XVIII
FROM MARJORIE
June 20, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
Having written you a short bum letter last week, I am now going to try to make it up to you this week. I certainly have enough material, and if this cahier is not interesting, it is because I am writing very hurriedly, and not on account of lack of things to tell you.
Ever since I arrived here in Paris, I have longed more or less, and mostly more, to get up to the “front,” and to see what this war has done to the country and villages, and what modern warfare is like, anyway. I have hoped that I might get an opportunity some time, but have only hoped. It never occurred to me that I, Marjorie Crocker, would ever really get there, but I have! I warn you right now that this trip has changed my point of view in several ways, and I only hope that I shall be able to tell you what I saw in such a way that you will feel as I felt. (I am, by the bye, making a carbon copy of this letter, for I do not intend to have another “Bordeaux trip” letter experience.)
Mrs. Gage wrote to Miss Curtis some time ago, saying that she wanted to borrow her car for a few days’ trip to the front, and would Miss C. be willing to drive it for her? You can imagine that Miss Curtis was willing. I happened to be there when she was reading the letter, and remarked at once that, if anything happened, not to forget that I could always go as a chauffeur too! Then I thought no more about it, until last Friday, the 8th, when Rootie blew in to luncheon, all agog about some Mrs. W—— who wanted Miss Curtis to drive her to the front the next day, and Miss C. was in the country for a few days’ rest. As this sounded like a chance to me, I got busy, and with Rootie’s help chased up the “chance” as quick as we could! Rootie, knowing how I felt, had suggested me in the morning as a substitute for Miss Curtis, but nothing very definite had been arranged. We tore around from Dr. Shurtleff’s to the Vestiaire, and there by pure luck met Mrs. W—— and a Miss Upjohn, who was with her. After some discussions between Mrs. Shurtleff, Mrs. W. and M. X. C., as to whether I ought to try to go in Miss Curtis’s place, for there was every possibility of her returning that night, Mrs. W—— said that I was there on the scene, and she would like to try to take me in place of Miss Curtis, and we must go at once to get the name changed on the papers,—so we hopped into the Association car and beat it for the Agence de la Presse, which is the place to get papers to go to the front. I was at this stage of the game as ignorant as you are as to who Mrs. W—— was, and why she was going to the front, and what the whole game was. The only thing I could think of was that I was really going to the front. We got the papers changed easily, and I came back to the house all excitement, ready to start at six in the morning. You can imagine how I felt, for it did seem as if I was cutting Miss Curtis out of her opportunity. We stopped at Miss C.’s house to discuss things with her, and found to our delight a telegram saying that she had decided to stay over one day more, so I felt much better. Incidentally I knew that she and Mrs. Shurtleff were going up to the front later on, and that they were to stay for a week or more. After going to Mrs. Shurtleff’s and talking it over with her, we came back here and found a note saying the start was postponed until three in the afternoon. This I was glad of, for it gave me time to get ready, and also to attend the usual Saturday morning conference.
Rootie and I lunched at the Bon Marché, in celebration of the event, although I felt rottenly about going and not being able to take her along too. I thought that the ladies seemed a little vague, so I took some food with me, as I can keep going indefinitely if I am fed, as you know. I went to the Hotel Regina, as directed, at the hour set, and there met the rest of the mob. The party was to go in two cars, one a high-powered landaulet, French make, and our Ford. Mrs. W—— was the head of our party. She is about to found a work over here, has got an office, and, when she gets money and a committee, is going to have a “large work” for the Pays Envahis, so she says. She is English, and has written at times, and her excuse for going on the trip was to write up the country, send it to America, and raise money there for her work which is about to be. Miss U. is a friend. Mrs. W. was the next. I made the fourth, and chauffeur of the party. The other car contained Mr. and Mrs. Will Irwin, of “Saturday Evening Post” fame, Mrs. Norman Hapgood, and Mme. Perrin, the official guide, and her sister. Mlle. Bazin (they are daughters of one Léon Bazin, a well-known French author), and a chauffeur who looked at me in scorn! We started at about half-past three, our orders being to follow as closely as possible to the other car, and, if we lost them, to turn up at Compiègne, seventy-five kilometres distant, for dinner and to spend the night.
I am perfectly sure that the chauffeur never drove so fast in all his life before; he just whizzed out of Paris with us panting at his rear! Once out of the city, I balked and slowed down to a comfortable gait, which gave me a chance to listen to Mrs. W——'s flow of words in my ear, and enjoy the country. I could hardly believe at this stage of the game that I was really on my way to the front. We had two punctures, but, as I was carrying two extra rims, they did not bother much. Of course, the ladies thought I was “so clever” to be able to change a tire! I wonder what they expected—that I would stay by the side of the road all night with a puncture? We arrived at Compiègne at about 6.30, and found an excellent hotel. The arrangement of rooms amused me a little, for I found that they had reserved two chauffeurs’ rooms! Although the other one is a most superior being, having driven Edward VII during his stay in Paris, still I thought I preferred the hotel to the garage to sleep in, and so made my own arrangements! King Edward, as we called him, was very nice, and mended my two punctures for me, after taking me to the military field to get my gas for my trip. For once in my life, I had all the gas I wanted offered me, and did not have to pay for it! I can tell you, I took all that she would hold, and then filled five empty bidons which I had, fortunately, brought with me. We had a delightful dinner, and I for one turned in early, for I imagined that the next day would be a tiring one. The next morning was cloudy, but not rainy, and we started off at nine o’clock for Noyon, which is the headquarters for such trips as ours. We went via Bailly, where we saw our first trenches. Also No Man’s Land, of Mary Roberts Rinehart fame: the first really famous battlefield. We stopped and walked through long communication trenches, now partially filled up, all muddy and full of cobwebs and dead rats. It seemed strange to think that only last March there was fighting in those trenches, and now they are cobwebbed and falling to pieces. The officers’ dug-outs along the side of the roads, all of which have been first in French hands, then German, and now French, were particularly interesting. Each one was different; some had regular windows with pathetic attempts at curtains, some were quite palatial, others were filled with water, and all wore a deserted and much-fought-over air. The miles and miles of barbed-wire entanglements, with corresponding miles of twisty-turny trenches, screens of boughs, wire with grass tied on it, and burlap curtains, showed us quite distinctly where the original French lines were and the Boche. The land in between is now quite dry, and does not look like a lake, but like an ordinary field, criss-crossed with low barbed-wire entanglements. Here and there a grave, mostly French. We walked along the roadway, and stopped to look at a ruined farm; the buildings of cement were all shattered, except the cellar of the main house, which had a painted sign over the door, “Notre Dame des Forêts,” and then the hours of services. The interior had been whitewashed, and a rude altar built at the farther end. There were bullets, many of them, lying in front of the door. While we were looking around, an old man drove up with his wife in a rickety shay. He owned the place, and was coming for the first time to see what was left. I hated to have him get out and look. I knew his heart was breaking, and he was too old and already broken to ever be able to see it rebuilt. He was talkative, and took me out behind the barns to see his pride and joy: what once was a McCormick reaping machine, only just paid for at the outbreak of the war,—fifteen hundred francs,—now a mass of twisted, rusted iron and steel, hopelessly wrecked. He did not say much, only told what it cost, said it was his only new machine, and then walked away. I went back to the car. What in the world could I say? The others had by this time walked on farther, and I had to hurry to catch them. We inspected more dug-outs, and then went on to Noyon.
Just before entering this town, we saw our first Boche prisoners. I don’t know what a German soldier looks like ordinarily, but when shorn of his arms, buttons (taken as souvenirs), wearing a little gray cap with a red stripe around it on the top of his shorn head, he presents an amusing and pathetic appearance. I don’t know what it is that is so very bedraggled about them, but they look so absurdly harmless, almost like the inhabitants of the Forest Hills insane asylum, when one sees them walking about the lawn or sitting under the trees on the way to Marion. They looked well fed and young. They were working, not very hard, but rather stolidly, I thought.
Noyon seemed to be fairly well preserved, and very full of military life. We went to Headquarters, and procured that most necessary of things for a trip to the front—a French capitaine. He was very nice-looking and agreeable, and, as we discovered later on, very efficient. He let us look around the town a bit; in fact, I went into the cathedral for a minute, but as a service was going on, did not get much idea of what it was like. One thing caught my eye in the courtyard of the priest’s house next door—a life-sized statue of some saint carrying a lamb. A shell had bitten a great piece out of the back of the figure, but he still held the lamb, unhurt.