When the Light Failed
One Soldier Tells What It Is Like to Have Eyes Shot Out
You may not think this a story of heroism; but if it does not fall into that class we do not know where to place it. There is no attacking a plane in mid-air and sending it crashing to earth; no leaping into trench and gathering a score or so of prisoners with the tilt of a bayonet; no running to stand on a parapet and hurl hand grenades against a rain of bullets; nothing to set your blood into a gallop to grip you and make you take off your hat to the man about whom Private Jesse A. Whaley, Co. K, 310th Inf., A. E. F., is writing. And this is what Whaley wrote as it appeared in the New York Sunday Times:
“It is dark, the ground is damp and cold. There are men stirring about cleaning their rifles and there is a queer look on their faces. One private is sitting huddled in the trench; he is cold, he is hungry with that gnawing feeling in his stomach which comes from lack of food for many hours. He moves restlessly, thousands of things pass through his mind; home, loved ones. Suddenly a whistle sounds at our right and there is a rushing of men. There is but a second’s wait; it is the signal for the fight. It is now midnight, the men move to and fro, they disappear. When we come upon them again they are all lined up waiting for the barrage to start just outside of the wood. Does it seem possible that these men are the same who just a few minutes ago were sitting in the trench back in the wood? The barrage starts and the scene is lit with the strangest light our eyes ever saw. There is a roar in our cars, and suddenly all is dark with a blackness the eye cannot pierce. A flare breaks in the sky, lighting the strange scene which lies before us. To our right lies a valley in which are many more men. We see flashes of rifles, and now and again a flare shoots up, disclosing a clump of bushes which means almost certain death to those who approach it.”