“But it wouldn’t be wasted. You need the sleep.”
“No, that isn’t what I need. I want to look at you,” he reiterated. “I’ve got a wife and a little baby at home, and I love them. I like to be here because seeing you takes me back to them. This morning I knew I ought to sleep, but I just couldn’t go over the top tonight without seeing you again. That’s why I want to see you and fry a few doughnuts for you. It takes me back to them.”
He finished with a far-away look in his eyes. He was not thinking what impression his words would make, his thoughts were with his wife and little baby.
He worked around for a couple of hours, saying very little, but seeming quite content. Then he looked at his watch and said it was time to go, as it was quite a walk back to his company. Just so quietly he took his leave and went out to take his chance with Death.
The two girls thought much about him that night as they went about their work, and later lay down and tried to sleep, and their prayers went up for the faithful soul who was doing his duty out there under fire, and for the anxious wife and little one who waited to know the outcome. Sleep did not come soon to their eyes, as they lay in the darkness and prayed.
“The next day about noon as the girls were dipping doughnuts the chief doughnut dipper stumbled once more into the hut, tired, dirty, dusty and worn, but with his eyes sparkling:
“Just thought I ought to come back and tell you I’m all right,” he said. “I was afraid you’d be worried. My wife and baby would, anyway.”
The girls received him with exultant smiles. “You go out there under the trees and go to sleep!” they ordered him.
“All right, I will,” he said. “I feel like sleeping now. Say, you don’t think I’m crazy, do you? I just had to see you! It took me back to them!”
It was one of those chill rainy nights which have caused the winter of 1917-1918 to be remembered with shudders by the men of the earlier American Expeditionary Forces. A large part of the American forces were billeted in the weathered, age-old little villages of the Gondrecourt area. They slept in barns, haylofts, cowsheds and even in pig sties. The roads were mere ditches running knee deep in sticky, clogging mud. Shoes, soaked through from the muddy road, froze as the men slept and in the morning had to be thawed out over a candle before they could be drawn on. Frequently men were late at roll-call simply because their shoes were frozen so stiff that they were unable to don them, and their leggings so icy that they could not be wound. After sundown there were no lights, because lights invited air-raids and might well expose the position of troops to the enemy observers. Only in towns where there were Salvation Army or Y.M.C.A. huts could men find any artificial warmth, during the day or night, and only in these places were there any lights after nightfall. Such huts afforded absolutely the only available recreation facilities. But in countless villages where Americans were billeted there was not even this small comfort to be had.