And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 14

No Roman conqueror at the head of his invading legions ever rode through that triumphal arch with greater pride than rode our little captain at the head of his battery. Our little captain was in stature the smallest man in our battery, but he compensated for that by riding the tallest horse in the battery.

He carried his head at a jaunty angle. He wore his helmet at a nifty tilt, with the chin strap riding between his underlip and his dimpled, upheld chin. He carried his shoulders back, and his chest out. The reins hung gracefully in his left hand, and he had a.s.sumed a rather moving-picture pose of the right fist on his right hip. Behind him flew the red guidon, its stirruped staff held stiffly at the right arm's length by the battery standard bearer.

Both of them smiled--expansive smiles of pride--into the clicking lens of my camera. I forgave our little captain for his smile of pride. I knew that six weeks before that very day our little captain had fitted into the scheme of civilian life as a machinery salesman from Indiana.

And there that day, he rode at the head of his two hundred and fifty fighting men and horses, at the head of his guns, rolling down that road in France on the way to the front.

In back of him and towering upward, was that historic rock that had known the tread and pa.s.sage of countless martial footsteps down through the centuries. Behind him, the gun carriages rattled through the frowning portal. Oh, if the folks back on the Wabash could have seen him then!

We wound through the crooked narrow streets of Besancon, our steel-tired wheels bounding and banging over the cobblestones. Townsfolk waved to us from windows and doorways. Old women in the market square abandoned their baskets of beet roots and beans to flutter green stained ap.r.o.ns in our direction. Our column was flanked by clattering phalanxes of wooden-shoed street gamins, who must have known more about our movements than we did, because they all shouted, "Gude-bye."

Six weeks' familiarity between these same artillerymen on town leave and these same urchins had temporised the blind admiration that caused them first to greet our men solely with shouts of "_Vive les Americains_."

Now that they knew us better, they alternated the old greeting with shouts of that all-meaning and also meaningless French expression, "Oo la la."

Our way led over the stone, spanned bridge that crossed the sluggish river through the town, and on to the hilly outskirts where mounted French guides met and directed us to the railroad loading platform.

The platform was a busy place. The regimental supply company which was preceding us over the road was engaged in forcibly persuading the last of its mules to enter the toy freight cars which bore on the side the printed legend, "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8."

Several arclights and one or two acetylene flares illuminated the scene.

It was raining fitfully, but not enough to dampen the spirits of the Y.

M. C. A. workers who wrestled with canvas tarpaulins and foraged materials to construct a make-shift shelter for a free coffee and sandwich counter.

Their stoves were burning brightly and the hurriedly erected stove pipes, leaning wearily against the stone wall enclosing the quay, topped the wall like a miniature of the sky line of Pittsburgh. The boiling coffee pots gave off a delicious steam. In the language of our battery, the "Whime say" delivered the goods.

During it all the mules brayed and the supply company men swore. Most humans, cognizant of the principles of safety first, are respectful of the rear quarters of a mule. We watched one disrespecter of these principles invite what might have been called "mulecide" with utter contempt for the consequences. He deliberately stood in the dangerous immediate rear of one particularly onery mule, and kicked the mule.

His name was "Missouri Slim," as he took pains to inform the object of his caress. He further announced to all present, men and mules, that he had been brought up with mules from babyhood and knew mules from the tips of their long ears to the ends of their hard tails.

The obdurate animal in question had refused to enter the door of the car that had been indicated as his Pullman. "Missouri Slim" called three other ex-natives of Champ Clark's state to his a.s.sistance. They fearlessly put a shoulder under each of the mule's quarters. Then they grunted a unanimous "heave," and lifted the struggling animal off its feet. As a perfect matter of course, they walked right into the car with him with no more trouble than if he had been an extra large bale of hay.

"Wonderful mule handling in this here army," remarked a quiet, mild-mannered man in uniform, beside whom I happened to be standing. He spoke with a slow, almost sleepy, drawl. He was the new veterinarian of the supply company, and there were a number of things that were new to him, as his story revealed. He was the first homesick horse doctor I ever met.

"I come from a small town out in Iowa," he told me. "I went to a veterinary college and had a nice little practice,--sorter kept myself so busy that I never got much of a chance to think about this here war.

But one day, about two months ago, I got a letter from the War Department down in Washington.

"They said the hoss doctor college had given them my name as one of the graduates and the letter said that the War Department was making out a list of hoss doctors. The letter asked me to fill out the blank and send it to Washington.

"'Joe,' my wife says to me, 'this here is an honour that the country is paying to you. The Government just wants the names of the patriotic professional citizens of the country.' So we filled out the blank and mailed it and forgot all about it.

"Well, about two weeks later, I got a letter from Washington telling me to go at once to Douglas, Arizona. It sorter scared the wife and me at first because neither of us had ever been out of Iowa, but I told her that I was sure it wasn't anything serious--I thought that Uncle Sam just had some sick hosses down there and wanted me to go down and look them over.

"Well, the wife put another shirt and a collar and an extra pair of socks in my hand satchel along with my instruments and I kissed her and the little boy good-bye and told them that I would hurry up and prescribe for the Government hosses and be back in about five days.

"Two days later I landed in Douglas, and a major shoved me into a uniform and told me I was commissioned as a hoss doctor lieutenant. That afternoon I was put on a train with a battery and we were on our way east. Six days later we were on the ocean. We landed somewhere in France and moved way out here.

"My wife was expecting me back in five days and here it is I've been away two months and I haven't had a letter from her and now we're moving up to the front. It seems to me like I've been away from Iowa for ten years, and I guess I am a little homesick, but it sure is a comfort to travel with an outfit that knows how to handle mules like this one does."

The supply company completed loading, and the homesick horse doctor boarded the last car as the train moved down the track. Our battery took possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the animals into the box cars.

Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking on the part of the men as well as the animals.

I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses.

The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men.

I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the group,--backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.

I went to his a.s.sistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I washed his two scalp wounds with water from a canteen and applied first aid bandages.

"Just my luck," I heard my patient mumbling as I swathed his head in white strips and imparted to him the appearance of a first-cla.s.s front line casualty.

"You're lucky," I told him truthfully. "Not many men get kicked in the head by a horse and escape without a fractured skull."

"That isn't it," he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet--that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off my head."

By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train examining the halter straps in the horse cars and a.s.suring himself of the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what developed to be a wild night ride.

The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a horse and a man, if placed out in any large open s.p.a.ce, are capable of getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them figuratively on the neck and tell them to lie down together and sleep through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases.

The described condition does not encompa.s.s the best understood relation of the two as travelling companions.

On our military trains in France, the reservations of s.p.a.ce for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining s.p.a.ce. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central s.p.a.ce between the two side doors. The central s.p.a.ce is reserved for the four two-footed animals.

Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central s.p.a.ce. If the movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the central s.p.a.ce. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the floor of the central s.p.a.ce is a lively existence, while "riding the rattlers with a horse outfit."

Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting with four artillerymen in the central s.p.a.ce between the side doors which had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by roping it off.

On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new fits of excitement.

We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.

"Yeah," observed Shoemaker, driver of the "wheelers" on No. 4 piece, "Yeah, but there ain't no mast to climb up on and get out of the way on in this here boxcar."

"I'd rather take my chances with a cannon any day," said 'Beady' Watson, gunner. "A cannon will stay put when you fix it. There's our piece out on the flat car and she's all lashed and blocked. It would take a wreck to budge her off that flat. I wish the B. C. had let me ride with the old gun out there. It would be a little colder but a lot healthier. Try to go to sleep in here and you'll wake up with a horse sitting on you."

"Where do you suppose we are going anyway?" asked Slater, fuse cutter in the same section. "I'm strong for travel, but I always like to read the program before we start to ramble. For all we know we might be on our way to Switzerland or Italy or Spain or Egypt or somewhere."

"Why don't you go up and ask the Captain?" suggested Boyle, corporal in charge of the car. "Maybe the Colonel gave him a special message to deliver to you about our dusty-nation. You needn't worry though. They ain't going to bowl us out of France for some time yet."

"Well, if we're just joy-riding around France," replied Slater, "I hope we stop over to feed the horses at Monte Carlo. I've heard a lot about that joint. They say that they run the biggest c.r.a.p game in the world there, and the police lay off the place because the Governor of the State or the King or something, banks the game. They tell me he uses straight bones and I figure a man could clean up big if he hit the game on a payday."

"Listen, kid, you've got this tip wrong," said Shoemaker. "If there's anything happens to start a riot among these horses, you are going to find that you're gambling with death. And if we ever get off this train, I think we have a date with Kaiser Bill."

"I've got a cousin somewhere in the German army. He spells his 'Shoemaker' with a 'u.' My dad told me that my grandfather and this cousin's grandfather had a business disagreement over a sauerkraut factory some time before the Civil War and my grandfather left Germany.

Since then, there ain't been no love lost between the branches of the family, but we did hear that Cousin Hans had left the sauerkraut business and was packing a howitzer for the Kaiser."

"Well, I hope we come across him for your sake," said Watson. "It's kinda tough luck to get cheated out of a big business like that, but then you must remember that if your cousin's grandfather hadn't pulled the dirty on your grandfather, your grandfather might never have gone to America and most likely you'd still be a German."

"I guess there's some sense in that, too," replied Shoemaker; "wouldn't that been h.e.l.l if I'd been on the other side in this war? But anyhow, I do hope we run into Cousin Hans somewhere."

The horses had been comparatively quiet for some time, but now they seemed to be growing restless. They p.r.i.c.ked their ears and we knew something was bothering them. The discussion stopped so that we could listen better.

Above the rattle of the train, there came to us the sound of firing. It seemed to come from the direction in which we were going. With surprising quickness, the explosions grew louder. We were not only speeding toward the sounds of conflict, but the conflict itself seemed to be speeding toward us.