You will understand that at the time of Tom’s tragic exploit the big bulge in the straining line which the Germans had made in their drive toward the Marne, and which was known as the Marne salient, had been entirely wiped out by the allied forces. The line ran almost straight between Soissons and Rheims with the little village of Pevy, where the Germans had erected the cross, lying a short distance within the enemy lines. So the line remained for some time while Marshal Foch was pressing forward elsewhere.
My first experience of actual warfare was when I joined the boys near Jonchery, prepared to accompany them northward toward the Aisne River. There was not much fighting in that advance. The Germans picked up like a lot of squatters and retreated so fast that twice we lost touch with them altogether, but we had the heroic satisfaction of capturing no end of deserted baggage. I think I never saw so many musical instruments and parrots as they left behind, and, indeed, the love of pets and music which those wretches showed has always been a matter of marvel to me. One of these squawking birds, I remember, was flapping its wings, all bewildered, upon the top of a post, to which (I was told) several British Tommies had been tied and tortured, and shrieking, “Cut their throats, cut their throats!” at the top of its expressionless voice. They are strange people who are so gentle and patient that they can teach these birds as no others can and then can play a tune on the mandolin and then torture a man to death.
After several days of this inglorious marathon race, the Germans made a stand upon the summit of a hill. I understood that our immediate objective was Pevy, which I remembered as the village where Tom’s grave was, and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to know that this place must presently fall to our troops and that the grave would be at least on friendly soil.
But Pevy was not to be so easily taken. The hill which confronted us descended in an almost sheer precipice upon the near side and I think I never saw such a rocky chaos as it presented.
My friend, Lieutenant Wells, let me view it through his field glass, and a more depressing, bleak and desolate place I never beheld—a jungle of gray boulders it was, and naked earth, as if the hill had been split open like an apple and one-half taken away.
“That’s where Fritzie mowed us down a while ago, when he was headed for the Marne,” said the lieutenant.
“You mean from the summit?” I asked.
“Yes, our boys tried to scale that stone-yard and stop the advance. We outnumbered them three to one just there, but they held out. Some of us got on top, but it was no use.”
I don’t know what put it into my head unless it was the knowledge that this place was near upon Pevy and west of Rheims, but it occurred to me that perhaps this was the very “rocky hillside” which the American newspaper had mentioned as the place where Tom fell. I remembered the phrase “in the fighting west of Rheims,” and also “the rocky hillside where the Germans put up such a stubborn resistance.”
“Do you suppose that is where Slade, the aviator, fell?” I asked.