On June 23rd we boarded the now familiar troop trains at Châte-sur-Moselle, and before we were off them we had zig-zagged our way more than half the distance to Paris, going up as far as Nancy, down to Neufchateau, northwest again by Bar-le-Duc, finally detraining on June 24th, at Coolus, south of Chalons-sur-Marne. We are now in five villages along the River Coole. We have left Lorraine at last and are in the province of Champagne. It is a different kind of country. The land is more level and less heavily wooded; the houses are built of a white, chalky stone with gray tiles instead of red; and with outbuildings in the rear of them—with the result (for which heaven be praised) that the dung heaps are off the streets. The inhabitants strike us as being livelier and less worried, whether from natural temperament or distance from the battle line, I do not know. The weather is beautiful and it is the joy of life to walk along the shaded roads that border the sleepy Coole and drop in on a pleasant company at mess time to share in their liveliness and good cheer. Today it was a trip to St. Quentin with the Machine Gun Company. Johnnie Webb and Barnett picked me up on the road and formed my escort, leading me straight to the kitchen, where Sergeant Ketchum and Mike Clyne were making ready for the return of the hungry gunners. Lieutenant De Lacour wanted me to go to Captain Seibert’s mess but I preferred by lunch on the grass with Milton Cohen, John Kenny, Ledwith, McKelvey, Murphy, Chester Taylor and Pat Shea. This is the kind of a war I like.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These men became confused and wandered into the German lines where they were made prisoners. Information concerning their fate came to us through the Red Cross about two months later, and both rejoined the regiment after the Armistice.
CHAPTER V
THE CHAMPAGNE DEFENSIVE
VADENAY FARM, CAMP DE CHALONS
July 2nd, 1918
I like this spot, but it was a terrible place to get to. We got hurry-up orders to leave our pleasant villages on the Coole on June 26th. It was payday and some of the fellows had hiked it into Chalons and back to find something to spend their money on. But it was “pack your kits and trek” for everybody.
It was a beautiful soft June night. No moon, but the French highway rolled out before us dull white in the gloom, as if its dust were mingled with phosphorus. The men trudged along behind—joking and singing—it was the beginning of the march. After a couple of hours we entered Chalons, a dream city by night. Not a light was visible, but the chalk stone buildings showed dimly on either hand, and the old Cathedral, with the ravages of the French Revolution obscured by darkness, was more beautiful than in the day. But before we left that town behind, all the poetry had departed from it. It seemed to take hours and hours of hard hiking on uneven pavements before the wearying men found their feet on country roads once more. Nobody knew how far the column had to go, and every spire that marked a village was hailed with hope, and, I fear, cursed when the hope was unrealized. They had a weary night ahead before they reached their destinations. The headquarters found itself with Division Headquarters in the Ferme de Vadenay, which is not a farm at all, but some long low barracks on the Camp de Chalons. The nearest approach to a farmer I saw there was a French soldier, who carefully nursed a few cabbages to feed his rabbits. He was a Breton fisherman, who had gone to the war, and the war had touched his wits. As a younger man he had fished in the North Sea and was the only person I ever found who could confirm the existence of Captain George MacAdie’s native town of Wyck. It was a great triumph for George, for my geographical skepticism had aroused a doubt as to whether he had ever been born at all.
The Chalons plains set all of us old Border veterans going again. The first comment was “Just like Texas.” A broad expanse of flat brookless country with patches of scrimpy trees that surely must be mesquite. But I delight in it. There is a blue sky over it all, and the long reaches for the eye to travel are as fascinating and as restful as the ocean. In Texas the attraction is in the skies. Half of it is beautiful. The half you see by gazing at the horizon and letting the eye travel up and back till it meets the horizon again. But here the flat earth has beauties of its own. It is God’s flower garden. The whole ground is covered with wild flowers—marguerites and bluets by millions and big clumps of violets as gorgeous as a sanctuary of Monsignori, and poppies, poppies everywhere. Colonel McCoy gave me a copy of Alan’s Seegar’s poems with one marked Champagne, 1915. Two lines of it are running through my head all day.
The mat of many colored flowers