But this village of Meran-en-Laye was not merely deprived of what beauty it once might or might not have possessed. Except by courtesy it was no longer a village at all. It was a double row of squalid ruins, zig-zagging along the two sides of what was left of its main street. Here and there a cottage or tiny shop or shed was still habitable. The rest was debris.
The church in the foreground was recognizable as such by the shape and size of its ragged walls, and by a half-smashed image of the Virgin and Child which slanted out at a perilous angle above its façade.
Yet, miserable as the ruined hamlet seemed to the casual eye, it was at present a vacation-resort--and a decidedly welcome one--to no less than three thousand tired men. The wrecked church was an impromptu hospital beneath whose shattered roof dozens of these men lay helpless on makeshift cots.
For the mixed American and French regiment known as the "Here-We-Comes" was billeted at Meran-en-Laye during a respite from the rigors and perils of the front-line trenches.
The rest and the freedom from risks, supposed to be a part of the "billeting" system, were not wholly the portion of the "Here-We Comes." Meran--en--Laye was just then a somewhat important little speck on the warmap.
The Germans had been up to their favorite field sport of trying to split in half two of the Allied armies, and to roll up each, independently. The effort had been a failure; yet it had come so near to success that many railway communications were cut off or deflected. And Meran-en-Laye had for the moment gained new importance, by virtue of a spur railway-line which ran through its outskirts and which made junction with a new set of tracks the American engineers were completing. Along this transverse of roads much ammunition and food and many fighting men were daily rushed.
The safety of the village had thus become of much significance. While it was too far behind the lines to be in grave danger of enemy raids, yet such danger existed to some extent. Wherefore the presence of the "Here-We-Comes"--for the paradoxical double purpose of "resting up" and of guarding the railway Function.
Still, it was better than trench-work; and the "Here-We-Comes" enjoyed it--for a day or so. Then trouble had set in.