Ruth of the U. S. A. (McClurg)/Chapter 21
GERRY'S feet thrust on the rudder bar, swinging his machine to meet them, while hot rills ran through his limbs, warming him against the chill of the night flight above the clouds. He had thought of the frontier as a hundred and fifty miles away—two hours' flight at best in this slow, heavy training "bus"—but here his friends were bringing it to him. His excitement prevented him from realizing instantly that to his friends he must appear an enemy—a black-crossed Hun-bird flying to fight them.
A covey of German pursuit planes, flushed up from some airdrome near the raided city, swooped upward in front of Gerry, climbing for the advantage of altitude before starting their attack upon the raiders. Gerry could see them clearly—triplane Fokkers mostly, of the swiftest, best-climbing, and best-armed type. Some of them saw him, but saw, too, that his machine was German. Probably the pilots wondered what that old "bus" was doing there, but no one investigated, while Gerry flew on.
The clouds had quite cleared below, but the city of Mannheim, speckled with lights a few minutes before, lay dark except where the great crimson bursts of the allied torpedoes erupted; where flames fanned from roofs of burning buildings; where the scintillant points of searchlights glared into the sky. Rockets streaked above the black city; shells flared and flaked in the air; and the glory of battle grasped Gerry. Grasped O'Malley, too. He patted his machine gun and turned about in his seat, appealing to Gerry.
Above them the Fokkers and the other machines of the German defense were diving and engaging the raiders; a light caught the under wings of a plane and showed Gerry the tricolor circles of the allies. Before it sparks streaked—the illuminated tracer bullets streaming from the machine guns; and toward it, beyond it—now through it—other sparks streaked back. These were the tracer bullets of the German who was attacking; and Gerry, jerking back his elevator, tried to climb; but the big, lumbering training "bus" responded only slowly.
When he threw up the nose, bringing the forward machine gun to bear, O'Malley loosed a burst of bullets, though the target German plane was five hundred yards away. A range of that length was all right for machine-gun work on the ground, but in the air—with firing gun and with the target flying—it was sure waste. Gerry bent forward and pummeled O'Malley's back to tell him so. But the Irishman did not turn; while Gerry climbed, the raiders and the Germans dropped, bringing the battle nearer, and O'Malley had a target now at two hundred yards from which he would not be withheld.
The range still shortened, and bullets streaked down past Gerry. He gazed above and tried to dodge; O'Malley looked up; he saw the tricolor circle and did not reply. One of their own people, having sighted the black cross, was coming down upon them, taking them for German. And at the same instant the far-off Fokker at which O'Malley had been firing realized that there was something wrong about this big, slow, black-crossed machine; the German swung upon it, his machine guns going. Gerry's engine went dead and he found himself automatically guiding the "bus" in a volplane which he was keeping as slow and as "flat" as possible as he glided below the battle and sought upon the ground for a place to land.
He examined his altimeter and learned that he was still up four thousand feet, and with the flat gliding angle of the wide-winged training biplane, he knew that he had a radius of more than two miles for the choice of his landing. The battle was still going on above Mannheim, as the allied bombers had swung back. A machine flashed into flame and started down, with its pilot evidently controlling it at first; then too much of the wing fabric was consumed and it dropped. Other machines, too, were leaving the battle; some of them seemed to be Germans damaged and withdrawing; others appeared to be all right—they had just spent their ammunition, perhaps. One got on the tail of Gerry's machine, looked him over, and then dropped past him.
Gerry was gliding north and west of the city, making for wide, open spaces shown on the map which he had been studying—the smooth spaces of the fields of the Schloss von Fallenbosch. Five hundred yards away through the moonlight, and at almost his same altitude, he saw another machine gliding, as he was, with engine shut off; the circle of their volplane swept them toward each other.
In the forward seat pit of the English machine—for Gerry steered close enough not only to see the allied insignia but the distinctive details of the British bombing plane—the man who had been bomber and machine gunner was lying back with head dropped; and the pilot, too, had been hit. He seemed to be half fainting, only spurring himself up for a few seconds at a time to control his glide.
Gerry stood up as they glided side by side; he hoped that the Englishman could make out his uniform in the moonlight. He knew it was little likely that the other could hear his shout, yet he yelled: "I'm American; follow me!" And dropping back to his seat, Gerry set himself to selecting the best spot for his landing. Whether or not the English pilot saw or heard, he followed Gerry down. The clear moonlight displayed the ground bare and smooth; it was hard to guess just when to cease dropping and, turning straight into the wind, give your elevators that last little upturn which would permit landing on your wheels and rolling; but he did it, and, turning in his seat as the rolling slowed, he saw the English plane bounding upon the field; it leaped, threatened to topple, but came down on its wheels again. Gerry had his hand on O'Malley. Together they leaped down and ran to where the English biplane had halted.
The English pilot had regained strength; he had succeeded even in lifting the body of his bomber out of his machine; and, considering himself captured, he hastened to remove the top of his fuel tank in order to set fire to his ship. Gerry observed this and shouted:
"Don't do that! We're escaped prisoners! We're Irish and American. Don't!"
His voice carried; and the English pilot delayed with his match. If any German was near, he did not evidence his presence. If any of the enemy flyers had noticed the descent of the English biplane, probably they had seen the black-crossed machine following it down. So Gerry and the English pilot stood undisturbed, estimating each other in the moonlight. A machine-gun bullet had grazed the Englishman's head; but he was fast recovering from the shock. Gerry adjusted a first-aid bandage to stay the blood.
"Your ship's all right?" Gerry asked.
"Look at it."
"Looks all right; and bombs!" Gerry cried out, discovering a pair of bombs still hanging in the racks. "You came down with bombs on!"
"I was gone—part the time," the Englishman explained. "Thought I'd released 'em."
Gerry was not finding fault. Bombs he had; and, to take the place of the German training machine, here was a ship with engine undamaged, and which could fly again, and quite capable—after its bombs were used—of bearing three men and a girl. Wisely had Gerry determined that night not to try to guide fate. Events unforeseeable again had him in their grasp. He gazed half a mile away where the gray walls of the schloss shimmered in the moonlight.
"There's a girl in there," he said to the English pilot. "An American girl we're going to have out. Will you help us?"
"How?"
"Lay those last two eggs close to the castle," Gerry motioned to the pair of bombs in the rack. "That will drive 'em all to the cellars; then keep circling above 'em, as if to lay more eggs to keep 'em there. O'Malley and I'll rush the castle."
"You two alone?" the Englishman asked.
"Alone?" Gerry laughed. "Lay your eggs, old hawk! Lay your eggs; and two's a crowd for that castle tonight! The only danger's getting lost in the halls! But in case someone shows, lend us your pistol—we have one. Then lay your eggs—close but not on; and keep flying above ten minutes more!"
The occupants of the Schloss von Fallenbosch all had been aroused many minutes earlier by the burst of the first bombs in the city. The detonations, followed immediately by the alarm and by the sound of the anti-aircraft guns replying, had sent the citizens of Mannheim scurrying to their cellars. The allied raiders never attacked intentionally the dwelling places of the city; their objectives were solely the chemical and munition works; but the German population—knowing how their own flyers bombed open cities indiscriminately—always expected similar assaults upon themselves. Moreover, they well knew the difficulties of identifying objectives from high in the air and the greater difficulty of confining attack to a limited area; then there were the machine-gun bullets from the aerial battle and the bits of shrapnel showering back upon the city.
But the schloss heretofore had been quite removed from attack; it was far enough from the city to be in small danger from the falling shells of the high angle guns. So Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch and his aids, his wife and his servants, when roused merely went to their windows and watched the sky curiously and without idea of personal danger. If they thought at all about the prisoner confined in the cell in the old wing of the schloss it was to consider her quite securely held; she, too, was roused, undoubtedly, and listening to the sounds which told that pilots from the allied forces were fighting within a mile or two. But what could she hope from them?
Ruth, indeed, was aroused. This night was the first since she had been taken, upon which the allies had attacked at Mannheim; but she had recognized the distinctive sounds—distant but tremendous—which told of a raid. Her window was open but for its bars, and its height in the wall, instead of interfering, facilitated inspection of the sky.
It gave her view over only a limited quadrilateral, of course, but every few seconds something happened in that space—shells burst, or a searchlight swept across, or a rocket flared—more than enough to make her sure that a real attack was on. Once she had a glimpse of an airplane upon which a searchlight glared and about which shrapnel burst; that meant she had seen a French, or English, or an American machine!
To her, who was about to die, the sight was enormously exciting. Not that it brought her shadow of hope for herself. For the first five days following her capture she had been kept shut up in her cell, seeing only the man who brought her food and refused any right of access to anyone else.
At the end of the five days she had been led before a military court of three men—von Fallenbosch and two other officers—who accused, tried, and sentenced her without permitting her any semblance of defense; she was led back and locked up again awaiting the day for the execution of the death penalty, which had been left to the discretion or the whim of Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch.
Her end might come, therefore, upon any day, or upon any hour, and without warning; it might not come for weeks or months; her execution might not, indeed, occur at all. But a more terrible suspense of sentence scarcely could be devised. Its purpose ostensibly was to make her disclose facts which the Germans believed that she knew. Of course they had held inquisition of her immediately upon capture and several times since, but without satisfactory result; so they kept her locked up. For reading matter she was supplied with German newspapers.
These proclaimed with constantly increasing boastfulness the complete triumph of the German arms. Everywhere the Germans had attacked, the allies had crumpled, fleeing in disorder, leaving guns by the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands. One more stroke and all would be over! Prince Ruprecht would be on the channel; the Crown Prince would be in Paris!
Ruth had seen German newspapers before and she had known of their blatant distortions of truth, but she had never seen anything like the vaunts of those days. These must have, she feared, much foundation in fact. Visions of catastrophe to the British Fifth Army, of the rout from the Hindenburg line almost to Amiens, and the terrors of the retreat haunted her in her solitary days. Was it possible that the English were completely crushed and that the French were helpless? Possible that the American army, which now was admitted to have arrived in some force, had proved so utterly unfit for European warfare that the allies dared not send it into the battle line?
The few words spoken to her by the man who attended her boasted that such were the facts. She thought of that front from Soissons to Reims, where the French lay unaware, perhaps, that upon them was soon to come the final, overwhelming attack. It must be in the last stages of preparation, with the hundreds of thousands of reserve troops secretly concentrated by night marches; with the thousands of guns and millions of shells secreted and in place for another such surprise attack to be delivered in some amazing, unforeseen manner as that assault which two months ago swept over the plains of Picardy and broke the English line. Perhaps already the attack was begun; perhaps
Such terrors held her when she lay sleepless or only half drowsing in the dark; they formed the background for more personal affrights visualizing her own friends—Hubert and Milicent and Mrs. Mayhew, French girls whom she had known, and many others. Most particularly her terror dwelt upon Gerry Hull. She had ventured to inquire of the Germans regarding his fate; at first they refused information, then they told her he was dead, next that he was a prisoner; and they even supplied her with a paragraph from one of their papers boasting of the fact and making capital of his capture.
He was in one of their camps, to be treated by the Germans—how? Her dismay would dwell with him; then, suddenly considering her own fate, she would sit up, stark, and grasping tight to the sides of her cot. Her mother and her sisters in Onarga—would they ever know? Cynthia Gail's people—what, at last, would they learn?
A sudden resounding shock, accompanied by a dull rolling sound, vibrated through the air. A great gun was being tested somewhere nearby, Ruth thought. No; they would not do that at night. Then it was an explosion at the chemical works; something had gone wrong. The shocks and the sounds increased. Also they drew nearer. Now guns—small, staccato, barking guns—began firing; shells smashed high in the air. Ruth had dragged her chair below her window and was standing upon it. Ah! Now she could see the flashes and lights in the sky; an air raid was on. There within sight—not a mile off—and fighting, were allied machines! Transcendent exaltation intoxicated her.
The bombs bursting in air!
The stanza of the glorious song of her country sang in her soul with full understanding of its great feeling. An American prisoner long ago had written those wonderful words—written them, she remembered, when lying a captive upon an enemy vessel and when fearing for the fate of the fort manned by his people. But
. . . the rocket's red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
The burst of these bombs and the flash of these rockets brought the same leaping glory to Ruth. Not far away in France her flag yet flew high; her people yet battled, and boldly, defiantly, if they could send here over German soil such a squadron of the air to this attack. The bombs and the guns and the rockets continued.
Sometimes they swept closer; but swiftly they retreated. Now the motor clatter of a single airplane separated itself and became louder than all the distant sound. This sound seemed to circle and swoop over the schloss; and—Ruth swayed at the buffet of a tremendous shock; she caught at the wall to steady herself; but the wall, too, was quivering. A bomb had burst nearby; near enough, indeed, to destroy some of the building, for through the tremors of the detonation she heard the crash of falling walls, the yells and screams of terror.
Ruth, steadying herself, realized that this attack might mean her destruction; but defiant triumph filled her. The airplane which was circling the schloss was one of the allies; the booming clatter of its motor as it returned was completing the panic throughout the schloss. A new eruption vibrated the walls, blowing down stones, timbers; the fury of its detonation battered her. The next might bury her in the débris of these walls; but she sang—wildly, tauntingly she sang The Star-Spangled Banner.
The taunt brought no protest. Throughout the schloss now was silence. She did not believe that all, or, indeed, many of the occupants of the place had been killed. But she knew that all who were alive were hiding in the cellars.
The increasing roar of the airplane motor as the machine swept back on its orbit of return struck through her pangs of awe at the possible imminence of her annihilation; but through them she sang, and this time the motor roar rose to its loudest and diminished without the shock of another bomb.
One had been dropped, perhaps, and had failed to explode, or the pilot had found himself not quite in the position he had desired. The diminuendo of his motor noise continued only for a few moments, however; it altered to a crescendo, warning of the approach. But now other sounds, closer and within the schloss, seized Ruth's attention.
Her name echoing in the stone halls—"Ruth! Ruth Alden! Where are you?"
Was she mad? Was this a wild fantasy of her excitement, a result of her long terror? Was this her failure to hold her reason at the approach of fate? It seemed to be not merely her name, but Gerry's voice. She could not answer, but she could sing—sing The Star-Spangled Banner
And the rocket's red glare,
The bombs bursting in air
Her voice seemed to guide the voices without. "Ruth! Ruth Alden! Are you all right? We're here!"
"Gave proof through the night," she sang, "that the flag was still there"
Now voices—unmistakable voices—answered her; and she cried out to guide them. Gerry called to her, his voice wondrous with triumph and joy. He was there at 
Gerry was there at the door of her cell; another man was with him; a friend
the door of her cell; another man was with him; a friend. They were working together with a bar to burst the lock; the friend laughed loudly and was not afraid. Gerry did not laugh; he spoke to her again and again, asking about her. She was well? She was unhurt?
Now they had the lock broken; the door open. Gerry seized her as she came out; he kissed her; he picked her up and started to carry her, while she cried to him that she was strong and could walk; could run; could do anything now. Anything!
The roar of the airplane continued overhead; and Ruth now knew the trick. It was keeping the Germans below while Gerry and his companion went through the schloss. Ruth did not yet have complete comprehension of the event; she supposed that Gerry must have escaped from Germany long before; that he had rejoined his squadron and had come from the allied lines with the raiders that night.
Now they were out of the schloss and Gerry was leading her over soft ground—a field brightly lit by the moon.
"Gerry, I've their plan!" Ruth cried to him. "On the front between Soissons and Reims; their next attack! I know it. . . . ."
He no longer was leading her. He lifted her and bundled her against him, quite as he had done once so long before. An airplane was approaching; she could hear the loud crescendo of its motor; suddenly it ceased and she heard only the whir of the airscrew of a machine about to land.
Gerry was speaking to her, but for some reason she could not understand what he was saying; she could hear his words, but they were separate sort of words without meaning. He and Mike were lifting her now and lowering her feet first into a pit—the seat pit of an airplane. Mike stepped down into the pit with her and supported her there. Gerry was gone from her now, but not far away. He was in the pilot's pit, or just behind it, with the pilot in front of him. The motor was roaring again; the machine was moving; it was rising. She was flying!
Far—far below, when she looked back, she saw a strange sheen, which was the moonlight on the ground, with a twisting, brighter strip dividing it.
"That," she tried to say to the man holding her in his lap, "that's the Rhine?"
He tried very hard to hear her, and she supposed that the same thing must be the matter with him as was the trouble with her when Gerry spoke to her on the ground. Only slowly she realized that she could not even hear her own voice for the noise of the motor.
She looked back to the other pit and saw Gerry's face; he waved at her and she waved back; then she sank upon the shoulder of the man holding her, and she lost consciousness.
Many times while that English bombing biplane—weighted now by three men and a girl instead of by two men and bombs—made the journey to the allied lines, Ruth stirred to semi-wakefulness. The swaying and the rising and the falling of the airplane as it rode the currents of the air made it seem to Ruth that she was upon a ship at sea—upon the Ribot. At other times the motion seemed merely the buoyancy following the sinking of sensations in a dream. Afterwards she remembered sitting up, wide-eyed and collected in mind, and gazing down upon the moonlit ground; but at the time these occasions gave no reaction.
She remembered that Gerry waved to her many times—every time she turned. Complete consciousness returned to her, however, only when she found herself no longer rising, and sinking, or swaying to right and left, with all sound overwhelmed by motor noises. She was upon a cot then; it was steady, and soft, and marvelously comfortable; and extremely kind people were caring for her—one of them an American girl.
Mrs. Mayhew was there, and George Byrne, and others, who identified her. Also, of course, there was Gerry. It was he who introduced to her two strange officers—one French and one American—and it was Gerry who said: "These are officers of our intelligence division, Ruth. Tell them what you can; then everyone will leave you alone to rest. Your work will be done."
So she told them, summoning all her strength to repeat everything correctly and in detail; and when she had finished she answered their questions for more than an hour. The next day again they questioned her. The attack upon the Soissons-Reims front was not yet begun, they told her. Did they believe her? she asked.
It was not the business of the intelligence officers to express either belief or incredulity; their task was simply to ascertain what she knew, or believed that she knew; to check her recital over with discovered facts about her; to add her reports to the others, both confirming and conflicting; and to pass the report on.
Ruth herself was passed on the next day and requisitioned by other men. Then she was taken to Paris and was left, undisturbed by further examinations, to rest in a bed in a little private room at one of the hospitals. She could not quite determine, during those first days that she was detained there, whether she was in fact under a sort of observational arrest or whether the constant care which she received was solely to promote the return of her strength.
For a semi-collapse had come—collapse of only physical powers. Her mind was ceaselessly active—too active, the doctor told her. Sometimes at night she could not sleep, but demanded that she be allowed to rise, and dress, and go to the intelligence officers, or have them come to her, so she could tell them her whole story again in a way they must believe.
If she could only make them see how Adler had looked; if she could make them hear how his voice had sounded when he had spoken of that Soissons-Reims front, they would not doubt her at all. If she could speak with Gerry Hull again, perhaps he could help make them believe her. But Gerry Hull was with his squadron. Only women were about Ruth now, and doctors, and wounded men. So, day after day, she was kept in bed awaiting the attack which—as all the world knows—came on the twenty-seventh of May and against the French on the front from Soissons to Reims.
The day the great assault began Ruth demanded to get up, and—it seemed until that day that someone must have doubted her—at last she was permitted to do as she pleased. So she returned to the Rue des Saints Pères and to her old rooms with Milicent; she wore again the khaki uniform which she had worn in Picardy; and, after reading the communiques that night, she applied for active duty as an ambulance driver.
That day the Germans had swept the French, in one single rush, from the Chemin des Dames; the enemy were over the Aisne. Back, back; everywhere the French, as the British in Picardy, were driven back, yielding guns by the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands. The Boche were over the Vesle now; they had Fismes. God! Again they were upon the Marne! Could nothing stop them? Still they were rushing onward, a broken army, before them.
Ruth was in Paris, where talk of a sort which she had never heard in France before was upon everyone's lips. France had given all and the Germans yet advanced. Their guns hourly roared louder. Four years ago, to be sure, their guns were heard as plainly in the Paris streets; four years ago the German field gray had come even closer; four years ago the government had abandoned Paris and prepared, even though Paris were taken, to fight and fight. But that was four years ago and the French army was young and unspent; Britain, then, had barely begun to come in. France had gathered all her strength, and, in her mighty hour at the Marne, had hurled back the enemy, "saving" Paris!
What mockery was that memory this day! Here, after the four years and the spending of French and British strength, the Germans were at the gates again only more numerous and more confident than before.
Ruth stayed alone in her room during a lone afternoon writing to Cynthia Gail's father and mother a full confession of all that she had done. Her whole enterprise, so hopefully taken up, had failed, she said. She related what she had tried to do; indeed, in defense of herself, she related how she had succeeded in entering Germany and in learning something of the German plan for the great drive which was now overwhelming the world; but she had failed to bring back any proof which was required to convince the army that the information she had gained was dependable. So she felt that she had played Cynthia Gail's part for no gain; she had no great achievement to offer Cynthia's parents in recompense for the wrong which she had done them.
She sealed and posted this, and now, at last, wrote to her own mother fully of what she had done. Again the despair of the day seized her. She wandered the streets where men—men who had not been in the fighting during the four years—were talking of the allies taking up a new line south of Paris and holding on there somehow until America was ready. But when such talk went about Ruth gazed at the eyes of the French who had been through the years of battle; and she knew that, if the Germans won now, the French could do no more.
Ever increasing streams of the wounded were flowing back into Paris; and through the capital began spreading the confusion of catastrophe nearby. The mighty emergency made demand upon the services of those refused only a few hours earlier; and Ruth left Paris that night upon the driving seat of a small ambulance. The next morning—it was the first of June—she was close to the guns and upon a road where was retreat.
Retreat? Well, two months ago in Picardy when the English had gone back before the Germans, Ruth had heard such a concourse to the rear called retreat; so she tried to call this retreat—this dazed, unresisted departure of soldiers from before the enemy's advance. What made it worse, they were the French—the poilus whom she met. The French! When the British had been broken in Picardy and fell back, fighting so desperately, they had sacrificed themselves to stay the enemy until the arrival of the French! When the French had arrived the German advance was stopped; the French had been the saviors! But here the French were going back; and the British could not, in turn, come to save them.
These poilus did not expect it; they had ceased, indeed, to expect anything. For the first time, as the poilus looked at her, she saw the awfulness of hopelessness in their eyes. Four years they had fought from Maubeuge to the Marne; to the Aisne; in the Champagne they had attacked and gained; at Verdun they had stood alone; this year at Kemmel they had sacrificed themselves and held on only to meet at last, and in spite of all, the overwhelming disaster.
Ruth tried to cry a word or two of cheer when a man saw and saluted her; but her cry choked in her throat. These men were spent; they were fought out; beaten. And just behind them, at Château-Thierry, whence they had fled, was the Prussian guard coming on with these beaten men between them and Paris.
Ruth sat, half dizzy, half sick, at the wheel of the little car, forcing it forward by these beaten men when the road offered a chance. She was maneuvering toward a crossroad; and as she approached it she noticed the French no longer trudging to the rear; they were halted now; and as Ruth passed them and reached the direct road to Château-Thierry she found them lined up beside the road, waiting. Officers were clearing the way farther down; and as someone halted Ruth's car she stood up and stared along the rise of ground to the south.
A sound was coming over, borne by the morning breeze—a sound of singing in loud, confident, boasting notes. Three notes, they were, three times repeated—the three notes which were blown on the bugles in Berlin when the kaiser or princes of the royal house were coming; three blatant, bragging notes which Ruth had learned a year before to mean, "Over there!"
For the Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere. . . .
Ruth caught to the side of the ambulance and held on tight. American voices; thousands of them! American men; American soldiers singing! Americans coming into this battle—coming forward into this battle, singing! Swinging! She could see them now as they wound about the hill—see the sun flashing on their bayonets, and the fine, confident swing—the American swing—of their ranks as they approached.
The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming . . .
And we won't go back till it's over, over here!
Ruth leaped up and screamed aloud with joy.
"What is it, Mademoiselle?" one of the dazed poilus inquired.
"The Americans are coming! Our men are here! Our Americans! The Yanks—the Yanks are coming!" she shouted it in the rhythm of the song.
What had seized her that day upon the Ribot when she saw the Starke come up and Gerry told her it was American; what had thrilled through her that night she arrived in France; what had stirred throughout her that morning near Mirevaux when the English officer called out to her, "Good old America," and she watched the English march off to die; what had come when the French at last arrived before Amiens; even that ecstasy of the bombs bursting over Mannheim when she had sung The Star-Spangled Banner and Gerry Hull had found her; all those together surged through her combined and intensified a thousand-fold.
And this came not to her alone. It had come, too, to the French—the French who had been falling back in flight—yes, in flight, one could say it now—knowing that the Americans were behind them, but expecting nothing of those Americans. Why they had expected nothing, they did not know. At this moment it was incredible that—only the instant before—they had been in total despair.
The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming!
They were marines who were coming; they were so close that Ruth could see their uniforms; American marines, who marched past her singing—swinging—on their way to kill and to die! For they were going to kill—and to die. They knew it; that was why they sang as they did; that was why they were so sure-so boastfully, absolutely sure!
. . . . send the word; send the word to beware!
It was American; nothing else! No other men in the world could have gone by so absolutely sure of themselves, singing—swinging—like that. And oh, Ruth loved them! Her people; only a few, indeed, as men were reckoned in this war; but such men! Still singing—swinging—they swept by, drawing after them a vortex of the French, who, a few moments before, had been abandoning the battle. They were all past now, the Americans; oh, how few they had been to face the German army with Paris and all the fate of France behind them.
A few miles on—it could not have been farther—the Americans met the Germans; and what they did there in the woods near the tiny town of Meaux came to Ruth in wonderful fashion. The battle, which each hour—each moment through that terrible morning—had been steadily coming nearer and nearer; the battle ceased to approach. There was no doubt about it! The fighting, furious twice over and then more furious, simply could not get closer. Now the battle was going back! The marines—the American marines, sent in to stop the gap and hold the Paris road—had not merely delayed the Prussian advance; they had halted it and turned it back!
That night Ruth learned a little of the miracle of the American marines from one of the men who had fought. He had been brought back, badly wounded, and for a time, while her ambulance was held up, Ruth was able to administer to the man, and he talked to her.
"Three miles, we threw 'em back, Miss! Not much, three miles, but in the right direction. They asked us to delay 'em. Delay 'em; hell . . . . excuse me, Miss."
"Oh, that's all right," Ruth cried. "Oh, that's fine! Say it again—our way!"
"That's all they asked us; to delay 'em. I was right near Wise"—Wise was the lieutenant colonel we got our orders. We was to get in touch with the Germans and hold up their advance as long as we could; and then retreat to a prepared position.
"'Retreat?' Wise yelled. 'Retreat? Hell! We've just come!' Well, Miss, we got in touch! Oh, we got in touch, all right; touched 'em with bayonets and butts. They couldn't like it. Couldn't quite believe at first; didn't think it was true; so we had to prove it to 'em, you see. Three miles back toward Berlin; not much; but—you admit—in the right direction."
"I admit it," Ruth said; and—the boy was very badly hurt—she kissed him before she climbed back to her seat.
The next day, when she at last allowed herself to rest, she wrote a letter to Gerry. She had no idea where he was; so she addressed him in care of his old squadron. She had no definite notion of their present relations; what he had said, or what she herself had said, during and following their flight back to France, she simply did not know; for during that time she had dreamed extreme, incredible things, which, nevertheless, fastened themselves upon her with such reality that she could not now separate, with any certainty, the false from the true.
That he had come for her, boldly, recklessly; that he and a companion had succeeded in taking her from the schloss and bringing her back with them were facts which might be the foundation of—anything between Gerry and herself or of no more than had existed before.
Yet something—a good deal—had existed at the time they had parted on the Rue des Saints Pères before she went to Switzerland. That was quite a lot to return to, and the only safe feeling to assume in him was that which he had confessed to her there. So she wrote this day chiefly of the marvel which she had seen—the miracle of the arrival of the Americans, which, as the world already knew, had saved Paris.
She received reply from him after two weeks—a brief yet intimate note, telling her that her wonderful letter had welcomed him just ten minutes ago, when he had returned from a patrol. He had only a minute now; but he must reply at once.
I want to tell you, Ruth, that you have the right to feel that your work contributed to the arrival of our marines at the right moment, at the right place. You are familiar enough with war now to know that troop dispositions must be made far ahead. Your information was, of course, not the only warning to reach the general staff that the attack was to come where it did. But I am now permitted to tell you that your information was believed to be honest; therefore it had weight, and its weight was sufficient undoubtedly to make our command certain, a few hours earlier than they otherwise might have been certain, of the direction of the German attack; and, throughout the front, reserves were started to the threatened points a few hours sooner. Yours ever,
The day after Ruth received this the Germans started their attack of the fifteenth of July; three days later the allied counter attack was striking in full force and the armies of the German Crown Prince were fighting for their lives against the French and Americans, to get back out of the Marne "pocket." Then, in the north, the English struck and won their greatest victories. It was August; September, and still, from Switzerland to the sea, the allies advanced; the Germans went back. And still from across the sea, three hundred thousand American soldiers arrived monthly.