BURIAL OF A SOLDIER IN FRANCE

By Gerald M. Dwyer

This is part of a letter home from Private Dwyer, Co. A, 121st Engineers, A. E. F. It is used here by permission of The Springfield (Mass) Republican.

Even far behind the lines of battle, in this beautiful France, little scenes take place which bring home to one the seriousness and sadness of life. Picture to yourself a dark-green hillside divided into sections by the hedge fences which the French peasant makes so much use of. 5 In one of these fields soldiers are at work making roads and little pathways. At one end are a number of flower-covered mounds, each one marked with a wooden cross, for this particular little field is one of the American Expeditionary Force's cemeteries. 10 On the day which I have in mind, a drizzling rain comes softly, though steadily, down. A number of soldiers, hardly distinguishable from the mud in which they are working, are busy leveling off the ground around a flagpole which stands in the center of the cemetery. Presently they stop15 work and stand listening to the drumbeats which can be heard faintly in the distance. The little group gathers about the flagpole, waiting. Slowly up the roadway comes a procession headed by the band playing the sweetly solemn funeral march. Behind 20 it is carried a plain wooden box, draped with the Stars and Stripes, while a firing squad marches in the rear. They stop at a newly dug grave and gently lower the coffin. In clear, concise tones the chaplain reads the funeral service. A mist seems to creep up from the valley and wisps of it wind themselves through the air. In the neighboring field the sheep who have been grazing huddle together and gaze, as only sheep can, at the performance going on near them. Like the sheep, the soldiers in the cemetery gather closer to each 5 other, each one's eyes filled with tears, and each one conscious of a queer sensation going on within him. . . . Now the chaplain has finished, the members of the firing squad take their places. A dead silence ensues, broken by the shots of their rifles. Two more salvos are fired and the 10 ceremony is finished. Finally, when the mist has become very dense, the clear notes of the bugle ring out, blowing taps for a soldier's last farewell sleep. You will never really appreciate the beauty and pathos of the notes of taps unless you have heard them while lying 15 on your hard bunk some night at the end of a hard day. The music seems to say that some day things will be peaceful again, all these hardships will be merely incidents to laugh over in the happy days to come. And so, singing its farewell to you, the notes die away, leaving you to slip into 20 the balm of sleep. The grave has now been covered and the procession and workers gone. The fields and valley seem forsaken and alone in the late afternoon. But no, there by the graves, flitting through the rain in their capes and hoods, and looking 25 like so many little sparrows, are some little French girls, daughters of the near-by peasants. Tenderly their little hands decorate the newest grave with flowers, their tribute to one who risked all for the safety of little maidens. Thus the grave is left, heaped with green branches and flowers, a 30 pretty resting place.

—The Springfield Republican.