Goncourt, February 11.
The little old house which now harbors the Y. formerly served, it seems,
as guard-house. To some it must have a strangely familiar air.
Downstairs there are two small rooms; the front one stone-paved, with a
dark carved cupboard in one corner which formerly enclosed the family
bed, and a huge fireplace; the back one with a dirt floor over which
uncertain boards have shakily been laid. The front room we use for the
canteen, the back, with four rough tables, serves as a make-shift
writing room. The walls are dim with smoke and grime, the windows in
both rooms lack half their panes, yet the odd little place has an
atmosphere, a charm all its own. Upstairs soldiers are billeted. When
the din of business dies down in the canteen, one can hear the crisp
rattle of dice as the boys shoot craps on the floor overhead.
In accordance with military regulations here we cannot open the canteen
until four in the afternoon. But a large part of the morning is easily
spent in cleaning out the hut and arranging the stock for the afternoon
and evening onslaught. At Saint Thiebault the detail that “policed up”
the camp in the morning swept out our tent for us, but here one wields
one’s own broom and shovel,—for first of all one must shovel out the mud
that’s on the floor! Cleaning the canteen, however, I find, though a
dirty, is quite a remunerative job, for in the heaps of litter on the
floor money lurks. According to the ethics of the game if money is found
back of the counter it belongs in the till, but if in front it goes to
the finder. Sometimes the find is five centimes, sometimes fifty and
once it was five francs! The litter—chocolate wrappers, orange peels and
cigarette boxes—is all swept into the fireplace and then touched off
with a match; a regular bonfire ensues. This morning we had left the
front door open; immediately the fire was started a throng of villagers
crowded around to look in. They were scandalized at the conflagration.
The house was old, they cried; we would set the chimney on fire, we
would burn up the building, we would burn down the whole town! One
ancient and portly dame in a frenzy of protest dashed into the room and
fairly danced about the hearth, shaking her apron at the flames and
calling for ashes to cover them. But before she could get her ashes the
fire died down and the excitement with it.
The Gendarme and I are billeted in a tiny house just at the village
edge. Our low second story looks down upon the street, so narrow that it
seems one could almost reach out and touch hands with the houses
opposite. But what a street it is! Underneath our low window the whole
world goes by; American officers on horseback, French officers in
limousines, American mule teams, French wood teams with three white
horses harnessed one in front of the other, and always the troops; going
by at dawn in the semi-darkness, their rhythmic incessant tramp weaving
itself into one’s waking dreams, passing by at noon, swinging back down
the hill as it grows dusk, singing snatches of song as they tramp. As I
lie a-bed in the morning before getting up to peer out the window into
the yellow misty atmosphere I can always calculate the exact state of
the weather by the amount of squelch which those marching boots make in
the muddy road.
Company H is billeted on this same street with us. The first morning
after we arrived the Gendarme and I were startled out of sleep by First
Call blown directly underneath our window. Hardly had the last note
sounded when a shout fit to wake the dead went up.
“Get to hell up, all of you! Rise and shine!”
Followed a tremendous banging and kicking at all the stable doors along
the street accompanied by a torrent of vivid and spicy admonitions. The
Gendarme and I gasped and chuckled. This was rich. Were we always to be
awakened in so picturesque a fashion? But the next morning we listened
in vain. First Call was blown at the far end of the street and followed
by a solemn silence; and so it has been ever since. Now that American
ladies are known to be living on the street Company H must get up
decorously.
Goncourt, February 12.
The fireplace is easily the feature of our funny little hut. Around this
at night the lads crowd perched on packing-boxes to smoke, chew gum and
gossip. As the first mad rush of business at the canteen dies down a
little I edge up towards the fireplace in order to get a wee share in
the conversation.
They have caught a spy! One of the cooks in F Company. He was a deserter
from the German Army some one said. They caught him putting dope in the
slum. The doctors were analyzing it now. It’s a wonder the whole company
wasn’t poisoned. Yes, and they found plans of the camp in his pocket
too. He hasn’t eaten a thing since they arrested him. All he does is
just to walk up and down the guard-house. Seems as if he were kind of
crazy.
And so they gossip. A sad-eyed bugler remarks to me that he’d be a rich
man if he only had all the hob-nailed shoes that had been thrown at him.
Another boy wonders what he’d do if he had “both arms shot off and then
the gas alarm sounded.” And always they must be rowing about their
respective states.
“Neebraska! Where’s Neebraska? Is that in the United States or Canada?”
“Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain’t nothin’ but mountains there. Why my old
man told me that when they let the cows out to grass there they had to
put stilts on one side of ’em so they won’t fall off’n the pasture.”
Then they turn on me.
“Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell the beans
bakin’.”
“But I don’t come from Boston,” I protest.
“Well there ain’t nothin’ much in Massachusetts outsider Boston. Why the
state of Noo Hampshire is goin’ to rent the rest o’ Massachusetts for a
duck-yard.”
And so it goes.
“Gee! but it’s good to get into one shop where you don’t have to talk
frog talk!” exclaimed one lad tonight.
“I’ve just heard the greatest compliment for you,” another lad declares
solemnly, “the greatest compliment that could possibly be paid any
woman.”
“Why, what was it?”
“I just heard a feller say; ‘My! don’t she look different from the
French girls!’”
A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter;
“You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it’s like, it’s
like—”
Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. Then
pulling a large bunch of letters “from lady friends” from his pocket,
nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. Finally in a fit of
prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, “Because I’m an American
and you’re one too.” As he makes the presentation something falls to the
floor with a little click. We search among the litter on the floor, the
lad on all fours; finally the lost is found,—a broken bit of comb about
two inches and a quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for
he is company barber and with the company comb gone E Company would be
out of luck.
Always our presence here is something that seems so strange to them as
to be almost incredible.
“Will you please tell me,” asked a serious-looking lad tonight, “what
consideration could possibly induce two American girls to come to a
place like this?”
Continually I am encountering boys who are sure that they’ve “seen me
somewhere.”
“Say, didn’t you use to live in Milwaukee?”
“Haven’t I seen you in Seattle? Well, if it warn’t you, it was somebody
that looked just like you!”
I suppose it is simply because I look American that I look familiar to
them. But the facts in the case seem to be that I have been observed by
some member of the A. E. F. in practically every one of the large cities
of the U. S. A. One boy nearly started a fight in camp the other night
by declaring that in spite of the evidence of my nose he knew I was of
Hebraic origin. He had seen me, he solemnly insisted, “goin’ with a Jew
feller in Philadelphia.”
Undoubtedly it is because they have so little to think about in these
drab days that they are so pathetically curious. Every little thing you
say or do is repeated, discussed all over camp. Sometimes curiosity gets
hold of one of the bolder spirits to such an extent that he ventures the
question;
“How much do you get paid for smiling at the soldiers?”
And when they learn that you are a volunteer and are paying for the
privilege of being there, their amazement is so blank as to be
positively ludicrous.
Goncourt, February 13.
One of the nicest things about Goncourt is our mess. This we have at the
House Across the Street, which is next to the House of the Madonna. We
mess _en famille_ with the family Peirut, the Gendarme, Mr. K. and I,
and we eat the family fare which consists chiefly of soup, boiled meat
and carrots, supplemented by various additions such as sugar, cocoa, jam
and canned corn from the commissary. I can never quite decide which is
quainter, the family or the setting.
In America we have the phrase _living-room_, in France they have it. In
this one high-ceilinged room the daily life of the family is complete.
Here is the kitchen stove and the dinner table, here are the beds of
Madame and Monsieur, Madame’s in one corner hung with dim flowered
chintz, Monsieur’s in another brave with a beautiful old red India
shawl. Here is the broad stone sink under the window, with the drain
running out into the street, where the family makes its morning toilet.
Here are the great dark armoires which hold clothing, china-ware and
stores of all sorts. Here is the littered desk where the family
correspondence is carried on; and here is the larder, a huge slab of
pork and a ham hanging from the beams over one’s head, while on a stick
in front of the fireplace a row of little fishes hang by their tails in
dumb expectation of a Friday. And here too is the family shrine, a
little wooden Madonna in red and blue, found as Madame tells us in the
ancient city of La Mothe, which, destroyed in 1645, now exists as a
wonderful ruin crowning a hill some two miles to the west.
If the stove-wood is found lacking at meal-time, Monsieur rises from his
chair and saws an armful beside the dinner-table. If Madame decides
while we are eating our soup that a piece of ham will improve the menu
she stands upon her chair and cuts a slice in the air over our heads. On
wash days one picks one’s way to the table past the pails which hold the
family linen in soak, and later eats one’s soupe _à pain_ under a brave
array of drying garments slung from wall to wall.
The family, which consists of Monsieur, Madame and Mademoielle, the two
sons being in service, are the most hospitable souls alive. Continually
they urge, “_Mangez, mangez!_” and then, “_Vous êtes timide!_” Their
feelings are dreadfully hurt if each one of us refuses to eat enough for
two. They seem somehow to have acquired the idea that Americans need a
vast deal of sweetening, so they offer you sugar, commissary sugar, with
everything, and they are gently but definitely disappointed when you
decline to heap it on your mashed potato.
Mile. Jeane, clear-skinned, bright-eyed, capable, energetic yet
possessed of a warm charm withal, is forewoman of the little glove
factory in town.
“Are there many employees?” I asked.
“But no. Eight only. Since the Americans came to town all the women have
deserted the factory in order to wash the Americans’ clothes.”
Monsieur, it appears, is a wood-cutter by profession. He comes home from
a hard day’s chopping looking like a genus of the woods himself with his
worn brown velour suit, his wrinkled brown skin and his ragged brown
beard which resembles exactly those bundles of fine twigs which the
French burn in their fireplaces. When Monsieur was ten years old the
Germans occupied the town and sixteen of them slept in this very room.
They were perfect pigs, he says, and ate everything they could lay their
hands on; “But,” he adds, “they didn’t like our bread!”
Sunday mornings all the men in town, including the Man With One Leg, and
all the dogs start off together, the men armed with guns and each
carrying a musette bag or knapsack. Papa puts on his shooting coat with
the fancy buttons each depicting a different bird or beast of the chase,
takes down his old shot-gun from the wall, and joins them. At dusk they
come back again, empty-handed, but seemingly well content. Their modus
operandi, I gather, is to proceed to a comfortable spot in the woods,
then all sit down, drink vin rouge and wait for the game. Indeed one
doughboy declares, that passing by one of those open alleys which
intersect the forests here, he once saw an old Frenchman standing with
his gun in a drizzling rain, patiently waiting for a shot while by his
side stood another “old frog” holding an umbrella over him.
Goncourt, February 14.
The woman who lives in the House of the Madonna is an unconscionable old
scalawag. Not that you would ever suspect it to look at her, for with
her round rosy face, her smooth parted hair and her comfortably rotund
figure she resembles nothing so much as somebody’s genial and respected
grandmother. Yet the facts in the case remain. She sells doped wine to
the soldiers at ruinous prices and she sells at forbidden hours.
Moreover we have reason to suspect that at odd times she carries on an
utterly illicit commerce. According to our hostess, when the time from
the last pay day grows too long, certain soldiers are not above
smuggling in their extra shoes and shirts to her, and she pays them back
in drinks.
This morning while I was at breakfast she came bouncing in and proceeded
to fill the house with lamentations. Last night a tipsy soldier had
stolen the key to her front door! Then she delved into history for my
benefit, recounting how, some weeks before, two soldiers, having sent
her out of the room on an errand, had proceeded to rob her till, the sum
amounting to almost three hundred francs!
“_Oh! Ils sont des monstres, des cochons!_” she wailed.
Whereat I, with some asperity, remarked that if the French people
wouldn’t sell drink to the Americans, the soldiers wouldn’t become
_zig-zag_ and do such things. Immediately she became conciliatory. Of
course, everyone knew that there were good people and bad people in
every nation, but certainly! Then she changed the subject abruptly,
demanding; why, why in the name of common sense did I do anything so
contrary to all the dictates of reason as to sleep with my window open?
Last night, as Mr. K. and I were coming home from the canteen, the door
of the cafe opposite was suddenly opened and a man’s figure appeared,
half pushed, half thrown outside. The door slammed shut,—it was long
after closing hour for the cafe,—the figure fell like a log to the
ground. We watched a minute to see the fellow pick himself up, but he
lay motionless. It was a freezing night. Mr. K. went over to
investigate. The man was in a drunken stupor.
“You go along,” he called to me, “I’ve got to get this fellow home.”
I left reluctantly. Subsequently Mr. K. told me the night’s history.
After considerable coaxing, he had finally succeeded in extracting the
information that the boy belonged to F Company. So to F Company
barracks, a good half-mile north of the canteen, they had proceeded, Mr.
K. half dragging, half carrying the fellow who was head and shoulders
taller than he, and broad to boot.
When they had nearly reached their journey’s end, Mr. K. by this time
fairly in a state of collapse, his burden suddenly baulked. The barracks
evidently didn’t look like home to him. Mr. K. began to have a sickening
sense of something gone wrong. At last the wretch drowsily recalled the
fact that he didn’t belong to F Company at all, but to I Company far on
the other side of town. So around they turned and back through town they
crawled until finally they arrived at I Company’s abiding-place; and
this time the derelict was satisfied.
Indeed a walk home from the canteen at night with Mr. K. at any time is
likely to prove an adventure. For should we meet a boy who has had more
than is “good for him” and is in an irritable mood, we must stop and
talk with him, in order, as Mr. K’s theory puts it, to divert his mind.
“Get them thinking about something else,” is his slogan. The other night
we stood out in the sleety drizzle until my feet fairly froze solid into
the freezing mud, carrying on polite conversations with two boys who had
just been put out of the House of the Madonna and were in a state of
mind to wreck the town. One of them Mr. K. got started on the subject of
taking French lessons. He was ambitious to study French he explained and
would Mr. K. kindly arrange for a teacher and a course of lessons? I
listened with one ear; here was the first man I had found in France who
expressed an earnest desire to learn French and he was tipsy! The other
one, evidently ashamed, explained to me at length how he hadn’t wanted
to get drunk, the trouble was that he was just naturally “dishgushted
with this country, just dishgushted.” And that it seems to me is the
whole thing in two words. The boys are “just dishgushted.” Considering
it all, who can blame them?
Goncourt, February 15.
The M. P.s who live in the second story of the Guard-House are my good
friends. They help sweep out the hut often in the mornings and when they
make taffy in their mess kits they bring me some. These M. P.s are in
reality cavalrymen detached from their regiment for the time being in
order to do police duty. As far as I can see, there seems to be no
special hard feeling between them and the doughboys.
One slim young M. P. in particular is a crony of mine. He keeps me
informed as to the gossip of the town. He tells me how the French women
who run cafes, our neighbor of the House of the Madonna among them, seek
to curry favor with the law in Goncourt, by bringing him out coffee and
sandwiches as he walks his beat in the middle of the night; and how, the
other night after closing hour, he put his head inside the door of one
of these cafes to be greeted by a frantic shriek of “_Feenish!
Feenish!_” from the hostess, only to find, when he insisted on entering,
a crowd of doughboys making merry in the back-room; how he took their
names and then was inspired to look at their “dog tags” in confirmation
and found that not one of the names agreed! He tells me about the cross
old Frenchman whose beehives have been stealthily, inexplicably,
disappearing one by one, in spite of the fact that the Frenchman had
tied his unfortunate and much suffering dog underneath the hives to
guard them; until now the old gentleman had taken to sitting up nights
with a shot-gun in order to watch the remaining ones. “He’s a kind o’
snoopy old man and nobody likes him. I reckon the boys are taking his
beehives just to spite him.” He tells me about the old lady who wants to
marry him to her daughter; but chiefly he tells me,—under the strictest
oath of secrecy,— the latest development in the case of the old woman
whom he suspects of being a spy. I advise him to hand the matter over to
the Intelligence Officer, but no, he must have the honor of catching her
red-handed himself. It’s quite like reading a detective story in
installments.
The other night while I was talking to one of the M. P.s in the canteen,
we heard a shot up the street. The next moment another M. P. appeared at
the door. After the exchange of a few whispered words, the two of them
ran out of the hut, and as they went, I saw them both draw their
revolvers. Fifteen minutes later the doughboys coming into the canteen
brought a ghastly tale. There had been a fight between the M. P.s and
the soldiers. The M. P.s had shot and killed two. “Yes, so-help-me-God,
it’s the truth!” The narrator had himself seen the two slain doughboys
lying in the street; one had been shot through the head, the other
through the heart. So the story went around. We went to bed that night
with a dull sense of horror hanging over us.
The next morning I confronted my friend the M. P. with the story. Then I
learned the true version. He had been on his beat not far from the
church, when down a dark alley he had heard sounds of a tremendous
fracas. In spite of the fact that he didn’t have his stick with him he
had plunged down the alley to come upon “a bunch of wops beating each
other over the head with beer bottles.” When they caught sight of the M.
P. they had quickly abandoned their family disagreement in order to turn
upon the intruder. He had shot his revolver into the air and this had
been enough to frighten them into taking to their heels. The two fellows
who had been seen lying on the ground were the casualties resulting from
the bottle-fight: they had been stunned and gashed so badly as to bleed
a good deal, but were later patched up with complete success at the
hospital.
Indeed life at Goncourt is seldom unrelieved by incident. Last night I
was sitting by our open window reading—the Gendarme was out—after my
return from the hut, when I heard an angry voice snarl something abusive
directly beneath me; a moment later a fusillade began. I jumped for the
candle, blew it out, then stood close against the wall. After a minute
the shots ceased; immediately excited people began to pour into the
street. I heard the M. P.s pounding on the door of the House Across the
Way, demanding information; I leaned from the window and told them what
I knew. All the French people in the neighborhood stood out in the
street and chattered excitedly for hours afterward it seemed. This
morning Madame told us what had happened. In the house next door lives a
tall and handsome girl. A sergeant suitor of hers, crazy with jealousy
and cognac, had shot wildly at a rival entering her door, emptying his
automatic, fortunately without effect.
Goncourt, February 16.
Twice a week each one of us goes to pay a visit at the local hospital.
This is a depressing place—two large dingy rooms in what was once, to
judge from the inscription over the door, some sort of ecclesiastical
school. We take the boys magazines and newspapers, oranges and jam. This
week I had a new idea. I would read aloud to them. In the Bourmont
warehouse I came across a volume of W. W. Jacobs’ short stories. Here
was just the thing, I thought, such simple slap-stick humour must appeal
to the most unsophisticated understanding.
I hurried to the hospital with my prize. The orderlies, not expecting a
lady visitor, were in the midst of a Black Jack game. Red and flustered,
one lad tried to hide the little heaps of money on the floor by standing
on them; I pretended not to see. Yes, they thought it would be all right
if I should read to the patients. They went ahead to the ward to
announce me. All the cots were full, making sixteen invalids in all. I
selected a story—an old favorite, I was sure it would prove
irresistible—and started to read. The story tells of an eccentric
skipper with a fad for doctoring. One by one, his crew, realizing his
weakness, develop mysterious maladies. They are excused from duty, put
to bed, petted and cossetted. Finally the mate becomes desperate. He
guarantees that he will cure them all; the skipper is sceptical but
allows him a free hand. The mate sets to work to compound some
“medicine,” a wonderful and fearful brew made of ink, vinegar, kerosene
and bilge-water. After a few doses, presto! the crew is hale and hearty
once again.
I read with all the animation I could muster, and to me the story had
never appeared funnier, but try my hardest, I couldn’t seem to “get it
over.” Not a chuckle, not a grin lightened my solemn audience. They were
utterly, blankly, unresponsive. I began to wonder if it were possible
that not one of them could understand English. At last I ended. As I
closed the book a whoop of delight went up from the orderlies;
“That’s you all over, Johnny!”
“Gee, that guy must have wrote that story about you, Slim.”
“Say, Miss, can’t you let us have the recipe for that medicine? We need
it in our business.”
The invalids grinned sulkily. In one awful moment I realized what I had
done.
“Of course,” I stammered, “this wasn’t meant to have any personal
application!” But the mischief was already done. There was nothing to do
but to retire with dignity.
However, I couldn’t bear to give up my scheme entirely. Today I went
again; this time having carefully selected my story. To my astonishment
the ward proved empty, all except for three boys who were crouching on
the floor shooting craps; I drew back.
“Perhaps they would rather not be disturbed.”
“They ought to be in bed anyway,” growled the orderly, and chased the
patients back to their cots.
I read to them; there was no way out of it. They listened politely to
the end, but all the while I felt they were longing to resume their
interrupted game. Tonight I expressed my surprise over the deserted ward
to Captain X. He roared at my innocence.
“You didn’t expect to find any fellows in hospital _today_ did you? Why,
this is Saturday, and there isn’t any drill tomorrow!”
Goncourt, February 18.
Every day we must go to see how the new hut is progressing. This
involves wading through a wilderness of mud. I had thought that Bourmont
had taught me everything that one could learn about French mud this side
of the trenches, but Goncourt has shown me that it has possibilities
hitherto undreamed.
The new hut is on the far edge of the town, on the east bank of the
Meuse. Near it are grouped the barracks of the Milk Battalion, so called
not because, as I first supposed, it is composed of heavy drinkers, but
because it is comprised of Companies I, K, L, and M. These barracks,
which were bequeathed to us by the French, are, the boys tell me,
infested with vermin. In the mess-hall of Company M we hold our weekly
movie-shows and our occasional concerts.
The hut, which is very large, and shipped here in sections, goes up
slowly. Army details are proverbial in their ability to consume time.
Then we are constantly being held back by shortage of materials; lumber
and nails and such things being desperately hard to obtain in France at
present. Not long ago the divisional Construction Man, who is a young
fellow with poor eyes and considerable initiative, was driven to the
desperate resort of appropriating French Army lumber. For a while all
went well, then the thefts grew too bold, and the Construction Man was
summoned before the French colonel in command. As the colonel knew
English, and so could not be put off by any “no compris” bluff, the
Construction Man had a pretty bad quarter hour of it, but in the end was
let off with a warning.
The window frames of the hut are to be filled in with _vitex_, a curious
glass substitute, which looks like a thin celluloid glaze over very fine
meshed wire. It is only slightly transparent, rather fragile and very
costly but it does admit the light, in this respect being far better
than the oiled cloth in use in most barracks. When the _vitex_ is cut to
fit the frames, many odd scraps are left over and these I have been
distributing among the boys so they can substitute them for the old
newspapers or sacking now in vogue for billet windows.
If they only could hurry up that hut!
“You wait and see,” say the boys; “just as soon as that hut is finished
we’ll be moving. That’s always the way with this regiment. Sure as you
live, when that hut’s done, we’ll be off for the front.”
And it begins to look as if this might come true.
“Do you really think so?” I asked Mr K. today.
“There’s no telling,” he replied. “Perhaps. But anyway the boys will
know we did our best.”
Meanwhile the state of the men is worse than ever. An order has been
issued in Goncourt that no soldier may enter a civilian house without a
special permit. The reason given is that certain of the townspeople have
been illegally selling the men strong drink. The soldiers, however,
declare bitterly that the real reason is that the officers wish to have
a clear field with the village damsels.
Goncourt, February 21.
We have had our first taste of the trenches; these are not real trenches
to be sure but simply practice trenches which lie on the hilly uplands
west of Goncourt. For two days we have been in a tumult with a dress
rehearsal of manœuvers at the front. The whole brigade in battle array
has passed under our window. Colonels and soup-kitchens, mules and
majors, supply trains, ambulances, machine-guns, everything. Yesterday
as Company F was starting on its hike to the trenches, word came that
the mules who pulled their field-kitchen were indisposed. Company F had
no mind to eat corn-willy and hard bread for dinner. They seized the
soup wagon and pulled it by hand, all the way up the hills. Meeting
their major on the way, they shouted in unison; “The mules went on sick
report and got marked quarters. We went on sick report and they marked
us duty.” But they got their dinner hot.
Tonight I heard the sad tale of Mr. B. the new secretary at Saint
Thiebault. Company A had marched off to spend the day in the trenches.
Mr. B. had an inspiration; he filled a large suit-case full of chocolate
and cigarettes: hailed a passing ambulance and set out to carry first
aid to Company A in its ordeal in the trenches. Unluckily neither Mr. B.
nor the driver knew just where the field of operations lay. Two miles
north of Goncourt Mr. B. got out and started to “cut across lots.” It
was raining; he waded through swamps, he scratched through thickets, he
wallowed in ploughed fields, with that suit case which must have weighed
a good eighty pounds growing heavier at every step. There being no sun
to guide him, he got lost and wandered about in circles. Finally, after
several hours, he arrived in a state of collapse at the field of
manœuveurs. Then instead of A Company he encountered another company, a
perfectly strange company; they demanded chocolate and he didn’t have
the heart to deny them. After the last cake of chocolate and the last
package of cigarettes had disappeared an officer came up, an officer
from still another company, and proceeded to tell Mr. B. in very plain
language what he thought of him for leaving his men out. And when that
officer had done with Mr. B. an officer from the company which had been
fed came up in an awful temper and “bawled out” Mr. B. because forsooth
his men had made such a mess, throwing away the chocolate wrappers that
when the others left, his company would have to stay behind to “police
up” the trenches!
Poor Mr. B! My heart goes out to him.
This evening as we were about to close the canteen, my friend, the
mule-skinner from Texas appeared in the hut. He had a sort of a
weak-in-the-knees expression on his face.
“What’s the matter?”
“Met the Old Man,” he answered ruefully,—the “Old Man” is the general in
command of the division—“Gee! but he sure did give me some bawlin’ out!”
“But why?”
He explained that his sergeant had misunderstood orders and told him to
go out in his usual rig. The general, encountering the mule-skinner
without his proper war-paint, had expressed his mind to him on the
matter.
“Jumpin’ Jupiter! but the langwidge that that old bird used! I sure will
hand it to him! Why, my ears ain’t done burnin’ yet!” And he shook his
head like a man half dazed.
“What did he say?”
The mule-skinner grew red as a beet, stared at me horrified.
“I couldn’t repeat it, ma’am! I couldn’t repeat nary word of it!”
That a general should so scandalize a mule-skinner, and a Texas
mule-skinner at that, by his address, was so intriguing to my fancy that
I laughed all the way home.
We have a new colonel; he has declared that the regiment is not fit for
the front, and so has laid out a two weeks’ programme of gruelling hikes
and intensive training, in order at the eleventh hour to try to jack us
up to standard.
The Gendarme leaves tomorrow to go _en permission_.
Goncourt, February 25.
If I were God I would lay a blight on every grape-vine in France; then I
would sink every still, wine press, distillery and brewery to the bottom
of the sea.
We have had payday. It happened Friday. The total results didn’t make
themselves evident immediately; it was instead a cumulative effect, a
crescendo, beginning Friday and reaching its climax yesterday. On these
three days, out of the twenty-five hundred men stationed here,
twenty-four hundred and ninety-three, I could take my oath, have come
into the canteen and leaned over the counter, drunk;—that is to say,
visibly and undeniably under the influence of liquor. When a lad, as
some half dozen did,—those composing the regular attendance in the group
about the fire,—came into the canteen entirely and unmistakably sober,
one welcomed him as a drowning man does a spar. For a moment one had
come in touch with something stable in a reeling world.
Out of a company of two hundred and fifty last night ninety were capable
of standing Retreat.
I have learned to gauge the stages. When a man looks you squarely in the
eye and declares vociferously, “Never took a drink in all my life!” he
is very drunk indeed. And there is always someone nearby to wink and
comment; “He must have joined the gang that pours it down with a
funnel.”
Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter and insisted
on conversing; from each pocket in his raincoat protruded a long-necked
bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then:
“Please,” I said, “won’t you take those bottles out of here? I just hate
to see them.”
“Bottles!” he expostulated. “What do you mean, _bottles_!”
“I mean just those.” I pointed.
“Why I ain’t got a bottle on me!” he burst out indignantly, fairly
glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward the other end
of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect picture of
outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling all over him.
The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys that used
to nod shyly in answer to your “Good morning” now lean from their loft
windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, my friend the M. P.
tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheepfolds up on our street.
Going to investigate he met a “bunch o’ drunken wops” coming out of the
door, every man of them carrying a struggling sheep under each arm. He
shouted at them; they dropped the sheep and fled.
The French find it all vastly amusing. “_Beaucoup zig zag_,” they cry.
It means, I suppose, riches for them.
And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word of
disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last night I
caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the counter. One
boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished another boy apparently
a shade more so, to be careful of his language out of respect for me.
“Whu’d ’you think? D’you think I ain’t got sense enough to know how to
talk when there’s an American lady present?” For a moment it looked as
if there might be a fight.
Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded that they
have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the prisoners to
sleep on.
From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed come even
more startling stories. Certain officers there went so wild that they
started to blow up the town with hand grenades. And one of them coming
into the Y. held up the secretary at the point of his pistol until he
sold him—instead of the ordinary allowance of one or two
packages—several cartons of his favorite brand of cigarettes.
The new colonel is said to be horrified. But what could he expect? Take
an odd lot of twenty-five hundred boys, remove them from every decent
restraining influence, hike them all day through the interminable mud
and rain until they drop by the roadside, bring them back at night to
dark, cold, damp, filthy, vermin-ridden lofts and stables, add the nerve
strain of the imminent prospect of their first time at the front, close
every door to them except the door of the café, give them money;—what
could anyone expect?
Goncourt, February 27.
My friend Pat is in the hospital; not the local hospital, but Base 18
situated at Bazoilles, some six miles to the north of Goncourt. This
afternoon, having our time free between one and four, Mr. K. and I
decided to go to call on him.
“Are we going to walk?” I asked.
“Oh we’ll get a lift; one always does.”
But the lift didn’t heave in sight until we were half way there; then it
was an ambulance that slowed down in answer to our signals.
“Give us a ride?”
“Sure, if you aren’t afraid of the mumps.”
I was, dreadfully afraid. But Mr. K. wasn’t, he had already had them, on
both sides. I hesitated, then decided to take a chance. We rode into
Bazoilles in an ambulance full of mumps.
As for Pat, we hadn’t an idea in what sort of shape we might find him.
Once, Mr. K. told me, he had come upon Pat in one of his visits to the
Saint Thiebault infirmary. Pat was lying on a cot with his eyes closed
and a sanctified look of patient suffering upon his face.
“Why what’s wrong with you, Pat?”
“Ssh!” Pat squinted about to see that neither doctor nor orderly was
within ear-shot, then an Irish grin spread over his impudent features.
“Nothin’ at all,” he whispered joyously, “just nothin’ at all!”
But this time we found Pat’s ailment real enough. He was in the “bone
ward” with a badly broken wrist.
“How did it happen?” we inquired.
“Sure an’ it happened this way,” and he told us both the official and
the confidential versions. Confidentially, Pat’s wrist had been broken
by a blow from an M. P.’s billy in an after-payday argument at Saint
Thiebault. Officially it had been broken two days later in the barracks
by an accidental knock from a gun-barrel. _Pat had hiked and drilled
with a broken wrist for two solid days in order to be able to claim that
he had been disabled in the line of duty!_ After the second day,
convinced that the encounter with the M. P. was sufficiently a matter of
past history to be discredited, Pat had reported at Sick Call with his
trumped-up tale and had as usual gotten by. Now as he lay on his cot he
was occupying himself by conjuring up visions of the party to which he
and his buddy were going to treat that M. P. just as soon as he (Pat)
should get his hospital discharge.
As we talked I noticed a lad who was walking about the ward with his
right hand done up in bloody bandages. He looked self-conscious and
embarrassed as if he half hoped, half feared to be recognized. I caught
Pat’s eye, his voice dropped to a whisper.
“That’s Philip R. Don’t you remember him?”
Of course! I smiled at Philip, but he turned away and wouldn’t come to
speak to me. Mr. K. went over to him; they talked for a long while in
undertones. Later I heard the whole pitiful story. He had been drinking,
the terror that was haunting him had suddenly gripped. He had taken his
rifle and shot himself through his right hand, mutilating it, in order
that he might not be sent to the front. Placed under arrest on
suspicion, his nerve had utterly given way. He had made a full
confession. It was likely to go hard with him.
While Mr. K. was listening to Philip, Pat was telling me about the
regiment of southern negro engineers who had come to Bazoilles to help
build the new hospital. Every time there was an air-raid alarm, Pat
declared, they knelt down and prayed by companies.
I emptied out my _musette_ bag onto Pat’s cot. Pat looked at the
oranges, dates, chocolates and cigarettes that we had brought, then took
a squint along the hungry-looking ward.
“Well, I guess I’ll get a taste,” he said.
He was “in soft” he told us. The nurses let him help serve the meals. He
had free run of the kitchen and all the milk that he wanted to drink.
Yet he was already chafing at the restraint and in his wicked head he
was scheming schemes. Some day in the not-too-distant future he was
going to give the hospital guards the slip, make a night of it, and
paint “Bazooie” red.
Tonight word reached us that a Y. M. C. A. woman worker has been killed
in Paris in an air-raid. She was sick and they had sent her to the
Hôpital Claude-Bernard. This time the bombs found it.
Goncourt, March 2.
The new hut is opened. Finished or unfinished, we made up our minds that
we would open that hut Saturday night, and open it we did. The last two
days have been fairly frantic. Yesterday we washed up; today we dried
out and decorated. The cleaning was the worst of it. The hut, as I have
hinted, is a sort of island in a sea of mud. Consequently as the
building went up, the floor, walls, counter, ceiling, everything was
splotched, streaked and plastered with dirt. Thursday night as I looked
around the hut my heart sank. The place was a sight.
“You can’t do anything about it,” they told me.
“But something has got to be done!”
Friday morning arrived a detail of eight prisoners from the guard-house.
They had come to scrub. The guard in charge took his stand, leaning
against one of the pillars, his loaded rifle in his hands; to see that
no one escaped was his only responsibility, the rest was up to me. My
detail proved a sullen, stubborn lot, slouching, cursing under their
breath, all their self-respect turned to a smouldering rebellion; after
the first few minutes I saw just how much work left to themselves they
would be likely to accomplish. So I told them in a matter-of-fact way
just how things stood: that we had promised to open the hut the next
day, that it was, as they could see, in a frightful mess, that I
realized they were up against a stiff job, but I did _so_ hope that we
could put it through. Then I got a pail and a scrubbing-brush and went
out and scrubbed side by side with them. It is of course strictly
against the rules to talk to prisoners, but all the while I worked I
“jollied” my “jail-birds” for all my wits were worth. I admired
ecstatically the spots which they had scrubbed, I moaned in despair over
the unscrubbed places. Inside of an hour the prisoners were all grinning
cheerfully as they worked like beavers. When the guard was looking the
other way I sneaked them cigarettes. By night the hut was very damp and
somewhat streaky, but it would pass, at least by candle-light. I didn’t
care though my arms were so lame I could hardly lift them, and my hands
in ruins.
“I congratulate you,” said the new Secretary, “I never thought it could
be done.”
“If only nobody looks at the ceiling!”
For the ceiling was beyond our reach, and back and forth over every one
of its boards had tramped the hob-nailed boots of the A. E. F. and every
step had left its muddy print. As I looked I thought; if we only had the
signatures to put beside each footprint, what a fascinating autograph
collection it would make!
Today we spent in a mad tear, making the hut beautiful and moving our
effects over from the “Guard-House.” The moving was accomplished by the
aid of the Wall-Eyed Boy and his donkey. These are two of Goncourt’s
leading citizens, the donkey, an ancient moth-eaten beast, being
particularly intimately known to a certain group of doughboys who would
joyfully murder him. His stable is directly beneath the loft in which
they are billeted and every morning, prompt as an alarm clock, at 4 A.
M. that donkey brays, and brays until the soundest sleeper is awakened.
The Wall-Eyed Boy’s name is Martin, and as a donkey in France is
slangily called _un Martin_, as we call a mule “Maud,” the two go under
the title of _Les Deux Martins_. When _les Deux Martins_ and I went
trudging along the muddy streets of Goncourt, side by side, with the
little tippy cart loaded with canteen truck bumping along behind, the M.
P.s thought it a rare joke. “I wish Sister Susy could see you now,”
called one.
The last few hours were spent frantically decorating. Our color scheme
is red and blue. This came about through accident rather than intention.
We had a bolt of turkey-red cotton bunting for curtains, only to
discover that this did not darken the lighted windows sufficiently to
comply with the now strictly enforced aeroplane regulations. So I asked
a secretary starting for Paris to bring me a bolt of black cambric in
order to make a set of inner supplementary curtains. The secretary
returning, brought bright blue; black, on account of the demand for
mourning, had proved too expensive. At first I was non-plussed, but then
discovered that the bright red and blue made rather a jolly combination.
So each one of our many windows is now giddy with red and blue draperies
and the seat that runs all around our writing room is brave with blue
and red cushions (stuffed, if the truth must be told, with shavings!)
Between each two windows is tacked one of my stunning big French war
posters, the long counter is covered with red-checked oil-cloth, a
bouquet of flags flies from the proscenium arch over the stage which,
for the occasion, is banked beautifully with evergreens. Altogether we
present rather the appearance of a perpetual Fourth of July celebration,
but then who cares? If one can’t be aesthetic one can at least be gay,
and it’s anything to take one’s mind off the mud!
The Gendarme came back from her leave tonight just in time for the Grand
Opening. This took place at seven o’clock. The hall was packed to the
last inch. As one boy said; “There’s plenty of room for me, but there
ain’t none for the buttons on my coat.” There was a reason for this. The
new colonel was to make a speech and he had advised all the officers and
non-coms, in the whole regiment to be present. I caught a glimpse of
Company A wedged in among the suffocating mass. Everything, I
understand, went off very nicely; there was much music by the band and
somebody sang Danny Deever very thrillingly, but I was too busy in the
kitchen to pay much attention. The new Secretary had wanted me to sit on
the platform, but after a three days’ debate, he had finally agreed to
let me off, and luckily, for the minute the last note of the S. S. B.
had sounded we were ready to start handing out the hot chocolate and
cookies over the counter to the mob. When everyone else had been fed the
colonel himself appeared back of the counter, to graciously accept a cup
of chocolate, and make himself generally charming.
When the last guest had gone and we were getting ready to shut up the
hut for the night, the Chief who had come over from Bourmont for the
occasion drew me aside, looking solemn.
“I have a question to put to you.”
“What is it?”
“The division leaves for the front within a short while. Do you wish to
go with them?”
“Of course!” said I.
Goncourt, March 8.
This week has gone by in a whirl. Because it was our first and
presumably our last week in the big hut we wanted to make it just as
nice as was humanly possible. And this hasn’t been an easy task because
with the regiment putting on the last touches before they go to the
front, there hasn’t been a bit of spare man-power available to help us;
and the mere problem of keeping that huge place anything like clean has
almost swamped us. After mess at night, to be sure, we have no lack of
assistance. The boys swarm into the little kitchen in droves, eager to
help stir the chocolate, or cut the bread for the sandwiches. If only
ten out of every dozen would be content to stay the other side of the
counter, it would simplify matters, but much as they may be underfoot
one hasn’t the heart to turn them out. Those who can’t get into the
kitchen hang about the doors, looking in, teasing for a “hand-out” of
bread and jam. “I’m just so hungry,” sighed a lad plaintively today,
looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, “I could eat the jamb off
the door!”
We have a Frenchwoman to help us in the kitchen. She is a treasure, shy
and bright-eyed as a brown bird, and so tiny that we have to set a
packing-box by the stove for her to stand on when she stirs the
chocolate. She is deaf and speaks _patois_, so between her strange
French and mine still stranger we have droll times making each other
understand. Yet, none the less, she and the boys manage to keep up a
running fire of badinage and when they become too rowdy, the tiny thing
turns ridiculously bellicose and threatens to whip them all with her
chocolate paddle. At night we all go home together and one tall lad must
always come along in order to help Madame over the road of a thousand
mud holes that leads from the hut to the highway, lest she be drowned in
transit. She carries a funny little gasolene lamp that gives about as
much light as an ambitious fire-fly and all the way to the main road one
can hear her moaning; “_Mon Dieu, quel chemin! Mon Dieu, quel chemin!_”
This has been our week’s programme:
Sunday. Hot chocolate and cookies
Religious Service with special music
Song Service. More chocolate
Monday. French Classes
Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Tuesday. Boxing and Wrestling Matches
Hot chocolate and sardine sandwiches
Wednesday. Band Concert
Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Thursday. Movies
Hot chocolate and cookies
Friday. Sing Fest with Solos
Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Saturday. Stunt Programme
Canned fruit and cookies
The hut has been filled every night, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers,
the auditorium packed and the writing-room holding at least a hundred
more, while the chocolate line, coiling and curling about like a monster
snake, has for hours seemed absolutely endless. We have worked out a
system for the chocolate serving—the Gendarme is cashier, taking the
money and making change, fifty centimes or nine cents for a cup of
chocolate and a sandwich, or six spice cookies, or four fig ones. One
boy ladles out the chocolate. I push the cups over the counter, another
boy hands out the cookies, a third gathers up the dirty cups and carries
them to the kitchen, where three or four others are busy washing and
wiping them, while Heaven only knows how many more are around the stove,
helping Madame stir the next kettleful, opening milk cans, or dipping
water into a third container. Thus we keep the line merrily wagging
along.
Last night, quite unknown to the men, Pershing himself came to town,
whirled in after dark in his big limousine and whirled away again as
suddenly and secretly as he had arrived. He came to give the officers
final instructions as to their conduct at the front.
The first faint wistful scents of Spring are in the air. This morning
Madame brought to our room a tiny bouquet of snow-drops. And one hears
from Saint Thiebault a rumour of early violets.
Goncourt, March 10.
This morning shortly after I reached the hut, one of the men from the
Bourmont office came in with a note for me, it read:
My dear Miss ——
I am glad to be able to tell you more or less confidentially
that you will probably go to the front very shortly. You had
better have everything ready so you could leave on short notice
any time after tomorrow noon.
Very sincerely yours, ——
Enclosed in the envelope was a little slip headed _Suggestions for Men
going to the Front_. It began “Go light, take no trunk,” and ended “We
provide helmets, gas masks, etc.” The note was dated yesterday.
I left the canteen and hurried back here to my billet to pack, while the
Gendarme, who does not wish to go with the division but prefers to stay
back and be reassigned, remained at the hut. What with sorting and
mending things, the packing took all afternoon. What to leave behind in
storage and what to take is no end of a question. Unfortunately the
_Suggestions_ were compiled with a view strictly to masculine
necessities.
It has been a grey dismal afternoon. A melancholy donkey in somebody’s
back-yard has kept up an incessant braying. “He does not please himself
at Goncourt,” explained Madame. “He is a Saint Thiebault donkey.”
Meanwhile half the regiment, it seems, has strayed by under my open
window. I never knew before how consistently and persistently profane
the A. E. F. could be when left to its own devices. The amazing part of
it is;—since this seems to be their natural style of expression, how do
they manage to slough it all and talk with such perfect prunes and
prisms propriety in the canteens?
At supper time we were surprised by a Concert Party which had arrived
today unexpectedly in this area. We were particularly glad to have them
as the nervous tension among the boys is marked enough to make us
welcome anything to divert their attention. We could have the regular
Sunday evening service first, we decided, and then the concert to finish
off with. The Concert Party came to supper at our mess. There was an
ornamental Russian violinist, male, an American accompanist, also male,
and a little French actress-singer. The minute we laid eyes on her we
knew that the concert would be a success. She was all frills and
frippery; lace, pink-rose buds and pale blue silk, with yellow curls and
great blue eyes peering from beneath a quaint little rose-wreathed poke
bonnet; an amazing vision of femininity to appear suddenly in the mud
and dingy squalor of Goncourt!
The family Peirut was in a great state of mind over such distinguished
visitors. They brought out food enough to feed the company a week, and
kept hovering about the table, urging the dishes on our guests and
emitting little wails of dismay when any one of the artists refused to
eat enough for all three.
I stayed at our billet to finish up my packing, and went over to the hut
late in the evening. The concert was half finished. As we anticipated,
the little singer had made a hit. She gave some French songs,
accompanying them with clever pantomine. Then she sang _Huckleberry
Finn_ and _Oh Johnny!_ As the phrase has it, she “got them going.” She
proved a past-mistress in the art of using her eyes. They winked at her
and she winked back. Every last man in the first six rows was flirting
with her, and every one was convinced that he was making a hit all his
own. Several, it was confided to me afterwards, developed matrimonial
aspirations on the spot. Then a tragic thing occurred. For the closing
number they must give the Star Spangled Banner. Everybody rose, and
everybody in duty bound removed their hats. The little singer took one
wild survey of the audience, gasped, choked, then retreated
precipitately in order to conceal her giggles. A week ago an order was
published that the regiment should have their hair shaved off before
going to the front;—every head in the whole auditorium, thus suddenly
laid bare, was bald as an egg!
From latest advices it appears that the troops will start entraining the
middle of the week. We are going on ahead in order to be there to serve
them hot chocolate when they detrain after the journey. Every one has a
different idea where that will be, but the best guess seems to be the
Lunéville sector. What sort of conditions we will find at the front I
haven’t the least idea. I missed the special conference held at Bourmont
the other day, in which instructions and information to the personnel
bound for the front were given. The driver who was to call for us,
failed to do so; I set out to walk, only to find on arriving at Bourmont
that the conference had been cut short, and was already over. Nobody has
told me a word except to tease me by telling me that I will have to have
my hair cut off in order to wear a gas-mask. Mr. K. amuses himself by
predicting cellars and cooties. The Peiruts shake their heads and talk
about my _courage_, but I can see that they mean folly. As for the
Gendarme’s friends, Lieutenant Z. warns: “Take my advice, stay out of
it. It’s a man’s game out there.” While Captain X. splutters; “Sending
you to the front without any gas-drill, it’s nothing short of
cold-blooded murder.” Thus do our friends encourage us.