LONGEAU
January 10th, 1918
The Regiment is in five villages south of the old Fortress town of Langres in the Haute Marne; Headquarters and Supply in Longeau, 1st Battalion in Percey, 2nd in Cohons, the 3rd in Baissey and the Machine Gun Company in Brennes. They are pleasant prosperous little places (inhabited by cultivateurs with a sprinkling of bourgeois) the red roofs clustering picturesquely along the lower slopes of the rolling country. None of them is more than an hour’s walk from our center at Longeau. The men are mostly in the usual hayloft billets, though some companies have Adrian barracks where they sleep on board floors. Apart from sore feet from that abominable hike, and the suffering from cold due to the difficulty of procuring fuel, we are fairly comfortable.
The officers are living in comparative luxury. I am established with a nice sweet elderly lady. I reach the house through a court that runs back of a saloon—which leaves me open to comments from the ungodly. The house is a model of neatness, as Madame is a childless widow, and after the manner of such, has espoused herself to her home. She is very devout, and glad to have M. l’Aumonier in the house, but I am a sore trial to her, as I have a constant run of callers, all of them wearing muddy hobnailed brogans. She says nothing to me, but I can hear her at all hours of the day lecturing little Mac about doors and windows and sawdust and dirt. I never hear him say anything in reply, except “Oui, Madame,” but somehow he seems to understand her voluble French and they get along very well together. I notice that our lads always strike up a quick acquaintance with the motherly French women. They work together, cooking at the fireplaces or washing clothes in the community fountain, keeping up some sort of friendly gossip and laughing all the while, though I never can understand how they manage it, for the villagers never learn any English and the soldiers have not more than forty words of French. After all a language is only a makeshift for expressing ourselves. “Qu’est-ce que c’est”—“Kesky,” and pointing supplies the nouns, gestures the verbs, and facial expressions the adjectives.