Bill Fitzgerald
The camp is quiet. A long trek to the site and then an evening of drink had left the men in a fugue state. They staggered to the edges of the Marne and washed out, the river flowing steadily down the hillside and cooling them down. They then fell asleep on its banks under the stars. A few soldiers were on the edge of the wood, taking the night shift, staring out of the greenery of the hillside where the Marine division had set up camp. Morris stood alone at the edge of the forest. Where he sits, there is a precipitous contrast between the greenery of the hillside as it sweeps down into the valley, and the Belleau which rises in its wake ; a stark belt of trees knifing their ways through the moonlit night and into the teary heavens above. For battle is in the wind.
Morris sits, barely taking note of the rifle pressed up to his chest, reminiscing on that glorious day just three months ago! When he had found out about the birth of his newest son, Walter! He could not stop dreaming about him. How greatly he wanted to see his round little face! Memories with him moistened the dry, and quelled the joint pain that tested the toughness of some of the Marine's finest. The Wartime reality had arrived the following week in the news. Tsar Nicholas II had left the throne, ending the reign of the Romanov dynasty and the war on the eastern German front. A fear of the stagnated battle on the eastern front shifting to the German forces favor swept the Allied powers, and Morris was crammed beneath great sheets of metal the following month, in the USS Massachusetts, the second finest battle ship uncle woody would recommission that month. What a man he was! Woodrow wilson. To be Finished.