Old Glory and Verdun, and other stories

The third phase of the great German offensive of 1918 began with the first light of dawn on July the fifteenth. In Paris, fifty-one miles behind Château-Thierry, that distant bombardment, violent beyond all precedent, could be distinctly heard. It could be heard, but the explosions were not like real explosions. They were like tiny, far-away echoes, ghosts of explosions—as if baseballs were being hurled with extreme force against a wall heavily padded with cotton wool. Pluff! Pluff-pluff! Pluff! Pluff! Pluff! Pluff! Distinct, yet muted, they came, those distant thuds; denatured, so to speak, with all the sound violence extracted.

Parisians rose from their beds, stepped to the windows and leaned from their casements to listen. But immediately the nearer night noises of the city eclipsed those distant ghost roars of battle. The whir of a belated taxi through the deserted streets, the hollow ring of footsteps on the pavement, even the blinking of an eyelid—and those soft sinister booms were completely blotted out. But back in bed once more, with the windows shutting out the city sounds, the dull pounding commenced again, steady, persistent as the beat of the blood in the arteries: Pluff! Pluff-pluff! Pluff!

Thus at Paris, the heart of the world. But up at Château-Thierry, the seat of alarms, it was a vastly different affair. There was nothing dim, distant, dissolved, denatured or cotton-woolly about the cannonading in that sector. It was the storm center of the tornado. The air was thick with clamor. The heavy guns bellowed incessantly. In order to hear each other men had to lean close and shout, and then it was only by the lip movement that they could be understood. It was like trying to speak during the rushing thunder of an express train. The Prussian storm troops were attacking formidably, with all their immense prestige, and the Americans were responding coolly, methodically as the Concord minutemen, with machine gun and rifle.

It cannot be said that the Prussians were cowards. They had been ordered to hold their position at any cost; and they fought ferociously, until they were dropped by the bayonet. In their machine-gun pits twenty and thirty Hun gunners were found, piled in heaps, slain by the bayonet, showing they had resisted desperately to the end; and the path to those same pits could be traced by American dead. Neither side asked or gave any quarter, and in those first fierce days of the offensive few prisoners were taken.

Despite the redoubtable blows of the famous iron-disciplined Prussian Guards and the Bavarian Reserves, shock troops alleged to be irresistible, despite also the hail of bullets and gas shells and high explosives right in their faces, the Americans started a counter-drive. The Germans had initiated this game called “drive,” and now the Americans, under Foch and Pershing, were ramming that same game down their throats. And slowly the German line began to recoil. Slowly those Prussians and Bavarians, fighting like tigers, began to retire. For the first time since America’s entry into the war she began to land substantial body blows upon the enemy; for the first time that enemy began to stagger under the terrible punishing force of those blows, delivered with the whole weight of a powerful angry nation behind them. The Germans had started out to stampede the Americans; the Americans retorted by stampeding the Germans—a little.

And now began two tides: one tide strong, and hourly growing stronger, sweeping the Hun back, pressing into tighter corners and hotter hells, victorious; the other tide composed of those who fell—a quiet, stricken, bloody tide, ebbing slowly toward the rear.

The hospital was waiting to receive them, surgeons and nurses in aprons and caps. In the kitchen a soldier, told off as cook, stoked the big kitchen range until it glowed incandescent on top, and the huge marmites of coffee and cocoa disseminated a fragrant aroma through the house. Ambulances, a steady stream, began to climb the dark, wooded hill road. Two lanterns, like bright, glowing eyes, fastened on either side of the entrance gate, guided them into the grounds. In the rear of the château, in front of the admission tent, they halted; deposited their burdens—silent, immobile, blanket-swathed figures, whose white bandages showed deep crimson stains—retrieved blankets and stretchers; snatched a hasty gulp of strong black coffee, and rumbled off for another load. More drew up, unloaded, departed. And still more and more and more. What a traffic in the dead of night! The traffic sergeant gave low, terse orders. A hooded lantern gleamed here and there. Over all was the infernal voice of the cannon, and those swift, stabbing, crimson flames across the sky.

Inside the admission tent, despite the rush and the constant influx of fresh stretchers, a clean-cut order prevailed. Men, sorely wounded, rested on their litters without change for a few minutes, while their infected clothes were removed and a brief history taken, after which they were borne off by brancardiers directly to the X-ray and operating rooms. Thus with all haste and yet with all order a constant sorting went on, the serious operative cases going forward, the lighter cases remaining behind. These latter were helped into clean pyjamas, given hot soup or cocoa—some of them during the fury of the attack had not tasted food for more than twenty-four hours—their wounds re-bandaged, and put to bed to await their turn in the long procession that led to the operating table. And some of these latter, shelled incessantly, under constant shock and stress, not having closed an eye for seventy-two hours, took the high dive into deep oblivion with the coffee cup still in their hands, and slept solidly for a night and a day on end.

The cots in the admission ward filled up. The stream of badly wounded moved forward and the fresh stream from the ambulances flowed in to its place. Everywhere could be heard a continuous low drone of conversation. There was no excitement. But neither was there silence nor sadness—though some were dying—nor groaning nor evidence of pain. They were talking, indeed, but it was noticeable that no one spoke of his wounds or his sufferings, though some had lain twenty-four hours and more on the field or in the dugouts under intense barrage before they could be brought in. But it was not of this they spoke. The battle, what had happened up there, still intoxicated them, still held their brains in thrall. They talked of horrible, grotesque, fantastic and sanguinary things in low, level dispassionate tones, as if they were discussing the weather:

“I saw my captain and my lieutenant blown straight to hell; it was a head-on collision with a high explosive. My captain was a fine fellow. He always seen we had a place to sleep, and if there was anything to eat going we got it. I was handed one in the chest. We was creeping up on a nest of their machine guns that the dirty boches had hid in a tree. I couldn’t bandage my chest wound, and I was spitting blood pretty bad, so I lay down in a shallow shell hole for the rest of the day.

“Along toward night I says to a comrade shot through the arm, who had crawled in alongside: ‘Steve,’ I says, ‘we’ve got to beat it. This is getting too lively for me.’ By that time the shells was busting at regular intervals at a distance of about five feet apart. No use scrouchin’ down to dodge ’em; if you did you lost your interval—see? And the next one caught you straight! So we just stood up and walked along kind of slow. We made it that way for about a mile, stumbling along, not going too fast or too slow, for fear of losing that danged interval, when suddenly I flopped down. I’d been bleeding pretty freely right along.

“‘Steve,’ I says, ‘I’m not going to make it. You hike on.’

“But he helped me to stand, and so we kind of leaned up against each other like some of these funny dead drunks you see, and staggered along until presently we saw something looming ahead. I let out a feeble little yip. It was a French machine gun right on top of us, and they was just drawing off to fire! Yes, sir! That holler, for all it was so feeble, was the best little piece of business I ever pulled!”

Some of their stories, I am bound to say, were whoppers, and their figures as inflated as those of watered stock. They saw things heroic size. This phase of battlefield psychology is well known to war surgeons. One soldier, for example, declared his entire division had been wiped out. Another made modest mention of the fact that his company alone, single-handed, against overwhelming odds, had started the Hun on his return trip to Berlin.

“Aw, dry up!” groaned out an exasperated realist, with a grimace of pain. “You four-flushers make me sick, blowing like that!”

“Well, anyhow,” retorted the youth who had boasted of his company, “we whaled ’em in that pocket!”

The realist lifted himself with labor, for a contemptuous look at the optimist.

“What’s the matter with your eye?” he demanded.

“Left it on the battlefield to look after things,” said the other with utter sang-froid. “What’s a little private eye or two in a war of this size?”

“Well, you’re no tin-horn sport!” admitted the realist grimly. And he laid himself down again.

Near the entrance to the admission tent lay a man on a stretcher, his leg bandaged above the knee. The trouser leg had been cut away, the white bandage gleamed ominously red, and down his leggings, down to the heel of his heavy boot, oozed slow drops of red which formed a dark pool on the stretcher. His eyes were closed; his eyelids were violet; his face, under the gleam of the surgeon’s torch, showed ghastly white; and a week’s growth of black beard emphasized the pallor.

“Get him right up to the house,” commanded the surgeon after an expert squint, not so much at the leg as at another bandage round the chest. “Have you taken his history?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then shoot him in ahead of the others. Tell the nurse to have him X-rayed at once, and pass him into the operating room. It’s a long chance at that.”

The brancardiers bore him away.

Down in the other wards the cots were fast filling with the gassed. For these, in an evacuation surgical hospital, nothing could be done save to remove their gas-impregnated garments, bandage their blisters and burns, feed them, rest them—and rush them on to the rear. Upon one of the beds lay a boy, gassed by phosgene. He lay in a kind of stupor, wondrously beautiful and pale, a statue carved in pure marble, the mobile boyish mouth curved in a faint smile. No visible breath. No pulse. And for him, too, rest—absolute rest.

Still the cannons thundered and their vivid flames painted momentarily the black sky. The ambulances never ceased their steady rumble. The drivers got down for a draught of hot coffee, a word with the sergeant, and then drove off in the dark. It was an unending procession.

And now another tent down in the grounds, isolated from the others, began to be filled. Some of the occupants were wounded, some gassed; some groaned and called out in guttural accents of agony, of fear; some were too far gone to groan. A guard stood at the door.

“Guess they think we’re going to murder them!” opined he grimly to the brancardiers as they bore in still another litter.

“We caught quite a bunch to-night between the devil and the deep blue sea,” remarked a brancardier jovially. “Now then—steady! One—two—three! Drop the stretcher!” They lifted the silent figure into bed. “This poor devil is almost in. He’ll be going West before long. Here’s another. Says his name is Max. All right. Max! You’re in America now! Nothing but a kid—is he? Can you make out what he’s chewing the rag about?”

The guard bent down his head. The German prisoner, young, pale, with still a lingering, childlike softness of contour about the chin, rolled his head ceaselessly to and fro, to and fro, while he muttered in a delirium of pain: “Oh, my poor old mother! Oh, my little sister! The Germans did not want the war!” Over and over again, like a litany.

Up in the pre-operative ward in the château the beds and the floor and the hallway were encumbered with men on stretchers waiting to be fed into the X-ray room. Here, as down in the admission ward, there was a constant circulation, the gravest cases being rapidly pushed forward and fresh stretchers from the outside filling their places. Suddenly an orderly, who had been bending above a still figure on a cot, straightened himself, and with panic in his face stepped across the room to the nurse.

“That guy in the corner’s dying, I think,” he muttered in her ear. “Anyhow, he’s stopped breathing.”

Hastily the nurse sought the alleged moribund’s cot, leaned down and felt his pulse. Normal. She held her palm above his nostrils. The man was sound asleep! He was slumbering softly, tranquilly, like a babe in its crib. The orderly, accustomed to the labored, stertorous respirations of those who fight a running fight with death, thought a man must be dying if he did not make a noise!

Stepping carefully along that crowded corridor I bent down to rearrange the blanket of a stretcher case, and ask the soldier how he did.

“I’m all right,” he replied quietly. “It’s only my foot. I was cleaning my automatic and suddenly it went off accidentally and shot me through the ankle.”

At that word “accidentally” a kind of cold chill assailed me. Why had he used that ill-omened word at all? Before now I had heard of the S. I. W.’s—self-inflicted wounds. These were soldiers who, through cowardice or momentary panic or spite, raging against some real or fancied wrong committed by a superior officer, shot themselves in the hand or foot in order to be sent back to the rear. In any aggregation of humans mounting up to more than a million there are bound to be a few such weaklings. But not this youth with the quiet voice and the clear, candid eyes! A second time he explained the incident, elaborating the details—with painstaking care—and a second time he used that fatal word. My heart was troubled. My head—that cool, hard, alien, dispassionate observer that sits up aloft in us all—whispered that this foolish lad had given the game clean away by the double use of that damning word. But my heart cried out that his story might be true.

Angry at myself, and even more at this savage war, at those monstrous taskmasters, the guns, which put to the same acid test all men, whether strong or weak, I passed the closed doors of the operating room to the deserted veranda and sat down upon the steps. A stray hound, coiled on the lower step, stirred at my coming, thrust its cool muzzle into my lap and licked my hand. And so we sat in mute companionship, the dog and I, and listened to the pounding of the guns. And it seemed to me that night that the dog had the best of it!

Presently a scream—or, to speak more exactly, a yell—pierced the quiet of the house and brought me, startled, to my feet. It was not a cry of terror or of anguish—nothing at all like that. It was the loud, chesty, rebellious roar of a lusty infant asserting his human rights. But this particular infant was well within the draft limits. Softly I crossed the hall, the dog tagging my footsteps, and opened the door of the operating room. In that brilliantly lighted little theater of healing and pain three tables were occupied, three teams of surgeons were working.

On the table nearest the door a big red-headed young colossus with the chest and huge freckled arms of a Samson, was just going under ether. Or rather, he was not going to do any such thing if he could help himself. At the head of the table, behind him, sat the anæsthetist. With one hand she held the ether cone over his nose while with the other she poured the ether over the cotton. Perhaps the giant had taken fifteen or twenty whiffs—just enough to decide he didn’t like the smell and that he was going to be boss of his nose! At the hot-water tap stood the major, soaping his hands for this new case while the nurse tied on a sterile apron.

As I opened the door the young giant, with a swift twist of his head—the only part of him that was free—whirled the offending cone to the floor. It was for all the world like the action of an obstreperous young colt refusing the bridle. The anæsthetist retrieved it, affixed it firmly to his nose and soaked it in ether.

Sounded a muffled roar: “Stop! Stop, I tell yah! Don’t you know how to stop?” More ether. “Stop you!” By this time he was struggling violently. He had taken just enough to be rebellious, and he looked sufficiently strong to rise up and walk off with the table strapped to his back. “I want—I—wanta—wanta——”

“Easy there, old man,” counseled the major reassuringly. “Take it easy.”

But Redhead did not intend to take it easy or any other way. Another whisk of the head. Off flew the ether cone. This time the major himself picked it up and took the anæsthetist’s chair. But before he could readjust the cone the blue eyes in the crimson face beneath opened widely, the giant struggled determinedly and roared in strangled tones:

“I—I—wanta—I wanta s-s-s—I wanta—spit!”

The major chuckled as he lifted the cone. “All right, old man, shoot! Now then—count. One—two—three. Louder! Breathe deep. Four—five—six. That’s the stuff! Seven. Keep it up! Loud! Ten——”

The breathing turned into a strong regular snore, and soon the giant had slid fathoms deep into the state of profound unconsciousness. Softly I closed the door.

Some of these men, strong husky youngsters, pulsing with life, hard as nails from their free out-of-door habits, are about as easy to put under ether as would be a wild steer off the range. Every atom of their physical nature rebels at surrendering consciousness. Others go under like lambs. It is largely a matter of temperament. Once a private laughed as they lifted him upon the table, and catching a whiff of ether he chuckled: “Hi! Give me my gas mask!” Then he cuddled the cone comfortably into place over his nose, settled down to snooze, and took the high dive into complete unconsciousness without a single kick.

The next morning broke into one of those exquisite soft mellow days for which this part of the country, called by the French the heart of France, seems celebrated. It was like a perfect rose, a day when Nature, by her clear sheer beauty, seems to shame man for his deeds of anger and blood. Still the ambulances climbed the hill, a steady stream, and vanished to the rear. At the moment, however, they were carrying more gassed than wounded. And thus the surgeons were snatching a rest. One or two of them appeared in the doorway for a moment, pale, with circles under the eyes and heavy lines from nostril to jaw. When they walked, it was slowly, and I had the impression that they might make it on a dead level, but that they would stumble over a pin.

When the major appeared he proposed a walk to the laundry plant. The change of linen on a thousand to fifteen hundred beds a night during a rush means a well-organized washing system—and this hospital had to depend on the village women. We strolled through one of the loveliest woods in France, the branches overhead interlacing into Gothic arches of lucid green, while far above, great white billowy clouds, like graceful schooners under full sail, bowled along through the deep uncharted blue of some unknown port. And as we strolled the major spoke of something extraordinary that had occurred the night before.

“It was a queer piece of psychology,” he said, “and I don’t know that I can get it over to you. It will probably sound unreal, exaggerated, in this calm morning sunshine. But you must try to realize the setting; try to comprehend the tensity, the strain of that operating room. We had been operating for twenty-four solid hours without a break, upon our men. Fine brave fellows, who went on the table without a groan. Men shot to pieces, horribly mangled, done to death. It’s heart-breaking work, if one’s got any heart to break. At the end of the night we all felt mighty blue. Then they brought in an American captain, a medical officer, already in a moribund condition. Well, to see one of our own corps in that state touched us pretty close. He was blown to pieces. He hadn’t a chance, and he knew it. And the sight of his calm, his high fine courage, hit us hard. But we did what we could for him—which was just nothing at all. After that was over I called out: ‘Fetch in the boches!’

“And as they brought in the first German wounded I was aware of a peculiar atmosphere, a sense of strain, a clear antagonism in the room. It was like a live magnetic current. You cannot conceive—nobody can—the terrific night we’d been through trying to salvage our brave fellows. The emotional stress was stupendous. Well, now we were looking on those who had caused that ruin, and the revulsion of feeling ran high. As the anæsthetist fixed the ether cone in place on the Prussian he said to me: ‘Sir, would you consider it a crime if I were just to go on pouring ether on this Hun’s nose?’

“That brought a laugh and cleared the strained atmosphere. And we cleaned up their wounded exactly as if they had been our own. But I’ll not deny we were glad when it was done!”

Returning to the château the major suddenly stopped and inquired: “Have you ever seen any cases of shell shock?”

I had not, though I had heard of them in the French and British armies.

“We don’t know exactly what it is yet,” continued the major. “Nobody does. But we have a special American hospital for its treatment. Look here: You see those two chaps crouching down by the steps? They both have it—hard.”

I looked. I had noted those two hunched figures before, and had taken them for orderlies, dead with fatigue, snatching a few minutes’ sleep. Now I looked closer. And looking closer I perceived it was not fatigue that caused them to squeeze themselves into the smallest possible space; it was not fatigue that caused them to hunch their shoulders and bow their backs as before a storm, draw their heads down into the curved hollow of their chests and try to hide themselves in the ground. It was fear—abject, ghastly, insane fear. They were obsessed, petrified, rendered deaf and dumb—by fear.

The major bent down to one, laid a hand on his shoulder, spoke a friendly word. The man’s fixed gaze stared straight through him as if he had been composed of air. He was deaf to reason, deaf to human appeal—but not deaf to the roar of the cannon. For each time that an ambulance rolled by or distant thunder issued from the clouds banking in the western sky his head jerked in the direction of the sound as though pulled by invisible wires. But not one word would he utter. Only his eyes seemed alive, wild, dark, affrighted. For the moment he was not human, but an effigy galvanized by fear. The noise, the continuous shelling, with probably some additional culminating shock, had temporarily bereft him of reason. For both of these men were unwounded, unscathed.

Later, in the admission ward, with the help of an orderly I induced one of these men to eat. The other patients watched with indifference. They had long since become hardened to uglier sights than that of a man crazed in battle. It was like feeding an infant ostrich. The mouth opened methodically to receive the food, but not one move, not one sound would he make. One hand upheld in air, the index finger raised, marked the tensity of his strained attention. His blue eyes forever darted from side to side. At each distant volley his body trembled and shook. And those straining eyes, full of horror, and that raised index finger followed questing through the air for the sound. It was infinitely pitiful.

“Don’t coddle him!” called the major, passing through. “It’s the worst thing in world you can do.”

“May I see if I can get him to talk?”

“Certainly. But treat him like an ordinary individual.”

“He’s afraid to talk,” said the orderly, pausing by the stretcher. “He’s a nut. He thinks if he opens his mouth the Germans will hear him and send over a shell.”

In taking his record I discovered his first name was Thomas.

“Why, Thomas,” I said, “I’ve a brother by that name. What do they call you—Tom?” For the first time his eyes fixed themselves on mine. “No, no, don’t point up there!” For now his index finger was lifted toward the canvas roof, upon which the first pattering drops of the storm were beginning to fall, and his wide blue eyes were straining after the sound. “It’s raining, Tom,” I explained. “Rain, rain, rain. You know what rain is! Now put that hand inside.”

With the faint, troubled smile of a child he obeyed. But the next instant that listening index finger was upraised again in the air. Resolutely I thrust his hand under the blanket.

“Look at me, Tom. Tom! Look!” He brought his strained gaze down from the roof. “Look round you and see where you are. Do you see those nurses? Do you see these beds? You’re in a hospital. You’re not fighting now. No shells can get you here. So you’ve got to buck up and feed yourself. We’re all busy here. Take your spoon. Now! Can you find the road to your mouth?”

With another smile, infinitely pathetic, he managed to convey a very wobbly loaded spoon somewhere near the region of his face. The second one found the goal. But it was a prodigious effort. The sweat poured off him. The startled blue eyes lost their fixed glare. Still he had not spoken. When finally he finished the soup and started to haul the blanket up over his head I drew it back and tucked it firmly under his chin. And again those blue eyes smiled! And now for the first time he recognized I was a woman. Before then I had simply been a vague irritant which prevented his proper listening.

With hesitation he pointed to his shirt pocket. This was the first movement, unconnected with his obsession, he had made of his own initiative. Thomas was coming on! I drew forth a small worn black leather Testament and laid it in his hands. With trembling fingers, for at intervals he still quaked like a leaf, he opened to a photograph—most obviously himself and his young wife. At sight of this girl looking out at him with frank laughing eyes a ray of joy broke across his troubled countenance. He stared hard, his face working—and then he burst into sobs.

“Who is it, Tom? Your brother?”

He shook his head violently and pointed to himself. And now the fugitive smile reappeared.

“Not you!” I exclaimed in hearty surprise.

He nodded, fully absorbed. But still he would not commit himself to speech.

“Then tell me. Say it. Speak!”

He thumped on his chest to indicate it was himself; his face worked; his eyes begged, implored me not to insist, not to drag him forth from his cellule of silence.

“Who is that, Tom?”

He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and with the sweat starting out on his forehead he pronounced huskily: “Me!”

The sound of his own voice seemed to terrify him utterly, and again he burst into tears.

“And who is this with you, Thomas—your grandmother?”

Again that ray of vivid joy. No need to ask Thomas’ sentiments about his wife! That one look told it all. Again the violent head shake.

“Thomas, it’s no use shaking your head at me. You’ve got to tell me who this lady is!”

And with a tremulous laugh and an effort that brought the tears into his eyes and mine Thomas responded proudly, brokenly: “My wife!”

The ice was broken. In stumbling accents, like a child, Thomas began to talk. And when an hour later he was evacuated back to a base which treats these mental breakdowns it was Thomas himself, from the dark interior of the ambulance where he lay on a stretcher, who called out weakly: “Good-by, miss! Good luck!”

Thus Thomas came back from the land of fear.

Later I went down through the wards searching for the man who had shot himself through the ankle.

“Oh, you mean the S. I. W.?” replied the nurse to my interrogation. “Well, he’s keeping pretty quiet this morning. There he is.”

“But he’s not an S. I. W.,” I protested rather faintheartedly. “He told me it was an accident.”

“Maybe he did,” she retorted with a significant smile.

“Well? Did he confess later?”

“No. Not consciously. But after the operation, while he was coming out from under ether, he gave the whole thing away. He blabbed the entire story before all the men. It seemed he had a grievance against some officer and took this way of getting out from under his command. Somebody,” she finished humorously, “ought to tell those S. I. W.’s that they can’t get away with those accidental-on-purpose self-inflicted wounds. Lie as they may, when they’re put under ether out plumps the truth. All the ward hears it, and the poor devil, regaining consciousness, wonders why it is that all his comrades turn away their eyes or look him up and down with a cold, contemptuous stare. That chap down there is suffering agonies right now. You see he has pulled up the sheet over his head and is pretending to be asleep.”

A word to the wise is sufficient. Those privates who try to take the law into their own hands and change the deal by means of a self-inflicted wound, heed the advice of this friendly nurse—and don’t. You can’t get away with it. Ether will find your guilty secret out. Fortunately, cases of this type are few and far between.

As the afternoon waned into evening and darkness fell the cannons resumed their bellowing, and the ambulances, which during the day had fallen off, began once more to climb the hill. And this time it was not only gassed that were flowing in but wounded as well. Despite the swiftness and the precision with which the hospital machinery moved the stretchers began to congest, to mass, to lie in the corridors, on the porch, and down on the moon-blanched grass. Men shattered and torn to pieces, patient, incomparably brave, with a smile or a joke for the orderlies who worked among them, lay in the open night under the stars awaiting their turn at the table.

Ah, those dark, silent, blanket-draped figures, lying so still under the moon! Those ghastly pale faces smudged with mud and blood, summoning a smile from their fainting souls as they look up into your eyes! All the papers were glowing with the magnificent deeds of the American heroes. Well, here they were, those heroes, lying before our eyes mangled, torn, bleeding to death with a smile. Somehow in the face of all this the glory and the bombast of those printed eulogies seemed tawdry and cheap.

One of the wounded men on a stretcher called attention to the night. And it was a night worthy of attention. The moon—large, lustrous, flat as an ancient golden plate of Babylon, chased with strange designs—was just appearing over the somber pine woods and drowning the fields and the hospital tents in a glimmering silver mist. But it was not the beauty that the private remarked.

“Fine night for a Hun raid!” he observed grimly; and raising himself with effort on one elbow he stared about him at the hospital tents and the château crowded with helpless men. But if this evacuation hospital was to be bombed—which at the moment I did not believe—it would be an act of sheer wanton brutality, of inhuman reprisal because our troops were winning at Château-Thierry. For on a night of brilliant moonshine like this those blanched tents and the huge white cross on the grass—insigne of mercy—were visible at a height of ten thousand feet. No, certainly the Germans would not bomb this hospital. They had bombed other hospitals before, it was true, but they would not bomb this one. Why, they had flown over it dozens of times! Thus we all argued.

The early hours of night passed, to the wounded mortally slow, each second packed to its full weight of agony. Down in the wards the cases already operated on were being settled into their cots and, according to how the ether took them, they were laughing, sobbing or reliving the grotesque scenes of the battlefield. No lights here, save the blanched moon rays which filtered in or the occasional gleam of an electric torch directing the movements of the brancardiers. On the beaten grassy sod of the tent floor their heavy tread fell noiselessly; their voices were hushed; and one sensed rather than saw many presences in that dark place. Some of the men were asleep; some, too ill to sleep, racked by anguish, by thirst or a mortal restlessness, called feebly for a drink. One there was, lying high on his pillows, passing in pain, who punctuated each gasping respiration with a long-drawn “O-o-o! O-o-o!”

By his side another, obviously coming out of ether, babbled, babbled ceaselessly, in dull drugged tones. A nurse sat by him.

“Say,” his voice, weak, dragging, half submerged in unconsciousness, came out of the dark, “are—are you—my mother?”

“No, boy. Go to sleep.”

Again the submerged, dragging voice: “Don’t seem—to have no appetite—for sleeping.... Fine appetite—for fighting.... No appetite—for sleep.... Haven’t slept—I don’t know when.... Shelling. Say, they murdered us—in that wood——”

“Sh!” whispered the nurse. “There’s a man in the next bed that’s pretty bad who’s trying to sleep. You wouldn’t like to wake him, would you?”

“Sure not!” He caught hold of the soothing hand and held it fast with the instinctive tenacious grip of a drowsy baby. “Worse off than me, is he?... I’ve not got much the matter with—— Oh, God!”—this in a high wrenched voice of clear agony—“what have you done to me? I can’t—I can’t move!”

“Sh! It’s all right. But you mustn’t try to move, boy! Lie right still.”

“Awright!... Say, did you say you was my mother?”

“No.”

“I knew you wasn’t my mother! But you kind of sound—like her.... But she’s far away from here—I know that.... Can’t fool me!... I’m in a hospital. Say, are you my sister?”

“No. I’m the nurse. Try to sleep, old top.”

“Awright—anything to please a lady.... Say, my mother’d hate to see me like this, wouldn’t she? ... Say, the folks at home don’t know a damn thing about this war—what goes on up here.... I’m not going to write to my mother about being here.... What’s the use?... Did you say that guy in the next bed was worse off than me?”

“Yes.”

“Is that him making that noise in his throat?”

“Yes. Does it bother you?”

“Hell, no! Say, ask him what his outfit is.... Maybe he got his in that wood along with me.” Suddenly, before the nurse could thwart him, he sprang to a sitting position and shouted in a strong, clear voice: “Say, are they any fellows here from my outfit?”

“What’s your outfit?” came a husky voice from across the aisle.

“Blank machine guns. Battery C.”

No reply.

“Wait until morning,” soothed the nurse as she eased him gently back again. “Then you can look up your comrades. And don’t move quick like that again, sonny. It’s bad for you. It might start you to bleeding. Lie still. Try to sleep.”

“Don’t want to sleep.... Any fool can sleep.... Say, do you know why they didn’t answer when I called out to see if any of my outfit was here?... It’s because there ain’t any of the outfit left but me!... The whole blank division’s gone—wiped out—shot to hell. They murdered us in that wood——”

“Sh! Sh! There’s lots left up there, boy! Don’t you fret. They’re cleaning the boches right out. We’re so proud of you we can’t see straight. Now go to sleep. Try. Just a little. Won’t you try?”

“Awright!... Say, you sound an awful lot like my mother.... Can I have a drink?... More.”

“It’ll make you sick, boy. Now lie still ... still ... still ... very ... ve-ry——”

“Say!”

“Sh!”

“No, but say—I want to say something.... Will you write a letter to my captain?”

“Yes, in the morning.”

“No—right now. I want you to send it off right now—before they move out.”

“All right, old man. What do you want to say?”

“Write this:” The voice was clear and smooth now.

“That’s all.”

Still holding the nurse’s hand he appeared to drowse. She breathed a sigh of relief, and gently, very gently, sought to disengage herself. Instantly the grip tightened. And the private’s voice, quiet, utterly rational, sounded out of the dark:

“Say, you know my captain—he was killed. He was standing just a little way in front of me as I came up to give my report, and a shell busted straight in front of us and tore his whole——”

“Sh! Sh!”

“My captain, he was a fine captain.... He—sure was kind—to us—all——”

The voice, weak, dragging, came to a halt, paused, died away. At last the boy slept.

And now the tremulous moaning sigh of the dying man was the only sound in the ward.

“O-o-o! O-o-o! O-o-o!” He was passing fast on his lonely road.

It drew on toward midnight. The moonlight, now at full strength, bathed the tents and the road in a radiant silvery flood. Down behind the wards a grove of somber pines seemed to draw all the darkness of the night into its own heart and leave the surrounding air clear and pale like a halo. One expected to see fairies with lustrous iridescent wings and morning-glory skirts come trooping out from that solemn enchanted wood to dance among the crimson poppies.

On the rear porch of the château the line of waiting stretchers had been moved inside. The stream trickled, man by man, through the X-ray room into the operating theater. There, under a brilliant concentrated light, the surgeons toiled, without ever glancing up, under a tremendous pressure. But they were catching up with the game.

Suddenly, between the moon and the blanched earth, whirled a monstrous black shape. Lower and lower it swooped. And now the air was filled with a terrible vibrating hum. The interrupted drone of twin motors chanted louder and louder. It became an enveloping, stupefying roar. Not continuous, but rhythmical, rising and falling, savage beating waves of sound.

C-r-r—ash! A blinding flash. All creation seemed to go up in the earth-shaking roar of explosion. The air was black with acrid smoke.

C-r-r—ash! Again. A tent, struck squarely, was slit to ribbons. Terror insensate, blind, gripped one by the throat.

“The boches! They’re bombing us! They’re bombing the hospital!”

Screams, groans, horror indescribable. Men with broken arms and legs threw themselves out of their beds, sought refuge underneath. Wounds broke open. A shell-shock patient sprang from his cot with a crazy yell and ran out into the night. Down, down, he rushed, panting, down into the heart of those black pines. Another shell-shock case flew to a heap of army blankets in the corner and burrowed out of sight. He fancied he was in a dugout. An orderly who kept his head found time to bend down and tuck his feet in, saying: “Now they won’t find you, old sport!”

A high shrill scream. Another. The wounded were being hit again. The dark air was filled with death. Pieces of shrapnel hurtled through the air like knives. The tent walls gaped with holes like a sieve. And still that deafening roar of twin motors, which seemed settling right on their heads. An orderly standing in the moon-blanched road scuttled like a rabbit to cover. He flung himself under the wheels of an ambulance. And there his destiny found him. A piece of shrapnel passed through his body. His soul took instant flight.

Up in the operating room the surgeons worked on, their faces the color of chalk. Whang! Whang! Pieces of metal bit into the iron shutters. The windows splintered into a million shards. One flying bit of shell whizzed through the air, less than four feet from Major M—— and lodged in the opposite wall. The orderly fled in blind panic.

“Hi! Go and stand in the corner for a dunce!” commanded the major sternly. Turning to his surgeons he said: “Come on, men. We can’t let our patients suffer!” and faced back to the table. His cheerful sang-froid stiffened the nerve of them all. The orderly crawled out from his corner. The nurse handed round tin hats. Silent, they bent to their tasks.

And still overhead the terrific ear-splitting bourdon, the infernal interrupted drone of a machine swooping down to less than three hundred meters in order to make no mistake! C-r-r—ash! Another blind, earth-rocking roar. It was the third bomb. And again it hit the mark. Luckily it was the recreation tent—and nobody was playing just then! Good-by, phonograph. Good-by, comfortable easy-chairs! Screams from the adjoining tent as the whistling missiles flew.

But by now another blessed racket had set up. Crack! Crack! Crack-crack! The antiaircraft guns began to bellow from a dozen concealed points. Sparks of fire burst in the clear upper air. Would the boche plane drop its fourth bomb? One waited in anguished suspense. And now that infernal vibration began to lift; the savage rhythmical whir sounded less and less fierce, died down, faded away. The French guns had scared the intruder off.

The surgeons straightened backs, which despite themselves had humped beneath the iron hail, drew deep breaths, and smiled at each other with lips that were still a trifle stiff.

“Scared pea green!” admitted one.

“Thought it was going to roost on the rooftop all night.”

“Gee! Some roar!”

Yes, it was over. It had lasted just six minutes! For six eternity-long minutes hell had yawned wide. Then, suddenly as it came, the danger had passed.

Major M—— settled his tin hat firmly on his head and, looking like a mandarin in his long white blouse, started forth to estimate the damage and collect the rewounded for operation. Fortunately one of the large tents which had been struck square amidships was empty. Here twisted beds, gutted mattresses, bits of uniforms and tatters of clothes were pasted over the landscape as if a degenerate monster had been at play. In another ward he discovered the patients down on all fours, just clambering out from under cover.

“What’s all this? What are you doing under those beds?” demanded the major in mock severity.

An Irishman poked out his head from his refuge, but cautiously, like a tortoise emerging from its shell.

“We were blown here, sir!” he explained solemnly.

The burst of laughter that followed this mendacious sally cleared the atmosphere. With the aid of nurses and orderlies the patients were got back to bed; shattered nerves were soothed by sleeping potions; the rewounded victims carried up to the château; one shell-shock case was retrieved from his dugout and the other from the wood; the dead orderly was tenderly borne away; the wounded nurse, struck in the side by flying metal, brought in for operation—and a semblance of peace settled down once more over the hospital.

Up in the operating room, Joe, one of the toughest little toughs that the Bowery ever reared, and one of the gamest sports, was being prepared for the table. He was one of the bomb victims. By a perverse freak of fate a second piece of shrapnel had re-entered his old wound. He had been struck twice in exactly the same spot. And as that spot was a sizable hole in his back, and as he had already acquired pneumonia to boot, Joe was staggering under the envious darts and slings of a very adverse circumstance indeed. He had grim need for all of his toughness now!

“Them blanky dash boches,” commented Joe weakly to the orderly who was stripping him, “they ain’t no slouches when it comes to hittin’ de mark. Look at me now. They had two shells wit’ my name on, and both of ’em found me out. And I ain’t no general, nor yet a colonel—dem big guys is easy to find. What’s more, them two shells pinked me twice in de same spot—a double bull’s-eye. Can youse beat it? If they got a toid shell wit’ my name on it—it’s good night, chicken, wit’ Joe!”

“If they’ve got a third shell with your name on it, kiddo, you call an alibi,” advised the orderly.

“I’m a-callin’ one right now, friend, and don’t you fergit it,” retorted Joe earnestly. “I ain’t takin’ no chances wit’ dem blanky dash boches!”

They lifted him onto the table.

Outside, the moon, high, pale, tranquil, drenched the dark earth with a silvery flood. The somber pines sucking the blackness from the surrounding air still seemed the abode of enchantment. It appeared incredible that a short half hour ago this quiet landscape had witnessed such an atrocious deed. The raid had been an act of wanton, inhuman brutality. In honest, open warfare the Americans were winning at Château-Thierry, and in revenge the Huns had wreaked their rage on helpless wounded men. It was a futile, insane act.

Nor did it achieve its end—to terrorize the enemy. On the contrary, that enemy, with a white flame of wrath burning high in its heart, kept steadfastly on with its appointed work. The surgeons, the nurses, the orderlies, the drivers—redoubled their vigilant care. The ambulances continued to rumble in, a steady stream. From their dark interiors stretchers were lifted gently out and deposited on the grass. Again it was a wave of gassed. Among them moved orderlies and nurses with food and soothing lotions for the burns. When the tents were filled the lighter cases lay out on their blankets under the moon. It was like a vast gypsy encampment. The men leaned on their elbows, drank hot coffee and talked of horrible, grotesque, fantastic and sanguinary things in low, level, dispassionate tones as if they were discussing the weather.

Up there the battle still raged with a ferocious violence unconceived of in far-away safe America. Overhead the sullen German cannon still boomed and boomed and boomed.

And still the Americans advanced—advanced—advanced!

THE END