CHAPTER X After breakfast, Claude reported to headquarters and talked with one of the staff-majors. He was told he would have to wait until tomorrow to see Colonel James, who had been called to Paris for a general conference. He had left in his car at four that morning in response to a telephone message. There's not much to do here by way of amusement, said the major. A movie show tonight, and you can get anything you want at the Estimine. The one on the square opposite the English tank is the best. There are a couple of nice French women in the Red Cross barrack up on the hill in the Old Convent garden. They try to look out for the civilian population, and we're on good terms with them. We get their supplies through with our own, and the quartermaster has orders to help them when they run short. You might go up and call on them. They speak English perfectly. Claude asked whether he could walk in on them without any kind of introduction. Oh yes, they're used to us. I'll give you a card to Mademoiselle Olive though. She's a particular friend of mine. There you are. Mademoiselle Olive de Corsay, introducing etc., and you understand. Here he glanced up and looked Claude over from head to foot. She's a perfect lady. Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about presenting himself to these ladies. Perhaps they didn't like Americans. He was always afraid of meeting French people who didn't. It was the same way with most of the fellows in his battalion he had found. They were terribly afraid of being disliked, and the moment they felt they were disliked, they hastened to behave as badly as possible in order to deserve it. Then they didn't feel that they had been taken in, the worst feeling a dough-boy could possibly have. Claude thought he would stroll about to look at the town a little. It had been taken by the Germans in the autumn of 1914, after their retreat from Le Marne, and they had held it until about a year ago when it was re-taken by the English and the Chasseur-de-Cal. They had been able to reduce it and to drive the Germans out, only by battering it down with artillery. Not one building remained standing. Ruin was ugly, and it was nothing more, Claude was thinking, as he followed the past that ran over piles of brick and plaster. There was nothing picturesque about this, as there was in the war-pictures one saw at home. A cyclone or a fire might have done just as good a job. The place was simply a great dump-heap, an exaggeration of those which disgraced the outskirts of American towns. It was the same thing over and over, mounds of burned brick and broken stone, heaps of rusty twisted iron, splintered beams and rafters, stagnant pools, cellar holes full of muddy water. An American soldier had stepped into one of those holes a few nights before and been drowned. This had been a rich town of eighteen thousand inhabitants, now the civilian population was about four hundred. There were people there who had hung on through all the years of German occupation, others who, as soon as they heard that the enemy was driven out, came back from wherever they had found shelter. They were living in cellars or in little wooden barracks made from old timbers and American goods boxes. As he walked along, Claude read familiar names and addresses painted on boards built into the sides of these frail shelters. From Emery Bird, Thayer Company, Kansas City, Missouri, Danielson Fisher, Denver, Colorado. These inscriptions cheered him so much that he began to feel like going up and calling on the French ladies. The sun had come out hot after three days of rain. The stagnant pools and the weeds that grew in the ditches gave out a rank heavy smell. Wildflowers grew triumphantly over the piles of rotting wood and rusty iron. Cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace and poppies, blue and white and red, as if the French colors came up spontaneously out of the French soil, no matter what the Germans did to it. Claude paused before little shanty built against a half-tomolished brick wall. A gilt cage hung in the doorway, with a canary singing beautifully. An old woman was working in the garden patch, picking out bits of brick and plaster the rain had washed up, digging with her fingers around the pale carotops and neat lettuce heads. Claude approached her, touched his helmet, and asked her how he could find the way to the Red Cross. She wiped her hands on her apron and took him by the elbow. —Vous avez-les tant anglais? Non? Marie! Marie! He learned afterward that everyone was directed to go this way or that from a disabled British tank that had been left on the site of the Old Town Hall. A little girl ran out of the barrack and her grandmother told her to go at once and take the American to the Red Cross. Marie put her hand in Claude's and let him off along one of the paths that wound among the rubbish. She took him out of the way to show him a church, evidently one of the ruins of which they were proudest, where the blue sky was shining through the white arches. The virgin stood with empty arms over the central door.  Les babées écassées, mais ils appartent à Zéjamir, Marie explained with satisfaction. As they went on she told Claude that she had a soldier among the Americans who was her friend. Il est bon, il est gay, mon sada, but he sometimes drank too much alcohol and that was a bad habit. Perhaps now since his comrade had stepped into a cellar hole Monday night while he was drunk and had been drowned, her charlie would be warned and would do better. Marie was evidently a well-brought-up child. Her father, she said, had been a schoolmaster. At the foot of the convent hill she turned to go home. Claude called her back and awkwardly tried to give her some money, but she thrust her hands behind her and said, Resolute, non merci, je n'ai pas besoin de rayon, and then ran away down the path. As he climbed toward the top of the hill he noticed that the ground had been cleaned up a bit. The path was clear. The bricks and hewn stones had been piled in neat heaps. The broken hedges had been trimmed and the dead parts cut away. Emerging at last into the garden he stood still for wonder. Even though it was in ruins it seemed so beautiful after the disorder of the world below. The gravel walks were clean and shining. A wall of very old boxwood stood green against a row of dead lombardy poppers.  Around the stone well was a shaven grass plot, and everywhere there were little trees and shrubs which had been too low for the shells to hit, or for the fire which had seared the poplars to catch. The hill must have been wrapped in flames at one time, and all the tall trees had been burned. The barrack was built against the walls of the cloister, three arches of which remained like a stone wing to the shed of planks. On a ladder stood a one-armed young man, driving nails very skillfully with his single hand. He seemed to be making a frame projection from the sloping roof to support an awning. He carried his nails in his mouth. When he won at one, he hung his hammer to the belt of his trousers, took a nail from between his teeth, stuck it into the wood, and then deftly wrapped it on the head. Claude watched him for a moment, then went to the foot of the ladder and held out his two hands. "'Les-es-moi,' he exclaimed. The one aloft spat his nails out into his palm, looked down and laughed. He was about Claude's age, with very yellow hair and moustache and blue eyes, a charming-looking fellow. "'Willingly,' he said. This is no great affair, but I do it to amuse myself, and it will be pleasant for the ladies.' He descended and gave his hammer to the visitor. Claude set to work on the frame, while the other went under the stone arches and brought back a roll of canvas, part of an old tent by the look of it. "'An air of tâche de bûche,' he explained, unrolling it upon the grass. I found it among their filth in the cellar, and had the idea to make a pavilion for the ladies, as our trees are destroyed. He stood up suddenly. Perhaps you have come to see the ladies? Play talk.' "'Very well,' the boy said, they would get the pavilion done for a surprise for Mademoiselle-Olive when she returned. She was down in the town now, visiting the sick people. He bent over his canvas again, measuring and cutting with a pair of garden shears, moving round the green plot on his knees and all the time singing. Claude wished he could understand the words of his song. While they were working together, tying the cloth up to the frame, Claude from his elevation saw a tall girl coming slowly up the path by which he had ascended. She paused at the top by the boxwood hedge, as if she were very tired and stood looking at them. Presently she approached the ladder and said in slow, careful English, "'Good morning. Louis has found help, I see.' Claude came down from his perch. "'Are you Mademoiselle Descorsies? I am Claude Wheeler. I have a note of introduction to you, if I can find it.' She took the card but did not look at it. That is not necessary. Your uniform is enough. Why have you come?' He looked at her in some confusion. "'Well, really, I don't know. I am just in from the front to see Colonel James, and he is in Paris, so I must wait over a day. One of the staff suggested my coming up here. I suppose because it is so nice,' he finished ingenuously. "'Then you are a guest from the front, and you will have lunch with Louis and me. Mademoiselle Descorsies is also gone for the day. Do you see our house?' She led him through the low door into a living room, unpainted, uncarpeted, light, and airy.  The sunlight on the floor, the bunches of fresh flowers, the white window curtains stirring in the breeze, reminded Claude of something, but he could not remember what. "'We have no guest room,' said Mademoiselle Descorsies, but you will come to mine, and Louis will bring you hot water to wash.' In a wooden chamber at the end of the passage, Claude took off his coat and set to work to make himself as tidy as possible. Hot water and scented soap were in themselves pleasant things. The dresser was an old goods box stood on end and covered with white lawn. On it there was a row of ivory toilet things with combs and brushes, powder and cologne, and a pile of white handkerchiefs fresh from the iron. He felt that he ought not to look about him much, but the odor of cleanness and the indefinable air of personality tempted him. In one corner a curtain on a rod made a clothes closet, in another was a low iron bed like a soldier's with a pale blue cover lid and white pillows. He moved carefully and splashed discreetly. There was nothing he could have damaged or broken, not even a rug on the plank floor, and the pitcher and hand basin were of iron, yet he felt as if he were imperiling something fragile. When he came out the table in the living room was set for three. The stout old dom who was placing the plates paid no attention to him, seemed from her expression to scorn him and all his kind. He withdrew as far as possible out of her path and picked up a book from the table, a volume of Heinies Reisebilder in German. Before lunch Mademoiselle de Corset showed him the storeroom in the rear, where the shelves were stocked with rows of coffee tins, condensed milk, canned vegetables and meat, all with American trade names he knew so well. This which seemed doubly familiar and reliable here so far from home. She told him the people in the town could not have got through the winter without these things. She had to deal them out sparingly, where the need was greatest, but they made the difference between life and death. Now it was summer, the people lived by their gardens, but old women still came to beg for a few ounces of coffee and mothers to get a can of milk or the babies. Claude's face glowed with pleasure. Yes, his country had a long arm. People forgot that, but here he felt was someone who did not forget. When they sat down at lunch he learned that Mademoiselle de Corset and Madame Barry had been here almost a year now. They came soon after the town was retaken when the old inhabitants began to drift back. The people brought with them only what they could carry in their arms. They must love their country so much, don't you think, when they endure such poverty to come back to it, she said. Even the old ones do not often complain about their dear things, their linen and their china and their beds. If they have the ground and hope, all that they can make again. This war has taught us all how little the made things matter. Only the feeling matters. Exactly so. Hadn't he been trying to say this ever since he was born? Hadn't he always known it and hadn't it made life both bitter and sweet for him? What a beautiful voice she had, this Mademoiselle O'Leave, and how nobly it dealt with the English tongue. He would like to say something, but out of so much, what? He remained silent, therefore, sat nervously breaking up the black war bread that lay beside his plate. He saw her looking at his hand, felt in a flash that she regarded it with favor, and instantly put it on his knee under the table. It is our trees that are worse, she went on sadly. You have seen our poor trees? It makes one ashamed for this beautiful part of France. Our people are more sorry for them than to lose their cattle and horses. Mademoiselle O'Leave looked overtaxed by care and responsibility, Claude thought, as he watched her. She seemed far from strong, slender, gray-eyed dark hair with white transparent skin and a two-ardent color in her lips and cheeks, like the flame of a feverish activity within. Her shoulders drooped as if she were always tired. She must be young, too, though there were threads of gray in her hair, brushed flat and not carelessly at the back of her head. After the coffee, Mademoiselle de Corzée went to work at her desk, and Louis took Claude to show him the garden. The clearing and trimming and planting were his own work, and he had done it all with one arm. This autumn he would accomplish much more, for he was stronger now, and he had the habit of working single-handed. He must manage to get the dead trees down. She distressed Mademoiselle O'Leave. In front of the barracks stood four old locusts. The tops were naked forks, burned coal-black, but the lower branches had put out thick tufts of yellow-green foliage, so vigorous that the life in the trunks must still be sound. This fall, Louis said, he meant to get some strong American boys to help him, and they would saw off the dead limbs and trim the tops flat over the thick voles. How much it must mean to a man to love his country like this, Claude thought, to love its trees and flowers, to nurse it when it was sick, and tend its hurts with one arm. Among the flowers which had come back self-sewn or from old roots, Claude found a group of tall, straggly plants with reddish stems and tiny white blossoms, one of the evening primrose family, the garra that grew along the clay banks of Lovely Creek at home. He had never thought it very pretty, but he was pleased to find it here. He had supposed it was one of those nameless prairie flowers that grew on the prairie and nowhere else. When they went back to the barrack, Mademoiselle O'Leave was sitting in one of the canvas chairs Louis had placed under the new pavilion. What a fine fellow he is, Claude exclaimed, looking after him. Louis? Yes, he was my brother's orderly. When Emile came home O'Leave, he always brought Louis with him, and Louis became like one of the family. The shell that killed my brother tore off his arm.  He put his hand over his face and began to cry, and said, Oh, Madame, il n'était-tu sure plus chique que moi?  The stiff sentences she uttered were foreign to her nature. Her face and eyes ran ahead of her tongue and made one wait eagerly for what was coming. He sat down in a sagging canvas chair, absently twisting a sprig of garra he had pulled. You have found a flower? She looked up. Yes, it grows at home on my father's farm. She dropped the faded shirt she was darning. Oh, tell me about your country. I have talked to so many, but it is difficult to understand. Yes, tell me about that. Nebraska. What was it? How many days from the sea? What did it look like? As he tried to describe it, she listened with half-closed eyes. Flat-covered with grain-muddy rivers, I think it must be like Russia, but your father's farm described that to me minutely and perhaps I can see the rest. Claude took a stick and drew a square in the sand. There to begin with was the house and farmyard. There was the big pasture with lovely creek flowing through it. There were the wheat fields and cornfields, the timber-claim. More wheat and corn, more pastures. There it all was, diagrammed on the yellow sand, with shadows gliding over it from the half-chart locus trees. He would not have believed that he could tell a stranger about it in such detail. It was partly due to his listener no doubt. She gave him unusual sympathy and the glow of an unusual mind. While she bent over his map, questioning him, a light dew of perspiration gathered on her upper lip, and she breathed faster from her effort to see and understand everything. He told her about his mother and his father and Mahaley, what life was like there in the summer and winter and autumn, what it had been like in that fateful summer when the Hun was moving always towards Paris, and on those three days when the French were standing at the Marne. Now his mother and father waited for him to bring the news at night, and how the very cornfields seemed to hold their breath, Mademoiselle Oolive sank back wearily in her chair. Claude looked up and saw tears sparkling in her brilliant eyes. And I myself, she murmured, did not know of the Marne until days afterward, though my father and brother were both there. I was far off in Brittany, and the trains did not run. It is what is wonderful that you are here telling me this. We, we were taught from childhood that some day the Germans would come. We grew up under that threat.  Claude dropped his eyes. Yes, he muttered, blushing, shame could. It pretty nearly did. We are pretty late. He rose from his chair as if he were going to fetch something. But where was he to get it from? He shook his head. I am afraid, he said mournfully, there is nothing I can say to make you understand how far away it all seemed, how almost visionary. It didn't only seem miles away, it seemed centuries away. But you do come, so many, and from so far it is the last miracle of this war. I was in Paris on the fourth day of July, when your marines just from below would march for your national feet, and I said to myself as they came on, that is a new man. Such heads they had so fine there behind the ears, such discipline and purpose. Our people laughed and called to them and threw them flowers, but they never turned to look, eyes straight before them. They passed like men of destiny. She threw out her hands with a swift movement and dropped them in her lap. The emotion of that day came back in her face. As Claude looked at her burning cheeks, her burning eyes, he understood that the strain of this war had given her a perception that was almost like a gift of prophecy. A woman came up the hill carrying a baby. Mademoiselle de Corsille went to meet her and took her into the house. Mademoiselle sat down again, almost lost to himself in the feeling of being completely understood, of being no longer a stranger. In the far distance the big guns were booming and intervals. Down in the garden Louis was singing. Again he wished he knew the words of Louis's songs. The airs were rather melancholy, but they were sung very cheerfully. There was something open and warm about the boy's voice, as there was about his face, something blonde too. It was distinctly a bland voice like summer wheat fields ripe and waving. Claude sat alone for half an hour or more, tasting a new kind of happiness, a new kind of sadness, ruin and new birth, the shudder of ugly things in the past, the troubling image of beautiful ones on the horizon, finding and losing. That was life, he saw. When his hostess came back he moved her chair for her out of the creeping sunlight. I didn't know there were any French girls like you, he said simply, as she sat down. She smiled, I do not think there are any French girls left. There are children and women. I was twenty-one when the war came, and I had never been anywhere without my mother or my brother or sister. In a year I went all over France alone, with soldiers, with Sénégalise, with anybody. Everything is different with us. She lived at Versailles, she told him, where her father had been an instructor in the military school. He had died since the beginning of the war. Her grandfather was killed in the war of 1870. Hers was a family of soldiers, but not one of the men would be left to see the day of victory. She looked so tired that Claude knew he had no right to stay. Long shadows were falling in the garden. It was hard to leave, but an hour more or less wouldn't matter. Two people could hardly give each other more if they were together for years, he thought. Will you tell me where I can come and see you if we both get through this war? He asked as he rose. He wrote it down in his notebook. I shall look for you, she said, giving him her hand. There was nothing to do but to take his helmet and go. At the edge of the hill, just before he plunged down the path, he stopped and glanced back at the garden lying flattened in the sun. The three stone arches, the dalleas and marigolds, the glistening boxwood wall. He had left something on the hilltop which he would never find again. The next afternoon Claude and his sergeant set off for the front. They had been told at headquarters that they could shorten their route by following the big road to the military cemetery and then turning to the left. It was not advisable to go the latter half of the way before nightfall, so they took their time through the belt of straggling crops and hay fields.  The horses were munching in their nosebags, and the driver had disappeared. The Americans hadn't happened to meet with any highlanders before and were curious. This one must be a good fighter, they thought, a brawny giant with a bulldog jaw and a face as red and knobby as his knees. More because he admired the looks of the man than because he needed information, Hicks went up and asked him if he had noticed a military cemetery on the road back there. The kilt nodded. About how far would you say it was? I wouldn't say at all. I'd take no account of their kilometers, he replied, dryly rubbing away at his skirt as if he had it in a wash tub. Well, about how long will it take us to walk it? That I couldn't say. A Scotsman would do it in an hour. I guess a Yankee can do it as quick as a Scotsman candy, Hicks asked Jovley. That I couldn't say. You've been four years getting this far on no very well. Hicks blinked as if he had been hit. Oh, if that's the way you talk, that's the way I do, said the other Sarlie. Claude put out a warning hand. Come on, Hicks, you'll get nothing by it. They went up the road very much disconcerted. Hicks kept thinking of things he might have said. When he was angry, the sergeant's far had puffed up and became dark red like a young baby's. What did you call me off for, he sputtered. I don't see where you'd have come out in an argument, and you certainly couldn't have licked him. They turned aside at the cemetery to wait until the sun went down. It was unfenced, unsoddered, and a wagon trail ran through the middle bisecting the square. On one side were the French graves with white crosses. On the other side the German graves with black crosses. Poppies and cornflour ran over them. The Americans strolled about, reading the names. Here and there the soldier's photograph was nailed upon his cross, left by some comrade to perpetuate his memory a little longer. The birds that always came to life at dusk and dawn began to sing, flying home from somewhere. Claude and Hick sat down between the mounds and began to smoke while the sun dropped. Lines of dead trees marked the red west. This was a dreary stretch of country, even to boys brought up on the flat prairie. They smoked in silence, meditating and waiting for night. On a cross at their feet the inscription read, merely, soldat en conneaux, Mopoulas-France. A very good epitaph, Claude was thinking. Most of the boys who fell in this war were unknown, even to themselves. They were too young. They died and took their secret with them, what they were and what they might have been. The name that stood was La France. How much that name had come to mean to him, since he first saw a shoulder of land bulk up in the dawn from the deck of the Ancheses. It was a pleasant name to say over in one's mind, where one could make it as passionately nasal as one flees and never blush. Hick's too had been lost in his reflections. Now he broke the silence. Somehow, lieutenant, morph seems better than dead. It has a coughinish sound, and over there they're all toke, and it's all the same damn silly thing. Look at them set out here, black and white, like a checkerboard. The next question is, who put them here, and what's the good of it? Search me, the other murmured absently. Hick's rolled another cigarette, and sat smoking it. His plump face wrinkled with the gravity and labor of his celebration. Well, he brought out at last, we'd better hike. This afterglow will hang on for an hour, always does over here. I suppose we had. They rose to go. The white crosses were now violet, and the black ones had altogether melded in the shadow. Behind the dead trees in the west a long smear of red still burned. To the north the guns were tuning up with a deep thunder. Somebody's getting peppered up there. Do owls always hoot in graveyards? Just what I was wondering, lieutenant, it's a peaceful spot otherwise. Good night, boys, said Hick's kindly, as they left the graves behind them. They were soon finding their way among shell-holes, and jumping trench tops in the dark, beginning to feel cheerful at getting back to their chums in their own little group. Hick's broke out and told Claude how he and Del Abel meant to go into business together when they got home. We're going to open a garage and automobile repair shop. Under their talk, in the minds of both, that lonely spot lingered, and the legend, Souda in New Country, about ten kilometers east of the trench they had relieved before. One morning Colonel Scott sent for Claude and Gerhardt, and spread his maps out on the table. We are going to clean them out there in F-6 tonight, and straighten our line. The thing that bothers us is that little village stuck up on the hill, where the enemy machine guns have a strong position. I want to get them out of there before the battalion goes over. I can't spare too many men, and I don't like to send out more officers than I can help. It won't do to reduce the battalion for the major operation. Do you think you two boys could manage it with a hundred men? The point is, you will have to be out and back before our artillery begins at three o'clock. Under the hill where the village stood ran a deep ravine, and from this ravine a twisting water-course wound up the hillside. By climbing this gully the raider should be able to fall on the machine gunners from the rear and surprise them. But first they must get across the open stretch nearly one and a half kilometers wide between the American line and the ravine without attracting attention. It was raining now, and they could safely count on a dark night. The night came on black enough. The company crossed the open stretch without provoking fire, and slipped into the ravine to wait for the hour of attack. A young doctor, a Pennsylvanian, lately attached to the staff, had volunteered to come with them, and he arranged a dressing station at the bottom of the ravine where the stretchers were left. They were to pick up their wounded on the way back. Anything left in that area would be exposed to the artillery fire later on. At ten o'clock the men began to ascend the water-course, creeping through pools and little waterfalls, making a continuous, spludgy sound, like pigs rubbing against the sty. Clawed with the head of the column was just pulling out of the gully on the hillside above the village, when a flare went up and a volley of fire broke from the brush on the uphill side of the water-course, machine guns opening on the exposed line crawling below. The Hun had been warned that the Americans were crossing the plane and had anticipated their way of approach. The men in the gully were trapped. They could not retaliate with effect, and the bullets from the Maxins bounded on the rocks about them like hail. Gearhart ran along the edge of the line, urging the men not to fall back and double on themselves, but to break out of the gully on the downhill side and scatter. Clawed with his group started back, go into the brush and get them. Our fellows have gotten no chance down there. Since while they last, then bayonets, pull your plugs and don't hold on too long. They were already on the run charging the brush. The Hun gunners knew the hill like a book, and when the bombs began bursting among them, they took to trails and burrows. Don't follow them off into the rocks, Clawed kept calling. Straight ahead, clear everything to the ravine. As the German gunners made for cover, the firing into the gully stopped, and the arrested column poured up the steep defile after Gearhart. Clawed and his party found themselves back at the foot of the hill, at the edge of the ravine from which they had started. Heavy firing on the hill above told them the rest of the men had got through. The quickest way back to the scene of action was by the same watercourse they had climbed before. They dropped into it and started up. Clawed at the rear felt the ground rise under him, and he was swept with a mountain of earth and rock down into the ravine. He never knew whether he lost consciousness or not. It seemed to him that he went on having continuous sensations. The first was that of being blown to pieces, of swelling to an enormous size under intolerable pressure and then bursting. Next he felt himself shrink and tingle, like a frost-bitten body thawing out. Then he swelled again and burst. This was repeated, he didn't know how often. He soon realized that he was lying under a great weight of earth, his body, not his head. He felt rain falling on his face. His left hand was free and still attached to his arm. He moved it cautiously to his face. He seemed to be bleeding from the nose and ears. Now he began to wonder where he was hurt. He felt as if he were full of shell splinters. Everything was buried but his head and left shoulder. A voice was calling from somewhere below. "'Are any of you fellows alive?'  The same voice came again with a note of patient despair. "'If there's anybody left alive in this hall, won't he speak up? I'm badly hurt myself.' "'That must be the new doctor. Wasn't his dressing-station somewhere down there?' "'Heard,' he said. Claude tried to move his legs a little. Perhaps if he could get out from under the dirt he might hold together long enough to reach the doctor. He began to wriggle and pull. The wet earth sucked at him. It was painful business. He braced himself with his elbows but kept slipping back. "'I'm the only one left then?' said the mournful voice below. At last Claude worked himself out of his burrow, but he was unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand he got faint and seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right ankle, too. He couldn't bear his weight on it. Perhaps he had been too near the shell to be hit. He had heard the boys tell of such cases. It had exploded under his feet and swept him down into the ravine but hadn't left any metal in his body. If it had put anything into him it would have put so much that he wouldn't be sitting here speculating. He began to crawl down the slope on all fours. "'Is that the doctor? Where are you? Here on a stretcher. They shelled us. Who are you? Our fellows got up, didn't they? I guess most of them did. What happened back here?' "'I'm afraid it's my fault,' the boy said sadly. I used my flashlight, and that must have given them the range. They put three or four shells right on top of us. The fellows that got hurt in the gully kept stringing back here, and I couldn't do anything in the dark. I had to have a light to do anything. I just finished putting on a Johnson splint when the first shell came. I guess they're all done for now.' "'How many were there?' "'14, I think. Some of them weren't much hurt. They'd all be alive if I hadn't come out with you.' "'Who were they? But you don't know our names yet, do you? You didn't see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them.' "'Don't think so.' "'Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow?' "'Don't think so.' "'Where are you hurt?' "'Abdominal. I can't tell anything without a light. I lost my flashlight. It never occurred to me that it could make trouble. It's the one I use at home when the babies are sick,' the doctor murmured. "'Clawed tried to strike a match with no success. Wait a minute. Where's your helmet?' He took off his metal hat, held it over the doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded man had already loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side. The wound and the stretcher on which he lay supported the mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow's liver. "'I guess I've got mine,' the doctor murmured as the match went out. "'Clawed struck another. "'Oh, that can't be. Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for you.' "'No use, Lieutenant.  I feel the cold terribly in my intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it's buried.' "'Clawed stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and began feeling about in the mud for the brandy. He wondered why the poor man wasn't screaming with pain. The firing on the hill had ceased except for the occasional click of a maxim off in the rock somewhere. His watch said twelve, ten. Could anything have miscarried up there?' Suddenly voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale. He began shouting to them. "'Coming, coming,' he knew the voice.  Clawed called to them to be careful. Don't strike a light. They've been shelling down here. "'All right, are you Wheeler? Where are the wounded? There aren't any but the doctor and me. Get us out of here quick. I'm all right, but I can't walk.' They put Clawed on a stretcher and sent him ahead. Four big Germans carried him, and they were prodded to a loathe by Hicks and Dell Abel. Four of their own men took up the doctor, and Gerhardt walked beside him. In spite of their care the motion started the blood again and tore away the clots that had formed over his wounds. He began to vomit blood and to strangle. The men put the stretcher down. Gerhardt lifted the doctor's head. "'It's over,' he said presently. "'Better make the best time you can.' They picked up their load again. Them that are carrying him now won't jolt him,' said Oster the pious sweet. Bee Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the company went off on a ten-day leave. Clawed's sprained ankle was twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the railhead.  Clawed and Gerhardt were going off on their leave together. End of Book 5, Chapter 11, Recording by Tom Weiss. One of Hours by Willie Cather, Chapter 12. A rainy autumn night Papa Joe Baer sat reading his paper. He heard a heavy pounding on his garden gate. Taking off his slippers he put on the wooden sabbats he kept for mud, shuffled across the dripping garden, and opened the door into the dark street. Two tall figures with rifles and kits confronted him. In a moment he began embracing them, calling to his wife, N'aum d'aie d'y'a bleu m'aum m'aum, c'est David et Claude, tu l'es d'eux. Sorry-looking soldiers they appeared when they stood in the candlelight, plastered with clay, their metal hats shining like copper bowls, their clothes dripping pools of water upon the flags of the kitchen floor. Madame Joe Baer kissed their wet cheeks, and M'Jure, now that he could see them, embraced them again. Whence had they come, and how had it fared with them up there? Very well as anybody could see. What did they want first, supper perhaps? Their room was always ready for them, and the clothes they had left were in the big chest. David explained that their shirts had not once been dry for four days, and what they most desired was to be dry and to be clean. Old Martha, already in bed, was routed out to heat water. M'Jure, Joe Baer, carried the big wash-tube upstairs. Tomorrow for conversation, he said, to-night, for repose. The boys followed and began to peel off their wet uniforms, leaving them in two sodden piles on the floor. There was one bath for both, and they threw up a coin to decide which should get into the warm water first. M'Jure, Joe Baer, seeing Claude's fat ankles strapped up in adhesive bandages, began to chuckle. Oh, I see the bosh made you dance up there. When they were clad in gleaned pajamas out of the chest, Papa Joe Baer carried their shirts and socks down for Martha to wash. They returned with the big knee-platter, on which was an omelet made of twelve eggs and stuffed with bacon and fried potatoes. Madame Joe Baer brought the three-story earthen coffee pot to the door and called Bon Appetit. The host poured the coffee and cut up the lope with his clasp knife. He sat down to watch them eat. How had they found things up there, anyway? The bosh polite and agreeable as usual? Finally, when there was not a crumb of anything left, he poured for each a little glass of brandy, pour c'est d'air la digestion, and wished them good night. He took the candle with him. Perfect bliss, Claude reflected, as the chill of the sheets grew warm around his body, and he sniffed in the pillow the old smell of lavender. To be so warm, so dry, so clean, so beloved. The journey down, reviewed from here, seemed beautiful. As soon as they had got out of the region of murdered trees, they found the land of France turning gold. All along the river valleys the poplars and cottonwoods had changed from green to yellow, evenly colored, looking like candle flames in the mist and rain. Across the fields, along the horizon they ran, like torches passed from hand to hand, and all the willows by the little streams had become silver. The vineyards were green still, thickly spotted with curly, blood-red branches. It all flashed back beside his pillow in the dark. This beautiful land, this beautiful people, this beautiful omelette, gold poplars, blue green vineyards, wet scarlet vine leaves, rain dripping into the court, fragrant darkness, sleep, stronger than all. The woodland path was deep in leaves. Claude and David were lying on the dry springy heather among the flint boulders. Dierhart, with his stetson over his eyes, was presumably asleep. They were having fine weather for their holiday. The forest rose about this open-glade like an amphitheater in golden terraces of horse chestnut and beech. The big nuts dropped velvety and brown as if they had been soaked in oil and disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees that had not been visible in the green of summer stood out among the curly yellow breaks. Through the gray netting of the beech twigs stiff hollybushes glittered. It was the wheeler way to dread false happiness, to feel cowardly about being fooled. Since he had come back, Claude had more than once wondered whether he took too much for granted and felt more at home here than he had any right to feel. The Americans were prone, he observed, to make themselves very much at home, to mistake good manners for good will. He had no right to doubt the affection of the joebares, however. That was genuine and personal. Not a smooth surface under which almost any shade of scorn might lie and laugh, was not in short the treacherous French politeness by which one must not let oneself be taken in. Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time, and anyway he wasn't a tourist, he was here on legitimate business. Claude's sprained ankle was still badly swollen. Madame Jobert was sure he ought not to move about on it at all, begged him to sit in the garden all day and nurse it, but the surgeon at the front had told him that if he once stopped walking he would have to go to the hospital. So with the help of his host best Hollywood king, he limped out into the forest every day. This afternoon he was tempted to go still farther. Madame Jobert had told him about some caves at the other end of the wood, underground chambers where the country people had gone to live in times of great misery long ago in the English wars. The English wars he could not remember just how far back they were, but long enough to make one feel comfortable. As for him, perhaps he would never go home at all. Perhaps when this great affair was over he would buy a little farm and stay here for the rest of his life. That was a project he liked to play with. There was no chance for the kind of life he wanted at home where people were always buying and selling, building and pulling down. He had begun to believe that the Americans were a people of shallow emotions. That was the way Gerhardt had put it once. And if it was true there was no cure for it. Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured, unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together. While he was absorbed in his daydream of farming in France, his companion stirred and rolled over on his elbow. You know we are to join the battalion at A. They'll be living like kings there. Hicks will get so fat he'll drop over on the march. Headquarters must have something particularly nasty in mind. The infantry is always fed up before a slaughter. But I've been thinking. I have some old friends at A. Suppose we go on there a day early and get them to take us in. It's a fine old place, and I ought to go to see them. The son was a fellow student of mine at the Conservatoire. He was killed the second winter of the war. I used to go up there for the holidays with him. I would like to see his mother and sister again. You've no objection? Claude did not answer it once. He lay squinting off at the beach trees without moving. You always avoid that subject with me, don't you? He said presently. What subject? Oh, anything to do with the Conservatoire or your profession. I haven't any profession at present. I'll never go back to the violin. You mean you couldn't make up for the time you'll lose. Gerhardt settled his back against the rock and got out his pipe. That would be difficult, but other things would be harder. I've lost much more than time. Couldn't you have got exemption one way or another? I might have. My friends wanted to take it up and make a test case of me, but I couldn't stand for it. I didn't feel I was a good enough violinist to admit that I wasn't a man. I often wish I had been in Paris that summer when the war broke out. Then I would have gone into the French army on the first impulse with the other students, and it would have been better. David paused and sat puffing at his pipe. Next then a soft movement stirred the brakes on the hillside. A little barefoot girl stood there, looking about. She had heard voices, but at first did not see the uniforms that blended with the yellow and brown of the wood. Then she saw the sun shining on two heads, one square and amber in color, the other reddish bronze long and narrow. She took their friendliness for granted and came down the hill, stopping now and again to pick up shiny horse chestnuts and pop them into a sack she was dragging. David called to her and asked her whether the nuts were good to eat. Oh, no! She exclaimed, her face expressing the liveliest terror. Pour les gossons, these inexperienced Americans might eat almost anything. The boys laughed and gave her some pennies. Pour les gossons, let's say. She stalled about the edge of the wood, stirring among the leaves for nuts and watching the two soldiers. Gerhard knocked out his pipe and began to fill it again. I went home to see my mother in May of 1914. I wasn't here when the war broke out. The conservatoire closed at once, so I arranged a concert tour in the states that winter and did very well. That was before all the little Russians went over and the field wasn't so crowded. I had a second season and that went well. But I was getting more nervous all the time. I was only half there. He smoked thoughtfully, sitting with folded arms as if he were going over a succession of events or states of feeling. When my number was drawn, I reported to see what I could do about getting out. I took a look at the other fellows who were trying to squirm and chucked it. I've never been sorry. Not long afterward my violin was smashed and my career seemed to go along with it. But I had asked him what he meant. While I was at Camp Dix, I had to play at one of the entertainments. My violin, Astrativarius, was in a vault in New York. I didn't need it for that concert any more than I needed at this minute. Yet I went to town and brought it out. I was taking it up from the station in a military car, and a drunken taxi driver ran into us. I wasn't hurt, but the violin lying across my knees was smashed into a thousand pieces. I didn't know what it meant then, but since I've seen so many beautiful old things smashed, I've become a fatalist. Claude watched his brooding head against the gray flint rock. You ought to have kept out of the whole thing. Any army man would say so. David's head went back against the boulder. He threw one of the chestnuts lightly into the air. Oh, one violinist, more or less, doesn't matter. But who is ever going back to anything? That's what I want to know. Claude felt guilty, as if David must have guessed what apostasy had been going on in his own mind this afternoon. You don't believe we are going to get out of this war what we went in for, do you, he asked suddenly. Absolutely not, the other replied with cool indifference. Then I certainly don't see what you're here for. Because in 1917 I was twenty-four years old and able to bear arms. The war was put up to our generation. I don't know what for, the sins of our fathers probably, certainly not to make the world safe for democracy or any rhetoric of that sort. When I was doing stretcher work I had to tell myself over and over that nothing would come of it, but that it had to be. Sometimes though, I think something must, nothing we expect, but something unforeseen.  You remember in the old mythology tales how, when the sons of the gods were born, the mothers always died in agony? Maybe it's only semile I'm thinking of. At any rate, I've sometimes wondered whether the young man of our time had to die to bring a new idea into the world, something Olympian. I'd like to know. I think I shall know. Since I've been over here this time I've come to believe in immortality. Do you? Claude was confused by this quiet question. I hardly know. I've never been able to make up my mind. Oh, don't bother about it. If it comes to you, it comes. You don't have to go after it. I arrived at it in quite the same way I used to get things in art, knowing them and living on them before I understood them. Such ideas used to seem childish to me. Gearheart sprang up. Now, have I told you what you want to know about my case? He looked at Claude with a curious glimmer of amusement and affection. I'm going to stretch my legs. It's four o'clock. He disappeared among the red pine stems where the sunlight made a rose-colored lake as it used to do in the summer, as it would do in all the years to come when they were not there to see it, Claude was thinking. He pulled his hat over his eyes and went to sleep. The little girl on the edge of the beach would left her sack and stole quietly down the hill. Sitting in the heather and drawing her feet up under her, she stayed still for a long time and regarded with curiosity the relaxed, deep-breathing body of the American soldier. The next day was Claude's twenty-fifth birthday, and in honor of that event Papa Jaubert produced a bottle of old burgundy from his cellar, one of the few dozens he had laid in for great occasions when he was a young man. During that week of idleness at Madame Jaubert's, Claude often thought that the period of happy youth about which his old friend, Mrs. Ehrlich, used to talk, and which he had never experienced, was being made up to him now. He was having his youth in France. He knew that nothing like this would ever come again. The fields and woods would never again be laced over this hazy enchantment.  Life had, after all, turned out well for him, and everything had a noble significance. The nervous tension in which he had lived for years now seemed incredible to him, absurd and childish when he thought of it at all. He did not torture himself with recollections. He was beginning over again. One night he dreamed that he was at home, out in the plowed fields where he could see nothing but the furrowed brown earth stretching from horizon to horizon. Up and down it moved a boy, with a plow and two horses. At first he thought it was his brother Ralph, but on coming nearer he saw it was himself, and he was full of fear for this boy. Poor Claude, he would never, never get away. He was going to miss everything. While he was struggling to speak to Claude and warn him, he awoke. In the years when he went to school in Blinken, he was always hunting for someone whom he could admire without reservations, someone he could envy, emulate, wish to be. Now he believed that even then he must have had some faint image of a man like Gerhardt in his mind. It was only in wartimes that their past would have been likely to cross, or that they would have had anything to do together, any of the common interests that make men friends. CHAPTER XIV Gerhardt and Claude Wheeler alighted from a taxi before the open gates of a square-roofed, solid-looking house, where all the shutters on the front were closed and the tops of many trees showed above the garden wall. They crossed a paved court and rang at the door. An old valet admitted the young men and took them through a wide hall to the salon which opened on the garden. Madame and mademoiselle would be down very soon. David went to one of the long windows and looked out. They have kept it up in spite of everything. It was always lovely here. The garden was spacious, like a little park. On one side was a tennis court, on the other a fountain with a pool and water lilies. The north wall was hidden by ancient ews. On the south two rows of plain trees cut square made a long arbor. At the back of the garden there were fine old lindens. The gravel walks wound about beds of gorgeous autumn flowers. In the rose garden small white roses were still blooming though the leaves were already red. Two ladies entered the drawing room. The mother was short, plump and rosy with strong rather masculine features and yellowish white hair. The tears flashed into her eyes as David bent to kiss her hand and she embraced him and touched both his cheeks with her lips. A vu, vu a si, she murmured, touching the coat of his uniform with her fingers. There was but a moment of softness. She gathered herself up like an old general, Claude thought, as he stood watching the group from the window, drew her daughter forward, and asked David whether he recognized the little girl with whom he used to play. Mademoiselle Claire was not at all like her mother. This lender, dark, dressed in a white-customed tennis and an apple-green hat with black ribbons, she looked very modern and casual and unconcerned. She was already telling David she was glad he had arrived early, as now they would be able to have a game of tennis before tea. Maman would bring her knitting to the garden and watch them. This last suggestion relieved Claude's apprehension that he might be left alone with his hostess. When David called him and presented him to the ladies, Mademoiselle Claire gave him a quick handshake and said she would be very glad to try him out on the court as soon as she had beaten David. They would find tennis shoes in their room, a collection of shoes for the feet of all nations. Her brothers, some that his Russian friend had forgotten when he hurried off to be mobilized, and a pair lately left by an English officer who was quartered on them. He and her mother would wait in the garden. She rang for the old valet. The Americans found themselves in a large room upstairs where two modern iron beds stood out, conspicuous among heavy mahogany bureaus and desks, and dressing tables, stuffed chairs and velvet carpets, and dull red brocade window hangings. David went at once into the little dressing room and began to array himself for the tennis court. Two suits of flannels and a row of soft shirts hung there on the wall. Aren't you going to change? He asked, noticing that Claude stood stiff and unbending by the window, looking down into the garden. Why should I? said Claude scornfully. I don't play tennis. I've never had a racket in my hand. Too bad. She used to play very well, though she was only a youngster then. Gerhardt was regarding his legs in trousers two inches too short for him. How everything has changed, and yet how everything is still the same. It's like coming back to places in dreams. They don't give you much time to dream, I should say, Claude remarked. Fortunately. Explain to the girl that I don't play, will you? I'll be down later. As you like. Claude stood in the window, watching Gerhardt's bare head and Mademoiselle Claire's green hat and long brown arm go bounding about over the court. When Gerhardt came to change before tea, he found his fellow officer standing before his bag, which was open but not unpacked. What's the matter, feeling shell-shocked again? Not exactly, Claude bit his lip. The fact is, Dave, I don't feel just comfortable here. Oh, the people are all right, but I'm out of place.  Why should I be here? These people don't keep a hotel. They very nearly do. From what they've been telling me, they've had a string of Scotch and English quartered on them. They like it, too, or have the good manners to pretend they do. Of course, you'll do as you like, but you'll hurt their feelings that put me in an awkward position. To be frank, I don't see how you can go away without being distinctly rude. Claude stood, looking down at the contents of his bag, in an irresolute attitude. Catching a glimpse of his face in one of the big mirrors, Gerhardt saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. His flash of temper died, and he put his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder. Come on, Claude, this is too absurd. You don't even have to dress, thanks to your uniform, and you don't have to talk, since you're not supposed to know the language. I thought you'd like coming here. These people have had an awfully rough time. Can't you admire their pluck? Oh yes, I do. It's awkward for me, though. Claude pulled off his coat and began to brush his hair vigorously. I guess I've always been more afraid of the French than of the Germans. It takes courage to stay, you understand. I want to run. But why? What makes you want to? Oh, I don't know. Something in the house, in the atmosphere. Something disagreeable? No, something agreeable. David laughed. Oh, you'll get over that. They had tea in the garden, English fashion. English tea, too, mademoiselle Clair informed them, left by the English officers. At dinner a third member of the family was introduced, a little boy with a cropped head and big black eyes. He sat on Claude's left, quiet and shy in his velvet jacket, though he followed the conversation eagerly, especially when it touched upon his brother Rene, killed at Verdun in the second winter of the war. The mother and sister talked about him as if he were living, about his letters and his plans and his friends at the conservatoire and in the army. Mademoiselle Clair told Gerhardt news of all the girl students he had known in Paris, how this one was singing for the soldiers. Another, when she was nursing in a hospital which was bombed in an air raid, had carried twenty wounded men out of the burning building, one after another on her back, like sacks of flour. In Paris the dancer had gone into the English Red Cross and learned English. Odette had married a New Zealander, an officer who was said to be a cannibal. It was well known that his tribe had eaten two avant-garde missionaries. There was a great deal more that Claude could not understand, but he got enough to see that for these women the war was France, the war was life, and everything that went into it. To be alive, to be conscious and have one's faculties, was to be in the war. After dinner when they went into the salon, Madame Fleurie asked David whether he would like to see Rene's violin again, and nod it to the little boy. He slipped away and returned carrying the case which he placed on the table. He opened it carefully and took off the velvet cloth, as if this was his peculiar office, and handed the instrument to Gerhard. David turned it over under the candles, telling Madame Fleurie that he would have known it anyway, Rene's wonderful la mate, almost too exquisite in tone for the concert hall, like a woman who is too beautiful for the stage. The family stood round and listened to his praise with evident satisfaction. Madame Fleurie told him that Lucien was très seru with his music, that his master was well pleased with him, and when his hand was a little larger he would be allowed to play upon Rene's violin. Claude watched the little boy as he stood looking at the instrument in David's hands.  What is it Lucien, his mother asked? If me short, David, would be so good as to play before I must go to bed. He murmured entreatingly. But Lucien, I am a soldier now. I have not worked at all for two years. The amate would think it had fallen into the hands of a Bosch. Lucien smiled. Oh, no! It is too intelligent for that. A little, please. And he sat down on a footstool before the sofa in confident anticipation. Mademoiselle Clare went to the piano. David frowned and began to tune the violin. Madame Fleurier called the old servant and told him to light the sticks that lay in the fireplace. She took the armchair at the right of the hearth and motioned Claude to a seat on the left. The little boy kept his stool at the other end of the room. Mademoiselle Clare began the orchestral introduction to the Saint Sainte's concerto. Oh, not that, David lifted his chin and looked at her in perplexity. She made no reply but played on, her shoulders bent forward. Lucien drew his knees up under his chin and shivered. When the time came, the violin made its entrance. David had put it back under his chin mechanically, and the instrument broke into that suppressed, bitter melody. They played for a long while. At last David stopped and wiped his forehead. I'm afraid I can't do anything with the third movement, really, nor can I, but that was the last thing Rene played on it the night before he went away after his last leave. She began again and David followed. Madame Fleurier sat with half-closed eyes looking into the fire. Claude, his lips compressed, his hands on his knees, was watching his friends back. David's music was a part of his own confused emotions. He was torn between generous admiration and bitter, bitter envy. What would it mean to be able to do anything as well as that, to have a hand capable of delicacy and precision and power? If he had been taught to do anything at all, he would not be sitting here tonight a wooden thing amongst living people. He felt that a man might have been made of him, but nobody had taken the trouble to do it. Tongue tied, foot tied, hand tied. If one were born into this world like a bear cub or a bull calf, one could only paw and upset things, break and destroy all one's life. Gerhard wrapped the violin up in its cloth. The little boy thanked him and carried it away. Captain Fleurier and her daughter wished their guests good night. David said he was warm and suggested going into the garden to smoke before they went to bed. He opened one of the long windows and they stepped out on the terrace. Dry leaves were rustling down on the walks. The yew trees made a solid wall, blacker than the darkness. The fountain must have caught the starlight. It was the only shining thing, a little clear column of twinkling silver. The boys strolled in silence to the end of the walk. I guess you'll go back to your profession all right, Claude remarked, in the unnatural tone into which people sometimes speak of things they know nothing about. Not I, of course I had to play for them. Music has always been like a religion in this house.  That's all that matters now.  I don't believe it. Claude stopped for a moment by the edge of the fountain, trying to collect his thoughts. I don't believe it has killed anything. It has only scattered things. He glanced about hurriedly at the sleeping house, the sleeping garden, the clear, starry sky, not very far overhead. It's men like you that get the worst of it, he broke out. But as for me, I never knew there was anything worth living for till this war came on. Before that the world seemed like a business proposition. You'll admit it's a costly way of providing adventure for the young, said David Dryley. Maybe so. All the same. Claude pursued the argument to himself long after they were in their luxurious beds and David was asleep. No battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother Bayless controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it. His boyhood had been clouded and innervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it too, apparently, but the event had shown that there were a great many people left who cared about something else. The intervals of the distant artillery fire grew shorter as if the big guns were tuning up, choking to get something out. Claude sat up in his bed and listened. The sounds of the guns had from the first been pleasant to him, had given him a feeling of confidence and safety. Tonight he knew why. What they said was that men could still die for an idea and would burn all they had made to keep their dreams. He knew the future of the world was safe. The careful planners would never be able to put it into a straight jacket. Cunning and prudence would never have it to themselves. Why, that little boy downstairs with the candlelight in his eyes, when it came to the last cry, as they said, could carry on forever. Ideals were not archaic things, beautiful and impotent. They were the real sources of power among men. As long as that was true, and now he knew it was true, he had come all this way to find out. He had no quarrel with destiny. Nor did he envy David. He would give his own adventure for no man's. On the edge of sleep it seemed to glimmer, like the clear column of the fountain, like the new moon, alluring, half averted, the bright face of danger. CHAPTER 15 When Claude and David rejoined their battalion on the 20th of September, the end of the war looked as far away as ever. The collapse of Bulgaria was unknown to the American army, and their acquaintance with European affairs was so slight that this would have meant very little to them had they heard of it. The German army still held the north and east of France, and no one could say how much vitality was left in that sprawling body. The battalion entrained at Eris. Lieutenant Colonel Scott had orders to proceed to the railhead and then advance on foot into the Argonne. The cars were crowded and the railway journey was long and fatiguing. They detrained at night in the rain at what the men said seemed to be the jumping-off place. There was no town and the railway station had been bombed the day before by an air fleet out to explode artillery ammunition.  The Colonel sent Claude out with a patrol to find some place for the men to sleep. The patrol came upon a field of straw stacks, and at the end of it found a black farmhouse. Claude went up and hammered on the door. Silence. He kept hammering and calling. The Americans are here. A shutter opened.  What now? Claude explained in his best French that an American battalion had just come in. Might they sleep in his field if they did not destroy his stacks? Sure, replied the farmer, and shut the window. That one word coming out of the dark in such an unpromising place had a cheering effect upon the patrol and upon the men when it was repeated to them. Sure, eh? They kept laughing over it as they beat about the field and dug into the straw. Those who couldn't burrow into a stack lay down in the muddy stubble. They were asleep before they could feel sorry for themselves. The farmer came out to offer his stable to the officers and to beg them not on any account to make a light. They had never been bothered by air raids until yesterday, and it must be because the Americans were coming and were sending in ammunition. Gerhardt, who was called to talk to him, told the farmer the Colonel must study his map, and for that the man took them down into the cellar where the children were asleep. Before he lay down on the straw bed his orderly had made for him, the Colonel kept telling names and kilometers off on his fingers. For officers like Colonel Scott, the names of places constituted one of the real hardships of the war. His mind worked slowly, but it was always on his job, and he could go without sleep for more hours together than any of his officers. Tonight he had scarcely lay down when a sentinel brought in a runner with a message. The Colonel had to go into the cellar again to read it. He was to meet Colonel Harvey at Prince Joachim Farm as early as possible tomorrow morning. The runner would act as guide. The Colonel sat with his eye on his watch and interrogated the messenger about the road and the time it would take to get over the ground. What's Fritz's temper up here, generally speaking? That's as it happens, sir. Sometimes we nab a night patrol of a dozen or fifteen and send them to the rear under a one-man guard.  They say it depends on what part of Germany they come from. The Bavarians and Saxons are the bravest. Colonel Scott waited for an hour and then went about shaking his sleeping officers. Yes, sir, Captain Maxi sprang to his feet as if he had been caught in a disgraceful act. He called his sergeants and they began to beat the men up out of the straw stacks and puddles. In half an hour they were on the road. This was the battalion's first march over really bad roads, where walking was a question of pulling and balancing. They were soon warm at any rate. It kept them sweating. The weight of their equipment was continually thrown in the wrong place. Their wet clothing dragged them back. Their packs got twisted and cut into their shoulders. Claude and Hicks began wondering to each other what it must have been like in the real mud, up about a prey in Pashondel two years ago. Hicks had been training at Arras last week, where a lot of the tommys were resting in the same way, and he had tales to tell. The battalion got to Yoakim farm at nine o'clock. Colonel Harvey had not yet come up, but old Julius Caesar was there with his engineers, and he had a hot breakfast ready for them. At six o'clock in the evening they took the road again, marching until daybreak with short rests.  At the halt for breakfast the prisoners wanted to make themselves useful, but the cook said they were so filthy the smell of them would make a stew go bad. They were herded off by themselves, a good distance from the grub line. It was Gerhardt, of course, who had to go over and question them. Claude felt sorry for the prisoners. They were so willing to tell all they knew, and so anxious to make themselves agreeable, began talking about their relatives in America, and said brightly that they themselves were going over at once after the war. Seemed to have no doubt that everybody would be glad to see them. They begged Gerhardt to be allowed to do something. Couldn't they carry the officer's equipment on the march? No, they were too buggy. They might relieve the sanitary squad. Oh, that they would gladly do here, officer. The plan was to get to rubric, trench, and take it before nightfall. It was easy taking. Easy of everything but vermin and human discards. A dozen crippled and sick left for the enemy to dispose of, and several half-witted youths who ought to have been locked up in some institution. Fritz had known what it meant when his patrols did not come back. He had evacuated, leaving behind his hopelessly disease and as much filth as possible. The dugouts were fairly dry, but so crawling with vermin that the Americans preferred to sleep in the mud in the open. After supper the men fell on their packs and began to lighten them, throwing away all that was not necessary and much that was. Many of them abandoned the new overcoats that had been served out at the railhead. Others cut off the skirts and made the coats into ragged jackets. Captain Maxi was horrified at these depredations, but the Colonel advised him to shut his eyes. They've got hard going before them. Let them travel life. If they'd rather stand the cold, they've got a right to choose. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tom Weiss. One of Hours by Willa Cather Chapter 16 The battalion had twenty-four hours' rest at Rubrecht Trench and then pushed on for four days and nights, stealing trenches, capturing patrols with only a few hours' sleep snatched by the roadside while their food was being prepared. They pushed hard after a retiring foe and almost outran themselves. They did outrun their provisions. On the fourth night when they fell upon a farm that had been a German headquarters, the supplies that were to meet them there had not come up, and they went to bed, sufferless. This farmhouse, for some reason called by the prisoners Frau Holder Farm, was a nest of telephone wires. Hundreds of them ran out through the walls in all directions. The Colonel cut those he could find and then put a guard over the old peasant who had been left in charge of the house, suspecting that he was in the pay of the enemy. At last Colonel Scott got into the headquarters' bed, large and lumpy, the first one he had seen since he left Arras. He had not been asleep more than two hours when a runner arrived with orders from the regimental Colonel. Claude was in a bed in the loft between Gerhardt and Bruder. He felt somebody shaking him, but resolved that he wouldn't be disturbed and went on placently sleeping. Then somebody pulled his hair, so hard that he sat up. Captain Maxi was standing over the bed. Come along boys, orders from regimental headquarters. The battalion is to split here. Our company is to go on four kilometers tonight and take the town of Beauford. Claude rose. The men are pretty well beat out, Captain Maxi, and they had no supper. That can't be helped. Tell them we are to be in Beauford for breakfast. Claude and Gerhardt went out to the barn and roused Hicks and his pal Del Abel. The men were asleep in dry straw for the first time in ten days. They were completely worn out, lost to time and place. Many of them were already four thousand miles away, scattered among little towns and farms on the prairie. They were a miserable-looking lot as they got together, stumbling about in the dark. After the Colonel had gone over the map with Captain Maxi, he came out and saw the company assembled. He wasn't going with them, he told them, but he expected them to give a good account of themselves. Once in Beauford, they would have a week's rest, sleep undercover, and live among people for a while. The men took the road, some with their eyes shut, trying to make believe they were still asleep, trying to have their agreeable dreams over again as they marched. They did not really waken up until the advance challenged a hunt patrol and sent it back to the Colonel under a one-man guard. When they had advanced two kilometers, they found the bridge blown up. God and Hicks went in one direction to look for a Ford, Bruger and Del Abel in the other, and the men laid down by the roadside and slept heavily. Just at dawn they reached the outskirts of the village, silent and still. Captain Maxi had no information as to how many Germans might be left in the town. They had occupied it ever since the beginning of the war and had used it as a rest camp. There had never been any fighting there. At the first house on the road the captain stopped and pounded. No answer. We are Americans and must see the people of the house. If you don't open, we must break the door. A woman's voice called, There is nobody here. Go away, please, and take your men away. I am sick. The captain called Gerhardt, who began to explain and reassure through the door. It opened a little way and an old woman in a nightcap peeped out. An old man hovered behind her. She gazed in astonishment at the officers, not understanding. These were the first soldiers of the Allies she had ever seen. She had heard the Germans talk about Americans, but thought it was one of their lies, she said. Once convinced, she let the officers come in and replied to their questions. No, there were no Bosch left in her house. They had got orders to leave day before yesterday and had blown up the bridge. They were concentrating somewhere to the east. She didn't know how many were still in the village nor where they were, but she could tell the captain where they had been. Triumpently she brought out a map of the town, lost, she said with a meaning smile, by a German officer on which the billets were marked. With this to guide them, Captain Maxi and his men went on up the street. They took eight prisoners in one cellar, seventeen in another. When the villagers saw the prisoners bunched together in the square, they came out of their houses and gave information. This cleaning up, Burt Fuller remark, was like taking fish from the Platte River when the water was low, simply pailing them out. There was no sport in it. At nine o'clock the officers were standing together in the square before the church, checking off on the map the houses that had been searched. The men were drinking coffee and eating fresh bread from a baker's shop. The square was full of people who had come out to see for themselves. Some believed that deliverance had come and others shook their heads and held back, suspecting another trick. A crowd of children were running about, making friends with the soldiers.  Gerhardt was bargaining with the baker for another baking of bread. The sun was shining for a change, everything was looking cheerful. This village seemed to be swarming with girls, some of them were pretty and all were friendly. The men who had looked so haggard and poorlorn when dawn overtook them at the edge of the town began squaring their shoulders and throwing out their chests. They were dirty and mud plastered, but as Claude remarked to the captain they actually looked like fresh men. Maybe a shot rang out above the chatter and an old woman in a white cap screamed and tumbled over on the pavement, rolled about, kicking in decorously with both hands and feet.  The people began screaming and running. The Americans looked this way and that, ready to dash, but not knowing where to go. Another shot, and Captain Maxie fell on one knee, lushed furiously and sprang up, only to fall again, ashy white with the leg of his trousers going red. There it is, to the left hit shouted pointing.  It hung before one of the upstairs windows. The captain's orderly dragged him into a wine shop. Claude and David, followed by the men, ran down the street and broke in the door. The two officers went through the rooms on the first floor, while Hicks and his lot made straight for an enclosed stairway at the back of the house. As they reached the foot of the stairs they were met by a volley of rifle shots, and two of the men tumbled over. Four Germans were stationed at the head of the steps. The Americans scarcely knew whether their bullets or their bayonets got to the Huns first. They were not conscious of going up, till they were there. When Claude and David reached the landing, the squad were wiping their bayonets, and four gray bodies were piled in the corner. Bert Fuller and Dell Abel ran down the narrow hallway and threw open the door into the room on the street. Two shots, and Dell came back with his jaw shattered and the blood spouting from the left side of his neck. Gerhard caught him and tried to close the artery with his fingers. How many are in there, Bert, Claude called? I couldn't see. Look out, sir. You can't get through that door more than two at a time. The door still stood open at the end of the corridor. Claude went down the steps until he could sight along the floor of the passage into the front room. The shutters were closed in there, and the sunlight came through the slats. In the middle of the room between the door and the windows stood a tall chest of drawers with a mirror attached to the top. In the narrow space between the bottom of this piece of furniture and the floor, he could see a pair of boots. It was possible there was but one man in the room shooting from behind his movable fort, though there might be others hidden in the corners. There's only one fellow in there, I guess. He's shooting from behind a big dresser in the middle of the room. Come on, one of you, we'll have to go in and get him. Willie Katz, the Austrian boy from Omaha Packing House, stepped up and stood beside him. Now, Willie, we'll both go in at once. You jump to the right, an eye to the left, and one of us will jab him. He can't shoot both ways at once. Are you ready? All right, now! Claude thought he was taking the more dangerous position himself, but the German probably reasoned that the important man would be on the right. As the two Americans dashed through the door, he fired.  He fell and never stirred. The German officer fired his revolver again as he went down, shouting in English, English with no foreign accent, you swine, go back to Chicago. Then he began choking with blood. Sergeant Hicks ran in and shot the dying man through the temples. Nobody stopped him. The officer was a tall man, covered with medals and orders, must have been very handsome. His linen and his hands were as white as if he were going to a ball. On the dresser were the files and paste and buffers with which he had kept his nails so pink and smooth. A ring with a ruby, beautifully cut, was on his little finger. The fuller screwed it off and offered it to Claude. He shook his head. That English sentence had unnerved him. Bert held the ring out to Hicks, but the sergeant threw down his revolver and broke out. Think I touched anything of his?  He turned his back on his comrade so that they wouldn't see him cry. Can I keep it myself, sir? Bert asked. Claude nodded. The sergeant had come in and was opening the shutters. This officer, Claude was thinking, was a very different sort of being from the poor prisoners they had been scooping up, like tadpoles from the cellars. One of the men picked up a gorgeous silk dressing gown from the bed. Another pointed to a dressing case full of hammered silver. Gerhardt said it was Russian silver. This man must have come from the eastern front. Bert Fuller and Nifty Jones were going through the officer's pockets. Claude watched them and thought they did about right. They didn't touch his metals but his gold cigarette case and the platinum watch still ticking on his wrist. He wouldn't have further need for them. Around his neck hung by a delicate chain was a miniature case, and in it was a painting, not as Bert romanically hoped when he opened it, of a beautiful woman, but of a young man pale as snow with blurred forget-me-not eyes. Claude studied it, wondering. It looks like a poet or something, probably a kid brother killed at the beginning of the war. Gerhardt took it and glanced at it with the disdainful expression, probably. There let him keep it, Bert. He touched Claude on the shoulder to call his attention to the inlay work on the handle of the officer's revolver. Claude noticed that David looked at him as if he were very much pleased with him, but indeed as if something pleasant had happened in this room where God knew nothing had, where when they turned around a swarm of black flies was quivering with greed and delight over the smear's willy cat's body had left on the floor. Claude had often observed that when David had an interesting idea or a strong twinge of recollection, it made him for the moment rather heartless. Just now he felt that Gerhardt's flash of high spirits was in some way connected with him. Was it because he had gone in with willy? Had David doubted his nerve? CHAPTER 17 When the survivors of Company B are old men and are telling over their good days, they will say to each other, Oh, that week we spent at Beaufort. They will close their eyes and see a little village on a low ridge lost in the forest overgrown with oak and chestnut and black walnut. Buried in autumn color, the streets drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing over the roofs of houses, wells of cool water that tastes of moss and tree roots. Up and down those streets they will see figures passing. Selfs, young and brown and clean-limbed, and comrades long dead, but still alive in that far away village. How they will wish they could tramp again, nights on days in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old billets at Beaufort. To sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed and dried their clothes for them. To eat rabbit stew and palm frits in the garden. Rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh, the days that are no more. As soon as Captain Maxie and the wounded men had been started on their long journey to the rear carried by the prisoners, the whole company turned in and slept for twelve hours, all but Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the house off the square beside the body of his chum. The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men, just created in a new world. And the people of the town came to life, excitement, change, something to look forward to at last. A new flag, Le la hapeau et toilette, floated along with the tricolor in the square. At sunset the soldier stood in formation behind it and sang the star-spangled banner with uncovered heads. The old people watched them from the doorways. The Americans were the first to bring Madeleine to Beaufort. The fact that the village had never heard this song, that the children stood around begging for it, Chante vous la Madeleine made the soldiers realize how far and how long out of the world these villagers had been.  Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner arrived from Colonel Scott, notifying him that he was in charge of the company until further orders. The German prisoners had buried their own dead and dug grays for the Americans before they were sent off to the rear. Claude and David were billeted at the edge of town, with the woman who had given Captain Maxi his first information when they marched in yesterday morning. Their hostess told them at their midday breakfast that the old dom who was shot in the square and the little girl were to be buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the Americans might as well have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would ask the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he and David set off through the brilliant rustling autumn sunshine to found the cures house. It was next to the church with a high-walled garden behind it. Before the bell-pull in the outer wall was a card on which was written Terefora. The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak like his doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands against his breast to keep them from shaking, and looked very old indeed, broken, hopeless, as if he were sick of this world and done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a face so sad as his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian burial, and they were far from home poor fellows. David asked him whether the German rule had been very oppressive, but the old man did not answer clearly, and his hands began to shake so uncontrollably over his cassock that they went away to spare him embarrassment.  I suppose the war has used him up. How can he celebrate mass when his hands quiver so? As they crossed the church steps, David touched Claude's arm and pointed into the square. Look, every dough-boy has a girl already. Some of them have trotted out fatigue-caps. I suppose they'd thrown them all away. Those who had no caps stood with their helmets under their arms in attitudes of exaggerated gallantry, talking to the women, who seemed all to have errands abroad. Some of them let the boys carry their baskets. One soldier was giving a delighted little girl a ride on his back. After the funeral, every man in the company found some sympathetic woman to talk to about his fallen comrades. All the garden flowers and bead-reese in Beaufort had been carried out and put on the American graves. When the squad fired over them and the bugle sounded, the girls and their mothers wept. More willy-cats, for instance, could never have had such a funeral in South Omaha. The next night the soldiers began teaching the girls to dance the posulé and the postro. They had found an old violin in the town, and Oscar the swede scraped away on it. They danced every evening. Claude saw that a good deal was going on, and he lectured his men at parade. But he realized that he might as well scold at the sparrows. There was a village with several hundred women, and only the grandmothers had husbands. All the men were in the army, hadn't even been home on leaves since the Germans first took the place.  The situation had been intolerable and prolonged. The Americans found themselves in the position of Adam in the garden. Did you know, sir, said Bert Fuller breathlessly as he overtook Claude and the street after parade, that these lovely girls had to go out in the fields and work, raising things for those dirty pigs to eat? Yes, sir, had to work in the fields under German sentinels, marched out in the morning and back at night like convicts. It's sure up to us to give them a good time now. One couldn't walk out of an evening without meeting loitering couples in the dusky streets and lanes. The boys had lost all their bashfulness about trying to speak French. They declared they could get along in France with three verbs, and all happily in their first conjugation. Manger, émer, payer, quite enough. They called Beaufort our town, and they were called our Americans. They were going to come back after the war and marry the girls, and put in waterworks.  Bunny casualties are heavy in town this week. You know, Wheeler, David remarked one morning as they were shaving. I think Maxie would come back here on one leg if he knew about these excursions into the forest after mushrooms. Maybe. Aren't you going to put a stop to them? Not I, Claude jerked, setting the corners of his mouth grimly. If the girls or their people make complaint to me, I'll interfere. Not otherwise. I've thought the matter over. Oh, the girls, David laughed softly. Well, it's something to acquire a taste for mushrooms. They don't get them at home, do they? And after eight days the Americans had orders to march there was morning in every house. On their last night in town the officers received pressing invitations to the dance in the square. Claude went for a few moments and looked on. David was dancing every dance, but Hicks was nowhere to be seen. The poor fellow had been out of everything. Claude went over to the church to see whether he might be moping in the graveyard. There as he walked about Claude stopped to look at the grave that stood off by itself under a privet hedge with withered leaves and a little French flag on it, the old woman with whom they stayed had told them the story of this grave. The crier's niece was buried there. She was the prettiest girl in Beaufort it seemed, and she had a love affair with a German officer and disgraced the town. He was a young Bavarian, quartered with the same old woman who told them the story, and she said he was a nice boy, handsome and gentle, and used to sit up half the night in the garden with his head in his hands, homesick, lovesick. He was always after this Marie-Louise, never pressed her, but was always there, grew up out of the ground under her feet, the old woman said. The girl hated Germans like all the rest and flouted him. He was sent to the front. Then he came back, sick and almost deaf, after one of the slaughters at Verdun, and stayed a long while. That spring a story got about that some woman met him at night in the German graveyard. The Germans had taken the land behind the church for their cemetery, and it joined the wall of the crier's garden. When the woman went out into the fields to plant the crops, Marie-Louise used to slip away from the others and meet her Bavarian in the forest. The girls were sure of it now, and they treated her with disdain. But nobody was brave enough to say anything to the crier. One day when she was with her Bavarian in the wood, she snatched up his revolver from the ground and shot herself. She was a French woman at heart, their hostess said. After the end of Bavarian, Claude asked David later, the story had become so complicated he could not follow it. He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot himself through the temples. His orderly, stationed at the edge of the thicket to keep watch, heard the first shot and ran toward them. He saw the officer take up the smoking pistol and turn it on himself. But the commandant couldn't believe that one of his officers had so much feeling. He held an ochet, dragged the girl's mother and uncle into court, and tried to establish that they were in conspiracy with her to seduce and murder a German officer. The orderly was made to tell the whole story, how and where they began to meet. Though he wasn't very delicate about the details he divulged, he stuck to a statement that he saw Lieutenant Mueller shoot himself with his own hand, and the commandant failed to prove his case. The old curier had known nothing of all this until he heard it aired in the military court. Mori Louise had lived in his house since she was a child, and was like his daughter. He had a stroke or something and has been like this ever since. The girl's friends forgave her, and when she was buried off alone by the hedge, they began to take flowers to her grave. The commandant put up an affiche on the hedge, forbidding anyone to decorate the grave. Apparently nothing during the German occupation stirred up more feeling than poor Mori Louise. It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely little grave, the shadow of the privet hedge falling across it. There at the foot of the curier's garden was the German cemetery, with heavy cement crosses, some of them with long inscriptions, lines from their poets and couplets from old hymns. Lieutenant Mueller was there somewhere, probably. Strange how their story stood out in a world of suffering. That was a kind of misery he hadn't happened to think of before, but the same thing must have occurred again and again in occupied territory. He would never forget Victoria's hands, his dim, suffering eyes. Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the church and went back to meet him. Hello, I mistook you for Hixit first. I thought he might be out here. David sat down on the steps and lit a cigarette. So did I. I came out to look for him. Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize, Claude, you and I are the only men in the company who haven't got engaged. Some of the married men have got engaged twice. It's a good thing we're pulling out, or we'd have bonds and a bunch of christenings to look after. All the same, murmured Claude. I like the women of this country as far as I've seen them. While they sat smoking in silence, his mind went back to the quiet scene he had watched on the steps of that other church on his first night in France, the country girl in the moonlight bending over her sixth soldier. When they walked back across the square over the crackling leaves, the dance was breaking up. Oscar was playing home sweet home for the last waltz. La Daniebe say, said David, Well, tomorrow will be gone, and the chances are we won't come back this way.


I'm Jeske, your fit at work ambassador. Sitting all day behind your desk is unhealthy. We often forget that there's a body attached to our brain. Exercise is crucial to our brains, also at work. This is an exercise for your shoulder blades. Hold your dino band like this and pull it to your chest. 10 times. This exercise is called lat pull up, which focuses on shoulders and arms. Okay, so you step on the dino band, put your fists together, bring it to your breast and put your elbows wide. This exercise is called squat. It focuses on the upper legs.