“Where is Georges?” I asked.
“Do not speak so loud, madame,” implored the neighbor. “The poor one can not be told just yet, but Georges was killed by a shell that burst near the station when we got on the train. Not all of us could get on that train. She thinks that Georges was left behind and that he will come to-morrow.”
I could write stories like that to fill a book. Indeed, it has been done, officially done, by the French government, and every story was carefully authenticated before it was published. I tell this story because it was told to me while I was feeding the wretched victim.
I speak only of what I know, and I know that this woman, one of thousands, is just a type, an example, of what has happened, what is happening to-day, but what must never happen again. The only way to prevent it happening again, perhaps to our American women, is to put out of the world the thing Germany stands for and which she is fighting desperately to keep alive and powerful.
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN THEY WIN WOUND STRIPES
Somewhere in France the soldier son for whom I wear my service pin lies wounded. A few hours before I sat down to write these words I heard the news, and almost as soon as the first shock had passed I thought to myself how much worse I should feel did I not know what wonderful things were being done for him at that hour. I said, I must hurry, hurry, and tell all the women I can reach, other women whose sons have been wounded, some of the reasons why I can think about my soldier with a heart full of quiet confidence.
My Julian was one of the splendid regiments of young untried American soldiers who on May twenty-eighth stormed their way into the village of Cantigny, and who, in spite of repeated German counter-attacks, have held that part of the line like a stone wall ever since.
It was only a minor engagement, to be sure, but it was so gallantly fought that it gained the highest admiration of the French and British commanders. It showed the civilized world what was going to happen when the American army got over in full force. I am proud to have had a son in that glorious fight at Cantigny.
He went over the top with his comrades into the face of a murderous machine-gun fire. He must have been in the front ranks, for he was among the first to fall. “I tried to keep on going,” he told the New York World correspondent who saw him in the hospital, “but it was no use. I had to flop.”
Two hours he lay helpless in No Man’s Land, shells bursting near him, and with the prospect of being bayoneted if the Germans were allowed to regain that ground. I don’t let myself think about those two hours. I know, all too well, what they must have been like. I won’t think about the pain of the wounded leg, nor the burning sun, the tormenting thirst, the anxiety and impatience before the stretcher bearers came. The wounded, thank God, soon forget all these, and so must we at home.