Page:Armistice Day.djvu/156

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134
ARMISTICE DAY
 

boweled horses and disemboweled tanks. Every few rods there was a clump of clean new crosses, their stiff white arms pointing always toward Germany, as if we needed urging from our dead! Only empty trucks and loaded ambulances were going in the other direction, with here and there a slightly wounded or gassed officer riding on a front seat. Every one was grimly elated, saying, "Blueey, we've got 'em on the run!" The hardships of such campaigning are just bearable when you are elated with the thrill of winning. What they must be to the retreating enemy, knowing himself beaten, we found solace in imagining.

We passed through the little town of Cunel and along the road toward Romagne between two rows of garrulous guns. Their conviction in the last few days of the war that the Boche was beaten led the Americans to do some unusual things. For instance, in a space of a mile and a half along this road we had sixty-four guns. If the enemy had been standing up to his artillery and fighting back with full power, he might have raised havoc with these massed cannon. But he would not stand, and we knew it. He dropped over a few shells on this neighborhood every few hours, and that was all.

On the outskirts of Romagne we halted for lunch in an old French farmhouse, formerly a German P. C., and now one of ours. Two men