There were many things to aid him in his feeling that the turning over of a new leaf would be useless. Nothing could ever undo what he had done. Try as he might he would never face the world an honest man. He would go to war. He would be a good soldier.
It was in the infantry that they needed men and Camp Dix received him with others. So insignificant a thing was one soldier that he presently felt a sense of security that had been denied him for years.
The experiences he went through in Camp were common to all. They were easier to him than most because of his perfection of physical condition. On the whole it was interesting work but he was glad when he marched along the piers of the Army Transport Service, where formerly German lines had docked, and boarded the Leviathan. Private Trent was going “over there.”
It was common knowledge that the regiments would not yet be sent to France. What they had learned at Camp Dix would be supplemented by a post-graduate course in England.
Curiously enough Trent found himself on the Sussex Downs, those rolling hills of chalk covered with short springy aromatic grasses and flowers. Here were a hundred sights and sounds that stirred his blood. Five generations of Trents had been born in America since that adventurous younger son had set out for the Western world. The present Anthony was coming back to the ancient home of his family under the most favorable circumstances. He was coming back with his mind purged of ancient enmities fostered so long by Britain’s foes to further alien causes; coming back to a country knit to his own by bonds that would not easily be broken.
It was curious that he should find himself here on the high downs because it was from this county of Sussex that the Trents sprang. Not far from Lewes was an old house, set among elms, which had been theirs for three hundred years. When he was last in England he had made a pilgrimage to it only to find its owner salmon fishing in Norway. The housekeeper had shown him over it, a big rambling house full of odd corridors and unexpected steps and he had never failed to think of it with pride. On that visit he had been disappointed to find the village church shut; the sexton was at his midday dinner.
Trent had been under canvas only a few days when he obtained leave for a few hours and set out to the church. He counted three Anthony Trents whose deeds were told on mural tablets. One had been an admiral; one a bishop and the third a colonel of Dragoons at Waterloo. He sauntered by the old house and looked at it enviously. “If I bought that,” he thought, “I would settle down to the ways of honest men.”
He shrugged his shoulders. There were many things yet to be done. It was only since he had been in England and seen her wounded that he realized what none can until it is witnessed, the certainty that there must be much suffering before the end is achieved.
The men in his company were not especially congenial. They were friendly enough but their interests were narrow. Trent was glad when the training period was over and he embarked in the troop train for Dover en route to the Western front. He made a good soldier. More than one of his mates said he would wear the chevrons before many weeks but he was anxious for no such distinction.
At the time his regiment arrived in France the American troops were at grips with the enemy. It was the first time that they held as a unit part of the line. The Germans, already making their retreat, left in the rear nests of machine gunners to hamper the pursuers. To clear these nests of hornets, to search abandoned cellars and buildings where men or bombs might be lying in wait was a task far more deadly than participation in a battle. Only iron-nerved men, strong to act and quick to think, were needed. There was a day when volunteers were asked for. Anthony Trent was the first man to offer himself. Under a lieutenant this band of brave men went about its dangerous task. The casualties were many and among them the officer.