Finally the marines emerged onto the main road. And what a road! It was a nightmare, a thousand bedlams. There was noise, noise and more noise. It was a Niagara of sound that deafened the men.
The shouting of the workers, the crunch and grind of wheels, the groan of gears, the cracking of whips, the clang of metal, the pounding of countless horses’ hoofs, the chugging of streams of motors and the screams of their many-throated sirens; empty ammunition trains going and loaded ones coming, light artillery and heavy artillery, tanks in platoons, trucks in companies, field kitchens, water wagons, supply trains, ration carts, all fought for space and air in order to make their own particular noise vibrate. Every square foot of that road, broad and gummy-surfaced, supported something all the time, while the ditches on either side were used by endless lines of plodding Americans, faint from hunger and thirst, almost exhausted from want of sleep, but all thrilled by the hunger for Huns that would only be satisfied by victory and peace.
The marines were about to strike the enemy and they knew it. Marshal Foch was behind them.
So they plodded on and on without complaint. The road with its babel of streaming traffic told them that something was about to happen. And each man secretly congratulated himself on being considered good enough to have a part in the show.
Toward the evening it was pure agony for most of the men to pass a French kitchen, located in the woods that flanked both sides of the woods. The men took to robbing the water wagons as they passed. French drivers, angered, slashed at them with their whips, but the marines didn’t mind.
Looking back along the road, Sergeant Bowers saw a young marine with a loaf of French bread. The sergeant stepped out of line and waited for him. In the presence of that loaf of bread, the sergeant actually trembled.
“Where’d you get it?” demanded the sergeant of the young marine.
“Frenchman, for the makin’s,’” returned the youngster.
Instantly the sergeant turned his eyes to the side of the road, where for the first time he noted the presence, at irregular intervals, of French soldiers, most of them slightly wounded, some of whom carried loaves of bread. Sergeant Bowers approached one and exposed a sack half full of tobacco.
“For one loaf,” he said to a Frenchman near him.