VII
GOOD-BYS AND THE SUBMARINE ZONE
In retrospect those who got home may wonder at the quiet force of the regret that crowded those farewell hours. As that philospher of ours had said, “War is saying goodby." And good-bys are seldom easy.
Since most of the regiment couldn't go to town, families came down; and wives, mothers, sweethearts don't speed their nearest on to battle with dry eyes.
These final farewells were given as far as practicable a just proportion of the last rushed days. From morning to night the hostess houses were filled with women, soberly clothed, who knitted, and, for the most part, sat silently, glancing up each time a brown clad figure hurried in.
Towards the end they learned the way to the barracks, and sat in noisy, cluttered mess halls. At each opportunity their men would sit with them. One marveled at the lack of words. There seemed nothing left to say except good-by.
At night in the dusk of the station this unnatural repression would be momentarily destroyed; shattered, as it were, by an unavoidable release of emotion too long subdued.
Always the long trains filled slowly, for the passengers, as a rule, waited until the last minute, huddled in the pen-like enclosure beyond which soldiers might not pass. From it arose a perpetual monotone, like a wind in heavy pines—the last effort at repression, the farewells of those who only dared whisper.
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