The Flag Part 27

It was in the s.p.a.cious grounds of an old French chateau not far from Beauvais on the river Andelle that Pen's battalion camped for their period of rest and recuperation. There were long, sunshiny days, nights of undisturbed and refreshing sleep, recreation and entertainment sufficient to divert tired brains, and a freedom from undue restraint that was most welcome. Moreover there were letters and parcels from home, with plenty of time to read them and to re-read them, to dwell upon them and to enjoy them. If the loved ones back in the quiet cities and villages and countryside could only realize how much letters and parcels from home mean to the tired bodies and strained nerves of the war-worn boys at the front, there would never be a lack of these comforts and enjoyments that go farther than anything else to brighten the lives and hearten the spirits of the soldier-heroes in the trenches and the camps.

Pen had his full share of these pleasures. His mother, his Aunt Millicent, Colonel Butler, and even Grandpa Walker from Cobb's Corners, kept him supplied with news, admonition, encouragement and affection. And these little waves of love and commendation, rolling up to him at irregular intervals, were like sweet and fragrant draughts of life-giving air to one who for months had breathed only the smoke of battle and the foulness of the trenches.

At the end of August, orders came for the battalion to return to the front. There were two days of bustling preparation, and then the troops entrained and were carried back to where the noise of the seventy-fives on the one side and the seventy-sevens on the other, came rumbling and thundering again to their ears, and the pall of smoke along the horizon marked the location of the firing line.

But their destination this time was farther to the south, on the British right wing, where French and English soldiers touched elbows with each other, and Canadian and Australian fraternized in a common enterprise. Here again the old trench life was resumed; sentinel duty, daring adventures, wild charges, the shock and din of constant battle, brief periods of rest and recuperation. But the process of attrition was going on, the enemy was being pushed back, inch by inch it seemed, but always, eventually, back. As for Pen, he led a charmed life. Men fell to right of him and to left of him, and were torn into shreds at his back; but, save for superficial wounds, for temporary strangulation from gas, for momentary insensibility from shock, he was unharmed.

It was in October, after Lieutenant Davis had been promoted to the captaincy, that Pen was made second lieutenant of his company. He well deserved the honor. There was a little celebration of the event among his men, for his comrades all loved him and honored him. They said it would not be long before he would be wearing the Victoria Cross on his breast. Yet few of them had been with him from the beginning. Of those who had landed with him upon French soil the preceding May only a pitifully small percentage remained. Killed, wounded, missing, one by one and in groups, they had dropped out, and the depleted ranks had been filled with new blood.

In November they were sent up into the Arras sector, but in December they were back again in their old quarters on the Somme. And yet it was not their old quarters, for the British front had been advanced over a wide area, for many miles in length, and imperturbable Tommies were now smoking their pipes in many a reversed trench that had theretofore been occupied by gray-clad Boches. But they were not pleasant trenches to occupy. They were very narrow and very muddy, and parts of the bodies of dead men protruded here and there from their walls and parapets. Moreover, in December it is very cold in northern France, and, m.u.f.fle as they would, even the boys from Canada suffered from the severity of the weather. They asked only to be permitted to keep their blood warm by aggressive action against their enemy. And, just before the Christmas holidays, the aggressive action they had longed for came.

It was no great battle, no important historic event, just an incident in the policy of attrition which was constantly wearing away the German lines. An attempt was to be made to drive a wedge into the enemy's front at a certain vital point, and, in order to cover the real thrust, several feints were to be made at other places not far away. One of these latter expeditions had been intrusted to a part of Pen's battalion. At six o'clock in the afternoon the British artillery was to bombard the first line of enemy trenches for an hour and a half. Then the artillery fire was to lift to the second line, and the Canadian troops were to rush the first line with the bayonet, carry it, and when the artillery fire lifted to the third line they were to pa.s.s on to the second hostile trench and take and hold that for a sufficient length of time to divert the enemy from the point of real attack, and then they were to withdraw to their own lines. Permanent occupation of the captured trenches at the point seemed inadvisable at this time, if not wholly impossible.

It was not a welcome task that had been a.s.signed to these troops.

Soldiers like to hold the ground they have won in any fight; and to retire after partial victory was not to their liking. But it was part of the game and they were content. So far as his section was concerned Pen a.s.sembled his men, explained the situation to them, and told them frankly what they were expected to do.

"It's going to be a very pretty fight," he added, "probably the hardest tussle we've had yet. The Boches are well dug in over there, and they're well backed with artillery, and they're not going to give up those trenches without a protest. Some of us will not come back; and some of us who do come back will never fight again. You know that.

But, whatever happens, Canada and the States will have no reason to blush for us. We're fighting in a splendid cause, and we'll do our part like the soldiers we are."

"Aye! that we will!" "Right you are!" "Give us the chance!" "Wherever you lead, we follow!"

It seemed as though every man in the section gave voice to his willingness and enthusiasm.

"Good!" exclaimed Pen. "I knew you'd feel that way about it. I've never asked a man of you to go where I wouldn't go myself, and I never shall. I simply wanted to warn you that it's going to be a hot place over there to-night, and you must be prepared for it."

"We're ready! All you've got to do is to say the word."

No undue familiarity was intended; respect for their commander was in no degree lessened, but they loved him and would have followed him anywhere, and they wanted him to know it.

The unusual activity in the Allied trenches, observed by enemy aircraft, combined with the terrific cannonading of their lines, had evidently convinced the enemy that some aggressive movement against them was in contemplation, for their artillery fire now, at seven o'clock, was directed squarely upon the outer lines of British trenches, bringing havoc and horror in the wake of the exploding sh.e.l.ls.

It was under this galling bombardment that the men of the second section adjusted their packs, buckled the last strap of their equipment, took firm bold of their rifles, and crouched against the front wall of their trench, ready for the final spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Into the Face of Death He Led the Remnant of His Brave Platoon]

At seven-thirty o'clock the order came. It was a sharp blast of a whistle, made by the commanding officer. The next moment, led by Lieutenant Butler, the men were up, sliding over the parapet, worming their way through gaps in their own wire entanglements, and forming in the semblance of a line outside. It all took but a minute, and then the rush toward the enemy trenches began. It seemed as though every gun of every calibre in the German army was let loose upon them. The artillery shortened its range and dropped exploding sh.e.l.ls among them with dreadful effect. Machine guns mowed them down in swaths.

Hand-grenades tore gaps in their ranks. Rifle bullets, hissing like hail, took terrible toll of them. Out of the blackness overhead, lit with the flame of explosions, fell a constant rain of metal, of clods of earth, of fragments of equipment, of parts of human bodies. The experience was wild and terrible beyond description.

Pen took no note of the whining and crashing missiles about him, nor of the men falling on both sides of him, nor of the shrieking, gesticulating human beings behind him. Into the face of death, his eyes fixed on the curtain of fire before him, heroic and inspired, he led the remnant of his brave platoon. Through the gaps torn out of the enemy entanglements by the preliminary bombardment, and on into the first line of Boche entrenchments they pounded and pushed their way.

Then came fighting indeed; hand to hand, with fixed bayonets and clubbed muskets and death grapples in the darkness, and everywhere, smearing and soaking the combatants, the blood of men. But the first trench, already battered into a shapeless and shallow ravine, was won.

Canada was triumphant. The curtain of artillery fire lifted and fell on the enemy's third line. So, now, forward again, leaving the "trench cleaners" to hunt out those of the enemy who had taken refuge in holes and caves. Again the rain of hurtling and hissing and crashing steel. Human fort.i.tude and endurance were indeed no match for this. Again the clubs and bayonets and wild men reaching with blood-smeared hands for each other's throats in the darkness.

And then, to Penfield Butler, at last, came the soldier's destiny. It seemed as though some mighty force had struck him in the breast, whirled him round and round, toppled him to earth, and left him lying there, crushed, bleeding and unconscious. How long it was that he lay oblivious of the conflict he did not know. But when he awakened to sensibility the rush of battle had ceased. There was no fighting around him. He had a sense of great suffocation. He knew that he was spitting blood. He tried to raise his hand, and his revolver fell from the nerveless fingers that were still grasping it. A little later he raised his other hand to his breast and felt that his clothing was torn and soaked. He lifted his head, and in the light of an enemy flare he looked about him. He saw only the torn soil covered with crouched and sprawling bodies of the wounded and the dead, and with wreckage indescribable. Bullets were humming and whistling overhead, and spattering the ground around him. Men in the agony of their wounds were moaning and crying near by. He lay back and tried to think. By the light of the next flare he saw the rough edge of a great sh.e.l.l-hole a little way beyond him toward the British lines. In the darkness he tried to crawl toward it. It would be safer there than in this whistling cross-fire of bullets. He did not dare try to rise. He could not turn himself on his stomach, the pain and sense of suffocation were too great when he attempted it. So he pulled himself along in the darkness on his back to the cavity, and sought shelter within it. Bodies of others who had attempted to run or creep to it, and had been caught by Boche bullets on the way, were hanging over its edge. Under its protecting shoulder were many wounded, treating their own injuries, helping others as they could in the darkness and by the fitful light of the German flares. Some one, whose friendly voice was half familiar, yet sounded strange and far away, dragged the exhausted boy still farther into shelter, felt of his blood-soaked chest, and endeavored, awkwardly and crudely, for he himself was wounded, to give first aid. And then again came unconsciousness.

So, in the black night, in the sh.e.l.l-made cavern with the pall of flame-streaked battle smoke hanging over it, and the whining, screaming missiles from guns of friend and foe weaving a curtain of tangled threads above it, this young soldier of the American Legion, his breast shot half in two, his rich blood reddening the soil of France, lay steeped in merciful oblivion.

CHAPTER XIII

When Colonel Butler declared his intention of going to New York and Washington to consult with his friends about the great war, to urge active partic.i.p.ation in it by the United States, and to offer to the proper authorities, his services as a military expert and commander, his daughter protested vigorously. It was absurd, she declared, for him, at his age, to think of doing anything of the kind; utterly preposterous and absurd. But he would not listen to her. His mind was made up, and she was entirely unable to divert him from his purpose.

"Then I shall go with you," she declared.

"May I ask," he inquired, "what your object is in wishing to accompany me?"

"Because you're not fit to go alone. You're too old and feeble, and something might happen to you."

He turned on her a look of infinite scorn.

"Age," he replied, "is no barrier to patriotism. A man's obligation to serve his country is not measured by his years. I have never been more capable of taking the field against an enemy of civilization than I am at this moment. To suggest that I am not fit to travel unless accompanied by a female member of my family falls little short of being gross disrespect. I shall go alone."

Again she protested, but she was utterly unable to swerve him a hair's breadth from his determination and purpose. So she was obliged to see him start off by himself on his useless and Quixotic errand. She knew that he would return disappointed, saddened, doubly depressed, and ill both in body and mind.

Since Pen's abrupt departure to seek a home with his Grandpa Walker, Colonel Butler had not been so obedient to his daughter's wishes. He had changed in many respects. He had grown old, white-haired, feeble and despondent. He was often ill at ease, and sometimes morose. That he grieved over the boy's absence there was not a shadow of doubt. Yet he would not permit the first suggestion of a reconciliation that did not involve the humble application of his grandson to be forgiven and taken back. But such an application was not made. The winter days went by, spring blossomed into summer, season followed season, and not yet had the master of Bannerhall seen coming down the long, gray road to the old home the figure of a sorrowful and suppliant boy.

When the world war began, his mind was diverted to some extent from his sorrow. From the beginning his sympathies had been with the Allies. Old soldier that he was he could not denounce with sufficient bitterness the spirit of militarism that seemed to have run rampant among the Central Powers. At the invasion of Belgium and at the mistreatment of her people, especially of her women and children, at the bombardment of the cathedral of Rheims, at the sinking of the _Lusitania_, at the execution of Edith Cavell, at all the outrages of which German militarism was guilty, he grew more and more indignant and denunciatory. His sense of fairness, his spirit of chivalry, his ideas of honorable warfare and soldierly conduct were inexpressibly shocked. The murder of sleeping women and children in country villages by the dropping of bombs from airships, the suffocation of brave soldiers by the use of deadly gases, the hurling of liquid fire into the ranks of a civilized enemy; these things stirred him to the depths. He talked of the war by day, he dreamed of it at night. He chafed bitterly at the apparent attempt of the Government at Washington to preserve the neutrality of this country against the most provoking wrongs. It was our war, he declared, as much as it was the war of any nation in Europe, and it was our duty to get into it for the sake of humanity, at the earliest possible moment and at any cost.

His intense feeling and profound conviction in the matter led finally to his determination to make the trip to New York and Washington in order to present his views and make his recommendations, and to offer his services in person, in quarters where he believed they would be welcomed and acted on. So he went on what appeared to his daughter to be the most preposterous errand he had ever undertaken.

He returned even sooner than she had expected him to come. In response to his telegram she sent the carriage to the station to meet him on the arrival of the afternoon train. When she heard the rumbling of the wheels outside she went to the door, knowing that it would require her best effort to cheerfully welcome the disappointed, dejected and enfeebled old man. Then she had the surprise of her life. Colonel Butler alighted from the carriage and mounted the porch steps with the elasticity of youth. He was travel-stained and weary, indeed; but his face, from which half the wrinkles seemed to have disappeared, was beaming with happiness. He kissed his daughter, and, with old-fashioned courtesy, conducted her to a porch chair. In her mind there could be but one explanation for his extraordinary appearance and conduct; the purpose of his journey had been accomplished and his last absurd wish had been gratified.

"I suppose," she said, with a sigh, "they have agreed to adopt your plans, and take you back into the army."

"Into the what, my dear?"

"Into the army. Didn't you go to Washington for the purpose of getting back into service?"

"Why, yes. I believe I did. Pardon me, but, in view of matters of much greater importance, the result of this particular effort had slipped my mind."

"Matters of greater importance?"

"Yes. I was about to inform you that while I was in New York I unexpectedly ran across my grandson, Master Penfield Butler."

She sat up with a look of surprise and apprehension in her eyes.

"Ran across Pen? What was he doing there?"

"He was on his way to Canada to join those forces of the Dominion Government which will eventually sail for France, and help to free that unhappy country from the heel of the barbarian."

"You mean--?"

"I mean that Penfield was to enlist, has doubtless now already enlisted, with the Canadian troops which, after a period of drilling at home, will enter the war on the firing line in northern France."

"Well, for goodness sake!" It was all that Aunt Millicent could say, and when she had said that she practically collapsed.

"Yes," he rejoined, "he felt as did I, that the time had come for American citizens, both old and young, with red blood in their veins, to spill that blood, if necessary, in fighting for the liberty of the world. Patriotism, duty, the spirit of his ancestors, called him, and he has gone."