The platoon filed along to the left upon the cross-road, marching as swiftly as their tired legs would permit. The stream of wounded had stopped. The field kitchens and supply wagons had turned off in the woods in rear. For miles sounded the baffled roar of firing artillery. Now and then a man fell out alongside the road, unable to march any longer, the cool green of the grass in the late afternoon offering a tantalizing bed. From behind them commenced a great clatter of caissons drawn jerkily along the shell-torn road by galloping, lathered horses. Artillerymen, one on the back of the leading horse, two on the caisson seat, urged the horses forward with picturesque curse words, only stopping long enough to shout at the platoon:
“Better hurry up, you guys, or we’ll git to Germany before you will.” They rumbled away.
In a twilight of mauve the platoon came to a halt on the crest of a broad hill. Silently they deployed, mud-caked ghosts, dragging wearily and uncertainly out in a long line that offered its front to the challenging boom of the enemy’s long-range guns. Water was found in a spring near by, and the men lay down in the shallow holes that they had dug, their blankets and ponchos thrown over them. A solitary sentry watched the stars, watched the red, the green, the blue-and-white signal lights flare for a moment along the line, then die away.
The gray spirit of dawn rose and hovered over the ground. In the faint light a unit of cavalry filed past. The riders, on delicate, supple mounts, carried long lances, with their points skyward. On their blue helmets bright, feathery plumes fell back gracefully. Their spotless uniforms, gray in the morning light, set off their youthful figures like those of pages attending a mediæval court. The horses, their fine legs delicately contoured, minced daintily down the hill and out of sight.
Ahead, through a scattered line of trees, stretched a spacious prairie, covered thick with wheat,—a slightly rolling sea, majestically and omnipotently engulfing the universe.
The platoon rose stiffly, bewildered, rubbing the stiffness from their faces. Over the calm of the air a danger was borne. Men smelled it in the acrid odor of powder which covered the grass. The trees, a thin line before them, swayed poignantly. Lorelei, singing seductively, sat in their branches. In attack formation the platoon moved toward the trees, to the front toward which they were moving.
Beyond the trees a narrow path ran parallel. Reaching it, the platoon turned to the left, tramping heavily toward the main road from which they had come the night before.
Scuffing the dust with lagging feet, the platoon crawled along the dusty road, lined on each side by contorted faces of men who had come to support the line of attack. Farther down the road a small town lay half hidden in the valley. Long, slender smoke-stacks rose amid a cluttering of small deserted houses, where, twenty-four hours earlier, German soldiers had been quartered. Through one of the chimneys of the factory a three-inch shell had ploughed its way, stopping with the nose protruding from one side, the butt from the other. There it was suspended, implicit in its obedience. Interminably long words were printed on signs over the doors of the houses. At a street crossing the old names of the thoroughfares had been blotted out, and such names as Kaiserstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse were roughly lettered over them. There was a touch of impiety, of great barbarousness, in the changing of names which for so long had been honored. Also a very strong suggestion of a sound, thorough business administration having been instituted in place of the lax, pleasant manner of the village before the war. A peculiar, disagreeable odor hinted at great and ruthless thrift. The Germans had been careful of their dead. None remained lying on the street.
The platoon wound through the town and out upon the wheat-field which that morning they had viewed through the scraggly trees. Dazzling sunlight beat upon the full-topped yellow heads of wheat that weighted down the cool green stalks; on the flat, absurdly shaped helmets of the soldiers; on the sharp white bayonets raised above the wheat with which the field was filled. Deploying, the men halted, joined on either side by other men with silly-looking helmets, rifles, and bayonets.