We could hear the rumbling of big guns; shells were exploding not far away; then came the noise of transport wagons approaching the farm. I turned back toward the barn and had not gone more than ten paces when there was a crash overhead. Splinters and shrapnel spattered into the farm yard. I ducked and hastened my pace. Then there was a thud behind me, as if a bag of potatoes had been dropped from a lorry. Almost simultaneously came a scream from the little girl.
I turned just in time to see the mother of the child fall, roll down out of the doorway in which the two were standing, and lie ominously still. The little girl stood gazing in terror at the fallen woman. Her little hands were raised shoulder high before her and she shrieked—hysterically and helplessly. As I hastened toward them the child seemed to realize the awful thing that had happened and threw herself upon her mother’s body, pressing her face against the dying woman’s. I felt the tears trickling down my cheek and smarting in my wound as I heard the child’s heartbroken exclamations—terms of endearment they seemed, and pitifully eloquent enough, though the tongue in which they were spoken was unknown to me.
A lad of ten, barefoot and in overalls, came running from the house. He knelt and stared into his mother’s face, then he turned a dumb, questioning glance at me. I could not meet his eyes. As I got my arms under the shoulders of the fallen woman and started to drag her body into the house, I could hear the little fellow sobbing softly but he didn’t speak. Hoping that it still might be of use, he helped with all his little strength to move his mother’s body. Inside the house, we pushed the tumbled hair back from her face. A shrapnel bullet had entered her forehead. It was useless to ask if human aid could serve her. Death had been almost instantaneous. Then I saw a sight that spoke a volume on the cruelty of war and the heroism of the sturdy French blood could I but tell it.
The little lad gathered his sister in his protecting arms and sat—speaking, manfully, words of comfort to her—beside the dead body of their mother, shells meanwhile bursting all about the home which had been their childhood haven of love and safety, and brick and plaster falling about them from its shattered roof. The children were in serious danger, but they steadfastly refused to leave their mother. I did not know enough French to reason with them, and it was not until some French muleteers sought shelter behind the building that I was able, through them, to persuade the boy and girl to go farther to the rear, with them.
After this experience, like one in a dream, I made my way back to the trenches, heedless of the shells whizzing overhead. The sight I had seen haunted me.
Upon reaching my trench, I was brought back to my senses by some of my “muckin’-in” pals, who threw all sorts of questions at me in a jesting fashion, such as:
“Hello, Reuter, been tae Blighty an’ back? Ye’re a better sprinter than Ah thocht”; “Hoo’s aw wi’ th’ fokes at hame? Did ye remember the fags?”
It was some time before I was sufficiently myself again to be able to answer them in the proper strain. My head looked like a cotton-and-bandage demonstration, and I was a sorry looking sight altogether. I lived for the next few days on bully beef biscuits, softened, and oxo cubes dissolved in water.
In a few days we were relieved by French troops, and we force-marched north to stem the German thrust at Calais.
After some stiff marching, we entrained “somewhere.” Our “camions” were coal trucks, which had been only partially unloaded. Some of my more hygienic mates who were under the impression that they did not have as much grime-caked mud sticking to them as the rest, suggested that our truck be cleaned out, but the general eagerness for a corner “doss” put this suggestion out of consideration at once. There was a scrambling match, and when our allotment got entirely in, the quartermaster was soundly “cussed.” It seemed as if the whole regiment had been detailed to this car. Even in these circumstances, the whimsical philosophy of the private soldier asserted itself. A little chap, jammed in a corner, said he wanted a place by the side door, so that he could “see the scenery”!