After all, what is the doughboy's idea of a good time? That is the very question our Red Cross asked itself—again and again. And because the correct answer could not be evolved in a moment, established not only after it had arrived in France a Bureau of Recreation and Welfare whose real job was, after plenty of practical experimentation, to establish the correct solution of the problem. For a long time this Bureau consisted of a small desk at the Paris headquarters, a Ford camionette, and Major Harold Ober. The camionette and Ober went from village to village along the lines from Bar-le-Duc to Gondrecourt with books, magazines, tobacco, writing material, and a small moving-picture show. These efforts many times furnished the only amusement to our early troops, billeted in quiet villages, where the quaintness of French pastoral life soon lost its novelty.
From that small beginning, Ober's work grew steadily. And because the Red Cross specialized more and more in that phase of army life which was its original purpose—hospitalization—Ober's task became in turn more and more devoted to the hospital centers, large and small—until the time came in practically every hospital ward in France—where the men were not so desperately ill as to make even music an irritant—that the "rag," and "jazz," or the latest musical comedy hit direct from Broadway were constant and welcome visitors to long rows of bedridden boys. In most cases these were phonographs, and because whenever I wish to be really convincing in the pages of this book, I fall back upon figures, permit me to mention that 1,243 phonographs, calling for 300,000 needles and 29,000 records, helped relieve the tedium of the American convalescents in the hospitals of France.
And, while we are still in figures, remember that there were times—unbelievable as it may seem to some folk who were frequent visitors to our hospital wards over there—that the doughboy tired of music, canned or fresh, and turned gratefully to the printed page. To anticipate his needs in that regard, American residents in Paris and in London gave generously of their private libraries—a nucleus which soon was greatly increased by purchase. The books were sent around in portable boxes, a service which steadily grew until a library of from 1,000 to 10,000 books was maintained by the American Red Cross in each hospital—a total of some 100,000 all told, and of which a goodly proportion were histories, French grammars, dictionaries and technical works.
The demand for periodical literature was tremendous. In the months of December, 1918, alone, our Red Cross distributed nearly four million magazines and newspapers among our doughboys. Prominent among these last was the Stars and Stripes, the clever and ingenious publication of the enlisted men themselves. A special "gift edition" of this remarkable weekly was obtained from the publishers for distribution in hospitals alone, and this ran into the hundreds of thousands each month—a high limitation which was reached only when the stock of print paper began to run low. The demand upon writing paper was hardly less than that upon print. The doughboy was a regular and prolific correspondent, and before January, 1919, our Red Cross had furnished him with seven million illustrated post cards, seven and a half million envelopes, and fourteen million sheets of writing paper.
But his eternal joy was in "shows." These might be two come-uppish lads, with gloves, going it in a roped arena, a flickering lantern displaying the well-known and untiring antics of Mr. Charles Chaplin or Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, the exquisite artistes of one of the opera houses in Paris in a composition that brought unforgetable joy to the ears and memories of the many, many lovers of music in our khaki—or a homemade production of the doughboy himself. Of these the "movie" was, of course, the simplest to handle, and therefore by far the most universal. It began its A. E. F. career in France as a true "barnstormer." As early as July, 1917, a Red Cross man with a French motion-picture operator as an assistant had hied himself out from Paris, riding in one of the universal Ford camionettes, upon which had been mounted a generator and a projector. Upon arriving at an army camp, the show would be "put on"—with little fuss or delay. The smooth, whitewashed side of a stone building would make a bully screen and there was never even doubts of an audience or of its enthusiasms. For from wonderments at this additional strange contraption from the Etats Unis, the peasants and the poilus, who were its very first admirers, grew rapidly into Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin and Billie Burke fans. This taste followed closely that all-conquering admiration for our chewing gum which overcame the French and left them quite helpless.
Eventually this "movie" institution of the Red Cross overseas grew to sizable proportions, under the direction of Lawrence Arnold, of New York. At least five and sometimes fourteen performances a week were given at each of our American hospitals in France—and with a complete change of program each week even to the Pathé weekly news, which was purchased and sent overseas by the Westchester County (N. Y.) Chapter of the American Red Cross as its own special contribution. But I think that the most interesting feature of this entire work—and the most human—was the ingenious scheme by which the projectors were so adapted as to throw the pictures upon the ceilings of the wards and so give an untold pleasure and diversion to the tedious hours of our boys who were so completely bedridden as not to be able to even sit erect. And there were many such.
We have drifted for the moment quite away from Vichy and the lovely blue and white and gold theater of our Red Cross in the heart of that ancient town. While it was headquarters, it was, after all, but part of the American Red Cross show there; because while our Red Cross recognized that the biggest part of its job was taking care of the enlisted man it was by no means blind to the necessities of his officers. Which led to the regeneration—moral and otherwise—of still another well-known gambling place in the town—the smart casino in the center of the park. This became, quite quickly and easily, an officers' club for the A. E. F. One room was reserved ordinarily for the French, while at least once a week the entire place was given over to a dance.
Dancing! Neither the enlisted man nor the officer ever seemed to tire of it. Each week also the enlisted men piled up the tables and the chairs in their hut and conducted a dance of their own, of which one of the chief features was ice cream—not fox-trotting. As in the huts and canteens elsewhere across France there were never nearly enough girls to serve as partners for the men. But there were no "wallflowers." The floor manager always carried a whistle. A number of times during the progress of each number he blew it—as a signal that the men lined along the walls were privileged to "cut in" on those already dancing. And on the occasions when some restless, impetuous boy blew a whistle of his own and seized the first partner available there was ever a delightful confusion.