Chapter XI
THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE
A sentinel barred our way. "Can't take the 'bus' in for half an hour yet." Barnes turned to me, and said, "Shall we walk or wait?" We left the car for the driver to bring up when the failing light would make his journey safer, and hiked up the road.
We had been stopped at the edge of the woods between the third and second lines, half a mile from a little village that marked the point within the second line which was our immediate destination. Machines were not allowed beyond the cover of the trees before dark. A few yards above the sentinel who had challenged us the road came under the eye of German observers.
Ten minutes of brisk walking brought us to the second line. There had been a great air fight, with eighteen planes in action, only a few hours before; and three Germans had been dropped. An anti-aircraft gun manned by the French was so carefully camouflaged that even when standing within ten feet of the spot where it raised itself unhurriedly out of the earth to go into action, one was quite unaware of its presence.
Barnes, an old-time Endeavorer from Ohio, whose business in Cleveland was big, and who brings to the generalship of a front-line Y. M. C. A. division a genius for leadership and a personality that make him a marked man, was in a hurry to be off. A mile and a half of open country lay between us and the most advanced "75's." In front of these was the military road along which were scattered the several ruined villages we must visit before returning to headquarters.
The "front line," by the way, is not a string without thickness; from batteries to the most advanced trench it is a mile deep at least. The great battle highway, in front of the hidden guns that are the most exact engines of death the war has developed, is screened carefully from the enemy to cover the passing of trains and men. From it deep communicating trenches run down to battalion and company headquarters, the dugouts, the reserve trenches, the machine-gun nests, and the "laterals" that stretch away for miles facing Germany.
The gray of a February evening, whose heavy sky completely hid the sunset, was our protection as we left the second line behind us and swung with long strides across the open. Then, too, we were nearly three miles from enemy trenches, and by the time we had come to closer quarters it would be pitch-dark.
Not a fence or a hedge broke the monotony of that vast open space. Abandoned trenches, that in a need could be quickly made war-fit, scarred it in all directions, and shell-holes pocked it thickly. Almost I thought myself again in the dead season of late fall upon the high plateaus of Montana or Wyoming. These craters, the old ones, were not unlike the ancient buffalo-wallows of the West; and the tangled, heavy grass, undisturbed for three plantings, reminded me of the dried virgin turf of my own country.
But I got no farther with my comparisons; the sounds in the air and the huge noises in the not-too-remote distance, where the earth rose in volcanic eruptions to meet the sky, were unlike any range voices I had ever heard. Across this plateau of France Death has herded his flocks, and here have been gathered some of his bloodiest harvests.