ON TO THE RHINE
It would have been hard to analyze the feeling of the Army Boys when
the meaning of it all dawned upon them.
Their first feeling was that of satisfaction at work well done. Uncle
Sam had sent them over to finish the job. Well, they had finished it.
Their next sensation was that of delight at having accomplished the
downfall of the Huns. They had saved the world from slavery to the most
brutal nation that the modern world had known.
Then there was the feeling that at last they could be free from the
daily danger of wounds and death. They had risked this freely and
gladly as long as it was necessary. Yet life was sweet and they were
young.
“I told you they’d sign,” exclaimed Frank as he gave Tom a resounding
thump on the back. “Now what have you got to say for yourself, you old
croaker?”
“I’m the goat,” admitted Tom with a joyous grin. “Josh all you like.
I’m too happy to want to come back at you. But don’t forget,” he
added, as a thought struck him, “that they may back out yet. They’re
the greatest crawfishes on earth.”
“Not a chance,” chimed in Billy. “They’re down and out. Gee, wouldn’t
you like to be in little old Camport this minute? Can’t you see them
all out on the streets and the laughing and the crying and the shaking
hands and all the rest of it?”
“Just wait till the old Thirty-seventh goes swinging through the
Camport streets,” gloated Tom. “They’ll give us the town. Nothing will
be too good for us.”
“We’ll surely be It with a capital I,” agree Frank happily. “If only
good old Bart could be with us,” he added, and a shadow came over his
face.
“That’s the one fly in the ointment,” admitted Billy. “But he will be
with us and don’t you forget it. He’s liable to turn up any minute.”
“And now that the fighting is over, we may have a chance to look for
him ourselves,” put in Tom. “It stands to reason he can’t be very far
from here. But now let’s go to chow. We ought to have an extra good
meal this morning with a lot of victory sauce to season it.”
They found the rest of the regiment as wildly excited as they were
themselves, and there was a perfect Babel of voices as the matter was
discussed in all its bearings.
“Look at the fellows’ faces,” chuckled Billy. “They’re like so many
full moons.”
“Rather different from what they were when the Germans seemed to have
the upper hand in the Spring,” grinned Frank. “If anyone then had told
us that the Germans would have caved in before Christmas, we’d have
thought he was crazy. But here it isn’t Thanksgiving yet and they’ve
cried quits.”
“I suppose there’ll be a little more fighting yet this morning,” said
Tom hopefully. “You know the armistice doesn’t go into force until
eleven o’clock.”
“Hear the glutton,” chaffed Frank. “He hasn’t got enough fighting yet.
He wants to get another crack at the Hun.”
“I suppose there will be a show of fighting until the last minute,”
said Billy. “But I guess it will be a matter of form. The artillery
will open up but they’ll fire wild. There’ll be just enough to show
that the army’s on the job.”
Billy was right. The morning wore away in a desultory fashion, with
every man looking at his wrist watch every five minutes until eleven
o’clock approached. Then when the moment came, all the big guns let go
at once in one tremendous salvo that seemed as though it would split
the heavens.
The war was over!
The silence that followed was the most curious sensation that the Army
Boys had known. Day and night, the guns had been growling for months,
sometimes faintly, sometimes strongly, but always growling. Now all
along that vast battle line of five hundred miles there was that moment
of blessed silence for which those millions of men had been waiting and
fighting. The end of the long agony had come.
Frank, Billy, and Tom dropped their rifles and looked at each other.
Usually they were talkative enough, but just now they were too full for
words.
Over the hill in front of them appeared a group of German soldiers.
They advanced a little, then hung back, then advanced again, and made
signs that indicated that they wanted to talk with the Americans. But
they were waved sternly back. The Americans wanted to have nothing to
do with them.
The strictest rules had been laid down by the American officers that
there was to be no fraternizing with the enemy. While hostilities had
ceased, the war was still formally regarded as being on until the
actual treaty of peace was signed. It might yet be necessary to take up
arms again, and the Americans were going to take no chance of German
propaganda getting in its nefarious work.
“A mighty good rule it is too,” commented Frank, as he saw the
discomfited Germans slink back into their own lines. “If those fellows
had played the game fairly and gallantly as we played it, I’d be the
first one to shake hands with them after the fighting was over and let
bygones be bygones. But there isn’t a decent rule of civilized warfare
that they haven’t violated. I’d as soon shake hands with a rattlesnake.”
“I didn’t know a rattlesnake had hands,” gurgled Billy, and dodged the
pass that Frank made at him.
“Well, now that the fighting is over, what’s the next thing on the
program?” asked Tom.
“Where do we go from here, boys,
Where do we go from here?”
chanted Billy.
“That’s a question for our officers to settle,” remarked Frank. “Of
course we’ll all go back to the good old U. S. A. eventually. At that,
it will be a tremendous job to get over two million men back to the
States. But I imagine a good many of us will have to stay over here and
do police duty until the peace treaty is signed. Let’s go down to the
headquarters bulletin board and see just what the armistice terms are.
That may give us a little light on the subject.”
The men had been given liberty now to leave the ranks, and they found
a great crowd gathered about a number of bulletin boards where the
printed terms of the armistice had been posted. So great was the throng
that they found difficulty in getting near the announcements.
“Here,” said Frank giving Tom a push. “You’ve got gall enough to get in
anywhere. Buck the line and come back with the dope.”
Tom obeyed and wormed his way through the crowd until he got a good
view of a board. He jotted down some of the main points and came back
with his eyes bulging.
“We’re going to the Rhine, fellows!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to the
Rhine!”