But she didn’t.
Central got the long-distance line cleared and then over the wire there
came a woman’s clear, crisp, businesslike voice: “I wish to speak to
Miss Carlotta Murray.”
“This is she.”
“Miss Murray, could you sail for France a week from Saturday?”
My heart gave a sort of big thrilly jerk and I had a sudden shock as if
my nerves had got short-circuited.
“Ye-yes!” I gulped faintly.
“What? Speak louder.”
“Yes!” I shouted into the mouthpiece, holding on to the wall for
support. “Dee-lighted!”
“Very well. Be at our office at eleven to-morrow morning. You’d better
come prepared to go straight on to Washington to arrange about your
passes. Good-b----”
“Wait!” I cried excitedly. “Who is it speaking? I don’t know who you
are.”
“Red Cross Headquarters. New York office. Good-by.”
She hung up and left me gasping in the darkness on the stair. Well, I
was in deep over my head now; and so I found mamma and put it straight
up to her: Would she give her consent if papa did? At first she
refused up and down, but by six o’clock I had her coaxed round to the
point where she was packing my suitcase and making up lists of things
I’d need in France--woolen underwear and galoshes and sweaters and
first-aid outfits and what nots. And all the time we didn’t either of
us know what I was going to do when I got over there any more than the
man in the moon. The call had tumbled right out of a clear sky. But
once I’d got mamma to see the situation as it really was, outside her
motherhood so to speak, she was as keen as mustard for it.
We had dinner upstairs in my room. Delia served it on a tray. And
when she heard I was sailing for France she just said, “Oh, my Gawd!
Submarines!” and dropped the tray and burst into tears. You’d have
thought the submarines were right under my bed. At that mamma broke
down altogether and Delia embraced her--Delia’s been with us ever since
I was born--and there followed a hectic half hour. I was beginning to
think Delia had spilled the beans for me with her “Oh, my Gawd!” when
all of a sudden mamma glanced at the clock, pulled herself together and
exclaimed sharply:
“Good gracious, child, get into your clothes--quick! Do you want to
miss that train? Delia, run down and phone for a taxi.”
Delia went, still dribbling tears and tomato bisque. Then mamma rushed
off a telegram to Uncle Jim to meet me in New York, rushed me into
my things, rushed me down to the station, through the gate, onto the
train, gave me a swift breathless hug and departed. That’s the way she
is, all tears one second and a regular little whiz-bang field marshal
the next. But it was some evening!
The next morning in New York Uncle Jim and I breakfasted at the
Belmont, after which I walked over to Red Cross Headquarters, had an
interview, and took the train to Washington. I had already wired papa,
who was down there on business, to meet me, and told him to watch out
for a life-size jolt. When I stepped off the train, there he was,
leaning against a pillar and looking, as the novelists say, singularly
handsome and debonair.
“Hello, Miss Murray!” he said, taking my bag away from the porter. “Now
come on with your jolt.”
“_Vive la France!_” I said by way of commencement.
“Ha! So that’s the bill of fare? With all my heart. May she _vive_
forever. But what’s that got to do with the price of winter umbrellas?”
“The _Rochambeau_ sails a week from to-morrow.”
“Well,” said papa, still bluffing away, though I could see from the way
he started that I had landed him one right over the heart, “I haven’t
any stock in her. The submarines may go as far as they like.”
“They want me to sail on her--as a canteener.”
“As a whatter?” demanded papa.
“A canteener. A person that works in a canteen. You know--serves hot
drinks and food and all to the soldiers.”
“Who wants you to go?” he growled in his crossest
cross-examining-witness manner.
“President Wilson. God. American Red Cross. Mamma. Delia. Me.”
“Pretty good references,” observed papa dryly. “Especially Delia. But
not worth a single red cent in the present instance--unless indorsed by
me. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. What is this all about?”
That’s the way papa always talks with me, straight from the shoulder,
just as if I were his law partner and we were threshing out a case.
And so I told him. I told him how the high commissioner for Europe
of the American Red Cross had cabled to Washington for women to be
sent immediately to France to work in canteens; how Washington had
telegraphed to New York to collect a group of workers without delay;
how New York had telegraphed to Boston for names of suitable persons
with training along that line; how Edith, the president of her Red
Cross chapter, had been called into council--and how that led to me.
“It’s the finger of destiny, papa,” I wound up; “and it’s pointed
straight at me--like the man in the ad. There’s just one hitch.”
“Only one?” observed papa with his grim little half smile.
“The cable says women over thirty.”
“Well,” chuckled papa, “I guess that lets you out--for about six years
anyhow. And by that time the war will be over. Though Bairnsfeather
says that the first seven years will be the worst, and after that every
fourteenth year.”
“I’m within the draft limit,” I protested. “And if they take infants
of twenty-one to be soldiers I don’t see why a college graduate of
twenty-four, captain of the basket-ball team and with a record in
Greek, hasn’t enough gumption to stand behind a counter and deal out
sandwiches and coffee. It makes me sick!”
“Well, all that’s a minor matter,” said papa. “It’s fitness, not age or
lack of it, that counts. But let’s waive that for the moment and get
down to the kernel of this proposition. Why are you interested in this
thing? Why do you want to go--or think that you want to go? Now don’t
hand out any cheap sentimentality. Don’t insult the cause by any tawdry
emotionalism. Come clean. What are your reasons?”
Followed a conference--or moral examination, rather--which lasted
for over four hours, straight through dinner, up to eleven o’clock;
and still we sat on at table, papa smoking one cigar after another,
until the big hotel dining-room was deserted and the lights went out.
There was no question from the first of a downright refusal. He simply
talked to me, eye to eye and man to man. He spoke as if I were his
son, a soldier, going off to war, and he charted the cardinal points
of conduct. He saw the thing big from the start, and I loved him
for it. Then we talked about life and love and marriage, the rights
of men and nations, and how this war was going to temper and fuse
America like steel that’s been through fire; we talked about personal
responsibility, the Red Cross, and he showed how any human institution
rested straight back on the individual, so that if I fell down on my
job the whole organization would feel the shock. He didn’t give me a
whole decalogue of “Don’ts” to guide me over there, but he did give me
three big “Do’s.” Here they are:
Number One: Get round your own job and leave it to the other fellow to
get round his.
Number Two: Keep alive and lovable. Women, he said, are a little more
apt than men to go to seed.
Number Three: Keep your sense of humor.
Altogether, it was the best talk I’ve ever had on earth, and when it
was done he kissed me; and then we sailed out arm in arm for some
ice-cream soda at the corner drug store, and I treated him and he
treated me--our immemorial custom.
It was all settled the next morning that I was to go to war. They
didn’t even query my age!
That morning, after breakfast, papa said, “Guess I’ll just walk over
with you to that shebang of yours, in case you need identification.”
“No, you don’t!” I said. “I’m going to get this on my own
credentials--my cafeteria credentials!--and not because I’m the
daughter of Judge Murray, alias Old Silver Tongue. ‘Get round your own
job and leave it to the other fellow to get round his.’ Axiom One.”
Papa grinned. “Strike one--right over the plate. All right. Let me hear
what the jury decides.” And we went our separate ways.
At the office in the Women’s Bureau it took less than ten minutes to
get through the red tape and settle my future, as follows: I’m to be
a canteen worker. I pay all my own expenses. And I literally do pay
them, with my cafeteria money and a check I received for writing a
movie. I’ve signed on for six months, during which time I can’t marry
an American army officer--without losing my job and getting sent home
to America. Wow! For further orders report to Number Four, Place de la
Concorde, Paris, France, seat of a world war for civilization. Think of
it, oh, my soul! Well, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,
the Murray family gives its heart and its hand to this vote!
The last week has been one mad, wild, excited scramble--with
canteen uniforms, French lessons, gum boots, telephones, typhoid
and paratyphoid injections, girls dropping in to say good-by, mamma
dismal as a corbie crow weeping off in odd corners, and papa humming
mournfully: “‘I didn’t raise my kidlet to be a soldierette.’”
On Tuesday night I said good-by to Robert. We dined together downtown
and then Bob said, “Let’s go round to Lucille’s and dance.”
And so we did. But I just couldn’t seem to put any spirit into it.
“Do you realize, Bob,” I said, “that this is our last dance together?”
I suppose my voice sounded rather wabbly, for Robert gave me a sharp
look and said, “Not on your life! Where did you get hold of that
notion? Are you going to throw up the sponge?”
And then I remembered that my case was exactly that of a million other
women scattered all over the land, who were still keeping the flag
flying, as Edith had said; and so I bucked up and we finished up with a
very good time.
ON SHIPBOARD, November 12th.
I begged papa and mamma not to come down to New York to see me off,
but of course they would. However, it turned out all right. Papa blew
us to a two-course dinner without wine downstairs in a famous grill
frequented by successful actors and artists and writers, after which
he packed us off to a musical comedy and kept up a light artillery of
jokes all through the evening, and we both laughed so hard that mamma
finally lost patience and declared we were a perfect scandal. There was
just one awful moment at the last. That was on the boat when papa gave
me a big still hug and then held his cheek close to mine the way he’s
done ever since I was a baby.
“Papa,” I whispered fiercely into his ear, “if you make me cry now I’ll
kill you!”
“Shucks, honey!” he murmured back. “If Miss Rankin can cry in Congress
I guess a green little soldierette can shed a few tears when bidding a
fond farewell to native land and mother, without grave dishonor. Still,
I don’t want to cramp your style. Cable us when you land. Be a good
girl--but not goody. And now, so long, dear. God bless us all together!”
And still smiling and steady he shook hands with me just as if I were
his son, and then marched mamma, sobbing audibly, gently off by the
arm. I went downstairs to my cabin.
No danger of my being sick. My bunk mate is! I hardly know how to
describe my feelings after we had really started and there was time
to look about--it all seemed so sort of natural and matter-of-fact,
and France still merely a small pink dab on the map. It wasn’t a
bit startling to be out of sight of land and hear people discussing
submarines and lifeboats, but it was a horrible sensation to have the
boat plunge down and leave your stomach in midair. A gorgeous sunset
to-night, but it’s rough and going to be rougher, I fear. I walked
about some, and then decided discretion was the better part of valor
and retired to my deck chair.
November 15th.
Three awful days in my cabin, too sick to stir. But to-day it’s
smooth and the air is marvelous. After a fine salt bath I came up and
pranced about the deck; and there were lots of nice people to prance
with--naval officers, Belgian generals, French _permissionnaires_, and
any number of Y.M.C.A.-ers and Red Cross men. Played shuffleboard;
tried the dining-room for ten minutes, and then decided to have all my
meals on deck in order to watch for the submarines.
November 24th.
Land is in sight--a long low ribbon of mist away on the starboard.
That’s France! It still doesn’t seem reasonable. The trip has been
nothing at all. Evenings we would sit out on deck. It was weird with
never a light, even cigarettes forbidden; inky blackness on deck, and
stumbling and pitching into someone at every step. It was awesome from
the stern to see two big black funnels silhouetted against the starry
sky, the phosphorescence of the water rivaling the splendor of the
heavens; and to realize that all the time this huge mechanical monster
beneath our feet was plowing steadily, silently forward, carrying seven
hundred human lives across three thousand miles of water.
PARIS, November 26th.
Paris at last, beautiful, soft, gray, in a blur of rain. I reported at
Number Four, Place de la Concorde, heard a speech by the commissioner,
and was assigned right away. It’s just exactly what I wanted and didn’t
dare to dream I’d get! I’m to work in a canteen in one of the biggest
aviation camps in France. With our own American men! We’ll live in
barracks, get up at reveille, five-thirty a.m., and---- But I’m somewhat
hazy as to our duties. Time will reveal. After the conference I met
Lucile B----, a Bryn Mawr girl, and found she’s to canteen with me
at the same barracks. We embraced and nearly fell downstairs in our
excitement. Lucile has moved her things over to my hotel so we can chum
together.
November 27th.
Slept--off and on--and had a breakfast in bed, after the luxurious
Continental fashion,--wouldn’t Delia sniff?--and then I read Baedeker’s
Paris aloud while Lucile unpacked. We lunched and did accounts and
then walked over to Red Cross Headquarters. After reporting there
we got our provisional cards of identity and went down to a shop on
the boulevard and ordered bracelets of identity. Had my hair washed
by a poilu on permission and tried out my Boston French on him. He
understood me better than I did him! Later Lucile and I taxied over
to Napoleon’s tomb, saw the German airplanes in the court of the
Invalides, and then went on to Notre Dame. It is wonderful inside,
so high and spacious and old and gray, with a scented misty twilight
air as though dimmed by many prayers. I made two prayers myself--one
personal, and the other impersonal for our army, and I only hope they
come true.
November 28th.
While waiting to be sent to camp I delved into the subject of canteens
in general. And I found that the old canteen idea is as different from
the new canteen idea as day is from night. A canteen before this war
meant simply a place where a soldier could buy a drink and perhaps
procure notions, buttons and needles and thread. But that old idea has
expanded and developed until now it really comprises a whole welfare
center, a regular community plant for dispensing food and comfort and
good cheer. There are restaurants, writing rooms, infirmaries, sleeping
quarters, pianos, phonographs, entertainments--everything you can
possibly think of to keep a collection of men far from home happy and
sane and sound. Of course not all these canteens are alike, for each
one caters to some particular need and thus develops along a particular
line. Its location determines its special bent.
There are, I was told at headquarters, several types of canteen.
Number One: These are the metropolitan canteens of Paris, situated at
the big railway stations--the Gare du Nord, the Gare de l’Est and the
Gare Saint Lazare--which catch all the troops coming into or leaving
the city.
Number Two: These are the canteens of the _Grande Ceinture_, at little
stations on the environs of Paris, where innumerable troop trains pass
through daily, carrying thousands of soldiers from England, Italy,
America, Saloniki, Portugal, Africa. These troops never even enter
Paris, but are shifted on the outskirts of the city.
Number Three: Canteens in the French war zone behind the actual
fighting lines in the big transportation centers.
Number Four: Canteens right on the French Front, in dugouts and
_abris_. In these canteens there are no women helpers.
Number Five: Canteens in the American training camps, behind the war
zone. That’s the kind I’m assigned to. It’s the biggest American
aviation center in France.
Number Six: Canteens for American soldiers dotted along the lines of
communication from the coast ports to the final training centers. All
these canteens are under the control of the American Red Cross.
December 1st.
In barracks! Yesterday was my first day. I got up in the dark at
bugle call, five-thirty A.M., and dressed in the cold--our stoves are
not up yet and I don’t know who’s going to start the fires when they
are!--had some hot coffee and went over to serve behind the counter,
serving coffee, chocolate and sandwiches. A long queue of soldiers
stood in line straight through the morning, and, work as hard as I
could, the line constantly augmented. Some wanted to linger and chat.
It was good, they said, to see a real live American girl who could talk
God’s language, and not that scrambled-egg affair the Frenchies handed
out. One confided he’d not seen a genuine honest-to-goodness girl for
four months; since he’d left home, and added that he liked ’em on the
American plan better than on the European plan. I couldn’t do much more
than smile in answer, for the orders flew thick and fast.
By noon the place was so crowded you couldn’t see for the forest of
campaign hats. A babel of voices; a rattle of dishes; the phonograph
going; the piano banging; a bunch of enlisted men trying out Mine Eyes
Have Seen the Glory; canteeners running back and forth with meals for
the officers, whose tables were in behind the counter; rain trickling
down my neck from an overhead leak; sleet and windy rain shaking the
windowpanes; sneezes and coughs mingling with shouts of laughter; and
always the far door opening to let in the storm and still more and
more men, till they were packed like sardines in rows--these are my
impressions of that first noon hour.
Suddenly: “_Otto, Sie haben etwas vergessen!_” I heard a low guttural
voice speaking close behind my ear.
“_Ja, ich weiss_,” replied another.
I whirled, visions of spies, explosions and poisoned soup rushing
wildly through my brain.
“What’s this?” I cried. “German? In an American aviation camp? What are
you two doing here?”
They stared at me stupidly. One held a mop and the other held a broom.
Of course they were spies!
“You are Germans--_Deutsch_?” I challenged again, sure that I had
uncovered a regular Guy Fawkes plot.
“_Ja_,” admitted the one called Otto, and jerked a thick dirty thumb
toward his working blouse, on the chest of which was inscribed in big
black letters “P G” with a slim little “i” between, so that it read
“PiG.”
“Pig!” I said wonderingly.
A soldier across the counter came to my aid. “Prisoners of war,” he
explained briefly. “P. G. stands for _prisonnier de la guerre_. Some
joker slipped the middle “i” over onto him. And it’s not so far wrong
at that! Look at the beggars’ fat jowls. They help round the camp,
unloading trucks, scrubbing up the barracks, and so on. For obvious
reasons they’re not allowed in the kitchens. They have their own
quarters behind barbed-wire entanglements--but you just bet they don’t
try very hard to get away. This is better than machine-gun fire.”
“Are they good workers?”
“Not so you’d notice--but they make up by being fine eaters. You should
see them tuck away the grub that Uncle Sam sends three thousand miles
across the sea to feed his Allies. I reckon they figure that the more
they eat the less there’ll be for the enemy, and there’s more than one
way of killing a cat. The French are too easy on them, and that’s the
fact.”
In the afternoon things went easier for a while. As it was still
raining we had mess in the canteen and then sat and made up jam
sandwiches. Along about five another tremendous rush began. I was put
on the _marmites_. These are big urns of coffee which are constantly
filled and refilled from the boiling-hot vats on the stove. It is
heavy, dirty, back-breaking work, and inside of an hour my clean blue
blouse and spotless collar looked as though I had slid down a chimney.
And my hands--was I ever proud of these red, chapped, grubby-nailed
horrors? _Nota bene_: If you love to be dainty, don’t be a canteen maid.
At nine-thirty P.M. we closed, and I was so dead tired that I tumbled
into bed and unlaced my boots by the feel. The first shift is from
seven A.M. until four P.M., and the second from noon to nine-thirty
P.M. But some of the workers are down with severe colds, their
substitutes have not yet arrived, and that means double duty for the
rest. From five in the morning until nine at night is some day’s job,
believe me! You have to be hardened before you can stand the pace. A
delicate girl would crumple up inside of a week. Of course when we get
organized and a system blocked out things will move more smoothly. At
present we’re a brand-new plant.
December 5th.
Superb aviation weather! For the past week it’s been blowing, hailing,
raining, snowing, thawing, and then beginning all over again _da capo_
with unabated zeal, like a child with only one tune. Water overhead
and slush underfoot. Colds, pneumonia, tonsillitis, dipththeria,
grippe--these are the enemies our soldiers have to face and conquer
or be conquered by, every single day. And yet, despite the hostile
weather, the men go up for practice just the same. And thus far only
one death.
Our stoves are up. The P. G.’s have put them in every room. No more
rising in the dark in freezing temperature and washing in the water
from your hot-water bottle. And we’ve appointed a fireman to build the
fires. We’re to take the job week about. As there’s no water laid on
in our barracks yet, we’ve had also to appoint a water bearer to keep
the jugs filled and on the fire. Each morning the P. G.’s swab down the
green linoleum floors of our quarters fresh and clean--and inside an
hour they are caked with real estate. Entire town lots come away with
our boots.
This morning when I went over to the canteen the cook had not shown up.
And in front a long line of waiting doughboys stood, beating a hungry
tattoo on the counter. What to do? Of course we could have turned them
out while we rounded up another cook, but that’s not what we’re here
for. “Get round your job,” said Axiom One, and feeding these men was
it. So I went into the kitchen. A soldier volunteered his aid. And all
through the morning hours we two worked like firemen at a ten-story
fire. Bacon and eggs, _repas complet_; we cooked and cooked and cooked.
In the afternoon as a change I was assigned to go on a camion to the
neighboring farms and collect butter, eggs, vegetables and fruit. It
was lowering when we set forth, with a raw chill wind that blew every
way at once, and presently the air turned black and the water came
down like a waterspout out of the sky. Nevertheless we completed our
circuit. It was twilight when we returned. I went into the canteen
kitchen.
“Well, he’s been and gone!” a chorus of voices cried.
“Who?” I inquired, catching my breath. They tossed me a card and a note.
It was Bob! He had got a day’s leave unexpectedly and he spent four
hours of it coming down to see me, found me gone, and spent another
four getting back again. He’d sent a wire last night, but of course it
hadn’t reached me. I suppose it will arrive the morning after eternity
and rout me out of bed!
I went back to quarters feeling pretty blue. There were little zigzags
of fiery pain running up and down my neck from bending so long over the
stove; my skirts were sopping; and my feet in their heavy boots with
their excess acreage of mud were so heavy I could scarcely drag them
after me. I opened the door upon a cozy scene. Lucile was making tea.
She had lifted the lid of the small fat-bellied stove in the center
of the room, and with a long fork she was toasting the nubbins of war
bread down over the live coals. Somebody strange was sitting in our one
easy-chair.
“Come in,” cried Lucile, “and shut that door! Here’s a lady from ‘The
Saturday Evening Post’; she’s come down to look at the animals in the
zoo.”
“Well, what do you think of us?” I asked.