“It is plain to me,” said Gordon, “that you are not a hunter, and have
never stalked deer as I have often done. If it had been a Boche instead
of me, you would have been captured or shot, when you were so near me.”
“But how,” I asked, “did you get away from them?”
“When you were knocked overboard,” he answered, “there was a good deal
of confusion. The sergeant commanding the guard made motions urging me
to go to your rescue. None of them wanted to try it, and when I had
made him understand that I could not swim, enough time had passed for
any reasonable man to drown; and no real effort was made to rescue you
or to retrieve your body. Then the guard who knocked you overboard was
scolded by the sergeant, not particularly for striking you, but for
making it hard for him to account for a missing prisoner. There was a
rejoinder that there was one less American pig to feed, which caused
a laugh. And just then, when attention was drawn from me, I softly
slipped into the water and, swimming under for some distance, at last
crawled upon the shore.
“Apparently they did not discover my absence for some time. Then they
came tramping back across the bridge, looking in the ends of the boats
and then beneath the planking. When they got to this end of the bridge,
I heard one of our officers suggest to the sergeant that you were not
drowned but faking it.”
“Did that fellow who was giving me away have a voice like the purr of
a cat--too sweet to be honest?” I asked suddenly.
“I reckon that’s him to a T. How did you happen to know him?”
“I spotted him,” I answered, “the first hour I was in that Boche wire
coop, and I wouldn’t trust him for a cent’s worth.”
“I reckoned you felt it rather than reasoned it; didn’t you?”
“That’s about it,” I replied. “I always did have ‘hunches’--and I
wouldn’t have shaken hands with him with a pair of tongs.”
“I reckon we are twins. I have that same feeling about some folks
myself.”
Gordon and I were glad of each other’s company, though neither of us
said much about it; for between some folks there is no need to say
things. That night we walked rapidly; for my comrade’s trained senses
enabled him to see and travel in the dark without missing the right
direction. Sometimes we kept the road in view for guidance, but he
seemed never to have doubts of the right road.
When daylight came, we found a hiding place in what, at first, we
thought was a quarry, but soon saw excavations that told us it had
been used by both the French and German soldiers for bomb proofs and
other military service. We halted and made a breakfast from our tins
and wheat bread, and lay there for most of the day, taking turns in
standing guard, while the other slept.
I think that I was, possibly, doing more than my share of sleeping,
when Gordon awakened me, and with a motion to keep silent, said in a
whisper: “There are some folks near here--quite a lot of them--sounds
like women--and I think they are French. But as we used to say in the
Medical School, ‘Don’t be sure of your subject until you are certain it
is a dead one.’ So you stay here until I find out what it means.”
It was a full half-hour before he returned, saying, “There is a nest of
people in an underground dugout. I reckon that the question before the
house is, shall we make their acquaintance, or skip them.”
“Can you speak French?” I inquired.
“Not ten cents’ worth,” he replied. “Can you?”
“Well,” I said, following his simile, “about twenty cents’ worth.”
“A few words,” he observed, “are sometimes better than a sermon.”
“All right,” I said, “we will chance it.”
“We’d better doll up a little first,” suggested Gordon. “You’d look
better to get them weeds and burs out of your hair, chum.”
“And you,” I retorted, “would look less like a bear from the wilderness
if you shaved and washed.”
“No soap or razor,” said Gordon, “but I will do it, if you will produce
them.”
“I am more provident,” I said; “when I travel, I travel first
class”--showing a comb and other articles.
“That’s fine!” he agreed. “But I don’t see what you carry a razor for
with nothing to shave--that I can see.”
When he had shaved, as he said, “with tears,” for he declared that
the razor was as “full of gaps as a hand saw,” we were ready for the
interview.
After some search we found the entrance to the excavation, and
introduced ourselves to the people. But instead of the welcome we had
expected, they drew together like so many frightened sheep, and made
outcries of fear and held up their hands in supplication.
“We are Americans,” I said, expecting that this would calm their fears;
but to my surprise they became still more frantic.
Then an old crippled man cried out in broken English, “We know
you--devils! The German soldiers have warned us that Americans are
savages and kill everybody on sight.”
It was some time before we convinced them that the Americans had come
to France to help them, and were fighting on their side.
This German lie to these people showed the deep cunning of the enemy to
prejudice the French peasants against American soldiers.
One old Frenchman told us that he had once lived in Montreal, and had
a little shop there, but had come home two years before the war. The
Germans, he said, had taken everything away from them and destroyed
their homes.
We tried to tell them of the victories the French and Americans had
achieved, but they could not believe it; for the Germans had told them
that they were besieging Paris and that London had been destroyed. It
was hard to convince these poor people of the truth, and they still
shrank at our approach.
We remained with them two hours or more and then, fearing that some
of the Huns might return, we resumed our journey, which, with the
information the Frenchman gave us, and a little compass that Gordon
carried offered fair directions for reaching our lines.
When morning came we recognized by the sound of guns and in other ways
known to soldiers, that we were near the German lines. We found a
hiding place in a field where there were some stacks of straw, and soon
saw the troops of the enemy moving over the near-by roads.
“I judge,” I said, “that there is going to be a fight near here, and
the enemy are concentrating for it; but I believe it is a rear-guard
action, to make their way clear for still further retreat.”
It was not long before an outburst of artillery and machine-gun fire
confirmed this belief. The sound of combat grew nearer and nearer
showing that the Boches were falling back.
“Let’s get out of this,” said Gordon, “for the enemy will be falling
back here before long, and we will be caught. When it comes night, they
will be after this straw for bedding.”
It was fortunate that we got away when we did, for before long we saw
soldiers going into the field and streaming back with sheaves of straw.
In another hour by crawling through a bit of woodland we came to an
abandoned village which, apparently, the Huns had occupied, and which
now was a wrecked heap of masonry and jagged walls. Here we thought no
human being would resort, or Huns approach, for there was nothing to
steal or destroy, but to our surprise we came upon an aged couple still
clinging to their ruined home. They had a few tattered bed clothes
and garments, some wheat that they had apparently gathered from the
near-by fields, a few potatoes, but not a scrap of bread or meat. Their
condition was so pitiable that we attempted in our poor French to
condole with them. They must have partially understood, for the old man
shook his head and with trembling voice said, “_C’est la guerre_.”
Thus we traveled for several nights, lying very close during the day,
without incident worthy of record except getting wet and tired. The
country hereabouts was rough and hilly and sparsely inhabited by French
speaking people, mostly of the peasant class, with whom we came in
contact but twice, and that in an accidental way.
It had been raining almost constantly. After traveling all night,
drenched to the skin and weak with long hunger and exposure, I felt
that I could not go further without rest and warmth. So, just before
daylight, we crept into a thatched little barn where, in one secluded
corner, there was some straw.
“Say, chum!” said Gordon, “this is right comfortable.”
“Yes,” I replied petulantly, “but ain’t it ‘right’ dangerous?”
“We can’t have everything, Yank,” he replied. “We’ve got to chance it
once in a while.”
“Yes,” I assented, “but I’m afraid I’m all in. I’m all of a shiver.”
After looking at my wound, my chum said, “That arm is right bad; and
I don’t like them shivers you are having. If we don’t get into God’s
country pretty soon, I reckon we shall have to do something desperate
to get that arm fixed.”
He covered me over with his coat, and heaped straw on top of that, and
then after a while, asked anxiously, “Getting over them shivers?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I am getting comfortable and warmer than I have been
for a good while. Better take your coat.”
“That’s good!” he said with a relieved expression. “Never mind about
the coat. I was afraid that them shivers meant something more than
cold.”
I had dropped into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion when I was
awakened by a sharp punch, and the rustling of the straw. Looking up, I
saw an old man with a pitchfork in one hand, staring down upon me with
eyes big with surprise and inquiry.
My chum sprang up with a greeting in German, and was answered in French
by the inquiry: “Who are you?”
“Un Americain,” I answered quickly.
He dropped his hay fork, and held out his arms to embrace me, then
called to his wife; and as she spoke German quite well, we soon had an
understanding with them.
They said that though some of the French people of that country had
become Germanized, they still loved “la belle France” and prayed for
deliverance from the hated, overbearing Germans. They had conscripted
his son and had taken his horse, his crop of potatoes and other food,
for their soldiers.
From them we learned that there was a heavy force of Germans a few
miles away, but that they were constantly falling back before the
French and Americans. They said, further, that many of the Boches they
had met were discouraged and feared that they could not continue to
fight much longer.
The old man gave us food to continue our journey, saying: “We are good
friends,” and then added ruefully, “_C’est la guerre_.”