The Deserter | Page 2

the theme for a big story.
No sooner had "Hamlin" left our room, reclad in his dirty uniform and headed for certain punishment back at his camp, than Mr. Davis proclaimed his intention to write the story.
"The best war story I ever knew!" he exclaimed.
Of course the young soldier did not see it as a drama in real life, and he certainly did not comprehend that he might be playing a part in what would be a tragedy in his own life. To him the incident had no dramatic possibilities. He was merely a young man who had been racked by exposure and suffering to a point where he longed to escape a continuance of such hardship, and the easiest way out of it seemed by way of deserting.
He was "fed up" on discomfort and dirt and cold, and harassed by the effects of an ill-healed wound received in Flanders some months before, and he wanted to go home.
The story, as Mr. Davis tells it in the following pages, is complete as it stands. So far as he knew up to the time of his death, there was no sequel. He died thinking of "Hamlin" as a potential deserter who had been shamed out of his purpose to desert and who had left, ungrateful and bitter with resentment at his fellow Americans, who had persuaded him to go back to camp, "take his medicine," and "see it through."
The Hotel "Hermes" is probably no more. Only a few days ago the news came that all of the water-front of Salonika, a district stretching in splendid array from the "White Tower" to the Customs House, had been wiped out by a tremendous fire. It was in this district that most of the finest buildings, including the Olympos Palace Hotel--the Hotel Hermes of Mr. Davis's story--were located, and there is little likelihood that any of this part of the city escaped. The magnitude of the fire is indicated by the estimated loss, which is $100,000,000, with about $26,000,000 insurance.
The government has authorized the construction of barracks outside the burned zone, but has decided not to permit repairs or temporary construction within that area until plans for rebuilding the city are complete.
Thus the setting of the story of "The Deserter" is gone, the author is gone, and who can tell at this moment whether "Hamlin," fighting in the trenches on the British front in Prance, is not also gone.
I hope it may not affect the interest or the moral of the story if I give the sequel. I know that Mr. Davis would have been glad to hear what became of the young man who left our room with an angry word of resentment against us. I hope, too, that the reader will feel a natural interest in knowing how he fared, and what punishment he received for having overstayed his leave, and for shaving his mustache as part of his plan to escape detection, both of which infractions made him subject to punishment.
One day about three weeks after Davis had left Salonika homeward bound, a soldier brought us a note from "Hamlin." He was on a Red Cross lighter down at the pier, and we at once went down to see him. He was lying on a stretcher among scores of men. His face was thin and pale, and in answer to our eager questions he told how he had fared when he returned to camp.
"Oh, they gave it to me good," he said. "But they still think I got drunk. They took away my stripes and made me a private. But I was sick the night I got back to camp and I've been laid up ever since. They say there is something the matter with my intestines and they're going to cut me open again. Gee, but the captain was surprised! He said he had always counted on me as a teetotaller and that he was grieved and disappointed in me. And just think, I've never taken a drink in my life!"
We said good-by, and this time it was a friendly good-by. That night he left on a hospital ship for Alexandria.
Once more the course of young Mr. "Hamlin's" life was swallowed up in the vast oblivion of army life, and we heard no more of him until, one day in London, three months later, Shepherd felt an arm thrown about his shoulder and turned to find the healthy and cheerful face of "Hamlin."
A few minutes later, at a luncheon-table, Shepherd heard his story.
After leaving Alexandria he was sent to a hospital in Manchester. On the day of his discharge he was asked to report to a certain major, who informed him that the government had conferred upon him the D.C.M.--the medal for Distinguished Conduct in the field--in recognition of his service