The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1930-11-07

WLHuluS, UdItcTeu TOduS, lnIO klCcn6nS,
camions, hospitals, ammunition dumps,
gun emplacements, dugouts and bar
racks went the tremendous news
"Finis la guerre. Eleven o'clock"
With this knowledge in mind, the
war went on in final burst of reck-
less abandon. Everyone wanted to
have hand in it before 1t ended. 1t
is told how at one point where a
Yankee outfit was having brisk bat
tie on the east of the Meuse a man
stationed at one battery stood with a
handkerchief in his rplifted hand q
watch in the other. 1t wanted one
minute Of eleven o'clock. In front Of
him were the guns of the battery, four
of them. Attached to each lanyard
was long rope, manned by gunners,
cooks. signalmen, soldiers, messen-
gers. stragglers, everybody. At eleven
o'clock the handkerchief fell, the men
pulled and the battery fired it's last
shot. And SO it was, at hundreds,
thousands of places along the line.
Stepped Fierce Action.
Probably the hardest fighting being
done by the Americans in the final
hour of the war was that which en-
gagged the troops Of the Twenty-eighth,
Ninety-second, Eighty first and Sew
enth divisions with the Second Amer
lean army. They had launched an at
tack above Vignuelles just before
dawn. 1t was no tea party. They
knew nothing Of any order to cease
firing, and were hard at it when word
reached them just in time, brought to
the edge of the battle front by rum
ners scurrying from fox hole to fox
hole.
Then, at the stroke of eleven, after
every gun In the war seemed to have
been fired simultaneously, some of
them without any attempt at direction.
silence-utter and absolute silence
fell upon the land. 1t was as if the
world had suddenly died. Men looked
at one another bewildered. But only
for a moment. Then
Every man in the A. e. F. threw
down his tools Of war. A slow grin
spread over his face. And then he
yelled. At that moment every one was
slightly befuddled. slightly mad. Then
another amazing thing happened.
The battered, torn landscape which
a minute before had been as bare as
the palm of your hand, became alive
with men. They crawled up out Of
the earth. dirty, disheveled figures, and
looked about them a good deal sur
prised to discover so many people In
place which had looked so deserted.
Fraternizing With Foe.
The Germans came up grinning,
eager to swap caps and equipment for
tobacco and food. A stranger with an
all-observing eye looking down upon
the scene at this moment would never
have been able to tell from the looks
Of things which side had won the war.
And that night, for the first time
since the war started, there was light,
illumination other than the flare Of
guns, the burst of shells and the taper
ing beams of searchlights sweeping
across the dark sky in search Of hos
tile airplanes.
Now that the war was over the boys
lit everything they could find. Screens
were torn from windows and doors.
A new moon shone. Rockets and
flares were sent up to brighten the
sky. And that night there was many
man who could not sleep. 1t was
so d-n quiet.
Thus ended the five hundred and
eighty-ffth day of Americas partici-
patton in the war; That was twelve
years ago. "Finis la guerre."