Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1915 — In the Path of Battle [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

In the Path of Battle

By Kathryn Jarboe

(Copyright, The Frank A. Munaejr Co.) Under the yellow AugUßt sunlight the fields lay deserted; here & scythe leaning against a half-completed stack, there a sickle rusting on the stubble. The twilight fell upon deserted hearths where women, with trembling fingers, cooked their scanty meals. The round, full moon looked down upon scattered homes where only the children slept, where the women wept and shuddered and waited. For the men had marched away tinder the brilliant, flaunting colors. None had been too old to go, none too young. Their lips had shouted the raucous notes, the valiant words — Honneur, Patrie, Gloire —but every eye was wet, every heart heavy with despair ind terror. Bibi had watched them go, the tiny staff in his clenched fingers beating time to the brave music, to the hurrying feet, but, in the nameless terror that had descended upon the land, he clung to the old grandmother’s hand and, when all were gone—father, uncle, brother—he flung himself sobbing upon the ground. The woman, left alone in the world save for the small grandchild, watched with eyes too old for tears until there was no longer even a cloud of dust upon the horizon; then she turned and hobbled into the empty house, leaving the child still lying there upon the lonely road. Before the hearth she sat, seeing the long procession of all the others who, under that same tricolor, had marched out, away from her life, never to return. Hours later, when Bibi came in, his little tragedy all forgotten, his face reflecting only the golden glory of the summer day, he found her sitting there, dry-eyed, her shriveled lips muttering prayers -for those already dead, for those about to die. Into her shaking hands'he thrust his offering—a nosegay of bluets, the color of the sky, of field-poppies, a flame of*red, and mullein, white with the dust of the road —the tricolor that had taken from them grandfather, father, husband and sons. A’ choking sob slipped across her lipß and she flung the flowers from her on to the hearth, where the red petals of the poppies lay in mimicry of the fire that might never again blaze thereon.

Days passed; only a few —Bibi could not count them, "Mere Craquette would not. The heavy-headed blades of grain lay prone upon the ground, ungarnered by the hands that were too tiny, the hands that were too old. There were others, of course, in that deserted land, as lonely as these two, but there were no other quite so helpless—a child of six, a grandam of eighty-six. Indoors, the woman cduld only sit and pray. Out of doors, the child played with his flowers —bluets, bits of the sky, poppies, red as blood, and mullein, a dried and ghastly white. The short-lived poppies drooped and fell to the earth, the mullein grumbled to dust, only the bluets were left. 4nd then there dawnpd the day of horror. For hours of light and darkness the roar of cannon had the universe, for hours of light and darkness the grandmother had knelt quivering and trembling before the crucifix. At daybreak the low horizon stretched —a long line of fire and smoke; flames licking up the parched fields with the hovels that stood in their midst, black smoke creeping like a pall across the sky. In the gray light before the sun had risen Mere Craquette stood in the doorway and watched the oncoming devastation, a foeman that feet, however young and agile, might not outdistance, that no human hand might stay. Clutching Bibi by the wrist, she re-entered the house and closed- the door. , Better to die crouched before the cross, with suppliant hands upon its succoring feet, than to be caught creeping and crawling through the fields of matted grain. Fbr a little time Bibi lay quiet in her arms, listening to the ever-in-creasing roar, watching the light that even now was redder than any rays of sunlight .that had ever flooded the windows of his home. Soon, though, he grew restless { and slipped away from the feeble, hands that, with the passing of all things earthly, had almost forgotten to hold him. Out of doors the horizon was still only a line of red* and black, and Bibi could not know that it was a score of miles nearer to his home than it had been a short hour before. Here and there above the broken gra|n there waved a tiny flag of blue. Upon hi# baby lips fragments of “Honneur, Gloire, Patrie,” he ran to and fro gathering his beloved bluets. Tired, stifled by the heat, the source of which he could not understand, he sat down at thje edge of the road. And now there was a new sound in the air —not the deadly roar of the cannon that had thundered for .two whole days, not the rush of 'flame, bat a steady, rhythmic throb that, with every instant, grew nearer and loader. Bibl’s mind, already confused by the difficult breaths he drew, could net

tell at first whether it was (he feet of men or horses that he heard. He stood up, tottering a little, but still rfntohiiig in his hands his bluets. Then he saw. rushing lowa upon him, horses, more horses than in all his life he had ever seen and, mounted on them, men, different from any men • that he bad ever beheld. Did he 'ook for the tricolor? Did he know that only under the tricolor might friends be found? High above his yellow head he held the bluets. , Perhaps it was only fate, perhaps was the God to whom the grandmere’a prayers were rising, but the man who saw the baby hands and the blue cornflowers was the man of war. A sudden word and there was a sudden halt cf all the pounding hoofs. Bending down from his horse, the man of war took the blossoms, and on his lips waa a word the childish ears had never ; heard spoken in a tongue he could not understand: “Kalserblumen!” “Honneur, Patrie, Gloire.” The valiant words rested curiously upon the baby lips, but in an Instant the intellect before which the entire world waa trembling understood. Honor —GloryFatherland —the same in every heart — for which every man must lay down his life, whatever helpless atom he might leave behind him. There were orders quick and clear and then the pounding hoofß passed on, but around the fields of Mere Craquette was a double cordon composed of the flower of the army, the emperor’s personal staff. It was theirs to obey, whether it might be a phalanx of fellow creatures that was to he mowed dowjl, whether it might be a conflagration lighted by their own torches that was to be stayed. The August moon was well past the full, only a little crescent of gold that

preceded by a few hours the rising of the sun. It looked down upon & scorched and smoldering territory. To the north, to the south, to the east and west it stretched, but in the center stood Bibl’s home, the small thatched cottage, surrounded by its field of grain, trampled, perhaps, a little under the feet of its zealous defenders —fallen here and there —hut sheltering everywhere clusters of blossoms blue as heaven Itself, Bibi’s bluets, the “Kaiserblumen” beloved by the man of war.

Watched the Oncoming Devastation.