CHAPTER IV: GONDRECOURT—THE ARTILLERY
Gondrecourt, April 28.
Gondrecourt is quite a place. It boasts a brewery, a hotel, a mediœval tower and a number of little stores. Each one of these stores contains at least one pretty girl on its selling force and the ratio between the sales of goods and the charms of the ladies is, I fancy, quite exact. From the military point of view Gondrecourt is important as being the site of the First Army Corps Training Schools. But to me the really distinguishing feature of Gondrecourt is the fact that it boasts a bath-tub. If anybody had said bath-tub to me the day before I arrived here, I would have said with the doughboy that,—short of Paris—“there ain’t no such animal.” But now I have beheld it with my own eyes, a white-enamelled bath-tub, a Y. M. C. A. bath-tub, in the basement at Headquarters. The tub is supposed to be a strictly family affair,—on the door are posted hours for the Lady Secretaries and hours for the Men Secretaries,—but in spite of the plain English before their eyes, it seems that army officers occasionally slip in and steal a bath off us, yes, even impinging on the sacred bath hours of the ladies!
My first day here they sent me to “The Café.” This was once a very wild place indeed. When the Y. first came to Gondrecourt it tried to buy the proprietor out, but the proprietor refused; he was doing too profitable a business. Then one night Providence sent some Boche planes wandering in this direction. There was a panic among the populace; the proprietor, with visions of his place wrecked by a bomb, sold out in a hurry and left town. Since then the Cafe has led a reformed and decorous existence but the old name still clings. My second day I spent at the “Double Hut,” the big hut built up on the hill close by the Infantry School. The third day I was introduced to my own canteen.
According to directions, I climbed the hill by my billet, went past the athletic field, past the warehouse and out along the edge of the rolling open upland. About half a mile out of town I came to a group of seven French barracks, covered with black tar paper, built at the edge of the railway cut. This was the Artillery School. I crossed the field, entered the nearest barracks which bore a Y. sign at one end, and found myself in a Greenwich Village Tea House. I stood and stared. Some modern-school interior decorator had been at work. The place was a riot of red, yellow, salmon-color and black, worked out from a nasturtium motif. In the wall panels were paintings, some conventionalized fruits and flowers, evidently done by the decorator; others, landscapes, Japanese scenes and some rather awful Indians just as evidently executed by the boys. The whole effect to be sure was a bit sketchy and in spots frankly unfinished, and yet to one used to such simplicity in the huts as I, the ensemble was startling. Back of the black and orange partition which screens the canteen and the kitchen from the hut proper, I found the staff, secretary and canteen worker. The lady whom I am to replace, it appears, belongs in reality to the Motor Transport Section. She turned canteen worker to help out in a pinch, and now is anxious to return again.
When dinnertime came the Motor Transport girl told me that we had been invited to dine at the camp. We went over to the mess-hall. “Let’s help feed the chow-line for a lark!” said the M. T. girl. So we stood behind the serving-bench and ladled out big spoonfuls of mashed potato and gravy. This amused the boys immensely; and as they passed they would sing out:
“When did they put you on K. P?”
“What have you done to deserve this?”
The kitchen was white-washed and specklessly clean, the earth floor was covered with cinders. These cinders which are in use for floors and walks in all the camps about, come, I am told, from a great heap down by the river which marks the site of one of Napoleon’s cannon foundries.
“Why are the boxers in a company always found on the kitchen force?” I asked one of the cooks.
“That’s so they can handle the boys when they come back for seconds.”
As soon as the chow-line had been fed, the M. T. girl and I had ours with the Top Sergeant. After dinner the Top Sergeant, who had formerly been mess sergeant, was moved to unburden his soul as to the sorrows of a mess sergeant.
“When I was mess sergeant,” he reminisced, “I sure got to know the way to a man’s heart all right. Why, the days when I gave them a good dinner there wasn’t a man in camp who wouldn’t positively beam at me; but if something had gone wrong and the chow wasn’t up to scratch, half the fellers in the company wouldn’t speak to me the rest of the day.”
Then he grinned. “I wouldn’t want Mother to know the way I used to get stuff for the boys last winter.”
He went on to tell us. French freight trains have no brakemen and the conductor rides in a caboose directly behind the coal car. Trains pulling into town from the north hit a grade curve close to the camp, up which they must pull very slowly. The camp guard kept a lookout; when a freight train with flat cars was sighted, word was immediately passed to the mess sergeant who with a number of K. P.s hurried to the tracks and boarded the slow-moving train; if the cars proved to hold anything of value for the mess,—be it coal or cabbages,—all the way up the grade the sergeant and his assistants were busy, hastily throwing or shoveling what they could over the sides of the cars. At the top of the grade they would jump off and returning along the tracks, gather up the spoils.
Tomorrow the Motor Transport girl departs and I “take over” the canteen.
Gondrecourt, May 4.
The Artillery School consists of some few hundred officers and non-coms enrolled for each four-weeks’ course, in addition to the two batteries who are here for demonstration work; Battery D from a regiment of “75s” and Battery A from a regiment of the big “155s.” Selected for this exhibition work on account of their exceptional ability, they are, I suppose, the equal of any batteries in the world. When the boys enlisted these batteries were declared to be about to be “motorized,” but at present the motor power is being supplied by a particularly unresponsive set of French cart horses, whose daily care is the greatest trial of the boys’ lives. Last night we had a movie-show; one reel gave the story of a discontented boy on the farm—showing him at one moment disgustedly grooming Dobbin. For a full minute it seemed as if the roof of the hut was going to be lifted right off.
The officers’ quarters and the class-rooms lie across the railroad track from the camp, in the grounds of the Château. Here they have a canteen of their own, a cool little place in cream color and blue presided over by a most refreshing and delightful English lady. The Château itself was partially destroyed by fire a few years ago and though the lower story is available for offices, the upper story stands roofless, with empty windows staring against the sky. Every now and then a rumour goes the rounds:—Pershing is going to move his headquarters to Gondrecourt,—the Château is to be repaired for his use! The Château and the school buildings stand on high ground. To the south the ground falls away suddenly; below is “off limits” and is Fairyland. Here are meadows warm with the color of spring flowers, here are groves such as one sees in the pictures of Eighteenth Century shepherds and shepherdesses, and here is the river flowing so placidly that its waters seem to form still lagoons, white-flecked with swans and arched with rustic bridges. Here while the boys are at their mess, I have been stealing to eat my picnic supper; an orange, a sandwich and a piece of chocolate. The guard walking post at the foot of the embankment shuts one eye as I go past,—and usually gets half of my supper! For that matter I gather he is there largely for the sake of appearance, for there’s not a boy in camp I’m sure who hasn’t explored those groves, fed the swans, and angled for fish in the river. And the only reason, I’m certain, that they don’t surreptitiously go in swimming there is that the water, fed by springs, is cold as ice! Nor is the touch of romance that should go with such a setting absent. One of the cooks in the officers’ mess kitchen is deep in an affair with Lucile, the caretaker’s daughter, a girl like a wild rose, shy, slender, freshly-tinted. Every other night when he is off duty he carries her chocolate from the canteen and she “gives him a French lesson.”
“Serious?” I asked inquisitively.
“Fat chance!” he glowered at me frankly. “She tells me that she’s engaged to twelve fellows now already and that twelve’s enough.”
The proprietor of the Château, Monsieur S., has the distinction of being the father of ten girls. I like to fancy that the spirits of the ten lovely daughters,—for lovely they must be, as no Frenchman, I am sure, would have the courage to father ten homely ones!—haunt the Château gardens.
The boys, however, don’t have to rely on phantoms for thrills of this sort. Yesterday, they tell me, that during the progress of an exciting ball-game on the Y. athletic field a beautiful lady dressed à la Parisienne strolled by. The batter dropped his bat, the pitcher forgot his ball; the game came to a dead halt until the beautiful lady had passed out of sight.
Gondrecourt, May 13.
The Secretary is sick. He lies in his little bed-room office and reads the latest magazines and gossips with his visitors while I attempt to run the hut single-handed. At times during this last week I have been strongly tempted to get sick myself. Indeed I think I probably would have done so if it hadn’t been for Snow. Snow, Snowball or Ivory as he is variously called, is Battery D’s albino cook. “Say, ain’t I the whitest-haired beggar you ever did see?” he asked me the other day in a sort of naive wonder at himself. “Anyway, nobody ever had a cleaner-looking cook,” remarked the Top Sergeant, ex-Mess Sergeant. Snow has the sweetest disposition in the world. “If Snow was starving to death,” declared one of the boys to me today, “and somebody gave him a sandwich, and he thought you were the least bit hungry, he’d give you that sandwich.” Ever since the Secretary has been sick, Snow has been bringing him toast and eggs and things while he has brought me lemon pies, the most wonderful lemon pies that ever I tasted. Already Snow has come to be looked upon by the boys as an authority on all things pertaining to the canteen and has to stand a battery of searching questions, such as, whether he thinks that my hair is really all my own?
Just to add to all our other troubles this week we have run amuck of the Major. This I suspect was all my fault. I was furious because when he came into the hut he made the boys stand at attention. This was something I had never seen done before and is, I am sure, contrary to all the rules. I was so angry that when the Major came up to the counter I stood and glared at him.
“You will find the Secretary in his office,” I said and turned and walked out the back door. It was the Major’s turn to be angry then. He stalked out behind the counter, looking for trouble, and began to hold an inspection in the kitchen. The Secretary appeared, the Major let loose. That kitchen, he declared, was not up to army standards in cleanliness. This was a matter of utmost importance. Hereafter the medical officer would inspect the kitchen daily. Then he proceeded to prescribe a schedule of canteen hours outside of which nothing at all must be sold.
Now I admit that kitchen hasn’t been quite all it might be. It is a small, overcrowded place, built of rough dirty boards and there are no shelves, nor of course running water, nor conveniences of any kind. Moreover, the Major, I learn, has the reputation of being a tartar in this respect; “Major Mess Kit” they call him because of the rigour of his inspections.
The next morning the medical officer arrived at the crack of dawn. He found the chocolate cups from the night before unwashed. He was shocked. He too read the Secretary a lecture. Then he departed to do the sensible, the saving thing, which was to recommend to the Major that we be allowed a detail. So it all worked out for the best in the end. “Neddy” as we have christened the detail is now a part of the family. A shy, dreamy lad, he is at hand to help from early morning until closing time at nine at night, and I actually have to shoo him out to his meals. The only trouble with Neddy is that he is so good I am sure that he is going to die young. And besides Neddy I now have a pet bugaboo. This has proved so useful these last few days that I don’t know how I ever kept a canteen without one. Now any time that officers come to my kitchen door to tease for cigarettes out of selling hours I can gleefully tell them:
“Oh, but I wouldn’t dare! The Major, you know! He’s expressly forbidden it! If I did and he learned about it, he would surely have me court-martialed!”
Of course when the boys come out of hours that is quite a different matter.
Then, too, as the Major is detested by the men, this furnishes a common bond of sympathy. This morning a boy came to my back door to borrow our axe in order to chop up the Major’s wood.
“You can have it on one condition,” I told him.
“What’s that?”
“That you chop off the Major’s head with it too.”
Gondrecourt, May 24.
I have always cherished a secret longing to have pets in my canteen: I have heard of huts that kept kittens and canaries, and once I visited in one where an ant-eater, if not an habitué, was at least a frequent and honoured guest and sat in the ladies’ laps at the movie-shows. At various times I have considered and regretfully abandoned the project of rabbits, a puppy, goldfish and a goat. But till recently the nearest I have come to realizing my dreams was when I found two large snails with black and yellow shells by the roadside. I carried them into the canteen and set them on a flowering branch in a vase. For two days the boys took a casual interest. They nicknamed them Bill and Daisy.
“The French eat snails you know,” I told them.
“You don’t say!”
“Yes and I had some myself the other day.”
“Aw shucks! You didn’t really, did you? Why, before I’d eat them things! Say, what did they taste like anyway?”
“They would have tasted pretty good,” I answered, “if only while you were eating them you could have stopped thinking what they were!”
One boy staring at my pets asked innocently;
“Will butterflies come but of those?”
After the snails our only livestock for a while was the canteen rat, whom I have never met myself, but of whom I have heard large rumours. The other day however I received a present of two real pets. One of the Y. drivers had been out to a wood-cutting camp in the forest. There an Italian lad had given him two young birds in a beautiful cage he had made himself with nothing but a pen-knife and a hot wire, and the driver brought the birds to me. I don’t know what sort they were but they were tame and most amusing. To feed them was the immediate question. I asked the boys to dig me some earth worms, but this they seemed to consider beneath their dignity. Finally Neddy went out with a can, only to return wormless. He couldn’t find any, he declared. I considered the advisability of asking the Top Sergeant for a worm-digging detail, but decided against it. Then I confided my troubles to my friend, the Warehouse Man.
“I know,” he said, “I’ll ask Pierre.”
Now Pierre is a little orphan refugee from the devastated district. He lives with one of the families on the edge of the town and I am afraid is none too well treated. When he isn’t herding the cows over the meadows, he is usually hanging about the warehouse. A handsome, rather wild looking lad, dressed in a brown cap and an old brown suit, I always think of him as Peter Pan. The next morning Pierre appeared at my kitchen door with a can full of long fat wriggly angleworms and had his pockets filled with chocolate by way of recompense. Later I learned that the Warehouse Man, not being able to pronounce the French word for birds, had told Pierre that I wanted the worms for fishing, and Pierre after taking one look at the bird-cage had gone straight back and told the Warehouse Man that he was a liar. But cunning as my pets were, I couldn’t quite reconcile myself to the idea of keeping wild birds in a cage. This morning I looked at Neddy:
“Let’s let them out.”
“Let’s,” he answered.
Now the only pet I have in prospect is the baby wild boar which a boy from one of the aviation camps nearby has promised me.
Gondrecourt, June 2.
Night before last, at half-past ten, as I was sitting here in my billet trying to write a letter, I heard a voice calling me from the street below.
“What is it?”
“It’s Sergeant B——. I’ve brought you a gas-mask.”
“What!”
“There’s a bunch of German planes headed in this direction. They’re afraid of gas bombs. We got the alarm out at the school.”
I went down to the door. The sergeant gave me two gas-masks. I gave one to the English lady who has the room across the hall from me. Then I sat up waiting for the fun to begin. Nothing happened. I went to sleep with the gas-mask lying on the pillow beside me.
The next morning the Chief declared that all the Y. personnel here must go to gas drill and have masks issued to them. Last night they rounded us up for a lesson. We stood in a big circle at the Gas School over on the hill while the gas instructors instructed us and the boys looked on and grinned. Gas drill consists of learning how to put on and take off your mask in the prescribed and formal manner. It is all done by count. If you can’t do it in six seconds you are a casualty. As we popped our masks on and pulled them off again the hair of all the ladies present proceeded to slowly but relentlessly fall down their backs. The English Lady stood next to me. “It’s all stuff and nonsense,” I could hear her muttering; “stuff and nonsense!”
The noncom instructors walked around and informed each and all of us that if we didn’t change the style of our coiffures we certainly would get gassed.
“And now,” said the instructor cheerfully, “I am going to send you through the gas-house.”
I looked desperately for a chance to sneak away, but there wasn’t any; besides, several boys from my batteries were watching.
“Oh this is nothing, nothing at all,” declared the instructor. “We’ve only got the tear gas on tonight. You will go through once with your masks on, and then a second time without them.” We put our masks on and marched in a long line into the gas-house. There was a table in the middle with candles burning on it, which gleamed golden through the thick yellowish clouds of gas. We marched around the table and out again. There was nothing to it; the masks were a perfect protection.
“Now,” said the instructor,” you will go through without your masks. This is to give you confidence in them.” The idea being that discovering how very nasty it was without one, you would be taught to appreciate the blessing of a mask. I had an inspiration. I would shut my eyes and hang on to the man in front of me! But alas, for my pretty plan, the line was too long; as I was about to enter: “Break the line here!” shouted the instructor. I had to lead the second line into the gas house. I made double-quick time around that table. Just as I was about to dart out the door an English noncom instructor seized my arm and, halting me, started to explain something.
“Yes, yes,” I choked. “It’s all very interesting, but I don’t feel like stopping now!” I pulled away and made a break out the door. I was weeping horribly. My eyes felt as if someone had rubbed onion juice on them. They stung and burned for hours afterward.
“The next time,” said the instructor genially, “we’ll put you through the mustard gas.”
Now in the mustard gas lesson a fellow must walk into the gas-house without his mask, and put it on after he has entered. If he fails to hold his breath long enough, or is nervous and clumsy and so doesn’t get his mask on quickly enough, why it means a trip to the hospital for him. The mustard gas test is an ordeal which causes the boys considerable apprehension.
“Oh thank you! You’re very kind,” I said.
As we took our departure down the hill I noticed a darky doughboy in a group who were drilling. He was in an awful fix; every time he tried to fasten the nose-clip on his nostrils, it would slip right off again!
When the next lesson is held I have decided to be among the missing.
Gondrecourt June 9.
We have a new detail. His name is Jones. About six weeks ago he was kicked by a mule and had three of his ribs broken. He was sent to the hospital at Neufchateau. Learning that there was a chance that his battery might be sent to the front shortly, he pestered the docters until they let him go, his besetting fear being that he might become separated from his outfit. He returned three days ago. The next day he went out on the range as one of a gun crew. Yesterday he came into the hut and collapsed. The Secretary put him on his bed where he spent the rest of the day. Moved by purely altruistic motives, the Secretary then went to his captain and asked that Jones be assigned to the Y. as a supplementary detail. Now this is very nice for Jones, but I am not so sure whether it is nice for the Y. Jones, it seems, goes by the nickname of “Mildred.” At one period of his past life he was engaged in selling soap, a fact which inspires the boys to shout at frequent intervals: “Three cheers for Jones! Soap! Soap! Soap!” He brings echoes of his commercial training to the canteen counter. No east-side shopkeeper was ever more anxious to make sales than he. If a boy asks for tooth-paste when we happen to be out of it, he is sure to answer:
“No, but we have some very fine shoe polish.”
Or if somebody wants talcum powder when talcum there is none:
“I’m sorry we’re out of it today, but can’t I interest you in some tomato ketchup?”
Some day I think I shall write on essay on the psychology of suggestion as demonstrated in canteen sales. Nothing, it seems, ever really wins the boys’ approval unless it bears the label; “Made in the U. S. A.”—nothing that is, with the possible exception of eggs. Anything originating in Europe, from mustard to matches, is looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion, while goods coming from America are hailed with an enthusiasm often quite inconsistent with their quality. The other day we put a case of “Fig Newtons” on sale. The news flashed all over town. As one of the boys said; “Why it was just as if General Pershing or somebody’s mother had come to camp.”
Lately we have had for sale quantities of fat French cookies. Some of the boys are mean enough to suggest that these were baked before the war.
“Those cookies ought to wear service stripes,” one boy declared.
So “Service Stripe Cookies” they have been ever since.
“They’re all right for eating,” observed another customer solemnly, “but the Lord help you if you drop one on your toe!” This morning when I reached the hut I found Jones languidly washing dishes.
“Where’s Neddy?”
“Neddy? Why he’s in the guard-house.”
For a moment I was goose enough to believe it, then I learned that Neddy, with a lieutenant and some twenty other boys, had all gone off, the day being Sunday, on single mounts to Domremy to visit the birthplace of Jeanne D’Arc. Late in the afternoon the little cavalcade returned.
“Neddy,” I teased, “I hear you’ve been in the guard-house.”
To my astonishment Neddy’s mouth twitched, his eyes filled. “I wish I’d never gone!” he blurted out.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
Then the whole pitiful tale was unfolded. Neddy hadn’t any money, not a clacker, and being too shy to ask for a loan, he had gone on the trip with empty pockets. He hadn’t been able to buy himself a bite of dinner. But that wasn’t what hurt. What hurt was that he couldn’t purchase any souvenirs for his girl, and there had been so many enticing ones!
“Gee,” he moaned, “but that’s an awful place for a feller to go who hasn’t any money.”
Then, just as the last straw of misery, his horse had been taken sick on the way home!
We are going through one of those painful periods of pecuniary depletion which are periodic in the army, the inevitable prelude to payday. In Battery A there are two lads whom I have privately dubbed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They are both short, roly-poly and always smiling and they are absolutely inseparable. When either of them buys anything at the canteen he always buys double; two packets of cigarettes, two “bunches” of gum, two cups of hot chocolate “one for me and one for my friend” as the stock phrase goes. This morning I received a shock. Tweedledum asked for one bar of chocolate and one package of cigarettes.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, thinking alarmedly of how in the immortal poem “Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle,”—“You and your buddy haven’t quarrelled, have you?”
“No ma’am, oh no indeed ma’am! It’s just that it’s an awful long ways from payday!”
Later I saw them carefully dividing the purchases between them. I leaned over the counter, beckoned to Tweedledee.
“You boys go around to the back door, but don’t let anybody see you!”
At the back door I gave them each a slice of Snow’s latest lemon pie.
Tonight the Major suddenly made his appearance in the kitchen to find Snow, Neddy and myself all sitting on the floor sorting out rotten oranges. Snow and Neddy faded away out the back door, but I stood my ground. For once his Majorship was pleased to be gracious. He complimented me on the improvement in the appearance of my kitchen. Indeed we did look pretty fine, Neddy having just covered the shelves with newspapers whose edges he had cut into beautiful fancy scalloping.
“What do you do with those over-ripe oranges?”
“Put them in a box outside the back door.”
“Well? What then?”
“The French children do the rest, sir.”
But the boys are more incensed than ever against the Powers That Be. They have been writing too many letters of late for the censor’s comfort. So yesterday at Retreat the order was read out that no boy might write more than two letters and one postal card per week!
Gondrecourt, June 13.
The School has closed. It is common knowledge that the two batteries will soon join their respective regiments at the front. Curiously enough, here with the artillery I have never had that same feeling of closeness to the war which I had when I was with the doughboys. The attitude of the men here is so much more detached, impersonal. I fancy this is because, however dangerous their work may be, they do not look forward to any actual physical conflict. It is the imaginative image of “Heinie” with a bayonet thrusting at his breast which makes the front so vivid in anticipation to the doughboy.
But now with the news from Château Thierry there is a certain tenseness everywhere. One feels that the hour is close at hand when every man that Uncle Sam has in France may be needed. The barking of the guns at practice has taken on a new significance. Yesterday indeed it just missed implying tragedy. Shortly after the jarring thunder of the “75s” had started our dishes in the kitchen to rattling, came a frantic message by telephone. A party of engineers were surveying for the narrow-gauge railway just beyond the hill over which the battery was shooting. One shell had narrowly missed them.
Today an aviator in a little Spad machine came down at our back door. He had lost his way, exhausted his gas, and was forced to descend. He had thought he was over Germany so his relief on finding himself among friendly faces may be imagined. But aviation doesn’t mean what it used to any more to us. We have lost our aviator. Shortly after I came to Gondrecourt we began to have an aerial visitor. Every few days about sundown he would appear; flashing up over the eastern hill horizon, to circle the big open drill ground, dipping, soaring, playing all manner of madcap tricks just for the sheer joy of it, now he would sweep so low as almost to touch the ridgepole of the hut, then up, up again with a rush, waving his hand to us below as we waved and shouted with all our might up at him. The whole camp would turn out to see; it was one of the events of the day. “It’s Lufberry,” some one told me. Not long ago we read in the paper that Major Lufberry had been killed. We waited in suspense. Had it really been he? Would our aviator never come again? Night after night we watched for him; he never came.
The fields about, which have been golden with buttercups and primroses, white with daisies, and purple with flowers whose names I do not know, are now crimsoning with poppies. “Artillery flowers,” the boys call them. They pick them and stick them jauntily in their overseas caps, or in great bunches, bring them to me to brighten the canteen.
Since the boys are going soon I have been trying desperately to make them extra special goodies; candy, stuffed dates, frosted cookies, and—what pleases them as much as anything—hard-boiled eggs. It has been a revelation to me here in France, the American appetite for eggs. The boys will walk miles to get them; they will cheerfully pay as high as two dollars a dozen for them. I buy twelve dozen at a time, carry them out to the canteen and boil them in the dishpan. Placed on sale they disappear in the winking of an eye, and then the cry is always, “Ain’t you got no more?” Sometimes I take Neddy with me on my shopping expeditions; Neddy carries my market basket, smokes his pipe and looks as pleased as Punch. Today in our quest we stopped in at a store kept by two extremely pretty Mademoiselles. As we entered we were greeted by peals of girlish laughter. In a chair in the corner sat a tired M. P. fast asleep, his mouth wide-open; between his lips one of the pretty girls had just at that moment popped a round ripe strawberry.
Gondrecourt, June 18.
Besides the American Camp Hospital there is a French Hospital at Gondrecourt, a place with a hint of old-world flavour to it, the nursing being done by Sisters of Charity. Here through some freak of chance a week ago arrived sixteen Tommies from the English front, after having travelled half over the map of France. They were none too pleased to find themselves in a French Hospital and several, being walking cases, straightway deserted and sneaked over to the American Hospital only to be regretfully returned again. They have a little Algerian in a red fez with them whom they have nicknamed “Charlie Chaplin.” Although intercourse between them is restricted entirely to sign language, the Tommies have adopted Charlie as their mascot and Charlie follows them about just like a dog.
My friend the English Lady, having little to do in her canteen since the School closed, has appointed herself as a sort of foster-mother to the whole cockney brood. She acts as interpreter and sometimes as intercessor, for the Tommies are impatient of the hospital discipline and cause the authorities frequent anxiety, helps the Sisters out in nursing them and, best of all, makes them tea at four o’clock or thereabouts, accompanying it with bread and butter sandwiches. Frankly, the Tommies think that they are little short of starved on the French Hospital rations, and the tea helps. When they can they sneak over to the American Hospital and beg a meal there, but such excursions are frowned upon by those in authority.
Yesterday the English Lady gave a tea party for the Tommies in her canteen. She arranged to have a truck go fetch them. To her astonishment, instead of one, two trucks appeared and instead of just the Englishmen, the whole hospital that was able to stand on two legs or one arrived with them; big black Algerians and Moroccans in every shade of duskiness and poilus by the half score. The hut was crowded, there weren’t enough chairs to go around. The English Lady sent out a hurry call to bring up the reserves in refreshments. Neddy and I came over from our hut with our arms full of cups; more water was put on to boil for the tea, new packages of biscuits opened. Then while the water heated the English Lady took all the liveliest ones out for a walk through the Château grounds, while “Skipper”, her detail, who is a clever pianist, entertained the rest with music. During the playing one enormous Algerian, as black as night, stared fascinated at the piano, then edged slowly nearer and nearer to finally lay one incredulous finger, with infinite caution on one of the end keys. He had evidently never seen such a thing before, and more than half suspected it was all magic.
Then the water boiled and we made the tea and carried cups and bowls of it around with canned milk and commissary sugar. The Frenchmen, true to type, with the scarcity of sugar in mind would only take one lump, until you invited them to have another, when each, with evident pleasure, took a second. As we could only muster six teaspoons between our two canteens to supply the whole company, we had to pass the spoons from guest to guest allowing each man just long enough for a good stir and then on to the next. The men with wounded arms got their neighbors to stir for them. With the tea we served sandwiches; these were a special treat to the poilus because they were made with American army bread. Now to my mind our white army bread is very poor and tasteless stuff in comparison with the grey well-flavored French war-bread, but the French, probably on account of the novelty, prize highly any scraps of the pain Américaine that they can obtain. “Why, they eat it just like cake!” one boy said to me. Besides the sandwiches, there were little cookies and candies and cigarettes and finally, the gift of an American officer who happened in, an orange for each man to take home with him.
When the tea was finished it was time for the guests to go. Crowded into the trucks they rolled out through the Château gates, the poilus smiling and waving their good hands, while the Tommies raised a ragged cheer.
As Neddy and I returned to our canteen we paused at the door of one of the barracks to listen to the band producing pandemonium within. This band is the pet project of Battery D, the dearest hope of Corporal R. who is theatrical producer, impresario, librettist, base soloist, and band leader for the battery. The instruments were finally assembled some ten days ago. The one thing required of a member seemed to be that he had never played that particular sort of an instrument before. For the last ten days the band has been practicing, mostly in the Y. They have always played the same tune, yet I have never been able to decide what that tune was. Now that the battery is going to the front, the instruments must be put in store and our budding band disbanded almost before it had begun. The instruments are to be interned at Abainville, the town next door. When the day comes to relinquish them the band is going to march all the way from Gondrecourt to Abainville in state, playing their one tune over and over.
Tonight Corporal R. sat on a barrel in the kitchen polishing his French horn with the Secretary’s pink tooth-paste. It made excellent brass-polish he had discovered.
“It’s too bad you can’t take that band of yours up front,” remarked Snow.
“What for?”
“’Cause it sure would make the boys feel like fighting.”
Gondrecourt June 22.
The boys have gone! We saw the last battery off on the train tonight. The guns were loaded on flat cars, horses and men lodged together in the box cars, the boys sleeping under the horses’ very noses and in danger of being nipped, it seemed to me, by an ill-tempered beast. The boys who were to sleep with the guns on the flat cars would be much better off I thought; they had made themselves cozy little nests of straw underneath the gun-carriages. Some of the boys in the box cars, I was pained to observe, had smuggled in bottles with them.
The English Lady and I had arrived at the station none too soon. We had no more than walked the length of the train, inspecting each car and wishing every boy Good-bye and Good-luck when the engine whistled and was off. We stood on the platform and waved to the boys who leaned from their cars and waved back until a curve in the track cut off our sight.
These last few days have been hectic. Wednesday was my birthday. Neddy found it out and told the boys. They had observed that I didn’t have any raincoat; indeed rainy nights I was always embarrassed by the offer of half a dozen different rubber coats and ponchos to go home in; so they decided,—bless them!—to supply this lack. A crowd of non-coms went downtown; they took along one boy with them as a cloak model because he was about my height and “looked like a girl”; and they made him try on every raincoat in Gondrecourt. Finally they selected one, brought it back and made a ceremonious presentation. The raincoat is a beauty, and ever since I have worn it every day, rain or shine, just to show them how much I thought of it.
It was hard to part with little Neddy. The Secretary presented him with a farewell pipe. I clasped around his neck a chain bearing a little silver cross; it was to keep him safe, body and soul from harm. He was almost moved to tears. The Secretary and I, he told me, had been “like a little papa and a daddy to him,” and then, flushing, joined in my laughter.
At the last moment one of the D Battery cooks came stealthily to the back door.
“Me an the other fellers in the kitchen,” he confided sotto voce, “we wanted to do something to show you folks how much we thought of you. So we just made up our minds to send yer this.”
This was a ten pound can of issue bacon.
The Secretary leaves tomorrow for Paris. He is going in order to buy himself some new clothes. It seems that all his belongings entrusted to the local laundresses disappeared one by one until he found himself reduced to a single set. Last night he washed these out himself and put them in the oven to dry. When he remembered them this morning it was to find nothing left but a little cinder heap.
The camp, for the present at least, is to be abandoned; the hut, for the army wishes to use the barracks elsewhere, torn down. In a few days the little Artillery School Canteen will be nothing but a memory.