Where the Souls of Men are Calling Part 14

Among the trenches of greater magnitude, recently pounded to the point of obliteration, activities were being pressed at highest tension, for here the destruction had been particularly severe. The Germans had held them well, but no human agency could have prevailed against the unfaltering valor of the Allies. Now they were in Allied hands, and being prepared for Allied shelter. From sunken approaches to the a.s.sembly trenches, and from there forward through an intricate maze of communicating pa.s.sages to the firing trench, tens of thousands of men were busy with pick and shovel--not, however, constructing the narrow, steep-sided affairs which proved so disastrous to the Germans on the Somme, but a shallower type of trench having more flare and a wider sole. Just behind them worked the plumbers and pipemen, the carpenters and timber placers, the electricians with their coils of wire and telephones; everything perfected with the greatest nicety today, which tomorrow--or the next, or next, tomorrow--would be buried for future plowshares. War could not be war unless it were the highest expression of construction and destruction, even as it raises life and death to the highest power of sublimity!

Boring like huge worms from the front line outward, were tunnellers, biting into the earth with grim persistence to lay mines beneath the enemy; not that this work would be finished in time for tomorrow's action, wherein plans were already completed to press forward, but should the German positions prove firm enough to establish another temporary deadlock, then they would serve a purpose. By such forethought are battles won, when nothing is underestimated, nothing overlooked, no shade of opportunity neglected, and all chances accounted for.

"I never dreamed it was so gigantic a game as this," Jeb gasped.

"But there is much more, Monsieur," his companion smiled.

"Does no one ever rest?" Jeb asked, in a voice of awe.

"Oh, yes, Monsieur," the _poilu_ smiled again. "In places where the trenches have been cleared and mended, where telephone wires have been connected to instruments, where water pipes have been brought down and fauceted, flooring built across mucky places, gas gongs installed, ammunition, grenades and tinned food stored in the newly finished sh.e.l.l-proof chambers, you will find a few over-exhausted men sprawled out, sleeping."

While Jeb could see nothing of this, the driver promised to get him into it soon enough--a suggestion that turned him away in search of other scenes and thoughts. Off to the right two lines of snags marked what had once been graceful poplars edging a famous _route national_, but now----! He glanced quickly backward along the direction from which he came. Here, at first, a brighter prospect met his eyes: the far-off rolling slopes were green, the far-off woods had not been stripped of leaves; but never could the grim story be quite wiped out for, across this verdant scene, as a long, thin reptile with a million legs, crawled an endless line of artillery and munition trains.

"Can't I ever get away from it!" he cried to himself, shutting his eyes in agony.

The horses had been rested and word came to proceed; the limbers creaked and moved. Jeb gripped the seat in terror, feeling now that before they got half way down the slope a German gunner would pick them out and touch the magic spring which reduces men--not symbolically but literally--to dust. Yet he breathed more freely and sent another prayer up for the engineers when almost at once they entered a sunken road, converging toward the enemy although keeping well out of sight. At places where the terrain did not admit of this shelter, or other roads went off at tangents, long strips of canvas were stretched across the openings, their outer sides being painted, in theatre scenery fashion, to represent the surrounding ground. If the Germans had only known that thousands of troops and thousands of tons of ammunition pa.s.sed daily within easy range of their guns, protected by a wall of 10-ounce canvas!

Another important reason for sweeping their planes from the sky!

The _poilu_ called Jeb's attention to these ingenious devices of camouflage, seeming to think them a great joke.

"But for the good G.o.d having made the Boche, Monsieur, I should call them a.s.ses with long ears for never estimating our _finesse_ and resource."

"It wouldn't be disrespectful, Frenchie," one of the unit laughed, "because the good G.o.d made a.s.ses, too!"

"Well, Monsieur, I feel there should be an apology somewhere! Perhaps it is to the four-footed a.s.ses."

They climbed down at last and, each loaded with supplies, tramped through half a mile of communicating trenches to the protected dressing-stable dug-outs--roomy affairs, twenty feet below the surface and opening rearward into a kind of quadrangle. Five hundred yards ahead were the firing trenches, where things would happen; and the _poilu_, observing this, grimly remarked:

"_Sacre bleu!_ They certainly have ordered you up to the very front, Monsieur! 'Tis not often the women are brought so close--but it means, Monsieur, that our Generals are positive of driving the Boche far back tomorrow!"

The chief surgeon in charge here rushed to meet them with open arms, embracing Dr. Barrow warmly; and then Barrow stepped back to look at him, for this was the great Bonsecours! Georges Bonsecours! He saw a man of medium height, and of medium build, slightly gray about his temples, and in the neighborhood of forty years of age. No one of these things was particularly distinguishing, but when he spoke--ah, then the impelling magnetism which drew others close to him, the force which sent them flying off to various duties, was easily explained. His eyes, while twinkling merrily as though everything in life possessed a touch of humor, also gave the impression that they could see beneath five layers of skin tissue--that by some canny second sight they could detect a piece of shrapnel without the aid of probes or X-ray; but a closer inspection showed that they were set in a face which had become seamed by weariness. His arms, also, hung with a directness that indicated great fatigue.

While supplies were being stored away and the women nurses had retired for a needed rest, the world-famed surgeon escorted Dr. Barrow farther down the line of dressing-stations, particularly to see his own unit which had been in this sector since the middle of April.

"Monsieur le Doctor," he said,--then continued in beautiful English--"I am greatly impressed with the fort.i.tude of your American women who have a.s.sisted me. There is one--but why mention one, when they all typify to my mind graceful columns of ivory; pure in their strength and certainty, crystal in their thoughts and deeds! My operating table is a Grecian temple, Monsieur, when they surround it."

"That is a beautiful tribute," said Barrow, flushing with pride.

"Not as beautiful, Monsieur, as the inspiration and a.s.sistance which one of them has given me." He stopped, blushing like a girl, then continued frankly with an infectious smile: "We learn to be outspoken on the edge of No Man's Land--perhaps it is because we never know at what moment our lips may be completely sealed that we appreciate the value of saying fearlessly what is in our minds; therefore I will finish by telling you that, next to an Allied victory, my greatest hope is that she may be persuaded to share my fortune in Paris, after we are finished with the fortunes of war!"

"I could wish no girl better luck than that," Barrow smiled. "To us at home you stand as a kind of demi-G.o.d, a wizard, who----"

"Ah, Monsieur, I have accomplished nothing, really, until I came here, where her sympathy and bravery have made me see new things! I tell her that she inherits these traits from an angel mother and an American Indian father."

Both men laughed delightedly; Dr. Barrow little dreaming at the moment that this American girl, beloved by every one around her, was the daughter of an old friend who edited a paper down--or was it up?--in Hillsdale.

"You see that we are close to things here," Bonsecours continued, as they walked along.

"I had wondered about the women being so near the front," Barrow replied.

"Well, Monsieur, in some sectors this position is safer for them than farther back--only, of course, when our artillery and line is as strong as here, and the dressing-stations as well protected. Besides," he added softly, "we are needing many nurses, and have lost fearfully in men and orderlies."

The sun set clear that evening, putting a sparkle in the air which touched one's nerves like wine. Shortly before twilight Jeb was drawn to the entrance of his dug-out by the tramping and sloshing of many feet.

He walked the length of the quadrangle to where it joined a communicating trench and for half an hour--even after the night had grown too dark to see distinctly--watched an incessant line of soldiery moving forward to positions. Tramp, tramp, they went, under orders of silence, because something big was on the boards for tomorrow. But 'twas not the quiet of glumness that enveloped them, for they showed in every step an elasticity of spirits, as of muscles. He might have called it a fluid line, so lithely did it flow by; he might have called it a line of G.o.ds, so proudly did each man hold his steel-capped head!

The firing trench lay about six hundred yards from the German first line; six hundred yards of No Man's Land waiting pa.s.sively for the shambles! Jeb wrung his hands and leaned against the earthen wall. With that stark struggle for existence but a few hours off, how was it possible for men to step out happily! What would he be doing, were he amongst them!

The line was still pa.s.sing, coming out of the impenetrable and marching--who knew where! when he stumbled through the dark entrance of the dug-out.

"What's going on out there?" a comrade asked.

"Ghosts," he answered, feeling for his bunk and throwing himself face down on it.

He was tired to exhaustion, his nerves were starved for rest. The dug-out was chilly after sundown and he reached fumblingly for his blanket, found himself lying upon it and awkwardly wriggled under.

The warmth was good. In a little while the steady tramp of men going to kill or die--for 'tis thus the G.o.ds play with us!--became a soothing lullaby, and lured him into sleep.

CHAPTER X

From this deep slumber Jeb was aroused by the very incarnation of doomsday noises that sent him bounding to the floor with nerves aquiver.

The blanket dragging after him hung from his shoulders, even as bewilderment and sleep clung to his mind. His senses knew that it was night, although details about him were brought into sharp relief by a thousand flashes spasmodically flooding the dug-out with fiendish brilliancy; and he knew that his body was cold, although the walls and timbers seemed to be consumed by raging fires. He felt the ground trembling in the throes of a t.i.tanic upheaval, while his entire being seemed to be hammered and torn by the frightful cataclysm of sounds. He stood as though paralyzed, unmindful that bits of earth and gravel were sifting through c.h.i.n.ks between the ceiling timbers and falling on his head.

Other members of the unit had staggered into wakefulness and sat staring at him, he thought, with greenish, flickering faces--accusingly, as if he were responsible. Each knew the French guns had searched out and were crumbling up the German defenses, but none had previously suspected that an artillery bombardment could reach such fury. The desultory firing of yesterday might well be understood as a _moment decalme_!

In this instant of terrified amazement Jeb and his comrades remained as statues, simply staring with owlish eyes devoid of intelligence, since it was well nigh impossible for men, uninitiated, to master their faculties until the first shock had been absorbed.

'Twas not so much the roar of cannon from their distant places in the rear--although these alone might doubtless have been startling enough--but the shower of projectiles falling on the doomed line only six hundred yards across No Man's Land. In answer to this bombardment from an eight-mile line of guns accurately trained the day before, enemy guns, trained with lesser accuracy, did their best to inflict an equal punishment. The effect was a combination of the solemnity and the littleness of man which defies every knack of human expression to depict.

The seasoned soldier could have told some things; he could have distinguished calibre from calibre as readily as the skillful fox hunter knows the position of his racing hounds by the quality of their voices.

He could have spotted the vindictive crash of "75's," the deep-toned bellowing of "heavies," or, nearer by--had they been in action--the banging of trench mortars. In the sky he could have told from white or greenish-orange flashes, from lace-like wreaths or fixed-star blasts, where shrapnel or high explosive sh.e.l.ls had burst; from the ringing of a gas gong he could tell where "green cross" sh.e.l.ls were falling; he could, and gladly would, have explained--to his own satisfaction, at least--the many freak phenomena: a solitary light spirally ascending upward until lost in the clouds; sprays of fire and spark-showers illumining the sky; rainbow arcs of angry red that flickered, as an aurora borealis, from horizon to horizon.

But the uninitiated Medical Corps unit, numbed to inertia, was only sensible to an overhead riot of screeching demons, as sh.e.l.ls hurtling forward were pa.s.sed and answered by sh.e.l.ls hurtling back--a sky of flying steel and a horizon of blasted earth! In moments of greatest concussion, simultaneous with the most blinding flashes, the air about their faces seemed to jump; crazy little vortexes scurried past the dug-out opening, or flew in across the floor, like phantom kittens seized by some curious madness. To Jeb's highly imaginative, and now half-crazed, mind these represented newly liberated souls, in anguish seeking refuge from the hurricane of death and its drenching rain of fire. He had not then found out how many hundreds of sh.e.l.ls must be fired to wound one man!

On the Allied side the bombardment, with growing intensity, became a _barrage_. Explosions came as thick as drum taps when a roll is sounded.

There seemed to be no intermission, really; no more, at any rate, than one's ear can detect between clicks in a telegraph room when the instruments work rapidly.

Barrow and Bonsecours ran in. They looked weirdly grotesque in the fitful playing of lights, and Bonsecours shouted something, although no voice seemed to issue from his lips. Then with vigorous gestures he beckoned the men up to him--having come especially to get this new unit straightened out, since his own veterans knew exactly what to do.

Jeb had not moved, for the blanket still hung from his shoulders.

Neither had the others arisen from their bunks, so bewildered were they also by the chorus of death engines.

"Up now, and active!" the great surgeon yelled. "Stretchers! You go out shortly!"

"Go out!" Jeb screamed, finding his voice in a burst. "Go out!" he screamed again. "G.o.d Almighty, no one can go out _there_!"