A Minstrel in France Part 13

And the sight of them made me realize for the first time the truth that lay behind the jest in a story that is one of Tommy's favorites.

A child saw a soldier in heavy marching order. She gazed at him in wide-eyed wonder. He was not her idea of what a soldier should look like.

"Mother," she asked, "what is a soldier for?"

The mother gazed at the man. And then she smiled.

"A soldier," she answered, "is to hang things on."

They eyed me very curiously as they came along, those sick laddies.

They couldn't seem to understand what I was doing there, but their discipline held them. They were in charge of a young lieutenant with one star--a second lieutenant. I learned later that he was a long way from being a well man himself. So I stopped him. "Would your men like to hear a few songs, lieutenant?" I asked him.

He hesitated. He didn't quite understand, and he wasn't a bit sure what his duty was in the circ.u.mstances. He glanced at G.o.dfrey, and G.o.dfrey smiled at him as if in encouragement.

"It's very good of you, I'm sure," he said, slowly. "Fall out!"

So the men fell out, and squatted there, along the wayside. At once discipline was relaxed. Their faces were a study as the wee piano was set up again, and Johnson, in uniform, of course sat down and trued a chord or two. And then suddenly something happened that broke the ice. Just as I stood up to sing a loud voice broke the silence.

"Lor' love us!" one of the men cried, "if it ain't old 'Arry Lauder!"

There was a stir of interest at once. I spotted the owner of the voice. It was a shriveled up little chap, with a weazened face that looked like a sun-dried apple. He was showing all his teeth in a grin at me, and he was a typical little c.o.c.kney of the sort all Londoners know well.

"Go it, 'Arry!" he shouted, shrilly. "Many's the time h' I've 'eard you at the old Sh.o.r.editch!"

So I went it as well as I could, and I never did have a more appreciative audience. My little c.o.c.kney friend seemed to take a particular personal pride in me. I think he thought he had found me, and that he was, in an odd way, responsible for my success with his mates. And so he was especially glad when they cheered me and thanked me as they did.

My concert didn't last long, for we had to be getting on, and the company of sick men had just so much time, too, to reach their destination--Boulogne, whence we had set out. When it was over I said good-by to the men, and shook hands with particular warmth with the little c.o.c.kney. It wasn't every day I was likely to meet a man who had often heard me at the old Sh.o.r.editch! After we had stowed Johnson and the piano away again, with a few less cigarettes, now, to get in Johnson's way, we started, and as long as we were in sight the little c.o.c.kney and I were waving to one another.

I took some of the cigarettes into the car I was in now. And as we sped along we were again in the thick of the great British war machine. Motor trucks and ambulances were more frequent than ever, and it was a common occurrence now to pa.s.s soldiers, marching in both directions--to the front and away from it. There was always some-one to recognize me and start a volley of "h.e.l.lo, Harrys" coming my way, and I answered every greeting, you may be sure, and threw cigarettes to go with my "h.e.l.los."

Aye, I was glad I had brought the cigarettes! They seemed to be even more welcome than I had hoped they would be, and I only wondered how long the supply would hold out, and if I would be able to get more if it did not. So Johnson, little by little, was getting more room, as I called for more and more of the cigarettes that walled him in in his tonneau.

About noon, as we drove through a little town, I saw, for the first time, a whole flock of airplanes riding the sky. They were swooping about like lazy hawks, and a bonnie sight they were. I drew a long breath when I saw them, and turned to my friend Adam.

"Well," I said, "I think we're coming to it, now!"

I meant the front--the real, British front.

Suddenly, at a sharp order from Captain G.o.dfrey, our cars stopped. He turned around to us, and grinned, very cheerfully.

"Gentlemen," he said, very calmly, "we'll stop here long enough to put on our steel helmets."

He said it just as he might have said: "Well, here's where we will stop for tea."

It meant no more than that to him. But for me it meant many things.

It meant that at last I was really to be under fire; that I was going into danger. I was not really frightened yet; you have to see danger, and know just what it is, and appreciate exactly its character, before you can be frightened. But I had imagination enough to know what that order meant, and to have a queer feeling as I donned the steel helmet. It was less uncomfortable than I had expected it to be--lighter, and easier to wear. The British trench helmets are beautifully made, now; as in every other phase of the war and its work they represent a constant study for improvement, lightening.

But, even had it not been for the warning that was implied in Captain G.o.dfrey's order, I should soon have understood that we had come into a new region. For a long time now the noise of the guns had been different. Instead of being like distant thunder it was a much nearer and louder sound. It was a steady, throbbing roar now.

And, at intervals, there came a different sound; a sound more individual, that stood out from the steady roar. It was as if the air were being cracked apart by the blow of some giant hammer. I knew what it was. Aye, I knew. You need no man to tell you what it is--the explosion of a great sh.e.l.l not so far from you!

Nor was it our ears alone that told us what was going on. Ever and anon, now, ahead of us, as we looked at the fields, we saw a cloud of dirt rise up. That was where a sh.e.l.l struck. And in the fields about us, now, we could see holes, full of water, as a rule, and mounds of dirt that did not look as if shovels and picks had raised them.

It surprised me to see that the peasants were still at work. I spoke to G.o.dfrey about that.

"The French peasants don't seem to know what it is to be afraid of sh.e.l.l-fire," he said. "They go only when we make them. It is the same on the French front. They will cling to a farmhouse in the zone of fire until they are ordered out, no matter how heavily it may be sh.e.l.led. They are splendid folk! The Germans can never beat a race that has such folk as that behind its battle line."

I could well believe him. I have seen no sight along the whole front more quietly impressive than the calm, impa.s.sive courage of those French peasants. They know they are right! It is no Kaiser, no war lord, who gives them courage. It is the knowledge and the consciousness that they are suffering in a holy cause, and that, in the end, the right and the truth must prevail. Their own fate, whatever may befall them, does not matter. France must go on and shall, and they do their humble part to see that she does and shall.

Solemn thoughts moved me as we drove on. Here there had been real war and fighting. Now I saw a country blasted by sh.e.l.l-fire and wrecked by the contention of great armies. And I knew that I was coming to soil watered by British blood; to rows of British graves; to soil that shall be forever sacred to the memory of the Britons, from Britain and from over the seas, who died and fought upon it to redeem it from the Hun.

I had no mind to talk, to ask questions. For the time I was content to be with my own thoughts, that were evoked by the historic ground through which we pa.s.sed. My heart was heavy with grief and with the memories of my boy that came flooding it, but it was lightened, too, by other thoughts.

And always, as we sped on, there was the thunder of the guns. Always there were the bursting sh.e.l.ls, and the old bent peasants paying no heed to them. Always there were the circling airplanes, far above us, like hawks against the deep blue of the sky. And always we came nearer and nearer to Vimy Ridge--that deathless name in the history of Britain.

CHAPTER XV

Now Captain G.o.dfrey leaned back and smiled at us.

"There's Vimy Ridge," he said. And he pointed.

"Yon?" I asked, in astonishment.

I was almost disappointed. We had heard so much, in Britain and in Scotland, of Vimy Ridge. The name of that famous hill had been written imperishably in history. But to look at it first, to see it as I saw it, it was no hill at all! My eyes were used to the mountains of my ain Scotland, and this great ridge was but a tiny thing beside them. But then I began to picture the scene as it had been the day the Canadians stormed it and won for themselves the glory of all the ages. I pictured it blotted from sight by the h.e.l.l of sh.e.l.ls bursting over it, and raking its slopes as the Canadians charged upward. I pictured it crowned by defenses and lined by such of the Huns as had survived the artillery battering, spitting death and destruction from their machine guns. And then I saw it as I should, and I breathed deep at the thought of the men who had faced death and h.e.l.l to win that height and plant the flag of Britain upon it. Aye, and the Stars and Stripes of America, too!

Ye ken that tale? There was an American who had enlisted, like so many of his fellow countrymen before America was in the war, in the Canadian forces. The British army was full of men who had told a white lie to don the King's uniform. Men there are in the British army who winked as they enlisted and were told: "You'll be a Canadian?"

"Aye, aye, I'm a Canadian," they'd say. "From what province?"

"The province of Kentucky--or New York--or California!"

Well, there was a lad, one of them, was in the first wave at Vimy Ridge that April day in 1917. 'Twas but a few days before that a wave of the wildest cheering ever heard had run along the whole Western front, so that Fritz in his trenches wondered what was up the noo.

Well, he has learned, since then! He has learned, despite his Kaiser and his officers, and his lying newspapers, that that cheer went up when the news came that America had declared war upon Germany. And so, it was a few days after that cheer was heard that the Canadians leaped over the top and went for Vimy Ridge, and this young fellow from America had a wee silken flag. He spoke to his officer.

"Now that my own country's in the war, sir," he said, "I'd like to carry her flag with me when we go over the top. Wrapped around me, sir--"

"Go it!" said the officer.

And so he did. And he was one of those who won through and reached the top. There he was wounded, but he had carried the Stars and Stripes with him to the crest.

Vimy Ridge! I could see it. And above it, and beyond it, now, for the front had been carried on, far beyond, within what used to be the lines of the Hun, the airplanes circled. Very quiet and lazy they seemed, for all I knew of their endless activity and the precious work that they were doing. I could see how the Huns were sh.e.l.ling them. You would see an airplane hovering, and then, close by, suddenly, a ball of cottony white smoke. Shrapnel that was, bursting, as Fritz tried to get the range with an anti-aircraft gun--an Archie, as the Tommies call them. But the plane would pay no heed, except, maybe, to dip a bit or climb a little higher to make it harder for the Hun. It made me think of a man shrugging his shoulders, calmly and imperturbably, in the face of some great peril, and I wanted to cheer. I had some wild idea that maybe he would hear me, and know that someone saw him, and appreciated what he was doing--someone to whom it was not an old story! But then I smiled at my own thought.

Now it was time for us to leave the cars and get some exercise. Our steel helmets were on, and glad we were of them, for shrapnel was bursting nearby sometimes, although most of the sh.e.l.ls were big fellows, that buried themselves in the ground and then exploded.

Fritz wasn't doing much casual sh.e.l.ling the noo, though. He was saving his fire until his observers gave him a real target to aim at.

But that was no so often, for our airplanes were in command of the air then, and his flyers got precious little chance to guide his shooting. Most of his. .h.i.ts were due to luck.

"Spread out a bit as you go along here," said Captain G.o.dfrey. "If a crump lands close by there's no need of all of us going! If we're spread out a bit, you see, a sh.e.l.l might get one and leave the rest of us."