Part 5 (1/2)
In monotone the steel rails seemed to plaintively reply,
”Art is long and Time is fleeting, And your hearts though stout and brave, Still, like m.u.f.fled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.”
Our afternoon hours were given something of a thrill in watching the evolutions of a half dozen planes, skirmish escort men of the air, flying high and wide covering our movements. We were now on the division of road operated by our own gallant 13th Engineers, of which my friend, Sergeant McDowell of Blue Island, was Locomotive Inspector.
Night fell; and the long troop trains like monstrous serpents creeping on their prey crawled steadily, silently forward into the abysmally black unknown. Slower and more uncertain they moved, feeling their way; and at midnight came to a final stop at the near approaches to No Man's Land. Quickly we detrained and took cover in a near-by forest; the empty cars trailed off rapidly to the south; and dawn found neither a car nor a soldier in sight. All that day we remained hidden in the shadowy solitudes of Bois l'Evque on the banks of the Moselle.
Beautiful was this softly flowing river, mirroring azure skies and radiant in the colorful glow of early autumn. How hard to realize that death lurked in the quietude of its borders; that Man had chosen this bosom of shade, tuneful with the voice of sweetly calling birds, as a fitting shambles to slay his fellow men!
If day for the soldier was for rest, night was for the march; and a new dawn found us in the sheltering woods of Gonderville on the Toul-Nancy highway.
Turquoise, palest violet, tender green and gold, the country lay before us. Then, even as we watched from covert, our ears made acquaintance with a new and ominous sound. From an infinite distance the morning breeze from the north carried with it a deadened thumping sound, now regular as the m.u.f.fled rolling of drums, now softly irregular with intervals of stillness. It was the dominating monotone of cannonading.
No need to tell the boys what it meant!
”Guess we're in time for the big show all right,” Buddie quietly remarked; and from that moment an expression overspread his countenance and a note crept into his voice I had not noticed there before. It was not one of nervousness, but of seriousness; a clearer vision and apprehension of big manly things henceforth to be done.
”When I was a boy I lived as a boy; but when I became a man I put away the things of boyhood and acted the part of a man.”
_Boys_ went _into_ the trenches, but _men_ came _out_ of them!
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR DUGOUTS AFFORDED SHELTER AND HABITATION.]
CHAPTER VI
PUVINELLE SECTOR--BOIS LE PRETRE--VIEVILLE EN HAYE
Gallant Pers.h.i.+ng was even then maneuvering his masterly all-American offensive in the San Michel. Our Seventh Division, with the 28th on the left and the 92d on the right, now reached the high full tide of martial responsibility; merging from the reserve into the attack; and taking its place with the Immortal Combat Divisions of proud Old Glory.
The front line sector, which that night we took over, extended in a general westerly direction from north of Pont a Musson on the Moselle river to Vigneulles--a distance of ten kilometers.
Approximate positions found the 55th Infantry at Thiacourt, the 64th at Vieville, the 37th at Fay-en-Haye, and the 56th at Vilcey-sur-Trey, with Machine Gun Battalions distributed equally among them. During September, Division Headquarters was at Villers-en-Haye; moving forward in echelon to Noviant and Euvezin October 24th.
Although Villers-en-Haye was mostly in ruins, the Sacristy of the village church was in good shape, and this I at once occupied. On the preceding Sunday, good Father Harmon of Chicago had said Ma.s.s in this church, as a note, fastened to its front door, announced.
Thoroughly tired, I spread my blanket on the floor and fell quickly to sleep. I dreamed I was tied to a railroad track with a train rus.h.i.+ng towards me. With a start I awoke, just as a siren voiced sh.e.l.l came screaming across the fields, bursting at the foot of the hill on which the church stood.
The gas alarm was at once sounded and every trooper sought refuge in the dugouts. It was then half-past eight. At four-minute intervals and with the most deadly regularity these sh.e.l.ls came at us for four nerve-racking hours.
Boom! You could hear it leave the eight-inch howitzer six miles away, then in a high tenor pitch, it rushed toward you with a crescendo of sound, moaning, wailing, screaming, hissing, bursting with frightful intensity apparently in the center of your brain. Falling here, there, and everywhere in the ruins and environs of the village, mustard gas, flying steel and mortar, levied cruel toll on six boys, whose mangled bodies I laid away the following afternoon at Griscourt under the hill.
One of these, I now recall, was Corporal Donald Bryan of the 7th Engineers, a most handsome and talented young man who, before the war, had won fame in the field of movie drama.
”Where were you last night?” inquired gallant Colonel c.u.mmings of Missouri, our Machine Gun Regimental Commander.
”In the sacristy,” I replied.
”The worst possible place for you!” he exclaimed; ”you would find it far safer in a dugout.”
I preferred the sacristy, however, for its convenience to the altar, where I could say daily Ma.s.s, and so won my point.