I rode on ahead through the stinging hailstones and watched our battery as it passed through the historic rock-hewn gateway that is the entrance to the mediæval town of Besançon. The portal is located at a sharp turn of the river. The gateway is carved through a mountain spur. Ancient doors of iron-studded oak still guard the entrance, but they have long since stood open. Battlements that once knew the hand of Vaubon frown down in ancient menace to any invader.
CAPT. CHEVALIER, OF THE FRENCH ARMY, INSTRUCTING AMERICAN OFFICERS IN THE USE OF THE ONE-POUNDER
IN THE COURSE OF ITS PROGRESS TO THE VALLEY OF THE VESLE THIS 155 MM. GUN AND OTHERS OF ITS KIND WERE EDUCATING THE BOCHE TO RESPECT AMERICA. THE TRACTOR HAULS IT ALONG STEADILY AND SLOWLY, LIKE A STEAM ROLLER
No Roman conqueror at the head of his invading legions ever rode through that triumphal arch with greater pride than rode our little captain at the head of his battery. Our little captain was in stature the smallest man in our battery, but he compensated for that by riding the tallest horse in the battery.
He carried his head at a jaunty angle. He wore his helmet at a nifty tilt, with the chin strap riding between his underlip and his dimpled, upheld chin. He carried his shoulders back, and his chest out. The reins hung gracefully in his left hand, and he had assumed a rather moving-picture pose of the right fist on his right hip. Behind him flew the red guidon, its stirruped staff held stiffly at the right arm's length by the battery standard bearer.
Both of them smiled—expansive smiles of pride—into the clicking lens of my camera. I forgave our little captain for his smile of pride. I knew that six weeks before that very day our little captain had fitted into the scheme of civilian life as a machinery salesman from Indiana. And there that day, he rode at the head of his two hundred and fifty fighting men and horses, at the head of his guns, rolling down that road in France on the way to the front.
In back of him and towering upward, was that historic rock that had known the tread and passage of countless martial footsteps down through the centuries. Behind him, the gun carriages rattled through the frowning portal. Oh, if the folks back on the Wabash could have seen him then!
We wound through the crooked narrow streets of Besançon, our steel-tired wheels bounding and banging over the cobblestones. Townsfolk waved to us from windows and doorways. Old women in the market square abandoned their baskets of beet roots and beans to flutter green stained aprons in our direction. Our column was flanked by clattering phalanxes of wooden-shoed street gamins, who must have known more about our movements than we did, because they all shouted, "Gude-bye."