Well, at last, the atmosphere on the hilltop is all changed. We have a
cantonnement de régiment again, and this time the most interesting
that we have ever had,--the 23d Dragoons, men on active service,
who are doing infantry work in the trenches at Tracy-le-Val, in the
Forêt de Laigue, the nearest point to Paris, in the battle-front.
It is, as usual, only the decorative and picturesque side of war, but it
is tremendously interesting, more so than anything which has
happened since the Battle of the Marne.
As you never had soldiers quartered on you--and perhaps you never
will have--I wish you were here now.
It was just after lunch on Sunday--a grey, cold day, which had
dawned on a world covered with frost--that there came a knock at the
salon door. I opened it, and there stood a soldier, with his heels
together, and his hand at salute, who said: "Bon jour, madame, avez-
vous un lit pour un soldat?"
Of course I had a bed for a soldier, and said so at once.
You see it is all polite and formal, but if there is a corner in the house
which can serve the army the army has a right to it. Everyone is
offered the privilege of being prettily gracious about it, and of letting
it appear as if a favor were being extended to the army, but, in case
one does not yield willingly, along comes a superior officer and
imposes a guest on the house.
However, that sort of thing never happens here. In our commune the
soldiers are loved. The army is, for that matter, loved all over France.
No matter what else may be conspué, the crowd never fails to cry
"Vive l'Armée!" although there are places where the soldier is not
loved as a visitor.
I asked the adjutant in, and showed him the room. He wrote it down
in his book, saluted me again with a smiling, "Merci bien, madame,"
and went on to make the rounds of the hamlet, and examine the
resources of Voisins, Joncheroy, and Quincy.
The noncommissioned officers, who arrange the cantonnements, are
very clever about it. They seem to know, by instinct, just what sort of
a man to put in each house, and they rarely blunder.
All that Sunday afternoon they were running around in the mud and
the cold drizzle that was beginning to fall, arranging, not only quarters
for the men, but finding shelter for three times as many horses, and
that was not easy, although every old grange on the hilltop was
cleaned out and put in order.
For half an hour the adjutant tried to convince himself that he could
put four horses in the old grange on the north side of my house. I was
perfectly willing, only I knew that if one horse kicked once, the floor of
the loft would fall on him, and that if four horses kicked once, at least
three walls would fall in on them. That would not be so very important
to me, but I'd hate to have handsome army horses killed like that on
my premises.
He finally decided that I was right, and then I went with him up to
Amélie's to see what we could do. I never realized what a ruin of a
hamlet this is until that afternoon. By putting seven horses in the old
grange at Père's,--a tumble-down old shack, where he keeps lumber
and dead farm wagons,--he never throws away or destroys anything--
we finally found places for all the horses. There were eleven at
Père's, and it took Amélie and Père all the rest of the afternoon to run
the stuff out of the old grange, which stands just at the turn of the
road, and has a huge broken door facing down the hill.
I often mean to send you a picture of that group of ruins--there are
five buildings in it. They were originally all joined together, but some of
them have had to be pulled down because they got too dangerous to
stand, and in the open spaces there is, in one place, a pavement of
red tiles, and in another the roof to a cellar, with stone steps leading
up to it. Not a bit of it is of any use to anyone, though the cellars
under them are used to store vegetables, and Amélie keeps rabbits
in one.
It was while we were arranging all this, and Amélie was assuring them
that they were welcome, but that she would not guarantee that the
whole group of ruins would not fall on their heads (and everything
was as gay as if we were arranging a week-end picnic rather than a
shelter for soldiers right out of the trenches), that the adjutant
explained how it happened that, in the third year of the war, the
fighting regiments were, for the first time, retiring as far as our
hill for their repos.
He told us that almost all the cavalry had been dismounted to do
infantry work in the trenches, but their horses were stalled in the rear.
It had been found that the horses were an embarrassment so near to
the battle-front, and so it had been decided to retire them further
behind the line, and send out part of the men to keep them exercised
and in condition, giving the men in turn three weeks in the trenches
and three weeks out.
They had first withdrawn the horses to Nanteuil-le-Haudrouin a little
northwest of us, about halfway between us and the trenches in the
Forêt de Laigue. But that cantonnement had not been satisfactory, so
they had retired here.
By sundown everything was arranged--four hundred horses along the
hilltop, and, they tell us, over fifteen thousand along the valley. We
were told that the men were leaving Nanteuil the next morning, and
would arrive during the afternoon.
It was just dusk on Monday when they began riding up the hill, each
mounted man leading two riderless horses.
It was just after they passed that there came a knock at the salon
door.
I opened it with some curiosity. When you are to lodge a soldier in a
house as intimately arranged as this one is, I defy anyone not to be
curious as to what the lodger is to be like.
There stood a tall, straight lad, booted and spurred, with a crop in one
gloved hand, and the other raised to his fatigue cap in salute, and a
smile on his bonny face,--as trig in his leather belted bleu de ciel tunic
as if ready for parade, and not a sign of war about him but his
uniform.
"Bon jour, madame" he said. "Permit me to introduce myself. Aspirant
B------, 23d Dragoons."
"Regular army?" I said, for I knew by the look of him that this was a
professional soldier.
"St. Cyr," he replied. That is the same as our West Point.
"You are welcome, Aspirant," I said. "Let me show you to your room."
"Thank you," he smiled. "Not yet. I only came to present myself, and
thank you in advance for your courtesy. I am in command of the
squad on your hill, replacing an officer who is not yet out of the
hospital. I must see my men housed and the horses under shelter.
May I ask you, if my orderly comes with my kit, to show him where to
put it, and explain to him how he may best get in and out of the
house, when necessary, without disturbing your habits?"
I had to laugh as I explained to him that locking up, when soldiers
were in the hamlet, was hardly even a formality, and that the orderly
could come and go at his will.
"Good," he replied. "Then I'll give myself the pleasure of seeing you
after dinner. I hope I shall in no way disturb you. I am always in before
nine," and he saluted again, backed away from the door, and
marched up the hill. He literally neither walked nor ran, he marched.
I wish I could give you an idea of what he looks like. At first sight I
gave him nineteen years at the outside, in spite of his height and his
soldierly bearing and his dignity.
Before he came in at half past eight his orderly had brought his kit,
unpacked and made himself familiar with the lay of the house, and
made friends with Amélie. So the Aspirant settled into an armchair in
front of the fire--having asked my permission--to chat a bit, and
account for himself, and it was evident to me that he had already
been asking questions regarding me--spurred, as usual, by the
surprise of finding an American here. As the officers' mess is at the
foot of the hill, at Voisins, that had been easy.
So, knowing intuitively, just by his manner and his words, that he had
asked questions about me--he even knew that I had been here from
the beginning of the war--I, with the privilege of my white hairs, asked
him even how old he was. He told me he was twenty--a year older
than I thought--that he was an only son, that his father was an officer
in the reserves and they lived about forty-five miles the other side of
Rheims, that his home was in the hands of the Germans, and the
house, which had been literally stripped of everything of value, was
the headquarters of a staff officer. And it was all told so quietly, so
simply, with no sign of emotion of any sort.
At exactly nine o'clock he rose to his feet, clicked his heels together,
made me a drawing-room bow, of the best form, as he said: "Eh,
bien, madame, je vous quitte. Bon soir et bonne nuit." Then he
backed to the foot of the stairs, bowed again, turned and went up
lightly on the toes of his heavy boots, and I never heard another
sound of him.
Of course in twenty-four hours he became the child of the house. I
feel like a grandmother to him. As for Amélie, she falls over herself
trying to spoil him, and before the second day he became "Monsieur
André" to her. Catch her giving a boy like that his military title, though
he takes his duties most seriously.
The weather is dreadful--cold, damp, drizzly, but he is in and out, and
the busiest person you can imagine. There isn't a horse that has to
have his feet washed that he isn't on the spot to see it done properly.
There isn't a man who has a pain that he isn't after him to see if he
needs the doctor,--and I don't need to tell you that his men love him,
and so do the horses.
I am taking a full course in military habits, military duties, and military
etiquette. I smile inside myself sometimes and wonder how they can
keep it up during these war times. But they do.
This morning he came down at half past seven ready to lead his
squad on an exercise ride. I must tell you that the soldier who comes
downstairs in the morning, in his big coat and kepi, ready to mount his
horse, is a different person from the smiling boy who makes me a
ballroom bow at the foot of the stairs in the evening. He comes down
the stairs as stiff as a ramrod, lifts his gloved hand to his kepi, as he
says, "Bon jour, madame, vous allez bien ce matin?"
This morning I remarked to him as he was ready to mount: "Well,
young man, I advise you to turn up your collar; the air is biting."
He gave me a queer look as he replied: "Merci,--pas réglementaire,"--
but he had to laugh, as he shook his head at me, and marched out to
his horse.
You do not need to be told how all this changes our life here, and yet
it does not bring into it the sort of emotion I anticipated. Thus far I
have not heard the war mentioned. The tramping of horses, the
moving crowd of men, simply give a new look to our quiet hamlet.
This cantonnement is officially called a "repos" but seems little like
that to me. It seems simply a change of work. Every man has three
horses to groom, to feed, to exercise, three sets of harness to keep in
order, stables to clean. But they are all so gay and happy, and as this
is the first time in eighteen months that any of them have, slept in
beds they are enjoying it.
Of course, I have little privacy. You know how my house is laid out--
the front door opens into the salon, and the staircase is there also.
When the Aspirant is not on duty outside he has to be here where he
can be found, so he sits at the salon desk to do his writing and fix up
his papers and reports, and when he is not going up and down stairs
his orderly is. There seems always to be a cleaning of boots, brushing
of coats, and polishing of spurs and rubbing up of leather going on
somewhere.
It did not take the men long to discover that there was always hot
water in my kitchen, and that they were welcome to it if they would
keep the kettles filled, and that I did not mind their coming and going--
and I don't, for a nicer crowd of men I never saw. They are not only
ready, they are anxious, to do all sorts of odd jobs, from hauling coal
and putting it in, to cleaning the chimneys and sweeping the terrace.
When they groom the horses they always groom Gamin, our dapple-
grey pony, and Ninette, which were never so well taken care of in
their lives--so brushed and clipped that they are both handsomer than
I knew. Though the regiment has only been here three days every
day has had its special excitement.
The morning after they got here we had a royal ten minutes of
laughter and movement.
In the old grange at the top of the hill, where they stabled seven
horses, there had been a long bar across the back wall, fixed with
cement into the side walls, and used to fasten the wagons. They
found it just right to tie the horses. It was a fine morning, for a wonder.
The sun was shining, and all the barn doors were open to it. The
Aspirant and I were standing on the lawn just before noon--he had
returned from his morning ride--looking across the Marne at the
battlefield. The regiment had been in the battle,--but he was, at that
time, still at St. Cyr. Suddenly we heard a great rumpus behind us,
and turned just in season to see all the horses trotting out of the
grange. They wheeled out of the wide door in a line headed down the
hill, the last two carrying the bar to which they had been attached, like
the pole of a carriage, between them. They were all "feeling their
oats," and they thundered down the hill by us, like a cavalry charge,
and behind them came half a dozen men simply splitting with
laughter.
Amélie had been perfectly right. The old grange was not solid, but
they had not pulled the walls down on themselves, they had simply
pulled the pole to which they were attached out of its bed.
The Aspirant tried not to smile--an officer in command must not, I
suppose, even if he is only twenty. He whistled gently, put up his
hand to stop the men from running, and walked quietly into the road,
still whistling. Five of the horses, tossing their heads, were thundering
on towards the canal. The span, dragging the long pole, swerved on
the turn, and swung the pole, which was so long that it caught on the
bank. I expected to see them tangle themselves all up, what with the
pole and the halters. Not a bit of it. They stopped, panting, and still
trying to toss their heads, and the Aspirant quietly picked up a halter,
and passed the horses over to the men, saying, in a most nonchalant
manner: "Fasten that pole more securely. Some of you go quietly
down the hill. You'll meet them coming back," and he returned to the
garden, and resumed the conversation just where it had been
interrupted.
It had been a lively picture to me, but to the soldiers, I suppose, it had
only been an every day's occurrence.
My only fear had been that there might be children or a wagon on the
winding road. Luckily the way was clear.
An hour later, the men returned, leading the horses. They had
galloped down to the river, and returned by way of Voisins, where
they had stopped right in front of the house where the Captain was
quartered, and the Captain had been in the garden and seen them.
This time the Aspirant had to laugh. He slapped one of the horses
caressingly on the nose as he said: "You devils! Couldn't you go on a
lark without telling the Captain about it, and getting us all into
trouble?"
To make this all the funnier, that very night three horses stabled in a
rickety barn at Voisins, kicked their door down, and pranced and
neighed under the Captain's bedroom window.
The Captain is a nice chap, but he is not in his first youth, and he is
tired, and, well--he is a bit nervous. He said little, but that was to the
point. It was only: "You boys will see that these things don't happen,
or you will sleep in the straw behind your horses."
This is the first time that I have seen anything of the military
organization, and I am filled with admiration for it. I don't know how it
works behind the trenches, but here, in the cantonnement, I could set
my clocks by the soup wagon--a neat little cart, drawn by two sturdy
little horses, which takes the hill at a fine gallop, and passes my gate
at exactly twenty-five minutes past eleven, and twenty-five minutes
past five every day. The men wait, with their gamelles, at the top of
the hill. The soup looks good and smells delicious. Amélie says that it
tastes good. She has five soldiers in her house, and she and Père
often eat with them, so she knows.
From all this you can guess what my life is like, and probably will be
like until the impatiently awaited spring offensive. But what you will
find it hard to imagine is the spirit and gaiety of these men. It is hard
to believe that they have been supporting the monotony of trench life
for so long, and living under bombardment,--and cavalry at that,
trained and hoping for another kind of warfare. There is no sign of it
on them.