CHAPTER XXVII THE MIX-UP OF BATTLE

I have not had the opportunity as yet, to tell of the message brought back with me, in Jack’s saddle.

The latter was in Jonathan’s minute and familiar handwriting. It began abruptly, without being addressed to me.

“Whatever else you may believe of me, my dearest friend, I am true to you. I do not deny that what I have done may have justly brought upon me the stigma of disloyalty. We can not divide our love; one must either hate or love one’s country, and serve one flag, only. I have been tried in the furnace of war as few others have ever been. If I have erred in serving the country of my love, and to which I am devoted and owe allegiance with every fibre of my being, then I have erred honestly.

“You must not believe me other than I am, though I may not always be what I seem to be. My allegiance is given, right or wrong, heart and soul to the country I love. And I must go on in this chosen path though it lead to misunderstanding of my motives by those I love, and though I may know that it leads to darkness and to death--for it is the path of duty.

“I have a difficult and heart-and-nerve trying part to play, on a larger stage of the world, than perhaps any one of my age and small abilities ever before attempted.

“When I learned that you were a prisoner, I made a plan for your liberation. I am risking my life to set you free; for I love you more than I do my life. If I should meet you in battle--which God forbid--you should kill me, rather than I would harm you.

“I have confided in one who loves and trusts me, and who likewise loves his country. He will help you to escape.

“JONATHAN N. VON RUCKER.”

What did this strange letter mean? I sat, after reading it, like one confounded. It made me heartsick to believe that it was a declaration of disloyalty to my country. It crushed, for the time being, my belief in Jonathan’s loyalty to our flag, that he had professed and promised to love and protect when he enlisted to fight its battles. But by the same process of thought must I not mistrust General Burbank? Whom could I trust, when the men of all others I had loved and believed in, seemed disloyal? Though reason said that they were false to their country, my heart said “no”; for I felt, against reason, that it could not be so.

I read and reread Jonathan’s letter, and finally decided to take a plain course--a straight cut. I took the letter to General Burbank and asked him to read it, and to make some explanation. Was it not a declaration of disloyalty?

A flush passed over his face as he read the letter. Then with a thoughtful look he read it again and passed it back to me saying, “He had his reasons for writing this letter, but what they are I do not know. But don’t you see, he does not say it is Germany that he is serving? I _know_ that he is loyal to our flag.”

“Thank you, General, for the assurance,” I exclaimed. And stretching out my hand to his, grasped it, for I had no longer the least doubt of him or of his word. Whatever the mystery, I must and did believe in him, though I confess, Jot’s letter had puzzled me.

Upon my return from my permission, I had found my regiment occupying a rest sector, where they had been for nearly two weeks. Here, let me explain, that under prevailing conditions in the great war, a battle lasts sometimes for several weeks, and no troops can remain for that time in line of battle. They must be sent for rest at intervals, to more quiet sectors, to recuperate and reorganize.

Our division was now, after more than two weeks’ rest, again ready for active service; though Sam Jenkins and others attempted to explain that hunting cooties was active duty enough for any one.

The marching and fighting that followed is hard to describe; for we were now a part of a great whole, whose operations no one man could see or understand fully. When a battle stretches out on a front of fifty or sixty miles or more, a single participant, even though he be a captain or a general, can not know much more about it than what he sees.

We had been moved from place to place for several days; sometimes by marching and sometimes by auto trucks.

We were now on the march. I was in my place, having left my horse as too good a target when near the enemy’s snipers moving along a pathway that skirted a forest. The rising sun reflected from the helmets of the men who came tramping wearily but cheerfully--for they had been marching for over twenty hours with little sleep--with prospects now of both rest and sleep.

When the order, “In place, rest,” came, and the brave fellows had sat down to eat, though they were hungry, some of them got to napping, in spite of it.

It was before daylight, when orders came to leave even their light packs behind--which shows what a hurry they were in--for a forced march.

Over strange roads, in a strange country, to a destination we knew not of--possibly “to that bourne from which no traveler returns,” we marched on all that day. We met regiments of _poilus_ who hugged us and held our hands, joyfully telling us that there was to be a big advance on the Boches lines, and that we were to be “in it” with them.

We got a little more sleep and chow, then were loaded into trucks, and buzzed off--heaven knew where--we didn’t!

We met still other Frenchies, who told us there was to be a big drive on a thirty-five mile front. We laughed incredulously; but began to believe, when we caught sight of a lot of tanks rumbling and waddling along in a stubborn manner, as though they meant business. Our men roared out, “Hooray! there’s going to be another dance and we are invited!”

The roads were filled with all kinds of soldiers--doughboys and more doughboys, _poilus_ in all sorts of uniforms, and then some more; horses prancing and snorting, mules heehawing and kicking, officers shouting sulphurous orders, guns and caissons, trucks and baggage wagons, all floundering along in the rain and mud, like dark rivers of humanity. On they came over crooked country roads that twisted around hills and plunged down into valleys, cut up and stirred up in muddy batter by heavy teams that had preceded us: a medley and jam of horses, mules, teams, guns and men! All this, though in seeming confusion, had a real thread of order and purpose controlling the whole. This confused picture will possibly convey some idea of an army on the march hurrying to get into action.

Some of the units were divorced from their wheeled kitchens, and were savagely hungry,--we were--but wanted to get into the mix-up just the same with both feet. We had a little hardtack and bully beef but that made us mighty thirsty. We succeeded in getting a little water from the cart, and I told our men to keep some for future use. Some of my men had lost their gas masks. That wouldn’t do, and the top had to steal some from the Frenchies--which was unprincipled--but it had to be done.

At last we were in it! As a starter we came upon some Huns hiding in dug-outs with a bunch of machine-guns--and then it was literally--what Sherman called war. But our men were there doing their best, and their best was pretty good!

I saw our Major standing in a ditch handing out ammunition with his own hands, amid a confusing uproar of exploding shells, whispering bullets and sputtering bombs. We thought we knew what gun fire was, but we didn’t know the real thing until then.

Everybody was doing the best he could. There stood Top Sergeant Sutherland shouting with a voice that seemed to come far down from his boots, “Right dress! you lousy sons of guns! Better than that! or I will drill thunder out of you when we get back to camp, if you can’t form a better line!”

We found a bunch of Dutchies playing they were dead. “Get up!” I yelled. And tapped some of them with the stick I carried--“get up and march!”--and though they may not have understood what I said, they knew what I meant, and obeyed as docile as puppies.

That evening we captured a little village which was as full of Huns, as an anthill is with ants. We swept them in and headed them for the rear. One of these was a husky officer that Sam Jenkins said he had hauled from a dug-out as deep as a well.

“And that chap,” added Sam, telling me about it later, “had some nerve. He stopped short, took out his cigar case, and lit a cigar from a pipe one of the doughboys was smoking, and then went on ahead as cool as though he had come from an ice chest instead of a dug-out.”

We steered a lot of them to the rear like that. There was a lot to think of, and a lot to do, and I was doing the best I could for the company, with help of the lieutenants and noncoms.

At the first aid station, one of the doctors caught sight of me and called out: “This way, Captain!” and almost dragged me into his coop.

“Not much,” I said. “I am all right!”

“No, you ain’t,” he insisted, “your face is all covered with blood.” It was a slight scalp wound, and though I had bled like a stuck pig, I did not know about it until then, and needed only a little sticking plaster to fix it all right. I was as glad to escape from that doctor as though he had been a Boche.

Turning away, I saw one of our men up a roadside tree that was strung with telegraph wires, apparently. A man had just been knocked out, he was explaining to me, and as he had been in the business at home, he thought he would finish the job. Just then, _whiz bang!_ came a shell that knocked off his tin hat without hurting him and sent it spinning away. After recovering from a transient daze, he coolly remarked: “Captain, I guess I’d better finish the business now that I have begun it.”

Then he came down and saluted in a shame-faced way, and I hadn’t the heart to censure him, though he had no business to be up that tree without orders, and away from his real duties.

When we got together that evening some of my men were missing, and naturally so, after such a mix up of a fight. We got some boss chow that the Salvation Army had brought up, and then bunched down on the ground for sleep--and we sure needed it.