Nothing much has happened lately, so I have not been moved to write. You
will remember I told you about getting a _marraine_; how she was born in
Illinois, has two married daughters, lives in her country home at
present, but will be in Paris during the winter months. Well, in her
second letter she asked me if she could send me tobacco or anything else
I might need, so I told her to send me candied fruit and golf stockings.
They arrived yesterday. Say, but that fruit was good, and the stockings
were the best I ever have seen. Dark brown, with a fancy top—not too
brightly colored, of light and dark green. They are most too good to
wear around here with my old khaki suit.
Most of the men are buying uniforms and thirty-five dollar aviator boots
and eight dollar belts and all that, but I think it will be better to
wait. If the United States takes us over, it will mean another change of
uniform. Perhaps my uniform will come in after all. At all events, I’ll
have to buy a light serge uniform which will be cool enough for summer
wear and dressy enough to wear when accepting invitations. They spend a
good deal of money on clothes here, and dress pretty lively when they go
to Paris. Around camp, though, there is no uniform or discipline. We
wear black and brown leather coats; red, black, brown, yellow, and blue
trousers; sweaters, flannel shirts; and green vests and hats ranging
from sombreros to the Turkish fez. This is a division of the Foreign
Legion, you know. All manner of strange people are to be seen here. The
_refectoire_, called the _ordinaire_ is the place where we feed, in the
animalistic sense. A crowd gathers about the steps as meal time
approaches, and clamors in a multitude of tongues. There are carefully
dressed Frenchmen, with sensitive features and dainty little moustaches.
There are heavy featured Frenchmen, with coarse manners and rough
attire. There are sallow-skinned Portuguese in dandy dress who have an
air of dissipated ennui, and yet have a solicitous cordiality which
makes them strange and out of place. There are dark-brown Moroccans and
Turcos with red fezzes, Assyrian beards, and brass studded belts. The
Russians, with their gray-green sweat shirts belted at the waist, their
bakers’ hats with highly colored diadems in front, and their loose black
knee boots, stand aloof and talk little, but with vim. They somewhat
resemble Irish in their features; and in the heart of the crowd,
pressing close against the doors, as eager and clamorous and more rough
in action than all, are the Americans, pushing, scrambling, elbowing, to
be first into the _ordinaire_. Only their inexhaustible good humor
prevents one from criticizing them. Once inside, there is a great
scramble for the head of the table. Men jump up on the benches and step
on and over the tables with their muddy hobnailed shoes in a vain
endeavor to arrange themselves favorably. Then enterprising mechanics,
who get one franc per person per month for their service, bring in
stacked pans of food. These are large receptacles of a gallon capacity,
and there is one stack to each table. In the top pan is meat—usually
beef cut in chunks, sometimes tough, sometimes tender, always
nourishing, never savory. In the second are boiled or baked or French
fried potatoes, or beans or carrots, or _mélange_, similar to succotash.
In the third and largest container is soup, which tastes better by
artificial light, and is always the same. A weak solution of beans and
cabbage and potatoes with scraps of war bread afloat. This is seldom
tasted, and passes on from week to week until it becomes richer from
many cookings, and is finally eatable. At the end of the meal comes the
dessert, and it is the redeeming feature. Each man has a good big
spoonful of _confiture_—apple butter.
The men at the head of the table have heaping platefuls of food; those
in the middle get theirs level full; those at the end are dependent upon
the foresight and generosity of those above them. But the food is
wholesome and clean, and if a man eats to live it will nourish him
satisfactorily. For those who live to eat, there are high-priced
restaurants just over the fence which are run with the sole idea of
getting the soldiers’ money.
This morning an order was issued that thirty of the men in the Penguin
class who have had less than thirteen sorties are to leave for Tours at
two o’clock. That is another school. My changing to the morning class
enables me to get seventeen sorties, so I remain here. I am glad for
that, because it means starting to learn on a new kind of aeroplane.
I could not make the facilities for printing pictures here suffice, so I
have sent the films to Paris. It will be a couple of weeks before I can
send them to you. I have taken very few pictures here, but intend to
take some soon. The country hereabout is very beautiful and fertile; the
sunsets have been simply glorious. The country is moist and rich in
color. I am not much pleased with the group of men in this barracks and
will change as soon as there is a vacancy in the one I like, but I sleep
and read and walk. I am reading _Catherine de’ Medici_, by Balzac. It is
rich in the history of Paris. Tell father to write me whenever he can. I
wish you and father would get a little vest-pocket camera like mine and
send me pictures whenever you can. I find that I have a passion for
photographs. Those that I have I look at almost every day.
It’s good to hear that you are enjoying yourself at Black Oak. I hardly
think you will be able to be miserable because Bob and I are not with
you. Send any newspaper clippings of interest.
A man just came into the room with a rumor that sixty more men are to
leave here in a couple of days, but does not say where they are going.
At next writing I may be almost anywhere. Guess I’ll scout around and
get some pictures right away. Well, much love to you, Mother dear, and
to father, and to everyone else.
Your loving son,