Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-05-07
Men Weary, But Smiling.


Men Weary, But Smiling.
These men were smiling as they
marched. They carried their full equip
ment and 1t ratified and tinkled; they
carried their guns at all angles; they
wore their uniforms in the strangest
of disorders: they seemed almost like
miners coming from the depth of the
earth rather than soldiers returning
from decisive battle, from the hell Of
modern shell fire.
But it was the line on the other side
of the road that held the eye. Here
were the troops that were going to-
ward the first line of trenches that
We're marching to the sound of the
guns. and one saw them the artil-
lery rumble took on a new distinctness.
1nvoluntarily 1 searched the face Of
these men as they passed. They were
hardly ten feet from me. Platoon after
platoon, company after company, whole
regiments in columns of fours. And
seeing the faces brought an instant
shock. They all wore the same calm.
steady, slightly weary expression but
there was in the whole line scarcely a
young man. Here men of the thirties
not the twenties; men still in the prime
of strength, of health. but the fathers
of families, the men of full manhood
Almost in a flash the fact came home
This was what all the graves along
the road had meant. This was what
the battlefelds and the glories of the
twenty months had spelled-France
had sent her youth and 1t was spent !;
she was sending her manhood now
In the line no man smiled and no man
struggled; the ranks were closed up
and there were neither commands nor
any visible sign of authority. These
men who were marching to the sound
of the guns had been there before
Yet you could not but feel that as they
went little YEARLY, sadly. they
marched willingly. They would not
have it otherwise. Their faces were
full measure of their own fate.
You had a sense of the loathing, the
horror, above all the sadness that was
in their hearts that this thing. this
war, this destruction had to be. They
had come back here through all the
waste of ruined villages and she'll
torn hillsides; all the men that you
saw would not measure the cost of a
single hour of trench fighting II the
real attack began. This these men
fire. which was only one of unknown
terrors for you, was Ineligible to the
utmost to each of them.
Patient and Resigned.
And yet with the WEAKNESS there was
certain resignation, a certain pa
thence, a certain sense of comprehend
ing sacrifice that more than all else is
France today, the true France. This
and not the empty forts. not even the
busy gurs, was the wall that defended
France, this line of men. If it broke
there would come laundering down
again out of the north all the tornado
of destruction that had turned north
eastern France into a waste place and
wrecked so much Of the worlds store
of the beautiful and the inspiring.
Somehow you felt that this was in
the minds of all these men. They had
willed to die that France might live.
They were going to death that sound
ed ever more clearly as they marched.
This death had eaten up all that was
young-most of what young, at the
France. and these men marched to
the sound of the guns. not to martial
music, not with any suggestion of dash,
of enthusiasm. but quietly. steadily;
I'll with the same look upon their faces
the look of men who have seen death
and are to see it again. Instinctively |
thought of what Kipling had said to
me in London:
Never to Be Forgotten.
Somewhere over there" he had said.