The Hindenburg Rathskeller lay to the left of our trench, but it was only dimly visible through the rain. This battered building was once a tiny roadside café. Now patrols take shelter behind its walls at night and try to find cheer in the room where only a few broken bottles remain. The poilus maintain that on dark nights the ghosts of cognac, of burgundy and even champagne flit about in and out of the broken windows and that a lucky soldier may sometimes detect, by an inner warmth and tingle, the ghost of some drink that is gone. Sometimes it is a German patrol which spends the night in No Man's Café. It is more or less a custom to allow whichever side gets to the café first to hold it for the night, since it is a strong defensive position in the dark. The night before our visit an American patrol reached the café and found that the Germans who had been there the night before had placed above the shattered door of the little inn a sign which read: "Hindenburg Rathskeller." Silently but swiftly one of the doughboys scratched out the name with a pencil and left a sign of his own. When next the Germans came they found that Hindenburg Rathskeller had become the Baltimore Dairy Lunch.
Several hundred yards behind the Baltimore Dairy Lunch is another ruined house and it was here that the Americans killed their first German. Even on clear days Germans in groups of not more than two would sometimes come from their trenches to the house. The French thought that they had a machine gun there, but it was not worth while to waste shells on parties of one or two and as the range was almost 1700 yards the Germans felt comparatively immune from rifle fire. Two doughboys saw a German walking along the road one bright morning and as they had telescopic sights on their rifles they were anxious to try a shot. One of the men was a sergeant and the other a corporal.
"That's my German," said the sergeant.
"I saw him first," objected the corporal, and so they agreed to count five and then fire together. One or both of them hit him, for down he came.
When we got back to the second line the men were having supper. The food supplied to the soldiers in the trenches was hot and adequate and moderately abundant. A few of the men complained that they got only two meals a day, but I found that there was an early ration of coffee and bread which these soldiers did not count as enough of a breakfast to be mentioned as a meal. This comes at dawn and then there are meals at about eleven and five. One of the men with whom I talked was mournful.
"We don't get anything much but slum," he said, when I asked him, "How's the food?" That did not sound appetizing until I found out that slum was a stew made of beef and potatoes and carrots and lots of onions. We ate some and it was very good, but perhaps it does pall a little after the third or fourth day. It forms the main staple of army diet in the trenches, for it is not possible to give the men in the line any great variety of food. The most tragic story in connection with food which we heard concerned a company which was just beginning dinner when a gas alarm was sounded. The men had been carefully trained to drop everything and adjust their masks when this alarm was sounded. So down went their mess tins, spilling slum on the trench floor as the masks were quickly fastened. Five minutes later word came that the gas alarm was a mistake.
Before we left we saw a patrol start out. The doughboys took to patrolling eagerly and officers who asked for volunteers were always swamped with requests from men who wanted to go. One lieutenant was surprised to have a large fat cook come to him to say that he would not be happy unless allowed to make a trip across No Man's Land to the German wire. When the officer asked him why he was so anxious to go, he said: "Well, you see, I promised to get a German helmet and an overcoat for a girl for Christmas and I haven't got much time left."
It was dark when we left the trenches and started cross country. The German guns had begun to fire a little. They were spasmodically shelling a clump of woods half a mile away and seemed indifferent to correspondents. But by this time the weather was actively hostile. The rain had changed to snow and the wind had risen to a gale. Every shell hole had become a trap to catch the unwary and wet him to the waist. Little brooks were carrying on like rivers and amateur lakes were everywhere. We walked and walked and suddenly the French lieutenant who was guiding us paused and explained that he hadn't the least idea where we were. Nothing could be seen through the driving snow and there was no certainty that we hadn't turned completely around. We wondered if there were any gaps in the wire and if it would be possible to walk into the German lines by mistake. We also wondered whether the Kaiser's three hundred marks for the first American would stand if the prisoner was only a reporter. Just then there was a sudden sharp rift in the mist ahead of us. A big flash cut through the snow and fog and after a second we heard a bang behind us.
"Those are American guns," said our guide, and we made for them. We were lost again once or twice, but each time we just stood and waited for the flash from the battery until we reached our base. Shortly after we arrived the shelling ceased. There was hardly a warlike sound. It was a quiet night on a tranquil front. The weather was too bad even for fighting.
We went to the hospital in the little town and were allowed to look at the first German prisoner. He was a pretty sick boy when we saw him. He gave his age when examined as nineteen, but he looked younger and not very dangerous, for he was just coming out of the ether. The American doctors were giving him the best of care. He had a room to himself and his own nurse. The doughboys had captured him close to the American wire. There had been great rivalry as to which company would get the first prisoner, but he came almost unsought. The patrol was back to its own wire when the soldiers heard the noise of somebody moving about to the left. He was making no effort to walk quietly. As he came over a little hillock his outline could be seen for a second and one of the Americans called out to him to halt. He turned and started to run, but a doughboy fired and hit him in the leg and another soldier's bullet came through his back. The patrol carried the prisoner to the trench. He seemed much more dazed by surprise than by the pain of his wounds. "You're not French," he said several times as the curious Americans gathered about him in a close, dim circle illuminated by pocket flash lamps. The prisoner next guessed that they were English and when the soldiers told him that they were Americans he said that he and his comrades did not know that Americans were in the line opposite them. Somebody gave him a cigarette and he grew more chipper in spite of his wounds. He began to talk, saying: "Ich bin ein esel."