But we were roused from our stupor. Off at our left, not far away, a shrapnel broke, the first I had seen that day. For an instant I was paralyzed. The balls flew all about us; dirt spattered us; and then we ran! Straight toward that barrage we sprinted. Our one chance—and I knew it as well as the splendid fellow in front of me—was those abandoned trenches with their caved-in dugouts; we were not more than fifty yards from them. It was shrapnel now and no mistake. That we were not hit is merely one of the hourly miracles of the front. But we did reach, without being wounded, the old barbed wire with the barrage being pulled across the village and shortening in our direction, and with the shrapnel overhead. Both of us dove head first into the trench, and a good eight-foot plunge it was, into slime and water six inches deep. There we waited until the affair was over.
As suddenly as it begins, intense shell-fire ceases; this demonstration against battalion headquarters lasted in all not more than ten minutes. Then, save for explosions well up on the ridge or behind it in the region of the batteries, comparative quiet reigned. With my new-found friend I climbed out of our refuge and hurried into the village. Here I received another shock; aside from three men wounded, several old walls tumbled in, a score of small craters in the streets, and yards of destroyed camouflage the bombardment had done no injury. I was sure that bodies would be scattered everywhere. But the major was at his table, working furiously and as if nothing had happened; the signal-corps room hard by had been mussed up; one shell had dropped close by the wall of the major's bomb-proof, and another had destroyed the camouflage at its entrance; but these experiences were with the day's work. With the first explosions just beyond the town the men had taken to the cellars, and there remained until the storm was over. The last few hours had given me a vivid demonstration of the truth of the statement that I had often heard, but scarcely believed, "It takes a thousand shells to kill a man by shell-fire."
My first inquiries were for Pest, and he was reported safe and waiting for me in the communicating trench; the sentinel at the head of the old road had given him a statement of my movements. The prisoner had been carried in, and presently he was hurried by in an ambulance bound for the hospital. Every hand that I had seen touch his stretcher had been a kindly, ministering hand; and the men who were risking their lives to bring him out had been prompt to express their admiration of his nerve; he was suffering terribly. He in his turn, when bearers "eased off" their load in the hard going of the open field, would say deeply between his groans, "Schön, schön!" ("Fine, fine.")
Shells exploding half a mile away had made me very nervous in the morning; but now as I hurried back, ploughing through the mud and snow of the communicating trench, sinking often to my hips, and pulling myself out as best I could, no sounds worried me. Men were coming in—the relief; they looked clean and fit. A machine-gun company passed me, and was eager for a few words of information. It was great to have good news for those fellows! At last I reached the main road; its inches of mud with firm footing beneath seemed a paradise. The field in front of the batteries had been reploughed since we crossed it in the morning, and there were many new craters about "Dead Man's Curve."
As darkness came down, we reached——home! and home it is to thousands of hungry-eyed lads who have become men in an hour. Home it is to these far-called soldiers of freedom, who pay the sterner price of the world's redemption. It holds them to their yesterdays; it grips them with their past. By its tables they sit and think and write; about its fire they talk and muse. In the atmosphere of its manly decency they breathe deeply and are purified; and the fellowship of those other soldiers who wear the red triangle makes them fit and strong in their hearts. Ah! as I stepped across the threshold of that place fenced with rough boards and set where heaven touches hell, I saw all things become new. We could not win this war without the Young Men's Christian Association; for, even though our armies reached Berlin, our souls would lose their way.
I put my trophies out of sight—the masks and some pieces of shell that I had taken from a shell-hole after I scrambled up from the first shock of the barrage. A few hurried changes were made, and then we relieved Hummel, who had been working like a lonely Trojan all day.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched Pest. He didn't even know that he was a hero! When I think of him, I shall always see him as I saw him swinging down the road with the lieutenant, bound for the open field, head up and chin out, leaning slightly forward as he took the long and easy stride of the trained athlete—a soldier and a Christian, under higher orders than any that man ever gave or refused, facing death to be merciful, risking his own life to salvage the life of his enemy.
And Pest is more than one man; he is a type. This one day of his life, a trifle more than ordinary, to be sure, but not unlike scores of days he experiences, is a single page from the ledger of service which the Y. M. C. A. secretaries are writing on every front where freedom bleeds.
FOOTNOTE
[1] A letter from Lieutenant David R. Morgan describes the circumstances under which Lieutenant-Colonel Griffiths was buried: