Paris, October 20, 1918

In the gray light of a misty morning, I had my last glimpse in wartime of the Verdun salient and of the shell-pitted route which had proved to be the life line of France. There were many fires glowing in the beleaguered city, but outside in the shadows the graveyard of half-a-million unburied Germans and as many gallant sons of France was veiled in a heavy mist. Overhead many invisible planes were droning about upon their deadly missions, and the roar of the never-ceasing bombardment made all conversation impossible. At first the road was fairly passable, and shunning shell holes and soft shoulders we progressed at the rate of five miles the hour, although we naturally gave the right of way to ambulances with their sad freight and to the on-coming convoys of munition trucks. But even before Souilly was reached we ran into traffic congestions which the frantic efforts of the exasperated French gendarmes could not straighten out.

Hour after hour we plugged along, enveloped and involved in the confusion and all the disarray in the rear of the armies. Indeed, when but five miles out from Rottentout we were forced to halt, all traffic being blocked by disabled lorries. We skirted through a field that was pitted with fresh shell holes, pushed up a hill, and there upon the crest there came to us a symbol of hope. An old woman was plowing. Harnessed to her unconquerable will and to her plow was an emaciated cow and a little barefooted girl.

“Hem,” she said, “I must get in my winter wheat, or else what shall we eat in the spring?” As we looked on, the whole strange outfit capsized into an unsuspected shell hole. We backed up and rescued her. With brief thanks she started another furrow. “I must get in my winter wheat,” she repeated. At last, we got back on the main road, and then simultaneously from Simpkins and myself came the words, “We should have no fear; France cannot die.”

Darkness had fallen when we reached the railhead, and but for the major general’s pennant flying over our car we would in all probability have spent the night on the road.