This is part of a letter home from Private Dwyer, Co. A, 121st Engineers, A. E. F. It is used here by permission of _The Springfield (Mass) Republican_.
Even far behind the lines of battle, in this beautiful France, little scenes take place which bring home to one the seriousness and sadness of life. Picture to yourself a dark-green hillside divided into sections by the hedge fences which the French peasant makes so much use of. 5 In one of these fields soldiers are at work making roads and little pathways. At one end are a number of flower-covered mounds, each one marked with a wooden cross, for this particular little field is one of the American Expeditionary Force's cemeteries. 10
On the day which I have in mind, a drizzling rain comes softly, though steadily, down. A number of soldiers, hardly distinguishable from the mud in which they are working, are busy leveling off the ground around a flagpole which stands in the center of the cemetery. Presently they stop 15 work and stand listening to the drumbeats which can be heard faintly in the distance. The little group gathers about the flagpole, waiting.
Slowly up the roadway comes a procession headed by the band playing the sweetly solemn funeral march. Behind 20 it is carried a plain wooden box, draped with the Stars and Stripes, while a firing squad marches in the rear. They stop at a newly dug grave and gently lower the coffin. In clear, concise tones the chaplain reads the funeral service. A mist seems to creep up from the valley and wisps of it wind themselves through the air. In the neighboring field the sheep who have been grazing huddle together and gaze, as only sheep can, at the performance going on near them. Like the sheep, the soldiers in the cemetery gather closer to each 5 other, each one's eyes filled with tears, and each one conscious of a queer sensation going on within him. . . .
Now the chaplain has finished, the members of the firing squad take their places. A dead silence ensues, broken by the shots of their rifles. Two more salvos are fired and the 10 ceremony is finished. Finally, when the mist has become very dense, the clear notes of the bugle ring out, blowing taps for a soldier's last farewell sleep.