Through the woods men were running like mad, beating small, inoffensive bushes with the butts of their rifles, and calling: “Come out of there, you damned Boche.” Wherever they saw a dugout they hurled a pocketful of hand-grenades down the entrance, following them with threatening exclamations. They were the new men who had joined the platoon at the last village at which it had been billeted.
It was a night for love, a night for beautifully mantillaed women to rest their elbows on the window casement of picturesque houses and lend their ears to the serenade of their troubadours—a night to wander listlessly through unreal woods and offer words of love beneath the benediction of a round moon.
Through a long, tortuous trench which, now and again, had been partially obliterated by the explosion of a large shell, Hicks tramped. He had been sent out by the platoon commander to find the French army, whose left flank was supposed, according to orders issued before the attack, to adjoin the right of the platoon. Picking his way through the barbed wire over the rough ground, he swung along with large strides. Importantly he adjusted the strap of his helmet more tightly about his chin. He girded his pistol belt tighter, until his waist was wasp-like. To his leg he buckled his holster until it interfered with the circulation of his blood. He liked the feel of the pistol against his thigh. It made him feel equal to any danger. He was a Buffalo Bill, a Kit Carson, a D’Artagnan.
Progress, walking in the trench, was too dreary for his mood. He climbed out and commenced to stride along the field, his chest inflated, his chin high. He thought of the men lying along the trench, huddled together, three men under one blanket, and he felt motherly toward them. He thought of the Allied armies waiting for the war to be over, so that they might return to their homes and children, and he felt protective toward them. He thought of President Wilson, bearing the burden of the saving of civilization on his thin, scholarly shoulders, and he felt paternal toward him. Hicks it was who had been ordered to find the French army, to link it up with the American army so that there might be no gaps in the ranks when the attack began on the morrow. He walked on and on and somehow in the dim light he lost the direction of the trench.
The blasted French army was not going to be as easy to find as he had imagined. He had now walked much farther than he had been told to walk, and still there was no sight or sound of them. A little farther on his attention became divided between the French army and the trench. If he lost the direction of the trench, how could he find the army, he thought.
Out of the stillness of the night a Maxim sputtered. Hicks started, then ran as swiftly as he could. He fell into the trench, quite breathless. Feeling forlorn, he crept along the trench, with all his native cunning. After he had been walking he knew not how long, a form was vaguely seen to move ahead. Hicks halted. “Français soldat?” he questioned. “Who the devil is that?” a voice answered. He had returned unwittingly to his own platoon. The platoon commander, hearing the voices, came up.
“Is that Hicks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, where have you been? I told you to come back if the Frogs weren’t near here. They probably haven’t arrived yet.”
Hicks sought out Pugh and lay down beside him underneath his blanket. Their heads covered, they talked in whispers.