Part 20

Two things I shall never forget. One was the sight of a Y. M. C. A. hut that I saw in a town far back of the trenches. It was in the town where General Pershing's headquarters are located. On the very tip of the hill above me was the hut. Its every window was a blaze of light. It was the one dominating, scintillating building of the town, a big double hut. When I climbed the hill to this hut I found it crowded to its limits with men from everywhere. The rest of the town was dark and there was little life, but here was the pulse of social life and comradeship, and here was the one blaze and glory of light.

The other sight that I shall not forget was up within a few hundred yards of the German lines. It was night. We were returning from our furtherest hut "down the line." We met a crowd of American soldiers tramping through the snow and mud and cold. They were shivering even as they walked. We stopped the machine and gave them a lift. I asked one of the lads where he was going. He said: "Down to the 'Y' hut in ----." I said: "Where is your camp?" He replied: "Up at ----." I said: "Why, boy, that's four miles away from the hut." "We don't care. We walk it every night. It's the only warm place in reach and the only place where we can be where there are lights at night and where we can get to see the fellows and write a letter. We stay there for an hour or two and tramp back through this ---- (censored) mud to our billets."

And of all the lights o' war one must know that the lights of the Y. M. C. A. huts cast their beams not only into the hearts of these lads but across the world, and sometimes I think across the eternities, for in these huts innumerable lads are seeing the light that never was on land or sea, and are finding the light that lights the way to Home. And these are the lights o' war.

XIII

SILHOUETTES OF SUNSHINE

There is laughter and song and sunshine among our boys in France. Let every mother and father be sure of that. Your boys are always lonely for home and for you, but they are not depressed, and they are there to stay until the job is done. There are times of unutterable loneliness, but usually they are a buoyant, happy, human crowd of American boys.

Those of us who have lived with them, slept with them, eaten with them, come back with no sense of gloom or depression. I say to you that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite of war, they are living normal lives, with just about the same proportion of sunshine and sorrow as they find at home, with the sunshine dominant.

Some Silhouettes of Sunshine gleam against the background of war like scintillating diamonds and

"Send a thrill of laughter through the framework of your heart; And warm your inner being 'til the tear drops want to start."

There was that watch-trading incident on the Toul line.

The Americans had only been there a week, but it hadn't taken them long to get acquainted with the French soldiers. About all the two watch-trading Americans knew of French was "Oui! Oui!" and they used this every minute.

The American soldiers had a four-dollar Ingersoll watch, and this illuminated time-piece had caught the eye of the French soldier. He, in turn, had an expensive, jewelled, Swiss-movement pocket-watch. The American knew its value and wanted it.

They stood and argued. Several times during the interesting transaction the American shrugged his shoulders and walked away as if to say: "Oh, I don't want your old watch. It isn't worth anything."

Then they would get together again, and the gesticulating would begin all over; the machine-gun staccato of "Oui Oui's" would rattle again, and the argument would continue, without either one of the contracting parties knowing a word of the other's language.

At last I saw the American soldier unstrap his Ingersoll and hand it over to the Frenchman, who, in turn, pulled out the good Swiss-movement watch, and both parties to the transaction went off happy, for each had gotten what he wanted.

One of the funniest things that happened in France while I was there was told me by a wounded boy one Sunday afternoon back of the Notre Dame cathedral. He was invalided from the Chateau-Thierry scrap in which the American marines had played such a heroic part. He was a member of the marines, and was slightly wounded. He saw that I was a secretary, and thought to play a good joke on me. He pulled out of his breast-pocket a small black thing that looked and was bound just like a Bible. Its corner was dented, and it was plain to be seen that a bullet had hit it, and that that book had stopped its death-dealing course.

I should have been warned by a gleam that I saw in his eyes, but was not. I said: "So you see that it's a good thing to be carrying a Bible around in your pocket?"

"Yes, that saved my life last week," he said impressively. Then he showed me the hole in his blouse where it had hit. The hole was still torn and ragged. In the meantime I was opening what I thought was his Bible.

It was a deck of cards.

I can hear that fine American lad's laughter yet. It rang like the bells of the old cathedral itself, in the shadow of which we stood. His laughter startled the group of old men playing checkers on a park bench into forgetting their game and joining in the fun. Everybody stopped to see what the fun was about. That lad had a good one on the secretary, and he was enjoying it as much as the secretary himself.

Then he said: "Now I'll tell you a good story to make up for fooling you."

"You had better," I said with a sheepish grin.

Then he began:

"There was a fellow named Rosenbaum brought in with me last week to the Paris hospital, wounded in three places. They put me beside him and he told me his story.

"It was at Belleau Wood and the Americans were plunging through to the other side driving the Boche before them. This Jewish boy is from New York City, and one of the favorites of the whole marine outfit. He had gotten separated from his friends. Suddenly he was confronted by a German captain with a belching automatic revolver. The Hun got him in the shoulder with the first shot. Then the American made a lunge with his bayonet, and ran the captain through the neck, but not before the captain shot him twice through the left leg. The two fell together. When the boy from New York came to consciousness he reached out and there was the dead German officer lying beside him.

"The boy took off the captain's helmet first, and pulled it over to himself. Then he took his revolver and his cartridge-belt and piled them all in a little pile. Then he took off his shoes and his trousers and every stitch of clothes that the officer had on, and painfully strapped them around himself under his own blouse. After he had done this he strapped the officer's belt on himself. When the stretcher-bearers got to him and had taken him to a first-aid and the nurses took his clothes off, they found the officer's outfit.

"'Say, boy, are you a walking pawnshop?' the good-natured doctor said, and proceeded to take the souvenirs away.

"This was the military procedure, but the New York boy cried and said: 'I'll die on your hands if you take them away.'