so expensive in France?"
----
SEA SLANG PUZZLES POILU.
----
Trips on an Idiom and His Pride
Takes a Fall.
----
Among the idiomatic terms adopted by United States Marines everywhere,
the expression "shove off" is used more frequently than any other. In
the sea-soldier lingo, if a Marine goes home on furlough, leaves his
camp or garrison or goes anywhere, he "shoves off."
A story comes from France of a Marine who had been acting as orderly for
a lieutenant. The officer sent him on an errand, and when he returned
the lieutenant was nowhere about. A poilu, who happened to be loitering
in the vicinity, was questioned by the Marine:
"Have you seen the lieutenant?"
"Oui, monsieur, oui," replied the poilu, proud of his newly acquired
Marine Corps English, "he have--what you call--pushed over."
----
HOW ABOUT THEM?
----
Things that make all the difference in the world:--
A letter from ---- (fill in name to suit yourself.)
A real soap-and-hot-water bath.
A real shave.
Dry feet.
American tobacco.
"Good work!" from the skipper.
A home-town paper less than a month old.
"Seconds" on coffee--when it's made right.
Pay-day.
----
YANKEE AVIATORS
PLAY IN LUCK
----
Dead Engine Sneezes and
Picks Up after a 2,000
Meter Drop.
----
SKY FULL OF CREAM PUFFS.
----
Observer Who Fails to Surround
Something Hot Faints
From the Cold.
----
Those were American boys who dodged Boche air patrols, laughed at
anti-aircraft guns and spattered bombs upon Rombach and Ludwigshafen far
behind the Boche lines.
One of them used to be a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Joseph Wilson,
of Wheeling, W. Va., another is Bud Lehr, of Albion, Neb., who played
center on a basketball team that won the State championship. The others
are Charles Kinsolving and Charles Kerwood, of Philadelphia, and George
Kyle, of Portland, Ore. They are corporals in a French flying squadron
situated within an hour's flight of an American infantry training camp.
Seated around the rough mess table in their popotte--a tiny building
stuck away on a ledge of rock under a cliff--they told all about the
bombing of the railroad stations and ammunition factories at Rombach and
Ludwigshafen.
"The old Boche almost got me that time," said Lehr, lifting the oil
cloth table cover to knock wood. "The engine of my boat died on me just
over Rombach. I pulled everything in sight and kicked every lever I
couldn't see. Nothing doing; anti-aircraft shells bursting right on a
level with me. We began to drop. I turned around to the observer and
pulled a sea-sick grin.
A Sneeze Spelled Joy.
"'It's all off, kid,' he said. 'Looks like we're through.'
"We dropped from 5,000 meters to 3,000. Then the engine sneezed, coughed
and took up again. My heart and the boat came up 2,000 meters in one
jump. The rest of the formation had gone on, dropped their bombs on
Rombach and were beating it for Ludwigshafen. By the time I got back to
my right altitude I could see the effects of their bombs. The railroad
station was burning like a haystack and smoke was coming from the
munitions plant. I circled the town and the observer released the bombs.
"Then I turned nose back towards Verdun and crossed the lines. A couple
of miles behind the line the engine ran out of gas, so we came down in a
field."
They circled several times on the French side of the lines before
crossing in order to reach the necessary altitude. Kyle dropped eight
bombs, most of them on the munition plant at Ludwigshafen.
"The sky was full of cream puffs," he said, "but it didn't bother us
very much because most of the stuff was breaking above or below us. We
took our time, aimed for the objective, and dropped the bombs.
Can't See Bomb's Results.
"You can't hear them explode or see the results unless you're flying
quite a distance behind the squadron because we go so fast that by the
time the fire gets under way we are miles off. Except for Lehr's
machine, we maintained our formation and came out flying in the same
position. If there were any Boche patrols out in our neighborhood they
knew better than to tackle us.
"When we came down I found my observer unconscious. I thought he had
been hit, but he had only fainted from the cold.
"You big rummy," turning to the observer and swiping one of his
cigarettes from the open box on the table--"You big rummy, I told you
you had better surround something hot before starting--a bowl of oatmeal
or coffee.
"Gimmie a light now."
All five are awaiting their transfer to the American flying corps.
----
STARS IN A HERO'S ROLE.
----
Movie Actor Plays Sapper in a
Real Rescue.
----
Among the candidates for officers' commissions at the A. E. F.'s
training schools is a former movie star who has served his
apprenticeship with the British Army. To see him now, few would
recognize him as one of the high steppers under the bright night lights
of Broadway as he was a year ago. Seized by a sudden impulse, he
enlisted in the British army without waiting for America to get into the
war and now in return for faithful service, has been given an
opportunity by that government to fight under his own flag. Several
other Americans who have also worn the British uniform, and who were
sent to the school for the same purpose, tell this story of one of the
former screen star's experiences:
In the darkness--locomotives, auto lights in the fighting zone--a
heavily loaded truck was struck by a train. The truck was overturned
down an embankment, imprisoning the two men on it, killing one almost
instantly and seriously injuring the other. Spurred by the latter's
groans and appeals for help an officer was directing a squad of men with
crowbars and sticks in an effort to lift the truck when the former actor
came up. The men were making no progress in budging the heavy wreck
while there was a possibility, if they did, that it would crash down on
the still living man.
"I think I can get the man out, sir if I may try," the New Yorker said
saluting the officer.
"Who are you?" the officer asked surprised at the interruption.
"I'm a Yank, sir," he replied, using the popular designation for
Americans in the British army.
"What's your rank?" continued the officer, determined that the man be
rescued properly if at all.
"Master engineer, sir," the American answered.
Evidently that was sufficient for the officer, for he at once assented
with:
"You may try. Lend him a hand men."
The "Yank" took a shovel and started tunnelling under the truck. As he
wormed himself into the little hole, the shovel was abandoned for a
bayonet and he pushed the dirt back with his hands to others, who threw
it aside. After an hour's work, he had the dead man out. Another hour,
and he had burrowed molelike, to the side of the other man, who still
was conscious.
"Do you want to take a chance? It'll be torture getting out," he said to
the truck driver.
"Anything to get from here to die outside," the man gasped.
A rope was shoved in and the American tied it around the man's legs.
Slowly, while he guided the battered body of the now unconscious man,
comrades pulled them both back through the narrow tunnel.
"I'll see that you're mentioned in regimental orders for your efforts,"
said the officer to the exhausted "Yank," and he did.
The truck driver had an arm broken, a shoulder crushed and a fractured
skull. He was rushed to a hospital on a chance that his life might be
saved after so much effort. The work was not in vain, for a few days ago
a letter was received from him, well again at his home in England,
saying to the former movie star:
"The latch string of this home in Leicester is always hanging out for
you."
----
"WELL, I'LL BE--!"
----
THEY'RE ALL HERE.
----
"Fat Casey!"
"Well, I'll be--!"
After seven years Gabby and Fat Casey came face to face on a
snow-covered country hillside in France. Gabby played right tackle on
the football team out in Chicago in his sophomore year. Casey, a senior,
was center and a bother to the trainer because he would surround two
bits' worth of chocolate caramels every day, adding to the dimension
that won him his nickname.
Somewhere in France Gabby swung his right mitt and clasped Casey's. They
hung on in a kind of reminiscent grip, searching one another's face for
changes.
Casey wore a smudge on his upper lip. Gabby's face was still un-hairy,
but a little lined by the last few years of bucking the business line
for a living. Casey has no cause for wrinkles, having a wealthy Dad.
And, anyway, Fat's disposition proofed his map against the corrugations
of money problems.
We find them shaking hands again.
Casey is driving a touring car over from Divisional Headquarters to call
for the major of the Third Battalion. He stalls on the hill from dirty
distributor points and gets out to sand-paper them. That red-headed
sentry, gazing skyward through field glasses on "aeroplane watch"
against the Boches, can be none other than Gabby, the ex-right tackle.
Gabby is a little puzzled by Fat's moustache, but only for a second.
"Whatever became of Charley Rose," he asks, "and Bill Lyman, and all the
rest of them?"
"For the love of Mike--meeting you in this forsaken spot after all this
time! Where are you stationed? Can't we stage a reunion? Can't we, Fat?"
Well, Fat is a sergeant-chauffeur, Q.M.C. Gabby is a doughboy in an
infantry regiment. They can't get together. They're at the War.
For the next ten minutes a whole battlefield of Boche fliers might have
sneaked past the Chicago sentry and bombed the daylights out of Division
Headquarters without any hindrance from Gabby.
Charley Rose, says Fat, is an infantry lieutenant. Maury Dunne's in the
heavy artillery. Dan McCarthy, the hopeless but untiring "sub" of the
1911 squad, is in France in the Q.M.C.
"Well, doggone!" says Fat, in wonderment at the littleness of the world.
"Well, gee whiz!" says Gabby, thinking the same thing.
You'll meet 'em all over here--your old rivals, your staunchest pals.
You may find yourself top sergeant over the very kids you stole apples
or milk bottles with back in the "good old days." Perhaps you'll be
saluting the fellow who cut you out of your girl back in high school
when an exchange of class pins with pretty Frances Black meant that you
were engaged to her for that semester.
Somewhere in France, they're all here.
----
SO THIS IS FRANCE?
----
The first shift is coming out from the tables. White-haired plump Madame
scurries over to her place at the door to collect the dinner toll.
Silver clinks into her country cash register, a cigar box with the lid
knocked off.
The second shift edges toward the dining room where Suzanne and Angel
and Joan are rushing about, clearing away the traces of the first
service.
"How's the chewin'?" asks the Albany rifleman.
"Pretty good, pretty good," says the engineer boy from Los Angeles.
"Good place to fill up on tan bread for a change."
Close your eyes and shut out the khaki. The buzzing voices, the scraping
hob nails take you back to the Democratic convention of Pottewantamis
County last Spring when the delegates came in through a sleet storm and
dried their socks around the stove in the Chamber of Commerce. Or you're
back in the locker room hearing the coach's final instructions for the
county championship tussle with Lincoln High.
The second service is finishing. Four soldiers are rolling the old
tin-throated piano into the middle of the floor. One of them used to be
a rag-time "song-booster." Oh, baby, how he can torment those keys!
There they go, in a chorus of fifty roof-raising voices:
"Twice as nice as Paradise,
And they called it Dixie Land!"
----
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.
----
The American war zone recently was honored by a visit from several "lady
journalists" who came out from Paris to see how "our boys" were faring.
One of these young women had been reared in luxurious surroundings in
New York. Since coming to Paris she seldom went about wearing anything
but slippers. These were all right because she always rode in a taxi.
A certain American captain, who thinks nothing of using a nice ten-foot
snow bank for bathing purposes, was delegated to conduct the young women
through the American war zone.
From the start, the horror of the New York society writer knew no
bounds.
"What," she exclaimed, "no pillows for our men! And you say, Captain,
they have no bathtubs, but have to bathe in the rivers and creeks? And I
see, there are no table cloths or napkins? Captain, leave it to me! I'm
going to tell the people of America all about the terrible living
conditions of our soldiers over here. Something must be done, and
something will be done by an aroused public opinion back home!"
The captain indulged an inward chuckle that racked his soul. Then his
face became solemn.
"Please don't stir up any scandal in America over this," he entreated
the young woman writer. "I'll tell you confidentially that feather beds
are on the way from America for every soldier and there are whole
boatloads of bathtubs coming, too. But what's sweetest of all in
this--promise you'll keep it a secret until it happens?--our government
is going to present every soldier in France with a beautiful manicure
set!"
"That's more like it," said the lady, much mollified.
MACDOUGAL & CO.
ARNOLD STEWART Successor
AMERICAN
MILITARY
TAILORS
PARIS 1 bis Rue Auber
Corner Rue Scribe
_Orders Executed in 48 Hours._
Our services at the disposal of
American Officers requiring
information of any description.
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8 RUE DUPHOT
The SMALLEST but SMARTEST
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_The_
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OPTICIENS SPECIALISTES pour la VUE
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Standard-Bearers
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Having Branches in the Army Zone, equipped with English-Speaking
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BRANCHES AT
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Agents and representatives requested.
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