Three Times and Out | Page 5

waves of darkness carried me farther and farther
away.
But they didn't carry me quite far enough, for a cry shot through me
like a knife, and I was wide awake, looking up from the bottom of a
muddy trench. And the cry that wakened me was sounding up and
down the trench, "The Germans are coming!"
Sergeant Reid, who did not seem to realize how desperate the situation
was, was asking Major Bing-Hall what he was going to do. But before
any more could be said, the Germans were swarming over the trench.
The officer in charge of them gave us a chance to surrender, which we
did, and then it seemed like a hundred voices--harsh, horrible
voices--called to us to come out of the trench. "Raus" is the word they
use, pronounced "rouse."
This was the first German word I had heard, and I hated it. It is the
word they use to a dog when they want him to go out, or to cattle they
are chasing out of a field. It is used to mean either "Come out!"--or
"Get out!" I hated it that day, and I hated it still more afterward.
There were about twenty of us altogether, and we climbed out of the
trench without speaking. There was nothing to be said. It was all up
with us.
CHAPTER II
THROUGH BELGIUM
It is strange how people act in a crisis. I mean, it is strange how quiet
they are, and composed. We stood there on the top of the trench,
without speaking, although I knew what had happened to us was
bitterer far than to be shot. But there was not a word spoken. I
remember noticing Fred McKelvey, when the German who stood in
front of him told him to take off his equipment. Fred's manner was
halting, and reluctant, and he said, as he laid down his rifle and

unbuckled his cartridge bag, "This is the thing my father told me never
to let happen."
Just then the German who stood by me said something to me, and
pointed to my equipment, but I couldn't unfasten a buckle with my
useless arm, so I asked him if he couldn't see I was wounded. He
seemed to understand what I meant, and unbuckled my straps and took
everything off me, very gently, too, and whipped out my bandage and
was putting it on my shoulder with considerable skill, I thought, and
certainly with a gentle hand--when the order came from their officer to
move us on, for the shells were falling all around us.
Unfortunately for me, my guard did not come with us, nor did I ever
see him again. One of the others reached over and took my knife,
cutting the string as unconcernedly as if I wanted him to have it, and I
remember that this one had a saw-bayonet on his gun, as murderous
and cruel-looking a weapon as any one could imagine, and he had a
face to match it, too. So in the first five minutes I saw the two kinds of
Germans.
When we were out of the worst of the shell-fire, we stopped to rest, and,
a great dizziness coming over me, I sat down with my head against a
tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that drifted across the
sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant an afternoon as I can
ever remember. But the calmness of the sky, with its deep blue distance,
seemed to shrivel me up into nothing. The world was so bright, and
blue, and--uncaring!
I may have fallen asleep for a few minutes, for I thought I heard
McKelvey saying, "Dad always told me not to let this happen." Over
and over again, I could hear this, but I don't know whether McKelvey
had repeated it. My brain was like a phonograph that sticks at one word
and says it over and over again until some one stops it.
I think it was Mudge, of Grand Forks, who came over to see how I was.
His voice sounded thin and far away, and I didn't answer him. Then I
felt him taking off my overcoat and finishing the bandaging that the
German boy had begun.

Little Joe, the Italian boy, often told me afterwards how I looked at that
time. "All same dead chicken not killed right and kep' long time."
Here those who were not so badly wounded were marched on, but there
were ten of us so badly hit we had to go very slowly. Percy Weller, one
of the boys from Trail who enlisted when I did, was with us, and when
we began the march I was behind him and noticed three holes in the
back of his coat;