Two o'clock in the morning on the sea is sometimes cold and
disagreeable, and sometimes it is glorious with wonder and beauty. But
whether it is beautiful or whether it is cold and disagreeable, at that
exact hour in the war zone on every American transport, now, every boy
is summoned on deck until daylight. This is only one of the many
precautions that the navy is taking to save life in case of a U-boat
attack. One thing that ought to comfort every mother and father in
America is the care that is manifested and the precautions that are
taken by the navy in getting the soldiers to France. One of the most
thrilling chapters of the history of this war, when it is written, will
be that chapter. And one of the most wonderful, the most colossal
feats will be the safe transportation overseas of those millions of
soldiers with so little loss of life while doing it.
And one of the best precautions is this of getting every boy up out of
the hold and out of the staterooms, officers and all, on deck, standing
by the assigned life-boats and rafts. Not a single boy remains below
in the war zone.
Day is just breaking across the sea. It is a beautiful dawning. Five
thousand American boys line the railings of a certain great transport.
They are not allowed to smoke. They do not sing. They do not talk
much. Some of them are sleepy, for the average American boy is not
used to being awakened at two in the morning. They just stand and wait
and watch through five hours of silence as the great ship plunges its
way defiantly through the danger zone, saying in so many words: "We're
ready for you!"
And the silhouette of that great ship, lined with khaki-clad American
boys, waiting, watching, as seen from another transport, where the
watcher who writes this story stands, is a sight never to be equalled
in art or story. To see the huge bulk of a great transport just a
stone's throw away, moving forward, without a sound from its
rail-lined, soldier-packed deck, is one of the striking Silhouettes of
Silence.
Thomas Carlyle once said of man: "Stands he not thereby in the centre
of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities?" One day I saw the
American army standing "in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of
eternities," at the focus of histories. One day I saw the American
army in France march in answer to General Pershing's offer to the
Allies at the beginning of the big drive, march to its place in history
beside its Allies, the English and the French.
The news came. The first division of American troops was to leave
overnight and march overland into the Marne line. Our Allies needed
us. They had called. We were answering.
As a tribute to the efficiency of the American army, may I say that the
one well-trained, seasoned division of troops that we had in a certain
quiet sector picked up bag and baggage overnight and, like the Arabs,
"silently stole away," and did it so well and so efficiently that not
even the Y. M. C. A. secretaries, who had been living with this
division intimately for months, knew that they were gone, and that a
new division had taken its place, until the next morning. Talk about
German efficiency--that phrase, "German efficiency," has become a
bugaboo to frighten the world. American efficiency is just as great,
if not greater.
I saw that division marching overland. It was a thrilling sight.
Coming on it suddenly, and looking down upon its marching columns from
the brow of a hill, and then riding past it in a Ford camionet all day
long with Irving Cobb, riding past its ammunition-wagons, past its
machine-gun battalion, past its great artillery company, past its
hundreds of infantrymen, past its trucks, past its clean-cut officers
astride their horses, past its supply-trains, past its flags and
banners, past its kitchen-wagons, seeing it stop to eat, seeing it
shoulder its rifles, seeing its ambulances and its Red Cross groups,
seeing its khaki-clad American boys wind through the valleys and up the
hills and over the bridges (the white stone bridge), through its
villages, many in which American soldiers had never been seen before;
welcomed by the people as the saviors of France, seeing its way strewn
with the flowers of spring by little children, and with the welcome and
the tears of French mothers and daughters clad in black, seeing it
march along the French streams from early morning until late at night,
this was a sight to stir the pride of any American to the point of
reverence.
But all day as we rode along that winding trail I thought of the song
that the soldiers are singing, "There's a Long, Long Trail Awinding to
the Land of Our Dreams," and when I looked into the faces of those
American boys I saw there the determination that the trail that they
were taking was a trail that, although it was leading physically
directly away from home, and toward Berlin, yet it was, to their way of
thinking, the shortest way home. The trail that the American army took
that day as it marched into the Marne line was the "home trail," and
every boy marched that road with the determination that the sooner they
got that hard job ahead over with, the sooner they would get home. I
talked with many of them as they stopped to rest and found this
sentiment on every lip.
But it was a silent army. I heard no singing all day long--not a song.
Men may sing as they are marching into training-camps; they may sing
when they board the boats for France now; they may sing as they march
into rest-billets, but they were not singing that day as they marched
into the great battle-line of Europe.
I heard no laughter. I heard no loud talking, I heard no singing; I
heard only the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet, and the crunching
of the great motor-trucks, and the patter of horses as the officers
galloped along their lines. That army of American men knew that the
job on which they were entering was not child's play. They knew that
democracy depended upon what they did in that line. They knew that
many of them would never come back. They knew that at last the real
thing was facing them. They were not like dumb, driven beasts. They
were men. They were American men. They were thinking men. They were
silent men. They were brave men.
They were marching to their place in history unafraid, and unflinching,
but thoughtful and silent.
Another Silhouette of Silence. It was after midnight on the Toul line.
We were driving back from the front. The earth was covered with a
blanket of snow. Everything was white. We were moving cautiously
because with the snow over everything it was hard to tell where the icy
road left off and the ditches began; and those ditches were four feet
deep, and a big truck is hard to get out of a hole. Then there were no
lights, for we were too near the Boche batteries.
"Halt!" rang out suddenly in the night, and a sentry stepped into the
middle of the road.