WHEN JOHNNY CAME MARCHING HOME
On November 11, 1918, the armistice was signed and the fighting of the
Great War ceased--almost as abruptly as it had begun. And the ebb tide
of American troops from Europe back to the United States began; almost
at once. For a time it was an almost imperceptible tide; in the
following month but 75,000 soldiers all told--officers and enlisted
men--were received through the port of New York, at all times the
nation's chief war gateway; yet this was but the beginning. Each month
of the early half of 1919 registered an increase of this human tide
inflowing as against the preceding months, until May, with 311,830
troops received home, finally beat, by some 5,000 men, the record
outgoing month of July, 1918, when under the terrific pressure induced
by the continued German drive, 306,731 officers and men had been
dispatched from these shores. Yet June, 1919, overtopped May. In that
month 342,686 troops passed not only under the shadow of the beloved
statue of Liberty, but also into the friendly and welcoming ports of
Boston, Newport News, and Charleston, while the Secretary of War
promised that the midsummer months that were immediately to follow would
break the June record. A promise which was fulfilled.
Long before the signing of the armistice, Pershing had ruled that the
work of the American Red Cross with the well men of the A. E. F. was
specifically to be limited to them while they were en route from one
point to another--along the lines of communication, as you already have
seen in an earlier chapter. To the Young Men's Christian Association was
intrusted the chief burden of caring for them in their more or less
permanent camps. This meant for our Red Cross in the final months of
the war--before peace was actually signed and declared--a task almost
exactly like that which had confronted it in its very first months of
war experience in France. The stations along the railroad lines of
eastern France, Luxembourg, and the Moselle Valley--the lines of
communication between our French base ports and the occupied districts
of the German states--offered to the American Red Cross the very same
canteen problems as had once faced it at Châlons-sur-Marne and Épernay.
Treves and Coblenz were hardly different from either of these--save
perhaps in their increased size.
Because Coblenz is rather more closely connected in the mind of the
average American with our Army of Occupation, let us begin with it, here
and now. It was, in fact, the easternmost outpost of the work of our Red
Cross with our army over there. There the lines of communication
officially began, and ran up the railway which ascends the beautiful but
extremely tortuous valley of the Moselle. And where the lines of
communication began--in the great railroad station of Coblenz--the
American Red Cross also began. It had two canteens in that station; one
just off the main waiting room, and the other, for the convenience of
troops who were merely halted in the train shed of the station while
going to and from the other American mobilization centers in that Rhine
bridgehead, right on the biggest and the longest of the train platforms.
Both were busy canteens; never more so, however, than just before 10:30
o'clock in the morning, which was the stated hour for the departure of
the daily leave-train toward the border lines of France. Then it was the
Red Cross coffee and sandwiches, tobacco and chewing gum were in
greatest demand; for the long leave-train boasted no such luxury as
dining cars, and there was scarce enough time at the noonday stop at
Treves for one to avail oneself of the lunch-room facilities in the
station there.
Yet Treves for the American Red Cross was a far, far more important
point than Coblenz. It was the headquarters of all its work in Germany,
and boasted in addition to the large American Red Cross canteens in each
of the two railroad stations, on either bank of the Moselle,
and the recreation huts at the base hospitals--for that matter,
there were also recreation huts at the base hospitals in and about
Coblenz--well-equipped clubs for both enlisted men and officers. Of
these the club for the enlisted men--for the rank and file of
doughboy--quite properly was the best equipped.
In the beginning it had been one of those large combination beer gardens
and music halls that always have been so very dear to the heart of the
German. It was the very sort of plant that could be, and was, quickly
adapted to the uses of a really big group of men. Its main _bierhalle_
made a corking dining room for the doughboys. The meals kept pace with
the apartment. Three times a day they appeared--feeding daily from 600
to 1,600 boys--and they were American meals--in fact, for the most part
composed of American food products--meats from Chicago, butter and
cheese from New York State, flour from Minnesota, and the like. For each
of these a flat charge of two marks--at the rate of exchange then
prevailing, about eighteen cents--was made. But if a doughboy could not
or would not pay, no questions were asked. The Treves Enlisted Men's
Club which the American Red Cross gave the A. E. F. was not a commercial
enterprise. It was run by an organization whose funds were the gift of
the American people--given and given freely in order that their boys in
khaki might have every comfort that money might provide.
The great high-ceilinged _halle_ held more than a restaurant. It was a
reading room as well, stocked with many hundreds of books and magazines.
In fact a branch of the American Library Association operated--and
operated very successfully--a small traveling loan library in one of the
smaller rooms of the club. Upon the walls of the vast room were pictures
and many maps--maps of the valley of the Moselle, of that of the Rhine,
of the Saar basin, of the operations in France. These last held much
fascination for the doughboys. The most of them were of divisions which
had led in the active and hard fighting, and the tiny flags and the
blue-chalk marks on the operation maps were in reality placed there by
their own efforts--but a few weeks and months before. It was real fun to
fight the old actions over and over again--this time with talk and a
pointing stick.
There were, of course, such fundamental conveniences for roaming
doughboys as baths, a bootblack and a barber shop--this last equipped
with chairs which the boys themselves invented and constructed; a plain
stout wooden armchair, into the back of which a board--not unlike an
old-fashioned ironing board--was thrust at an angle. When turned one way
this board formed just the proper headrest for a shave; in the other
direction it was at exactly the right angle for haircutting.
For the Officers' Club of our Red Cross at Treves, the Casino in the
Kornmarkt, the heart of the city, was taken over. The fact that this was
in the beginning a well-equipped club made the problem of its adaption a
very slight one indeed. And the added fact that officers require, as a
rule, far less entertainment than the enlisted men also simplified its
operation. As it was, however, the officers were usually given a dance
or a show each week--in the comfortable, large hall of the Casino. In
the Enlisted Men's Club there was hardly a night, however, without some
sort of an entertainment in its _halle_; and the vast place packed to
the very doors.
* * * * *
The next stop after Treves in the eastbound journey from the Rhine of
the man in khaki was usually Nancy. And here there were not only canteen
facilities at the railroad station, but a regular Red Cross
hotel--situated in the Place Stanislas, in the very heart of the town.
In other days this had been the Grand Hotel, and the open square that
it faced has long been known as one of the handsomest in all France. In
fact, Nancy itself is one of the loveliest of all French towns; and
despite the almost constant aërial bombardments that were visited upon
it, escaped with comparatively minor damage.
[Illustration: "NEVER SAY DIE"
Sorely wounded, our boys at the great A. R. C. field hospital in the
Auteuil race track outside of Paris, kept an active interest in games
and sports]
The Red Cross hotel there was opened on September 30, 1918, and closed
on the tenth of April of the following spring--had eighty-eight rooms,
capable of accommodating one hundred guests, and two dormitories capable
of providing for some forty more. The room charges were invariably five
francs for a room--with the exception of one, usually reserved for
generals or other big wigs--which rented at eight francs a night. For
the dormitory beds an even charge of two francs (forty cents) nightly
was made, while in the frequent event of all these regular
accommodations of the hotel being engaged and the necessity arising of
placing cots in its broad hallways, no charge whatsoever was made for
these emergency accommodations.
For the excellent meals--served with the fullness of a good
old-fashioned Yankee tavern--a progressive charge of four francs for
breakfast, five francs for lunch, and six francs for dinner was made.
Surely no one could fairly object to the restaurant prices, which, even
in France in war-time stress, ranged from eighty cents to a dollar and
twenty! In fact it was a bonanza for the American officers who formed
the chief patrons of the place--although a bit of thoughtfulness on the
part of some one had provided this particular hostelry with a dormitory
of twelve beds and a single room with three which was held reserved for
American women war workers; an attention which was tremendously
appreciated by them.
* * * * *
Eleven miles distant from Nancy was Toul; but Toul we have already
visited in the pages of this book. We know already the comfortable
accommodations that the traveler in khaki found in the group of hotels
and canteens which our Red Cross operated there. There were many of
these, even outside of Paris; one of the largest the tavern at the
badly overcrowded city of Bordeaux. That tavern had been little to boast
of, in the beginning. It was an ancient inn indeed; but good taste--the
purchase of some few dozen yards of cretonne, and cleanliness--the
unrelenting use of mop and broom and soap--had accomplished wonders with
it. There were others of these American Red Cross hotels in France
during the fighting period--the ones at Dijon, Is-sur-Tille, and
Marseilles were particularly popular. But it was in Paris itself that
the Red Cross accommodations for the itinerant doughboy in the final
months of the war, as in the long and difficult half year that
intervened between the signing of the armistice and the signing of
peace, reached their highest development. In the beginning these had
taken form in canteens which were operated night and day at each of the
important railroad stations. These were all right--so far as they went.
Their one-franc or seventy-five centime meals were wonderful indeed. I
have eaten in these canteens many times myself--and always eaten well. I
have been seated between a doughboy from North Carolina and one from
North Dakota and been served by a society woman in steel-gray uniform--a
woman whose very name was a thing to be emblazoned in the biggest
headline type of the New York newspapers, but who was working week in
and week out harder than the girls in busy restaurants back home are
usually wont to work.
If you would see these canteens as they really worked, gaze upon them
through the eyes of a brilliant newspaper woman from San Francisco, who
took the time and the trouble to make a thorough study of them. She
wrote:
"A brown puddle of coffee was spreading over the white oilcloth. The
girl from home sopped it up with her dish towel. She brushed away messy
fragments of food and bread crumbs. Again there were few vacant places
for American soldiers on the benches at the long table in the canteen at
the Gare St. Lazare.
"The canteen, one of a circuit of thirteen maintained by the Red Cross
in Paris, had formerly been the corner of a baggage room in one of the
most important Paris terminals. The concrete floor bruised her feet. She
was as conscious of them as _Alice in Wonderland_ who discovered her own
directly beneath her chin after she nibbled the magic toadstool. The
girl was tired, but she smiled.
"It was really a smile within a smile. There was one on her lips which
seemed to sparkle and glance, waking responsive smiles on the faces of
the men. At once the gob who was born down in Virginia and had trained
at Norfolk, decided that she was from his own South. The six-foot
doughboy from California knew that she came from some small town in the
Sierras. To each of the men she suddenly represented home.
"That smile stays in place each day until she reaches her room in a
pension across the Seine on the Rue Beaux Arts. There, closing the door
upon the world with its constant pageant of uniformed men who seem
forever hungry and thirsty, she lets her smile fade away for the first
time that day.
"The smile within is tucked away in her heart with the memory of
agonizing moments aboard an ocean liner when she felt her exalted desire
for service ebbing away because she feared she would not be needed.
Needed! Now she wonders who else could have managed so tactfully the boy
who had been at sea for one year and discovered that he had forgotten
how to talk to an American woman. His diffidence was undermined with
another dish of rice pudding and an extra doughnut. He became a regular
boarder at the canteen where breakfast costs nine cents and any other
man's size meal may be had for thirteen cents. His leave ended in a half
day of excited shopping for which his younger sister will always be
grateful.
"The girl from home had been one of those solemn creatures who was
called to the Overseas Club in New York for service abroad. She was one
of hundreds who had clinched their own faith in their ideals by
pledging such service. It had been a wrench, saying good-bye at the
station in the Middle West. There were no boys in the family, and her
father had made a funny little joke which betrayed his pride about
'hanging out a service flag now.' Armed with interminable lists which
called for supplies for twelve months, she bought her equipment. All the
time she was saying to herself:
"'I am ready to give all of my youth and my strength to the cause and to
hasten victory.'
"Then the armistice was signed. The wireless instrument sang with the
message. There was a celebration. The ship remained dark, still sliding
through the nights warily, but her next trip would be made with decks
ablaze and portholes open. The war was ended. It seemed to the girl that
in the silence of the aftermath she could hear once more the wings of
freedom throbbing above the world. She was glad and she was sorry. Her
fear was that after all the Red Cross would not need her because she
came too late.
"Canteen service--she pictured the work minus the tonic of danger as a
social job. Dressed in a blue smock and white coif she would bid a
graceful farewell to the A. E. F. as it filtered out of Europe. Now she
smiles. Needed? Her fingers are scarred and she wonders if she ever will
be able to pour one thousand bowls of coffee from the gigantic white
porcelain pitcher without blistering her hands.
"Each day she looks at the line of men jostling one another at the door.
She listens to their interminable questions and comes to the full
realization that she is one of the most important people in Paris, one
of two hundred girls feeding thirty-five thousand soldiers daily.
"As some workers leaving for home after more than a year of service tell
of making sandwiches under shell fire, of sleeping by the roadside in
the woods to fool the _boche_ flyers who bombed the Red Cross buildings,
she still feels the sly nip of envy. But soldiers do not cease to be
soldiers and heroes when the war is done.
"Other puddles formed on the table and she mopped them up. She had used
three towels during her eight-hour shift. A soldier, one of the
thousands passing daily through the six Paris stations on their way
home, journeying to leave areas, going to join the Army of Occupation or
assigned to duty in the city, called to her.
"'Sister, I want to show you something,' he said, and unwrapped a highly
decorative circlet of aluminum. It was a napkin ring which he had bought
from a _poilu_ who made it of scraps from the battlefield. There was an
elaborate monogram engraved on a small copper shield.
"'For my mother,' he explained. 'If you don't think it is good enough I
will get something else.'
"At once fifty rival souvenirs were produced. Men came from other tables
to exhibit their own. There was the real collector who bemoaned the
theft of a 'belt made by a Russian prisoner in Germany and decorated
with the buttons of every army in the world including the fire
department of Holland.'
"One of the new arrivals had hands stiffened from recently healed
wounds. She brought his plate of baked beans, roast meat, potatoes, a
bowl of coffee, and pudding. A young Canadian with flaming, rosy cheeks
divided the last doughnut with his friend, the Anzac. Crullers are the
greatest influence in canteen for the general friendliness among
soldiers of different armies. A League of Nations could be founded upon
them if negotiations were left to the privates about the
oilcloth-covered tables.
"The boy with the crippled hands protested that he did not want to
accept a dinner for which there was so little charge.
"'Say, Miss,' he said, 'I can pay more. I don't have to be sponging.'
"'You have folks in the states?' she asked. He had.
"'Then,' she explained, 'they are the ones who support the American Red
Cross. When you come here it is because the folks asked you in to
dinner.'
"'But I haven't any folks,' announced a sailor.
"'I'm from the States, so I am your folks,' she retorted, 'and the Red
Cross is your folks. We invite you to three meals a day as long as you
stay in Paris.'
"'You are my folks,' said the boy who was only a youngster, 'and you
sure look like home to me.'
"The soldier with the crippled hands wanted to describe his wounds. Like
hundreds of others he began with the sensations in the field, 'when he
got his.' Deftly as she had learned to do during hundreds of such
recitals, she cleaned up the table and stacked the plates without
seeming to interrupt. It was three o'clock, the end of her day. She had
reported at seven in the morning. The following week she would report
with the other members of the staff at eleven at night because the doors
of a canteen must never be closed.
"The boy talked on. He was explaining homesickness, the sort which
drives men from cafés where the food is unfamiliar and the names on the
menus cannot be translated into 'doughboy French' to such places as the
little room in the Gare St. Lazare.
"She discovered that her habitual posture was with arms akimbo and hands
spread out over her hips. This position seemed to rest the ache in her
shoulders. Through her memory flashed pictures of waitresses in station
eating houses who stood that way while tourists fought for twenty
minutes' worth of ham and eggs between trains.
"Red Cross after-war canteens were a social center for pretty idlers in
smart blue smocks?
"The smile on her lips never faltered and the hidden smile in her heart
became a little song of laughter.
"She was 'helping'--helping in an 'eating joint,' some of the boys
called it. But it was an eating joint with a soul."
What more could one ask of an eating-house?
From the canteen at the railroad terminals--which were all right so far
as they went--it was an easy step of transition to the establishment of
hotels for the enlisted men in the accessible parts of Paris--until
there was a total of six of these last, in addition to the five railway
station canteens--at Gare St. Lazare, Gare du Nord, Gare d'Orsay, Gare
d'Orléans, and Gare Montparnasse. The winter-time hotels were in the
Avenue Victor Emanuel, Rue Traversière, Rue la Victoire, Rue St.
Hyacinthe, and the Rue du Bac. These were all, in the beginning, small
Parisian taverns of the _pension_ type, which were rather quickly and
easily adapted to their war-time uses.
The great difficulty with the first five of these American Red Cross
doughboy hotels was their extreme popularity. They could hardly keep
pace with the demands made upon them--in the last weeks that preceded
and immediately following the signing of the armistice; while, with the
coming of springtime and the granting of wholesale leaves of absence by
the army, an immediate and most pressing problem confronted the American
Red Cross in Paris. The boys were coming into the town--almost literally
in whole regiments, and the provisions for their housing and
entertainment there were woefully inadequate--to say the least. Not only
were these accommodations, as furnished by the French, inadequate and
poor, but the charges for them often were outrageous.
Yet to furnish hotel accommodations in the big town, even of the crudest
sort, for a thousand--perhaps two thousand--doughboys a night was no
small problem. There were no more hotels, large or small, available for
commandeering in Paris; the various allied peace commissions had
completely exhausted the supply. Yet our Red Cross, accustomed by this
time to tackling big problems--and the solution of this was, after all,
but part of the day's work, and because there were no more hotels or
apartment houses or dormitories or barracks of any sort whatsoever
available in the city of more than two million folks--our Red Cross
decided to build a hotel. And so did--almost overnight.
It was a summer hotel, that super-tavern for our doughboys, and it stood
squarely in the center of that famous Parisian playground, the Champs de
Mars--and almost within stone throw of the Eiffel Tower and the _Ecole
Militaire_. To create it several dozen long barracks--like American Red
Cross standard khaki tents--were erected in a carefully planned pattern.
Underneath these were builded wooden floors and they were furnished with
electric lights and running water. A summer hotel could not have been
more comfortable; at least few of them are.
The Tent City, as it quickly became known, was opened about March 4,
1919, with bed accommodations for 1,400 men, while preparations were
quickly made to increase this capacity by another five hundred, for the
latest and the biggest of American Red Cross hotels in Paris had leaped
into instant popularity. Between six and nine-thirty in the morning and
ten-thirty and midnight in the evening, the boys would come streaming in
to the registry desk, like commercial travelers into a popular hostelry
in New York or Philadelphia or Chicago. They would sleep--perhaps for
the first time in many, many months--in muslin sheets. And these were as
immaculate as those of any first-class hotel in the States.
There was no charge whatsoever for these dormitory accommodations. For
the meals--simple but good and plentiful--the normal price of fifty
centimes (nine or ten cents) was asked, but never demanded; while merely
for the asking any of our boys in khaki could have at any hour the
famous Red Cross sandwiches of ham or salmon or beef mixture or
jam--chocolate or coffee or lemonade a-plenty to wash it down.
Definite provision was made for their amusement; there were "rubberneck
wagons" to take them afield to the wonderful and enduring tourist sights
of Paris and her environs--and at the Tent City itself a plenitude of
shows and dances as well as the more quiet comfort of books or
magazines, or the privilege and opportunity of writing a letter home.
"Of what use these last in Paris?" you ask.
Your point is well taken. I would have taken it myself--before I first
went to the Tent City. When I did it was a glorious April day, the sun
shone with an unaccustomed springtime brilliancy over Paris, and yet the
air was bracing and fit for endeavor of every sort. Yet the big reading
room tent of the Red Cross hotel in the Champs de Mars was completely
filled--with sailor boys or boys in khaki reading the books or paper
most liked by them. The sight astonished me. Could these boys--each on a
leave of but three short days--be blind to the wonders of Paris? Or was
their favorite author particularly alluring that week? I decided to ask
one of them about it.
"I saw Paris yesterday--Notre Dame, the Pantheon, Napoleon's Tomb, the
Opera House, the Louvre, the Follies--the whole blame business. It's
some hike. But I did it. An' to-day I'm perfectly satisfied to sit here
and read these guys a-telling of how they would have fought the war."
Of such was the nature of the American doughboy.
* * * * *
Just as it was necessary at Treves and Bordeaux and elsewhere--because
of the very volume of the problem--to separate his entertainment from
that of his officers, so it became necessary to effect a similar
solution in Paris; for the officer is quite as much a ward of our Red
Cross as the doughboy, himself. And so early in the solution of this
entire great problem a superb home in the very heart of Paris--the town
residence of the Prince of Monaco at No. 4 Avenue Gabriel and just a
step from the Place de la Concorde--was secured and set aside as an
American Red Cross Officers' Club. Lovely as this was, and seemingly
more than generous in its accommodations, these were soon overwhelmed by
the demands placed upon them, and steps were taken toward finding a
real officers' hotel for the men of the A. E. F. when they should come
to Paris.
These led to the leasing of the Hotel Louvre, at the head of the Avenue
de l'Opéra and almost adjoining the Comédie Française, the American
University Union, and the Louvre. After being rapidly redecorated and
otherwise transformed to meet the necessities of the A. E. F. it was
reopened on the sixth of January, 1919, as the American Officers' Hotel
in charge of Mr. L. M. Boomer, the directing genius of several large New
York hotels. Mr. Boomer brought to the Red Cross a great practical hotel
experience, and the house under his management quickly attained an
overwhelming success. It had, in the first instance, been charmingly
adapted to its new uses. Its rather stiff and old-fashioned interior had
been completely transformed; there was all through the building an
indefinable but entirely unmistakable home atmosphere. Our American
officers fairly reveled in it.
Into this setting was placed good operation--a high-grade
American-operated hotel, if you please, in the very heart of Paris and
all her stout traditions. _Petit déjeuners_ begone! They are indeed
starvation diet for a hungry Yank. The breakfast in the American
Officers' Hotel, which our Red Cross set up and operated, cost a uniform
five francs (one dollar) and had the substantial quality of a regular
up-and-doing tavern on this side of the Atlantic.
Before we rest, here are three typical bills of fare of a single
ordinary day in this A. R. C.-A. E. F. establishment. The day was the
nineteenth of April, 1919, and the three meals were as follows:
BREAKFAST Five Francs--($1.00).
Bananas
Quaker Oats
Eggs and Bacon
Griddle Cakes with Sirup
Confiture
Coffee, Cocoa, or Chocolate
LUNCHEON Eight Francs--($1.60).
Oyster Soup, with Okra
Scollops of Veal, Dewey
Nouilles, Milanaise
Cold Meats, with Jelly
Russian Salad
Assorted Eclairs
Raspberry Ice Cream
Coffee
DINNER Ten Francs--($2.00).
Crème St. Cloud
Rouget Portugaise
Roasted Filet of Beef, Cresson
Pommes Château
Endive Flamandes
Salade de Saison
Candied Fruits
Coffee Ice Cream
Coffee
Yet the charm of the American Officers' Hotel in Paris rested not alone
in the real excellence of its cuisine, nor in the comfort of its cleanly
sleeping rooms. It carried its ideals of genuine service far beyond
these mere fundamentals. It recognized the almost universal Yankee
desire to have one's shoes shined in a shop and so set up a regular
American boot-blacking stand in one of its side corridors, a thing which
every other Parisian hotel would have told you was quite impossible of
accomplishment. It recognized the inconvenience of tedious waiting and
long queues at the box office of the Paris theaters by setting up a
theater ticket office in its lobby, which made no extra charge for the
distinct service rendered. Nor was there a charge for the services of
Miss Curtis, the charming little Red Cross girl, who went shopping with
a fellow or for him, and who had a knack of getting right into those
perplexing Paris shops and getting just what a fellow wanted at an
astonishingly low price--for Paris in war times, anyway. Her range of
experience was large; from the man with a silver star on each shoulder
who wanted to buy a modish evening gown for his wife at a price not to
exceed forty dollars, to the chunky Nevada lieutenant who had won three
thousand francs at "redeye" on the preceding evening and was anxious to
blow it all in the next morning in buying souvenirs for mother. With
both she did her best. Her motto was that of the successful shop keeper:
"We aim to please."
When Mr. Boomer had this hotel set up and running and turned his
attention to some other housing problems of our Red Cross, the
management fell to Major H. C. Eberhart, who had been his assistant in
Paris and before that had been affiliated in a managerial capacity with
several large American houses. He carried forward the job so well begun.
* * * * *
With the slow but very sure movement of our doughboys back from eastern
France and Germany toward the base ports along the westerly rim of
France, where they were embarking in increasing numbers for the blessed
homeland, it became necessary for General Pershing to establish
concentration areas, or reservoir camps, well back from the Atlantic
Coast but convenient to it. By far the largest and most important of
these was in the neighborhood of the city of Le Mans, some one hundred
and fifty miles southwest of Paris, which meant in turn that what was
finally destined to be the largest of the canteens of our American Red
Cross in France outside of Paris was the final one established. It was
known as the American Red Cross Casual Canteen and, situated within
three blocks to the east of the railroad station at Le Mans, was a
genuine headquarters for all the American soldiers for ten or fifteen or
twenty miles roundabout. And in the bare chance that there might not be
a doughboy who had chanced to hear of it, it was well indicated--by day,
by a huge sign of the crimson cross, and by night that emblem blazing
forth in all the radiance of electricity.
When the doors were finally opened--about the middle of March,
1919--there were sleeping quarters under its hospitable roof for 250
enlisted men and forty officers. In the canteen portion of the
establishment, 200 men could be served at a single sitting; in all 500
at each of the three meals a day. The comforts of this place almost
approximated those of a hotel. When the men rose from their beds in the
morning--clean sheets and towels and pillowcases, of course, even though
it did mean that the Red Cross had to establish its own laundry in the
establishment--they could step, quickly and easily, into a commodious
washroom and indulge, if they so chose, in a shower bath. Eighteen
showers were installed--for their convenience. It represented the acme
of Red Cross service.
* * * * *
Finally the beginning of the end for the average doughboy in
France--that long anticipated and seemingly never-arriving day of
departure in the troopship for home.
Our Red Cross was down to see him off when he sailed. It might have been
from Brest or Bordeaux or St. Nazaire that he took his departure--or
from some one of the lesser ports that were used to a greater or less
extent. That made no difference to the American Red Cross. It was part
of its job to be on hand whenever and wherever the boy of the A. E. F.
sailed for home--whether it was Brest or Vladivostok or Southampton or
Marseilles.
As a matter of real and actual fact, Brest was the most used of all the
embarkation ports for the journey home. It boasted what was sometimes
called "the most beautiful canteen in France" which had been builded by
our Red Cross, with the generous help of the army engineers. It
immediately adjoined the embarkation sheds, and night and day in the
months that followed the signing of the armistice, it was supremely
busy--serving the inevitable cigarettes, doughnuts, chocolate, and other
hot drinks. An interesting and extremely valuable adjunct to the place
was a bakery, with a capacity of twenty thousand buns a day.
The enlisted men's rest room, with its bright hangings and draperies,
its cartoons of army life painted upon its wall panels, its big
fireplace, its comfortable settees, lounging chairs, and tables supplied
with games, magazines, and writing material, held especial attraction
for the doughboys. In all the mud and grime of the dirty _Port du
Commerce_ it was the one cheery and homelike place.
* * * * *
I told in an earlier chapter of the American Red Cross canteen at
Bassens, just across the Gironde from Bordeaux. It is enough to add here
and now that this American-builded port with its mile-long Yankee timber
pier at which seven great ships might be berthed simultaneously,
discharging or loading cargoes, never justified its worth half so much
as in the days after the armistice. Thomas Kane's coffee attained a new
perfection while Miss Susanne Wills, the Chicago woman who was
directress of the canteen on the pier, and her fellow workers made
renewed efforts to see that the boys that passed through the canteen had
every conceivable comfort--and then some others. I, myself, spent a half
day questioning them as to these. The verdict to the questionings was
unanimous. It generally came in the form of a grin or a nod of the head,
sometimes merely in a pointing gesture to the crimson-crossed comfort
bag, that the big and blushing doughboy carried hung upon his wrist.
* * * * *
For the sick boy, going homeward bound from all the ports, very special
comfort provisions were made--and rightly so. All of these last passed
through the Red Cross infirmaries on the embarkation docks. As each went
over the gangway he was questioned as to his equipment. If he was short
a mess kit or a cup, a fork, a knife, a spoon or a blanket, the
deficiency was promptly met; in addition to which each boy was given a
pair of flannel pajamas and the inevitable comfort bag, with its
toothbrush, tooth paste, wash cloth, bar of soap, and two packages of
cigarettes. Books and magazines also went upon each troopship, while
Red Cross nurses accompanied the boys on to the ships and saw them
safely settled in the hospital wards.
No mere cataloging of the work of our Red Cross in the embarkation ports
can ever really begin to tell the story of the fullness of its service
there. Charts of organization, details of operations, pictures of the
surroundings go just so far, but never quite far enough to tell of the
heart interest that really makes service anywhere and everywhere. Such
service the American Red Cross rendered all across the face of
France--and nowhere with more strength and enthusiasm than in those
final moments of the doughboy which awaited him before his start home.
Have I not already told you that our Red Cross over there was not a
triumph of organization--or anything like it? It was a big job--and with
big mistakes. But the bigness of the things accomplished so far
outweighed the mistakes that they can well be forgotten; the tremendous
net result of real achievement set down immutably and indisputably as a
real triumph of our American individualism.