DENEUVRE
May 15th, 1918
Our allotted three weeks in line being up, we returned to our original stations, the only change being that the 2nd Battalion comes to Deneuvre, while the 3rd has to go to Camp Mud. I am billetted with the Curé, a devout and amiable priest—who was carried off as a hostage by the Germans in their retreat of 1914 and held by them for over a year. He likes to have Americans around, and we fill his house. Captain Anderson, Lieutenants Walsh, Howe, Allen and Parker are domiciled with me. Joe Bruell and Austin McSweeney have their wireless in a room in the house, and draw down all sorts of interesting messages from the other Sergeants. Sergeants McCarthy, Esler and Russell are next door neighbors, and better neighbors no man could choose. I can go down to the dooryard if time hangs on my hands and hear remarks on men and things, made more piquant by New York slang or Irish brogue.
It is a delight to go to our mess with McCoy’s stimulating wit and Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell’s homely philosophy and Mangan’s lively comments, and the various aspects of war and life opened up by all sorts of interesting people—Bishops, diplomats, soldiers and correspondents who drift in from afar, drawn by the magnetism of our Colonel. The food may not always be to the taste of an epicure but “we eat our Irish potatoes flavored with Attic salt,” as Father Prout says.
But my chiefest joy in life is to have Joyce Kilmer around. In the army it matters little whether a man was a poet or a grave digger—he is going to be judged by what he is as a soldier. And Joyce is rated high by everybody from the K. P. to the Colonel because he is a genuine fellow. He is very much a soldier—a Sergeant now, and prouder of his triple chevron as member of the 69th than he would be of a Colonel’s eagles in any other outfit. If they do not let us commission officers within the Regiment he will come out of the war as Sergeant Joyce Kilmer—a fine title, I think, for any man, for it smacks of the battlefield with no confounded taint of society about it. His life with us is a very full and a very happy one. At first I selfishly took him to help in my own duties regarding statistics. He was glad to help, but he regretted leaving a line company, and especially parting from a lot of friends he had made among the Irish “boys from home,” whose simplicity amused him and whose earnest faith aroused his enthusiasm.
Over here he got restless at being on the Adjutant’s force, and when Lieutenant Elmer began his lectures on the work and opportunities of the Intelligence Section—scouting, and all the rest of it—Joyce pleaded with me to get him away from a desk and out in the line. Now he is happy all the day long. He has worked himself into various midnight patrols, and Captain Anderson has told me to advise him that he lacks caution in taking care of himself, but as Kilmer has told me the same thing about Anderson, I feel helpless about them both.
I know Kilmer well. He has evidently made up his mind to play the game without flinching, without any admixture of fear. On our last day in Lunéville, when the town was being shelled, I called to him to stand in a doorway where there was a little less danger and he answered with a story about Tom Lacey and a French Major, the moral of which was that a soldier is expendable and officers not; and the outcome of which was that I went forth and walloped him till he came in, though still chuckling. He has been for some time out on an observation post in a beautiful spot which overlooks the German lines, with Watson, Kerrigan, Beck, Mott, Levinson, Titterton—all great admirers of his. Whenever he gets a day off he is in to see me and we break all the rules chatting till midnight and beyond. Books and fighting and anecdotes and good fellows and things to eat and religion; all the good old natural human interests are common to us, with a flavor of literature, of what human-minded people have said in the past to give them breadth and bottom.
Kilmer or I, or both of us, may see an end to life in this war, but neither of us will be able to say that life has not been good to us.