Evening star., 1926-11-07
BV Berton Bralev.

Napoleonic tradition, an army that
had made every field of Europe shake
under the tread of its feet, the thud
of its horses hoofs, the rumble of its
artillery wheels-think Of what that
experience was worth to an Ameri
can college freshman with a boys
| heart. boys sensitiveness and
responsiveness to outward Impres.
sions and inward emotions.
*
HVOU know. the American Army
hasn't really experienced this
war. It's probably one reason that
army did so much to win it. The sol
diers had not the time nor the expert
ence to be weary and tagged by it.
! they had not been in 1t SO long that
they had come to consider war as the
continuing condition of existence, its
! beginning almost forgotten, its end
! beyond vision.
For the Yanks it was definite job
| to be finished as quickly as possible;
! it was something abnormal to their
life. while for us in the French army
it had unfortunately, but naturally
enough, lost that aspect. We accepted
it and doggediy went on-because go
ing on or holding on was the condition
Of our employment. / don't know
whether, make that clear or not.
We had our enthusiasm, and it los
us men in uncounted thousands and
apparently brought nothing but a few
yards of devastated territory-not
room enough to bury our dead in sep
arate graves. And so, because VEL
speak. you understand. as one of the
French army-had no such ineXhaus-
tible reservoir of men to draw upon
yoll had wp settled down RI 1x-ar
a matter of ugly, cruel and continuing
fact.
But | found even the weariest
monotony of 1t full of a strange SAVIOR.
Take the stalemate of the trenches,
for instance when for days and weeks.
on end the eyes never saw a German,
when only the everlasting shelling,
the occasional spiteful snap of snip
er's rife. or the sudden evil clatter of
a machine gun showed there was life
in and behind the parapets facing us.
There was always the tension 6 sus
pense to keep one keyed up, as mas
ter writer gives you that sense of
lowering catastrophe through the
pages of a great book. There was the
watching for signs of concentration
behind the lines. the occasional alert
ness for gas attacks, the occasional
lul in the ordinary pounding of artil
lery that might preSage the concen'
trated barrage prior to a drive.
Then there was mining. To me 1t
is one of the fundamental thrills of
war. You are holding trench line,
grirnly. with your forces seeping away
gradually from shell and gas and
machine guns, and requirements
trickling in to fill the vacancies. You
organize patrols which sometimes
come back with prisoners and in
formation. and sometimes do not
come back. otherwise you just wait.
And while you wait YOU hear.
somewhere far below YOU In the
earth. Tick. tick. tick and a pause.
and then tick. tick, tick and so on
for hours and hours and days and
days. And you know the Boche sap
pers are mining below you and there
Is nothing you can do but sit tight
and wait for that ticking to end
in a roar and crash that may blow
you and all your men to nothing
ness. Your own sappers are doing
the same somewhere below the Boche
trenches: sometimes their saps run
into ours and there Is a battle under
ground, but you. an infantryman in
the trenches. hear nothing, see moth |
ing of that. You merely wait while |
tick, tick. tick the Boche hollows |
out hell to explode below YOU It's |