Vive la France! With all the emotion that must have thrilled the heart of Lafayette, sailing up the Chesapeake to Washington's assistance at Yorktown, we gazed on the rugged coast of Brittany. Our convoy alone, if you will, more than compensated, in point of number of troops at least, for the 20,000 who wore the fleur-de-lis at the surrender of Cornwallis. Mere number of troops, however, was not the question—it was all we then needed. France would, no doubt, have sent us more in 1783, even as we would have sent more to her in the world war, had there been the need.
Brest was the only harbor along the western France coast with sufficient depth of water to accommodate the Leviathan; and, inside her breakwater, on Sunday, August 10, we dropped anchor.
This harbor and city, with a history rich in recorded and traditional lore, antedated the Christian era. The Phonecian, the Carthaginian, the Roman, and the Frank, had each, in turn, left upon its sheltering bay and rock hewn hills the impress of his generation.
Apart and aloof from the beaten paths that lead from London to Paris it held, through the centuries, "the even tenor of its way."
Here had the painter ever found color and form for his canvas; the romanticist, theme and character for his story. In the deep-voiced caverns of these towering cliffs lived the Pirates of Penzance. The solitude of yonder St. Malo inspired Chateaubriand with his immortal "Monks of the West"; and Morlix, just east of Brest, was, in days of peace, the dwelling place of peerless Marshal Foch.
By nightfall all the troops had been ferried to the wharfs and formed by companies in the railroad yards along the water front.
Promptly at five o'clock, with headquarters troop at the head of the column, Colonel Taylor and all officers on foot, we began our march to Ponteneuson Barracks. Each of us, on leaving the Leviathan, had been rationed with a sandwich. We had hoped to dejeuner on the wharf before beginning the march, but such was not our good fortune—the single sandwich was all the food—or drink for that matter—we tasted until ten o'clock the following morning.
The march of eight torturous, hill-climbing, miles, while exhausting in the extreme, was not without interest. It brought us within seeing and speaking distance of the inhabitants. A group of little boys and girls trudged along at our side singing what they no doubt believed to be our Marseillaise, "Cheer, cheer, the gang's all here." The shrill voices of these petit garcons expressed our only bienvenue to France!
Their elders, in their quaint Breton Sunday costumes, sitting on doorsteps or grouped along the roadsides, viewed us interestedly, but quietly and without demonstration. Although it was the highway used by thousands of American troops passing through Brest, we heard no word of cheer, nor saw a single banner of welcome in those eight weary miles of back torture under full packs.
At nine o'clock we arrived at Ponteneuson. Well might this place be called, at least at that time, the vestibule of hell! If there is any boy of the A. E. F. who has anything good to say—or the slightest happy memory to recall—of Ponteneuson, I have yet to meet him.