“La guerre c’est finie,” was the predominating cry. “Vivent les Américains!” was the second in strength.
Most of the demonstrations came from the throats of the French whose natural dramatic and emotional temperament responded to the occasion more quickly than did the less demonstrative make-ups of the Yankee soldiers. But it was only natural that the French should have indulged in greater feelings and demonstrations than their brothers in arms, the Americans, for they had borne the yoke of war years longer. It was wonderful to see the worn lines on veteran poilu faces as their sternness relaxed in smiles and laughs.
Jimmy and Sammy found themselves drinking wine and other liquors with many strange men. The password to good-fellowship was “Finee, la guerre finee,” and when the liquor began to assert itself in the blood of the men who acclaimed the Allied triumph on the streets of Verdun good-fellowship reached its zenith.
That night the men of Jimmy’s section were gathered around a cheery-looking beer keg in a comfortable barrack at Thierville hashing over the guerre and its swift dramatic dénouement. The flight of the Kaiser and the downfall of his military empire had dwindled into a meaningless fact before the expanding idea of an early departure for home.
“Home! Great Lord, it ain’t possible!” ejaculated one man as he looked wistfully into the blazing fire that roared up a great open fireplace. A bit of silence followed on the heels of his remark. Then Limy Mills and Vine started singing the chorus of “There’s a Long, Long Trail Awinding.” Twenty throats, unsteady from an emotion that was new and yet old, joined in the singing.
Jimmy McGee, sitting in a far corner of the room, looked up from the letter that he was writing to Mary O. D. and listened while a strange yearning for something that the song suggested mastered his feelings.
Four days later Jimmy McGee’s outfit rolled down the “Sacred Road” of France. No officer or enlisted man knew its destination. All that any man could be certain of was that he was headed for the rear.
Jimmy, lacking a roll and stripped of sundry equipments that he had carried over the same road three months before, followed behind his Betsy.
“What outfit, buddy?” asked an engineer who leaned on his shovel to watch the decrepit parade pass.
“Twenty-sixth division,” answered Jimmy.