Unknown soldier

“ It is a common weakness of humanity to ask the questions that can never be answered in this life. Probably none to whom the drama of the Unknown Soldier has appealed has not wondered who, in the sunshine of earth, was the protagonist of today's ceremony. ”

“ Know that every time one perceives a fault of his own and resolves to avoid it for the future, he gains a great reward; and as often as he keeps himself from falling into it again for My sake, he does Me as much honor as a valiant soldier does his king, when he fights manfully against his enemies and conquers them. ”

“ All therefore who did not return to the regiment or dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as "Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses. The evidence of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare report a soldier dead on the strength of it. During an attack a man is in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses are not entirely reliable. ”

“ A dun cloud of dust rolls skyward along a well-worn cavalry trail, and is whirled into space by the hoofs of sixty panting chargers trotting steadily south. Sixty sunburned, dust-covered troopers ride grimly on, following the lead of a tall soldier whose kind brown eyes peer anxiously from under his scouting-hat. It is just as they pass the village of the prairie dogs that he points to the low valley down to the front and questions the "plainsman" who lopes along by his side,—
"That Black Cañon down yonder?" ”

“ I shall not easily forget the sadness of the man's face,—a young face with very dark, dog-like eyes. There was nothing smart about him; he was indeed rather more dirty than even a travel-stained soldier from Poland had any right to be. As I looked at him I thought of the countless numbers of German soldiers whose lives had been sacrificed in vain efforts to capture the French position at Arras. ”

“ If he is discovered, and attempts to escape, he may be shot in the process; but if he is captured, he must be treated as a prisoner of war and not as a spy. 'B', another soldier, speaking the enemy language, disguises himself as an officer of the enemy forces, and in this disguise penetrates behind the lines and mixes with the enemy troops. ”

“ He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky out of the mess. He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say of him. The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never risen to the surface before. Wherever there were wounded and dying men he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment. When a man fell in No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an eye to bring him in. ”

“ They were trenches in another landscape from those the memory of which lay like a scar across his soul. At the entrance to the sandbagged, wrecked farmhouse which served him as a home, the soldier courrier was in the act of extracting letters from his wallet. The Colonel took the bundle destined for him. At the sight of the topmost envelope he stopped as though he had seen a ghost. With trembling fingers he tore it open, read:
My hero! I understood! I understood! Oh, didn't you know I understood? How grand you are—more than a man! ”

“ A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier’s instinct told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid which had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital ”

“ Men imagine they see things, and frequently make mistakes in identity. I have known many cases in which a man has sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the missing man's body has afterwards been found near the German lines. The eye-witness simply mistook one man for another. No end of pain to relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.
Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners ”

“ He’ll see what’s amiss,” and as she spoke a tall man in the fatigue uniform of an officer of infantry shouldered his way through the crowd, and reached the blue-coated quartette in the center. Up went the hands to the shouldered rifles in salute, and the young soldier, the cause of all the gathering which the police were now trying to disperse, whirled quickly, and with something suspiciously like tears in his fine dark eyes, was seen to be eagerly speaking to the veteran officer. There was a brief colloquy, and then the colonel said something to the sergeant at which the crowd set up a cheer. ”

“ Duty now recalled me to my patients at the hospital.
My hands and dress and feet were bloody, and I felt sick with horror.
As I was recrossing the battle-field accompanied by Dr. Welford, of Virginia, the same terrible scenes were presented to the view. The ground was littered with the accoutrements of soldiers,—carbines, pistols, canteens, haversacks, etc. Two cannon lay overturned, near one of which lay a dead Federal soldier still grasping the rammer. Beneath the still struggling horses lay human forms just as they had fallen. ”

“ About daybreak we arrived at a hahn, where we found the ambulance again, and the Commandant and the Captain [95] got their horses there, and we all walked, and later on rode, up and up a winding road, up a mountain. It was bitterly cold, and every few yards we passed horrible looking corpses of bullocks, donkeys and ponies, with the hides and some of the flesh stripped from them; sometimes there were packs, ammunition and rifles thrown away by the roadside, but very, very few of the latter; a soldier is very far gone indeed before he will part with that. ”

“ THE HUNTED SOLDIER.
The sun was just rising, and his red beams gilded the summits of the Alleghany Mountains, which in the glory of the early morning seemed as calm and peaceful as if their lofty heights had never looked 305down upon scenes of carnage and strife, or their tangled passes and dark ravines sheltered poor, starving, frightened wretches, fleeing for their lives, and braving death in any form rather than be recaptured by their merciless pursuers. ”

“ The flask which Hero brought was marked in the same way, and the Major buckled it to his collar, saying, as he fastened first that and then the shoulder-bags in place, "When a dog is in training, soldiers, pretending to be dead or wounded, are hidden in the woods or ravines and he is taught to find a fallen body, and to bark loudly. If the soldier is in some place too remote for his voice to bring aid the dog seizes a cap, a handkerchief, or a belt,—any article of the man's clothing which he can pick up,—and dashes back to the nearest ambulance." ”

“ Any day, any soldier who sauntered down the grass-grown moles, any carabineer riding along the solitary shores, might hear some story from a shepherd, or a hunter, or a charcoal-burner, some hint that might awaken suspicion and bring mounted troopers over the moors and the gleam of gun-barrels amongst the thickets of briar rose and myrtle. ”

“ A small body of troops, not more than a platoon, showed up very badly against the dark background; even as I looked again they had disappeared among the trees. To the left of the white house, beyond the road and beyond the beetroot fields, the thick brushwood which skirts the cultivated ground becomes more open, and here the sun throws a gleam of light. Here, it seemed, were many shadows. At that moment German snipers, unknown to us, were already lying somewhere on the edge of the wood. The sound of bullets is most alarming when wholly unexpected. ”

“ He knew so much about war, arms, tents, knapsacks, ammunition, marching, fighting, camping, cooking, shooting, and everything a soldier is and does. It is remarkable how much a recruit and how little an old soldier knows about such things. After a while the recruit forgets all, and is as ignorant as any veteran. ”

“ The soldier, horror stricken, in vain endeavours to draw out his lance from the struggling mass. The soldier pulls and swears, the grave man raves and tugs at the soldier's arm, the spectators are all astonishment, and the officer darts wildly to the rescue. ”

“ My soul is crying for a dead soldier.
“Kneel ye down, lest your eyes should dare them,
Kneel ye down and your beads be saying.”
“Lord, on their heads Thy wrath deliver,”
This is the prayer that my lips are praying,
My heart is praying for a dead soldier.
“Best cheer the path of the men victorious,
For he is dead and his blade lies broken,
His march is far where no aid can follow,
And for his people he left no token,
He left no token, the dead soldier.”
The way of the sword a man can follow,
See the young child with his gold hair gleaming. ”

“ It is to be a sham battle to amuse us. See, they are aiming their guns at one another!”
And as he spoke the Rag Doll looked and saw the two companies of Tin Soldiers ready to take part in a battle.
“Oh, hold me! Hold me!” whispered the Rag Doll to the Calico Clown. “I know I am going to faint!”
CHAPTER II SAVING THE CLOWN
“Ready! Take aim! Fire!” cried the Bold Tin Soldier Captain.
“Bang! Bang!” cracked the tin guns, some in the hands of one “army” and some shot off by the other “army.” The Soldiers had divided themselves into two “armies,” to give a make-believe fight to amuse the other toys. ”

“ They are going to do something else,” said the Monkey on a Stick.
And it did seem so, for part of the Soldiers, shouldering their guns, marched to one end of the toy counter, and the others, with their Captain at their head, remained near the pile of blocks.
“Are you ready?” asked the Captain of a Sergeant who had charge of the second half of the tin soldiers.
“All ready, sir!” was the answer.
“Load! Aim! Fire!” suddenly cried the Captain.
“Oh, they are going to shoot! Oh, it’s going to be war! There is going to be a battle!” cried the Rag Doll. ”

“ Just what happened on their trip from the store of course the Captain and his men did not know. They could feel themselves being jiggled about, and at one time they were put on the seat of an automobile, though they did not know it. And finally they were set down with a jingle and a jangle, the guns of the men rattling against the tin legs of the soldiers, and the sword of the Captain tinkling in its scabbard.
“Now I’ll have some fun with my Soldiers!” cried the boy, whose name was Arnold. ”

“ The Adjutant went at once to the rescue of his Sergeant-Major, but his horse was shot, and before he could get disengaged from his charger he was cut down; the wounded Sergeant-Major rushed to the assistance of his officer, but was felled to the earth like a bullock with the butt end of a rifle. A strong guard was looking on all the time, but would not interfere. ”

“ To the silently observant volunteer, on the other hand, it was just as odd to note that when a gray-haired veteran sergeant, issuing from the guard-house, caught sight of a trig, alert little fellow, with beardless face and boyish features and keen, snapping dark eyes, hastening towards him in the garb of a lieutenant of cavalry, the veteran was suddenly transformed into a rigid statue in light blue, standing attention and at the salute—a phenomenon that extracted from the infant officer only a perfunctory touch of finger to cap visor and not so much as a glance. ”

“ It is only brave men, like our Bold Captain and his men, who know how to use swords and guns,” he concluded.
“Thank you,” said the Captain, waving his shiny sword. “We are glad you liked our drill and make-believe fight. Form in line, ready to go back to your box, my men,” he went on.
Led by the Sergeant, under whom some of them had fought in the pretended battle, the Tin Soldiers formed in line, ready to march back to the box in which they were kept on the toy counter. ”

“ Always we asked whether they knew of any wounded. We found a wounded soldier groaning under the hedge. One leg was soaked in blood and he gave little shrill desperate cries as we lifted him on to the stretcher. Another soldier, lying on the road in the moonlight, murmured incessantly: "Bojé moi! Bojé moi! Bojé moi!" But they were all ghosts. We alone, in that familiar and yet so unreal world, were alive. When a stretcher was filled, four sanitars turned back with it to the wagons, and we were soon a very small party. ”

“ The conditions in the trenches were dreary in the extreme after the drenching and long-continued rainfall, but the irrepressible spirits of the “Pals” were not yet entirely quenched when the order came to leave the trenches.
“Hurry up out of this, my gallant soldiers,” was the cheery call of the sergeant to his waist-deep and rain-sodden men.
“Soldiers!” came the derisive answer from one of them. “I’m not a soldier; I’m a blooming bulrush!” ”

“ And game he was, too, for he got him safely away, and the officer, to show his gratitude, made the man a present of his revolver and a silver flask. When the soldier rejoined his regiment they took the revolver away; but he kept the flask as a memento, carefully wrapped up in all sorts of things, very proud of the gift from the officer, who had said, “I shall never forget you!” The officer was mortally [60] wounded, and died before they could get him into the hospital ship.
It was round Chocolate Hill that we made our queerest find of all—women snipers. ”

“ The soldier does not seem to feel pangs of sorrow when arms clash the loudest; he does not see danger and suffering and ghastly sights until all is over and quiet restored. Those who are unacquainted with the mental condition of the soldier in time of battle, wonder and ask why it is that those whom he knows so intimately are wounded and many times killed by his side without knowing the nature of their wounds or the circumstances of their death. ”