In one of the most beautiful countries in the world, the Alsatian
Valley of the Thur runs to where the Vosges abruptly end in the great
flat plain of the Rhine. In turn a small valley descends into that
of the Thur. At the head of this valley lies the small village of
Mollau where is billeted the Section Sanitaire Américaine N{o} 3. It
has been through months of laborious, patient, never-ceasing trips
from the valley to the mountain-tops and back, up the broadened
mule-paths, rutted and worn by a thousand wheels and the hoofs of
mules, horses, and oxen, by hobnailed boots and by the cars of the
American Ambulance (for no other Section is equipped with cars and men
for such service), up from the small Alsatian towns, leaving the main
valley road to grind through a few fields of ever-increasing grade on
into the forest, sometimes pushed, sometimes pulled, always blocked
on the steepest slopes by huge army wagons deserted where they stuck,
rasping cart-loads of trench torpedoes on one side, crumbling the edge
of the ravine on the other,--day and night--night and day--in snow
and rain--and, far worse, fog--months of foul and days of fair,--up
with the interminable caravans of _ravitaillement_, supplies with
which to sustain or blast the human body (we go down with the human
body once blasted), up past small armies of Alsatian peasants of
three generations (rather two--octogenarians and children), forever
repairing, forever fighting the wear and tear of all that passes,--up
at last to the little log huts and rudely made _postes de secours_ at
the mouth of the trench "bowels,"--a silent little world of tethered
mules, shrouded carts and hooded figures, lightless by night, under the
great pines where is a crude garage usually filled with grenades into
which one may back at one's own discretion.
Day after day, night after night, wounded or no wounded, the little
ambulances plied with their solitary drivers. Few men in ordinary
autos or in ordinary senses travel such roads by choice, but all that
is impossible is explained by a simple _C'est la guerre_. Why else
blindly force and scrape one's way past a creaking truck of shells
testing twenty horses, two abreast, steaming in their own cloud of
sweaty vapor, thick as a Fundy fog? Taking perforce the outside, the
ravine side, the ambulance passes. More horses and wagons ahead in the
dark, another blinding moment or two, harnesses clash and rattle, side
bolts and lanterns are wiped from the car. It passes again; _C'est la
guerre_. Why else descend endless slopes with every brake afire, with
three or four human bodies as they should not be, for cargo, where a
broken drive-shaft leaves but one instantaneous twist of the wheel for
salvation, a thrust straight into the bank, smashing the car, but
saving its precious load? _C'est la guerre._
The men in time grow tired as do the machines. A week before Christmas
they rested quietly in their villages--a week of sun and splendid moon,
spent tuning up their motors and gears and jogging about afoot after
all their "rolling." A lull in the fighting, and after three weeks
of solid rain, nature smiles. The Section had been ordered to leave
shortly, and it was only held for a long-expected attack which would
bring them all together for once on the mountains in a last great
effort with the Chasseurs Alpins and the mountains they both loved.
On December 21st the mountain spoke and all the cars rolled upwards
to the _poste_ of Hartmannsweilerkopf,--taken and retaken a score of
times,--a bare, brown, blunt, shell-ploughed top where before the
forest stood, up elbowing, buffeting, and tacking their way through
battalions of men and beasts, up by one pass and down by another
unmountable (for there is no going back against the tide of what was
battle-bound). From one mountain slope to another roared all the
lungs of war. For five days and five nights--scraps of days, the
shortest of the year, nights interminable--the air was shredded with
shrieking shells--intermittent lulls for slaughter in attack after the
bombardment, then again the roar of the counter-attack.
All this time, as in all the past months, Richard Nelville Hall calmly
drove his car up the winding, shell-swept artery of the mountain of
war,--past crazed mules, broken-down artillery carts, swearing drivers,
stricken horses, wounded stragglers still able to hobble,--past long
convoys of _Boche_ prisoners, silent, descending in twos, guarded by
a handful of men,--past all the _personnel_ of war, great and small
(for there is but one road, one road on which to travel, one road
for the enemy to shell),--past _abris_, bomb-proofs, subterranean
huts, to arrive at the _postes de secours_, where silent men moved
mysteriously in the mist under the great trees, where the cars were
loaded with an ever-ready supply of still more quiet figures (though
some made sounds), mere bundles in blankets. Hall saw to it that those
quiet bundles were carefully and rapidly installed,--right side up,
for instance,--for it is dark and the _brancardiers_ are dull folks,
deadened by the dead they carry; then rolled down into the valley
below, where little towns bear stolidly their daily burden of shells
wantonly thrown from somewhere in Bocheland over the mountain to
somewhere in France--the bleeding bodies in the car a mere corpuscle
in the full crimson stream, the ever-rolling tide from the trenches to
the hospital, of the blood of life and the blood of death. Once there,
his wounded unloaded, Dick Hall filled his gasoline tank and calmly
rolled again on his way. Two of his comrades had been wounded the day
before, but Dick Hall never faltered. He slept where and when he could,
in his car, at the _poste_, on the floor of our temporary kitchen at
Moosch--dry blankets--wet blankets--blankets of mud--blankets of
blood; contagion was pedantry--microbes a myth.
At midnight Christmas Eve, he left the valley to get his load of
wounded for the last time. Alone, ahead of him, two hours of lonely
driving up the mountain. Perhaps he was thinking of other Christmas
Eves, perhaps of his distant home, and of those who were thinking of
him.
* * * * *
Matter, the next American to pass, found him by the roadside halfway
up the mountain. His face was calm and his hands still in position to
grasp the wheel. Matter, and Jennings, who came a little later, bore
him tenderly back in Matter's car to Moosch, where his brother, Louis
Hall, learned what had happened.
A shell had struck his car and killed him instantly, painlessly. A
chance shell in a thousand had struck him at his post, in the morning
of his youth.
* * * * *
Up on the mountain fog was hanging over Hartmann's Christmas morning,
as if Heaven wished certain things obscured. The trees were sodden with
dripping rain. Weather, sight, sound, and smell did their all to sicken
mankind, when news was brought to us that Dick Hall had fallen on the
Field of Honor. No man said, "Merry Christmas," that day. No man could
have mouthed it. With the fog forever closing in, with the mountain
shaken by a double bombardment as never before, we sat all day in the
little log hut by the stove, thinking first of Dick Hall, then of
Louis Hall, his brother, down in the valley....
Gentlemen at home, you who tremble with concern at overrun putts, who
bristle at your partner's play at auction, who grow hoarse at football
games, know that among you was one who played for greater goals--the
lives of other men. There in the small hours of Christmas morning,
where mountain fought mountain, on that hard-bitten pass under the
pines of the Vosgian steeps, there fell a very modest and valiant
gentleman.
* * * * *
Dick Hall, we who knew you, worked with you, played with you, ate with
you, slept with you, we who took pleasure in your company, in your
modesty, in your gentle manners, in your devotion and in your youth--we
still pass that spot, and we salute. Our breath comes quicker, our eyes
grow dimmer, we grip the wheel a little tighter--we pass--better and
stronger men.
* * * * *
[Illustration: RICHARD HALL]
Richard Hall was buried with honors of war in the Valley of
Saint-Amarin, in the part of Alsace which once more belongs to France.
His grave, in a crowded military cemetery, is next that of a French
officer who fell the same morning. It bears the brief inscription,
"Richard Hall, an American who died for France." Simple mountain people
in the only part of Germany where foreign soldiers are to-day brought
to the grave many wreaths of native flowers and Christmas greens. The
funeral service was held in a little Protestant chapel, five miles
down the valley. At the conclusion of the service Hall's citation was
read and the Cross of War pinned on the coffin. On the way to the
cemetery sixteen soldiers, belonging to a battalion on leave from the
trenches, marched in file on each side with arms reversed. The _médecin
chef_ spoke as follows:--
_Messieurs--Camarades_--
C'est un suprême hommage de reconnaissance et d'affection que nous
rendons, devant cette fosse fraîchement creusée, à ce jeune homme--je
dirais volontiers--cet enfant--tombé hier pour la France sur les
pentes de l'Hartmannsweilerkopf.... Ai-je besoin de vous rappeler
la douloureuse émotion que nous avons tous ressentis en apprenant
hier matin que le conducteur Richard Hall, de la Section Sanitaire
Américaine N{o} 3, venait d'être mortellement frappé par un éclat
d'obus, près du poste de secours de Thomannsplats où il montait
chercher des blessés?
A l'Ambulance 3/58, où nous éprouvons pour nos camarades américains
une sincère amitié basée sur des mois de vie commune pendant laquelle
il nous fut permis d'apprécier leur endurance, leur courage, et leur
dévouement, le conducteur Richard Hall était estimé entre tous pour sa
modestie, sa douceur, sa complaisance.
A peine sorti de l'université de Dartmouth, dans la générosité de son
coeur d'adolescent, il apporta à la France le précieux concours de
sa charité en venant relever, sur les champs de bataille d'Alsace,
ceux de nos vaillants soldats blessés en combattant pour la patrie
bien-aimée.
Il est mort en "Chevalier de la Bienfaisance"--en "Américain"--pour
l'accomplissement d'une oeuvre de bonté et de charité chrétienne!
Aux êtres chers qu'il a laissés dans sa patrie, au Michigan, à ses
parents désolés, à son frère ainé, qui, au milieu de nous, montre une
si stoique douleur, nos hommages et l'expression de notre tristesse
sont bien sincères et bien vifs!
Conducteur Richard Hall, vous allez reposer ici à l'ombre du drapeau
tricolore, auprès de tous ces vaillants dont vous êtes l'émule.... Vous
faites à juste titre partie de leur bataillon sacré!... Seul, votre
corps, glorieusement mutilé, disparait--votre âme est remonté trouver
Dieu--votre souvenir, lui, reste dans nos coeurs, impérissable!... Les
Français n'oublient pas!