The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl

by Katharine Duncan Morse

CHAPTER II: GONCOURT—THE DOUGHBOYS

Goncourt, February 11.

The little old house which now harbors the Y. formerly served, it seems, as guard-house. To some it must have a strangely familiar air. Downstairs there are two small rooms; the front one stone-paved, with a dark carved cupboard in one corner which formerly enclosed the family bed, and a huge fireplace; the back one with a dirt floor over which uncertain boards have shakily been laid. The front room we use for the canteen, the back, with four rough tables, serves as a make-shift writing room. The walls are dim with smoke and grime, the windows in both rooms lack half their panes, yet the odd little place has an atmosphere, a charm all its own. Upstairs soldiers are billeted. When the din of business dies down in the canteen, one can hear the crisp rattle of dice as the boys shoot craps on the floor overhead.

In accordance with military regulations here we cannot open the canteen until four in the afternoon. But a large part of the morning is easily spent in cleaning out the hut and arranging the stock for the afternoon and evening onslaught. At Saint Thiebault the detail that “policed up” the camp in the morning swept out our tent for us, but here one wields one’s own broom and shovel,—for first of all one must shovel out the mud that’s on the floor! Cleaning the canteen, however, I find, though a dirty, is quite a remunerative job, for in the heaps of litter on the floor money lurks. According to the ethics of the game if money is found back of the counter it belongs in the till, but if in front it goes to the finder. Sometimes the find is five centimes, sometimes fifty and once it was five francs! The litter—chocolate wrappers, orange peels and cigarette boxes—is all swept into the fireplace and then touched off with a match; a regular bonfire ensues. This morning we had left the front door open; immediately the fire was started a throng of villagers crowded around to look in. They were scandalized at the conflagration. The house was old, they cried; we would set the chimney on fire, we would burn up the building, we would burn down the whole town! One ancient and portly dame in a frenzy of protest dashed into the room and fairly danced about the hearth, shaking her apron at the flames and calling for ashes to cover them. But before she could get her ashes the fire died down and the excitement with it.

The Gendarme and I are billeted in a tiny house just at the village edge. Our low second story looks down upon the street, so narrow that it seems one could almost reach out and touch hands with the houses opposite. But what a street it is! Underneath our low window the whole world goes by; American officers on horseback, French officers in limousines, American mule teams, French wood teams with three white horses harnessed one in front of the other, and always the troops; going by at dawn in the semi-darkness, their rhythmic incessant tramp weaving itself into one’s waking dreams, passing by at noon, swinging back down the hill as it grows dusk, singing snatches of song as they tramp. As I lie a-bed in the morning before getting up to peer out the window into the yellow misty atmosphere I can always calculate the exact state of the weather by the amount of squelch which those marching boots make in the muddy road.

Company H is billeted on this same street with us. The first morning after we arrived the Gendarme and I were startled out of sleep by First Call blown directly underneath our window. Hardly had the last note sounded when a shout fit to wake the dead went up.

“Get to hell up, all of you! Rise and shine!”

Followed a tremendous banging and kicking at all the stable doors along the street accompanied by a torrent of vivid and spicy admonitions. The Gendarme and I gasped and chuckled. This was rich. Were we always to be awakened in so picturesque a fashion? But the next morning we listened in vain. First Call was blown at the far end of the street and followed by a solemn silence; and so it has been ever since. Now that American ladies are known to be living on the street Company H must get up decorously.

Goncourt, February 12.

The fireplace is easily the feature of our funny little hut. Around this at night the lads crowd perched on packing-boxes to smoke, chew gum and gossip. As the first mad rush of business at the canteen dies down a little I edge up towards the fireplace in order to get a wee share in the conversation.

They have caught a spy! One of the cooks in F Company. He was a deserter from the German Army some one said. They caught him putting dope in the slum. The doctors were analyzing it now. It’s a wonder the whole company wasn’t poisoned. Yes, and they found plans of the camp in his pocket too. He hasn’t eaten a thing since they arrested him. All he does is just to walk up and down the guard-house. Seems as if he were kind of crazy.

And so they gossip. A sad-eyed bugler remarks to me that he’d be a rich man if he only had all the hob-nailed shoes that had been thrown at him. Another boy wonders what he’d do if he had “both arms shot off and then the gas alarm sounded.” And always they must be rowing about their respective states.

“Neebraska! Where’s Neebraska? Is that in the United States or Canada?”

“Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain’t nothin’ but mountains there. Why my old man told me that when they let the cows out to grass there they had to put stilts on one side of ’em so they won’t fall off’n the pasture.”

Then they turn on me.

“Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell the beans bakin’.”

“But I don’t come from Boston,” I protest.

“Well there ain’t nothin’ much in Massachusetts outsider Boston. Why the state of Noo Hampshire is goin’ to rent the rest o’ Massachusetts for a duck-yard.”

And so it goes.

“Gee! but it’s good to get into one shop where you don’t have to talk frog talk!” exclaimed one lad tonight.

“I’ve just heard the greatest compliment for you,” another lad declares solemnly, “the greatest compliment that could possibly be paid any woman.”

“Why, what was it?”

“I just heard a feller say; ‘My! don’t she look different from the French girls!’”

A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter;

“You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it’s like, it’s like—”

Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. Then pulling a large bunch of letters “from lady friends” from his pocket, nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. Finally in a fit of prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, “Because I’m an American and you’re one too.” As he makes the presentation something falls to the floor with a little click. We search among the litter on the floor, the lad on all fours; finally the lost is found,—a broken bit of comb about two inches and a quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for he is company barber and with the company comb gone E Company would be out of luck.

Always our presence here is something that seems so strange to them as to be almost incredible.

“Will you please tell me,” asked a serious-looking lad tonight, “what consideration could possibly induce two American girls to come to a place like this?”

Continually I am encountering boys who are sure that they’ve “seen me somewhere.”

“Say, didn’t you use to live in Milwaukee?”

“Haven’t I seen you in Seattle? Well, if it warn’t you, it was somebody that looked just like you!”

I suppose it is simply because I look American that I look familiar to them. But the facts in the case seem to be that I have been observed by some member of the A. E. F. in practically every one of the large cities of the U. S. A. One boy nearly started a fight in camp the other night by declaring that in spite of the evidence of my nose he knew I was of Hebraic origin. He had seen me, he solemnly insisted, “goin’ with a Jew feller in Philadelphia.”

Undoubtedly it is because they have so little to think about in these drab days that they are so pathetically curious. Every little thing you say or do is repeated, discussed all over camp. Sometimes curiosity gets hold of one of the bolder spirits to such an extent that he ventures the question;

“How much do you get paid for smiling at the soldiers?”

And when they learn that you are a volunteer and are paying for the privilege of being there, their amazement is so blank as to be positively ludicrous.

Goncourt, February 13.

One of the nicest things about Goncourt is our mess. This we have at the House Across the Street, which is next to the House of the Madonna. We mess en famille with the family Peirut, the Gendarme, Mr. K. and I, and we eat the family fare which consists chiefly of soup, boiled meat and carrots, supplemented by various additions such as sugar, cocoa, jam and canned corn from the commissary. I can never quite decide which is quainter, the family or the setting.

In America we have the phrase living-room, in France they have it. In this one high-ceilinged room the daily life of the family is complete. Here is the kitchen stove and the dinner table, here are the beds of Madame and Monsieur, Madame’s in one corner hung with dim flowered chintz, Monsieur’s in another brave with a beautiful old red India shawl. Here is the broad stone sink under the window, with the drain running out into the street, where the family makes its morning toilet. Here are the great dark armoires which hold clothing, china-ware and stores of all sorts. Here is the littered desk where the family correspondence is carried on; and here is the larder, a huge slab of pork and a ham hanging from the beams over one’s head, while on a stick in front of the fireplace a row of little fishes hang by their tails in dumb expectation of a Friday. And here too is the family shrine, a little wooden Madonna in red and blue, found as Madame tells us in the ancient city of La Mothe, which, destroyed in 1645, now exists as a wonderful ruin crowning a hill some two miles to the west.

If the stove-wood is found lacking at meal-time, Monsieur rises from his chair and saws an armful beside the dinner-table. If Madame decides while we are eating our soup that a piece of ham will improve the menu she stands upon her chair and cuts a slice in the air over our heads. On wash days one picks one’s way to the table past the pails which hold the family linen in soak, and later eats one’s soupe à pain under a brave array of drying garments slung from wall to wall.

The family, which consists of Monsieur, Madame and Mademoielle, the two sons being in service, are the most hospitable souls alive. Continually they urge, “Mangez, mangez!” and then, “Vous êtes timide!” Their feelings are dreadfully hurt if each one of us refuses to eat enough for two. They seem somehow to have acquired the idea that Americans need a vast deal of sweetening, so they offer you sugar, commissary sugar, with everything, and they are gently but definitely disappointed when you decline to heap it on your mashed potato.

Mile. Jeane, clear-skinned, bright-eyed, capable, energetic yet possessed of a warm charm withal, is forewoman of the little glove factory in town.

“Are there many employees?” I asked.

“But no. Eight only. Since the Americans came to town all the women have deserted the factory in order to wash the Americans’ clothes.”

Monsieur, it appears, is a wood-cutter by profession. He comes home from a hard day’s chopping looking like a genus of the woods himself with his worn brown velour suit, his wrinkled brown skin and his ragged brown beard which resembles exactly those bundles of fine twigs which the French burn in their fireplaces. When Monsieur was ten years old the Germans occupied the town and sixteen of them slept in this very room. They were perfect pigs, he says, and ate everything they could lay their hands on; “But,” he adds, “they didn’t like our bread!”

Sunday mornings all the men in town, including the Man With One Leg, and all the dogs start off together, the men armed with guns and each carrying a musette bag or knapsack. Papa puts on his shooting coat with the fancy buttons each depicting a different bird or beast of the chase, takes down his old shot-gun from the wall, and joins them. At dusk they come back again, empty-handed, but seemingly well content. Their modus operandi, I gather, is to proceed to a comfortable spot in the woods, then all sit down, drink vin rouge and wait for the game. Indeed one doughboy declares, that passing by one of those open alleys which intersect the forests here, he once saw an old Frenchman standing with his gun in a drizzling rain, patiently waiting for a shot while by his side stood another “old frog” holding an umbrella over him.

Goncourt, February 14.

The woman who lives in the House of the Madonna is an unconscionable old scalawag. Not that you would ever suspect it to look at her, for with her round rosy face, her smooth parted hair and her comfortably rotund figure she resembles nothing so much as somebody’s genial and respected grandmother. Yet the facts in the case remain. She sells doped wine to the soldiers at ruinous prices and she sells at forbidden hours. Moreover we have reason to suspect that at odd times she carries on an utterly illicit commerce. According to our hostess, when the time from the last pay day grows too long, certain soldiers are not above smuggling in their extra shoes and shirts to her, and she pays them back in drinks.

This morning while I was at breakfast she came bouncing in and proceeded to fill the house with lamentations. Last night a tipsy soldier had stolen the key to her front door! Then she delved into history for my benefit, recounting how, some weeks before, two soldiers, having sent her out of the room on an errand, had proceeded to rob her till, the sum amounting to almost three hundred francs!

“Oh! Ils sont des monstres, des cochons!” she wailed.

Whereat I, with some asperity, remarked that if the French people wouldn’t sell drink to the Americans, the soldiers wouldn’t become zig-zag and do such things. Immediately she became conciliatory. Of course, everyone knew that there were good people and bad people in every nation, but certainly! Then she changed the subject abruptly, demanding; why, why in the name of common sense did I do anything so contrary to all the dictates of reason as to sleep with my window open?

Last night, as Mr. K. and I were coming home from the canteen, the door of the cafe opposite was suddenly opened and a man’s figure appeared, half pushed, half thrown outside. The door slammed shut,—it was long after closing hour for the cafe,—the figure fell like a log to the ground. We watched a minute to see the fellow pick himself up, but he lay motionless. It was a freezing night. Mr. K. went over to investigate. The man was in a drunken stupor.

“You go along,” he called to me, “I’ve got to get this fellow home.”

I left reluctantly. Subsequently Mr. K. told me the night’s history. After considerable coaxing, he had finally succeeded in extracting the information that the boy belonged to F Company. So to F Company barracks, a good half-mile north of the canteen, they had proceeded, Mr. K. half dragging, half carrying the fellow who was head and shoulders taller than he, and broad to boot.

When they had nearly reached their journey’s end, Mr. K. by this time fairly in a state of collapse, his burden suddenly baulked. The barracks evidently didn’t look like home to him. Mr. K. began to have a sickening sense of something gone wrong. At last the wretch drowsily recalled the fact that he didn’t belong to F Company at all, but to I Company far on the other side of town. So around they turned and back through town they crawled until finally they arrived at I Company’s abiding-place; and this time the derelict was satisfied.

Indeed a walk home from the canteen at night with Mr. K. at any time is likely to prove an adventure. For should we meet a boy who has had more than is “good for him” and is in an irritable mood, we must stop and talk with him, in order, as Mr. K’s theory puts it, to divert his mind. “Get them thinking about something else,” is his slogan. The other night we stood out in the sleety drizzle until my feet fairly froze solid into the freezing mud, carrying on polite conversations with two boys who had just been put out of the House of the Madonna and were in a state of mind to wreck the town. One of them Mr. K. got started on the subject of taking French lessons. He was ambitious to study French he explained and would Mr. K. kindly arrange for a teacher and a course of lessons? I listened with one ear; here was the first man I had found in France who expressed an earnest desire to learn French and he was tipsy! The other one, evidently ashamed, explained to me at length how he hadn’t wanted to get drunk, the trouble was that he was just naturally “dishgushted with this country, just dishgushted.” And that it seems to me is the whole thing in two words. The boys are “just dishgushted.” Considering it all, who can blame them?

Goncourt, February 15.

The M. P.s who live in the second story of the Guard-House are my good friends. They help sweep out the hut often in the mornings and when they make taffy in their mess kits they bring me some. These M. P.s are in reality cavalrymen detached from their regiment for the time being in order to do police duty. As far as I can see, there seems to be no special hard feeling between them and the doughboys.

One slim young M. P. in particular is a crony of mine. He keeps me informed as to the gossip of the town. He tells me how the French women who run cafes, our neighbor of the House of the Madonna among them, seek to curry favor with the law in Goncourt, by bringing him out coffee and sandwiches as he walks his beat in the middle of the night; and how, the other night after closing hour, he put his head inside the door of one of these cafes to be greeted by a frantic shriek of “Feenish! Feenish!” from the hostess, only to find, when he insisted on entering, a crowd of doughboys making merry in the back-room; how he took their names and then was inspired to look at their “dog tags” in confirmation and found that not one of the names agreed! He tells me about the cross old Frenchman whose beehives have been stealthily, inexplicably, disappearing one by one, in spite of the fact that the Frenchman had tied his unfortunate and much suffering dog underneath the hives to guard them; until now the old gentleman had taken to sitting up nights with a shot-gun in order to watch the remaining ones. “He’s a kind o’ snoopy old man and nobody likes him. I reckon the boys are taking his beehives just to spite him.” He tells me about the old lady who wants to marry him to her daughter; but chiefly he tells me,—under the strictest oath of secrecy,— the latest development in the case of the old woman whom he suspects of being a spy. I advise him to hand the matter over to the Intelligence Officer, but no, he must have the honor of catching her red-handed himself. It’s quite like reading a detective story in installments.

The other night while I was talking to one of the M. P.s in the canteen, we heard a shot up the street. The next moment another M. P. appeared at the door. After the exchange of a few whispered words, the two of them ran out of the hut, and as they went, I saw them both draw their revolvers. Fifteen minutes later the doughboys coming into the canteen brought a ghastly tale. There had been a fight between the M. P.s and the soldiers. The M. P.s had shot and killed two. “Yes, so-help-me-God, it’s the truth!” The narrator had himself seen the two slain doughboys lying in the street; one had been shot through the head, the other through the heart. So the story went around. We went to bed that night with a dull sense of horror hanging over us.

The next morning I confronted my friend the M. P. with the story. Then I learned the true version. He had been on his beat not far from the church, when down a dark alley he had heard sounds of a tremendous fracas. In spite of the fact that he didn’t have his stick with him he had plunged down the alley to come upon “a bunch of wops beating each other over the head with beer bottles.” When they caught sight of the M. P. they had quickly abandoned their family disagreement in order to turn upon the intruder. He had shot his revolver into the air and this had been enough to frighten them into taking to their heels. The two fellows who had been seen lying on the ground were the casualties resulting from the bottle-fight: they had been stunned and gashed so badly as to bleed a good deal, but were later patched up with complete success at the hospital.

Indeed life at Goncourt is seldom unrelieved by incident. Last night I was sitting by our open window reading—the Gendarme was out—after my return from the hut, when I heard an angry voice snarl something abusive directly beneath me; a moment later a fusillade began. I jumped for the candle, blew it out, then stood close against the wall. After a minute the shots ceased; immediately excited people began to pour into the street. I heard the M. P.s pounding on the door of the House Across the Way, demanding information; I leaned from the window and told them what I knew. All the French people in the neighborhood stood out in the street and chattered excitedly for hours afterward it seemed. This morning Madame told us what had happened. In the house next door lives a tall and handsome girl. A sergeant suitor of hers, crazy with jealousy and cognac, had shot wildly at a rival entering her door, emptying his automatic, fortunately without effect.

Goncourt, February 16.

Twice a week each one of us goes to pay a visit at the local hospital. This is a depressing place—two large dingy rooms in what was once, to judge from the inscription over the door, some sort of ecclesiastical school. We take the boys magazines and newspapers, oranges and jam. This week I had a new idea. I would read aloud to them. In the Bourmont warehouse I came across a volume of W. W. Jacobs’ short stories. Here was just the thing, I thought, such simple slap-stick humour must appeal to the most unsophisticated understanding.

I hurried to the hospital with my prize. The orderlies, not expecting a lady visitor, were in the midst of a Black Jack game. Red and flustered, one lad tried to hide the little heaps of money on the floor by standing on them; I pretended not to see. Yes, they thought it would be all right if I should read to the patients. They went ahead to the ward to announce me. All the cots were full, making sixteen invalids in all. I selected a story—an old favorite, I was sure it would prove irresistible—and started to read. The story tells of an eccentric skipper with a fad for doctoring. One by one, his crew, realizing his weakness, develop mysterious maladies. They are excused from duty, put to bed, petted and cossetted. Finally the mate becomes desperate. He guarantees that he will cure them all; the skipper is sceptical but allows him a free hand. The mate sets to work to compound some “medicine,” a wonderful and fearful brew made of ink, vinegar, kerosene and bilge-water. After a few doses, presto! the crew is hale and hearty once again.

I read with all the animation I could muster, and to me the story had never appeared funnier, but try my hardest, I couldn’t seem to “get it over.” Not a chuckle, not a grin lightened my solemn audience. They were utterly, blankly, unresponsive. I began to wonder if it were possible that not one of them could understand English. At last I ended. As I closed the book a whoop of delight went up from the orderlies;

“That’s you all over, Johnny!”

“Gee, that guy must have wrote that story about you, Slim.”

“Say, Miss, can’t you let us have the recipe for that medicine? We need it in our business.”

The invalids grinned sulkily. In one awful moment I realized what I had done.

“Of course,” I stammered, “this wasn’t meant to have any personal application!” But the mischief was already done. There was nothing to do but to retire with dignity.

However, I couldn’t bear to give up my scheme entirely. Today I went again; this time having carefully selected my story. To my astonishment the ward proved empty, all except for three boys who were crouching on the floor shooting craps; I drew back.

“Perhaps they would rather not be disturbed.”

“They ought to be in bed anyway,” growled the orderly, and chased the patients back to their cots.

I read to them; there was no way out of it. They listened politely to the end, but all the while I felt they were longing to resume their interrupted game. Tonight I expressed my surprise over the deserted ward to Captain X. He roared at my innocence.

“You didn’t expect to find any fellows in hospital today did you? Why, this is Saturday, and there isn’t any drill tomorrow!”

Goncourt, February 18.

Every day we must go to see how the new hut is progressing. This involves wading through a wilderness of mud. I had thought that Bourmont had taught me everything that one could learn about French mud this side of the trenches, but Goncourt has shown me that it has possibilities hitherto undreamed.

The new hut is on the far edge of the town, on the east bank of the Meuse. Near it are grouped the barracks of the Milk Battalion, so called not because, as I first supposed, it is composed of heavy drinkers, but because it is comprised of Companies I, K, L, and M. These barracks, which were bequeathed to us by the French, are, the boys tell me, infested with vermin. In the mess-hall of Company M we hold our weekly movie-shows and our occasional concerts.

The hut, which is very large, and shipped here in sections, goes up slowly. Army details are proverbial in their ability to consume time. Then we are constantly being held back by shortage of materials; lumber and nails and such things being desperately hard to obtain in France at present. Not long ago the divisional Construction Man, who is a young fellow with poor eyes and considerable initiative, was driven to the desperate resort of appropriating French Army lumber. For a while all went well, then the thefts grew too bold, and the Construction Man was summoned before the French colonel in command. As the colonel knew English, and so could not be put off by any “no compris” bluff, the Construction Man had a pretty bad quarter hour of it, but in the end was let off with a warning.

The window frames of the hut are to be filled in with vitex, a curious glass substitute, which looks like a thin celluloid glaze over very fine meshed wire. It is only slightly transparent, rather fragile and very costly but it does admit the light, in this respect being far better than the oiled cloth in use in most barracks. When the vitex is cut to fit the frames, many odd scraps are left over and these I have been distributing among the boys so they can substitute them for the old newspapers or sacking now in vogue for billet windows.

If they only could hurry up that hut!

“You wait and see,” say the boys; “just as soon as that hut is finished we’ll be moving. That’s always the way with this regiment. Sure as you live, when that hut’s done, we’ll be off for the front.”

And it begins to look as if this might come true.

“Do you really think so?” I asked Mr K. today.

“There’s no telling,” he replied. “Perhaps. But anyway the boys will know we did our best.”

Meanwhile the state of the men is worse than ever. An order has been issued in Goncourt that no soldier may enter a civilian house without a special permit. The reason given is that certain of the townspeople have been illegally selling the men strong drink. The soldiers, however, declare bitterly that the real reason is that the officers wish to have a clear field with the village damsels.

Goncourt, February 21.

We have had our first taste of the trenches; these are not real trenches to be sure but simply practice trenches which lie on the hilly uplands west of Goncourt. For two days we have been in a tumult with a dress rehearsal of manœuvers at the front. The whole brigade in battle array has passed under our window. Colonels and soup-kitchens, mules and majors, supply trains, ambulances, machine-guns, everything. Yesterday as Company F was starting on its hike to the trenches, word came that the mules who pulled their field-kitchen were indisposed. Company F had no mind to eat corn-willy and hard bread for dinner. They seized the soup wagon and pulled it by hand, all the way up the hills. Meeting their major on the way, they shouted in unison; “The mules went on sick report and got marked quarters. We went on sick report and they marked us duty.” But they got their dinner hot.

Tonight I heard the sad tale of Mr. B. the new secretary at Saint Thiebault. Company A had marched off to spend the day in the trenches. Mr. B. had an inspiration; he filled a large suit-case full of chocolate and cigarettes: hailed a passing ambulance and set out to carry first aid to Company A in its ordeal in the trenches. Unluckily neither Mr. B. nor the driver knew just where the field of operations lay. Two miles north of Goncourt Mr. B. got out and started to “cut across lots.” It was raining; he waded through swamps, he scratched through thickets, he wallowed in ploughed fields, with that suit case which must have weighed a good eighty pounds growing heavier at every step. There being no sun to guide him, he got lost and wandered about in circles. Finally, after several hours, he arrived in a state of collapse at the field of manœuveurs. Then instead of A Company he encountered another company, a perfectly strange company; they demanded chocolate and he didn’t have the heart to deny them. After the last cake of chocolate and the last package of cigarettes had disappeared an officer came up, an officer from still another company, and proceeded to tell Mr. B. in very plain language what he thought of him for leaving his men out. And when that officer had done with Mr. B. an officer from the company which had been fed came up in an awful temper and “bawled out” Mr. B. because forsooth his men had made such a mess, throwing away the chocolate wrappers that when the others left, his company would have to stay behind to “police up” the trenches!

Poor Mr. B! My heart goes out to him.

This evening as we were about to close the canteen, my friend, the mule-skinner from Texas appeared in the hut. He had a sort of a weak-in-the-knees expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?”

“Met the Old Man,” he answered ruefully,—the “Old Man” is the general in command of the division—“Gee! but he sure did give me some bawlin’ out!”

“But why?”

He explained that his sergeant had misunderstood orders and told him to go out in his usual rig. The general, encountering the mule-skinner without his proper war-paint, had expressed his mind to him on the matter.

“Jumpin’ Jupiter! but the langwidge that that old bird used! I sure will hand it to him! Why, my ears ain’t done burnin’ yet!” And he shook his head like a man half dazed.

“What did he say?”

The mule-skinner grew red as a beet, stared at me horrified.

“I couldn’t repeat it, ma’am! I couldn’t repeat nary word of it!”

That a general should so scandalize a mule-skinner, and a Texas mule-skinner at that, by his address, was so intriguing to my fancy that I laughed all the way home.

We have a new colonel; he has declared that the regiment is not fit for the front, and so has laid out a two weeks’ programme of gruelling hikes and intensive training, in order at the eleventh hour to try to jack us up to standard.

The Gendarme leaves tomorrow to go en permission.

Goncourt, February 25.

If I were God I would lay a blight on every grape-vine in France; then I would sink every still, wine press, distillery and brewery to the bottom of the sea.

We have had payday. It happened Friday. The total results didn’t make themselves evident immediately; it was instead a cumulative effect, a crescendo, beginning Friday and reaching its climax yesterday. On these three days, out of the twenty-five hundred men stationed here, twenty-four hundred and ninety-three, I could take my oath, have come into the canteen and leaned over the counter, drunk;—that is to say, visibly and undeniably under the influence of liquor. When a lad, as some half dozen did,—those composing the regular attendance in the group about the fire,—came into the canteen entirely and unmistakably sober, one welcomed him as a drowning man does a spar. For a moment one had come in touch with something stable in a reeling world.

Out of a company of two hundred and fifty last night ninety were capable of standing Retreat.

I have learned to gauge the stages. When a man looks you squarely in the eye and declares vociferously, “Never took a drink in all my life!” he is very drunk indeed. And there is always someone nearby to wink and comment; “He must have joined the gang that pours it down with a funnel.”

Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter and insisted on conversing; from each pocket in his raincoat protruded a long-necked bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then:

“Please,” I said, “won’t you take those bottles out of here? I just hate to see them.”

“Bottles!” he expostulated. “What do you mean, bottles!”

“I mean just those.” I pointed.

“Why I ain’t got a bottle on me!” he burst out indignantly, fairly glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward the other end of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect picture of outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling all over him.

The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys that used to nod shyly in answer to your “Good morning” now lean from their loft windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, my friend the M. P. tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheepfolds up on our street. Going to investigate he met a “bunch o’ drunken wops” coming out of the door, every man of them carrying a struggling sheep under each arm. He shouted at them; they dropped the sheep and fled.

The French find it all vastly amusing. “Beaucoup zig zag,” they cry. It means, I suppose, riches for them.

And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word of disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last night I caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the counter. One boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished another boy apparently a shade more so, to be careful of his language out of respect for me. “Whu’d ’you think? D’you think I ain’t got sense enough to know how to talk when there’s an American lady present?” For a moment it looked as if there might be a fight.

Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded that they have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the prisoners to sleep on.

From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed come even more startling stories. Certain officers there went so wild that they started to blow up the town with hand grenades. And one of them coming into the Y. held up the secretary at the point of his pistol until he sold him—instead of the ordinary allowance of one or two packages—several cartons of his favorite brand of cigarettes.

The new colonel is said to be horrified. But what could he expect? Take an odd lot of twenty-five hundred boys, remove them from every decent restraining influence, hike them all day through the interminable mud and rain until they drop by the roadside, bring them back at night to dark, cold, damp, filthy, vermin-ridden lofts and stables, add the nerve strain of the imminent prospect of their first time at the front, close every door to them except the door of the café, give them money;—what could anyone expect?

Goncourt, February 27.

My friend Pat is in the hospital; not the local hospital, but Base 18 situated at Bazoilles, some six miles to the north of Goncourt. This afternoon, having our time free between one and four, Mr. K. and I decided to go to call on him.

“Are we going to walk?” I asked.

“Oh we’ll get a lift; one always does.”

But the lift didn’t heave in sight until we were half way there; then it was an ambulance that slowed down in answer to our signals.

“Give us a ride?”

“Sure, if you aren’t afraid of the mumps.”

I was, dreadfully afraid. But Mr. K. wasn’t, he had already had them, on both sides. I hesitated, then decided to take a chance. We rode into Bazoilles in an ambulance full of mumps.

As for Pat, we hadn’t an idea in what sort of shape we might find him. Once, Mr. K. told me, he had come upon Pat in one of his visits to the Saint Thiebault infirmary. Pat was lying on a cot with his eyes closed and a sanctified look of patient suffering upon his face.

“Why what’s wrong with you, Pat?”

“Ssh!” Pat squinted about to see that neither doctor nor orderly was within ear-shot, then an Irish grin spread over his impudent features. “Nothin’ at all,” he whispered joyously, “just nothin’ at all!”

But this time we found Pat’s ailment real enough. He was in the “bone ward” with a badly broken wrist.

“How did it happen?” we inquired.

“Sure an’ it happened this way,” and he told us both the official and the confidential versions. Confidentially, Pat’s wrist had been broken by a blow from an M. P.’s billy in an after-payday argument at Saint Thiebault. Officially it had been broken two days later in the barracks by an accidental knock from a gun-barrel. Pat had hiked and drilled with a broken wrist for two solid days in order to be able to claim that he had been disabled in the line of duty! After the second day, convinced that the encounter with the M. P. was sufficiently a matter of past history to be discredited, Pat had reported at Sick Call with his trumped-up tale and had as usual gotten by. Now as he lay on his cot he was occupying himself by conjuring up visions of the party to which he and his buddy were going to treat that M. P. just as soon as he (Pat) should get his hospital discharge.

As we talked I noticed a lad who was walking about the ward with his right hand done up in bloody bandages. He looked self-conscious and embarrassed as if he half hoped, half feared to be recognized. I caught Pat’s eye, his voice dropped to a whisper.

“That’s Philip R. Don’t you remember him?”

Of course! I smiled at Philip, but he turned away and wouldn’t come to speak to me. Mr. K. went over to him; they talked for a long while in undertones. Later I heard the whole pitiful story. He had been drinking, the terror that was haunting him had suddenly gripped. He had taken his rifle and shot himself through his right hand, mutilating it, in order that he might not be sent to the front. Placed under arrest on suspicion, his nerve had utterly given way. He had made a full confession. It was likely to go hard with him.

While Mr. K. was listening to Philip, Pat was telling me about the regiment of southern negro engineers who had come to Bazoilles to help build the new hospital. Every time there was an air-raid alarm, Pat declared, they knelt down and prayed by companies.

I emptied out my musette bag onto Pat’s cot. Pat looked at the oranges, dates, chocolates and cigarettes that we had brought, then took a squint along the hungry-looking ward.

“Well, I guess I’ll get a taste,” he said.

He was “in soft” he told us. The nurses let him help serve the meals. He had free run of the kitchen and all the milk that he wanted to drink. Yet he was already chafing at the restraint and in his wicked head he was scheming schemes. Some day in the not-too-distant future he was going to give the hospital guards the slip, make a night of it, and paint “Bazooie” red.

Tonight word reached us that a Y. M. C. A. woman worker has been killed in Paris in an air-raid. She was sick and they had sent her to the Hôpital Claude-Bernard. This time the bombs found it.

Goncourt, March 2.

The new hut is opened. Finished or unfinished, we made up our minds that we would open that hut Saturday night, and open it we did. The last two days have been fairly frantic. Yesterday we washed up; today we dried out and decorated. The cleaning was the worst of it. The hut, as I have hinted, is a sort of island in a sea of mud. Consequently as the building went up, the floor, walls, counter, ceiling, everything was splotched, streaked and plastered with dirt. Thursday night as I looked around the hut my heart sank. The place was a sight.

“You can’t do anything about it,” they told me.

“But something has got to be done!”

Friday morning arrived a detail of eight prisoners from the guard-house. They had come to scrub. The guard in charge took his stand, leaning against one of the pillars, his loaded rifle in his hands; to see that no one escaped was his only responsibility, the rest was up to me. My detail proved a sullen, stubborn lot, slouching, cursing under their breath, all their self-respect turned to a smouldering rebellion; after the first few minutes I saw just how much work left to themselves they would be likely to accomplish. So I told them in a matter-of-fact way just how things stood: that we had promised to open the hut the next day, that it was, as they could see, in a frightful mess, that I realized they were up against a stiff job, but I did so hope that we could put it through. Then I got a pail and a scrubbing-brush and went out and scrubbed side by side with them. It is of course strictly against the rules to talk to prisoners, but all the while I worked I “jollied” my “jail-birds” for all my wits were worth. I admired ecstatically the spots which they had scrubbed, I moaned in despair over the unscrubbed places. Inside of an hour the prisoners were all grinning cheerfully as they worked like beavers. When the guard was looking the other way I sneaked them cigarettes. By night the hut was very damp and somewhat streaky, but it would pass, at least by candle-light. I didn’t care though my arms were so lame I could hardly lift them, and my hands in ruins.

“I congratulate you,” said the new Secretary, “I never thought it could be done.”

“If only nobody looks at the ceiling!”

For the ceiling was beyond our reach, and back and forth over every one of its boards had tramped the hob-nailed boots of the A. E. F. and every step had left its muddy print. As I looked I thought; if we only had the signatures to put beside each footprint, what a fascinating autograph collection it would make!

Today we spent in a mad tear, making the hut beautiful and moving our effects over from the “Guard-House.” The moving was accomplished by the aid of the Wall-Eyed Boy and his donkey. These are two of Goncourt’s leading citizens, the donkey, an ancient moth-eaten beast, being particularly intimately known to a certain group of doughboys who would joyfully murder him. His stable is directly beneath the loft in which they are billeted and every morning, prompt as an alarm clock, at 4 A. M. that donkey brays, and brays until the soundest sleeper is awakened. The Wall-Eyed Boy’s name is Martin, and as a donkey in France is slangily called un Martin, as we call a mule “Maud,” the two go under the title of Les Deux Martins. When les Deux Martins and I went trudging along the muddy streets of Goncourt, side by side, with the little tippy cart loaded with canteen truck bumping along behind, the M. P.s thought it a rare joke. “I wish Sister Susy could see you now,” called one.

The last few hours were spent frantically decorating. Our color scheme is red and blue. This came about through accident rather than intention. We had a bolt of turkey-red cotton bunting for curtains, only to discover that this did not darken the lighted windows sufficiently to comply with the now strictly enforced aeroplane regulations. So I asked a secretary starting for Paris to bring me a bolt of black cambric in order to make a set of inner supplementary curtains. The secretary returning, brought bright blue; black, on account of the demand for mourning, had proved too expensive. At first I was non-plussed, but then discovered that the bright red and blue made rather a jolly combination. So each one of our many windows is now giddy with red and blue draperies and the seat that runs all around our writing room is brave with blue and red cushions (stuffed, if the truth must be told, with shavings!) Between each two windows is tacked one of my stunning big French war posters, the long counter is covered with red-checked oil-cloth, a bouquet of flags flies from the proscenium arch over the stage which, for the occasion, is banked beautifully with evergreens. Altogether we present rather the appearance of a perpetual Fourth of July celebration, but then who cares? If one can’t be aesthetic one can at least be gay, and it’s anything to take one’s mind off the mud!

The Gendarme came back from her leave tonight just in time for the Grand Opening. This took place at seven o’clock. The hall was packed to the last inch. As one boy said; “There’s plenty of room for me, but there ain’t none for the buttons on my coat.” There was a reason for this. The new colonel was to make a speech and he had advised all the officers and non-coms, in the whole regiment to be present. I caught a glimpse of Company A wedged in among the suffocating mass. Everything, I understand, went off very nicely; there was much music by the band and somebody sang Danny Deever very thrillingly, but I was too busy in the kitchen to pay much attention. The new Secretary had wanted me to sit on the platform, but after a three days’ debate, he had finally agreed to let me off, and luckily, for the minute the last note of the S. S. B. had sounded we were ready to start handing out the hot chocolate and cookies over the counter to the mob. When everyone else had been fed the colonel himself appeared back of the counter, to graciously accept a cup of chocolate, and make himself generally charming.

When the last guest had gone and we were getting ready to shut up the hut for the night, the Chief who had come over from Bourmont for the occasion drew me aside, looking solemn.

“I have a question to put to you.”

“What is it?”

“The division leaves for the front within a short while. Do you wish to go with them?”

“Of course!” said I.

Goncourt, March 8.

This week has gone by in a whirl. Because it was our first and presumably our last week in the big hut we wanted to make it just as nice as was humanly possible. And this hasn’t been an easy task because with the regiment putting on the last touches before they go to the front, there hasn’t been a bit of spare man-power available to help us; and the mere problem of keeping that huge place anything like clean has almost swamped us. After mess at night, to be sure, we have no lack of assistance. The boys swarm into the little kitchen in droves, eager to help stir the chocolate, or cut the bread for the sandwiches. If only ten out of every dozen would be content to stay the other side of the counter, it would simplify matters, but much as they may be underfoot one hasn’t the heart to turn them out. Those who can’t get into the kitchen hang about the doors, looking in, teasing for a “hand-out” of bread and jam. “I’m just so hungry,” sighed a lad plaintively today, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, “I could eat the jamb off the door!”

We have a Frenchwoman to help us in the kitchen. She is a treasure, shy and bright-eyed as a brown bird, and so tiny that we have to set a packing-box by the stove for her to stand on when she stirs the chocolate. She is deaf and speaks patois, so between her strange French and mine still stranger we have droll times making each other understand. Yet, none the less, she and the boys manage to keep up a running fire of badinage and when they become too rowdy, the tiny thing turns ridiculously bellicose and threatens to whip them all with her chocolate paddle. At night we all go home together and one tall lad must always come along in order to help Madame over the road of a thousand mud holes that leads from the hut to the highway, lest she be drowned in transit. She carries a funny little gasolene lamp that gives about as much light as an ambitious fire-fly and all the way to the main road one can hear her moaning; “Mon Dieu, quel chemin! Mon Dieu, quel chemin!”

This has been our week’s programme:

Sunday.	Hot chocolate and cookies Religious Service with special music Song Service. More chocolate
Monday.	French Classes Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Tuesday.	Boxing and Wrestling Matches Hot chocolate and sardine sandwiches
Wednesday.	Band Concert Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Thursday.	Movies Hot chocolate and cookies
Friday.	Sing Fest with Solos Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches
Saturday.	Stunt Programme Canned fruit and cookies

The hut has been filled every night, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, the auditorium packed and the writing-room holding at least a hundred more, while the chocolate line, coiling and curling about like a monster snake, has for hours seemed absolutely endless. We have worked out a system for the chocolate serving—the Gendarme is cashier, taking the money and making change, fifty centimes or nine cents for a cup of chocolate and a sandwich, or six spice cookies, or four fig ones. One boy ladles out the chocolate. I push the cups over the counter, another boy hands out the cookies, a third gathers up the dirty cups and carries them to the kitchen, where three or four others are busy washing and wiping them, while Heaven only knows how many more are around the stove, helping Madame stir the next kettleful, opening milk cans, or dipping water into a third container. Thus we keep the line merrily wagging along.

Last night, quite unknown to the men, Pershing himself came to town, whirled in after dark in his big limousine and whirled away again as suddenly and secretly as he had arrived. He came to give the officers final instructions as to their conduct at the front.

The first faint wistful scents of Spring are in the air. This morning Madame brought to our room a tiny bouquet of snow-drops. And one hears from Saint Thiebault a rumour of early violets.

Goncourt, March 10.

This morning shortly after I reached the hut, one of the men from the Bourmont office came in with a note for me, it read:

My dear Miss ——

I am glad to be able to tell you more or less confidentially that you will probably go to the front very shortly. You had better have everything ready so you could leave on short notice any time after tomorrow noon.

Very sincerely yours, ——

Enclosed in the envelope was a little slip headed Suggestions for Men going to the Front. It began “Go light, take no trunk,” and ended “We provide helmets, gas masks, etc.” The note was dated yesterday.

I left the canteen and hurried back here to my billet to pack, while the Gendarme, who does not wish to go with the division but prefers to stay back and be reassigned, remained at the hut. What with sorting and mending things, the packing took all afternoon. What to leave behind in storage and what to take is no end of a question. Unfortunately the Suggestions were compiled with a view strictly to masculine necessities.

It has been a grey dismal afternoon. A melancholy donkey in somebody’s back-yard has kept up an incessant braying. “He does not please himself at Goncourt,” explained Madame. “He is a Saint Thiebault donkey.” Meanwhile half the regiment, it seems, has strayed by under my open window. I never knew before how consistently and persistently profane the A. E. F. could be when left to its own devices. The amazing part of it is;—since this seems to be their natural style of expression, how do they manage to slough it all and talk with such perfect prunes and prisms propriety in the canteens?

At supper time we were surprised by a Concert Party which had arrived today unexpectedly in this area. We were particularly glad to have them as the nervous tension among the boys is marked enough to make us welcome anything to divert their attention. We could have the regular Sunday evening service first, we decided, and then the concert to finish off with. The Concert Party came to supper at our mess. There was an ornamental Russian violinist, male, an American accompanist, also male, and a little French actress-singer. The minute we laid eyes on her we knew that the concert would be a success. She was all frills and frippery; lace, pink-rose buds and pale blue silk, with yellow curls and great blue eyes peering from beneath a quaint little rose-wreathed poke bonnet; an amazing vision of femininity to appear suddenly in the mud and dingy squalor of Goncourt!

The family Peirut was in a great state of mind over such distinguished visitors. They brought out food enough to feed the company a week, and kept hovering about the table, urging the dishes on our guests and emitting little wails of dismay when any one of the artists refused to eat enough for all three.

I stayed at our billet to finish up my packing, and went over to the hut late in the evening. The concert was half finished. As we anticipated, the little singer had made a hit. She gave some French songs, accompanying them with clever pantomine. Then she sang Huckleberry Finn and Oh Johnny! As the phrase has it, she “got them going.” She proved a past-mistress in the art of using her eyes. They winked at her and she winked back. Every last man in the first six rows was flirting with her, and every one was convinced that he was making a hit all his own. Several, it was confided to me afterwards, developed matrimonial aspirations on the spot. Then a tragic thing occurred. For the closing number they must give the Star Spangled Banner. Everybody rose, and everybody in duty bound removed their hats. The little singer took one wild survey of the audience, gasped, choked, then retreated precipitately in order to conceal her giggles. A week ago an order was published that the regiment should have their hair shaved off before going to the front;—every head in the whole auditorium, thus suddenly laid bare, was bald as an egg!

From latest advices it appears that the troops will start entraining the middle of the week. We are going on ahead in order to be there to serve them hot chocolate when they detrain after the journey. Every one has a different idea where that will be, but the best guess seems to be the Lunéville sector. What sort of conditions we will find at the front I haven’t the least idea. I missed the special conference held at Bourmont the other day, in which instructions and information to the personnel bound for the front were given. The driver who was to call for us, failed to do so; I set out to walk, only to find on arriving at Bourmont that the conference had been cut short, and was already over. Nobody has told me a word except to tease me by telling me that I will have to have my hair cut off in order to wear a gas-mask. Mr. K. amuses himself by predicting cellars and cooties. The Peiruts shake their heads and talk about my courage, but I can see that they mean folly. As for the Gendarme’s friends, Lieutenant Z. warns: “Take my advice, stay out of it. It’s a man’s game out there.” While Captain X. splutters; “Sending you to the front without any gas-drill, it’s nothing short of cold-blooded murder.” Thus do our friends encourage us.