The Rest of the Story—July 15–August 17, 1918
ARES
THE WAR GROUND ON. The Germans’ last big push, the Champagne-Marne Offensive, or the Second Battle of the Marne, had ended in crushing defeat for Germany. At a total cost of a quarter million casualties, dead and wounded.
Both James and Aubrey saw combat in the battle, many miles apart on the Western Front. James had been reassigned to Britain’s Tenth Army under General Charles Mangin. He was sorry not to be back with his old friends, but that couldn’t be helped.
James arrived at the Front just when the battle began. A seasoned veteran, a deadly shooter, he fought like an Aegean warrior. Not because he loved a battle, but because it gave him the best chance of coming home.
I wish I could say that he fought without fear. That he felt impervious to danger, after all he’d been through. But the battle was brutal. Death on every side. If he hadn’t had his girl to think of, and his family back home, he never would’ve have made it.
Aubrey, too, fought like a dragon. This was the worst combat he’d seen by far. All the 369th men were dragons on the battlefield. Giants. Hoplites. Of them, 171 would receive the Croix de Guerre from the French. “Les Hommes de Bronze,” they called them. “Blutlustige Schwarzmänner.” German for “bloodthirsty black men.”
I don’t know about “bloodthirsty,” but you didn’t want to be a Jerry who fell into a Harlem Rattler’s trench. You definitely didn’t want to be a Jerry who took a Harlem Hellfighter prisoner. They’d be coming after you, and they always got their man.
They fought as one. They fought how they played in Lieutenant Europe’s band. Experience breeds unity; a band of soldiers who have fought the same enemy, the same war, together, for their entire lives, understands unity. As did their parents and grandparents before them.
APHRODITE
I never said I wouldn’t tell the rest of the story, Ares.
Colette and Hazel were back chopping cabbage and onions at Compiègne. Hazel had been apprehensive. The German who’d assaulted her stalked her nightmares. She and Colette began their second sojourn at the concentration camp by meeting with the guards and sergeants in charge and putting them on alert that they expected their safety, and that of all workers, to be assured. The camp directors were so understaffed and so grateful that the girls had returned that they accepted all terms without argument. Hazel watched but never saw a sign of her assailant.
Compiègne was close to Soissons, where James was posted. Letters flew back and forth between them almost as fast as telegrams. Though the echo of guns was louder, she had such frequent letters from James that she never wondered for long if he was all right.
When the battle ended, James wrote to let Hazel know that he’d have half a day of rest and relaxation the following Saturday. Was there any way she could come spend it with him? The same day, a letter arrived from Aubrey saying he would have the following Monday off. So the girls concocted a plan. They would don their old YMCA uniforms and travel by troop train to the depot nearest to James’s sector. He would meet them there. They’d spend a few marvelous hours together. Then Colette and Hazel would take the spur line back to a main artery that would lead them toward Verdun. They’d travel Sunday and spend Monday with Aubrey.
It was wicked and daring and harmless and so simple. They boarded the train in Compiègne without opposition and sweated their way through the short ride in the August heat to their meeting place. Seeing how no one seemed to care whether they were with the YMCA or with the circus, they peeled off their wool uniform coats. As the train approached the depot near Soissons, Hazel borrowed a mirror and comb from Colette to neaten herself up. She was too excited to feel the heat.
James waited at the depot for their train to arrive. He felt jumpy with anticipation. These few weeks apart felt longer than the entire war.
He mopped the sweat off his brow and searched for anything in this scorched earth that could give a chap some shade.
ARES
The occasional rumble of guns in the distance was as normal now as traffic in the city or birds in the country. James barely noticed it.
The track began vibrating. He saw smoke and heard the engine’s song. Here she comes!
Inside their passenger car, Hazel looked up.
“Nearly there,” she told Colette. “The train’s slowing to a stop.”
From nowhere, a rush of air knocked James to the ground. Then came the whine, after the shell itself. From a long-range gun. The Long Max. Thirty-eight centimeters.
The explosion shook the earth beneath him. The geyser of dirt rained down upon train track. Smoke and flames roared upward from what remained of the train.
HADES
The engine and the first two cars were annihilated.
The cars beyond buckled and crashed into one another.
Soldiers and war workers were thrown all about the cars.
Shards of glass from shattered windows flew like shrapnel.
Colette emerged unscathed, for Hazel had thrown her body over her friend’s.
James found Colette holding on to Hazel, rocking her like an infant. As though she’d only gone to sleep. As though she could be persuaded to wake up.
“It’s my fault,” she repeated. “It was wrong of me to love her. I had no right to do it.” She gulped and keened. “La guerre takes everyone I love from me. She won’t even spare me Hazel. I never should have made myself her friend.”
James the battle veteran, arriving on the scene, knew what to do. Apply pressure to the bleeding and summon a medic. Clear airflow, release tight clothing.
James the boy from the parish dance was lost in the fog of a dark world, searching everywhere for one who would not be found.