It was quite as if the regiment had sailed away under
sealed orders. Metz and Nancy had been broadcasted
about as the objective of the 231st. But that
had been just a blind for German informers. For
the next communique mentioning the regiment came from
far to the west, where it had been hurried to hold
up the grave threat upon Paris. At Soissons the
gray-green advance rolled itself up against the red
and blue of the 231st.
Back and forth the battle line surged through the
old streets, now lurid with the light of blazing houses.
A shell falling on the town-hall fired this ancient
land-mark. A great flame-fountain burst up from
the heart of the city. “Rescue the archives!”
was the cry. For this, volunteers were called.
The dash of a sergeant and his men into the burning
hall and back again through the bullet-spattered streets
is related in the Journal Officiel. It tells of
the safe return of the archives, but of few survivors.
For impetuous valor in this exploit, the name of Sergeant
le Marchand was changed to Lieutenant le Marchand.
That was my last tidings of Marie and Robert, until
a year later a letter came to me in a shaky but familiar
hand. It had the post-mark of Hornell Sanitarium,
New York. It was from Marie, and one glance revealed
the tragedy. Briefly it was this:
In the attempted Champagne drive of 1915 the 231st
regiment was ordered to rush the barbed wire barricade
and drive a wedge into the enemy’s line.
At command Lieutenant le Marchand leaped from cover
to lead the charge of his men. Scarcely had he
uttered his cry, “En avant!” when he was
dropped in his tracks, a bullet through his brain.
Over his body, with revenge adding to their fury,
the regiment swept like mad. The trenches, a quarry
of prisoners, and the thrill of high praise from the
general were theirs—a triumph with a bitter
taste, for some, creeping back, had found their young
lieutenant crumpled where he fell, the moonlight cold
upon his blood-stained face. “In order
that France might live he was willing to close his
eyes upon her forever.” Curiously his sword
was sticking upright just as it had dropped from his
hand. They buried him where he lay upon the edge
of No-Man’s-Land. Tears were showered on
his grave, and on that fatal bullet many bitter curses.
But this does not complete the tale of murder wrought
by that slug of lead. Each plunging bullet blazes
its black trail of the spirit-killed.
A month later and three thousand miles away this German
missile struck the heart of an American girl with
a more cruel impact than it had struck the brain of
this lieutenant of France. She, too, crumpled
and fell upon the thorns. His had been a speedy,
painless death; one sharp electric stroke and then
the closing night. A like oblivion would have
been sweet to her. But she had to face it out
alone. Upon her torn heart were beaten a thousand
hammer-strokes, and through the endless nights she
bore the anguish of a thousand deaths.
