The days and nights went on, but still the attack did not take place,
but the artillery duels were growing in intensity every night.
If there was any belief that preparations for the attack were not
known, this belief was dispelled when the Germans erected a sign over
their trenches reading――
“WE WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU ON THE FIFTEENTH”――but the fifteenth
passed by and――the attack did not take place. We were getting very
tired――we were becoming conscious that we had nerves――the driving
became more hazardous and terrifying with the increased activity of
the artillery.
Early on the evening of August seventeenth, I was off duty and was
standing talking to some of the fellows, enjoying an after supper pipe
and watching the anti-aircraft guns popping at a German aeroplane when
Stevenson walked up. He said a telephone message had just come in
informing him that Stockwell had broken the front spring of his car
out at Fort Houdremont. I was to take a new spring out and Pearl was
to go along to help make the repairs.
William Pearl was our volunteer mechanician and had been with the
Section for some time. Before that he had been a Rhodes scholar. After
the war he would practice law.
Pearl and I started off and we had not gone far when it began to
rain――it frequently rained at Verdun. We stopped to slip our rubber
ponchos over our heads. Perhaps that brief delay was the cause of what
happened shortly after. A matter of seconds sometimes changes destiny
when at the front. I recall that on one occasion I slowed down my car
for a few seconds, just long enough to light a cigarette, and as I
paused a shell struck on the road, not far in front of me. I am sure
but for the lighting of that cigarette, the shell would have scored a
direct hit. Yet some people say that cigarettes are an unmixed evil!
We drove on in the rain along the bank of the Meuse past the city of
Verdun, up a long hill along which were formed the troops, the
munition trucks, the cannon, the camions waiting to move toward the
front under darkness; and when the procession once started to move, we
knew from experience that progress would be slow along the road. So we
drove as rapidly as possible, and as we drove, we got into
conversation and Pearl told me that in all his experience Section One
had never known anything worse that what we had been through at
Verdun. I had heard Ned Townsend say the same thing, and Townsend had
been at the front most of the time since the war started.
As we began to descend the long hill, we could see shells striking
near the road and when we reached the bottom of the hill, we came to a
large camion ditched and deserted on one side of the road and on the
other side of the road a large shell hole. It was now dusk and I
stopped my car to see whether I could pass without running into the
hole. Then we heard the terrific shriek to which our ears had become
accustomed――and then the crash. Pearl had stepped partly from the seat
and had crouched down――I had put my head down and covered my face with
my arms. The pieces of shell and rocks spattered around the car and
hit it in several places. Each fraction of a second I expected to feel
a stinging sensation but I quickly came to a realization that I was
not scratched. I raised my head and asked――“Are you all right, Pearl?”
Then I saw a magnificent display of calm courage. As he stood up,
Pearl replied as quietly as if he had discovered something wrong with
the front tire: “I think my arm is gone.”
It was not gone but badly shattered. With nerves calm and head cool,
though he was bleeding badly, he got up on the seat beside me. The
nearest dressing station was at Houdrement and we drove on. I am not
sure, but I think a shell must have struck behind us at that moment
because I later discovered a hole in the rear curtain of the car and
the rear hub cap was cut as if by a steel chisel.
At Houdrement we left the car at the cross roads and started to climb
the steep muddy embankment to reach the dressing post. Pearl was
losing blood and getting weak, but still calm. I am sure he was more
calm than I was. While his wound was being dressed I telephoned and
reported the accident to Stevenson. I reported that I would remain at
Houdrement with Pearl until he could be moved. There was some question
as to whether he might be obliged to stay all night, but it was
finally decided to move him back to the hospital at Beveaux without
waiting.
It was now pitch dark and the roads were crowded with traffic coming
toward the front. Progress was extremely slow on the way back. We
would perhaps drive a quarter of a mile and then be held up for a
quarter of an hour. Shells were arriving and shells were departing. It
was a bad night, but all nights were hideously bad in front of Verdun.
Whenever we stopped, I would open the little front door of the car and
ask Pearl how he felt and always would come back the reply, “All
right.” Once we were held up for an unusually long time and I walked
ahead to see what was holding up the traffic. It was a large gun that
had become ditched and men and horses and trucks were pulling and
groaning and straining. Finally we were on our way and without further
bad delays we reached the hospital at Beveaux. It had taken us two
hours to cover less than ten miles.
I saw Pearl carried from his stretcher and tucked in bed and then I
could not refrain from telling him what I felt: “Pearl, you have got
about the finest, coolest nerve of any man I have ever seen.”