Part 7

Many of these letters contain only a recital of uneventful days and the prescribed formalities of friendship or love, banal to the general public but dear enough to those who are waiting and who will sit around the lamp of an evening and comment on every word. I know young women throughout the country who receive a letter from their husbands every day. The war has served as a school for adults. Sometimes expediency entirely disappears and it is the race which speaks, and the hidden faith, and the soul which perhaps has never thus been laid bare.

Here is a letter which has been brought to my notice. For a year it had been carried in the pocket of a territorial who wrote it as his last will and testament, and when he was killed it was sent to his widow. Read it and see if you would not like to have had him who wrote it as a friend and neighbor:

“My dear, today, as I am writing these lines, my heart feels very big, and if you ever read them it will be because I died doing my duty. I ask you, before I go, to bring up our children in honor and in memory of me, for I have loved them very dearly, and I shall have died thinking of them and of you. Tell them I died on the field of honor, and that I ask them to offer the same sacrifice the day France shall need their arms and hearts. Preserve my certificate of good conduct, and later make them know that their father would like to have lived for them and for you, whom I have always held so dear. Now, I do not want you to pass the rest of your life worshiping one dead. On the contrary, if during your life you meet some good, industrious young fellow capable of giving you loyal aid in rearing our children, join your life with his and never speak to him of me, for if he loves you it would only cast the shadow of a dead man upon him—it is over, my dear. I love you now and forever, even through eternity. Good-bye! I shall await you over there. Your adoring JEAN.”

As showing the dogged, determined character of these men, Mr. Bazin relates the following incident:

Lately, when both wind and rain were raging, an officer told me of going up to two lookout men, immovable at their posts in the first line trench, and joking with them, he said:

“Let’s see, what do you need?”

“Less mud.”

“I am in the same boat. What else?”

“This and that—”

“You shall have it, I promise you. Tired?”

“A little.”

“Discouraged?”

They made a terrible face, looked at him, and together replied: “If you have come to say such things as that, sir, you better not have come at all. Discouraged? No, indeed! We’re not the kind who get discouraged!”

ALL IN THE SAME COUNTRY

The German officer who confiscated a map of Cripple Creek belonging to an American traveler, and remarked that “the German Army might get there some time,” should be classed with the London banker who said to a solicitous mother seeking to send cash to San Antonio, Texas, for her wandering son: “We haven’t any correspondent in San Antonio, but I’ll give you a draft on New York, and he can ride in and cash it any fine afternoon.”

GENERAL BELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE

THE youngsters at Camp Upton looked with admiring and envious eyes at the ribbons pinned on the left breast of the man who entered headquarters. Then they looked up at the face of the wearer of these emblems of service in the Indian Wars, Cuba, and the Philippines, and they saw a sturdy campaigner of field and desert, his face bronzed by many scorching suns. On the left sleeve of his coat were the three bars of a sergeant with the emblem of the supply department in the inverted V.

This ghost of the old Army seemed to feel a little out of place for a moment, and then he turned to Sergeant Dunbaugh and said:

“I’d like to see the General, if you please.”

“Have you an appointment?” asked Dunbaugh a bit hesitatingly.

“Well, no, but the General told me to come back, so I am here.”

As the General was then out in the camp Sergeant Dunbaugh suggested that the old soldier tell him just what he wanted to see him about, and, says the New York _Sun_:

So the story of Sergeant Busick was told—the story of a once trim young trooper and a once dashing lieutenant of the Seventh Cavalry, immortalized by Custer and honored by a whole army.

Twenty years ago Edward Busick was assigned as a private to G Troop of the Seventh, stationed at Fort Apache, Arizona. At that time G was officially lacking a captain, so a certain young lieutenant was acting commander, and for his orderly he chose one Trooper Busick.

One evening, a year later, the lieutenant received sudden orders to report immediately to a staff post. All that night his orderly worked with him packing his personal belongings and helping him get ready for an early-morning start. It was a long job, and a hard one, but the orderly didn’t mind the work in the least; all he cared about was the loss of his troop commander.

“Don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again, Busick, but if I do, and there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll be glad to do it,” the lieutenant told him when the job was finished and the last box had been nailed down.

It wasn’t very much for a lieutenant to say to his orderly, but it meant a great deal to this trim young trooper. Somehow, in the old Army, orderlies get to thinking a great deal of their officers and Busick happened to be just that particular kind. He had an especially good memory, too.

The whirligig of fate that seems to have so much to do with Army affairs sent the lieutenant to the Philippines, where, as colonel of the suicide regiment, he won everlasting honor for his regiment and a Congressional medal for valor for himself. Then on up he jumped until his shoulder-straps bore the single star of a brigadier. Then another star was added, and he became chief of staff and ranking officer in the whole Army.

And all the while the whirligig that looks after enlisted men saw to it that Trooper Busick added other colored bars to his service ribbons. And slowly he added pounds to his slim girth and a wife and children to his fireside. But as a heavy girth and a family aren’t exactly synonymous with dashing cavalrymen, Sergeant Busick saw to it that he was transferred from the roving cavalry to the stationary Coast Artillery. And through all the years he remembered the lieutenant and his promise that if he ever wanted anything he would try to get it for him.

One month ago Sergeant Busick got a furlough from his Coast Artillery company at Fort McKinley, Portland, Me., and bought a ticket to Camp Upton, New York. There were only a few men here then, so he didn’t have any great difficulty in seeing his old first lieutenant.

For half a minute or so General Bell, commanding officer of the Seventy-seventh Division of the National Army and one-time first lieutenant of the Seventh Cavalry, didn’t recognize his old orderly—but it was for only half a minute.

“You’ll sleep in our quarters with us tonight,” General Bell ordered. “Tomorrow we’ll see about that old promise.”

So that night Sergeant Busick had the room between Major-General Bell’s and Brigadier-General Read’s. But sleeping next to generals was pretty strong for an ordinary sergeant and he didn’t accept General Bell’s invitation to have mess with him.

And a little later Busick told his old commander that the big request that he had come across the continent to make was that he be transferred to the Seventy-seventh division and allowed to serve under the General. But army tape is still long and red, so all that the General could do was to send the sergeant back to his post and promise that he would do all that he could. This, it proved, was sufficient.

For Sergeant Edward Busick, smiling and happy with his reassignment papers safely tucked away in the pocket of his blouse under his half a foot of service ribbons, came back to report for duty. It took twenty years to do—but he’s done it.

And the National Army of Freedom hasn’t any idea as yet how much richer in real soldier talent and color it is today. But a certain old campaigner, who used to be a first lieutenant of cavalry, knows.

NO GREAT LOSS

An American stopping at a London hotel rang several times for attendance, but no one answered. He started for the office in an angry mood, which was not improved when he found that the “lift” was not running. Descending two flights of stairs, he met one of the chambermaids.

“What’s the matter with this dashed hotel?” he growled. “No one to answer your call and no elevator running.”

“Well, you see, sir,” said the maid, “the Zeps were reported and we were all ordered to the cellar for safety.”

“——!” ejaculated the American. “I was on the fifth floor and I wasn’t warned.”

“No, sir,” was the bland reply, “but you see, sir, you don’t come under the Employers’ Liability Act, sir.”

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT

“LAST evening we went out into a field, and read Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ out loud.”

Do you get the picture? Can you see the fading glory of the sunset sky, and hear the soft breeze, sweetly laden with the scent of new-mown hay, as it murmurs through the gently rustling leaves—a real autumn scene of rural peace and quiet?

Yes? Well, you are quite mistaken. That is an extract from a letter written by an ambulance driver on the French front. And so you see that war is not all horror.

Emerson Low, the son of Alfred M. Low, of Detroit, went to France with a group of college boys. He joined the American Field Ambulance Service, and is now in the thick of the fighting in the Champagne district. The Detroit _Free Press_ prints some extracts from his letters to his family. In one he tells of his trip to the posts:

Day before yesterday several of us started out for the posts. I carried the _médecin divisionnaire_ and went a little before the others. In spite of the fact that the fields are being recultivated and the searness of former battles is somewhat concealed, the road to the front is rather a grim affair, and you are startled when you pass through a town deserted and demolished. There is quite a large town between this one and the front. It is uninhabited except for a few soldiers and a yellow dog that slinks about in the doorways.

I left the _médecin divisionnaire_ at his _abri_, a little further along the road, a road hidden completely by strips of burlap tied to poles. The first post is in a little wood. There were two of us there, and we tossed a coin to see who would take the first call. I won and waited for an ambulance to come in from one of our three posts. These posts are along the front of the hill where the battle is taking place. They are all reached by going through and then beyond X (you remember the little destroyed town with the church which I spoke of during our first month). The first post was a smaller town than X, and is now razed completely to the ground. The second is about one-fourth of a mile to the right and the third—which can only be reached during the night and left before dawn—is a German _abri_, formerly a dugout of German officers. The German _saucises_ are directly above the road, and any machine would be shelled in the daytime. The posts are close together and are reached by exposed roads.

My call came about noon. I was given an orderly, and left for the first post. From the road we could see the shells breaking on the hill and in the fields about, where the French batteries were hidden. We reached the post, backed the machine into a wide trench, which hid it from view, and then went into the dugout. It was a new iron dugout, about 30 feet long and 10 or 12 feet broad, with bunks on either side. On top were heaped bags of sand and dirt.

We read until about two o’clock, when several shells fell in the battery field a few meters behind us. Then a few shells fell in a field to the right, and in another moment we were in the midst of a bombardment. It lasted all afternoon. Two men trying to enter the dugout were hit, one in the throat and the other in the shoulder, but not badly. About six o’clock it grew so bad and so many shells fell on the roof of the dugout that we had to leave, cross through some trenches—a strange-looking procession, crouching and running along—and get into a deep cave about twenty feet under the ground, where we stayed until eight o’clock in the evening. Then the firing became intermittent, the shells hit further to the right and left, and we ran back into the dugout.

It was still light and an airplane soared above us, the noise of which is to me, for an unaccountable reason, one of the most reassuring sounds I have ever heard.

Quite jocularly he writes of supper, first having looked at his car which he found uninjured, although covered with dirt from exploding shells. Continuing, he says:

There were about eight of us, the orderly and myself, the lieutenant-doctor in charge, and three or four old _brancardiers_, who, when they ate their soup made more noise than the shells. After every few spoonfuls, to avoid waste, they poked their mustaches in their mouths and sucked them loudly.

During the evening the firing became steady on both sides, the French battery pouring their shells, which whistled over our dugout. We went to bed, secure in this iron cylinder, whose great ribs stood like the fleshless carcass of a beast, which to destroy would be a worthless task. A stump of a candle lay wrapped in our blankets in the bunks. It was rather comfortable, except that my bed was crossed at the top by a piece of iron just where my head lay.

All through the night there was a continuous commotion in the dugout, the _brancardiers_ running around and talking in loud voices about things we were too sleepy to understand. We had no _blessés_ during the night (an exceptional thing—this morning they had fifty from one post) and were relieved about half-past ten the next morning. I returned to the large town, where our cantonment had been changed to another quarter of the village.

This is an exceptionally fine cantonment and was recently occupied by the British Ambulance, whose place we have taken. I think it was originally an officers’ barracks. Two low cement buildings, faced with red brick and roofed with red tile, stand on one side, and opposite these are the stables, used by the “Genies.” In front of the houses are some trees and grass. Each house (one story in height) is divided into four parts, accessible by four doors.

Jim, Rogers, and I have one room to ourselves off the third hallway and in front. There are three other rooms accessible by the same hallway. It is almost like a separate house, as each division has its flight of steps before the door and there is a main sidewalk running under all the front windows. We have our three stretchers on the floor, two cupboards, a broken mirror, and two camp-stools. We keep our trunks, etc., right in the room and it saves transferring them every trip to the posts. There is a large French window with blue shutters. We certainly are comfortably located. There are no showers after all (we had expected two), except one that is broken, and we wash from our _bidons_ (canteens) with a sponge, which is almost as good.

Jim and Rogers came back yesterday shortly before I did. They had both been to the same post, the second one, and been caught in a gas-attack which lasted for an hour. They sat in the _abri_ with their masks on (the masks are a greenish color, with two big round windows for the eyes) and, of course, with the helmets, the _abri_ was crowded, and from their description they must have looked like so many big beetles crouching together. There is absolutely no danger with the masks, however, and we carry one always with us (even in town) and one fastened in the car.

Last evening we went out into a field and read Jane Austen’s “Emma” out loud. Jim and Rog left this morning for the posts and I go tomorrow.

Of the routine work of the ambulance driver he writes:

On account of the night driving we have lately put two men on each car, a driver and an orderly who just goes back and forth between the posts. Five cars are out every day and eight drivers. Three cars begin at the posts and two wait in the woods. As a car comes in from a post, another is sent out from the woods and this driver takes with him the orderly who has just come in, as only one man is necessary to make the trip from the woods to the hospital. From the hospital the latter returns to the woods, and thus a relay is formed. The day before yesterday I was at post 1; yesterday (beginning at noon), I was _en repos_ for the day; today I am _en remplacement_, that is practically the same as repose, but if any extra cars are wanted in case of an attack, etc., we have to be within call. I am fourth in the list and don’t expect to go out. Tomorrow I go in my own car, next day repose, next day as orderly to post 3, next day repose, etc. The work is as interesting as ever.

In another letter which _The Free Press_ prints Mr. Low tells of a battle between airplanes directly over his head. The engagement ended with the winging of both machines. The letter reads:

The German machine fell between the lines, the French plane near one of our posts. There was a terrific fight, which we could hardly see, as it was very high in the air. The French plane caught on fire and began to fall. After some meters it was entirely enveloped in smoke and the three aviators had to jump, which was a quicker death. When they were found, parts of their bodies had been burned away.

Just before this the first German shell fell in our cantonment. It was about half-past seven in the morning and we were all asleep when we heard the rush and explosion of an _obus_. It struck about two meters from the barracks and made a large hole in the road. Three shells usually fall in one place, but no other followed.

For a day of repose it certainly was disturbing.

Yesterday I had a hot shower at the hospital near here. It certainly seemed good, after bathing for two months out of a small reserve water can.

This morning we are at the second post. Before the war there were really enough houses to call it a small town, but it has been so completely destroyed that only stumps of the buildings remain. Batteries have been planted all about it, and at present they are receiving a heavy shelling from the Germans.

Mr. Low seems to possess an excellent nervous organization and a dependable imagination which he finds quite useful. He says:

We are kept in the dugout, which, provided with chairs and a table, is very comfortable. It is rather pleasant to be securely seated here with books and listening to the “rush” of the shells overhead. It is like being before a grate fire and listening to a winter’s storm outside. As long as no _blessés_ are brought in we can sit here and warm our feet until the storm is over. Our beds are all made on the stretchers (placed high enough to keep out the rats), and we intend to spend a pleasant afternoon reading. I have Rog’s Shakespeare, and I am reading “Cymbeline.”

We have just had lunch—hot meat, lentils, camembert, and the inevitable Pinard. The bombardment has nearly died away, so we can sit out a while and enjoy a very delightful August day. This post is reached by an old Roman road, which is rather badly torn up. They have just put up a screen of burlap to conceal it from the _saucisses_; that is, to hide the traffic on it, for the German gunners know where every road lies.

(Later) A young fellow of about nineteen was just carried in. He was at the battery post a few meters behind us and became half-crazed by the shells during the bombardment. It is quite a common occurrence, especially with the men in the trenches. The French call it _commotion_, and the mind becomes so stunned that often they lose their speech or become totally stupid. The lieutenant said that this was a bad case and that if another shell fell near the man he would go mad. He asked us to take the fellow back to the hospital as soon as possible, and I had to ride in the back of the ambulance with him all the way to keep him quiet. Fortunately no shells came near the car.

After supper we sat near the edge of the road and watched two or three battalions pass by on their way to the trenches. The road filled with carts and supply wagons as soon as the _saucisses_ descended. These vehicles travel between towns in the rear to a communication trench a little beyond our post, a point which is a terminus for all traffic. From there the ammunition and supplies are carried to the trenches by hand.

There is a little railroad running from that point, beyond our post; horses pulling small flat cars loaded with wood, barbed wire, etc., for the trenches. A young _poilu_, standing up and waving his arms, came spinning down the hill in an empty car. He nearly caused a collision and I never saw a man so yelled and screamed at as this one was by his sergeant. The officer scolded him for a quarter of an hour and shouted himself hoarse: “_Quelle bêtise!_”

About nine we went down into the _abri_, lighted a candle on the table, and read until about ten, when a man burst through the door, shouting:

“_Gaz! Gaz! M. Médecin!_” and dashed out again. The _médecin_ went outside, and, returning, told us to have our masks ready, that gas was coming over the hill and blowing in our direction. We waited about ten minutes and heard the alarm bell ring—a signal to warn that a gas attack is near. We sat waiting with our masks at our elbows, but the wind carried the gas in another direction and we did not have to use them.

These attacks are frequent, but not dangerous; as at every hour of the day a man stands in the first line trench (with a bell at his side) to give warning of gas. The masks that we always carry at our belts are positive guards against any sort of gas.

We read until twelve and then went to bed, lucky in having only one trip through the day.

HELPING HIS WIFE OUT

An officer was surprised one day when searching the letters of his detachment to read in one of them a passage that was something like this:

“We have just got out of shell-fire for the first time for two months. It has been a hard time. The Germans were determined to take our field bakery, but, by gee! we would not let them. We killed them in thousands.”

This was a letter from one of the bakers to his wife. None of the detachment had been a mile from the base, and they had never seen a German, except as a prisoner. My friend knew the writer well, and could not help (although it was none of his business) asking him why he told such terrible lies to his poor wife. The soldier said:

“It’s quite true what you say, but it’s like this, sir. When my wife and the wives of the other men in the place where I live are talking it all over in the morning I couldn’t think to let her have nothing to say and the others all bragging about what their men had done with the Germans. That’s the way of it, sir.”

MEET TOMMY, D. C. MEDAL MAN

IF war is not a great leveler—and we have been told numberless times that it is—it is certainly the Great American Mixer, and Camp Upton, L. I., is probably the best example extant thereof, so to speak. The Bowery boy and the millionaire rub elbows—you have probably heard that before, but it is nevertheless true—and the owners of Long Island show places sleep in cots next to their former gardeners. But probably the most interesting character at Camp Upton is the barber who was at one time a sergeant in the British Flying Corps, and wears the King’s Distinguished Conduct Medal—that is, he probably would wear it if he hadn’t left it at “’ome in a box.” The New York _Sun_ says: