We are right here among the pines. Great forests of splendid Norways
stretch away over the rolling sandy country, broken only by the clearing
around some old manor château with its radiating vistas and its towers
standing white amidst the green. Would you think that France with its
dense population and old culture would be covered with great forests,
almost primeval in the abandon of their growth? Throw in a few lakes and
it would be Wisconsin.
Yesterday I cut the noonday roll-call and succeeded in losing myself as
an excuse. As I swung along the road, I could feel the spirit of the
blazed trail humming in the pine boughs; and my breath came deep. Here
was a clearing with the logs fallen and the smallest branches cut and
tied in neat sheaves—there, off to the right, was a hill which mounted
above the tree tops. I climbed to the top and saw the stretch of woods
on all sides with here and there a rock-strewn, barren stretch of sand.
Going down the other side, a pheasant clapped up from under foot and
made me start. As my eyes glanced along the trail ahead of my wandering
feet, I saw many deer tracks. They say that since the war, wolves are
not infrequent; and have we not heard of wolves in the streets of Paris
not many decades ago? Now and then a rabbit bobbed out of sight. It
soothed me and yet made me homesick. Out there in the open woods with
the gentle spirit of the mighty pines, I could not help despairing at
the question, “What good is war?”
Today we had an accident. A machine had mounted to fifty meters when it
stopped climbing and started to lose speed. It turned to come back to
the _piece_, but slipped sideways and fell in “_vrille_,” and crashed
headlong to the ground. The tail broke backward and the motor gave a
final groan, as in a death struggle. Men covered their eyes. It was a
quarter of a mile away. All started to run, and I was first there. The
pilot, a little Frenchman with whom I had been exchanging French, had
crawled out on top of the wreck. He sat shut in by the wreckage. There
was a whimper on his face. I climbed up on the wreckage and held him in
my arms. He called me by name and then managed to tell me that his arm
was broken. Well, you can imagine how relieved I was. I handed him out
to the others who had arrived by this time. The doctor came up and cut
the clothes away from his arm. There was no bruise nor blood, and as he
began to regain his color, we tried to divert his mind. About the first
thing he asked for was a piece of the propeller for a souvenir. Well, we
put him on a stretcher and into the captain’s car and went to the
hospital in a little town, Senlis, some two miles away. He seemed to
prefer me to all his French friends. The hospital was a nice old
Catholic institution, with old Sisters and young Red Cross nurses. We
left him contented and resigned to his lot of another two or three
months before reaching the Front.
The village in which we found the hospital has been heavily shelled in
the early days of the war. Every third or fourth house was a monumental
ruin to the price of war, but by some happy chance the two beautiful
cathedrals of the town had been spared, yet the ruins seemed very old
and the vines which formerly climbed the walls now fell about the broken
stones and trailed through the blind windows, giving the whole an aged
aspect; and between these ruins were the untouched abodes of unconscious
inhabitants.