Well, the 118th has settled down to what looks like a long
cantonnement. It is surely the liveliest as well as the biggest we ever
had here, and every little town and village is crowded between here
and Coulommier. Not only are there five thousand infantry billeted
along the hills and in the valleys, but there are big divisions of
artillery also. The little square in front of our railway station at
Couilly is full of grey cannon and ammunition wagons, and there
are military kitchens and all sorts of commissary wagons along
all the roadsides between here and Crécy-en-Brie, which is the
distributing headquarters for all sorts of material.
As the weather has been intolerably cold, though it is dry and often
sunny, the soldiers are billeted in big groups of fifty or sixty in a room
or grange, where they sleep in straw, rolled in their blankets, packed
like sardines to keep warm.
They came in nearly frozen, but they thawed out quickly, and now
they don't mind the weather at all.
Hardly had they got thawed out when an epidemic of mumps broke
out. They made quick work of evacuating those who had it, and stop
its spreading, to the regret, I am afraid, of a good many of the boys.
One of them said to me the day after the mumpy ones were taken
over to Meaux: "Lucky fellows. I wish I had the mumps. After Verdun
it must be jolly to be in the hospital with nothing more dangerous than
mumps, and a nice, pretty girl, in a white cap, to pet you. I can't think
of a handsomer way to spend a repos than that."
When I tell you that these soldiers say, "Men who have not been at
Verdun have not seen the war yet," and then add that the life of the
118th here looks like a long picnic, and that they make play of their
work, play of their grenade practice, which they vary with football, play
of their twenty miles hikes, I give you leave to laugh at my way of
seeing the war, and I'll even laugh with you.
That reminds me that I never see a thousand or so of these boys on
the big plain playing what they call football that I don't wish some
American chaps were here to teach them the game. All they do here
is to throw off their coats and kick the ball as far, and as high, as
possible, and run like racers after it, while the crowd, massed on the
edge of the field, yells like mad. The yelling they do very well indeed,
and they kick well, and run well. But, if they only knew the game--
active, and agile, and light as they are--they would enjoy it, and play it
well.
I had one of the nicest thrills I have had for many a day soon after the
118th arrived.
It was a sunny afternoon. I was walking in the road, when, just at the
turn above my house, two officers rode round the corner, saluted me,
and asked if the road led to Quincy. I told them the road to the right at
the foot of the hill, through Voisins, would take them to Quincy. They
thanked me, wheeled their horses across the road and stood there. I
waited to see what was going to happen--small events are interesting
here. After a bit one of them said that perhaps I would be wise to step
out of the road, which was narrow, as the regiment was coming.
I asked, of course, "What regiment?" and "What are they coming
for?" and he answered "The 118th," and that it was simply "taking a
walk."
So I sauntered back to my garden, and down to the corner by the
hedge, where I was high above the road, and could see in both
directions. I had hardly got there when the head of the line came
round the corner. In columns of four, knapsacks on their backs, guns
on their shoulders, swinging at an easy gait, all looking so brown, so
hardy, so clear-eyed, the men from Verdun marched by.
I had thought it cold in spite of the sun, and was well wrapped up, with
my hands thrust into my big muff, but these men had beads of
perspiration standing on their bronzed faces under their steel
helmets.
Before the head of the line reached the turn into Voisins, a long shrill
whistle sounded. The line stopped. Someone said: "At last! My, but
this has been a hot march," and in a second every man had slipped
off his knapsack and had a cigarette in his mouth.
Almost all of them dropped to the ground, or lay down against the
bank. A few enterprising ones climbed the bank, to the field in front of
my lawn, to get a glimpse of the view, and they all said what everyone
says: "I say, this is the best point to see it."
I wondered what they would say to it if they could see it in summer
and autumn if they found it fine with its winter haze.
But that is not what gave me my thrill.
The rest was a short one. Two sharp whistles sounded down the hill.
Instantly everyone slipped on his sac, shouldered his gun, and at that
minute, down at the corner, the military band struck up "Chant du
Départ." Every hair on my head stood up. It is the first time I have
heard a band since the war broke out, and as the regiment swung
down the hill to the blare of brass--well, funnily enough, it seemed
less like war than ever. Habit is a deadly thing. I have heard that
band--a wonderful one, as such a regiment deserves,--many times
since, but it never makes my heart thump as it did when, so
unexpectedly, it cut the air that sunny afternoon.
I had so often seen those long lines marching in silence, as the
English and the French did to the Battle of the Marne, as all our
previous regiments have come and gone on the hillside, and never
seen a band or heard military music that I had ceased to associate
music with the soldiers, although I knew the bands played in the
battles and the bugle calls were a part of it.
We have had all sorts of military shows, which change the
atmosphere in which the quiet about us had been for months and
months only stirred by the far-off artillery.
One day, we had a review on the broad plain which lies along the
watershed between the Marne and the Grande Morin, overlooking the
heights on the far side of both valleys, with the Grande Route on one
side, and the walls to the wooded park of the handsome Château de
Quincy on the other. It was an imposing sight, with thousands of
steel-helmeted figures sac au dos et bayonnette au canon, marching
and counter-marching in the cold sunshine, looking in the distance
more like troops of Louis XIII than an evolution from the French
conscript of the ante-bellum days of the pantalon rouge.
Two days later we had the most magnificent prise d'armes on the
same plain that I have ever seen, much more stirring--though less
tear-moving--than the same ceremony in the courtyard of the
Invalides at Paris, where most foreigners see it. At the Invalides one
sees the mutilés and the ill. Here one only saw the glory. In Paris, the
galleries about the court, inside the walls of the Soldiers' Home, are
packed with spectators. Here there were almost none. But here the
heroes received their decorations in the presence of the comrades
among whom they had been won, in the terrible battles of Verdun. It
was a long line of officers, and men from the ranks, who stood so
steadily before the commander and his staff, inside the hollow
square, about the regimental colors, to have their medals and
crosses fastened on their faded coats, receive their accolade, and
the bravos of their companions as their citations were read. There
were seven who received the Légion d'Honneur.
It was a brave-looking ceremony, and it was a lovely day--even the
sun shone on them.
There was one amusing episode. These celebrations are always a
surprise to the greater part of the community, and, in a little place like
this, it is only by accident that anyone sees the ceremony. The
children are always at school, and the rest of the world is at work, so,
unless the music attracts someone, there are few spectators. On the
day of the prise d'armes three old peasants happened to be in a field
on the other side of the route nationale, which skirts the big plain on
the plateau. They heard the music, dropped their work and ran
across the road to gape. They were all men on towards eighty--too
old to have ever done their military service. Evidently no one had
ever told them that all Frenchmen were expected to uncover when
the flag went by. Poor things, they should have known! But they
didn't, and you should have seen a colonel ride down on them. I
thought he was going to cut the woollen caps off their heads with his
sabre, at the risk of decapitating them. But I loved what he said to
them.
"Don't you know enough to uncover before the flag for which your
fellow citizens are dying every day?"
Isn't that nice? I loved the democratic "fellow citizens"--so pat and
oratorically French.
I flung the Stars and Stripes to the French breezes on the 7th in
honor of the rupture. It was the first time the flag has been unfurled
since Captain Simpson ordered the corporal to take it down two years
ago the third of last September. I had a queer sensation as I saw it
flying over the gate again, and thought of all that had happened since
the little corporal of the King's Own Yorks took it down,--and the
Germans still only forty-two miles away.