War the Creator — Parts 19 -23

XIX

When the Twentieth was gathered together for roll call, it was found that there were 150 dead or wounded.

Some 300 Germans were stretched upon the ground.

But the enemy must be pursued.

So forward, with great precautions, to a farm, their headquarters—but it was found to be empty; so here they halted for a rest, the young men still panting with the exertion and excitement of the fight.

“I tried to smoke my pipe,” said Georges, “but I had to give it up.

” With the artillery still hammering all about—but mostly the French batteries of “75’s” now, pounding away in fours—the Twentieth stayed till night, and sent its wounded to the rear—for the stretcher bearers and ambulances were right up behind these days, with plenty to do.

Here the regiment received with yells and tears the news of the victory of this five days’ battle of the Marne.

It was too good to be true.

The captain of Georges’s company, with his arm in a sling, was a Frenchman, and now it was time for more rhetoric.

He had an appreciative audience, this time.

“You are men!

” he announced, “you have done your duty, and France is proud of you.

” But France, it appeared from his talk, was not yet free; and the moral of his discourse was that there was still considerable work to do, and he ended with the word “_Forward!

_” So, forward they went, next morning, gloriously in pursuit of the enemy, now some ten miles away.

Forward, with their bayonets stained by German blood at last.

Forward, all the forenoon, past villages wrecked and plundered by the barbarians; past houses gutted and outraged and burned; past trembling, fear-struck peasants offering what was left of their bread and wine.

Forward all the afternoon, along the roads strewn with helmets, knapsacks, and empty wine bottles; past German camps in the open, littered with armchairs and clocks and silver plate, mattresses and broken pianos, and bottles, bottles, bottles—with sheep and cattle cut open, rotting; past dead horses everywhere, disemboweled, legs up.

Forward at sunset, past wrecked automobiles, burned to masses of curly iron; past caissons smashed by shells, and bicycles without number abandoned along the road.

Forward, in the moonlight across battle fields where the dead lay in windrows in shocking confusion, mutilated abominably, dead in the long fresh trenches, filling every gallery and compartment, dead in the woods, dead on green meadows where in the cool night air wisps of trailing mist hovered near the ground and the stench was in their nostrils till they sickened and hurried on, rinsing their mouths with water!

Forward across the swath, leagues wide, of death and hate and ruin, forward, forward all that night!

XX

Three hours’ rest, and then _again_ forward!

At noon, a farm.

_Halt!

_ Georges was one of the three who went forward, dodging from wall to wall, to reconnoiter.

There seemed to be some secret hidden there—the roof was blown off, the windows smashed, devastation everywhere about—but it might still conceal some desperate foe.

As he approached the closed door, he saw a stain on the stone step, where a little dark stream of something had dried.

He pushed open the door—butchery!

More than two hundred Germans who had taken refuge there had found appalling death when two howitzer shells had converted them into an incredible mass of mere bleeding flesh.

No fear now need any Frenchman have of those grim Germans—save only the fear of infection.

Georges flung back the door and fled.

Could he find worse horrors?

Let him tell.

“On Friday, after we had been relieved, we were held in reserve in the rear, and detailed to pick up the German deserters and waifs that were hiding in the woods all over the country.

They were a sorry enough lot, frightened to death at first, when they threw up their hands at sight of us, but glad enough to be made prisoners and not have to work, when they found they were not going to be killed.

After the wanton destruction of innocent villages we had seen—they had even destroyed the fire engines—it was pretty hard to refrain from knocking these brutes down with the butts of our rifles.

We heard many stories of the atrocities they had committed in their baffled rage, but the one thing I saw was enough for me.

“We were marching through a little wood in the Department of the Marne—somewhere between Posesse and Givry, it was, I think.

The company ahead suddenly began to slow up and halt—they were pointing at something, but the officers cried: ‘Go on!

_Go on!

_’ Of course we were curious to know what it was they were looking at, and we halted, too.

Well, our officers couldn’t hold us—or they didn’t try to.

Some of us ran up through the trees on the right-hand side of the road to look closer.

“Eight French soldiers, m’sieur, with ropes round their necks, hanging to the limbs of the trees!

I was right close to them.

I saw them plainly.

I know.

They were riddled with bullet holes.

And in among them, m’sieur, was hanging the body of a little girl.

About twelve years old, I should say.

_She_ was shot, too.

She was so pretty....

The officers called us back.

There was no time to cut them down, even; we were hurrying along to keep in touch with the advance.

“Yes, m’sieur, we all saw it.

Why, there is a man in this very hospital now who saw it, too.

Last week there came a commissioner down here on purpose to get our affidavit about it, for some report of the Government.

” XXI

Georges’s story is almost told, now; there remains only the end of his soldiering, which was to be eventful to the last.

After following the fighting body for three days, the Twentieth Regiment was ordered into the first line.

The Germans, having now retreated to the Aisne, and eastward to the strategic positions long since prepared and mapped by German spies, had made a stand.

So on toward Ville-sur-Tourbes Georges marched, the firing every moment getting hotter.

They were evidently advancing against a very strong position, so that when they swung westward to the little village of Le Mesnil they began to be subjected to continuous shelling and to rifle fire that grew worse and worse.

But still no enemy was in sight.

Again the Twentieth had to wait for the French artillery to arrive in front of a black wood that poured out destruction.

Lying in the brush, Georges wondered whether it would all end as before.

As before, each man waited for his time to come; but now, seasoned, hopeful, he could joke at death.

“There’s a _marmite_ for you!

” a corporal would sing out, as a German shell came screaming to the right; and, as the shrapnel exploded, “Look out for the prunes!

” a man would yell, “they’re coming your way!

” Georges was taking it all coolly enough, thinking, he told me, how much those hurtling shells sounded like a subway train rolling into a station—rather more like an express traveling past without stopping.

And so, when a sergeant near him yelled, “Look out—here comes our portion!

” he only laughed and ducked under the little shelter of brush and earth he had been building.

XXII

But Georges laughed too soon, he ducked just too late!

There was a terrific explosion, and suddenly he felt paralyzed all over—as if by an electric shock.

No pain anywhere at first; only a fearful feeling that something dire had happened to him.

He was stunned; “sort of upside-down, all over,” he said.

Dragging himself out of the shower of dirt, dazed and frightened, he saw that his left foot was covered with blood.

Then, a sudden leap of pain!

He had a savage burst of anger that he should have been so treated.

The pain every moment grew more excruciating....

Just how he got to the rear he didn’t know, but after crawling and limping somehow, with his rifle as a crutch, he found himself at last by the wall of a house outside the village, and there he lay down to rest.

But there was to be little rest for Georges Cucurou.

From that moment, for a whole week, he lived in a sort of waking nightmare.

One foot bare, hopping along, hugging the walls of the village, savagely bombarded by German batteries—lying under big trees, watching his retreating regiment leaving him to almost certain capture—limping away on the arm of a stray wounded soldier in desperate haste before the “Bosches” came that ride in a galloping ammunition wagon, bounced and jolted, bouncing into ditches, bumping over stones—and then, after a hurried first-aid dressing, that fearful journey to Ville-sur-Tourbes!

That journey—more than three miles—Georges made along the hard macadam road, crawling on his hands and knees.

He had thrown away his knapsack, he had thrown away his rifle.

“But,” said Georges, “there was one thing I’d have died before I’d have thrown away—and that was that Prussian helmet!

” The last half mile he was carried on horseback, half fainting, behind a friendly chasseur.

That was but an incident, however—the rest of his ordeal became a confused horror of days and days in a ruined farm, with a hundred others suffering like him, without any food, except unsugared tea, with their wounds undressed—at a farm where threatening German shells dropped intermittently, keeping up the constant fear of death.

Then—after endless hours, torturing hours when he thought of nothing but his ankle and his stomach, the flying automobiles of the Red Cross!

Georges was wafted to a semi-heaven of beds and bandages and women’s kindly hands and faces—warm food—cleanliness; rest—at Châlons!

[Illustration] Georges’s soldiering was over—over, that is, if you except his trip to Toulouse.

To some, perhaps, a three days’ railway trip in a crowded compartment with a crushed ankle might be considered an ordeal.

But to Georges it was a holiday.

He was going home!

Home.

XXIII

At the beautiful Renaissance hospital at Toulouse on the Boulevard de Strasbourg, I found Georges Cucurou lying in the corner of a huge hall—a splendid hall it was of carvings and arches and coffer-vaulted ceiling, all hung with flags.

How small his cot looked, there in the corner of that hall, amid paintings and gildings and magnificent cornices!

How strange those nurses looked too—white-swathed matrons in flowing draperies, and nuns with flapping wide white headdresses gliding silently along the parqueted floor!

How strange and quiet those weak, pale soldiers in the cots, and the patient soldiers sitting about in blue uniforms, and white, and red!

But, most of all, how strange _he_ seemed!

No, it was not Coco, any more—not Coco of the free, airy gestures, Coco of the big, innocent eyes; but some one who was content to let his straight-forward words speak for themselves.

Not the boy with mobile, parted lips; but some one whose mouth closed firmly, now, when he paused, reflecting seriously before he answered.

And, as he spoke of things beyond my ken, he made me, somehow, feel ashamed.

Why, it seemed, now, that, having known Death so near, he knew Life itself—he was the wiser, the elder; and I the boy, without experience save of the little arts and playthings of the world....

Well, it was time to go.

I took out my notebook to jot down an address, and as I did so I saw his eyes fastened upon my pencil.

His face had changed.

Without a word, he reached out his hand for it.

I understood—and there came up to me suddenly, a picture of the laughing boy who had pretended to shoot with such a pencil—and ...

even to give a bayonet thrust!

He looked at it curiously with a faint smile.

“A-mer-i-cain Pencil Compagnie” he read with his queer French accent.

Then he pressed in the end, and a little point of lead popped out.

He laughed—he sighed.

He handed it back.

There were tears in his eyes.

“Ah, m’sieur,” he said, “do you remember that day in Paris, last July?

” There was a silence.

Then—“Why, it seems like ten years since then!

” So, in those two months, War the Creator had done its work.

Coco was a man.

[Illustration: COCO's ITINERARRY BATTLE of the MARNE BATTLE of the AISNE ] *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR THE CREATOR ***

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