Huts in Hell

by Daniel A. Poling

I made chocolate in the big iron bucket, and gave it away; that is, I tried to. But why dwell on that tragedy? It was better the next time. One of the men from the first-aid room gave me a few lessons while he swept out for me.

At about six o'clock a chap who had been eying me for some few minutes said, "Say, I know you; who are you?"

He was right. He had been president of a Christian Endeavor society in Newport, Va. With fine frankness he told me of uniting with the First Church of Christ there; we had met at a State Christian Endeavor convention. Another lad who had listened to the conversation remained long enough to tell me that he lived in Macon, Ga., and that he saw me first in Griffin, the same State. He was the "birdman," in charge of the carrier-pigeons, and had been in that first affair back in 1917 when Germany captured her first American prisoners. By the way, a strangely impressive sight it is to see a white dove circling above the battery to get its bearings and then flying swift and straight toward the red flag in the trenches to which its training calls it.

A considerable crowd was lingering about while I lunched out of a can of peaches and on crackers. Breakfast was brought in to me by one of the men, who carried it back from the company kitchen in my mess kit, and I took it with one hand while I "shoved the stuff" with the other. Dinner I went out for, as already related; but "lunch" was a less formal affair. While I munched away, I watched the fellows, those who were ready to go in. They were fully equipped, had their gas-masks at attention, as we all did, and were in helmets. There was very little profanity, no vileness; and some of them did not smoke. I was often surprised by the number of men who spent no money on cigarettes. As for the swearing, the Y. M. C. A. hut has an atmosphere that, while it does not stifle cursing, does make the men themselves prefer to be without it. They welcome a place that is different! The secretaries remember first that they are there to minister, and to minister to all; they do not preach at the fellows, but some of them are real geniuses. One put up a "menu" that said among other perfectly rich things, "Please don't swear; the secretary is trying to break himself of the habit."

And let us be perfectly frank about the cigarette problem that troubles so many of us. That it is a problem I am fully persuaded. Leading medical authorities in all armies recognize the fact that the nicotine bondage now fastening upon the men and women of the war-ridden nations will be a slavery of heavy chains for the next generation. Giving evidence before the city exemption appeal courts in Montreal in January, 1918, Dr. G. E. Dube said that he was appalled at the amount of illness prevailing among men of military age, and that he attributed the trouble chiefly to cigarettes.

Personally I hate the cigarette. I have seen its fine fiendishness. But to-day society has time for only absolutely "first things." Some seem to think that because the world is on fire the time is ripe for an anti-smoking crusade. I do not. Just as the next generation must carry largely the financial burden of the war, so it must solve the many physical and moral problems that this generation let fall from its hands when it gripped the sword. Personally, I have put the cigarette, for the man in the service who uses it, in the same class with the strychnine the doctor prescribes. There are hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches who would go mad, or at least become so nervously inefficient as to be useless, if tobacco were denied them. Without it they would surely turn to worse things. Many a sorely wounded lad has died with a cigarette in his mouth, whose dying was less bitter because of the "poison pill." The argument that tobacco may shorten the life five or ten years, and that it dulls the brain in the meantime, seems a little out of place in a trench where men stand in frozen blood and water and wait for death.

This statement is not a defence of the cigarette; it is an honest effort to make clear the position of the Y. M. C. A., facing an immediate crisis in a diseased world, and required to function or fail. I found splendid opportunities to help the non-smoker without appearing to "preach." When he didn't "use them," I said, "Shake, neither do I. How do we live?" When a man in trying to make even change suggested "another pack," I said, "Better try something else; you've driven enough coffin-nails to-day." In many huts Dr. George Fisher's book on tobacco is placed on the counter by the side of the cigarettes. The men have here available the positive instruction that at least does them no harm. In the educational campaign which will follow the war those who were able to adjust themselves to the peculiar needs of this abnormal time will have the greater ministry.

At nine o'clock I took down the stovepipe that ran up through the little window in the far corner of the selling-section of the canteen, and dropped the heavy gas-curtain; a little later the double gas-curtains at the door were also dropped. A good hour was spent in "cleaning up." Boxes were re-arranged with the assistance of the man who lingered; I laid the fire for the morning, and studied the stock so as to be quicker on my feet the next day. I left a few candle stubs on the table for the "gas-post," the man standing on guard to protect the soldiers in the billets, signal-corps room, and first-aid dressing-station from being surprised by a possible gas attack. All of these men were in this same dugout or series of dugouts. For another hour I wrote a few brief letters and filled out my order-blank for the next day. Our stock was very low.

It was now nearly midnight. There were no stragglers left in the canteen, and all about me I could hear the regular breathing of the tired sleepers. Putting on my helmet and pushing aside the curtains, I climbed the steep stairs, and walked for a few minutes in the chill February night beneath a cloudless sky. The guns were going ceaselessly; back and forth the huge shells moaned like tired and unwilling men; they were not tired when they landed! Down on the line the rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat of the machine guns, with the explosions so close together as to give almost the sound of ripping canvas, rang out at irregular intervals. They were spraying No Man's Land, searching for enemy patrols. The huge trucks and great wagons that had been pounding the road since early dark bringing up supplies and ammunition were still busy; it was a good night for the "mule-skinners" (mule-drivers) and for men at the wheels; they could move faster, and the moon reduced to a minimum the danger of accidents.

I stood for a minute or two by a dirty pool in the centre of what had been a formal garden, and wondered where the grace and beauty of the ancient house had gone. Only the pool, the crushed marble walls of the chateau, and the splintered trees remained of that which had been the glory of an ancient name.