Two Colored women with the American Expeditionary Forces

by Addie W. Hunton; Kathryn M. Johnson

We have told about the soldiers at Chateau Thierry and Fere-en-Tardenois, but we have not told about our race from one place to the other, about thirty miles, with stops here and there to find our way, pick up hats and caps blown away, and to repair the camions.

That night we slept at Epernay and that is still another story. There, too, we found the city crowded by Americans. We thought we would sit in the depot all night, but the sleeping crowd and steamy atmosphere drove us forth into the clean night air. We were just endeavoring to drive a bargain with the owner of a voiture for its use as a sleeping carriage, when a tiny French lady in voluminous black bombazine swept us away to her small apartment with its big feather bed. The next day, having satisfied for the time our desire for sight-seeing, we most demurely handed in “movement orders” at the Paris office.

During the war Epernay, like Bar-le-Duc and Chalons, was always just on the rim of that gulf of fire and smoke that swept Eastern France. For the most part these cities escaped with only an ugly scar here and there. Verdun saved them, for could the Crown Prince but have realized his dream, they, too, would have been as Soissons, Rheims and Chateau Thierry, mere heaps of ruins.

There were other trips over battlefields and through their tunnels that most of those who went to France had the privilege of making. But it was away from the beaten paths of travelers, and especially along the west coast of France, that these Stray Days afforded us the greatest pleasure. At St. Nazaire there were days when we would leave the noise of the camp and wander down long shady roads, by high stone walls that hid from view beautiful cottages and gardens, down steep inclines to the sea, stepping from boulder to boulder till we would be far out. Then we would rest with the breeze full of the salt of the sea blowing about us. Sometimes we would talk of home and loved ones over there in the west, sometimes of our work, but oftener we would be silent. Looking up we might see a khaki-clad form high above that would come down to us at a frightfully rapid pace. There were lovely moonlight nights when we would stand by the sea-wall on the ocean boulevard and watch the transports that so often filled the harbor, resting on the glistening waves. But there were other nights when, clad in storm raiment, we enjoyed equally as well seeing the great waves dash over the wall and across the boulevard in turbulent anger.

Now and then there would be a whole day in which we could leave the camp entirely. Then we could go to one of the many little seaside resorts about us—Pornichet, for instance, with its great stretch of white beach, quaint and quiet inns and tempting sea food. There one would go to sleep with the roar of the waves in the ears and the salt of the sea filling the atmosphere.

Now and then there would be need of supplies for our hut that the local magasins or shops could not supply, and it would afford a chance for a shopping expedition to the quaint and historical old city of Nantes. Once there we would spend most of the day in the crowded but wonderfully attractive shops. Then we would seek for a voiture with a versatile and talkative owner who would show us the points of interest in the old town that had known so much of persecution and despotism. The river Loire, now filled with supplies for the army, was once filled with barges in which hundreds of human souls were drowned. Nantes was one of the important war bases, and was always crowded by Americans.

1. Down by the Sea in France. 2. Devastated Rheims. 3. A Lighthouse off the Coast of Brittany. 4. The Druid Stones at Carnac. 5. Chamonix. 6. An old gateway at Verdun. 7. Chateau Thierry. 8. Verdun. 9. Ancient Vannes.

Another outing took us to Vannes on the Brittany coast, one of the oldest towns of France. In Celtic times it was the capital of Venetis and it takes the honor of giving Venice its name as well as colonizing the Adriatic. Because its inhabitants resisted Cæsar with so much vigor he said of them “they have bodies of iron and hearts of steel.” Looking at the everyday life of those inhabitants of the Brittany coast, one feels that time has brought few changes in conditions and customs. The men driving their cows and sheep on market day, the women and children riding in the carts or walking about the towns, all in the native costume of their class, close the door on the present and, for a time, make one a part of the past. Its old stone gateways and courts, its old squares and old passages and more than all else, its old men and women with their clattering wooden shoes, reveal how little the outer world has penetrated to that ancient spot.

A half day only left for Vannes, and Carnac with its Druid Stones almost thirty kilometres away! How was it to be done? We could not miss seeing such a wonder. There was but one way, and well for us that we did not know then all the army regulations or we would have missed this place now engraven in our memory. But we did not know, so we did the one thing possible, hired an automobile with chauffeur—both French—and sped to Carnac. It is neither beautiful nor ugly, but it is wonderful to see hundreds of gray stones rising skyward out of the heather-covered fields. So regular the rows, so silent the surroundings that one can almost believe the legend that makes them an army turned to stone. There is much of tradition and history in all of this part of Brittany.