stove, then round at the bare board walls hung thick with mackintoshes
and storm skirts, at the shelves containing each girl’s toilet
articles, at the cots ranged along the sides covered with dark army
blankets, at the trunks standing everywhere, at a leak in the roof from
which the rain was decanting with a steady tap-tap onto my pillow, and
finally back at Lucile again--“I think it’s a cross between a girls’
boarding house, an East Side tenement and a Western mining shack. And I
think you girls are ripping to rough it like this!”
“Pooh!” said Lucile, taking up her banjo and beginning to strum. “We
love the hardships. Of course a weakling couldn’t stand the racket.
You have to be sound through and through, or sooner or later it gets
you. In a month or so, though, we’re going to have enlarged quarters,
and then two girls will have a cubby-hole to themselves and we’ll be
rid of all this clutter. Also we’re going to start an officers’ club
where we serve hot meals to the aviators; in the same building will be
recreation rooms, and just outside a garden and a tennis court. Then
we’ll be _grand luxe_! As yet we’re still in the making, like creation
on the fourth day.”
“How do you keep clean?” the visitor wanted to know.
“You don’t,” I said grimly. “Look! But since Lucile has bought a rubber
bathtub we manage a bath once in a while.”
“She thinks our boots are funny,” said Lucile.
“She wouldn’t think they were quite so funny if she had had to oil them
and keep them clean. You should have seen mine the other day when I
slipped and fell in front of the post-office. I thought the whole camp
and the hangars and the flying field were coming right along with me
like the top of a layer cake. I give you my word, for a second I was
afraid to move my feet for fear I’d lift the town.”
The lady rose to go. Lucile went over to her trunk and got her diary,
which the lady had asked to see. After some debate I gave her mine,
too. I only hope she uses discretion!
December 11th.
Dazzling sunshiny weather. I counted seventeen planes up. Got back my
diary. The lady said she read it in bed and whooped so over some of
the passages that we could have heard her clear out to camp, it was
the parts where I told what I thought about men. She swore, though,
she wouldn’t use them; and I hope she keeps her word! Worked at the
_marmites_ in the forenoon and behind the counter in the afternoon.
Right in the middle of the rush, when I was pushing hot chocolate and
sandwiches across the counter as fast as my two hands could fly, I
suddenly heard a voice say: “One coffee, please--and step lively!”
It was Robert! I was so busy that there was no time then for more than
a handshake. After Robert had squeezed my hand he turned it over in his
palm and stared steadily down at it, all chapped and rough and red. I
cut my thumb yesterday, and the bandage was ragged and coffee-stained.
Altogether, not a hand that you’d enter at a beauty show. But Bob only
said “Bully little flapper!” and couldn’t seem to let go of it. Then
for an hour he helped me. He’d got another leave, he said, and thought
he’d try my camp again.
At four I went off duty and the directrice lent us her sitting-room,
where we had tea together and--well, sort of caught up on arrears.
Afterward we strolled about the camp in the early twilight and came by
the post-office for the mail. Robert and I stood off at one side and
watched the soldiers hurrying from all directions like ants converging
upon that one radiant doorway of warm streaming light. The board walks
resounded to their footsteps. On and on they came, some on the dead
run. It was weird to see those figures suddenly evolve out of the gloom.
“And that’s not all,” said Robert. “This one camp with its thousands of
men is the epitome of scores of other camps over here, where at this
twilight hour exactly the same performance is taking place--thousands
on thousands of lonesome soldiers hastening, with eagerness in their
hearts, to get that word from home. That’s one end of the line. At the
other end are the girls and wives and mothers at home writing those
letters with cheerfulness and faith--thousands of Susie Smiths and
Mamie Joneses! A Whitman could make a fine poem out of that, naming
every girl and her town. And between those two ends so far apart is the
big invisible rope of love. They talk about the necessity of guns and
effectives, but, by George, if they lived in one of these god-forsaken
little villages behind the Front they’d realize that it’s the guns plus
the letters of the Susie Smiths and Mamie Joneses which are going to
win this war!”
December 20th.
Robert left that same night, and ever since I’ve been laid up with
tonsillitis--the first time I’ve been ill in my life. It was a splendid
opportunity to think--only there wasn’t anything to think about. That’s
the bother with this war--it kills thought. But I kept the fires up
and the big jugs heating for the baths, and cleaned the girls’ boots,
and talked with the P. G.’s, and indexed our new library, and counted
the flies on the wall, and made the tea every afternoon. Nevertheless
I could feel my brain begin to disintegrate with idleness. That’s the
worst trouble with the soldiers in the trenches--nothing to do. It
gives them the _cafards_, the black butterflies, the blue devils, the
jimjams, the hump.
Christmas Day.
Raining again, slowly but surely. However, I’m on my job again--in
waders; and with three pairs of heavy woolen stockings underneath.
These frame buildings just can’t help but leak, and they always want to
leak wherever the back of your neck is. To-day we gave out Red Cross
Christmas boxes to all the soldiers and cadets and officers. You should
have seen the rush! Men who at home were used to receiving from their
fathers a six-cylinder car as a gift and then remarking casually “Oh,
thanks awf’lly, old chap!” came crowding up for those boxes, as eager
as kids for tin horns. And there was no put-on about it. They wanted
their Christmas presents!
After a full day we had mess--turkey!--with some of the officers, and
then half a dozen of us went over to the Y. M. C. A. hut to see the
movies. We sat in the front row--six women among five hundred men.
These evening entertainments are a great boon. And the shows are so
well attended that they have to give two performances each night.
Later we danced, overshoes and all. After that we tramped over to the
barracks of the P. G.’s to see their Christmas tree. Altogether it was
a strange Christmas. Where shall we be this time next year? All those
solid husky youngsters who filled the hall with their jolly laughter?
All these slim young aviators with their budding mustaches and their
straight, keen, fearless eyes? What has 1918 in store for us?
December 31st.
I’ve been transferred! There was a call for more workers at a certain
canteen, and so some of us were shifted round. Now I am at X----,
which is a canteen on the environs of Paris, of Number Two Type. Here
thousands of troops pass through each day from all parts of France,
carrying the Allied man power for redistribution upon every Front.
Occasionally soldiers lie over a few hours while new trains are being
made up, but usually they go straight through, with a ten-minutes’
stop for food. Sometimes the men have traveled from thirty-six to
forty-eight hours without a bite to eat. Thus our chief work is upon
the platforms or _quais_, distributing hot coffee, chocolate and
sandwiches. The heavy rushes come between six and eight in the morning,
at noon, and once more at dusk. Often there will be trains on two
tracks at the same time, one full of grim, silent troops bound for the
Front, the other filled with jolly _permissionnaires_ going home on
leave. There is a sharp contrast of mood between those two trainloads
of Frenchmen, so close together upon those narrow parallel tracks. The
incoming ones face home and a brief spell of happiness; the outgoing
ones face--another year! And the unending weariness of it, the bitter
black nostalgia, is to be read in those black eyes straining out at you
from the windows.
This is to-day’s record--my first day here: I rose and was on the
_quai_ by six-thirty. It was dark, and the cold was appalling. It had
been snowing, and a high wind slapped icy particles against my cheek.
The pavement of the _quai_, where it was not covered with snow, was
caked with dirty, slippery ice so that one had to step gingerly for
fear of accident. My feet were freezing, despite the customary three
pairs of stockings and heavy boots.
“You’ll have to get some clogs,” said a white-haired American
worker beside me. “Look!” She lifted her skirts and I beheld thick
wooden-soled boots--sabots with leather tops. “Sweet, aren’t they? But
better than frozen feet!”
The train was late. The _marmites_ of boiling hot coffee stood waiting
by the track, each with its padded flannel jumper to keep the contents
hot. The basket of ham sandwiches, apples and Camembert cheese were
covered with oilcloth as protection from the wet. The workers, some
Americans, some French, in blue blouses and veils, swathed to the eyes
in their mantles, huddled in the sheltered lee of the station and
stamped their feet and swung their arms to keep warm. Those drafty
_quais_ in the raw dawns are the native heath of pneumonia microbes.
Suddenly the captain of the _gare_ blew his whistle.
“Here she comes!” cried the white-haired American, and seized her
coffee cart and started down the track. The rest of us followed with
sandwiches. The long train slowed to a halt. Snow piled high upon
the roofs of the cars; snow upon the steps and vestibules; icicles
dripping from the eaves--and nobody descended! Not a move or a stir. It
looked like a specter train.
“_Café! Café, messieurs! Descendez, messieurs!_ You have ten minutes!”
It was the gay voice of a little French canteener as she ran from car
to car, tapping on the windowpanes. And then--bang! Some of the windows
were let down, heads began to poke out, and tin cups stained with
_pinard_ appeared at the end of arms.
“No, no, messieurs. Descend if you please. You have time. And we can’t
wait on you all up there. Ah, you little monster”--this to a big giant
who suddenly loomed above--“come down from that window. The coffee is
good and hot!”
That cheerful, laughing voice, so absolutely French in its intonations,
roused the silent train. And then they came pouring out like a
cloudburst and almost mobbed the coffee machine. Hundreds of hands and
cups were under the faucet at once.
“_Dix centimes, messieurs! Dix centimes, n’est-ce pas?_”
The little mademoiselle shook her tin cup, and the sous rattled
into it--but still the men did not speak. They drank their beloved
scalding hot beverage in silence. The snow fell steadily, tipping their
mustaches, the visors of their kepis, the edges of their coats--with
a powder of white, like silhouettes. And still they uttered no word!
Remember, it is the day before New Year’s--a day dear to every
Frenchman’s heart--and these men were returning to the Front. The
whistle blew.
“_En voiture!_”
The circle of hands about the coffee machine melted as if by magic.
The train sucked them in. And still not a single word had been spoken!
I turned, that strange grim muteness of a voluble warm-hearted race
sinking into my heart. I turned, and the spell was broken. I heard a
young French voice. It was a soldier, who at the risk of losing his
train had lingered to thank the white-haired canteener for filling his
coffee cup. She was down on her knees in the snow, decanting the last
drop of precious liquid from the machine. Her white hair was powdered
still whiter with shining crystals. Her face streamed with perspiration
and was rosy from exertion.
“Ah, madame,” said the soldier, “it is the sympathy and courage of
women like you that give us strength to go on with this dirty war!”
She did not understand a word of his rapid lingo, but she patted his
arm and smiled. Each comprehended the other! The next instant the train
was a rushing shadow on the blinding white landscape.
And then before we could draw breath or refill our _marmites_ another
train was upon us. This time it was _permissionnaires_ returning home.
They hopped out like joyous schoolboys, with a fusillade of teasing
banter.
“Aha! ’Tis the pretty little Americans! Say! You are all right, you
know, you Americans!”
“I have an American marraine. Will you be my marraine, mademoiselle?
You don’t know how nice I am! Not ‘naughty boy’!”
“Look! Ham sandwiches! My God, we’re in Paradise!”
They bought out the apple basket and had apple fights. And while we
were rushing the growlers cross-tracks for more coffee they marched up
and down arm in arm and chanted in our honor a trench ditty about a new
relative they’ve acquired. The chorus, loosely translated, runs like
this:
“_’Tis my Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam!
He is a fine copain.[1]
He comes from Amérique.
The terror of the German,
’Tis my Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam!
He is sympathique.
The great Républicain.
The victory of demain,
’Tis to Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam!_”
And when at length the train pulled out, heads were thrust from the
windows, cups and kepis were waved, and a rousing “_Vive l’Amérique!_”
floated back to us. For these men were going home.
[1] _Pal._
January 4, 1918.
Aside from the work on the _quais_ we also run a canteen in behind the
station, where we serve meals to the men obliged to wait for their
trains. In addition next month we intend to start a buffet counter
right on the tracks, where the hungry soldier passing through with
only ten minutes at his command may obtain a solid meal of soup, meat,
vegetables and coffee. The benefit of this kind of service to troops
traveling, sometimes in open cattle cars, a day and a night without
food, can never be estimated.
In our canteen we feed all the sons of earth--even German prisoners.
Yesterday was our banner day. We began with some English from the Royal
Flying Corps. Then followed in rapid succession Alpins Chasseurs; a
company of Arabs, whose French officer had a tiny baton with which
he waved them in and out and set them down to table like children in
a row; Senegalese; Annamites; American negroes; Canadians; Hindus;
Chinese; Portuguese; and train upon train of French and American
troops. We were so rushed in the cluttered and cramped little kitchen
that we had to establish a sort of bucket brigade to pass the food
forward to the men.
Our cook, a mountain of jelly, is almost the ugliest woman in France;
and her husband, a cross-eyed, bandy-legged little ogre, is certainly
the ugliest man. And yet each considers the other a perfect paragon
of beauty. Léonie brags about her handsome _mari_; and André chants
the praises of his exquisite “_petit ange_,” and they nod and smile
and coo endearing compliments to each other among the pots and pans.
By profession André is a sexton, and it is only in his off hours, when
he is not sweeping the church or burying the dead, that he consents to
grace our kitchen with his Apollolike form.
Besides serving food, a canteen of this description is a sort of
emergency bureau where almost anything may turn up. Buttons are sewn
on, wounds bandaged, cough medicine administered, letters written home,
and general physical and moral good cheer kept on tap day and night.
After the great Italian débâcle, when thousands of French troops were
being rushed down, our canteeners worked twenty-four hours at a stretch
upon these icy _quais_. The emergency came in a minute, and they had to
handle it in a minute. And the food they served was all the food those
famished troops received. No time to halt and feed hungry mouths, with
the Prussians battering down the gates of Italy! At another canteen,
farther south, a trainload of French wounded came through from Italy.
And the canteeners flew aboard with food, bandages and first-aid
appliances, and in the brief time allotted transformed those starving,
untended sufferers.
The other day a bunch of Montana cow punchers tramped into the
canteen, and when the leader--a loose, lank, lean giant of seven feet
nothing--saw the American flag he took off his hat and said, “Thank
Gawd, boys, we’re found--at last. We’re home.”
It turned out that in the shift of trains they had somehow got
separated from their detachment, and for over two days they had
wandered about the frozen little town, without a word of French,
without money--for they had not yet received their pay--and
consequently without lodging or food.
“But why on earth don’t you ask for something to eat?” I exclaimed.
“You’re nothing but great big sillies!”
The leader drew himself up proudly. “I reckon we warn’t going to let
none of them fly Frenchies get onto our little private plight and give
us the merry ha-ha--was we, boys?”
“Not by a dern sight!” agreed the strayed mavericks stoutly.
We fitted them out with food, postals, an English-French dictionary,
some French money with written instructions as to its value, and
steered them on their way.
Yesterday I had an experience of still another sort. It was in the
middle of a bleak afternoon, and the canteen was empty. I was sitting
in the kitchen by the stove, making up the baskets for the evening rush
on the _quais_--so many slices of ham, so many apples, so many pieces
of cheese--when the far door opened, an American soldier drifted in,
leaned over the buffet for a time, and finally with a strong Texas
drawl said: “I wish you’d write me a letter, ma’am--to my wife.”
“What’s the matter with your writing it yourself?”
“I don’t know exactly what to say. It’s dog-gone delicate, and that’s
a fact. You see, I got a bad die-ges-tion.” He pronounced it as if it
were three words, with a heavy stress on the “die.”
“But you don’t write with your die-ges-tion.”
“No; but it’s this way, ma’am. My wife, she’s went and divorced me.
And it’s all along of my bad die-ges-tion. I don’t blame her no way. I
reckon that bad die-ges-tion did sort of get between her and me. But
that ain’t what I aim to say in the letter. It’s about this here new
insurance. I’ve made mine out in her name.”
“But if she’s divorced you on account of your bad die-ges-tion she has
no claim on you now.”
“I don’t give a whoop in hell about that,” he responded soberly. “I
want her to get it, that’s all. And I kind of thought maybe you might
fix it up for me in a letter, so’s she’d understand, and tell her I
don’t bear no grudge. I got a bad die-ges-tion.”
And so I fixed it up for him in a letter; and there’s one woman in
America who has lost a man with a mighty good heart even if he has a
bad die-ges-tion.
January 10th.
Transferred again. But this time I’m settled for good. This is a
canteen of Type Number Three, in the French war zone, in a big
transportation center within sound of the guns of Verdun. Anywhere
from three to ten thousand troops pass through daily. Here again,
this canteen is absolutely different from the two others, because
the conditions are different. It is a canteen which the French call
_grand luxe_. A beautiful spacious building, given by the French
Government; tastefully decorated interiors; rest rooms with papers,
writing materials, piano, tables and easy-chairs; restaurant; sleeping
quarters, hot baths; gardens with statuary; and _abris_ in case of
aërial attack--altogether the poilu’s delight.
“_Très chic, hein?_” murmurs the Frenchman. He stares about him at the
clean airy place, gay with chintz curtains, painted garlands on the
walls, and even the electric globes veiled with soft yellow Chinese
silk. And he catches the idea at once. “_Pas militaire, pas du tout
du tout._” That’s it exactly. It’s not military at all at all. The
French artist who conceived the scheme was so nauseated with everything
military that he let himself loose on this canteen to make it cozy and
homelike and gay. Its soft beauty delights the poilu; and its baths,
its disinfecting plants where he can rid himself of vermin, its kiosk
where he can buy his beloved _pinard_, its hot chocolate--made with
milk, after an American recipe--contribute to make it a very paradise
of canteens. Its fame is known all over the French war zone. The
poilus come miles to see if it’s as good as report.
At night in the rest room they lie outstretched in those canvas
easy-chairs--just how easy none but a weary poilu can know!--and they
stare through dreamy half-closed eyes at the warm charm of the place,
soaking it in at every pore; the smoke of countless cigarettes rises in
a kind of enchanted mist; there is an occasional bubble of laughter or
the low-toned give-and-take of _copains_ round the brazier; but chiefly
there is silence, luxurious well-earned ease for tired limbs--linked
sweetness long drawn out. Occasionally, when the wind is right, a
vague distant rumble seems to echo in the air. Is it thunder, or is it
bombardment? Or are those ears so accustomed to the ceaseless roar of
heavy artillery that they still hear it resounding, even in this quiet
spot? A poilu rolls over, opens one eye, listens.
“What is that? _Les canons?_”
His companion cocks an ear.
“_Mais non._”
“_Mais oui._”
“You’re crazy! Whence, then?”
The first soldier sits up and takes his bearings.
“’Tis Verdun,” he proclaims. “_N’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?_”
“Yes,” replies the canteener at the desk; “we can often hear the guns
of Verdun on a thick night.”
“Me--I come from Verdun,” says the poilu, always ready for a chat.
“Were you one of those who held Verdun when the Crown Prince made that
terrible attack?”
“_Oui._”
“Ah, those glorious heroes of Verdun!” murmurs the canteener with misty
eyes.
The simple poilu looks at her, puzzled, angry, and finally blazes forth:
“Heroes! Heroes! I’m always hearing about those people--those heroes.
But I never saw anything of them. They weren’t in the fight. I tell
you, it was we, we Frenchmen alone, who won Verdun!”
The canteener apologizes to the unconscious hero.
In a canteen of this description, serving anywhere from three to ten
thousand men a day, the work must be organized down to its last detail.
And it is. The mechanism runs as smoothly as a well-oiled automobile.
For one thing, our directrice has a “flair” for handling people, for
getting along with the French domestics--we have a kitchen staff alone
of twenty--and for making her workers contented and at home. Nor is the
work itself so hard as in the other canteens. For one thing, labor is
plentiful. For another, we live in a town. And in our time off we can
shop or stroll or laze about the comfortable big house we’ve leased for
quarters. Our hours, too, are well arranged. As the canteen remains
open all night and meals are served straight round the clock, the day
is divided into four shifts: From seven A.M. to one P.M.; from one to
seven; from seven to eleven-thirty; and from eleven-thirty P.M. to
seven A.M. In addition there is an extra shift to help at the rush
hours, which occur usually about ten A.M. and four P.M. At these times
the big dining-room resembles nothing so much as a six-o’clock subway
rush. The poilus are packed in tight as they can squeeze--every one
with his head pointed toward the _caissé_, where are sold the tickets
for the _repas complet_. Each meal costs seventy-five centimes.
January 16th.
Of all the shifts I love the morning best. Then the men come storming
in so ravenous that it’s a pleasure to see them eat. And then is when
they’re gayest. The afternoon is apt to be prosaic. But the night shift
is the most interesting of all. Then things seem to stand out, to take
on personality, to become more alive, vivid and real. Then impressions,
pictures, scenes are stamped on the brain as clean as if cut with a
die, true in every trivial detail. Soldiers playing cards by the light
of a flickering candle, their huge ungainly shadows capering up against
the wall.