"I came within fifty yards of the tir de barrage and stopped to watch it and try to mark out a path. But no path was possible. No sooner was one chosen than it was wiped out, all the little landmarks gone, the whole face of the ground changed by a new rain of shells. My heart sank. My stomach went suddenly empty. I knew that I had reached the limit beyond which I could not go. I had found the point where my fear was greater than my duty. I lay flat down on the earth. I do not know how long I lay. I thought of nothing. There was only a horrible blank fear.
"And then I found that unconsciously, not knowing it, I was digging my fingers into the ground, clutching the roots of grass and dragging myself into the tir de barrage. I might as well have been dragging myself the other way, but I had lain down with my face toward my duty.
"When I made that discovery I got to my feet and stood upright for a second, not more, only time to say, 'I must not give myself time to think,' and dashed forward into the exploding shells. Such a race as that is like the last steps of a dying horse, one that has broken a blood vessel, straining for the wire, and plunges on his face in the midst of his stride. I floundered blindly into the raw earth and fell again on my face. But this time my mind was working. There was only one thing for me to do, and I knew it. That was to go on. I crawled forward on my hands and knees. I could not stand. It would be certain death. Twenty times I was knocked flat, my wind gone, by the explosion of a shell almost beside me. But I crawled on. I did not know if I had been hit. I thought I had. Two hundred yards I crawled through the tir de barrage and then I got to our lines. They gave me the Medaille Militaire for that.
"You asked me why I smiled when you came up to us in the trench. I was wondering what you had to take you through the shells. I thought of my own struggles. I wondered if you had any of the thoughts that have crowded in on me under fire. And I smiled."
The next time I saw him was in a hospital back of the Somme, one of the hospitals where wounded soldiers stay only a few hours, unless they are too badly hurt to be moved on. He was one of those who could not be moved. He lay with closed eyes, asleep or exhausted—more likely exhausted—propped up a little with pillows behind his head and shoulders. His tunic hung beside his cot, and on it there was a new ribbon, the Legion d'Honneur. I stopped before him.
"There is little chance for him," the doctor said.
"What did he do?" I asked.
"Led his company into the Park of Deniécourt, when all the officers were gone," replied the doctor. "They got a footing in the park and stuck there for two days, because he would not give up, until we made a new attack and got the park, the château and the village. He had been wounded the first day, but he would not give up. He has received the Legion d'Honneur and been made a sous-lieutenant, but he will probably never know it."
I saw him once more. This time was on the boulevards of Paris. His left sleeve was pinned across his breast and above it were his three medals, from left to right the Croix de Guerre, now with three palms; the Medaille Militaire and the Legion d'Honneur. He was having a look at Paris, he told me, while he waited for the train to take him home to the centre of France, to his wife and boy.
"I can tell them now that I was afraid," he said. (Told in the New York Tribune.)