"Then there's nothing to do but take her along to headquarters," I says, and off we started, she not saying a word.
That was some trip! I want to tell you sweetie it was the worst part of the whole war to me. You know I got a heart and I felt just fierce for that poor little German mother. All the way in, while we was helping her along I kept wishing I knew how on earth she come to get in that place. She seemed real feeble at times and we lifted her across the worst places. I tried to get her to let me carry the baby, but she held on to it like grim death and wouldnt leave any of us touch it—and it was so quiet I commenced to get scared.
"More than likely its dead!" I whispered to Ceasare and he thought so too.
Before we got in, we had carried her almost a mile, taking turns with her on our crossed hands, and the odd feller guarding our Hun. And then we came to the end of about the very worst and longest hike I ever took including the time the Queen of the Island Company got stranded in New Rochelle. The sentry across that mud hole of a slushy road was the welcomest sight in the world.
"Wot the 'ell yer got?" he says when he recognized us.
"One Gentleman Hun prisoner and one lady ditto in very bad shape!" I says.
"Wot the 'ell!" he says again. And then he passed us and we reported.
Say sweetie, take it or leave it, but I had honest clean forgot all about that wine which we had been sent for in the first place. I tell you I was so worried about that poor woman! And it was not until the five of us was standing in Capt. Haskell's quarters with the light from his ceiling glaring at us and him also glaring from behind his mustache, that I even commenced to remember it. But I had to report so I reported for the bunch of us and in strict detail as good as I could remember. All this while the woman sat in a chair, her face like a stone, and my heart just aching for her.
Well, when I got through taking the most nervous curtin-call of my life—and take it or leave it, if the German army would ever of been as nervous as I was then, the war would of ended that minute. Capt. Haskell beckoned to the lady.
"Come here, please!" he says very kind. "And let me see the baby!"