THE BATTLE OF LE CHIEN ROUGE
—1—
Can you beat it? After my going to all that trouble to get Ben
transferred, we were informed that the big ape was in the jug at Le
Mans!
God alone knew what he’d been up to. I thought of everything, from
drunkenness and disorderly conduct to assault upon an officer. When the
personnel clerk told me about it, I couldn’t say a word, just vanished
in order to digest this information. I couldn’t decide whether to tell
the General and ask his help or what to do. Finally I marched back to
the clerk and told him that the General said that unless Garlotz was
being held on a manslaughter charge, he should be released and
transferred here at once. “Will that be much trouble?” I asked
disarmingly.
“I’ll see what can be done,” he said. And that was all I knew about Ben
for a while.
The General said, “That new man ought to be here to-day, shouldn’t he,
Sergeant?”
All I could say was “Yes, sir” and let it go at that.
—2—
The personnel chap told me they had arranged for Ben’s transfer at once
and that he was on prison detail, serving out a sentence on which there
were several days to go yet.
“Did they say what he had done?” I asked.
The clerk laughed. “It appears that he ran wild one night not long ago
and wrecked a café or something—nothing serious.”
So Ben was on the way.
—3—
He arrived in the morning and was put to work immediately driving us
around Tours. I think the General wanted to try him out before we
started off on any journeys. Anyway, the result was that I didn’t have
two minutes alone with the new arrival until evening, and I was dying to
ask him for an explanation of his fall from grace. So as soon as we were
out of earshot of any listeners, I put the question to him: “What the
devil have you been up to, Big Boy? What’s the sad story about prison
bars and fines?”
He gave me kind of a nasty look and said, “Don’t kid me, Leony. Don’t
kid me.”
“What do you mean ‘kid you’?” I insisted. “It’s right on your record in
plain writing!”
“Listen—” he ordered, with a wave of his hand, “is that any way to
thank a guy fer savin’ yer life?”
“Whose life? When? Where? How?” I demanded, at a loss to divine what he
was driving at.
“Say—don’t ya s’pose I know who I see? What I wanta know is why the
frog was lammin’ hell outa ya. What the hell you been doin’ to his wife?
I gave you credit fer better taste than that—but now I wouldn’t put
nothin’ past ya!”
I didn’t know what he was talking about at all, and promptly said so.
“Gee, that’s rich, ain’t it, now?” He laughed kinda sourly. “And here I
been picturing you gettin’ down on yer knees to thank me fer rescuin’
ya! Instead o’ which you got the guts to try an tell me ya don’t know
what I’m talkin’ about. Gee, Leony, you’re terrible!”
“And you’re crazy as hell!” I retorted.
“Yeh—but I ain’t so crazy but what I know why ya got me this transfer,
an’ I’ll accept it as yer thanks.” He laughed again, that same unhealthy
ha-ha. “All I gotta say is ya musta been pretty hard up to be sidlin’
after that greasy bartender’s wife! You, of all people!... Ha-ha—I
guess appearances is deceivin’, eh?”
“Oh!” I gasped. So that was it! But I still couldn’t understand the
connection. I didn’t see how Ben had got mixed into Pierre’s jealousy.
He had never been in the place with me and there was no reason for
Pierre to connect us.
“I should say OH, too, if I was you,” he observed dryly.
“But I still don’t understand, Ben,” I told him seriously. “What
bartender and where did this happen?”
At first he refused to take me seriously, but I finally goaded him into
explaining.
“Just to put the details fresh in yer mind—which seems to be purty
fergetful all of a sudden—” he began with grave condescension. “I eased
into a buvette in Le Mans one evenin’ an’ saw before me nobody but my
old bunkee, Sergeant Leon Canwick himself, an’ he was bein’ mauled all
over the floor by a little runt of a frog wid a bartender’s apern on
’im. I suppose you don’t remember him at all, eh?”
“Go on with your story,” I replied, beginning now to suspect the secret
of the mess.
“He was doin’ such a ferocious job on my old friend, Mister Canwick,
that I thought I oughta take a hand myself. And while I was hangin’ that
frog on the chandyleer and givin’ him back-stretchin’ exercises over a
cognac keg, my old friend picks himself up and departs toute suite,
leavin’ me there alone to face about a million gendarmes and twice that
many M.P.’s. Nice fella, wasn’t he?”
“Then what happened.” I insisted, ignoring his query.
“Well—what could I do? It wasn’t my fight anyhow an’ I didn’t know what
I was fightin’ for besides, so I just told the boys I’d go along
quietly. They threw me in the jug fer being drunk an’ disorderly.”
“And is that all that happened?”
“No—not quite. I figured my friend, Sergeant Canwick, bein’ such a good
friend an’ on accounta my savin’ him an’ all that—I figgered he’d be
only too glad to come around and explain the argument and get me outa
the jug, but instead o’ that I stays there and has to listen to some
frog interpreter tellin’ that bartender’s tale o’ woe, an’ in the end
they decided, without my consent, that I had to pay fer the damage done
to his damn old buvette by givin’ up most o’ my pay for four months.
Course that struck me as one o’ the funniest things that ever
happened.... Besides which I discovered that I was supposed to spend ten
days in one o’ them prison gangs, one o’ them heavy labor outfits....
An’ it was so funny that I just laughed and laughed every time I thought
of my good friend, Mister Canwick, an’ how easy he got outa a bad
lickin’.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” I declared.
“Huh—maybe not, buddy, but I do—an’ if you didn’t have them stripes on
ya and if you was a little bigger than the shrimp ya are, I’d give ya a
lacin’ right now to make up fer the one you missed.”
He looked so grim and serious that I was really scared for a minute, but
I insisted over and over again that I didn’t know anything about the jam
at all. “Honest to God, Ben—I haven’t been in Le Mans for a couple of
months—not since I left there with the General! That’s the God’s truth
and I can prove it by the General! We haven’t been near Le Mans!”
He looked at me then and I could see that he was beginning to have
doubts. He wanted to believe me, I guess, but it didn’t seem possible
that he could be wrong. “If it wasn’t you, who was it then?” he finally
demanded. “I’d swear it was you—looked just like you right this
minute.”
Well, I knew who it was. My darling brother had, I thus learned, arrived
in this land of the fleur-de-lis. But I couldn’t tell Ben that. I
couldn’t tell him about Leon, for if we should ever bump into him, Ben
would be sure to wonder why his name was Leonard Lane. There was only
one thing for me to say and I said it: “I can’t imagine who the devil it
was, Ben. I must have a double running loose over here—did he have a
sergeant’s chevron on his sleeve?”
That stumped him for a moment. “Damned if I know,” he admitted. “I
didn’t stop to look. But he looked exactly like you—an’ I still think
it was you.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I give you my word of honor and I can prove that I
haven’t been in Le Mans since I saw you last.” I insisted, and was
gratified to see that he was impressed. “Anyway, I’m much obliged to you
for saving what you thought was me, and I’ll make up the money end of it
to show you my heart’s in the right place.”
“What the hell’s the idea?” he demanded. “If it wasn’t you, why should
you wanta pay the bill?”
But I didn’t want to argue about it any longer and so I told him,
“You’ve got me wrong, Ben. You may never believe it was not me at Le
Mans, but that’s the truth and can be proved. However, I do insist upon
making up to you for the pay you’re losing, merely because I appreciate
your trying to help me when you thought I needed help. And that’s all
there is to it!”
“Well, it looks kinda fishy to me,” he contended.
But I refused to argue with him. I made him take twenty dollars on
account and I determined he’d take the balance as soon as I could get a
check cashed.
I knew he didn’t know whether to believe me or not, but I just couldn’t
explain the thing to him. Lord knows, there were enough loose ends to
this affair already. I didn’t know where Leon was or when I was liable
to meet him. And Jay-Jay was liable to breeze into Tours any day. What
if he should see Leon and me together? Might the good Lord stick with me
yet a while!
I wished I could have seen that scrap in Le Chien Rouge! Poor old
Pierre—Ben must have done an awful job on him. And to think that it was
all my fault.... I wondered if Lisa saw Leon. Maybe it had been
explained to Pierre by now: if so, we had something else to worry about.
Oh, sweet existence!
—4—
God, but I worked those next two weeks! Believe me, there was a big
battle being fought in this S.O.S, regardless of all the current jokes
about non-combatants. About twelve hundred years ago a strong-arm
Frankish hero by the name of Charles Martel turned back the invading
hordes of Arab Moors that had swept up through Spain and was threatening
all Western Europe. That Battle of Tours was one of the decisive battles
of history, and this 1918 Battle of Tours was going to be a decisive
one, too, for this was the very heart and lungs of the American army.
We’d just about covered all the nooks and crannies of this vast
organization, from the base sections at Brest, St. Nazaire and Bordeaux,
to the great depots of Nevers and the zone of action that began above
Chaumont, but always we had to come back to the headquarters at Tours,
and the center of this tremendous S.O.S. which constituted in itself one
of the most expansive battles of the war—for it required three men to
keep one man at the Front, and thousands times that three were warriors
of the S.O.S. It was amazing—like a nation within a nation, a huge
octopus of an organization embracing everything from hospitals and rest
camps and leave areas to quartermaster and ordnance depots. It was all a
gigantic business, a military government which owned and operated all
its machinery, materials and human constituents.
Every day that passed impressed this realization the more plainly upon
us. Troops were pouring in from the States. Supplies and equipment were
being rushed along in tremendous quantities. And every ship that landed
meant that much more work for us, because as the camps grew larger and
the workings of this great government became more and more involved and
far-reaching, there was just that much more need of supervision and
watchfulness. And that was our job.
The system grew from day to day. It developed to such an incredible
extent that it seemed impossible for any one man, or little group of
men, to comprehend its far-flung reaches. Even General Backett, who had
a genuine talent for organization, confessed that he was amazed and
bewildered by the stupendous sweep of it all. On one occasion he
observed that, “Perhaps there is someone somewhere who knows what all is
happening in this organization, but there are moments when I seriously
question the existence of any such person.... At times it presents a
perfect picture of chaos and confusion, but a single word from Tours
brings instant response, and undeniable order appears suddenly from the
confounding confusion. It is simply amazing! A glorious example of the
efficiency and coördination which are inherent in Americans!”
It was a gargantuan enterprise and I had long since ceased trying to
envision the whole works. Napoleon or Cæsar or somebody once said that
an army travels on its stomach and if that is the case G.H.Q. must have
been planning on going a long, long way—and the food supply was but one
branch of this enormous business of supply.
The General said that when this war was won, the combat commands would
get the credit—“but it will be these laboring devils in the service of
supply that will have won the war.”
And he thought that this war couldn’t go on without him. He managed to
find more business to attend to than any other five general officers
that I’d seen. He worked like a nigger day in and day out—and he was
really not any too young any more. I feared that he might break under
the strain. He said that there was no limit to a man’s capacity for
endurance during a time of tension, but I had my doubts about anyone’s
being able to go on and on under an uninterrupted strain. I knew I was
beginning to feel kinda dizzy at times, as if everything was in a
terrible jumble. I was due for a leave af absence, but couldn’t very
well take one until the rush was over. There were big things in the wind
up toward Germany and business was sure picking up.
—5—
Well, of course it was bound to happen sooner or later. I met the enemy
and for the time being, at least, he was mine, although I had my doubts
about his attitude. I refer, of course, to Jay-Jay.
I ran into him coming out of the headquarters building at Tours. Esky
was at my heels and Ben was beside me. When I saw him I was
panic-stricken and wanted to turn and run—but I couldn’t do that
because we were going out to the car and the General would be along any
minute.
He started to come toward me just as I realized that Esky’s presence
might look very suspicious to him. I grabbed Ben’s arm and told him to
chase along and get Esky into the car, and then I stepped back and
waited.
“How are you, Leon?” Jay-Jay greeted me, while his eyes made a quick
survey of my person.
I told him I was getting along all right and asked about his own
progress. We managed to talk about this and that for several minutes. He
asked me why I hadn’t answered his letter and I told him I lost it
without copying the address. Said he hadn’t heard from my sister since
he came over here and I said I hadn’t either, but that I thought she was
still out West somewhere.
“Wasn’t that her dog I just saw here with you?” he demanded suddenly.
“Dog?” I asked dumbly. “When?”
“Wasn’t that dog and the big fellow with you a moment ago?” he insisted.
“Looked just like Leona’s Esky.”
I managed to laugh. “Oh—that!” I said. “That’s my boss’s pup. The big
fellow’s the chauffeur and I’m the General’s special clerk, so the pup
sticks with us most of the time. He does look like Esky, at that.”
“You didn’t care much for Esky, did you?” he inquired with a smile.
“No—” I admitted. “He’s Leona’s and I don’t like dogs anyway.”
Conversation went on then, with ups and downs of critical moments.
Finally he told me about meeting Vyvy and that she had said I didn’t
leave Wakeham until three o’clock on the Sunday before I sailed.
“Oh—Vyvy,” I exclaimed. “She was so excited, you know. So glad to see
me go. She forgot what day it was, I guess.... Anyway, you ought to
know, for I’m damned sure I didn’t dream of seeing you at Camp that
day.”
“No—” he admitted. “You didn’t dream that. You did see me. I just
wondered, though, when Vyvy insisted that you were in Wakeham that
noon.”
I laughed at him. “Don’t let that worry you,” I told him. “And you can
report to my aunt that I’m doing very nicely—miles and miles from any
danger!”
We both laughed at that simple crack and he said something about
“fighting the battle of Cognac Hill and the Siege of the S.O.S.”
But the General appeared at that moment and I was only too glad to use
the excuse to break away. Not, however, before he had informed me that
he was going from Tours to Le Mans. Wasn’t that sweet fortune for you!
He would probably go to Le Mans, bump into Leon, and the beans would be
spilled for fair. If there were a million men in Le Mans that he could
see without hurting me at all, the chances would still be a million to
one he’d meet Leon. That’s the kind of a gink he was—could be depended
upon to do whatever you least wanted him to do.
I didn’t like him in the least any more. An able bodied man like him
masquerading and dodging danger by supervising the people who entertain
in the camps and rest areas. He was less of a hero than Leon: the
latter, at least had finally come through with a vengeance—though
without regard for my safety. Well, I could only pray that they did not
meet. I hadn’t the least idea how to reach Leon. I cussed him for not
writing to me. You see, blaming and cussing him was a habit of long
standing.