“You were going to tell us a story about a tank, sir,” announced a respectful voice.
“Was I? Well, I might as well, for we can do nothing at this moment but wait. Up north, in September, my outfit were attacking day after day, with an escort of British tanks. The Germans were scared to death of those tanks. They did everything to stop them—brought up field guns to point-blank range; dug deep ditches, sprung land mines, and everything. The tanks suffered; but they never weakened, and most of them arrived at their objective. Their crews were marvels, and as for the children who commanded them, they were the cunningest little things you ever saw. One day we were detailed to carry a village, lying just back of a wood. We got there in the course of time, rather more easily than I had expected. When our men reached the little market-square, the reason revealed itself, in the form of a British tank, squatting plumb in the centre, having beaten us to it by four minutes. The usual infant was in charge, sitting on the top and twirling the place where he hoped one day to raise a mustache. When he saw our senior Major doubling down the street at the head of our men, he scrambled down and saluted very smart and proper, and said: ‘Major, I hereby hand over this village to you, as my superior officer, with cordial compliments, world without end, Amen!’—or words to that effect. The Major saluted back, very polite, and thanked him. Then the child said, kind of thoughtfully, jerking his head towards the grinning Tommies who were peeking out of the inside of the machine: ‘Still, we wish somehow, don’t you know, that we had something to show—just to show, sir, that we were here first.’ The Major thought a minute. Then he said, ‘I can fix that for you. I’ll give you a receipt for the village.’ And he did!” concluded the Colonel, amid a rising tide of laughter: “Received from officer commanding British Tank, ‘Bing Boy,’ one village—in poor condition.”
A salvo of German five-point-nine shells detonated amid the tree-roots far above their heads.
“Enemy getting nervous,” commented the Colonel. “Let him wait! Our artillery preparation isn’t due for an hour or more. Now, do you boys understand your orders? Any questions to ask? If so, shoot! That’s what I’m here for.”
He answered one or two eleventh-hour inquiries, and added: “Make the most of this attack. You may not have another opportunity.”
“You mean,” suggested Floyd, “that this battle is going to peter out?”
“I mean,” replied Colonel Graham deliberately, “that this war is going to peter out! And,” he added, with sudden concentrated bitterness, “if it does—now—we Americans are going to regret it for the rest of our history!”
The figures round the table sat up—quite literally. But one or two of the older men nodded their heads.
“If only we could be allowed to go on for another three months!” pursued the Colonel earnestly. “If only this great beautiful machine of an American Army could be given a chance to climb to its top speed! Then we should be functioning in proper shape—with our own guns, and our own tanks, plenty of horse-transport, and sufficient airplanes to direct our own fire and locate the enemy’s. We should be employing acquired experience instead of borrowed experience. We should have a trained Staff. We could send these great-hearted boys of ours into action adequately protected by a perfectly timed barrage. We could cut down our casualties seventy-five per cent, and make future victories a real matter for rejoicing. Of course it won’t matter to the folks at home. They have no opportunity to discriminate. They would cheer themselves hoarse over us if we were a Sanitary Section from the Base. But—we should like to show our friends over here what the American Army really is and not merely what it is going to be. And—we could extract some sort of adequate interest from the capital—the capital of our men’s lives—that we have been sinking in this year’s campaign. But there isn’t time! There isn’t time!” The old soldier’s gnarled fist dropped despairingly upon the trestle table. “We are still on our second speed, and however hard we may step on the gas, we can’t get real results for a little while to come. There isn’t time!”