Gondrecourt, April 28.
Gondrecourt is quite a place. It boasts a brewery, a hotel, a mediœval
tower and a number of little stores. Each one of these stores contains
at least one pretty girl on its selling force and the ratio between the
sales of goods and the charms of the ladies is, I fancy, quite exact.
From the military point of view Gondrecourt is important as being the
site of the First Army Corps Training Schools. But to me the really
distinguishing feature of Gondrecourt is the fact that it boasts a
bath-tub. If anybody had said bath-tub to me the day before I arrived
here, I would have said with the doughboy that,—short of Paris—“there
ain’t no such animal.” But now I have beheld it with my own eyes, a
white-enamelled bath-tub, a Y. M. C. A. bath-tub, in the basement at
Headquarters. The tub is supposed to be a strictly family affair,—on the
door are posted hours for the Lady Secretaries and hours for the Men
Secretaries,—but in spite of the plain English before their eyes, it
seems that army officers occasionally slip in and steal a bath off us,
yes, even impinging on the sacred bath hours of the ladies!
My first day here they sent me to “The Café.” This was once a very wild
place indeed. When the Y. first came to Gondrecourt it tried to buy the
proprietor out, but the proprietor refused; he was doing too profitable
a business. Then one night Providence sent some Boche planes wandering
in this direction. There was a panic among the populace; the proprietor,
with visions of his place wrecked by a bomb, sold out in a hurry and
left town. Since then the Cafe has led a reformed and decorous existence
but the old name still clings. My second day I spent at the “Double
Hut,” the big hut built up on the hill close by the Infantry School. The
third day I was introduced to my own canteen.
According to directions, I climbed the hill by my billet, went past the
athletic field, past the warehouse and out along the edge of the rolling
open upland. About half a mile out of town I came to a group of seven
French barracks, covered with black tar paper, built at the edge of the
railway cut. This was the Artillery School. I crossed the field, entered
the nearest barracks which bore a Y. sign at one end, and found myself
in a Greenwich Village Tea House. I stood and stared. Some modern-school
interior decorator had been at work. The place was a riot of red,
yellow, salmon-color and black, worked out from a nasturtium motif. In
the wall panels were paintings, some conventionalized fruits and
flowers, evidently done by the decorator; others, landscapes, Japanese
scenes and some rather awful Indians just as evidently executed by the
boys. The whole effect to be sure was a bit sketchy and in spots frankly
unfinished, and yet to one used to such simplicity in the huts as I, the
_ensemble_ was startling. Back of the black and orange partition which
screens the canteen and the kitchen from the hut proper, I found the
staff, secretary and canteen worker. The lady whom I am to replace, it
appears, belongs in reality to the Motor Transport Section. She turned
canteen worker to help out in a pinch, and now is anxious to return
again.
When dinnertime came the Motor Transport girl told me that we had been
invited to dine at the camp. We went over to the mess-hall. “Let’s help
feed the chow-line for a lark!” said the M. T. girl. So we stood behind
the serving-bench and ladled out big spoonfuls of mashed potato and
gravy. This amused the boys immensely; and as they passed they would
sing out:
“When did they put _you_ on K. P?”
“What have _you_ done to deserve this?”
The kitchen was white-washed and specklessly clean, the earth floor was
covered with cinders. These cinders which are in use for floors and
walks in all the camps about, come, I am told, from a great heap down by
the river which marks the site of one of Napoleon’s cannon foundries.
“Why are the boxers in a company always found on the kitchen force?” I
asked one of the cooks.
“That’s so they can handle the boys when they come back for seconds.”
As soon as the chow-line had been fed, the M. T. girl and I had ours
with the Top Sergeant. After dinner the Top Sergeant, who had formerly
been mess sergeant, was moved to unburden his soul as to the sorrows of
a mess sergeant.
“When I was mess sergeant,” he reminisced, “I sure got to know the way
to a man’s heart all right. Why, the days when I gave them a good dinner
there wasn’t a man in camp who wouldn’t positively beam at me; but if
something had gone wrong and the chow wasn’t up to scratch, half the
fellers in the company wouldn’t speak to me the rest of the day.”
Then he grinned. “I wouldn’t want Mother to know the way I used to get
stuff for the boys last winter.”
He went on to tell us. French freight trains have no brakemen and the
conductor rides in a caboose directly behind the coal car. Trains
pulling into town from the north hit a grade curve close to the camp, up
which they must pull very slowly. The camp guard kept a lookout; when a
freight train with flat cars was sighted, word was immediately passed to
the mess sergeant who with a number of K. P.s hurried to the tracks and
boarded the slow-moving train; if the cars proved to hold anything of
value for the mess,—be it coal or cabbages,—all the way up the grade the
sergeant and his assistants were busy, hastily throwing or shoveling
what they could over the sides of the cars. At the top of the grade they
would jump off and returning along the tracks, gather up the spoils.
Tomorrow the Motor Transport girl departs and I “take over” the canteen.
Gondrecourt, May 4.
The Artillery School consists of some few hundred officers and non-coms
enrolled for each four-weeks’ course, in addition to the two batteries
who are here for demonstration work; Battery D from a regiment of “75s”
and Battery A from a regiment of the big “155s.” Selected for this
exhibition work on account of their exceptional ability, they are, I
suppose, the equal of any batteries in the world. When the boys enlisted
these batteries were declared to be about to be “motorized,” but at
present the motor power is being supplied by a particularly unresponsive
set of French cart horses, whose daily care is the greatest trial of the
boys’ lives. Last night we had a movie-show; one reel gave the story of
a discontented boy on the farm—showing him at one moment disgustedly
grooming Dobbin. For a full minute it seemed as if the roof of the hut
was going to be lifted right off.
The officers’ quarters and the class-rooms lie across the railroad track
from the camp, in the grounds of the Château. Here they have a canteen
of their own, a cool little place in cream color and blue presided over
by a most refreshing and delightful English lady. The Château itself was
partially destroyed by fire a few years ago and though the lower story
is available for offices, the upper story stands roofless, with empty
windows staring against the sky. Every now and then a rumour goes the
rounds:—Pershing is going to move his headquarters to Gondrecourt,—the
Château is to be repaired for his use! The Château and the school
buildings stand on high ground. To the south the ground falls away
suddenly; below is “off limits” and is Fairyland. Here are meadows warm
with the color of spring flowers, here are groves such as one sees in
the pictures of Eighteenth Century shepherds and shepherdesses, and here
is the river flowing so placidly that its waters seem to form still
lagoons, white-flecked with swans and arched with rustic bridges. Here
while the boys are at their mess, I have been stealing to eat my picnic
supper; an orange, a sandwich and a piece of chocolate. The guard
walking post at the foot of the embankment shuts one eye as I go
past,—and usually gets half of my supper! For that matter I gather he is
there largely for the sake of appearance, for there’s not a boy in camp
I’m sure who hasn’t explored those groves, fed the swans, and angled for
fish in the river. And the only reason, I’m certain, that they don’t
surreptitiously go in swimming there is that the water, fed by springs,
is cold as ice! Nor is the touch of romance that should go with such a
setting absent. One of the cooks in the officers’ mess kitchen is deep
in an affair with Lucile, the caretaker’s daughter, a girl like a wild
rose, shy, slender, freshly-tinted. Every other night when he is off
duty he carries her chocolate from the canteen and she “gives him a
French lesson.”
“Serious?” I asked inquisitively.
“Fat chance!” he glowered at me frankly. “She tells me that she’s
engaged to twelve fellows now already and that twelve’s enough.”
The proprietor of the Château, Monsieur S., has the distinction of being
the father of ten girls. I like to fancy that the spirits of the ten
lovely daughters,—for lovely they must be, as no Frenchman, I am sure,
would have the courage to father ten homely ones!—haunt the Château
gardens.
The boys, however, don’t have to rely on phantoms for thrills of this
sort. Yesterday, they tell me, that during the progress of an exciting
ball-game on the Y. athletic field a beautiful lady dressed _à la
Parisienne_ strolled by. The batter dropped his bat, the pitcher forgot
his ball; the game came to a dead halt until the beautiful lady had
passed out of sight.
Gondrecourt, May 13.
The Secretary is sick. He lies in his little bed-room office and reads
the latest magazines and gossips with his visitors while I attempt to
run the hut single-handed. At times during this last week I have been
strongly tempted to get sick myself. Indeed I think I probably would
have done so if it hadn’t been for Snow. Snow, Snowball or Ivory as he
is variously called, is Battery D’s albino cook. “Say, ain’t I the
whitest-haired beggar you ever did see?” he asked me the other day in a
sort of naive wonder at himself. “Anyway, nobody ever had a
cleaner-looking cook,” remarked the Top Sergeant, ex-Mess Sergeant. Snow
has the sweetest disposition in the world. “If Snow was starving to
death,” declared one of the boys to me today, “and somebody gave him a
sandwich, and he thought you were the least bit hungry, he’d give you
that sandwich.” Ever since the Secretary has been sick, Snow has been
bringing him toast and eggs and things while he has brought me lemon
pies, the most wonderful lemon pies that ever I tasted. Already Snow has
come to be looked upon by the boys as an authority on all things
pertaining to the canteen and has to stand a battery of searching
questions, such as, whether he thinks that my hair is really all my own?
Just to add to all our other troubles this week we have run amuck of the
Major. This I suspect was all my fault. I was furious because when he
came into the hut he made the boys stand at attention. This was
something I had never seen done before and is, I am sure, contrary to
all the rules. I was so angry that when the Major came up to the counter
I stood and glared at him.
“You will find the Secretary in his office,” I said and turned and
walked out the back door. It was the Major’s turn to be angry then. He
stalked out behind the counter, looking for trouble, and began to hold
an inspection in the kitchen. The Secretary appeared, the Major let
loose. That kitchen, he declared, was not up to army standards in
cleanliness. This was a matter of utmost importance. Hereafter the
medical officer would inspect the kitchen daily. Then he proceeded to
prescribe a schedule of canteen hours outside of which nothing at all
must be sold.
Now I admit that kitchen hasn’t been quite all it might be. It is a
small, overcrowded place, built of rough dirty boards and there are no
shelves, nor of course running water, nor conveniences of any kind.
Moreover, the Major, I learn, has the reputation of being a tartar in
this respect; “Major Mess Kit” they call him because of the rigour of
his inspections.
The next morning the medical officer arrived at the crack of dawn. He
found the chocolate cups from the night before unwashed. He was shocked.
He too read the Secretary a lecture. Then he departed to do the
sensible, the saving thing, which was to recommend to the Major that we
be allowed a detail. So it all worked out for the best in the end.
“Neddy” as we have christened the detail is now a part of the family. A
shy, dreamy lad, he is at hand to help from early morning until closing
time at nine at night, and I actually have to shoo him out to his meals.
The only trouble with Neddy is that he is so good I am sure that he is
going to die young. And besides Neddy I now have a pet bugaboo. This has
proved so useful these last few days that I don’t know how I ever kept a
canteen without one. Now any time that officers come to my kitchen door
to tease for cigarettes out of selling hours I can gleefully tell them:
“Oh, but I wouldn’t dare! The Major, you know! He’s expressly forbidden
it! If I did and he learned about it, he would surely have me
court-martialed!”
Of course when the boys come out of hours that is quite a different
matter.
Then, too, as the Major is detested by the men, this furnishes a common
bond of sympathy. This morning a boy came to my back door to borrow our
axe in order to chop up the Major’s wood.
“You can have it on one condition,” I told him.
“What’s that?”
“That you chop off the Major’s head with it too.”
Gondrecourt, May 24.
I have always cherished a secret longing to have pets in my canteen: I
have heard of huts that kept kittens and canaries, and once I visited in
one where an ant-eater, if not an _habitué_, was at least a frequent and
honoured guest and sat in the ladies’ laps at the movie-shows. At
various times I have considered and regretfully abandoned the project of
rabbits, a puppy, goldfish and a goat. But till recently the nearest I
have come to realizing my dreams was when I found two large snails with
black and yellow shells by the roadside. I carried them into the canteen
and set them on a flowering branch in a vase. For two days the boys took
a casual interest. They nicknamed them Bill and Daisy.
“The French eat snails you know,” I told them.
“You don’t say!”
“Yes and I had some myself the other day.”
“Aw shucks! You didn’t _really_, did you? Why, before I’d eat them
things! Say, what did they taste like anyway?”
“They would have tasted pretty good,” I answered, “if only while you
were eating them you could have stopped thinking what they were!”
One boy staring at my pets asked innocently;
“Will butterflies come but of those?”
After the snails our only livestock for a while was the canteen rat,
whom I have never met myself, but of whom I have heard large rumours.
The other day however I received a present of two real pets. One of the
Y. drivers had been out to a wood-cutting camp in the forest. There an
Italian lad had given him two young birds in a beautiful cage he had
made himself with nothing but a pen-knife and a hot wire, and the driver
brought the birds to me. I don’t know what sort they were but they were
tame and most amusing. To feed them was the immediate question. I asked
the boys to dig me some earth worms, but this they seemed to consider
beneath their dignity. Finally Neddy went out with a can, only to return
wormless. He couldn’t find any, he declared. I considered the
advisability of asking the Top Sergeant for a worm-digging detail, but
decided against it. Then I confided my troubles to my friend, the
Warehouse Man.
“I know,” he said, “I’ll ask Pierre.”
Now Pierre is a little orphan refugee from the devastated district. He
lives with one of the families on the edge of the town and I am afraid
is none too well treated. When he isn’t herding the cows over the
meadows, he is usually hanging about the warehouse. A handsome, rather
wild looking lad, dressed in a brown cap and an old brown suit, I always
think of him as Peter Pan. The next morning Pierre appeared at my
kitchen door with a can full of long fat wriggly angleworms and had his
pockets filled with chocolate by way of recompense. Later I learned that
the Warehouse Man, not being able to pronounce the French word for
birds, had told Pierre that I wanted the worms for fishing, and Pierre
after taking one look at the bird-cage had gone straight back and told
the Warehouse Man that he was a liar. But cunning as my pets were, I
couldn’t quite reconcile myself to the idea of keeping wild birds in a
cage. This morning I looked at Neddy:
“Let’s let them out.”
“Let’s,” he answered.
Now the only pet I have in prospect is the baby wild boar which a boy
from one of the aviation camps nearby has promised me.
Gondrecourt, June 2.
Night before last, at half-past ten, as I was sitting here in my billet
trying to write a letter, I heard a voice calling me from the street
below.
“What is it?”
“It’s Sergeant B——. I’ve brought you a gas-mask.”
“What!”
“There’s a bunch of German planes headed in this direction. They’re
afraid of gas bombs. We got the alarm out at the school.”
I went down to the door. The sergeant gave me two gas-masks. I gave one
to the English lady who has the room across the hall from me. Then I sat
up waiting for the fun to begin. Nothing happened. I went to sleep with
the gas-mask lying on the pillow beside me.
The next morning the Chief declared that all the Y. personnel here must
go to gas drill and have masks issued to them. Last night they rounded
us up for a lesson. We stood in a big circle at the Gas School over on
the hill while the gas instructors instructed us and the boys looked on
and grinned. Gas drill consists of learning how to put on and take off
your mask in the prescribed and formal manner. It is all done by count.
If you can’t do it in six seconds you are a casualty. As we popped our
masks on and pulled them off again the hair of all the ladies present
proceeded to slowly but relentlessly fall down their backs. The English
Lady stood next to me. “It’s all stuff and nonsense,” I could hear her
muttering; “stuff and nonsense!”
The noncom instructors walked around and informed each and all of us
that if we didn’t change the style of our coiffures we certainly would
get gassed.
“And now,” said the instructor cheerfully, “I am going to send you
through the gas-house.”
I looked desperately for a chance to sneak away, but there wasn’t any;
besides, several boys from my batteries were watching.
“Oh this is nothing, nothing at all,” declared the instructor. “We’ve
only got the tear gas on tonight. You will go through once with your
masks on, and then a second time without them.” We put our masks on and
marched in a long line into the gas-house. There was a table in the
middle with candles burning on it, which gleamed golden through the
thick yellowish clouds of gas. We marched around the table and out
again. There was nothing to it; the masks were a perfect protection.
“Now,” said the instructor,” you will go through without your masks.
This is to give you confidence in them.” The idea being that discovering
how very nasty it was without one, you would be taught to appreciate the
blessing of a mask. I had an inspiration. I would shut my eyes and hang
on to the man in front of me! But alas, for my pretty plan, the line was
too long; as I was about to enter: “Break the line here!” shouted the
instructor. I had to lead the second line into the gas house. I made
double-quick time around that table. Just as I was about to dart out the
door an English noncom instructor seized my arm and, halting me, started
to explain something.
“Yes, yes,” I choked. “It’s all very interesting, but I don’t feel like
stopping now!” I pulled away and made a break out the door. I was
weeping horribly. My eyes felt as if someone had rubbed onion juice on
them. They stung and burned for hours afterward.
“The next time,” said the instructor genially, “we’ll put you through
the mustard gas.”
Now in the mustard gas lesson a fellow must walk into the gas-house
without his mask, and put it on after he has entered. If he fails to
hold his breath long enough, or is nervous and clumsy and so doesn’t get
his mask on quickly enough, why it means a trip to the hospital for him.
The mustard gas test is an ordeal which causes the boys considerable
apprehension.
“Oh thank you! You’re very kind,” I said.
As we took our departure down the hill I noticed a darky doughboy in a
group who were drilling. He was in an awful fix; every time he tried to
fasten the nose-clip on his nostrils, it would slip right off again!
When the next lesson is held I have decided to be among the missing.
Gondrecourt June 9.
We have a new detail. His name is Jones. About six weeks ago he was
kicked by a mule and had three of his ribs broken. He was sent to the
hospital at Neufchateau. Learning that there was a chance that his
battery might be sent to the front shortly, he pestered the docters
until they let him go, his besetting fear being that he might become
separated from his outfit. He returned three days ago. The next day he
went out on the range as one of a gun crew. Yesterday he came into the
hut and collapsed. The Secretary put him on his bed where he spent the
rest of the day. Moved by purely altruistic motives, the Secretary then
went to his captain and asked that Jones be assigned to the Y. as a
supplementary detail. Now this is very nice for Jones, but I am not so
sure whether it is nice for the Y. Jones, it seems, goes by the nickname
of “Mildred.” At one period of his past life he was engaged in selling
soap, a fact which inspires the boys to shout at frequent intervals:
“Three cheers for Jones! Soap! Soap! Soap!” He brings echoes of his
commercial training to the canteen counter. No east-side shopkeeper was
ever more anxious to make sales than he. If a boy asks for tooth-paste
when we happen to be out of it, he is sure to answer:
“No, but we have some very fine shoe polish.”
Or if somebody wants talcum powder when talcum there is none:
“I’m sorry we’re out of it today, but can’t I interest you in some
tomato ketchup?”
Some day I think I shall write on essay on the psychology of suggestion
as demonstrated in canteen sales. Nothing, it seems, ever really wins
the boys’ approval unless it bears the label; “Made in the U. S.
A.”—nothing that is, with the possible exception of eggs. Anything
originating in Europe, from mustard to matches, is looked upon with a
certain amount of suspicion, while goods coming from America are hailed
with an enthusiasm often quite inconsistent with their quality. The
other day we put a case of “Fig Newtons” on sale. The news flashed all
over town. As one of the boys said; “Why it was just as if General
Pershing or somebody’s mother had come to camp.”
Lately we have had for sale quantities of fat French cookies. Some of
the boys are mean enough to suggest that these were baked before the
war.
“Those cookies ought to wear service stripes,” one boy declared.
So “Service Stripe Cookies” they have been ever since.
“They’re all right for eating,” observed another customer solemnly, “but
the Lord help you if you drop one on your toe!” This morning when I
reached the hut I found Jones languidly washing dishes.
“Where’s Neddy?”
“Neddy? Why he’s in the guard-house.”
For a moment I was goose enough to believe it, then I learned that
Neddy, with a lieutenant and some twenty other boys, had all gone off,
the day being Sunday, on single mounts to Domremy to visit the
birthplace of Jeanne D’Arc. Late in the afternoon the little cavalcade
returned.
“Neddy,” I teased, “I hear you’ve been in the guard-house.”
To my astonishment Neddy’s mouth twitched, his eyes filled. “I wish I’d
never gone!” he blurted out.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
Then the whole pitiful tale was unfolded. Neddy hadn’t any money, not a
clacker, and being too shy to ask for a loan, he had gone on the trip
with empty pockets. He hadn’t been able to buy himself a bite of dinner.
But that wasn’t what hurt. What hurt was that he couldn’t purchase any
souvenirs for his girl, and there had been so many enticing ones!
“Gee,” he moaned, “but that’s an awful place for a feller to go who
hasn’t any money.”
Then, just as the last straw of misery, his horse had been taken sick on
the way home!
We are going through one of those painful periods of pecuniary depletion
which are periodic in the army, the inevitable prelude to payday. In
Battery A there are two lads whom I have privately dubbed Tweedledum and
Tweedledee. They are both short, roly-poly and always smiling and they
are absolutely inseparable. When either of them buys anything at the
canteen he always buys double; two packets of cigarettes, two “bunches”
of gum, two cups of hot chocolate “one for me and one for my friend” as
the stock phrase goes. This morning I received a shock. Tweedledum asked
for _one_ bar of chocolate and _one_ package of cigarettes.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking alarmedly of how in the immortal
poem “Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle,”—“You and your
buddy haven’t quarrelled, have you?”
“No ma’am, oh no indeed ma’am! It’s just that it’s an awful long ways
from payday!”
Later I saw them carefully dividing the purchases between them. I leaned
over the counter, beckoned to Tweedledee.
“You boys go around to the back door, but don’t let anybody see you!”
At the back door I gave them each a slice of Snow’s latest lemon pie.
Tonight the Major suddenly made his appearance in the kitchen to find
Snow, Neddy and myself all sitting on the floor sorting out rotten
oranges. Snow and Neddy faded away out the back door, but I stood my
ground. For once his Majorship was pleased to be gracious. He
complimented me on the improvement in the appearance of my kitchen.
Indeed we did look pretty fine, Neddy having just covered the shelves
with newspapers whose edges he had cut into beautiful fancy scalloping.
“What do you do with those over-ripe oranges?”
“Put them in a box outside the back door.”
“Well? What then?”
“The French children do the rest, sir.”
But the boys are more incensed than ever against the Powers That Be.
They have been writing too many letters of late for the censor’s
comfort. So yesterday at Retreat the order was read out that no boy
might write more than two letters and one postal card per week!
Gondrecourt, June 13.
The School has closed. It is common knowledge that the two batteries
will soon join their respective regiments at the front. Curiously
enough, here with the artillery I have never had that same feeling of
closeness to the war which I had when I was with the doughboys. The
attitude of the men here is so much more detached, impersonal. I fancy
this is because, however dangerous their work may be, they do not look
forward to any actual physical conflict. It is the imaginative image of
“Heinie” with a bayonet thrusting at his breast which makes the front so
vivid in anticipation to the doughboy.
But now with the news from Château Thierry there is a certain tenseness
everywhere. One feels that the hour is close at hand when every man that
Uncle Sam has in France may be needed. The barking of the guns at
practice has taken on a new significance. Yesterday indeed it just
missed implying tragedy. Shortly after the jarring thunder of the “75s”
had started our dishes in the kitchen to rattling, came a frantic
message by telephone. A party of engineers were surveying for the
narrow-gauge railway just beyond the hill over which the battery was
shooting. One shell had narrowly missed them.
Today an aviator in a little Spad machine came down at our back door. He
had lost his way, exhausted his gas, and was forced to descend. He had
thought he was over Germany so his relief on finding himself among
friendly faces may be imagined. But aviation doesn’t mean what it used
to any more to us. We have lost our aviator. Shortly after I came to
Gondrecourt we began to have an aerial visitor. Every few days about
sundown he would appear; flashing up over the eastern hill horizon, to
circle the big open drill ground, dipping, soaring, playing all manner
of madcap tricks just for the sheer joy of it, now he would sweep so low
as almost to touch the ridgepole of the hut, then up, up again with a
rush, waving his hand to us below as we waved and shouted with all our
might up at him. The whole camp would turn out to see; it was one of the
events of the day. “It’s Lufberry,” some one told me. Not long ago we
read in the paper that Major Lufberry had been killed. We waited in
suspense. Had it really been he? Would our aviator never come again?
Night after night we watched for him; he never came.
The fields about, which have been golden with buttercups and primroses,
white with daisies, and purple with flowers whose names I do not know,
are now crimsoning with poppies. “Artillery flowers,” the boys call
them. They pick them and stick them jauntily in their overseas caps, or
in great bunches, bring them to me to brighten the canteen.
Since the boys are going soon I have been trying desperately to make
them extra special goodies; candy, stuffed dates, frosted cookies,
and—what pleases them as much as anything—hard-boiled eggs. It has been
a revelation to me here in France, the American appetite for eggs. The
boys will walk miles to get them; they will cheerfully pay as high as
two dollars a dozen for them. I buy twelve dozen at a time, carry them
out to the canteen and boil them in the dishpan. Placed on sale they
disappear in the winking of an eye, and then the cry is always, “Ain’t
you got no more?” Sometimes I take Neddy with me on my shopping
expeditions; Neddy carries my market basket, smokes his pipe and looks
as pleased as Punch. Today in our quest we stopped in at a store kept by
two extremely pretty _Mademoiselles_. As we entered we were greeted by
peals of girlish laughter. In a chair in the corner sat a tired M. P.
fast asleep, his mouth wide-open; between his lips one of the pretty
girls had just at that moment popped a round ripe strawberry.
Gondrecourt, June 18.
Besides the American Camp Hospital there is a French Hospital at
Gondrecourt, a place with a hint of old-world flavour to it, the nursing
being done by Sisters of Charity. Here through some freak of chance a
week ago arrived sixteen Tommies from the English front, after having
travelled half over the map of France. They were none too pleased to
find themselves in a French Hospital and several, being walking cases,
straightway deserted and sneaked over to the American Hospital only to
be regretfully returned again. They have a little Algerian in a red fez
with them whom they have nicknamed “Charlie Chaplin.” Although
intercourse between them is restricted entirely to sign language, the
Tommies have adopted Charlie as their mascot and Charlie follows them
about just like a dog.
My friend the English Lady, having little to do in her canteen since the
School closed, has appointed herself as a sort of foster-mother to the
whole cockney brood. She acts as interpreter and sometimes as
intercessor, for the Tommies are impatient of the hospital discipline
and cause the authorities frequent anxiety, helps the Sisters out in
nursing them and, best of all, makes them tea at four o’clock or
thereabouts, accompanying it with bread and butter sandwiches. Frankly,
the Tommies think that they are little short of starved on the French
Hospital rations, and the tea helps. When they can they sneak over to
the American Hospital and beg a meal there, but such excursions are
frowned upon by those in authority.
Yesterday the English Lady gave a tea party for the Tommies in her
canteen. She arranged to have a truck go fetch them. To her
astonishment, instead of one, two trucks appeared and instead of just
the Englishmen, the whole hospital that was able to stand on two legs or
one arrived with them; big black Algerians and Moroccans in every shade
of duskiness and poilus by the half score. The hut was crowded, there
weren’t enough chairs to go around. The English Lady sent out a hurry
call to bring up the reserves in refreshments. Neddy and I came over
from our hut with our arms full of cups; more water was put on to boil
for the tea, new packages of biscuits opened. Then while the water
heated the English Lady took all the liveliest ones out for a walk
through the Château grounds, while “Skipper”, her detail, who is a
clever pianist, entertained the rest with music. During the playing one
enormous Algerian, as black as night, stared fascinated at the piano,
then edged slowly nearer and nearer to finally lay one incredulous
finger, with infinite caution on one of the end keys. He had evidently
never seen such a thing before, and more than half suspected it was all
magic.
Then the water boiled and we made the tea and carried cups and bowls of
it around with canned milk and commissary sugar. The Frenchmen, true to
type, with the scarcity of sugar in mind would only take one lump, until
you invited them to have another, when each, with evident pleasure, took
a second. As we could only muster six teaspoons between our two canteens
to supply the whole company, we had to pass the spoons from guest to
guest allowing each man just long enough for a good stir and then on to
the next. The men with wounded arms got their neighbors to stir for
them. With the tea we served sandwiches; these were a special treat to
the poilus because they were made with American army bread. Now to my
mind our white army bread is very poor and tasteless stuff in comparison
with the grey well-flavored French war-bread, but the French, probably
on account of the novelty, prize highly any scraps of the _pain
Américaine_ that they can obtain. “Why, they eat it just like cake!” one
boy said to me. Besides the sandwiches, there were little cookies and
candies and cigarettes and finally, the gift of an American officer who
happened in, an orange for each man to take home with him.
When the tea was finished it was time for the guests to go. Crowded into
the trucks they rolled out through the Château gates, the poilus smiling
and waving their good hands, while the Tommies raised a ragged cheer.
As Neddy and I returned to our canteen we paused at the door of one of
the barracks to listen to the band producing pandemonium within. This
band is the pet project of Battery D, the dearest hope of Corporal R.
who is theatrical producer, impresario, librettist, base soloist, and
band leader for the battery. The instruments were finally assembled some
ten days ago. The one thing required of a member seemed to be that he
had never played that particular sort of an instrument before. For the
last ten days the band has been practicing, mostly in the Y. They have
always played the same tune, yet I have never been able to decide what
that tune was. Now that the battery is going to the front, the
instruments must be put in store and our budding band disbanded almost
before it had begun. The instruments are to be interned at Abainville,
the town next door. When the day comes to relinquish them the band is
going to march all the way from Gondrecourt to Abainville in state,
playing their one tune over and over.
Tonight Corporal R. sat on a barrel in the kitchen polishing his French
horn with the Secretary’s pink tooth-paste. It made excellent
brass-polish he had discovered.
“It’s too bad you can’t take that band of yours up front,” remarked
Snow.
“What for?”
“’Cause it sure would make the boys feel like fighting.”
Gondrecourt June 22.
The boys have gone! We saw the last battery off on the train tonight.
The guns were loaded on flat cars, horses and men lodged together in the
box cars, the boys sleeping under the horses’ very noses and in danger
of being nipped, it seemed to me, by an ill-tempered beast. The boys who
were to sleep with the guns on the flat cars would be much better off I
thought; they had made themselves cozy little nests of straw underneath
the gun-carriages. Some of the boys in the box cars, I was pained to
observe, had smuggled in bottles with them.
The English Lady and I had arrived at the station none too soon. We had
no more than walked the length of the train, inspecting each car and
wishing every boy Good-bye and Good-luck when the engine whistled and
was off. We stood on the platform and waved to the boys who leaned from
their cars and waved back until a curve in the track cut off our sight.
These last few days have been hectic. Wednesday was my birthday. Neddy
found it out and told the boys. They had observed that I didn’t have any
raincoat; indeed rainy nights I was always embarrassed by the offer of
half a dozen different rubber coats and ponchos to go home in; so they
decided,—bless them!—to supply this lack. A crowd of non-coms went
downtown; they took along one boy with them as a cloak model because he
was about my height and “looked like a girl”; and they made him try on
every raincoat in Gondrecourt. Finally they selected one, brought it
back and made a ceremonious presentation. The raincoat is a beauty, and
ever since I have worn it every day, rain or shine, just to show them
how much I thought of it.
It was hard to part with little Neddy. The Secretary presented him with
a farewell pipe. I clasped around his neck a chain bearing a little
silver cross; it was to keep him safe, body and soul from harm. He was
almost moved to tears. The Secretary and I, he told me, had been “like a
little papa and a daddy to him,” and then, flushing, joined in my
laughter.
At the last moment one of the D Battery cooks came stealthily to the
back door.
“Me an the other fellers in the kitchen,” he confided _sotto voce_, “we
wanted to do something to show you folks how much we thought of you. So
we just made up our minds to send yer this.”
_This_ was a ten pound can of issue bacon.
The Secretary leaves tomorrow for Paris. He is going in order to buy
himself some new clothes. It seems that all his belongings entrusted to
the local laundresses disappeared one by one until he found himself
reduced to a single set. Last night he washed these out himself and put
them in the oven to dry. When he remembered them this morning it was to
find nothing left but a little cinder heap.
The camp, for the present at least, is to be abandoned; the hut, for the
army wishes to use the barracks elsewhere, torn down. In a few days the
little Artillery School Canteen will be nothing but a memory.