Of twenty bridges, there remained but beams rolled up by the waters--and yawning gaps.
Not a thought remained for the distant homeland and dear ones far away; the only thought, by day and by night: On to the enemy, come what may! No mind intent on any other goal. No time to lose! No time to lose! Haste! Haste!
And forward and backward and criss-cross through the gray Ardennes the Chief Lieutenant and I, racing day after day.
Captain of the Guard! You? From the Staff Headquarters?
And he waves a paper above a hundred heads.
"Telegram from home! Make way, there, you rascals! At the home of our poet--I've just learned it--a little war girl has arrived!"
I hold the paper in my outstretched hand. Has the sun broken suddenly into the enemy's land? Light and life on all the ruins? * *
*Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.
My little girl! I have a little girl in my home! * *
*You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time. * *
*I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in the far sky. Officers and men, for a single heart-throb, listen as to a distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's lips, stand there and smile around me in blissful pensiveness, as if there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the sun of olden happiness.
And yet it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.
The following is written from the front by Corp. T. Trainor:
We have had German cavalry thrown at us six times in the last four hours, and each time it has been a different body, so that they must have plenty to spare. There is no eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play with us, whatever the Germans may do.
The strain is beginning to tell on them more than on us, and you can see by the weary faces and trembling hands that they are beginning to break down.
One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what he had been through. The French are fighting hard all round us with a grit and go that will carry them through.