This is part of a letter home from Private Dwyer,
Co. A, 121st Engineers, A. E. F. It is used here by
permission of _The Springfield (Mass) Republican_.
Even far behind the lines of battle, in this beautiful
France, little scenes take place which bring home to
one the seriousness and sadness of life. Picture to yourself
a dark-green hillside divided into sections by the hedge
fences which the French peasant makes so much use of. 5
In one of these fields soldiers are at work making roads and
little pathways. At one end are a number of flower-covered
mounds, each one marked with a wooden cross, for this
particular little field is one of the American Expeditionary
Force's cemeteries. 10
On the day which I have in mind, a drizzling rain comes
softly, though steadily, down. A number of soldiers, hardly
distinguishable from the mud in which they are working,
are busy leveling off the ground around a flagpole which
stands in the center of the cemetery. Presently they stop 15
work and stand listening to the drumbeats which can be
heard faintly in the distance. The little group gathers about
the flagpole, waiting.
Slowly up the roadway comes a procession headed by the
band playing the sweetly solemn funeral march. Behind 20
it is carried a plain wooden box, draped with the Stars and
Stripes, while a firing squad marches in the rear. They stop
at a newly dug grave and gently lower the coffin. In clear,
concise tones the chaplain reads the funeral service. A mist
seems to creep up from the valley and wisps of it wind themselves
through the air. In the neighboring field the sheep
who have been grazing huddle together and gaze, as only
sheep can, at the performance going on near them. Like
the sheep, the soldiers in the cemetery gather closer to each 5
other, each one's eyes filled with tears, and each one conscious
of a queer sensation going on within him. . . .
Now the chaplain has finished, the members of the firing
squad take their places. A dead silence ensues, broken by
the shots of their rifles. Two more salvos are fired and the 10
ceremony is finished. Finally, when the mist has become
very dense, the clear notes of the bugle ring out, blowing
taps for a soldier's last farewell sleep.
You will never really appreciate the beauty and pathos
of the notes of taps unless you have heard them while lying 15
on your hard bunk some night at the end of a hard day.
The music seems to say that some day things will be peaceful
again, all these hardships will be merely incidents to
laugh over in the happy days to come. And so, singing its
farewell to you, the notes die away, leaving you to slip into 20
the balm of sleep.
The grave has now been covered and the procession and
workers gone. The fields and valley seem forsaken and
alone in the late afternoon. But no, there by the graves,
flitting through the rain in their capes and hoods, and looking 25
like so many little sparrows, are some little French girls,
daughters of the near-by peasants. Tenderly their little
hands decorate the newest grave with flowers, their tribute
to one who risked all for the safety of little maidens. Thus
the grave is left, heaped with green branches and flowers, a 30
pretty resting place.
--_The Springfield Republican._
_OUR COUNTRY_
_Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights,
She heard the torrents meet.
There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gathered in her prophet mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.
Then stepped she down through town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men revealed
The fullness of her face._
--ALFRED TENNYSON.
[Illustration: THE STATUE OF LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD]