From that altitude the earth was beautiful. The enchantment of distance had blotted out the rubbish heaps. The yellow waters of the turbid streams glistened in the sun and the very mud itself, which the day before had prevented my flight, was now but a smooth, golden surface.
"A Public Hanging in War Time"
On July 12 it was rumored that a soldier had been sentenced to be hung the next day at ten o'clock for an unspeakable crime. The gallows was already built on the edge of the camp at Bazoilles. I saw it on my afternoon trip and knew that the report was true. Being interested in the psychology of such a scene on the men present, I put aside my inward rebellion at so gruesome a sight and arranged my trip so as to be present. I reached the camp at nine forty-five and was the last man admitted. The gallows was built in the center of the semicircle facing two hills which came abruptly together, leaving a large grass plot at their base. This formed a natural amphitheater. About two thousand soldiers, both white and colored, were seated on the grass inside a rope inclosure. A company of soldiers from another camp had been marched in to act as guards, and they formed a complete circle standing just outside the ropes and extending down to the gallows on either side.
Many French civilians and visiting soldiers lined the edges or looked down from points of vantage on the hillside. I stood on one side about one hundred feet from the "trap." At nine fifty a Red Cross ambulance drove up, and the prisoner, his hands bound behind him, alighted, and accompanied by a guard and the officials, walked up a dozen wooden steps to the platform. He was escorted to the front of the platform, and in a clear, strong voice spoke to the almost breathless crowd. He acknowledged with sorrow his crime, and urged upon all the necessity of being true to God and their country. He stepped back on the "trap," the black cap was drawn over his head, the noose placed about his neck, the "trap" sprung, and with a sickening thud he dropped to his doom. For twenty minutes, from nine fifty to ten ten, his body hung there before he was pronounced by the attending surgeon officially dead.
I never witnessed a twenty minutes of such deathly silence. Two guards fainted, and the effect on the crowd was indescribable. I overheard a colored fellow say, "I never want to do anything bad again as long as I live."
The body was immediately cut down, placed in a coffin, and taken in the ambulance to its burial. It was a silent, thoughtful company that went out from that tragic scene.
"The American Dead"
"Will we be able to locate the body of our boy?"
So often has this question been asked me that I must take a moment to answer it.
I watched two American military burial plots grow from the first lone grave to small cities of our noble dead. One was at Bazoilles, half way between Chaumont and Toul. The other was at Baccarat near the Alsatian border. Each grave was marked with a little wooden cross bearing the name and rank of the soldier, and beside each cross an American flag.