Beautiful was this softly flowing river, mirroring azure skies and radiant in the colorful glow of early autumn. How hard to realize that death lurked in the quietude of its borders; that Man had chosen this bosom of shade, tuneful with the voice of sweetly calling birds, as a fitting shambles to slay his fellow men!
If day for the soldier was for rest, night was for the march; and a new dawn found us in the sheltering woods of Gonderville on the Toul-Nancy highway.
Turquoise, palest violet, tender green and gold, the country lay before us. Then, even as we watched from covert, our ears made acquaintance with a new and ominous sound. From an infinite distance the morning breeze from the north carried with it a deadened thumping sound, now regular as the muffled rolling of drums, now softly irregular with intervals of stillness. It was the dominating monotone of cannonading. No need to tell the boys what it meant!
"Guess we're in time for the big show all right," Buddie quietly remarked; and from that moment an expression overspread his countenance and a note crept into his voice I had not noticed there before. It was not one of nervousness, but of seriousness; a clearer vision and apprehension of big manly things henceforth to be done.
"When I was a boy I lived as a boy; but when I became a man I put away the things of boyhood and acted the part of a man."
Boys went into the trenches, but men came out of them!
Our Dugouts Afforded Shelter and Habitation.