Retreat? Well, two months ago in Picardy when the English had gone back before the Germans, Ruth had heard such a concourse to the rear called retreat; so she tried to call this retreat—this dazed, unresisted departure of soldiers from before the enemy’s advance. What made it worse, they were the French—the poilus whom she met. The French! When the British had been broken in Picardy and fell back, fighting so desperately, they had sacrificed themselves to stay the enemy until the arrival of the French! When the French had arrived the German advance was stopped; the French had been the saviors! But here the French were going back; and the British could not, in turn, come to save them.
These poilus did not expect it; they had ceased, indeed, to expect anything. For the first time, as the poilus looked at her, she saw the awfulness of hopelessness in their eyes. Four years they had fought from Maubeuge to the Marne; to the Aisne; in the Champagne they had attacked and gained; at Verdun they had stood alone; this year at Kemmel they had sacrificed themselves and held on only to meet at last, and in spite of all, the overwhelming disaster.
Ruth tried to cry a word or two of cheer when a man saw and saluted her; but her cry choked in her throat. These men were spent; they were fought out; beaten. And just behind them, at Château-Thierry, whence they had fled, was the Prussian guard coming on with these beaten men between them and Paris.
Ruth sat, half dizzy, half sick, at the wheel of the little car, forcing it forward by these beaten men when the road offered a chance. She was maneuvering toward a crossroad; and as she approached it she noticed the French no longer trudging to the rear; they were halted now; and as Ruth passed them and reached the direct road to Château-Thierry she found them lined up beside the road, waiting. Officers were clearing the way farther down; and as someone halted Ruth’s car she stood up and stared along the rise of ground to the south.
A sound was coming over, borne by the morning breeze—a sound of singing in loud, confident, boasting notes. Three notes, they were, three times repeated—the three notes which were blown on the bugles in Berlin when the kaiser or princes of the royal house were coming; three blatant, bragging notes which Ruth had learned a year before to mean, “Over there!”
For the Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere....
Ruth caught to the side of the ambulance and held on tight. American voices; thousands of them! American men; American soldiers singing! Americans coming into this battle—coming forward into this battle, singing! Swinging! She could see them now as they wound about the hill—see the sun flashing on their bayonets, and the fine, confident swing—the American swing—of their ranks as they approached.
The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming...
And we won’t go back till it’s over, over here!