The Marines held, and then they did a little better; they began to advance. They say that Foch himself was none too sure of what these lads would find it possible to do. These men were getting their baptism of Hun fire, which is comparable to no fire this side of hell and which possibly may have introduced some new ideas into hell itself. Certainly neither Dante nor Milton revealed any conception of mustard gas.
Creeping forward on all fours the Marines advanced. It was grim business these boys were about, while the flags flew dreamily in the streets of New York and a thousand other cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico—flew dreamily and prettily for safe men to look up at and for safe women and children to smile at contentedly. It was serious business they were about to the right and left of that old town, while the machines sped up and down Fifth Avenue bright in the summer sun. And yet when at length the cables flashed across the ocean the news that the old town had been won and all that meant, there was little in the message to hint of that grim business. And there was no mention at all of individuals—of the boy Ben who lay in a bit of woods like one asleep, his hair all tousled and his face dirty as he used to come in from play. But that night Carter went home with his head held high and his eyes alight.
When Carter opened the front door he was greeted with the smell of smoke from the kitchen. He hurried out there and found Mrs. Carter standing almost in tears before the charred remains of what had evidently been intended for a pie of some sort. She looked up anxiously as Carter entered. Her blue eyes began to fill with tears.
“Oh, Ben,” she quavered, “I’m so sorry. I—I’ve been saving flour and sugar for a week to have enough to make you a real apple pie. And then—and then I forgot it. And—and——”
She made a despairing gesture toward the jet-black evidence of her unpardonable thoughtlessness. And then before Carter’s accusing glance she shrank back and hid her face in the folds of her blue gingham apron.
Carter stared from her to the pie and then back to her. Fresh from the victory of Château-Thierry, this was such a pitiful travesty! She was crying—she, the mother of his son who had fought with the Marines this day, was crying in fear of his anger because she had spoiled in the baking an apple pie.