June, At the Front
I am back in active service at last. Lieutenant Littledale, attached asofficier de liaisonwith the ——th Division de Fer, French Army, thanks to De Saint Omer, now Commandant on the staff of General La Pierre. We are constantly together. My record was against me—the leg still has a limp and I am under weight—and the best I could have hoped for was to be used in a training school. So, when De Saint Omer suggested being attached to the French, I jumped at the chance.
Hope is running high: a new offensive is in the air. Several American officers have come to us on a visit, and the stories they bring of preparations at home are very heartening. The presence of the American uniform works miracles among the troops.
*****
Letters are fearfully delayed. I have a helpless feeling that half of them never reach me. It has been a month since I have had word from Bernoline. The last news was that she had gone as companion in the family of the Barristers. It gave me a strange feeling. I know them; they are cousins of Anne’s, and I am happy that she at least is with friends. Anne has written me every week. Ben is in the aviation.
A week later
To-day Maurice de Saint Omer told me of the death of his brother in the early days of the war. He was a young lieutenant, just twenty-two, and was in command of a section that was to go over the top at dawn.
It was in the early days of the stabilized war of thetrenches, when men went to certain slaughter on account of the lack of proper artillery protection, and when to win a few strategic yards, hundreds of men had to be sacrificed as a screen.
The section of trench which the young lieutenant held was absolutely at the mercy of the Boche machine guns. To obey the order meant the death of every man who went over the top. He debated his duty all through the night and in the morning, half an hour before the appointed time, he called his men together and said:
“The attack is to be general, all up and down the line. Therefore, no account can be taken of local conditions. You can understand that. There can be no army without obedience and discipline. But I cannot find it in my heart to sacrifice every life here. Therefore, at the hour, I go over the top alone.”
They pleaded with him, but he remained firm as he saw his duty; wrote his farewell to his brother, embraced his men, and, when the time came, went over the top, and—was killed instantly.
“It is a story to be told after the war,” said De Saint Omer, in conclusion. “Technically, of course, he was wrong—but it was like the boy to pay the price!”
*****
He told it without emotion that I could see. In fact, all personal feeling has left him completely. The old feeling of family and race gives him an impassivity and a detachment of sacrifice which is beyond my understanding. No one would recognize now the dandy of Paris. His hair is gray, his face gaunt and wrinkled, but he never loses either his faith in the outcome or the Gallic quality of gaiety to the end. Yet, when he makes a decision, nothing can swerve him. He hates the Boches with a burning, unholy hatred (there is some tragic story about his family and particularly his mother which some dayI think he will tell me), and yet, when it is a question of some captured officer, he is punctilious to the extreme in his courtesy.Noblesse oblige!
July
Back from the Chemin des Dames affair to hear of my father’s death in the month of May. I have, of course, expected it from day to day. Yet now that it has come, it brings home to me what will some day come to me, as nothing else has done. Then, too, I have the feeling of suddenly stepping into the front rank and looking into vacancy—a feeling of others crowding at my back—and I ask myself, incredulously, if thirty years is now my allotted span. Strangely enough, I don’t think of what may happen here.
July, In Rest Camp
Letters from home; from Anne, Molly and two from Bernoline. I had almost forgotten the existence of that other world: not its existence, but its power to reach out to me. The Champagne offensive has been a ghastly failure, terrible blunders committed, useless sacrifices. We all feel it and thepoilus, too, are not deceived. At the close of a brave, gossipy letter of Bernoline’s about the war frenzy at home, a passage that I have read over three times,—one that I do not comprehend.
When you write me, David, that you can never think of me but as a woman to whom every good act is instinctive,—how sadly you misjudge me. David, this very ideal you have of me makes me examine my conscience so restlessly. Don’t idealize me. See me as I am,—a very human and weak woman, who falls far short of the ideal you raise of her. No,mon ami, the way is not clear before me, nor do I know yet what I shall do. If you knew how I am tortured by remorse at times, I who write to you of duty and sacrifice,—who amI to preach to you! I try to say to myself that whatever God has sent to me in this world, it is His will, as He sees the good of my soul. If He tries me, it is for His purpose. And yet, with all my struggling, I do not accept it. I cannot; God have pity on me!It is hard to know the right, when others are involved. I should not write down this moment of weakness, when all I should mean to you is courage and fortitude. David, if you ever pray, pray for me in these coming months. Would that I could open my heart to you.B.What a terrible disaster it has been in Champagne. And you have been in it! Your last letter spoke of your being attached to General La Pierre’s staff. I have had you in my thoughts every moment.
When you write me, David, that you can never think of me but as a woman to whom every good act is instinctive,—how sadly you misjudge me. David, this very ideal you have of me makes me examine my conscience so restlessly. Don’t idealize me. See me as I am,—a very human and weak woman, who falls far short of the ideal you raise of her. No,mon ami, the way is not clear before me, nor do I know yet what I shall do. If you knew how I am tortured by remorse at times, I who write to you of duty and sacrifice,—who amI to preach to you! I try to say to myself that whatever God has sent to me in this world, it is His will, as He sees the good of my soul. If He tries me, it is for His purpose. And yet, with all my struggling, I do not accept it. I cannot; God have pity on me!
It is hard to know the right, when others are involved. I should not write down this moment of weakness, when all I should mean to you is courage and fortitude. David, if you ever pray, pray for me in these coming months. Would that I could open my heart to you.
B.
What a terrible disaster it has been in Champagne. And you have been in it! Your last letter spoke of your being attached to General La Pierre’s staff. I have had you in my thoughts every moment.
It is the first time she has written me so. I am quite puzzled. What can such a clear, direct nature know of remorse?
*****
Ben was killed at the front on the eighth of July. He brought down an enemy plane and fell into a trap. His machine came down in flames, near X——. We were not thirty miles away.
*****
Did he do it deliberately, or not? I shall probably never know for, if he did, he would never leave a hint of it. Yet I do not think he deliberately threw his life away. It was not his way of playing the game. Letty is in Paris. I shall have to see her.
I wonder if Ben left a letter behind him and if that letter will tell me what I dread to know at the last.
It is hard to write. I can only jot down a few incoherent notes. Actuality dominates and oppresses me. I have again the old feeling of having surrendered my imagination and of moving like an automaton.
August
No letter from Bernoline in ages. Others come—from Anne and Molly, but a blank door of silence is between us. I think I shall write no more in this chronicle. I have a weariness and a distaste for life outside.