"I sure have," grinned the doughboy, "and it sticks closer than a poor
relation, too."
"Where did you pick it up?"
"Oh, in there," said the soldier, pointing to a dilapidated barn.
"Why in there?"
"My home," grinned the boy.
"Let me see," said Bok, and the doughboy took him in with the pig
following close behind. "Billeted here--been here six days. The pig was
here when we came, and the first night I lay down and slept, it came up
to me and stuck its snout in my face and woke me up. Kind enough, all
right, but not very comfortable: it stinks so."
"Yes; it certainly does. What did you do?"
"Oh, I got some grub I had and gave it to eat: thought it might be
hungry, you know. I guess that sort of settled it, for the next night it
came again and stuck its snout right in my mug. I turned around, but it
just climbed over me and there it was."
"Well, what did you do then? Chase it out?"
"Chase it out?" said the doughboy, looking into Bok's face with the most
unaffected astonishment. "Why, mister, that's a mother-pig, that is.
She's going to have young ones in a few days. How could I chase her
out?"
"You're quite right, Buddy," said Bok. "You couldn't do that."
"Oh, no," said the boy. "The worst of it is, what am I going to do with
her when we move up within a day or two? I can't take her along to the
front, and I hate to leave her here. Some one might treat her rough."
"Captain," said Bok, hailing the officer, "you can attend to that, can't
you, when the time comes?"
"I sure can, and I sure will," answered the Captain. And with a quick
salute, Pinney and his porker went off across the road!
Bok was standing talking to the commandant of one of the great French
army supply depots one morning. He was a man of forty; a colonel in the
regular French army. An erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and
mustache, and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve,
came up, saluted, delivered a message, and then asked:
"Are there any more orders, sir?"
"No," was the reply.
He brought his heels together with a click, saluted again, and went
away.
The commandant turned to Bok with a peculiar smile on his face and
asked:
"Do you know who that man is?"
"No," was the reply.
"That is my father," was the answer.
The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired
business man when the war broke out. After two years of the heroic
struggle he decided that he couldn't keep out of it. He was too old to
fight, but after long insistence he secured a commission. By one of the
many curious coincidences of the war he was assigned to serve under his
own son.
When under the most trying conditions, the Americans never lost their
sense of fun. On the staff of a prison hospital in Germany, where a
number of captured American soldiers were being treated, a German
sergeant became quite friendly with the prisoners under his care. One
day he told them that he had been ordered to active service on the
front. He felt convinced that he would be captured by the English, and
asked the Americans if they would not give him some sort of testimonial
which he could show if he were taken prisoner, so that he would not be
ill-treated.
The Americans were much amused at this idea, and concocted a note of
introduction, written in English. The German sergeant knew no English
and could not understand his testimonial, but he tucked it in his
pocket, well satisfied.
In due time, he was sent to the front and was captured by "the ladies
from hell," as the Germans called the Scotch kilties. He at once
presented his introduction, and his captors laughed heartily when they
read:
"This is L--. He is not a bad sort of chap. Don't shoot him; torture him
slowly to death."
One evening as Bok was strolling out after dinner a Red Cross nurse came
to him, explained that she had two severely wounded boys in what
remained of an old hut: that they were both from Pennsylvania, and had
expressed a great desire to see him as a resident of their State.
"Neither can possibly survive the night," said the nurse.
"They know that?" asked Bok.
"Oh, yes, but like all our boys they are lying there joking with each
other."
Bok was taken into what remained of a room in a badly shelled farmhouse,
and there, on two roughly constructed cots, lay the two boys. Their
faces had been bandaged so that nothing was visible except the eyes of
each boy. A candle in a bottle standing on a box gave out the only
light. But the eyes of the boys were smiling as Bok came in and sat down
on the box on which the nurse had been sitting. He talked with the boys,
got as much of their stories from them as he could, and told them such
home news as he thought might interest them.
After half an hour he arose to leave, when the nurse said: "There is no
one here, Mr. Bok, to say the last words to these boys. Will you do it?"
Bok stood transfixed. In sending men over in the service of the Y. M. C.
A. he had several times told them to be ready for any act that they
might be asked to render, even the most sacred one. And here he stood
himself before that duty. He felt as if he stood stripped before his
Maker. Through the glassless window the sky lit up constantly with the
flashes of the guns, and then followed the booming of a shell as it
landed.
"Yes, won't you, sir?" asked the boy on the right cot as he held out his
hand. Bok took it, and then the hand of the other boy reached out.
What to say, he did not know. Then, to his surprise, he heard himself
repeating extract after extract from a book by Lyman Abbott called The
Other Room, a message to the bereaved declaring the non-existence of
death, but that we merely move from this earth to another: from one room
to another, as it were. Bok had not read the book for years, but here
was the subconscious self supplying the material for him in his moment
of greatest need. Then he remembered that just before leaving home he
had heard sung at matins, after the prayer for the President, a
beautiful song called "Passing Souls." He had asked the rector for a
copy of it; and, wondering why, he had put it in his wallet that he
carried with him. He took it out now and holding the hand of the boy at
his right, he read to them:
For the passing souls we pray,
Saviour, meet them on their way;
Let their trust lay hold on Thee
Ere they touch eternity.
Holy counsels long forgot
Breathe again 'mid shell and shot;
Through the mist of life's last pain
None shall look to Thee in vain.
To the hearts that know Thee, Lord,
Thou wilt speak through flood or sword;
Just beyond the cannon's roar,
Thou art on the farther shore.
For the passing souls we pray,
Saviour, meet them on the way;
Thou wilt hear our yearning call,
Who hast loved and died for all.
Absolute stillness reigned in the room save for the half-suppressed sob
from the nurse and the distant booming of the cannon. As Bok finished,
he heard the boy at his right say slowly: "Saviour-meet-me-on-my-way":
with a little emphasis on the word "my." The hand in his relaxed slowly,
and then fell on the cot; and he saw that the soul of another brave
American boy had "gone West."
Bok glanced at the other boy, reached for his hand, shook it, and
looking deep into his eyes, he left the little hut.
He little knew where and how he was to look into those eyes again!
Feeling the need of air in order to get hold of himself after one of the
most solemn moments of his visit to the front, Bok strolled out, and
soon found himself on what only a few days before had been a field of
carnage where the American boys had driven back the Germans. Walking in
the trenches and looking out, in the clear moonlight, over the field of
desolation and ruin, and thinking of the inferno that had been enacted
there only so recently, he suddenly felt his foot rest on what seemed to
be a soft object. Taking his "ever-ready" flash from his pocket, he shot
a ray at his feet, only to realize that his foot was resting on the face
of a dead German!
Bok had had enough for one evening! In fact, he had had enough of war in
all its aspects; and he felt a sigh of relief when, a few days
thereafter, he boarded The Empress of Asia for home, after a ten-weeks
absence.
He hoped never again to see, at first hand, what war meant!