As one approaches the front-line cities and towns he learns something more about the lights o’ war.  It is dark.  He is in a little town and must go to another town nearer the front lines.  He is standing at the depot (gare).  No lights are visible save here and there an absolutely necessary red or green light, which is veiled dimly.  His train pulls silently in.  There is not a single light on it from one end to the other.  It creeps in like a great snake.  There is nobody to tell you whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into a compartment which is pitch-dark.

HEARS AMERICAN VOICE

You have a ticket that calls for first-class military compartment, but you climbed into the first open door you saw, and didn’t know and didn’t care whether it was first, second, third, or tenth class just so you got on your way.  Your eyes soon became accustomed to the darkness and you discerned two or three forms in the seat opposite you.  You wondered if they were French, Italians, Belgians, English, Australians, Canadians, Moroccans, Algerians, or Americans.  It was too dark to see, but suddenly you heard a familiar voice saying, “Gosh, I wish I was back in little ole New York,” and you made a grab in the darkness for that lad’s hand.

All during your trip no trainman appears.  You are left to your own sweet will at nights in the war zone when you are on a train.  No stations are announced.  You are supposed to have sense enough to know where you are going, and to have gumption enough to get off without either being assisted or told to do so.  The assumption, I suppose, is that anybody who travels in the war zone knows where he is going.  Personally, I felt like the American phrase, “I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on the way,” and I tried to jump off at two or three towns before I got to my own destination, but the American soldiers had been that way before on their way to the trenches, and wouldn’t let me off at the wrong place.  I thought surely that somebody would come along to take my ticket, but nobody appeared.  I soon found that night trains “on the line” pay little attention to such minor matters as tickets, and I have a pocketful that have never been taken up.  Time after time I have piled into a train at night, after buying a ticket to my destination; have journeyed to my destination, have gone through the depot and to my hotel without ever seeing a trainman to take the ticket.  I was let severely alone.  And even if a conductor had come along through the train it would have been too dark for him to have seen me, and I am sure I could have dodged him had I so desired.  Maybe that’s the reason they don’t take the tickets up.  Anyhow, I have given you a picture of a great train in the war zone, winding its way toward the front, in complete darkness.

FLASH-LIGHTS