Number one"s eye caught the descending hand of the section chief. He pulled the lanyard.
There was an eruption of orange coloured flame, a deafening roar, a crash of rendered steel, a cloud of smoke blue green, and yellow.
A black chunk of the gun cradle hurtled backward through the air with a vicious swish. A piece of the bore splintered the wheels and buried itself in the ammunition caisson. Thick hunks of gun metal crumbling like dry cake filled the air. The ground shook.
The corporal gunner pitched backward from his seat and collapsed on the ground. His mate with fists buried in his steel seared eyes staggered out of the choking fumes. The rest of the crew picked themselves up in a dazed condition. Fifty yards away a horse was struggling to regain his feet.
Every man in the three other gun crews knew what had happened. None of them moved from their posts. They knew their guns were loaded with sh.e.l.ls from the same lot and possibly with the same faults. No man knew what would happen when the next firing pin went home. The evidence was before them. Their eyes were on the exploded gun but not for long.
"Crash," the ten second firing interval had expired. The section chief of piece number two had dropped his hand. The second gun in the battery had fired.
"Number two on the way," sang out the signalman over the telephone wire to the hidden observation station.
Ten seconds more for another gun crew to cogitate on whether disaster hung on the dart of a firing pin.
"Crash."
"Number three on the way."
Another ten seconds for the last section to wonder whether death would come with the lanyard jerk.
"Crash."
"Number four on the way." Round complete. The signalman finished his telephone report.
Four horses drawing an army ambulance galloped up from the ravine that sheltered them. The corporal gunner, unconscious and with one leg pulverised was lifted in. Two other dazed members of the crew were helped into the vehicle. One was bleeding from the shoulder. The lead horses swung about; the ambulance rattled away.
"Battery ready to fire. Piece number one out of action." It was the signalman reporting over the wire to the observer.
Battery X fired the rest of the morning and they used ammunition from the same lot and every man knew what might happen any minute and every man was in his exact position for every shot and n.o.body happened to think about hiding in a dugout and putting a long string on the firing lanyard.
It had been an unstaged, unconscious demonstration of nerve and grit and it proved beyond all question the capacity of American artillerymen to stand by the guns.
The gunner corporal told the nurse at his bedside how it all happened, but he was still under the effects of the anesthetic. He did not refer to the morale of his battery mates because it had not occurred to him that there was anything unusual in what they did. But he did think that he could wiggle the toes on his right leg. The doctor told me that this was a common delusion before the patient had been informed of the amputation.
Incidents such as the one related had no effect whatever upon the progress of the work. From early dawn to late at night the men followed their strenuous duties six days a week and then obtained the necessary relief on the seventh day by trips down to the ancient town of Besancon.
In this picturesque country where countless thousands fought and died, down through the b.l.o.o.d.y centuries since and before the Christian era, where Julius Caesar paused in his far flung raids to dictate new inserts to his commentaries, where kings and queens and dukes and pretenders left undying traces of ambition"s stormy urgings, there it was that American soldiers, in training for the war of wars, spent week-end holidays and mixed the breath of romance with the drag of their cigarettes.
The extender of Roman borders divided that region into three parts, according to the testimony of the first Latin cla.s.s, but he neglected to mention that of these three parts the one decreed for American occupation was the most romantic of them all.
It is late on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon and I accept the major"s offer of a seat in his mud-bespattered "Hunka Tin." The field guns have ceased their roar for the day and their bores will be allowed to cool over Sunday. Five per cent. of the men at the post have received the coveted town leave.
They form a khaki fresco on the cab and sides of the giant commissary trucks that raise the dust along the winding white road over the hills.
Snorting motorcycles with two men over the motor and an officer in the side car skim over the ground, pa.s.sing all others. A lukewarm sun disappears in a slot in the mountains and a blue grey mist forms in the valleys. A chill comes over the air and a cold new moon looks down and laughs.
It is a long ride to the ancient town, but speed laws and motor traps are unknown and the hood of the Detroit Dilemma shakes like a wet dog as her sizzling hot cylinders suck juice from a full throttle. We cross one divide through a winding road bordered by bushy trees and as orderly as a national park. We coast through a hillside hamlet of barking dogs and saluting children who stand at smiling attention and greet our pa.s.sage with a shrill "Veev La Mereek" (Vive l"Amerique).
We scud across a broad, level road built well above the lowland, and climb through zig-zagging avenues of stately poplars to the tunnel that pierces the backbone of the next ridge.
While the solid rock walls of the black bore reverberate with the echoes from our exhaust, we emerge on a road that turns sharply to the left and hugs a cliff. Below winds a broad river that looks like mother of pearl in the moonlight. The mountain walls on either side rise at angles approximating 45 degrees, and in the light their orderly vineyards look like the squares on a sloping checkerboard. In front of us and to the right the flanking ridges converge to a narrow gorge through which the river Doub runs to loop the town.
Commanding this gorge from the crests of the two rocky heights are sinister sentinels whose smooth, grey walls and towers rise sheer from the brink of the cliffs. The moonlight now catching the ramparts of the em-battlements splashes them with strokes of white that seem ever brighter in contrast with the darker shadows made by projecting portions of the walls. Spaniard and Moor knew well those walls, and all the kingly glory that hurried France to the reign of terror has slept within their shadows.
Our way down the cliff side is hewn out of the beetling rock. To our left, a jagged wall of rock rises to the sky. To our right, a step, rock-tumbled declivity drops to the river"s edge.
The moonlight brings funny fancies, and our yellow headlights, wavering in concentric arcs with each turn of the course, almost seem to glint on the helmets and shields of the spear-bearing legionaries that marched that very way to force a southern culture on the Gauls. We slow down to pa.s.s through the rock-hewn gate that once was the Roman aqueduct bringing water down from mountain springs to the town.
Through the gate, a turn to the left and we reach the black bottom of the gorge untouched by the rising moon. We face a blast of wind that slows our speed and brings with it the first big drops of rain. We stop at the "Octroi" and a.s.sure the customs collector that we are military, and that we carry no dutiable wine, or beans or wood into the town.
Yet another gate, built across the narrow road between the cliff and the river, and we enter the town. It has been raining and the cobblestones are slippery. They shine in the gleams of pale light that come from the top-heavy street lamps. Gargoyle water spouts drip drainage from the gables of moss-speckled tiles.
We pa.s.s a fountain that the Romans left, and rounded arches further on show where the hooded Moor wrote his name in masonry. Barred windows and stone balconies projecting over the street take one"s mind off the rattling motor and cause it to wander back to times when serenading lovers tw.a.n.ged guitars beneath their ladies" windows and were satisfied with the flower that dropped from the balcony.
The streets are wet and dark now and through their narrow windings our headlights reveal tall figures in slickers or khaki overcoats topped by peaked felt hats with the red cords of American artillerymen. Their identification is a surprise to the dreamer, because one rather expects these figures to sulk in the deeper shadows and screen their dark, bearded faces with the broad brims of black felt hats or m.u.f.fle themselves to the chin in long, flowing black cloaks that hide rapiers and stilettos and other properties of mediaeval charm.
We dine in a room three hundred years old. The presence of our automobile within the inner quadrangle of the ancient building jars on the sense of fitness. It is an old convent, now occupied by irreligious tenants on the upper three floors, restaurants and estaminets on the lower floor. These shops open on a broad gallery, level with the courtyard, and separated from it only by the rows of pillars that support the arches. It extends around the four sides of the court.
Centuries ago shrouded nuns, clasping beads or books of office, walked in uncommunicative pairs and mumbled their daily prayers beneath these time-worn arches, and to-night it affords a promenade for officers waiting for their meals to be served at madame"s well laid tables within.
Madame"s tables are not too many. There is not the s.p.a.ce economy of an American cafe, where elbows interlock and waiters are forced to navigate fearsome cargoes above the diners" heads. Neither is there the unwholesome, dust-filled carpet of London"s roast beef palaces.
Madame"s floor is bare, but the wood has stood the scrubbings of years, and is as spotless as gra.s.s-dried linen. The high ceiling and the walls are of white stucco. In bas-relief are cl.u.s.ters of heraldic signs, of bishops" crooks and cathedral keys, of mounted chargers and dying dragoons, of miter and crown, and trumpet and shield, and cross.
Large mirrors, circled with wreaths of gilded leaves, adorn both end walls, and beneath one of them remains an ornate fireplace and mantelpiece of bologna coloured marble, surmounted with a gilt c.o.c.k of wondrous design. Beneath the other mirror madame has placed her buffet, on which the boy who explores the dusty caves below places the cobwebbed bottles of red wine for the last cork pulling. Large gold chandeliers, dangling with gla.s.s prisms, are suspended from high ceiling and flood the room with light, against which the inner shutters of the tall windows must be shut because of danger from the sky.
There is colour in that room. The Roman conquerors would have found it interesting. If former armed occupants of the old town could have paraded in their ancient habiliments through the room like a procession from the martial past, they would have found much for their attention in this scene of the martial present. American khaki seems to predominate, although at several tables are Canadian officers in uniforms of the same colour but of different tailoring.
The tables are flecked with all varieties of French uniforms, from scarlet pants with solitary black stripes down the leg, to tunics of horizon blue. In one corner there are two turbaned Algerians with heads bent close over their black coffee, and one horn of the hall rack shows a red fez with a gold crescent on the crown.
Consider the company. That freckle-faced youth with the fluffed reddish hair of a bandmaster is a French aviator, and among the row of decorations on his dark blue coat is one that he received by reason of a well known adventure over the German lines, which cannot be mentioned here. That American colonel whose short grey hair blends into the white wall behind him is a former member of the United States war college and one of the most important factors in the legislation that shaped the present military status of his country. That other Frenchman with the unusual gold shoulder straps is not a member of the French army. He is a naval officer, and the daring with which he carried his mapping chart along exposed portions of the line at Verdun and evolved the mathematical data on which the French fired their guns against the German waves has been the pride of both the navy and the army.
Over there is a young captain who this time last year was a "shavetail"
second in command at a small post along the line of communications in Chihuahua. Next to him sits a tall dark youngster wearing with pride his first Sam Browne belt and "U. S. R." on his collar. He carted human wreckage to the hospitals on the French front for two years before Uncle Sam decided to end the war. There"s another one not long from the "Point," booted and spurred and moulded to his uniform. He speaks with a tw.a.n.g of old Virginia on every syllable and they say his family--but that has nothing to do with the fact that he is aid to a major general and is in these parts on a mission.
There are three American women in the room. One who is interested in Y.
M. C. A. work and a number of newspapers, wears a feminine adaptation of the uniform and holds court at the head of a table of five officers.
Another, Mrs. Robert R. McCormick, who is engaged in the extension of the canteen work of a Paris organisation, is sitting at our table and she is willing to wager her husband anything from half a dozen gloves to a big donation check that Germany will be ready for any kind of peace before an American offensive in the spring.
The interests of the other American woman are negative. She professes no concern in the fact that war correspondents" life insurances are cancelled, but she repeats to me that a dead correspondent is of no use to his paper, and I reply that if madame puts yet another one of her courses on the board, one correspondent will die with a fork in his hand instead of a pencil.
The diners are leaving. Each opening of the salon door brings in a gust of dampness that makes the tablecloths flap. Rain coats swish and rustle in the entry. Rain is falling in sheets in the black courtyard. The moon is gone.
A merry party trails down the stone gallery skirting the quadrangle.
Their hobnailed soles and steel plated heels ring on the stone flags.
The arches echo back their song: