As a first step American headquarters were installed in 31 Rue Constantine, a broad, shaded street near the Hôtel des Invalides, overlooking the Champs de Mars. The house had belonged once to a prodigiously popular Paris actress, and it was correspondingly magnificent.
But the magnificence, except that which was inalienably in space and structure, was banished by the busy Americans. In the hallway they stretched a plank railing, behind which American private soldiers asked and answered questions. Under the once sumptuous stairway there were stacks of army cots. The walls were bulletined and covered with directions carefully done in two languages. The chief of the Intelligence Section had the ex-dining-room, and the adjutant-general had the ballroom on the second floor. Even so, it was not long before this spaciousness was insufficient, and the headquarters brimmed over into No. 27 as well.
It was in these two houses that the whole army organization was plotted out, and General Pershing made good his prediction that the Americans would not merely seem, but would be, businesslike.
After ten days or so of beaver-like absorption in their jobs the American headquarters announced to the war correspondents that they must take a certain train at a certain hour, under the guidance of Major Frederick Palmer, press officer and censor, to a certain port in France. There, at a certain moment, they would see what they would see.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST DIVISION LANDS
THEY saw the gray troop-ships steaming majestically into the middle distance from the gray of the open sea, with the little convoy fleet alongside. It was a gray morning, and at first the ships were hardly more than nebulous patches of a deeper tone than sea and sky. As they neared the port, and took on outline, the watchers increased, and took on internationalism.
The Americans, who had come to see this consequential landing, some in uniform and some civilians, had arrived in the very early morning, before the inhabitants of the little seaport town were up and about, let alone aware of what an event was that day to put them into the history books.
But it never takes a French civilian long to discover that something is afoot—what with three years of big happenings to sharpen his wits and keep him on the lookout.
At the front of the quay were Americans two deep, straining to make out the incoming ships, on tiptoe to count their number, breathless to shout a welcome to the first "Old Glory" to be let loose to the harbor winds. Forming rapidly behind the Americans were French men, French women, and French children, indifferent to affairs, kitchens, or schools, chattering that "Mais surement, c' sont les Américains—regardez, regardez!..."
Ignominiously in the rear, but watching too, were the German prisoners who worked, in theory at least, at transferring rails from inconvenient places to convenient ones for the loading of coaster steamers. They said little enough, having learned that a respectful hearing was not to be their lot for a while. But they moved fewer rails than ever, and nobody bothered to speed them up.