Stories and Letters from the Trenches

by Various

He shouts my name as he approaches:

"Congratulations! Congratulations!"

And he waves a paper above a hundred heads.

"Telegram from home! Make way, there, you rascals! At the home of our poet—I've just learned it—a little war girl has arrived!"

I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins? * * *

Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.

My little girl! I have a little girl in my home! * * *

You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time. * * *

I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men, for a single heart-throb, listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's lips, stand there and smile around me in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness.