[Illustration: Rice Purdy In Front of Verdun]
Then as we stood there I heard another band playing in the distance. It grew nearer and nearer till at last I saw an American flag rising over the brow of the hill and back of it swinging along the road four thousand men in khaki.
The delightful days at Aillianville will always stand out in my memory in marked contrast with the forty-five days and forty-five long nights that we spent before Verdun. I shall always remember a night in a dug-out in front of Verdun toward the end of our long siege. The place was dimly lighted. At one end was a table on which there was a telephone. A French officer sat there writing reports and answering telephone calls. “’Allo! ’Allo!” he would say, taking down the receiver. Along the wall was a wooden bench on which sat two weary poilus, their heads nodding under their steel helmets. On the floor, a wounded soldier lay on a stretcher. Outside I could hear the firing of the guns, the trampling of horses, the straining and groaning of the heavy munition trucks pulling up the grade.
I was very tired, in fact I had reached the stage of premonitions. I felt that luck had been with me just as long as might be expected and in the fagged, depressed condition of my brain I felt quite certain that my next time out would be my last. I have seen others pass through the same stage when they have been worn out. I suppose Alan Seeger must have felt like that when he wrote his wonderful poem “I have a rendezvous with Death.”
As I sat there waiting for my turn to go out and expecting a call each time the telephone rang, I got to thinking of my early impressions upon reaching France. It seemed a long time since I had landed in France. Then I got to thinking of my later impressions after coming to the Front. To keep my mind from dwelling on what was happening outside, where I must soon go, I took some scraps of paper and wrote a brief summary of my impressions, supposing that it might be the last words I would write. I had just finished writing when the telephone rang. The officer took down the receiver, “’Allo! ’Allo! San Fein!” The officer turned to me. It was my turn out. I put the scraps of paper in my pocket, slipped into my heavy coat, put on my steel helmet, shook hands with the officer and went out.