His groan found gasping echo.
“They were children of the French villages held by the Germans—we could tell! Some of them had been shot by the last of our barrage fire after the Huns had shoved them over the top. It was hell to see the children’s torn bodies writhing—we’re used to it with men! The smallest—babies—were clinging to the older ones—children of five or six—trying to hide—between the Huns and—us!
“If we went on—took the ditch—these mothers must cut through a barricade of children! If we did not go on, we betrayed our trust, lost our share of the Front—let the Huns behind the lines through a gap made by the failure of the women of the —nth!
“We seemed to stand there for hours, but it was only a second. The Huns had thrust their guns between the children, and were holding their fire—the devilish cat and mouse game!
“Then one of the women captains stumbled forward and made the sign of the cross. It is the voiceless battle cry of the Avengers and signs supreme sacrifice for all the Front means. She lifted her right hand in the sweep of victory—on her wrist was bound the packet of death they carry in case of capture by the kultur beasts—and fell, for the Huns opened fire the instant they saw her gesture.
“But the message had gotten over! They could charge—they must—and the cyanide would erase the intolerable memory forever! I looked at those nearest and saw they would go through with it, but men—their faces were set with the look of the face of Christ on the cross!”
He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked from one American to the other.
“You won’t believe it—I saw it and I cannot—but the proof is there! As the women gripped to thrust, leaning forward as if to force rebellious bodies toward that barricade, there swept down upon us from the rear or above, a sudden striding mist—a battalion of marching shadows in a blur of the old red and blue that outstripped the Avengers’ advance. There was a flash of charging steel and the waving colors of the old —nth as they swept over the untouched children into the trench.
“It’s all a blur, sir, I can’t tell you clearly, but they turned their faces as they passed and—we knew our dead. You could see the women cry out and lift their arms, each to her own man as he halted an instant beside her.
“Madame Arouet was sobbing as if caught by a bullet, ‘Jean—Jean!—to have seen you again! Ah, my God!’ The tall corporal, just beyond, threw herself with high piercing scream—arms outstretched—toward the smiling shadow that was passing.