In the beginning it had been one of those large combination beer gardens and music halls that always have been so very dear to the heart of the German. It was the very sort of plant that could be, and was, quickly adapted to the uses of a really big group of men. Its main bierhalle made a corking dining room for the doughboys. The meals kept pace with the apartment. Three times a day they appeared—feeding daily from 600 to 1,600 boys—and they were American meals—in fact, for the most part composed of American food products—meats from Chicago, butter and cheese from New York State, flour from Minnesota, and the like. For each of these a flat charge of two marks—at the rate of exchange then prevailing, about eighteen cents—was made. But if a doughboy could not or would not pay, no questions were asked. The Treves Enlisted Men's Club which the American Red Cross gave the A. E. F. was not a commercial enterprise. It was run by an organization whose funds were the gift of the American people—given and given freely in order that their boys in khaki might have every comfort that money might provide.
The great high-ceilinged halle held more than a restaurant. It was a reading room as well, stocked with many hundreds of books and magazines. In fact a branch of the American Library Association operated—and operated very successfully—a small traveling loan library in one of the smaller rooms of the club. Upon the walls of the vast room were pictures and many maps—maps of the valley of the Moselle, of that of the Rhine, of the Saar basin, of the operations in France. These last held much fascination for the doughboys. The most of them were of divisions which had led in the active and hard fighting, and the tiny flags and the blue-chalk marks on the operation maps were in reality placed there by their own efforts—but a few weeks and months before. It was real fun to fight the old actions over and over again—this time with talk and a pointing stick.
There were, of course, such fundamental conveniences for roaming doughboys as baths, a bootblack and a barber shop—this last equipped with chairs which the boys themselves invented and constructed; a plain stout wooden armchair, into the back of which a board—not unlike an old-fashioned ironing board—was thrust at an angle. When turned one way this board formed just the proper headrest for a shave; in the other direction it was at exactly the right angle for haircutting.
For the Officers' Club of our Red Cross at Treves, the Casino in the Kornmarkt, the heart of the city, was taken over. The fact that this was in the beginning a well-equipped club made the problem of its adaption a very slight one indeed. And the added fact that officers require, as a rule, far less entertainment than the enlisted men also simplified its operation. As it was, however, the officers were usually given a dance or a show each week—in the comfortable, large hall of the Casino. In the Enlisted Men's Club there was hardly a night, however, without some sort of an entertainment in its halle; and the vast place packed to the very doors.
The next stop after Treves in the eastbound journey from the Rhine of the man in khaki was usually Nancy. And here there were not only canteen facilities at the railroad station, but a regular Red Cross hotel—situated in the Place Stanislas, in the very heart of the town. In other days this had been the Grand Hotel, and the open square that it faced has long been known as one of the handsomest in all France. In fact, Nancy itself is one of the loveliest of all French towns; and despite the almost constant aërial bombardments that were visited upon it, escaped with comparatively minor damage.
The Red Cross hotel there was opened on September 30, 1918, and closed on the tenth of April of the following spring—had eighty-eight rooms, capable of accommodating one hundred guests, and two dormitories capable of providing for some forty more. The room charges were invariably five francs for a room—with the exception of one, usually reserved for generals or other big wigs—which rented at eight francs a night. For the dormitory beds an even charge of two francs (forty cents) nightly was made, while in the frequent event of all these regular accommodations of the hotel being engaged and the necessity arising of placing cots in its broad hallways, no charge whatsoever was made for these emergency accommodations.
For the excellent meals—served with the fullness of a good old-fashioned Yankee tavern—a progressive charge of four francs for breakfast, five francs for lunch, and six francs for dinner was made. Surely no one could fairly object to the restaurant prices, which, even in France in war-time stress, ranged from eighty cents to a dollar and twenty! In fact it was a bonanza for the American officers who formed the chief patrons of the place—although a bit of thoughtfulness on the part of some one had provided this particular hostelry with a dormitory of twelve beds and a single room with three which was held reserved for American women war workers; an attention which was tremendously appreciated by them.