It steadied me somewhat during the difficult next hour, when in the falling twilight I walked up and down between the long rows of raw earth, with the innumerable crosses, each with its new, bright American flag, fluttering in the sweet country air. I needed to recall that selfless courage, for my heart was breaking with sorrow, with guilt-consciousness, with protest, as I stood there, thinking of our own little son, of the mothers of the boys who lay there.
A squad of soldiers were preparing graves for the next day. As they dug in the old, old soil of the cemetery to make a place for the new flesh come from so far to lie there forever, a strong odor of corruption and decay came up in puffs and drifted away down toward the little town lying below us, in its lovely green setting, still shaking rhythmically to the ponderous passage of the guns, of the troops, of the camions.
At one side were a few recent German graves, marked with black crosses and others, marked with stones, dating from the war of 1870, that other nightmare when all this smiling countryside was blood-soaked—and how many times before that!
Above me, dominating the cemetery, stood a great monument of white marble, holding up to all those graves the ironic inscription, “Love ye one another.”
The twilight fell more and more deeply, and became darkness. The dull, steady surge of the advancing troops grew louder. Night had come, night no longer used for rest after labor in the sunlight, night which must be used to hurry troops and more troops forward over roads shelled by day.
They passed by hundreds, by thousands, an endless, endless procession—horses, mules, camions, artillery, infantry, cavalry; obscure shadowy forms no longer in uniform, no longer from Illinois, or Georgia or Vermont, no longer even American; only human—young men, crowned with the splendor of their strength, going out gloriously through the darkness to sacrifice.
“IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED”
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated....”