AT REST
IF one wants to know the real tragedy of war, he does not have to see
the battle waged; he need not watch men fight and fall, need not hear
their anguished moans, nor even witness their awful agony. He has only
to be with a company, a battalion or a regiment when the tally of
casualties is made to hear—when the weary struggle relaxes for a few
hours, and there is comparative peace and quiet—the calling of the roll,
with those fearful, ominous silences that follow name after name. One
more closely visions then the human holocaust, and finds his mind
wandering in dismal, useless, melancholy speculation. He wonders, and
wondering, too vividly pictures to himself, what has happened “out
there” to those brave men who are not present to respond to their names.
He knows that sometimes the explanation lies in the fact that they have
become separated from their own units in the fighting, and, unable to
get back, are for the time attached to entirely different regiments. But
more often the cause is all too clear; and comrades who have safely
survived the terrible ordeal—who silently close up the ranks that have
been left with great gaps—stand at rigid attention, their faces as fixed
masks, their hearts torn by sorrow.
For friends whose real worth has been tried and proved in the acid test
of bloody battle and in the face of death, have “gone west”—west, as the
fine but futile sentiment of an awful loneliness likes to picture it, to
the place, the far distant place, where home is; west, to the land of
the setting sun, where there is no war, no death, where all is peace and
quiet and happiness.
“Gone west!”—as one repeats it many times the tragedy of it drops away,
and the expressive words take on the tranquility of a benediction.
As men stood ready to drop in their tracks at Thiaucourt that night, too
weary to move, utterly exhausted mentally and physically by the terrific
strain under which they had been for the last twenty-four hours, it was
the unpleasant duty of roll-call that fell to Sergeant Tom Walton.
He would far rather have escaped it, but discipline required that he do
the task at hand without murmur or complaint, and it was in this case as
it is so often in war—the sooner over, the better for all.
And so he took up the roster of the company, cast a swift glance over
the men before him, and in what he tried to make a dull monotone, began.
From time to time some man suddenly would stiffen and his lips would be
drawn into a hard line, as the name of his “bunkie” was called and there
was no response. When Tom knew of his own knowledge that one in his own
ranks had been killed or wounded, he skipped over his name with only the
quickest articulation, going rapidly to the next, in order that no undue
emphasis might be laid upon the casualties that had befallen Company C
in the brave assault that had more than obtained them their given
objective.
But there were others—a great many others—of whose absence he was not
aware, and after each of these names there was that awed, painful
silence in which time had to be taken to record the fact that the man
was among the missing. They were intervals in which it seemed that a pin
could be heard dropping upon the ground. Men gave no outward sign of
their grief, but each knew what all the others felt.
It was Tom himself who broke the terrible strain of the thing. He was
down the alphabet as far as O.
“Jockey Ogden,” he suddenly called; and as Ollie responded with a brief
but energetic “Here, but without mount,” a laugh ran along the line, and
everyone felt better for the merest excuse for throwing off the
inevitable melancholy accompanying roll-call after battle.
When it was over, Tom sought out Ollie and Harper, who by that time had
returned to his company, assured that his “bang in the slats,” as he
expressed it, at the hands of Tom’s later prisoner, was perhaps painful,
but in no way a permanent or even serious injury.
In subdued tones Tom told them of the death of Major Sweeney. Would they
go with him back into the night and over the ground they had traversed
that day, to find the body and give it decent burial? Would they? Why,
of course they would.
And through the mind of each was running the same thing. How it was
Major Sweeney himself to whom they had first gone when they had
determined to enlist together—Major Sweeney, whose house near Brighton
always was open to boys of that school; who was always ready with a
helping hand, and who personally had coached the best football eleven
that Brighton ever had put upon the gridiron.
Brave, big-hearted Major Sweeney! He had told the boys that night when
they visited him at his home that within a few days he would depart for
service. He had been commissioned a captain, and if they desired he
would try to see to it that they were assigned to his company. And true
to his word he had.
Now he lay out there on the edge of that wood where so many lives had
been sacrificed, an American hero, gone to his last reward.
With the permission of the Captain the three youths armed themselves
with searchlights, the sentry pass-word, spades, a hammer and saw. It
was Sergeant Tom who thought of a little can of paint and a brush.
It was half an hour before they reached the wood, and an hour later
before they found the body. It was a ghastly business, and more than
once they thought they were at the right spot, only to find that the
search must be renewed.
When at last Tom’s sense of direction brought them to the exact place,
they found the body lying just as Tom had left it, the blouse still
slightly open, the hair smoothed back, the right hand resting peacefully
on the breast.
“Let him be buried near the spot where he fell,” said Tom, in subdued
tones, as, sticking his searchlight into the ground so that it would
give them sufficient light, he thrust his spade into the dirt and began
preparing his major’s grave.
Harper and Ollie joined in the work and within another half hour they
had gently placed the body in its last resting place. To Tom fell the
duty of saying the brief rites; a handful of dirt was thrown in, and
then, anxious to have an unhappy duty over, they completed their task as
rapidly as possible.
While Ollie and Harper were doing that, Tom had sawed from a broad tree
limb two fairly lengthy slats. These he nailed together in the form of a
cross. And upon this cross he began to paint.
He had inscribed the lateral board with the Major’s full name, and the
battalion he commanded, and then abruptly he stopped, looking far over
the desolate open stretch and through the black night to where he knew
Thiaucourt to be—Thiaucourt, which had been their day’s objective;
Thiaucourt, for the possession of which so many courageous Americans had
died; Thiaucourt, where the men who had survived now lay stretched in
heavy slumber; Thiaucourt, quiet and peaceful now and giving no evidence
of the terrific battle in which it had been the goal.
And Tom, taking his brush in hand again, dipped it into the can and
painted a brief inscription:
“_At Rest._”
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