To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [385]
Pershing nodded slowly and Joffre said, “John, it is time for you to stand aside. You and I made their war. We must trust others to make the peace.”
“It would have been better if they had allowed us to finish the job.”
LA ROCHETTE, LUXEMBOURG—DECEMBER 1, 1918
IT WAS ONE MORE MARCH THROUGH THE MISERY OF THE FREEZING rain. The division had been ordered to move north, passing through the southeastern corner of Belgium, establishing camp on the Sauer River, which divided Luxembourg and Germany. There they would wait a week, while the entire army of occupation made ready to cross as one unified mass into German territory.
Temple’s feet were more than sore. He suffered from deep blisters, bandaged and smeared thick with ointment from the medical wagon. Most of the men were footsore. It was only one of the aftereffects of the bloody crossing of the footbridges over the Meuse River, every uniform soaked, every boot filled with muddy water. In the days that followed the armistice, the weather had been as bad as any they had seen before, made worse by the sharp cold that often turned the rain to sleet. There was no dry place, few meals that were much warmer than the men who suffered through them, more corned beef and salmon and cornmeal mush.
When the order came, Temple had awakened to a new chorus of cursing, an outpouring of misery voiced by too many of the men who had only recently arrived. The replacements were coming still, even after the armistice, rebuilding the division back to full strength, a reminder that no matter the celebrations, an armistice was not, after all, a peace treaty. Despite the low tolerance for discomfort shown by the new men, the veterans saw the march for what it was. For the first time, the infantrymen and Marines would march to some new place knowing that this time, no one would be shooting at them.
NEAR AHRWEILER, GERMANY—DECEMBER 8, 1918
The Second Division was to man one of the three primary bridgeheads across the Rhine River, alongside the First and Thirty-second Divisions. The bridgeheads had been defined by the terms of the armistice, each one a zone of occupation that extended in an arc twenty miles east of the river. The American sector was the crossing at Koblenz, a picturesque city perched alongside the great river, which would be their home for as long as it took for a final peace treaty to be signed.
They marched again through rain that Temple believed might never stop. The wide road was coated with an oozing pool of slippery mud, aggravating the pain in his feet, torturing the sore legs of every man in the column. He had limped along with the men around him, the exhaustion in each of them increased by the burden they carried. Besides their backpacks and blankets, they had been ordered to carry extra bandoliers of ammunition, an order born of caution, the senior command’s uncertainty that here, in the towns and villages where the enemy might suddenly make a stand, the men had best be prepared. As the Second Division marched deeper into Germany, they knew that not so far in front of them, the enemy was moving in the same direction, heading for home. The roadsides gave hints of the condition of the German soldiers, scattered heaps of cast-off equipment, rags that had once been coats, the occasional carcass of a horse that had been starved and driven to death. But the villages showed no sign of the war, no shell holes peppering the roads, no shattered houses or blasted orchards. The people gathered in small crowds, stoic, unsmiling, but there were no outcries or hostile displays, no displays at all. The German civilians seemed thin, underfed, their mood as despairing as the French refugees Temple had seen so many times before. The fields were empty of life, brown and barren. There were almost no young men, something else these people had in common with the French, the faces of the women mostly sad and empty, the old people bent and fragile. But in every village, Temple was surprised to see children, a great