Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

At three miles from our destination, but only one mile from the German lines, it was necessary to put out the lamps. Our progress, which had been dangerous enough before, became extremely precarious. It was necessary to turn out for teams and lorries, for guns and endless lines of soldiers, and to turn out a foot too far meant slipping into the mud. Two miles and a half from the village we turned out too far.

There was a sickening side slip. The car turned over to the right at an acute angle and there remained. We were mired!

We got out. It was perfectly dark. Guns were still passing us, so that it was necessary to warn the drivers of our wrecked car. The road was full of shell holes, so that to step was to stumble. The German lines, although a mile away, seemed very near. Between the road and the enemy was not a tree or a shrub or a fence—only the line of the railway embankment which marked the Allies' trenches. To add to the dismalness of the situation the Germans began throwing the familiar magnesium lights overhead. The flares made the night alike beautiful and fearful. It was possible when one burst near to see the entire landscape spread out like a map—ditches full of water, sodden fields, shell holes in the roads which had become lakes, the long lines of poplars outlining the road ahead. At one time no less than twenty starlights hung in the air at one time. When they went out the inky night seemed blacker than ever. I stepped off the road and was almost knee-deep in mud at once.

The battery passed, urging its tired horses to such speed as was possible. After it came thousands of men, Belgian and French mostly, on their way out of the trenches.

We called for volunteers from the line to try to lift the car onto the road. But even with twenty men at the towing rope it refused to move. The men were obliged to give it up and run on to catch their companies.

Between the fusées the curious shuffling of feet and a deeper shadow were all that told of the passage of these troops. It was so dark that one could see no faces. But here and there one saw the light of a cigarette. The mere hardship of walking for miles along those roads, paved with round stones and covered with mud on which their feet slipped continually, must have been a great one, and agonizing for feet that had been frosted in the water of the trenches.

Afterward I inquired what these men carried. They loomed up out of the night like pack horses. I found that each soldier carried, in addition to his rifle and bayonet, a large knapsack, a canteen, a cartridge pouch, a brown haversack containing tobacco, soap, towel and food, a billy-can and a rolled blanket.

German batteries were firing intermittently as we stood there. The rain poured down. I had dressed to go out to tea and wore my one and only good hat. I did the only thing that seemed possible—I took off that hat and put it in the automobile and let the rain fall on my unprotected head. The hat had to see me through the campaign, and my hair would stand water.

At last an armoured car came along and pulled the automobile onto the road. But after a progress of only ten feet it lapsed again, and there remained.

The situation was now acute. It was impossible to go back, and to go ahead meant to advance on foot along roads crowded with silent soldiers—meant going forward, too, in a pouring rain and in high-heeled shoes. For that was another idiocy I had committed.