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Now, Padre, I have told you the great thing. What does it matter what happens to me, if only Jack Curtis's "feeling" comes true? It is two days since I wrote, Padre; and I have come back to Compiègne from a world of unnatural silence and desolation. Day before yesterday it was Roye and Nesle; the Château of Ham; Jussy, Chauny and Prince Eitel Friedrich's pavilion.
Even the sky, which had been blue and bright, was gray over Jussy, and the grayest of gray things were the immense "saucisses" three or four of them hanging low under the clouds like advertisements of titanic potatoes, haughtiest of war-time vegetables. Dierdre O'Farrell inadvertently called the big bulks "saucissons," which amused our officer guide so much that he laughed to tears.
Chauny is the sight most pitiful of all. Would you perhaps wish to avoid it?" "What about you, Mother?" Father Beckett wanted to know. But Mother had no wish to avoid Chauny. She was not able to believe that anything could be sadder than Roye, or Nesle, or Ham, or more grim than Jussy. "He doesn't want to take us to Chauny," Brian whispered to me.
C. Aeronatique, Noyon & D. C. 13. MY DEAR ROCKWELL: The targe element informs us that it has found, in the environs of the Bois l'Abbe, a Nieuport No. 2055. The aviator, a sergeant, has been dead since three days, in the opinion of the doctor. His pockets appear to have been searched, for no papers were found on him. The Bois l'Abbe is two kilometers south of Jussy.
The 26th Brigade had taken possession of Jussy, on the extreme right, thus maintaining the connection with Metz, but found it impossible to cross the deep valley of Rozerieulles.
But the sight gave me the same kind of icy shock I had when I first saw the moon's ravaged face through a huge telescope. You took me, Padre, so you'll remember. If you came to Jussy, and didn't know about the war, you'd think you had stumbled into hell or else that you were having a nightmare and couldn't wake up.
The walls of the usine have simply melted, and it's hard to realize that it as a building, put up by human hands for human uses, ever existed. There is a new Jussy, though, created since the German retreat; and seeing it, you couldn't help knowing that there was a war! The whole landscape is full of cannon, big and little and middle-sized.
"Mon mieux" was the motto St. Pol carved over the gateway; "Our worst" is the taunt the Germans have flung. But the combination of that best and worst is glorious to the eye. From Ham we spun on to Jussy, along the new white road which is so amazing when one thinks that every yard of it had to be created out of chaos a few months ago.
The above message received by us at ten o'clock last night. Jussy is on the main road between Saint Quentin and Chauny. I expect to go back to the infantry soon. Sincerely, E. A. MARSHALL. Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182, March 25, 1917.
The first line was only three miles away, and the place is under bombardment, but this was what our guide called a "quiet day," so there was only an occasional mumble and boom. The town was destroyed, wiped almost out of existence, save for heaps of rubble which might have been houses or hills. But there were things to be seen which would have made Jussy worth a long journey.
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