Abainville July 1.
“Abainville is going to be bombed off the face of the map.” Every time
anyone has mentioned Abainville in my hearing during the last six weeks
they have wound up with some such prophecy as this. Abainville is an
engineering camp, Abainville is the starting-point for the narrow-gauge
system that is to supply a certain sector of the American front. Already
the great car shops have been built and stand gaunt and staring with
more glass in their glittering sides than I have seen on this side of
the Atlantic. It is these shops in particular that are held to be such
shining marks for enemy aircraft. Anyway we have this comfort that if
the Boche gets us we will all go together, for the town is so tiny that
if a bomb hit it anywhere, it would wreck the major part of the village
and there isn’t a single cellar in the whole vicinity!
Just at present Abainville is in a state of suspense. There is some
question among those in high places as to whether after all the site,
for such extensive operations as have been planned, is well selected.
Work on the narrow-gauge goes on, but the work on the shops has been
suspended. Everyone is anxiously awaiting the decision.
The hut, which is on the far edge of the camp, is a huge empty shell,
for work on this too has been stopped pending developments. Up till the
day I arrived the Y. was doing business in a tent near the highway, but
being notified that the engineers were going to run a railway through
that spot the next day, they had moved out and over to the unfinished
hut in a hurry.
My billet has a fine central location,—at the corner of La Grande Rue
and the national highway that runs through the town. My window overlooks
what approximates the town square, an open dusty space, bounded on the
south by the principal café, on the east by the butcher’s shop, on the
west by manure-heaps and on the north by my billet. In this square, it
appears, all the village pig-killings take place. It is incredible and
painful how many pigs of a marketable maturity a town no larger than
Abainville can produce. Arguing from the frequency of the pig-killings I
am convinced that if a census were taken Abainville would be found to
contain more pigs than people.
Further down la Grande Rue one comes to the church and the town-hall.
Upstairs in the Mairie my co-worker, Miss S., has her billet. Downstairs
is the village school and the living apartments of the schoolmaster’s
family, refugees from the invaded territory. I peeped in at the empty
schoolroom yesterday: on the wall was a large pictorial chart designed
to impress upon the infant mind the advantages of drinking beer, cider
and wine, rather than the more potent alcohols; a lesson vividly
demonstrated by a series of cuts portraying a pair of guinea pigs. The
guinea pig who indulged in cognac and kindred beverages was depicted in
successive stages of inebriation until at the end he is shown expiring
in all the horrors of delirium, while the prudent guinea pig who took
nothing stronger than _vin_, _biére et cidre_ is pictured first in a
state of mild and genial intoxication, and then the “morning after” with
all the zest of a good digestion and a clear conscience, breakfasting on
a sober cabbage leaf.
The church next door to the Mairie is remarkable for nothing except the
peculiar sound like a wheezing snore which may be heard every evening
issuing from the belfry. At first this sound was a mystery to us. I
inquired of Madame; she was blank.
“Perhaps,” I suggested remembering how in medieval lore evil spirits
were reputed to haunt church towers, “perhaps it is the devil in the
belfry.”
“But no!” cried Madame scandalized. “The devil doesn’t live in
Abainville!”
“To be sure,” I amended hastily, “the devil is a Boche! He lives at
Berlin.”
“_Mais, oui, oui, oui!_”
But now the riddle has been read. The devil in the belfry is in reality
an ancient owl, _une chouette_, who has inhabited the church tower time
out of mind.
There is a Salvation Army hut here, the first one I have seen. It is
down by the main road; the canteen occupies one end of a barracks, which
is used as a store-house, then there is an ell containing the kitchen.
The staff comprises one man and two women; they are pleasant people,
“real home folks.” Two or three times a week, for supplies are hard to
obtain, they make pie or cake or doughnuts. On these nights, passing the
hut on our way back from mess, one sees a long line stretching down the
road, waiting patiently for the chance to get a piece of pie “like
Mother used to make.” Our relationships are cordial. We help each other
out in the matter of change. They come to our hut for sweet chocolate
and movies; we go to them, when our consciences will permit, for
doughnuts. I only wish that one of their huts could be in every camp in
France.
Abainville, July 8.
By courtesy of a group of officers we are messing at a house with a
particularly noisome front-door gutter and the Most Beautiful Girl in
France to wait on us. La Belle Marguerite, as I always think of her, is
tall and stately with a lovely gracious bearing and a sensitive,
responsive face; what’s more, she only paints a little. She affects to
speak no English but I suspect she understands a good deal. At meal
times when we are present the officers never look twice at her, but any
evening that one happens past the house one can see two cigarette ends
gleaming from the darkness just inside the mess-room window: the
officers are making up for lost time. Yesterday La Belle looked so pale
and _distraite_ at dinnertime that I was quite distressed, fancying
heart-break. “Mademoiselle Marguerite is sad,” I told Madame my hostess.
Madame immediately went forth on a Visit of investigation. “Mademoiselle
has the tooth-ache!” she announced on her return. Today at dinner,
having finished our salade, we waited in vain for dessert. La Belle
Marguerite, usually so prompt and so efficient, simply did not appear.
After waiting until I grew tired I gave it up and left. Passing by the
kitchen door I glanced inside. In front of the hearth stood Marguerite
and a handsome Russian officer, and oh! the coquetry of her eyes, the
seduction of her smiling, scarlet lips! It was evident that the mess in
the next room was wiped as clean from her mind as if it never had been!
Whether my messmates ever got their dessert or not I haven’t heard.
Besides La Belle Marguerite, the one unique feature of our mess is a
certain set of plates. These are French picture plates with jokes on
them. The jokes are all of a gustatory nature and pertain to things
which most people would prefer not to think about while they are eating.
One rather striking design represents the proprietor of a Swiss resort
hotel delicately sniffing a platter of fish as he says to the waitress:
“These trout are passe. Keep them for the customers who have colds in
their heads.”
On another an irate diner is exclaiming over an item on his bill:
“Three francs for a chicken! What’s that?”
“Why that was the little chicken that Monsieur found in his egg!”
There is always an anxious moment of suspense whenever a guest comes to
dinner, a moment in which one peeps furtively out of the corners of
one’s eyes to see whether the newcomer has noticed the picture on his
plate, and if so, whether he has got the point. Sometimes the guest will
ask to have the text translated for him and then there is an awkward
pause.
The question of what to serve at the canteen is a vexed one these days
as it is quite too hot for chocolate. By scouring the country we managed
to procure several cases of lemons, and then found our work for the day
laid out,—just squeezing them. A few days ago, however, a shipment of
bottled fruit juices arrived at the warehouse; by mixing this syrup with
water and a small amount of lemon a delicious drink can be obtained. The
boys have dubbed it a dozen different names, “_Camouflage vin rouge_”
being one of them, but “_pink lemonade_” is the title it commonly passes
under. Already it has become famous and every drunk in camp if
questioned as to how he came to be in that condition will unblushingly
assert that it was through drinking “that Y. M. C. A. pink lemonade.”
If we could only get ice! Yesterday I investigated the possibilities, to
find that if one were very ill and in desperate need of it, could
produce a certificate to that effect signed by half a dozen doctors,
approved by the Sanitary Inspector, passed upon by the local Board of
Health and sealed by the Mayor with the sanction of the Town Council,
one could, by means of this document, procure at the brewery at
Gondrecourt a piece of ice about as large as a small-sized egg. Somehow
it doesn’t seem quite worth the trouble.
Lacking ice, we do our best with freshly-drawn water which comes
pleasantly cool from the deep wells drilled by American engineers to
supply the camp,—when it does come. But often just when the thirsty ones
are crowding thickest you make a frantic dash to the faucet only to find
that the supply has been cut off: there is not enough water in the
wells, it seems, to supply all the engines and pink lemonade besides for
the whole camp. Then there is nothing to do but to take a pail and set
out. After climbing over a couple of freight trains and ploughing
through a dozen cinder heaps one comes at last to the pump-house, where
one may, by assuming an ingratiating manner, beg a pailful,—strictly
against the regulations,—from the man at the pump. And then, after all,
what use is a mere pailful of lemonade in a thirsty camp?
Abainville, July 10.
We have stopped fighting the war and have gone into the movie business.
For two days all work has been suspended while the camp has posed before
the camera. They are making a big propaganda film for use in the States,
entitled “America’s Answer to the Hun” and Abainville and the
Abainville-Sorcy narrow-gauge is to be part of that answer. “Camouflage
pictures” sneer the boys, and camouflage pictures I blush to say they
frankly are. For on the screen the peaceful valley through which the
narrow-gauge is being built is to masquerade as a field of battle.
Camouflaged engineers, armed and equipped as infantry will march
valiantly across the landscape, while other engineers in helmets, with
their gas-masks at the alert, are plying their picks and shovels amid
the smoke of camouflage shrapnel; the climax being attained when the
helmeted engineers effect a lightning repair feat by bridging over a
carefully dug camouflage shell-hole.
Yesterday I saw a photograph cut from the Sunday Supplement of one of
America’s best known and most respected newspapers. Underneath the
picture ran the text, “American boys playing baseball on a field in
France where shells fall daily.” To my certain knowledge the only shells
that have ever fallen on that field or within many miles of it are
peanut shells. For the field in the picture is most plainly and
indisputably the Y. athletic field at Gondrecourt. Will I ever, I
wonder, recover my pre-war faith in newspapers and photographs and
movies and such things?
But now we have done our turn before the camera, it’s back to work again
and very hard work at that, for the officers are determined to set a
record for all the world in laying track. Already the little railway has
shot ahead at an amazing rate; though whether track laid in such a hurry
is really going to make for speed in the long run is a question on which
the trainmen, sipping their pink lemonade at the canteen counter, have
their own opinions. For no train, it seems, can make the run at present
without leaving the track at least once during the journey.
“Sun-trouble” say the officers, which means, being interpreted, that the
heat of the sun’s rays has warped the rails. “Sun trouble nothin,’”
grunt the men. “It’s just not takin’ the time to do the job decent.”
When the “sun trouble” doesn’t serve to throw a train off the track, the
French children see to it that the same effect is produced by the simple
expedient of dropping spikes in between the ends of adjoining rails.
Yesterday I was talking with an engineer from Tours. He and his fireman
had just brought a Belgian engine up from that city for use in the
Abainville yards. The attitude of the train crew who received it was
plainly “thank-you-for-nothing-sirs!”, Belgian engines being none too
popular with A. E. F. railroad men. The two crews sat in the hut for a
long while holding a symposium over the Belgian engine’s oddities; at
last the home crew departed, looking very glum. In the course of my
subsequent conversation with the visiting engineer I happened to ask:
“Would you vote for Pershing for president?”
“No sir!” he answered emphatically. “All the railroad men over here have
got it in for him.” He went on to explain.
French railroad engineers are allowed a certain amount of coal and oil
with which to make their runs; for anything that they can save out of
this, they are reimbursed. This idea appealed to the American train
crews who were attached to the French. They set to work and saved,—far
more than the French were able to! The French proceeded to depreciate
the quality of coal allowed them, instead of giving them half dust and
half briquets, they gave them three-quarters dust and finally all dust
yet still the Americans were able to beat the French at saving. And each
man in fancy was rolling up a tidy little sum for himself.
“And then,” continued my informant, “Pershing came out and said that we
weren’t here to make money off the French, but to help them, so we
weren’t to get the money for all the coal and oil we had saved after
all. And that’s why there isn’t a railroad man in France who has any use
for him.”
How much of politics could be reduced, I wonder, to a mere question of
pocketbook?
He went on to tell me among other things that although a French
conductor would be furious if you stopped a train in the middle of a run
for any other reason, if you just said; “Come on, ol’ top, and have a
bottle of _vin rouge_ on me,” he was all beaming acquiescence. “Just
imagine,” he concluded disgustedly, “stopping a main-line train in
America so the crew could go into a saloon and get a drink!”
Abainville, July 14.
The Bastille has fallen! We celebrated its fall today with much
enthusiasm. Ostensibly in order to signalize the Franco-American
Alliance, the festivities in reality were planned as propaganda of a
different sort. Surreptitiously but quite definitely the end and aim of
them was to flatter the Major.
Now the Major in command of the camp at Abainville is what—if he weren’t
a major—one would be tempted to term a “hard-boiled guy.” Being of the
bid school he looks with a jaundiced eye at all welfare organizations,
particularly, I gather, at the feminine element in them. He calls the
college men in the regiment “sissy boys” and believes in treating them
to an extra dose of pick and shovel. What’s more, it is an open secret
that he would like to swap the whole outfit of them for a regiment of
Mexican desperadoes, with whom he has had considerable experience. As
the boys say, he speaks three languages, English, Mexican and Profane,
and of the three he is the most proficient in the last.
So in view of all this, the Fourteenth of July celebration was gotten up
chiefly in order to give the Major a chance to appear in all his glory
and make a speech, this being, it is claimed, one of the surest ways to
tickle the vanity and so win the heart of a man.
We decorated the half-finished hut with flags and bunting, screening the
yawning cavern back of the stage with broad strips of red, white and
blue cheesecloth. Then we officially invited the whole town to attend.
The whole town, from grandmother to baby, came dressed in their Sunday
best. The programme started with an informal concert by an impromptu
jazz orchestra varied by some Harry Lauder impersonations delivered by
an unexpected youth who somehow strayed on to the stage. For a few
moments we were painfully uncertain as to whether the effect produced
was due just to Harry Lauder or to _vin rouge_, finally deciding that a
share at least of the credit should be allowed the latter. Fortunately
Harry’s appearance on the stage was short; he left us fondly hoping that
the French hadn’t realized anything was amiss.
The Major of course opened the formal programme. He read his speech. It
wasn’t a bad speech, representing, as it did, the combined efforts of
one captain, two lieutenants and the clerk in the Headquarters office,
and was sufficiently fiery in its reference to the Germans to be quite
in keeping with the Major’s character. The Major sat down amid
thunderous applause. The Secretary had vainly tried to arrange to have a
little girl present him with a bouquet at the end of his speech: perhaps
it was just as well the way it was,—a bouquet might have proved
embarrassing to the Major. When the applause had died down the Major’s
interpreter stepped out and gave a brief summary of the address in
French for the benefit of the villagers. Then we had the Mayor of
Abainville and after him the Cure, looking very handsome in his
beautiful French officer’s uniform. They both delivered flowery
speeches, enlarging upon the mutual affections of the two nations, which
were translated briefly into English by the interpreter for the benefit
of the Americans.
After the speeches the school children, who had been fidgeting about
like so many little crickets in their front-row seats, swarmed up on the
stage and, standing in a long line with flag-bearers at each end, sang
the Marseillaise in their funny shrill little voices. Then we all sang
the Star Spangled Banner, and after that there was a movie. As luck
would have it, instead of an adventure of the western plains, fate had
sent us a romance of high finance. We had asked the interpreter to
announce the titles of the pictures in French for the benefit of the
villagers but when he discovered that this meant making clear the
intricacies of the New York Stock Exchange to the mind of the French
peasant, he baulked and bolted. It must have been just about as
intelligible to them as Coptic, yet they sat tight and at least looked
interested.
Everybody considers the affair a success. The Secretary was in high
spirits over the evening.
“The Major was pleased, I’m sure,” he declared. “As for the French, it
was an occasion which they will always remember. Why it was just like
transplanting the whole village there. The grandmother and the babies,
the mayor, the priest, the school-teacher and his scholars; every
village institution was represented!”
“Everything,” I said—I was tired, “but the pig-killings.”
Abainville, July 20.
I have just established what I think must be the smallest “hut” in
France, and such fun as it was doing it!
There is a detachment of about a hundred engineers stationed, while they
build the narrow-gauge railway, at a little village about ten miles to
the north, called Sauvoy. The other day I went with the Athletic
Director in a side-car to take them some baseball equipment. The boys I
found were billeted in dark dingy lofts and had to eat their meals, rain
or shine, sitting just anywhere in the streets of the village. The
thought came to me; why shouldn’t they too have a Y? I approached the
French Town Major, taking the barber-interpreter with me to lend me both
moral and lingual support. After some uncertainty he admitted that there
was a room which might be made to serve, a room over a stable to be
sure, but a good room for all that; the rent would be thirteen sous a
day,—I snapped it up.
Yesterday with all my materials assembled I started out for Sauvoy
again. We began work a little before noon, myself and four engineers.
Before the afternoon was over we had changed a filthy loft, its grimy
walls covered with obscene scrawls, into as cunning a little
pocket-edition Y. as one could find I think in France. Sweeping the dust
and cobwebs from the rafters, we calcimined the ceiling and walls a
pretty creamy yellow; filled in the missing panes with vitex; hung
curtains of beautiful blue and green chintz at the windows; laid runners
of the same across the tables lent with the benches by the _Major du
Cantonment_; decorated the walls, half-dry as they were, with stunning
French posters; built shelves in the alcove corner where the built-in
bed had been, filled them with books, games and writing materials; hung
two big green Japanese lanterns from the beam in the center; and last of
all put bowls of the loveliest flowers, larkspurs and snapdragons,
begged by the boys from the village gardens, on the shelves and tables,
together with heaps of fresh magazines and the company victrola. In the
midst of all the scurry and hurry a red-faced frowsy Frenchwoman marched
in upon us. She stalked across the room and tried the door which led
into the hay-loft: we had nailed it fast. We must open that door
immediately, she declared, otherwise she could not get the hay to feed
the horse downstairs. I saw my pretty room used as a passage-way by a
beery old termagant and my heart sank. After some discussion, however,
our visitor proposed an alternative. If we would supply her with a
ladder, she could climb up into the loft from below. But how, I asked
helplessly, was I to get a ladder? One of the boys winked at me and
disappeared; ten minutes later he was back dragging a ladder after him.
Our French friend was satisfied.
“But how did you get it?” I asked wonderingly.
He looked at me reprovingly. “In this Man’s Army,” he remarked, “you
should learn not to ask such questions.”
When the last touch had been bestowed there was still an hour before the
truck which was to take me home was slated for departure. Someone
suggested a visit to the Château. So the Top Sergeant, the
barber-interpreter, the Town Major and I all set out together.
The Château at Sauvoy is a fifteenth century Château, cut out of an old
picture-book, surrounded by a high wall and just about big enough for
two. One enters, oddly enough, through the kitchen which is enormous and
like a Dutch _genre_ painter’s “Interior,” with a cobble-stone floor, an
eight-foot fireplace, dried herbs and vegetables hanging from the
rafters and everywhere on the long shelves, the soft gleam of pewter and
the mellow tones of old china-ware. From the kitchen one steps into a
tiny dining-room paneled in dark carved wood with a bird-cage, empty
now, built into the wall. Beyond this is the _salon_ with a wonderful
old tapestry stretched across one of its walls and some exquisite Louis
Quinze chairs in which kings and queens might have sat.
But the best thing about the Château is the Chatelain, an old French
gentleman, eighty-nine years of age, the last of his family, who lives
all alone, except for one antique serving-woman, in this beautiful dim
old mansion, wears _sabots_, keeps bees for a living, and every day of
his life cuts from the _journal_ the little daily English lesson, pastes
it in a tiny note-book, and then his poor old eyes an inch from the
paper, cons the words over and over, reading them aloud with _such_ a
pronunciation!
“In three months,” he told us proudly, “I am going to be an American.”
He related to us how in 1870 the town was invaded by the Germans and he
taken prisoner. But the Germans were gentlemen then and treated him
humanely; he couldn’t understand what had changed them to such savage
beasts. He took us out and showed us his precious bees. We went through
the garden, a charming place with little box hedges and rose bushes and
currant bushes and gooseberries all growing together in the true French
style. Beyond we came to an open oblong of greensward edged by trees
with fifty hives ranged around it, the hives,—of all quaint
conceits—being made like little Chinese houses, each one different from
the rest, each painted red and blue, a bit shabby and worn by time, but
still gay and jaunty nevertheless. Monsieur guaranteed us that the bees
wouldn’t sting, they weren’t bad bees he said, so we consented to be led
about to each hive in turn and peered in through the little glass
windows at the bees making honey. Sad to say, this is a bad year for
sweets and instead of hundreds of pounds of honey, there will be
scarcely one to sell.
We went back through the garden and here Monsieur must gather a bouquet
for me. Around and about the garden he hurried, going to every bush in
turn, putting his poor dim eyes down into the very leaves of each,
searching for just what he wanted; and finally it was done, pink and
white roses, red geraniums, camomile and white pinks, made up in a
little stiff bunch and tied with a bit of scarlet string. Then he must
present it with a deep bow and a gallant speech “from an old Frenchman
to _une jolie Américaine_”, while all the rest, including the ancient
maid-servant who had just returned from the fields with an apron full of
clover for the rabbits, stood about and applauded and cried “Vive la
France!” and then “Vive l’ Amérique!” in a quite truly stage manner.
We left the little Y. in charge of a boy from the Medical Corps. He has
little to do except dispense pills to the French people, so he was
willing to look after it.
This morning word came in from Sauvoy that the Germans bombed it last
night. Luckily the bombs, evidently aimed at the railroad, fell just
outside the village and did no harm; but poor old Monsieur must have
gotten a bad fright.
Abainville, August 1.
Abainville’s future is at last assured. Work upon the hut has been
resumed. The buzz of barracks-building fills all the place, the railroad
yards gradually but relentlessly encroach; little by little they are
ruining the most beautiful poppy field in all the world.
Meanwhile our family too has grown. A few days ago three new companies
of engineers arrived in town. These are draft troops from Texas and
Oklahoma, in camp for only a few weeks in the States, shipped here
directly from the base port, and so green to France that they don’t even
know what _oui oui_ means. On the trip here one of these boys, they
tell, after gazing out the door of his “side-door pullman” in silence
half the morning, remarked disgustedly;
“This is a hell of a country!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why all the stations have got the same name!”
“The hell they have! What’s the name?”
“_Sortie!_”
The Major in command of the new arrivals proves to be an old and none
too amicable acquaintance of our Major’s, their mutual esteem having
been obscured by a law-suit some time in the past which resulted in our
Major’s being forced to part with a considerable sum of money. To make
himself more welcome the new Major has introduced innovations. Up till
now, in accordance with our Major’s theories, we have been a strictly
business community, our energies concentrated chiefly upon what the boys
call P. and S.—pick and shovel. But now with the coming of the new
detachment we have blossomed out with all sorts of military frills.
Armed sentinels marching their beats in a military manner fairly
encumber the camp. One is halted and challenged a half-dozen times on
one’s way home from the canteen at ten o’clock in the evening. I am
startled out of my dreams in the middle of the night by shouts of,
“Corporal of the Guard, Post Number Four!” under my very window. And the
best part of it is that these “Long Boys,” never having had so much as
the A-B-C of military training, make the drollest imitations of real
soldiers that ever were. The atmosphere at Headquarters has of late, I
gather, been slightly tinged with electricity. But the boys belonging to
the older organizations in camp have been enjoying themselves to an
unholy degree “stuffing” the new arrivals with ghastly tales of
air-raids, gas bombs, and Serial machine-gun barrages.
As in all huts, we have a big map of France tacked to the wall where the
boys can have easy access to it. After one of these maps has been up a
short while, it is always a simple matter when glancing at it, to locate
one’s self—one has only to look for a dirty spot; a little later,
countless more grimy fingers having in the meantime been applied, one
looks for the hole. Yesterday one of our new friends came to me and
asked:
“Please, Ma’am, could you tell me where that there place, ‘No Man’s
Land’ that they talk about in the papers is? I’ve been a-lookin’ an’
a-lookin’ an’ I can’t find it on the map nowhere.”
Along with the new engineers Nanny arrived in town. Nanny is an Alabama
goat, smuggled on board the transport wrapped up in one of the boys’
overcoats. Her fleece is pure white and she is fat as a little
butter-ball. Already she is one of our most distinguished citizens.
Possessed of an adventurous spirit, she makes herself free of every
house in town, being particularly fond of climbing stairs and appearing
at unsuspected moments in odd corners of one’s billet. Madame explains
the attraction here: “She smells an American, you see!” which is a
quaint thought. Nanny is the pet detestation of the Adjutant, for she
has a _penchant_ for straying into his office and nibbling at every
paper within reach. Already several valuable documents have disappeared
down her greedy little throat. Last night, in revenge, one of the boys
in the Adjutant’s office, armed with a pot of bright red paint, painted
Nanny in “dazzle” designs. Today she is a sight.
This morning I was puzzled to observe that a considerable number of the
newcomers were wearing pink tickets in their hats.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Them? Them’s meal tickets!” They explained; the report had gone around
that the chow of one of the companies was of superior quality;
immediately the chow line of that same company had assumed an inordinate
length. The mess sergeant, unable, since the company was so new, to
distinguish his own men from the self-invited guests, had found it
necessary to attach tags to the company.
With the coming of the new engineers, the sale of one article in stock
has swelled to unprecedented quantities. One member of the force is
fairly kept busy from morning until night cutting off chunks of chewing
tobacco. Texas and Oklahoma, it seems, have unlimited capacities for
this commodity. Now with all due respect to the honourable American
tribe of chewers, this indulgence raises a very delicate question for
the canteen lady in whose charge rests the appearance of the hut. The
scrap-boxes are already in a bad way, I frankly advocate spittoons, but
our detail, who is a very superior lad, known among his cronies as “The
Infant” because of his pink cheeks and innocently solemn air, flatly
refuses. There are some things, he declares, to which he will not stoop,
and he grows very stiff and red in the face if I hint at it.
“I have discussed the matter,” he told me yesterday, “with several very
eminent chewers, and they all agree that there isn’t the slightest
necessity for their behaviour!”
There may not be any necessity,—how am I to judge? But there is a very
actual and urgent state of affairs. And what is one to do about it?
Abainville, August 13.
The hut is finished. Now if at any time Marshal Foch or General Pershing
or President Poincaré should happen this way, we could say: Come in,
gentlemen, and behold us; don’t we look nice?
The main part of the hut, the big auditorium, is done in creamy yellow
and brown with rafters of bright blue, the windows hung with curtains of
sumptuous orange chintz. The writing-room is blue and yellow too, with
green and yellow curtains on which, in a bower of branches, black-birds
perch; runners of the same material lie across the writing tables, the
practical advantage of this pattern being that whenever anyone spills a
bottle of ink on a runner, it merely gives the effect of one more
black-bird. In each window of the writing-room is a little pot with a
scarlet geranium, while the walls of both writing-room and auditorium
are bright with beautiful French posters.
But the best of all the hut, to my mind at least, is the Tea
Room,—so-called until we think of something better to name it,—for the
Tea Room was my own particular pet scheme. According to the plans, the
ell behind the canteen counter was cut up into half a dozen little
rooms. By eliminating part of the central hall, the “mess-room” and the
“ladies’ room” and moving the office out to an unused corner by the
movie machine booth, we got space for a fair-sized room connected by a
serving-window with the kitchen. Our matched lumber having run short we
used rough lumber and covered it with burlap; each strip was a different
weave and texture, to be sure, but all the same it was burlap! The
woodwork and little tables we painted a bright green, hung vivid green
curtains at the windows, then, taking the covers of chewing tobacco
boxes, stained these green too, pasted in the centre of each a bright
little water-color reproduction cut from an English art magazine, tacked
them up on the walls, and _voilà!_ as pretty a little room as could be
found short of Paris!
In the Tea Room we serve pink lemonade, hot chocolate, jam sandwiches,
cookies and canned fruit. The boys are living on a diet of what they
call “goat’s meat” at present;—whenever it is time for a chow line to
form you can hear a chorus of bleats and baas half across the camp,—and
so sick of this have they become that many will sup off chocolate and
sandwiches in the Tea Room by preference. Yesterday I took a chance and
tried making a ten gallon boiler full of raspberry tapioca pudding,
using the bottled fruit juice. At first the boys were inclined to be
cautious.
“What do you call that?”
“How would raspberry slum do?”
“Well, I’ll try anything once!”
But after the first taste it went all too fast.
“Say, are there any seconds on this?”
“Lady,” said one lad solemnly to me, “with pudding like that I could
stay four years more in the army.”
One of the divisions from the lines arrived in this area, a few days
ago, for a short period of rest. A number of the men are encamped up on
the hill near the old Artillery School and they come straying down to
our hut. Poor lads, it is pitiful to see how wonderful it seems to them
to be in a place that is clean and pretty.
“This looks like a bit of heaven to me,” declared one boy.
Another, sitting in the Tea Room stirring his chocolate, commented,
“Gee, this is a swell place in here. You ought ter get some fancy name
for it.”
“What would you suggest?”
“Well I should think,” he looked around, “you might call it Canary
Cottage.”
Yet occasionally I wonder if it really all pays, as when I pick out the
cigar butts which, in spite of the trash boxes beneath the tables, the
boys will persist in sticking in the vases of flowers and planting in
the geranium pots, or when, as last night, I catch a fellow using one of
the beautiful chintz runners from the tables with which to wipe the mud
off his boots.
Abainville, August 21.
Talk kills men.
Don’t talk. The walls have ears.
Keep mum, let the guns talk for you.
Thus are we placarded. Every hut, every café, every garage, every place
of any sort where the A. E. F. may meet together and indulge in
conversation, now bears a board with some such legend printed on it and
after each terse warning is the terser admonition; Read G. O. 39. A
campaign of silence is on foot. These catchy phrases, American
variations on the classic French line: _Taisez vous, méfiez vous, les
oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent!_—Be still, beware, the ears of the
enemy are listening!—are to be perpetual reminders to us that we are all
too prone to gossip indiscreetly.
As to just what one may say and mustn’t say, I for one confess, not
having read G. O. 39, that I am in a quandary. I find myself hesitating
before mentioning the fact that we had baked beans for dinner. As for
talking about the weather, why that leads naturally to the subject of
moonlight nights, and moonlight nights, as every one knows, now imply
not romance but air-raids and air-raids are of course a tabooed topic.
Indeed I am beginning to have a sneaking conviction that perhaps it
would be better to discard speech entirely and take to conversing in
dumb show.
Sometimes some small thing that comes to one’s attention will
crystallize a difference between two races so sharply as to be
startling. This was impressed on me the other day by two posters. Both
the French and American authorities have recently issued warnings to
their soldiers concerning the practice of riding on the tops of railroad
cars, since this habit has led to a number of casualties. The French
poster reads something like this:
Whereas it has been brought to the attention of the Commissioner of
Railroads, that various accidents have occurred resulting from the
practice indulged in by soldiers of obtruding a portion or the whole of
their bodies beyond the limits of the car; it is urgently requested that
the soldiers in transit upon the railroad should henceforth restrict
themselves to the interior of the cars.
The American sign runs thus:
“If you want to see the next block, keep yours inside! Your head may be
hard but it’s not as hard as concrete!” Pithily it states the number of
casualties resulting from this trick, explains that the French bridges
and tunnels only allow six inches clearance above the top of the cars,
and ends;
“Your life may not be worth anything to you, but it may cost your
country $10,000.”
But the triumph of American sign art, a specimen of which hangs in the
Adjutant’s office, is the gas-defense poster. It starts off with the Gas
School slogan:
“There are two classes of men in a gas attack, the quick and the dead,”
proceeds to poetry:
“The hard-boiled guy said gas was bunk,
It couldn’t hurt you, only stunk....
The hard-boiled guy went up the line,
Fritz spilled the mustard good and fine;
And now some people wonder why
It’s flowers for the hard-boiled guy,”
and ends with the admonition that seems a little ironical to one who
must struggle to make green wood burn in a broken-down French range;
“Cook with it, don’t croak with it.”
Today we put up a sign fill of our own over the counter. For some
reason, transportation probably, there has been a most distressing lack
of supplies in this area recently. Not only are we suffering, but the
Salvation Army and even the sales commissaries have all been stricken
with the same famine. Indeed I was told of one commissary which bore the
warning; “We have salt, mustard and baking powder. That’s all.” Tired of
replying several hundred times a day; “I’m awfully sorry but we haven’t
any so-and-so,” I made a sign which was a list of all the “haven’t gots”
and tacked it up over the counter. Thinking to be funny I included
strawberry ice-cream among the rest, to be promptly punished by an
innocent-eyed youth who inquired hopefully; “What kind of ice-cream
_have_ you got?”
Another boy read through the list once, twice, then looked up at the
Infant disgustedly.
“Why don’t you put ‘Hell!’ at the bottom of it?” he queried.
“’Pears to me it would be easier to make a list of the things you _have_
got,” suggested another.
A little while longer and if no help comes, we shall be doing this. I
can see that sign in my mind’s eye now. It will read something like
this:
We have
chewing tobacco
indelible pencils
and
shaving brushes
Abainville, September 2.
Once a month, according to schedule, the whole personnel of the division
is summoned to Y. Headquarters at Gondrecourt for a conference. Formerly
these conferences were largely religious in significance, consisting of
much righteousness with a slight leaven of business. Each one in turn
was looked forward to as a pious but unprofitable duty and evaded when
possible,—which wasn’t often. Now with a change in the directorship the
conferences have taken on an almost entirely practical tone.
Incidentally they have gained amazingly in popularity. For now one can
attend a conference with confidence that during its progress one will
surely glean more than one quaint bit of human comedy.
Today it was the Aviation Camp Secretary who supplied most of the spice.
This is an odd but very earnest little man whom I shall always remember
as I saw him at the Gondrecourt railway station last May, starting for
Paris dressed up in a “tin hat” and a gas mask. Whether this was in
order to bluff Paris into thinking that he had come straight from the
front, or whether this was to protect himself against the assaults of
Big Bertha while in the city, I could not determine, but never since
have I been able to take the gentleman quite seriously.
The Aviation Secretary created the first sensation by rising suddenly to
his feet and reading a motion to the effect that the Gondrecourt
Division of the Y. M. C. A. should go on record as registering a protest
against “the wicked state of the Paris streets,” citing Mr. Edward Bok
and his action in the case of the streets of Liverpool. For a moment no
one said a word, then a secretary arose and requested that the motion be
amended to read more clearly, as in its present form it might be taken
to refer to the condition of the paving, or the criminal recklessness of
the taxi drivers. The Warehouse Man then solemnly proposed that in view
of Mr. Bok a ruling should be passed that while in Paris all secretaries
should be required to travel by the subway or in a cab. I wanted to ask
if it wouldn’t do just as well if special prayers should be offered for
each secretary on his departure for the wicked city, but refrained.
No sooner had the excitement over the Paris streets subsided, than the
Aviation Secretary was on his feet again with a second resolution. This
was in effect a petition to the Paris office that they send us
proportionately less tobacco and more sweets for sale in the canteens.
This precipitated a fiery argument, the smokers lined up against the
non-smokers. Listening to the non-smokers you became convinced that the
manhood of America was on its way to ruin through excessive cigarettes;
listening to the smokers you became equally certain that the war would
be won by tobacco smoke. The situation became so tense one could almost
see the sparks in the air. In the end the smokers had it.
The next thrill was caused by one of the women workers who in the course
of a speech took occasion to deprecate the housekeeping abilities of the
men secretaries. On Fourth of July, she declared, when the chocolate
cups from all over the area had been sent into Gondrecourt for the
celebration there, some of them had been discovered to be in a shocking
state. These had later been traced to a hut where there was no woman
worker. Instantly the Aviation Secretary was up again. This charge was a
personal matter, he declared, as the cups in question had been his.
However he denied the implication. The cups had been perfectly clean
when they left the hut, they must have become soiled en route. And so
the conference comedy is played out.
At the town of X. there is a secretary who declares he is devoting his
life to the service of the Lord. Some years ago he found himself
becoming deaf. So he told the Lord that if He would restore his hearing
he would spend the rest of his days in performing good works. He was
cured. Last week he created a corner on eggs in this vicinity by buying
one hundred and twenty-five dozen at five francs per. Now he is
reselling them for six. Wanting eggs badly to make custard for some sick
boys here, and not being able to obtain them any other way, I walked
over to X. and bought two dozen. When I got home I counted them, there
were just twenty-three. Surely the Lord got the worst of that bargain!
Abainville, September 9.
Something is going to happen.
We have been used to seeing the French Army go by; interminable lines of
camions, so many feet apart, rolling through the town for hours on end.
Sometimes we have seen a section pass through on its way to the front,
only to return again some ten days later. Once seen, a French camion
train is never forgotten, for each automobile section bears painted on
its sides the distinctive insignia of the unit. These are sometimes
droll, sometimes sentimental, but always cleverly designed and usually
striking,—a poilu drinking _pinard_ from his canteen, a pelican, a polar
bear, a dancing monkey, a soldier embracing a peasant girl, a grinning
Algerian’s head in ear rings and a red fez, a gendarme holding up a
threatening club.
But now by day, by night, it is the Americans who are passing through,
their faces set toward the front, on troop-trains, in camions, on foot.
Coming home from the canteen in the evening one hears the heavy rattle
that means artillery on the move, and standing by the roadside peering
through the darkness one can just discern horses and caissons,
slat-wagons, supply-wagons and, looming ominously in the dim light, the
formidable bulk of the great guns.
Night before last I was awakened by the sound of troops passing, a
regiment of infantry on the march. I lay and listened; the tramp, tramp,
tramp of the rhythmic feet was unvarying, incessant, then came a break.
The order had been given to halt for a rest. The boys were evidently
sitting down by the edge of the road. But though they rested they were
by no means still.
“_Oh Mademoiselle!_” they entreated the dark and unresponsive houses,
“_Oh, Mademoiselle! Deux vin rouge toot sweet s’il vous plaît,
Mademoiselle!_”
They swore genially. They sang snatches of _Hail, hail the gang’s all
here_ and _Tipperary_. One boy had a mouth organ which he played with
vim. Someone introduced a barnyard motif and they were off, crowing and
cackling, mooing and bleating, imitating every animal known to domestic
life. They sounded like schoolboys off for a holiday and my God! they
were soldiers on the march to the front, their faces set to the battle!
Tonight as we came home from the hut, we were startled by a strange
sight. The sky was clear, except for one dark mass shaped like a cloud
of smoke which hung above the horizon to the north. As we looked,
suddenly the under side of the cloud turned an angry crimson, then in a
moment grew dark again. A minute later the red glow showed again only to
fade but and be repeated. We knew that the angry light must be the glare
reflected from the flashes of the guns which were belching red death
across the lines. All at once the battle-field seemed very near.
Abainville, September 14.
We have taken the Saint Mihiel salient! The news came in yesterday over
the wires. At first we couldn’t believe it. We have heard so many
wonderful but alas! too hopeful things over those wires! But now the
newspapers have proved it, with their maps showing the salient cut off
as clean as by a knife. And if we wanted concrete proof, why we have
that too. They have sent for a detail of engineers from Abainville to
build hurry-up prison pens. They simply haven’t any place to put the
thousands of captive Germans. The detail set out in high spirits looking
forward to doing a brisk business in souvenirs; already reports have
come in to the effect that buttons and shoulder-straps may be had in
exchange for a cigarette, and a ring for a sack of five-cent “smoking.”
The inhabitants of Saint Mihiel, they say, were terror-stricken at the
sight of the Americans. When our troops first entered the town they
believed the city had been retaken. The Americans, they thought, were
Austrians. No one in Saint Mihiel had ever seen an American; they hadn’t
even known America was in the war!
But even in Saint Mihiel I don’t believe that there was any greater joy
than the joy that was here in our own kitchen. Madame who helps us with
the dishes at the hut is the daughter of the refugee schoolmaster, a
shy, sensitive, appealing little woman, girl-like in spite of her
half-grown daughter. When we told her that the salient had been taken
she went white and trembled. And what of Vieville? she begged; Vieville,
her own little village? We got the map and showed it to her. Sure
enough, there was Vieville and the new line stretching the other side of
it! It was true past doubting. Madame shivered. “I don’t know whether to
laugh or to cry,” she told us and there were sobs in her voice while she
smiled at us. She tried to go on with scrubbing the floor, but she
couldn’t. Would we mind if she ran home for a minute? She must tell the
news to Papa and Maman. But certainly, stay as long as you like! we told
her. In an hour she was back again, to go about her work in a dazed
uncertain fashion, smiling tremulously while the tears stood in her
eyes. We must get someone to take her place at the canteen, she told
us,—they would be going back to Vieville right away. It was plain to see
that she would have liked to start that very moment. We said nothing. Of
course it was impossible. Vieville though liberated was close to the
lines. When I looked at Madame so happy, so confidently eager to return
to her home, I sickened to think of the ruin that probably awaited her.
How do they have the courage to face it, these French people? I thought
of the words of the old schoolmaster: “We are living under tension now,
it is the strain that keeps us up. When the war is over there will be a
terrible reaction.” They have been brave, so brave, these peasant
villagers, but how will they bear the future? Where will they be swept
when they are caught in the fearful ebb of that reaction?
Already odd-looking little German narrow-gauge engines and freight cars
have begun to appear in the yards, part of the Saint Mihiel booty. It
does the eyes good to look at them.
One doesn’t want to hope too greatly, but is it possible that this may
be the beginning of the end?
Abainville, September 18.
Last night they bombed Gondrecourt. We were startled out of our sleep by
the explosions. Lying in bed I could hear the angry growling gr-gr-gr
which distinguishes the German plane, as it flew over Abainville headed
back towards the lines. Would it drop another bomb? It seemed to take an
interminable time to pass over us. Finally the growling hum grew faint,
died away. Then the real excitement of the night began. Swarming into
the streets, men, women and children, they proceeded to turn the
occasion into a social event. Standing in the square in the moonlight,
all talking at once and all talking at the top of their voices, they
discussed, narrated, compared, commented, sympathized, while high above
all the din I could hear Madame’s voice in semi-hysterical outbursts of
emotion. How they could find so much to say about it I can’t imagine. If
Hindenburg’s whole army had suddenly appeared in Gondrecourt they
couldn’t have been more excited. I went to sleep and left them still
busy analyzing, as I took it, their psychological reactions.
This morning we learned that the bombs, falling at the edge of the town,
had injured nothing except a few trees.
“What would you do if they should start to bomb Abainville?” I asked
Madame when she brought me my morning toast and chocolate.
“I? I would go to the church.”
“What you, the infidel! You who never go to mass!”
“I know.” Madame smiled a little sheepishly. “And yet all the same, one
would feel safer there.”
At the canteen a lieutenant who was just finishing his course at
Gondrecourt came in.
“Nobody can imagine who should have wanted to bomb the school,” he
declared, “unless it was some former pupil.”
“Why I was told that the Gondrecourt School was the ranking school of
France!” I exclaimed.
“Made a mistake in the last syllable,” he responded sourly, “it should
have been spelled e-s-t.”
But if the inhabitants of Abainville have experienced no losses through
air-raids yet, they have nevertheless, suffered a minor casualty.
Victor, the town simpleton, the genial, harmless Victor, was knocked
down by a passing automobile yesterday and became separated from his
left ear in the ensuing confusion. Poor wretch! I saw him this morning
hobbling down the street with a cane, his head swathed in bandages, but
the same old cheerful smile on his half-wit face, as he cocked one eye
warily on the look-out for approaching autos. Meanwhile a heated
controversy is being waged between the medical officers of Abainville as
to whether or not that ear might after all have been saved.
Saint Malo, Brittany, September 23.
Today I took tea with a Baroness, not only I, but about eighty odd
members of the A. E. F. here _en permission_ like myself. Our hostess
was an American lady, the widow of a French Baron; the tea a weekly
party held at her Château out in the country, to which all boys on leave
in this Brittany area are invited.
We took the funny little narrow-gauge train from Saint Malo, a “mixed”
train and so crowded by the tea party that the boys must ride in the
baggage car and on the flat freight cars, and started our journey out to
Châteauneuf. The feature of the train trip was the blackberries. Here in
Brittany these grow all along the roadsides, the bushes topping the
narrow earth-covered walls like dykes that serve for fences. Strangely
enough in this land of thrift, the blackberries go untouched, untasted.
A Frenchman who lectured to us last spring declared that as a child he
was warned not to eat them: they would give him lice, he was told. This,
he explained, was the method which French parents took to dissuade their
children from eating berries which, growing along the roadsides, would
be full of dust—a quaint scruple to find among people ordinarily so
superior to sanitary considerations! But the Americans had no such
superstitions; at every cross-roads stop we made, the boys swarmed off
the cars and fell upon the wayside bushes. I tasted some that one of the
boys brought back for me. Compared to our blackberries at home they were
flat and flavorless, but anyway they were fruit and they were free and
that was all the A. E. F. demanded.
Arrived at Châteauneuf, we must first file through the reception room
where each and all of us shook hands with the Baroness, a gracious,
stately old lady dressed in black, and then out upon the lawn beyond the
long ivy-covered, many-gabled house, to sit upon the grass and drink our
tea. But tea was a misnomer unless it might have been the sort which the
English call “high tea,” it was a supper; salad, sandwiches, buttermilk
and fruit punch served on real china plates and in dainty goblets. Many
a covetous eye I saw fixed on the silver forks with the coronets
engraved on them, while the whispered word “souvenir” caught my ear, but
to the boys’ credit I am glad to say that, as far as I know, they one
and all resisted this temptation.
After supper the boys sang and then we were invited to go through the
house and wander about the grounds and garden. Coming back to the house
after having made the rounds, the boy who was with me suddenly stopped
stock-still.
“Well I’ll be darned!”
Before us wound a tiny stream and perched on its bank an old, old
peasant woman was busy scrubbing what was evidently the Château wash.
The boy turned and looked at me despairingly, “And for all that’s such a
fine house,” he groaned, “I suppose there ain’t so much as a speck of
plumbing in the whole blamed building!”
On the lawn we found games were in progress. All the youngsters from the
neighborhood had assembled to watch the Americans at the tea party. At
first they had hung shyly on the outskirts, but now a lad from the air
service had started them to romping. Taking hold of hands a long line of
these little gamin would pursue a soldier victim, encircle him, bring
him to earth, then pile on him, holding him a helpless prisoner until he
bought his liberty with a ransom of cigarettes, gum or coppers. It was a
wonderful game for the children but I could not help but watch with
apprehension, every time there was a pig-pile, to see where all those
wooden shoes would land.
Coming home, we walked to the little fishing village next door and took
the train there. As this visit to the village is also a weekly affair,
all the inhabitants were on their door-steps to greet us, the women with
their red cheeks, dressed invariably in black dresses and little stiffly
starched net caps. We went into the church with its array of votive
offerings in the shape of tiny models of fishing boats and then, on our
way to the station, stopped to view, over the hedge, the picture-book
garden of one old fisherman in which the trees and shrubs were all
clipped and trained into the quaintest shapes—peacocks and animals and
little ships. As the crowd moved on I lingered. An old man leaning on a
cane, who had been watching from the roadside, stepped forward and spoke
to me. He was the owner of the garden. He wanted to express to me his
gratitude to America, America who had saved France! “_Ah! Vive
l’Amérique!_” The old fellow’s tribute, unsolicited and unpremeditated
evidently, touched me deeply.
Abainville, October 4.
While I was away it seems several things occurred. For one, we lost
Nanny. Whether some enterprising mess sergeant thought the day’s menu
would be improved by the addition of kid pie, whether some French family
lured her away to be interned in their back yard, or whether, as one
might more darkly suspect, the Adjutant had something to do with the
matter; nobody knows. The bare fact confronts us: Nanny has disappeared.
We have also lost one of our most picturesque customers. This was a
handsome young Greek with a beautiful curled mustache, named Niccolo. He
used to hold up the chocolate line, while, his eyes fairly shooting
fire, he rolled up his sleeves and showed me the scars of the bayonet
wounds which he received fighting the Turks. “The German, he just the
same the Turk! I tella the Captain he letta me go front, killa ten,
twenty, hundred Germans!” Why such a bloodthirsty soul as his should be
cribbed, cabined and confined in an engineer regiment, he never
explained. Just before I went away on leave a detail of prisoners from
the guard-house arrived at the hut one morning to scrub the floor. To my
regret I noticed Noccolo was among them. Niccolo, however, did not seem
to mind, he was quite happily occupied with telling the others how the
work should be done.
“That feller’s nuts,” complained a fellow-prisoner to me, “he spends all
his time when he’s in the brig, tryin’ to read the Bible to us.”
While I was away they sent him to the Gondrecourt hospital on suspicion
of insanity. The other night he escaped and made his way back to
Abainville clad in his hospital pajamas, only to be caught and taken
back again. Poor Niccolo with his beautiful mustache and his fiery
spirit! I am sorry he never had the chance to get those Germans.
Worst of all, the Y. is in disgrace with the officers. It came about
through the matter of seats at the movies. The officers wanted to come
to the shows and they also wanted seats reserved for them; naturally
they wanted the best seats. Now this is always a vexed and delicate
problem in a hut, for if the officers ask for reserved seats one can’t
very well refuse them, and yet to grant them is to raise resentment
among the men. When I left the matter was hanging at loose ends. Shortly
afterwards our Secretary, who is more distinguished for sentimentality
than tact, had an inspiration; he would put it up to the men.
Undoubtedly when the case was laid before them, their nobler natures
would be touched and they would discern that it was their patriotic duty
to voluntarily relinquish the best seats in the house to their military
superiors. So one night just as the show was due to start the Secretary
walked out onto the stage and made his little speech, ending with the
appeal:
“And now boys, where shall we put the officers?”
A perfect roar answered him. “Put ’em on the roof! Put ’em on the roof!”
It was frightfully embarrassing. The officers were furious. They
withdrew and called a mass-meeting to consider the matter. What the
exact statute that covered the case was I don’t know. I suppose the
crime was one of a sort of military _lèse Majesté_. Anyway the Secretary
had indisputably laid himself liable to a court-martial. In the end,
however, the officers decided that as long as the case was one of
stupidity rather than malice, they would let the Secretary go with a
warning.
And now they have stationed spotters among us! The hut, it seems, has
proved to possess an all too potent charm for boys who should by rights
be engaged at “pick and shovel” and other uninviting but necessary
occupations. In view of this the authorities have taken drastic action;
passes must now be issued to the boys to allow them to enter the hut
during work hours, and alas for the unhappy lad who ventures in without
a permit, the lynx-like eye of the amateur detective detail is sure to
light upon him!
Abainville, October 11.
Nanny has returned! She was found tethered in a back-yard in a nearby
village. Since the French household which claimed her as their lawful
property refused to relinquish her peacefully, she was taken by storm.
There was a scrimmage, the neighbors rallied to their friends’
assistance. But the two lads who had been the discoverers managed to
break away bearing the struggling Nanny with them and, followed by the
whole village shouting “Stop thief!” gained their truck and rolled
triumphantly away. No longer, however, does Nanny wander at large,
innocently trimming the villagers’ cabbage rows, or slipping slyly into
the Adjutant’s office to sample his latest orders. Nanny is under guard.
The engineers are taking no chances.
Yesterday we acquired a kitten,—a wild-eyed yellow scrap brought in last
night by a lad as an offering. The boys immediately christened her “The
O. D. Cat.” Every time I give her a caress some one of the boys leaning
over the counter is sure to remark: “Gee, wish I was a cat!”
“But what shall I feed her?” I questioned, thinking of the difficulty of
fresh milk.
“Corn willy and cognac! What else would you give an O. D. cat?” they
chorused.
“And where shall she spend the night?”
“I’ll keep her for you ma’am,” volunteered a brawny Texan. “She’ll sleep
right in the bunk longside o’ me.”
This morning the canteen was full of tales of the night. “Yes sir! he
tied her up to a post with a rope as big around as your arm! An’ the
pore cat nearly hanged herself. She hollered all night long!”
This the Texan emphatically denied; he had a tale all of his own to tell
however.
“There was a mouse last night in the barracks. It was the littlest mouse
you ever seen, but it chased that cat all around them barracks. Yes
ma’am, it sure did run that cat ragged!”
“Did you give her any breakfast?” I asked, disdaining any comment on his
story.
“Sure ma’am! I gave her a saucerful of cognac.”
“You never did!”
“Yes, an’ it did that cat good, it did. Soon’s she’d lapped up that
saucer; ‘Bring on your mouse!’ she says.” He shook his head
reflectively. “My, but that cat sure was feelin’ its strength this
mornin’!”
“Waste cognac on a cat! That’s a likely story for that guy to be
telling!” was the single comment of the bystanders.
Right here I wish to record a formal apology to the Secretary at X who
sold me the six-franc eggs a month ago. Today I was talking to the Top
Sergeant whom I encountered on my way home and who carried my basket for
me. From something he let fall I now more than suspect it was he who
accounted for that twenty-fourth egg!
Abainville, October 16.
His real name, of course, is Horace but since Madame refers to him as
’Oreece, as ’Oreece he must go,—’Oreece is our new detail. He is
cautious, conscientious and slow. If ’Oreece ever showed signs of having
spunk enough to do something that was really bad, I would feel that
there was hope for him. Madame, who adores the Infant, is very cold to
’Oreece. The other day she requested him to save her all the cigar stubs
he found while sweeping. She wanted them for an old derelict of a
Frenchman who is a sort of scavenger around camp. Poor old papa could
smoke the butts nicely in his pipe she declared. But ’Oreece was so
disobliging as to turn his nose up at their proposal. Anyway ’Oreece
cuts the bread for the jam-sandwiches very, very nicely.
Three nights ago we had an air-raid alarm. The evening’s programme was
over but the hut was still full of boys. Suddenly without any warning,
all the lights went out. We looked out the door, the camp was in total
darkness. In the machine-gun pit nearby we could hear quick excited
orders interspersed with curses,—the gunners were getting ready to stand
off the aeroplanes. The boys left the hut. We waited for a while and
then, getting tired of the dark, went home. The planes didn’t show up; I
went to bed feeling that it had been a case of Hamlet without Hamlet.
Last night we were in the middle of a movie show when a shattering
explosion sounded outside. Back in the kitchen where I was serving hot
chocolate to the Tea Room line, everyone started and stared. Was it a
raid? Surely that was a bomb! There was another explosion. Then the
lights went out. So it was the real thing! I seized the Cash-box and
stood pat. Another crash; instantly outside there was a stampede. In the
dark it was impossible to see just what was happening, but from the
sounds it appeared that about seven hundred pairs of hob-nailed shoes
were doing double-quick time out the doors. In less time than one could
believe the auditorium was empty. I heard Madame’s voice behind me in
staccato exclamations. Somebody scratched a match and lit a candle, a
little group of boys were still standing at the window waiting for their
chocolate, their faces looked a bit white I thought. Then the Infant put
his head out the kitchen door:
“Why, the lights in camp are all on!” he exclaimed.
A boy came up to the window. “They’re practising at the school,” he told
us. “I heard the other day that they were going to pull some stunts in
the trenches tonight.”
“So that was it!”
The lights flashed on.
“But why did they go out?” I asked confused. Nobody could explain it.
At that moment ’Oreece drifted into the kitchen, he wore a very pale and
apologetic grin.
“’Oreece!” I gasped, “Did you—”
“I turned the lights off,” he admitted. “I knew where the switch was. I
thought it was a raid.”
I glared disgusted: “And a nice night’s work you’ve done!”
My friend the Texan strolled up to the deserted counter.
“I met ’em all coming down the road,” he remarked. “Gee, but it was like
the retreat of a whole division!”
Today the boys have been asking to tease me: “Where were _you_ in the
Great Air-Raid?”
“I? Oh, I was under the kitchen-table,” I reply.
Abainville, October 23.
The Chief has just brought me great news. I am to have a hut all of my
own. I am to be head cook, bottle-washer, and grand high secretary all
in one. And I am to go out into the wilds of France and start a new hut
alone.
It seems there is an ordnance depot at a village called Mauvages about
six miles north of here. The camp itself is small, some two hundred men,
but the town has a large billeting capacity and additional bodies of
troops will be stationed there from time to time. The C. O. of the
Ammunition Reclamation Camp,—that is its official title,—has requested
that a hut be established there. With the personnel in its present state
no man secretary, says the Chief, can be spared, but if I care to
undertake the job on my own I am welcome to it. And if after two months
or so of solitary confinement “out in the sticks,” as the boys say, I
get to hankering too badly for the flesh-pots of civilization, why they
will arrange to have me relieved. Need I say that I snapped up the offer
on the spot? I had asked to be transferred from Abainville some while
ago, as the conditions here have been none too congenial, but to have a
hut all of my own is beyond any luck that I had dared dream.
I would like to sling my old kit bag over my shoulder, tuck a chocolate
container under one arm and a case of cigarettes under the other, and
catch the first truck that passes bound northward for Mauvages. But it
seems they won’t let me go until a New Lady comes here to take my place.
They have telegraphed to the office at Nancy. If the New Lady doesn’t
come quick, I have a good mind to go A. W. O. L. and start my canteen
willy-nilly.
Meanwhile I am planning plans. Because of the grey chill days of winter
I am going to paint my hut inside the brightest sunshiny yellow I can
find, hang it with orange curtains, and then in honor of the ordnance,
christen it the Pumpkin Shell!