“Huh! Ever read any history?”
“What’s on your mind now, little teacher? I read enough to pass my exams in school.”
“Then you’ve forgotten some things about American history, especially about spirit and equipment. Where was the equipment at Valley Forge? What about the troops under Washington that took the breastworks at Yorktown without a single round of powder–just bayonets? What about the war of 1812, when we had no army and the English thought we had no navy? You don’t remember those–”
“That’s just what I do remember,” Buzz interrupted, “and that’s what I’m howling about. We 60never have been prepared with anything except spirit. Right now we have a lot of good pilots over here and the air service is having to beg planes from the French and English. And here we are, sent down to this front to act as instructors to a shipless squadron, at the very time when the Germans are making ready for another big drive. It’s all wrong. Every minute is precious.”
McGee had been looking out of the window of the swaying, lurching cab that was now threading its way through hurrying traffic. “Forget it!” he said. “Give Old Man Worry a swift kick. Here we are in Gay Paree. The war’s over for twenty-four hours!”
3
To all allied soldiers on leave of absence from the front, Paris represented what McGee had voiced to Larkin–a place where the war was over for the time limits of their passes. Forgotten, for a few brief hours, were all the memories of military tedium, the roar of guns, the mud of trenches, the flaming airplane plunging earthward out of control–all these things were banished by the stimulating thought that here was the world famous city with all its amusements, its arts, its countless beauties, open to them for a few magic hours.
The fact that Paris was only a ghost of her former 61self made no impression on war-weary troopers. What mattered it, to them, that the priceless art treasures of the Louvre had been removed to the safety of the southern interior? Was it their concern that the once mighty and fearless Napoleon now lay blanketed by tons of sand bags placed over his crypt to protect revered bones from enemy air raids or a chance hit by the long range gun now shelling the city? What mattered it that famous cafés and chefs were now reduced to the simplest of menus; what difference did it make if the streets were darkened at night; who that had never seen Paris in peace time could sense that she was a stricken city hiding her sorrow and travail behind a mask of dogged, grim determination?
Paris was Paris, to the medley of soldiers gathered there from the four points of the compass, and it was the more to her credit that she could still offer amusement to uniformed men and boys whose war-weary minds found here relief from the drive of duty.
Everywhere the streets were swarming with men in uniform–French, English, Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, colored French Colonials, a few Russians who, following the sudden collapse of their government, were now soldiers lacking a flag, Scotch Highlanders in their gaudy kilts, Japanese officers in spick uniforms not yet baptized in the mud of the trenches–a varied, colorful parade of young men bent on one great common objective.