There might also have been pictures in those selfsame comfort bags of the Red Cross girls on the stone platforms of the railroad station—young women who in warm days served iced lemonade there and in cold, hot chocolate, or, when it was requested, hot lemonade; for the fact remains that lemonade was the only food or drink that many of the gassed cases could endure. And it was ready for them there—at all hours of the day or night, and at all days; even though to make that possible the girl workers would sometimes stay on duty for thirty-six hours at a stretch: without having the opportunity of divesting themselves of their clothing and so gaining a little real rest.
A final picture of Vichy might have well been a mental photograph of the "hut." This formerly had been the Elysée Palace—a gaming and amusement center of none too savory a reputation; yet with its central location on the main street, its ample lounging space, and its small theater, self-contained, it was ideal for the purposes of our Red Cross and so became a living heart of Vichy. It was the canteen or club in which some five thousand doughboys were wont to congregate each day—to write letters home, to play games, or the tireless piano, to read the newspapers or the magazines, to visit, to gossip—in every way possible to shorten days that passed none to quickly for any of them.
During the first months of its organization this Red Cross superhut did not include the entire "Palace." Gradually it spread, however, until the entire two floors of the place were busy with American Red Cross activities. And the doughboy passing from the comfortable clubrooms on the main floor—wherein, for the comfort of the convalescents, a full-fledged army commissary had been set up—upstairs found a "first-aid" room of a new sort. It was, in fact, an operating room, where expert surgery might be applied to torn and ripped and otherwise wounded uniforms. And the head surgeon was a woman—a smart, black-eyed French seamstress who could perform wonders not alone with torn buttonholes but who also possessed a facility with a hot sadiron that made her tremendously popular upon the eve of certain festal occasions.
"How would a dish of Yankee ice cream taste to-day? You know, the same sort that Blink & Smith serve down there in the Universal, at the corner of Main and First streets?"
Imagine something like that coming out of the blue, and to a boy who has been "fed up" on army cookery and who even has lost his taste for the delicacy of French cookery. You may take it direct from me that the hut there at Vichy held a kitchen and that it was a good kitchen. Can you imagine any first-rate American club that ever would fail in such an essential? And from that modest cuisine there in the pulsing heart of the bubbly town came truly vast quantities of the trivial foodstuffs that are forever dear to the stomach of the doughboy. Ice cream—of course—and small meat pies, each in its own little coat of oiled paper—and creamy custards—and, of course, once again—coffee and all manner of sandwiches, imaginable and unimaginable. And, because there were many of the doughboys who could not possibly make their way to the hut, even on crutches or in wheel chairs, a camionette drove away from its kitchen each day with seventeen gallons of ice cream tucked in it—all for the benefit of bedridden American soldier boys.
Remember, if you will, that this once disreputable Elysée Palace—in the glory of war aid becoming not only reputable but almost sanctified—held a theater; small, but completely equipped. Our Red Cross workers did not lose sight of that when they chose the place as a headquarters for their endeavors. Four days a week this became a moving-picture house—just like the Bijou or the Orpheum back home. On Wednesday French wounded—for whom comfort provisions were never too ample—were guests there of the American Red Cross, and each poilu carried away a little gift of American cigarettes—to any Frenchman the very greatest of all treasures. Saturdays were set aside for "competitive vaudeville" or an "amateur night"—very much as we saw it at Savenay. Gradually a stock company—capable at least of one-act plays—was evolved from the dramatic material immediately at hand—soldiers and Red Cross and hospital men and women workers—with the result that by Thanksgiving Day, 1918, a very creditable production entitled "The Battle of Vichy" was produced there in the hut, after which the company moved on toward the conquest of the neighboring "metropolitan" towns of Moulins and Châtel-Guyon.
Some one is going to come along some day and write the analysis of the innate desire of the American to dabble with play-acting. The plethora of war-time musical shows that became epidemic among the divisions of the A. E. F. and spread not merely to Paris—where one of these entertainments followed upon the heels of another—but eventually to New York and other cities of the country, affords interesting possibilities for the psychologist. It was a huge by-product of the war and one not entirely expected.
When the resources of the amateur Thespians of Vichy had become well-nigh exhausted, a New York professional actress—Miss Ida Phinney—who not only had real dramatic ability but considerable experience in staging and producing, was enlisted in the Red Cross service there. With her aid, the attractive little cinema theater—with its blue upholstery, its tiny boxes, and its complete and up-to-date stage equipment, even to the scenery—became a full-fledged playhouse. Stage hands and property men were assigned from the army, and Vichy began seriously to stage, costume, and produce and criticize plays. Soldiers with a knack for design took keen delight in advising as to "creations" for the wardrobes of the cast and themselves watched the garments grow into reality from inexpensive stuffs in the sewing room. A clever artist wrought a full set of stage jewelry—even to the heavy bracelets and the inevitable snake rings of the Oriental dancers—from stray scraps of shells and other metals that came to his hungry fingers, while the Red Cross sent a full complement of musical instruments down from Paris. And so the Vichy A. E. F.-A. R. C. Playhouse came into the fullness of its existence—and night after night hung out the S. R. O. sign.