LXXII
France
August 22,1918
I can't sleep to-night. It's nearly one. The candle lights up the mud walls and makes the other occupants of my dug-out look contorted and grotesque. They sigh and toss in their dreams. Now an arm is thrown out and a face is turned. They've been through it, all of them, in the past few days. They have a haggard look. And somewhere in shell-holes, wheatfields, woods, they lie to-night—those others. Pain no longer touches them—their limbs have ceased to twitch and their breath is quiet. They have given their all. For them the war is finished—they can give no more.
Do people at home at all realize what our men are doing and have done? Coarse men, foulmouthed men—men whose best act in life is their manner in saying good-bye to it. And then there are the high-principled fellows from whom ideals are naturally to be expected—whatever we are, we all go out in the same way and in the same rush of determined glory. We climb the steep ascent of Heaven through peril, toil, and pain—and at last our spirits are cleansed.
I think continually of the mothers who stand behind these armies of millions. Mothers just like my mother, with the same hopes and ambitions for their sons. Poor mothers, they never forget the time when the hands that smite to-day were too strengthless to do more than grope at the breast. They follow us like ghosts; I seem to see their thoughts like a grey mist trailing behind and across our strewn battlefields. When the rain descends upon our dead, it is their tears that are falling. The whispering of the wheat is like the tiptoe rustling of approaching women.
Pray for us; we need your prayers—need them more than you think, perhaps. Tuck us up in our scooped-out holes with your love, the way you used to before we began to adventure. Above all be proud of us, whether we stand or fall—so proud that you will not fret. God will let us be little again for you in Heaven. We shall again reach up our arms to you, relying on your strength. We shall be afraid and cry out for your comfort. We're not brave—not brave naturally; we shall want you in Heaven to tell us we are safe.
So many thoughts and pictures come to me to-night. One is of a ravine I was in a few days ago, all my men mounted and waiting to move forward. Wounded horses of the enemy are limping through the grass. German wagons, caught by our shell-fire, stand silent, the drivers frozen to the seats with a terrifying look of amazement on their faces, their jaws loose and their bodies sagging. Others lie twisted in the grass—some in delirium, some watching. We shall need all our water before the day is over, and have no time to help them. Besides, our own dead are in sight and a cold anger is in our heart. The stretcher-bearers will be along presently—time enough for mercy when the battle is won! We ourselves may be dead before the sun has set. I know the anger of war now, the way I never did in the trenches. You can see your own killing. You can also see the enemy's work. And yet, through it all down come our wounded, supported by the wounded Huns.
“Those chaps are very good to you,” one of our officers said. The Tommy grinned. “They have to be. If they weren't, I'd let the daylight into them. I've a pocketful of bombs, and they know it.” Well, that's one incentive to friendship, however reluctant.
The Huns are brave—I know that now. They endure tests of pluck that are well-nigh incredible. We are not defeating craven curs. I can think of no one braver than the man who stays behind with a machine gun, fighting a rearguard action and covering his comrades' road to freedom. He knows that he will receive no quarter from our people and will never live to be thanked by his own. His lot is to die alone, hated by the last human being who watches him. They're brave men; they cease fighting only when they're dead.
What a contrast between love and hatred—dreaming of our mothers to the last and smashing the sons of other mothers. That's war!