“No,” I says, “we ain’t done it. We was told to find a PC. And soon as Nick gets out this ain’t going to be no PC, but only a dugout. We got to go with him. We got to find where his new PC is at, and then we go back.”
“Well, if we ain’t done it,” says Shep, “that’s different.”
So in a couple of minutes Nick started off, and we went with him, and a hell of a fine thing we done for ourself that we ain’t went back in the first place, like Shep wanted to do. Because where we went, it weren’t over no road and it weren’t through no trench. It was straight up toward the front line over No Man’s Land, and a worse walk after supper nobody ever took this side of Hell. How we went was single file, first Nick, and then them aides, and then them headquarters guys, and then us. About every fifty yards, a runner would pick us up, and point the way, and then fall back and let us pass. And what we was walking over was all shell holes and barbed wire, and you was always slipping down and busting your shin, and then all them dead horses and things was laying around, and you didn’t never see one till you had your foot in it, and then it made you sick. And dead men. The first one we seen was in a trench, kind of laying up against the side, what was on a slant. And he was sighting down his gun just like he was getting ready to pull the trigger, and when you come to him you opened your mouth to beg his pardon for bothering him. And then you didn’t.
Well, we went along that way for a hell of a while. And pretty soon it seemed like we wasn’t nowheres at all, but was slugging along through some kind of black dream what didn’t have no end, and them goddam runners look like ghosts what was standing there to point, only we wasn’t never going to get where they was pointing nor nowheres else.
But after a while we come to a road and on the side of the road was a piece of corrugated iron. And Nick, soon as he come to that, wishing his musette bag and sat down on it. And then all them other guys sat down too. So me and Shep, we figured on that awhile, because at first we thought they was just taking a rest, but then Shep let on it looked like to him they was expecting to stay awhile. So then we went up to Nick.
“Sir,” I says, “is this the new Brigade PC?”
“Who are you?” he says.
“We’re from Division Headquarters,” I says. “We was ordered to find the Brigade PC and report back.”
“This is the new PC,” he says.
“This piece of iron?” I says.
“Yes,” says he.
“Thank you, sir,” I says, and me and Shep saluted and left him.
“A hell of a looking PC,” says Shep, soon as we got where he couldn’t hear us.
“A hell of a looking PC all right,” I says, “but it’s pretty looking alongside of that trip we got going back.”
“I been thinking about that,” he says.
So then we sat down by the road a couple of minutes.
“Listen,” he says. “I ain’t saying I like that trip none. But what I’m thinking about is suppose we get lost. I don’t mind telling you I can’t find my way back over them shell holes.”
“I got a idea,” I says.
“Shoot,” he says.
“This here road we’re setting on,” I says, “must go somewheres.”
“They generally do,” he says.
“If we can find someplace what’s on one end of it,” I says, “I can take you back if you don’t mind a little walking. Because I know all these roads around here like a book.” And how that was, was because I had been on observation post before the drive started, and had to study them maps, and even if I hadn’t never been on the roads I knowed how they run.
“I’ll walk with you to sunup,” he says, “if it’s on a road and we know where we’re going. But I ain’t going to try to get back over that No Man’s Land, boy, I’ll tell you that. Because I just as well try to fly.”
So we asked a whole lot of guys did they know where the road run, and not none of them knowed nothing about it. But pretty soon we found a guy in the engineers, what was fixing the road, and he said he thought the road run back to Avocourt.
“Let’s go,” I says to Shep. “I know where we’re at now.”
So we started out, and sure enough after a while we come to Avocourt. And I knowed there was a road run east from Avocourt over the ridge to Esnes, if we could only figure out which the hell way was east. So the moon was coming up about then, and we remembered the moon come up in the east, and we headed for it, and hit the road. And a bunch of rats come outen a trench and began going up the road in front of us, hopping along in a pretty good line, and Shep said they was trench camels, and that give us a laugh, and we felt better. And pretty soon, sure enough we come to Esnes, and turned left, and in a couple minutes we was right back in the Division PC what we had left after supper, and it weren’t much to look at, but it sure did feel like home.
II
Well, we weren’t no sooner there than a bunch of guys begun to holler out to Captain Madeira that here we was, and he came a-running, and if we had of been a letter from home he couldn’t of been more excited about us.
“Thank God, you’ve come,” he says.
“Sure we’ve come,” says Shep; “you wasn’t really worried about us, was you?”
But I seen it was more than us the Captain was worrying about, so I says:
“What’s the matter?”
“General Nicholson has broken liaison,” he says, “and we’ve got not a way on earth to reach him unless you fellows can do it.”
“Well, I guess we can, hey kid?” I says to Shep.
But Shep shook his head. “Maybe you can,” he says, “but I ain’t got no more idea where we been than a blind man. I’ll keep you company, though, if you want.”
“Company hell,” says the Captain. “Here,” he says to me, “you come in and see the General.”
So he brung me into the dugout what was the PC to see General Kuhn [Major General Joseph E. Kuhn, commanding general, 79th Division]. And most of the time, the General was a pretty snappy-looking soldier. He was about medium size, and he had a cut to his jaw and a swing to his back what look like them pictures you see in books. But he weren’t no snappy-looking soldier that night. He hadn’t had no shave, and his eyes was all sunk in, and no wonder. Because when the Division ain’t took Montfaucon that day, like they was supposed to, it balled everything up like hell. It put a pocket in the American advance, a kind of a dent, what was holding up the works all along the line. And the General was getting hell from Corps, and he had lost a lot of men, and that was why he was looking like he was.
“Do you know where General Nicholson is?” he says to me, soon as Captain Madeira had told him who I was.
“Yes, sir,” I says, “but I don’t think he does.”
Now what the General said to that I ain’t sure, but he mumbled something to hisself what sound like he be damned if he did either.
“I want you to take a message to him,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I says.
So he commenced to write the message. And while I was standing there I was so sleepy everything look like it was turning around, like them things you see in a dream. It was a couple of aides in there, and maybe an orderly, and Captain Madeira, and it was in behind a lot of blankets, what they wet and hang over the door of a dugout to keep out gas. And in the middle of it was General Kuhn, writing on a pad in lead pencil, and I remember thinking how old he looked setting there, and then that would blank out and I couldn’t see nothing but his whiskers, and then that would blank out and I would be thinking it was pretty tough on him, and I would do my best to help him out. It weren’t no more than a minute, mind. Why I was thinking all them things jumbled up together was because I hadn’t had no sleep.