“I saw how hard the chaplain was workin’ and I knew my job on the crew wasn’t so heavy, so he took my place and I carted ammunition a while. Just when we thought that the thing was fineed a Boche plane came swoopin’ down on us and opened up a machine-gun barrage. I’ll say that the Boches had pretty good guts, but no more than Carl Davis had, the ‘loot’ that was our C. O. Davis grabbed a rifle from one of the gang and ran right after that Boche, pepperin’ away at him like he was shootin’ at a flock of blackbirds. It was still darker than hell and all that we could see of the Boche plane was black outlines, just as if some big hawk was flappin’ its wings right over our heads. Gee! it was uncanny and sort of ghostlike. Davis was runnin’ up and down like a man in a relay race all by himself. He didn’t have nothin’ on except an undershirt, pants, and boots. We all laughed at him and that helped a lot to get our minds off our troubles. Finally the Boche whirred away and Lieutenant Davis put the old rifle up. Poor Davis, he was some fightin’ kid. They got him up at Château-Thierry. But that comes later.
“The battlin’ was wearin’ down to a small noise. Most of the Boches had all they could stand. They began tryin’ to get back to their lines, and our batteries cut ’em up like a lawn-mower gets the grass. Their artillery had shut up except those few guns that was firin’ at ambulances and wounded parties. You see, our ambulances had to come up over a road that was pickin’ and when they started ’round Dead Man’s Curve—Bluey! Bang!—the Boches would smash ’em, wounded and all, into pieces. We had to keep our wounded down in that dugout about six hours waitin’ to evacuate ’em on that account. The little Greek boy I was tellin’ you about died before they got him away.
“Exceptin’ for a few guns goin’, now and then, the place was quiet ’round five-thirty. So quiet you could hear the wounded moanin’ mighty easy, and now and then a thud was heard when barbed wire supportin’ a dead man would snap and let the body hit the ground.
“The early mornin’ was as gray as cigarette ashes, but it was plenty light enough to see what was ’round us. I wished it had been a blame sight darker. I couldn’t look at poor old Frank Gordon to save my life. He was lyin’ right outside the trench—face turned toward the dug-out, mouth wide open and all blue and bloated like. The only arm he had was pointin’ to the sky just like an arrow. He was almost straddlin’ Wilson’s trunk.
“But Gordon and Wilson was just two of many. There was beaucoup more of our boys and officers lyin’ ’round in stiff heaps, all broken and twisted up. Down ’round the first-line infantry trenches it was as grim lookin’ as an opened-up graveyard. There was beaucoup Germans piled up on the ground and hangin’ on wire entanglements. All mostly dead—some just dyin’. I saw a few Americans scattered in and out between ’em, too.
“Father Farrell came along and asked some of us to give him a hand to put the boys away. I was one of the gang that started the buryin’ stuff, but when I came to Frank Gordon— Honest to God, O. D., I couldn’t touch him. Sounds foolish to say that—don’t it? I swear it’s a fact. Guess I didn’t have the guts.
“I says, ‘Father, you’ll have to get somebody else on this detail in my place. I can’t touch Gordon.’ I used to sleep with that boy and listen to him tell me ’bout his girl, a colleen that was waitin’ for him to come back to the old country—Gordon was born in Ireland, you see. Father Farrell understood, I guess, ’cause he says, ‘Here, you take his identification tag, this ring and pocketbook, and keep it; they’re his effects. Then you beat it to the dug-out.’ I grabbed them things and run like hell. I was kinda feelin’ funny in the gills. First and last time it’s hit me that way, though.
“We got relieved that night and were sent back to the échelon for a rest and somethin’ to eat. We’d been monjayin’ the old iron rations for almost a week straight.
“It wouldn’t have been nothin’ more than half natural for us to mope ’round after such excitement and think ’bout it or talk a hell of a lot. But I never saw much of that stuff—not durin’ the whole time we’ve been in the guerre. Day after we got back we got an old madame to cook up a big feed for some of us that was on the gun crew. Had a hot bath before monjayin’, and maybe I didn’t feel like a regular guy!
“All the fellows was cleaned up, and you’d have never known that they had been battlin’. Course everybody missed old Gordon. He could tell the funniest stories I ever listened to and play and sing stuff in a way that would have set Broadway nuts. Somebody got up and said a toast to him, and we drank champagne to his memory. There wasn’t no crape-hangers at the party. Course we was mighty sorry for the boys that had passed out. But we still had to fight the guerre for ourselves, and if there’s any way the guerre can lick you it’s by getting your goat over things that’s happened to you or your pals. You got to forget it, O. D. Got to be a hard guy as much as you can.