The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl

by Katharine Duncan Morse

CHAPTER V: ABAINVILLE—THE ENGINEERS

Abainville July 1.

“Abainville is going to be bombed off the face of the map.” Every time anyone has mentioned Abainville in my hearing during the last six weeks they have wound up with some such prophecy as this. Abainville is an engineering camp, Abainville is the starting-point for the narrow-gauge system that is to supply a certain sector of the American front. Already the great car shops have been built and stand gaunt and staring with more glass in their glittering sides than I have seen on this side of the Atlantic. It is these shops in particular that are held to be such shining marks for enemy aircraft. Anyway we have this comfort that if the Boche gets us we will all go together, for the town is so tiny that if a bomb hit it anywhere, it would wreck the major part of the village and there isn’t a single cellar in the whole vicinity!

Just at present Abainville is in a state of suspense. There is some question among those in high places as to whether after all the site, for such extensive operations as have been planned, is well selected. Work on the narrow-gauge goes on, but the work on the shops has been suspended. Everyone is anxiously awaiting the decision.

The hut, which is on the far edge of the camp, is a huge empty shell, for work on this too has been stopped pending developments. Up till the day I arrived the Y. was doing business in a tent near the highway, but being notified that the engineers were going to run a railway through that spot the next day, they had moved out and over to the unfinished hut in a hurry.

My billet has a fine central location,—at the corner of La Grande Rue and the national highway that runs through the town. My window overlooks what approximates the town square, an open dusty space, bounded on the south by the principal café, on the east by the butcher’s shop, on the west by manure-heaps and on the north by my billet. In this square, it appears, all the village pig-killings take place. It is incredible and painful how many pigs of a marketable maturity a town no larger than Abainville can produce. Arguing from the frequency of the pig-killings I am convinced that if a census were taken Abainville would be found to contain more pigs than people.

Further down la Grande Rue one comes to the church and the town-hall. Upstairs in the Mairie my co-worker, Miss S., has her billet. Downstairs is the village school and the living apartments of the schoolmaster’s family, refugees from the invaded territory. I peeped in at the empty schoolroom yesterday: on the wall was a large pictorial chart designed to impress upon the infant mind the advantages of drinking beer, cider and wine, rather than the more potent alcohols; a lesson vividly demonstrated by a series of cuts portraying a pair of guinea pigs. The guinea pig who indulged in cognac and kindred beverages was depicted in successive stages of inebriation until at the end he is shown expiring in all the horrors of delirium, while the prudent guinea pig who took nothing stronger than vin, biére et cidre is pictured first in a state of mild and genial intoxication, and then the “morning after” with all the zest of a good digestion and a clear conscience, breakfasting on a sober cabbage leaf.

The church next door to the Mairie is remarkable for nothing except the peculiar sound like a wheezing snore which may be heard every evening issuing from the belfry. At first this sound was a mystery to us. I inquired of Madame; she was blank.

“Perhaps,” I suggested remembering how in medieval lore evil spirits were reputed to haunt church towers, “perhaps it is the devil in the belfry.”

“But no!” cried Madame scandalized. “The devil doesn’t live in Abainville!”

“To be sure,” I amended hastily, “the devil is a Boche! He lives at Berlin.”

“Mais, oui, oui, oui!”

But now the riddle has been read. The devil in the belfry is in reality an ancient owl, une chouette, who has inhabited the church tower time out of mind.

There is a Salvation Army hut here, the first one I have seen. It is down by the main road; the canteen occupies one end of a barracks, which is used as a store-house, then there is an ell containing the kitchen. The staff comprises one man and two women; they are pleasant people, “real home folks.” Two or three times a week, for supplies are hard to obtain, they make pie or cake or doughnuts. On these nights, passing the hut on our way back from mess, one sees a long line stretching down the road, waiting patiently for the chance to get a piece of pie “like Mother used to make.” Our relationships are cordial. We help each other out in the matter of change. They come to our hut for sweet chocolate and movies; we go to them, when our consciences will permit, for doughnuts. I only wish that one of their huts could be in every camp in France.

Abainville, July 8.

By courtesy of a group of officers we are messing at a house with a particularly noisome front-door gutter and the Most Beautiful Girl in France to wait on us. La Belle Marguerite, as I always think of her, is tall and stately with a lovely gracious bearing and a sensitive, responsive face; what’s more, she only paints a little. She affects to speak no English but I suspect she understands a good deal. At meal times when we are present the officers never look twice at her, but any evening that one happens past the house one can see two cigarette ends gleaming from the darkness just inside the mess-room window: the officers are making up for lost time. Yesterday La Belle looked so pale and distraite at dinnertime that I was quite distressed, fancying heart-break. “Mademoiselle Marguerite is sad,” I told Madame my hostess. Madame immediately went forth on a Visit of investigation. “Mademoiselle has the tooth-ache!” she announced on her return. Today at dinner, having finished our salade, we waited in vain for dessert. La Belle Marguerite, usually so prompt and so efficient, simply did not appear. After waiting until I grew tired I gave it up and left. Passing by the kitchen door I glanced inside. In front of the hearth stood Marguerite and a handsome Russian officer, and oh! the coquetry of her eyes, the seduction of her smiling, scarlet lips! It was evident that the mess in the next room was wiped as clean from her mind as if it never had been! Whether my messmates ever got their dessert or not I haven’t heard.

Besides La Belle Marguerite, the one unique feature of our mess is a certain set of plates. These are French picture plates with jokes on them. The jokes are all of a gustatory nature and pertain to things which most people would prefer not to think about while they are eating. One rather striking design represents the proprietor of a Swiss resort hotel delicately sniffing a platter of fish as he says to the waitress:

“These trout are passe. Keep them for the customers who have colds in their heads.”

On another an irate diner is exclaiming over an item on his bill:

“Three francs for a chicken! What’s that?”

“Why that was the little chicken that Monsieur found in his egg!”

There is always an anxious moment of suspense whenever a guest comes to dinner, a moment in which one peeps furtively out of the corners of one’s eyes to see whether the newcomer has noticed the picture on his plate, and if so, whether he has got the point. Sometimes the guest will ask to have the text translated for him and then there is an awkward pause.

The question of what to serve at the canteen is a vexed one these days as it is quite too hot for chocolate. By scouring the country we managed to procure several cases of lemons, and then found our work for the day laid out,—just squeezing them. A few days ago, however, a shipment of bottled fruit juices arrived at the warehouse; by mixing this syrup with water and a small amount of lemon a delicious drink can be obtained. The boys have dubbed it a dozen different names, “Camouflage vin rouge” being one of them, but “pink lemonade” is the title it commonly passes under. Already it has become famous and every drunk in camp if questioned as to how he came to be in that condition will unblushingly assert that it was through drinking “that Y. M. C. A. pink lemonade.”

If we could only get ice! Yesterday I investigated the possibilities, to find that if one were very ill and in desperate need of it, could produce a certificate to that effect signed by half a dozen doctors, approved by the Sanitary Inspector, passed upon by the local Board of Health and sealed by the Mayor with the sanction of the Town Council, one could, by means of this document, procure at the brewery at Gondrecourt a piece of ice about as large as a small-sized egg. Somehow it doesn’t seem quite worth the trouble.

Lacking ice, we do our best with freshly-drawn water which comes pleasantly cool from the deep wells drilled by American engineers to supply the camp,—when it does come. But often just when the thirsty ones are crowding thickest you make a frantic dash to the faucet only to find that the supply has been cut off: there is not enough water in the wells, it seems, to supply all the engines and pink lemonade besides for the whole camp. Then there is nothing to do but to take a pail and set out. After climbing over a couple of freight trains and ploughing through a dozen cinder heaps one comes at last to the pump-house, where one may, by assuming an ingratiating manner, beg a pailful,—strictly against the regulations,—from the man at the pump. And then, after all, what use is a mere pailful of lemonade in a thirsty camp?

Abainville, July 10.

We have stopped fighting the war and have gone into the movie business. For two days all work has been suspended while the camp has posed before the camera. They are making a big propaganda film for use in the States, entitled “America’s Answer to the Hun” and Abainville and the Abainville-Sorcy narrow-gauge is to be part of that answer. “Camouflage pictures” sneer the boys, and camouflage pictures I blush to say they frankly are. For on the screen the peaceful valley through which the narrow-gauge is being built is to masquerade as a field of battle. Camouflaged engineers, armed and equipped as infantry will march valiantly across the landscape, while other engineers in helmets, with their gas-masks at the alert, are plying their picks and shovels amid the smoke of camouflage shrapnel; the climax being attained when the helmeted engineers effect a lightning repair feat by bridging over a carefully dug camouflage shell-hole.

Yesterday I saw a photograph cut from the Sunday Supplement of one of America’s best known and most respected newspapers. Underneath the picture ran the text, “American boys playing baseball on a field in France where shells fall daily.” To my certain knowledge the only shells that have ever fallen on that field or within many miles of it are peanut shells. For the field in the picture is most plainly and indisputably the Y. athletic field at Gondrecourt. Will I ever, I wonder, recover my pre-war faith in newspapers and photographs and movies and such things?

But now we have done our turn before the camera, it’s back to work again and very hard work at that, for the officers are determined to set a record for all the world in laying track. Already the little railway has shot ahead at an amazing rate; though whether track laid in such a hurry is really going to make for speed in the long run is a question on which the trainmen, sipping their pink lemonade at the canteen counter, have their own opinions. For no train, it seems, can make the run at present without leaving the track at least once during the journey. “Sun-trouble” say the officers, which means, being interpreted, that the heat of the sun’s rays has warped the rails. “Sun trouble nothin,’” grunt the men. “It’s just not takin’ the time to do the job decent.” When the “sun trouble” doesn’t serve to throw a train off the track, the French children see to it that the same effect is produced by the simple expedient of dropping spikes in between the ends of adjoining rails.

Yesterday I was talking with an engineer from Tours. He and his fireman had just brought a Belgian engine up from that city for use in the Abainville yards. The attitude of the train crew who received it was plainly “thank-you-for-nothing-sirs!”, Belgian engines being none too popular with A. E. F. railroad men. The two crews sat in the hut for a long while holding a symposium over the Belgian engine’s oddities; at last the home crew departed, looking very glum. In the course of my subsequent conversation with the visiting engineer I happened to ask:

“Would you vote for Pershing for president?”

“No sir!” he answered emphatically. “All the railroad men over here have got it in for him.” He went on to explain.

French railroad engineers are allowed a certain amount of coal and oil with which to make their runs; for anything that they can save out of this, they are reimbursed. This idea appealed to the American train crews who were attached to the French. They set to work and saved,—far more than the French were able to! The French proceeded to depreciate the quality of coal allowed them, instead of giving them half dust and half briquets, they gave them three-quarters dust and finally all dust yet still the Americans were able to beat the French at saving. And each man in fancy was rolling up a tidy little sum for himself.

“And then,” continued my informant, “Pershing came out and said that we weren’t here to make money off the French, but to help them, so we weren’t to get the money for all the coal and oil we had saved after all. And that’s why there isn’t a railroad man in France who has any use for him.”

How much of politics could be reduced, I wonder, to a mere question of pocketbook?

He went on to tell me among other things that although a French conductor would be furious if you stopped a train in the middle of a run for any other reason, if you just said; “Come on, ol’ top, and have a bottle of vin rouge on me,” he was all beaming acquiescence. “Just imagine,” he concluded disgustedly, “stopping a main-line train in America so the crew could go into a saloon and get a drink!”

Abainville, July 14.

The Bastille has fallen! We celebrated its fall today with much enthusiasm. Ostensibly in order to signalize the Franco-American Alliance, the festivities in reality were planned as propaganda of a different sort. Surreptitiously but quite definitely the end and aim of them was to flatter the Major.

Now the Major in command of the camp at Abainville is what—if he weren’t a major—one would be tempted to term a “hard-boiled guy.” Being of the bid school he looks with a jaundiced eye at all welfare organizations, particularly, I gather, at the feminine element in them. He calls the college men in the regiment “sissy boys” and believes in treating them to an extra dose of pick and shovel. What’s more, it is an open secret that he would like to swap the whole outfit of them for a regiment of Mexican desperadoes, with whom he has had considerable experience. As the boys say, he speaks three languages, English, Mexican and Profane, and of the three he is the most proficient in the last.

So in view of all this, the Fourteenth of July celebration was gotten up chiefly in order to give the Major a chance to appear in all his glory and make a speech, this being, it is claimed, one of the surest ways to tickle the vanity and so win the heart of a man.

We decorated the half-finished hut with flags and bunting, screening the yawning cavern back of the stage with broad strips of red, white and blue cheesecloth. Then we officially invited the whole town to attend. The whole town, from grandmother to baby, came dressed in their Sunday best. The programme started with an informal concert by an impromptu jazz orchestra varied by some Harry Lauder impersonations delivered by an unexpected youth who somehow strayed on to the stage. For a few moments we were painfully uncertain as to whether the effect produced was due just to Harry Lauder or to vin rouge, finally deciding that a share at least of the credit should be allowed the latter. Fortunately Harry’s appearance on the stage was short; he left us fondly hoping that the French hadn’t realized anything was amiss.

The Major of course opened the formal programme. He read his speech. It wasn’t a bad speech, representing, as it did, the combined efforts of one captain, two lieutenants and the clerk in the Headquarters office, and was sufficiently fiery in its reference to the Germans to be quite in keeping with the Major’s character. The Major sat down amid thunderous applause. The Secretary had vainly tried to arrange to have a little girl present him with a bouquet at the end of his speech: perhaps it was just as well the way it was,—a bouquet might have proved embarrassing to the Major. When the applause had died down the Major’s interpreter stepped out and gave a brief summary of the address in French for the benefit of the villagers. Then we had the Mayor of Abainville and after him the Cure, looking very handsome in his beautiful French officer’s uniform. They both delivered flowery speeches, enlarging upon the mutual affections of the two nations, which were translated briefly into English by the interpreter for the benefit of the Americans.

After the speeches the school children, who had been fidgeting about like so many little crickets in their front-row seats, swarmed up on the stage and, standing in a long line with flag-bearers at each end, sang the Marseillaise in their funny shrill little voices. Then we all sang the Star Spangled Banner, and after that there was a movie. As luck would have it, instead of an adventure of the western plains, fate had sent us a romance of high finance. We had asked the interpreter to announce the titles of the pictures in French for the benefit of the villagers but when he discovered that this meant making clear the intricacies of the New York Stock Exchange to the mind of the French peasant, he baulked and bolted. It must have been just about as intelligible to them as Coptic, yet they sat tight and at least looked interested.

Everybody considers the affair a success. The Secretary was in high spirits over the evening.

“The Major was pleased, I’m sure,” he declared. “As for the French, it was an occasion which they will always remember. Why it was just like transplanting the whole village there. The grandmother and the babies, the mayor, the priest, the school-teacher and his scholars; every village institution was represented!”

“Everything,” I said—I was tired, “but the pig-killings.”

Abainville, July 20.

I have just established what I think must be the smallest “hut” in France, and such fun as it was doing it!

There is a detachment of about a hundred engineers stationed, while they build the narrow-gauge railway, at a little village about ten miles to the north, called Sauvoy. The other day I went with the Athletic Director in a side-car to take them some baseball equipment. The boys I found were billeted in dark dingy lofts and had to eat their meals, rain or shine, sitting just anywhere in the streets of the village. The thought came to me; why shouldn’t they too have a Y? I approached the French Town Major, taking the barber-interpreter with me to lend me both moral and lingual support. After some uncertainty he admitted that there was a room which might be made to serve, a room over a stable to be sure, but a good room for all that; the rent would be thirteen sous a day,—I snapped it up.

Yesterday with all my materials assembled I started out for Sauvoy again. We began work a little before noon, myself and four engineers. Before the afternoon was over we had changed a filthy loft, its grimy walls covered with obscene scrawls, into as cunning a little pocket-edition Y. as one could find I think in France. Sweeping the dust and cobwebs from the rafters, we calcimined the ceiling and walls a pretty creamy yellow; filled in the missing panes with vitex; hung curtains of beautiful blue and green chintz at the windows; laid runners of the same across the tables lent with the benches by the Major du Cantonment; decorated the walls, half-dry as they were, with stunning French posters; built shelves in the alcove corner where the built-in bed had been, filled them with books, games and writing materials; hung two big green Japanese lanterns from the beam in the center; and last of all put bowls of the loveliest flowers, larkspurs and snapdragons, begged by the boys from the village gardens, on the shelves and tables, together with heaps of fresh magazines and the company victrola. In the midst of all the scurry and hurry a red-faced frowsy Frenchwoman marched in upon us. She stalked across the room and tried the door which led into the hay-loft: we had nailed it fast. We must open that door immediately, she declared, otherwise she could not get the hay to feed the horse downstairs. I saw my pretty room used as a passage-way by a beery old termagant and my heart sank. After some discussion, however, our visitor proposed an alternative. If we would supply her with a ladder, she could climb up into the loft from below. But how, I asked helplessly, was I to get a ladder? One of the boys winked at me and disappeared; ten minutes later he was back dragging a ladder after him. Our French friend was satisfied.

“But how did you get it?” I asked wonderingly.

He looked at me reprovingly. “In this Man’s Army,” he remarked, “you should learn not to ask such questions.”

When the last touch had been bestowed there was still an hour before the truck which was to take me home was slated for departure. Someone suggested a visit to the Château. So the Top Sergeant, the barber-interpreter, the Town Major and I all set out together.

The Château at Sauvoy is a fifteenth century Château, cut out of an old picture-book, surrounded by a high wall and just about big enough for two. One enters, oddly enough, through the kitchen which is enormous and like a Dutch genre painter’s “Interior,” with a cobble-stone floor, an eight-foot fireplace, dried herbs and vegetables hanging from the rafters and everywhere on the long shelves, the soft gleam of pewter and the mellow tones of old china-ware. From the kitchen one steps into a tiny dining-room paneled in dark carved wood with a bird-cage, empty now, built into the wall. Beyond this is the salon with a wonderful old tapestry stretched across one of its walls and some exquisite Louis Quinze chairs in which kings and queens might have sat.

But the best thing about the Château is the Chatelain, an old French gentleman, eighty-nine years of age, the last of his family, who lives all alone, except for one antique serving-woman, in this beautiful dim old mansion, wears sabots, keeps bees for a living, and every day of his life cuts from the journal the little daily English lesson, pastes it in a tiny note-book, and then his poor old eyes an inch from the paper, cons the words over and over, reading them aloud with such a pronunciation!

“In three months,” he told us proudly, “I am going to be an American.”

He related to us how in 1870 the town was invaded by the Germans and he taken prisoner. But the Germans were gentlemen then and treated him humanely; he couldn’t understand what had changed them to such savage beasts. He took us out and showed us his precious bees. We went through the garden, a charming place with little box hedges and rose bushes and currant bushes and gooseberries all growing together in the true French style. Beyond we came to an open oblong of greensward edged by trees with fifty hives ranged around it, the hives,—of all quaint conceits—being made like little Chinese houses, each one different from the rest, each painted red and blue, a bit shabby and worn by time, but still gay and jaunty nevertheless. Monsieur guaranteed us that the bees wouldn’t sting, they weren’t bad bees he said, so we consented to be led about to each hive in turn and peered in through the little glass windows at the bees making honey. Sad to say, this is a bad year for sweets and instead of hundreds of pounds of honey, there will be scarcely one to sell.

We went back through the garden and here Monsieur must gather a bouquet for me. Around and about the garden he hurried, going to every bush in turn, putting his poor dim eyes down into the very leaves of each, searching for just what he wanted; and finally it was done, pink and white roses, red geraniums, camomile and white pinks, made up in a little stiff bunch and tied with a bit of scarlet string. Then he must present it with a deep bow and a gallant speech “from an old Frenchman to une jolie Américaine”, while all the rest, including the ancient maid-servant who had just returned from the fields with an apron full of clover for the rabbits, stood about and applauded and cried “Vive la France!” and then “Vive l’ Amérique!” in a quite truly stage manner.

We left the little Y. in charge of a boy from the Medical Corps. He has little to do except dispense pills to the French people, so he was willing to look after it.

This morning word came in from Sauvoy that the Germans bombed it last night. Luckily the bombs, evidently aimed at the railroad, fell just outside the village and did no harm; but poor old Monsieur must have gotten a bad fright.

Abainville, August 1.

Abainville’s future is at last assured. Work upon the hut has been resumed. The buzz of barracks-building fills all the place, the railroad yards gradually but relentlessly encroach; little by little they are ruining the most beautiful poppy field in all the world.

Meanwhile our family too has grown. A few days ago three new companies of engineers arrived in town. These are draft troops from Texas and Oklahoma, in camp for only a few weeks in the States, shipped here directly from the base port, and so green to France that they don’t even know what oui oui means. On the trip here one of these boys, they tell, after gazing out the door of his “side-door pullman” in silence half the morning, remarked disgustedly;

“This is a hell of a country!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why all the stations have got the same name!”

“The hell they have! What’s the name?”

“Sortie!”

The Major in command of the new arrivals proves to be an old and none too amicable acquaintance of our Major’s, their mutual esteem having been obscured by a law-suit some time in the past which resulted in our Major’s being forced to part with a considerable sum of money. To make himself more welcome the new Major has introduced innovations. Up till now, in accordance with our Major’s theories, we have been a strictly business community, our energies concentrated chiefly upon what the boys call P. and S.—pick and shovel. But now with the coming of the new detachment we have blossomed out with all sorts of military frills. Armed sentinels marching their beats in a military manner fairly encumber the camp. One is halted and challenged a half-dozen times on one’s way home from the canteen at ten o’clock in the evening. I am startled out of my dreams in the middle of the night by shouts of, “Corporal of the Guard, Post Number Four!” under my very window. And the best part of it is that these “Long Boys,” never having had so much as the A-B-C of military training, make the drollest imitations of real soldiers that ever were. The atmosphere at Headquarters has of late, I gather, been slightly tinged with electricity. But the boys belonging to the older organizations in camp have been enjoying themselves to an unholy degree “stuffing” the new arrivals with ghastly tales of air-raids, gas bombs, and Serial machine-gun barrages.

As in all huts, we have a big map of France tacked to the wall where the boys can have easy access to it. After one of these maps has been up a short while, it is always a simple matter when glancing at it, to locate one’s self—one has only to look for a dirty spot; a little later, countless more grimy fingers having in the meantime been applied, one looks for the hole. Yesterday one of our new friends came to me and asked:

“Please, Ma’am, could you tell me where that there place, ‘No Man’s Land’ that they talk about in the papers is? I’ve been a-lookin’ an’ a-lookin’ an’ I can’t find it on the map nowhere.”

Along with the new engineers Nanny arrived in town. Nanny is an Alabama goat, smuggled on board the transport wrapped up in one of the boys’ overcoats. Her fleece is pure white and she is fat as a little butter-ball. Already she is one of our most distinguished citizens. Possessed of an adventurous spirit, she makes herself free of every house in town, being particularly fond of climbing stairs and appearing at unsuspected moments in odd corners of one’s billet. Madame explains the attraction here: “She smells an American, you see!” which is a quaint thought. Nanny is the pet detestation of the Adjutant, for she has a penchant for straying into his office and nibbling at every paper within reach. Already several valuable documents have disappeared down her greedy little throat. Last night, in revenge, one of the boys in the Adjutant’s office, armed with a pot of bright red paint, painted Nanny in “dazzle” designs. Today she is a sight.

This morning I was puzzled to observe that a considerable number of the newcomers were wearing pink tickets in their hats.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Them? Them’s meal tickets!” They explained; the report had gone around that the chow of one of the companies was of superior quality; immediately the chow line of that same company had assumed an inordinate length. The mess sergeant, unable, since the company was so new, to distinguish his own men from the self-invited guests, had found it necessary to attach tags to the company.

With the coming of the new engineers, the sale of one article in stock has swelled to unprecedented quantities. One member of the force is fairly kept busy from morning until night cutting off chunks of chewing tobacco. Texas and Oklahoma, it seems, have unlimited capacities for this commodity. Now with all due respect to the honourable American tribe of chewers, this indulgence raises a very delicate question for the canteen lady in whose charge rests the appearance of the hut. The scrap-boxes are already in a bad way, I frankly advocate spittoons, but our detail, who is a very superior lad, known among his cronies as “The Infant” because of his pink cheeks and innocently solemn air, flatly refuses. There are some things, he declares, to which he will not stoop, and he grows very stiff and red in the face if I hint at it.

“I have discussed the matter,” he told me yesterday, “with several very eminent chewers, and they all agree that there isn’t the slightest necessity for their behaviour!”

There may not be any necessity,—how am I to judge? But there is a very actual and urgent state of affairs. And what is one to do about it?

Abainville, August 13.

The hut is finished. Now if at any time Marshal Foch or General Pershing or President Poincaré should happen this way, we could say: Come in, gentlemen, and behold us; don’t we look nice?

The main part of the hut, the big auditorium, is done in creamy yellow and brown with rafters of bright blue, the windows hung with curtains of sumptuous orange chintz. The writing-room is blue and yellow too, with green and yellow curtains on which, in a bower of branches, black-birds perch; runners of the same material lie across the writing tables, the practical advantage of this pattern being that whenever anyone spills a bottle of ink on a runner, it merely gives the effect of one more black-bird. In each window of the writing-room is a little pot with a scarlet geranium, while the walls of both writing-room and auditorium are bright with beautiful French posters.

But the best of all the hut, to my mind at least, is the Tea Room,—so-called until we think of something better to name it,—for the Tea Room was my own particular pet scheme. According to the plans, the ell behind the canteen counter was cut up into half a dozen little rooms. By eliminating part of the central hall, the “mess-room” and the “ladies’ room” and moving the office out to an unused corner by the movie machine booth, we got space for a fair-sized room connected by a serving-window with the kitchen. Our matched lumber having run short we used rough lumber and covered it with burlap; each strip was a different weave and texture, to be sure, but all the same it was burlap! The woodwork and little tables we painted a bright green, hung vivid green curtains at the windows, then, taking the covers of chewing tobacco boxes, stained these green too, pasted in the centre of each a bright little water-color reproduction cut from an English art magazine, tacked them up on the walls, and voilà! as pretty a little room as could be found short of Paris!

In the Tea Room we serve pink lemonade, hot chocolate, jam sandwiches, cookies and canned fruit. The boys are living on a diet of what they call “goat’s meat” at present;—whenever it is time for a chow line to form you can hear a chorus of bleats and baas half across the camp,—and so sick of this have they become that many will sup off chocolate and sandwiches in the Tea Room by preference. Yesterday I took a chance and tried making a ten gallon boiler full of raspberry tapioca pudding, using the bottled fruit juice. At first the boys were inclined to be cautious.

“What do you call that?”

“How would raspberry slum do?”

“Well, I’ll try anything once!”

But after the first taste it went all too fast.

“Say, are there any seconds on this?”

“Lady,” said one lad solemnly to me, “with pudding like that I could stay four years more in the army.”

One of the divisions from the lines arrived in this area, a few days ago, for a short period of rest. A number of the men are encamped up on the hill near the old Artillery School and they come straying down to our hut. Poor lads, it is pitiful to see how wonderful it seems to them to be in a place that is clean and pretty.

“This looks like a bit of heaven to me,” declared one boy.

Another, sitting in the Tea Room stirring his chocolate, commented, “Gee, this is a swell place in here. You ought ter get some fancy name for it.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Well I should think,” he looked around, “you might call it Canary Cottage.”

Yet occasionally I wonder if it really all pays, as when I pick out the cigar butts which, in spite of the trash boxes beneath the tables, the boys will persist in sticking in the vases of flowers and planting in the geranium pots, or when, as last night, I catch a fellow using one of the beautiful chintz runners from the tables with which to wipe the mud off his boots.

Abainville, August 21.

Talk kills men.

Don’t talk. The walls have ears.

Keep mum, let the guns talk for you.

Thus are we placarded. Every hut, every café, every garage, every place of any sort where the A. E. F. may meet together and indulge in conversation, now bears a board with some such legend printed on it and after each terse warning is the terser admonition; Read G. O. 39. A campaign of silence is on foot. These catchy phrases, American variations on the classic French line: Taisez vous, méfiez vous, les oreilles ennemies vous ecoutent!—Be still, beware, the ears of the enemy are listening!—are to be perpetual reminders to us that we are all too prone to gossip indiscreetly.

As to just what one may say and mustn’t say, I for one confess, not having read G. O. 39, that I am in a quandary. I find myself hesitating before mentioning the fact that we had baked beans for dinner. As for talking about the weather, why that leads naturally to the subject of moonlight nights, and moonlight nights, as every one knows, now imply not romance but air-raids and air-raids are of course a tabooed topic. Indeed I am beginning to have a sneaking conviction that perhaps it would be better to discard speech entirely and take to conversing in dumb show.

Sometimes some small thing that comes to one’s attention will crystallize a difference between two races so sharply as to be startling. This was impressed on me the other day by two posters. Both the French and American authorities have recently issued warnings to their soldiers concerning the practice of riding on the tops of railroad cars, since this habit has led to a number of casualties. The French poster reads something like this:

Whereas it has been brought to the attention of the Commissioner of Railroads, that various accidents have occurred resulting from the practice indulged in by soldiers of obtruding a portion or the whole of their bodies beyond the limits of the car; it is urgently requested that the soldiers in transit upon the railroad should henceforth restrict themselves to the interior of the cars.

The American sign runs thus:

“If you want to see the next block, keep yours inside! Your head may be hard but it’s not as hard as concrete!” Pithily it states the number of casualties resulting from this trick, explains that the French bridges and tunnels only allow six inches clearance above the top of the cars, and ends;

“Your life may not be worth anything to you, but it may cost your country $10,000.”

But the triumph of American sign art, a specimen of which hangs in the Adjutant’s office, is the gas-defense poster. It starts off with the Gas School slogan:

“There are two classes of men in a gas attack, the quick and the dead,” proceeds to poetry:

“The hard-boiled guy said gas was bunk,

It couldn’t hurt you, only stunk....

The hard-boiled guy went up the line,

Fritz spilled the mustard good and fine;

And now some people wonder why

It’s flowers for the hard-boiled guy,”

and ends with the admonition that seems a little ironical to one who must struggle to make green wood burn in a broken-down French range; “Cook with it, don’t croak with it.”

Today we put up a sign fill of our own over the counter. For some reason, transportation probably, there has been a most distressing lack of supplies in this area recently. Not only are we suffering, but the Salvation Army and even the sales commissaries have all been stricken with the same famine. Indeed I was told of one commissary which bore the warning; “We have salt, mustard and baking powder. That’s all.” Tired of replying several hundred times a day; “I’m awfully sorry but we haven’t any so-and-so,” I made a sign which was a list of all the “haven’t gots” and tacked it up over the counter. Thinking to be funny I included strawberry ice-cream among the rest, to be promptly punished by an innocent-eyed youth who inquired hopefully; “What kind of ice-cream have you got?”

Another boy read through the list once, twice, then looked up at the Infant disgustedly.

“Why don’t you put ‘Hell!’ at the bottom of it?” he queried.

“’Pears to me it would be easier to make a list of the things you have got,” suggested another.

A little while longer and if no help comes, we shall be doing this. I can see that sign in my mind’s eye now. It will read something like this:

We have

chewing tobacco

indelible pencils

and

shaving brushes

Abainville, September 2.

Once a month, according to schedule, the whole personnel of the division is summoned to Y. Headquarters at Gondrecourt for a conference. Formerly these conferences were largely religious in significance, consisting of much righteousness with a slight leaven of business. Each one in turn was looked forward to as a pious but unprofitable duty and evaded when possible,—which wasn’t often. Now with a change in the directorship the conferences have taken on an almost entirely practical tone. Incidentally they have gained amazingly in popularity. For now one can attend a conference with confidence that during its progress one will surely glean more than one quaint bit of human comedy.

Today it was the Aviation Camp Secretary who supplied most of the spice. This is an odd but very earnest little man whom I shall always remember as I saw him at the Gondrecourt railway station last May, starting for Paris dressed up in a “tin hat” and a gas mask. Whether this was in order to bluff Paris into thinking that he had come straight from the front, or whether this was to protect himself against the assaults of Big Bertha while in the city, I could not determine, but never since have I been able to take the gentleman quite seriously.

The Aviation Secretary created the first sensation by rising suddenly to his feet and reading a motion to the effect that the Gondrecourt Division of the Y. M. C. A. should go on record as registering a protest against “the wicked state of the Paris streets,” citing Mr. Edward Bok and his action in the case of the streets of Liverpool. For a moment no one said a word, then a secretary arose and requested that the motion be amended to read more clearly, as in its present form it might be taken to refer to the condition of the paving, or the criminal recklessness of the taxi drivers. The Warehouse Man then solemnly proposed that in view of Mr. Bok a ruling should be passed that while in Paris all secretaries should be required to travel by the subway or in a cab. I wanted to ask if it wouldn’t do just as well if special prayers should be offered for each secretary on his departure for the wicked city, but refrained.

No sooner had the excitement over the Paris streets subsided, than the Aviation Secretary was on his feet again with a second resolution. This was in effect a petition to the Paris office that they send us proportionately less tobacco and more sweets for sale in the canteens. This precipitated a fiery argument, the smokers lined up against the non-smokers. Listening to the non-smokers you became convinced that the manhood of America was on its way to ruin through excessive cigarettes; listening to the smokers you became equally certain that the war would be won by tobacco smoke. The situation became so tense one could almost see the sparks in the air. In the end the smokers had it.

The next thrill was caused by one of the women workers who in the course of a speech took occasion to deprecate the housekeeping abilities of the men secretaries. On Fourth of July, she declared, when the chocolate cups from all over the area had been sent into Gondrecourt for the celebration there, some of them had been discovered to be in a shocking state. These had later been traced to a hut where there was no woman worker. Instantly the Aviation Secretary was up again. This charge was a personal matter, he declared, as the cups in question had been his. However he denied the implication. The cups had been perfectly clean when they left the hut, they must have become soiled en route. And so the conference comedy is played out.

At the town of X. there is a secretary who declares he is devoting his life to the service of the Lord. Some years ago he found himself becoming deaf. So he told the Lord that if He would restore his hearing he would spend the rest of his days in performing good works. He was cured. Last week he created a corner on eggs in this vicinity by buying one hundred and twenty-five dozen at five francs per. Now he is reselling them for six. Wanting eggs badly to make custard for some sick boys here, and not being able to obtain them any other way, I walked over to X. and bought two dozen. When I got home I counted them, there were just twenty-three. Surely the Lord got the worst of that bargain!

Abainville, September 9.

Something is going to happen.

We have been used to seeing the French Army go by; interminable lines of camions, so many feet apart, rolling through the town for hours on end. Sometimes we have seen a section pass through on its way to the front, only to return again some ten days later. Once seen, a French camion train is never forgotten, for each automobile section bears painted on its sides the distinctive insignia of the unit. These are sometimes droll, sometimes sentimental, but always cleverly designed and usually striking,—a poilu drinking pinard from his canteen, a pelican, a polar bear, a dancing monkey, a soldier embracing a peasant girl, a grinning Algerian’s head in ear rings and a red fez, a gendarme holding up a threatening club.

But now by day, by night, it is the Americans who are passing through, their faces set toward the front, on troop-trains, in camions, on foot. Coming home from the canteen in the evening one hears the heavy rattle that means artillery on the move, and standing by the roadside peering through the darkness one can just discern horses and caissons, slat-wagons, supply-wagons and, looming ominously in the dim light, the formidable bulk of the great guns.

Night before last I was awakened by the sound of troops passing, a regiment of infantry on the march. I lay and listened; the tramp, tramp, tramp of the rhythmic feet was unvarying, incessant, then came a break. The order had been given to halt for a rest. The boys were evidently sitting down by the edge of the road. But though they rested they were by no means still.

“Oh Mademoiselle!” they entreated the dark and unresponsive houses, “Oh, Mademoiselle! Deux vin rouge toot sweet s’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle!”

They swore genially. They sang snatches of Hail, hail the gang’s all here and Tipperary. One boy had a mouth organ which he played with vim. Someone introduced a barnyard motif and they were off, crowing and cackling, mooing and bleating, imitating every animal known to domestic life. They sounded like schoolboys off for a holiday and my God! they were soldiers on the march to the front, their faces set to the battle!

Tonight as we came home from the hut, we were startled by a strange sight. The sky was clear, except for one dark mass shaped like a cloud of smoke which hung above the horizon to the north. As we looked, suddenly the under side of the cloud turned an angry crimson, then in a moment grew dark again. A minute later the red glow showed again only to fade but and be repeated. We knew that the angry light must be the glare reflected from the flashes of the guns which were belching red death across the lines. All at once the battle-field seemed very near.

Abainville, September 14.

We have taken the Saint Mihiel salient! The news came in yesterday over the wires. At first we couldn’t believe it. We have heard so many wonderful but alas! too hopeful things over those wires! But now the newspapers have proved it, with their maps showing the salient cut off as clean as by a knife. And if we wanted concrete proof, why we have that too. They have sent for a detail of engineers from Abainville to build hurry-up prison pens. They simply haven’t any place to put the thousands of captive Germans. The detail set out in high spirits looking forward to doing a brisk business in souvenirs; already reports have come in to the effect that buttons and shoulder-straps may be had in exchange for a cigarette, and a ring for a sack of five-cent “smoking.”

The inhabitants of Saint Mihiel, they say, were terror-stricken at the sight of the Americans. When our troops first entered the town they believed the city had been retaken. The Americans, they thought, were Austrians. No one in Saint Mihiel had ever seen an American; they hadn’t even known America was in the war!

But even in Saint Mihiel I don’t believe that there was any greater joy than the joy that was here in our own kitchen. Madame who helps us with the dishes at the hut is the daughter of the refugee schoolmaster, a shy, sensitive, appealing little woman, girl-like in spite of her half-grown daughter. When we told her that the salient had been taken she went white and trembled. And what of Vieville? she begged; Vieville, her own little village? We got the map and showed it to her. Sure enough, there was Vieville and the new line stretching the other side of it! It was true past doubting. Madame shivered. “I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” she told us and there were sobs in her voice while she smiled at us. She tried to go on with scrubbing the floor, but she couldn’t. Would we mind if she ran home for a minute? She must tell the news to Papa and Maman. But certainly, stay as long as you like! we told her. In an hour she was back again, to go about her work in a dazed uncertain fashion, smiling tremulously while the tears stood in her eyes. We must get someone to take her place at the canteen, she told us,—they would be going back to Vieville right away. It was plain to see that she would have liked to start that very moment. We said nothing. Of course it was impossible. Vieville though liberated was close to the lines. When I looked at Madame so happy, so confidently eager to return to her home, I sickened to think of the ruin that probably awaited her. How do they have the courage to face it, these French people? I thought of the words of the old schoolmaster: “We are living under tension now, it is the strain that keeps us up. When the war is over there will be a terrible reaction.” They have been brave, so brave, these peasant villagers, but how will they bear the future? Where will they be swept when they are caught in the fearful ebb of that reaction?

Already odd-looking little German narrow-gauge engines and freight cars have begun to appear in the yards, part of the Saint Mihiel booty. It does the eyes good to look at them.

One doesn’t want to hope too greatly, but is it possible that this may be the beginning of the end?

Abainville, September 18.

Last night they bombed Gondrecourt. We were startled out of our sleep by the explosions. Lying in bed I could hear the angry growling gr-gr-gr which distinguishes the German plane, as it flew over Abainville headed back towards the lines. Would it drop another bomb? It seemed to take an interminable time to pass over us. Finally the growling hum grew faint, died away. Then the real excitement of the night began. Swarming into the streets, men, women and children, they proceeded to turn the occasion into a social event. Standing in the square in the moonlight, all talking at once and all talking at the top of their voices, they discussed, narrated, compared, commented, sympathized, while high above all the din I could hear Madame’s voice in semi-hysterical outbursts of emotion. How they could find so much to say about it I can’t imagine. If Hindenburg’s whole army had suddenly appeared in Gondrecourt they couldn’t have been more excited. I went to sleep and left them still busy analyzing, as I took it, their psychological reactions.

This morning we learned that the bombs, falling at the edge of the town, had injured nothing except a few trees.

“What would you do if they should start to bomb Abainville?” I asked Madame when she brought me my morning toast and chocolate.

“I? I would go to the church.”

“What you, the infidel! You who never go to mass!”

“I know.” Madame smiled a little sheepishly. “And yet all the same, one would feel safer there.”

At the canteen a lieutenant who was just finishing his course at Gondrecourt came in.

“Nobody can imagine who should have wanted to bomb the school,” he declared, “unless it was some former pupil.”

“Why I was told that the Gondrecourt School was the ranking school of France!” I exclaimed.

“Made a mistake in the last syllable,” he responded sourly, “it should have been spelled e-s-t.”

But if the inhabitants of Abainville have experienced no losses through air-raids yet, they have nevertheless, suffered a minor casualty. Victor, the town simpleton, the genial, harmless Victor, was knocked down by a passing automobile yesterday and became separated from his left ear in the ensuing confusion. Poor wretch! I saw him this morning hobbling down the street with a cane, his head swathed in bandages, but the same old cheerful smile on his half-wit face, as he cocked one eye warily on the look-out for approaching autos. Meanwhile a heated controversy is being waged between the medical officers of Abainville as to whether or not that ear might after all have been saved.

Saint Malo, Brittany, September 23.

Today I took tea with a Baroness, not only I, but about eighty odd members of the A. E. F. here en permission like myself. Our hostess was an American lady, the widow of a French Baron; the tea a weekly party held at her Château out in the country, to which all boys on leave in this Brittany area are invited.

We took the funny little narrow-gauge train from Saint Malo, a “mixed” train and so crowded by the tea party that the boys must ride in the baggage car and on the flat freight cars, and started our journey out to Châteauneuf. The feature of the train trip was the blackberries. Here in Brittany these grow all along the roadsides, the bushes topping the narrow earth-covered walls like dykes that serve for fences. Strangely enough in this land of thrift, the blackberries go untouched, untasted. A Frenchman who lectured to us last spring declared that as a child he was warned not to eat them: they would give him lice, he was told. This, he explained, was the method which French parents took to dissuade their children from eating berries which, growing along the roadsides, would be full of dust—a quaint scruple to find among people ordinarily so superior to sanitary considerations! But the Americans had no such superstitions; at every cross-roads stop we made, the boys swarmed off the cars and fell upon the wayside bushes. I tasted some that one of the boys brought back for me. Compared to our blackberries at home they were flat and flavorless, but anyway they were fruit and they were free and that was all the A. E. F. demanded.

Arrived at Châteauneuf, we must first file through the reception room where each and all of us shook hands with the Baroness, a gracious, stately old lady dressed in black, and then out upon the lawn beyond the long ivy-covered, many-gabled house, to sit upon the grass and drink our tea. But tea was a misnomer unless it might have been the sort which the English call “high tea,” it was a supper; salad, sandwiches, buttermilk and fruit punch served on real china plates and in dainty goblets. Many a covetous eye I saw fixed on the silver forks with the coronets engraved on them, while the whispered word “souvenir” caught my ear, but to the boys’ credit I am glad to say that, as far as I know, they one and all resisted this temptation.

After supper the boys sang and then we were invited to go through the house and wander about the grounds and garden. Coming back to the house after having made the rounds, the boy who was with me suddenly stopped stock-still.

“Well I’ll be darned!”

Before us wound a tiny stream and perched on its bank an old, old peasant woman was busy scrubbing what was evidently the Château wash. The boy turned and looked at me despairingly, “And for all that’s such a fine house,” he groaned, “I suppose there ain’t so much as a speck of plumbing in the whole blamed building!”

On the lawn we found games were in progress. All the youngsters from the neighborhood had assembled to watch the Americans at the tea party. At first they had hung shyly on the outskirts, but now a lad from the air service had started them to romping. Taking hold of hands a long line of these little gamin would pursue a soldier victim, encircle him, bring him to earth, then pile on him, holding him a helpless prisoner until he bought his liberty with a ransom of cigarettes, gum or coppers. It was a wonderful game for the children but I could not help but watch with apprehension, every time there was a pig-pile, to see where all those wooden shoes would land.

Coming home, we walked to the little fishing village next door and took the train there. As this visit to the village is also a weekly affair, all the inhabitants were on their door-steps to greet us, the women with their red cheeks, dressed invariably in black dresses and little stiffly starched net caps. We went into the church with its array of votive offerings in the shape of tiny models of fishing boats and then, on our way to the station, stopped to view, over the hedge, the picture-book garden of one old fisherman in which the trees and shrubs were all clipped and trained into the quaintest shapes—peacocks and animals and little ships. As the crowd moved on I lingered. An old man leaning on a cane, who had been watching from the roadside, stepped forward and spoke to me. He was the owner of the garden. He wanted to express to me his gratitude to America, America who had saved France! “Ah! Vive l’Amérique!” The old fellow’s tribute, unsolicited and unpremeditated evidently, touched me deeply.

Abainville, October 4.

While I was away it seems several things occurred. For one, we lost Nanny. Whether some enterprising mess sergeant thought the day’s menu would be improved by the addition of kid pie, whether some French family lured her away to be interned in their back yard, or whether, as one might more darkly suspect, the Adjutant had something to do with the matter; nobody knows. The bare fact confronts us: Nanny has disappeared.

We have also lost one of our most picturesque customers. This was a handsome young Greek with a beautiful curled mustache, named Niccolo. He used to hold up the chocolate line, while, his eyes fairly shooting fire, he rolled up his sleeves and showed me the scars of the bayonet wounds which he received fighting the Turks. “The German, he just the same the Turk! I tella the Captain he letta me go front, killa ten, twenty, hundred Germans!” Why such a bloodthirsty soul as his should be cribbed, cabined and confined in an engineer regiment, he never explained. Just before I went away on leave a detail of prisoners from the guard-house arrived at the hut one morning to scrub the floor. To my regret I noticed Noccolo was among them. Niccolo, however, did not seem to mind, he was quite happily occupied with telling the others how the work should be done.

“That feller’s nuts,” complained a fellow-prisoner to me, “he spends all his time when he’s in the brig, tryin’ to read the Bible to us.”

While I was away they sent him to the Gondrecourt hospital on suspicion of insanity. The other night he escaped and made his way back to Abainville clad in his hospital pajamas, only to be caught and taken back again. Poor Niccolo with his beautiful mustache and his fiery spirit! I am sorry he never had the chance to get those Germans.

Worst of all, the Y. is in disgrace with the officers. It came about through the matter of seats at the movies. The officers wanted to come to the shows and they also wanted seats reserved for them; naturally they wanted the best seats. Now this is always a vexed and delicate problem in a hut, for if the officers ask for reserved seats one can’t very well refuse them, and yet to grant them is to raise resentment among the men. When I left the matter was hanging at loose ends. Shortly afterwards our Secretary, who is more distinguished for sentimentality than tact, had an inspiration; he would put it up to the men. Undoubtedly when the case was laid before them, their nobler natures would be touched and they would discern that it was their patriotic duty to voluntarily relinquish the best seats in the house to their military superiors. So one night just as the show was due to start the Secretary walked out onto the stage and made his little speech, ending with the appeal:

“And now boys, where shall we put the officers?”

A perfect roar answered him. “Put ’em on the roof! Put ’em on the roof!”

It was frightfully embarrassing. The officers were furious. They withdrew and called a mass-meeting to consider the matter. What the exact statute that covered the case was I don’t know. I suppose the crime was one of a sort of military lèse Majesté. Anyway the Secretary had indisputably laid himself liable to a court-martial. In the end, however, the officers decided that as long as the case was one of stupidity rather than malice, they would let the Secretary go with a warning.

And now they have stationed spotters among us! The hut, it seems, has proved to possess an all too potent charm for boys who should by rights be engaged at “pick and shovel” and other uninviting but necessary occupations. In view of this the authorities have taken drastic action; passes must now be issued to the boys to allow them to enter the hut during work hours, and alas for the unhappy lad who ventures in without a permit, the lynx-like eye of the amateur detective detail is sure to light upon him!

Abainville, October 11.

Nanny has returned! She was found tethered in a back-yard in a nearby village. Since the French household which claimed her as their lawful property refused to relinquish her peacefully, she was taken by storm. There was a scrimmage, the neighbors rallied to their friends’ assistance. But the two lads who had been the discoverers managed to break away bearing the struggling Nanny with them and, followed by the whole village shouting “Stop thief!” gained their truck and rolled triumphantly away. No longer, however, does Nanny wander at large, innocently trimming the villagers’ cabbage rows, or slipping slyly into the Adjutant’s office to sample his latest orders. Nanny is under guard. The engineers are taking no chances.

Yesterday we acquired a kitten,—a wild-eyed yellow scrap brought in last night by a lad as an offering. The boys immediately christened her “The O. D. Cat.” Every time I give her a caress some one of the boys leaning over the counter is sure to remark: “Gee, wish I was a cat!”

“But what shall I feed her?” I questioned, thinking of the difficulty of fresh milk.

“Corn willy and cognac! What else would you give an O. D. cat?” they chorused.

“And where shall she spend the night?”

“I’ll keep her for you ma’am,” volunteered a brawny Texan. “She’ll sleep right in the bunk longside o’ me.”

This morning the canteen was full of tales of the night. “Yes sir! he tied her up to a post with a rope as big around as your arm! An’ the pore cat nearly hanged herself. She hollered all night long!”

This the Texan emphatically denied; he had a tale all of his own to tell however.

“There was a mouse last night in the barracks. It was the littlest mouse you ever seen, but it chased that cat all around them barracks. Yes ma’am, it sure did run that cat ragged!”

“Did you give her any breakfast?” I asked, disdaining any comment on his story.

“Sure ma’am! I gave her a saucerful of cognac.”

“You never did!”

“Yes, an’ it did that cat good, it did. Soon’s she’d lapped up that saucer; ‘Bring on your mouse!’ she says.” He shook his head reflectively. “My, but that cat sure was feelin’ its strength this mornin’!”

“Waste cognac on a cat! That’s a likely story for that guy to be telling!” was the single comment of the bystanders.

Right here I wish to record a formal apology to the Secretary at X who sold me the six-franc eggs a month ago. Today I was talking to the Top Sergeant whom I encountered on my way home and who carried my basket for me. From something he let fall I now more than suspect it was he who accounted for that twenty-fourth egg!

Abainville, October 16.

His real name, of course, is Horace but since Madame refers to him as ’Oreece, as ’Oreece he must go,—’Oreece is our new detail. He is cautious, conscientious and slow. If ’Oreece ever showed signs of having spunk enough to do something that was really bad, I would feel that there was hope for him. Madame, who adores the Infant, is very cold to ’Oreece. The other day she requested him to save her all the cigar stubs he found while sweeping. She wanted them for an old derelict of a Frenchman who is a sort of scavenger around camp. Poor old papa could smoke the butts nicely in his pipe she declared. But ’Oreece was so disobliging as to turn his nose up at their proposal. Anyway ’Oreece cuts the bread for the jam-sandwiches very, very nicely.

Three nights ago we had an air-raid alarm. The evening’s programme was over but the hut was still full of boys. Suddenly without any warning, all the lights went out. We looked out the door, the camp was in total darkness. In the machine-gun pit nearby we could hear quick excited orders interspersed with curses,—the gunners were getting ready to stand off the aeroplanes. The boys left the hut. We waited for a while and then, getting tired of the dark, went home. The planes didn’t show up; I went to bed feeling that it had been a case of Hamlet without Hamlet.

Last night we were in the middle of a movie show when a shattering explosion sounded outside. Back in the kitchen where I was serving hot chocolate to the Tea Room line, everyone started and stared. Was it a raid? Surely that was a bomb! There was another explosion. Then the lights went out. So it was the real thing! I seized the Cash-box and stood pat. Another crash; instantly outside there was a stampede. In the dark it was impossible to see just what was happening, but from the sounds it appeared that about seven hundred pairs of hob-nailed shoes were doing double-quick time out the doors. In less time than one could believe the auditorium was empty. I heard Madame’s voice behind me in staccato exclamations. Somebody scratched a match and lit a candle, a little group of boys were still standing at the window waiting for their chocolate, their faces looked a bit white I thought. Then the Infant put his head out the kitchen door:

“Why, the lights in camp are all on!” he exclaimed.

A boy came up to the window. “They’re practising at the school,” he told us. “I heard the other day that they were going to pull some stunts in the trenches tonight.”

“So that was it!”

The lights flashed on.

“But why did they go out?” I asked confused. Nobody could explain it.

At that moment ’Oreece drifted into the kitchen, he wore a very pale and apologetic grin.

“’Oreece!” I gasped, “Did you—”

“I turned the lights off,” he admitted. “I knew where the switch was. I thought it was a raid.”

I glared disgusted: “And a nice night’s work you’ve done!”

My friend the Texan strolled up to the deserted counter.

“I met ’em all coming down the road,” he remarked. “Gee, but it was like the retreat of a whole division!”

Today the boys have been asking to tease me: “Where were you in the Great Air-Raid?”

“I? Oh, I was under the kitchen-table,” I reply.

Abainville, October 23.

The Chief has just brought me great news. I am to have a hut all of my own. I am to be head cook, bottle-washer, and grand high secretary all in one. And I am to go out into the wilds of France and start a new hut alone.

It seems there is an ordnance depot at a village called Mauvages about six miles north of here. The camp itself is small, some two hundred men, but the town has a large billeting capacity and additional bodies of troops will be stationed there from time to time. The C. O. of the Ammunition Reclamation Camp,—that is its official title,—has requested that a hut be established there. With the personnel in its present state no man secretary, says the Chief, can be spared, but if I care to undertake the job on my own I am welcome to it. And if after two months or so of solitary confinement “out in the sticks,” as the boys say, I get to hankering too badly for the flesh-pots of civilization, why they will arrange to have me relieved. Need I say that I snapped up the offer on the spot? I had asked to be transferred from Abainville some while ago, as the conditions here have been none too congenial, but to have a hut all of my own is beyond any luck that I had dared dream.

I would like to sling my old kit bag over my shoulder, tuck a chocolate container under one arm and a case of cigarettes under the other, and catch the first truck that passes bound northward for Mauvages. But it seems they won’t let me go until a New Lady comes here to take my place. They have telegraphed to the office at Nancy. If the New Lady doesn’t come quick, I have a good mind to go A. W. O. L. and start my canteen willy-nilly.

Meanwhile I am planning plans. Because of the grey chill days of winter I am going to paint my hut inside the brightest sunshiny yellow I can find, hang it with orange curtains, and then in honor of the ordnance, christen it the Pumpkin Shell!