ST. BOINGT
Palm Sunday, 1918
This has been an ideal Spring day. I said Mass in the village church for the “4th Battalion” (Headquarters, Machine Gun, Sanitary and Supply Companies). Later in the morning Major Lawrence and I dropped in to the High Mass. I was interested in the palms. When I was a lad we used cedar, before the days when ships from the Spanish Main brought their cargoes of broad palmetto leaves, which we carry in our hands on Palm Sunday and wear in our hats through Holy Week. Here they use anything fresh, young and growing, that the country and the season afford. The people pluck small branches from the trees on their way to Mass, the preference being for willow shoots with their shiny yellow green bark and furry buds. There is a fine old-world countryside flavor to this custom of plucking these offerings to the Lord from one’s own trees or along familiar lanes, that we never get from our boughten palms.
This I felt especially when I saw what they were doing with them. When the procession began, everybody arose and followed the crossbearer out of the church portals into the mellow spring morning. Around the church they went, their ranks now swelled by a crowd of our own soldiers. Our route lay through the graves of the village dead. At each grave a lone figure or a small group would detach themselves and kneel in prayer while they stuck their fresh young twigs in the soil around it. We too found a place for our offerings and prayers when we came to a recently made mound with a Croix de Guerre and bronze palm embossed upon its stone—a French soldier, “Mort pour la Patrie.” We borrowed pussy willows from the people and pulled branches of green box, and covered that grave with them while we made our soldier’s orisons for the man that was sleeping there, and for our own fine lads that we had left behind in the dugout at Rocroi and under the Green Tree Cross at Croix-Mare.
After Mass I started off across the fields to visit the 2nd Battalion at Essey la Cote. A wonderful spring day—fresh and sweet and clear. From the hill one could see the dull red tiles of twenty villages clustering along the slopes of the rolling landscape. Faint sounds of distant church bells came to my ears; and nearer, clearer notes from overhead such as I had never heard before. Skylarks! It was the final touch to make it a perfect morning.
I dropped down to the road which led to the nestling village, and met a band of children romping out. Here too was spring. They gathered round me, not at all shy, for they were bubbling with excitement and anxious to talk. The American soldiers—they were so—big-and so young—and so nice—and so devout (they filled the church at three Masses)—and so rich (they gave money like nobody had ever seen before, and the Commandant had put a twenty franc note on the collection plate). “Good Old Bill Stacom,” I mused, “we are both far away from our little parish in the Bronx, but he has not forgotten my teachings on the first duty of the laity.”
I dined with Captain Jim Finn and his happy family of bright young Lieutenants—Sherman Platt and Becker and Otto and Flynn, clean cut active youngsters who enjoy their work and are delighted at serving with the old Regiment. I spent the afternoon amongst the men. They too were enjoying the day lazily, cleaning up equipment in chatty groups or propped against sunny walls, or wandering through the fields. They have heard of the big German Drive in the north and they know that we have been halted and are to be sent in somewhere. They are somewhat disappointed at not getting back to Longeau and Baissey and Cohons and Percey once more, but if there is anything big happening they don’t want to miss it. That’s what we are here for.
Billy Kaas offered to be my guide to the hilltop, from which the whole countryside can be seen for miles around. The spot is interesting for other reasons. It marks the high water level of the German invasion of Lorraine in 1914, and now it marks the furthest backward step we are to make on this journey. I feel prophetic twitchings that it will be a long long time before we are allowed to pitch our tents in that part of France over there which has not known invasion by the enemy. The news from the North is grave, and our side will need every soldier it has if the Germans are to be held off. And that is a job that will take a lot of doing. Well, as the men say, “that’s what we are here for.”