THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918 (continued 8)

His groan found gasping echo.

“They were children of the French villages held by the Germans—we could tell! Some of them had been shot by the last of our barrage fire after the Huns had shoved them over the top. It was hell to see the children’s torn bodies writhing—we’re used to it with men! The smallest—babies—were clinging to the older ones—children of five or six—trying to hide—between the Huns and—us!

“If we went on—took the ditch—these mothers must cut through a barricade of children! If we did not go on, we betrayed our trust, lost our share of the Front—let the Huns behind the lines through a gap made by the failure of the women of the —nth!

“We seemed to stand there for hours, but it was only a second. The Huns had thrust their guns between the children, and were holding their fire—the devilish cat and mouse game!

“Then one of the women captains stumbled forward and made the sign of the cross. It is the voiceless battle cry of the Avengers and signs supreme sacrifice for all the Front means. She lifted her right hand in the sweep of victory—on her wrist was bound the packet of death they carry in case of capture by the kultur beasts—and fell, for the Huns opened fire the instant they saw her gesture.

“But the message had gotten over! They could charge—they must—and the cyanide would erase the intolerable memory forever! I looked at those nearest and saw they would go through with it, but men—their faces were set with the look of the face of Christ on the cross!”

He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked from one American to the other.

“You won’t believe it—I saw it and I cannot—but the proof is there! As the women gripped to thrust, leaning forward as if to force rebellious bodies toward that barricade, there swept down upon us from the rear or above, a sudden striding mist—a battalion of marching shadows in a blur of the old red and blue that outstripped the Avengers’ advance. There was a flash of charging steel and the waving colors of the old —nth as they swept over the untouched children into the trench.

“It’s all a blur, sir, I can’t tell you clearly, but they turned their faces as they passed and—we knew our dead. You could see the women cry out and lift their arms, each to her own man as he halted an instant beside her.

“Madame Arouet was sobbing as if caught by a bullet, ‘Jean—Jean!—to have seen you again! Ah, my God!’ The tall corporal, just beyond, threw herself with high piercing scream—arms outstretched—toward the smiling shadow that was passing.

“The bravest man in the old —nth, where all were brave, dropped behind as he bent over the fallen captain. There was a quivering smile of recognition just as the jerking heap settled into quiet; then, as if he waited for it, a slender blur in horizon blue sprang to his side and swept forward with the Battalion—though the captain still lay where she had fallen!”

Fouquet gripped his comrade, arm and crutch together, with a cry.

“Did you see our brave captain salute as he passed? Joyously I shouted as I fell into step beside him, but—I dropped back—I could not keep that pace! Barres—Barres—you saw them? You must have seen them? It was the old —nth come back to save their women from the last hellish trap set by fiends! We know they had the right. This was their battleground where once before they had saved an army of France!”

Lieutenant Agor was leaning across the table with staring eyes: “Then—that was what I—saw, sir?” He turned to his commander, “I told you it was like the fog blowing in off Frisco bay, and—”

Captain Hailes half rose, “My lieutenant said he lost you when a mist obscured the contact platoon. He said he saw—I—thought it was shell shock—I meant to send him behind the lines—”

Barres shook his head slowly as he caught Fouquet about the shoulder.

“Mon ami—I saw—I know! Very low I flew over the gap to-day when it broke and widened. I felt the White Battalion first, rushing through the planes—then I saw them—a mist of the old red and blue with wondrous swords!” His voice sank low, “From above I saw one who led them—a shining one who, even as we have read, smote the camp of the Assyrians”.

“It was the old —nth that followed. I knew them!” His voice caught. “Did you see the rascals in the third squad goose-stepping as they closed in on the Hun?” With a break of unsteady laughter, “It was always their final joke with the German, sir, before they got him. No one could break them of it! Fouquet—we know! It was the old —nth, our White Battalion!”

“A White Battalion!” Agor repeated the words slowly, still staring.

The aviator shifted his crutch and drew himself erect. “Mes amis, the Huns fling the taunt that France has been bled white! To us it means a White Army—a crowding host killed in battle—the red life of gallant youth given so gloriously that it cannot die!

“And France bled white!... We know,” the words halted, “the country for which we went to war is maimed—scarred—she can never again be the same France, but—” his lifted face gleamed through the dim light, “our battle cry has changed! We no longer fight ‘Pour la Patrie!’ but ‘Pour le Droit!’—the right that is greater than country!”

With a sharp intake of breath he turned to his comrade. Fouquet’s protesting look was gone. With the sure touch of reality he picked up the story.

“It was all over in a breath, sir—like a mist swirling along the trenches shot through with phantom steel, and we knew our work was being done. When it lifted—the ditch lay motionless!

“The women had dropped on their knees with their arms about the children. We passed the poor little ones through to the rear in charge of the wounded.

“The first trench was piled with dead—unmarked dead! The communicating tunnels were cleared or quiet; that was how we made up the forty seconds and followed the barrage on time to the second ditch.

“I looked down the line as we made ready for the second charge. Not a Hun cried ‘Kamarad!’ or tried to surrender when they saw the faces of the Avengers. The second ditch was piled with nearly as many dead as the first—marked dead! The Avengers and the White Battalion had retaken the ground for which the —nth had given their lives.

“That is all, sir,” the gaunt figure in mud-stained blue straightened, “excepting that the fouling Beast is going in the end—we know! He cannot stand against the unconquerable dead. And when we march through Berlin, the White Armies will march at the head of the column—” he lifted his hand in salute, “Pour le Droit!”

The crippled aviator balanced on crutches as he brought up his hand.

“Pour le Droit!”

Noiselessly the men of the Foreign Legion pushed back their chairs and stood at salute. Silently they faced each other in a long moment of understanding. The major in blue dropped his arm and with smiling eyes gripped the hand of the man in khaki.

He flung open the door of the dugout, humming the Song of France in marching time. The young officers, French and American, fell into step together.

“Gentlemen—to Headquarters!”

The lilting voices filled the low room to the accent of marching feet.

“Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”