We steered our course by the "farm" described to us by the men on the second line. It was a jumbled ruin overhung with vines, kindly vines that tried to hide great wounds. A bicycle courier, speeding back with messages, set us right again when we lost our way in the deepening darkness; but it was black night when we entered our first objective on the great road.
A private directed us to the officers' mess. Winding in and out among the shattered buildings, we threaded our way to an old bomb-proof. As I came out of the night, even the flicker of the candles in the dark, cellar-like room blinded me. When my vision cleared, I saw approaching me a young officer who had risen from the head of the table; he was the "town major," the officer in charge of the village. With his hands he made a vise and gripped my shoulders, as he said, like one in a dream, "Poling, what are you doing here?" and, reaching back a half-dozen years, I cried, "Pat!" It was Lieutenant Robert C. Patterson, of Huntington, Ind.,—but it was not as "Lieutenant Patterson" that I addressed him.
We met first at a young people's conference at Winona Lake. He was president of the Christian Endeavor society and teacher of a Sunday-school class in the Presbyterian church at home, an exceptionally alert and vigorous young man. Out under the trees early one morning we talked about the gravest problem a man ever faces, "Where shall I put my life?" Since those days at Winona Lake I had not seen him. He had experienced many changes, enlisting at twenty-one, three years before our meeting in France; and, when the challenge of a vast military need had become unmistakable to him, he had seen service first at Panama. Later he had been assigned to duty at home; and in July, 1917, his eager eyes were among the first in our expeditionary army to see the shores of bleeding, glorious France. His advancement had been rapid, from private to sergeant, and from sergeant to a commission. He was wearing the silver bar of a first lieutenant when we gripped each other "over there," but before I saw again the lights off Sandy Hook—and my return was not long delayed after our meeting—he was made a captain.
We did not eat. In his billet we sat on his bunk and talked. We travelled fast and far in a few minutes. Things and times had changed since we last talked together by the quiet lake in Indiana, but some things never change; we talked about those things that are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
But Barnes was becoming impatient; there were long miles to go yet, and much work was to be done. The machine had arrived and was waiting, and machines look better under way than parked on the line.
"Pat" said a few things quietly, and then opened his tunic and took out of a deep pocket a well-worn leather case. In it was the first Croix de Guerre given by the French government to an American officer after the entry of the United States into the war. With it was the official citation telling of the high courage and determination which won the coveted cross of honor. "Take it back; deliver it in person," he said.
You have not forgotten the story of the first little affair suffered by Americans in the trenches, the story of the barrage, the trench raid, the taking of three prisoners, and the offering of America's first strong lives upon the altar of freedom. You will never forget the young officer who in that "violent bombardment," when communications were cut and re-enforcements held back, conquered the shell-fire to make his report, and then "carried on" until the black morning was over. America's first Croix de Guerre never left its place by the side of my passport and movement orders, pressed close against my body, until the last inch of treacherous Atlantic was behind me.
But to me it speaks of the other soldier, not the one I left out there by the battle road under the shell-illumined sky of St. Mihiel, not the one in muddy uniform with the old-young face of a veteran and the insignia of the army of the republic; but that other soldier who gave his heart's full allegiance to the Captain of the great salvation, and who now, in the far, stern place his quest of richer, fuller life has called him to, keeps the faith. As these lines are being written, there lies before me a letter from the mother of Captain Patterson; and in it I read, "It was through his interest in our local Christian Endeavor society that he became a member of the church when he was thirteen years old."
Out from the International Headquarters of the Christian Endeavor movement floats a service flag with 140 stars upon it, and every star represents 1,000 men—140,000 young Endeavorers now with the colors in France or in training-camps preparing to go—140,000 young men from the churches of the United States who have not "failed to hear the call of highest patriotism." Long ere these words will find themselves upon the printed page the 140,000 will have become 150,000, and, if the end of this red pilgrimage be not soon reached, the three hundred thousand Endeavorers of military age, and their as yet uncounted brothers, will have found their places in the trenches or behind them, and on the ships of the sea.
How quickly they came! From my own local union six officers enlisted within a few weeks; before I left for France twenty-three State presidents, active or past, were in training; and a great city union, that of Des Moines, found itself without a young man left on the executive committee. Within the first year of the war Illinois and Ohio recorded more than five Christian Endeavorers in service for every society. A census of Camp Hancock taken in early December, 1917, revealed the fact that ten per cent of the men in training there at that time were Christian Endeavorers.