Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1918 — TELLS OF WILD MOTOR RIDE OVER A SHELL-SWEPT ROAD [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF WILD MOTOR RIDE OVER A SHELL-SWEPT ROAD

By CLARENCE B. KOLLAND.

Paris. —A man can be only so brightened. After that he dies suddenly, or laughs, or both. Also, no matter how scared you are, curiosity survives. If a shell is coming, you want to see it land. If it is going to swat you, you •want to see how it goes about It. ' We were going back from the front —back. The battle was behind us. Privately each one of us didn’t care how vnuclj farther behind us it got. It could pick up its belongings and move away-from us as fast as we were moving away from it if it wanted. Nobody would hear a protest from any of us. At a crossroads our meteoric progress was halted by a young and severe soldier with M. P. on his sleeve. “You can’t pass,” he said; “they’re shelling the foad ahead." He didn’t need to tell us. We knew it. As a matter of fact we could have told him things about that road being shelled that he would never know. A shell came screaming over our heads to “wham” down alongside the road a hundred yards beyond. It wasn’t a big shell. In a calmer moment, and at a greater distance, I might have admitted that it was a little shell, an Insignificant shell, a negligible three-inch shell. But when it went over my head I was willing to take oath that it was a 42 centimeter. When I was dug out of the ditch into which I had dived and the mud scraped, out of my eyes I took a last look down the road. Cap as Shock Absorber. Something was paining me in the region of the knees. Also there was a sound resembling that made by Brother Bones, in the minstrel show. Minute examination demonstrated that the pain was caused by the knees assaulting each other venomously. I stuck my cap between them as a shock Absorber and looked again. It was a busy little road. It was not u popular road. Everybody on it had taken a dislike to it and was moving away with enthusiasm. In the distance were three German prisoners and one American private. The private was on a horse. It looked a very fast horse, but the Germans were having trouble with it. It kept getting in their way. They stumbled over it. “Wham” came another shell. It’s explpsion was almost drowned out by the sounds of concussion at my side. They were caused by the beating together of the knees of the driver of the Y. M. C. A. car and by those of a buck private. Their note was different, and the meter dissimilar, but the air was much the same. I could not quite make out which accomplished the most knocks to the minute, nor which was. loudest. ' Several "ration carts were approaching. It was no slow, dignified, matronly progress. Anybody who believes a team of mules Is Incapable of speed should have been there to see. The ration carts were filled with hard tack. The hard tack was as scared as anything else, and was trying to keep up to the cart—but it was but of luck. It bad no arms to hang on with. The air was full of hard tack. It flowed out behind those aation carts like a ribbon. It was a snowstorm of hard tack, and nobody paused to ask where tt fell. Ditches Are Popular. Every ditch was unbelievably popular. It didn’t have-to be a deep ditch nor a clean ditch. Any common or garden variety of ditch would do. A six-foot man was perfectly able to conceal himself in a six-inch ditch. Heads would poke up, and another shell would land. Immediately it would become a scene of desolation, a lifeless waste. After awhile an airplane went oyerbead to locate the battery that was causing all the rumpus. Then the battery stopped. “Go ahead,” said the M. P. ‘They’re through now.” He is the last M. P. I shall ever believe. This is positive. He meant well, and spoke the truth according to his lights, but his light* were dim. We

started, and we continued. We continued so rapidly that the scenery looked like a green fog, for Fritz was not through. A shell landed alongside the road and a telephone wire dropped across our faces. If it had been a range of mountains it wouldn’t have stopped us. People who saw us pass will never know what we were. It will remain a mystery to them to their-dying days. We were a pale streak, a very pale streak. We were not traveling for pleasure, we were on business. Our .immediate business was to go away from there, and our next immetyate business was to fill the flivver with cigarettes and chocolate from the Y. M. C. A. warehouse and get it back to the boys back there. It was several kilometers to the warehouse, but we did It in ten flat by the watch, arriving Ln a state of profound" calm. We were not ruffled. Nobody would have known we were excited except for a few minor matters. Of course we were knocking splinters off our teeth with the chattering we felt it our duty to do; we were a trifle pale, say as pale as fresh snow. Aside from this with our hearts beating so they sounded like a dilapidated camion engine, with our hair standing out like spines on an angry porcupine, our appearance and bearing were normal. “Going Back?” “Sure.” With nonchalance we filled our tonneau with supplies. “Going back?" somebody asked. The driver looked at me and I looked at the driver. “Back?” said he. “Oh, he means back,” I said easily. "You understand back. That way.” ‘They’re shelling the road,” said the manager of the warehouse. “Indeed,” said L “Shelling? Why, we hadn’t noticed it. Regular shells? We just come down the road. It was peaceful —peaceful as a—cow pasture.” - “So you’re going right back, eh?” “Sure,” said the driver, standing with his legs far apart so his knees couldn’t hit. “Of course,” said I, hanging onto

the seams of my pants for the same reason. “Get in?* said he. . “ J never saw* a car so difficult to mount, so high to climb, but I got there. The driver cranked it and we started away with gay, nonchalant waves of the hand. We had to climb a hill. I suggested that maybe the engine needed a little tinkering before we tried .lt, but the driver thought ijot. I could have found troubles in that engine that would have held us there a week. But we went on. All of a sudden the air filled up with the holler of a shell. It busted vehemently, but I didn’t see It. I was where I couldn’t see, with my Mfead down among the control levers. A few pieces of roof apd debris settled on my back, but I was not annoyed. The more that settled there the better I would be protected. “Shall we go on?” the driver asked. *Tm just a passenger,” said I with steady courage. “I can’t jump out while you are moving—at this rate, anyhow.” Knew It Was a Roof. Another shell landed, this time on the roof at our very elbow so to speak. I didn’t have time to join the levers again, so I saw it. It landed on a roof, because I saw the roof just before it landed. I will never see that roof again. -Our acquaintance was brief. As I looked the roof moved away from there hastily. It sought divers destinations, many of which were in, at or around us. Tiles and plaster and dust filled the air. “Mister,” said I, “step on her. She’s standing still.” “We’re doing sixty an hour if we’re doing an inch,” he said. It was not true. I can prove it. It took us 12 minutes, actual count, to pass a tree. Afterwards the driver told me it wasn’t a tree, but a woods several kilometers long, but he was mistaken. I know a single tree when I see it, and I counted that tree again and again. “I hope,” I said, “that the soldiers get this tobacco. I hope they get it soon. Let’s see, they’re in dugouts, aren’t they? You don’t need to bother about taking it to them. I’ll do that I haven’t chatted with these boys for quite a while, and much as I dislike the closeness of a dugout I think I can sacrifice myself today arid stay down with them a little while. By the way, it’s a dugout with a Isn’t it?” “Mister,” said he gravely, “the naan that gits Into that dugout first is the fastest runner in the A. E. F.-Y. M. C. A.” Which was true. lam the champion sprinter.