the providence of God and in His time will make the world safe for democracy.

I shall hope that in the great peace I may lead my children down the street of Seicheprey restored and tell of the glory that I saw there.

Chapter VI
A DUGOUT DIARY

On Monday morning, February 25, I opened my eyes in the great bedchamber of the Archbishop's house in Toul, hard by the cathedral. Rather, it had been the Archbishop's house, and even now the underground entrance leading to the cathedral was in use. It was no longer an entrance, however, but an "abri" or anti-aircraft shelter for the secretaries and guests of the Y. M. C. A. officers' hotel which, following the removal of a French general, occupied the fine old building.

I opened my eyes slowly, reluctantly, and tried to close them again without disturbing the knocking at the door! It was no use; the secretary was determined, and I surrendered. Out through the writing-room, where above the mantelpiece were embossed the seals of the cities of the old diocese,—among them those of Nancy and Toul,—in less than ten minutes I walked, ready for breakfast and a trip to the line.

I was to spend three days in a wine-cellar Y. M. C. A. canteen, "close up," as a relief for "Heints," a strong-bodied, big-hearted young Methodist preacher, a "Northwestern" man of football fame, who for several weeks had been on the toughest job of the division without a rest or a chance to clean up. His was a "one man's stand"; there was no room to "sleep" an assistant.

West drove me in. After making several calls to drop men at the huts en route we reached Mandras, where we left the car. Machines were not allowed to go farther than this point until night. We were now only a mile from the military road that marked the back of the first line. It was a beautiful morning and comparatively quiet. Shells came over regularly, and our guns were not idle; but nothing broke within half a mile of us. As we hiked up the road and swung around "Dead Man's Curve," we discussed the evangelization of the world! We reached Boumont, just a mile from Mandras, and hurried through its tumbled buildings to Rambecourt. An hour served to cover the two miles to our destination. The going was muddy, but the footing beneath the surface slime was firm.

Heints protested at first; but "orders is orders," and he threw his things hurriedly together and accompanied West back to the car. I was soon to feel the wrath of his friends. Officers and privates all swore by him. Only my assurance that he was gone temporarily and to get a bath and fresh insect-powder saved the situation. I immediately got into action behind the counter. A lieutenant just in from the trenches intrusted to me a German stick grenade—a grenade attached to a wooden handle about twenty inches long, that he had promised my friend. He said:

"It's safe now. I fixed it; only don't get it near the fire." I put the fire out.

For several hours during the middle of the day I had the assistance of a secretary from an adjoining hut. His presence gave the man in charge a chance to stretch his limbs in the open and go to the company kitchen for "chow." While the dimensions of the canteen were not more than twenty feet by fifteen, it was a busy and crowded place. From early morning until late at night men filled it; indeed, they stood generally in a long queue reaching up the entrance stairway and out into the old open court. My sales in three days and two nights totalled nearly 4,000 francs, or $800. The men bought everything we had, and all that we had—oranges, jam, candy, cigarettes and tobacco, bar chocolate, etc., and a score of things that a man needs to keep himself fit, from tooth-paste to shaving-brushes.

The canteen service of the Red Triangle at the front is an absolute necessity. There is no other place "alive" within miles; the villages are utterly empty, for in the years that have passed since the war began even the broken furniture has completely disappeared. Not a villager remains. The Y. M. C. A. sells nothing from the standpoint of traffic for gain; it hopes to keep its losses as low as possible, but it constantly "short-changes" itself. Tons of supplies are given away outright in the "trench trips," and daily the canteens serve hot drinks free. Now and then criticisms are heard because the extreme difficulty of transportation and the high cost of every commodity, a cost that constantly fluctuates, cannot be generally understood; but the commissary department of the Red Triangle is giving vastly more than one hundred cents for the dollar; giving it with efficiency and despatch.

My first afternoon in the cellar was uneventful but strenuous. I found myself compelled to learn the ropes under pressure. Men wanted everything that was hard to find; and it seemed, too, that every man was either just out of the trenches—which began right there and extended in communicating trenches, the reserve and the most advanced trenches, nearly a mile on in front of us—or just going in, and therefore in a great rush. I was slow on the prices, too; but, when I was in doubt, I simply put it up to the men; only once was I deceived, and then the Y. M. C. A. got too much money! I saw but one man in France who had a dishonest streak in him, and I speak with deep sympathy of that man; he was born with a twist, and was killed by a shell only a few hours after a Y. M. C. A. secretary caught him in the act of stealing from a comrade. The fellows over there are a "plumb-line" crowd.

I made chocolate in the big iron bucket, and gave it away; that is, I tried to. But why dwell on that tragedy? It was better the next time. One of the men from the first-aid room gave me a few lessons while he swept out for me.

At about six o'clock a chap who had been eying me for some few minutes said, "Say, I know you; who are you?"

He was right. He had been president of a Christian Endeavor society in Newport, Va. With fine frankness he told me of uniting with the First Church of Christ there; we had met at a State Christian Endeavor convention. Another lad who had listened to the conversation remained long enough to tell me that he lived in Macon, Ga., and that he saw me first in Griffin, the same State. He was the "birdman," in charge of the carrier-pigeons, and had been in that first affair back in 1917 when Germany captured her first American prisoners. By the way, a strangely impressive sight it is to see a white dove circling above the battery to get its bearings and then flying swift and straight toward the red flag in the trenches to which its training calls it.

A considerable crowd was lingering about while I lunched out of a can of peaches and on crackers. Breakfast was brought in to me by one of the men, who carried it back from the company kitchen in my mess kit, and I took it with one hand while I "shoved the stuff" with the other. Dinner I went out for, as already related; but "lunch" was a less formal affair. While I munched away, I watched the fellows, those who were ready to go in. They were fully equipped, had their gas-masks at attention, as we all did, and were in helmets. There was very little profanity, no vileness; and some of them did not smoke. I was often surprised by the number of men who spent no money on cigarettes. As for the swearing, the Y. M. C. A. hut has an atmosphere that, while it does not stifle cursing, does make the men themselves prefer to be without it. They welcome a place that is different! The secretaries remember first that they are there to minister, and to minister to all; they do not preach at the fellows, but some of them are real geniuses. One put up a "menu" that said among other perfectly rich things, "Please don't swear; the secretary is trying to break himself of the habit."

And let us be perfectly frank about the cigarette problem that troubles so many of us. That it is a problem I am fully persuaded. Leading medical authorities in all armies recognize the fact that the nicotine bondage now fastening upon the men and women of the war-ridden nations will be a slavery of heavy chains for the next generation. Giving evidence before the city exemption appeal courts in Montreal in January, 1918, Dr. G. E. Dube said that he was appalled at the amount of illness prevailing among men of military age, and that he attributed the trouble chiefly to cigarettes.

Personally I hate the cigarette. I have seen its fine fiendishness. But to-day society has time for only absolutely "first things." Some seem to think that because the world is on fire the time is ripe for an anti-smoking crusade. I do not. Just as the next generation must carry largely the financial burden of the war, so it must solve the many physical and moral problems that this generation let fall from its hands when it gripped the sword. Personally, I have put the cigarette, for the man in the service who uses it, in the same class with the strychnine the doctor prescribes. There are hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches who would go mad, or at least become so nervously inefficient as to be useless, if tobacco were denied them. Without it they would surely turn to worse things. Many a sorely wounded lad has died with a cigarette in his mouth, whose dying was less bitter because of the "poison pill." The argument that tobacco may shorten the life five or ten years, and that it dulls the brain in the meantime, seems a little out of place in a trench where men stand in frozen blood and water and wait for death.

This statement is not a defence of the cigarette; it is an honest effort to make clear the position of the Y. M. C. A., facing an immediate crisis in a diseased world, and required to function or fail. I found splendid opportunities to help the non-smoker without appearing to "preach." When he didn't "use them," I said, "Shake, neither do I. How do we live?" When a man in trying to make even change suggested "another pack," I said, "Better try something else; you've driven enough coffin-nails to-day." In many huts Dr. George Fisher's book on tobacco is placed on the counter by the side of the cigarettes. The men have here available the positive instruction that at least does them no harm. In the educational campaign which will follow the war those who were able to adjust themselves to the peculiar needs of this abnormal time will have the greater ministry.

At nine o'clock I took down the stovepipe that ran up through the little window in the far corner of the selling-section of the canteen, and dropped the heavy gas-curtain; a little later the double gas-curtains at the door were also dropped. A good hour was spent in "cleaning up." Boxes were re-arranged with the assistance of the man who lingered; I laid the fire for the morning, and studied the stock so as to be quicker on my feet the next day. I left a few candle stubs on the table for the "gas-post," the man standing on guard to protect the soldiers in the billets, signal-corps room, and first-aid dressing-station from being surprised by a possible gas attack. All of these men were in this same dugout or series of dugouts. For another hour I wrote a few brief letters and filled out my order-blank for the next day. Our stock was very low.

It was now nearly midnight. There were no stragglers left in the canteen, and all about me I could hear the regular breathing of the tired sleepers. Putting on my helmet and pushing aside the curtains, I climbed the steep stairs, and walked for a few minutes in the chill February night beneath a cloudless sky. The guns were going ceaselessly; back and forth the huge shells moaned like tired and unwilling men; they were not tired when they landed! Down on the line the rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat of the machine guns, with the explosions so close together as to give almost the sound of ripping canvas, rang out at irregular intervals. They were spraying No Man's Land, searching for enemy patrols. The huge trucks and great wagons that had been pounding the road since early dark bringing up supplies and ammunition were still busy; it was a good night for the "mule-skinners" (mule-drivers) and for men at the wheels; they could move faster, and the moon reduced to a minimum the danger of accidents.

I stood for a minute or two by a dirty pool in the centre of what had been a formal garden, and wondered where the grace and beauty of the ancient house had gone. Only the pool, the crushed marble walls of the chateau, and the splintered trees remained of that which had been the glory of an ancient name.

I slept profoundly that night; general shelling does not disturb one's rest unless it stops. I say that I slept profoundly; I did until two in the morning when the gas experience, related elsewhere, crept into my diary.

The second day was quite as busy as the first, and there were at least a score of feature stories. The life of a hut-manager is not monotonous; his contribution to the cause of his country is second to the contribution of no other. My little glimpse of his parish was quite convincing.

All the morning the talking-machine was busy. The selections varied with the mood of the man playing it. I wanted to choke the chap who started Homer Rodeheaver's "Tell Mother I'll Be There." No violence was used, but several besides myself choked before the record was finished. Mother is everything plus, over there. To the fellow who has seen her blessed face in dreams beneath a battle's flaming sky she will never be taken for granted again. A thousand little things bring him close to her—the socks that he tries to darn, the button that he sews on, the food that reminds him. A letter from a mother makes a lot of heaven over there—if it is the right kind, if it is the kind that makes a son proud of his mother. A message of courage, of cheer, of news; details of the commonplace,—the coming of the spring birds back to the house he built, the addition to the neighbor's home, the new paper on the wall, the bright gossip of the street or town, the tragedy of the bread that burned while you wrote him, such a message builds morale faster than flags, or music, or the speeches of captains.

Just before dinner a stretcher-party brought in a man who had been painfully, though not seriously, injured by the explosion of a "75." His helmet had deflected the fragment. He was standing in the door of the bomb-shelter when he fired the gun, but one ear had been nearly severed and his neck had been deeply cut. After he had been fixed up I put him on a box by the little stove, and gave him some hot tea.

He was shaken and nervous. In just such a situation the secretary has his "big chance." The boy said: "This will sure kill my mother. She's a frail little thing, never could stand trouble; when she hears I'm hurt, she'll just lie down and die."

I came back with "Don't you believe it. That isn't the way it works at all. When your mother hears of this, she'll say: 'Thank God, he's only wounded. Now I know he's safe for a little while.'" And I went on: "You have yours; comparatively few men ever get two wounds, and after nearly four years of war still there aren't enough wounds to go around."

But it didn't do the business.

Then I asked him where he lived, and he said, "The Bronx."

"I'll tell you what I'll do, old man," I said; "I'll call her up as soon as I reach New York, and later I'll go and see her."

Bang! he blew up! Down into his hands went his sore head, and then he was better. He was just a boy after all and through it all. But what a boy!

When I went up to "mess" that day, an orderly pointed out to me through a crack in the camouflage a ruined plane a kilometer away in the open and under constant observation from both lines. In it was the body of a famous German flier. Things had been too hot for our men to go out and bring in the remains. Mt. Sec towered above us, nine hundred feet high. We knew that it was a vast nest of German guns. Like Gibraltar it stands in front of Metz. But it is not impregnable. Twice the French have demonstrated that; and, when the hour strikes, Mt. Sec will not turn these allied armies back.

I felt something cold touch my hand, and, looking down, saw a kindly-eyed, well-fed dog inspecting me. These dogs are the only "original settlers" left on the line. They were lost in the first rush, I suppose; and now, cared for by the fighting men, they watch the walls that daily dwindle, and wait with dumb loyalty for the return of their masters.

One of the men brought me a "beautiful" fragment of a mustard-gas shell. His little gift helped a lot, for it told me that I was beginning to "arrive." Later I received the nose of a shrapnel "made in Germany"; the shrapnel broke above the dugout, and the nose dropped "dead" in the entrance. Another fellow, a youngster who must have fibbed a lot to get into the army, pulled a Testament out of his upper left-hand pocket to replace it with something else, and then said, as he thought out loud, "Nope," and back went the book. There is an unadmitted tradition that the "book" keeps German steel away from the heart, and it does in more ways than one.

That evening I had plenty of assistance, and things moved like clockwork. There was nearly a catastrophe, though. Two of the men were trying to fix a carbon lamp that had been useless for several days, and it caught fire. The way that dugout emptied itself was a sight to behold.

After eight o'clock we had a "home-talent" frolic, and it was some show. There was no room for acrobatics, but practically everything else that a well-ordered minstrel show should have we had.

"At midnight in his guarded tent"—that doesn't really fit here, but at midnight the Pierce-Arrow arrived with oranges, blood-oranges from Italy. We were out of everything but tobacco, and I was desperate before the oranges came. What fellows they are who keep the supply lines open for the Y. M. C. A.! Day and night they work, with a smile. Every risk the ammunition drivers run, they accept, and without complaint. They left me fifteen boxes of oranges, and a good word that sang me to sleep. This night I slept better, and there was no gas alarm.

The third day it rained—shells! At ten the entrance suddenly darkened as if the gas-curtain had been dropped. It looked as if every man of General Pershing's army was trying to come to see me in a great hurry, and ahead of every other man who was bound in the same direction. For several minutes I had noticed the quickened firing and that the explosions were unusually close; but, feeling safe myself and being busy, I had paid little attention to the noise. The Germans were trying to muss up the batteries just behind us, and a torrent of shells was now falling. The big outdoors had suddenly become too small, and the men were taking cover.

One chap, longer and louder than the rest, came in waving one boot above his head, and in his sock feet. When I inquired solicitously after the other shoe, he sang out, "Left it; didn't need it, anyhow."

He was cleaning his equipment in front of his billet when an "H. E." (High Explosive) dropped just across the street from him and close against an old wall. He cut the "Kaiser's party" in a hurry. A shell dropped in the old pool, two just to the right of the entrance, and several others did spring ploughing in the abandoned garden hard by. But not a man was scratched, and not a missile reached its objective. The "doves of peace" from Germany presently stopped coming over, and we breathed more freely.

While we were giving our friend of the lonely shoe some unsolicited advice, a sergeant came in and told a thrilling tale of an alarm that had been distributed along the road by a wild-eyed "runner" holding his nose and yelling, "Gas!" at the top of his voice.

At six o'clock Heints came back. He was as fresh as a daisy and as happy as a lad just arrived "out to old Aunt Mary's." It was with a pang of regret that I surrendered the place to him. It was not easy to go away. Always I shall remember that dark place and treasure my recollections of it. May all the men I knew there come safely home!

It was a long jaunt back. In one village we passed through, the clock in the church tower had stopped at 4.30 P.M., when the first shell hit it; in another at 2.25 P.M. Both had been silenced in the early days of stern fighting before Toul. When will they start again? Ah, no! that is not the question. "How soon shall the power that turned back the clock of civilization be stopped?"—that is the question. That question America is answering with her treasure and with the best of her breed.

By a long line of trucks and wagons we ran,—two hundred of them,—ready to go on in under cover of darkness. In another place fifty-seven ambulances were ready for quick action, and by them a hundred fresh artillery horses were watering.

That night I slept again in the house by the cathedral. I dreamed of muddy men and bursting shells, of scampering rats and a phonograph, and I awoke—disappointed.

Chapter VII
"HE'S A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS"

With a wild clatter a twelve-foot section of the ceiling came down. We sat up in our bunks and waited. It occurred to me that no shell had exploded above, within, or immediately about the "hut," and that this interruption of our peaceful slumbers must be due to the vibrations from our own batteries; there was consolation in the thought. But I did not fall asleep again. Our guns were going on at a terrific rate now. It was no ordinary shelling of enemy objectives, no mere following of a regular schedule by which "big ones" and "little ones" are dropped on military roads, headquarters, and concentration-points in "Germany."

Pest, secretary in charge of the "hut," who in happier times is physical director of the Young Men's Christian Association in Newark, N. J., said: "Something doing. That's a barrage; wonder whether they're coming across or whether we are going over. The first brigade is due for relief to-day; guess the Hun knows it, and is 'speeding the departing guest.' We'll sure have company for breakfast if our fellows keep on stirring up the animals."

Presently the "company" arrived. First the gas-alarm was given, and we hurried into our masks. I kept on my waterproof, so that my friends would not see my knees in action! Then the shrapnel began to spray, and high explosives felt out our guns. The throaty roar of our seventy-fives mingled with the longer and nearly double shocks of enemy explosions. We knew that "William" would not waste shells on us; but we knew, too, that we were desperately near the places he was trying to find, and that even modern military science is not always exact.

There was a stern patter on the roof—spent shrapnel; a few minutes later it came again with a sterner knocking and the sound of an explosion directly overhead, but high. Hummel got up and opened the door. He looked out, and then closed the door. Simultaneously with the banging of the door a huge explosion took place in our back yard. Hummel said that he saw the field go up as high as the spire of the ruined village church. There was a mighty rush of wind and a scream of steel; a fragment of high explosive tore out the sash of a window, and "carried on." This particular piece of projectile passed through the hut less than twenty-five feet from the cots.

From three o'clock in the morning until seven the shelling was heavy, the roar of the guns was continuous. It then lessened, but for the rest of the day and through the night there was no quiet. During the barrage, the reason for which we learned a few hours later, our village suffered more than usual. In one billet six men were instantly killed and five were horribly wounded. In another billet there was a fatality, and a French soldier was killed at the meeting of two streets as he walked towards his home, going back on his first "leave" in two years.

We waded through the mud to our "mess" just across the street; good, steaming hot, and well prepared it was. I went back for a "second," as is the privilege of every man provided he waits until all have had the first serving.

It was the first day of the month, and so while Pest fixed the packs for the trenches, and Hummel (Rev. Mr. Hummel, of California, if you please) completed a sink and drain which his deft hands had begun the day before, I took account of stock, and incidentally packed more securely on the shelves the supplies that were in quantity. The bombardment was shaking things loose. At 10 A.M. Pest and I started for the trenches, with the former remarking to Hummel that if things continued so active the supply-truck would hardly get in, and that it might be well to "shove the stuff" a bit easy to conserve what we had.

Up the road we hiked toward Germany. Our sacks held a hundred pounds of chocolate, nuts, cigarettes, and oranges, things that the regular and necessarily severe front-line mess could not duplicate. The oranges came from Italy, and the chocolate was made by Americans in French or Swiss factories taken over by the Y. M. C. A. Trench supplies are never sold; these are "specials," gifts to those who for days at a time must bear the body and nerve destroying ordeal of the most advanced places. No man who has not seen the faces of the men and heard their "Thank yous" can appreciate what these trench trips of the Red Triangle mean to the soldiers of the Republic. Every day the secretaries go "in," and clear in. To the last observation-post they carry the extra food, the bit of luxury, and the strong man's word and grip of comradeship that build fighting spirit and morale.

For a mile the going was easy, the road-bed straight away toward the trenches; and the footing beneath five or six inches of mud was firm. At "Dead Man's Curve," a bad spot which bends out from behind a great ammunition-dump and passes between batteries on into another ruined village, we took a short cut across the field. The mud at the bend was red, and the road was filled with blood; an empty supply-wagon had been caught there earlier in the morning. The two men on the driver's seat and all of the mules had been killed. For five hundred yards we continued across the shell-ploughed field; now and then we were forced to turn out of the direct path to avoid shell-holes close together; several times I found as many as three small craters with rim touching rim.

The firing continued heavy, and the moaning missiles passed one another high above our heads. There were explosions half a mile away, and the surface of the earth was churned with fury; but no shells dropped near. We entered the communication-trench at the far edge of the great military road that at this particular point parallels the first line of fifteen miles. It runs directly in front of the last heavy batteries, and to a height of twenty feet is carefully camouflaged with branches and painted canvas. The camouflage does not disguise the location of the road itself; but it does hide the movements of troops, munitions, and supplies from the enemy observers, who here look down upon our lines from a famous mountain which towers nine hundred feet above our position.

The morning was cloudy; mist was in the air, and a little later it began to snow. We caught glimpses now and then of another ruined village, the battalion headquarters (a kilometer from the head of the communicating trench), where we reported before going on to the most advanced positions. Presently we met a lieutenant coming out. He was smiling, and without being asked for information told us that the enemy had come over in force with shock troops after shelling the lines for twelve hundred meters on either side of the eight-hundred-meter front which bore the full weight of the infantry attack. He gave us no details; but, as he hurried on, he assured us that "the boys brought away the bacon."

We reported to the major on reaching headquarters, and learned from him that the company we had planned to serve that morning had been very "busy"; that it was digging itself out, reopening the trenches after the intense bombardment, clearing away the dead, looking after the wounded; and that he would prefer to have these supplies taken into Company K, where things were in better order. He spoke with pardonable pride when he informed us that already the men at the most advanced listening-posts had been served with food and red-hot coffee. We began to understand the heavy firing of the morning. Our guns had been supporting the infantry, and German guns had been trying to silence them.

A sergeant, covered with blood but happy, had just made his report for Company I. He accompanied us until our paths, or rather trenches, separated. He was going back to the "busy" portion of the front. His story was interesting, to say the least. During the preparatory bombardment which preceded the raid he was buried in a dugout. When the barrage lifted for the raiders to come across, he dug frantically toward the faint light that came through a tiny opening in the shattered roof. Suddenly two hand-grenades were hurled through his little window of hope. Both exploded, but the sergeant miraculously escaped. Indeed, the grenades helped him out! He despatched the thrower, and leaped into the heart of the counter-attack. How fierce that counter-attack was may be judged from the fact that every commissioned officer of his company was killed or wounded before it was crowned with triumph.

The Germans were forced into our supporting barrage, and were virtually annihilated. It was a demoralized remnant indeed that reached German lines to make a report far different from what had been anticipated. But our losses were not light. Our first infantry captain to die in action was killed that morning at the head of his men. Five out of the six lieutenants "up" at the time were wounded, and the sixth followed his gallant captain. The sergeant spoke slowly when he recounted the losses, but he was jubilant when he recalled the perfect support given by the artillery. We knew and he knew that the first great test had come, and that Americans had not been found wanting in courage, initiative, or skill.

Presently we reached company headquarters as the major had directed us, and heard at length the story of the morning. With a guide we now went on. Hip-boots did little good, for the "chicken-ladder" trench floor had been badly smashed by the shelling. Often we sank to our hips. The boys were mighty glad to get the candy and fruit. The Italian oranges were our leaders! A soft-voiced Southern lieutenant gave us additional details, and told us how the gallant French on our right came down and dropped in behind us at a distance of five hundred yards. There in the open they lay, a reserve against the possible breaking through of the enemy. No Man's Land looked strangely peaceful through our parapet, and the German barbed wire a hundred and seventy yards away was more like loganberry trellises in Oregon than part of a war machine in France. The company had lost only one man during the shelling, and it had not suffered in the raid.

It was nearing one o'clock when, returning, we reached the place where our friend the sergeant had left us. Pest looked down the trench toward headquarters, and then down the front line toward the low ground where we had originally planned to go, and where the boys were "busy." Surely things were cleaned up now, and they would be hungry for a bit of chocolate and a strong word. I followed him toward the left, but not without forebodings. There was plenty of noise in front of us, and I was sure that the enemy would not co-operate with the engineers who were restoring our trenches, by refraining from shelling them. The "little ones," three-inch high explosives, were falling not far away; but we were well covered. We crossed the low ground where the boys had suffered so seriously from the gas attack three days before, and then entered the woods, whose tree-trunks bore many new wounds.

At the far edge of the woods our progress was completely blocked. Working parties filled the space. All about were the marks of the bloody struggle. Not all the dead had been carried back, but the wounded were either out or had been started toward the rear. There were yet bodies in the barbed wire, hanging like ghastly scarecrows.

We emptied our sacks, and right about faced. The firing was steadily increasing, and we hurried our steps. When we came to the place where we had entered the woods, we found our way barred again. Two stretcher parties were resting under the cover of the little ruined forest. One carried the remains of the second lieutenant, who had been killed by a trench mortar; the other bore a wounded German prisoner, a fine-looking, husky Bavarian whose legs had been fearfully mangled. The carriers were worn out; it had been a "busy" morning for them, too. They were within a hundred yards of the point where it was necessary to leave the trench and take to the open. The trench had been so shattered by the shelling that a stretcher could not be carried through it. The light had been growing steadily better, and it was very apparent that German observers, at this point less than two hundred yards away, would quickly spot a party taking to the open. But there was nothing else to do. Pest volunteered to lend a hand, and together we carried the wounded prisoner to the point where with assistance we lifted him to the parapet.

The two stretcher parties now started down across the low ground in the open, their burdens shoulder-high, not only for greater ease in carrying, but to give the "kultured" gentlemen across the way a square and open look. The going was heavy. After carrying for perhaps three hundred yards the four of us who had lifted the burden at the parapet were relieved. Pest and I now increased our speed in the direction of battalion headquarters, which were in plain view and not more than a kilometer away as the bird flies.

Suddenly hell opened. A barrage was put down upon the field. I can hear to-day as distinctly as I heard it then the close-up crash of German guns, and almost simultaneously with that the cry of the officer in charge of the stretcher, "Scatter!" Then all about us the shells dropped and broke. I suppose that the barrage lasted ten minutes, hardly more, but it was a kind of eternity. It seemed to my terrified eyes that no foot of ground about us was left untouched. That night an observer in our line, on his way back after being relieved, stopped long enough to say that more than two hundred shells fell within a radius of fifty yards from the centre of our party.

I sprawled upon my face, and rolled over into a very shallow shell-hole. At my right, and not ten feet away, suddenly a man was lifted into the air; five feet he seemed to go up. He turned over, and came down with a flop into a shell-hole filled with water. Aside from the shock and bruises he was uninjured. The "three-inch" had gone in, by his side and at an angle, almost under him. But in the open and in soft ground high explosives are not particularly dangerous unless they score direct hits. They penetrate so far before they explode that they are largely smothered; and, while they kick up a great commotion, their bark is worse than their bite.

Fortunately for our little party, this barrage had no shrapnel mixed with it; had there been shrapnel, the story would be of another sort. But I was so profoundly frightened that I made no distinction between high explosives and shrapnel.

I found myself trying to hide behind a rock no larger than a baby's fist. I envied the white dog, which wheeled about on his hind legs, barking angrily in a dozen directions at once, trying to cover each new explosion. I envied not his bark, but his potential speed, and called him a fool for not using it.

And then I heard some one say,—or perhaps it was my own heart speaking,—"Run for it!" and faster than I ever left the scratch on a cinder path, in the days when I was credited with 10 1-5 seconds for the hundred-yard dash, I got away. As I ran, I thought of two things. First, I breathed a prayer of thankfulness for the additional five thousand of war-risk life-insurance that I had taken out just before leaving New York; and then I remembered the ancient tale of the colored brother who heard the bullet twice, once when it passed him and once again when he passed it! And I did my best to emulate the hero of the tale. Two men reached headquarters before I did, but they were younger men and unimpeded by trench coats.

I followed Pest into the presence of the major,—we ran a dead heat!—and heard his report. The major smiled, a trifle anxiously, told us of the comparative safety we had really enjoyed because of the soft ground and high explosives, and then inquired, "Did the carriers stay with the prisoner?" Pest replied, "I am not sure, sir; I did not look around, but I am inclined to think that he is out there alone." Some one felt it in order to remark that if the Hun wanted to kill his own wounded, he ought to be given the privilege of doing so "without mussing up any good Americans"; and then the major said: "Yes, he's a Hun, but we're Americans. Go back and get him."

I am writing these lines more than five thousand miles from the candle-lighted room in the bomb-shelter of that battalion headquarters; but, as I write them, I cross the sea, and stand again by the side of the rough table where I stood that March afternoon when the major startled me out of my terror into soberness and quiet with his "Yes, he's a Hun, but we're Americans. Go back and get him." I believe that I am better for trying to give the German the benefit of the doubt; for half thinking that, after all, he may not have recognized the nature of the party crossing the open field. But the major waived the whole question of German "frightfulness," and leaped at once into the heart of American traditions of war and America's military idealism. He saw only a prisoner, wounded and under fire, and—he knew his duty.

And before we continue this story let us halt for a moment with the "major." I saw him only once and under tense and extreme circumstances. His battalion had just come through a baptism of fire that will not be forgotten when the story of America's part in the great war is told. I do not know how he looked in a dress uniform or when he was clean-shaven; I have no conception of what his carriage was in a drawing-room; and I am uninformed as to his church affiliation—if he had any. But he acted like a soldier that afternoon and talked like a Christian. I am sure that he was every inch a soldier, too; for he fought through the Spanish-American war, and was a major in the Philippine constabulary. He enlisted in the British army; but, when the Stars and Stripes came to stand by the side of the Union Jack, he moved over, and was commissioned a major in the national army. I intended to write him a letter after I returned; but now that will be unnecessary, for to-day at the top of a column I read, "American colonel killed in action," and below, "Lieutenant-Colonel Richard H. Griffiths; commanding a battalion of infantry, has been killed by shell-fire in Picardy. He emerged from a dugout just as a German shell arrived and exploded directly in front of him." And now he stands at attention before the Commander whose orders, whether he thought of it in that way or not, he so completely obeyed.[1]

As the major spoke, he turned to a lieutenant, and said, "Get those carriers, and send them back." Pest and I followed the lieutenant into the open. The lieutenant inquired of Pest the location of the prisoner; and the man from Newark replied, "I'll show you." It was at this point that the writer made a speech. The speech was brief, but logical and unanswerable. I told Mr. Pest that he had no business to go back. True, the barrage had lifted, but the Germans had another one where the first one came from, and they might decide to spare it! Then, too, he—Pest—had done not only his full duty, but more. To go back would be to expose himself needlessly and also to run the risk of having the trenches closed to the Y. M. C. A. "What will the army over here say if it gets the idea that you Y. M. C. A. fellows are sticking your heads above parapets and rambling around in open fields? How long will it stand for the Y. M. C. A. man's assuming a rôle that does not belong to him? Granted that you did the only thing you could do by helping with that prisoner when you ran into the immediate need, this return trip is another proposition."

I laid hands on my friend; but he started up the road for the open field, showing the way to the lieutenant, and with a heavy heart I followed another officer to indicate the carriers who must go out to help bring in the wounded man. Pest had made no reply to my speech, and I knew that my logic was sound; but that didn't satisfy my heart, with Pest out there. And Pest's heart would not have been satisfied, had he allowed me to win the debate.

I came back and stood at the head of the road leading through the tumbled walls, out by some abandoned trenches with tangles of rusted wires above them, and on into that open field where so many brave men had fought and died since the first rush came down from Metz. "Poor place to spend a vacation," said the sentinel, who stood post there, and scarcely had the last word left his lips when that field again became an inferno. I could not see my friend and those who had gone to join him, a slight rise in the ground and an old cut-to-pieces orchard obscured the view; but the air was full of earth and rocks, and I was sure that I saw fragments of bodies in the vortex. Surely men could not come again unscathed through such a horror.

And now I was forced into the sickening acknowledgment that, while my logic had been sound when I sought to dissuade Pest from returning to the prisoner, my nerve had not been. I knew that my feverish urgency was not unmixed with personal fear. Never did a more sick and anguished heart cry out to God than the one that supplicated for that stretcher party. But it did not appear! When the suspense became unbearable, I hurried to the major; and, when I told him the situation, he became very grave. He had been trying for some minutes to silence our own batteries, fearing that the enemy would continue to concentrate their fire on objectives near our battalion headquarters if our firing continued to stir them up. And our fire was stirring them up! Our shelling was deadly and unrelenting. The major wanted to give that party in the field a chance to get back. But his communications were down. Already two runners had been despatched, and the signal-corps men were working frantically.

I asked for permission to go down the road a little way to see whether there might be a sign of the men. I could not face my own soul without knowing for myself what Pest's end was. The major understood, and down the road I went. A great fear possessed me, but it was a new kind of fear. I reached the edge of the open place; there was no sign of life anywhere. The snow was falling again, and I hurried on. I met a runner; he had not seen the party. Three minutes more, and I was on the spot where the first barrage broke; and still there was no sign.

Suddenly the tightening about my heart loosened, and I fairly shouted, "There would be something left, if they were dead." A second runner was skirting the woods we had passed through earlier in the day. I ran to meet him, and fairly choked him to get the information that I was desperately searching for. "Yes," he had seen them. They had waited till the shelling stopped, and then from the cover of the woods he had watched them rush the stretcher back to the trench. They had followed close against the lower side of the trench, the longer way into the village. This brought them into the lower end of the town, and gave them a slight cover for the entire distance. It was the way we should have taken in the beginning.

"And now," the runner said, "this is our 'busy' afternoon,"—I had heard the word so often that day,—"and we must get to headquarters 'toot sweet'!" The youthful veteran instructed me to follow him at a distance of twenty paces, and he led the way down the road which skirted the edge of the field farthest from the German lines. The snow was falling more rapidly now, and we were practically safe from observation. We walked in the shallow ditch by the roadside, so that in case shelling was resumed we could avail ourselves of its protection. By lying flat we should be on a level with the surface of the ground.

The road was deep in mud, and I saw the prints of French boots! Then I remembered what the lieutenant had said in the morning of the gallant French reserves, and realized that I was on the exact spot where they had waited in the open behind our trenches. A rush of emotion overwhelmed me, and I wept. Suddenly in front of me I saw a mask, a blue gas-mask, half buried in the mud, lying where the brave Poilu had dropped it only a few hours before. When I showed it to the major a little later, soaked with water and with blood, ruined and useless, he said, "Take it home to your children; you are a millionaire." Yes, a millionaire in the treasure of sentiment, by the wealth of the vision the blue mask brings to me of the comradeship of democracy in suffering and in sacrifice.