It was thereabouts that Tom Slade fell, a fact that seems to admit of little doubt, and you must not continue to indulge in any day-dreams as to his being still alive. I am sure we are both more interested in some of the things he did while living than in the immediate circumstances of his death, and in this connection I intend to question my new acquaintance as soon as I get the chance.
Well, I had a difficult time of it scrambling up that rocky hill and it was pitch dark when I reached the top. I have made a rough pencil sketch of the locality which you may be interested in.
I fell in with our detachment about a mile out of Pevy and had a few hours’ rest until dawn, when we made our advance against the village. All this has nothing to do with Tom Slade so I won’t burden you with an account of how the retreating Germans made a stand before the town. But when we marched in, there was nothing to be found but burned homesteads and gas-poisoned atmosphere. It was not impossible to breathe in the open, but in the wrecked and charred buildings the deadly fumes lingered and I should have had sense enough to keep out of them. One of them, a makeshift hospital, had not been destroyed and I foolishly entered it.
For a few seconds I beheld a scene which struck horror to my very heart. They say over here that every American soldier fights with a wrath and desperation born of some particular discovery or experience of Hun brutality. One goes forth with the thought of a maimed and tortured comrade to give him strength; another with the memory of some violated truce or false and murderous cry of “kamerad!” Well, here was the sight to arouse in me the hatred of those beasts which I had not sufficiently felt before.
They had left their own people, their own sick and wounded, to suffer the agonizing death of those deadly gas fumes. If there are any degrees in loathesomeness, it seemed to me that this was more unspeakable than was the bombing of an enemy hospital.
I cannot describe what I saw, nor did I see it long. I remember groping toward a bed, on which lay the body of an old man, all the while trying, like the clumsy fool I was, to adjust my gas mask. I remember how my eyes pained and the horrible taste in my mouth, and how my fingers seemed to be asleep. I thought I saw one of those ghastly yellow patients sit up and fall back again. The next I knew I was here in this hospital in this spotless cot, and one of the first things I was really conscious of was this youngster next me, talking. I am given to understand that I had a pretty narrow squeak of it, and that I will cease breathing like a goldfish in time.
I am going to stop writing now in order to talk to my young neighbor, Archer (or “Souvenir” as they call him). They are just bringing him in in a wheel chair and he’s eating an apple. Never have I known of anyone who could eat so many apples—he lives on them.
LETTER RECEIVED FROM ROY
Note: As my acquaintance with young Archer was to prove both diverting and profitable, I have boiled our conversations down into a sort of narrative in which he will appear as something of a character, and the chapters which follow were intended to be the story of Tom Slade with the Flying Corps, which I should present to Roy on my return to America.