We reached the camp on Mother’s Day, and as many of the men as could crowd the “hanger,” as the tent auditorium was called, were there. After a year among soldiers, we had become quite accustomed to whistles, calls, applause and shouts; otherwise the noise occasioned by a woman’s advent among the thousands of men, might have overwhelmed us, and made it impossible to reach the rostrum.
The work of these stalwart California lads of the “815th,” and of the “816th,” so many of whom came from the Central West, is told elsewhere in the chapter Reburying of the Dead. Their record, with that of the “813th,” and labor battalions who helped at the task, is the most sacred of all the Pioneer regiments. They were “our boys” at Romagne, and again at Brest! They were the very last of the Pioneers to reach France and the last to reach America again. It was a picture to linger in the memory, as with packs on back, bags in hand and heads erect, we saw these men march at the dawn of the day out of the camp, down the long dusty road, over the city streets to the waiting transports. They were not permitted to look to the right or left, but as they passed slowly by, a lifting of the eyes, a movement of the hand, or in some small way, the women who had served them recognized through tear-dimmed eyes a warm adieu.
Those Pioneer regiments, so quickly mobilized to meet an emergency, were just as quickly demobilized with the return of the men to America. But the strengthening and unifying processes through which they passed as a result of the hard work, hard sacrifices, and in many cases, hard treatment of the war, can never be demobilized. There will be little whining from these men who are even yet Pioneers. But certain of their power of achievement, keen and courageous for truth and justice, they will hold fast to their vision of the future, and with strong, sure hands, build toward that future.
Ye Queens, who bear the birth-pangs of a world,
To whom the nations in this hour of stress,
For succor look, and for the truth to bless,
Ye great, whose fondled darlings, combed and curled,
Are in the shell-torn, shamble-trenches hurled,
To stay the hellish Hun, who else would press,