The Fight for the Argonne Part 5

I could appreciate the importance of the bombing planes, for I had once been privileged to help load one of the monster Handley-Page British bombing planes. It weighed seven tons, including its load of sixteen 100-pound bombs, and was manned by two pilots and a machine gunner.

I am conscious even yet of the thrills that p.r.i.c.ked my spine, as this monster with nineteen companions spurned the earth in a mad, rushing leap out into s.p.a.ce and sailed away into the night to let the inhabitants of German towns know that "frightfulness" was a game at which two could play.

The Liberty motors were highly praised by our pilots, and I am ready to add my testimony to the steadiness and reliability of the "ship"

which was under so much discussion and investigation over here.

On October 10, with Lieutenant Wilson, of the 163rd Aero Squadron, in a two-seated Liberty I took a "jump" over the Meuse Valley. As we b.u.mped over the ground in our first sudden dash, and then birdlike rose quickly into the air, my sensations were not the hair-raising variety so often described by the thrilled amateur. When we "banked"

however, on a sharp turn, I had my first real sensation--I quickly braced myself lest I fall overboard. At thirty-five hundred feet the fields looked like green-and-brown patches, the forests like low bushes, and the railroads, highways, and rivers like tracer lines across the face of a map.

From that alt.i.tude the earth was beautiful. The enchantment of distance had blotted out the rubbish heaps. The yellow waters of the turbid streams glistened in the sun and the very mud itself, which the day before had prevented my flight, was now but a smooth, golden surface.

"A PUBLIC HANGING IN WAR TIME"

On July 12 it was rumored that a soldier had been sentenced to be hung the next day at ten o'clock for an unspeakable crime. The gallows was already built on the edge of the camp at Bazoilles. I saw it on my afternoon trip and knew that the report was true. Being interested in the psychology of such a scene on the men present, I put aside my inward rebellion at so gruesome a sight and arranged my trip so as to be present. I reached the camp at nine forty-five and was the last man admitted. The gallows was built in the center of the semicircle facing two hills which came abruptly together, leaving a large gra.s.s plot at their base. This formed a natural amphitheater. About two thousand soldiers, both white and colored, were seated on the gra.s.s inside a rope inclosure. A company of soldiers from another camp had been marched in to act as guards, and they formed a complete circle standing just outside the ropes and extending down to the gallows on either side.

Many French civilians and visiting soldiers lined the edges or looked down from points of vantage on the hillside. I stood on one side about one hundred feet from the "trap." At nine fifty a Red Cross ambulance drove up, and the prisoner, his hands bound behind him, alighted, and accompanied by a guard and the officials, walked up a dozen wooden steps to the platform. He was escorted to the front of the platform, and in a clear, strong voice spoke to the almost breathless crowd. He acknowledged with sorrow his crime, and urged upon all the necessity of being true to G.o.d and their country. He stepped back on the "trap,"

the black cap was drawn over his head, the noose placed about his neck, the "trap" sprung, and with a sickening thud he dropped to his doom. For twenty minutes, from nine fifty to ten ten, his body hung there before he was p.r.o.nounced by the attending surgeon officially dead.

I never witnessed a twenty minutes of such deathly silence. Two guards fainted, and the effect on the crowd was indescribable. I overheard a colored fellow say, "I never want to do anything bad again as long as I live."

The body was immediately cut down, placed in a coffin, and taken in the ambulance to its burial. It was a silent, thoughtful company that went out from that tragic scene.

"THE AMERICAN DEAD"

"Will we be able to locate the body of our boy?"

So often has this question been asked me that I must take a moment to answer it.

I watched two American military burial plots grow from the first lone grave to small cities of our n.o.ble dead. One was at Bazoilles, half way between Chaumont and Toul. The other was at Baccarat near the Alsatian border. Each grave was marked with a little wooden cross bearing the name and rank of the soldier, and beside each cross an American flag.

Many were buried in French cemeteries. At Neufchateau a section was set aside for the use of our American army. When I visited it there were about one hundred new-made graves all plainly marked, and fresh flowers on each grave.

Of course most of the French cemeteries were Catholic, and Protestant bodies could not be granted burial within the walls. A touching story is told of an American Protestant soldier buried close outside the wall of a Catholic graveyard. During the night French civilians tore down the wall at that place and rebuilt it around their comrade of a different faith. It was a beautiful symbol of the new dawn of peace when all nations and all creeds shall recognize the common brotherhood of all G.o.d's children.

FRANCE A GREAT Sc.r.a.p HEAP

Now that the war is over, France is a vast junk heap of arms and equipment that cost a mint of money and the brains and lives of millions of men.

For generations to come the soil of France will be disclosing to the peasants who till her fields, the fragments of war's destructive power and the bones of heroes who bled and died.

On the battlefields I saw innumerable quant.i.ties of equipment, together with guns and ammunition, which had cost millions to produce but were valueless in so far as their future use was concerned. I saw the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Garden in Paris packed with one thousand captured German guns and more than a score of Boche planes and observation balloons. On one great pile were three thousand Boche helmets, carefully wired together and closely guarded so that souvenir hunters could not slip them away. It seemed a terrible price to pay for object lessons for the great celebrations commemorating the overthrow of autocracy. But having paid the price it was right to use the trophies.

As the boys went into battle they left behind them great salvage piles of things they would not need in the fight. As they came out of the battle they left great piles of salvage which they fervently hoped the world would never need to use again.

With the world's war bills mounting into the billions, and the value of the salvage piles an almost negligible amount, the material waste of war is appalling. If it will teach the nations to be as generous toward the great reconstruction program as they were toward the overthrow of that autocracy which threatened the world's freedom, then the waste of war has not been in vain.

At Bar le Duc I saw great warehouses under management of the French government stacked to the roof with auto tires and tubes. I had driven with our Division Y.M.C.A. chief, Dr. Norton, from Neufchateau to exchange an auto load of tires which our half dozen cars had worn out, for an equal number of new tires. And I knew that these great piles formed but a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of rubber shoes needed for the vehicles of war.

I visited the great Renault automobile plant at Nancy, which the French government had taken over for a repair station. Literally thousands of army trucks and official cars were pa.s.sing through this station in a constant stream, either to be quickly repaired or thrown into the junk heap. Our own case was typical. Our Renault truck had broken down at Luneville, twenty miles from Nancy. No local man could make the repairs. Through our American army headquarters at Nancy we applied to this French repair station. At eight o'clock next morning I was on hand to pilot a heavy wrecking truck to our car. A towing hawser was attached; their second pilot took charge of our truck, load and all; and before noon we were safely landed at the repair station.

A hasty examination by a Renault expert revealed the fact that ten days or more would be required to make the necessary repairs. A day or two was the longest time they could allow any car to remain. So after searching in vain for another garage that would undertake the repairs, we towed the truck to our Y.M.C.A. garage and stored it, that it might be salvaged at some future time.

France is full of broken-down trucks, touring cars, and ambulances; of worn out engines and the rolling stock of her railways. From the English Channel to the Persian Gulf her battlefields are littered with bra.s.s and iron and wood and steel. Besides these there are the great piles of garments of wool and rubber and leather, and the wasting stores of army blankets and cots and surgical supplies.

Into the larger salvage piles will go the mult.i.tude of tents and temporary wooden barracks for the housing of the fighters from all nations, who for four dreadful years held that "far-flung battle line."

A part of this larger salvage pile will be the temporary hospitals. In less than a year America alone built and equipped hospitals which were capable of accommodating a million wounded.

Then from the battle-line to the Atlantic coast we must think of the vast supply stations and warehouses, the great engineering plants and repair shops. America not only built in France the greatest ice plant in the world but she made _every_ preparation on a gigantic scale.

When she entered the war she went in to win, even if it would take ten million of her men to finish the job. Had she done less, the final chapter would not yet have been written, and a different story might needs have been told.

HOSPITAL BARRACKS

Day by day I watched the magic growth of the wooden hospital barracks at Rimacourt with accommodations for fifteen thousand men, and was interested in the engineering feat by which an abundance of fresh water was pumped from drilled wells in an old chateau to a great reservoir on the mountain side, and piped from there to every building and ward.

I watched the same process at Bazoilles as, nestled in the wonderful Meuse valley, that great hospital grew from a single base (the Johns Hopkins Unit) until it included seven bases and was able to care for thirty-five thousand wounded.

I spent one night there ministering to the wounded as they were unloaded from the great American Red Cross train. I watched the process with pride and amazement. So well organized was the army Red Cross that when a train was announced the ambulances loaded with stretcher bearers were rushed to the unloading platform. In seven minutes three hundred helpless men were gently taken from their comfortable berths in the train and carried on stretchers to the platform from which the ambulances speedily bore them to the waiting wards.

During the night of which I speak five trainloads of ga.s.sed men from the Chateau-Thierry fight were thus unloaded at Bazoilles.

CHAPTER VII

MORAL FLASHES

This chapter is plainly labeled so that anyone who chooses may escape it.

A preacher without a preachment is a paradox. We do not fear the paradox, much less the criticism of the over-religious. But we frankly believe that the solution of the moral and spiritual problems of the soldier, as the army attempted to solve them, gives a hint to the churches which dare not be ignored.

The soldier was more truly religious "over there" than he was before he "fared forth" on his great adventure. And the reason was not merely in the fact that fear of death drives men nearer to G.o.d. That reason has been present in every war. The history of all wars proves that war engenders such hatred, recklessness, and immorality that fighters have come out of the conflict more G.o.dless than when they entered. The veterans of our own Civil War bear abundant testimony to the debauchery of youth during the four long years of that struggle.

What is the story of the morality of the American army during the struggle just ended? Already statistics have been compiled showing that the percentage of disease resulting from immorality was so small in comparison with the percentage even in civil life as to be almost negligible. If we could compare the army life of the present with the army life of the past, I am confident the contrast would be even more startling.

Our army was a clean army--an army whose actions and modes of life squared with the highest standards of moral and religious teachings.

That there were notable exceptions no one will deny.

Why were our soldiers in this bitter world conflict better and stronger than the soldiers of previous wars? The answer I want you to think about (there are other answers) is that the army and navy officers, from President Wilson down, planned wisely and sanely to meet the physical, mental, and moral needs of our boys both at home and over seas. And the results achieved proved the wisdom of the endeavor. _Had the plans been less comprehensive the results would certainly have been far less gratifying._

My own experiences cause me to draw the same conclusions that many others have drawn. "Over there" man stood out before his Maker, his very soul uncovered, and prayed with a frankness he had never expressed before. And G.o.d revealed himself. We may not understand the psychology, nevertheless one soldier saw, or thought he saw, Christ in a sh.e.l.l-hole stretching out his hands in forgiveness and blessing.

Another saw G.o.d the Father giving absolution as his straining eyes caught a glimpse of the crucifix. Another felt "The Presence" as the inward quietness which follows action crept over him. Whatever the form, the effect was the same. Men met G.o.d face to face and lived.