“That’s the goods!” remarked Ed approvingly, as he folded the paper with reverent care and tucked it inside his shirt. “The feller that writes that stuff has gotten the real idea for a story. The others over here”—designating apparently the editors of the London Times and Paris Matin—“ain’t got nothing to them. No, sir! They don’t write nothing but small-town stuff!”
“You said it, Ed!” agreed Al.
“All the same,” observed the critic, rising and stretching his giant limbs, “this yer reading the papers from home may give a feller a grand and glorious feeling, but it makes him feel mighty lonesome and homesick too.” He raised a pair of great fists heavenward. “Oh, Boy! when I get back home after this War, if the Statue of Liberty ever wants to see Ed Gillette again, she’ll have to turn around to do it!”
CHAPTER TEN
S.O.S. TO DILLPICKLE
To most of us hitherto the letters S.O.S. have signified calamity of some kind—appeals for succour from sinking liners, and the like. Our British liaison officers, too, tell us that S.O.S. is the epithet applied to the rockets which are always kept in position in British front-line trenches, to be discharged as an urgent intimation to the gunners behind that the enemy are attacking in mass.
But in the American Army S.O.S. means “Service of Supply.” It denotes, not panic, but order, and control, and abundance. It covers the whole chainwork of activity known in most armies as the “Lines of Communication.” The town where we find ourselves to-day is a great S.O.S. centre. On its outskirts lie mushroom cities of huts and sheds. Here is a great cold-storage depot: there are eight thousand tons of frozen beef in this single building. Here is a big station for assembling aeroplanes, where de Haviland planes of British design are being fitted with Liberty engines. Through the town itself there flows by night and by day a never-failing stream of food and munitions and replacement troops. Needless to say the town lies upon one of the main roads along which the Race to Berlin is being run.
Back along that road, alas! streams another current—a counter-current—of wastage, material and human. Upon its surface is borne all the dreadful litter of the battlefield—rusty rifles, damaged equipment, blood-soaked uniforms. Here is a mighty depot, which handles and repairs such wreckage. These buildings have all been constructed within the past few months. It would take you half a day to walk through them. In at one end of the establishment goes a squalid torrent of torn clothing, unmated shoes, leaky rubber trench boots, odds and ends of equipment. In due course, after a drastic series of laundering, sorting, patching, stitching, or vulcanizing experiences—mainly at the hands of a twittering army corps of Frenchwomen—each item in this melancholy jumble finds itself reincarnated in various storehouses in the form of properly assorted pairs of boots and shoes, neat second-hand uniforms, and complete sets of equipment. Nothing is wasted. Stetson hats damaged beyond repair are cut up into soles for hospital slippers. Uniforms too badly ripped for decent renovation are patched, dyed grass-green, and issued to German prisoners.
There are some thousands of these prisoners, with more coming. When they arrive, their prevailing tint is grey. Their uniforms are grey, by nature; their knee-high boots are grey, with dust; their faces are grey, with exhaustion and grime. These human derelicts are submitted to very much the same process of restoration as the damaged uniforms and equipment. They are paraded, stripped, and marched into the first of a series of renovation chambers. They pass under hot showers; they spend a salutary period in what is delicately described as the “delousing chamber”; they are then provided, first with underwear, then with shoes, then with one of the grass-green uniforms aforesaid, and finally with a cooking and toilet outfit. They are shaved and their hair is cut; they are medically examined; they are card-indexed; a register is made of their trades; they are housed in comfortable wooden huts within a great barbed-wire enclosure; and within a few days they are at work upon whatever tasks they happen to be best qualified for, earning twenty centimes a day. They are fed upon the rations of American and British soldiers, including white bread—the only white bread in Europe.