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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl, by 
-Katharine Duncan Morse
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl
-
-Author: Katharine Duncan Morse
-
-Release Date: March 19, 2016 [EBook #51495]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNCENSORED LETTERS--CANTEEN GIRL ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Roger Frank, Sue Clark and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.bookcove.net.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE UNCENSORED LETTERS OF A CANTEEN GIRL
-
-NEW YORK
-
-HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
-
-1920
-
-
-
-
-Copyright, 1920
-
-By
-
-HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
-
-
-
-
-  TO
-  PAT
-  GATTS
-  BRADY
-  SNOW
-  NEDDY
-  BILL
-  NICK
-  HARRY
-  JERRY
-  and
-  THE REST
-  THIS BOOK
-  is
-  DEDICATED
-
-
-
-
-TABLE OF CONTENTS
-
-  I. BOURMONT—COMPANY A
-  II. GONCOURT—THE DOUGHBOYS
-  III. RATTENTOUT—THE FRONT
-  IV. GONDRECOURT—THE ARTILLERY
-  V. ABAINVILLE—THE ENGINEERS
-  VI. MAUVAGES—THE ORDNANCE
-  VII. VERDUN—THE FRENCH
-  VIII. CONFLANS—PIONEERS, M. P.’s AND OTHERS
-
-
-
-
-FOREWORD
-
-To M. D. M. and M. H. M:
-
-_My dears_,
-
-These letters were all written for you; scratched down on odds and ends
-of writing paper, in a rare spare moment at the canteen; at night, at my
-billet, by candle-light; in the mornings, perched in front of Madame’s
-fireplace with my toes tucked up on an ornamental _chaufrette_
-foot-warmer. Why were they never sent? Simply because all letters mailed
-from France in those days, must of course pass under the eyes of the
-Censor. And as the Censor was likely to be a young man who sat opposite
-you at the mess-table, it meant that one mustn’t say the things one
-could, and one couldn’t say the things one would. So, after my first
-fortnight over there I decided to write my letters to you just as I
-would at home, putting down everything I saw and thought and did, quite
-brazenly and shamelessly, and then keep them,—under lock and key if need
-be,—until I could give them to you in person.
-
-Written with the thought of you in my mind, these letters are first of
-all for you, and after that for whoever they may concern, being a true
-record of one girl’s experience with the A. E. F. in France during the
-Great War.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I: BOURMONT—COMPANY A
-
-
-Bourmont, France, Nov. 24, 1917.
-
-My village has red roofs. When I first came to France and saw that the
-villages were two kinds; those with red roofs and those with grey, I
-prayed _le bon Dieu_ that mine should be a red-roofed one. Heaven was
-kind. Every little house in town is covered with rose-colored tiles. We
-came here yesterday from Paris. Our orders, which were delivered to us
-in great secrecy, read: Report to Mr. T——, Divisional Secretary,
-Bourmont, Haute Marne; then followed a schedule of trains. That was all
-we knew except that some one told us that at Bourmont it had rained
-steadily all fall.
-
-“It cleared off for several hours once,” concluded our informant. “But
-that was in the middle of the night when nobody was awake to see.”
-
-Bourmont is a city set upon a hill, a hill that rises so sharply, so
-suddenly, that no motor vehicle is allowed to take the straight road up
-its side, but must follow the roundabout route at the back. Already we
-have heard tales about our hill; one of them being of a lad belonging to
-a company of engineers stationed here, who in a spendthrift mood, being
-disinclined to climb the hill one night after having dined at the café
-at its foot, bribed an old Frenchman with a fifty franc note to wheel
-him to the summit in a wheelbarrow. The Frenchman, for whose powers one
-must have great respect, achieved the feat eventually, the spectators
-agreeing the ride a bargain at the price.
-
-Two-thirds of the way up the hill on the steep street called grandiosely
-_Le Faubourg de France_ we have our billet, at the home of Monsieur and
-Madame Chaput. These are an adorable old couple; Madame a stately yet
-lovably gentle soul, Monsieur le Commandant, a veteran of the
-Franco-Prussian War and member of the _Légion d’Honneur_. His wonderful
-old uniforms with their scarlet trousers and gold epaulets rub elbows
-with my whipcord in the wardrobe.
-
-Outside, the Maison Chaput resembles all the other houses which, built
-one adjoining another, present a solid grey plaster front on each side
-of the street. Like all the rest it has two doors, one opening into the
-house and one into the stable, and like every other house on the street
-the doors bear little boards with the billeting capacity of house and
-stable stenciled on them, so many _Hommes_, so many _Off._ (for
-_Officiers_). It is told how one lad after walking the length of the
-street exclaimed;
-
-“Gee! Looks as if this were Dippyville. There’s one or two off in every
-house!”
-
-Another boy gazing ruefully at the sign on his billet door, groaned;
-
-“Twelve homes! Why, there ain’t one there!”
-
-One stable door nearby wears the legend in large scrawling letters;
-“Sherman was right.” At first the owner was furious at this defacement
-of his property, but when someone explained the significance of the
-words to him, he became mollified and even took a pride in them.
-
-“Where are you stopping?” asks one boy of another.
-
-“Me? Oh, at the Hotel de Barn, four manure-heaps straight ahead and two
-to the right.”
-
-The distinguishing feature of the Maison Chaput is the corner-stone.
-This shows as a white stone tablet at one side of the door. On it is
-carved “Laid by the hand of Emil Chaput, aged one year. Anno. 1842.” It
-is the same Emil Chaput who with his tiny baby hand “laid” the
-corner-stone who is now our genial host.
-
-“It is droll,” said Madame; “When strangers come to town they must
-always stop and read the corner-stone. They think the tablet is placed
-there to mark the birthplace of some famous man.”
-
-The Gendarme and I,—Madame has christened G—— my companion the Gendarme
-on account of her vigorous brisk bearing,—live in the _Salle des
-Assiettes_, at least that is what I have named it, for the walls of the
-room which evidently in more pretentious days served as a _salle à
-manger_, are literally covered with the most beautiful old plates. Not
-being a connoisseur I don’t know what their history is nor what might be
-their value; I only know that they are altogether lovely. The designs
-are delicious; flowers, insects, birds, little houses, Chinamen fishing
-in tiny boats, interspersed with spirited representations of the Gallic
-cock in rose and scarlet. I exclaimed over them to Madame, whereat
-Monsieur, candle in hand, bustled across the room and called on me to
-regard one in particular.
-
-“_Ça coute_,” he averred proudly, “_quarante francs!_”
-
-Since that moment I have been vaguely uneasy. What if, in a moment of
-exasperation, I should throw an ink-bottle at the Gendarme’s head,
-and—shatter a plate worth forty francs!
-
-Our room is the third one back. The front room is kitchen, dining and
-living room. The in-between room is quite bare of furniture, lined all
-about with panelled cupboards, and quite without light or air except
-that which filters in through the opened doors. In one of these
-cupboards Monsieur le Commandant spends his nights. When the hour for
-retiring comes, he opens a little panelled door and climbs into the hole
-in the wall thus revealed, leaving the door a crack open after him. When
-we pass through on our way to breakfast we hurry by the cupboard with
-averted faces. The family Chaput are not early risers.
-
-Already Madame has taken us into her warm heart. She will be our mother
-while we are in France, she tells us. Everything about us is of
-absorbing interest. When the Gendarme exhibited her wardrobe trunk, she
-was fairly overcome.
-
-“_Ah, vive l’Amérique_,” she cried, clapping her old hands, and, “_Vive
-l’Amérique!_” again.
-
-Bourmont, it seems, is army Divisional Headquarters. It is also
-headquarters for this division of the Y. There is a hut here, a
-warehouse, and headquarters offices, employing a personnel of sixteen or
-seventeen. By tomorrow the Gendarme and I will know what our work is to
-be.
-
-
-Bourmont, November 28.
-
-I have a canteen; the Gendarme, who has had some business training, is
-to work in the office. My canteen is in Saint Thiebault, the village
-next door. In the morning I go down the hill, past the grey houses built
-like steps on either side—some with odd pear trees, their branches
-trained gridiron-wise flat against the fronts,—over the river Meuse,
-here a sleepy little stream, to Saint Thiebault. On the way I pass lads
-in olive drab with whom I exchange a smile and a hello, villagers
-bare-headed, in sabots, and poilus in what was once horizon blue. In
-Paris the uniforms were all so beautiful and bright, but here at
-Bourmont one sees the real hue, faded, discolored, muddy, worn. The
-soldiers, middle-aged men for the most part, slouch about, occupied with
-homely, simple tasks, chopping wood and drawing water. One feels there
-is something painfully improper in the fact that they should be in
-uniform; they should, each and every one, be propped comfortably in
-front of their own hearthsides reading _l’Echo de Paris_, in felt
-slippers while their wooden shoes rest on the sill outside. And yet
-these very ones, I think as I look at them, may be the defenders of
-Verdun, the victors of the Marne, the veterans of a hundred battles!
-
-The Bourmontese, who are proud and haughty folk, and call themselves a
-city though they number only a few hundred souls, look with disdain on
-the smaller village of Saint Thiebault, _Saint Thiebault des Crapauds_
-they call it, Saint Thiebault of the Toads. Approaching Saint Thiebault
-one sees two unmistakable signs of American occupancy; first, a large
-heap of empty tin cans and then the Stars and Stripes fluttering from a
-flag pole in the centre of the village. For Saint Thiebault is
-Regimental Headquarters and it is the boast of the old Colonel that
-wherever the regiment has gone that flag has gone too. Down the main
-street of the town I go, past the drinking fountain placarded; “Do not
-drink, good only for animals,” but at which, nevertheless, the doughboys
-frequently refresh themselves, cheerfully risking death, not to mention
-a court-martial, in order to get a drink of unmedicated water; and out
-along the Rue Dieu until I turn off the highway just beyond the village
-wash-house. The wash-house, known to the French as _la Fontaine_, is a
-beautiful little building like a tiny stone chapel, with tall arched
-windows filled with iron grills. Through the centre runs a long oblong
-pool; at its brim the women kneel to do their scrubbing, handsome
-peasant wenches many of them, with fresh, high coloring. Often one sees
-a soldier leaning against the grill, engaged in some attempt at
-gallantry through the bars. Sometimes one even glimpses a form in olive
-drab kneeling by the side of one of the peasant girls, he scrubbing his
-socks, and she her stays, while she gives him a lesson in French and in
-laundering _à la Française_. When the Americans first came to Saint
-Thiebault they had only a small-sized guard-house. Then came one
-historic payday when after months of penury the troops were paid. That
-night the accommodations at “the brig” proved inadequate and the
-wash-house had to be requisitioned for the over-flow. This was well
-enough until the lodgers fell to fighting among themselves and so fell
-headlong into the pool. Then such a hullabaloo broke loose that the
-whole camp turned out to see who had been murdered.
-
-Back of the wash-house lies a group of long French barracks, and here
-lives Company A of the —— Regiment, infantry and “regulars.” Beyond the
-mess-hall is the hut, a French _abri_ tent with double walls. Ducking
-under the fly, one finds oneself in a long rectangular canvas room,
-lighted by a dozen little isinglass windows. The room is filled with
-folding wooden chairs and long ink-stained tables over which are
-scattered writing materials, games and well-worn magazines. Opposite the
-door, at the far end, is the canteen counter, a shelf of books at one
-side, a victrola and a bulletin board, to which cartoons and clippings
-are tacked, on the other. Back of the counter on the wall, held in place
-by safety pins, are the hut’s only decorations, four of the gorgeous
-French war posters brought with me from Paris. There are two stoves
-resembling umbrella-stands for heating in the main part of the hut and
-behind the counter another, about the size and shape of a man’s derby
-hat, on which I must make my hot chocolate. For lights at night I am
-told that occasionally one can procure a few quarts of kerosene and then
-the lamps that stand underneath the counter are brought out and for a
-few days we shine; but usually we manage as our ancestors did with
-candle-light. Our candlesticks form a quaint collection; some are real
-tin _bourgeois_ brought from Paris, some strips of wood, some
-chewing-gum boxes, while others are empty bottles, “dead soldiers” as
-the boys call them. As for the bottles, I am particular about the sort
-that I employ and none of mine are labeled anything but Vittel Water.
-Others I observe are not so circumspect,—yesterday I chanced in at a
-canteen in a neighboring village kept by a Y man; on a shelf three “dead
-soldier” candlesticks stood in a row and their labels read; Champagne,
-Cognac, Benedictine! For the rest, the hut is equipped with a wheezy old
-piano, a set of parlor billiards, and a man secretary. It is invariably
-dense with smoke, part wood and part tobacco, and usually crowded with
-boys.
-
-The first night after the Chief had taken me over to call at my canteen
-and I had had one cursory glance at them, I came back feeling that my
-hut contained the roughest, toughest set of young ruffians that I had
-ever laid eyes on. The second night I came home and fairly cried myself
-to sleep over them—they seemed so young, so pitiful and so puzzled
-underneath their air of bravery, so far away from anything they really
-understood and everybody that was dear to them. It was Cummings in
-particular I think who did it for me. He owns to seventeen but I would
-put fifteen as an outside estimate. A mere boy who hasn’t got his growth
-yet, with soft unformed features and a voice as shrill as a child’s, I
-am sure he ran away from home to go to war just as another lad might
-have run away to see the circus. Although the regiment is a regular army
-organization, a large part of the men were raw recruits only last
-summer, a fact which causes the old-timers, whose service dates from
-Border days or before, no little regret.
-
-“This Man’s Army ain’t what it used to be,” they complain; “it’s getting
-too mixed.”
-
-The “veterans” have a stock saying which they employ to put the
-youngsters in their places: “Call yourself a soldier do you? Why I’ve
-stood parade rest longer than you’ve been in the army!”
-
-This is sometimes varied, when the speaker happens to be the tough sort,
-by; “Huh! I’ve put more time in the guard-house than you have in the
-army!”
-
-Tonight a boy came up to the counter and asked: “Goin’ to serve hot
-chocolate tonight?”
-
-“Sure thing!”
-
-“Then I guess I won’t go out and get drunk.”
-
-It’s going to be hot chocolate or die in that hut every night after
-this!
-
-
-Bourmont, November 31.
-
-I don’t like my uniform. I don’t like women in uniform anyway. I suppose
-it is because one is so used to the expression of a woman’s personality
-in dress that when she dons regulation garb she seems to lose so much.
-And then to really carry off a uniform requires a flair, a dash, a
-swagger, and such are rarely feminine possessions. The consensus of
-opinion seems to bear me out.
-
-“Of course I think women in uniforms look very snappy,” confided a lad
-to me today; “but somehow they don’t look like women to me!”
-
-“_Pas joli_,” says Monsieur le Commandant severely, referring to my hat.
-“_Pas joli!_” But when I put on my old blue civilian coat he fairly goes
-into raptures.
-
-“Be-u-ti-ful!” he ejaculates. “Be-u-ti-ful! _Toilette de ville. Pas
-toilette de Y. M. C. A.!_”
-
-Besides the suit and cape I had made in Paris, they gave me two canteen
-aprons, aprons such as French working women wear, voluminous, beplaited,
-made in Mother Hubbard style. Now there is one point on which I am
-resolved. They can court martial me, they can send me home, or they can
-lead me out and shoot me at sunrise, but they cannot make me wear those
-aprons! What’s more, the very first minute that I have to myself I’m
-going to cut them up and make them into canteen dish-cloths.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 3.
-
-This French money is the very plague; not because it is French but
-because it is so flimsy. It may perhaps measure up to the national
-standards, but it fails utterly to meet American requirements; the
-difference lying chiefly in the fact that the French don’t shoot craps.
-It comes into the canteen in all stages of disintegration.
-
-“She’s kinder feeble. Will she pass?” inquires a lad anxiously.
-
-“With care maybe, and the help of a little sticking plaster,” I reply;
-and getting out the roll of gummed paper kept handily in the
-cash-drawer, I proceed to patch up the tattered bill.
-
-“Guess this one must have been up to the front; it’s all shot to
-pieces,” another lad apologizes; then, at my casual references to
-shooting craps, grins guiltily. “But say now, ain’t it the rottenest
-money you ever did see?” “The United States ought to teach these
-Frenchies how to make paper money,” remarks a third; while still another
-adds; “When I’m to home I write to my girl on better paper than that.”
-
-Sometimes the bills come in as a mere mass of crumpled tatters; then one
-must play picture-puzzle piecing it together. Sometimes they are beyond
-repair; for at times you will receive two halves of different notes
-pasted neatly together, or at other times one with the corner bearing an
-essential number lacking. The French banks refuse to pay a cent on their
-paper money unless it is just so.
-
-“I’m sorry, but that bill’s no good,” you will occasionally have to tell
-a boy. Usually he will grin cheerfully as he stuffs it back into his
-pocket.
-
-“Oh well, I’ll pass it along in a crap game.”
-
-Then too, the boys have no respect for foreign money and so handle it
-carelessly with an obvious contempt that is irritating to the French.
-
-“Tain’t real money,” they declare.
-
-The paper francs and half-francs they call “soap coupons.”
-
-“Why, you might just as well be spendin’ the label off a stick o’
-chewin’ gum!” they jeer.
-
-Next to the paper money that comes to pieces in their fingers, the boys
-detest the big one and two cent coppers. Known to the navy as
-“bunker-plates,” in the army they pass as “clackers.” “You get a
-pocket-full o’ them things and you think you’ve got some money, and all
-the time it ain’t more than ten cents altogether,” they grumble.
-
-“I can’t be bothered carryin’ that stuff around,” they declare when I
-beg them to pay me in coppers. “I always throw ’em away or give ’em to
-the kids.” A prejudice which greatly complicated the matter of making
-change until I had an inspiration. Now I give them their small change in
-boxes of matches or sticks of chewing gum.
-
-Then there is the annoyance of the local money. Since the war, the
-cities of France have taken to issuing their own paper francs and
-half-francs. We accept all this local money in the canteens and send it
-to Paris to be redeemed. But the French tradespeople in general refuse
-to honor these bills except in the city that issues them or its
-immediate vicinity. Many a puzzled doughboy has been driven to indignant
-protest or even to “chucking the stuff away” in his exasperated disgust
-when told by the shopkeepers that his paper money was _pas bon_. But the
-grievance is not quite all on one side: no small amount of worthless
-Mexican money, brought over by Border veterans, I am told, was palmed
-off on shopkeepers at the port when the Americans first landed!
-
-In contrast to their disdain for this foreign currency the boys cherish
-to a degree that is half funny, half pathetic, any specimens of “real
-money” that they are lucky enough to possess.
-
-“Say, I had an American dollar bill in my hand the other day,—I felt
-just as if the old flag was waving over me!” And another lad; “Saw a U.
-S. Dollar bill today. Oh boy! but it looked a mile long to me!”
-
-If anyone displays an American greenback at the counter a little riot is
-sure to ensue. All the boys nearby crowd about, feast their eyes on it,
-touch it, pat it, kiss it even.
-
-“Lemme see!” “Ain’t she a beauty?” “That’s the real stuff!” “Say, how
-much will you sell her for?”
-
-Even the half-dollars, quarters and dimes are precious.
-
-“You don’t get that one,” they say as they pull a handful of change from
-their pockets. “That’s my lucky piece. I’m savin’ that there little ol’
-nickel to spend on Broadway.”
-
-French money, Belgian money, Swiss money, English money, Spanish money,
-Italian money, Greek money, Canadian money, Luxembourg money,
-Indo-Chinese money, money from Argentine Republic, and yesterday a
-German mark even, all come across the counter and go into the till
-without comment. But when any American money comes in I always feel
-badly over it. For, be it a crisp five dollar bill, an eagle quarter or
-only a buffalo nickel I know it signifies just one thing,—bankruptcy.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 7.
-
-To be a corporal in the Ninth Infantry, it is said, a man must be able
-to speak eight languages, one for each soldier in his squad. The same
-could be said with almost equal truth of our regiment. I don’t know
-whether it is this mixture of many nationalities that gives my family
-its flavour; be that as it may, Company A has more color, more
-character, more individuality to the square inch than I had dreamed any
-such group could possess. And they are so funny, so engaging in their
-infinite variety and their child-like naivete!
-
-First there are Gatts and Maggioni; Gatts, lean, tall, honest-eyed, with
-a grin that won’t come off and a quaint streak of humour,—Gatts who
-looks pure Yankee, but is, if the truth were told, three-quarters
-German,—Gatts who hangs about my counter hour after hour; and by his
-side sticks little Maggioni, who told the recruiting officer that he was
-seventeen but whose head just tops the canteen shelf, and who looks,
-with his pink cheeks and his great dark eyes, like nothing in the world
-but an Italian cupid in the sulks. The two have struck up the oddest
-comradeship.
-
-“Me an’ Gatts, we’re goin ’to stick side by side,” explains Maggioni,
-“an’ if I see a crowd o’ Germans pilin’ onto him, why I’ll just go right
-after ’em, an’ if too many of ’em come for me ter oncet, why Gatts here,
-he’ll just lay right into ’em.”
-
-And Gatts nods, looking down at Maggioni with a parent’s indulgent eye.
-
-“He thinks he’s a tough guy for sich a little feller,” he comments
-reflectively; “but he’s the only one in the regiment that knows it.”
-
-“You all think I’m mighty little!” snaps the cupid. “When I joined at
-Syracuse everybody said to me ‘Baby, where’d you leave your cradle?’ But
-lemme tell you, I’ve growed since I’ve been in the army!”
-
-“Waal I do believe there’s one part of him that’s growed;” Gatts is very
-solemn.
-
-“What’s that?” I ask.
-
-“His feet.”
-
-Private Gatts has promised me one of the Kaiser’s ears!
-
-Then there is Brady, “Devil Brady” the little black Irish coal-miner
-from Oklahoma, who spends his days trying to get put in the guard-house,
-so he won’t have to drill.
-
-“I’m plumb disgusted,” he confided to me today. “I never worked so hard
-in my life as I did the other night gettin’ drunk, an’ then the guard
-was so much drunker than I was, I had to carry him to the guard-house. I
-thought sure they’d give me thirty days at least, but they only kept me
-twenty-four hours and then out!”
-
-“Hard luck,” I sympathized.
-
-“I just knew how it would be,” he mourned. “It was Friday the thirteenth
-when I joined the army; there were just thirteen of us fellers, and the
-thirteenth was a nigger.”
-
-He tells me the most wonderful yarns about the miners and their pet
-rats, about explosions and disasters and rescue parties. Last night he
-told me the story of one mine-horror that will stick in my memory.
-
-“And we shoveled the last three men and a mule into one bag,” he
-finished.
-
-Now and then I catch a glimpse of Jenicho the Russian giant, but he is
-very shy. A huge lumbering fellow, sluggish, and seemingly stupid, with
-little pig eyes that are quite lost to sight when he smiles, Jenicho is
-the butt of the Company. When he joined the regiment last summer, they
-tell me, he knew no word of English. The first phrase that he acquired
-was; “You no bodder me.” For the boys can’t resist the temptation to
-plague Jenicho, and though his strength is such that if he once should
-get his hands on his tormentors he could break them into bits, he is so
-slow withal that they always can elude him. Not long ago Jenicho was
-walking post one night when the Officer of the Day hailed him and
-announced himself. To which Jenicho lustily responded; “Me no give damn.
-Me walk post, gun loaded, bay’net fixed. You no bodder me. Me shoot!”
-And the Officer of the Day discreetly walked on.
-
-Then there is little Philip R. who plays our decrepit old piano quite
-brilliantly by ear, and who is, he tells me, half Greek and half
-Egyptian. Philip R. is the pet of a French family in one of the
-neighboring villages. He stopped at a house to ask for a drink of water
-when out walking one day. Madame asked him in, pressed him to stay to
-supper. The family made much of him, and all because forsooth he was the
-first “American” they had ever seen. Since then he has been a constant
-welcome visitor.
-
-There is St. Mary too. If you can conceive of a cherub eating watermelon
-you have a perfect picture of St. Mary. St. Mary converses entirely in
-words of one syllable and very few at that. He makes smiles serve for
-speech. St. Mary loses everything he owns; not long ago he lost his
-overcoat, now he has lost his bayonet. Yet St. Mary is the best natured
-boy in the company; he needs to be. When St. Mary helps me stir the
-chocolate it seems as if half the company lined up on the other side of
-the counter to shout; “St. Mary! Take your dirty hands out er that there
-chocolate!” and St. Mary never says a word but grins until his eyes are
-nothing but little slits and ducks his head until only the curls on top
-are visible.
-
-“St. Mary, he’s kind o’ simple,” explains Private Gatts. “But there
-ain’t anybody in camp that’s got a better heart.”
-
-And there is Bruno, Angelo Bruno, a little grinning goblin of a man, but
-strong, they say, as a gorilla. Bruno gives the non-coms no end of
-trouble; he’s a “tough nut to manage.” Whenever he is told to do
-anything that does not suit his tastes, he merely shrugs his shoulders,
-“No capish,” and that’s the end of it. The other day while on guard he
-was interrogated by the Officer of the Day.
-
-“What’s your name?”
-
-“Bruno.”
-
-“What are your general orders?”
-
-“Angelo.”
-
-The Officer gasped, thought he would try again. “What are your special
-orders?”
-
-Bruno saw a light. “They’re ina my pock!”
-
-When I first came to Saint Thiebault I was puzzled by the silver
-half-francs in my cash drawer which were bent in the middle, some of
-them so far as almost to form a right-angle. Then the boys explained.
-Bruno was once a strong man in a circus sideshow. He did things with his
-teeth. The crooked half-francs were the results of his exhibiting his
-prowess to the boys. So now when damaged half-francs appear I know that
-our little Angelo has been trying his teeth again. At present our social
-intercourse with Bruno is limited. He is serving thirty days in the
-guard-house. But every day or two he slips into the hut to do his
-shopping, the kind-hearted guard standing at the door, as he does so, a
-sheepish look on his face. If there is one military duty which the
-doughboy hates above all others, it is this job of “chasing prisoners,”
-and when you meet a file of guard-house habitués escorted by a rifle in
-the rear, it is invariably the guard, and not the prisoners, who looks
-the culprit! The interest of Bruno’s visits lies largely in seeing what
-is his latest acquisition in the way of jewelry. For Bruno has a pretty
-taste for finery and enlivens the dull evenings of his captivity by
-winning away the ornaments of his fellow prisoners. Already he has come
-into the canteen decked out with seven large rings and a fat watch and
-chain. Today he appeared with his latest prize, a pair of gold-rimmed
-eye glasses. They are hideously unbecoming, they pinch his nose so that
-it hurts, moreover he can’t more than half see out of them, and yet it
-is quite evident those eyeglasses are the pride of his heart.
-
-Last week our Secretary conceived a big idea. He would educate A
-Company. He would teach them to read, write and speak English. He
-started a class. On the first night there was a large crowd, eager and
-interested; the second night there were six, the pupils when sought out
-complaining they were “tired” or “busy;” the third night there was Saint
-Mary who made one; the fourth night the class died an easy death. I am
-afraid Company A is going to continue uneducated. As Brady said:
-
-“There were just two things I learned in school; one was to throw a spit
-ball, the other was to bend a pin convenient for somebody to sit on.”
-And it looks as if it would have to go at that.
-
-“Why, those birds don’t even understand their own names,” complain the
-officers; “except on payday, and then they’ll answer no matter _how_ you
-pronounce them.”
-
-
-Bourmont, December 9.
-
-There is something queer about me. I don’t mind the mud, I don’t mind
-the rain, I don’t mind the hill, I don’t even mind the mess. Of course I
-admit that the food isn’t quite what one is used to, and the
-surroundings are a trifle unsavoury, but it is, after all, so much
-better than the state of semi-starvation that I was led to half
-anticipate, that I for one am quite content.
-
-Our mess is held at the house of an old couple who live a little way
-above our billet on the hill. The house was differentiated from the
-others in the row by a spindling and discouraged tree which stood in a
-green tub outside; as this was the only tree in front of a house on the
-whole street it has always been easy to pick out our otherwise
-undistinguished entrance. Last night however, the weather waxing colder,
-the tree moved indoors. This morning the whole Y. personnel wandered
-distractedly up and down the hill trying to identify the mess-house
-door, until some kindly villagers, sensing the situation, came out on
-their front steps and pointed us to the place.
-
-The house, like most of the village dwellings, consists, downstairs, of
-just two rooms. In the front room the family cooks, eats and spends its
-days. In the back room the family sleeps, and here we have our mess. The
-drawback of this arrangement is that one has to pass through the kitchen
-in order to reach the dining-room and this is likely to spoil one’s
-pleasure in the meal that follows. As for me, I go on the principle that
-what one doesn’t know won’t take one’s appetite away, and so hurry
-through the kitchen with one eye shut and the other fixed on the door
-ahead of me.
-
-Said my right-hand neighbor to my left-hand neighbor at supper the other
-day, as he offered him the _pièce de résistance_ of the meal:
-
-“You aren’t taking rice tonight?”
-
-“Thanks no. Saw the old lady picking ’em out this noon.”
-
-“That’s nothing. I saw the old man picking ’em out of the beans
-yesterday.”
-
-But why should people come to war if they are going to be so squeamish?
-
-A few days ago one rash soul among us conceived a hankering for salad.
-She went to Madame and, being ignorant of the French word, demanded
-simply.
-
-“_Avez-vous_ lettice?”
-
-Madame shook her head uncomprehending, but finally as the words were
-repeated a light dawned.
-
-“_Ah oui, oui, oui!_”
-
-She turned and hurried upstairs, descending triumphantly a moment later
-with a large bundle of old letters! In just what form she expected us to
-have them served I have not yet been able to ascertain.
-
-The mess-room is so crowded that to reach a seat often requires
-considerable manœuvering. In one corner stands an ancient dressmaker’s
-dummy—by popular vote awarded as sweetheart to the most bashful man at
-table; in the corner opposite is the bed of Madame and Monsieur. The men
-who get up for early breakfast, swallow their bread and jam and coffee
-with Monsieur watching from his couch of ease. Today Madame was
-indisposed and when we came to supper we found that she had retired
-already. All through the meal she lay there, under the red feather-bed,
-looking like a dingy, weazened old corpse, staring at the ceiling, her
-mouth wide open.
-
-For the last few days we have had a visiting clergyman with us. To all
-appearances a meek and long-suffering little man, he has been giving
-special revivalistic discourses at the huts and eating at our mess. This
-morning he was asked to say grace. In the middle of a long and earnest
-exhortation I was startled to hear these words: “Oh Lord, Thou knowest
-we are apt to grow lean and to starve in Thy service!” I fairly had to
-stuff one of the one franc canteen handkerchiefs, which serve as napkins
-at the mess, into my mouth to keep from laughing.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 12.
-
-In Paris a man who lectured to us said: “Get the fellows who have
-influence with you, and you can swing the crowd.” Sometimes I think that
-if Pat were our enemy instead of our friend we might almost as well shut
-up the hut. For Pat the sharp-shooter, Pat the dare-devil, Pat, who in
-company phrase “has Harry Lauder and George Cohen stopped in a hundred
-places,” Pat the happy-go-lucky adventurer is one of the leading spirits
-in Company A. He has served, it seems, already in the war with the
-Canadian army.
-
-“But how did you get out of it?” I asked.
-
-Whereupon Pat regaled me with a wonderful rigmarole involving an
-extraordinary case—his own—of shell-shock out of which I could make
-neither head nor tail. Later, from one of the Secretaries who had been
-at Saint Thiebault before I came, I learned the truth. When America had
-declared war, Pat had deserted from the Canadian in order to enlist in
-the American army. Pat had showed him a letter from one of his old-time
-friends; it ended:
-
-“Of course I wouldn’t think of splitting on an old pal like you, Pat,
-but I do need twenty dollars like hell.”
-
-“What did you do?” asked the Secretary.
-
-“Sure an’ I sent him the money,” grinned Pat.
-
-Shortly after I first became acquainted with him, Pat, who is naturally
-gallant, with a tongue inclined to blarney, extracted a promise from me.
-Some day, after the war, if we should happen to meet, say, strolling
-down Fifth Avenue, Pat “dressed in a nice blue serge suit” is going to
-“take me away from the other feller” and take me out to dinner. It was
-after solemly pledging my word to this agreement that I learned that Pat
-had formerly been a saloon keeper and had had an extensive police-court
-record. Immediately I began to hope that Pat would forget that post-war
-party, but not he. Instead, he is constantly reminding me of it, always
-before an audience, dwelling on it and elaborating it, until now I find
-it has grown from a mere dinner, to dinner, the theatre and a dance!
-
-Lithe, wiry, lean-faced with close-cropped hair, pale blue gimlet eyes
-and an almost unvarying expression of intense seriousness on his face,
-Pat, when present, is the life of the hut. Forever at his clowning, you
-would never dream from his demeanour that Pat’s domestic affairs are in
-a state little short of catastrophic. His wife, according to her
-photograph a handsome, sullen, passionate type, half Mexican, ran away
-about a year ago, taking with her all his money that happened to be
-handy, together with his new automobile. Encountering some of Pat’s
-friends, she had explained her apparently care-free single state by
-telling them that Pat was dead. Now she has discovered that Pat is in
-France, she is all for reconciliation. She has written him a letter in
-which she addresses him as her dear husband about six times to each
-sheet, informing him that she needs money, and inquiring of him what he
-wished her to do with his clothes.
-
-“What did you answer?” I asked, for Pat, who must always share his
-correspondence, had shown me the letter.
-
-“I told her,” grinned Pat, “she cu’d keep the clothes and maybe she’d
-find another man to fit ’em.”
-
-But there is another and more serious side to the matter. It seems that
-the lady in the case has written to the Captain of A Company, requesting
-him to forward a large proportion of Pat’s pay to his deserving and
-indigent wife. Whether or not this will be done is still uncertain. Pat
-refuses to discuss the possibilities, but from the glint in his eyes I
-have a premonition that if next pay day Pat finds any considerable
-deduction made from his pay, that that night one wild Irishman will run
-amuck in Saint Thiebault.
-
-Occasionally in the midst of Pat’s racy discourses I overhear things not
-meant for my ears, such as his remarking how in Rochester once he “went
-on a seven day’s pickle in company with a female dreadnut.” But usually
-he is very careful to only “pull gentle stuff” in my hearing. The other
-day he delivered himself of a wonderful dissertation on the
-deceitfulness of pious people, ending with this gem;
-
-“So whenever I see one of these guys comin’ towards me with a gold crown
-on his bean, looking’ as if he couldn’t sin if he had to, why I nip
-tight on to my pocketbook and I cross to the other side of the street!”
-
-Today Pat came into the canteen with a newspaper clipping and a letter
-to show me. The letter was from the Chief of Police of K——, one of the
-many cities in which Pat has resided during his short but crowded life,
-the clipping from the K—— Daily Sheet. The clipping was comprised of a
-letter which Pat had written to the Chief of Police giving in humorous
-phrase his version of life in France and an accompanying paragraph
-stating that though the writer had given the police force no little
-anxiety during his residence in K——, still he had been in spite of all,
-a good-hearted and likable rascal, and now that he had gone to war for
-his country, bygones should be bygones and K—— must be proud of him. The
-letter from the Chief was in much the same vein.
-
-“Yes,” ruminated Pat; “I kept the old feller pretty busy, though me an’
-him were friends just the same. But it sure would get the old man’s
-goat, just after he’d had me up and fined me, to come home and see me
-settin’ at his dinner-table alongside of his pretty daughter.”
-
-
-Bourmont, December 14.
-
-Because it took too much time right in the most important part of the
-day to climb Bourmont Hill for mess at night, I have arranged to take my
-suppers with two little old ladies here in Saint Thiebault. The suppers
-are to consist of a bowl of cocoa and a slice of bread with jam. The
-little ladies supply the bread and milk for the cocoa and I supply the
-rest, paying them one franc a day.
-
-At half-past five I put on my things, light my little candle-lantern and
-set forth. The boys, coming in after mess, will be crowding the hut; a
-chorus of anxious voices queries.
-
-“You’re comin’ back sure, ain’t you?”
-
-And, “What time is that hot chocolate goin’ to be ready?”
-
-I pick my way down the slippery duck-boards to the highway. Trudging
-along the muddy road, friendly voices hail me from the dark. I am known
-by the little light I carry. At number two Rue Dieu I rap and enter,
-trying desperately to leave some of the mud from my boots on the
-door-step, for in this land of wooden shoes scrapers are as unknown as
-they are unnecessary. Once inside I have to fairly strain my eyes in
-order to be able to see anything, for all the light in the room is
-supplied by the embers on the hearth and one tiny gasolene lamp with a
-flame not much bigger than the point of a lead pencil. Kerosene is
-unobtainable for civilian use; the price of candles is prohibitive.
-
-“_C’est la guerre. Cest la misère_,” say the little old ladies. “One
-must sit in the dark—“_Cest triste comme ça._”
-
-My candle doubles the illumination, yet in spite of that, so strong is
-the instinct for economy, they will not rest easy until they have blown
-it out.
-
-The little old ladies are cousins. The elder of the two, “Madame,” is
-lame and has snow-white hair. She sits by the fire always in the
-self-same spot. The younger, “Mademoiselle,” is a tiny dwarfish creature
-with a back that is not quite straight. Over her dark dress she wears a
-jaunty little scarlet apron sewn with black polka dots. I am grateful
-for that apron; it makes the one bit of color in the sombre room.
-
-I sit in front of the fire at the round table and sip my chocolate. The
-table has an oil-cloth cover on which is printed a map of France, so as
-I eat my supper I can take a lesson in geography. It is a pre-war
-tablecloth I fancy; over at one edge shows a slice of Germany. The
-little old ladies point to that side of the table with scorn, “_Les
-sales Bodies sont là!_” they explain.
-
-I wonder that it doesn’t give them heart-burn to look down and see the
-captive and devastated districts of France lying beneath their tea cups.
-Think of setting your salt-cellar on the city of Lille or your mustard
-pot on the sacred citadel of Verdun!
-
-As I sup I endeavour to converse politely, but as my French is little
-more than camouflage, this is a dubious proceeding. Whenever I prove
-particularly stupid, out of the corner of my eye I catch Madame shaking
-her old head at Mademoiselle despairingly.
-
-“_Elle ne comprend pas!_” she murmurs sotto voce, pityingly; “_elle ne
-comprend pas!_”
-
-At odd times they turn an honest penny by doing a little sewing for the
-villagers. But life is very difficult these days: the prices of
-everything have gone so high. Why, wooden shoes that cost five francs
-before the war now fetch fifteen!
-
-Tonight I noticed an item in a Parisian Journal lying by my plate. It
-was to the effect that at the Madeleine that day Mlle. X had married
-Lieut. Z., a veteran of the war who had lost both arms and both legs. I
-showed it to the little ladies.
-
-“_Ah oui!_” sighed Mademoiselle with a shiver. “_Elle a beaucoup de
-courage, celle-là!_”
-
-And Madame shook her white head and echoed. “_Oui, elle a beaucoup de
-courage!_”
-
-Upstairs an American officer is billeted. I fancy his presence supplies
-a certain dash of romance to the little old ladies’ lives. The Americans
-are nice, they say, and make little noise in the village; when the
-Russians were here it was different.
-
-“It will be lonely when the Americans are gone,” sighs Mademoiselle.
-“The houses will seem empty.”
-
-
-Bourmont, December 18.
-
-Yesterday I explored the top of Bourmont Hill. It is here that the
-Quality Folk live, and here are some stately old houses with beautiful
-carved doorways and even an occasional gargoyle. Here too the general
-commanding the Division lives, and I have often observed with glee
-corpulent colonels and rotund majors puffing and blowing and growing red
-in the face as they climbed the hill to Headquarters. At the top of the
-hill there are two churches. Some two weeks ago, it is whispered, a spy
-was caught signaling from the tower of Notre Dame. His signals, it is
-said, were flashed to another spy stationed on the hills to the east,
-who in turn sent the messages on to the lines. The Curé of Notre Dame is
-being held under suspicion of complicity.
-
-From Notre Dame an avenue bordered by magnificent old trees sweeps
-around to the Calvary, a tall wooden cross surmounting a curious
-structure of rough stone, ringed about with shallow steps—the Mecca of
-many pilgrimages. Beyond the Calvary one comes to the Mystery of
-Bourmont. A faded sign declares _Défense d’éntrée_, but one looks the
-other way and slips by. For once past the gate you are in an atmosphere
-of enchantment. No one seems to know just what it is, nor how it came
-about; I can get no intelligent explanation from Madame or Monsieur. To
-me it seems like the forgotten playground of an old mad king in some
-fantastic legend. For here among the trees are stone stairs, walls and
-terraces, and, cut in the curiously cleft rocks, are niches and
-tunnelled passage-ways, all mantled over now with green moss and ivy,
-the whole making one think of a dream garden out of Mæterlinck.
-
-Coming down Bourmont Hill afterwards I was startled by the beating of a
-drum; looking back I saw a woman, bare-headed, her blue apron fluttering
-in the wind, descending the street after me; from her shoulders was
-slung the drum which she was beating with a martial vim. It was the
-town-crier, _le tambour_ as the French put it. Arrived at an appropriate
-spot, she stopped, pulled out a paper, cried “_Avis!_” and began to read
-in a rapid high official monotone. The wash-house was to be closed
-between two and four o’clock the following afternoon on account of the
-new water system the Americans were installing. Certain requisitions of
-grain were to be levied.... The villagers were notified to call at the
-Mayory for their bread cards, without which, after such a date, no bread
-could be obtained.... One or two women came to the doors of the houses
-and listened. She took no notice of them. The reading over, she rolled
-the paper up with a quick decisive gesture, and resumed her march, the
-sharp rub-a-dub-dub of her drum pursuing me all the way to Saint
-Thiebault.
-
-Of late the air has become fairly vibrant with disquieting rumours: one
-does not know what to believe, what to reject.
-
-The Germans are massing for a gigantic drive on Nancy. In three weeks,
-some say, the offensive is to begin; three days, say others. Nancy is to
-be another Verdun. If they break through they will pass this way. The
-American troops are being withdrawn from this neighborhood: any day the
-order may come for us to leave. At Paris the political situation is
-dark. Some people even fear a popular uprising against the government. I
-hinted at this to Monsieur, he shook his old head hopelessly. But yes,
-things were in a bad way. Now if France only had _Veelson_ at her head!
-France and _Veelson_! His gesture indicated the grandeur of such a
-contingency. As it was, France lacked a leader. And underneath all this
-runs another rumour, still darker, still more disquieting. The French,
-the gallant French, they say, are “laying down.” They are ready to make
-peace at any price. They are played out, sick to death of it all!
-
-“Forty-two months in the trenches!” cried a sergeant _en-permission_
-last night; “It is enough! I am through. Let the Americans do it!”
-
-And this feeling, they tell us, is wide-spread. The people see our
-soldiers day after day, in the training camps, inactive. “What are they
-here for?” they are asking. “Why don’t they fight? Are they going to
-wait until it is all over?”
-
-Will our soldiers, half-trained as they are, and a mere handful, be
-forced, to satisfy them, into the trenches?
-
-In the canteen I look into the boys’ faces and smile, but my heart turns
-sick within me.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 20.
-
-Such a strange, incredible thing has happened,—a thing that has upset
-all my preconceived ideas of human nature. It began with Malotzzi.
-Malotzzi as his name betrays is a “wop;” he is also the smallest fellow
-in the company which contains many small men. Nor is he only small, but
-with his thin olive-tinted face and his slender body, he looks so
-delicate, so ethereal that you feel a breath of wind might fairly blow
-him away. To the company he is “a good kid, quiet, never makes any
-trouble.” To me he has always seemed an elfin, changeling creature, a
-strayed pixie, whose impishness has turned to gentleness. Child of the
-tenements that he is, he is possessed of the most exquisite
-old-fashioned courtesy that I have ever yet encountered; and he has the
-starriest eyes of any mortal born.
-
-Not long ago he came to the counter to show me a post-card from his
-sweetheart. It had an ugly picture of a red brick city block upon it,
-and the message scrawled in an unformed hand beneath contained little
-except the simple declaration that when he came home she would go with
-him to the photographer’s over the candy store at the corner and they
-would have their pictures taken together. Yet no flaming and lyric
-love-letter could have rendered him more naively proud. Malotzzi with a
-sweetheart! It was absurd, he was nothing but a child! I can well
-believe that Malotzzi wouldn’t make a very “snappy” soldier.
-
-This afternoon when the company was out for drill, a certain Second
-Lieutenant discovered that Malotzzi hadn’t got his pack rolled up right.
-This was not the first time he had offended in this manner. The
-Lieutenant had warned him. He was angry. He took Malotzzi over to the
-bath-house, stripped off his blouse, tied his hands so he couldn’t
-struggle, and beat him with a gunstrap until he fainted.
-
-The story flashed around the camp. When I came back from supper I found
-the boys at white-heat with indignation. They fairly seethed with anger.
-I think if the Lieutenant had happened in, they might have killed him.
-Presently a little crowd carried Malotzzi in. They rolled back his
-sleeves and showed me the great purple welts upon his arms. His back was
-all like that, they said. He had to be held up in order to keep his
-feet.
-
-“You had better take him to the hospital,” I told them.
-
-They carried him out again. He is at the hospital now, where he is
-likely to stay for some time. His lungs are delicate and the beating
-caused congestion. The medical officer made a report and the Lieutenant
-has been placed under arrest.
-
-I have never met the Lieutenant to know him, but curiously, the
-Secretary, who messes with the officers, asserts that of all the men
-there this Lieutenant has always appeared as the most clean-spoken, the
-most cultured, the most gentlemanly. And the boys have always considered
-him a very decent sort. The whole thing is absolutely and blankly
-incomprehensible to me. There is one explanation the boys offer; which
-is that the Lieutenant, having a yellow streak, has lost his nerve at
-the prospect of going to the front, and has done this as a desperate
-expedient, in the hope of being dishonorably discharged. The only other
-possible explanation which I can come upon is that the Lieutenant has a
-German name.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 23.
-
-The burning question that is on every lip: Will the Christmas turkeys
-come?
-
-We had been promised turkey. What’s more I had been promised some of
-that turkey too, at Company A’s mess table. Now uncertainty holds us in
-torment. Every sort of a rumor is rife. Some darkly insinuate that
-neighboring organizations have sidetracked those turkeys. Others declare
-that the turkeys, having been smuggled in by night, are now actually in
-camp among us.
-
-“Huh!” snorts my friend the Tall Kentuckian. “Funny turkeys they have in
-this army! I done heard those turkeys had four legs and a pair of
-horns!”
-
-Of course Christmas won’t be Christmas without the turkeys, but anyway
-we have done our best to bring Christmas into the hut. The question of
-Christmas trees was taken up in the Bourmont office some days ago. An
-application was made to the Mayor; the Mayor referred the matter to the
-representative of the Bureau of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry proved
-to be a good scout. He ruminated a while, “Mademoiselle,” said he, “this
-matter is so tied up with red tape, that if one were to unwind it all,
-it would be New Year’s before you got your tree. My advice is that you
-select your tree, wait until after dark, then go out, cut it down close
-to the ground, and cover the place carefully with snow.”
-
-Tonight when the subject of Christmas trees came up in the canteen I
-repeated this anecdote to the boys. It was then growing dusky. Several
-boys immediately disappeared. In an hour they were back again, dragging
-not one, but two beautiful hemlocks. We set up the more perfect one, and
-cut the other up for trimmings. With flags, paper festoons, Japanese
-lanterns, tinsel which the French call “angel’s hair,” and tree
-ornaments the hut was transformed in a twinkling as if by magic. Now it
-is no longer a muddy-floored tent, but a green bower threaded with
-myriad bits of bright color, and I have really never seen anything of
-the sort that was any prettier.
-
-Yesterday several cases of free tobacco from the Sun Tobacco Fund
-arrived in camp. The boys in the orderly room opened the cases last
-night and hunted through and through them, trying to find packages which
-bore the names of unmarried lady donors. Unfortunately the Misses who
-contributed were few and far between, but hope dies hard.
-
-“Say, mightn’t Asa be a girl?” the lads are asking me eagerly today.
-
-“Lucien ain’t a man’s name, is it?”
-
-Enclosed in each package is a postal-card on which one may, if so
-inclined, return thanks to the giver. The boys who are taking the
-trouble to write are doing it frankly with the hope that this may
-encourage the recipient to repetition. How to tactfully suggest this
-without seeming greedy is a problem whose delicacy proves difficult.
-
-“You tell me how to say it,” they tease.
-
-“Say, won’t you write it for me, please ma’am?”
-
-I saw one postal-card accomplished after an evening of concentrated
-effort; “Your precious and admired gift,” it began.
-
-Already Santa Claus in the person of Mr. Gatts has presented me with a
-beautiful white silk apron embroidered with large bunches of life-like
-violets.
-
-
-Bourmont, Christmas Day.
-
-_Joyeux Noël!_
-
-As I came in last night there was a great log burning on the hearth.
-
-“_C’est la bouche de Noël_,” said Madame and explained how it would burn
-all night, then Christmas morning she would take the little end that was
-left and put it away in the loft until the next Christmas: it would
-protect the house from lightning; it was a very ancient custom.
-
-Back in the _Salle des Assiettes_ I found our table spread as for a
-little fête with a wonderful cake and a bottle tied up with a bouquet of
-chrysanthemums and long ribbon streamers of red white and blue. I was so
-innocent that I supposed at first that the chrysanthemums were in the
-bottle, an improvised vase, but Madame quickly enlightened me: “_C’est
-le vin blanc_,” she explained to my embarrassment.
-
-The Gendarme and I took counsel together as to how we could best express
-our feelings on this occasion toward the Family Chaput, the household
-having been increased over night by the arrival of the married daughter
-and her small boy and girl. After various projects had been considered
-and abandoned, we finally took the little stand from our room, dressed
-it with evergreen and tinsel, then heaped it with nuts, candies,
-chocolate bars, and little jars of jam all from the canteen, together
-with a few small toys, and carried it in and placed it in front of the
-hearth. The family appeared delighted. We observed, however, that after
-the first toot, baby Max’s whistle was swiftly and silently confiscated.
-Later when _La Petite_, the little maid-of-all-work who takes care of
-our rooms, came in, we had a few trinkets dug from the depths of our
-trunks to bestow on her. Later still I carried chocolates and
-_confiture_ to my little old ladies of the Rue Dieu.
-
-This Christmas day I fancy will be long remembered by the inhabitants of
-this part of France; for in every one of the villages about, our
-soldiers have given the French children a Christmas tree. I went to see
-the tree at Saint Thiebault. The ancient church, its chill interior
-ablaze with light, was crowded with villagers all dressed in their fête
-day best. The old people were just as excited and eager as the children;
-not one had ever seen a Christmas tree before. They stood on the pews in
-order to get a better view. The tree which was very large and beautiful
-stood just outside the altar rail. It bore a gift for every child in
-Saint Thiebault. While the tree was slowly being unburdened of its load,
-the band-master’s choir, high up in the choir-loft, sang an
-accompaniment. Some of the selections were of a sacred character, others
-frankly secular, such as Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes; but as one of
-the choristers remarked;
-
-“As long as we sing them slow and solemn the Frenchies won’t know the
-difference.”
-
-After the Christmas tree I went around to the little local hospital to
-take some gifts to the patients. There were half a dozen of them lying
-on cots in the bare barracks room, a dreary set in a drearier setting.
-In one corner lay a boy who muttered incoherently. He had just been
-brought in, they told me, and was very ill: the doctors were puzzled to
-know what was the matter with him. I left some little gifts for him when
-he should be better.
-
-It was half-past four when I reached the hut. Suddenly it popped into my
-head that we ought to have a Santa Claus. At half-past six Santa walked
-in through the door. It was Pat in a big red nose, a red peaked cap,
-much white cotton-batting beard and whiskers, rubber boots, the Chief’s
-fur coat, covered over for the night with turkey-red bunting, and a fat
-pack slung over one shoulder. I had just dressed him in the mess hall,
-and for an impromptu Santa Claus, I flatter myself he was quite
-effective. The boys whooped. When they discovered who it was behind that
-nose, they yelped like terriers.
-
-“Ain’t he the beauty! Oh you whiskers! Say Pat, kiss me quick!”
-
-We got Santa safely behind the counter and then opened the pack. It was
-full of foolish little things; tricks, puzzles, games, mottoes,
-whistles, tin trumpets, paper “hummers”. The boys went wild. It was the
-musical instruments that made the hit. For two hours that hut shrieked
-pandemonium. Every last man in the company tootled and squawked as if
-his life depended on it, and every last one of them was tootling a
-different tune.
-
-“_C’est des grands gosses!_” Truly, as Madame Chaput says, they’re
-nothing after all but so many big little boys.
-
-After the stuff was distributed the Secretary and I invited the boys to
-partake of hot chocolate and sandwiches. But to our disappointment they
-only took a languid interest in the treat. Instead of the five and six
-cups apiece which many often swallow, not one of them consumed more than
-a cup and three-quarters. Too late we realized; they had already gorged
-themselves on the contents of their Christmas boxes from home.
-
-Reports coming in from the village stated that one American Christmas
-custom had made a strong appeal to the feminine portion at least of the
-population. Quantities of mistletoe grow hereabouts. The French,
-although averring that it brings good-luck, consider it a pest and let
-it go at that. It took the American doughboys to enlighten the
-_Mademoiselles_ as to its Anglo-Saxon significance. It would be curious,
-I have been thinking, if the adoption of this ancient privilege should
-prove one of the lasting evidences of the American troops in France!
-
-As I left the canteen I learned that the boy who had been so sick at the
-hospital was dead.
-
-
-Bourmont, December 26.
-
-Last night was a wild night in the barracks. This morning the hut was
-full of echoes of it. Company A indeed wore a jaded look. They had had
-very little sleep it was explained. And it was all on account of the
-Christmas hummers.
-
-“I ain’t got nothin’ against you people, but I shore don’t think you
-gave A Company a square deal,” remarked my friend the Tall Kentuckian as
-he lit his cigarette at the counter.
-
-“Why, didn’t you like the present that Santa Claus brought you?” I
-teased.
-
-“Huh! I would shore have singed the ol’ gentleman’s whiskers for him
-last night if I could have caught him!” He went on to explain; “We’d
-just get settled down good to sleep when some guy or other would start
-up a-squawkin’ on one of them things. An’ Sergeant ——, well he’d had
-just enough to make him fightin’ mad, an’ he shore would rare around
-that there barracks tryin’ to find them fellers. Why, half the corporals
-in the outfit was marchin’ up and down the place most all the night
-long, shyin’ hob-nailed shoes in what they guessed was the direction of
-them noises.”
-
-I began to discern what a night of terror it had been.
-
-“Yes suh!” declared the Kentuckian. “There was one feller with a hummer
-we couldn’t get. He kept blowin’ Tipperary. He must have blowed it for
-two hours steady, on an’ off. I guess he had every last hob-nailed shoe
-in the hull barracks throwed at him.”
-
-Nor is this all. It seems I have committed a ghastly _faux pas_. I have
-gotten the Y. in dreadfully dutch with the officers. It is all along of
-the Christmas calendars. The Christmas calendars arrived at the canteen
-just the day before Christmas. They were designed to be sold to the boys
-for five cents apiece in order that they might have something to send to
-the folks at home as a Christmas greeting. But since they reached us so
-very late the Secretary and I decided we didn’t have the face to put
-them on sale.
-
-“Let’s give them away,” I suggested, and on his agreeing, laid them in
-heaps on the counter and invited the boys to help themselves. The boys
-weren’t bashful. They helped themselves with enthusiasm and zeal. They
-came back for more and more. For the rest of the day no one did a thing
-at the hut but sit at the tables and address envelopes. One boy, I
-learned later, sent off as many as thirty-five. I was awfully pleased to
-have the boys appreciate the calendars so. And I never once for a moment
-thought of the censors; but presently I heard from them. The company
-censors, two of the younger lieutenants, had been looking forward, it
-seems, to some leisurely care-free hours at Christmas. When the stacks
-of calendars started coming in they saw their holiday vanish into thin
-air, nay more, they saw themselves sitting up nights for weeks to come
-censoring those precious calendars. And they were swearing, raving mad.
-They were going to run the Y. out of the town! They were going to shut
-down the hut! Finally they compromised the matter with their consciences
-by censoring half and chucking the other half into the stove. But even
-then they couldn’t stop fussing and fuming over it. Tonight just to top
-the matter off, we received a sharp reprimand from the Business Manager
-at Bourmont for being so extravagant as to give the calendars away,
-unauthorized. Was there ever such a tragedy of good intentions?
-
-
-Bourmont, December 27.
-
-Today we buried the lad who died on Christmas night. I had never seen a
-military funeral before and I had never dreamed that such a ceremony
-could be so thrillingly beautiful.
-
-The company formed at three o’clock in the road in front of the canteen,
-then filed slowly through the streets of the little grey age-old
-village. The band marching at the head of the procession played the
-_Marche Funèbre_ of Chopin. After the band came the officers of the
-company and then the firing squad of eight sharp-shooters, followed by
-an ambulance carrying the boy’s coffin covered with a great flag.
-Behind, marched the whole of Company A and after them crowded a throng
-of villagers. All the men in town, with the innate respect that the
-French have for death, stood uncovered as we passed, while many of the
-women watched with tears streaming down their faces.
-
-We passed through the village and down the road to the little
-grey-walled cemetery, ringed around with evergreens and now deep in
-freshly fallen snow. All about stretched virgin shining snowfields and
-over them to the east rose Bourmont like a dream city, etched as
-delicately as by a silver-point against the soft dove-colored sky.
-
-The majestic phrases of the Catholic burial service rang out clearly on
-the frosty air:
-
-Eternal rest grant him, O Lord,
-
-And let perpetual light shine upon him!
-
-The coffin with the great flag burning in blue and scarlet was lowered
-into the grave. Slowly, with perfect expression, a bugler blew the
-poignant, unforgettable notes of Taps. The rifles of the firing squad
-cracked sharply; three volleys, it was over.
-
-“Will they leave him there?” An old Frenchwoman asked one of the boys
-afterwards.
-
-“’Till the war is over, then likely they will send him home.”
-
-“But why? He won’t be lonely here. There will always be some one to put
-flowers on his grave.”
-
-Tonight I was talking to the Supply Sergeant about the lad.
-
-“I think he died of a broken heart as much as anything,” he told me.
-“They wouldn’t let his mother see him at the dock when we sailed. She
-came to say good-bye but it was against the rules. He never could get
-over that; he kept brooding all the time and fretting for her. I read
-some of her letters to him. They seemed more like a sweetheart’s than a
-mother’s.”
-
-The doctors, however, diagnosed his disease as spinal meningitis. They
-have ordered the barracks in which he slept to be quarantined. Already a
-half a dozen boys in quarantine have taken to their beds, but this we
-hope is largely due to over-stimulated imaginations. Even if the disease
-doesn’t spread, however, I am wondering what will become of ninety-seven
-lively boys bottled up for two weeks in one barracks. Already various
-ones have eluded the guard and come sneaking furtively into the canteen
-to buy their cigarettes and chocolates. Whenever one of these
-unfortunates is recognized a regular howl goes up all over the hut.
-
-“Outside! You’re one of the crumby ones!” they jeer, or; “Convict! Get
-back to your cell!”
-
-
-Bourmont, December 28.
-
-The worst of my job is playing dragon to the French children. In view of
-the fact that if allowed in the hut at all they swarm in, in such
-numbers as to fairly overrun it, and pester the boys with their
-insatiable appeals for “goom” and chocolate, it has seemed best to make
-a strict rule against their admission. (Besides which I don’t approve of
-giving them gum, for in the face of anything one can do or say they will
-insist on swallowing it, which is, I’m sure, not at all good for their
-tummies!) But in spite of this prohibition the place holds an
-irresistible attraction for them. At night one can often see their faces
-pressed flat against the isinglass windows as they peer inside; while
-chiefly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons they will slip slyly in, and
-then if the dragon isn’t on the jump to explain to each and every one in
-her very best French, that she is so sorry but it really is forbidden,
-why in a twinkling the hut becomes full of them. And they are so
-picturesque, so appealing, so full of shy wonder at the gramophone with
-the wheel that “marches by itself” that it is very hard to turn them
-out.
-
-Since Christmas I have been kept busy by a tiny tad of a ragamuffin with
-a funny round cropped black head and a face as solemnly expressionless
-as a little carved Buddha. He slips in among the tables and he is
-positively too small to be seen. The Christmas tree with its shining
-ornaments is his stealthy objective. In vain I explain matters politely
-to him; without a sound, without the hint of a flicker in his little
-beady black eyes, he turns and clumps out in his ridiculous _sabots_,
-only to presently slip in again. And now it seems he has lain low and
-sagaciously observed my habits; for returning to the hut after mess this
-noon, I met him trudging along the Rue Dieu, his eyes encountering mine
-blandly without embarrassment, his absurd little figure bulging all over
-with purloined Christmas tree ornaments. In the hut I found our poor
-tree stripped to a height of four feet from the floor of all its finery.
-
-These last few evenings the hut has been given over to writing Christmas
-thank-you letters home. The official writer of love letters for the
-company has been working overtime; not that his clients cannot write
-themselves, but because they feel he is more able to do justice to the
-subject. Every night now I see him sitting out in front of the counter,
-his Jewish profile bent low over the table as he covers sheet after
-sheet with his fine and fanciful handwriting, while next him perches
-anxiously the interested party, watching developments and occasionally
-proffering a suggestion. When it is done they must bring it to me for my
-approval.
-
-“That’s a real classy letter, ain’t it?” the lover will query proudly
-and I assure him that it is indeed.
-
-“When she gets that, I bet she’ll come across with that sweater she told
-me she was makin’ for me, all right!”
-
-“Say do you think that ought to be good for a _cartoon_ of cigarettes?”
-another one inquires.
-
-Of course there are many who, no matter what the effort, prefer to write
-their own. Sometimes when cleaning up the canteen tables I come upon
-specimens of such, first drafts discarded on account of blots. One such
-love letter, classic in its brevity, picked up the other day, ran:
-
-    Dear Sweetheart,
-
-    I am writing you a few interesting lines which I hope will be
-    the same to you wishing you a merry Xmas and a happy New Year
-
-    Your loving friend
-
-    Pvt. ——
-
-Of late I have been moved to speculate wonderingly on the mental
-processes of the American public. I have been going through the stacks
-of magazines in the warehouse sent from the States for one cent per to
-provide amusement for the doughboys’ leisure moments. Among the rest I
-found the Upholsterer’s Monthly, The Hardware Dealer’s Journal, The
-Mother’s Magazine, Fancy Work and The Modern Needleworker. I showed some
-of these prizes to one of the boys; “Gee, but that’s the kind of snappy
-stuff to send a feller over the top!” was his comment. That numbers of
-the Undertaker’s Journal have also been discovered among the donations
-from home I have heard asserted on excellent authority, but as yet I
-have not personally come across any.
-
-Just as we were closing tonight, Pat came up to the counter, solemnly
-leaned across it:
-
-“Have you seen the new shoes they’re issuin’? he demanded. “They’ve got
-pitchers on them so a feller can’t see his own feet!”
-
-
-Bourmont, January 2, 1918.
-
-Once a week our peripatetic movie-machine makes its appearance among us.
-Louis, the sixteen year old French operator, unpacks the big cases, sets
-up the apparatus, and, if our luck holds, we have a show. Owing to the
-short range of the little machine the screen must be hung in the middle
-of the hut. This means that half the audience must view the pictures
-from the back, the essential difference being that the lettering is then
-reversed; “The Jewish Picture Show,” the boys call this. But then as
-half of us can’t read anyway, why should we mind?
-
-The joy of the show lies in the audience. Just as soon as the lights are
-put out the fun begins: “Everbody watch their pocketbooks!” goes up the
-shout and from that moment we are never still.
-
-The curly-headed heroine makes her coquettish entrance.
-
-“Ooo la la! Oooo la la!” rises the enthusiastic welcome.
-
-A bottle is displayed; “Cognac!” the yell shakes the roof.
-
-The neglected wife begins to waver in response to the tempter’s wiles;
-“Now don’t forget your general orders, little lady!” admonishes an
-earnest voice.
-
-Lovers indulge in a prolonged embrace; “Aw quit! Quit it! Yer make me
-homesick!” goes up the agonized appeal.
-
-The enraptured lover stands registering ecstasy; “Hit him again, he’s
-coming to!” comes the derisive shout.
-
-And so it goes. The actors aren’t on the screen, they’re in the house,
-and truly there isn’t a dull moment on the programme!
-
-Last night, however, instead of the joyous chorus of running comment a
-subdued and decorous silence reigned, broken only by a few half-hearted
-sallies. What was the matter? I racked my brain to find the cause. All
-the joy had gone from the show. The evening was stale, flat and
-unprofitable. When the lights were lit again the mystery was immediately
-made plain. At one end of the counter stood an officer. I wonder if he
-dreamed what a spoil-sport he had been?
-
-Once a week also a lady comes from the Bourmont office to give us a
-French lesson; not that Company A betrays any burning desire to learn to
-_parlez-vous_, but just that it seems obviously the proper thing to do
-under the circumstances, so French they must be taught willy-nilly.
-There were two lessons to be sure in which they took a degree of
-interest; the lesson about buying and counting money, and the lesson
-about food and drink. But when they had once learned to ask the price of
-things and to understand the answer, and had learned the words for eggs,
-bread, butter, beer, ham, beefsteak, chicken and French fried potatoes,
-their interest lapsed until it became positive boredom. Of late it has
-seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned
-anything and they, of course, knew it all already.
-
-For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This
-was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other
-night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand,
-if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that
-day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To
-stimulate the artists we announced prizes.
-
-Private Dostal opened the programme; a large red-faced lad with a bland
-and simple cast of countenance, he is the comic balladist of the
-company. His first contribution was a selection popularly known among us
-as _Beside the dyin’ boxcar, the empty hobo lay_, a piece with a vast
-number of verses in which the dying hobo repents an ill-spent life,
-only, in the last line, to “jump up and hop the train.” For an encore we
-had _Papa Eating Noodle Soup_ which could best be described as a
-“gleesome, gluesome” recitative, the chorus of each of numerous verses
-consisting of a realistic imitation of Papa partaking of the Soup. Mr.
-Gatts gave us a jig. Then Bruno who, as the boys say; “Could sing pretty
-good, only he don’t sing nothin’ but wop,” favored us with _Oh Maria_,
-prefacing his performance with the earnest admonition, “No laffin!
-nobody!” and after that with an Italian folk dance in which he looked
-more like a grotesque little punchinello than ever. Our light-weight
-boxing champion then gave us _Love’s Old Sweet Song_ and the
-heavy-weight champion popularly known as _Magulligan_, together with Mr.
-Bruno rendered _Bye low my Baby_, antiphonal fashion. The last number
-was furnished by a poilu who had wandered in, in company with one of the
-boys. He sang a long dramatic ballad, entitled _The Last Cuirassier_,
-depicting some incident in the Franco-Prussian War. Just what the boys
-made of it I don’t know, but to me it was intensely thrilling, not on
-account of the words for I couldn’t catch them, but on account of the
-fervor, the imaginative sympathy, the martial spirit which that old
-fellow in his faded trench coat threw into his tones.
-
-When the show was over Pat stood up on the counter and announced that as
-long as all the performances had been of such superlative merit, it was
-impossible for the judges to decide between them. So we handed out a
-couple of packages of “smoking” to each one of the artists, and
-everybody was satisfied.
-
-Once too we had a party, an athletic stunt party. There were
-potato-races and sack-races, string-eating contests, three-legged and
-obstacle-races; but the sensational, the crowning event was, of course,
-the pie-race. The pies which were of French manufacture had only been
-arranged after difficulties: consulting the _boulangère_ at Bourmont I
-had discovered that the calendar now only allows two pie-days per week,
-Sunday and Wednesday; since the party was to be Friday, pie was
-unlawful, unless—and here the law, like all good laws allowed a
-loop-hole—unless the pie be made with commissary flour! The pie-race was
-the “dark horse” on the programme. Fearing that if the boys learned
-beforehand of the prospective pie not only would we be mobbed by
-would-be contestants but also that their interest in the rest of the
-programme would suffer, we had kept the pie-race a profound secret.
-Smuggled in when the hut was empty those pies had reposed serenely under
-the counter all afternoon and contrary to my fears not a boy had sniffed
-them! When the proper moment came the pies were placed on a board in the
-middle of the floor, the contestants, of whom Pat was one, knelt with
-their hands tied behind them. At the word _go!_ they fell to. The hut
-howled. Then it was discovered that Corporal G. laboured under a cruel
-handicap; _his_ pie was a cherry pie and every cherry had a stone in it.
-Half-way through his pie, Pat, jerking one hand loose, seized a large
-piece, plastered it on the head of his opponent opposite; the race ended
-in a riot. Strangely enough, when peace was restored not a trace of pie
-could be found anywhere,—nowhere, that is, except in the back hair of
-the contestants.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 6.
-
-Now I know how the prince in the fairy tale felt when he was bidden to
-climb the mountain of glass. For Bourmont Hill is sheeted with ice, and
-it is fairly as much as one’s life is worth to attempt to go up or down.
-Every morning I stand and look at that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder
-if I may possibly reach the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes
-in the shape of a French lad in _sabots_, sometimes as a stalwart
-doughboy with a sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go
-slipping, slithering down the hill-side. In the middle of the road
-yelling doughboys, seated on cakes of ice, whiz by at a mad rate of
-speed; long before they reach the bottom of the slope, the ice-cake
-splinters into bits, but the doughboy shoots on downward, sprawling,
-spinning like a top, while you hold your breath and gape to see that his
-neck isn’t broken. For the French people all this supplies the sensation
-of a life-time; they crowd their front doors and their front yards
-laughing, shrieking warning or encouragement, as they watch the progress
-of the mad Americans up and down the hill.
-
-“If one could only have a movie of Bourmont Hill on a day like this!”
-sighs the Gendarme.
-
-The other day I encountered a sergeant of engineers on the hill-side.
-
-“You ought to have a sled, Little Girl,” he told me.
-
-“Well why don’t the engineers make me one?” I unthinkingly retorted.
-
-“Sure and they will!” he answered.
-
-Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have that sled
-made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. And as for
-starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just as soon attempt
-Niagara in a barrel.
-
-Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the canteen I
-wash my chocolate cups with the dishpan on the stove in order to keep
-the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry at the corner of the
-counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. At night the
-ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black ruin all around them.
-What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a vexing problem; I might I
-suppose take them home each night with me and sleep with them underneath
-my pillow. In the little umbrella-stand stoves the green wood, which
-comes in so freshly cut, that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined
-around them, simply will not burn, and the stoves will smoke, _mon
-Dieu_, how they will smoke! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes,
-secured shakily by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company
-with the stoves, and then the clouds pour forth as if we housed a
-captive Etna.
-
-In the barracks the boys tell me their shoes freeze to the floor over
-night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the sake of
-warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of a deadly
-crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an acute one. The boys
-who have money to burn are spending it to purchase extravagantly priced
-fur-lined gloves. The boys who can’t afford them, wait until they see
-somebody lay a pair down.
-
-The taking of baths has become an act of heroism.
-
-“Took a bath today,” growls a lad. “Think I ought to get a service
-stripe for that.”
-
-While another boy grins; “Gee but I’m feelin’ rich! Took a bath today
-and found two pair o’socks and three shirts I didn’t know I had!”
-
-“Now ain’t you sorry you cut off the bottom of your coat!” a long-coated
-doughboy taunts an abbreviated one. “I told you not to. First, you’re
-out of luck at Reveille ’cause the Top Kick can see you ain’t got no
-leggin’s on. An’ now before you know it, you’ll be havin’ chilblains in
-your knees.”
-
-“You should worry,” growls back the short-coated one. “I couldn’t stand
-that thing flappin’ ’round my feet no longer. An’ most of the other guys
-done it too.”
-
-Which is true. Before this cold spell set in, half the boys in the
-company had taken a slice off the bottom of their overcoats, a procedure
-which leads to an odd effect _en masse_ as each has chosen his own
-length which means everything from knees to ankles, and drives the
-exasparated Loots to demanding; “D’you want to know what you look like?
-Well, you look like _hell_!”
-
-In the village streets snow-ball fights are in order. As soon as the
-boys start an offensive, all the inhabitants of the _Faubourg de France_
-run out and put up their shutters. Better to sit in the dark while the
-battle rages than to risk a pane of precious window-glass! Yesterday out
-at Iloud the boys caught the Y Secretary, a meek and mild little man, in
-the road and started to give him a thorough pelting. He ran for the hut,
-they chased him, he gained his refuge, locked the door after him; they
-proceeded to heap about half a ton of snow against it, making it
-immovable. The unhappy man had to remove a window frame and crawl out
-through the opening, then spend the rest of the afternoon digging out
-his hut door.
-
-Here at our billet our little pea-green porcelain stove with the
-lavender thistles growing over it has proved to be more ornamental then
-useful. Since the Gendarme is one of your naturally efficient souls, I
-feel that such practical details as building fires belong to her. If she
-wishes to coax and cozen the wretched thing for an hour on end, well and
-good. As for me I prefer to go and hug the cook stove in Madame’s
-parlor. French fires don’t burn the way American fires do, I tell
-Madame. But to her the matter is quite simple. The stove, she says,
-doesn’t understand English.
-
-Today I met the sergeant of engineers. Some imp impelled me to question
-jovially;
-
-“Where’s that sled you promised me?”
-
-“It’s almost done.” My knees went weak beneath me.
-
-Tonight I confided my apprehensions to the Gendarme. She looked at me
-with an unpitying eye.
-
-“The more goose you, for encouraging him,” was her cold comfort. “What
-are you going to do about it?”
-
-“I’m going to pray for a thaw,” I told her.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 8.
-
-Life at the Maison Chaput doesn’t flow quite so peacefully these days as
-it did before Christmas. The disturbing factor is four-year old Max,
-left by his mother to visit his grandparents. Max is a spoiled child
-according to the Chaput point of view. He is expected to walk a chalk
-line with his little red felt toes, and failing this, he is spanked
-early and often. It is unlucky for him that the fagots by the hearth
-afford a continual supply of handy switches.
-
-“The little Jesus will never bring you anything again at Christmas,”
-warns Grandmamma; “never again! And neither will the _Père Nicolas_!”
-Then she appeals to me; “All the little children in America are always
-well-behaved, are they not?”
-
-“But yes, certainly!” I reply, avoiding Max’s eye.
-
-Coming home in the evening I often stop on my way back to the chilly
-_Salle des Assiettes_, in response to an urgent invitation, to warm
-myself at the fireplace. Old Monsieur will be sitting on one side of the
-hearth and I on the other, while Baby Max toasts his toes in their
-scarlet slippers on a stool between us. Sometimes they will sing for me.
-Monsieur had a fine voice when he was young and even now he sings with a
-delightful air, a sort of indescribable old gallantry that is a joy to
-me. When he and Max sing together the effect is irresistible.
-
-“Now we will sing _Le Drapeau de la France_,” cries Monsieur. “We must
-stand for this!” And Monsieur in his gay red neck cloth and little Max
-in his blue checked pinafore stand up before the fire and sing with
-their hearts in the words “_Saluons le drapeau de la France._” When they
-come to that line, Monsieur le Commandant veteran of 1870 and baby Max
-salute together.
-
-Then, “_Vive la France!_” I cry, and “_Vive la France!_” they echo.
-
-When new troops pass through town Max must always run to the door to cry
-“_Bonjour les Américans!_” a salutation which is often followed I fear
-by a request for cigarettes, for Max, baby that he is, enjoys a smoke,
-much to his grandparents’ amusement.
-
-Among the china-ware at the Maison Chaput there is a funny little jug
-which the Gendarme and I use for fetching hot water. It is made in the
-shape of a fat frog with a blue waistcoat and a pipe in one of his
-webbed feet. I had thought it was the famous frog who would a-wooing go,
-but Monsieur has his own explanation. It is the original St. Thiebault
-toad he declares, to tease me. Every time I come to draw a little hot
-water from the stove he must crack the self-same joke.
-
-“_C’est le crapaud de Saint Thiebault_,” he cries and baby Max pipes up;
-“_Il a soif!_”
-
-Yesterday as I was passing through the front room on my way to the
-canteen Monsieur stopped me to draw me into conversation. There were
-several neighbors present. They gathered in a ring around me. I could
-see they had some weighty question to put to me. After a moment’s
-hesitation it came out:
-
-“_Pourquoi_,” they demanded, “_pourquoi_, does the American soldier blow
-his nose with his fingers?”
-
-I stared, taken aback. In order to make their meaning quite clear they
-illustrated with expressive gestures.
-
-“Why,” I stammered, “does the poilu never do such a thing?”
-
-“But never!” they declared in chorus. “The poilu always uses his
-handkerchief!” And again they illustrated in pantomime.
-
-I labored to explain; the French climate had given the boys colds, and
-the question of laundry and clean handkerchiefs presented
-difficulties....
-
-“But,” declared old Monsieur sagely, “in America I have heard it is the
-custom. There all the _haut monde_, it is said, lawyers, doctors,
-ministers, statesmen, blow their noses in that manner!”
-
-This was too much. I hurried from the room.
-
-This morning Monsieur accused me of being a coquette. Hotly I denied the
-charge. But why then, he rejoined triumphantly, had I asked for a
-looking-glass in my bed-room?
-
-
-Bourmont, January 9.
-
-Company A is going to China! Somebody heard somebody say that somebody
-told him that the Chaplain had said so. The boys are all excitement over
-the idea.
-
-“Won’t that be jolly! You’ll all be coming home with little shiny
-pigtails hanging down your backs!” I tease them.
-
-“Yes sir! an’ we’ll learn to eat our chow with chopsticks!” I have
-solemnly promised the boys that if Company A goes to China I will go
-too. What’s more I will learn to make Chop Suey for them. I have always
-wanted to visit China.
-
-Thus does the army rumor make sport of us. Reports of this sort
-incessantly spring up among us, flourish for a day, to be forgotten on
-the morrow. It is just a sign I suppose of the restlessness that is rife
-among the boys, the nostalgia, the rebellion at the grinding monotony of
-their lives. Half the men in the company, it seems, have gone to their
-officers begging to be transferred into one of the two divisions that
-have already been in the lines.
-
-“I’m sick o’ this kind o’ life; what I came over here for was to fight,”
-they growl.
-
-In the canteen they look at the French National Loan poster which has
-the Statue of Liberty on it, and speculate as to their chances of ever
-seeing her again.
-
-“Oh boy! but I bet there’ll be some noise on board ship when we catch
-sight o’ that ol’ gal again!”
-
-“They wouldn’t be breakin’ my heart if they gave out orders tonight to
-start for home termorrer.” The chorus groans assent. “No sir!” speaks up
-Private Gatts, “I don’t want to go home until I’ve killed some of them
-Germans.”
-
-“Aw, come off,” rises the incredulous jeer; “you know, if they’d let
-you, you’d start out to walk to Saint Nazaire tonight if you had to
-carry your full pack an’ your rife an’ your extra shoes.”
-
-To beguile the tedium they indulge in what appears to be, next to
-crap-shooting, the most popular indoor sport of the A. E. F.—mustache
-raising. I don’t believe there’s a man in the company outside of
-Cummings and Maggioni who hasn’t tried his luck at it. Sometimes it
-seems as though an epidemic of young mustaches will break out overnight
-as it were. The second lieutenants jeer and witticize in vain. There is
-one squad who have solemnly pledged themselves to remain mustachioed
-until they “can the Kaiser;” but for the most part, the little
-“Charlies” are fleeting affairs that come and go according to their
-owner’s whim. This makes it quite confusing for me, because no sooner
-have I got to know a lad with a mustache by sight, than he shaves it off
-and alters his appearance so that I have to learn him all over again.
-But even the excitement of raising a mustache and having your picture
-taken and sending it back home to your best girl and then waiting to
-hear what she will say about it, affords only a brief diversion. And
-when that is done, we are face to face again with the stark sheer
-stupidity of drilling and hiking, hiking and drilling, day after day,
-week in and week out, in the slush, the mud, and the rain.
-
-“Another day, another dollar,” remarks my friend Mr. Brady with
-philosophic resignation as he comes in from walking post at night,
-“Betsy the Toad-sticker,” as he familiarly terms his rifle, over his
-shoulder.
-
-“I sure was strong on the patriotic stuff when I enlisted,” mourns a lad
-cast in a less stoic mould, “but since I got over here I’ll tell the
-world my patriotism is all shot to pieces.”
-
-“Who called this here land _Sunny France_, I’d like to know?” is the
-indignant question which someone is bound to propose at least once a
-day.
-
-“I’ve only seen the sun twice since I’ve been here,” complained one lad,
-“and then it was kind of mildewed.”
-
-“It stopped raining for three hours the other day,” remarked another,
-“an’ I wrote home to my folks an’ told ’em what a long dry spell we’d
-been having.”
-
-Altogether we are inclined to take a very pessimistic view at present of
-our surroundings.
-
-“This land is a thousand years behind the times,” is the reiterated
-comment, and who can blame them, having seen nothing of France but these
-tiny primitive mud-and-muck villages? “It ain’t worth fightin’ for. Why
-if I owned this country I’d give it to the Germans and apologize to
-’em.”
-
-“It ain’t the country, it’s the people in it,” asserted another lad
-darkly.
-
-While the Tall Kentuckian declared, “When I came to France, the height
-of my ambition was to kill a German. Now the height of my ambition is to
-kill a Frenchman.”
-
-What can one say to them? I try fatuously to comfort by reminding them
-of the good time coming when we all get home again. I paint rosy
-pictures of a grand parade of the division up Fifth Avenue, but they are
-sceptical.
-
-“Huh! That won’t be for us! All the fuss will be for the National Guard
-and the draft guys. The reg’lars don’t never get no credit.”
-
-Then someone will start to hum the song which goes;
-
-  “O why didn’t I wait to be drafted?
-  Why didn’t I wait to be cheered?”
-
-“Well I’ll tell the world that you deserve the credit!”
-
-Anyway Company A has settled one point: if they ever march up Fifth
-Avenue I am to march with them.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 11.
-
-The “convicts” are out of quarantine, and none the worse it seems for
-the experience. Yet my family is still depleted. Forty boys from the
-company have been sent out on a wood-chopping detail. Detachments from
-each of the four companies in rotation are being sent out into the
-forest to cut fuel for the use of the First Battalion and now it is our
-turn.
-
-The boys, we learn, are billeted in a twelfth century fortress in a tiny
-village at the forest’s edge. From time to time some of them hike the
-four miles in to Saint Thiebault after the day’s work is done, in order
-to get a cup of hot chocolate and to tease a candle out of me. For the
-chateau boasts none of the modern luxuries of heat and light.
-
-“What do you do in the evenings?” I asked Mr. Gatts.
-
-“Sit in the _café_. It’s the only place there is to go.”
-
-“I’m sorry.”
-
-“Well you needn’t worry about the boys drinkin’. They ain’t none of them
-got no money. All they can do is to sit and watch the Frenchies.”
-
-Indeed such a long time has passed since our last payday that the whole
-company is feeling the pinch of poverty. Canteen sales have narrowed
-down to the three essentials; chocolate, cigarettes and chewing gum. I
-am running accounts on my personal responsibility, giving them “jawbone”
-as the boys say, a proceeding at which our Secretary looks with a
-disapproving eye. To be sure the air is full of rumours of impending
-payday but meanwhile there is no disguising the fact that the great
-majority is “dead broke.”
-
-Says Sergeant X to Sergeant Z, a boy with a curious cast of countenance;
-“Say, Bill, do you remember the time I paid ten cents to see you in a
-cage at Barnum’s? Well I want that dime back now.”
-
-Another lad in answer to the appeal of “got a cent?” replies with
-feeling; “One cent? Why man, if I had a cent I’d go to Paris!”
-
-They have court-martialed the lieutenant who beat Malotzzi. His
-punishment is to be transferred to another regiment.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 14.
-
-Madame is sick and I am worried. It isn’t so much that she is
-dangerously ill as that she is dangerously old. She lies in the big blue
-room upstairs, looking like a patient aged Madonna, without a fire, and
-with no one to look after her. Monsieur it seems has made up his mind to
-her demise and piously resigned himself. I called in an army doctor.
-
-“She’s pretty low,” he said, “but it isn’t medicine she needs so much as
-nursing.”
-
-I informed Monsieur. He must get a woman to come in and take care of
-her. But there was no such woman. He must try to find one. But no, it
-was impossible! “Well at least, you can make a fire in her room,” I told
-him. As for _La Petite_, she has proved herself a broken reed. Lacking
-Madame’s rigid eyes upon her, she has become lazy and negligent.
-Moreover she is indubitably in love with some doughty doughboy, the
-proof being that she spends the time when she should be gathering the
-harvest of dust from the _Salle des Assiettes_ in copying English
-phrases from our books on to the Gendarme’s pink blotting-paper.
-Yesterday we found “Welcome Americans” scrawled all over it. Meanwhile
-Monsieur seems to consider himself as qualifying for a martyr’s crown
-because he gets his own meals and washes his own dishes. “_Mais,
-regardez Mademoiselle!_” he calls to me as I pass through the
-living-room, and flourishes the dish-cloth at me with a tragic air. So
-between excursions to the canteen I am trying to play nurse to Madame,
-and a pretty poor one I make, I fear. Worse still, I must act as
-interpreter for the Doctor, whose French is absolutely nil, at every
-visit and since my scanty stock of French phrases hardly includes a
-sick-room vocabulary I am often absolutely at a loss. But we muddle
-through somehow and the Doctor gets his reward when we stop to speak to
-Monsieur in the front-room afterwards, for then Monsieur must bring out
-a bottle of champagne and together they sit in front of the fire and
-toast each other.
-
-Yesterday the Doctor prescribed fresh eggs. I told Monsieur. But there
-were none in Bourmont he declared.
-
-“Very well,” I said, “then I’ll get them.”
-
-I started out to search. I knew of course that eggs in France these days
-were difficult. In some places the Americans have been forbidden, on
-account of the scarcity, to buy either eggs or chickens; a ruling which
-officers have been known to evade by the simple expedient of renting
-laying hens. But no such prohibition exists at present in Saint
-Thiebault. Just the other day a lad told me he had consumed twelve fried
-eggs at one sitting.
-
-“Yes and Corporal G. ate more than I did.”
-
-“How many did he eat?”
-
-“Oh, just thirteen.”
-
-“No wonder,” I observed, “that the French talk about _la famine_!” I
-started a house-to-house canvas of Saint Thiebault only to be met by a
-shake of the head and “_Pas des oeufs_” everywhere I went. Finally back
-at the canteen I put the question in despair to the boys. “Have you been
-to the tobacco shop?” they inquired. So to the tobacco shop I hurried
-and sure enough there they were, all one wanted at the rate of seven
-francs a dozen.
-
-Last night Madame had an egg-nogg and this morning an omelette. Now the
-Doctor says that she is better.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 17.
-
-If my fairy god-mother should lend me her magic wand, the very first
-thing I would wish for would be a dinner, a real dinner just like Mother
-used to cook, for Company A. It would start with turkey and cranberry
-sauce and end with several kinds of pie, ice-cream and chocolate layer
-cake. There would be no soup on the menu. Such a meal I am sure would do
-more to raise the morale of Company A than the news of a smashing allied
-victory. It is the everlasting sameness, the perpetual reiteration of a
-certain few articles of food, I suppose, that makes the boys’ “chow” so
-depressing.
-
-“I’ve eaten so much bacon since I’ve been in the army,” remarked one boy
-mournfully,” that I’m ashamed to look a pig in the face.”
-
-There is one question which the whole A. E. F. would like to have
-answered. They’ve “got the bacon,” but what became of the ham?
-
-Far more hated than the bacon, however, is the “slum,” a word which Pat
-informs me is derived from the “slumgullion” of the hobo. It is this
-“slum” that gives the doughboy his horror of anything like soup.
-
-“When I get back to New York,” said a lad to me the other day, “I’m
-going to go into a real swell hotel and order a big dish o’ slum. Then
-I’m going to order a regular dinner, beefsteak and oysters and all the
-fixings, and then I’m going to sit and laugh at the slum.”
-
-Pat came in with a whoop after dinner yesterday. “We had a change
-today,” he sang out, “they put a pickle in the beans!” This noon he
-bounced in again. “We had a change today,” he shouted, “they cut the
-beans lengthwise instead of cuttin’ them acrosst.”
-
-I made a fatal error. “Don’t you like beans?” I asked. “Why I’m very
-fond of them. I wish they’d give them to us at our mess once in a
-while.”
-
-Pat looked at me with his sharp eyes narrowing. “D’you mean it?”
-
-“Why of course I do!”
-
-He turned and walked out of the hut. Two minutes later he returned with
-a hunk of bread and a mess-kit brimfull of beans; he laid them on the
-counter in front of me. I gasped but did my best to rise to the
-occasion. I was delighted to see those beans, I assured him. I had just
-been starting out to go to mess; a little bird had told me they were to
-have roast pork, French fries, and peach pie for dinner, but now I would
-stay at the hut and eat beans instead. Then I tasted the beans. They
-were as hard as bullets, they stuck in my throat; I had never known
-anything could be quite so awful. But Pat’s eyes were upon me. There was
-nothing for it but to swallow those beans. So swallow them I did, every
-last one, and there were positively at least a thousand. Then I washed
-the mess-kit and returned it to friend Pat with effusive thanks. At
-least, I complimented myself, I had been game. Tonight, just as I was
-starting out for my supper of toast and chocolate with the little old
-ladies of the Rue Dieu, Pat suddenly appeared on the other side of the
-counter.
-
-“We had ’em again tonight,” he announced joyfully, “and I thought since
-you were so fond of ’em,”—he pushed another mess-kit full of beans
-across the counter. I glared at him. I had vainly been trying to recover
-from the dinner beans all afternoon.
-
-“Take those things away,” I snapped, “I don’t want to lay eyes on
-another bean as long as ever I live!” Pat had called my bluff.
-
-For the last week Company A has had guests in the mess-hall. Several
-French soldiers have been sent here to instruct the boys in some special
-drill; it was arranged that they eat and sleep with the Americans.
-Dreary as the boys find their chow, it proved a treat to the poilus who
-evidently spread the news of their good fortune among their friends in
-the vicinity, for day by day the number of Frenchmen messing with
-Company A was mysteriously increased.
-
-“Yes sir!” the indignant Mess Sergeant declared to me. “They started in
-with five and now they’ve grown to be fifteen. I can’t tell one from
-t’other because all these frogs look alike to me, and they know as how I
-can’t sling their lingo. That’s a nice thing for them to be putting over
-on me!”
-
-But yesterday he got his chance to get even. He caught one of the
-Frenchmen putting a piece of bread in his pocket. It is of course a
-military offense to carry food out of the mess-hall.
-
-“I just sailed right into that guy”—the Mess Sergeant is a large and
-husky specimen—“and I sure did wipe up the floor some with him. And
-since then the whole gang of ’em has been scared stiff. Those frogs just
-watch me all the time. There ain’t a minute when I’m in the mess-hall
-that one of ’em takes his eyes off me.”
-
-The other day, they tell me, one of the boys in the company, possessed
-of a practical turn, employed his newly-issued “tin derby” as a kettle
-in which to boil some eggs. The delicacy proved dear. Betrayed by the
-blackened helmet, he was tried and fined twenty dollars.
-
-
-Bourmont, January 20.
-
-I’m off for Paris! My eyes have been in a horrid state for the last
-week. I have had all the doctors in the neighborhood treating them and
-they only get worse and worse. The Chief is going up to Paris tomorrow
-and has decided that the best thing to do is to take me along to see a
-specialist.
-
-Madame is so much better that I don’t feel uneasy at leaving her. But I
-hate to desert the boys, especially as the hut is in such a state.
-Yesterday we had a storm and the wind almost wrecked our tent. There was
-one moment while I was out at dinner, when such a gust hit it, that, as
-the boys said, “She sure seemed a goner.” At that moment there was a
-stampede for the door, the boys shooting out of the tent “just like
-seeds from an orange when you squeeze it.” But thanks to the Secretary
-and a crowd of boys who got out and hung for dear life on to the guy
-ropes, the tent came through damaged but still standing. When I returned
-after mess I found our hut with two great gaping rents torn in the outer
-walls and the inner lining all ripped loose and hanging down from the
-ceiling, so that one felt exactly as if one were inside a punctured
-zeppelin.
-
-Reports coming in this morning from other points on the division state
-that two tents actually did collapse during the tempest, and that one
-man, caught beneath the wreckage, had his collarbone broken. So we can
-count ourselves lucky.
-
-Tonight I said _au ’voir_ to Company A, telling them that if payday
-should occur during my absence, I hoped they all would be very, very
-good. Some of the boys lugubriously predicted that I would never return,
-while others darkly insinuated that they suspected I was “goin’ to Paris
-to git married.” To show them what my intentions honestly were, I
-inquired if there were any errands I could do for them in the city.
-Corporal G. looked at me, stammered, hesitated. There was something he
-would like, only he didn’t want to bother me. What was it? He paused,
-grew red, then blurted it out.
-
-“If it ain’t too much trouble, could you send me a picture post-card
-while you’re away? I ain’t never had a post-card from Paris.”
-
-
-Hôpital Claude-Bernard, Porte D’Aubervilliers
-
-Paris, January 25.
-
-This is a hideous hospital. They wake you up in the middle of the night
-to wrap you in a mustard poultice. They wake you up in the wee sma’
-hours and order you to brush your teeth. And nobody in the whole
-establishment from head-doctor to scrub-lady knows a word of English;
-except the night-nurse and she knows “mumpsss!” like that she says it,
-“MUMPSSSSS!” Not that I have them; I have the measles. I don’t know
-where I got them. They were, so far as I am aware, almost the only known
-malady which we didn’t have at Bourmont. Probably some lad who was
-passing through the town and stopped in at the canteen gave them to me.
-It was undoubtedly the measles that were affecting my eyes; sometimes it
-seems they act that way.
-
-They sent me to this hospital because it was the only hospital in Paris
-admitting women that had room for me: known officially as the city
-hospital for contagious diseases, among Americans it passes as “the
-pest-house.”
-
-They think I’m a weird one here, because I want my window open.
-Twenty-nine times a day at least an _infirmière_ will come hurrying in
-and bang it shut and twenty-nine times a day I crawl out of bed and open
-it again.
-
-The nursing here is all done by _infirmières_, or untrained women under
-the direction of two real nurses, one in charge of this wing during the
-day, the other during the night. Some of these _infirmières_ go about in
-curl papers, others wear sabots. They mean well enough, but they are
-overworked, and frankly peasant types, with little education and almost
-no notion of cleanliness or of much else that is supposed to pertain to
-nursing. Last night a fat old soul without many teeth came waddling into
-my room to have a look at that interesting curiosity, _la pauvre petite
-Dame Américaine_. When she saw my open window she was so overcome with
-astonishment that she hurried out and fetched a companion to regard the
-phenomenon. The two of them stood and stared at it and discussed the
-matter between themselves for quite a while, then the fat one turned to
-me and remarked with a toothless but engaging smile; it was very warm in
-America where I lived, was it not? When I replied that, instead, it was
-much colder in winter there than here in Paris, they looked aghast and
-flatly incredulous. Their only explanation of the matter had been, it
-seemed, that I was accustomed to living in the tropics and just didn’t
-have sense enough to suit my habits to the atmosphere.
-
-Just outside the hospital there is a munitions factory. At night the
-light over the front door shines into my room and day and night the
-machinery keeps up an incessant thudding hum that says as plain as words
-over and over and over: _Kill the Boches. Kill the Boches. Kill the
-Boches._ Once in a long while the machines stop for a few moments in
-order, I suppose, to catch their breath and then I grow dreadfully
-worried, for I know that if someone doesn’t keep on killing the Boches
-every second, they will be breaking through the lines and pouring in
-over France in great drowning grey waves.
-
-January 27. I haven’t got the measles after all; I have the German
-measles, only they don’t call it that in French I am glad to say. At
-first I was so very red and speckled that they thought I had the
-_rougeole_, but now they have decided it is only the _rubeole_ after
-all. A concourse of doctors considered me yesterday morning and
-pronounced the verdict. “But then,” I demanded, “if it’s only the
-_rubeole_ can’t I be leaving _tout de suite_?” For the French do not
-consider quarantine necessary for the rubeole. “Eight days,” they
-answered, and when I expostulated they turned on their collective heels
-and marched callously out the door, each one holding up eight fingers
-apiece as a parting rejoinder.
-
-Last night I resisted a great temptation. This place is full of doors
-with little glass panes in them. As I lay awake in bed in the middle of
-the night, a wild desire grew on me to seize my big green bottle of
-mineral water by the neck and see how many panes of glass I could
-account for before they nabbed me. I had a perfect vision of myself,
-flying down the hall in my little flour-sack chemise of a night-gown,
-long legs stretching out beneath, going zip, bang, right and left into
-those window panes. I have seldom wanted to do anything quite so badly.
-And then just to top off with I was going to wring the interne’s neck.
-He is a little shrimp of a man—that interne, with no chin and a sort of
-scrawny picked-chicken neck, a neck that gets on one’s nerves.
-
-When they sent me to this hospital I comforted myself with the thought
-that I would at least learn a little French while staying here, but the
-only thing I have learned so far is that _gargariser_ means gargle and
-any goose might have guessed that.
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-January 28. The Chief has sent me a rose-pink cyclamen. It is a lovely
-thing and very elaborately done up with pink crêpe paper and a large bow
-of shell-pink ribbon. Now I am no longer an object of any interest.
-Every last doctor, nurse, interne and _infirmière_ who comes into my
-room to take a look at _la petite Mees_, immediately turns his or her
-back on me and admires the cyclamen instead. I gather such objects are
-rare in French hospitals, for they examine and discuss it at the
-greatest length, always winding up with the remark that it must have
-“cost very dear.”
-
-Not having anything else to do I lie with my eyes shut and think. And of
-course I have been thinking chiefly about Company A. I have thought
-among other things of a play, or rather a dramatic charade in three
-acts, which we might give in the hut. It is to be entitled _Slum_. In
-the first act,—_Bill_— three doughboys hit on a plan to encompass the
-Kaiser’s death and so become rich by gaining the proffered reward:—they
-will send him a dish of slum! The second act,—_et_—shows a room in the
-Potsdam palace with Kaiser Bill and His Side Whiskers, the Lord High
-Chancellor, discussing the food situation. The slum appears; the Kaiser
-partakes of it and falls writhing to the floor. The last act shows a
-typical barn-loft billet, with rats squeaking, chickens clucking et
-cetera, where the Soldiers Three of the first act have their lodging.
-They receive the tidings of the Kaiser’s death; wild rejoicings ensue,
-as in fancy they spend their fortunes; only to be cut short by the
-discovery that the cook who made the slum has already claimed the
-reward. I think we can stage it successfully, though the costumes for
-the Kaiser and His Side Whiskers present some difficulties. One thing
-only troubles me; will it hurt the Mess Sergeant’s feelings?
-
-                    *       *       *       *       *
-
-January 30. They have relented. They have shortened my stay. I am to be
-let out tomorrow, but I must _reposer_ a few days before going back to
-work. Bother! I haven’t heard anything from Bourmont for ten days and I
-am full of uneasy apprehensions. Since I have been in the hospital the
-cyclamen has been the only word I have had from the outside world. I
-have been cut off as completely as if I were in a tomb. Ah well, some
-day I’ll get back to the hut again I suppose, and when I do, if those
-boys aren’t almost half as glad to see me as I am to see them, why I’ll
-know that some other canteen lady has been surreptitiously stealing
-their affections, and I shall put poison in her soup.
-
-
-Hôpital Claude-Bernard
-
-Paris, January 31.
-
-I have been in a big air raid; this is just how it all happened:
-
-It was a white night in the hospital for me. I had lain for hours, it
-seemed, in the little blue room watching through the glass panes of my
-door the coiffed head of a young _infirmière_ bent over her embroidery.
-She sat outside my door because there was a light in the hall just
-there. Suddenly my drowsy ears were pierced by a long weird hoot. In an
-instant the girl had leaped to her feet and switched off the light, then
-she turned and ran down the hall. A moment later and the building was in
-darkness. I jumped from my bed and ran to the window. The light in front
-of the munitions factory was out, there seemed an uncanny silence, the
-machinery had been stopped. I hurried to the door. The corridor was full
-of hastening forms, _infirmières_, their loose white robes showing dimly
-in the grey light.
-
-“_Qu’est ce qui arrive?_” I demanded.
-
-“_Les Boches!_”
-
-The night nurse was peering from my window.
-
-“It’s the first warning,” she whispered. “See! the lights of Paris still
-shine.”
-
-But even as we looked, the light across the sky that was Paris
-flickered, dimmed, flashed out. At the same moment two great golden
-stars rose over the munitions factory.
-
-“_Les avions!_” cried the night nurse.
-
-And all the time the sirens kept up their ghostly wailing, like nothing
-one could imagine except a vast host of lost souls. Then the guns began.
-A moment later a crashing thud told that a bomb had fallen in our
-neighborhood. The night nurse drew me hurriedly into the hall.
-
-“Lie down against the wall,—close—like this,” she ordered.
-
-Up and down the corridor every space by the wall was occupied by the
-huddled form of an _infirmière_ buried beneath a mattress. The night
-nurse, who had a whole heap of mattresses to herself, pushed one across
-to me. I lay on the top, finding it more comfortable that way.
-
-The bombs were falling nearer. A child in one of the wards woke up and
-began to wail fretfully. No one heeded her. There was a flash and then a
-tearing thud that shook the hospital. I had one ghastly moment, a thrill
-of panic terror at our utter helplessness as we lay there awaiting what
-seemed the inevitable coming of destruction. The moment passed. I got up
-and slipped down the side corridor to the glass door. The sky was full
-of moving lights; some burned with a steady brilliancy, some flickered
-and went out like fireflies, a few flashed red. There was no telling
-which was friend or foe. They seemed to be proceeding in all directions
-without plan or purpose. The air pulsated with the humming drone of
-their motors. They were like a swarm of angry hornets I thought. Across
-the road, standing on the top of a high wall, in sharp silhouette
-against the sky, three poilus stood to watch. Every now and then an
-_infirmière_, curiosity outweighing caution, would leave her
-hiding-place and creep to the door beside me only to burrow like a bug,
-a moment later, underneath her mattress once more.
-
-“_Mees! N’avez-vous pas peur?_”
-
-“_Mais non!_”
-
-“_Ah, vous êtes un soldat!_”
-
-I went back to my room and climbed out on the window-sill. At first I
-thought the lights of Paris had been turned on again, but this time they
-were color of rose. As I looked the pink flush deepened, grew ruddy,
-flamed across the sky. I called the night nurse.
-
-“_C’est une incendie_,” she wailed staccato. “_Quel malheur!_”
-
-So Paris was on fire.
-
-As we watched two big puffs of white smoke rose over the munitions
-factory, spread into a cloud, drifted slowly toward us. The night nurse
-sniffed, then shut the window hurriedly.
-
-“_La gaz_,” she whispered. I questioned it but left the window shut.
-
-An aeroplane swung low over the munitions factory, so near that it
-looked like a great lazy fish with the rose light from below shining on
-its belly. Was it friend or enemy?
-
-The bombs were dropping close again. One could see the flashes and feel
-the jar of the explosions which made the windows rattle.
-
-“_Oh les sales Boches!_”
-
-“_Oh la la!_”
-
-The agonized wails sounded half stifled from beneath the mattresses.
-
-“_Taisez! Écoutez!_” It was the night nurse’s voice.
-
-The front door slammed. A fat _infirmière_ in a badly shattered state of
-nerves stumbled down the hall weeping out unintelligible woes. At my
-mattress she came to a standstill, then ducked and tried to crawl
-beneath it; failing, she sat down on top of me. I ventured a polite
-protest,—in vain. The night nurse heard me. She emerged from beneath her
-heap. Followed a scene dramatic, unforgettable. Mattresses scattered to
-each side of her, heedless of the falling bombs, with Gallic passion she
-proceeded to point out to the sobbing _infirmière_ the shortcomings of
-her behaviour. But the fat lady proved unrepentant, her terror at the
-bombs superseding even her awe of the night nurse. She sat tight,
-holding her ground. She even ventured to answer back. The scene grew
-more intense. After I had heard the night nurse discharge the
-_infirmière_ some six times over, feeling a trifle out of place, I
-managed to crawl from beneath and made my way back to the window. No
-more bombs were falling but the guns still barked. As I watched, a
-burning plane looking like a great tinsel ball seared its way through
-the sky, falling just to the right of Paris.
-
-“Pray God it is a Boche!” I thought.
-
-A round-eyed _infirmière_ peered in at the door, staring curiously at
-me.
-
-“_Mees! Vous allez retourner en Amerique?_”
-
-“_Mais oui! A près la guerre!_”
-
-The red glare over Paris was fading out. The machines in the munitions
-factory began to throb once more. In the grey light at the window I
-looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes past one. I turned to crawl
-into bed feeling cold and very sleepy. Some one touched my sleeve; it
-was the night nurse. She was staring out the window with eyes that saw
-nothing.
-
-“And how many little children will be dead in the morning do you think?”
-she asked.
-
-
-Bourmont, February 5.
-
-The blow that I somehow dimly apprehended while I was in the hospital
-has fallen. Last night late I arrived from Paris. The first thing I
-learned was, that with the addition of some new workers a general
-shuffle of the women at Headquarters was to take place. This morning the
-Chief called us together and gave us our new assignments. The Gendarme
-and I are to leave Bourmont. Since I have been away regimental
-Headquarters have been moved from Saint Thiebault to Goncourt, a town
-about two miles to the south, and the whole regiment with the exception
-of the First Battalion concentrated there. The Y. at Goncourt has had a
-hard time of it. Originally it occupied a barracks; then the regimental
-machine-gun company moved in and the Y. must move out. So the Y. settled
-itself in an old stone mill by the Meuse, only to have the military
-authorities decide that they needed that mill for a guard-house. So once
-more the Y. moved, this time to a little old house in the centre of the
-village; and here according to last reports it still is, for the simple
-reason that nobody else has any use for the little old house. Meanwhile,
-however, they are putting up a Big Hut which is to be ready in from one
-to three weeks, all according to who is making the estimate. It is to
-Goncourt that the Gendarme and I have been assigned. According to the
-Chief this is a “promotion.”
-
-“It’s the largest, the most important place on the division now,” he
-declared; “I’m sending you there because you made good at Saint
-Thiebault.”
-
-But this little piece of taffy doesn’t seem to help matters a bit. The
-only way to look at it is that it’s a case of the greatest good for the
-greatest number, and of course numerically Goncourt is about ten times
-as important as Saint Thiebault. And anyway it wouldn’t do the least
-good to kick against the pricks because when all is said and done one is
-under orders like a soldier. After all it isn’t as if I were going to
-Greenland or to Timbuctoo. And yet at even only two miles distance, so
-tied to the work one must be, one might almost as well be in a different
-planet.
-
-As for Saint Thiebault, they are going to have to do with just a man
-secretary there. The place is too small, the Chief says, to be allowed
-more than one worker.
-
-We won’t be moving for several days yet. I’m not going to say a word
-about it to Company A until the very last moment. I hate partings.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II: GONCOURT—THE DOUGHBOYS
-
-
-Goncourt, February 11.
-
-The little old house which now harbors the Y. formerly served, it seems,
-as guard-house. To some it must have a strangely familiar air.
-Downstairs there are two small rooms; the front one stone-paved, with a
-dark carved cupboard in one corner which formerly enclosed the family
-bed, and a huge fireplace; the back one with a dirt floor over which
-uncertain boards have shakily been laid. The front room we use for the
-canteen, the back, with four rough tables, serves as a make-shift
-writing room. The walls are dim with smoke and grime, the windows in
-both rooms lack half their panes, yet the odd little place has an
-atmosphere, a charm all its own. Upstairs soldiers are billeted. When
-the din of business dies down in the canteen, one can hear the crisp
-rattle of dice as the boys shoot craps on the floor overhead.
-
-In accordance with military regulations here we cannot open the canteen
-until four in the afternoon. But a large part of the morning is easily
-spent in cleaning out the hut and arranging the stock for the afternoon
-and evening onslaught. At Saint Thiebault the detail that “policed up”
-the camp in the morning swept out our tent for us, but here one wields
-one’s own broom and shovel,—for first of all one must shovel out the mud
-that’s on the floor! Cleaning the canteen, however, I find, though a
-dirty, is quite a remunerative job, for in the heaps of litter on the
-floor money lurks. According to the ethics of the game if money is found
-back of the counter it belongs in the till, but if in front it goes to
-the finder. Sometimes the find is five centimes, sometimes fifty and
-once it was five francs! The litter—chocolate wrappers, orange peels and
-cigarette boxes—is all swept into the fireplace and then touched off
-with a match; a regular bonfire ensues. This morning we had left the
-front door open; immediately the fire was started a throng of villagers
-crowded around to look in. They were scandalized at the conflagration.
-The house was old, they cried; we would set the chimney on fire, we
-would burn up the building, we would burn down the whole town! One
-ancient and portly dame in a frenzy of protest dashed into the room and
-fairly danced about the hearth, shaking her apron at the flames and
-calling for ashes to cover them. But before she could get her ashes the
-fire died down and the excitement with it.
-
-The Gendarme and I are billeted in a tiny house just at the village
-edge. Our low second story looks down upon the street, so narrow that it
-seems one could almost reach out and touch hands with the houses
-opposite. But what a street it is! Underneath our low window the whole
-world goes by; American officers on horseback, French officers in
-limousines, American mule teams, French wood teams with three white
-horses harnessed one in front of the other, and always the troops; going
-by at dawn in the semi-darkness, their rhythmic incessant tramp weaving
-itself into one’s waking dreams, passing by at noon, swinging back down
-the hill as it grows dusk, singing snatches of song as they tramp. As I
-lie a-bed in the morning before getting up to peer out the window into
-the yellow misty atmosphere I can always calculate the exact state of
-the weather by the amount of squelch which those marching boots make in
-the muddy road.
-
-Company H is billeted on this same street with us. The first morning
-after we arrived the Gendarme and I were startled out of sleep by First
-Call blown directly underneath our window. Hardly had the last note
-sounded when a shout fit to wake the dead went up.
-
-“Get to hell up, all of you! Rise and shine!”
-
-Followed a tremendous banging and kicking at all the stable doors along
-the street accompanied by a torrent of vivid and spicy admonitions. The
-Gendarme and I gasped and chuckled. This was rich. Were we always to be
-awakened in so picturesque a fashion? But the next morning we listened
-in vain. First Call was blown at the far end of the street and followed
-by a solemn silence; and so it has been ever since. Now that American
-ladies are known to be living on the street Company H must get up
-decorously.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 12.
-
-The fireplace is easily the feature of our funny little hut. Around this
-at night the lads crowd perched on packing-boxes to smoke, chew gum and
-gossip. As the first mad rush of business at the canteen dies down a
-little I edge up towards the fireplace in order to get a wee share in
-the conversation.
-
-They have caught a spy! One of the cooks in F Company. He was a deserter
-from the German Army some one said. They caught him putting dope in the
-slum. The doctors were analyzing it now. It’s a wonder the whole company
-wasn’t poisoned. Yes, and they found plans of the camp in his pocket
-too. He hasn’t eaten a thing since they arrested him. All he does is
-just to walk up and down the guard-house. Seems as if he were kind of
-crazy.
-
-And so they gossip. A sad-eyed bugler remarks to me that he’d be a rich
-man if he only had all the hob-nailed shoes that had been thrown at him.
-Another boy wonders what he’d do if he had “both arms shot off and then
-the gas alarm sounded.” And always they must be rowing about their
-respective states.
-
-“Neebraska! Where’s Neebraska? Is that in the United States or Canada?”
-
-“Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain’t nothin’ but mountains there. Why my old
-man told me that when they let the cows out to grass there they had to
-put stilts on one side of ’em so they won’t fall off’n the pasture.”
-
-Then they turn on me.
-
-“Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell the beans
-bakin’.”
-
-“But I don’t come from Boston,” I protest.
-
-“Well there ain’t nothin’ much in Massachusetts outsider Boston. Why the
-state of Noo Hampshire is goin’ to rent the rest o’ Massachusetts for a
-duck-yard.”
-
-And so it goes.
-
-“Gee! but it’s good to get into one shop where you don’t have to talk
-frog talk!” exclaimed one lad tonight.
-
-“I’ve just heard the greatest compliment for you,” another lad declares
-solemnly, “the greatest compliment that could possibly be paid any
-woman.”
-
-“Why, what was it?”
-
-“I just heard a feller say; ‘My! don’t she look different from the
-French girls!’”
-
-A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter;
-
-“You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it’s like, it’s
-like—”
-
-Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. Then
-pulling a large bunch of letters “from lady friends” from his pocket,
-nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. Finally in a fit of
-prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, “Because I’m an American
-and you’re one too.” As he makes the presentation something falls to the
-floor with a little click. We search among the litter on the floor, the
-lad on all fours; finally the lost is found,—a broken bit of comb about
-two inches and a quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for
-he is company barber and with the company comb gone E Company would be
-out of luck.
-
-Always our presence here is something that seems so strange to them as
-to be almost incredible.
-
-“Will you please tell me,” asked a serious-looking lad tonight, “what
-consideration could possibly induce two American girls to come to a
-place like this?”
-
-Continually I am encountering boys who are sure that they’ve “seen me
-somewhere.”
-
-“Say, didn’t you use to live in Milwaukee?”
-
-“Haven’t I seen you in Seattle? Well, if it warn’t you, it was somebody
-that looked just like you!”
-
-I suppose it is simply because I look American that I look familiar to
-them. But the facts in the case seem to be that I have been observed by
-some member of the A. E. F. in practically every one of the large cities
-of the U. S. A. One boy nearly started a fight in camp the other night
-by declaring that in spite of the evidence of my nose he knew I was of
-Hebraic origin. He had seen me, he solemnly insisted, “goin’ with a Jew
-feller in Philadelphia.”
-
-Undoubtedly it is because they have so little to think about in these
-drab days that they are so pathetically curious. Every little thing you
-say or do is repeated, discussed all over camp. Sometimes curiosity gets
-hold of one of the bolder spirits to such an extent that he ventures the
-question;
-
-“How much do you get paid for smiling at the soldiers?”
-
-And when they learn that you are a volunteer and are paying for the
-privilege of being there, their amazement is so blank as to be
-positively ludicrous.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 13.
-
-One of the nicest things about Goncourt is our mess. This we have at the
-House Across the Street, which is next to the House of the Madonna. We
-mess _en famille_ with the family Peirut, the Gendarme, Mr. K. and I,
-and we eat the family fare which consists chiefly of soup, boiled meat
-and carrots, supplemented by various additions such as sugar, cocoa, jam
-and canned corn from the commissary. I can never quite decide which is
-quainter, the family or the setting.
-
-In America we have the phrase _living-room_, in France they have it. In
-this one high-ceilinged room the daily life of the family is complete.
-Here is the kitchen stove and the dinner table, here are the beds of
-Madame and Monsieur, Madame’s in one corner hung with dim flowered
-chintz, Monsieur’s in another brave with a beautiful old red India
-shawl. Here is the broad stone sink under the window, with the drain
-running out into the street, where the family makes its morning toilet.
-Here are the great dark armoires which hold clothing, china-ware and
-stores of all sorts. Here is the littered desk where the family
-correspondence is carried on; and here is the larder, a huge slab of
-pork and a ham hanging from the beams over one’s head, while on a stick
-in front of the fireplace a row of little fishes hang by their tails in
-dumb expectation of a Friday. And here too is the family shrine, a
-little wooden Madonna in red and blue, found as Madame tells us in the
-ancient city of La Mothe, which, destroyed in 1645, now exists as a
-wonderful ruin crowning a hill some two miles to the west.
-
-If the stove-wood is found lacking at meal-time, Monsieur rises from his
-chair and saws an armful beside the dinner-table. If Madame decides
-while we are eating our soup that a piece of ham will improve the menu
-she stands upon her chair and cuts a slice in the air over our heads. On
-wash days one picks one’s way to the table past the pails which hold the
-family linen in soak, and later eats one’s soupe _à pain_ under a brave
-array of drying garments slung from wall to wall.
-
-The family, which consists of Monsieur, Madame and Mademoielle, the two
-sons being in service, are the most hospitable souls alive. Continually
-they urge, “_Mangez, mangez!_” and then, “_Vous êtes timide!_” Their
-feelings are dreadfully hurt if each one of us refuses to eat enough for
-two. They seem somehow to have acquired the idea that Americans need a
-vast deal of sweetening, so they offer you sugar, commissary sugar, with
-everything, and they are gently but definitely disappointed when you
-decline to heap it on your mashed potato.
-
-Mile. Jeane, clear-skinned, bright-eyed, capable, energetic yet
-possessed of a warm charm withal, is forewoman of the little glove
-factory in town.
-
-“Are there many employees?” I asked.
-
-“But no. Eight only. Since the Americans came to town all the women have
-deserted the factory in order to wash the Americans’ clothes.”
-
-Monsieur, it appears, is a wood-cutter by profession. He comes home from
-a hard day’s chopping looking like a genus of the woods himself with his
-worn brown velour suit, his wrinkled brown skin and his ragged brown
-beard which resembles exactly those bundles of fine twigs which the
-French burn in their fireplaces. When Monsieur was ten years old the
-Germans occupied the town and sixteen of them slept in this very room.
-They were perfect pigs, he says, and ate everything they could lay their
-hands on; “But,” he adds, “they didn’t like our bread!”
-
-Sunday mornings all the men in town, including the Man With One Leg, and
-all the dogs start off together, the men armed with guns and each
-carrying a musette bag or knapsack. Papa puts on his shooting coat with
-the fancy buttons each depicting a different bird or beast of the chase,
-takes down his old shot-gun from the wall, and joins them. At dusk they
-come back again, empty-handed, but seemingly well content. Their modus
-operandi, I gather, is to proceed to a comfortable spot in the woods,
-then all sit down, drink vin rouge and wait for the game. Indeed one
-doughboy declares, that passing by one of those open alleys which
-intersect the forests here, he once saw an old Frenchman standing with
-his gun in a drizzling rain, patiently waiting for a shot while by his
-side stood another “old frog” holding an umbrella over him.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 14.
-
-The woman who lives in the House of the Madonna is an unconscionable old
-scalawag. Not that you would ever suspect it to look at her, for with
-her round rosy face, her smooth parted hair and her comfortably rotund
-figure she resembles nothing so much as somebody’s genial and respected
-grandmother. Yet the facts in the case remain. She sells doped wine to
-the soldiers at ruinous prices and she sells at forbidden hours.
-Moreover we have reason to suspect that at odd times she carries on an
-utterly illicit commerce. According to our hostess, when the time from
-the last pay day grows too long, certain soldiers are not above
-smuggling in their extra shoes and shirts to her, and she pays them back
-in drinks.
-
-This morning while I was at breakfast she came bouncing in and proceeded
-to fill the house with lamentations. Last night a tipsy soldier had
-stolen the key to her front door! Then she delved into history for my
-benefit, recounting how, some weeks before, two soldiers, having sent
-her out of the room on an errand, had proceeded to rob her till, the sum
-amounting to almost three hundred francs!
-
-“_Oh! Ils sont des monstres, des cochons!_” she wailed.
-
-Whereat I, with some asperity, remarked that if the French people
-wouldn’t sell drink to the Americans, the soldiers wouldn’t become
-_zig-zag_ and do such things. Immediately she became conciliatory. Of
-course, everyone knew that there were good people and bad people in
-every nation, but certainly! Then she changed the subject abruptly,
-demanding; why, why in the name of common sense did I do anything so
-contrary to all the dictates of reason as to sleep with my window open?
-
-Last night, as Mr. K. and I were coming home from the canteen, the door
-of the cafe opposite was suddenly opened and a man’s figure appeared,
-half pushed, half thrown outside. The door slammed shut,—it was long
-after closing hour for the cafe,—the figure fell like a log to the
-ground. We watched a minute to see the fellow pick himself up, but he
-lay motionless. It was a freezing night. Mr. K. went over to
-investigate. The man was in a drunken stupor.
-
-“You go along,” he called to me, “I’ve got to get this fellow home.”
-
-I left reluctantly. Subsequently Mr. K. told me the night’s history.
-After considerable coaxing, he had finally succeeded in extracting the
-information that the boy belonged to F Company. So to F Company
-barracks, a good half-mile north of the canteen, they had proceeded, Mr.
-K. half dragging, half carrying the fellow who was head and shoulders
-taller than he, and broad to boot.
-
-When they had nearly reached their journey’s end, Mr. K. by this time
-fairly in a state of collapse, his burden suddenly baulked. The barracks
-evidently didn’t look like home to him. Mr. K. began to have a sickening
-sense of something gone wrong. At last the wretch drowsily recalled the
-fact that he didn’t belong to F Company at all, but to I Company far on
-the other side of town. So around they turned and back through town they
-crawled until finally they arrived at I Company’s abiding-place; and
-this time the derelict was satisfied.
-
-Indeed a walk home from the canteen at night with Mr. K. at any time is
-likely to prove an adventure. For should we meet a boy who has had more
-than is “good for him” and is in an irritable mood, we must stop and
-talk with him, in order, as Mr. K’s theory puts it, to divert his mind.
-“Get them thinking about something else,” is his slogan. The other night
-we stood out in the sleety drizzle until my feet fairly froze solid into
-the freezing mud, carrying on polite conversations with two boys who had
-just been put out of the House of the Madonna and were in a state of
-mind to wreck the town. One of them Mr. K. got started on the subject of
-taking French lessons. He was ambitious to study French he explained and
-would Mr. K. kindly arrange for a teacher and a course of lessons? I
-listened with one ear; here was the first man I had found in France who
-expressed an earnest desire to learn French and he was tipsy! The other
-one, evidently ashamed, explained to me at length how he hadn’t wanted
-to get drunk, the trouble was that he was just naturally “dishgushted
-with this country, just dishgushted.” And that it seems to me is the
-whole thing in two words. The boys are “just dishgushted.” Considering
-it all, who can blame them?
-
-
-Goncourt, February 15.
-
-The M. P.s who live in the second story of the Guard-House are my good
-friends. They help sweep out the hut often in the mornings and when they
-make taffy in their mess kits they bring me some. These M. P.s are in
-reality cavalrymen detached from their regiment for the time being in
-order to do police duty. As far as I can see, there seems to be no
-special hard feeling between them and the doughboys.
-
-One slim young M. P. in particular is a crony of mine. He keeps me
-informed as to the gossip of the town. He tells me how the French women
-who run cafes, our neighbor of the House of the Madonna among them, seek
-to curry favor with the law in Goncourt, by bringing him out coffee and
-sandwiches as he walks his beat in the middle of the night; and how, the
-other night after closing hour, he put his head inside the door of one
-of these cafes to be greeted by a frantic shriek of “_Feenish!
-Feenish!_” from the hostess, only to find, when he insisted on entering,
-a crowd of doughboys making merry in the back-room; how he took their
-names and then was inspired to look at their “dog tags” in confirmation
-and found that not one of the names agreed! He tells me about the cross
-old Frenchman whose beehives have been stealthily, inexplicably,
-disappearing one by one, in spite of the fact that the Frenchman had
-tied his unfortunate and much suffering dog underneath the hives to
-guard them; until now the old gentleman had taken to sitting up nights
-with a shot-gun in order to watch the remaining ones. “He’s a kind o’
-snoopy old man and nobody likes him. I reckon the boys are taking his
-beehives just to spite him.” He tells me about the old lady who wants to
-marry him to her daughter; but chiefly he tells me,—under the strictest
-oath of secrecy,— the latest development in the case of the old woman
-whom he suspects of being a spy. I advise him to hand the matter over to
-the Intelligence Officer, but no, he must have the honor of catching her
-red-handed himself. It’s quite like reading a detective story in
-installments.
-
-The other night while I was talking to one of the M. P.s in the canteen,
-we heard a shot up the street. The next moment another M. P. appeared at
-the door. After the exchange of a few whispered words, the two of them
-ran out of the hut, and as they went, I saw them both draw their
-revolvers. Fifteen minutes later the doughboys coming into the canteen
-brought a ghastly tale. There had been a fight between the M. P.s and
-the soldiers. The M. P.s had shot and killed two. “Yes, so-help-me-God,
-it’s the truth!” The narrator had himself seen the two slain doughboys
-lying in the street; one had been shot through the head, the other
-through the heart. So the story went around. We went to bed that night
-with a dull sense of horror hanging over us.
-
-The next morning I confronted my friend the M. P. with the story. Then I
-learned the true version. He had been on his beat not far from the
-church, when down a dark alley he had heard sounds of a tremendous
-fracas. In spite of the fact that he didn’t have his stick with him he
-had plunged down the alley to come upon “a bunch of wops beating each
-other over the head with beer bottles.” When they caught sight of the M.
-P. they had quickly abandoned their family disagreement in order to turn
-upon the intruder. He had shot his revolver into the air and this had
-been enough to frighten them into taking to their heels. The two fellows
-who had been seen lying on the ground were the casualties resulting from
-the bottle-fight: they had been stunned and gashed so badly as to bleed
-a good deal, but were later patched up with complete success at the
-hospital.
-
-Indeed life at Goncourt is seldom unrelieved by incident. Last night I
-was sitting by our open window reading—the Gendarme was out—after my
-return from the hut, when I heard an angry voice snarl something abusive
-directly beneath me; a moment later a fusillade began. I jumped for the
-candle, blew it out, then stood close against the wall. After a minute
-the shots ceased; immediately excited people began to pour into the
-street. I heard the M. P.s pounding on the door of the House Across the
-Way, demanding information; I leaned from the window and told them what
-I knew. All the French people in the neighborhood stood out in the
-street and chattered excitedly for hours afterward it seemed. This
-morning Madame told us what had happened. In the house next door lives a
-tall and handsome girl. A sergeant suitor of hers, crazy with jealousy
-and cognac, had shot wildly at a rival entering her door, emptying his
-automatic, fortunately without effect.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 16.
-
-Twice a week each one of us goes to pay a visit at the local hospital.
-This is a depressing place—two large dingy rooms in what was once, to
-judge from the inscription over the door, some sort of ecclesiastical
-school. We take the boys magazines and newspapers, oranges and jam. This
-week I had a new idea. I would read aloud to them. In the Bourmont
-warehouse I came across a volume of W. W. Jacobs’ short stories. Here
-was just the thing, I thought, such simple slap-stick humour must appeal
-to the most unsophisticated understanding.
-
-I hurried to the hospital with my prize. The orderlies, not expecting a
-lady visitor, were in the midst of a Black Jack game. Red and flustered,
-one lad tried to hide the little heaps of money on the floor by standing
-on them; I pretended not to see. Yes, they thought it would be all right
-if I should read to the patients. They went ahead to the ward to
-announce me. All the cots were full, making sixteen invalids in all. I
-selected a story—an old favorite, I was sure it would prove
-irresistible—and started to read. The story tells of an eccentric
-skipper with a fad for doctoring. One by one, his crew, realizing his
-weakness, develop mysterious maladies. They are excused from duty, put
-to bed, petted and cossetted. Finally the mate becomes desperate. He
-guarantees that he will cure them all; the skipper is sceptical but
-allows him a free hand. The mate sets to work to compound some
-“medicine,” a wonderful and fearful brew made of ink, vinegar, kerosene
-and bilge-water. After a few doses, presto! the crew is hale and hearty
-once again.
-
-I read with all the animation I could muster, and to me the story had
-never appeared funnier, but try my hardest, I couldn’t seem to “get it
-over.” Not a chuckle, not a grin lightened my solemn audience. They were
-utterly, blankly, unresponsive. I began to wonder if it were possible
-that not one of them could understand English. At last I ended. As I
-closed the book a whoop of delight went up from the orderlies;
-
-“That’s you all over, Johnny!”
-
-“Gee, that guy must have wrote that story about you, Slim.”
-
-“Say, Miss, can’t you let us have the recipe for that medicine? We need
-it in our business.”
-
-The invalids grinned sulkily. In one awful moment I realized what I had
-done.
-
-“Of course,” I stammered, “this wasn’t meant to have any personal
-application!” But the mischief was already done. There was nothing to do
-but to retire with dignity.
-
-However, I couldn’t bear to give up my scheme entirely. Today I went
-again; this time having carefully selected my story. To my astonishment
-the ward proved empty, all except for three boys who were crouching on
-the floor shooting craps; I drew back.
-
-“Perhaps they would rather not be disturbed.”
-
-“They ought to be in bed anyway,” growled the orderly, and chased the
-patients back to their cots.
-
-I read to them; there was no way out of it. They listened politely to
-the end, but all the while I felt they were longing to resume their
-interrupted game. Tonight I expressed my surprise over the deserted ward
-to Captain X. He roared at my innocence.
-
-“You didn’t expect to find any fellows in hospital _today_ did you? Why,
-this is Saturday, and there isn’t any drill tomorrow!”
-
-
-Goncourt, February 18.
-
-Every day we must go to see how the new hut is progressing. This
-involves wading through a wilderness of mud. I had thought that Bourmont
-had taught me everything that one could learn about French mud this side
-of the trenches, but Goncourt has shown me that it has possibilities
-hitherto undreamed.
-
-The new hut is on the far edge of the town, on the east bank of the
-Meuse. Near it are grouped the barracks of the Milk Battalion, so called
-not because, as I first supposed, it is composed of heavy drinkers, but
-because it is comprised of Companies I, K, L, and M. These barracks,
-which were bequeathed to us by the French, are, the boys tell me,
-infested with vermin. In the mess-hall of Company M we hold our weekly
-movie-shows and our occasional concerts.
-
-The hut, which is very large, and shipped here in sections, goes up
-slowly. Army details are proverbial in their ability to consume time.
-Then we are constantly being held back by shortage of materials; lumber
-and nails and such things being desperately hard to obtain in France at
-present. Not long ago the divisional Construction Man, who is a young
-fellow with poor eyes and considerable initiative, was driven to the
-desperate resort of appropriating French Army lumber. For a while all
-went well, then the thefts grew too bold, and the Construction Man was
-summoned before the French colonel in command. As the colonel knew
-English, and so could not be put off by any “no compris” bluff, the
-Construction Man had a pretty bad quarter hour of it, but in the end was
-let off with a warning.
-
-The window frames of the hut are to be filled in with _vitex_, a curious
-glass substitute, which looks like a thin celluloid glaze over very fine
-meshed wire. It is only slightly transparent, rather fragile and very
-costly but it does admit the light, in this respect being far better
-than the oiled cloth in use in most barracks. When the _vitex_ is cut to
-fit the frames, many odd scraps are left over and these I have been
-distributing among the boys so they can substitute them for the old
-newspapers or sacking now in vogue for billet windows.
-
-If they only could hurry up that hut!
-
-“You wait and see,” say the boys; “just as soon as that hut is finished
-we’ll be moving. That’s always the way with this regiment. Sure as you
-live, when that hut’s done, we’ll be off for the front.”
-
-And it begins to look as if this might come true.
-
-“Do you really think so?” I asked Mr K. today.
-
-“There’s no telling,” he replied. “Perhaps. But anyway the boys will
-know we did our best.”
-
-Meanwhile the state of the men is worse than ever. An order has been
-issued in Goncourt that no soldier may enter a civilian house without a
-special permit. The reason given is that certain of the townspeople have
-been illegally selling the men strong drink. The soldiers, however,
-declare bitterly that the real reason is that the officers wish to have
-a clear field with the village damsels.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 21.
-
-We have had our first taste of the trenches; these are not real trenches
-to be sure but simply practice trenches which lie on the hilly uplands
-west of Goncourt. For two days we have been in a tumult with a dress
-rehearsal of manœuvers at the front. The whole brigade in battle array
-has passed under our window. Colonels and soup-kitchens, mules and
-majors, supply trains, ambulances, machine-guns, everything. Yesterday
-as Company F was starting on its hike to the trenches, word came that
-the mules who pulled their field-kitchen were indisposed. Company F had
-no mind to eat corn-willy and hard bread for dinner. They seized the
-soup wagon and pulled it by hand, all the way up the hills. Meeting
-their major on the way, they shouted in unison; “The mules went on sick
-report and got marked quarters. We went on sick report and they marked
-us duty.” But they got their dinner hot.
-
-Tonight I heard the sad tale of Mr. B. the new secretary at Saint
-Thiebault. Company A had marched off to spend the day in the trenches.
-Mr. B. had an inspiration; he filled a large suit-case full of chocolate
-and cigarettes: hailed a passing ambulance and set out to carry first
-aid to Company A in its ordeal in the trenches. Unluckily neither Mr. B.
-nor the driver knew just where the field of operations lay. Two miles
-north of Goncourt Mr. B. got out and started to “cut across lots.” It
-was raining; he waded through swamps, he scratched through thickets, he
-wallowed in ploughed fields, with that suit case which must have weighed
-a good eighty pounds growing heavier at every step. There being no sun
-to guide him, he got lost and wandered about in circles. Finally, after
-several hours, he arrived in a state of collapse at the field of
-manœuveurs. Then instead of A Company he encountered another company, a
-perfectly strange company; they demanded chocolate and he didn’t have
-the heart to deny them. After the last cake of chocolate and the last
-package of cigarettes had disappeared an officer came up, an officer
-from still another company, and proceeded to tell Mr. B. in very plain
-language what he thought of him for leaving his men out. And when that
-officer had done with Mr. B. an officer from the company which had been
-fed came up in an awful temper and “bawled out” Mr. B. because forsooth
-his men had made such a mess, throwing away the chocolate wrappers that
-when the others left, his company would have to stay behind to “police
-up” the trenches!
-
-Poor Mr. B! My heart goes out to him.
-
-This evening as we were about to close the canteen, my friend, the
-mule-skinner from Texas appeared in the hut. He had a sort of a
-weak-in-the-knees expression on his face.
-
-“What’s the matter?”
-
-“Met the Old Man,” he answered ruefully,—the “Old Man” is the general in
-command of the division—“Gee! but he sure did give me some bawlin’ out!”
-
-“But why?”
-
-He explained that his sergeant had misunderstood orders and told him to
-go out in his usual rig. The general, encountering the mule-skinner
-without his proper war-paint, had expressed his mind to him on the
-matter.
-
-“Jumpin’ Jupiter! but the langwidge that that old bird used! I sure will
-hand it to him! Why, my ears ain’t done burnin’ yet!” And he shook his
-head like a man half dazed.
-
-“What did he say?”
-
-The mule-skinner grew red as a beet, stared at me horrified.
-
-“I couldn’t repeat it, ma’am! I couldn’t repeat nary word of it!”
-
-That a general should so scandalize a mule-skinner, and a Texas
-mule-skinner at that, by his address, was so intriguing to my fancy that
-I laughed all the way home.
-
-We have a new colonel; he has declared that the regiment is not fit for
-the front, and so has laid out a two weeks’ programme of gruelling hikes
-and intensive training, in order at the eleventh hour to try to jack us
-up to standard.
-
-The Gendarme leaves tomorrow to go _en permission_.
-
-
-Goncourt, February 25.
-
-If I were God I would lay a blight on every grape-vine in France; then I
-would sink every still, wine press, distillery and brewery to the bottom
-of the sea.
-
-We have had payday. It happened Friday. The total results didn’t make
-themselves evident immediately; it was instead a cumulative effect, a
-crescendo, beginning Friday and reaching its climax yesterday. On these
-three days, out of the twenty-five hundred men stationed here,
-twenty-four hundred and ninety-three, I could take my oath, have come
-into the canteen and leaned over the counter, drunk;—that is to say,
-visibly and undeniably under the influence of liquor. When a lad, as
-some half dozen did,—those composing the regular attendance in the group
-about the fire,—came into the canteen entirely and unmistakably sober,
-one welcomed him as a drowning man does a spar. For a moment one had
-come in touch with something stable in a reeling world.
-
-Out of a company of two hundred and fifty last night ninety were capable
-of standing Retreat.
-
-I have learned to gauge the stages. When a man looks you squarely in the
-eye and declares vociferously, “Never took a drink in all my life!” he
-is very drunk indeed. And there is always someone nearby to wink and
-comment; “He must have joined the gang that pours it down with a
-funnel.”
-
-Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter and insisted
-on conversing; from each pocket in his raincoat protruded a long-necked
-bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then:
-
-“Please,” I said, “won’t you take those bottles out of here? I just hate
-to see them.”
-
-“Bottles!” he expostulated. “What do you mean, _bottles_!”
-
-“I mean just those.” I pointed.
-
-“Why I ain’t got a bottle on me!” he burst out indignantly, fairly
-glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward the other end
-of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect picture of
-outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling all over him.
-
-The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys that used
-to nod shyly in answer to your “Good morning” now lean from their loft
-windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, my friend the M. P.
-tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheepfolds up on our street.
-Going to investigate he met a “bunch o’ drunken wops” coming out of the
-door, every man of them carrying a struggling sheep under each arm. He
-shouted at them; they dropped the sheep and fled.
-
-The French find it all vastly amusing. “_Beaucoup zig zag_,” they cry.
-It means, I suppose, riches for them.
-
-And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word of
-disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last night I
-caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the counter. One
-boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished another boy apparently
-a shade more so, to be careful of his language out of respect for me.
-“Whu’d ’you think? D’you think I ain’t got sense enough to know how to
-talk when there’s an American lady present?” For a moment it looked as
-if there might be a fight.
-
-Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded that they
-have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the prisoners to
-sleep on.
-
-From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed come even
-more startling stories. Certain officers there went so wild that they
-started to blow up the town with hand grenades. And one of them coming
-into the Y. held up the secretary at the point of his pistol until he
-sold him—instead of the ordinary allowance of one or two
-packages—several cartons of his favorite brand of cigarettes.
-
-The new colonel is said to be horrified. But what could he expect? Take
-an odd lot of twenty-five hundred boys, remove them from every decent
-restraining influence, hike them all day through the interminable mud
-and rain until they drop by the roadside, bring them back at night to
-dark, cold, damp, filthy, vermin-ridden lofts and stables, add the nerve
-strain of the imminent prospect of their first time at the front, close
-every door to them except the door of the café, give them money;—what
-could anyone expect?
-
-
-Goncourt, February 27.
-
-My friend Pat is in the hospital; not the local hospital, but Base 18
-situated at Bazoilles, some six miles to the north of Goncourt. This
-afternoon, having our time free between one and four, Mr. K. and I
-decided to go to call on him.
-
-“Are we going to walk?” I asked.
-
-“Oh we’ll get a lift; one always does.”
-
-But the lift didn’t heave in sight until we were half way there; then it
-was an ambulance that slowed down in answer to our signals.
-
-“Give us a ride?”
-
-“Sure, if you aren’t afraid of the mumps.”
-
-I was, dreadfully afraid. But Mr. K. wasn’t, he had already had them, on
-both sides. I hesitated, then decided to take a chance. We rode into
-Bazoilles in an ambulance full of mumps.
-
-As for Pat, we hadn’t an idea in what sort of shape we might find him.
-Once, Mr. K. told me, he had come upon Pat in one of his visits to the
-Saint Thiebault infirmary. Pat was lying on a cot with his eyes closed
-and a sanctified look of patient suffering upon his face.
-
-“Why what’s wrong with you, Pat?”
-
-“Ssh!” Pat squinted about to see that neither doctor nor orderly was
-within ear-shot, then an Irish grin spread over his impudent features.
-“Nothin’ at all,” he whispered joyously, “just nothin’ at all!”
-
-But this time we found Pat’s ailment real enough. He was in the “bone
-ward” with a badly broken wrist.
-
-“How did it happen?” we inquired.
-
-“Sure an’ it happened this way,” and he told us both the official and
-the confidential versions. Confidentially, Pat’s wrist had been broken
-by a blow from an M. P.’s billy in an after-payday argument at Saint
-Thiebault. Officially it had been broken two days later in the barracks
-by an accidental knock from a gun-barrel. _Pat had hiked and drilled
-with a broken wrist for two solid days in order to be able to claim that
-he had been disabled in the line of duty!_ After the second day,
-convinced that the encounter with the M. P. was sufficiently a matter of
-past history to be discredited, Pat had reported at Sick Call with his
-trumped-up tale and had as usual gotten by. Now as he lay on his cot he
-was occupying himself by conjuring up visions of the party to which he
-and his buddy were going to treat that M. P. just as soon as he (Pat)
-should get his hospital discharge.
-
-As we talked I noticed a lad who was walking about the ward with his
-right hand done up in bloody bandages. He looked self-conscious and
-embarrassed as if he half hoped, half feared to be recognized. I caught
-Pat’s eye, his voice dropped to a whisper.
-
-“That’s Philip R. Don’t you remember him?”
-
-Of course! I smiled at Philip, but he turned away and wouldn’t come to
-speak to me. Mr. K. went over to him; they talked for a long while in
-undertones. Later I heard the whole pitiful story. He had been drinking,
-the terror that was haunting him had suddenly gripped. He had taken his
-rifle and shot himself through his right hand, mutilating it, in order
-that he might not be sent to the front. Placed under arrest on
-suspicion, his nerve had utterly given way. He had made a full
-confession. It was likely to go hard with him.
-
-While Mr. K. was listening to Philip, Pat was telling me about the
-regiment of southern negro engineers who had come to Bazoilles to help
-build the new hospital. Every time there was an air-raid alarm, Pat
-declared, they knelt down and prayed by companies.
-
-I emptied out my _musette_ bag onto Pat’s cot. Pat looked at the
-oranges, dates, chocolates and cigarettes that we had brought, then took
-a squint along the hungry-looking ward.
-
-“Well, I guess I’ll get a taste,” he said.
-
-He was “in soft” he told us. The nurses let him help serve the meals. He
-had free run of the kitchen and all the milk that he wanted to drink.
-Yet he was already chafing at the restraint and in his wicked head he
-was scheming schemes. Some day in the not-too-distant future he was
-going to give the hospital guards the slip, make a night of it, and
-paint “Bazooie” red.
-
-Tonight word reached us that a Y. M. C. A. woman worker has been killed
-in Paris in an air-raid. She was sick and they had sent her to the
-Hôpital Claude-Bernard. This time the bombs found it.
-
-
-Goncourt, March 2.
-
-The new hut is opened. Finished or unfinished, we made up our minds that
-we would open that hut Saturday night, and open it we did. The last two
-days have been fairly frantic. Yesterday we washed up; today we dried
-out and decorated. The cleaning was the worst of it. The hut, as I have
-hinted, is a sort of island in a sea of mud. Consequently as the
-building went up, the floor, walls, counter, ceiling, everything was
-splotched, streaked and plastered with dirt. Thursday night as I looked
-around the hut my heart sank. The place was a sight.
-
-“You can’t do anything about it,” they told me.
-
-“But something has got to be done!”
-
-Friday morning arrived a detail of eight prisoners from the guard-house.
-They had come to scrub. The guard in charge took his stand, leaning
-against one of the pillars, his loaded rifle in his hands; to see that
-no one escaped was his only responsibility, the rest was up to me. My
-detail proved a sullen, stubborn lot, slouching, cursing under their
-breath, all their self-respect turned to a smouldering rebellion; after
-the first few minutes I saw just how much work left to themselves they
-would be likely to accomplish. So I told them in a matter-of-fact way
-just how things stood: that we had promised to open the hut the next
-day, that it was, as they could see, in a frightful mess, that I
-realized they were up against a stiff job, but I did _so_ hope that we
-could put it through. Then I got a pail and a scrubbing-brush and went
-out and scrubbed side by side with them. It is of course strictly
-against the rules to talk to prisoners, but all the while I worked I
-“jollied” my “jail-birds” for all my wits were worth. I admired
-ecstatically the spots which they had scrubbed, I moaned in despair over
-the unscrubbed places. Inside of an hour the prisoners were all grinning
-cheerfully as they worked like beavers. When the guard was looking the
-other way I sneaked them cigarettes. By night the hut was very damp and
-somewhat streaky, but it would pass, at least by candle-light. I didn’t
-care though my arms were so lame I could hardly lift them, and my hands
-in ruins.
-
-“I congratulate you,” said the new Secretary, “I never thought it could
-be done.”
-
-“If only nobody looks at the ceiling!”
-
-For the ceiling was beyond our reach, and back and forth over every one
-of its boards had tramped the hob-nailed boots of the A. E. F. and every
-step had left its muddy print. As I looked I thought; if we only had the
-signatures to put beside each footprint, what a fascinating autograph
-collection it would make!
-
-Today we spent in a mad tear, making the hut beautiful and moving our
-effects over from the “Guard-House.” The moving was accomplished by the
-aid of the Wall-Eyed Boy and his donkey. These are two of Goncourt’s
-leading citizens, the donkey, an ancient moth-eaten beast, being
-particularly intimately known to a certain group of doughboys who would
-joyfully murder him. His stable is directly beneath the loft in which
-they are billeted and every morning, prompt as an alarm clock, at 4 A.
-M. that donkey brays, and brays until the soundest sleeper is awakened.
-The Wall-Eyed Boy’s name is Martin, and as a donkey in France is
-slangily called _un Martin_, as we call a mule “Maud,” the two go under
-the title of _Les Deux Martins_. When _les Deux Martins_ and I went
-trudging along the muddy streets of Goncourt, side by side, with the
-little tippy cart loaded with canteen truck bumping along behind, the M.
-P.s thought it a rare joke. “I wish Sister Susy could see you now,”
-called one.
-
-The last few hours were spent frantically decorating. Our color scheme
-is red and blue. This came about through accident rather than intention.
-We had a bolt of turkey-red cotton bunting for curtains, only to
-discover that this did not darken the lighted windows sufficiently to
-comply with the now strictly enforced aeroplane regulations. So I asked
-a secretary starting for Paris to bring me a bolt of black cambric in
-order to make a set of inner supplementary curtains. The secretary
-returning, brought bright blue; black, on account of the demand for
-mourning, had proved too expensive. At first I was non-plussed, but then
-discovered that the bright red and blue made rather a jolly combination.
-So each one of our many windows is now giddy with red and blue draperies
-and the seat that runs all around our writing room is brave with blue
-and red cushions (stuffed, if the truth must be told, with shavings!)
-Between each two windows is tacked one of my stunning big French war
-posters, the long counter is covered with red-checked oil-cloth, a
-bouquet of flags flies from the proscenium arch over the stage which,
-for the occasion, is banked beautifully with evergreens. Altogether we
-present rather the appearance of a perpetual Fourth of July celebration,
-but then who cares? If one can’t be aesthetic one can at least be gay,
-and it’s anything to take one’s mind off the mud!
-
-The Gendarme came back from her leave tonight just in time for the Grand
-Opening. This took place at seven o’clock. The hall was packed to the
-last inch. As one boy said; “There’s plenty of room for me, but there
-ain’t none for the buttons on my coat.” There was a reason for this. The
-new colonel was to make a speech and he had advised all the officers and
-non-coms, in the whole regiment to be present. I caught a glimpse of
-Company A wedged in among the suffocating mass. Everything, I
-understand, went off very nicely; there was much music by the band and
-somebody sang Danny Deever very thrillingly, but I was too busy in the
-kitchen to pay much attention. The new Secretary had wanted me to sit on
-the platform, but after a three days’ debate, he had finally agreed to
-let me off, and luckily, for the minute the last note of the S. S. B.
-had sounded we were ready to start handing out the hot chocolate and
-cookies over the counter to the mob. When everyone else had been fed the
-colonel himself appeared back of the counter, to graciously accept a cup
-of chocolate, and make himself generally charming.
-
-When the last guest had gone and we were getting ready to shut up the
-hut for the night, the Chief who had come over from Bourmont for the
-occasion drew me aside, looking solemn.
-
-“I have a question to put to you.”
-
-“What is it?”
-
-“The division leaves for the front within a short while. Do you wish to
-go with them?”
-
-“Of course!” said I.
-
-
-Goncourt, March 8.
-
-This week has gone by in a whirl. Because it was our first and
-presumably our last week in the big hut we wanted to make it just as
-nice as was humanly possible. And this hasn’t been an easy task because
-with the regiment putting on the last touches before they go to the
-front, there hasn’t been a bit of spare man-power available to help us;
-and the mere problem of keeping that huge place anything like clean has
-almost swamped us. After mess at night, to be sure, we have no lack of
-assistance. The boys swarm into the little kitchen in droves, eager to
-help stir the chocolate, or cut the bread for the sandwiches. If only
-ten out of every dozen would be content to stay the other side of the
-counter, it would simplify matters, but much as they may be underfoot
-one hasn’t the heart to turn them out. Those who can’t get into the
-kitchen hang about the doors, looking in, teasing for a “hand-out” of
-bread and jam. “I’m just so hungry,” sighed a lad plaintively today,
-looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, “I could eat the jamb off
-the door!”
-
-We have a Frenchwoman to help us in the kitchen. She is a treasure, shy
-and bright-eyed as a brown bird, and so tiny that we have to set a
-packing-box by the stove for her to stand on when she stirs the
-chocolate. She is deaf and speaks _patois_, so between her strange
-French and mine still stranger we have droll times making each other
-understand. Yet, none the less, she and the boys manage to keep up a
-running fire of badinage and when they become too rowdy, the tiny thing
-turns ridiculously bellicose and threatens to whip them all with her
-chocolate paddle. At night we all go home together and one tall lad must
-always come along in order to help Madame over the road of a thousand
-mud holes that leads from the hut to the highway, lest she be drowned in
-transit. She carries a funny little gasolene lamp that gives about as
-much light as an ambitious fire-fly and all the way to the main road one
-can hear her moaning; “_Mon Dieu, quel chemin! Mon Dieu, quel chemin!_”
-
-This has been our week’s programme:
-
-    Sunday.       Hot chocolate and cookies
-                  Religious Service with special music
-                  Song Service. More chocolate
-
-    Monday.       French Classes
-                  Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
-
-    Tuesday.      Boxing and Wrestling Matches
-                  Hot chocolate and sardine sandwiches
-
-    Wednesday.    Band Concert
-                  Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
-
-    Thursday.     Movies
-                  Hot chocolate and cookies
-
-    Friday.       Sing Fest with Solos
-                  Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
-
-    Saturday.     Stunt Programme
-                  Canned fruit and cookies
-
-The hut has been filled every night, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers,
-the auditorium packed and the writing-room holding at least a hundred
-more, while the chocolate line, coiling and curling about like a monster
-snake, has for hours seemed absolutely endless. We have worked out a
-system for the chocolate serving—the Gendarme is cashier, taking the
-money and making change, fifty centimes or nine cents for a cup of
-chocolate and a sandwich, or six spice cookies, or four fig ones. One
-boy ladles out the chocolate. I push the cups over the counter, another
-boy hands out the cookies, a third gathers up the dirty cups and carries
-them to the kitchen, where three or four others are busy washing and
-wiping them, while Heaven only knows how many more are around the stove,
-helping Madame stir the next kettleful, opening milk cans, or dipping
-water into a third container. Thus we keep the line merrily wagging
-along.
-
-Last night, quite unknown to the men, Pershing himself came to town,
-whirled in after dark in his big limousine and whirled away again as
-suddenly and secretly as he had arrived. He came to give the officers
-final instructions as to their conduct at the front.
-
-The first faint wistful scents of Spring are in the air. This morning
-Madame brought to our room a tiny bouquet of snow-drops. And one hears
-from Saint Thiebault a rumour of early violets.
-
-
-Goncourt, March 10.
-
-This morning shortly after I reached the hut, one of the men from the
-Bourmont office came in with a note for me, it read:
-
-    My dear Miss ——
-
-    I am glad to be able to tell you more or less confidentially
-    that you will probably go to the front very shortly. You had
-    better have everything ready so you could leave on short notice
-    any time after tomorrow noon.
-
-    Very sincerely yours, ——
-
-Enclosed in the envelope was a little slip headed _Suggestions for Men
-going to the Front_. It began “Go light, take no trunk,” and ended “We
-provide helmets, gas masks, etc.” The note was dated yesterday.
-
-I left the canteen and hurried back here to my billet to pack, while the
-Gendarme, who does not wish to go with the division but prefers to stay
-back and be reassigned, remained at the hut. What with sorting and
-mending things, the packing took all afternoon. What to leave behind in
-storage and what to take is no end of a question. Unfortunately the
-_Suggestions_ were compiled with a view strictly to masculine
-necessities.
-
-It has been a grey dismal afternoon. A melancholy donkey in somebody’s
-back-yard has kept up an incessant braying. “He does not please himself
-at Goncourt,” explained Madame. “He is a Saint Thiebault donkey.”
-Meanwhile half the regiment, it seems, has strayed by under my open
-window. I never knew before how consistently and persistently profane
-the A. E. F. could be when left to its own devices. The amazing part of
-it is;—since this seems to be their natural style of expression, how do
-they manage to slough it all and talk with such perfect prunes and
-prisms propriety in the canteens?
-
-At supper time we were surprised by a Concert Party which had arrived
-today unexpectedly in this area. We were particularly glad to have them
-as the nervous tension among the boys is marked enough to make us
-welcome anything to divert their attention. We could have the regular
-Sunday evening service first, we decided, and then the concert to finish
-off with. The Concert Party came to supper at our mess. There was an
-ornamental Russian violinist, male, an American accompanist, also male,
-and a little French actress-singer. The minute we laid eyes on her we
-knew that the concert would be a success. She was all frills and
-frippery; lace, pink-rose buds and pale blue silk, with yellow curls and
-great blue eyes peering from beneath a quaint little rose-wreathed poke
-bonnet; an amazing vision of femininity to appear suddenly in the mud
-and dingy squalor of Goncourt!
-
-The family Peirut was in a great state of mind over such distinguished
-visitors. They brought out food enough to feed the company a week, and
-kept hovering about the table, urging the dishes on our guests and
-emitting little wails of dismay when any one of the artists refused to
-eat enough for all three.
-
-I stayed at our billet to finish up my packing, and went over to the hut
-late in the evening. The concert was half finished. As we anticipated,
-the little singer had made a hit. She gave some French songs,
-accompanying them with clever pantomine. Then she sang _Huckleberry
-Finn_ and _Oh Johnny!_ As the phrase has it, she “got them going.” She
-proved a past-mistress in the art of using her eyes. They winked at her
-and she winked back. Every last man in the first six rows was flirting
-with her, and every one was convinced that he was making a hit all his
-own. Several, it was confided to me afterwards, developed matrimonial
-aspirations on the spot. Then a tragic thing occurred. For the closing
-number they must give the Star Spangled Banner. Everybody rose, and
-everybody in duty bound removed their hats. The little singer took one
-wild survey of the audience, gasped, choked, then retreated
-precipitately in order to conceal her giggles. A week ago an order was
-published that the regiment should have their hair shaved off before
-going to the front;—every head in the whole auditorium, thus suddenly
-laid bare, was bald as an egg!
-
-From latest advices it appears that the troops will start entraining the
-middle of the week. We are going on ahead in order to be there to serve
-them hot chocolate when they detrain after the journey. Every one has a
-different idea where that will be, but the best guess seems to be the
-Lunéville sector. What sort of conditions we will find at the front I
-haven’t the least idea. I missed the special conference held at Bourmont
-the other day, in which instructions and information to the personnel
-bound for the front were given. The driver who was to call for us,
-failed to do so; I set out to walk, only to find on arriving at Bourmont
-that the conference had been cut short, and was already over. Nobody has
-told me a word except to tease me by telling me that I will have to have
-my hair cut off in order to wear a gas-mask. Mr. K. amuses himself by
-predicting cellars and cooties. The Peiruts shake their heads and talk
-about my _courage_, but I can see that they mean folly. As for the
-Gendarme’s friends, Lieutenant Z. warns: “Take my advice, stay out of
-it. It’s a man’s game out there.” While Captain X. splutters; “Sending
-you to the front without any gas-drill, it’s nothing short of
-cold-blooded murder.” Thus do our friends encourage us.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III: RATTENTOUT—THE FRONT
-
-
-Bar-le-Duc, March 12.
-
-It’s not to be the Lunéville sector after all, it’s to be the sector
-just south of Verdun!
-
-We arrived here at Bar-le-Duc last night after a six-hour trip by motor
-car. Mr. K. came by motor-cycle; most of the other men travelled by
-truck, sitting perched on top of a load of luggage, canvas cots, and
-chocolate boilers. The truck broke down somewhere _en route_ and never
-reached Bar-le-Duc until this morning, when it rolled in carrying a
-rather weary-looking lot of passengers.
-
-Tomorrow we go on to our station behind the lines. Today we have spent
-shopping for supplies. We have bought writing paper; materials to make
-hot chocolate, paying two francs and a half apiece or almost fifty cents
-for a small-sized can of condensed milk; and dozens of gross of little
-jars of confiture. Ever since I was a child _Bar-le-Duc_ has meant just
-the one thing to me,—those little glasses of delectable currant preserve
-which bear its label. We went around to the wholesale houses which
-handle the famous _Confitures Fins de Bar-le-Duc_. The sight of all
-those gleaming rows of glass jars filled with deep crimson or
-amber-colored currants was one that I shan’t easily forget.
-
-Bar-le-Duc is a city which shows the wounds of war. Time and again,
-unfortified, defenceless as she is, she has known _the terror that
-flieth by night_. Last summer several blocks in the very heart of the
-city were completely demolished by bombs and the wilderness of ruins
-lies there untouched. All over the city great black signs are painted on
-the houses; _Cave, Cave voutée_,—vaulted cellar,—_Place Pour 40
-Personnes_. At the end of the afternoon we climbed, Mr. K and I, to the
-top of the ancient clock-tower which stands on the edge of the
-fortress-citadel of the Dukes of Bar, overlooking the city. Just above
-the clock we came upon a tiny platform transformed for the time being
-into light-housekeeping apartments for two poilus who night and day keep
-watch there for enemy aircraft. As we stood on the little balcony
-outside and looked down on the house-tops of the city spread beneath us,
-with the little children playing in the streets, a telephone bell in the
-tower tingled. A moment later one of the poilus announced; “A squadrille
-of Gothas has just crossed the lines, headed for Paris.”
-
-Alas, poor Paris! Yet the news brought a feeling of relief with it. The
-little children of Bar-le-Duc are safe for the night, it seems. The
-avions are out after bigger game.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 14.
-
-Out from Bar-le-Duc one swings into a separate world, the
-World-Behind-the-Lines. Here one is at the back door of the war, as it
-were. Passing through the half-abandoned villages one sees war in its
-_déshabille_; you get no sense of the thrill of it, nor even of its
-horrors; only the weary disgust, the stultifying stupidity, the
-unutterable ennui.
-
-Here everything that moves or lives, it seems, is blue; faded blue,
-dingy blue, purplish or greenish blue perhaps, but blue nevertheless.
-Everywhere the color insists. It streaks along the roads in long, broken
-lines, the meagre trodden villages are blotched and patched with it.
-Indeed the whole horizon, at this season of the year, might be expressed
-in just two tones; the almost uniform grey-yellow tint that washes over
-the fields, the rolling hills, the dusty roads, the squalid villages,
-and the ever-insistent poilu-blue.
-
-You pass by tilled fields labeled _Culture Militaire_; great grey-green
-aerodromes with flocks of little planes resting in rows beside them, in
-their gay paint resembling nothing in the world so much as dicky birds
-fresh from the toy shop; and always dotted here and there over the open
-fields, the little lonely graves, sometimes hedged in by fences made of
-sticks and always marked by a grey wooden cross on which hangs, in
-painted tin, the tricolor. Farther on you come to the world where men
-live underground, burrowing in the earth like hunted animals. Scattered
-along the roadside, or in rows under the shelter of a hill-slope,
-everywhere you look, are dugouts, some with the entrances covered with
-pine-boughs, others thatched with sticks, still others hidden beneath
-earth-colored camouflages.
-
-We arrived here last night about dusk. The poilus as we passed stared at
-us as if we were so many lunatics. Rattentout is on the right bank of
-the Meuse, about six miles from the trenches. This means for one thing
-that you must carry a gas-mask with you wherever you go. One even sees
-the little children, what few of them are left, trudging about with
-small-sized masks slung over their shoulders. The Y. here is short of
-masks and as yet M.—the only canteen worker besides myself to come with
-the advance guard—and I have none. This morning when the Chief went out
-he hung his mask on a peg in the hall. “If anything happens,” he said to
-M. and me, “you two can settle it between you, which shall have it.”
-
-Our home here is in a lordly mansion, evidently the Big House of the
-village. French officers were living here before we came. The regiment
-to which they belonged moving out just as we arrived, they graciously
-made over the house to us. The officers had started a vegetable garden
-in the back-yard and this they relinquished with deep regret, one young
-lieutenant fairly having tears in his eyes as he took a last survey of
-his rows of tiny lettuce and young cabbages.
-
-Today is to be given over to house-cleaning, and getting settled.
-Tomorrow the troops are due to begin detraining at the two points
-Landrecourt and Dugny and we are to be there to serve them hot
-chocolate.
-
-Last night we took our supper at the dingy little house next door, a
-surprisingly delicious meal, bread and butter, omelette, salad and
-cocoa. The house next door is one of the half-dozen or so in town still
-inhabited by civilians. The family consists of grandmother, mother and
-little girl of five; the husband is in the trenches. The child Pauline
-is half sick with a feverish cold. They could get no medicine, the
-mother fretted; we promised some from Bar-le-Duc. The house itself is
-painfully unkempt and dirty, yet Pauline is always fresh in a spotless
-white pinafore, her glossy hair immaculately brushed. This morning we
-went to the house next door again for bread and coffee.
-
-“Did you sleep last night?” asked Madame.
-
-“But yes,—and you?”
-
-She shook her head. “I was afraid of the Boche aeroplanes. I could hear
-them overhead.”
-
-“But I should think you would be used to them by now.”
-
-“Ah! But that makes no difference!”
-
-What consideration keeps her here, clinging to the very door-step of the
-war, as it were, hounded as she is, by terrors? Just the one reason, I
-suppose,—that she has nowhere else to go.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 15.
-
-_Lafayette, nous voilà!_ The first battalions of the division have
-arrived.
-
-The car called for us early this morning to take us to Dugny-Est where
-half the men are to detrain. We followed along the east bank of the
-Meuse running parallel to the _Canal de L’Est_. The canal was a dismal
-sight, filled with an endless line of empty abandoned barges, many of
-them settling slowly down as if water-logged, a few, already sunk,
-leaving nothing but a bit of prow protruding above the water’s surface.
-We ran along the bank for about three miles, then swung across the Meuse
-to Dugny. Dugny-Est is a half mile north of Dugny proper,—the terminus
-of a strip of railway taken over and run by American engineers. Viewed
-from the detraining tracks the landscape was bleak enough; the morasses
-of the Meuse, strung with barbed-wire beyond, an austere
-deserted-looking church in the foreground, and, dreariest of all, right
-under the boys’ feet as they detrained, almost, a large military
-grave-yard.
-
-Arriving at the little stone station-house made over to us for the
-occasion, we found the chocolate already made. Four of the Y. men had
-spent the night there and by dint of stoking the fires all night long,
-as they declared, they had gotten the five huge containers hot. The
-equipment assembled in haste at Bar-le-Duc was evidently proving none
-too satisfactory.
-
-I had just time to suspend a small American flag from the front of the
-station-house before the first train puffed up the track. Nothing I
-think has ever looked quite so good to me as that old American
-locomotive. It was the first one I had seen in France. I wanted to throw
-my arms around it and hug it. As one of the boys said afterwards: “Why,
-you’d be happy just to lie down on the track and let the darned thing
-run over you.”
-
-I stood under the flag and waved frantically, first to the American
-train crew and then, oh joy! to my Company A! There they all were,
-crowded in the open doors of their box cars, “Side-door Pullmans” as
-they call them, Magulligan the prize fighter, comically conspicuous with
-his head done up in a sort of night-cap made from a large white
-handkerchief. The train pulled by, slowed down, came to a standstill up
-the track. We hustled the chocolate cans out by the roadside. Company A,
-the first off the train, came marching down the road; each man held out
-his mess-cup and got a dipperful of cocoa.
-
-“Where are we?” they demanded.
-
-“Four miles south of Verdun. How do you like the scenery?”
-
-“All right except the grave-yard. That’s too handy.”
-
-“Say,” spoke up one of the boys, “I heard the mud out here in the
-trenches was pretty deep.”
-
-“Is that so?”
-
-“Yes they said a feller went in over his ankles there the other day.”
-
-“I wouldn’t call that very deep!” I bit.
-
-“Mm, but he went in head-first!”
-
-I asked one of the corporals how things were going.
-
-“We were feelin’ kind o’ lost,” he confessed. “Then we looked out and
-saw the old flag and you. After that it seemed just like home somehow.”
-
-They marched off down the road looking very business-like and military.
-Next came the other companies belonging to the first battalion, and the
-regimental machine-gun company. These were not permitted to stop by the
-station-house on account of the danger of being observed by enemy
-aircraft, but were halted at a distance down the road. We picked up the
-chocolate cans and chased after them.
-
-When every man in the First Battalion had had a drink, we hurried back
-to the stone-house to get ready for the next trainload. As I stirred the
-chocolate on one of the little stoves set up outside, several of the
-train crew came to talk to me. I was the first “real honest-to-God
-American girl” they had seen in months they told me; and they were just
-as excited over me as I had been over their engine.
-
-If the history of America in the Great War should ever be written down
-in detail, surely one chapter should be given over to a Little Iliad of
-the “Six Bit Railway” that runs from Sommeil to Dugny-Est, five
-kilometers south of Verdun; how, as I had it from the lips of one of
-those engineers, the English took it over from the French and tried to
-run it and failed, how the Canadians took it after them and failed too,
-how then the —— Engineers fell heir to it. How they lived with the
-French, eating French rations which were gall and wormwood to them. How
-they struggled with an alien tongue and finally reduced it to a weird
-unholy gibberish which was yet somehow intelligible both to the French
-and to themselves. How they came through shell-fire and gas and bombing
-raids, seemingly bearing charmed lives. And how they worked forty-eight
-hours at a stretch whenever the big drives and shifts were on.
-
-Tonight one of the secretaries told us that, as he was standing by the
-roadside watching while we ladled out the chocolate, one of the boys
-said to him:
-
-“I’m thinking of a toast.”
-
-“And what might that be?”
-
-“God bless American women,” the boy answered him.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 16.
-
-When we reached the station-house this morning we found everyone agog
-over the night’s events. The detraining had gone on all night; at first
-without incident. All precautions had been taken, no one was allowed to
-so much as light a match. About midnight one of the marine soup-kitchens
-had been unloaded and rolled down the road puffing sparks and scattering
-coals. Some enterprising mess sergeant had evidently planned that his
-men should have a hot meal. The French spectators in consternation had
-followed the soup-kitchen down the road, extinguishing the trailing
-embers, but the mischief was already done. There were German planes
-scouting overhead, they noted, evidently, the sparks, and signaled the
-range to the German gunners. Fifteen minutes later a six inch shell
-exploded a few hundred yards from the little stone-house, then another
-and another. One shell had fallen in the very center of the grass-plot
-where Company D had lined up to eat their luncheon of cold corn-willy
-sandwiches and hot chocolate. The gas-alarm had been sounded. A mule
-team had become frantic and bolted, encountering the marine band’s big
-base drum, had made toothpicks of it. Meanwhile confusion, it seemed,
-had reigned in the little stone-house. One secretary, seizing an article
-of underwear and putting it on his head in mistake for a helmet, had
-dashed madly up and down the road as the shells fell, and ended by
-bursting, in his _déshabille_, into the private dugout of a French
-colonel.
-
-No Americans were hurt, but one poilu had been injured and another
-killed.
-
-“They have our range now,” said everybody. “And look at those Boche
-balloons, will you?”
-
-We looked to the northeast; three German observation balloons were
-hanging just above the hills.
-
-We stirred the chocolate and served it to whatever boys happened to be
-about, boys on detail, drivers of mule-teams. One can, having been kept
-warm all night, had turned. Some bright soul suggested that it was the
-concussion of the shelling that had soured the milk, just as
-thunderstorms sometimes do. Two poilus leaned in at the window.
-
-“What are you doing?” they asked curiously. We explained; they shook
-their heads. “You spoil your soldiers.” Then, “Was anyone killed last
-night?”
-
-“Yes, one Frenchman.”
-
-“Oh that’s nothing!” (_Ça ne fait rien._) They strolled away.
-
-The friendly interpreter came in and told us that they were about to
-hold the poilu’s funeral.
-
-A troop-train pulled in. It was loaded with soldiers from my own
-regiment, the Second Battalion. The chocolate was ready, smelt
-delicious.
-
-“You can’t serve it,” they told us. “On account of last night’s
-shelling, the troops won’t be allowed to stop until they’re well beyond
-the town.”
-
-“Isn’t there _some_ way we can manage?” we teased.
-
-“No, they’ve got our range.”
-
-“Well at least we can say hello to them!”
-
-We went down to the tracks where the men were spilling out of the box
-cars. They were gathering up their equipment and forming in companies in
-double time. One red-in-the-face sergeant was furiously demanding who in
-blazes had stolen his revolver on him; it was evident that he found the
-presence of ladies sadly hampering to his flow of language. Three
-companies marched off. The last to go was H Company, the company that
-had been billeted on the same street with us at Goncourt. We waved and
-they smiled back at us. They marched down the road, disappeared over the
-brow of the hill.
-
-We stood chatting with two boys who were on a billeting detail.
-
-There was a dull heavy detonation beyond the hills. A moment later a
-strange whistling screech shrilled over our heads. I stared into the
-air, trying to see—I knew of course it was a shell, but I had never
-thought one would travel so slowly or be quite so noisy about it. The
-whistling shriek passed over us, changed to a dropping whine. Down the
-street there was a thunderous explosion followed instantly by a
-shattering crash. Timbers, tiles, stones, a mass of debris splashed for
-a moment up against the sky. The shell had fallen at the cross-roads. I
-stared at M. I was cold all over.
-
-“It must have got them,” I heard myself whispering. “My God! it must
-have got them!”
-
-We stared down the road. Everywhere figures in poilu blue and some in
-khaki, were running like rabbits towards the dugouts. It seemed to me
-the uncertainty was more than I could bear.
-
-“I’m going to go and see.”
-
-“I’ll go with you,” said M.
-
-We stopped at the station-house and put on our helmets; then we started
-down the road. Just beyond the station-house we passed a little cortege
-of poilus carrying the body of their comrade on a stretcher-bier. They
-were on their way to the church. When the first shell came over I had
-seen the funeral procession waver, hesitate, seem uncertain for a few
-moments whether to proceed or to seek shelter, now, their indecision
-conquered, they were continuing their march with what seemed an added
-dignity. A limousine drew up behind us, stopped. In the back seat sat an
-American major.
-
-“Give you a lift?”
-
-We climbed in. Half way down the hill another shell shrieked over our
-heads, burst in front of us. We reached the cross-roads.
-
-“Let us out, please.”
-
-The major stared, then stopped the car. We scrambled out. The car
-whirled off. Two houses lay, crushed heaps of stone. In the road were
-three dead horses and an automobile with a crumpled radiator. That was
-all. Another shell struck, sending us cowering against the nearest
-house-wall. As far as we could see the place was utterly deserted. There
-was nothing to do but go back. Half-way up the hill we met a poilu, he
-was carrying an O. D. blouse. He asked us where the wounded American
-was; he had been carried into some house nearby; this was his coat. We
-could of course tell him nothing. The wind which had been strong all
-morning, was filling the air with blinding clouds of yellow dust. The
-shells were coming over at regular intervals, so many minutes between
-them; they were all falling, it seemed, in the vicinity of the
-cross-roads. A little further up the hill and we began to meet mule
-teams from the supply train driving down. The mule-skinners on their
-high seats looked calm enough, but a number of the mules were becoming
-quite unmanageable. I recognized the slim lad of seventeen with whom I
-had driven into Bourmont from Goncourt once after a load of canteen
-supplies. As each team passed, we waved our hands and wished them luck;
-but all the time I kept repeating to myself:
-
-“They’re going right down into it. God help them! Why does it have to
-be?”
-
-A French officer encountered us, asked us politely if we wouldn’t like
-to step down into a dugout. I was amused at his manner which was as
-casual as if he were offering us an umbrella in a shower. There were
-some excellent dugouts up on the hill-side he assured us. “But I don’t
-want to go into a dugout!” “_Mademoiselle a beaucoup d’esprit_,” he
-observed, “_mais ce n’est pas prudent_.” Obediently we climbed the hill,
-to come upon a little group of Americans gathered about the entrance to
-a dugout, watching the shells as they came over. Taking a peep into the
-dugout I found it had already been patronized by several poilus. We sat
-on the ground and watched the shelling. On the other side of the town we
-could see Company H flung out in skirmish line, marching over the open
-fields.
-
-Presently a boy in olive drab came panting and laughing up the hill. The
-group welcomed him with a shout. He was one of the billeting detail.
-They had been staying in a house at the cross-roads. When the others had
-gone out this morning he had been left to clean up and get dinner. He
-had washed all the dishes, he told us, and had just gone out and bought
-a basketful of eggs to make an omelette for dinner, when crash! the
-first shell had fallen demolishing the house next to theirs. He had
-stepped out to look at the ruins and returned, when bang! went the house
-on the other side of him! He began to think it might be time for him to
-move, when, oh boy! zowie! a shell had wrecked the upper story of the
-billet over him. Then he had left. But he was feeling very badly about
-those eggs. Corporal G. also of the billeting detail looked at him with
-widened eyes. “And I was half a mind to stay upstairs in bed and not get
-up this morning!” he remarked. The boys found solace for the loss of the
-omelette in the thought that all the effects of the very unpopular
-captain billeted next door must surely have been annihilated.
-
-After an hour or so the shelling stopped. One by one blue forms emerged
-from the dugouts. The Chief had ordered the flivver to report at eleven.
-It was noon and it hadn’t appeared.
-
-“We must walk to Rattentout,” said the Chief. “No use our staying here.”
-
-It was hot and dusty and my helmet weighed like a mountain on my head,
-but at last we made it. Some two miles or so from Dugny we passed two
-marines sitting in discouraged postures by the roadside.
-
-“What’s the matter?”
-
-“He’s had a fit,” growled one of the warriors, jerking his thumb in the
-direction of his comrade’s back.
-
-“He has ’em. They never ought ter let him come.”
-
-There was nothing we could offer them but sympathy.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 17.
-
-Here I am sitting on a bench in the little garden back of our billet,
-soaked in spring sunshine. Over my head the lilacs are leafing out
-against a sky of Italian blue, at my feet are golden crocuses and the
-first pale primroses. But the sky, as one gazes at it, has an odd trick
-of breaking out in little puffy dots of white like nothing so much as
-kernels of corn in a corn-popper. These are of course the bursting
-shells fired by French anti-aircraft batteries at the enemy aviators
-overhead; sometimes you can see the plane itself, skimming like a gnat
-among the smoke puffs. “They don’t seem to get ’em often,” as a boy
-remarked to me. “But golly they do make ’em move!”
-
-Ever since the Americans began to arrive the German planes have been
-constantly overhead. They are taking photographs; they say. Where, oh
-where are our American aviators?
-
-In my ears as I sit here is a curious sound, a sound like the pounding
-of tremendous breakers on a stormy shore: it is the guns of Verdun, Les
-Eparges and St. Mihiel. At rhythmic intervals this sound is punctuated
-by heavy crashing thuds nearer at hand. They are shelling Dugny again.
-All the civilians fled yesterday. A driver, coming in last night, told
-us how they went, empty-handed, creeping along the edges of the roads
-under the cover of trees or brush, fearing to step out in the open lest
-they be spied and bombed by the German aeroplanes overhead. The church
-where they held the poilu’s funeral has already been struck by a shell
-and the steeple demolished.
-
-In front of the house the street is quiet. All through the day the town
-seems a sleepy deserted place, but at night it is a different matter;
-then the real business of the day begins. Carts and camions may straggle
-past at odd intervals during the daylight hours, but with darkness, the
-traffic starts to pour by in a perfectly unbroken stream. One lies awake
-and listens, it seems for hours, to the absolutely incessant rattle of
-carts, trucks, caissons and gun carriages passing along the road, until
-it seems as if the whole French Army must be on the move.
-
-Little Pauline is better today. She has just come running into the
-garden through the back gate, in company with a big curly dog.
-Rattentout they tell us is the “Dog Town” for this sector; every dog
-picked up near the front, lost mascots, faithful beasts looking for
-their masters, strays of every sort, are sent back here for keeping.
-
-Presently I must go in and help M. get the supper. Our food, over and
-beyond what we brought from Bar-le-Duc in tins and sacks, is furnished
-us by the French Army. Every morning a dapper little corporal calls to
-take our orders. When the official interpreter is out it falls to me to
-do the parleying. The corporal is patient and very military and oh so
-polite! He brings us fresh butter, fresh eggs, even so much as a quart
-of fresh milk, and the most delicious fresh French bread I have ever
-tasted. The first day he came he was dreadfully distressed; he had no
-fresh meat to offer us. This morning he shone with smiles. There was
-plenty of fresh beef now, plenty! We ordered some and ate it stewed for
-dinner. It was dark and tough and stringy. I could dare swear that I saw
-that “beef” freshly slaughtered yesterday at Dugny cross-roads.
-
-A French _liaison_ officer called here this afternoon. He told me that
-it was quite true that a certain regiment of French infantry had gone
-into battle, each man carrying with him the wooden cross which was to
-mark his grave if he fell. To earn _le croix de bois_ is the current
-slang phrase among the French to designate dying a soldier’s death.
-
-Yesterday noon a detachment of marines arrived in Rattentout. During the
-day they must keep under cover, but last night after sundown they came
-out and played baseball in the street. When I looked out my window and
-saw those lads in olive drab nonchalantly throwing and catching a
-baseball under my window, I felt as if something safe and sane had
-somehow appeared in the midst of a strange nightmare world.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 18.
-
-I have said; “Good-bye, Good luck!” to my boys.
-
-Today we received word that the first battalion of my regiment was to
-take its place in the trenches by Les Eparges at twelve o’clock tonight,
-leaving Genicourt where they have been billeted, at eight. I breathed a
-piteous appeal to the Chief. At five o’clock the car called for us.
-
-Earlier in the afternoon there had been an air battle over Genicourt. I
-heard the soft _whut_, _whut_ of the anti-aircraft guns, and later the
-staccato rattle of machine-guns in the air. Looking out I could see the
-planes, one German and two French darting among the shrapnel puffs, the
-German escaping, sad to say, unharmed. Now a French observation balloon
-was floating over Genicourt, a curious-looking thing shaped like a huge
-ram’s head, and a dull green in color. As we neared the town they
-started to haul the balloon in: it came down with astonishing rapidity.
-
-We rolled into Genicourt, a sodden desolate village clinging under the
-lea of a low hill, just now alive with suppressed vitality. The boys had
-been ordered to keep their billets until the last moment, as any unusual
-number of men about might be observed by an enemy aeroplane.
-Nevertheless there were plenty of stragglers in the streets, while out
-of the windows were leaning several hundred more, craning their necks in
-order to get a glimpse of the descending balloon.
-
-We went to the _Foyer du Soldat_, a bright clean barracks, the walls
-covered with posters in vivid hues. It was full of our boys. They
-laughed, joked, played checkers and pounded the piano, some were dancing
-together. Yet through all the gaiety one had a sense of tension, of
-nervous strain. Some of the boys asked us to sing, one lad evidently in
-a more solemn mood repeatedly requested “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” We
-sang the “Long, Long Trail” and “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” Then we
-went out in the street again. The French, we gathered, were quite
-astonished at the high spirits of the Americans. “Ah, but it’s their
-first time,” they said. “After four years it will be different.”
-
-In the public square they had been holding some sort of ceremony, an
-interchange of formal greetings between the French and American
-officers. A French military band had just finished its programme. As we
-passed they played the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner; we all
-stood at attention.
-
-We came to the street where Company A was billeted. The boys leaned out
-of the windows and waved and called to me. Everywhere it was the same
-question:
-
-“What shall I bring you from the trenches?”
-
-“Do you want a live Boche for a souvenir? I’ll get you one!” They
-thought my gas-mask was a lovely joke. “What’s that strap across your
-shoulder for?” they teased.
-
-“That? Oh that’s my new Sam Browne belt!”
-
-“Say! Bet you don’t know how to put it on!” Then they would yell “Gas!”
-just to frighten me.
-
-In the street a little crowd of boys were tossing coppers. Everybody was
-anxious to get rid of his “clackers,” in order not to have to carry all
-that useless weight into the trenches with him. They invited me to join.
-I tried one penny while the boys all cheered, only to miss by a good
-yard. Lieut. B. came by: “Will you take tea with me in my dugout?” he
-asked.
-
-The order was given for the companies to form. The streets filled up;
-dusk was gathering. The Chief said that it was time to go. We found the
-car in the public square. Slowly we moved out of town. I shall never
-forget those long brown files drawn up against the dim grey houses. Five
-hours hence and those very boys would be in the front line trenches,
-face to face with the enemy. We passed Company A. I called out to them
-to be sure not to stick their heads up over the top, and not to dare to
-take off their gas-masks before they were ordered to. Never before did I
-realize how much those boys meant to me. Each face I saw flashed some
-vivid unforgettable association to my mind. “When you come back,” I
-called, “I’ll be waiting for you with the hot chocolate ready.” They
-smiled and waved Good-bye to me. Some of them held up their fingers to
-show how many Germans they were going to account for. A turn in the road
-shut it all from sight. On the way back to Rattentout we passed the
-Third Battalion, who were marching in on their very heels to take over
-their billets.
-
-It’s eleven o’clock now. They must be almost in. They are marching, I
-know, in darkness and silence; not a cigarette is to be lighted, not a
-word spoken above a whisper. One hour more and the relief will be
-completed.
-
-
-Rattentout, March 19.
-
-I am to be sent to Paris for reassignment. I have, it seems, been guilty
-of conduct unbecoming a lady under shell-fire. This sentence has been
-hanging over me ever since that day at Dugny. I knew of course that I
-was in disgrace but never dreamed that it would come to this.
-
-It seems, what no one had troubled to hint to me, that we have been
-allowed to go farther front than any women of any of the Allied Nations
-in France have been permitted to go to work before. Moreover that the
-French, whose guests we are in this sector, were very much opposed to
-the presence of women here, and only finally, after much persuasion,
-allowed us to come here on trial. Now the Chief says that he is afraid
-that my indiscreet action at Dugny in going down to the cross-roads
-instead of into a dugout may have shocked the French. In order to
-forestall any possible protest by our Allies I am to be made an example
-of the discipline of the organization.
-
-
-Etretat, Normandy. March 28.
-
-I have been here a week on leave. Tomorrow I start back for Paris once
-more. Where I am to go after that is uncertain.
-
-It seems strange to be in France and not be wading through seas of mud,
-but to have firm turf and dry roads beneath one’s feet. The hamlets
-here, while picturesque, are quite spruce and tidy, amazingly different
-from the quaint but indescribably dirty little mudpie muck-heap villages
-to which I have been used.
-
-This pretty little coast town, once a fishing village, then a summer
-resort, is now chiefly a hospital. All the large hotels have been taken
-over for wards and nurses’ quarters, the big casino filled with row on
-row of iron cots. It is an American hospital with American doctors,
-nurses and orderlies, but attached to the B. E. F. and filled of course
-with British patients. As in all the English hospitals, as soon as a
-patient is able to get out of bed he is dressed in a “suit of blues;”
-trousers and jumper blouse of bright blue cotton, white shirt, scarlet
-tie and handkerchief to match, making him look exactly like a grown-up
-Greenaway boy. The men hate them, they tell me, but I for one am
-grateful to the designer as the bright blue and scarlet makes wonderful
-splotches of color in the landscape.
-
-There may be a more disgusted set of boys in France than these here in
-the hospital corps at Base No. 2, but if so I have yet to meet them. One
-of the first units to come across, landing in May of 1917, every man
-enlisted, so they tell me, because he thought it was the quickest means
-of getting to the front in field hospital service and most of them
-enlisted to do some form of specialized work; but, medical students,
-college professors, and motor experts, they each and all were given the
-job of hospital orderly which means scrubbing floors, washing windows,
-shovelling coal, doing the hard and dirty work of a hospital, and, most
-galling I fancy of all,—taking orders from girls with whom you are not
-allowed to associate or even speak except in the line of business. The
-X-ray expert has been delegated to the job of keeping the hospital pigs.
-I saw him in a pair of grimy overalls trundling a well-worn wheelbarrow
-down the street. The man who speaks eight languages, and enlisted as
-interpreter, spends his days checking up clothes in the laundry. And
-here as hospital orderlies in spite of their frantic efforts to get
-transferred, it seems likely that they will stay.
-
-But these are dark days for us all just now, with the news that comes in
-every day of the German drive. “What do the officers in the hospital
-think? What do they say about it?” I tease the nurses.
-
-“They think that we will hold them,” they reply, but none too hopefully.
-
-At the hotel where I am staying there is a French officer _en
-permission_, with his wife and apparently unlimited offspring. With them
-is an English governess. She is a little nervous thing all a-twitter
-these days with excitement and apprehension. Will the Germans get
-through to Paris? Monsieur’s aged mother is there. He is thinking of
-going back to get her, together with a few essential household
-treasures. She herself had fled with the family from Paris in 1914. It
-was a dreadful experience; fourteen people crowded in a coach for six,
-and nothing to eat. Oh dear! wasn’t it all just too terrible!
-
-There is also an old French lady here who frankly fled from Paris to
-escape the air-raids; now someone has taken all the joy out of life for
-her by suggesting that Etretat might be shelled from the sea by a German
-submarine.
-
-The Tommies in the hospitals, they say, flatly refuse to believe that
-Paris is being shelled. It isn’t possible, they declare, for a gun to
-shoot as far as that, and to them that is the end of it. But tonight a
-little crowd of the hospital boys who had gone on pass to Paris came
-back as eye-witnesses. One of the first shells had fallen very close to
-them, killing a number of people who were sitting drinking in a sidewalk
-café. The boys had gone up to the Church of Sacré Cœur on Montmartre and
-from the tower there had watched the shelling of the city. It had been a
-beautiful clear day: they could see where each shell struck. One of the
-boys brought back with him for a souvenir a piece of a French
-lieutenant’s skull, picked up, after the shell had wrecked the café,
-from the sidewalk.
-
-Tonight there was a concert at the Y hut here. The hall was crowded; the
-concert party, a group of pretty girls, had just completed, to much
-applause, the first number, when a horn sounded in the distance.
-Everybody started up. The Y man stepped forward and announced the
-programme over. In a few minutes the hut was deserted. “The convoy is
-in,” they said, which meant that a train load of wounded had arrived at
-the station.
-
-
-Paris, Easter Sunday.
-
-On the way here from Etretat I saw a sight which brought the war closer
-to me somehow than anything before; at the junction station connecting
-the line to Le Havre with the line to Amiens, a string of box cars full
-of women, little children and decrepit old men, packed in like cattle,
-fleeing before the German drive, many of them empty-handed, others with
-a few pathetic futile treasures, a hen or two, a copper cooking-pot,
-snatched up evidently in a moment of half-witless panic haste.
-
-Nor is Paris itself without its refugees. The German advance, the
-air-raids, the shelling, culminating in the Good Friday horror, have
-combined to render the city half deserted.
-
-“Paris? We call Paris ‘the front’ now-a-days,” one Frenchman on the
-journey had remarked to me.
-
-Yesterday I went shopping. Everywhere it was the same reply. Nothing
-could be made to order for an indefinite period, the workrooms were all
-deserted, the workers fled. As for those who remain, they seem to take
-life calmly enough; what else can they do? When, as yesterday, every
-sixteen minutes a tremendous jarring crash tells you that a shell has
-fallen somewhere in the city,—and the concussion is so great that it
-always sounds as if it had fallen in the next block!—you see people turn
-their heads as they walk, staring in the direction of the explosion;
-others come out on the balconies to see what they can see and that is
-all.
-
-Of course the danger of all this lies in its effect on the civilian
-morale. In connection with this I learned an interesting thing today.
-While the hospitals outside are overcrowded, the hospitals in Paris with
-their splendid equipment and staffs are left half empty, because they
-dare not show the people of Paris too many wounded. And when convoys are
-brought into the city, they are often detained outside, sometimes for
-hours, in order that the wounded may be transferred to the hospitals at
-night.
-
-Yesterday at Brentano’s I got talking with a boy who belonged to the
-American Ambulance Section which is attached to the French. He told me
-an incident which struck my fancy:
-
-One night, at the front, after a hard day’s work, he had just dropped
-off to sleep when he was awakened. There was a _blessé_ to be taken back
-to the hospital, he was in bad shape, they had placed him in an
-ambulance. The boy rolled out of his blankets, started up the car. It
-was a bitter night. Once he was on his way everything went wrong; the
-water had frozen in the radiator, he had to get out and crawl along the
-ditches on his hands and knees, trying, in the dark to find a pool that
-was still unfrozen. And all the while he was tortured by the thought
-that the life of the wounded man in the car depended probably on his
-speed in reaching the hospital, and this urged him to an agony of haste.
-Finally, as the dawn was breaking, he reached his goal. They came to
-carry the blesse in. The wounded man was dead; he had been dead, it was
-evident, some while before the boy started. At the front, he explained,
-they hate to take the time and trouble to bury bodies. So whenever it is
-possible they work this method of passing on the task to someone else.
-You have to be constantly on the look-out for such tricks. This time
-they had fooled him.
-
-Last night there was an air-raid. It was a mild affair. I was awakened
-by the sirens. They make what is to me quite the most fascinatingly
-horrible sound I have ever heard. That long agonized wail, now sinking
-to a shuddering whimper, now rising to a banshee screech, flashes
-vividly to my mind’s eye a myriad little demons sitting on the roofs of
-Paris, cowering, shivering, crying out their abject terror. I went to
-the window and looked out, but although my room is on the top floor of
-the hotel, I could see nothing and so went back to bed again. The
-anti-aircraft guns put up a tremendous barrage; they have them mounted
-on trucks now so they can quickly be shifted from point to point about
-the city. I am sure there was a whole battery just in front of the
-hotel. Today the papers inform us that the Gothas were driven back after
-reaching the suburbs.
-
-This morning I went to service at Notre Dame, entering through piles of
-sand bags heaped so as to hide the carvings about the doorways. In that
-vast cathedral only a few were present, a fair share of the congregation
-being comprised of Americans.
-
-Tonight an ambulance driver attached to one of the Paris hospitals came
-to the hotel for dinner. He spread a startling tale. Every ambulance in
-the city has been ordered to be in readiness; for tomorrow, it has been
-learned, twenty-seven long-range guns are to be turned at once on Paris!
-
-
-Aix-les-Bains, April 6.
-
-When they said “Leave Area” to me my heart sank. The Lady in the Office
-explained to me how very important she considered the work, and the
-assignment, she added, need not be permanent. “Very well” I said, “I’m
-willing to go there temporarily.”
-
-I left Paris Tuesday, taking the night train. Getting off was something
-of an ordeal. The lighting at the stations, as on the streets, has been
-reduced almost to the vanishing point. The great Gare de Lyon was filled
-with a mass of distraught humanity over whom the few violet-blue bulbs
-cast a ghostly glimmer. There were no porters to take one’s luggage; a
-number of women had possessed themselves of the baggage trucks and were
-pushing them, heaped high with bags and household stuff, recklessly
-through the crowds. I could find no officials anywhere about. All the
-French orderliness and red tape seemed to have been swept clean away and
-the result was chaos. Somehow, I don’t know quite how, I found my train
-and reached my seat.
-
-Three very fat old gentlemen and one old lady occupied the compartment
-with me. The fat gentlemen had one little spoiled dog between them which
-they kept passing from one to the other, in order that each in turn
-might kiss him. The old lady had a bird in a cage; presently she opened
-her hand-bag and brought out her supper, a loaf of bread, unwrapped,
-together with a good-sized turtle. For a moment; such were her raptures
-over her pet, I thought that she was going to kiss the turtle. The first
-minute that one of my companions entered the compartment, each informed
-all the rest that he or she was _not_ running away from the air-raids or
-the long range guns. “I? I am not afraid of the Kaiser’s Gothas! I laugh
-at them!” A few minutes later however they began: Ah, what a fearful
-night, last night had been! Five hours in the _Caves_! No sleep at all!
-One might as well be a mole and take up one’s dwelling underground. What
-a life! Oh it was terrible, terrible! Then one old gentleman turned
-proudly to the little fat canine. “But of a verity, my little Toto is
-possessed of a sagacity extraordinary. The moment that he hears the
-sirens, he will run down into the cellar, and nothing can induce him to
-come up again until the ‘all clear’ has sounded!”
-
-We pulled into Aix soon after dawn as the rising sun was touching the
-tops of the mountains and the morning mists were hovering over the lake.
-Whatever the work may prove to be like here, the place is surpassingly
-lovely. It is too early for the summer resort pleasure seekers. The
-French don’t care for it here until it grows really hot, they tell us.
-But to me the season is at its most appealing moment. One glimpses pink
-peach blossoms against the blue lake over which stand purple mountains
-with snow still lying on their summits. Several of the large hotels and
-casinos have been requisitioned for French convalescent hospitals, but
-the largest of all has been taken over by the Y. From this canteen
-excursions are constantly setting out, motor-boats on the lake, motor
-cars to Chambery, the cog-wheel railway up Mt. Revard, picnics, hikes
-and fishing parties, yet many of the boys seem to find it pleasantest to
-do nothing,—just to sit around in lazy comfort all day long, watching
-the others playing billiards, listening to the orchestra in the
-afternoon Beneath the gold mosaic casino dome, sitting luxuriously in a
-box at the vaudeville in the evening, gaining a maximum of pleasure with
-a minimum of exertion. Many of the boys came here with their heads full
-of pessimistic expectations.
-
-“They told us it would be Reveille and Retreat and one day’s K. P. for
-each of us,” confided one lad to me.
-
-Some brought their mess-kits and some even their blankets. When they
-find themselves guests in hotels that are among the finest in Europe,
-lodged in comfortable rooms, eating real food off tables furnished with
-china-ware and linen, at first they are fairly dazed.
-
-“I’m feared somebody’ll pinch me an’ I’ll wake up,” declared one lad
-today.
-
-More than one has told me, that the first night he got here, he could
-not go to sleep in bed at all and only finally achieved slumber by
-rolling himself in blankets on the floor.
-
-There are no troops from the line here at present; only boys from
-forestry regiments, motor mechanics and a few lads from medical
-detachments. They are holding up the leaves of all combatant troops on
-account of the drive. It may be that presently they will hold up all
-leaves altogether. Then we will have to shut up shop here temporarily.
-
-It is the pleasant custom here for the Y ladies to go down to the train
-every night to see the boys off.
-
-“It’s a shame you can’t stay longer,” we say to them.
-
-“I’ll say it is!”
-
-“I’m awfully sorry you have to go.”
-
-“You ain’t half so sorry as I am, Lady.”
-
-“Maybe some day you’ll be coming back again.”
-
-“I’ll tell the world one thing; I’m going to be good as gold when I get
-back to camp, so they’ll let me.”
-
-One of the Y women tonight repeated what one boy on leaving had confided
-to her:
-
-“If I said to you that this had been my happiest week since I joined the
-army it wouldn’t mean much,” he told her, “but that’s not what I’m going
-to say. What I’m going to say is that this has been the happiest week of
-all my life.”
-
-So far I have found just one man who wasn’t enjoying himself here. He
-had been stationed for six months at Paris. Aix, he declared, “Weren’t
-no town at all, nothin’ but a one-horse place.” He evidently had no soul
-for the beauties of nature.
-
-
-Paris, April 22.
-
-They held the leaves up. The boys kept leaving; fewer and fewer came,
-then finally none. Last week they disbanded the force of workers at Aix;
-a few stayed to look after things until such time as the crowds should
-start to pour in again; the rest were sent back to Paris to be
-reassigned.
-
-If I thought the trip down was a chore, it wasn’t a patch on the trip
-back. We waited half the night for the train at the Aix railway station.
-When it finally pulled in, I found my seat was in a compartment which
-was full, and had evidently been so for hours, of French people. Now
-life in France tends to cure you of belief in several popular
-superstitions; one is the idea that it is dangerous to have wet feet,
-and another that there is anything in the germ theory; but there is one
-notion to which I still cling, an obstinate belief in the desirability
-of fresh air. I put my head in the compartment, then withdrew, shutting
-the door. For the twelve hours it took to reach Paris I stood up outside
-in the corridor.
-
-Arrived in Paris, they assigned me temporarily to the Avenue Montaigne
-Club House. This is a beautiful building, the home of one of Napoleon’s
-generals; but the best thing about it is the tea-room restaurant, for
-here they serve apple-pie, chocolate cake and ice-cream. Since the
-latest food restrictions were issued, forbidding the French to make
-desserts employing milk, cream, sugar, eggs or flour, such dainties have
-been unobtainable anywhere else in Paris; but the Americans drawing
-supplies from their own commissary, are of course untouched by such
-regulations. Indeed the saddest sign in France these days I often think
-is that over the deserted shops which reads _Patisserie_. To be sure
-some of these stores still make a show at doing business, filling their
-windows with raisins, dried prunes and other prosaic edibles, together
-with heaps of pseudo-chocolates wrapped gayly in tin-foil, but which
-when purchased proved to be nothing but what one boy termed “the same
-old camouflage,”—an unappetizing paste of dried fruits and ground nuts.
-Yesterday a curly-headed lad, who looked about sixteen, came into the
-canteen carrying a big bunch of pink carnations. These were for the
-waitresses, he said, because they were the first American ladies that he
-had seen in France. We each pinned a spray to the front of our pink
-aprons, and then, since he pretended famine, let him have
-“seconds”,—quite against the rules—on everything, with all the ice-cream
-and cake that he could swallow.
-
-Yesterday I saw Mr. T. who was with us for a while at Goncourt. He told
-me that French troops _en repos_ were occupying that area at present.
-They had asked for the use of our hut and of course it had been granted
-them. A Y man, happening by the other day, had stopped in. They had
-converted our beautiful hut into a regular French _Cantine_ with three
-men to hand the bottles over the counter “and a smell enough to knock
-you down.” Who shall say that this is the least of life’s little
-ironies?
-
-This morning I met N. who had reached Rattentout the day I left. She
-tells me that all the villages occupied by our troops in the sector
-have, one by one, been shelled. Rattentout was shelled and two
-Frenchwomen killed. Because of the constant shelling all the Y women
-workers had been withdrawn from the canteens and sent back to safety at
-Souilly where they have nothing to do but sit and possess their souls in
-patience.
-
-Tonight they gave me my new assignment. It is at Gondrecourt. I leave
-tomorrow. I am glad, so glad over the prospect of being back on a real
-job once more! Here at the Avenue Montaigne as in the gilded casino at
-Aix I have been desperately homesick, to be back in a real hut again!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV: GONDRECOURT—THE ARTILLERY
-
-
-Gondrecourt, April 28.
-
-Gondrecourt is quite a place. It boasts a brewery, a hotel, a mediœval
-tower and a number of little stores. Each one of these stores contains
-at least one pretty girl on its selling force and the ratio between the
-sales of goods and the charms of the ladies is, I fancy, quite exact.
-From the military point of view Gondrecourt is important as being the
-site of the First Army Corps Training Schools. But to me the really
-distinguishing feature of Gondrecourt is the fact that it boasts a
-bath-tub. If anybody had said bath-tub to me the day before I arrived
-here, I would have said with the doughboy that,—short of Paris—“there
-ain’t no such animal.” But now I have beheld it with my own eyes, a
-white-enamelled bath-tub, a Y. M. C. A. bath-tub, in the basement at
-Headquarters. The tub is supposed to be a strictly family affair,—on the
-door are posted hours for the Lady Secretaries and hours for the Men
-Secretaries,—but in spite of the plain English before their eyes, it
-seems that army officers occasionally slip in and steal a bath off us,
-yes, even impinging on the sacred bath hours of the ladies!
-
-My first day here they sent me to “The Café.” This was once a very wild
-place indeed. When the Y. first came to Gondrecourt it tried to buy the
-proprietor out, but the proprietor refused; he was doing too profitable
-a business. Then one night Providence sent some Boche planes wandering
-in this direction. There was a panic among the populace; the proprietor,
-with visions of his place wrecked by a bomb, sold out in a hurry and
-left town. Since then the Cafe has led a reformed and decorous existence
-but the old name still clings. My second day I spent at the “Double
-Hut,” the big hut built up on the hill close by the Infantry School. The
-third day I was introduced to my own canteen.
-
-According to directions, I climbed the hill by my billet, went past the
-athletic field, past the warehouse and out along the edge of the rolling
-open upland. About half a mile out of town I came to a group of seven
-French barracks, covered with black tar paper, built at the edge of the
-railway cut. This was the Artillery School. I crossed the field, entered
-the nearest barracks which bore a Y. sign at one end, and found myself
-in a Greenwich Village Tea House. I stood and stared. Some modern-school
-interior decorator had been at work. The place was a riot of red,
-yellow, salmon-color and black, worked out from a nasturtium motif. In
-the wall panels were paintings, some conventionalized fruits and
-flowers, evidently done by the decorator; others, landscapes, Japanese
-scenes and some rather awful Indians just as evidently executed by the
-boys. The whole effect to be sure was a bit sketchy and in spots frankly
-unfinished, and yet to one used to such simplicity in the huts as I, the
-_ensemble_ was startling. Back of the black and orange partition which
-screens the canteen and the kitchen from the hut proper, I found the
-staff, secretary and canteen worker. The lady whom I am to replace, it
-appears, belongs in reality to the Motor Transport Section. She turned
-canteen worker to help out in a pinch, and now is anxious to return
-again.
-
-When dinnertime came the Motor Transport girl told me that we had been
-invited to dine at the camp. We went over to the mess-hall. “Let’s help
-feed the chow-line for a lark!” said the M. T. girl. So we stood behind
-the serving-bench and ladled out big spoonfuls of mashed potato and
-gravy. This amused the boys immensely; and as they passed they would
-sing out:
-
-“When did they put _you_ on K. P?”
-
-“What have _you_ done to deserve this?”
-
-The kitchen was white-washed and specklessly clean, the earth floor was
-covered with cinders. These cinders which are in use for floors and
-walks in all the camps about, come, I am told, from a great heap down by
-the river which marks the site of one of Napoleon’s cannon foundries.
-
-“Why are the boxers in a company always found on the kitchen force?” I
-asked one of the cooks.
-
-“That’s so they can handle the boys when they come back for seconds.”
-
-As soon as the chow-line had been fed, the M. T. girl and I had ours
-with the Top Sergeant. After dinner the Top Sergeant, who had formerly
-been mess sergeant, was moved to unburden his soul as to the sorrows of
-a mess sergeant.
-
-“When I was mess sergeant,” he reminisced, “I sure got to know the way
-to a man’s heart all right. Why, the days when I gave them a good dinner
-there wasn’t a man in camp who wouldn’t positively beam at me; but if
-something had gone wrong and the chow wasn’t up to scratch, half the
-fellers in the company wouldn’t speak to me the rest of the day.”
-
-Then he grinned. “I wouldn’t want Mother to know the way I used to get
-stuff for the boys last winter.”
-
-He went on to tell us. French freight trains have no brakemen and the
-conductor rides in a caboose directly behind the coal car. Trains
-pulling into town from the north hit a grade curve close to the camp, up
-which they must pull very slowly. The camp guard kept a lookout; when a
-freight train with flat cars was sighted, word was immediately passed to
-the mess sergeant who with a number of K. P.s hurried to the tracks and
-boarded the slow-moving train; if the cars proved to hold anything of
-value for the mess,—be it coal or cabbages,—all the way up the grade the
-sergeant and his assistants were busy, hastily throwing or shoveling
-what they could over the sides of the cars. At the top of the grade they
-would jump off and returning along the tracks, gather up the spoils.
-
-Tomorrow the Motor Transport girl departs and I “take over” the canteen.
-
-
-Gondrecourt, May 4.
-
-The Artillery School consists of some few hundred officers and non-coms
-enrolled for each four-weeks’ course, in addition to the two batteries
-who are here for demonstration work; Battery D from a regiment of “75s”
-and Battery A from a regiment of the big “155s.” Selected for this
-exhibition work on account of their exceptional ability, they are, I
-suppose, the equal of any batteries in the world. When the boys enlisted
-these batteries were declared to be about to be “motorized,” but at
-present the motor power is being supplied by a particularly unresponsive
-set of French cart horses, whose daily care is the greatest trial of the
-boys’ lives. Last night we had a movie-show; one reel gave the story of
-a discontented boy on the farm—showing him at one moment disgustedly
-grooming Dobbin. For a full minute it seemed as if the roof of the hut
-was going to be lifted right off.
-
-The officers’ quarters and the class-rooms lie across the railroad track
-from the camp, in the grounds of the Château. Here they have a canteen
-of their own, a cool little place in cream color and blue presided over
-by a most refreshing and delightful English lady. The Château itself was
-partially destroyed by fire a few years ago and though the lower story
-is available for offices, the upper story stands roofless, with empty
-windows staring against the sky. Every now and then a rumour goes the
-rounds:—Pershing is going to move his headquarters to Gondrecourt,—the
-Château is to be repaired for his use! The Château and the school
-buildings stand on high ground. To the south the ground falls away
-suddenly; below is “off limits” and is Fairyland. Here are meadows warm
-with the color of spring flowers, here are groves such as one sees in
-the pictures of Eighteenth Century shepherds and shepherdesses, and here
-is the river flowing so placidly that its waters seem to form still
-lagoons, white-flecked with swans and arched with rustic bridges. Here
-while the boys are at their mess, I have been stealing to eat my picnic
-supper; an orange, a sandwich and a piece of chocolate. The guard
-walking post at the foot of the embankment shuts one eye as I go
-past,—and usually gets half of my supper! For that matter I gather he is
-there largely for the sake of appearance, for there’s not a boy in camp
-I’m sure who hasn’t explored those groves, fed the swans, and angled for
-fish in the river. And the only reason, I’m certain, that they don’t
-surreptitiously go in swimming there is that the water, fed by springs,
-is cold as ice! Nor is the touch of romance that should go with such a
-setting absent. One of the cooks in the officers’ mess kitchen is deep
-in an affair with Lucile, the caretaker’s daughter, a girl like a wild
-rose, shy, slender, freshly-tinted. Every other night when he is off
-duty he carries her chocolate from the canteen and she “gives him a
-French lesson.”
-
-“Serious?” I asked inquisitively.
-
-“Fat chance!” he glowered at me frankly. “She tells me that she’s
-engaged to twelve fellows now already and that twelve’s enough.”
-
-The proprietor of the Château, Monsieur S., has the distinction of being
-the father of ten girls. I like to fancy that the spirits of the ten
-lovely daughters,—for lovely they must be, as no Frenchman, I am sure,
-would have the courage to father ten homely ones!—haunt the Château
-gardens.
-
-The boys, however, don’t have to rely on phantoms for thrills of this
-sort. Yesterday, they tell me, that during the progress of an exciting
-ball-game on the Y. athletic field a beautiful lady dressed _à la
-Parisienne_ strolled by. The batter dropped his bat, the pitcher forgot
-his ball; the game came to a dead halt until the beautiful lady had
-passed out of sight.
-
-
-Gondrecourt, May 13.
-
-The Secretary is sick. He lies in his little bed-room office and reads
-the latest magazines and gossips with his visitors while I attempt to
-run the hut single-handed. At times during this last week I have been
-strongly tempted to get sick myself. Indeed I think I probably would
-have done so if it hadn’t been for Snow. Snow, Snowball or Ivory as he
-is variously called, is Battery D’s albino cook. “Say, ain’t I the
-whitest-haired beggar you ever did see?” he asked me the other day in a
-sort of naive wonder at himself. “Anyway, nobody ever had a
-cleaner-looking cook,” remarked the Top Sergeant, ex-Mess Sergeant. Snow
-has the sweetest disposition in the world. “If Snow was starving to
-death,” declared one of the boys to me today, “and somebody gave him a
-sandwich, and he thought you were the least bit hungry, he’d give you
-that sandwich.” Ever since the Secretary has been sick, Snow has been
-bringing him toast and eggs and things while he has brought me lemon
-pies, the most wonderful lemon pies that ever I tasted. Already Snow has
-come to be looked upon by the boys as an authority on all things
-pertaining to the canteen and has to stand a battery of searching
-questions, such as, whether he thinks that my hair is really all my own?
-
-Just to add to all our other troubles this week we have run amuck of the
-Major. This I suspect was all my fault. I was furious because when he
-came into the hut he made the boys stand at attention. This was
-something I had never seen done before and is, I am sure, contrary to
-all the rules. I was so angry that when the Major came up to the counter
-I stood and glared at him.
-
-“You will find the Secretary in his office,” I said and turned and
-walked out the back door. It was the Major’s turn to be angry then. He
-stalked out behind the counter, looking for trouble, and began to hold
-an inspection in the kitchen. The Secretary appeared, the Major let
-loose. That kitchen, he declared, was not up to army standards in
-cleanliness. This was a matter of utmost importance. Hereafter the
-medical officer would inspect the kitchen daily. Then he proceeded to
-prescribe a schedule of canteen hours outside of which nothing at all
-must be sold.
-
-Now I admit that kitchen hasn’t been quite all it might be. It is a
-small, overcrowded place, built of rough dirty boards and there are no
-shelves, nor of course running water, nor conveniences of any kind.
-Moreover, the Major, I learn, has the reputation of being a tartar in
-this respect; “Major Mess Kit” they call him because of the rigour of
-his inspections.
-
-The next morning the medical officer arrived at the crack of dawn. He
-found the chocolate cups from the night before unwashed. He was shocked.
-He too read the Secretary a lecture. Then he departed to do the
-sensible, the saving thing, which was to recommend to the Major that we
-be allowed a detail. So it all worked out for the best in the end.
-“Neddy” as we have christened the detail is now a part of the family. A
-shy, dreamy lad, he is at hand to help from early morning until closing
-time at nine at night, and I actually have to shoo him out to his meals.
-The only trouble with Neddy is that he is so good I am sure that he is
-going to die young. And besides Neddy I now have a pet bugaboo. This has
-proved so useful these last few days that I don’t know how I ever kept a
-canteen without one. Now any time that officers come to my kitchen door
-to tease for cigarettes out of selling hours I can gleefully tell them:
-
-“Oh, but I wouldn’t dare! The Major, you know! He’s expressly forbidden
-it! If I did and he learned about it, he would surely have me
-court-martialed!”
-
-Of course when the boys come out of hours that is quite a different
-matter.
-
-Then, too, as the Major is detested by the men, this furnishes a common
-bond of sympathy. This morning a boy came to my back door to borrow our
-axe in order to chop up the Major’s wood.
-
-“You can have it on one condition,” I told him.
-
-“What’s that?”
-
-“That you chop off the Major’s head with it too.”
-
-
-Gondrecourt, May 24.
-
-I have always cherished a secret longing to have pets in my canteen: I
-have heard of huts that kept kittens and canaries, and once I visited in
-one where an ant-eater, if not an _habitué_, was at least a frequent and
-honoured guest and sat in the ladies’ laps at the movie-shows. At
-various times I have considered and regretfully abandoned the project of
-rabbits, a puppy, goldfish and a goat. But till recently the nearest I
-have come to realizing my dreams was when I found two large snails with
-black and yellow shells by the roadside. I carried them into the canteen
-and set them on a flowering branch in a vase. For two days the boys took
-a casual interest. They nicknamed them Bill and Daisy.
-
-“The French eat snails you know,” I told them.
-
-“You don’t say!”
-
-“Yes and I had some myself the other day.”
-
-“Aw shucks! You didn’t _really_, did you? Why, before I’d eat them
-things! Say, what did they taste like anyway?”
-
-“They would have tasted pretty good,” I answered, “if only while you
-were eating them you could have stopped thinking what they were!”
-
-One boy staring at my pets asked innocently;
-
-“Will butterflies come but of those?”
-
-After the snails our only livestock for a while was the canteen rat,
-whom I have never met myself, but of whom I have heard large rumours.
-The other day however I received a present of two real pets. One of the
-Y. drivers had been out to a wood-cutting camp in the forest. There an
-Italian lad had given him two young birds in a beautiful cage he had
-made himself with nothing but a pen-knife and a hot wire, and the driver
-brought the birds to me. I don’t know what sort they were but they were
-tame and most amusing. To feed them was the immediate question. I asked
-the boys to dig me some earth worms, but this they seemed to consider
-beneath their dignity. Finally Neddy went out with a can, only to return
-wormless. He couldn’t find any, he declared. I considered the
-advisability of asking the Top Sergeant for a worm-digging detail, but
-decided against it. Then I confided my troubles to my friend, the
-Warehouse Man.
-
-“I know,” he said, “I’ll ask Pierre.”
-
-Now Pierre is a little orphan refugee from the devastated district. He
-lives with one of the families on the edge of the town and I am afraid
-is none too well treated. When he isn’t herding the cows over the
-meadows, he is usually hanging about the warehouse. A handsome, rather
-wild looking lad, dressed in a brown cap and an old brown suit, I always
-think of him as Peter Pan. The next morning Pierre appeared at my
-kitchen door with a can full of long fat wriggly angleworms and had his
-pockets filled with chocolate by way of recompense. Later I learned that
-the Warehouse Man, not being able to pronounce the French word for
-birds, had told Pierre that I wanted the worms for fishing, and Pierre
-after taking one look at the bird-cage had gone straight back and told
-the Warehouse Man that he was a liar. But cunning as my pets were, I
-couldn’t quite reconcile myself to the idea of keeping wild birds in a
-cage. This morning I looked at Neddy:
-
-“Let’s let them out.”
-
-“Let’s,” he answered.
-
-Now the only pet I have in prospect is the baby wild boar which a boy
-from one of the aviation camps nearby has promised me.
-
-
-Gondrecourt, June 2.
-
-Night before last, at half-past ten, as I was sitting here in my billet
-trying to write a letter, I heard a voice calling me from the street
-below.
-
-“What is it?”
-
-“It’s Sergeant B——. I’ve brought you a gas-mask.”
-
-“What!”
-
-“There’s a bunch of German planes headed in this direction. They’re
-afraid of gas bombs. We got the alarm out at the school.”
-
-I went down to the door. The sergeant gave me two gas-masks. I gave one
-to the English lady who has the room across the hall from me. Then I sat
-up waiting for the fun to begin. Nothing happened. I went to sleep with
-the gas-mask lying on the pillow beside me.
-
-The next morning the Chief declared that all the Y. personnel here must
-go to gas drill and have masks issued to them. Last night they rounded
-us up for a lesson. We stood in a big circle at the Gas School over on
-the hill while the gas instructors instructed us and the boys looked on
-and grinned. Gas drill consists of learning how to put on and take off
-your mask in the prescribed and formal manner. It is all done by count.
-If you can’t do it in six seconds you are a casualty. As we popped our
-masks on and pulled them off again the hair of all the ladies present
-proceeded to slowly but relentlessly fall down their backs. The English
-Lady stood next to me. “It’s all stuff and nonsense,” I could hear her
-muttering; “stuff and nonsense!”
-
-The noncom instructors walked around and informed each and all of us
-that if we didn’t change the style of our coiffures we certainly would
-get gassed.
-
-“And now,” said the instructor cheerfully, “I am going to send you
-through the gas-house.”
-
-I looked desperately for a chance to sneak away, but there wasn’t any;
-besides, several boys from my batteries were watching.
-
-“Oh this is nothing, nothing at all,” declared the instructor. “We’ve
-only got the tear gas on tonight. You will go through once with your
-masks on, and then a second time without them.” We put our masks on and
-marched in a long line into the gas-house. There was a table in the
-middle with candles burning on it, which gleamed golden through the
-thick yellowish clouds of gas. We marched around the table and out
-again. There was nothing to it; the masks were a perfect protection.
-
-“Now,” said the instructor,” you will go through without your masks.
-This is to give you confidence in them.” The idea being that discovering
-how very nasty it was without one, you would be taught to appreciate the
-blessing of a mask. I had an inspiration. I would shut my eyes and hang
-on to the man in front of me! But alas, for my pretty plan, the line was
-too long; as I was about to enter: “Break the line here!” shouted the
-instructor. I had to lead the second line into the gas house. I made
-double-quick time around that table. Just as I was about to dart out the
-door an English noncom instructor seized my arm and, halting me, started
-to explain something.
-
-“Yes, yes,” I choked. “It’s all very interesting, but I don’t feel like
-stopping now!” I pulled away and made a break out the door. I was
-weeping horribly. My eyes felt as if someone had rubbed onion juice on
-them. They stung and burned for hours afterward.
-
-“The next time,” said the instructor genially, “we’ll put you through
-the mustard gas.”
-
-Now in the mustard gas lesson a fellow must walk into the gas-house
-without his mask, and put it on after he has entered. If he fails to
-hold his breath long enough, or is nervous and clumsy and so doesn’t get
-his mask on quickly enough, why it means a trip to the hospital for him.
-The mustard gas test is an ordeal which causes the boys considerable
-apprehension.
-
-“Oh thank you! You’re very kind,” I said.
-
-As we took our departure down the hill I noticed a darky doughboy in a
-group who were drilling. He was in an awful fix; every time he tried to
-fasten the nose-clip on his nostrils, it would slip right off again!
-
-When the next lesson is held I have decided to be among the missing.
-
-
-Gondrecourt June 9.
-
-We have a new detail. His name is Jones. About six weeks ago he was
-kicked by a mule and had three of his ribs broken. He was sent to the
-hospital at Neufchateau. Learning that there was a chance that his
-battery might be sent to the front shortly, he pestered the docters
-until they let him go, his besetting fear being that he might become
-separated from his outfit. He returned three days ago. The next day he
-went out on the range as one of a gun crew. Yesterday he came into the
-hut and collapsed. The Secretary put him on his bed where he spent the
-rest of the day. Moved by purely altruistic motives, the Secretary then
-went to his captain and asked that Jones be assigned to the Y. as a
-supplementary detail. Now this is very nice for Jones, but I am not so
-sure whether it is nice for the Y. Jones, it seems, goes by the nickname
-of “Mildred.” At one period of his past life he was engaged in selling
-soap, a fact which inspires the boys to shout at frequent intervals:
-“Three cheers for Jones! Soap! Soap! Soap!” He brings echoes of his
-commercial training to the canteen counter. No east-side shopkeeper was
-ever more anxious to make sales than he. If a boy asks for tooth-paste
-when we happen to be out of it, he is sure to answer:
-
-“No, but we have some very fine shoe polish.”
-
-Or if somebody wants talcum powder when talcum there is none:
-
-“I’m sorry we’re out of it today, but can’t I interest you in some
-tomato ketchup?”
-
-Some day I think I shall write on essay on the psychology of suggestion
-as demonstrated in canteen sales. Nothing, it seems, ever really wins
-the boys’ approval unless it bears the label; “Made in the U. S.
-A.”—nothing that is, with the possible exception of eggs. Anything
-originating in Europe, from mustard to matches, is looked upon with a
-certain amount of suspicion, while goods coming from America are hailed
-with an enthusiasm often quite inconsistent with their quality. The
-other day we put a case of “Fig Newtons” on sale. The news flashed all
-over town. As one of the boys said; “Why it was just as if General
-Pershing or somebody’s mother had come to camp.”
-
-Lately we have had for sale quantities of fat French cookies. Some of
-the boys are mean enough to suggest that these were baked before the
-war.
-
-“Those cookies ought to wear service stripes,” one boy declared.
-
-So “Service Stripe Cookies” they have been ever since.
-
-“They’re all right for eating,” observed another customer solemnly, “but
-the Lord help you if you drop one on your toe!” This morning when I
-reached the hut I found Jones languidly washing dishes.
-
-“Where’s Neddy?”
-
-“Neddy? Why he’s in the guard-house.”
-
-For a moment I was goose enough to believe it, then I learned that
-Neddy, with a lieutenant and some twenty other boys, had all gone off,
-the day being Sunday, on single mounts to Domremy to visit the
-birthplace of Jeanne D’Arc. Late in the afternoon the little cavalcade
-returned.
-
-“Neddy,” I teased, “I hear you’ve been in the guard-house.”
-
-To my astonishment Neddy’s mouth twitched, his eyes filled. “I wish I’d
-never gone!” he blurted out.
-
-“Why, what’s the matter?”
-
-Then the whole pitiful tale was unfolded. Neddy hadn’t any money, not a
-clacker, and being too shy to ask for a loan, he had gone on the trip
-with empty pockets. He hadn’t been able to buy himself a bite of dinner.
-But that wasn’t what hurt. What hurt was that he couldn’t purchase any
-souvenirs for his girl, and there had been so many enticing ones!
-
-“Gee,” he moaned, “but that’s an awful place for a feller to go who
-hasn’t any money.”
-
-Then, just as the last straw of misery, his horse had been taken sick on
-the way home!
-
-We are going through one of those painful periods of pecuniary depletion
-which are periodic in the army, the inevitable prelude to payday. In
-Battery A there are two lads whom I have privately dubbed Tweedledum and
-Tweedledee. They are both short, roly-poly and always smiling and they
-are absolutely inseparable. When either of them buys anything at the
-canteen he always buys double; two packets of cigarettes, two “bunches”
-of gum, two cups of hot chocolate “one for me and one for my friend” as
-the stock phrase goes. This morning I received a shock. Tweedledum asked
-for _one_ bar of chocolate and _one_ package of cigarettes.
-
-“What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking alarmedly of how in the immortal
-poem “Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle,”—“You and your
-buddy haven’t quarrelled, have you?”
-
-“No ma’am, oh no indeed ma’am! It’s just that it’s an awful long ways
-from payday!”
-
-Later I saw them carefully dividing the purchases between them. I leaned
-over the counter, beckoned to Tweedledee.
-
-“You boys go around to the back door, but don’t let anybody see you!”
-
-At the back door I gave them each a slice of Snow’s latest lemon pie.
-
-Tonight the Major suddenly made his appearance in the kitchen to find
-Snow, Neddy and myself all sitting on the floor sorting out rotten
-oranges. Snow and Neddy faded away out the back door, but I stood my
-ground. For once his Majorship was pleased to be gracious. He
-complimented me on the improvement in the appearance of my kitchen.
-Indeed we did look pretty fine, Neddy having just covered the shelves
-with newspapers whose edges he had cut into beautiful fancy scalloping.
-
-“What do you do with those over-ripe oranges?”
-
-“Put them in a box outside the back door.”
-
-“Well? What then?”
-
-“The French children do the rest, sir.”
-
-But the boys are more incensed than ever against the Powers That Be.
-They have been writing too many letters of late for the censor’s
-comfort. So yesterday at Retreat the order was read out that no boy
-might write more than two letters and one postal card per week!
-
-
-Gondrecourt, June 13.
-
-The School has closed. It is common knowledge that the two batteries
-will soon join their respective regiments at the front. Curiously
-enough, here with the artillery I have never had that same feeling of
-closeness to the war which I had when I was with the doughboys. The
-attitude of the men here is so much more detached, impersonal. I fancy
-this is because, however dangerous their work may be, they do not look
-forward to any actual physical conflict. It is the imaginative image of
-“Heinie” with a bayonet thrusting at his breast which makes the front so
-vivid in anticipation to the doughboy.
-
-But now with the news from Château Thierry there is a certain tenseness
-everywhere. One feels that the hour is close at hand when every man that
-Uncle Sam has in France may be needed. The barking of the guns at
-practice has taken on a new significance. Yesterday indeed it just
-missed implying tragedy. Shortly after the jarring thunder of the “75s”
-had started our dishes in the kitchen to rattling, came a frantic
-message by telephone. A party of engineers were surveying for the
-narrow-gauge railway just beyond the hill over which the battery was
-shooting. One shell had narrowly missed them.
-
-Today an aviator in a little Spad machine came down at our back door. He
-had lost his way, exhausted his gas, and was forced to descend. He had
-thought he was over Germany so his relief on finding himself among
-friendly faces may be imagined. But aviation doesn’t mean what it used
-to any more to us. We have lost our aviator. Shortly after I came to
-Gondrecourt we began to have an aerial visitor. Every few days about
-sundown he would appear; flashing up over the eastern hill horizon, to
-circle the big open drill ground, dipping, soaring, playing all manner
-of madcap tricks just for the sheer joy of it, now he would sweep so low
-as almost to touch the ridgepole of the hut, then up, up again with a
-rush, waving his hand to us below as we waved and shouted with all our
-might up at him. The whole camp would turn out to see; it was one of the
-events of the day. “It’s Lufberry,” some one told me. Not long ago we
-read in the paper that Major Lufberry had been killed. We waited in
-suspense. Had it really been he? Would our aviator never come again?
-Night after night we watched for him; he never came.
-
-The fields about, which have been golden with buttercups and primroses,
-white with daisies, and purple with flowers whose names I do not know,
-are now crimsoning with poppies. “Artillery flowers,” the boys call
-them. They pick them and stick them jauntily in their overseas caps, or
-in great bunches, bring them to me to brighten the canteen.
-
-Since the boys are going soon I have been trying desperately to make
-them extra special goodies; candy, stuffed dates, frosted cookies,
-and—what pleases them as much as anything—hard-boiled eggs. It has been
-a revelation to me here in France, the American appetite for eggs. The
-boys will walk miles to get them; they will cheerfully pay as high as
-two dollars a dozen for them. I buy twelve dozen at a time, carry them
-out to the canteen and boil them in the dishpan. Placed on sale they
-disappear in the winking of an eye, and then the cry is always, “Ain’t
-you got no more?” Sometimes I take Neddy with me on my shopping
-expeditions; Neddy carries my market basket, smokes his pipe and looks
-as pleased as Punch. Today in our quest we stopped in at a store kept by
-two extremely pretty _Mademoiselles_. As we entered we were greeted by
-peals of girlish laughter. In a chair in the corner sat a tired M. P.
-fast asleep, his mouth wide-open; between his lips one of the pretty
-girls had just at that moment popped a round ripe strawberry.
-
-
-Gondrecourt, June 18.
-
-Besides the American Camp Hospital there is a French Hospital at
-Gondrecourt, a place with a hint of old-world flavour to it, the nursing
-being done by Sisters of Charity. Here through some freak of chance a
-week ago arrived sixteen Tommies from the English front, after having
-travelled half over the map of France. They were none too pleased to
-find themselves in a French Hospital and several, being walking cases,
-straightway deserted and sneaked over to the American Hospital only to
-be regretfully returned again. They have a little Algerian in a red fez
-with them whom they have nicknamed “Charlie Chaplin.” Although
-intercourse between them is restricted entirely to sign language, the
-Tommies have adopted Charlie as their mascot and Charlie follows them
-about just like a dog.
-
-My friend the English Lady, having little to do in her canteen since the
-School closed, has appointed herself as a sort of foster-mother to the
-whole cockney brood. She acts as interpreter and sometimes as
-intercessor, for the Tommies are impatient of the hospital discipline
-and cause the authorities frequent anxiety, helps the Sisters out in
-nursing them and, best of all, makes them tea at four o’clock or
-thereabouts, accompanying it with bread and butter sandwiches. Frankly,
-the Tommies think that they are little short of starved on the French
-Hospital rations, and the tea helps. When they can they sneak over to
-the American Hospital and beg a meal there, but such excursions are
-frowned upon by those in authority.
-
-Yesterday the English Lady gave a tea party for the Tommies in her
-canteen. She arranged to have a truck go fetch them. To her
-astonishment, instead of one, two trucks appeared and instead of just
-the Englishmen, the whole hospital that was able to stand on two legs or
-one arrived with them; big black Algerians and Moroccans in every shade
-of duskiness and poilus by the half score. The hut was crowded, there
-weren’t enough chairs to go around. The English Lady sent out a hurry
-call to bring up the reserves in refreshments. Neddy and I came over
-from our hut with our arms full of cups; more water was put on to boil
-for the tea, new packages of biscuits opened. Then while the water
-heated the English Lady took all the liveliest ones out for a walk
-through the Château grounds, while “Skipper”, her detail, who is a
-clever pianist, entertained the rest with music. During the playing one
-enormous Algerian, as black as night, stared fascinated at the piano,
-then edged slowly nearer and nearer to finally lay one incredulous
-finger, with infinite caution on one of the end keys. He had evidently
-never seen such a thing before, and more than half suspected it was all
-magic.
-
-Then the water boiled and we made the tea and carried cups and bowls of
-it around with canned milk and commissary sugar. The Frenchmen, true to
-type, with the scarcity of sugar in mind would only take one lump, until
-you invited them to have another, when each, with evident pleasure, took
-a second. As we could only muster six teaspoons between our two canteens
-to supply the whole company, we had to pass the spoons from guest to
-guest allowing each man just long enough for a good stir and then on to
-the next. The men with wounded arms got their neighbors to stir for
-them. With the tea we served sandwiches; these were a special treat to
-the poilus because they were made with American army bread. Now to my
-mind our white army bread is very poor and tasteless stuff in comparison
-with the grey well-flavored French war-bread, but the French, probably
-on account of the novelty, prize highly any scraps of the _pain
-Américaine_ that they can obtain. “Why, they eat it just like cake!” one
-boy said to me. Besides the sandwiches, there were little cookies and
-candies and cigarettes and finally, the gift of an American officer who
-happened in, an orange for each man to take home with him.
-
-When the tea was finished it was time for the guests to go. Crowded into
-the trucks they rolled out through the Château gates, the poilus smiling
-and waving their good hands, while the Tommies raised a ragged cheer.
-
-As Neddy and I returned to our canteen we paused at the door of one of
-the barracks to listen to the band producing pandemonium within. This
-band is the pet project of Battery D, the dearest hope of Corporal R.
-who is theatrical producer, impresario, librettist, base soloist, and
-band leader for the battery. The instruments were finally assembled some
-ten days ago. The one thing required of a member seemed to be that he
-had never played that particular sort of an instrument before. For the
-last ten days the band has been practicing, mostly in the Y. They have
-always played the same tune, yet I have never been able to decide what
-that tune was. Now that the battery is going to the front, the
-instruments must be put in store and our budding band disbanded almost
-before it had begun. The instruments are to be interned at Abainville,
-the town next door. When the day comes to relinquish them the band is
-going to march all the way from Gondrecourt to Abainville in state,
-playing their one tune over and over.
-
-Tonight Corporal R. sat on a barrel in the kitchen polishing his French
-horn with the Secretary’s pink tooth-paste. It made excellent
-brass-polish he had discovered.
-
-“It’s too bad you can’t take that band of yours up front,” remarked
-Snow.
-
-“What for?”
-
-“’Cause it sure would make the boys feel like fighting.”
-
-
-Gondrecourt June 22.
-
-The boys have gone! We saw the last battery off on the train tonight.
-The guns were loaded on flat cars, horses and men lodged together in the
-box cars, the boys sleeping under the horses’ very noses and in danger
-of being nipped, it seemed to me, by an ill-tempered beast. The boys who
-were to sleep with the guns on the flat cars would be much better off I
-thought; they had made themselves cozy little nests of straw underneath
-the gun-carriages. Some of the boys in the box cars, I was pained to
-observe, had smuggled in bottles with them.
-
-The English Lady and I had arrived at the station none too soon. We had
-no more than walked the length of the train, inspecting each car and
-wishing every boy Good-bye and Good-luck when the engine whistled and
-was off. We stood on the platform and waved to the boys who leaned from
-their cars and waved back until a curve in the track cut off our sight.
-
-These last few days have been hectic. Wednesday was my birthday. Neddy
-found it out and told the boys. They had observed that I didn’t have any
-raincoat; indeed rainy nights I was always embarrassed by the offer of
-half a dozen different rubber coats and ponchos to go home in; so they
-decided,—bless them!—to supply this lack. A crowd of non-coms went
-downtown; they took along one boy with them as a cloak model because he
-was about my height and “looked like a girl”; and they made him try on
-every raincoat in Gondrecourt. Finally they selected one, brought it
-back and made a ceremonious presentation. The raincoat is a beauty, and
-ever since I have worn it every day, rain or shine, just to show them
-how much I thought of it.
-
-It was hard to part with little Neddy. The Secretary presented him with
-a farewell pipe. I clasped around his neck a chain bearing a little
-silver cross; it was to keep him safe, body and soul from harm. He was
-almost moved to tears. The Secretary and I, he told me, had been “like a
-little papa and a daddy to him,” and then, flushing, joined in my
-laughter.
-
-At the last moment one of the D Battery cooks came stealthily to the
-back door.
-
-“Me an the other fellers in the kitchen,” he confided _sotto voce_, “we
-wanted to do something to show you folks how much we thought of you. So
-we just made up our minds to send yer this.”
-
-_This_ was a ten pound can of issue bacon.
-
-The Secretary leaves tomorrow for Paris. He is going in order to buy
-himself some new clothes. It seems that all his belongings entrusted to
-the local laundresses disappeared one by one until he found himself
-reduced to a single set. Last night he washed these out himself and put
-them in the oven to dry. When he remembered them this morning it was to
-find nothing left but a little cinder heap.
-
-The camp, for the present at least, is to be abandoned; the hut, for the
-army wishes to use the barracks elsewhere, torn down. In a few days the
-little Artillery School Canteen will be nothing but a memory.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V: ABAINVILLE—THE ENGINEERS
-
-
-Abainville July 1.
-
-“Abainville is going to be bombed off the face of the map.” Every time
-anyone has mentioned Abainville in my hearing during the last six weeks
-they have wound up with some such prophecy as this. Abainville is an
-engineering camp, Abainville is the starting-point for the narrow-gauge
-system that is to supply a certain sector of the American front. Already
-the great car shops have been built and stand gaunt and staring with
-more glass in their glittering sides than I have seen on this side of
-the Atlantic. It is these shops in particular that are held to be such
-shining marks for enemy aircraft. Anyway we have this comfort that if
-the Boche gets us we will all go together, for the town is so tiny that
-if a bomb hit it anywhere, it would wreck the major part of the village
-and there isn’t a single cellar in the whole vicinity!
-
-Just at present Abainville is in a state of suspense. There is some
-question among those in high places as to whether after all the site,
-for such extensive operations as have been planned, is well selected.
-Work on the narrow-gauge goes on, but the work on the shops has been
-suspended. Everyone is anxiously awaiting the decision.
-
-The hut, which is on the far edge of the camp, is a huge empty shell,
-for work on this too has been stopped pending developments. Up till the
-day I arrived the Y. was doing business in a tent near the highway, but
-being notified that the engineers were going to run a railway through
-that spot the next day, they had moved out and over to the unfinished
-hut in a hurry.
-
-My billet has a fine central location,—at the corner of La Grande Rue
-and the national highway that runs through the town. My window overlooks
-what approximates the town square, an open dusty space, bounded on the
-south by the principal café, on the east by the butcher’s shop, on the
-west by manure-heaps and on the north by my billet. In this square, it
-appears, all the village pig-killings take place. It is incredible and
-painful how many pigs of a marketable maturity a town no larger than
-Abainville can produce. Arguing from the frequency of the pig-killings I
-am convinced that if a census were taken Abainville would be found to
-contain more pigs than people.
-
-Further down la Grande Rue one comes to the church and the town-hall.
-Upstairs in the Mairie my co-worker, Miss S., has her billet. Downstairs
-is the village school and the living apartments of the schoolmaster’s
-family, refugees from the invaded territory. I peeped in at the empty
-schoolroom yesterday: on the wall was a large pictorial chart designed
-to impress upon the infant mind the advantages of drinking beer, cider
-and wine, rather than the more potent alcohols; a lesson vividly
-demonstrated by a series of cuts portraying a pair of guinea pigs. The
-guinea pig who indulged in cognac and kindred beverages was depicted in
-successive stages of inebriation until at the end he is shown expiring
-in all the horrors of delirium, while the prudent guinea pig who took
-nothing stronger than _vin_, _biére et cidre_ is pictured first in a
-state of mild and genial intoxication, and then the “morning after” with
-all the zest of a good digestion and a clear conscience, breakfasting on
-a sober cabbage leaf.
-
-The church next door to the Mairie is remarkable for nothing except the
-peculiar sound like a wheezing snore which may be heard every evening
-issuing from the belfry. At first this sound was a mystery to us. I
-inquired of Madame; she was blank.
-
-“Perhaps,” I suggested remembering how in medieval lore evil spirits
-were reputed to haunt church towers, “perhaps it is the devil in the
-belfry.”
-
-“But no!” cried Madame scandalized. “The devil doesn’t live in
-Abainville!”
-
-“To be sure,” I amended hastily, “the devil is a Boche! He lives at
-Berlin.”
-
-“_Mais, oui, oui, oui!_”
-
-But now the riddle has been read. The devil in the belfry is in reality
-an ancient owl, _une chouette_, who has inhabited the church tower time
-out of mind.
-
-There is a Salvation Army hut here, the first one I have seen. It is
-down by the main road; the canteen occupies one end of a barracks, which
-is used as a store-house, then there is an ell containing the kitchen.
-The staff comprises one man and two women; they are pleasant people,
-“real home folks.” Two or three times a week, for supplies are hard to
-obtain, they make pie or cake or doughnuts. On these nights, passing the
-hut on our way back from mess, one sees a long line stretching down the
-road, waiting patiently for the chance to get a piece of pie “like
-Mother used to make.” Our relationships are cordial. We help each other
-out in the matter of change. They come to our hut for sweet chocolate
-and movies; we go to them, when our consciences will permit, for
-doughnuts. I only wish that one of their huts could be in every camp in
-France.
-
-
-Abainville, July 8.
-
-By courtesy of a group of officers we are messing at a house with a
-particularly noisome front-door gutter and the Most Beautiful Girl in
-France to wait on us. La Belle Marguerite, as I always think of her, is
-tall and stately with a lovely gracious bearing and a sensitive,
-responsive face; what’s more, she only paints a little. She affects to
-speak no English but I suspect she understands a good deal. At meal
-times when we are present the officers never look twice at her, but any
-evening that one happens past the house one can see two cigarette ends
-gleaming from the darkness just inside the mess-room window: the
-officers are making up for lost time. Yesterday La Belle looked so pale
-and _distraite_ at dinnertime that I was quite distressed, fancying
-heart-break. “Mademoiselle Marguerite is sad,” I told Madame my hostess.
-Madame immediately went forth on a Visit of investigation. “Mademoiselle
-has the tooth-ache!” she announced on her return. Today at dinner,
-having finished our salade, we waited in vain for dessert. La Belle
-Marguerite, usually so prompt and so efficient, simply did not appear.
-After waiting until I grew tired I gave it up and left. Passing by the
-kitchen door I glanced inside. In front of the hearth stood Marguerite
-and a handsome Russian officer, and oh! the coquetry of her eyes, the
-seduction of her smiling, scarlet lips! It was evident that the mess in
-the next room was wiped as clean from her mind as if it never had been!
-Whether my messmates ever got their dessert or not I haven’t heard.
-
-Besides La Belle Marguerite, the one unique feature of our mess is a
-certain set of plates. These are French picture plates with jokes on
-them. The jokes are all of a gustatory nature and pertain to things
-which most people would prefer not to think about while they are eating.
-One rather striking design represents the proprietor of a Swiss resort
-hotel delicately sniffing a platter of fish as he says to the waitress:
-
-“These trout are passe. Keep them for the customers who have colds in
-their heads.”
-
-On another an irate diner is exclaiming over an item on his bill:
-
-“Three francs for a chicken! What’s that?”
-
-“Why that was the little chicken that Monsieur found in his egg!”
-
-There is always an anxious moment of suspense whenever a guest comes to
-dinner, a moment in which one peeps furtively out of the corners of
-one’s eyes to see whether the newcomer has noticed the picture on his
-plate, and if so, whether he has got the point. Sometimes the guest will
-ask to have the text translated for him and then there is an awkward
-pause.
-
-The question of what to serve at the canteen is a vexed one these days
-as it is quite too hot for chocolate. By scouring the country we managed
-to procure several cases of lemons, and then found our work for the day
-laid out,—just squeezing them. A few days ago, however, a shipment of
-bottled fruit juices arrived at the warehouse; by mixing this syrup with
-water and a small amount of lemon a delicious drink can be obtained. The
-boys have dubbed it a dozen different names, “_Camouflage vin rouge_”
-being one of them, but “_pink lemonade_” is the title it commonly passes
-under. Already it has become famous and every drunk in camp if
-questioned as to how he came to be in that condition will unblushingly
-assert that it was through drinking “that Y. M. C. A. pink lemonade.”
-
-If we could only get ice! Yesterday I investigated the possibilities, to
-find that if one were very ill and in desperate need of it, could
-produce a certificate to that effect signed by half a dozen doctors,
-approved by the Sanitary Inspector, passed upon by the local Board of
-Health and sealed by the Mayor with the sanction of the Town Council,
-one could, by means of this document, procure at the brewery at
-Gondrecourt a piece of ice about as large as a small-sized egg. Somehow
-it doesn’t seem quite worth the trouble.
-
-Lacking ice, we do our best with freshly-drawn water which comes
-pleasantly cool from the deep wells drilled by American engineers to
-supply the camp,—when it does come. But often just when the thirsty ones
-are crowding thickest you make a frantic dash to the faucet only to find
-that the supply has been cut off: there is not enough water in the
-wells, it seems, to supply all the engines and pink lemonade besides for
-the whole camp. Then there is nothing to do but to take a pail and set
-out. After climbing over a couple of freight trains and ploughing
-through a dozen cinder heaps one comes at last to the pump-house, where
-one may, by assuming an ingratiating manner, beg a pailful,—strictly
-against the regulations,—from the man at the pump. And then, after all,
-what use is a mere pailful of lemonade in a thirsty camp?
-
-
-Abainville, July 10.
-
-We have stopped fighting the war and have gone into the movie business.
-For two days all work has been suspended while the camp has posed before
-the camera. They are making a big propaganda film for use in the States,
-entitled “America’s Answer to the Hun” and Abainville and the
-Abainville-Sorcy narrow-gauge is to be part of that answer. “Camouflage
-pictures” sneer the boys, and camouflage pictures I blush to say they
-frankly are. For on the screen the peaceful valley through which the
-narrow-gauge is being built is to masquerade as a field of battle.
-Camouflaged engineers, armed and equipped as infantry will march
-valiantly across the landscape, while other engineers in helmets, with
-their gas-masks at the alert, are plying their picks and shovels amid
-the smoke of camouflage shrapnel; the climax being attained when the
-helmeted engineers effect a lightning repair feat by bridging over a
-carefully dug camouflage shell-hole.
-
-Yesterday I saw a photograph cut from the Sunday Supplement of one of
-America’s best known and most respected newspapers. Underneath the
-picture ran the text, “American boys playing baseball on a field in
-France where shells fall daily.” To my certain knowledge the only shells
-that have ever fallen on that field or within many miles of it are
-peanut shells. For the field in the picture is most plainly and
-indisputably the Y. athletic field at Gondrecourt. Will I ever, I
-wonder, recover my pre-war faith in newspapers and photographs and
-movies and such things?
-
-But now we have done our turn before the camera, it’s back to work again
-and very hard work at that, for the officers are determined to set a
-record for all the world in laying track. Already the little railway has
-shot ahead at an amazing rate; though whether track laid in such a hurry
-is really going to make for speed in the long run is a question on which
-the trainmen, sipping their pink lemonade at the canteen counter, have
-their own opinions. For no train, it seems, can make the run at present
-without leaving the track at least once during the journey.
-“Sun-trouble” say the officers, which means, being interpreted, that the
-heat of the sun’s rays has warped the rails. “Sun trouble nothin,’”
-grunt the men. “It’s just not takin’ the time to do the job decent.”
-When the “sun trouble” doesn’t serve to throw a train off the track, the
-French children see to it that the same effect is produced by the simple
-expedient of dropping spikes in between the ends of adjoining rails.
-
-Yesterday I was talking with an engineer from Tours. He and his fireman
-had just brought a Belgian engine up from that city for use in the
-Abainville yards. The attitude of the train crew who received it was
-plainly “thank-you-for-nothing-sirs!”, Belgian engines being none too
-popular with A. E. F. railroad men. The two crews sat in the hut for a
-long while holding a symposium over the Belgian engine’s oddities; at
-last the home crew departed, looking very glum. In the course of my
-subsequent conversation with the visiting engineer I happened to ask:
-
-“Would you vote for Pershing for president?”
-
-“No sir!” he answered emphatically. “All the railroad men over here have
-got it in for him.” He went on to explain.
-
-French railroad engineers are allowed a certain amount of coal and oil
-with which to make their runs; for anything that they can save out of
-this, they are reimbursed. This idea appealed to the American train
-crews who were attached to the French. They set to work and saved,—far
-more than the French were able to! The French proceeded to depreciate
-the quality of coal allowed them, instead of giving them half dust and
-half briquets, they gave them three-quarters dust and finally all dust
-yet still the Americans were able to beat the French at saving. And each
-man in fancy was rolling up a tidy little sum for himself.
-
-“And then,” continued my informant, “Pershing came out and said that we
-weren’t here to make money off the French, but to help them, so we
-weren’t to get the money for all the coal and oil we had saved after
-all. And that’s why there isn’t a railroad man in France who has any use
-for him.”
-
-How much of politics could be reduced, I wonder, to a mere question of
-pocketbook?
-
-He went on to tell me among other things that although a French
-conductor would be furious if you stopped a train in the middle of a run
-for any other reason, if you just said; “Come on, ol’ top, and have a
-bottle of _vin rouge_ on me,” he was all beaming acquiescence. “Just
-imagine,” he concluded disgustedly, “stopping a main-line train in
-America so the crew could go into a saloon and get a drink!”
-
-
-Abainville, July 14.
-
-The Bastille has fallen! We celebrated its fall today with much
-enthusiasm. Ostensibly in order to signalize the Franco-American
-Alliance, the festivities in reality were planned as propaganda of a
-different sort. Surreptitiously but quite definitely the end and aim of
-them was to flatter the Major.
-
-Now the Major in command of the camp at Abainville is what—if he weren’t
-a major—one would be tempted to term a “hard-boiled guy.” Being of the
-bid school he looks with a jaundiced eye at all welfare organizations,
-particularly, I gather, at the feminine element in them. He calls the
-college men in the regiment “sissy boys” and believes in treating them
-to an extra dose of pick and shovel. What’s more, it is an open secret
-that he would like to swap the whole outfit of them for a regiment of
-Mexican desperadoes, with whom he has had considerable experience. As
-the boys say, he speaks three languages, English, Mexican and Profane,
-and of the three he is the most proficient in the last.
-
-So in view of all this, the Fourteenth of July celebration was gotten up
-chiefly in order to give the Major a chance to appear in all his glory
-and make a speech, this being, it is claimed, one of the surest ways to
-tickle the vanity and so win the heart of a man.
-
-We decorated the half-finished hut with flags and bunting, screening the
-yawning cavern back of the stage with broad strips of red, white and
-blue cheesecloth. Then we officially invited the whole town to attend.
-The whole town, from grandmother to baby, came dressed in their Sunday
-best. The programme started with an informal concert by an impromptu
-jazz orchestra varied by some Harry Lauder impersonations delivered by
-an unexpected youth who somehow strayed on to the stage. For a few
-moments we were painfully uncertain as to whether the effect produced
-was due just to Harry Lauder or to _vin rouge_, finally deciding that a
-share at least of the credit should be allowed the latter. Fortunately
-Harry’s appearance on the stage was short; he left us fondly hoping that
-the French hadn’t realized anything was amiss.
-
-The Major of course opened the formal programme. He read his speech. It
-wasn’t a bad speech, representing, as it did, the combined efforts of
-one captain, two lieutenants and the clerk in the Headquarters office,
-and was sufficiently fiery in its reference to the Germans to be quite
-in keeping with the Major’s character. The Major sat down amid
-thunderous applause. The Secretary had vainly tried to arrange to have a
-little girl present him with a bouquet at the end of his speech: perhaps
-it was just as well the way it was,—a bouquet might have proved
-embarrassing to the Major. When the applause had died down the Major’s
-interpreter stepped out and gave a brief summary of the address in
-French for the benefit of the villagers. Then we had the Mayor of
-Abainville and after him the Cure, looking very handsome in his
-beautiful French officer’s uniform. They both delivered flowery
-speeches, enlarging upon the mutual affections of the two nations, which
-were translated briefly into English by the interpreter for the benefit
-of the Americans.
-
-After the speeches the school children, who had been fidgeting about
-like so many little crickets in their front-row seats, swarmed up on the
-stage and, standing in a long line with flag-bearers at each end, sang
-the Marseillaise in their funny shrill little voices. Then we all sang
-the Star Spangled Banner, and after that there was a movie. As luck
-would have it, instead of an adventure of the western plains, fate had
-sent us a romance of high finance. We had asked the interpreter to
-announce the titles of the pictures in French for the benefit of the
-villagers but when he discovered that this meant making clear the
-intricacies of the New York Stock Exchange to the mind of the French
-peasant, he baulked and bolted. It must have been just about as
-intelligible to them as Coptic, yet they sat tight and at least looked
-interested.
-
-Everybody considers the affair a success. The Secretary was in high
-spirits over the evening.
-
-“The Major was pleased, I’m sure,” he declared. “As for the French, it
-was an occasion which they will always remember. Why it was just like
-transplanting the whole village there. The grandmother and the babies,
-the mayor, the priest, the school-teacher and his scholars; every
-village institution was represented!”
-
-“Everything,” I said—I was tired, “but the pig-killings.”
-
-
-Abainville, July 20.
-
-I have just established what I think must be the smallest “hut” in
-France, and such fun as it was doing it!
-
-There is a detachment of about a hundred engineers stationed, while they
-build the narrow-gauge railway, at a little village about ten miles to
-the north, called Sauvoy. The other day I went with the Athletic
-Director in a side-car to take them some baseball equipment. The boys I
-found were billeted in dark dingy lofts and had to eat their meals, rain
-or shine, sitting just anywhere in the streets of the village. The
-thought came to me; why shouldn’t they too have a Y? I approached the
-French Town Major, taking the barber-interpreter with me to lend me both
-moral and lingual support. After some uncertainty he admitted that there
-was a room which might be made to serve, a room over a stable to be
-sure, but a good room for all that; the rent would be thirteen sous a
-day,—I snapped it up.
-
-Yesterday with all my materials assembled I started out for Sauvoy
-again. We began work a little before noon, myself and four engineers.
-Before the afternoon was over we had changed a filthy loft, its grimy
-walls covered with obscene scrawls, into as cunning a little
-pocket-edition Y. as one could find I think in France. Sweeping the dust
-and cobwebs from the rafters, we calcimined the ceiling and walls a
-pretty creamy yellow; filled in the missing panes with vitex; hung
-curtains of beautiful blue and green chintz at the windows; laid runners
-of the same across the tables lent with the benches by the _Major du
-Cantonment_; decorated the walls, half-dry as they were, with stunning
-French posters; built shelves in the alcove corner where the built-in
-bed had been, filled them with books, games and writing materials; hung
-two big green Japanese lanterns from the beam in the center; and last of
-all put bowls of the loveliest flowers, larkspurs and snapdragons,
-begged by the boys from the village gardens, on the shelves and tables,
-together with heaps of fresh magazines and the company victrola. In the
-midst of all the scurry and hurry a red-faced frowsy Frenchwoman marched
-in upon us. She stalked across the room and tried the door which led
-into the hay-loft: we had nailed it fast. We must open that door
-immediately, she declared, otherwise she could not get the hay to feed
-the horse downstairs. I saw my pretty room used as a passage-way by a
-beery old termagant and my heart sank. After some discussion, however,
-our visitor proposed an alternative. If we would supply her with a
-ladder, she could climb up into the loft from below. But how, I asked
-helplessly, was I to get a ladder? One of the boys winked at me and
-disappeared; ten minutes later he was back dragging a ladder after him.
-Our French friend was satisfied.
-
-“But how did you get it?” I asked wonderingly.
-
-He looked at me reprovingly. “In this Man’s Army,” he remarked, “you
-should learn not to ask such questions.”
-
-When the last touch had been bestowed there was still an hour before the
-truck which was to take me home was slated for departure. Someone
-suggested a visit to the Château. So the Top Sergeant, the
-barber-interpreter, the Town Major and I all set out together.
-
-The Château at Sauvoy is a fifteenth century Château, cut out of an old
-picture-book, surrounded by a high wall and just about big enough for
-two. One enters, oddly enough, through the kitchen which is enormous and
-like a Dutch _genre_ painter’s “Interior,” with a cobble-stone floor, an
-eight-foot fireplace, dried herbs and vegetables hanging from the
-rafters and everywhere on the long shelves, the soft gleam of pewter and
-the mellow tones of old china-ware. From the kitchen one steps into a
-tiny dining-room paneled in dark carved wood with a bird-cage, empty
-now, built into the wall. Beyond this is the _salon_ with a wonderful
-old tapestry stretched across one of its walls and some exquisite Louis
-Quinze chairs in which kings and queens might have sat.
-
-But the best thing about the Château is the Chatelain, an old French
-gentleman, eighty-nine years of age, the last of his family, who lives
-all alone, except for one antique serving-woman, in this beautiful dim
-old mansion, wears _sabots_, keeps bees for a living, and every day of
-his life cuts from the _journal_ the little daily English lesson, pastes
-it in a tiny note-book, and then his poor old eyes an inch from the
-paper, cons the words over and over, reading them aloud with _such_ a
-pronunciation!
-
-“In three months,” he told us proudly, “I am going to be an American.”
-
-He related to us how in 1870 the town was invaded by the Germans and he
-taken prisoner. But the Germans were gentlemen then and treated him
-humanely; he couldn’t understand what had changed them to such savage
-beasts. He took us out and showed us his precious bees. We went through
-the garden, a charming place with little box hedges and rose bushes and
-currant bushes and gooseberries all growing together in the true French
-style. Beyond we came to an open oblong of greensward edged by trees
-with fifty hives ranged around it, the hives,—of all quaint
-conceits—being made like little Chinese houses, each one different from
-the rest, each painted red and blue, a bit shabby and worn by time, but
-still gay and jaunty nevertheless. Monsieur guaranteed us that the bees
-wouldn’t sting, they weren’t bad bees he said, so we consented to be led
-about to each hive in turn and peered in through the little glass
-windows at the bees making honey. Sad to say, this is a bad year for
-sweets and instead of hundreds of pounds of honey, there will be
-scarcely one to sell.
-
-We went back through the garden and here Monsieur must gather a bouquet
-for me. Around and about the garden he hurried, going to every bush in
-turn, putting his poor dim eyes down into the very leaves of each,
-searching for just what he wanted; and finally it was done, pink and
-white roses, red geraniums, camomile and white pinks, made up in a
-little stiff bunch and tied with a bit of scarlet string. Then he must
-present it with a deep bow and a gallant speech “from an old Frenchman
-to _une jolie Américaine_”, while all the rest, including the ancient
-maid-servant who had just returned from the fields with an apron full of
-clover for the rabbits, stood about and applauded and cried “Vive la
-France!” and then “Vive l’ Amérique!” in a quite truly stage manner.
-
-We left the little Y. in charge of a boy from the Medical Corps. He has
-little to do except dispense pills to the French people, so he was
-willing to look after it.
-
-This morning word came in from Sauvoy that the Germans bombed it last
-night. Luckily the bombs, evidently aimed at the railroad, fell just
-outside the village and did no harm; but poor old Monsieur must have
-gotten a bad fright.
-
-
-Abainville, August 1.
-
-Abainville’s future is at last assured. Work upon the hut has been
-resumed. The buzz of barracks-building fills all the place, the railroad
-yards gradually but relentlessly encroach; little by little they are
-ruining the most beautiful poppy field in all the world.
-
-Meanwhile our family too has grown. A few days ago three new companies
-of engineers arrived in town. These are draft troops from Texas and
-Oklahoma, in camp for only a few weeks in the States, shipped here
-directly from the base port, and so green to France that they don’t even
-know what _oui oui_ means. On the trip here one of these boys, they
-tell, after gazing out the door of his “side-door pullman” in silence
-half the morning, remarked disgustedly;
-
-“This is a hell of a country!”
-
-“What’s the matter?”
-
-“Why all the stations have got the same name!”
-
-“The hell they have! What’s the name?”
-
-“_Sortie!_”
-
-The Major in command of the new arrivals proves to be an old and none
-too amicable acquaintance of our Major’s, their mutual esteem having
-been obscured by a law-suit some time in the past which resulted in our
-Major’s being forced to part with a considerable sum of money. To make
-himself more welcome the new Major has introduced innovations. Up till
-now, in accordance with our Major’s theories, we have been a strictly
-business community, our energies concentrated chiefly upon what the boys
-call P. and S.—pick and shovel. But now with the coming of the new
-detachment we have blossomed out with all sorts of military frills.
-Armed sentinels marching their beats in a military manner fairly
-encumber the camp. One is halted and challenged a half-dozen times on
-one’s way home from the canteen at ten o’clock in the evening. I am
-startled out of my dreams in the middle of the night by shouts of,
-“Corporal of the Guard, Post Number Four!” under my very window. And the
-best part of it is that these “Long Boys,” never having had so much as
-the A-B-C of military training, make the drollest imitations of real
-soldiers that ever were. The atmosphere at Headquarters has of late, I
-gather, been slightly tinged with electricity. But the boys belonging to
-the older organizations in camp have been enjoying themselves to an
-unholy degree “stuffing” the new arrivals with ghastly tales of
-air-raids, gas bombs, and Serial machine-gun barrages.
-
-As in all huts, we have a big map of France tacked to the wall where the
-boys can have easy access to it. After one of these maps has been up a
-short while, it is always a simple matter when glancing at it, to locate
-one’s self—one has only to look for a dirty spot; a little later,
-countless more grimy fingers having in the meantime been applied, one
-looks for the hole. Yesterday one of our new friends came to me and
-asked:
-
-“Please, Ma’am, could you tell me where that there place, ‘No Man’s
-Land’ that they talk about in the papers is? I’ve been a-lookin’ an’
-a-lookin’ an’ I can’t find it on the map nowhere.”
-
-Along with the new engineers Nanny arrived in town. Nanny is an Alabama
-goat, smuggled on board the transport wrapped up in one of the boys’
-overcoats. Her fleece is pure white and she is fat as a little
-butter-ball. Already she is one of our most distinguished citizens.
-Possessed of an adventurous spirit, she makes herself free of every
-house in town, being particularly fond of climbing stairs and appearing
-at unsuspected moments in odd corners of one’s billet. Madame explains
-the attraction here: “She smells an American, you see!” which is a
-quaint thought. Nanny is the pet detestation of the Adjutant, for she
-has a _penchant_ for straying into his office and nibbling at every
-paper within reach. Already several valuable documents have disappeared
-down her greedy little throat. Last night, in revenge, one of the boys
-in the Adjutant’s office, armed with a pot of bright red paint, painted
-Nanny in “dazzle” designs. Today she is a sight.
-
-This morning I was puzzled to observe that a considerable number of the
-newcomers were wearing pink tickets in their hats.
-
-“What’s that?” I asked.
-
-“Them? Them’s meal tickets!” They explained; the report had gone around
-that the chow of one of the companies was of superior quality;
-immediately the chow line of that same company had assumed an inordinate
-length. The mess sergeant, unable, since the company was so new, to
-distinguish his own men from the self-invited guests, had found it
-necessary to attach tags to the company.
-
-With the coming of the new engineers, the sale of one article in stock
-has swelled to unprecedented quantities. One member of the force is
-fairly kept busy from morning until night cutting off chunks of chewing
-tobacco. Texas and Oklahoma, it seems, have unlimited capacities for
-this commodity. Now with all due respect to the honourable American
-tribe of chewers, this indulgence raises a very delicate question for
-the canteen lady in whose charge rests the appearance of the hut. The
-scrap-boxes are already in a bad way, I frankly advocate spittoons, but
-our detail, who is a very superior lad, known among his cronies as “The
-Infant” because of his pink cheeks and innocently solemn air, flatly
-refuses. There are some things, he declares, to which he will not stoop,
-and he grows very stiff and red in the face if I hint at it.
-
-“I have discussed the matter,” he told me yesterday, “with several very
-eminent chewers, and they all agree that there isn’t the slightest
-necessity for their behaviour!”
-
-There may not be any necessity,—how am I to judge? But there is a very
-actual and urgent state of affairs. And what is one to do about it?
-
-
-Abainville, August 13.
-
-The hut is finished. Now if at any time Marshal Foch or General Pershing
-or President Poincaré should happen this way, we could say: Come in,
-gentlemen, and behold us; don’t we look nice?
-
-The main part of the hut, the big auditorium, is done in creamy yellow
-and brown with rafters of bright blue, the windows hung with curtains of
-sumptuous orange chintz. The writing-room is blue and yellow too, with
-green and yellow curtains on which, in a bower of branches, black-birds
-perch; runners of the same material lie across the writing tables, the
-practical advantage of this pattern being that whenever anyone spills a
-bottle of ink on a runner, it merely gives the effect of one more
-black-bird. In each window of the writing-room is a little pot with a
-scarlet geranium, while the walls of both writing-room and auditorium
-are bright with beautiful French posters.
-
-But the best of all the hut, to my mind at least, is the Tea
-Room,—so-called until we think of something better to name it,—for the
-Tea Room was my own particular pet scheme. According to the plans, the
-ell behind the canteen counter was cut up into half a dozen little
-rooms. By eliminating part of the central hall, the “mess-room” and the
-“ladies’ room” and moving the office out to an unused corner by the
-movie machine booth, we got space for a fair-sized room connected by a
-serving-window with the kitchen. Our matched lumber having run short we
-used rough lumber and covered it with burlap; each strip was a different
-weave and texture, to be sure, but all the same it was burlap! The
-woodwork and little tables we painted a bright green, hung vivid green
-curtains at the windows, then, taking the covers of chewing tobacco
-boxes, stained these green too, pasted in the centre of each a bright
-little water-color reproduction cut from an English art magazine, tacked
-them up on the walls, and _voilà!_ as pretty a little room as could be
-found short of Paris!
-
-In the Tea Room we serve pink lemonade, hot chocolate, jam sandwiches,
-cookies and canned fruit. The boys are living on a diet of what they
-call “goat’s meat” at present;—whenever it is time for a chow line to
-form you can hear a chorus of bleats and baas half across the camp,—and
-so sick of this have they become that many will sup off chocolate and
-sandwiches in the Tea Room by preference. Yesterday I took a chance and
-tried making a ten gallon boiler full of raspberry tapioca pudding,
-using the bottled fruit juice. At first the boys were inclined to be
-cautious.
-
-“What do you call that?”
-
-“How would raspberry slum do?”
-
-“Well, I’ll try anything once!”
-
-But after the first taste it went all too fast.
-
-“Say, are there any seconds on this?”
-
-“Lady,” said one lad solemnly to me, “with pudding like that I could
-stay four years more in the army.”
-
-One of the divisions from the lines arrived in this area, a few days
-ago, for a short period of rest. A number of the men are encamped up on
-the hill near the old Artillery School and they come straying down to
-our hut. Poor lads, it is pitiful to see how wonderful it seems to them
-to be in a place that is clean and pretty.
-
-“This looks like a bit of heaven to me,” declared one boy.
-
-Another, sitting in the Tea Room stirring his chocolate, commented,
-“Gee, this is a swell place in here. You ought ter get some fancy name
-for it.”
-
-“What would you suggest?”
-
-“Well I should think,” he looked around, “you might call it Canary
-Cottage.”
-
-Yet occasionally I wonder if it really all pays, as when I pick out the
-cigar butts which, in spite of the trash boxes beneath the tables, the
-boys will persist in sticking in the vases of flowers and planting in
-the geranium pots, or when, as last night, I catch a fellow using one of
-the beautiful chintz runners from the tables with which to wipe the mud
-off his boots.
-
-
-Abainville, August 21.
-
-  Talk kills men.
-  Don’t talk. The walls have ears.
-  Keep mum, let the guns talk for you.
-
-Thus are we placarded. Every hut, every café, every garage, every place
-of any sort where the A. E. F. may meet together and indulge in
-conversation, now bears a board with some such legend printed on it and
-after each terse warning is the terser admonition; Read G. O. 39. A
-campaign of silence is on foot. These catchy phrases, American
-variations on the classic French line: _Taisez vous, méfiez vous, les
-oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent!_—Be still, beware, the ears of the
-enemy are listening!—are to be perpetual reminders to us that we are all
-too prone to gossip indiscreetly.
-
-As to just what one may say and mustn’t say, I for one confess, not
-having read G. O. 39, that I am in a quandary. I find myself hesitating
-before mentioning the fact that we had baked beans for dinner. As for
-talking about the weather, why that leads naturally to the subject of
-moonlight nights, and moonlight nights, as every one knows, now imply
-not romance but air-raids and air-raids are of course a tabooed topic.
-Indeed I am beginning to have a sneaking conviction that perhaps it
-would be better to discard speech entirely and take to conversing in
-dumb show.
-
-Sometimes some small thing that comes to one’s attention will
-crystallize a difference between two races so sharply as to be
-startling. This was impressed on me the other day by two posters. Both
-the French and American authorities have recently issued warnings to
-their soldiers concerning the practice of riding on the tops of railroad
-cars, since this habit has led to a number of casualties. The French
-poster reads something like this:
-
-Whereas it has been brought to the attention of the Commissioner of
-Railroads, that various accidents have occurred resulting from the
-practice indulged in by soldiers of obtruding a portion or the whole of
-their bodies beyond the limits of the car; it is urgently requested that
-the soldiers in transit upon the railroad should henceforth restrict
-themselves to the interior of the cars.
-
-The American sign runs thus:
-
-“If you want to see the next block, keep yours inside! Your head may be
-hard but it’s not as hard as concrete!” Pithily it states the number of
-casualties resulting from this trick, explains that the French bridges
-and tunnels only allow six inches clearance above the top of the cars,
-and ends;
-
-“Your life may not be worth anything to you, but it may cost your
-country $10,000.”
-
-But the triumph of American sign art, a specimen of which hangs in the
-Adjutant’s office, is the gas-defense poster. It starts off with the Gas
-School slogan:
-
-“There are two classes of men in a gas attack, the quick and the dead,”
-proceeds to poetry:
-
-  “The hard-boiled guy said gas was bunk,
-  It couldn’t hurt you, only stunk....
-  The hard-boiled guy went up the line,
-  Fritz spilled the mustard good and fine;
-  And now some people wonder why
-  It’s flowers for the hard-boiled guy,”
-
-and ends with the admonition that seems a little ironical to one who
-must struggle to make green wood burn in a broken-down French range;
-“Cook with it, don’t croak with it.”
-
-Today we put up a sign fill of our own over the counter. For some
-reason, transportation probably, there has been a most distressing lack
-of supplies in this area recently. Not only are we suffering, but the
-Salvation Army and even the sales commissaries have all been stricken
-with the same famine. Indeed I was told of one commissary which bore the
-warning; “We have salt, mustard and baking powder. That’s all.” Tired of
-replying several hundred times a day; “I’m awfully sorry but we haven’t
-any so-and-so,” I made a sign which was a list of all the “haven’t gots”
-and tacked it up over the counter. Thinking to be funny I included
-strawberry ice-cream among the rest, to be promptly punished by an
-innocent-eyed youth who inquired hopefully; “What kind of ice-cream
-_have_ you got?”
-
-Another boy read through the list once, twice, then looked up at the
-Infant disgustedly.
-
-“Why don’t you put ‘Hell!’ at the bottom of it?” he queried.
-
-“’Pears to me it would be easier to make a list of the things you _have_
-got,” suggested another.
-
-A little while longer and if no help comes, we shall be doing this. I
-can see that sign in my mind’s eye now. It will read something like
-this:
-
-                                We have
-                            chewing tobacco
-                           indelible pencils
-                                  and
-                            shaving brushes
-
-
-Abainville, September 2.
-
-Once a month, according to schedule, the whole personnel of the division
-is summoned to Y. Headquarters at Gondrecourt for a conference. Formerly
-these conferences were largely religious in significance, consisting of
-much righteousness with a slight leaven of business. Each one in turn
-was looked forward to as a pious but unprofitable duty and evaded when
-possible,—which wasn’t often. Now with a change in the directorship the
-conferences have taken on an almost entirely practical tone.
-Incidentally they have gained amazingly in popularity. For now one can
-attend a conference with confidence that during its progress one will
-surely glean more than one quaint bit of human comedy.
-
-Today it was the Aviation Camp Secretary who supplied most of the spice.
-This is an odd but very earnest little man whom I shall always remember
-as I saw him at the Gondrecourt railway station last May, starting for
-Paris dressed up in a “tin hat” and a gas mask. Whether this was in
-order to bluff Paris into thinking that he had come straight from the
-front, or whether this was to protect himself against the assaults of
-Big Bertha while in the city, I could not determine, but never since
-have I been able to take the gentleman quite seriously.
-
-The Aviation Secretary created the first sensation by rising suddenly to
-his feet and reading a motion to the effect that the Gondrecourt
-Division of the Y. M. C. A. should go on record as registering a protest
-against “the wicked state of the Paris streets,” citing Mr. Edward Bok
-and his action in the case of the streets of Liverpool. For a moment no
-one said a word, then a secretary arose and requested that the motion be
-amended to read more clearly, as in its present form it might be taken
-to refer to the condition of the paving, or the criminal recklessness of
-the taxi drivers. The Warehouse Man then solemnly proposed that in view
-of Mr. Bok a ruling should be passed that while in Paris all secretaries
-should be required to travel by the subway or in a cab. I wanted to ask
-if it wouldn’t do just as well if special prayers should be offered for
-each secretary on his departure for the wicked city, but refrained.
-
-No sooner had the excitement over the Paris streets subsided, than the
-Aviation Secretary was on his feet again with a second resolution. This
-was in effect a petition to the Paris office that they send us
-proportionately less tobacco and more sweets for sale in the canteens.
-This precipitated a fiery argument, the smokers lined up against the
-non-smokers. Listening to the non-smokers you became convinced that the
-manhood of America was on its way to ruin through excessive cigarettes;
-listening to the smokers you became equally certain that the war would
-be won by tobacco smoke. The situation became so tense one could almost
-see the sparks in the air. In the end the smokers had it.
-
-The next thrill was caused by one of the women workers who in the course
-of a speech took occasion to deprecate the housekeeping abilities of the
-men secretaries. On Fourth of July, she declared, when the chocolate
-cups from all over the area had been sent into Gondrecourt for the
-celebration there, some of them had been discovered to be in a shocking
-state. These had later been traced to a hut where there was no woman
-worker. Instantly the Aviation Secretary was up again. This charge was a
-personal matter, he declared, as the cups in question had been his.
-However he denied the implication. The cups had been perfectly clean
-when they left the hut, they must have become soiled en route. And so
-the conference comedy is played out.
-
-At the town of X. there is a secretary who declares he is devoting his
-life to the service of the Lord. Some years ago he found himself
-becoming deaf. So he told the Lord that if He would restore his hearing
-he would spend the rest of his days in performing good works. He was
-cured. Last week he created a corner on eggs in this vicinity by buying
-one hundred and twenty-five dozen at five francs per. Now he is
-reselling them for six. Wanting eggs badly to make custard for some sick
-boys here, and not being able to obtain them any other way, I walked
-over to X. and bought two dozen. When I got home I counted them, there
-were just twenty-three. Surely the Lord got the worst of that bargain!
-
-
-Abainville, September 9.
-
-Something is going to happen.
-
-We have been used to seeing the French Army go by; interminable lines of
-camions, so many feet apart, rolling through the town for hours on end.
-Sometimes we have seen a section pass through on its way to the front,
-only to return again some ten days later. Once seen, a French camion
-train is never forgotten, for each automobile section bears painted on
-its sides the distinctive insignia of the unit. These are sometimes
-droll, sometimes sentimental, but always cleverly designed and usually
-striking,—a poilu drinking _pinard_ from his canteen, a pelican, a polar
-bear, a dancing monkey, a soldier embracing a peasant girl, a grinning
-Algerian’s head in ear rings and a red fez, a gendarme holding up a
-threatening club.
-
-But now by day, by night, it is the Americans who are passing through,
-their faces set toward the front, on troop-trains, in camions, on foot.
-Coming home from the canteen in the evening one hears the heavy rattle
-that means artillery on the move, and standing by the roadside peering
-through the darkness one can just discern horses and caissons,
-slat-wagons, supply-wagons and, looming ominously in the dim light, the
-formidable bulk of the great guns.
-
-Night before last I was awakened by the sound of troops passing, a
-regiment of infantry on the march. I lay and listened; the tramp, tramp,
-tramp of the rhythmic feet was unvarying, incessant, then came a break.
-The order had been given to halt for a rest. The boys were evidently
-sitting down by the edge of the road. But though they rested they were
-by no means still.
-
-“_Oh Mademoiselle!_” they entreated the dark and unresponsive houses,
-“_Oh, Mademoiselle! Deux vin rouge toot sweet s’il vous plaît,
-Mademoiselle!_”
-
-They swore genially. They sang snatches of _Hail, hail the gang’s all
-here_ and _Tipperary_. One boy had a mouth organ which he played with
-vim. Someone introduced a barnyard motif and they were off, crowing and
-cackling, mooing and bleating, imitating every animal known to domestic
-life. They sounded like schoolboys off for a holiday and my God! they
-were soldiers on the march to the front, their faces set to the battle!
-
-Tonight as we came home from the hut, we were startled by a strange
-sight. The sky was clear, except for one dark mass shaped like a cloud
-of smoke which hung above the horizon to the north. As we looked,
-suddenly the under side of the cloud turned an angry crimson, then in a
-moment grew dark again. A minute later the red glow showed again only to
-fade but and be repeated. We knew that the angry light must be the glare
-reflected from the flashes of the guns which were belching red death
-across the lines. All at once the battle-field seemed very near.
-
-
-Abainville, September 14.
-
-We have taken the Saint Mihiel salient! The news came in yesterday over
-the wires. At first we couldn’t believe it. We have heard so many
-wonderful but alas! too hopeful things over those wires! But now the
-newspapers have proved it, with their maps showing the salient cut off
-as clean as by a knife. And if we wanted concrete proof, why we have
-that too. They have sent for a detail of engineers from Abainville to
-build hurry-up prison pens. They simply haven’t any place to put the
-thousands of captive Germans. The detail set out in high spirits looking
-forward to doing a brisk business in souvenirs; already reports have
-come in to the effect that buttons and shoulder-straps may be had in
-exchange for a cigarette, and a ring for a sack of five-cent “smoking.”
-
-The inhabitants of Saint Mihiel, they say, were terror-stricken at the
-sight of the Americans. When our troops first entered the town they
-believed the city had been retaken. The Americans, they thought, were
-Austrians. No one in Saint Mihiel had ever seen an American; they hadn’t
-even known America was in the war!
-
-But even in Saint Mihiel I don’t believe that there was any greater joy
-than the joy that was here in our own kitchen. Madame who helps us with
-the dishes at the hut is the daughter of the refugee schoolmaster, a
-shy, sensitive, appealing little woman, girl-like in spite of her
-half-grown daughter. When we told her that the salient had been taken
-she went white and trembled. And what of Vieville? she begged; Vieville,
-her own little village? We got the map and showed it to her. Sure
-enough, there was Vieville and the new line stretching the other side of
-it! It was true past doubting. Madame shivered. “I don’t know whether to
-laugh or to cry,” she told us and there were sobs in her voice while she
-smiled at us. She tried to go on with scrubbing the floor, but she
-couldn’t. Would we mind if she ran home for a minute? She must tell the
-news to Papa and Maman. But certainly, stay as long as you like! we told
-her. In an hour she was back again, to go about her work in a dazed
-uncertain fashion, smiling tremulously while the tears stood in her
-eyes. We must get someone to take her place at the canteen, she told
-us,—they would be going back to Vieville right away. It was plain to see
-that she would have liked to start that very moment. We said nothing. Of
-course it was impossible. Vieville though liberated was close to the
-lines. When I looked at Madame so happy, so confidently eager to return
-to her home, I sickened to think of the ruin that probably awaited her.
-How do they have the courage to face it, these French people? I thought
-of the words of the old schoolmaster: “We are living under tension now,
-it is the strain that keeps us up. When the war is over there will be a
-terrible reaction.” They have been brave, so brave, these peasant
-villagers, but how will they bear the future? Where will they be swept
-when they are caught in the fearful ebb of that reaction?
-
-Already odd-looking little German narrow-gauge engines and freight cars
-have begun to appear in the yards, part of the Saint Mihiel booty. It
-does the eyes good to look at them.
-
-One doesn’t want to hope too greatly, but is it possible that this may
-be the beginning of the end?
-
-
-Abainville, September 18.
-
-Last night they bombed Gondrecourt. We were startled out of our sleep by
-the explosions. Lying in bed I could hear the angry growling gr-gr-gr
-which distinguishes the German plane, as it flew over Abainville headed
-back towards the lines. Would it drop another bomb? It seemed to take an
-interminable time to pass over us. Finally the growling hum grew faint,
-died away. Then the real excitement of the night began. Swarming into
-the streets, men, women and children, they proceeded to turn the
-occasion into a social event. Standing in the square in the moonlight,
-all talking at once and all talking at the top of their voices, they
-discussed, narrated, compared, commented, sympathized, while high above
-all the din I could hear Madame’s voice in semi-hysterical outbursts of
-emotion. How they could find so much to say about it I can’t imagine. If
-Hindenburg’s whole army had suddenly appeared in Gondrecourt they
-couldn’t have been more excited. I went to sleep and left them still
-busy analyzing, as I took it, their psychological reactions.
-
-This morning we learned that the bombs, falling at the edge of the town,
-had injured nothing except a few trees.
-
-“What would you do if they should start to bomb Abainville?” I asked
-Madame when she brought me my morning toast and chocolate.
-
-“I? I would go to the church.”
-
-“What you, the infidel! You who never go to mass!”
-
-“I know.” Madame smiled a little sheepishly. “And yet all the same, one
-would feel safer there.”
-
-At the canteen a lieutenant who was just finishing his course at
-Gondrecourt came in.
-
-“Nobody can imagine who should have wanted to bomb the school,” he
-declared, “unless it was some former pupil.”
-
-“Why I was told that the Gondrecourt School was the ranking school of
-France!” I exclaimed.
-
-“Made a mistake in the last syllable,” he responded sourly, “it should
-have been spelled e-s-t.”
-
-But if the inhabitants of Abainville have experienced no losses through
-air-raids yet, they have nevertheless, suffered a minor casualty.
-Victor, the town simpleton, the genial, harmless Victor, was knocked
-down by a passing automobile yesterday and became separated from his
-left ear in the ensuing confusion. Poor wretch! I saw him this morning
-hobbling down the street with a cane, his head swathed in bandages, but
-the same old cheerful smile on his half-wit face, as he cocked one eye
-warily on the look-out for approaching autos. Meanwhile a heated
-controversy is being waged between the medical officers of Abainville as
-to whether or not that ear might after all have been saved.
-
-
-Saint Malo, Brittany, September 23.
-
-Today I took tea with a Baroness, not only I, but about eighty odd
-members of the A. E. F. here _en permission_ like myself. Our hostess
-was an American lady, the widow of a French Baron; the tea a weekly
-party held at her Château out in the country, to which all boys on leave
-in this Brittany area are invited.
-
-We took the funny little narrow-gauge train from Saint Malo, a “mixed”
-train and so crowded by the tea party that the boys must ride in the
-baggage car and on the flat freight cars, and started our journey out to
-Châteauneuf. The feature of the train trip was the blackberries. Here in
-Brittany these grow all along the roadsides, the bushes topping the
-narrow earth-covered walls like dykes that serve for fences. Strangely
-enough in this land of thrift, the blackberries go untouched, untasted.
-A Frenchman who lectured to us last spring declared that as a child he
-was warned not to eat them: they would give him lice, he was told. This,
-he explained, was the method which French parents took to dissuade their
-children from eating berries which, growing along the roadsides, would
-be full of dust—a quaint scruple to find among people ordinarily so
-superior to sanitary considerations! But the Americans had no such
-superstitions; at every cross-roads stop we made, the boys swarmed off
-the cars and fell upon the wayside bushes. I tasted some that one of the
-boys brought back for me. Compared to our blackberries at home they were
-flat and flavorless, but anyway they were fruit and they were free and
-that was all the A. E. F. demanded.
-
-Arrived at Châteauneuf, we must first file through the reception room
-where each and all of us shook hands with the Baroness, a gracious,
-stately old lady dressed in black, and then out upon the lawn beyond the
-long ivy-covered, many-gabled house, to sit upon the grass and drink our
-tea. But tea was a misnomer unless it might have been the sort which the
-English call “high tea,” it was a supper; salad, sandwiches, buttermilk
-and fruit punch served on real china plates and in dainty goblets. Many
-a covetous eye I saw fixed on the silver forks with the coronets
-engraved on them, while the whispered word “souvenir” caught my ear, but
-to the boys’ credit I am glad to say that, as far as I know, they one
-and all resisted this temptation.
-
-After supper the boys sang and then we were invited to go through the
-house and wander about the grounds and garden. Coming back to the house
-after having made the rounds, the boy who was with me suddenly stopped
-stock-still.
-
-“Well I’ll be darned!”
-
-Before us wound a tiny stream and perched on its bank an old, old
-peasant woman was busy scrubbing what was evidently the Château wash.
-The boy turned and looked at me despairingly, “And for all that’s such a
-fine house,” he groaned, “I suppose there ain’t so much as a speck of
-plumbing in the whole blamed building!”
-
-On the lawn we found games were in progress. All the youngsters from the
-neighborhood had assembled to watch the Americans at the tea party. At
-first they had hung shyly on the outskirts, but now a lad from the air
-service had started them to romping. Taking hold of hands a long line of
-these little gamin would pursue a soldier victim, encircle him, bring
-him to earth, then pile on him, holding him a helpless prisoner until he
-bought his liberty with a ransom of cigarettes, gum or coppers. It was a
-wonderful game for the children but I could not help but watch with
-apprehension, every time there was a pig-pile, to see where all those
-wooden shoes would land.
-
-Coming home, we walked to the little fishing village next door and took
-the train there. As this visit to the village is also a weekly affair,
-all the inhabitants were on their door-steps to greet us, the women with
-their red cheeks, dressed invariably in black dresses and little stiffly
-starched net caps. We went into the church with its array of votive
-offerings in the shape of tiny models of fishing boats and then, on our
-way to the station, stopped to view, over the hedge, the picture-book
-garden of one old fisherman in which the trees and shrubs were all
-clipped and trained into the quaintest shapes—peacocks and animals and
-little ships. As the crowd moved on I lingered. An old man leaning on a
-cane, who had been watching from the roadside, stepped forward and spoke
-to me. He was the owner of the garden. He wanted to express to me his
-gratitude to America, America who had saved France! “_Ah! Vive
-l’Amérique!_” The old fellow’s tribute, unsolicited and unpremeditated
-evidently, touched me deeply.
-
-
-Abainville, October 4.
-
-While I was away it seems several things occurred. For one, we lost
-Nanny. Whether some enterprising mess sergeant thought the day’s menu
-would be improved by the addition of kid pie, whether some French family
-lured her away to be interned in their back yard, or whether, as one
-might more darkly suspect, the Adjutant had something to do with the
-matter; nobody knows. The bare fact confronts us: Nanny has disappeared.
-
-We have also lost one of our most picturesque customers. This was a
-handsome young Greek with a beautiful curled mustache, named Niccolo. He
-used to hold up the chocolate line, while, his eyes fairly shooting
-fire, he rolled up his sleeves and showed me the scars of the bayonet
-wounds which he received fighting the Turks. “The German, he just the
-same the Turk! I tella the Captain he letta me go front, killa ten,
-twenty, hundred Germans!” Why such a bloodthirsty soul as his should be
-cribbed, cabined and confined in an engineer regiment, he never
-explained. Just before I went away on leave a detail of prisoners from
-the guard-house arrived at the hut one morning to scrub the floor. To my
-regret I noticed Noccolo was among them. Niccolo, however, did not seem
-to mind, he was quite happily occupied with telling the others how the
-work should be done.
-
-“That feller’s nuts,” complained a fellow-prisoner to me, “he spends all
-his time when he’s in the brig, tryin’ to read the Bible to us.”
-
-While I was away they sent him to the Gondrecourt hospital on suspicion
-of insanity. The other night he escaped and made his way back to
-Abainville clad in his hospital pajamas, only to be caught and taken
-back again. Poor Niccolo with his beautiful mustache and his fiery
-spirit! I am sorry he never had the chance to get those Germans.
-
-Worst of all, the Y. is in disgrace with the officers. It came about
-through the matter of seats at the movies. The officers wanted to come
-to the shows and they also wanted seats reserved for them; naturally
-they wanted the best seats. Now this is always a vexed and delicate
-problem in a hut, for if the officers ask for reserved seats one can’t
-very well refuse them, and yet to grant them is to raise resentment
-among the men. When I left the matter was hanging at loose ends. Shortly
-afterwards our Secretary, who is more distinguished for sentimentality
-than tact, had an inspiration; he would put it up to the men.
-Undoubtedly when the case was laid before them, their nobler natures
-would be touched and they would discern that it was their patriotic duty
-to voluntarily relinquish the best seats in the house to their military
-superiors. So one night just as the show was due to start the Secretary
-walked out onto the stage and made his little speech, ending with the
-appeal:
-
-“And now boys, where shall we put the officers?”
-
-A perfect roar answered him. “Put ’em on the roof! Put ’em on the roof!”
-
-It was frightfully embarrassing. The officers were furious. They
-withdrew and called a mass-meeting to consider the matter. What the
-exact statute that covered the case was I don’t know. I suppose the
-crime was one of a sort of military _lèse Majesté_. Anyway the Secretary
-had indisputably laid himself liable to a court-martial. In the end,
-however, the officers decided that as long as the case was one of
-stupidity rather than malice, they would let the Secretary go with a
-warning.
-
-And now they have stationed spotters among us! The hut, it seems, has
-proved to possess an all too potent charm for boys who should by rights
-be engaged at “pick and shovel” and other uninviting but necessary
-occupations. In view of this the authorities have taken drastic action;
-passes must now be issued to the boys to allow them to enter the hut
-during work hours, and alas for the unhappy lad who ventures in without
-a permit, the lynx-like eye of the amateur detective detail is sure to
-light upon him!
-
-
-Abainville, October 11.
-
-Nanny has returned! She was found tethered in a back-yard in a nearby
-village. Since the French household which claimed her as their lawful
-property refused to relinquish her peacefully, she was taken by storm.
-There was a scrimmage, the neighbors rallied to their friends’
-assistance. But the two lads who had been the discoverers managed to
-break away bearing the struggling Nanny with them and, followed by the
-whole village shouting “Stop thief!” gained their truck and rolled
-triumphantly away. No longer, however, does Nanny wander at large,
-innocently trimming the villagers’ cabbage rows, or slipping slyly into
-the Adjutant’s office to sample his latest orders. Nanny is under guard.
-The engineers are taking no chances.
-
-Yesterday we acquired a kitten,—a wild-eyed yellow scrap brought in last
-night by a lad as an offering. The boys immediately christened her “The
-O. D. Cat.” Every time I give her a caress some one of the boys leaning
-over the counter is sure to remark: “Gee, wish I was a cat!”
-
-“But what shall I feed her?” I questioned, thinking of the difficulty of
-fresh milk.
-
-“Corn willy and cognac! What else would you give an O. D. cat?” they
-chorused.
-
-“And where shall she spend the night?”
-
-“I’ll keep her for you ma’am,” volunteered a brawny Texan. “She’ll sleep
-right in the bunk longside o’ me.”
-
-This morning the canteen was full of tales of the night. “Yes sir! he
-tied her up to a post with a rope as big around as your arm! An’ the
-pore cat nearly hanged herself. She hollered all night long!”
-
-This the Texan emphatically denied; he had a tale all of his own to tell
-however.
-
-“There was a mouse last night in the barracks. It was the littlest mouse
-you ever seen, but it chased that cat all around them barracks. Yes
-ma’am, it sure did run that cat ragged!”
-
-“Did you give her any breakfast?” I asked, disdaining any comment on his
-story.
-
-“Sure ma’am! I gave her a saucerful of cognac.”
-
-“You never did!”
-
-“Yes, an’ it did that cat good, it did. Soon’s she’d lapped up that
-saucer; ‘Bring on your mouse!’ she says.” He shook his head
-reflectively. “My, but that cat sure was feelin’ its strength this
-mornin’!”
-
-“Waste cognac on a cat! That’s a likely story for that guy to be
-telling!” was the single comment of the bystanders.
-
-Right here I wish to record a formal apology to the Secretary at X who
-sold me the six-franc eggs a month ago. Today I was talking to the Top
-Sergeant whom I encountered on my way home and who carried my basket for
-me. From something he let fall I now more than suspect it was he who
-accounted for that twenty-fourth egg!
-
-
-Abainville, October 16.
-
-His real name, of course, is Horace but since Madame refers to him as
-’Oreece, as ’Oreece he must go,—’Oreece is our new detail. He is
-cautious, conscientious and slow. If ’Oreece ever showed signs of having
-spunk enough to do something that was really bad, I would feel that
-there was hope for him. Madame, who adores the Infant, is very cold to
-’Oreece. The other day she requested him to save her all the cigar stubs
-he found while sweeping. She wanted them for an old derelict of a
-Frenchman who is a sort of scavenger around camp. Poor old papa could
-smoke the butts nicely in his pipe she declared. But ’Oreece was so
-disobliging as to turn his nose up at their proposal. Anyway ’Oreece
-cuts the bread for the jam-sandwiches very, very nicely.
-
-Three nights ago we had an air-raid alarm. The evening’s programme was
-over but the hut was still full of boys. Suddenly without any warning,
-all the lights went out. We looked out the door, the camp was in total
-darkness. In the machine-gun pit nearby we could hear quick excited
-orders interspersed with curses,—the gunners were getting ready to stand
-off the aeroplanes. The boys left the hut. We waited for a while and
-then, getting tired of the dark, went home. The planes didn’t show up; I
-went to bed feeling that it had been a case of Hamlet without Hamlet.
-
-Last night we were in the middle of a movie show when a shattering
-explosion sounded outside. Back in the kitchen where I was serving hot
-chocolate to the Tea Room line, everyone started and stared. Was it a
-raid? Surely that was a bomb! There was another explosion. Then the
-lights went out. So it was the real thing! I seized the Cash-box and
-stood pat. Another crash; instantly outside there was a stampede. In the
-dark it was impossible to see just what was happening, but from the
-sounds it appeared that about seven hundred pairs of hob-nailed shoes
-were doing double-quick time out the doors. In less time than one could
-believe the auditorium was empty. I heard Madame’s voice behind me in
-staccato exclamations. Somebody scratched a match and lit a candle, a
-little group of boys were still standing at the window waiting for their
-chocolate, their faces looked a bit white I thought. Then the Infant put
-his head out the kitchen door:
-
-“Why, the lights in camp are all on!” he exclaimed.
-
-A boy came up to the window. “They’re practising at the school,” he told
-us. “I heard the other day that they were going to pull some stunts in
-the trenches tonight.”
-
-“So that was it!”
-
-The lights flashed on.
-
-“But why did they go out?” I asked confused. Nobody could explain it.
-
-At that moment ’Oreece drifted into the kitchen, he wore a very pale and
-apologetic grin.
-
-“’Oreece!” I gasped, “Did you—”
-
-“I turned the lights off,” he admitted. “I knew where the switch was. I
-thought it was a raid.”
-
-I glared disgusted: “And a nice night’s work you’ve done!”
-
-My friend the Texan strolled up to the deserted counter.
-
-“I met ’em all coming down the road,” he remarked. “Gee, but it was like
-the retreat of a whole division!”
-
-Today the boys have been asking to tease me: “Where were _you_ in the
-Great Air-Raid?”
-
-“I? Oh, I was under the kitchen-table,” I reply.
-
-
-Abainville, October 23.
-
-The Chief has just brought me great news. I am to have a hut all of my
-own. I am to be head cook, bottle-washer, and grand high secretary all
-in one. And I am to go out into the wilds of France and start a new hut
-alone.
-
-It seems there is an ordnance depot at a village called Mauvages about
-six miles north of here. The camp itself is small, some two hundred men,
-but the town has a large billeting capacity and additional bodies of
-troops will be stationed there from time to time. The C. O. of the
-Ammunition Reclamation Camp,—that is its official title,—has requested
-that a hut be established there. With the personnel in its present state
-no man secretary, says the Chief, can be spared, but if I care to
-undertake the job on my own I am welcome to it. And if after two months
-or so of solitary confinement “out in the sticks,” as the boys say, I
-get to hankering too badly for the flesh-pots of civilization, why they
-will arrange to have me relieved. Need I say that I snapped up the offer
-on the spot? I had asked to be transferred from Abainville some while
-ago, as the conditions here have been none too congenial, but to have a
-hut all of my own is beyond any luck that I had dared dream.
-
-I would like to sling my old kit bag over my shoulder, tuck a chocolate
-container under one arm and a case of cigarettes under the other, and
-catch the first truck that passes bound northward for Mauvages. But it
-seems they won’t let me go until a New Lady comes here to take my place.
-They have telegraphed to the office at Nancy. If the New Lady doesn’t
-come quick, I have a good mind to go A. W. O. L. and start my canteen
-willy-nilly.
-
-Meanwhile I am planning plans. Because of the grey chill days of winter
-I am going to paint my hut inside the brightest sunshiny yellow I can
-find, hang it with orange curtains, and then in honor of the ordnance,
-christen it the Pumpkin Shell!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI: MAUVAGES—THE ORDNANCE
-
-
-Abainville, October 26.
-
-I have been to Mauvages; a reconnoitering expedition. As regards the
-town the most striking feature about it is the Egyptian Fountain. A
-somewhat startling structure to come upon in a little French mudpie
-village, it stands in the centre of the town and consists of the façade
-of a temple in front of which towers an ancient God of the Nile—or so I
-take him—in dull green bronze, pouring from pitchers held in either hand
-clear streams of water into a broad semi-circular basin. Behind the
-columns is another pool, this one for the village washerwomen: a
-cleverly conceived arrangement, for every passing stranger must stop to
-stare at the fountain and this in turn affords the washerwomen the
-opportunity to stare at him.
-
-Around two sides of the town curves the canal along whose placid surface
-the slow barges occasionally pass. They tell me that some very beautiful
-women go by on these canal boats, but I suspect that the reason that
-they seem so beautiful is just that they do go by—the lure of the
-unobtainable. At the south end of the town the canal disappears into a
-hill-side, four miles to the southwest it appears again; a rather
-remarkable, and in view of the fact that in the most piping times of
-peace the traffic on the canal never exceeded four barges each way a
-day, inexplicably extravagant feat of engineering. Every now and then a
-little crowd of ordnance boys will take a notion to walk through the
-tunnel which has a path cut at one side, an excursion which must be
-unspeakably dreary as the whole length is quite unlighted and the air
-damp and close beyond anything. More than once on these excursions a boy
-has fallen into the canal and had to be fished out again.
-
-My hut-to-be is on the further edge of town in the centre of a beautiful
-open green field like a lawn. Just behind it is a large ruined stone
-house which the boys use as a background against which to take pictures
-“at the front” and on one side is a lovely tall wayside cross and a tiny
-chapel, the smallest I have ever seen, almost hidden in a little grove
-of bushes. The hut is a French recreation barracks; long, low, covered
-with black tar paper, the windows filled with grimy cloth, it is
-comprised of four walls, a roof, a tiny stage and a mud floor,—a good
-mud floor, the best mud floor, I am assured, in this part of France.
-
-As for my billet, I am to lodge, it seems, with Monsieur le Curé. He was
-out when I called but the Major du Cantonment and Madame the Caretaker
-settled things between them. What Monsieur le Curé will say when he come
-home and discovers that _une demoiselle Américaine_ is to live _chez
-lui_, I don’t know, but as Monsieur le Major himself suggested it, it
-must be in accordance with the clerical proprieties.
-
-The Curé’s mansion is a rather stately, gloomy square house set back
-from the street with a rose-garden edging the path in front. My room has
-a Juliet balcony with a view of the Egyptian Fountain, the ancient
-church and a scrap of rolling hills beyond. Breakfasts I have arranged
-to take with Madame the Caretaker who lives several doors down the
-street, dinners and suppers I am to eat by courtesy of the C. O. at the
-camp.
-
-When I returned tonight I told my landlady of my plans. Her eyes fairly
-danced with mischievous glee.
-
-“Oh la la! You and the Curé!” she cried. “_Le diable avec le bon Dieu!_
-It will be necessary for you to become a good Catholic, say your
-prayers, and go to mass every morning. Who knows? Perhaps you may end by
-becoming a _religieuse_.”
-
-
-Mauvages, November 2.
-
-We are building. This proves to be a painful process, consisting largely
-of discovering what you can’t have and what you will have to do without.
-For instance, it appears that there is not enough lumber to be had in
-France to furnish me a complete floor, and I had set my heart on having
-a nice, whole, _sweepable_ floor! French barracks, one should note in
-passing, are constructed of sections; the upper part of the walls
-containing the window sections being vertical, the lower sloping outward
-at an angle of about thirty-five degrees. By a process of begging,
-borrowing and salvaging—nobody says _steal_ any more these days,—I have
-visions of getting the floor in the centre all filled in, but for the
-edges, under the sloping sides, I am afraid there is no hope. But I’m
-not going to mind, I tell the boys; I shall start a series of war
-gardens in the little mud-plots, cabbages in number one, brussels
-sprouts in number two, and violets just for my own satisfaction in
-three. And the boys can take turns hoeing them.
-
-For the rest, we have cut a door in the side for general entrance, the
-original one being reserved for cooks, colonels and K. P.s, and across
-the front end opposite the stage we have constructed our store-room,
-kitchen and canteen. A lattice is all that separates the kitchen from
-the counter; this is so, in order to facilitate social intercourse
-between the cook and the customers, and also to enable the secretary, no
-matter if she is engaged in stirring the chocolate or washing the
-dishes, to keep a weather eye on what is going on outside. But the
-triumph of my hut-plan is the window-seat. Half-way down the hut we have
-a stove, a stove which looks as big as an engine-boiler, a stove which
-makes the eyes of all beholders fairly pop with admiration. “That’s a
-real stove,” say the boys. “That ain’t no frog stove I’ll tell the
-world!” And back of the stove we have a seat three sections long against
-the wall. Wonderful to say that seat is comfortable and what’s more it
-has sofa-cushions. “What are those pillers for?” demanded one boy
-suspiciously. “Are they for the officers to sit on?”
-
-“D’you know what this is?” asked a boy today as he luxuriously stretched
-his length on the window-seat. “This is the Lounge Lizard’s Roost.” So
-the Lounge Lizard’s Roost it is.
-
-The yellow curtains are already up in place. They give a rather stunning
-effect against the black tar paper when the æroplane camouflage curtains
-are let down. In each space between the windows we have tacked one of
-that gorgeous series of French railway posters, so my hut is brave with
-color, tawny orange, sharp blues, and shadowy purples.
-
-Meanwhile the whole French populace has called, singly or in crowds, in
-order to see just what is going on. As for the children, I am sure they
-must have declared a school holiday in honor of us. The whole concern is
-evidently a bit puzzling to the French mind; but they have solved the
-riddle by terming the hut a “_coopératif_,” and so I let it rest.
-
-But you will be wondering how _le diable_ is contriving to live with _le
-bon Dieu_.
-
-Monsieur le Curé is quite old. There is something stern and something
-tragic in his face, with all his urbane graciousness. He is a refugee
-from the devastated area and like myself a lodger in the house, whose
-owners have fled this zone of armies. Monsieur le Curé was a captive for
-six months with the Germans and the desolate confinement wrought a
-little on his mind; “At times he is absent,” says Madame the Caretaker.
-This morning I stopped and chatted with him at his door downstairs, he
-called me in to show me “a souvenir of his captivity,” a little
-dirty-white tin basin out of which as prisoner he ate. “I learned to
-smoke then,” he told me. “There was nothing to do the whole day long but
-sit and smoke and wait for the clock to strike.” Tonight I am going to
-take him a little gift of American tobacco.
-
-I am planning a house-warming with which to formally open the hut.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 6.
-
-We didn’t have that house-warming. Even as we were finishing the hut all
-hands came down with the flu. Curiously enough it hit the camp all in a
-heap after dinner. Thirty per cent of the boys, the two officers, the
-building detail and myself were all laid low between one and six
-o’clock. Fortunately it was the lightest sort of an epidemic, a mere
-_soupçon_ as it were, in every case. I merely retired to my bed for a
-day and a half and refused to eat. On the third day, which was
-yesterday, I crawled back to the canteen. It was a case of pipe all
-hands on deck and stand to the counter. Two companies of engineers had
-arrived in the night. They were back from an advanced station just
-behind the lines and they were starved for chocolate and cigarettes. Two
-months ago they left Abainville, green troops, just over, now they are
-seasoned veterans, in proof of which they carry souvenirs salvaged from
-German dugouts. I heard all about these souvenirs, as I was taking
-breakfast, from the lips of an excited Neighbor Woman. From the list of
-unwarlike trophies which she rattled off I gleaned umbrellas and a
-wall-clock; but the best was reserved for me when I reached the canteen.
-One of the boys had met one of these same engineers toiling up the hill
-from the railroad with a large upholstered armchair on his back.
-
-“You can’t imagine,” he complacently replied to his gaping questioners,
-“how nice it is, at the end of a hard day’s work, to be able to sit down
-and smoke one’s pipe in real comfort.”
-
-Up and down the street are heaps of pale-green cabbages. The field
-kitchens by the fountain are busy cooking them. The town is fairly
-steeped in the odor of boiling cabbages. These are the famous German
-cabbages captured in the Saint Mihiel drive, and for the past two
-months, the engineers, they tell me, have had them boiled for dinner,
-for supper and for breakfast, until it seems that they hate the Germans
-for those cabbages as much as they hate them for the rape of Belgium and
-the sinking of the Lusitania.
-
-At the corner by the fountain this noon a lady stopped to speak to me.
-She was tall and white-haired and bore herself with gracious dignity.
-She had heard, she told me, that these men had just returned from
-Hattonchatel. She was very anxious to learn something of the fate of a
-nearby town, Haumont by the lakes, where her aged sister had lived.
-Since the German invasion four years ago she had heard absolutely no
-word of her. Was the town in such a state that it was possible her
-sister might still be there, or had the inhabitants been herded off to
-Germany? I questioned several boys, finally I found a lad who spoke
-French. Yes he knew the town to which she referred. He had often
-observed it from the height of a nearby hill,—it had been daily under
-shell-fire. Very sadly, but with her gracious sweetness undisturbed, the
-lady turned away.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 9.
-
-Life is just one breathless bustle now-a-days. Hardly had we got our
-minds adjusted to the engineers when a whole battalion of
-machine-gunners marched into town. From the moment they arrived it has
-been one interminable line from morning until night, demanding the Three
-C.s,—chocolate, cookies, and cigarettes. Luckily my closet was well
-stocked and so has stood the strain.
-
-And speaking of closets, I have acquired a skeleton in mine. It came
-about through a sick soldier, an accommodating captain and an egg-nogg.
-The sick boy I discovered in Madame the Caretaker’s stable while
-breakfasting this morning. He was very miserable, Madame told me, and
-had been quite unable to eat a thing for days. I stopped in at the
-stable and verified her words. The boy looked wretched.
-
-“Come to the canteen at ten o’clock and I’ll have something for you to
-eat,” I told him. Then I begged a cup of fresh milk from Madame.
-
-The Captain I discovered in front of my canteen counter, and knowing him
-to be a southerner and a gentleman, I summoned my courage and whispered
-a petition for a few drops of something, from the flask he carried in
-his pocket, to put in the egg-nogg for the sick boy. The Captain, who
-was corpulent and dignified, in some embarrassment replied that he was
-unfortunately without anything at present, but that the lack would be
-immediately supplied. He disappeared, returning to produce before my
-startled eyes, from beneath his coat, a life-sized bottle labeled
-cognac. Then he invited himself into the kitchen to help make the
-egg-nogg. He proved expert. I quaked fearing the customers would sniff
-the cognac through the lattice-work. The sick boy came, turned out to be
-one of the Captain’s own men. The Captain cocked an unsympathetic eye.
-
-“What’s the matter with you, Smith?” he questioned, “been drunk again?”
-
-“Captain,” I scolded horrified, “I won’t have any rough talk like that
-in my kitchen!”
-
-Smith indignantly denied the charge. He drank his egg-nogg and left
-looking three shades happier.
-
-“Captain,” said I, “did you ever make an egg-nogg for one of your men
-before?”
-
-“Never,” replied the Captain with decision. He drained his own bowl and
-took his departure. “I will leave the bottle behind,” he told me.
-
-“But I don’t want it!”
-
-“You might need it again,” he declared. And nothing could induce him to
-change his mind.
-
-That bottle weighs on my conscience like a crime. I have hidden the
-guilty thing in a corner of the store-room shelf behind some perfectly
-innocent-looking bundles of stationery and a pile of safety razor
-blades. But out of sight it continues to haunt my mind. I feel as if I
-were giving sanctuary to the devil. And, worst of all, I have a vision
-of coming into the hut some day to find that the bottle has been
-discovered and the whole Y. M. C. A. is on a jag.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 11.
-
-It isn’t true. It isn’t real. It can’t be that the war is really ended.
-
-This morning I awoke to the sound of the most tremendous barrage I have
-ever heard. At this distance however it was almost more like a sensation
-than a sound, a sort of incessant thrilling, throbbing vibration.
-
-The question was on everybody’s lips: “Do you suppose they really _will_
-sign the armistice?” “It don’t sound much like peace this morning!”
-would come the dubious reply. We have heard rumours just since
-yesterday, but in rumours we have so long ceased to put any faith! As
-the morning wore on our skepticism grew. The almost unbroken
-reverberation frayed the nerves. As eleven o’clock drew near the tension
-became torture. Would the guns cease? Could they? It seemed as if they
-must go on forever. The clock in the old grey church tower began to
-strike the hour. I flung open the kitchen door. We all stood breathless,
-frozen, listening. Ding-dong, ding-dong; through the notes of the bell
-we could still hear the throbbing of the great guns. Eleven times the
-slow bell chimed, there was a heavy boom, one more, and then absolute
-silence. We stared at each other blankly incredulous. “They’ve signed,”
-said a boy.
-
-I walked down the little lane that leads to the ammunition dump and
-picked a bunch of orange-scarlet berries. I wanted to be alone, to
-listen. It was a day all pearl and lavender, a violet mist hung over the
-brown hill-sides. No one passed on the road, there was not a sound of
-any sort that reached me, the world seemed to be asleep. The stillness
-was terrifying. I waited, tense, not able to believe, expecting every
-moment to have the silence broken by the resumption of the cannonade.
-Then as the minutes passed and still my strained ears could not catch so
-much as a whisper, I turned back and entered the little roadside Chapel
-in the Bush. There in its dim blue and silver solitude I knelt down
-before the little statue of Jeanne d’Arc and prayed.
-
-At noon someone started the old church bell to ringing, it jangled
-frantically for hours.
-
-I think we are all a little dazed. I for one have a curious feeling as
-if I had come up suddenly against a blank wall.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 12.
-
-Last night we celebrated. The whole ordnance camp got out and set off
-flares and signal rockets from the dump, while two of the boys put over
-a barrage with the machine-gun on the hill. And there was much
-champagne. This morning the street is hung with flags,—I never knew
-before how thrilling the tricolor could be until I saw it like this,
-against the stone-grey of the old houses.
-
-A company of French cavalry is just passing through town. They are very
-beautiful to look at, with their bright blue uniforms, their bright bay
-horses, and the long slim lances which they carry in one hand, each with
-a tiny pennant at the end. As each one comes into view down the street I
-think; “Thank God, for one more Frenchman left alive.”
-
-The boys have already begun to argue about the date on which they will
-reach home. But though the fighting may be over, there are long months
-still ahead of us here I am sure. And now with the strain and the
-excitement gone, France is bound to look greyer and muddier and more
-whats-the-use to the boys than ever before. May Heaven help us all!
-
-
-Mauvages, November 17.
-
-I want to make you acquainted with Bill and Nick, my two invaluable
-assistants. Bill is my official detail formally assigned. Nick is a
-volunteer, his services a free-will offering proferred at such times as
-he is not required in his regular capacity as guardian of the
-bath-house.
-
-Bill is a lame tame giant six feet two and up. He slipped a cog in his
-knee one time while shuffling shells last summer and never got quite
-straightened out again. Bill is my salvation. He redeems what would
-otherwise be a desperate situation. For Bill has a Business Brain. If it
-weren’t for that, I believe I should be driven to the mad-house trying
-to balance the francs and centimes at the end of each week. Besides
-having a head for figures, Bill is an all round handy man with a turn
-for inventions. When I come back to the hut after a morning expedition
-to Gondrecourt in quest of suppplies, I may or I may not find last
-night’s dishes washed but I am pretty sure to find some wonderful new
-contrivance added to my hut equipment. Bill has made me a stove-pipe out
-of a German powder can. Bill has installed an automatic closing
-attachment for the main door, which consists of a rope, a pulley, a
-stove grate and an excruciating squeak; the chief advantage of this
-invention being the squeak which always betrays the sneak who tries to
-escape undetected in the middle of a prayer. Sometimes I think it hurts
-Bill’s pride to have to take orders from a lady, especially one with
-such an unmathematical brain as I. Occasionally he lapses into a
-you’re-only-a-little-girl-after-all sort of attitude and then I have to
-put on all my dignity and read the riot act to him. But when I hand in
-my weekly cash sheets at Headquarters and the cashier there tells me
-that my accounts are the best in the whole area, why Bill could have the
-whole hut and everything in it.
-
-As for Nick, if Bill is right hand man, why Nick makes a quite
-indispensable left, and this in spite of the fact that the poor fellow
-is almost blind. He got a crack in the back of his head from the corner
-of a case of “75s,” while unloading ammunition some two months ago,
-which affected the optic nerve. And though the doctor promises a partial
-restoration of his sight, at present he must grope about in dark glasses
-and semi-darkness. Nick has a history. An orphan, educated for the
-priesthood, he ran away at the age of sixteen and started on the career
-of a cowboy. After having broken every bone in his body in the course of
-his broncho-busting he rose to the heights of his profession and joined
-Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Here he met his wife, a lasso and pistol
-expert. While riding an “outlaw” in Madison Square Garden, he was thrown
-and had one of his legs badly smashed, which forced him to retire from
-public life. After this he spent a couple of years as a bar-tender in
-New York. In his spare moments, aided by his ecclesiastical Latin, he
-learned practical chemistry from an old German druggist who kept shop
-next door. Now in his civilian capacity Nick is consulting chemist for a
-Brooklyn laundry concern, while his wife conducts successfully a French
-millinery store in Flatbush. So much for romance!
-
-Nick is, I am quite sure, the politest Irishman in France. Moreover he
-is the darling of the feminine portion of the town. Partly by reason of
-his blindness, which appeals to the quick sympathies of the Frenchwomen,
-and partly because of his unvarying courtesy, his kindliness and his
-quaint humour, he is the most sought-after man in Mauvages. He knows, I
-should judge, some six words of French, but with these he manages to
-“get by.” And he is forever being invited out to supper.
-
-Every morning between sweeping up and washing the dishes and waiting on
-the counter we hold a coffee party in the kitchen; Bill and Nick and
-myself and whoever else happens to be around. The party consists of
-coffee with plenty of sugar and canned milk,—always a treat in the army
-as in the messes you must drink it plain;—and K. P. cookies. Now K. P.
-cookies, you must understand, are cookies from the end of the package
-that the mouse didn’t eat. As there is considerable activity on the part
-of the mice these days there are any number of K. P. cookies. And yet I
-have done my best. Pricked on by conscience I said to Nick day before
-yesterday, “Nick do you suppose you could get me a trap?”
-
-“Certainly Ma’am, I’ll buy one at the store.”
-
-“But wait a minute, do you know the word for mouse-trap?”
-
-“Don’t worry. That’s not in the least necessary.” And he set out for the
-_General Store Articles Militaire_ down the street.
-
-But for once his sign language failed him. He was offered everything in
-the store from a screw-driver to an egg-beater and only achieved the
-trap finally by stumbling over one on the floor. It was a French trap to
-be baited with flour and sewed up with thread; I looked at it
-skeptically, but the next morning we had caught a mouse. However today
-it was K. P. cookies as usual.
-
-“Bill,” I said, “you’ll have to borrow Iodine.” Iodine is the Medical
-Sergeant’s cat.
-
-“Aw shucks,” says Bill, “Iodine is a frog cat. She wouldn’t look at a
-mouse unless you served it to her on a platter dressed with garlic.”
-
-Bill says no home is complete without a dog. I quite agree with him.
-Only, I say, we must catch him young so we can bring him up in the way
-he should go. These French dogs for the most part seem to have neither
-manners nor morals. So Bill is keeping an eye out for a likely puppy.
-
-“But,” he said, “when we close up here, the only way we’ll be able to
-settle it between us will be to make him into sausages.”
-
-If we ever do get a dog I think I shall call him “Tin Hat” just because
-every other dog in the A. E. F. is named “Cognac.”
-
-
-Mauvages, November 20.
-
-Our relations to the French populace are enough to try a diplomat.
-Hardly a day passes in the hut but what some delicate social or ethical
-problem arises.
-
-First, there is Louis, a most disreputable old scamp if there ever was
-one. He keeps the café across the street and so is my deadly rival. The
-other day the old rascal appeared at my counter grinning from ear to
-ear, and demanded “_bonbons pour le rheum_,” producing, in witness of
-his urgent need, a feeble and patently artificial cough. When I answered
-that unfortunately we had none, he instantly substituted chocolate in
-his request. Unable to resist the rapscallion’s grin I gave him a
-handful, whereat in beaming gratitude he immediately invited me over to
-the café to have a glass of wine at his expense. And when I hastily
-informed him that I didn’t care for wine he genially amended the
-invitation so that it stood, “glass of beer.” And now I am told by the
-boys that he has announced that I, forsooth, am his “fiancée!”
-
-But chiefly there is Rebecca. We call her Rebecca because when Bill goes
-to the well to get a pail of water he usually happens to meet her there.
-Rebecca is thin and dark and lively. Her English vocabulary includes
-such phrases as “beeg steef” and “Mek eet snappee!” She is, as the boys
-put it, “full of pep.” Rebecca has a little black and villainous-looking
-husband who occasionally appears in town from the trenches, but for the
-most part she is free to follow where her fancy leads. If it should ever
-lead her to confession I am afraid she would make the old Curé’s
-eyebrows curl.
-
-Bill’s acquaintance with Rebecca is entirely on business lines he wants
-me to understand. She does his laundry for him. “It’s all very well,” I
-say, “to take her your washing, but why must you take her chocolates?”
-He knows I disapprove. When he lingers too long on the water detail I
-eye him severely on his return.
-
-“Bill, have you been hobnobbing with Rebecca?”
-
-Bill grins admission.
-
-Rebecca lives in a white little one story door-and-window house just
-around the corner on the Rue d’Eglise which I must pass going to my
-canteen. And Rebecca keeps tab on the precise hour and minute at which I
-return to my billet under Bill’s escort every night. Going home one
-stormy night I took Bill’s arm. The next day Bill informed me that
-Rebecca had advised him that such conduct, according to French notions,
-was not quite _comme il faut_.
-
-Bill, I find, is able to make an astonishing amount of conversation with
-his “nigger French” that takes absolutely no account of moods, tenses,
-conjugations, declinations or any of the other stuff in grammar books.
-And I am afraid he understands a great deal that it would be just as
-well he didn’t.
-
-“How did you learn it all?” I asked him.
-
-He looked at me side-wise. “Rebecca gave me lessons,” he answered
-grinning.
-
-Last night, as we passed Rebecca’s house, I noticed that her door was
-the least bit ajar.
-
-As Bill left me at my gate I admonished him; “Now don’t you stop to say
-good-night to Rebecca.”
-
-“Gosh, no!” said Bill, “if I did I’m afraid I might have to hurry or I’d
-be late for breakfast.”
-
-Whenever I meet Rebecca on the street she always bows to me most
-urbanely.
-
-Nor is Rebecca all my concern in relation to Big Bill. There is also the
-pretty girl who lives down the street who undoubtedly would not be
-averse to accompanying him to America. Bill stops at her house every
-night in order to get a quart of fresh milk for the C. O.’s breakfast. I
-bid him be wary of these Franco-American alliances, citing horrible
-examples I have known, such as the machine-gunner, for instance, who, in
-order to be in harmony with his future family-in-law, felt it incumbent
-on him to appear at his wedding wearing a pair of wooden shoes; and of
-the doughboy who married a widow with two children, and, since he knew
-no French and she no English, persuaded his company commander to detail
-an interpreter to live in the house with them for the first three days
-after their marriage.
-
-Not many days ago a girl came to my kitchen door in company with a
-soldier. She had a United States paymaster’s cheque which she wished to
-have cashed. Afterwards I questioned Bill. It seems a lieutenant had
-married and afterwards divorced her. She was still drawing his
-allotment. She looked so thoroughly the peasant, bare-headed, in a shawl
-and shoddy skirt, with nothing to particularly distinguish her pretty
-but inexpressive face, that I voiced my wonder to the boys.
-
-“Oh but you ought to see her when she gets dressed up!” they said.
-
-“Fine feathers don’t make fine birds,” I remind severely. “Bill, be
-warned!”
-
-“Yes, but there’s Gaby,” Bill suggests. “What about her?” Now Gaby is
-the little chauffeuse who has been driver for a French general three
-years and who turns up periodically in town. She is quaint as a wood-cut
-and solemn as an owl, with her shock of bobbed hair and her great
-staring child-like eyes. She sits at the mess table and never says a
-word but draws your glance irresistibly. Always she wears an odd little
-straight-cut dress hanging just below her knees and a _croix de guerre_
-pinned to her breast. Gaby killed a man with her car not long since and
-was held a prisoner at Ligny-en-Barrois for ten days in consequence.
-Gaby and one of the sergeants at the A. R. are undergoing all the woe
-and wonder of love’s young dream.
-
-“Oh well,” I say, “Gaby is different.”
-
-This afternoon Rebecca appeared at the canteen and asked for Bill. She
-was so elegantly attired that at first I didn’t know her. After a parley
-at the door, Bill, with an odd expression on his face, takes his
-second-best raincoat from the peg and hands it to her. I looked my
-inquiries. An old doughboy sweetheart of the lady’s, it appears, had
-returned on leave and they were going travelling together.
-
-“Going off on a honey-moon with another feller, in my raincoat! Gosh,
-it’s a cruel war!” grinned Bill.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 24.
-
-Now that the time is drawing on toward Christmas the boys,—bless
-them!—are all wanting to send some remembrance to mothers, sisters,
-wives and sweethearts at home. But what to send has been the desperate
-question. One sort of goods and one only is offered for such purposes by
-the French stores in this locality, a line of flimsy silk stuff,
-handkerchiefs, scarfs and little aprons, machine-embroidered with gay
-flowers and each bearing the legend “Souvenir de France.” They are
-fragile slazy things, absurdly high-priced, inappropriate and often
-hideous. But to the boys they are altogether beautiful. After many
-requests and inquiries I gave in. I went to Gondrecourt and purchased
-what I could find that was the least tawdry, the least exorbitant. I
-brought them to the canteen; they proved so popular that three days
-afterward I had to make another trip to town to buy some more. Now we
-carry a regular stock of fancy silk handkerchiefs and aprons in addition
-to the chewing tobacco and cigarettes. But here one is faced with a
-delicate problem. Each handkerchief is embroidered with some such
-specific legend as _To my Sweetheart_, _To My Dear Wife_, _To my Darling
-Daughter_,—I refused to consider the bit of lacy frippery marked _To my
-Dear Son!_—and this complicates matters immensely I find. Somehow we
-always manage to have a supply of Sweethearts on hand when a man is in
-quest of a Dear Wife and vice versa. In vain I artfully suggest that it
-would be a pretty compliment to call one’s wife “Dear Sweetheart,” to
-their minds there seems to be something essentially compromising in such
-a notion. Occasionally the reverse will work however, and a boy,
-grinning and abashed, will select a handkerchief marked “Dear Wife” to
-send to his sweetheart. Sometimes during these sales one’s faith in the
-single heartedness of Young America receives a shock, as when an
-innocent-looking lad will blandly select half a dozen “Dear Sweethearts”
-and put each in a separate envelope to send to a different girl!
-
-Speaking of souvenirs, there is a boy who acts as fireman on the dinky
-little engine that pulls the work-train on the narrow-gauge between
-Mauvages and Sauvoy. He belongs to a regiment of engineers who served
-with the British in Flanders for some eight months. While there he dug
-up enough dead Germans,—“You could always tell where they were buried
-because the grass grew so much greener there,” he explained,—and picked
-enough gold fillings out of their teeth, to make a whole match box full.
-He was going to take it home and have a dentist put the gold in his
-teeth “for a souvenir,” but unluckily in the spring drive he lost all
-his possessions and the match box with them. Now this, as Kipling would
-say, is a true story.
-
-
-Mauvages, November 30.
-
-Let me recount to you the gentle tale of the German prisoners and the
-Thanksgiving movies, an incident which I consider a sort of sermon in a
-nutshell and a Warning to the Nations.
-
-Unluckily there is in this division a secretary who is a sentimentalist.
-He has an idea that an important part of his object in France is “to
-enliven the long evenings of the French villagers,” and particularly
-does he consider it his Christian duty to do something to demonstrate
-how much we love the poor German prisoners, those gentlemen who wear the
-big P. G. for _Prisonnier de Guerre_ on their backs and “ought,” as the
-boys say, “to have an I in the middle.” There are several hundred of
-them in a camp at Gondrecourt and they are, it is said, just as well
-housed and fed as our boys, and not made to work nearly as hard.
-
-Now, as there was no other sort of entertainment available, I had set my
-heart on having movies in my hut on Thanksgiving. I had presented my
-request at the Headquarters office and understood the matter settled.
-But the Sentimental Secretary it seems had made up his mind that the
-poor dear German prisoners must have a treat and, other schemes falling
-through, he also put in a request for the movies. There was only one
-portable machine in working order. Through some misunderstanding or
-something in the office, the P. G.s got the movies. To enlarge upon my
-sentiments when the news was broken to me Thursday morning or to record
-the opinions expressed by the boys in regard to the matter, is not to
-the purpose of this tale.
-
-Failing our show, all that I could manage in the way of celebration was
-a little box of nuts and raisins tied up with a bit of red, white and
-blue ribbon for every man in camp. The mess sergeant, however, outdid
-himself. Our Thanksgiving dinner was nothing less than a feast. For days
-the A. R. jitney had been scouring the country for poultry. At last the
-sergeant had succeeded in getting enough for all. He did this by
-assembling specimens of the whole feathered tribe; turkey, duck, chicken
-and goose. And I had a slice of each. But for all that I didn’t enjoy
-that dinner worth six-pence. Those movies were on my mind. I tried to
-think of the touching gratitude of the German prisoners. Perhaps after
-all if one should pursue them with delicate attentions it might lead
-them to see the error of their ways. Perhaps giving them a movie show
-would inculcate, by example, a beautiful lesson of Christian charity and
-forgiveness. Who could tell what uplifting moral influence Charlie
-Chaplin or Mutt and Jeff might exert?
-
-Last night was our regular movie-night. In the midst of preparing for
-the show, Georges, the French operator, who was getting the machine
-ready, Georges the little dandy, always nonchalant and blasé, came
-charging back to the counter, his eyes as big as arc-lights. He thrust
-his hands, which were full of cartridges, beneath my nose, fairly
-dancing on tip-toe in his excitement. He had found them in the carbide;
-when the carbide had gotten hot, “_Poof!_” he dramatized the wrecking of
-the hut with explosive gestures. “_C’est les Boches!_ _Les cochons!_”
-Never again would he take his machine there, never, never!
-
-As the machine had been left at the German Prison Camp after the
-Thanksgiving show and then brought directly from there to Mauvages there
-seems little room for doubt that the prisoners had placed the shells
-there. Of course, if there were any poetic justice in things, the
-Sentimental Secretary himself would have been blown up by the Germans’
-cartridges, but unfortunately in real life things don’t happen that way.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 3.
-
-The French Army is in possession of Mauvages. A regiment of artillery
-moved in on us yesterday afternoon. There seemed a never-ending line of
-them as they crawled into town, the horses just barely able to drag the
-heavy pieces. There must have been a shocking shortage of fodder in the
-French Army; the poor beasts look wretched beyond words. The big guns
-are lined up all along the street. They look like great spotted lizards
-in their green and brown and yellow coats of camouflage. Each piece has
-a girl’s name carved on the muzzle. The one in front of my canteen is
-Marthe, further up the street stand Lucile and Marie. We watched them as
-they brought the guns into place, unhitched the teams and made their
-preparations to settle down and stay. Once settled, our perplexities
-began. Immediately they started to trickle into the canteen in search of
-cigarettes. To the first comers in a weak moment I slipped a few
-packages. That was enough. Thereafter it was just like flies to the
-molasses jar, and then of course I had to harden my heart and say no.
-But they wouldn’t take no for an answer. They begged, pleaded and
-cajoled. I posted a polite sign at the end of the counter explaining how
-the canteen supplies had been brought into France without payment of any
-duty, under the strict agreement with the French Government that they
-would be sold only to Americans. But they refused to read the sign. One
-handsome brigadier stopped me on the street in order to present his
-petition. And at the canteen a little poilu with a round cherubic face,
-after being refused some nine or ten times over at the counter, followed
-me out into the kitchen to urge his piteous plea. It was dreadful, it
-was harrowing. I have never felt quite so mean about anything in all my
-life.
-
-In the evening we had billed a stereoptican lecture on London. Forseeing
-that the poilus would form a large proportion of the audience, I tried
-to get an interpreter to explain the pictures in French to them but at
-the last minute the interpreter failed me. Notwithstanding, the
-Frenchmen remained courteously quiet while the lecture lasted. But once
-it was finished the atmosphere of the hut underwent a change. The
-blue-coated figures who were swarming into the canteen now had evidently
-spent the earlier part of the evening in the cafés. I went out into the
-centre of the hut to see what was going on; all about me stretched a
-swarm of poilus in a genial mood. The door squeaked open, a little
-soldier came skipping into the hut. To my horror I saw he carried in one
-hand a tall tumbler and in the other a large bottle of Benedictine. The
-victrola was jigging out a rag on the counter. Posing for a minute in an
-attitude reminiscent of the great Isadora, the little poilu proceeded to
-dance in time to the music, pirouetting on one toe as he waved the
-bottle and the tumbler above his head with Bacchanalian gestures. Then
-suddenly he sat down at one of the tables and started to pour himself a
-glass. I swooped down upon him. It was _défendu_ I explained, strictly
-and absolutely _défendu_ to drink in this hut. He stared incredulous. I
-reiterated with emphasis. Finally he nodded sulkily and, slipping the
-bottle underneath his arm, turned away. Two minutes later I caught him
-offering a red-nosed friend a drink square in front of my counter. I
-flew to the attack again. I told him it was against the rules to so much
-as _bring_ wine into the hut. He held his ground defiantly. I wanted to
-take the little wretch by his coat collar and march him out the door; I
-felt I could have done it. Instead I plead, expostulated and commanded.
-A score of grinning poilus crowded about us: it was evidently as good as
-a show to them. I entreated the little poilu please, _please_ to carry
-the bottle out of the hut! “_Dehors!_ _Dehors!_ Outside!” they chorused
-gleefully. I exhausted my vocabulary, apparently without effect. The
-little poilu wasn’t used to taking orders from a girl, especially one
-who spoke French so badly, but finally I won. “_Bon!_” he snapped
-explosively, turned on his heel and marched out. I fled precipitately to
-the kitchen and stayed there until closing time. I didn’t feel equal to
-coping with any more tipsy poilus.
-
-It’s curious how the whole character of a dwelling-place can change.
-When the priest and the cat and I are keeping house together, the old
-mansion is the dimmest, most decorous place imaginable. At night I let
-myself in the dark front door, locking it carefully behind me,—Monsieur
-scolded me for leaving it unlocked once; I had left him, he said, at the
-mercy of the passersby!—then grope my way down the cold unlighted hall
-and up the steep stairs to my chilly room and to bed by one flickering
-candle’s light. The place is as silent and lifeless as a tomb. Then new
-troops come into town and suddenly everything is changed. The lower
-floor is taken over for an officers’ mess and often too, for
-Headquarters. Savory odors of cooking, warm smells mount up the dim
-stairway, candles gutter in niches in the passage-ways, smart-looking
-officers in khaki or horizon-blue as the case may be, meet and salute
-one in the hall. The tramp of booted feet, the ring of spurs, the clink
-of glasses, laughter, song, the piano played tumultuously sometimes late
-into the night,—everything from Madelon to Mozart—and most startling,
-and incredible of all, the jangle of a telephone bell, installed for the
-occasion; for a few days we live in a strange bustling vivid world, then
-on they move and we are left again to our silence and solitude.
-
-Tonight as I was washing up for supper I was startled by a rap on my
-door. There stood Monsieur le Curé and a French officer. I had a bad
-moment wondering what the cause of such a visitation might be. Was he
-going to turn me out of my billet perhaps? Or was he going to complain
-about the treatment his men had received in the Y.? Monsieur le Curé was
-ambling through a long and elaborate peroration. At first I could make
-no sense out of it, then suddenly I caught on. Monsieur le Capitaine was
-a stamp collector. He wanted to know if I perhaps had some stamps _des
-États-Unis_ which I could spare him!
-
-Reports have come in tonight of friction between the French and American
-soldiers in town, resulting in a number of scrimmages. The whole trouble
-springs, I gather, from the eternal feminine and the native jealousy of
-the male; the Fair Sex of Mauvages having made quite evident to the
-poilus their decided preference for the doughboys.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 6.
-
-The theatrical season at Mauvages has been inaugurated. The carpenters
-were busy in the hut all day yesterday, hammering and sawing, making us
-a roll curtain out of roofing paper, manufacturing foot-lights from
-commissary candles and tin reflectors cut from the lining of tobacco
-cases. When the stage was done it was very gay. We had a red curtain
-across the back, bright yellow wings, red and yellow draperies around
-the proscenium arch, festoons of little flags strung across the top, and
-a large American flag draped centre back. It wasn’t what we wanted, it
-was just what, by hook or crook we could get, and the effect really
-wasn’t half as bad as it sounds.
-
-The programme might be classed in two parts, rehearsed and impromptu.
-For a starter we dropped a tear over Baby’s Prayer, that bit of
-ninety-nine one-hundredths pure sentimentality, without which no
-programme in the A. E. F. is complete these days; after which we were
-adjured to “Pray for sunshine, But always be prepared for rain,”—a quite
-superfluous admonition in this part of France at this season of the
-year!
-
-  “Put all your pennies on the shelf,
-  The almighty dollar will take care of itself.”
-
-“Humph!” grunted the boy next me, “I’ll bet it was a Jew wrote that.”
-
-Following the songs we heard Barney, the Poet Laureate of the Camp,
-celebrate the deeds of the ordnance detachment in verse. At least we
-supposed that was what it was, for Barney has a brogue all his own and
-if you get one word in ten you’re lucky. As the C. O. says, it is much
-easier to “_compree_” a Frenchman than it is to understand Barney.
-
-After Barney we had a sermon, a burlesque darky sermon preached by a
-black-face comedian. As luck would have it, two real darkies from a
-labor camp up the line slipped in at the back of the hut just as the
-preacher began. They took it all in deadly earnest, and warmed, I
-suspect, by a glass at the corner café, they presently began to respond
-to the preacher’s exhortations with genuine religious fervor.
-
-“Dat’s so! You tell ’em bruder! Hallelujah! Bless de Lord!”
-
-The audience up front, hearing a commotion and unluckily not catching
-the comedy, hissed indignantly and the darkies, abashed, slunk out.
-
-Of course at the last moment some of our headliners failed to come
-across. The mumps claimed our dramatic reader and our buck-and-wing
-dancer sent word, just as the curtain was going up, that in all the
-camp, no shoes outside of hob-nails, large enough for him could be
-found. But we made up for these defections by our impromptu acts. The
-most surprising of these was the Little Fat Poilu. He popped up suddenly
-from Heaven knows where, a round rosy dumpling of a man with a shiny
-nose and a fat black beard, and offered his services. On his first
-appearance he played the violin with vim and spirit. Then in answer to
-the applause he dropped his violin, seized the tall hat from the head of
-the darky preacher, clapped it on his own, and bounced back onto the
-stage. The transformation was amazing. In an instant, instead of a poilu
-he had become a jolly little bourgeois shopkeeper out for a stroll on
-the boulevard. He proceeded to sing a comic song, a song with an
-interminable number of verses, unquestionably very funny and in all
-probability quite scandalous. The French portion of the audience was
-charmed, they joined vociferously in the jiggy choruses, and when he had
-done they insisted on another and another. For a while it looked as if
-France was going to run away with the programme, but finally the little
-poilu came to the end of his repertoire,—or of his breath maybe, and
-America once more took the stage.
-
-Today we are living in an atmosphere of theatrical enterprise. Already
-there are three or four “bigger and better” rival shows in process of
-incubation. What’s more, Barney is writing a play. He sits at one of the
-canteen tables surrounded by a group of admiring would-be actors and
-each sheet, as he finishes it, is gravely handed around the crowd. So
-far it seems to contain just three characters; Rose the beautiful
-stenographer, the villain landlord and the office boy. I am waiting in
-suspense to see whether Barney’s masterpiece is going to turn out a
-melodrama, a problem play or a dramatic treatise on the social and
-political wrongs of Ireland.
-
-The French troops are moving tomorrow. Tonight the Little Fat Poilu came
-to bid us good-bye. When no one was looking I filled his pockets up with
-cigarettes.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 9.
-
-A very regrettable incident occurred last night. The day being Sunday we
-were due for a religious service at seven-fifteen. At seven-ten the
-Reverend Gentleman, who was to instruct my flock in the way wherein they
-should go, arrived in company with the Business Manager from
-Gondrecourt. Now it happened that the Reverend Gentleman on this
-occasion was none other than my friend the Sentimental Secretary. He
-surveyed the congregation; there were nine boys in the hut. He sat down
-and waited for the audience to arrive. But the audience didn’t. Instead
-one wretch surreptitiously sneaked out the door. At last I felt it
-necessary to come forward with apologies and explanations; my flock at
-present was small to start with, the sheep had all gone to Domremy on an
-excursion, the goats were deep in an after-payday poker game.
-
-“Do you wish me to hold the meeting?” the R. G. questioned grimly.
-
-“If you will.”
-
-The Reverend Gentleman, a bit tight about the lips, laid on. It was a
-cold night; we gathered by the fire. I tried to make myself look as
-large as possible, but stretch the congregation as you might, we only
-reached two-thirds of the way around the stove.
-
-“Well,” said the Business Manager when it was all over with, “how soon
-will you be ready to close out this hut?”
-
-I reminded him that after all it would have only taken ten righteous to
-save Sodom, so might not eight save Mauvages?
-
-Of course just as soon as the Reverend Gentleman and the Business
-Manager had shaken our dust off their feet and disappeared, a whole
-crowd of boys came streaming into the hut. I accused them of having
-waited just around the corner until they had seen the Religious Service
-depart. As for Big Bill I consider him nothing short of a slacker, he
-sat in the kitchen all evening and wrote a letter to his girl. I tell
-him that as hut detail it is obviously his duty to attend all services
-but he explains that “it makes him homesick.”
-
-In a town on the road between Mauvages and Gondrecourt there is a labor
-camp of Chinese coolies. These are the laziest folk in Europe I am sure.
-They are supposed to be working on the road, which needs it badly
-enough, resembling, as one boy declared, “the top of a stove when all
-the lids are taken off.” All day long they squat by the roadside, or
-stand idle watching the traffic go by. “They’d rather be caught dead
-than caught working,” as one boy said. The story goes that if one of
-them dies the French Government must pay the Chinese Government thirty
-francs. They come dear at that. Moreover, they are unconscionable
-thieves. Up on the hill back of the town where they are billeted there
-is an American aviation field. The camp was abandoned after the
-armistice, but twelve boys from the air service were detailed to stay
-and guard the property. These boys find that the chief end of their life
-is to chase the Chinks out of the stores; they are quite persistent and
-perfectly unabashed. More than that, if the Chinks catch one of the
-guards by himself, they are likely to attack in force armed with sticks
-and as our boys are not allowed to carry weapons, such an attack is no
-laughing matter. The trouble began, the boys tell me, in the days when
-the camp was populated; two mechanics had once thought it a good joke to
-give one of the Chinks a bath by ducking him in the horse-trough.
-
-One of these heathen, I am told, came to church here at Mauvages
-yesterday and almost broke up the meeting. It pleased him to sing all
-the way through the service, a wierd sing-song chant all his own, and as
-if that were not bad enough, in the middle of a prayer he had turned
-square about and started to play with the rosary of the scandalized
-Madame behind him! The most pious-minded could scarcely keep their
-thoughts on the priest’s dissertation. There was “_beaucoup
-distraction_” as one Mademoiselle phrased it.
-
-This morning I went down to Gondrecourt.
-
-“Well, and how are your eight men?” asked the Business Manager.
-
-“One of them has gone to the hospital with the mumps,” I answered. “So
-now I have seven.”
-
-
-Mauvages, December 12.
-
-I have been A. W. O. L. I have been on a joy ride. For the first time
-since I came to France I have taken a real day off. I got a chance to go
-up to the old battle front on a “speeder.” I didn’t mention the matter
-to the office, but I took the chance. I knew I could safely trust the
-hut to the management of Bill and Nick for one day.
-
-We started out shortly after six A. M., on the narrow-gauge bound for
-Mont Sec. There were five of us on the speeder which is, you must know,
-a little flat car something like a hand-car, only that instead of being
-propelled by hand power, it is run by a gasolene motor. Speeders are the
-jolliest possible way of travelling and they can go like the wind: they
-possess just two disadvantages, their propensity for having engine
-trouble, and the ease with which they jump the track at the slightest
-provocation. It is told how in Abainville the other day a speeder jumped
-the rails, the engineer, after turning a half a dozen somersaults,
-picked himself up, squared off, demanded; “Who in hell put the pebble on
-the track?”
-
-From Mauvages we followed the A. and S. to Sorcy. There we switched onto
-the line which the boys at Abainville used to declare “ran through the
-trenches.” They would tell me wonderful tales of the trips they had
-taken on this line; the smoke-stack of the engine protruded over the
-top, they explained, and “Gosh, you could hear the bullets just
-splatterin’ against it!”
-
-A short ways out from Sorcy we passed the last inhabited village. Ahead
-of us we could see the barren sinister outline of Mont Sec, that little
-Gibraltar of the land which the Germans had captured and fortified early
-in the war, which the French had endeavored to retake in 1915 with the
-most fearful losses, but which had remained impregnable, commanding,
-looking down in contempt on our men in their muddy lowland trenches of
-the Toul Sector, until, on September twelfth, the American Army had
-taken it along with the rest of the Saint Mihiel salient.
-
-As we neared Mont Sec we began to pass devastated villages, some of them
-mere formless ruins, others from a distance holding the shape and
-outline of habitable dwelling-places but on approach revealing
-themselves as mere groups of riddled house-shells. Across the open
-places stretched interminable grey swathes of rusting tangled wire,
-“barbed-wire enough to fence Texas,” as one boy put it. On sidings we
-passed long lines of cars full of salvage, all the junk of war tossed
-carelessly together. Along the tracks were scattered empty shells and
-here and there piles of unexploded ammunition. In a shell-hole by the
-roadside, half filled with water, lay a hob-nailed shoe,—prosaic but
-pitiful witness of some tragedy. It was the loneliest land, the most
-forsaken I have ever seen. Far and wide as one looked over the empty
-plain there was no living, moving creature anywhere.
-
-At the foot of Mont Sec we stopped. There in the woods were the remains
-of a German camp; it had been a jolly little place fixed up like a beer
-garden underneath the trees, with fancy “rustic” work and chairs and
-tables. We left the speeder there, and tramping across the fields,
-climbed Mont Sec. Near the top we found the entrances to the dugouts.
-The hill was tunneled through from side to side, all the corridors and
-rooms walled, roofed and floored with the heaviest oak lumber.
-Everywhere through the passage-ways ran a perfect network of electric
-wires. Long stairs led to the different levels. No furnishings were left
-except the bunks and some rough tables. We ate our luncheon of bread,
-jam and corn willy in what had evidently been the officers’ quarters;
-the room was nicely finished with cement, there was a fancy moulded
-pattern in bas relief over the doorway, a pipe-hole showed where a stove
-had been.
-
-After lunch we inspected the concrete machine-gun pill-boxes which
-dotted the hill-top. Then we went down the steep eastern slope to the
-village of Mont Sec. About the town, to judge from the ploughed and
-pitted vineyards, the fighting must have been the fiercest. The village
-was a village of the dead. We went inside the church; part of the tower,
-some of the walls, a little of the roof was left, beyond that nothing.
-Near the door a French officer had scrawled “_Maudite soit le boche qui
-détruit les églises_,”—cursed be the Hun who destroys the churches. In
-this church, Madame the Caretaker tells me, the Germans commanded all
-the male inhabitants of Mont Sec to assemble. Here they were kept
-prisoners for three days and nights. On the fourth day they were marched
-off at the bayonet’s point into Germany, and no one has ever heard a
-word from them since.
-
-Just outside the village in the little cemetery, ploughed with
-shell-holes, we found French, American and German graves. The German
-inscriptions all commemorated “heroes dead for the Fatherland;” one of
-them vowed, with the help of God, vengeance on the enemy.
-
-We went back to the speeder. As it was early in the afternoon we decided
-to go on. Rounding Mont Sec, we passed into German occupied territory.
-We saw the famous cabbage patches which fed our soldiers after the Saint
-Mihiel drive, and, on a hillock beside the road, one memorable scarecrow
-dressed from head to foot as a German soldier, “feldgrau” uniform,
-cartridge belt, helmet and all. At Hattonchatel we looked down on the
-German barracks from the hill-side but didn’t have time to stop. It was
-growing late, so we must turn about-face. Once headed for home our
-troubles began. The rain which had been teasing us all day as a faint
-drizzle, settled down to business. A few hundred yards down the
-hill-side the speeder jumped the track. Fortunately we weren’t running
-fast and the speeder jumped on the right side, if it had jumped on the
-left we might have gone over the edge of the mountainous hill-side. As
-it was no real harm resulted beyond a violent bumping and shaking up; I
-jumped and got a lame wrist. “The chances are, that whatever happens,
-she won’t turn over,” the boys told me, “so hang on after this.” So I
-hung tight. The engine, which had worked like a charm all the way up,
-began to sulk and balk by fits. Presently it grew dark. We had one
-lantern, we lighted it and the boy who sat at the front end held it so
-the light would fall on the rails. Every now and then the wind would
-blow it out. At each station along the track we would stop and ask the
-engineer operators whether the block ahead was clear. When we came to
-the last station before the long forest stretches about Mont Sec the
-operator who came out to speak to us was quite angry; there were three
-trains, he said, somewhere on the track ahead; we were doing a very
-dangerous thing, running after dark. We went on, straining our eyes as
-we entered the woods in order to discern the dark mass on the track
-ahead which would mean a train, for the trains, in memory of war days, I
-suppose, carry absolutely no lights. A week ago a speeder ran head-on
-into a train at night just above Sauvoy; of its three passengers, two
-were killed, the other fearfully injured. We held ourselves tense, ready
-the moment we had made out a train, and the speeder slowed down, to
-jump, and, lifting the car, push it to one side off the tracks until the
-train had passed. Once we were lucky enough to make a siding just at the
-critical moment. Sometimes we ran at the edge of high embankments,
-sometimes we would cross, on a trestle, a wide marshy stream; then the
-thought would come to me, _What if the speeder should jump here?_ And
-she did jump twice more on the way back, but luckily both times in
-well-selected places. The worst feature of these acrobatics was that the
-jar had an unhealthy effect upon the engine and after each occasion the
-mechanics in the crowd had to delve and tinker before the speeder could
-be coaxed to speed again. Also it was wet. The rain soaked through my
-raincoat, through my sweater, into my leather jacket; my skirt was a
-dripping rag, the water oozed from my gloves, raindrops dripped from my
-nose, my “waterproof” shoes were like sponges. You felt, as one of the
-boys put it, exactly like a figure in a fountain.
-
-Between Mont Sec and Sorcy we got a tow. In the dark we came upon the
-rear end of a salvage train, tied ourselves up to it, and bumped merrily
-along behind until the train turned off on a branch line and we had to
-cut loose and make our own way with the increasingly contrary engine.
-Fortunately, from that point most of the way was down hill; on the
-up-grades we got off and walked; the last part of the way the boys
-simply had to push the car. We reached home at half-past ten, tired,
-soaked to the skin, but happy.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 16.
-
-After this, Mauvages is going to be on the map! Mauvages is to be
-headquarters for the —— Artillery Brigade, with seventeen hundred men in
-town and thousands more in the villages about. Wonderful to say, this is
-the very brigade to which my two batteries from the Artillery School
-belong and though neither of these will be here in town, still they will
-be near enough so I can get a glimpse of my old boys, I am sure.
-
-Already we have an ammunition train and a crowd of “casuals” waiting
-here for their outfits. The hut, which has of late been rather empty
-mornings, is now filled all day. These casuals are for the most part
-replacements, shipped here directly from the ports, after a ten days’
-residence in France. They have nothing to do at present but sit in the
-hut and think how miserable they are. It is funny to hear them talk.
-Their opinion of Mauvages is inexpressible in polite terms. They are
-quite convinced that they have come to the Very Last Hole on Earth. In
-vain I assure them that Mauvages is quite a fine town, as French towns
-go, in vain I draw their attention to its beauties and advantages. They
-are absolutely certain that nothing could be worse!
-
-Meanwhile I have been busy making frantic trips into Gondrecourt to
-demand, in view of the coming crowds, a new hut, an electric lighting
-system, an addition to the old hut, anything or everything, except a man
-secretary! But Gondrecourt takes the situation very calmly.
-
-Just to pass the time away, one of the new arrivals went fishing in the
-canal yesterday. He bestowed his catch on me; it measured about six
-inches by one and a quarter. As it was still wriggling faintly I put the
-poor thing in the water-pail, only to find later that Big Bill in
-disgust had thrown water and fish out into the back yard. Whereupon I
-raised such an outcry that Bill must go out in the dark and feel through
-the wet grass for that fish until he found it. I carried it down to
-camp, inviting the K. P.s to prepare it for the C. O.’s dinner. At
-dinner it appeared elegantly garnished with parsley in the center of a
-huge platter. Just to pay me back they made me eat it, while the rest
-dined on steak.
-
-“How do you suppose he caught it?” asked the C. O. I said nothing.
-Fishing with hand-grenades is strictly against the law.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 18.
-
-Mauvages is in disgrace. Mauvages is the black sheep in the Y. fold.
-Mauvages is in wrong all the way around. And it’s all because of one Old
-Gentleman and his ill-timed opinions.
-
-The Old Gentleman came out to talk to us yesterday evening. We weren’t
-expecting him. We were expecting a lecture on the Man Without a
-Country,—whoever that may be, Jack Johnson or the Kaiser! as the boys
-say,—by the Educational Department. But then we have almost given up
-expecting to get what we expect. This is only the third time we have
-been fooled on the Man Without a Country who appears to be our Old Man
-of the Sea.
-
-The Old Gentleman was brought out in state in the best Y. car by the Big
-Chief, the Entertainment Department and a driver. The Entertainment
-Department immediately ensconced himself by the cook-stove with a Sunday
-Picture Supplement; the driver retired to a secluded corner to play a
-game of checkers with one of the boys; while the Big Chief took his
-stand out front. I for once back-slid scandalously, and, instead of
-occupying a front seat with a deeply interested expression spread upon
-my countenance, sat in the kitchen and ate jam and waffles, the waffles
-which were heart-shaped and crisp and heavenly, having been brought by
-Nick from his latest supper party.
-
-The Old Gentleman stood out by the stove, the stage proving too chilly.
-There was a crowd in the hut. He put his foot in it at the start. He
-announced himself as an intimate friend of ex-President Roosevelt. The
-boys, sniffing politics, grew suspicious, even hostile. He began on the
-scandal of America’s unpreparedness, from that passed by degrees to the
-view that Germany was not yet defeated and as a climax called upon the
-boys to rise and put themselves on record as being willing to stay in
-France until Kingdom come, if necessary, in order to do the job up
-brown. The boys did not rise. Instead they heckled the Old Gentleman
-until he grew as red as a turkey-cock and so indignant as to fairly wax
-speechless. One of the ammunition train boys, a husky lad who, they tell
-me, is an old guard house standby, led the opposition. Out in the
-kitchen you could have heard a pin drop. The Entertainment Department
-and I sat and stared at each other.
-
-The whole trouble as I saw it, was that the Old Gentleman had slipped up
-on his dates. He was giving them a Before-November-Eleventh speech when
-it was after the eleventh. It was as if he had quite failed to
-comprehend that at eleven o’clock on that date the whole psychological
-outlook of the American doughboy underwent an instantaneous change. His
-entire mental horizon became forthwith concentrated to one burning
-point,—the desire which he expresses simply but adequately in the words;
-“I want to go home!” And not ex-President Roosevelt, nor President
-Wilson, nor General Pershing, nor anybody else could make him interested
-in anything that was not remotely, at least, related to that issue.
-
-At last the agony was over. The Old Gentleman came back to the kitchen
-mopping his brow. When he had finished expressing his opinion of
-Mauvages, the driver went out to crank the car. The car was gone. Of
-course then, everyone remembered having heard a car drive off in the
-middle of the lecture,—every one that is, but I, I had been too
-interested in the waffles,—but of course no one had really thought that
-it could be, etc. A search party was recruited which scoured highway and
-byway. The M. P.s at Gondrecourt were notified by ’phone. Meanwhile it
-was ten o’clock, a bleak night and four indignant gentlemen were
-stranded six miles from home. An ambassador was elected to go and lay
-the case before the A. R. C. O. The C. O. on his way to bed, instructed
-the emissary where billets for the night might possibly be had. But the
-Old Gentleman, upon receiving the information, flatly and finally
-refused to stay in any billet in town; he would sleep in his own bed or
-no other. After a nervous interval the ambassador again approached the
-C. O., this time suggesting the loan of his car and chauffeur. The C.
-O., aroused a second time from bed, acceeded shortly, the ambassador
-returned to despatch the unfortunate Bill to camp to break the news to
-the chauffeur. The chauffeur, who was in the midst of an after-hours
-poker game, when he recovered from his astonishment, replied
-(expurgated) that he’d come when he got good and ready, and settled back
-to his game.
-
-In the meantime my four guests by the kitchen-stove discussed in part
-the peculiarities of the Japanese language, but chiefly the shortcomings
-of Mauvages. The Chief, however, showed himself a gentleman. He washed
-the dishes up! And considering that he was a man and a minister and that
-the light was dim and the water cold, he washed them pretty well.
-
-At a quarter to eleven the A. R. chauffeur having presumably forced all
-the others into bankruptcy, or gone bankrupt himself, drove up to the
-door and I said farewell to my friends.
-
-This morning a rescue expedition was sent out from Gondrecourt. It
-finally discovered the lost car, none the worse for its joy-ride, in a
-ditch half-way to Sauvoy. Information has reached me on the side that it
-was a little group of “hard-boiled guys” from the ammunition train who
-stole the auto. They were displeased with the Old Gentleman’s opinions,
-and they made up their minds that he should walk home.
-
-So this is how matters stand: I and my hut are in discredit at
-Headquarters, because my boys stole their car. The Old Gentleman has
-openly declared that Mauvages is the most unpatriotic spot in France.
-The A. R. C. O. is disgusted because he was routed twice out of bed in
-one night. The chauffeur is so incensed at me and mine at having to
-drive into town at eleven P. M. that he persistently forgets to stop for
-my daily papers. And the boys are all sore and touchy on account of the
-opinions expressed by the Old Gentleman in and after his lecture. Such
-is the happy lot of a hut secretary.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 23.
-
-The Big Push is here. Our lawn has turned into a gun park with limbers
-and caissons elbowing each other under our very eaves. All day the
-little hut is crowded to its capacity and at night it becomes so full
-that I am literally afraid it will burst out at the seams. Colonels and
-captains are forever bobbing up like so many Jack-in-the-Boxes in my
-kitchen which I was used to consider as a refuge and a sanctum. They
-have the best intentions in the world; they offer me advice on every
-subject under the sun from the building of new shelves in the canteen to
-the frequency with which I should require Big Bill to shave. And quite
-unsolicited they have given me a detail,—a detail of such proportions
-that I am swamped. I don’t know how many there are. They never stand
-still long enough for me to count them. Sometimes there appear to be ten
-and sometimes twenty. Like the Old Woman who lived in the shoe, I have
-so many details I don’t know what to do. They are the nicest boys that
-ever were, if only they didn’t take up quite so much room! Now when I am
-minded to sit down for a moment to think, my only course is to go into
-the store-room and sit on a packing-box, and the store-room is very
-cold. And the worst of it is that they all, from colonel to K. P., have
-the beautiful idea in their heads that I am not to do any work, but just
-to be a sort of parlor ornament, and a sweet influence; that I will, in
-short, like the old man who was afraid of the cow, “sit on the stile and
-continue to smile,” while the army runs my hut. Which is not at all my
-notion of things.
-
-In the meantime we have been busy making such preparations for Christmas
-as we could. Chiefly we have decorated the hut. I begged two boxes full
-of lanterns, flags, tinsel and festoons, from the office, then I merely
-mentioned the fact that I wanted a tree and lots of branches to trim
-with and the boys did the rest. I don’t know where those greens came
-from, I don’t want to know. But there is one spectre that keeps haunting
-me; the apparition of an indignant Frenchman at my canteen door, with a
-bill half a metre long for damages.
-
-This new outfit has brought a heathen custom to town with them. The band
-plays for Reveille! We had been so peaceful, so unmilitary here in town
-with not so much as a bugle note to make a ripple in our slumbers! But
-now at some unimagined hour before daylight a brazen clangour bursts
-suddenly forth. Down the street and past under my window in the dark
-they go, making the grand tour of the three streets in town, thumping
-and tooting as if their lives depended on it. I never knew a band could
-make such an amazing racket, nor could sound quite so joyously impudent.
-A bucketful of cold water couldn’t dispel sleep any more effectively. I
-feel like jumping out of bed. But I don’t, for it is pitch dark and cold
-and very damp. There is a fireplace to be sure in my room but after one
-or two fruitless attempts at making it produce a little heat I abandoned
-the idea and decided to spend all my time between my bed and the
-canteen. But when I desire to view my countenance in the mirror, I have
-to take a towel and wipe off the moisture that collects on it to trickle
-down in little streams.
-
-I have received my first Christmas present. Bill and Nick—the
-dears!—have presented me a beautiful silk umbrella. I think they did it
-largely for the honor of the family. As long as my old faithful only had
-its handle gone, they could overlook it, but when the ribs took to
-parting company with the covering, they evidently thought that something
-should be done about it. Nick went to Gondrecourt to buy it; coming
-back, he managed to fall off the truck, was picked up and given first
-aid by a kindly Frenchwoman, and reached home in slightly damaged shape
-but with the precious umbrella safe. I have been suggesting to Bill that
-he set a two franc piece in the handle and then I will have his and
-Nick’s initials carved on it, but he doesn’t wax enthusiastic.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 25.
-
-We sat up half the night packing Christmas boxes,—seventeen hundred of
-them, one for every man in Mauvages. Two packages of cigarettes, a
-cigar, two bars of chocolate and a can of “smoking” went into each
-little cardboard box labelled in red “A Merry Xmas from the folks at
-home through the Y;” that is, theoretically they went in, practically it
-was discovered that no human ingenuity could so arrange the pesky things
-as to make them fit the box. So finally we decided to treat the
-“smoking” as a separate affair. I wanted badly to have Santa Claus hand
-the boxes to the boys underneath the Christmas tree, but the boys
-finally convinced me that the difficulties, including the danger of
-“repeaters” ad lib, were too great, so we fitted the boxes into
-packing-cases and shipped a case to each company and let each of the top
-sergeants play that he was Santa Claus.
-
-It was half past twelve by the time I passed the church on my way back
-to the billet. They were celebrating midnight mass. The light of the
-altar-candles illumined the old windows with a soft radiance. They were
-Y. M. C. A. candles. Monsieur le Curé had begged them from me in the
-afternoon; he could get no others, he said, and was in great distress.
-
-_Chez nous_ there was much activity. I stopped inside the door to chat
-with the cooks. They were up plucking the Colonel’s goose and expected
-to make a night of it.
-
-Sounds of gaiety were ringing from the dining-room. A young lieutenant,
-slightly touseled, thrust his head out of the door. I wished him a Merry
-Christmas; in return he asked me in to partake of an anchovy sandwich. I
-took one look inside the door at the array of empty bottles, declined
-with thanks, and climbed the stairs to bed. For a long while afterwards
-someone downstairs kept mewing like a cat. It might have been the
-slightly touseled lieutenant.
-
-Today it has been raw and damp and chill and grey and drizzly. I had a
-notion that I might ask the French kiddies in this afternoon to see the
-tree and receive some little gifts of cookies and chocolate but when I
-reached the hut this morning and saw how packed it was I quickly gave up
-the project. Not for all the children in ten villages would I turn the
-boys out into the rain.
-
-Tonight there is to be some sort of show, arranged by the entertainment
-officer.
-
-Just before dinner time the Second Lieutenant from the A. R. came in,
-looking full of mysterious importance. “The C. O. leaves this noon,” he
-said. “He’s ordered to report at Souilly by twelve tonight. I’ll tell
-you all about it later.” Later I learned. Inspectors had been visiting
-the dump. They had found it in a very dangerous state indeed. The wet
-weather has affected the explosives so that should the sun come out for
-a day or two the chemical change ensuing would in all probability cause
-an explosion which would set off the whole dump with its millions of
-dollars worth of high explosives. In which case little Mauvages would of
-course go higher than Halifax. The C. O. has been removed and the Second
-Lieutenant left in charge. The work of destroying the dangerous
-explosives is to be pursued at top speed. In the meanwhile we will pray
-for continued rain.
-
-I received two gifts today that touched me deeply. One was a pretty pink
-embroidered scarf from the boys at the aviation field. The lad who
-brought it to me had walked twelve miles, into Gondrecourt and back
-again in the sleety rain, to buy it! The other was a package labeled;
-“Wishing you a Mary Xmas from the Operators at A. S. No. 9, and may the
-next one be in the States.” Inside were two boxes of chocolates, their
-Christmas candy issue!
-
-As for me, I am ashamed—I have been so busy and so bothered that I just
-couldn’t seem to manage a gift for anyone, not for Bill nor Nick nor
-even Monsieur le Curé.
-
-
-Mauvages, December 28.
-
-Neddy has come back! His battery has just arrived at Rosières and last
-night he got off and walked over here to see me.
-
-We sat and talked by the kitchen-stove and I found him just the same
-shy, slow-spoken dreamy lad. The long months at the front have seemingly
-instilled nothing bitter in him, nor left any scars on his spirit, no
-matter if he is wearing a wonderful belt quite covered with German
-buttons all “cut off of dead ones.” He dug out of his pockets for me two
-odd little picture frames made cleverly out of rings from German fuses,
-with pieces of celluloid cut from the eye-holes of German gas-masks for
-glass, and held together with surgeon’s plaster. Then of course there
-were the latest pictures of his girl to show me.
-
-He told me about the battery. On the whole their casualties have been
-light. Jones was gassed, and is in hospital somewhere; it seems just
-like Jones, somehow, to get gassed! The boys, he told me, had been
-fairly homesick for the little old Artillery School Hut,—most of all, he
-said, they had missed my hot chocolate.
-
-Then just to make the occasion perfect, who should walk in but Snow!
-Snow’s battery is at Delouze, two towns away; but Snow has been on leave
-down on the Riviera, having the time of his young life.
-
-“I never could see what there was in this country worth fighting for,”
-he told me, “until I went down there. But now I know.”
-
-He had just returned from his furlough this very afternoon. He hadn’t a
-thing to eat all day, being of course, “dead broke.” I got the best
-impromptu supper I could and we all three sat in the kitchen and ate it.
-The menu was: crackers and canned milk; sardines and crackers;
-cracker-pudding and cocoa; crackers and jam. The boys gossiped and
-swapped yarns like two old veterans. Neddy related how the gunners at
-the front when loading would pat and even kiss a shell as they adjured
-it not to be a dud! Snow told me how ——, the talented, the brilliant,
-had gone to pieces at the front and had been sent back to the S. O. S.
-This must have been hard on Snow for the two were close friends. “I said
-to him one day,” recounted Snow, “——, you must have done something
-awfully wicked in your life to make you so afraid to die.” Undoubtedly
-the poor fellow’s failure was due, not so much to lack of courage, as to
-over-sensitiveness and too much imagination. The pity of it is that this
-will surely prove a bad blow to his self-respect.
-
-When it was time for Neddy to go I saw there was something he wanted to
-say to me. At last it came out. Around his neck, it seems, he is still
-wearing the chain with the little cross which I gave him when he went to
-the front. And he has the unshakable notion in his quaint head that it
-was the cross which kept him safe!
-
-
-Mauvages, December 29.
-
-Tonight we gave a party: hot chocolate and cookies for the whole camp.
-Every Sunday before the Big Push came I had been serving hot chocolate
-free but I had been staggered by the thought of trying to make chocolate
-for seventeen hundred men on my little stove that is just big enough to
-sit on, over a fire which has to be coaxed with German powder sticks and
-candle ends before it will burn, and serving it in our sixty odd cocoa
-bowls. This morning, however, I had an inspiration. I consulted the
-detail, they approved. Accordingly we sent requests to three of the
-battery mess-kitchens, asking that they should each furnish us, at
-five-thirty, the largest container they possessed full of hot water.
-Then we asked the mess sergeants to announce the party at supper and
-tell the boys to bring their mess-cups. The sentry at the street corner
-was also instructed to let no one pass without his mess-cup. Then we
-started in, heating all the water we could manage, making chocolate
-paste, opening whole cases full of canned milk.
-
-At six o’clock the fun, per schedule, began. The boys lined up from the
-counter to the stage. But instead of a single line, it soon became
-evident we had two, one coming and one going, which together formed an
-endless chain like a giant wheel which kept slowly but surely revolving.
-After the second or third time around a boy would begin to acquire a
-slightly sheepish look and endeavor to avoid my eye, but when they found
-that all they got was a grin and “I’m glad you like it!” they grinned
-back unashamed.
-
-“I can’t stop,” joyfully explained one lad to me, “I’m in the line and I
-can’t get out; I just gotter keep on coming round.”
-
-“Oh boy! but that’s the best thing I’ve had in France!” declared
-another.
-
-While a third announced; “Gee, but I’m full all the way up! If I drink
-another drop I sure will bust”—a confession which may have contained
-more fact than fancy, for some of the boys did drink so much that they
-got sick right then and there. It was an orgy. And when the last of the
-four huge containers had been drained to a drop, why everyone, I
-believe, for once had had enough.
-
-“You’ve got all the business in town right here tonight,” one of the
-boys informed me. “I just took a look in at the cafés. Every one of them
-is empty.”
-
-Personally I feel that the party was a Great Success. We shall have to
-have one just like it every Sunday.
-
-
-Mauvages, January 1, 1919.
-
-_Mes meilleurs voeux de Bonne Année!_ or, as the boys say; “Bun Annie!”
-We welcomed the new Year in _con molto giubilo_. Downstairs at my billet
-there was music until late and after that sounds as of a repetition of
-the Christmas party. At twelve o’clock by the old church bell, the band,
-which I had imagined long since safe and sound in bed, burst forth into
-music and straggled down the street playing “_There’ll be a hot time in
-the old town tonight_,” and all the rest of the most rakish airs in its
-repertoire. I stepped out on my Juliet balcony. The boys were setting
-off pyrotechnics of all sorts “salvaged” from the dump; flares, colored
-lights, and rockets. The street burned out of the darkness in
-rose-colored mist against which showed black silhouettes of soldiers who
-waved their arms and shouted and sang; while from the edge of the
-village sounded a sharp tattoo of rifle shots. Just as the light was
-beginning to fade out I heard an emphatic bang of the front door below
-me and looking down saw two figures; a little brisk bustling one and a
-tall, lean one go hurrying down the path and out the gate. It was our
-Colonel and an attendant officer. Retribution, I knew, was bearing down
-upon the revellers. Sure enough, this morning I learned that the
-Colonel, sallying forth, had struck right and left, leaving a trail of
-arrests all over town.
-
-But even with the Colonel’s sortie, quiet did not descend on Mauvages
-for some time. The party below-stairs was not confined to the mess-hall
-this time but was also being celebrated in the kitchen. At about one
-o’clock a K. P. stumbled up the stairs and knocked on the door of the
-Curé’s chamber just across from me. He had some champagne for the Curé,
-he explained in thick and execrable French. The Curé must drink it in
-honor of the New Year. It was good champagne. I could hear the Curé
-replying from his bed in rapid deprecating sentences, but the K. P. held
-to his point; he had set his heart on the old man’s joining the
-celebration. “_Champagne bun_,” he kept repeating, “_Vous camarade. Bun
-annie._” For a long time they carried on the argument, but finally, as
-the priest implacably refused to open his door, the genial K. P. gave up
-in disgust, confiding to his friends as he reached the floor that the
-Curé was, after all, nothing but a dried up old fish.
-
-This morning I went down to Headquarters to turn in my accounts. Alas,
-for the vanity of human intentions! At Christmas I had sent little boxes
-of fudge to several of the men at the office, hoping thereby to curry
-favour for my canteen and counteract any bad impressions which our
-delinquencies in the matter of attending Sunday Services and
-appropriating other people’s autos might have caused. Now I find I have
-made more enemies among the ones that I left out, than I made friends of
-the ones I favoured.
-
-In spite of this sad condition of affairs I managed to tease one driver
-into agreeing to take me to Vaucouleurs. At Vaucouleurs I had been told
-that there was a commissary where one could purchase candles, and the
-boys are desperately anxious for candles. At first I did not quite
-understand so burning a desire as they exhibited, but now I am wise.
-They want them—poor wretches!—so they can “read their shirts,” before
-they go to bed! I stayed down in Gondrecourt, missing dinner, and then
-set out for Vaucouleurs with my heart full of hope and my pockets
-crammed with currency. It was a long, cold trip in the driving, drizzly
-rain. Arrived at Vaucouleurs we found that, being the first of the
-month, the commissary was closed for inventory.
-
-
-Mauvages, January 3.
-
-Everybody has a little pet trouble of his own these days. The A. R. has
-its share and more of them. Lieutenant C. recounted some of his tonight.
-He had been carrying the dangerous explosives over beyond the woods to
-the west of the town where they were being blown off. Then the French
-Town Major had called.
-
-It wouldn’t do, he said, to blow off the ammunition there any more;
-there were sick people in the town and the explosions fairly made them
-jump right up out of their beds. And really one couldn’t blame them. So
-then the Lieutenant had switched to the north, over beyond the
-narrow-gauge, only to be promptly visited by a furious delegation of
-engineers. Whether it was because proper precautions hadn’t been taken
-or what I don’t know, whatever the case, in the course of the explosions
-a large rock had made a gaping hole in the roof of A. S. No. 9 and
-narrowly missed one of my good friends the operators. The complaint of
-the engineers was shortly followed by an indignant ultimatum from the
-Captain at Abainville who is in charge of the railway. Unless the
-explosions were forthwith stopped, he threatened, no more trains would
-be run on the road. On top of all this the Colonel of artillery must
-call the Lieutenant to account. The boys whom he arrested New Year’s
-night had been shooting off their rifles. The shells must have come from
-the dump. Since it was Lieutenant C.’s dump, it was his business to keep
-his shells in their proper places. Therefore Lieutenant C. was
-responsible for the shooting.
-
-I don’t know just how the matter has been arranged with the Captain at
-Abainville, but the explosions beyond the tracks have been going on all
-day. Latest reports testify that that roof of A. S. No. 9 is riddled
-like a sieve with stone-holes and that the cook, who never was known to
-be a religious man, spends all his time beneath the table praying.
-
-Two of the ordnance boys have been badly burned while setting off the
-explosions, and the whole detachment is sore and disheartened because
-they are being worked so hard in the mud and rain and their Sunday
-holiday denied them. Special details from the artillery are being sent
-to work at the dump every day in order to hasten the work of
-destruction, but these boys, too, are sullen and rebellious. They have
-been used to handling shells at the front, they say, and they consider
-it an indignity to have to handle them here in the dump as if they,
-forsooth, belonged to the ordnance! And so the work goes none too
-quickly. Everyone has been instructed to keep a particular lookout for
-German delay fuses, those deadly little infernal machines, which can be
-set, according to the strength of the acid which eats through the
-spring, to explode any time between a week and six months. They are
-disguised cleverly to look exactly like ordinary percussion fuses, the
-only betraying mark being a tiny six pointed star on the nose. Several
-have already been found planted in dumps which contained captured German
-ammunition, and the tale runs through camp that some have been
-discovered here, although this I rather suspect is just another army
-rumor.
-
-Tonight one of the ordnance boys hobbled into the hut, his left foot
-swathed in bandages; a shell had fallen on a toe and crushed it. I
-attempted to sympathize.
-
-“Don’t waste any of your sympathy on me,” he retorted, “I’m the luckiest
-feller you know. There ain’t a man in camp who don’t envy me.”
-
-As for me, I am having a few pet troubles too. One of these is concerned
-with the army dentist at Gondrecourt. And this is all in consequence of
-the kind operators at A. S. No. 9 and their Christmas chocolates, for
-among those chocolates was a caramel and,—well that candy was made in
-Switzerland and so was probably pro-German anyway.
-
-Yesterday I had to witness the harrowing spectacle of a stalwart
-doughboy being separated from a tooth. When the ghastly business was
-over he shook himself.
-
-“I’ve been over the top,” he declared, “and got filled up with
-machine-gun bullets,”—he was wearing two wound stripes,—“but I’ll tell
-the world them bullets weren’t nothin’ to that tooth!”
-
-But the chief of my troubles is the hut lighting problem. So far, I have
-not been able to get any response to my petition for an electric
-lighting system. Our fine carbide lamps are a frank fizzle, our candles
-are all gone, we have nothing but a few lanterns and small oil lamps.
-Every day someone breaks my heart by breaking another lamp chimney, and
-new ones, alas! are not to be had for love or money in this part of
-France. Moreover the boys have developed a most inconvenient habit of
-walking off with the lamps. At first I said in exasperation; “Well, let
-them take them! As soon as the oil burns out they’ll find the lamps
-aren’t any use to them.” But I didn’t reckon on their Yankee ingenuity.
-They are smart enough, it seems, to bring back the empty ones, and
-exchange them for filled ones, every evening!
-
-
-Mauvages, January 5.
-
-Mauvages is in a state of mind for mutiny, and it’s all over a little
-piece of cloth about two inches square. The case is this; the ——
-Artillery Brigade, having served six months continuously at the front,
-having participated in all the big offensives, and having won an
-enviable reputation, was attached, on coming to this area, for the sake
-of military convenience, to the —— Division already stationed here, a
-draft organization which had never been to the front at all. The
-artillery were far from pleased over the arrangement, but they managed
-to swallow their pride and put a good face on the matter. A few days
-ago, however, the order came out that they were to abandon the insignia
-of their old division and appear—every last man of them,—with the
-insignia of the new division on his arm. The men were furious. The
-batteries stationed at Rosières made a bonfire and burned the detestable
-insignia publicly, for which they got two weeks restriction to camp and
-a new set of little red patches. One boy sewed his “clover-leaf,” as
-they call them, to the seat of his breeches. Raincoats have become all
-the wear, even in the best of weather, for under these the hated symbol
-is hidden. Indeed the feeling was so intense that in some places both
-officers and men tore off their service-stripes before putting on the
-new insignia.
-
-I alone in the town am wearing the insignia of the old division and this
-is a wonderful and weird affair cut out of turkey red bunting and pinned
-to my sweater sleeve in a moment of reminiscent loyalty by my indignant
-detail. But the band keeps on lustily proclaiming the brigade’s undying
-allegiance, for every morning for Reveille, as it makes the grand tour
-of the town it brays forth defiantly the war march of the old division.
-
-“We haven’t got orders to stop _that!_” says the leader.
-
-Since the spirit of rebellion is abroad I have been managing a little
-mutiny of my own. It came about in the matter of Sunday movies. Up till
-the present we had been accustomed to having a service every Sunday
-night, but since the artillery moved in we have been furnished with a
-full-fledged morning service by the regimental chaplain, in view of
-which I had set my heart on having movies in the evening rather than a
-second service. I based my position on the grounds that, since to my
-notion at least, the main end of the work over here is simply to keep
-the boys away from the things that would hurt them, on Sunday night, the
-most dangerous night of all the week, this could best be done by drawing
-them to the hut with a movie show; always provided that their “religious
-needs” had been supplied earlier in the day.
-
-The movie machine was at the hut, I had found an operator in one of the
-batteries, a little Jewish boy who bragged of long experience in the
-states; all I wanted was a film. I went with my request to the office.
-My logic it seemed to me was unassailable. But the office couldn’t see
-it that way. After much debate we agreed to disagree in theory. In
-practice I carried off my film. But I did it with a sinking of the
-heart. My relations with the office have always been quite cordial, this
-was the first incident to cast a gloom over them. Anyway, I thought,
-we’re going to have those movies! I advertised the show extensively.
-
-Sunday night came. The hut was thronged. I was feeling rather
-particularly pleased with things. We had ministered to the boys’ souls
-in the morning, fortified the inner man with free hot chocolate at six
-o’clock, now we were going to finish out the day by satisfying their
-romantic cravings with a film drama of love and adventure.
-
-But oh! for the pride that goes before the stumbling-block! When it came
-to the test it seemed that the little operator, for all his bragging,
-couldn’t make the movie machine go. Perhaps it was because the lad
-didn’t understand the foreign make, perhaps it was because the machine
-needed to be talked to in French, or perhaps it was just because the
-project had been unblessed from the beginning; I don’t know. We had half
-the camp ganged around the machine, offering to take a hand. Everybody
-was criticizing and advising, which, I suppose, added the last touch to
-the little operator’s confusion. After waiting an interminable time in
-the dark we witnessed a few feeble flickers on the screen and then
-darkness once more. The audience dribbled disgustedly away. They
-probably made up for their disappointment in the cafés.
-
-This morning the driver stopped at the hut to take the machine away.
-“Have a good show, last night?” he asked.
-
-“Umm hm,” said I, grinning cheerfully.
-
-I am praying that the truth about that show never reaches the office!
-
-
-Mauvages, January 10.
-
-Tonight I leave Mauvages. Two weeks more and I shall be “homeward
-bound.” I am so tired that it has seemed to me for some time that the
-only thing I can do is to go home. There isn’t any room in France these
-days for anyone who isn’t perfectly strong, perfectly rested. A week ago
-I went to Nancy and persuaded the lady in charge of the women workers of
-this division, after some argument, to let me go. I have already
-overstayed my contract by eight months. Now they have telegraphed from
-Paris that they have a sailing for me. The man secretary is here to take
-over this hut.
-
-Because I hate leave-takings I tried to keep the fact that I was going
-dark until the very last minute but at the end word got around. The boys
-came flocking into my kitchen with messages and missives for the states.
-Boys whom I had never to my knowledge seen before pledged me to call up
-their wives on the long distance telephone as soon as I should land. One
-boy gave me two German fuses weighing a number of pounds apiece to carry
-home. If I would take one for him, I might keep the other one, he said.
-
-“Say hello to the Statue of Liberty for me!”
-
-“Give my regards to Broadway.”
-
-“Say Lady, can’t you take me in your trunk?” they chorused.
-
-As for Nick, he has instructed me to go to Brooklyn, pick out the best
-hat in his wife’s millinery store, “And tell the missus it’s on me.”
-
-I have taken my last agonized inventory, turned in my last
-accounts,—balanced by Big Bill. This afternoon I went to take my last
-look at the little hut. It is all torn to pieces, they have begun to
-build that addition which I started begging for a month ago; I slipped
-one of my canteen tea-cups into my bag just for old times sake.
-
-Neddy came in to say Good-bye. At the last moment he shyly placed a
-little box in my hand. In it was a pretty gilt Lorraine cross. He had
-walked all the way into Gondrecourt to get it. He would have bought me a
-chain too, he explained with a flush, only he was “pecuniarily
-embarrassed.” Dear little Neddy! If he only knew how much better I liked
-it without the chain.
-
-My luggage is all packed and Bill has strapped it up for me. I have said
-adieu to the Curé and the Colonel. Madame the Caretaker has kissed me on
-both cheeks and dropped a tear over me. Now I am waiting for the A. R.
-jitney to come and take me to the station.
-
-A horrid thought has just occurred to me. The captain’s cognac must be
-still in the corner of the store-room shelf. What _will_ the secretary
-think?
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII: VERDUN—THE FRENCH
-
-
-Paris, January 12.
-
-It is fortunate that the world looks tolerantly on a certain instability
-in the feminine mind. When I left Mauvages there was just one thought in
-my head,—to go straight home. I have been twenty-four hours in Paris;
-already my resolution is wavering. It’s all on account of what they said
-to me at the Headquarters office.
-
-Paris is truly a different city from the one I last saw in September on
-my way back from Saint Malo; the streets thronged with people, and
-brightly lighted at night, the shop windows gay and inviting, freed from
-their patterned lattices of paper strips which formerly protected the
-glass from the concussions caused by shells and bombs. In the Place de
-la Concorde the statue representing the City of Strasbourg, divested of
-the mourning wreaths which it has worn ever since 1870, now smiles
-triumphantly above a mass of flags and flowers; and, most thrilling of
-all, the crouched grey guns of Germany, like so many dumb impotent
-monsters, throng the Place de la Concorde, stretch in a double line
-along the Champs Elysées all the way to the Arc de Triomphe.
-
-Everywhere the shop windows display a picture; a woman’s form, heroic,
-bearing a great sword, with wide spread wings which are at the same time
-wings and American flags; before her the bent and cowering form of the
-Emperor; while beyond, a sea of khaki, illimitable hosts of warriors
-melting away in waves against the horizon; and underneath the words:
-
-“But what tremendous fleet could have brought hither such an army?”
-
-“The _Lusitania_.”
-
-The Patisserie shops are full of enticing little cakes once more; but,
-sad to say, the quality one finds has depreciated while the prices have
-gone sky-rocketing. I thought I would economise this noon and, instead
-of eating a five franc luncheon at the hotel, substitute a cup of cocoa
-and some little cakes at a tea-shop. When I came to pay my bill it was
-seven francs fifty! While I was partaking of my frugal repast a French
-Red Cross nurse came into the shop leading two blind poilus. She bought
-them each some cakes as if they had been two little boys and they stood
-there eating them. The poilu nearest me, a tall fine-looking fellow,
-tasted his, “_Ah!_” he exclaimed, “_c’est une vrai Madeleine!_” He lied.
-It was no more like a pre-war Madeleine than chalk is like cheese, but
-if it had been made of India-rubber I suppose he would have said the
-same thing, and said it with just the same grave and gracious courtesy.
-
-Now that the war is over, one feels sorrier than ever for the French
-officers who haven’t medals.
-
-“The Frenchies are issuing the _croix de guerre_ with their rations
-now,” the boys used to say. And indeed when one sees a French officer
-without some sort of decoration one feels instinctively that something
-must be the matter with him.
-
-To go or not to go? I am thinking of a compromise. I will postpone my
-sailing, take the furlough that is due to me. At the end of two weeks I
-can calmly make up my mind.
-
-
-Cauterets, January 20.
-
-“There’s only one poor feature about this place;” declared a boy today,
-“they won’t let you stay long enough.”
-
-This is a representative but not a universal sentiment. Some of the boys
-don’t like the snow, for Cauterets being high in the Pyrenees, is deep
-in snow at present. A few complain that they don’t get enough to eat. It
-is the breakfasts chiefly that fail to satisfy. The French having been
-used, time out of mind, to a _petit déjeuner_ of rolls and coffee,
-utterly fail to comprehend the American need for heartier sustenance.
-When the contracts with the hotels were made it was carefully stipulated
-that eggs, meat or fish should be served at breakfast in addition to the
-continental menu, but the quantities were not stated and to a hearty
-doughboy on a cold morning _one_ egg is a mere tantalization, if not an
-insult. Every morning you may see them flocking in swarms to the Y. in
-order to round out their unsatisfactory breakfasts with hot chocolate
-and bread and jam. Yesterday I overheard some indignant splutterings
-from a little crowd at one of the canteen tables.
-
-“What’s the matter, boys?”
-
-“They gave us fish this morning for breakfast!”
-
-“They did?”
-
-“Yep! One sardine to each man!”
-
-Yet in spite of a few such inharmonious notes, Cauterets, like Saint
-Malo and Aix-les-Bains, is instinct with the spirit of the American
-soldier on leave. And the American soldier on leave is the Playboy of
-the Western World. When the last doughboy has walked up the gang-plank
-of the last west-bound transport, I think the railway officials,
-gate-keepers, station agents, and train conductors all over France will
-settle back in their chairs and draw a deep breath of relief.
-
-The French poilu and the English Tommy have both questioned often and
-bitterly why it was that while they must ride third class, the American
-soldier habitually traveled second and first; the answer being that you
-simply can’t keep the doughboys out! It is the idea of the social
-distinction implied by the _classes_ I fancy that makes half the
-trouble. However that may be, it is absolutely against the rules of the
-game for any doughboy to ride third class if there are any second class
-coaches, and equally disgraceful to ride second class if there is a
-first. I myself have seen an American buck private with third class
-transportation in his pocket stretching his legs in a luxurious first
-class compartment seat, while a French general stood up outside in the
-corridor! At another time I took a journey in a first class compartment
-built for six, in which three English officers, an English titled Lady,
-her companion, two muddy doughboys and myself were all crowded. This was
-an anxious trip for me, for not only was I worried lest an indignant
-conductor should eject the doughboys, but I was also guiltily conscious
-of having paid only a second class fare myself!
-
-One joyous company of eight lads on leave whom I encountered on the way
-down here counted in their number one sergeant with a well-worn second
-class pass. Things arranged themselves very simply. In the line-up at
-the gate or in the car, the sergeant, heading the file, presented his
-pass first, then, as it was handed back to him, slipped it behind his
-back to the next man and so on down the line. Once in a second class
-compartment it was usually an easy matter to transfer to first. This
-same crowd related to me how, when locked out of an empty first class
-compartment by an irate conductor they merely waited until the next
-stop, then getting out climbed through the window on the off side of the
-train into the forbidden seats.
-
-“Golly, but that old frog got a shock when he looked in through the
-glass door and saw us sitting there!”
-
-They were overcome with chagrin because at the last change one member of
-the party allowed himself to be bullied by a hard-boiled M. P. into
-leaving the first class car.
-
-“He’s broken our record,” they mourned; “he’s disgraced the family!” And
-half their pleasure in the remainder of the trip was spoiled it was
-evident.
-
-Irrepressible, curious of all things, awed by nothing, the doughboy
-cares not a snap of his fingers for the whole of French Officialdom. An
-officer told me how, when standing on a station platform the other day,
-an irate and husky doughboy sailed by him, headed for the baggage-room
-in search of somebody’s luggage.
-
-“If you hear a noise, Major,” he remarked in transit, “you’ll know that
-I’m stepping on a frog.”
-
-The French railway system affords him a never-failing topic for
-amusement. And truly it has its quaint points. On the trip down we
-passed over one line where the heating system for the cars consisted
-entirely of long flat metal cans filled with hot water which were shoved
-in under our feet, so that, no matter how chilly the rest of us might
-be, our toes at least could travel in comfort; while on the walls of
-each coach, we observed with glee, was an official notice requesting the
-passengers to refrain from throwing objects such as _empty bottles_ out
-the windows as numerous casualties among the employees had resulted from
-this practice!
-
-The doughboy passes everywhere by virtue of the magic words, “_no
-compree_.” Traveling he develops a stupidity that is absolute and
-unshakable.
-
-“I never understand anything they say,” chuckled one youngster joyously,
-“until they begin to talk about something to eat”.
-
-Wonderful tales are told of escapades and adventures; such as the story
-of the boy who started out to spend his leave at Aix-les-Bains and
-traveled half over Italy before he came back, all on the the strength of
-the pass-word “onion-stew” and an unidentified document that happened to
-have a red seal attached. Common rumour has it that the official report
-records sixty thousand A. W. O. L.s at the present date in the A. E. F.
-in France. I don’t know whether this is correct, but I rather hope it
-is. Now that the war is won I am glad that in spite of Provost Marshals
-and M. P.s some of the boys at least are on the way to discovering that
-there is something more to France than just “mud and kilometers.”
-
-
-Paris, February 7.
-
-I’m going to stay. If I went home now I would feel like a quitter all
-the rest of my life. I don’t know where I’m going. They asked me if I
-would like to go to Germany but I said no, I didn’t want to look at
-Germans. I shall have to stay here in Paris for a week or so anyway in
-order to get that wretched business of a broken tooth, which the
-Christmas caramel at Mauvages began, straightened out. In the meantime,
-I am doing what I can in a perfectly amateur and impromptu way to help
-young America see Paris.
-
-Paris is the lodestar of France for the A. E. F. From every part of the
-country it draws them like a magnet. When on leave, no matter from what
-portion of France they may have come or what corner they may be bound
-for, they always contrive to get there by way of Paris. If the R. T. O.
-instructs them to change to another line before they reach the city,
-they arrive there just the same, to explain blandly to the M. P. that
-they went to sleep on the train: “and when I woke up, why here I was in
-Paris!” What dodges the doughboys haven’t worked in order to circumvent
-the M. P.s and get into Paris without official permission, or once in
-Paris to stay longer than the short time allotted them, would be beyond
-human imagination. There is one story current, for whose truth though, I
-cannot vouch, of an American private who passed a week in the forbidden
-city in the uniform of his cousin, a lieutenant in the French Army. At
-the time of the signing of the armistice, for several days the M. P.s’
-vigilance was relaxed and boys from all over France swarmed to the city
-to participate in the festivities, but since then the penalties for the
-unlucky ones who are caught have grown more and more severe.
-
-Yesterday by request I took two boys to the Louvre. We wandered through
-the galleries of Greek and Roman sculptures. One boy, looking at the
-yellowed and discolored surfaces, declared himself bitterly
-disappointed. He had heard that the statues were all real marble here,
-but it was perfectly plain that they were nothing but plaster
-imitations! The other boy asked naïvely if the mutilated statues were
-“meant to represent people who had had their heads chopped off.” After
-about half an hour they consulted their watches, announced that we had
-just time to get to a movie show, and wouldn’t I go with them?
-
-But if the finer points of Greek art are lost on many, there are plenty
-of other things which they do appreciate.
-
-“Can you climb to the top of the Eiffel tower?”
-
-“Where is the church that the shell struck on Good Friday?”
-
-“What would you advise me to buy to send home to Mother?”
-
-“How often does the Ferris Wheel go?”
-
-“Is there any place in Paris where one can get ice-cream soda?”
-
-These are some of the questions that they ask you. Some go to the Opera,
-sitting invariably in the best seats to the amazement of the French
-people. Yesterday I stopped at the box-office to buy some tickets. A boy
-standing just inside the door spoke to me.
-
-“I beg your pardon, were you going to buy a seat for this afternoon?”
-
-“No,” I said; “for Saturday.”
-
-“I have an extra ticket. I’d be glad to have you use it.”
-
-He went on to tell me that he was taking the six o’clock train, that he
-had bought tickets for himself and a friend for the matinee as a last
-pleasure, but that his friend had failed him. I hesitated, uncertain.
-“What’s the opera?” I asked, just because it was something to say.
-
-“It’s La Bohème,” he said. I fell.
-
-“I’m mighty glad,” he told me, “I was just about to go out and pick up a
-chicken on the street, when you came in.”
-
-The opera was a dream of loveliness. I felt as if I must have done
-something very good indeed in some previous existence to be thus
-rewarded.
-
-Today I encountered two boys who told me how they had “done” Paris.
-
-“We stopped at a store and bought a bunch of post cards, all the famous
-buildings and everything. Then we got a taxi. After that all we’d do was
-to show the chauffeur a post card and he’d drive us to it,—then we’d
-show him another one, and so we kept a-goin’ until we’d seen most all of
-Paris. But gee! That taxi bill was a fright!”
-
-This afternoon, coming down the “Boulevard de Wop,” as the boys call the
-Boulevard des Italiens, I paused beside a fiacre, attached to a
-particularly wretched looking old nag, which was drawn up by the
-sidewalk. Into it were piling merrily some eight or nine doughboys, the
-cabman fairly dancing on his seat as he uttered frantic but perfectly
-unheeded expostulations. Finally as the cabby appeared to be developing
-apoplexy, I spoke up.
-
-“Boys, you know that _really_ that broken-down old beast never _could_
-pull all of you!”
-
-Whereupon half of them immediately piled out again. One of the remaining
-ones leaned out of the fiacre.
-
-“Say Lady, can you talk French?” he demanded earnestly.
-
-“Why a little.”
-
-“Well tell that old guy for me, will you,” he indicated the still
-disgruntled _cocher_ who, like the rest of his tribe, was crowned with
-an ornamental “stove-pipe,” “that I want him to lend me his hat.”
-
-Tonight I met a girl I know who is in the Hut Equipment Department. She
-has just returned from an extended tour of inspection. I told her I
-didn’t know where my next assignment was to be.
-
-“Why don’t you go to Verdun?” she asked. “The conditions about there are
-worse than any other place in France. Men are commiting suicide there
-every day.”
-
-So I wrote a note to the Office asking that I be sent to Verdun.
-
-
-Bar-le-Duc, February 16.
-
-Somewhere here in Bar-le-Duc there is an extraordinary thing. It is the
-Mausoleum of René of Chalons, prince of Orange, and designed in
-accordance with his wishes. Against an ermine mantle, under a rich
-armorial crest, stands a skeleton or rather the rotting carcass of a
-man, half bone and half disintegrating tissue, holding aloft in one
-ghastly hand, his heart, an offering, so the story goes, to his lady
-wife.
-
-Every time I am in Bar-le-Duc, even if it is only an hour between
-trains, I go hunting for that skeleton; but the nearest I have come so
-far, is to find it on a picture post card. Once I thought I had surely
-run it to earth when I came upon a strange old church built so as to
-bridge a narrow moat-like canal, and so low that it seemed as if the
-water must ooze up through the stone slabs of the floor, but no.
-
-I am here at Bar-le-Duc for a few days because it seems that after all
-it isn’t quite certain whether I had better go to Verdun or to Souilly.
-While my fate is being decided, I am acting as a sort of errand-girl,
-special messenger and Jack-of-all-jobs here at Headquarters.
-
-This morning I went out in a flivver to do an errand. The driver told me
-how, a few days ago, he had carried a young French girl all over the
-country-side looking for her aviator-lover’s grave. Finally with the
-help of a French officer they had found it. The girl had placed a wreath
-on the grave, said a little prayer and turned away. He showed me the
-place, three grey wooden crosses, one with a china wreath on it, marking
-the field where a large aviation camp had once been and now quite the
-loneliest and most deserted spot in the world.
-
-Coming back, I was sent to the Provost Marshal’s office to telephone.
-While I waited for my connection two M. P.s brought in a prisoner. He
-belonged to the —— Division which reached France in September. Two days
-after he landed he went A. W. O. L. and had been missing ever since. By
-some unknown means he had managed to acquire a typewriter and all
-winter, it appeared, he had been living in the woods supporting himself
-by typing faked travel orders and selling them to the soldiers. He was a
-heavy-set fellow, sullen and taciturn under their questioning. They went
-through his pockets and turned out the collection on the table; chewing
-gum, tobacco, a shaving-set, old newspapers, screws and nails, buttons
-and string and matches and pins, pencils, and post cards, a knife and
-three toothbrushes.
-
-Bar-le-Duc I understand does a thriving business in A. W. O. L.s. One of
-the M. P.s told me of a lad who, when asked for his papers, took to his
-heels and was promptly pursued.
-
-“I chased him all over town, and finally I ran him into the canal,” he
-narrated joyfully. “He stood out there with the water up to his waist
-while I stood on the bank and shied stones at him. And he had on a serge
-uniform too.”
-
-“How did it end?” I asked.
-
-“Oh I let him go; I figured if he wanted to get away that bad he had a
-right to.”
-
-Up this same canal a few weeks ago came a flotilla of French submarines
-bound for the Rhine, the sailors startling the inhabitants by their
-sudden appearance in the streets in their naval uniforms and their
-casual references to their ships close at hand. Somebody was unkind
-enough to declare that the subs had started their journey from the coast
-on Armistice Day, but I am sure this must be a libel.
-
-This afternoon I asked if I might work in the canteen. This is in a
-French house, a few doors beyond the beautiful Officers’ Club, the home
-of one of the wealthy manufacturers of the _Confiture de Bar-le-Duc_,
-lent by him, rent-free for the use of the Americans during the war. In
-the course of the afternoon I became the possessor of a puppy-dog
-presented me by a motor-truck driver, who, following some careless
-remark of mine about wishing I had a puppy, dropped the scared little
-black thing in my arms and fled. As soon as I could collect my senses I
-flew around the counter and out the door after him, calling on him to
-take his dog back. But when I reached the street, motor-truck and driver
-both had vanished. I would have loved to keep the little beggar, but
-here I am, a transient traveller bound for nobody knows where; what
-could I do? I explained my dilemma to the grinning crowd in the canteen.
-One of the boys spoke up.
-
-“I’ll take him and give him to my French girl,” he said. I relinquished
-the little fellow regretfully. I hope Mademoiselle makes him a good
-foster-mother.
-
-A little while later I noticed a boy at the counter who wore three
-service stripes and two wound stripes. “What’s your division?” I asked.
-He told me. He belonged to my old regiment! He had been in the Milk
-Battalion at Goncourt, and he remembered me. He was a Class B man now
-and in the post office at Bar-le-Duc.
-
-“What of the rest?” I asked.
-
-“They’re mostly dead,” he answered, and he told me how, after one
-charge, out of the whole Company M six men and the captain had come
-back.
-
-I broke down and cried; I couldn’t help it. The boy, embarrassed, drew
-away. He is the only man I have seen out of my regiment since last
-March, and all he could say was, “They’re mostly dead!” Dead at
-Château-Thierry, dead on the Marne, dead by Soissons, dead in honor,
-dead with glory. America, will you ever forget?
-
-
-Bar-le-Duc, February 18.
-
-Everyone here is incensed this morning over the action of the French
-troops in the matter of the theatre. It seems that the Americans had
-arranged a schedule of movies and shows to be given at the local theatre
-a month in advance. A soldier show was billed for tonight, the company
-had reached town, the audience was beginning to gather from the nearby
-villages, when the French troops who began to arrive in town yesterday
-announced that they had their own exclusive and immediate uses for the
-building. All efforts to arbitrate the matter have so far failed. And
-now word comes that a French lieutenant in order to be ready to repel
-any possible move on the part of the Americans to take possession of the
-theatre for the night has had his bed made up in one of the boxes!
-
-It is the greatest of pities that there should be this wretched element
-of friction between the two allies. If every American could have been
-miraculously whisked out of France the day after the armistice was
-signed the doughboy would likely have been to this day a bit of a
-popular French idol. It is this hanging about with no ostensible end in
-view that frays nerves on both sides and leads to a mutual stepping on
-each other’s toes. No two nationalities I am convinced could be thrown
-into such an intimate and trying relationship and produce perfect
-harmony. There must inevitably be a clash of temperaments. The case in
-this instance, as I see it, is complicated to an extraordinary degree,
-with human foibles and failings a-plenty on both sides.
-
-We Americans have undoubtedly been guilty of bad manners. Quite openly
-and persistently the doughboy has called the Frenchman “frog” to his
-face and this the French have by no means enjoyed. The odd part of the
-thing is that the doughboy can give no explanation of the nickname.
-
-“But why do you call them frogs?” I ask the boys. Usually they look
-quite blank.
-
-“It’s ’cause they sound like frogs when they talk,” explained one lad.
-
-“’Cause they jump around like frogs when they get excited,” offered
-another.
-
-Not one of them suspects that this nickname is a curious survival of the
-old term of contempt “Frog-eaters” applied to the French by the English
-in the days when they were enemies instead of allies!
-
-Undoubtedly too the feminine factor, leading as it has to jealousy, has
-played its share in arousing antagonism.
-
-“The chief victories of the Americans in France,” declared a French
-officer bitterly the other day, “are his conquests over the feminine
-heart!”
-
-Indeed from the start it has been an open secret that the
-“Mademoiselles” have taken a prodigious fancy to the American soldier.
-This is partly because he possesses the charm of novelty, partly because
-he has money and can procure chocolate and cigarettes and partly just
-because he is himself.
-
-“There are three thousand men in this town and three girls,” ran a
-postal addressed by a joyous youngster on leave to his lieutenant; “I’m
-going with one of them and Abe has the other two.”
-
-And who can blame the poilu for a certain amount of resentment, when,
-coming back from the trenches he has discovered that a dashing American
-stationed at an engineering camp in his home town has supplanted him in
-the affections of his sweetheart?
-
-On the American side there is of course the old grievance of the
-overcharging.
-
-“D’you know why you don’t see any Jews in France?” asked a lad of me the
-other day, “It’s because they couldn’t make a living.”
-
-In part, this sense of grievance, as I see it, is justifiable. An
-officer told me not long ago that he had recently been left behind when
-his outfit moved out from a village, as “Mop Up Officer” to settle the
-claims of the townspeople for damage done by the soldiers during their
-stay,—a pane of glass, a truss of straw, the tine of a pitchfork.
-Hearing a commotion in the town square he looked out; the town crier was
-announcing to the populace that now the Americans had gone the price of
-wine would be cut from five francs a bottle to two. But in part this
-sense of grievance is unjustifiable, for the American has in no small
-measure brought this state of affairs upon himself. From the start the
-doughboy’s disgust with the flimsy paper bills and the puzzling tricky
-scheme of the francs, sous and centimes engendered a carelessness toward
-French money which the tradespeople took as a delightful indication of
-unlimited wealth. “But everyone is rich in America!” I have heard them
-declare with childish conviction. So prices began to rise and presently,
-with the prices, the doughboy’s resentment, and then the poilu’s; for
-the rise automatically put all luxuries out of the French soldier’s
-reach and this of course he in turn blamed bitterly on the “rich”
-American. Indeed the sending of a large body of men paid at the rate of
-a dollar a day into a country where the native troops were paid at the
-rate of five cents a day was a social-economic error which somehow, say
-by some system of reserve pay such as the Australians have, should have
-been avoided.
-
-Then too, the American won’t haggle. The Frenchman, as a rule, won’t buy
-unless he can. Prices are fixed with the expectation of a compromise
-after bargaining. Not easily shall I forget a dramatic scene witnessed
-at the “Rag Fair” at the Porte Maillot in Paris between a prosperous
-householder and a “rag” seller over a second-hand padlock. The seller
-remained firm in demanding six cents for the padlock. The householder
-was equally determined not to pay more than five. Finally the
-householder with great dignity withdrew, only to be called back by a
-despairing yelp from the seller. He had capitulated. To the American
-such a performance seems both tedious and undignified; he either takes
-the article at the first price asked or leaves it.
-
-Nor can it be denied that the doughboy tends to be a bit of a prodigal.
-Chief of his spendthrift weaknesses are two; he will pay almost any
-price for sweets, sink almost any sum in a present for his girl. Then
-too the universal custom of gambling in the army, leading to swollen
-fortunes for the favoured ones, has helped to establish standards of
-extravagance. An officer in charge of a company belonging to a negro
-labor regiment told me of seeing two of his boys in a café sit down to a
-twenty-five franc bottle of champagne and then, the taste for some
-reason not quite suiting their fancies, walk out leaving the bottle
-practically untouched behind!
-
-In the light of such incidents as this, who can blame the French people
-for regarding the American as a sort of gift from God beneficently
-allowed them at the time of their greatest national impoverishment, for
-the replenishing of their depleted pocketbooks?
-
-
-Verdun, February 20.
-
-The little narrow-gauge train pulled us in here from Bar-le-Duc at ten
-o’clock last night, a thirty mile run and six hours to make it! When I
-asked for a first class fare at the station I noticed an odd expression
-on the ticket-seller’s face. “They’re all the same,” he said; “all
-second class.” Arrived at the train I understood. The coaches were
-filthy and furnished with straight-backed wooden benches; a heap of
-rubbish surrounded the rickety stove in the centre. Shortly after we
-crawled out of Bar-le-Duc it began to rain. Half the windows were
-innocent of glass. The rain beat in through the empty sashes. Presently
-it grew dark. Several of the passengers, American, reached in their
-pockets and brought out a few grimy candle-ends. We made little
-grease-spots on the benches and stuck the candles there, but the gusts
-of wind from the empty windows kept blowing them out, so half the time
-we jogged along in darkness.
-
-Among the passengers was a little old Frenchman with one arm. He was
-returning to his native village in the devastated area the other side of
-Verdun, after an absence of four years. With him was his young son, an
-immature lad of seventeen.
-
-“_J’ai tine passion_,” declared the old man with startling fervour;
-“_j’ai une passion véritable de revoir le village de ma naissance!_”
-
-In all probability he was returning to nothing but a crumbled heap of
-stones.
-
-“You are very brave,” I told him.
-
-Ah but it was for them, the old, to set an example for the young! It was
-they who should lead the way! It was they who should rebuild France! His
-frail old body fairly shook with the strength of his emotion. What a
-strange, thrilling, tragic pilgrimage!
-
-Verdun resembled nothing but a ruin mercifully wrapped in darkness as we
-passed through the gate and made our way up the hill. We had found,
-luckily, a guide who had a lantern; nowhere else in all the city was so
-much as a gleam of light to be seen. In places, as we passed, the shells
-of houses still stood, staring down with empty eyes at us, in other
-places there were nothing but rubble mounds with here and there a narrow
-jagged bit of wall or a naked chimney standing out like a lonely
-monolith.
-
-Headquarters offices are at the Château on the summit of the hill close
-to the Cathedral, one of the few buildings left undamaged in this part
-of town, a rambling, ungainly, rather gloomy structure. The second story
-consists almost entirely of a series of great empty barren loft-like
-store-rooms. In one of these, known as the Ladies, Cold Storage, I have
-my habitation. Supposed to be a sort of one-night-stand dormitory for
-female tourists,—nurses chiefly,—who are touring the battle-fields, the
-Ladies, Cold Storage is a large dusty garret with grimy rough-plastered
-walls, without a window or as much as a crack to let in any light or air
-except for a few small slits in the roof where the rain leaks in. A
-stove, a long row of cots and a tin basin on a shelf surmounted by a
-broken piece of looking-glass are its only furnishings. However, the L.
-C. S. boasts one luxury, it is equipped with electric lights. This
-helps—when the current is turned on!—when it isn’t, we light a candle
-stub and stick it in an old milk can. The electricity is generated
-underground in the Citadel. When the Americans first came to Verdun some
-enterprising electricians tapped the wires and had forty lights working
-before the French knew anything about it. Upon discovery the French cut
-off the Americans, only to find shortly afterwards that another
-connection had been made. This absurd performance was repeated no less
-than seven times. After the seventh time the French gave up.
-
-We were fairly frightened out of bed this morning by a most horrible
-hubbub,—a Klaxon gas-alarm which is used to call the guests to
-breakfast. Having heard it I am quite convinced that if Gabriel wishes
-to do the job efficiently on the last day, he will scrap his trumpet and
-take a Klaxon.
-
-After breakfast we newcomers hurried out to get a glimpse of the town.
-There were plenty of others likewise occupied as Verdun is a veritable
-magnet for A. E. F. tourists. The Cathedral is closed to visitors but we
-happened upon two French officers who kindly took us through. The roof
-is badly damaged and the stained glass of the windows shattered to bits,
-but beyond that the Cathedral is comparatively unharmed. I was much
-embarrassed when the officers informed me that the _sacrés pierres_, the
-sacred stones from the altar, had been stolen and presumably sent as
-souvenirs to America. At first I pretended not to understand, but they
-took such pains to explain, finally taking me to the altar and showing
-me where the little marble slabs had been dug out, that I finally had to
-admit I understood. The two nurses who were with us were anxious to
-climb the clock-tower, but this, we found, was strictly _défendu_. All
-through the war, we learned afterwards, the clock in the tower had been
-kept going by the faithful verger who refused to leave his post, and
-what’s more, it had kept time. But a short while ago the clock had
-started “skipping.” A party of American boys had just visited the tower.
-Upon investigation it proved that one of the wheels was missing!
-Sometimes I think the French are very patient with us.
-
-Everywhere we went we came upon German prisoners engaged in the most
-leisurely fashion in cleaning up. There are several thousands of them
-here and more to come. Verdun is to rise from her ruins and live once
-more. Yet she can never be in any sense the stately city that once she
-was; for while the business and poorer portions of the city below the
-hill are not irreparably damaged, the finer part with its stately
-mansions and exquisite specimens of mediæval architecture is wrecked
-beyond repair. The most serious obstacle in the way of making at least
-some small portions of the city habitable at present lies in the great
-difficulty of obtaining window-glass.
-
-From the Cathedral we went to the Canteen-in-the-Convent. How the nuns
-would stare, I thought, if they could see their virgin precincts in
-possession of a mob of boys in khaki, white and black, interspersed with
-the blue-coated poilus! Across the back of the building runs a wide
-terrace, once worn by pious feet of patient sisters engaged in holy
-meditations. Here among the lounging boys stand life-sized carved and
-colored images of saints and angels. Their size of course prevents them
-from traveling to America as souvenirs, but even so they must stand
-witness to the irreverence of young America, for the Angel Gabriel is
-hideous in a German gas-mask!
-
-After dinner we went on a trip through the Citadel, that vast
-underground soldier-city with its miles of corridors and rooms enough to
-harbor a whole army, a little world deep underneath the earth. We saw
-the bakery which bakes bread not only for the whole garrison but for all
-the troops in the vicinity; the Foyer, a writing and recreation hall,
-named in honor of President Wilson; the movie theatre; and the hospital
-with its wards and operating room,—what a nightmare horror I thought to
-be sick in those damp and dimly-lighted subterranean caverns! But we
-were not allowed to see more than the outer door of the chapel which
-they say is sumptuous, since it is enriched by all the costly
-furnishings and precious images moved there for safety’s sake from the
-Cathedral. Nor were we shown the underground café where, I have been
-told, an unusually good brand of beer is sold.
-
-From the Citadel, rumour has it, tunnels lead out to the circle of forts
-that form the defences of Verdun, but if you ask a Frenchman if this is
-so, he only looks wise and keeps mum.
-
-
-Verdun, February 25.
-
-I don’t believe there is another canteen quite like my canteen in the
-whole of France. It is a canteen for French civilians. The one-time
-inhabitants of Verdun and the devastated area beyond are allowed by the
-government, it seems, just twenty-four hours in which to visit their
-former homes, after which they must return as there is no food for them
-here and very little shelter. In return for many favours the French
-authorities asked the Y. to co-operate with them in running a sort of
-rest-room for these refugees; they supplying a detail, and we supplying
-the materials to make hot chocolate which is given away, and a secretary
-to take charge. The canteen is in the Collège Buvignier at the foot of
-the hill. There is a _dortoir_ in the building also, in charge of the
-man who was once manager of the principal hotel in the city; two long
-halls full of cots with straw mattresses where the refugees may pass the
-night. My assignment to this canteen is only to be temporary.
-
-The room where my canteen is must have once been quite beautiful,
-high-ceilinged with wainscot panelling below and embossed leather
-covering the walls above. Even now in its state of dingy disrepair, with
-half the panes in the tall arched windows replaced by dirty cloth, it
-keeps something of its old dignity and charm. Beyond the main room is
-another smaller one, connected by two doors, in which the detail lives
-and in which we make our chocolate.
-
-When I took over the canteen from the man who had been in charge of it,
-it was absolutely bare except for four tables and some backless wooden
-benches. My first act on assuming charge was to clean house, my second
-was to persuade the detail to make the very watery chocolate richer.
-After that we proceeded to refurnish and adorn. We ran a frieze of
-war-pictures in color, taken from a child’s pictorial _Histoire de la
-Guerre_ around the top of the wainscoting, hung French and American
-flags from the chandeliers, teased the French authorities into bringing
-us some nice upholstered armchairs for the old ladies to sit in, and,
-finally, put a little pot of primroses or snow-drops, dug with a broken
-tile from a ruined garden, in the centre of each table. Then a kind
-secretary bound for Bar-le-Duc was persuaded to go shopping for us and
-brought back an array of French magazines, hand-picked, and an
-assortment of toys to amuse the kiddies who must often wait here with
-their families between trains, though so far, it must be confessed, it
-is chiefly the detail who have been amused by them. And now I am
-wondering what there is to do next.
-
-Besides the hot chocolate, we carry on a trade in bread, a huge sackfull
-of which is brought us fresh every day from the underground bakery on
-the back of a little round-faced poilu; and we do a brisk business in
-checking parcels, without checks. Yesterday a rabbit was left all day in
-our care. I was sorry for the poor beast cooped up in the little box and
-wanted to give it a drink of water, but the poilus insisted that this
-would be fatal. Whether this might possibly be a zoölogical fact, or is
-just part of the national prejudice against water, I can’t determine.
-
-At first, remembering my difficulties with the French Army at Mauvages,
-I was a little apprehensive as to how my two poilus, Emil and Guillaume
-and I might get along. But though I am sure they think me the oddest
-creature in the world, and my presence here unconventional beyond words,
-yet their behaviour could not possibly be more courteous, considerate
-and deferential. They won’t even allow me to wash the chocolate cups.
-
-“Mademoiselle will soil her hands!”
-
-And they are forever telling me that I am working too hard. “But
-Mademoiselle will be fatigued!” Which is so absurd as to fairly
-exasperate me.
-
-Besides Emil and Guillaume we have four soldier friends-of-the-family,
-as it were, who also frequent the back room. The canteen is supposed to
-be a strictly civilian affair, but we make an exception in favour of the
-four _camarades_, and they repay us by helping chop the stove-wood which
-is stacked in a great pile outside the door and is nothing more or less
-than the stakes to which were once fastened barbed-wire entanglements.
-Each stake still bears two little rings of wire around it and every few
-days one has to clear out the accumulation of barbed-wire entanglements
-from the chocolate-stove. _Les défences de Verdun_ the poilus call the
-wood-pile. The poilus are all artillerymen from a regiment of “75s.”
-Guillaume has brought down three Boche planes, he tells me, and Emil
-five. One of the poilus is a handsome brigadier, or corporal, who wears
-wooden shoes. I said something about _sabots_ the other day. But don’t
-they wear _sabots_ in America? The poilus were astonished to learn that
-wooden shoes were unknown among us! There is also a sergeant who is the
-aristocrat of our little circle, a dreamy looking lad, a student of
-architecture at the Beaux Arts. Yesterday he shyly proffered me an
-envelope; in it was a pretty pen-and-ink sketch of two little girls, one
-in the costume of Alsace, the other of Lorraine, proffering bouquets,
-and underneath was written, “Souvenir of a Frenchman who thanks America
-for having given the victory more quickly.” Our poilu friends are
-constantly straying into the back room in order to read the newspapers
-here and to get a cup of hot chocolate. Every now and then they all get
-together and hold a _vin rouge_ tea party. On these occasions it is
-evidently a mystery to them why, though I join them in eating bread and
-cheese, I always refuse the _vin rouge_!
-
-The politeness of the poilus is equalled by that of the clientele. They
-are extraordinarily grateful for what little we do for them. Today an
-old lady, in spite of anything I could say, insisted on tipping me with
-a two franc piece! I spent it buying chocolates and cigarettes for the
-poilus at the Canteen-in-the-Convent. Every class of society flows into
-my little canteen from gently bred ladies under the escort of immaculate
-officers to old men who resemble nothing but the forlornest vagabonds.
-The cheerfulness and courage of the refugees in general is astonishing.
-One would think that a room full of people engaged in such a mournful
-mission would be a gloomy place, but on the contrary, although
-occasionally you see a woman quietly sobbing, at most times we fairly
-buzz with pleasant sociability. The women come in with faces bright with
-excitement. “Oh the poor Cathedral!” they cry.
-
-“Did you find anything of your home?” I ask. For a moment the tears swim
-in their brave eyes. “_Rien_” they answer shaking their heads.
-“Nothing!”
-
-Today an old man in a long white apron smock was the centre of attention
-here. He was busy searching the ruins of his house for buried treasure.
-Every little while he would come back to the canteen with the fruits of
-his pathetic salvaging,—a few silver spoons, some paint brushes, a bolt
-of black velvet ribbon,—place them in a basket and then return to look
-for more. Two German prisoners were digging for him. Finally he came
-back with six unbroken champagne glasses and a face scored with tragedy.
-He had been hoping against hope to recover the treasures in his wine
-cellar but he was too late, not a bottle was there left!
-
-
-Verdun, February 28.
-
-This morning I went out on a truck to Fort Douaumont. This is the fort
-which was captured by the Germans, held by them for five months, and
-then retaken by the French and marks the enemy’s nearest approach to the
-city. Oddly enough the French were the gainers through this occupation
-to the extent of a splendid electric lighting system introduced by the
-Germans into the fort!
-
-A modern fort does not resemble in the least the idea that one has of a
-“fort.” Viewed from outside it is nothing more or less than a hole in
-the ground. Once inside we had the sense of being in a monster ant-hill
-as we followed our guide through a network of tunnelled corridors. We
-saw the room of the Commandant with its wonderful relief maps both
-French and German of the Verdun hills, we saw the war-museum, the Foyer,
-the store-rooms and engine-rooms, the magazine rooms where the big
-shells were stacked like cord wood, and we climbed up into the turrets
-of the disappearing guns. In this strange fort which has been both
-friend and enemy we looked through one empty doorway into a pit of ruins
-open to the sky, under the wreckage sixteen Germans lay, they said; it
-was here that a French shell had broken through. We passed by another
-door which bore a sign on it announcing that this was the tomb of five
-French mitrailleurs who had been killed by a German shell in the room
-within; instead of burying the bodies they had simply sealed up the door
-and left them. Then we ducked through a little low door and climbed up
-over the hillock which forms the roof of the fort as it were. All about
-us stretched the abomination of desolation of the battle-fields, wracked
-tortured earth, seared and scarred into a yellow-grey desert waste. Here
-and there lay bones, human bones, sometimes scattered loose, sometimes
-gathered in a little heap with a rusty helmet and a broken rifle lying
-close beside them. Only a few hundred feet from the road, the man who
-guided the party told us, he came yesterday upon two unburied bodies.
-
-To the northeast we could just discern a large wooden cross. A French
-officer who was stationed at the fort pointed it out to us. Here, he
-said, lay buried no less than twelve hundred French soldiers. They had
-been given a line of trench to hold, the officers were taken from them,
-they were to expect no reinforcements or relief. They were left there
-knowing it was only a question of days or hours. When the French finally
-reached the line again every man was dead. So they left them where they
-lay and filled the trench in over them, but each man’s rifle they took
-and planted upright in the earth beside him. There is a heroic theme for
-a poet!
-
-When I reached the canteen again I found a ragged disconsolate old soul
-occupying one of the benches. On seeing me he began a sad recital of
-sore feet, ending with the petition that I procure him a pair of rubber
-boots and emphasizing the point by taking off his shoes then and there
-and exhibiting his troubles,—which weren’t pretty,—to me. I was
-perplexed, not knowing what to do, when the friendly M. P. on the beat
-happened in; so I put the case up to him. He told me that there was a
-salvage dump at the station. We set out together and succeeded in
-finding an enormous pair of rubber overshoes, and, what’s more, in
-getting away with them. The old man was pleased as Punch, put them on
-and hobbled off in them. Tonight someone told me a melancholy tale. An
-M. P. stationed upon the hill had spied an old Frenchman going by in a
-pair of American overshoes and had straightway held him up and ordered
-him to relinquish what was Government property. And the old man perforce
-had to sit down in the street and take off his shoes.
-
-Speaking of boots reminds me of the tale told me by a doughboy the other
-day; a tale of a pair of tan shoes, handsome, shiny, new tan shoes which
-was sold to every man in turn in his whole company only to be finally
-purchased as a bargain at thirty-five francs by an unsuspecting
-Frenchman. They were beautiful shoes, the boy assured me, the only
-trouble was that they both happened to be for the left foot.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII: CONFLANS—PIONEERS, M.P.’s AND OTHERS
-
-
-Jarny, March 2.
-
-I am living in a hospital. Being in the occupied territory, the hospital
-has been for the last four years, of course, a German hospital. Over the
-doorways are painted such pious mottoes as “_Gruss Gott!_” and the
-theatre, for there is an amusement hall in the building, is adorned with
-a back-drop on which a Siegfried-esque hero overlooks an ideal German
-landscape wherein a picture-book castle perches on the top of an
-impossible mountain. At the other end of the hall is painted an enormous
-iron cross. The masterpiece of the collection, though, is on the wall of
-the basketball court and is, naturally, a portrait of His Late Imperial
-Majesty, although one indentifies him rather by inference than
-recognition, for the countenance having recently served for a pistol
-target is battered almost out of human semblance. The main part of the
-hospital is occupied by the Y.; in the wings some two hundred ordnance
-boys are quartered; we ladies find comfortable lodging in the operating
-room. There are five of us here at present, two American girls, besides
-myself, and two Englishwomen. These latter are ladies of high degree, I
-gather, being related to bishops and other such personages. They go
-under the unvarying title of the “British Army, First and Second
-Battalions.” According to report they were sent over here from England
-to do propaganda work, that is, to create a pleasant impression on young
-America and thus help to forge another link between the two nations
-etc., but this they indignantly deny. However that may be, the boys
-derive a rather wicked joy from teasing and arguing with the good
-ladies, and particularly from filling them full of amazing tales about
-“The States.” Even the Secretary can’t resist the temptation to “rag”
-them, and though they are usually very patient under his plaguing, today
-at dinner we received a shock. In response to one of his more daring
-sallies, the Bishop’s sister, fixing the Secretary with an icy eye,
-lifted one patrician hand to her august nose, and thumbed it! Which only
-goes to show that even an English Lady of Quality has human moments. And
-if we on our side must laugh a bit at them, it is plain to see that
-they, in their turn, find us infinitely amusing. In fact I half suspect,
-since they spend hours every day covering sheets of paper with close,
-fine handwriting, that the good ladies are engaged upon writing a book
-concerning the peculiarities of their American cousins when seen at
-close range. And in view of all the wonderful material the boys have
-furnished them, that book should make rich reading.
-
-There are three Y.s here in a little triangle each a mile apart, all
-under the same management; Jamy, Conflans and Labry. Within this
-triangle, besides the ordnance detachment, there is a regiment of
-engineers, two companies of pioneer infantry, a telegraph battalion and
-a detachment of negro labor troops.
-
-When the Americans came here last November, the town, they tell us, was
-an indescribable mess, the roads choked with abandoned military material
-and litter of all sorts. To the Americans as usual fell the pleasant
-task of cleaning up. Sometimes I think that if France doesn’t come out
-of this war as clean as the classic Spotless Town it will only be
-because the Americans weren’t here long enough. And yet, funnily enough,
-France being cleaned up by America has often provided a spectacle
-analogous to a little boy having his face washed against his will. At
-Bourmont, when the Americans sought to make the town sanitary by a
-liberal use of disinfectants, a frantic protest went up from the
-inhabitants: their wells, they claimed, had all been ruined! At
-Gondrecourt the Mayor presented a formal complaint; the Americans were
-wearing away the streets, he said, by too much cleaning! And on the
-other hand this sort of work proves none too pleasant a pill for
-American pride to swallow. Today a young New York Jew came into the
-canteen. He was a handsome fellow and in civilian life evidently
-something of a dandy. He belonged to the pioneers and he had been
-engaged all day, I gathered, in following about at the tail of a dump
-cart, picking up tin cans and rubbish.
-
-“My God!” he suddenly burst out. “If my wife could see me now! My God!
-if she could see me!”
-
-One day last fall going down a street I passed a boy who was engaged in
-a particularly dirty sort of cleaning. He looked up, caught my eye,
-stood grinning sheepishly at me a moment. Then he drawled, half
-humourously, half-bitterly:
-
-“And my mother thinks I’m in the trenches!”
-
-
-Conflans, March 10.
-
-After so many weeks of wandering, I have settled down to a job again.
-The last six “huts” in which I have been were in a barracks, a casino, a
-private house, a convent, a college and a hospital. This “hut” is in a
-hotel. The hotel is situated directly back of the Conflans-Jamy railroad
-station. Before the war the hotel was a prosperous and pleasant place,
-judging from the photograph which Madame showed us; its windows filled
-with real lace curtains all matching! as she pointed out; the broad
-terrace in front on sunny days filled with little tables and crowded
-with well-dressed people. Now, after four years of German occupation, it
-is a melancholy spectacle; ragged, dingy, half the panes gone from the
-windows, its front painted over with staring German signs. There are two
-entrances, one into the hall leading to the rooms given over to the Y.
-the other into what we call the “Annex,” a little café kept by Madame
-and Monsieur, the proprietors of the place. Next to our red triangle
-sign stares a board announcing brazenly in red and yellow _Vin et
-Bière_; but the irony of the juxtaposition is quite lost on the French;
-indeed yesterday Madame asked me if I couldn’t get her the loan of a
-truck to go to Nancy for a load of beer!
-
-Madame and Monsieur have been here all through the German occupation.
-The Germans weren’t bad, Madame told me, if one were very meek and never
-said a word, but did just exactly as they said,—she had had some
-difficulty to be sure, reducing her more temperish spouse to the proper
-attitude of meek submission!—but they had made a clean sweep of
-everything of value; all her linen that she had carefully hidden, her
-copper utensils, everything.
-
-The Y. consists of a canteen room, a reading and writing room,
-store-room, kitchen and office. When I first saw the place it was as
-uninviting as anything could well be; dark, dirty, ill-smelling, the
-walls covered with soiled ragged paper. But now it is very nice; the
-dirty cloth in the window frames has been replaced by vitex, the windows
-hung with pretty curtains, new electric lights have been added, and best
-of all, the walls entirely covered with German camouflage cloth and
-decorated with bright posters. This camouflage cloth is a Godsend; woven
-of finely twisted strands of paper, it comes in three colors, a soft
-brown, a yellowish green and a dark blue, resembling, when on the walls,
-a loosely woven burlap. It was used by the Germans to conceal and
-disguise military objects and was left here in large quantities when
-they evacuated. The Americans hereabouts use it for every imaginable
-purpose; for covering unsightly walls, for curtains, for officers’ mess
-table-cloths. Then there are the ammunition bags made of paper cloth
-which the boys use for laundry bags. “When in doubt, camouflage,” is the
-motto. I chose brown for my canteen and now it is on the walls I feel
-that no millionaire could ask for anything prettier. Only I wonder; will
-they ask me to join the paper-hangers’ union when I get home?
-
-Besides running the dry canteen, we serve hot chocolate free every night
-for all comers here, filling up their canteens so the boys can take it
-away with them, and run a free lodging-house. Every day we have boys
-coming into the canteen asking for a bed. So after nine-fifteen we stack
-all the chairs and tables at one end of the writing-room, and bring out
-canvas-cots and blankets from the store-room for our lodgers. There is
-only one unfortunate feature of this scheme; the lodgers become so
-attached to their blankets that they are all too apt to carry them away
-with them the next morning!
-
-A man secretary and I are to run the hut together; a minister in the
-states, here he answers to the unvarying title of “Chief.” The “Chief” I
-find at present chiefly remarkable for his trousers. These are garments
-with a past apparently and a present of such a sort that in the company
-of ladies he is only rendered at ease by assuming a sitting posture. If
-compelled to rise he backs out of your presence as if you were royalty
-or goes with the gesture of the little boy who has been chastised.
-Outside the house, no matter how fine the day may be, he goes discreetly
-clad in a raincoat.
-
-“I must,” declares the Chief at least six times a day, “go to Toul and
-get a new uniform.”
-
-“Amen,” say I under my breath.
-
-Besides the outfits stationed in town there are some twenty more in the
-neighborhood which draw their rations here at the railhead and then
-there are the leave trains on their way to or from Germany, whose
-passing, like a visitation of locusts, leaves the canteen stripped and
-bare. The negro labor troops in the vicinity supply quite a new element.
-Sometimes this takes the form of a bit of humour. Last night I had drawn
-several cups of cocoa ahead of the demand when a darky lad came shyly up
-to the counter and pointed to one.
-
-“Please ma’am,” he asked, “am dat cup occupied?”
-
-There is one fat and genial little darky who is a constant customer,
-always he comes in munching a sandwich or an orange or some other edible
-bought from a street-vendor.
-
-“Eating again, Jo?” asked the Chief today.
-
-“Why Boss,” expostulated Jo, “I only eats one meal a day! But dat,” he
-grinned, “am all de time!”
-
-“Shines” the boys invariably call them.
-
-Tonight we were amused to see a negro corporal, who, not content with
-the chevrons on his sleeve, had sewed an additional pair on his overseas
-cap!
-
-
-Conflans, March 14.
-
-My family at the hut consists of the Chief, Harry, Jerry and Slim. Harry
-and Jerry are as nice lads as one could find anywhere, but Slim is the
-bird that hatched out of the cuckoo’s egg. Lean, uncouth, according to
-his own claim, “the tallest man that Uncle Sam’s got in his army,” with
-an inordinately long neck and an Adam’s apple so prominent as to give
-him the appearance of an ostrich in the act of swallowing a perpetual
-orange, “Slim Old Horse” as the boys call him, seems to me at times more
-like an animated caricature of the middle west “Long Boy” than a being
-of flesh and blood and bone. How he ever became attached to the Y. is a
-point on which nobody seems certain, but here he is and here he sticks
-in spite of every effort to dislodge him. I fancy his “Top Kick” was
-only too glad to get rid of him and when he discovered Slim’s
-inclination toward the Y. simply let him go and washed his hands of him.
-Slim’s health is uncertain. Most of the time he only feels well enough
-to sit in the office and eat or “chaw.”
-
-“I started in ter chaw terbaccer,”—he talks with a nasal twang which is
-impossible to reproduce,—“when I was a kid four years old; when my daddy
-an’ my mammy found it out, they sure did start ter raise hell with me,
-but I says to ’em; ‘All right, have it your way, but then it will be
-whisky and rum fer mine, when I’m twenty-one!’ So my mammy says ‘Let ’im
-chaw.’ An’ I’ve chawed ever sence.”
-
-“I’ve only got one lung,” he remarked the other day, “and that’s a
-little one.”
-
-“Slim,” I urged, “I’m worried about you. You oughtn’t to be here. You
-ought to be in the hospital where you could be properly cared for. Go to
-your medical officer and tell him from me that he must send you to the
-hospital.”
-
-Slim reluctantly departed. I dared to hope we had seen the last of him.
-But before the afternoon was over he was back on his old perch. He had
-brought some little pills back with him. Just wait, I thought, until I
-meet that medical officer!
-
-Slim seldom feels attracted to the meals at the mess-hall. So he sits in
-the office and lives chiefly upon cheese, Y. M. C. A. cheese purchased
-to make sandwiches for the canteen at a cost of a dollar and a quarter a
-pound. Sometimes he fries himself eggs, taking whatever mess-kit,
-Harry’s or Jerry’s or mine, happens to be handy and never, in spite of
-anything I can say, will he wash it up after him! Sometimes Harry and
-Jerry and I decide that instead of going to mess we would like to have a
-supper-party at the canteen ourselves, and then the question is, how to
-get rid of Slim?
-
-“Slim, it’s getting near chow-time,” we say, “I’ll bet they’re going to
-have mashed potatoes and brown gravy tonight. Isn’t that ‘Soupy’ I hear
-going now?”
-
-But Slim refuses to budge any more than a bump on a log, so we usually
-have to end by inviting him. But if I find Slim a burden, how must the
-Chief feel toward him? For Slim has appropriated the extra cot in the
-office, which also serves as the Chief’s bed-room, and so has fairly
-camped down on him. And the Chief is a gentleman of nerves and delicate
-perceptions.
-
-“He gets up in the middle of the night,” confided the Chief to me today
-in an almost awe-struck voice, “and he goes for the water-bucket and
-drinks a half a pail without stopping. He makes a noise just like a
-horse swallowing it.”
-
-I have given up trying to do anything with Slim. Nothing that I can say
-seems to make the least impression on him. Slim is a married man, yet
-yesterday I caught him embracing Louise, Madame’s cross-eyed maid of all
-work, in the passage-way. I undertook to reprove him.
-
-“Why that ain’t nawthin!” he turned a blameless and unabashed eye upon
-me. “That’s jest a man’s nature.”
-
-This is the first time that I have eaten regularly from a mess-kit and I
-am learning things. I have learned that the aluminum mess-cup draws the
-heat from the hot coffee so that it is impossible to drink out of one
-until the liquid has become half-way cold, and that it is most
-unappetizing to have to wash one’s mess-kit afterwards in a pail of
-greasy soap suds in which a hundred odd other mess-kits have already
-been bathed. I used to tease the boys with their mess-cups in the
-chocolate line by telling them that I could tell just how recently they
-had had inspection by the shine on their mess-cups, but now whenever I
-look at the state of my own cup I think I won’t have the face to ever
-tease them that way again! I have also learned that cold “gold fish” or
-“sewer carp,” as the boys call their canned salmon, is just as bad as
-they say it is, and that slum made of hunks of bacon, potatoes, onions
-and unlimited water is no easy thing to swallow. But this sounds
-ungrateful and I don’t mean to be, for the cooks are nice as can be and
-never say a word no matter how late I may be. While as for the boys,
-they put on all their company manners for me.
-
-Here at the hut we are busy building an addition in order to enlarge our
-restaurant business. This is in the shape of a room on the terrace. The
-Germans had kindly built a roof over one end, a detail from the ordnance
-detachment at Jarny is enclosing the sides; we are to have three real
-glass windows looking out onto the street and a door connecting the
-terrace-room with the present canteen. This afternoon the detail ran out
-of lumber; the Chief managed to get the loan of a truck to fetch some
-more. He asked Slim to go with the truck. The afternoon wore away,
-neither Slim nor the truck appeared, the detail, disgusted, sat and
-twiddled their thumbs. Nobody could understand what had happened as the
-lumber yard was just around the corner! Jerry went out to search. There
-was no trace of Slim or the truck to be found. About five o’clock he
-turned up. He had gone to Mars-la-Tour he told us coolly. We had been
-talking of going to the commissary at Mars-la-Tour for canteen supplies,
-and that great goose had gotten into his head that the _lumber_ was to
-be obtained there! At least that is his explanation. But Harry and Jerry
-insinuate darker things:
-
-“We didn’t know you had a girl in Mars-la-Tour before,” they tease. “Oh
-Slim, you old devil, you!”
-
-I wonder now, just what _was_ he up to in Mars-la-Tour all afternoon?
-
-
-Conflans, March 19.
-
-Why is it that all the world loves a rascal? What is the secret of the
-fascination that outlaw and free-booter have exercised from Robin Hood
-down to Captain Kidd? Is it because each one of us, in our secret
-hearts, would like to go and do likewise, if we only dared? Of all the
-minor piracies committed by the A. E. F. in France, none, I think, are
-so picturesque as those of the — Engineers.
-
-The — Engineers are a railroad regiment. My first acquaintance with them
-was last summer. A company of these engineers was located at a station
-on the Paris line just north of us. It was a point at which supplies for
-the American front were transferred from the standard gauge to the
-American narrow gauge; in order to effect these transfers the —
-Engineers had a switch of their own. Now freight trains in France are
-quite unguarded and so at the mercy of marauders. Indeed the losses in
-transit have been so serious that since the armistice it has been the
-custom to have cars containing American goods “convoyed” to their
-destination by soldier guards. Last summer of course the men could not
-be spared for convoy duty. So it was the easiest thing in the world for
-the — Engineers to “cut out” a Y. or a Red Cross car, side-track it, and
-lighten the load at their leisure.
-
-“I went through their company store-house while I was there,” a Q. M.
-sergeant told me, “and it was as well stocked with delicacies as the
-store-rooms of a big hotel back in the States.”
-
-No wonder there was such a dearth of supplies at Abainville last summer!
-
-But it was after the — Engineers moved into the occupied area here
-following the armistice that they performed their most notorious
-exploits. Assigned to run a stretch of railway in cooperation with the
-French, a certain amount of friction was inevitable from the start, the
-red tape in the French railway system exasperating the Americans as much
-as our more direct methods scandalized the French. Finally the French
-protests at the Americans’ disregard for the formalities of railroading
-moved the engineer officers to stricter discipline. “I’ll _hang_ the
-next man of you who runs a train out of the yards without a pilot!”
-declared one captain. After that things went more smoothly,—on the
-surface. Then came the Dance.
-
-Now unfortunately for the — Engineers there is an extra large M. P.
-force here at Conflans under a Major whose greatest delight in life is
-the detection and punishment of both major and minor infractions of the
-law.
-
-The Dance was quite an affair over which the — Engineers had spread
-themselves and to which the French fair sex was generally invited. When
-the party was about to begin, however, it became evident that the
-feminine partners afforded locally were all too few. Some bold soul had
-a bright idea; a train-crew forthwith hurried down to the yards,
-commandeered an engine and a couple of cars, and, in spite of the
-horrified protests of the French railroad men, ran it to a nearby town.
-Here they filled up the train with girls from the village and were about
-to start back again when a detachment of M. P.s, rushed up in autos from
-Conflans, broke in upon the scene. A sanguine scrimmage ensued,
-resulting in a victory for law and order.
-
-In the meanwhile, back at the dance hall the engineers were waiting in
-impatient expectation for partners. Among the invited guests were two
-friendly M. P.s, old soldiers, with genial dispositions and several
-wound stripes to their credit. When word reached the party that the M.
-P.s had prevented the arrival of the “Mademoiselles” the engineers were
-furious. “Kill the M. P.s!” went up the cry. Catching sight of the
-red-arm bands on their two innocent guests the crowd started for them
-with the evident intention of making a beginning then and there. Heaven
-only knows what would have happened if the two M. P.s, by affecting an
-exit at the double-quick, hadn’t immediately made their escape, unharmed
-but badly scared.
-
-The most notable exploit of the — Engineers occurred not long
-afterwards. It is referred to as the Affair of the Serge Uniforms. One
-fine day, not very long ago, it was noised abroad that a car full of
-tailored serge uniforms, consigned to and paid for by officers of the
-Army of Occupation in Luxembourg, was standing down in the yards. The
-idea of going home in an officer’s serge uniform from which, of course,
-the braid on the cuffs had been discreetly ripped, made a strong appeal
-to the boys’ imaginations. When the time came for that car to be sent to
-Luxembourg it was found to be quite empty. But for once the Engineers
-had gone too far. The M. P. Major took the war-path. Word flew around
-the camp that a strict search was being conducted. The possessors of the
-incriminating uniforms must get rid of them and get rid of them quick.
-Some hid them in out-of-the-way places, between the floors and ceilings
-in the half-ruined houses; others frantically ripped the uniforms to
-pieces and burned them in the barracks stoves. The camp, they tell me,
-was full of the stench of scorching woolen. Still others got rid of them
-by planting them among the possessions of their innocent neighbors. One
-company postal clerk, a most upright and blameless lad, to his horror
-discovered one of the fatal uniforms stuffed in a mail-bag lying at his
-feet. Before the search party had made its rounds most of those serge
-uniforms had been safely disposed of; a few, a very few were found.
-
-But now, having been baulked in his attempt to bring the culprits to
-justice, it is common rumour, that the M. P. Major is lying low, waiting
-to “fix” the — Engineers.
-
-
-Conflans, March 23.
-
-The — Engineers have left. They are on their way to Le Mans, presumably
-the first stage of their journey home. Their departure was not unmarked
-by incident. At the last moment, when they had all entrained and were
-ready to pull out of the station, the M. P. Major sallied forth,
-court-martials in his eye, to search the trains for contraband. But he
-had reckoned without the Colonel of the engineers who flatly refused to
-allow any such procedure. Being outranked by the Colonel, the M. P.
-Major was seemingly helpless. Then, however, the Colonel made a bad
-mistake. There were two train loads. The Colonel left with the first.
-The second, being left without any protector of sufficiently high rank,
-fell an easy prey to the Major. He searched to his heart’s content,
-discovering several articles of unlawful loot and, one unfortunate clad
-in one of the notorious serge uniforms! The train was held in the yards
-while the M. P. Major indulged in an orgy of court-martials.
-
-On the morning of the departure the captain of the motor unit where we
-had messed stopped in to speak to me. He came by request of the boys to
-bring an apology for any careless language which might have been uttered
-unwittingly in my hearing! Then the captain of another unit called to
-tell us, sub rosa, that, forced by shortage of transportation, he was
-leaving behind an over supply of rations which would be ours for the
-fetching. We fetched accordingly and found that we had fallen heir to
-dozens of loaves of bread, sugar, coffee, canned meat, canned tomatoes,
-hard bread, soap and unlimited beans. What to do with these
-surreptitious stores is now the embarrassing question. One simply can’t
-offer the boys hard bread, tomatoes plain or scalloped, in the canteen,
-no matter if one should dress them with all the sauces of Epicurus and
-serve them on gold-plate. Yet they mustn’t be wasted. What’s more, the
-fact that they are in our possession must be kept absolutely dark, lest
-we get the kind captain into trouble. I feel something like the man who
-was presented with a million dollar check and then found he couldn’t
-cash it.
-
-With the — Engineers went Harry, Jerry, and Slim. I couldn’t believe
-until the last moment that Slim was actually going. His departure almost
-compensated for the loss of Harry and Jerry. But though gone, he is not
-forgotten. This morning a lad came into the canteen. He would like his
-watch please, he said. I looked blankly at him. He explained; several
-days ago, just as he was leaving on a long truck-trip, he had broken the
-strap of his wrist watch. Happening to be in front of the Y. just then,
-he had brought it in and left it for safe-keeping “with the Y. man in
-the office.” The Chief knew nothing of it.
-
-“What did the Y. man look like?” I questioned.
-
-He described him. It was Slim. We have searched every nook and cranny of
-that office, hoping to come upon the missing watch, in vain.
-
-“I’ll come in again,” said the boy. “Perhaps by that time you will have
-found it.”
-
-But personally I am sure that that watch is now on its way to Le Mans,
-en route for the States. Was there ever anything more wretchedly
-embarrassing?
-
-
-Conflans, March 27.
-
-This is a curious world. Six “Relief Trains” pass through here every day
-bound east, loaded with food for Germany. Meanwhile in the little
-half-ruined hamlets within a stone’s throw of the tracks the French
-villagers, for whom no provision has been made, are famine-stricken.
-
-Lieutenant A. came in from the little town of Pierrefond which lies
-between Conflans and Verdun yesterday.
-
-“They have nothing to eat there,” he told me, “but the weeds they dig up
-in the fields for _salade_ and the frogs they catch in the marshes. When
-the days are cold the frogs bury themselves so deep in the mud that they
-can’t be caught. There is one old gentleman who told me today that he
-had existed for weeks entirely on a diet of turnips. They come to me and
-beg pitifully for a bite of something from the mess-kitchen, but I don’t
-dare let them have it, as that would be, of course, strictly against
-regulations.”
-
-I thought of those bushels of beans in the store-house. It was taking a
-chance of course, because after all it was government property and
-nothing else, but I told the Lieutenant that if he was willing to run
-the risk, I was; then I put it up to the Chief.
-
-This morning the Lieutenant came in with a flivver. We drove over to the
-store-house and loaded it up with army beans, issue coffee, sugar, rice,
-onions, potatoes and soap. Then we filled a special sack with canned
-soup, “gold fish,” corn meal, canned tomatoes and corn syrup for the old
-gentleman who had lived on turnips. I felt he had a special claim on our
-sympathy.
-
-We reached Pierrefond after a long drive in a stinging rain. It was a
-quaint pathetic village with a pretty little church whose tower had been
-sliced off as neatly as by a knife. Was it a German or a French shell
-which had done it, I wondered. We drew up in front of the Mayor’s house.
-He came out to greet us, showed me a list of the seventy-three
-inhabitants of the town; men, women and infants in arms. All the
-supplies were to be duly weighed and measured and distributed, so much
-per capita. While they were unloading the flivver we stopped in at
-Madame C.’s for coffee and compliments, and to dry out by her hospitable
-fire. Everyone made pretty speeches, of course, and Madame bestowed on
-me a delectable bouquet of wall-flowers and daffodils. Poor things! It’s
-little enough one can do for them. This will keep the wolf from the door
-for a short while perhaps, but after that, what then?
-
-Pierrefond, like Conflans, was occupied by the Germans for four years.
-Now there is a young half-German population growing up, even as many as
-three to one family. The villagers accept the situation with tolerant
-humour; “Souvenirs Boches,” they call the children.
-
-As for the rest of the rations, I made jam sandwiches with the bread and
-bestowed them together with hot chocolate on a hungry leave train. What
-to do with the “Charlie Horse,” as the boys call the canned roast beef,
-was a puzzle. Finally I made a paste of it mixed with bread crumbs,
-tomato soup, a few weenies and some ham scraps, pickles, parsley, onion
-and an egg,—we had six assistants in the kitchen and each added an
-ingredient,—put it between slices of bread and christened the result
-“Liberty Sandwiches. Guaranteed to contain neither Gold Fish nor Corn
-Willy.” The boys ate and wondered and came back for more.
-
-
-Conflans, March 30.
-
-In our back yard a detail of German prisoners is busy cleaning up;
-already they have made quite a transformation. Madame must have a
-garden. I wonder, as I watch them, what their state of mind may be;
-their phlegmatic faces give no hint. Did some of these very ones,
-perhaps, make merry in this self same café, only six months ago, when
-they were conquerors?
-
-Madame tells me how, when the German officers were living here at the
-hotel, they ate off priceless old French plates, which, apparently quite
-ignorant of their value, they had carried off as loot. Madame, coveting
-these treasures, tried to arrange an exchange with the mess orderly,
-offering a number of modern dishes in return for one antique; but the
-mess orderly, fearing that some officer might notice the substitution,
-hesitated and before they could come to an agreement the precious
-plates, with the rough handling accorded them, had all been broken to
-bits.
-
-Some of the boys seem to think that the French don’t give their
-prisoners enough to eat. The Germans, they say, when they get the
-chance, will wait outside the mess-hall door and seize eagerly the
-leavings in the mess-kits that the boys are about to throw away.
-
-“Maybe it’s just because they’re greedy,” I say. “Surely they look fat
-enough!” And then a picture comes back to my mind, the picture of a Red
-Cross train seen while waiting at Pagny on my way to Paris last January,
-a train full of French prisoners who were being brought back from
-Germany, so weak from starvation that they lay on stretchers or sat
-pressing against the windows faces as wan and white as spectres.
-
-The German prisoners, according to the boys’ repeated stories, are by no
-means a humble or repentant lot. They’re not beaten for good, the
-prisoners invariably declare. Just as soon as the Americans have gone
-and things have calmed down a bit, they are coming back to France again,
-they say, and this time they will settle matters with the French for
-good and all!
-
-Last night a train load of German prisoners in box cars pulled into
-town. When the doors of the cars were opened it was found that one of
-the prisoners had died on the way. The dead man was wrapped in a blanket
-and left lying on the freight station platform. A “shine” from the labor
-battalion happened along in the dark, tripped and fell flat over the
-body. He came into the canteen in a state of nerves, quite prepared,
-evidently, to see a ghost in every corner.
-
-
-Conflans, April 2.
-
-The latest member of our household is something quite new in the way of
-details. He is a Salvation Army man and a very nice fellow indeed. A
-year or so ago he was beating a big drum in front of Gimbel’s Store;
-then he was drafted to come to France with the pioneers; now he has
-applied for a discharge in order to join his organization over here; and
-while waiting for his release he is proving himself an invaluable aid in
-the canteen. Now more than ever, since The Salvation Army, as everybody
-calls him, has joined our force, I have been longing to realize a dream
-which I have cherished ever since I came to France,—to make doughnuts
-for the A. E. F. I have the recipe, I can get the materials, the stove
-is the sticking-point. At present our cooking equipment consists of a
-hot water boiler and a wretched German range which is really fit for
-nothing but the scrap-heap. As the boys say, I have lost more religion
-than I ever thought I had over that stove! So while we hope and hunt for
-a doughnut-stove we are specializing in sandwiches and puddings. The
-puddings are my special pride as I worked out the ideas for them myself
-and, as far as I know, they are served in no other canteen. There are
-four of them; Coffee Jelly, Raspberry Jelly (made with the
-“pink-lemonade” fruit juice) Chocolate Bread Pudding, and Blackberry
-Bread Pudding. The bread-puddings are baked for us, by kindness of the
-cooks, at a nearby mess-kitchen. The only trouble with the puddings is,
-that there never is enough! But lest anyone should think that I take
-this as a compliment to my culinary skill, I must explain that the boys
-would eat anything you offered them, I believe, just as long as it was
-sweet and was a change. And then there is perhaps a quaint psychological
-factor too.
-
-“A man don’t like to eat food that’s cooked by a man,” a lad confided to
-me the other day. “Anything that’s cooked by a woman tastes better.”
-
-So if a boy does leave any scraps of pudding on his plate it bothers me
-unreasonably.
-
-“Somebody didn’t like his pudding,” I remark mournfully to the S. A. as
-I pick up the dishes. This amuses him. Last night as we were clearing up
-before we closed he marched up to the counter, deposited a tiny wad
-found on one of the tables in front of me.
-
-“Somebody,” he declared in a tragic tone, “didn’t like his chewing-gum!”
-
-Nor can I boast, as a cook, of a record of unvarying success. On more
-than one occasion I must admit to having scorched the cocoa, and once,
-not many days ago—to my shame be it said!—I ruined a ten gallon can by
-putting in salt instead of sugar!
-
-Here at Conflans we have an unusual amount of competition in the light
-lunch line. The other day a French fried potato booth, like a hot-dog
-booth at a country fair at home, established itself on the terrace just
-outside our door. Now a hungry doughboy can take the edge off his
-appetite with a paper full of hot French fries in return for a franc at
-any hour of the day.
-
-Also in the street below the terrace are many little stands where
-oranges and sandwiches made of rolls and slices of sausage are on sale.
-The rivalry between these stands, it appears, is acute. Yesterday,
-hearing a hubbub, I looked out to see a comic battle in progress, the
-proprietors of two neighboring stands, a fat frowsy old woman and a
-little ragged man like a weasel, pelting each other for all they were
-worth with rotten oranges while half the A. E. F., it seemed, stood
-around and cheered. Nor did matters settle down to calm until a gendarme
-and intervention appeared on the scene.
-
-This morning I stopped in at the little French store around the corner
-to buy half a dozen eggs to make a custard sauce for my chocolate bread
-pudding. When the man gave me my change I noticed he had overcharged me
-by twenty-five centimes.
-
-“Why’s that?” I asked.
-
-“That,” returned the shopkeeper, “is because you picked them out by
-hand.”
-
-Some canteen ladies can cook and wait on the counter and open milk-cans
-and wash the chocolate cups and yet keep spotlessly and specklessly
-clean. But I have come to the conclusion that as long as I live in
-Conflans, with its air full of smoke and soot from the train yards, and
-its water so hard that it curdles the soap,—and sometimes the milk in
-the cocoa too, that I will have to content myself with being godly and
-leave the cleanliness till a happier day. We have been having a regular
-plague of inspectors and investigators of late. Last night just as I had
-my final bout with the last chocolate container, a major and a
-lieutenant colonel wandered in, evidently in search of scandal. The
-lieutenant colonel fixed a piercing eye on me.
-
-“So you are the only ‘white woman’ in this part of the world at
-present?”
-
-“Well,” I said looking at my fingers smudged with cocoa, “tonight I
-should say that I was a pale chocolate-colored woman.”
-
-“I noticed that your face was dirty,” coolly returned the gentleman. I
-hurriedly excused myself in order to consult a looking-glass. Sure
-enough, there on my nose was a large smudge of soot! I must have got it
-the last time I stoked the chocolate-stove.
-
-
-Conflans, April 7.
-
-The M. P.s live in the hotel next door. Naturally we see a good deal of
-them. I try to treat them extra nicely because I feel sorry for them.
-They can’t help being M. P.s any more than they can help being
-unpopular. And though many of them go about with a chip on their
-shoulders and an attitude of I-don’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn, still to know
-that you are anathema to the major portion of the A. E. F., to be
-publicly referred to as Misery Providers, Mademoiselle Promenades, and
-Military Pests, besides being made the subject of songs such as; _Mother
-take down your service flag, Your son is only an M. P._, must be galling
-to the most insensitive.
-
-Just as soon as the armistice was signed the doughboys started in to
-pester the M. P.s with the classic taunt:
-
-“Who won the war?—The M. P.s!”
-
-For a long while the M. P.s could think of no more crushing rejoinder
-than the time-honored;
-
-“Aw, go to hell!”
-
-But lately some bright soul has hit upon a bit of repartee that goes far
-to salve the M. P.s’ self-respect. Now if a soldier is so rash as to
-jeer; “Who won the war? The M. P.s!” the response comes instantly:
-
-“Yep! They chased the doughboys up front!”
-
-There are two M. P.s from the detachment next door who have lately
-joined themselves to our family. Like Slim, they came unsolicited, and
-like Slim, they stick. They are known respectively as the Littlest M. P.
-and the Fattest M. P.
-
-The Littlest M. P. is a pest. I feel sorry for him because he is so
-young and has no mother; otherwise there would be no tolerating him. He
-hangs about the canteen from morning until late at night under pretence
-of assisting us, and eats and eats and eats and eats. The other day I
-heard him proudly averring that he hadn’t taken a meal in the mess-hall
-for two weeks, and I believed him. Yet when you ask him to do any
-particular piece of work, like filling up the wood box or fetching a
-pail of water, in return for his board, he always has some perfectly
-good reason for not doing it. Besides which, he has no morals. The other
-day he confided to me triumphantly that the reason that they didn’t put
-him on guard work was that they knew he would take money to let men into
-cafés at prohibited hours. He went on to tell me about the town of S.
-
-“That was a good place, you could get twenty-five francs for lettin’ a
-feller into a café out of hours there.”
-
-I have tried to find out what he does in return for Uncle Sam’s dollar a
-day and have discovered that his job is sweeping out the halls in the M.
-P. Hotel.
-
-“But I skip about twenty feet at each end every time, so it don’t take
-me more’n ten minutes.”
-
-Yesterday morning he came in with an air of righteousness rewarded.
-
-“I told ’em I’d got to have help on that job,” he announced, “so they
-put another feller on too.”
-
-This morning I got so exasperated with him that I told him in
-unmistakable terms that we could dispense with his company. He
-disappeared, and I congratulated myself that we were rid of him. But at
-supper-time he bobbed serenely up again.
-
-“Some fellers would have got sore if you’d spoke like that to them,” he
-told me with a magnanimous air, “but I just took it as a joke.”
-
-Now what is one to do with anybody like that?
-
-The Fattest M. P. is the most unleavened lump of good-nature I have ever
-known. He is, I understand, a notorious poker-player and his breath, to
-my embarrassment, betrays the fact that he has a weakness for Conflans
-beer. Besides which, he really takes up quite too much room behind the
-counter. Yet in spite of all this, he is such a simple soul and is so
-anxious to help that one hasn’t the heart to send him away.
-
-Yesterday I thought I was going to be arrested by an M. P. I had gone
-over to Verdun in an army flivver to get some stock. Turning the corner
-into Conflans on our way home we were halted by the upraised billy of
-the M. P. on duty.
-
-“Sorry, Buddy!” he called to the driver, “but you can’t do that!”
-
-Then, approaching, he got a closer view, turned red as fire and
-stammered;
-
-“Beg your pardon, Miss. Made a mistake. That’s all right, driver, you
-can go on.”
-
-Later he sent apologies to me at the canteen. It is, of course, against
-regulations to allow civilian women to use army transportation. The M.
-P., catching sight of a skirt, had taken me for a Mademoiselle on a
-joy-ride.
-
-
-Conflans, April 7.
-
-We must start an Orphans’ Annex here, the boys tell me. Three nights ago
-as it was drawing on toward closing time the Chief called me into the
-office. By the table stood two young boys, about fourteen and sixteen I
-judged them; each carried on his shoulder a little sack which evidently
-contained all his worldly possessions. They were German boys from Metz;
-they had just come in on the train. Why had they come? we asked them.
-They had come to join the American army. But they were too young! He was
-eighteen, declared the elder. He dug into his pockets and produced
-documents. I looked at two of the papers, they appeared to be the birth
-certificates of his father and mother. Had his parents given their
-consent? He nodded. “And you really are eighteen?”, “_Ja! Ja wohl!_” It
-was hard to believe,—he was so small. We stared at them a bit
-helplessly. Then, finding our German not quite adequate to the occasion,
-we called an interpreter. But to all the interpreter’s questioning the
-boy returned the same unvarying answer. He had come to join the American
-army! As for the younger one, he merely stood and smiled and looked as
-guileless as a young angel. Whatever the elder one’s intention might be,
-I was sure I could divine the younger’s. _He_, I am certain, had set his
-heart on being an American “mascot.” And he, for all his innocent and
-engaging air, had most patently run away from home!
-
-We told the boys that we would put them up for the night. I busied
-myself in getting them some supper and then—another waif appeared! A
-little French lad of thirteen, with a peg-leg and a crutch, he came
-shyly hobbling into the office, and the face he lifted to us was one of
-the sweetest, the most sensitive and appealing that I have ever seen.
-Silently he tendered us a letter. It had been written by an American
-lieutenant; the bearer, it stated, was an orphan of the war; he had been
-shot by German machine-gunners near Verdun; his right leg had been
-amputated at the thigh. I looked at the crippled child in apprehension.
-How would he take the presence of the Germans? But my question was
-already answered. The little German lad and the French _mutilé_ had
-drawn close together, seemingly drawn instantly to each other by a bond
-of childish understanding. Although neither could speak the other’s
-speech they appeared to be communicating in some shy wordless way.
-Later, as we were getting the cots ready for the lodgers, passing the
-empty canteen room, I glanced inside. Somebody had started the victrola
-on the counter to playing a waltz, and to its music the German boys were
-dancing while the little French lad gaily kept time with his crutch!
-
-We fed the three of them and put them up for the night. The next morning
-the French lad took his leave. Later he came back to see us dressed in a
-little American uniform; he had been adopted by one of the companies
-here. The German lads stayed with us, or rather, they slept and ate with
-the M. P.s next door and spent the rest of the day with us in the
-canteen. They loved to help about the counter; they were quick and deft
-and willing. The only trouble with the arrangement was that I fairly
-went distracted trying to talk three languages at once!
-
-Two days afterwards, the M. P.s having taken the matter in hand, the
-German boys were sent back to Metz. But the French lad comes in often to
-visit us. We see him playing ball with the soldiers in the street in
-front of the hotel. This morning the S. A. and I stood watching him.
-
-“I wouldn’t mind it so much somehow,” the S. A. remarked, “if he didn’t
-have that wrap-legging wound so tight around that pitiful little
-peg-stick!”
-
-The tenderness toward little children which the war has shown forth so
-vividly has been a revelation of an inherent sweetness in the boys’
-natures; this fondness for children other than their own, being, I
-believe a distinctive characteristic of our American men. Any number of
-companies have mascots, little French boys, orphans usually, whom they
-dress in miniature uniforms, take about from place to place with them,
-and, of course, spoil quite shamelessly. And in every unit that
-possesses a mascot you find boys whose dearest wish is to adopt the
-little fellow as his own and take him back home; but this the French law
-forbids.
-
-“That’s the best part of France, the little kids,” remarked a boy to me
-as we passed a group of little tots by the roadside.
-
-Unfortunately though, this petting has another side. Spoiled by the
-soft-hearted soldiers, the French gamins have developed into a brood of
-brazen little beggars. They have come to regard all Americans, it seems,
-as perambulating slot machines for “goom” and chocolate with whom,
-however, the purchasing penny is quite superfluous. I shall never forget
-being held up, as I was walking with a doughboy through the streets of
-Lourdes, by a tiny lad who demanded pathetically;
-
-“_Une cigarette pour moi, et une pour Papa, et une pour Maman qui est
-malade!_”
-
-Nor the fifteen year old conductor on a suburban tram line near Paris,
-who took up our tickets with a forbidding scowl, and then, his rounds
-made, hurried back down the car to confront us with the wistful childish
-plea: “’Ave you goom?”
-
-For some while there has been a red-headed urchin of perhaps thirteen
-years hanging about the hut. As he was dressed in an O. D. blouse,
-breeches and leggings, I concluded that he was somebody’s mascot. He
-kept coming into the canteen to buy gum and cigarettes; presently I
-discovered he was purchaser for a little gang of ragamuffins who would
-wait for him just outside the door. I asked the boys in the canteen if
-they knew anything about the red-head, but no one seemed to know who he
-was or to what outfit he belonged. The boy himself seemed stupid and
-sullen when I questioned him. Finally I told him that I could sell him
-nothing more. Tonight my friend the M. P. Sergeant asked casually;
-
-“Do you remember that red-headed kid that used to hang around? Well
-we’ve got him and eight others.”
-
-“Why, what for?”
-
-“They’re Propaganda Kids. They came over here from Germany; they’ve been
-stealing American uniforms and smuggling them to the German prisoners so
-they could escape in them.”
-
-
-Conflans, April 15.
-
-Of all the roads over which I have ever passed, the road from Conflans
-to Verdun will remain, I think, most sharply etched upon my memory.
-
-Leaving Conflans, as one passes through the occupied territory, the
-predominant impression made upon one’s mind is of signs. German military
-signs. These are everywhere, painted in great staring letters on the
-sides of buildings, covering bill-boards set at the road’s edge, or hung
-suspended from the branches of trees over the truck drivers’ heads. Here
-in this German sector behind the lines every movement was timed, ordered
-and regulated. No one could possibly go astray, no one could lose a
-moment in hesitation as to where he should go, in what manner and at
-what rate. Half-way between Conflans and the lines you come upon two
-great bill-boards at the highway’s edge, one duplicating the other, in
-order that, marching past, what might have been missed on the first
-board, could be supplied by the second. They are headed “Under Enemy
-Observation!” and give in strict detail the order of procedure from that
-point forward, both by day and night, just what strength the marching
-groups should be and how many metres should intervene between them. The
-German thoroughness, the German system! Everything has been thought of,
-everything provided for, everything possible done to reduce the
-individual to an automaton, a mere senseless cog in a vast machine. And
-yet among all these signs there is one that lacks, a sign that is
-notable by its absence; it is the sign that should read _Nach Verdun_.
-
-Once across the lines on the French side you are struck by the startling
-difference; here the only signs that one sees are two, poignant in their
-simplicity and directness. They are _Poste de Secours_ and _Blessés à
-Pied_.
-
-Every time I approach Verdun by this road I thrill when I think of the
-enormous energy that poured along it, directed, it must have seemed,
-irresistibly, over-poweringly against the city in the hills; a thrill
-only surpassed by the emotion that one must feel when he traverses the
-_Sacra Via_ on the other side of Verdun, the “Holy Way” over which men
-and munitions flowed incessantly to the defense of the beleaguered city.
-
-Everywhere one sees the ineffaceable scars of struggle, the aftermath of
-destruction. The stately trees bordering the roadside, the trees that
-Napoleon ordered planted along the highways of France, are barked with
-great ugly gashes where mines had been placed, the exploding of which
-would have felled the great trees across the road, blocking the
-pursuer’s way. Others bear platforms high up in the branches where
-machine-guns were placed. Rotting camouflages of every sort, paper
-strips woven like lattice, curtains of branches woven through wire which
-once screened the road for miles from the enemy’s observation, now lie
-disintegrating in the ditches. Shell holes pit the fields, concrete
-“pill-boxes” lurk in unsuspected places, every mound is shelter for a
-dugout, walls are riddled with ragged holes cut for machine-guns.
-Further on, one comes to the trenches zigzagging in what seems erratic
-and aimless patterns and the interminable barbed-wire entanglements,
-like the devil’s brier patches.
-
-Half across the open plain that lies before the hills of Verdun you come
-upon a German tank defence, a long line of heavy concrete pillars with
-enormous cables, once highly electrified, looped between. A little
-farther and the road crosses an impromptu bridge thrown hastily over the
-great gaping crater torn by an exploding mine. And always here and there
-over the plain, little heaps of glimmering whitish stones which mark the
-places where once were villages. Starting to ascend the hills, one looks
-down upon a ghost city, a city where many of the walls still stand,
-making you think of nothing but a huddled host of tombstones, a city
-chalk-white, naked, as if the flesh were all picked away from its dead
-bones; the most haunted, the most wraith-like, the most desolate of any.
-
-Climbing the hills, sweeping around one slow curve after another, one
-beholds suddenly before him, a lesser hill ringed by higher ones,
-Verdun, scarred, wounded, but victorious, like the Winged Victory of
-Samothrace, mutilated yet triumphant!
-
-When I first made the trip from Verdun to Conflans there were still good
-pickings for the souvenir-hunter by the way; shell-cases, helmets, gas
-masks lying along the roadside; but lately it has looked as if these
-trophies had been thoroughly gleaned. Nor does one wonder where they
-have gone when one sees the flivvers piled high with homeward bound
-souvenirs pulling in at the post office around the corner. But will they
-reach home, is the question? Ominous rumours are abroad that salvage
-plants have been established at the base ports for the particular
-purpose of confiscating shell-cases on their way to America, and thereby
-saving the Allies a fortune in brass. Some of the boys are inclined to
-try to carry their trophies with them rather than entrust them to Uncle
-Sam’s mail service, but this entails some trouble to prevent their
-seizure during inspections. Nowadays, passing by, one can tell when an
-inspection is in progress within, by all the junk which is hanging out
-of the barracks windows! Homeward-bound troops have already discovered a
-use for gas masks not mentioned in the Drill Manual: the cases provide
-an excellent receptacle in which surreptitiously one may carry
-photographs and post-cards! When I first came to Conflans, camouflaged
-German helmets were a prize so rare as to be much sought after by the
-souvenir enthusiast; but now camouflaged helmets may be had for the
-asking; an enterprising bugler possessed of a knack with a paint-brush
-has gone into the business of camouflaging them while you wait.
-
-Yesterday, after having returned from Verdun, I noticed a post-card in a
-Jarny shop. It showed a black cat and a white cat silhouetted against
-the moon, perched on the skeleton beams of a half-demolished house,
-peering disconsolately about them. Underneath the sentence ran; _Où
-est-il le toit de nos amours?_ Where is the roof of our love? Could any
-nation but the French thus make light of such tragedy?
-
-
-Paris, April 21.
-
-I am on my way home at last. I am waiting here for my sailing. This time
-I am really going all the way through. Now that I am on the brink of the
-_retour au civil_, as the French say, it seems very odd. For eighteen
-months I haven’t worn white gloves, or silk stockings, or a veil, no,
-nor even powdered my nose. And the worst of it is, these things don’t
-seem to matter any more. Even a uniform, and a homely uniform at that,
-has tremendous advantages as part of a working scheme of life. As one
-girl remarked;
-
-“You don’t have to spend any time thinking: Shall I put on the pink or
-the blue tonight? The only question is, Do I or do I not need a clean
-collar?”
-
-Somehow I feel a little unfitted to go back to a civilian existence once
-more. The same feeling one finds expressed continually among the boys.
-
-“When I get back home, if I see a line anywhere I’ll go and stand in it
-just from force of habit,” remarked one boy, grinning ruefully.
-
-But most often this feeling takes the form of a pathetic and wistful
-fear.
-
-“I’m afraid I’ll shock Mother when I get home.”
-
-“They won’t know what to make of us, back home, the way we’ll behave.”
-
-“I reckon I’ve forgotten how to act civilized.”
-
-And over and again they confess to a shame-faced apprehension lest they
-should unguardedly relapse into the language of the army and so frighten
-their women folk!
-
-A famous French surgeon confided to my friend, the English Lady:
-
-“In that first year of the war when we were allowed no _permissions_ we
-became like savages. The first time that I returned home I was afraid. I
-was afraid all the while, afraid before my wife, before my
-children,—afraid that I would act the beast.”
-
-If by coming to France, we women who have had this privilege have
-discovered the American doughboy, the American doughboy, by coming to
-France, has discovered America. I don’t know who first said; “After I
-get back, if the Statue of Liberty ever wants to see my face again,
-she’ll have to turn around,” but whoever did, uttered a sentiment which
-has been echoed and re-echoed all over France. The doughboy has been to
-Paris, “the City of Light,” he has amused himself in the playgrounds of
-princes along the Riviera, he has visited the châteaux and palaces of
-kings and queens. And though he admits it is all mighty fine, in the
-face of everything he holds staunchly to his declaration of loyalty;
-“I’ll tell the world the little old U. S. A. is good enough for me!”
-
-At times perhaps his patriotic enthusiasm has outweighed his manners.
-Again and again a French villager, evidently echoing some doughboy’s
-dissertation, has asked me a little wistfully;
-
-“America _bon_, goode! France _pas bon_, no goode! _Hein?_”
-
-“Anyway the war has done one good thing,” I used to say to the lads in
-the canteens, “it has taught you to appreciate your homes.”
-
-“I used to want to get away from home,” confided one boy to me, “but
-when I get back there again I’m just going to tie myself so tight to
-Mother’s apron-strings that she’ll never get the knot undone.”
-
-“Say, when I get back,” declared another lad as he helped me wipe the
-dishes, “my mother’s going to find I’m just the best little K. P. she
-ever knew.”
-
-“When I get home, I’m going to lock myself in the house and then I’m
-going to lose the key and stay right there for a month,” announced
-another.
-
-“Who’s in your house?”
-
-“Just Mother. She’s good enough for me.”
-
-Sometimes I have thought that three things have stood as concrete
-symbols of all that was desirable to the American boy through his ordeal
-over here: a dollar-bill, the Statue of Liberty, his mother’s face. And
-only a shade less touching than the doughboy’s realization of all that
-is implied by “Mother;” is his attitude of chivalrous idealism toward
-the American girl. Once I ventured to say something in praise of the
-women of France.
-
-“But they’re not as fine as our girls!” came the instant jealous
-rejoinder.
-
-“No _Mademoiselles françaises_ for me, thank you. I’ve got a little girl
-of my own back home!”
-
-“Our American girls, they’re as different from these French girls,”
-declared a tall Virginian, “as day is from night!”
-
-“I’ve laid off of lovin’ while I’ve been over here,” confided one little
-engineer, “but, oh boy! my girl’s goin’ to get an awful huggin’ when I
-get home!”
-
-The most pitiful and hopeless cases that I have seen over here were boys
-who had taken to drink because their girls at home had proved
-inconstant. “That man never touched a drop,” confided the buddy of one
-of these to me, “until he got that letter from his girl telling him that
-she was married to a slacker.”
-
-Not that the doughboy’s conduct has always been above reproach. “Single
-men in barracks,” as Kipling once remarked, “don’t grow into plaster
-saints;” and he has been sorely tempted. But in his heart he has kept an
-ideal. It has stood between him and utter darkness. In this ideal he has
-put all his faith. If he loses it, he loses everything. Those women back
-home, I wonder, do they really understand?
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen
-Girl, by Katharine Duncan Morse
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