On the morning of December 11th a number of the boys at the hospital at Tours received orders to prepare for a trip to the coast. This was the most welcome news that we could have heard and we hastily got our personal belongings together. It was about 10 o'clock when we were placed in ambulances and taken from the hospital. We were driven to the railroad station about a mile distant, and there assigned to quarters in an American hospital train.
This was the first American train I had been on since I arrived in France, and it certainly was a great relief to me to know that we were not to be crowded into one of those uncomfortable, stuffy and tiresome French trains. The American hospital train furnished an excellent example of American efficiency, and when contrasted with the French trains. I could not but think how much more progressive our people are than Europeans. We had everything that we needed, and plenty of it. We enjoyed good beds, good food, and sufficient room to move around without encroaching upon the rights and the good natures of others. We pulled out of Tours with no regrets on what was our most enjoyable train trip while in France. It was enjoyable for two reasons—first, we were traveling in comfort and as an American is used to traveling, and secondly, we were traveling toward home.
The trip down the Loire Valley followed practically the same route that we took on our way from Brest to Tours. The scenes, of course, were very much the same, except that the country now wore its winter coat, while it was mid-summer on my previous trip.
We arrived in Brest on December 13th, and to our surprise, we learned that President Wilson had just previously landed there, and the city had gone wild with enthusiasm over him. A tremendous crowd gathered at the station to greet him. Bands were playing and the occasion was a gala one. Our train stopped about a quarter of a mile away from the station, where the President greeted a mass of French people and American soldiers. I regret very much that I was unable to get a view of the President while he was at Brest; that was not my fortune. We did, however, see his train pull out on its journey to Paris.
Soon after we arrived at Brest we were told that we would be taken back on the "George Washington," the liner upon which President Wilson crossed the Atlantic, and great was our joy. However, we were soon doomed to disappointment, for orders were changed, and we were taken to the Carry On Hospital, just out of Brest. The ride to the hospital was a disagreeable one, as it had been raining and the streets were muddy and wet. The ambulance rocked more like a boat than a motor car. We were assigned quarters and given food. We met a number of boys in the various wards who were awaiting their time of departure. We asked them about how long it was after arriving at Brest before soldiers were embarked for home, and they said the time varied all the way from three to thirty days. That was not very encouraging and we were hoping that in our case it would be three days. The very next morning, however, a number of our boys received orders to get ready to depart. I was not included among them, to my sorrow, and had no idea how long I might be kept at Brest. It was only a day or two later when we were made happy by the news that our time to depart had come. It was joyful news and made our hearts beat with the joy that only a returning soldier knows.
We were loaded on the hospital ship "La France," which is a beautiful, four-funnel French liner, 796 feet in length. It was the third largest liner in use in transporting troops at that time. We took our places on the boat about noon, but the big ship laid in the harbor all afternoon, and it was not until about sundown that she started to pull out and we bade "good-bye" to "la belle France." One might think that there was a lot of cheering when the boat pulled out on the eventful afternoon of December 17, 1918, but there was not. Some of the boys, it is true, cheered heartily. Most of us, however, were too full of emotion to become wildly demonstrative. Our thoughts were on home, the folks that are dear to us, and our beloved native land, and our emotions were too strained for expression in cheers.
The vessel was manned by French, who treated us splendidly for the first two days out. After that, however, they began to skimp on our food and to give us things of poor quality. For instance, we were given coffee without sugar or milk, cereals of poor quality without even salt in them, and no fruit, though it was understood that fruit was to be a part of our diet. The boys complained bitterly at this treatment, and finally our officers, knowing that we were not being properly fed, made an examination of the ship. They found several hundred boxes of apples that were supposed to be for us, stowed away in the hold. It had been the intention of the French in charge of this boat to steal that fruit, evidently to sell it, at the expense of the wounded American soldiers on this hospital ship, who had fought and saved their country from the Hunnish hordes. We had been cheated and overcharged for everything we purchased in France, and we knew it, but it surely did hurt when we were thus treated by men whose homes we had saved at the cost of our blood. I will say this: We did not hold this kind of treatment against the French people as a whole, but to individuals who are so unprincipled and so greedy that they are willing to sacrifice the fair name of their people for a paltry gain. I might add here that it was the smallness of some of the individual "Y" workers that brought the Y. M. C. A. into such disrepute among the American soldiers in France. This simply shows how important it is for an individual to sustain the reputation of his country, or his association, as the case may be, by honorable conduct.
After our officers uncached the horde of stolen apples in the ship's hold, we were well fed and on the last two days of the journey had no complaint to make on this score.
On December 24th at 10 a.m. some far sighted individual shouted "Land" and what a welcome word it was. Columbus, watching from the deck of the Santa Maria, was not more happy when he first set eyes upon the faint outline of the new world than we were as the dim blue shoreline began to rise upon the horizon. There was a mad rush to the deck and everybody who could get out was soon watching over the rail. It was not long before the Statue of Liberty came into full view and there was joy in our hearts for we knew that at last we were home.
In a very few minutes our ship stopped and a pilot was taken aboard to guide the great vessel safely into the harbor. Next we were greeted by a yacht that steamed out beside us carrying a great sign, "Welcome Home." It was the 24th of December, and this boat carried a large Christmas tree, typical of the season.