Gerry’s feet thrust on the rudder bar, swinging his machine to meet
them, while hot rills ran through his limbs, warming him against the
chill of the night flight above the clouds. He had thought of the
frontier as a hundred and fifty miles away--two hours’ flight at
best in this slow, heavy training “bus”--but here his friends were
bringing it to him. His excitement prevented him from realizing
instantly that to his friends he must appear an enemy--a
black-crossed Hun-bird flying to fight them.
A covey of German pursuit planes, flushed up from some airdrome near
the raided city, swooped upward in front of Gerry, climbing for the
advantage of altitude before starting their attack upon the raiders.
Gerry could see them clearly--triplane Fokkers mostly, of the
swiftest, best-climbing, and best-armed type. Some of them saw him,
but saw, too, that his machine was German. Probably the pilots
wondered what that old “bus” was doing there, but no one
investigated, while Gerry flew on.
The clouds had quite cleared below, but the city of Mannheim,
speckled with lights a few minutes before, lay dark except where the
great crimson bursts of the allied torpedoes erupted; where flames
fanned from roofs of burning buildings; where the scintillant points
of searchlights glared into the sky. Rockets streaked above the
black city; shells flared and flaked in the air; and the glory of
battle grasped Gerry. Grasped O’Malley, too. He patted his machine
gun and turned about in his seat, appealing to Gerry.
Above them the Fokkers and the other machines of the German defense
were diving and engaging the raiders; a light caught the under wings
of a plane and showed Gerry the tricolor circles of the allies.
Before it sparks streaked--the illuminated tracer bullets streaming
from the machine guns; and toward it, beyond it--now through
it--other sparks streaked back. These were the tracer bullets of the
German who was attacking; and Gerry, jerking back his elevator,
tried to climb; but the big, lumbering training “bus” responded only
slowly.
When he threw up the nose, bringing the forward machine gun to bear,
O’Malley loosed a burst of bullets, though the target German plane
was five hundred yards away. A range of that length was all right
for machine-gun work on the ground, but in the air--with firing gun
and with the target flying--it was sure waste. Gerry bent forward
and pummeled O’Malley’s back to tell him so. But the Irishman did
not turn; while Gerry climbed, the raiders and the Germans dropped,
bringing the battle nearer, and O’Malley had a target now at two
hundred yards from which he would not be withheld.
The range still shortened, and bullets streaked down past Gerry. He
gazed above and tried to dodge; O’Malley looked up; he saw the
tricolor circle and did not reply. One of their own people, having
sighted the black cross, was coming down upon them, taking them for
German. And at the same instant the far-off Fokker at which O’Malley
had been firing realized that there was something wrong about this
big, slow, black-crossed machine; the German swung upon it, his
machine guns going. Gerry’s engine went dead and he found himself
automatically guiding the “bus” in a volplane which he was keeping
as slow and as “flat” as possible as he glided below the battle and
sought upon the ground for a place to land.
He examined his altimeter and learned that he was still up four
thousand feet, and with the flat gliding angle of the wide-winged
training biplane, he knew that he had a radius of more than two
miles for the choice of his landing. The battle was still going on
above Mannheim, as the allied bombers had swung back. A machine
flashed into flame and started down, with its pilot evidently
controlling it at first; then too much of the wing fabric was
consumed and it dropped. Other machines, too, were leaving the
battle; some of them seemed to be Germans damaged and withdrawing;
others appeared to be all right--they had just spent their
ammunition, perhaps. One got on the tail of Gerry’s machine, looked
him over, and then dropped past him.
Gerry was gliding north and west of the city, making for wide, open
spaces shown on the map which he had been studying--the smooth
spaces of the fields of the Schloss von Fallenbosch. Five hundred
yards away through the moonlight, and at almost his same altitude,
he saw another machine gliding, as he was, with engine shut off; the
circle of their volplane swept them toward each other.
In the forward seat pit of the English machine--for Gerry steered
close enough not only to see the allied insignia but the distinctive
details of the British bombing plane--the man who had been bomber
and machine gunner was lying back with head dropped; and the pilot,
too, had been hit. He seemed to be half fainting, only spurring
himself up for a few seconds at a time to control his glide.
Gerry stood up as they glided side by side; he hoped that the
Englishman could make out his uniform in the moonlight. He knew it
was little likely that the other could hear his shout, yet he
yelled: “I’m American; follow me!” And dropping back to his seat,
Gerry set himself to selecting the best spot for his landing.
Whether or not the English pilot saw or heard, he followed Gerry
down. The clear moonlight displayed the ground bare and smooth; it
was hard to guess just when to cease dropping and, turning straight
into the wind, give your elevators that last little upturn which
would permit landing on your wheels and rolling; but he did it, and,
turning in his seat as the rolling slowed, he saw the English plane
bounding upon the field; it leaped, threatened to topple, but came
down on its wheels again. Gerry had his hand on O’Malley. Together
they leaped down and ran to where the English biplane had halted.
The English pilot had regained strength; he had succeeded even in
lifting the body of his bomber out of his machine; and, considering
himself captured, he hastened to remove the top of his fuel tank in
order to set fire to his ship. Gerry observed this and shouted:
“Don’t do that! We’re escaped prisoners! We’re Irish and American.
Don’t!”
His voice carried; and the English pilot delayed with his match. If
any German was near, he did not evidence his presence. If any of the
enemy flyers had noticed the descent of the English biplane,
probably they had seen the black-crossed machine following it down.
So Gerry and the English pilot stood undisturbed, estimating each
other in the moonlight. A machine-gun bullet had grazed the
Englishman’s head; but he was fast recovering from the shock. Gerry
adjusted a first-aid bandage to stay the blood.
“Your ship’s all right?” Gerry asked.
“Look at it.”
“Looks all right; and bombs!” Gerry cried out, discovering a pair of
bombs still hanging in the racks. “You came down with bombs on!”
“I was gone--part the time,” the Englishman explained. “Thought I’d
released ’em.”
Gerry was not finding fault. Bombs he had; and, to take the place of
the German training machine, here was a ship with engine undamaged,
and which could fly again, and quite capable--after its bombs were
used--of bearing three men and a girl. Wisely had Gerry determined
that night not to try to guide fate. Events unforeseeable again had
him in their grasp. He gazed half a mile away where the gray walls
of the _schloss_ shimmered in the moonlight.
“There’s a girl in there,” he said to the English pilot. “An
American girl we’re going to have out. Will you help us?”
“How?”
“Lay those last two eggs close to the castle,” Gerry motioned to the
pair of bombs in the rack. “That will drive ’em all to the cellars;
then keep circling above ’em, as if to lay more eggs to keep ’em
there. O’Malley and I’ll rush the castle.”
“You two alone?” the Englishman asked.
“Alone?” Gerry laughed. “Lay your eggs, old hawk! Lay your eggs; and
two’s a crowd for that castle tonight! The only danger’s getting
lost in the halls! But in case someone shows, lend us your
pistol--we have one. Then lay your eggs--close but not on; and keep
flying above ten minutes more!”
The occupants of the Schloss von Fallenbosch all had been aroused
many minutes earlier by the burst of the first bombs in the city.
The detonations, followed immediately by the alarm and by the sound
of the anti-aircraft guns replying, had sent the citizens of
Mannheim scurrying to their cellars. The allied raiders never
attacked intentionally the dwelling places of the city; their
objectives were solely the chemical and munition works; but the
German population--knowing how their own flyers bombed open cities
indiscriminately--always expected similar assaults upon themselves.
Moreover, they well knew the difficulties of identifying objectives
from high in the air and the greater difficulty of confining attack
to a limited area; then there were the machine-gun bullets from the
aerial battle and the bits of shrapnel showering back upon the city.
But the _schloss_ heretofore had been quite removed from attack; it
was far enough from the city to be in small danger from the falling
shells of the high angle guns. So Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch
and his aids, his wife and his servants, when roused merely went to
their windows and watched the sky curiously and without idea of
personal danger. If they thought at all about the prisoner confined
in the cell in the old wing of the _schloss_ it was to consider her
quite securely held; she, too, was roused, undoubtedly, and
listening to the sounds which told that pilots from the allied
forces were fighting within a mile or two. But what could she hope
from them?
Ruth, indeed, was aroused. This night was the first since she had
been taken, upon which the allies had attacked at Mannheim; but she
had recognized the distinctive sounds--distant but tremendous--which
told of a raid. Her window was open but for its bars, and its height
in the wall, instead of interfering, facilitated inspection of the
sky.
It gave her view over only a limited quadrilateral, of course, but
every few seconds something happened in that space--shells burst, or
a searchlight swept across, or a rocket flared--more than enough to
make her sure that a real attack was on. Once she had a glimpse of
an airplane upon which a searchlight glared and about which shrapnel
burst; that meant she had seen a French, or English, or an American
machine!
To her, who was about to die, the sight was enormously exciting. Not
that it brought her shadow of hope for herself. For the first five
days following her capture she had been kept shut up in her cell,
seeing only the man who brought her food and refused any right of
access to anyone else.
At the end of the five days she had been led before a military court
of three men--von Fallenbosch and two other officers--who accused,
tried, and sentenced her without permitting her any semblance of
defense; she was led back and locked up again awaiting the day for
the execution of the death penalty, which had been left to the
discretion or the whim of Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch.
Her end might come, therefore, upon any day, or upon any hour, and
without warning; it might not come for weeks or months; her
execution might not, indeed, occur at all. But a more terrible
suspense of sentence scarcely could be devised. Its purpose
ostensibly was to make her disclose facts which the Germans believed
that she knew. Of course they had held inquisition of her
immediately upon capture and several times since, but without
satisfactory result; so they kept her locked up. For reading matter
she was supplied with German newspapers.
These proclaimed with constantly increasing boastfulness the
complete triumph of the German arms. Everywhere the Germans had
attacked, the allies had crumpled, fleeing in disorder, leaving guns
by the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands. One more stroke
and all would be over! Prince Ruprecht would be on the channel; the
Crown Prince would be in Paris!
Ruth had seen German newspapers before and she had known of their
blatant distortions of truth, but she had never seen anything like
the vaunts of those days. These must have, she feared, much
foundation in fact. Visions of catastrophe to the British Fifth
Army, of the rout from the Hindenburg line almost to Amiens, and the
terrors of the retreat haunted her in her solitary days. Was it
possible that the English were completely crushed and that the
French were helpless? Possible that the American army, which now was
admitted to have arrived in some force, had proved so utterly unfit
for European warfare that the allies dared not send it into the
battle line?
The few words spoken to her by the man who attended her boasted that
such were the facts. She thought of that front from Soissons to
Reims, where the French lay unaware, perhaps, that upon them was
soon to come the final, overwhelming attack. It must be in the last
stages of preparation, with the hundreds of thousands of reserve
troops secretly concentrated by night marches; with the thousands of
guns and millions of shells secreted and in place for another such
surprise attack to be delivered in some amazing, unforeseen manner
as that assault which two months ago swept over the plains of
Picardy and broke the English line. Perhaps already the attack was
begun; perhaps----
Such terrors held her when she lay sleepless or only half drowsing
in the dark; they formed the background for more personal affrights
visualizing her own friends--Hubert and Milicent and Mrs. Mayhew,
French girls whom she had known, and many others. Most particularly
her terror dwelt upon Gerry Hull. She had ventured to inquire of the
Germans regarding his fate; at first they refused information, then
they told her he was dead, next that he was a prisoner; and they
even supplied her with a paragraph from one of their papers boasting
of the fact and making capital of his capture.
He was in one of their camps, to be treated by the Germans--how? Her
dismay would dwell with him; then, suddenly considering her own
fate, she would sit up, stark, and grasping tight to the sides of
her cot. Her mother and her sisters in Onarga--would they ever know?
Cynthia Gail’s people--what, at last, would they learn?
A sudden resounding shock, accompanied by a dull rolling sound,
vibrated through the air. A great gun was being tested somewhere
nearby, Ruth thought. No; they would not do that at night. Then it
was an explosion at the chemical works; something had gone wrong.
The shocks and the sounds increased. Also they drew nearer. Now
guns--small, staccato, barking guns--began firing; shells smashed
high in the air. Ruth had dragged her chair below her window and was
standing upon it. Ah! Now she could see the flashes and lights in
the sky; an air raid was on. There within sight--not a mile off--and
fighting, were allied machines! Transcendent exaltation intoxicated
her.
The bombs bursting in air!
The stanza of the glorious song of her country sang in her soul with
full understanding of its great feeling. An American prisoner long
ago had written those wonderful words--written them, she remembered,
when lying a captive upon an enemy vessel and when fearing for the
fate of the fort manned by his people. But
... the rocket’s red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
The burst of these bombs and the flash of these rockets brought the
same leaping glory to Ruth. Not far away in France her flag yet flew
high; her people yet battled, and boldly, defiantly, if they could
send here over German soil such a squadron of the air to this
attack. The bombs and the guns and the rockets continued.
Sometimes they swept closer; but swiftly they retreated. Now the
motor clatter of a single airplane separated itself and became
louder than all the distant sound. This sound seemed to circle and
swoop over the _schloss_; and--Ruth swayed at the buffet of a
tremendous shock; she caught at the wall to steady herself; but the
wall, too, was quivering. A bomb had burst nearby; near enough,
indeed, to destroy some of the building, for through the tremors of
the detonation she heard the crash of falling walls, the yells and
screams of terror.
Ruth, steadying herself, realized that this attack might mean her
destruction; but defiant triumph filled her. The airplane which was
circling the _schloss_ was one of the allies; the booming clatter of
its motor as it returned was completing the panic throughout the
_schloss_. A new eruption vibrated the walls, blowing down stones,
timbers; the fury of its detonation battered her. The next might
bury her in the débris of these walls; but she sang--wildly,
tauntingly she sang _The Star-Spangled Banner_.
The taunt brought no protest. Throughout the _schloss_ now was
silence. She did not believe that all, or, indeed, many of the
occupants of the place had been killed. But she knew that all who
were alive were hiding in the cellars.
The increasing roar of the airplane motor as the machine swept back
on its orbit of return struck through her pangs of awe at the
possible imminence of her annihilation; but through them she sang,
and this time the motor roar rose to its loudest and diminished
without the shock of another bomb.
One had been dropped, perhaps, and had failed to explode, or the
pilot had found himself not quite in the position he had desired.
The diminuendo of his motor noise continued only for a few moments,
however; it altered to a crescendo, warning of the approach. But now
other sounds, closer and within the _schloss_, seized Ruth’s
attention.
Her name echoing in the stone halls--“Ruth! Ruth Alden! Where are
you?”
Was she mad? Was this a wild fantasy of her excitement, a result of
her long terror? Was this her failure to hold her reason at the
approach of fate? It seemed to be not merely her name, but Gerry’s
voice. She could not answer, but she could sing--sing _The
Star-Spangled Banner_----
And the rocket’s red glare,
The bombs bursting in air--
Her voice seemed to guide the voices without. “Ruth! Ruth Alden! Are
you all right? We’re here!”
“_Gave proof through the night_,” she sang, “_that the flag was
still there----_”
Now voices--unmistakable voices--answered her; and she cried out to
guide them. Gerry called to her, his voice wondrous with triumph and
joy. He was there at the door of her cell; another man was with him;
a friend. They were working together with a bar to burst the lock;
the friend laughed loudly and was not afraid. Gerry did not laugh;
he spoke to her again and again, asking about her. She was well? She
was unhurt?
[Illustration: Gerry was there at the door of her cell; another man
was with him; a friend]
Now they had the lock broken; the door open. Gerry seized her as she
came out; he kissed her; he picked her up and started to carry her,
while she cried to him that she was strong and could walk; could
run; could do anything now. Anything!
The roar of the airplane continued overhead; and Ruth now knew the
trick. It was keeping the Germans below while Gerry and his
companion went through the _schloss_. Ruth did not yet have complete
comprehension of the event; she supposed that Gerry must have
escaped from Germany long before; that he had rejoined his squadron
and had come from the allied lines with the raiders that night.
Now they were out of the _schloss_ and Gerry was leading her over
soft ground--a field brightly lit by the moon.
“Gerry, I’ve their plan!” Ruth cried to him. “On the front between
Soissons and Reims; their next attack! I know it....”
He no longer was leading her. He lifted her and bundled her against
him, quite as he had done once so long before. An airplane was
approaching; she could hear the loud crescendo of its motor;
suddenly it ceased and she heard only the whir of the airscrew of a
machine about to land.
Gerry was speaking to her, but for some reason she could not
understand what he was saying; she could hear his words, but they
were separate sort of words without meaning. He and Mike were
lifting her now and lowering her feet first into a pit--the seat pit
of an airplane. Mike stepped down into the pit with her and
supported her there. Gerry was gone from her now, but not far away.
He was in the pilot’s pit, or just behind it, with the pilot in
front of him. The motor was roaring again; the machine was moving;
it was rising. She was flying!
Far--far below, when she looked back, she saw a strange sheen, which
was the moonlight on the ground, with a twisting, brighter strip
dividing it.
“That,” she tried to say to the man holding her in his lap, “that’s
the Rhine?”
He tried very hard to hear her, and she supposed that the same thing
must be the matter with him as was the trouble with her when Gerry
spoke to her on the ground. Only slowly she realized that she could
not even hear her own voice for the noise of the motor.
She looked back to the other pit and saw Gerry’s face; he waved at
her and she waved back; then she sank upon the shoulder of the man
holding her, and she lost consciousness.
Many times while that English bombing biplane--weighted now by three
men and a girl instead of by two men and bombs--made the journey to
the allied lines, Ruth stirred to semi-wakefulness. The swaying and
the rising and the falling of the airplane as it rode the currents
of the air made it seem to Ruth that she was upon a ship at
sea--upon the _Ribot_. At other times the motion seemed merely the
buoyancy following the sinking of sensations in a dream. Afterwards
she remembered sitting up, wide-eyed and collected in mind, and
gazing down upon the moonlit ground; but at the time these occasions
gave no reaction.
She remembered that Gerry waved to her many times--every time she
turned. Complete consciousness returned to her, however, only when
she found herself no longer rising, and sinking, or swaying to right
and left, with all sound overwhelmed by motor noises. She was upon a
cot then; it was steady, and soft, and marvelously comfortable; and
extremely kind people were caring for her--one of them an American
girl.
Mrs. Mayhew was there, and George Byrne, and others, who identified
her. Also, of course, there was Gerry. It was he who introduced to
her two strange officers--one French and one American--and it was
Gerry who said: “These are officers of our intelligence division,
Ruth. Tell them what you can; then everyone will leave you alone to
rest. Your work will be done.”
So she told them, summoning all her strength to repeat everything
correctly and in detail; and when she had finished she answered
their questions for more than an hour. The next day again they
questioned her. The attack upon the Soissons-Reims front was not yet
begun, they told her. Did they believe her? she asked.
It was not the business of the intelligence officers to express
either belief or incredulity; their task was simply to ascertain
what she knew, or believed that she knew; to check her recital over
with discovered facts about her; to add her reports to the others,
both confirming and conflicting; and to pass the report on.
Ruth herself was passed on the next day and requisitioned by other
men. Then she was taken to Paris and was left, undisturbed by
further examinations, to rest in a bed in a little private room at
one of the hospitals. She could not quite determine, during those
first days that she was detained there, whether she was in fact
under a sort of observational arrest or whether the constant care
which she received was solely to promote the return of her strength.
For a semi-collapse had come--collapse of only physical powers. Her
mind was ceaselessly active--too active, the doctor told her.
Sometimes at night she could not sleep, but demanded that she be
allowed to rise, and dress, and go to the intelligence officers, or
have them come to her, so she could tell them her whole story again
in a way they must believe.
If she could only make them see how Adler had looked; if she could
make them hear how his voice had sounded when he had spoken of that
Soissons-Reims front, they would not doubt her at all. If she could
speak with Gerry Hull again, perhaps he could help make them believe
her. But Gerry Hull was with his squadron. Only women were about
Ruth now, and doctors, and wounded men. So, day after day, she was
kept in bed awaiting the attack which--as all the world knows--came
on the twenty-seventh of May and against the French on the front
from Soissons to Reims.
The day the great assault began Ruth demanded to get up, and--it
seemed until that day that someone must have doubted her--at last
she was permitted to do as she pleased. So she returned to the Rue
des Saints Pères and to her old rooms with Milicent; she wore again
the khaki uniform which she had worn in Picardy; and, after reading
the communiques that night, she applied for active duty as an
ambulance driver.
That day the Germans had swept the French, in one single rush, from
the Chemin des Dames; the enemy were over the Aisne. Back, back;
everywhere the French, as the British in Picardy, were driven back,
yielding guns by the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands.
The Boche were over the Vesle now; they had Fismes. God! Again they
were upon the Marne! Could nothing stop them? Still they were
rushing onward, a broken army before them.
Ruth was in Paris, where talk of a sort which she had never heard in
France before was upon everyone’s lips. France had given all and the
Germans yet advanced. Their guns hourly roared louder. Four years
ago, to be sure, their guns were heard as plainly in the Paris
streets; four years ago the German field gray had come even closer;
four years ago the government had abandoned Paris and prepared, even
though Paris were taken, to fight and fight. But that was four years
ago and the French army was young and unspent; Britain, then, had
barely begun to come in. France had gathered all her strength, and,
in her mighty hour at the Marne, had hurled back the enemy, “saving”
Paris!
What mockery was that memory this day! Here, after the four years
and the spending of French and British strength, the Germans were at
the gates again only more numerous and more confident than before.
Ruth stayed alone in her room during a lone afternoon writing to
Cynthia Gail’s father and mother a full confession of all that she
had done. Her whole enterprise, so hopefully taken up, had failed,
she said. She related what she had tried to do; indeed, in defense
of herself, she related how she had succeeded in entering Germany
and in learning something of the German plan for the great drive
which was now overwhelming the world; but she had failed to bring
back any proof which was required to convince the army that the
information she had gained was dependable. So she felt that she had
played Cynthia Gail’s part for no gain; she had no great achievement
to offer Cynthia’s parents in recompense for the wrong which she had
done them.
She sealed and posted this, and now, at last, wrote to her own
mother fully of what she had done. Again the despair of the day
seized her. She wandered the streets where men--men who had not been
in the fighting during the four years--were talking of the allies
taking up a new line south of Paris and holding on there somehow
until America was ready. But when such talk went about Ruth gazed at
the eyes of the French who had been through the years of battle; and
she knew that, if the Germans won now, the French could do no more.
Ever increasing streams of the wounded were flowing back into Paris;
and through the capital began spreading the confusion of catastrophe
nearby. The mighty emergency made demand upon the services of those
refused only a few hours earlier; and Ruth left Paris that night
upon the driving seat of a small ambulance. The next morning--it was
the first of June--she was close to the guns and upon a road where
was retreat.
Retreat? Well, two months ago in Picardy when the English had gone
back before the Germans, Ruth had heard such a concourse to the rear
called retreat; so she tried to call this retreat--this dazed,
unresisted departure of soldiers from before the enemy’s advance.
What made it worse, they were the French--the poilus whom she met.
The French! When the British had been broken in Picardy and fell
back, fighting so desperately, they had sacrificed themselves to
stay the enemy until the arrival of the French! When the French had
arrived the German advance was stopped; the French had been the
saviors! But here the French were going back; and the British could
not, in turn, come to save them.
These poilus did not expect it; they had ceased, indeed, to expect
anything. For the first time, as the poilus looked at her, she saw
the awfulness of hopelessness in their eyes. Four years they had
fought from Maubeuge to the Marne; to the Aisne; in the Champagne
they had attacked and gained; at Verdun they had stood alone; this
year at Kemmel they had sacrificed themselves and held on only to
meet at last, and in spite of all, the overwhelming disaster.
Ruth tried to cry a word or two of cheer when a man saw and saluted
her; but her cry choked in her throat. These men were spent; they
were fought out; beaten. And just behind them, at Château-Thierry,
whence they had fled, was the Prussian guard coming on with these
beaten men between them and Paris.
Ruth sat, half dizzy, half sick, at the wheel of the little car,
forcing it forward by these beaten men when the road offered a
chance. She was maneuvering toward a crossroad; and as she
approached it she noticed the French no longer trudging to the rear;
they were halted now; and as Ruth passed them and reached the direct
road to Château-Thierry she found them lined up beside the road,
waiting. Officers were clearing the way farther down; and as someone
halted Ruth’s car she stood up and stared along the rise of ground
to the south.
A sound was coming over, borne by the morning breeze--a sound of
singing in loud, confident, boasting notes. Three notes, they were,
three times repeated--the three notes which were blown on the bugles
in Berlin when the kaiser or princes of the royal house were coming;
three blatant, bragging notes which Ruth had learned a year before
to mean, “Over there!”
For the Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere....
Ruth caught to the side of the ambulance and held on tight. American
voices; thousands of them! American men; American soldiers singing!
Americans coming into this battle--coming forward into this battle,
singing! Swinging! She could see them now as they wound about the
hill--see the sun flashing on their bayonets, and the fine,
confident swing--the American swing--of their ranks as they
approached.
The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming...
And we won’t go back till it’s over, over here!
Ruth leaped up and screamed aloud with joy.
“What is it, Mademoiselle?” one of the dazed poilus inquired.
“The Americans are coming! Our men are here! Our Americans! _The
Yanks--the Yanks are coming!_” she shouted it in the rhythm of the
song.
What had seized her that day upon the _Ribot_ when she saw the
_Starke_ come up and Gerry told her it was American; what had
thrilled through her that night she arrived in France; what had
stirred throughout her that morning near Mirevaux when the English
officer called out to her, “Good old America,” and she watched the
English march off to die; what had come when the French at last
arrived before Amiens; even that ecstasy of the bombs bursting over
Mannheim when she had sung _The Star-Spangled Banner_ and Gerry Hull
had found her; all those together surged through her combined and
intensified a thousand-fold.
And this came not to her alone. It had come, too, to the French--the
French who had been falling back in flight--yes, in flight, one
could say it now--knowing that the Americans were behind them, but
expecting nothing of those Americans. Why they had expected nothing,
they did not know. At this moment it was incredible that--only the
instant before--they had been in total despair.
The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming!
They were marines who were coming; they were so close that Ruth
could see their uniforms; American marines, who marched past her
singing--swinging--on their way to kill and to die! For they were
going to kill--and to die. They knew it; that was why they sang as
they did; that was why they were so sure--so boastfully, absolutely
sure!
... send the word; send the word to beware!
It was American; nothing else! No other men in the world could have
gone by so absolutely sure of themselves, singing--swinging--like
that. And oh, Ruth loved them! Her people; only a few, indeed, as
men were reckoned in this war; but such men! Still
singing--swinging--they swept by, drawing after them a vortex of the
French, who, a few moments before, had been abandoning the battle.
They were all past now, the Americans; oh, how few they had been to
face the German army with Paris and all the fate of France behind
them.
A few miles on--it could not have been farther--the Americans met
the Germans; and what they did there in the woods near the tiny town
of Meaux came to Ruth in wonderful fashion. The battle, which each
hour--each moment through that terrible morning--had been steadily
coming nearer and nearer; the battle ceased to approach. There was
no doubt about it! The fighting, furious twice over and then more
furious, simply could not get closer. Now the battle was going back!
The marines--the American marines, sent in to stop the gap and hold
the Paris road--had not merely delayed the Prussian advance; they
had halted it and turned it back!
That night Ruth learned a little of the miracle of the American
marines from one of the men who had fought. He had been brought
back, badly wounded, and for a time, while her ambulance was held
up, Ruth was able to administer to the man, and he talked to her.
“Three miles, we threw ’em back, Miss! Not much, three miles, but in
the right direction. They asked us to delay ’em. Delay ’em; hell ...
excuse me, Miss.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Ruth cried. “Oh, that’s fine! Say it
again--our way!”
“That’s all they asked us; to delay ’em. I was right near
Wise”--Wise was the lieutenant colonel--“when we got our orders. We
was to get in touch with the Germans and hold up their advance as
long as we could; and then retreat to a prepared position.
“‘Retreat?’ Wise yelled. ‘Retreat? Hell! We’ve just come!’ Well,
Miss, we got in touch! Oh, we got in touch, all right; touched ’em
with bayonets and butts. They couldn’t like it. Couldn’t quite
believe at first; didn’t think it was true; so we had to prove it to
’em, you see. Three miles back toward Berlin; not much; but--you
admit--in the right direction.”
“I admit it,” Ruth said; and--the boy was very badly hurt--she
kissed him before she climbed back to her seat.
The next day, when she at last allowed herself to rest, she wrote a
letter to Gerry. She had no idea where he was; so she addressed him
in care of his old squadron. She had no definite notion of their
present relations; what he had said, or what she herself had said,
during and following their flight back to France, she simply did not
know; for during that time she had dreamed extreme, incredible
things, which, nevertheless, fastened themselves upon her with such
reality that she could not now separate, with any certainty, the
false from the true.
That he had come for her, boldly, recklessly; that he and a
companion had succeeded in taking her from the _schloss_ and
bringing her back with them were facts which might be the foundation
of--anything between Gerry and herself or of no more than had
existed before.
Yet something--a good deal--had existed at the time they had parted
on the Rue des Saints-Pères before she went to Switzerland. That was
quite a lot to return to, and the only safe feeling to assume in him
was that which he had confessed to her there. So she wrote this day
chiefly of the marvel which she had seen--the miracle of the arrival
of the Americans, which, as the world already knew, had saved Paris.
She received reply from him after two weeks--a brief yet intimate
note, telling her that her wonderful letter had welcomed him just
ten minutes ago, when he had returned from a patrol. He had only a
minute now; but he must reply at once.
I want to tell you, Ruth, that you have the right to feel
that your work contributed to the arrival of our marines
at the right moment, at the right place. You are familiar
enough with war now to know that troop dispositions must
be made far ahead. Your information was, of course, not
the only warning to reach the general staff that the
attack was to come where it did. But I am now permitted to
tell you that your information was believed to be honest;
therefore it had weight, and its weight was sufficient
undoubtedly to make our command certain, a few hours
earlier than they otherwise might have been certain, of
the direction of the German attack; and, throughout the
front, reserves were started to the threatened points a
few hours sooner. Yours ever,
Gerry.
The day after Ruth received this the Germans started their attack of
the fifteenth of July; three days later the allied counter attack
was striking in full force and the armies of the German Crown Prince
were fighting for their lives against the French and Americans, to
get back out of the Marne “pocket.” Then, in the north, the English
struck and won their greatest victories. It was August; September,
and still, from Switzerland to the sea, the allies advanced; the
Germans went back. And still from across the sea, three hundred
thousand American soldiers arrived monthly.