And there in that prettiest of French watering places—Vittel—we came upon those first American nurses attached to the American Expeditionary Forces. They told us that all they knew was the name of the place they were in, that they were without maps and were not even aware of what part of France they were located in.
It developed that the unit's motor transportation had not arrived and, other automobiles being as scarce as German flags, communication with the nearby camps had been almost non-existent. Orders had been received from field headquarters and acknowledged, but its relation in distance or direction to their whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. But not for long.
Soon the word spread through the training area that American nurses had a hospital in the same zone and some of the homesick Yanks began to make threats of self-mutilation in order that they might be sent to that hospital.
The hospital unit was soon followed by the arrival of numerous American auxiliary organisations and the kindly activities of the workers as well as their numbers became such as to cause the men to wonder what kind of a war they were in.
I happened to meet an old top sergeant of the regular army, a man I had known in Mexico, with the American Punitive Expedition. He had just received a large bundle of newspapers from home and he was bringing himself up-to-date on the news. I asked him what was happening back home.
"Great things are going on in the States," he said, looking up from his papers. "Here's one story in the newspaper that says the Y. M. C. A. is sending over five hundred secretaries to tell us jokes and funny stories. And here's another account about the Red Cross donating half a million dollars to build recreation booths for us along the front. And here's a story about a New York actor getting a committee of entertainers together to come over and sing and dance for us. And down in Philadelphia they're talking about collecting a million dollars to build tabernacles along the front so's Billy Sunday can preach to us. What I'm wondering about is, when in hell they're going to send the army over."
But that was in the early fall of 1917, and as I write these lines now, in the last days of 1918, I am aware and so is the world, that in all of France nobody will ever ask that question again.