Well, all quiet on the hilltop again--all the soldiers gone--no sign of
more coming for the present. We are all nervously watching the
advance, but controlling our nerves. The German retreat and the
organized destruction which accompanies it just strikes one dumb. Of
course we all know it is a move meant to break the back of the great
offensive, and though we knew, too, that the Allied commanders were
prepared for it, it does make you shiver to get a letter from the front
telling you that a certain regiment advanced at a certain point thirty
kilometres, without seeing a Boche.
As soon as I began to read the account of the destruction, I had a
sudden illuminating realization of the meaning of something I saw
from the car window the last time I came out from Paris. Perhaps I did
not tell you that I was up there for a few days the first of the month?
Of course you don't need to be told that there has been a
tremendous amount of work done on the eastern road all through the
war. Extra tracks have been laid all the way between Paris and
Chelles, the outer line of defenses of the city--and at the stations
between Gagny and Chelles the sidings extend so far on the western
side of the tracks as to almost reach out of sight. For a long time the
work was done by soldiers, but when I went up to Paris, four weeks
ago, the work was being done by Annamites in their saffron-colored
clothes and queer turbans, and I found the same little people cleaning
the streets in Paris. But the surprising thing was the work that was
accomplished in the few days that I was in Paris. I came back on
March 13, and I was amazed to see all those miles and miles of
sidings filled with trucks piled with wood, with great posts, with planks,
with steel rails, and what looked the material to build a big city or two.
I did not wonder when I saw them that we could not get coal, or other
necessities of life, but it was not until I read of the very German-like
idea of defending one's self on the property of other people that I
realized what all that material meant, and that the Allies were
prepared for even this tragic and Boche-like move. I began to get little
cards and letters back from the 118th on the twenty-third. The first
said simply:
Dear Madame,
Here we are--arrived last night just behind the line,--with our eyes
strained towards the front, ready to bound forward and join in the
pursuit.
Of course I have seen the Americans--a doctor from Schenectady
and forty men, almost all youngsters in their early twenties. In fact
twenty-two seems to be the popular age. There are boys from
Harvard, boys from Yale, New England boys, Virginia boys, boys from
Tennessee, from Kentucky, from Louisiana, and American boys from
Oxford. It is a first-line ambulance corps,--the boys who drive their
little Ford ambulances right down to the battlefields and receive the
wounded from the brancardiers, and who have seen the worst of
Verdun, and endured the privations and the cold with the army.
When a Virginia man told me that he had not taken cold this winter,
and showed me his little tent on the common, where, from choice, he
is still sleeping under canvas, because he "likes it," I could easily
believe him. Do you know,--it is absurd--I have not had a cold this
winter, either? I, who used to have one tonsilitis per winter, two
bronchitis, half a dozen colds in my head, and occasionally a mild
specimen of grip. This is some record when you consider that since
my coal gave out in February we have had some pretty cold weather,
and that I have only had imitation fires, which cheer the imagination
by way of the eyes without warming the atmosphere. I could fill a
book with stories of "how I made fires in war time," but I spare you
because I have more interesting things to tell you.
On the twenty-sixth we were informed that we were to have the 65th
Regiment cantoned on the hill for a day and a night. They were to
move along a bit to make room for the 35th for a few days. It was
going to be pretty close quarters for one night, and the adjutant who
arranged the cantonnement was rather put to it to house his men.
The Captain was to be in my house, and I was asked, if, for two days
--perhaps less--I could have an officers' kitchen in the house and let
them have a place to eat. Well,--there the house was--they were
welcome to it. So that was arranged, and I put a mattress on the floor
in the atelier for the Captain's cook.
We had hardly got that over when the adjutant came back to look
over the ground again, and see if it were not possible to canton a
demi-section in the granges. I went out with him to show him what
there was--a grange on the south side, with a loft, which has already
had to be braced up with posts, and which I believe to be dangerous.
He examined it, and agreed: a grange on the north side, used for
coal, wood, and garden stuff, with a loft above in fair condition, but
only accessible by ladder from the outside. He put up the ladder,
climbed it, unlocked the door, examined it, and decided that it would
do, unless they could find something better.
So soldiers came in the afternoon and swept it out, and brought the
straw in which they were to sleep, and that was arranged.
It was about seven the next morning when they began to arrive. I
heard the tramp of their feet in the road, as they marched, in sections,
to their various cantonnements. I put a clean cap over my tousled
hair, slipped into a wadded gown and was ready just as I heard the
"Halte," which said that my section had arrived. I heard two growly
sounds which I took to be "A droite, marche!"--and by the time I got
the window open to welcome my section I looked down into an Indian
file of smiling bronzed faces, as they marched along the terrace,
knapsacks and guns on their backs, and began mounting the ladder.
Soon after, the Captain's cook arrived with his market baskets and
took possession of the kitchen, and he was followed by orderlies and
the kits, and by the officer who was to be the Captain's table
companion.
As Amélie had half a section cantoned in her courtyard she was busy
there, and I simply showed the cook where things were, gave him
table cloths and napkins, and left him to follow his own sweet will, free
to help himself to anything he needed. If you remember what I told
you about my house when I took it, you can guess how small I had to
make myself.
I can tell you one thing--on the testimony of Amélie--the officers eat
well. But they pay for it themselves, so that is all right. The cook was
never idle a minute while he was in the house. I heard him going up
to bed, in his felt shoes, at ten o'clock--Amélie said he left the kitchen
scrupulously clean--and I heard the kitchen alarm clock, which he
carried with him going off at half past five in the morning.
I had asked the Captain when the regiment was to advance, and he
said probably the next morning, but that the order had not come.
Twice while I was at dinner in the breakfast room, I heard an orderly
come in with despatches, but it was not until nine o'clock that the
order "sac au dos" at half past ten the next morning--that was
yesterday--was official, and it was not until nine in the morning that
they knew that they were leaving in camions--which meant that they
were really starting in the pursuit, and the American division was to
follow them.
The officers had a great breakfast just after nine--half a dozen
courses. As they did not know when, if ever, they would sit down to a
real meal at a table again they made their possibly last one a feast.
As they began just after nine and had to be on the road at half past
ten I don't need to tell you that the cook had no time to clear up after
himself. He had just time--with his mouth full of food--to throw his
apron on the floor, snatch up his gun and his knapsack and buckle
himself into shape as he sprinted up the hill to overtake his company.
As for me--I threw on a cape and went across the road to the field,
where I could see the Grande Route, and the chemin Madame
leading to it. All along the route nationale, as far as I could see with
my field-glass, stood the grey camions. On the chemin Madame the
regiment was waiting. They had stacked their guns and, in groups,
with cigarettes between their lips, they chatted quietly, as they waited.
Here and there a bicyclist was sprinting with orders.
Suddenly a whistle sounded. There was a rattle of arms as the men
unstacked their guns and fell into line, then hundreds of hobnailed
boots marked time on the hard road, and the 65th swung along to the
waiting camions, over the same route I had seen Captain Simpson
and the Yorkshire boys take, just before sundown, on that hot
September day in 1914.
As I stood watching them all the stupendousness of the times rushed
over me that you and I, who have rubbed our noses on historical
monuments so often, have chased after emotions on the scenes of
past heroism, and applauded mock heroics across the footlights,
should be living in days like these, days in which heroism is the
common act of every hour. I cannot help wondering what the future
generations are going to say of it all; how far-off times are going to
judge us; what is going to stand out in the strong limelight of history? I
know what I think, but that does not help yet.
Do you know that I had a letter from Paris this week which said: "I
was looking over your letters written while we were tied up in London,
in August, 1914, and was amused to find that in one of them you had
written 'the annoying thing is, that, after this is over, Germany will
console herself with the reflection that it took the world to beat her.'"
It is coming truer than I believed in those days,--and then I went
back to dishwashing.
You never saw such a looking kitchen as I found. Léon, the officers'
cook--a pastry cook before he was a soldier--was a nice, kindly, hard-
working chap, but he lacked the quality dear to all good house-
keepers--he had never learned to clean up after himself as he went
along. He had used every cooking utensil in the house, and such a
pile of plates and glasses! It took Amélie and me until two o'clock to
clean up after him, and when it was done I felt that I never wanted to
see food again as long as I lived. Of course we did not mind, but
Amélie had to say, every now and then, "Vive l'armée!" just to keep
her spirits up. Anyway it was consoling to know that they have more
to eat than we do.
The American corps had to leave one of their boys behind in our
ambulance, very ill with neuritis--that is to say, painfully ill. As the
boys of the American corps are ranked by the French army as
officers this case is doubly interesting to the personnel of our
modest hospital. First he is an American--a tall young Southerner
from Tennessee. They never knew an American before. Second,
he is not only an honorary officer serving France, he is really a
lieutenant in the officers' reserve corps of his own State, and
our little ambulance has never sheltered an officer before.
The nurses and the sisters are falling over one another to take care
of him--at least, as I always find one or two of them sitting by his bed
whenever I go to see him, I imagine they are.
The amusing thing is that he says he can't understand or speak
French, and swears that the only words he knows are:
Oui, oui, oui,
Non, non, non,
Si, si, si,
Et voilà,
Merci!
which he sings, in his musical southern voice, to the delight of his
admiring nurses. All the same, whenever it is necessary for an
interpreter to explain something important to him, I find that he has
usually got the hang of it already, so I've my doubts if he has as little
French as he pretends. One thing is sure his discharge will leave a
big void in the daily life of the ambulance.
This is growing into a long letter--in the quiet that has settled on us I
seem to have plenty of time--and the mood--so, before I close, I must
say something in reply to your sad sentence in your last letter--the
reply to mine of December regarding our first big cantonnement. You
say "Oh! the pity of this terrible sacrifice of the youth of the world!!
Why aren't the middle-aged sent first--the men who have partly lived
their lives, who leave children to continue the race?" Ah, dear old girl
--you are indeed too far off to understand such a war as this. Few men
of even forty can stand the life. Only the young can bear the strain.
They not only bear it, they thrive on it, and, such of them as survive
the actual battles, will come out of it in wonderful physical trim. Of
course there are a thousand sides to the question. There are
hospitals full of the tuberculous and others with like maladies, but
those things existed before the war, only less attention was paid to
them. It is also a serious question--? getting more serious the longer
the war goes on--as to how all these men will settle into civil life again
--how many will stand sedentary pursuits after years in the open, and
how they will settle back into the injustices of class distinctions after
years of the equality of the same duty--fighting for their country.
Still if the victory is decisive, and the army is satisfied with the
peace conditions, I imagine all those things will settle themselves.
Well, Congress meets on Monday. There is no doubt in anyone's
mind of the final decision. I only hope it won't drag too long. I have
taken my flags down just to have the pleasure of putting them up
again.
I had this letter closed when I got my first direct news from the front
since the advance.
Do you remember how amused I was when I saw the Aspirant
equipped for his march in January? I was told afterward that my idea
of a light equipment for the cavalry in battle was "theoretically
beautiful," but in such a war as this absolutely impracticable. Well I
hear today that when the cavalry advanced it advanced in a
"theoretically beautiful" manner. It seems that the order was
unexpected. It caught the cavalry in the saddle during a manuvre,
and, just as they were, they wheeled into line and flew off in pursuit of
the Boches. They had nothing but what was on their backs--and
ammunition, of course. The result was that they had forty-eight hours
of real suffering. It was harder on the officers than on the men, and
hardest of all on the horses. All the soldiers always have a bidon with
something in it to drink, and almost invariably they have a bite or so in
their sacks. No officer ever has anything on him, and none of them
carries a bidon except on a march. For forty-eight hours in the chase
they suffered from hunger, and, what was worse still, from thirst. As
the weather was nasty and they were without shelters of any kind--not
even tents--they tasted all the hardships of war. This must comfort
the foot soldiers, who are eternally grumbling at the cavalry. However,
the officer who brought back the news says the men bore it with
philosophical gaiety, even those who on the last day had nothing as
well as those who in forty-eight hours had a quarter of a biscuit. The
horses were not so philosophical--some of them just lay down and
died, poor beasts. I assure you I shall never laugh again at a
cavalryman's "battle array."