I took my troubles to Mr. Beatty, through whose hands, expert and generous, so many millions’ worth of donations have passed for the benefit of afflicted France, and who seems to respond automatically to the most unreasonable demand. For me he produced an American Army officer six feet high, very imposing and distinguished, and the matter was settled.
We started on the following Tuesday—Major C., Mme. Lyon, a mechanician, and our driver, Monsieur G. B., whom I shall call the Lieutenant to avoid confusion, although as a matter of fact, and to his natural chagrin, there were no stripes on his sleeve. Refused for the army on account of an accident to his shoulder in boyhood, which prevented him from handling a gun properly, he had offered his services as driver at the outbreak of the war. Like many others, he anticipated a short war, or he would have gone as interpreter to the British Army (he is an Oxford man); that way lies promotion, and for the driver there is none. As he is a young man, wealthy, pampered, living his own life in his own way up to August, 1914, he is now no doubt enjoying the novel experience of hard and incessant work, constant danger and unremitting discipline, with no hope of reward. It was our gain, for he was altogether charming, and it was impossible to pity him, as, gay and grim, he certainly was determined to do what he could do for his country.
The Marquise d’Andigné (who was Miss Goddard of Providence), the President of Le Bienêtre du Blessé, was to have been one of the party, but as she was detained at the last minute I was asked to visit the hospitals in her place and ascertain which had received supplies and what each needed most. We started at 7:30 from Paris in admirable weather.
Traveling by automobile in the war zone is far more complicated than by train. Even in a gray military car, with two men in horizon blue on the front seat, you are held up at the entrance and exit of every town and hamlet, and often half way between, by the sudden appearance of a sentinel in the middle of the road, holding his gun horizontally above his head. He is accompanied by two others, who examine your papers, and if they possess the average quick intelligence of their race they make short work of it. If the first in authority happens to be slow, conscientious, and suspicious, he will pore over the papers for five minutes, and not infrequently disappear with them into his hut. Once they held us up so long in the blazing sun that our Lieutenant, who was not a patient mortal, poked his head into one of these tiny headquarters and demanded what was the matter, while even Major C. had visions of being turned back. They would give no answer until the Lieutenant made a second invasion, and then they informed him that they could not understand why the papers indicated four men and one woman in the party and the automobile contained two women. Mme. Lyon’s first name is Martin! Why they could not have come out and asked instead of wasting their time and ours can only be explained by the fact that to a Frenchman time is nothing.
All this, save for the heat, concerned me not at all. I had not a second’s responsibility on this trip. Major C. and the Lieutenant carried the papers, and although I am a feminist and admit no inferiority to man except in the matter of physical prowess, personally, when I have a man to take care of me, I am as meek as a lamb. He is welcome to all the responsibility and all the work. I never worry him by a suggestion. Our American officer in his khaki uniform, sitting like a ramrod on one of the single seats of the tonneau, inspired both curiosity and respect and spent a good part of his days returning salutes.
Our adventures were almost too insignificant to mention. I, alas! am a mascot. If I were taken to the front and given the hospitality of a trench I am positive that the guns for some inscrutable reason would be paralyzed. It has always been as if some mysterious force surrounded me, permitting me to see all that is necessary for my work at a safe distance, but saving even my nerves from shock. During the San Francisco earthquake I was in Berkeley! It is very annoying. I should have liked an adventurous life.
Nevertheless, the trip, which lasted four days, was more than interesting. It was as unlike traversing the war zone by train as possible. In the first place the roads, which I expected to see (and feel) cut to pieces by the enormous amount of artillery and heavy camions that have rumbled over them constantly during the last two years, were in perfect condition. I don’t know when they work on these roads, but while we were in the war zone there was but one short stretch under repair, and they were as dusty as California roads in Summer time. We must have passed during these four days no less than several thousand of these covered army wagons, great and small, which convey to the front every war commodity from soldiers to beef. I asked our Lieutenant how many of these camions France possessed and he said that, although he had never seen the amount stated, each was numbered and he had seen numbers as high as 130,000. This, of course, included every sort of vehicle, and we saw many kitchen wagons. The cooks, by the way, are among the heroes of the war and perish in large numbers.
If I was forced to complain of an unnatural calm during my first two visits into the war zone I had my fill of noise and incessant motion on this trip. Aside from the gray lumbering camions in their clouds of dust, there were, every few miles, “parcs” of artillery, the famous seventy-fives, hundreds of them, either undergoing repairs or awaiting demand. Of course, these parcs were filled with soldiers and their officers, and, indeed, before the end of those four days, it seemed to me that there must be as many men in the further precincts of the war zone doing practically nothing as there were at the front.
In certain of the larger towns, which for obvious reasons must not be named, the streets were so packed with soldiers that the car was obliged to crawl. All of these men were frankly loafing. Some of them were resting after the prescribed number of days in the trench, but as many more had never been to the front at all. They were ordered into the war zone that they might be on hand when needed, but meanwhile they were amusing themselves as best they could, and the majority looked bored. In one beautiful little town through which the Germans did not pass during their retreat from the Marne, I saw a number of soldiers seated on the banks of a stream fishing. Their only excitement they owe to the frequent visits of the taubes, but whether they avail themselves of the cellars hospitably marked “Cave Voutée,” I forgot to ask. Probably not.
Every estaminet, every restaurant and the “terrasse” before it with the little round white tables, was crowded, as well as the twisted streets and the frequent “place,” with these soldiers in their faded blue, which, at a distance, seems to melt before your eyes. They hung from the windows, they gossiped at the pump, they mused on the bridges, and they were lined up in the fields just outside the towns, practicing arm exercise, one, two, three, four. Officers also strolled about, three and four in a party. Even in the villages, those old gray villages consisting of one long crooked street, widening to a “place” in the centre and embracing several “farms,” there were often many soldiers home on leave, smoking in front of their houses or playing with their children.