“You can’t tell me that this guerre is goin’ to finee toot sweet,” asserted Jimmy McGee to an infirmary orderly. “Listen to that hell-bent-for-election noise.” He paused to allow himself and the orderly to appreciate the significance of his assertion.
Both had grown accustomed to the thunder of barrages and the din of battles, but their ears were not listening to any ordinary bombardment. Their pals in arms were putting over the heaviest artillery fusillade that had ever made the base of Verdun’s brave citadel tremble. The noise was magnificent and awe-inspiring. The men held their tongues awhile. Then Jimmy spoke.
“Maybe it’s possible, but I doubt it. How the hell can they stop a thing like this guerre so quick?”
“Damn if I know. Sounds like bull to me, but the radio order says that we stop fightin’ at eleven o’clock. That’s all I know,” answered the orderly.
“I’m going to breeze ’round a bit. If it’s straight dope I’ll blow up to the position. Want to get a picture of O. D.’s grave. Camouflage me if any of them guys get wonderin’ where I am. The old wing’s gettin’ très-bon now, anyhow. They might just as well let me go back to the battery,” and Jimmy took his bandaged left arm out of its sling just to prove his words.
“Go on, I’ll cover you up,” said the orderly.
Jimmy wandered through the different barracks of the regimental échelon and finally landed at Headquarters Office.
“What’s the dope, Barney?” asked Jimmy of a bespectacled sergeant who sat humped over a desk full of morning reports.
“The guerre is finee at eleven o’clock,” was the answer in slow, methodic tones.
“I WANT TO GET A PICTURE OF O. D.’s GRAVE”
“Guess it’s straight enough if Barney believes it,” muttered Jimmy, closing the door.
He found Joyce, borrowed a pocket camera from him, and started for the front. Jimmy evaded Verdun and picked the straight road from Thierville to Bras. From Bras he intended following the muddy trail that led directly to the present position of his outfit.
A continuous stream of nondescript traffic flowed past him going in the direction of the échelons. Captured Boche wagons, ammunition limbers, ration-trucks, caissons, staff cars, and ambulances were some of the vehicles that passed Jimmy as he plodded along. Their presence on the road at ten-thirty in the morning was a significant thing in itself. He knew that such heavy traffic was forbidden on roads that were under enemy fire during the hours of daylight. But the rattle and clatter of the motley traffic could not drown out the fury of the American bombardment.
“Well, it’s finee, old man,” shouted a man in fatigue clothes riding a balky mule.
“Oui,” responded Jimmy, unenthusiastically.
At Bras Jimmy stopped at one of the ambulance stations to watch them load on some boys who had just been wounded.
“Where the hell are you bound? The guerre’s finee.”
Jimmy looked at the speaker. He was Mike Merrowitz, of his own outfit.
“Goin’ up to the battery. What the hell did you do to your arm, Mike?”
“Nothin’ much. Was mendin’ a broken wire early this mornin’ and a piece of shell got me there. Doc said they might have to cut it off at the elbow. But I don’t believe it’s that bad. Remember my tellin’ you that I’d go through this guerre and get walloped on the last day? Well, the damn thing is finee, anyhow. Take care, Jimmy,” he admonished, looking at his bandaged arm.
Jimmy McGee could only nod his answer. The idea that a man could go through the war as long as Mike had and then get hit during the last minute of play was beyond him. He began wondering if it was all a mistake about the guerre being finished. The banging of the guns certainly didn’t help him to renew his faith in all the statements that he had heard to the effect that fighting would end at eleven o’clock.
It was exactly ten-forty-five when he started out on the second lap of his trip.
“Fifteen minutes to make good in,” muttered Jimmy to himself.
Along the sides of the slimy trail strange things were happening. Men began to appear on the surface. Horses and mules browsed around, hunting for a green patch of grass.
“What time have you got, buddy?” asked Jimmy of a man who was stripped to the waist and washing in an honest attempt to remove some of the dirt that had accumulated on his body since the wash of two months ago.
The man stopped and picked up his wrist watch. “Five minutes before knocking-off time, Jack,” was the casual reply.
“Five minutes,” repeated Jimmy McGee, doubtfully. “Say, do you think it’ll finee at eleven?” he asked.
“Sure,” was the confident reply. “It started in ten minutes; why the hell can’t it end in a few minutes?”
“Guess it can, but it seems funny as hell to talk ’bout the guerre endin’. Why, there’s been times lately when I thought the damn thing would never finee,” stated Jimmy, very solemnly.
“It will be strange to have it all finished. But I can get along without it. Say, I wonder when the hell we’ll go home, Jack?”
“Great God! I’d never thought of that. If this guerre finees to-day we ought to get a crack at the first boats. Been over here long enough. Can you imagine gettin’ back to the old life, wearin’ garters and stuff like that?”
“Too much for me, Jack,” admitted the man as he scrubbed away.
The bombardment seemed just in the act of flinging all of its violence into their ears when the roar of cannon and the shrieking of shells toned down to a puny whisper. A few seconds of scattered “booms” passed. Then a silence unknown to that part of the world settled over the vicinity of Verdun.
The guns of war had been hushed as if by the magic command of some invisible master voice.
Jimmy and the man looked at each other, stunned into dumbness by the miracle of silence. Five minutes passed in strange quietude.
“Guess I’ll blow up to the guns and see how the boys are takin’ this stuff,” said Jimmy, slowly.
“Well, it’s finee, sure as hell,” declared the man. He was reading his shirt and snapping his catches between thumb-nails.
“So long, bud; I’ll meet you in Boston,” was Jimmy’s parting shot.
“In Boston, eh?” replied the man as if a new and pleasing idea had occurred to him. “Oui—in Boston.”
The pockmarked hills that sloped down to meet the trail and mingle muddy rivulets with the slimy water that stagnated in its shell-holes took on a new lease of life as Jimmy surveyed them. Dark rings of smoke curled upward. The forms of men and animals began to appear, slowly at first, as if the bowels of the earth were giving up their recent inhabitants with great reluctance. Gradually whole processions of men moved against the horizons made by the dip and rise of Verdun’s storied hills. Mules and horses scampered at liberty and joined their braying and neighing with the sounds of human life that were heard in the great silence that obtained.
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