ame the stand
behind the Tagliamento;[52-4] the retreat still farther and the more
hopeful stand behind the Piave.[52-5] And with that I knew that the
First Ambulance Section was racing to the Italian front and that my
boy was driving one of the cars.

And behold it was now the year 1919 and the war was over and the
cablegram from Bordeaux, which read: "Sailing 13th Santa Angela 12 day
boat New York," was a week old.

Of course I met him. I left a director's meeting and vital engagements,
with indecent firmness, to meet that ship. At crack of dawn on a raw
morning in March I arose and drove miles to a freezing pier to meet it.
And presently, as I stood muffled in a fur coat, an elderly, grizzled,
small man, grim and unexhilarating--presently the soul of this
monotonous person broke into song. For out of the early morning, out
from behind a big anchored vessel near the pier, poked the nose of a
troop ship and lumbered forward, and her decks were brown with three
thousand soldiers--Americans of our victorious army coming home from
overseas.

It was a sight which none of us will ever see again. Out in the harbor
tugs were yelping, whistles blowing; the little fleet which had gone
down the bay to meet the incoming troops was screaming itself mad in a
last chorus of joyful welcome. And the good ship _Santa Angela_,
blessed old tub, rolled nearer till the lads on her, shouting, waving,
laughing, crying lads could be seen separately, and she had rounded the
corner into the slip and was mere yards from the dock.

And then the boy came down the gangplank and I greeted him as is my
ungracious way, as if he had been off on a sailing trip. But he knew,
and he held to me, the tall fellow, with his arm around my shoulder
unashamed, and from that moment to this in the den he had hardly let me
out of his sight.

After dinner that night I settled back in deep satisfaction and lighted
a fresh cigar. And the boy, standing before the blazing logs, which
kept up a pleasant undertone to the music of his young voice, began.

"You know, Uncle Bill, we were blamed proud to be Red Cross when we
knew what was doing about Italy. It was plumb great. You know it all
of course. But I saw it. No worse fight ever--in all history. Towns
turned into a rolling river of refugees. Hungry, filthy, rain-soaked,
half-clad--old, babies, sick--a multitude pitiful beyond words--stumbling,
racing down those mountain trails, anyhow--to get anywhere--away."