At midnight as I lay wrapped in my blanket beside the fire's expiring embers, Colonel Degan came to me and said, "I am leaving you, Chaplain. Good-bye and the best of luck." He was on his way to another sector; and although I have never seen him since, I still recall him as a splendid soldier and a devoted friend.
At Units the following morning, I said Mass and gave the Sacraments to quite a number of the boys. Among these I recall Machine Gunner Brady of the 34th Infantry, brother of my friend, Father Brady, of St. Agnes Church, Chicago.
Meanwhile the waiting trains had been boarded and promptly at noon we rolled away into the mysterious Northeast. How good it seemed to be once more on the move! The utmost caution was now to be observed—no lights on the train at night, not even a headlight on the engine. Softly the boys sang,
"We don't know where we're going,
But we're on our way."
In monotone the steel rails seemed to plaintively reply,
"Art is long and Time is fleeting,
And your hearts though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave."
Our afternoon hours were given something of a thrill in watching the evolutions of a half dozen planes, skirmish escort men of the air, flying high and wide covering our movements. We were now on the division of road operated by our own gallant 13th Engineers, of which my friend, Sergeant McDowell of Blue Island, was Locomotive Inspector.
Night fell; and the long troop trains like monstrous serpents creeping on their prey crawled steadily, silently forward into the abysmally black unknown. Slower and more uncertain they moved, feeling their way; and at midnight came to a final stop at the near approaches to No Man's Land. Quickly we detrained and took cover in a near-by forest; the empty cars trailed off rapidly to the south; and dawn found neither a car nor a soldier in sight. All that day we remained hidden in the shadowy solitudes of Bois l'Evque on the banks of the Moselle.