No sooner had "Hamlin" left our room, reclad in his dirty uniform
and headed for certain punishment back at his camp, than Mr. Davis
proclaimed his intention to write the story.
"The best war story I ever knew!" he exclaimed.
Of course the young soldier did not see it as a drama in real
life, and he certainly did not comprehend that he might be playing
a part in what would be a tragedy in his own life. To him the
incident had no dramatic possibilities. He was merely a young man
who had been racked by exposure and suffering to a point where he
longed to escape a continuance of such hardship, and the easiest
way out of it seemed by way of deserting.
He was "fed up" on discomfort and dirt and cold, and harassed by
the effects of an ill-healed wound received in Flanders some
months before, and he wanted to go home.
The story, as Mr. Davis tells it in the following pages, is
complete as it stands. So far as he knew up to the time of his
death, there was no sequel. He died thinking of "Hamlin" as a
potential deserter who had been shamed out of his purpose to
desert and who had left, ungrateful and bitter with resentment at
his fellow Americans, who had persuaded him to go back to camp,
"take his medicine," and "see it through."
The Hotel "Hermes" is probably no more. Only a few days ago the
news came that all of the water-front of Salonika, a district
stretching in splendid array from the "White Tower" to the Customs
House, had been wiped out by a tremendous fire.
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