One of Ours
Book V: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On"
Chapter VII
On the march at last; through a brilliant August day Colonel Scott's
battalion was streaming along one of the dusty, well-worn roads east of the
Somme, their railway base well behind them. The way led through rolling country;
fields, hills, woods, little villages shattered but still habitable, where the
people came out to watch the soldiers go by.
The Americans went through every village m march step, colours flying, the
band playing, "to show that the morale was high," as the officers said. Claude
trudged on the outside of the column,—now at the front of his company, now at
the rear,—wearing a stoical countenance, afraid of betraying his satisfaction
in the men, the weather, the country.
They were bound for the big show, and on every hand were reassuring signs:
long lines of gaunt, dead trees, charred and torn; big holes gashed out in
fields and hillsides, already half concealed by new undergrowth; winding
depressions in the earth, bodies of wrecked motor-trucks and automobiles lying
along the road, and everywhere endless straggling lines of rusty barbed-wire,
that seemed to have been put there by chance,—with no purpose at all.
"Begins to look like we're getting in, Lieutenant," said Sergeant Hicks,
smiling behind his salute.
Claude nodded and passed forward.
"Well, we can't arrive any too soon for us, boys?" The Sergeant looked over
his shoulder, and they grinned, their teeth flashing white in their red,
perspiring faces. Claude didn't wonder that everybody along the route, even the
babies, came out to see them; he thought they were the finest sight in the
world. This was the first day they had worn their tin hats; Gerhardt had shown
them how to stuff grass and leaves inside to keep their heads cool. When they
fell into fours, and the band struck up as they approached a town, Bert Fuller,
the boy from Pleasantville on the Platte, who had blubbered on the voyage over,
was guide right, and whenever Claude passed him his face seemed to say, "You
won't get anything on me in a hurry, Lieutenant!"
They made camp early in the afternoon, on a hill covered with half-burned
pines. Claude took Bert and Dell Able and Oscar the Swede, and set off to make a
survey and report the terrain.
Behind the hill, under the burned edge of the wood, they found an abandoned
farmhouse and what seemed to be a clean well.
It had a solid stone curb about it, and a wooden bucket hanging by a rusty
wire. When the boys splashed the bucket about, the water sent up a pure, cool
breath. But they were wise boys, and knew where dead Prussians most loved to
hide. Even the straw in the stable they regarded with suspicion, and thought it
would be just as well not to bed anybody there.
Swinging on to the right to make their circuit, they got into mud; a low
field where the drain ditches had been neglected and had overflowed. There they
came upon a pitiful group of humanity, bemired. A woman, ill and wretched
looking, sat on a fallen log at the end of the marsh, a baby in her lap and
three children hanging about her. She was far gone in consumption; one had only
to listen to her breathing and to look at her white, perspiring face to feel how
weak she was. Draggled, mud to the knees, she was trying to nurse her baby, half
hidden under an old black shawl. She didn't look like a tramp woman, but like
one who had once been able to take proper care of herself, and she was still
young. The children were tired and discouraged. One little boy wore a clumsy
blue jacket, made from a French army coat. The other wore a battered American
Stetson that came down over his ears. He carried, in his two arms, a pink
celluloid clock. They all looked up and waited for the soldiers to do something.
Claude approached the woman, and touching the rim of his helmet, began:
"Bonjour, Madame. Qu'est que c'est?"
She tried to speak, but went off into a spasm of coughing, only able to gasp,
"'Toinette, 'Toinette!"
'Toinette stepped quickly forward. She was about eleven, and seemed to be the
captain of the party. A bold, hard little face with a long chin, straight black
hair tied with rags, uneasy, crafty eyes; she looked much less gentle and more
experienced than her mother. She began to explain, and she was very clever at
making herself understood. She was used to talking to foreign soldiers,—spoke
slowly, with emphasis and ingenious gestures.
She, too, had been reconnoitering. She had discovered the empty farmhouse and
was trying to get her party there for the night. How did they come here? Oh,
they were refugees. They had been staying with people thirty kilometers from
here. They were trying to get back to their own village. Her mother was very
sick, presque morte and she wanted to go home to die. They had heard people were
still living there; an old aunt was living in their own cellar,—and so could
they if they once got there. The point was, and she made it over and over, that
her mother wished to die chez elle, comprenez-vous? They had no papers, and the
French soldiers would never let them pass, but now that the Americans were here
they hoped to get through; the Americans were said to be toujours gentils.
While she talked in her shrill, clicking voice, the baby began to howl,
dissatisfied with its nourishment. The little girl shrugged. ''Il est toujours
en colere," she muttered. The woman turned it around with difficulty—it seemed
a big, heavy baby, but white and sickly—and gave it the other breast. It began
sucking her noisily, rooting and sputtering as if it were famished. It was too
painful, it was almost indecent, to see this exhausted woman trying to feed her
baby. Claude beckoned his men away to one side, and taking the little girl by
the hand drew her after them.
"Il faut que votre mere—se reposer," he told her, with the grave caesural
pause which he always made in the middle of a French sentence. She understood
him. No distortion of her native tongue surprised or perplexed her. She was
accustomed to being addressed in all persons, numbers, genders, tenses; by
Germans, English, Americans. She only listened to hear whether the voice was
kind, and with men in this uniform it usually was kind.
Had they anything to eat? "Vous avez quelque chose a manger? "
"Rien. Rien du tout."
Wasn't her mother "trop malade a marcher? "
She shrugged; Monsieur could see for himself.
And her father?
He was dead; "mort a la Marne, en quatorze".
"At the Marne?" Claude repeated, glancing in perplexity at the nursing baby.
Her sharp eyes followed his, and she instantly divined his doubt. "The baby?"
she said quickly. "Oh, the baby is not my brother, he is a Boche."
For a moment Claude did not understand. She repeated her explanation
impatiently, something disdainful and sinister in her metallic little voice. A
slow blush mounted to his forehead.
He pushed her toward her mother, "Attendez la."
"I guess we'll have to get them over to that farmhouse," he told the men. He
repeated what he had got of the child's story. When he came to her laconic
statement about the baby, they looked at each other. Bert Fuller was afraid he
might cry again, so he kept muttering, "By God, if we'd a-got here sooner, by
God if we had!" as they ran back along the ditch.
Dell and Oscar made a chair of their crossed hands and carried the woman, she
was no great weight. Bert picked up the little boy with the pink clock; "Come
along, little frog, your legs ain't long enough."
Claude walked behind, holding the screaming baby stiffly in his arms. How was
it possible for a baby to have such definite personality, he asked himself, and
how was it possible to dislike a baby so much? He hated it for its square,
tow-thatched head and bloodless ears, and carried it with loathing . . . no
wonder it cried! When it got nothing by screaming and stiffening, however, it
suddenly grew quiet; regarded him with pale blue eyes, and tried to make itself
comfortable against his khaki coat. It put out a grimy little fist and took hold
of one of his buttons. "Kamerad, eh?" he muttered, glaring at the infant. "Cut
it out!"
Before they had their own supper that night, the boys carried hot food and
blankets down to their family.