From a commingling of memories of recent events there stands out a thing of which I was an eye-and-ear-witness back in April, when the first of our divisions to go into the line of the great battle moved up and across France from a quieter area over in Lorraine, where it had been holding a sector during the early part of the spring. Each correspondent was assigned to a separate regiment for the period of the advance, being quartered in the headquarters mess of his particular regiment and permitted to accompany its columns as it moved forward toward the Picardy Front. That is to say, he was permitted to accompany its columns, but it devolved upon him to furnish his own motive power. Baggage trains and supply trains had been pared to the quick in order to expedite fast marching; no provision for transporting outsiders had been made, nor would any such provision have been permitted. A colonel was lucky if he had an automobile to himself and his adjutant; generally he had to carry a French liaison officer or two along with him in addition to his personal equipment.
I had been added to the personnel of an infantry regiment, which meant I could not steal an occasional ride while moving from one billet to another on the jolting limber of a field gun. Such boons were vouchsafed only to those more fortunate writers who belonged for the time being to the artillery wing. One day I walked. I was lucky in that I did not have to carry my bedding roll and my haversack; these a kindly disposed ambulance driver smuggled into his wagon, rules and regulations to the contrary notwithstanding.
Another day the philanthropic lieutenant colonel rode his saddle horse and turned over to me his side car, the same being a sort of combination of tin bathtub and individual bootblack stand, hitched onto a three-wheeled motor cycle. What with impedimenta and all, rather overflowed its accommodations, but from the bottoms of my blistered feet to the topmost lock of my wind-tossed hair I was grateful to the donor as we went scudding along, the steersman and I, at twenty-five miles an hour.
On a third day I hired a venerable mare and an ancient two-wheeled covered cart, with a yet more ancient Norman farmer to drive the outfit, and under the vast poke-bonnet hood of the creaking vehicle the twain of us journeyed without stopping, from early breakfast time until nearly sunset time. The old man did not know a word of English, but mile after mile as we plodded along, now overtaking the troops who had started their hike at dawn, and now being overtaken by them as the antique mare lost power in her ponderous but rheumatic legs, he conversed at me—not with me, but steadily at me—in his provincial patois, which was the same as Attic Greek to me, or even more so, inasmuch as the only French I have is restaurant French, which begins with the hors d'oeuvres and ends just south of the fromages among the standard desserts.
Nevertheless, I deemed it the part of politeness to show interest by making a response from time to time when he was pausing to take a fresh breath. So about once in so often I would murmur “Yes,” with the rising inflection, or “No,” or “Is that so?” or “Can such things really be?” as the spirit moved me. And always he seemed perfectly satisfied with my observations, which he could not hear—I should have stated before now that among other things he was stone-deaf—and wouldn't have been able to understand even if he had heard them. And then he would go right on talking some more. From his standpoint, I am convinced, it was a most enjoyable journey and a highly instructive one besides.
Along toward sunset we ambled with the utmost possible deliberation into our destination. It was like the average small town of Northwestern France in certain regards. At a little distance it seemed to be all gable ends jumbled together haphazard and anyhow, as is the way of village architecture in this corner of the world; and following an almost universal pattern the houses scraped sides with one another in a double file along the twisting main street, only swinging back to form a sort of irregular square in the centre.
Here, in the heart of things communal, the grey church reared its bulk above all lesser structures, with the school and the town hall facing it, flanked one side by the town pump and the town shrine and the other side by a public pond, where the horses and the cows watered, and grave, plump little French children played along the muddy brink. But this place had an air of antiquity which showed it antedated most of its fellows even in a land where everything goes back into bygone centuries.
Indeed, the guidebook in peace days, when people used guidebooks, gave it upward of a page of fine print—not so much for what it now was, but for what once upon a time it had been. Julius Cæsar had founded it and named it—and certain of the ruins of the original battlement still stood in massy but shapeless clumps, while other parts had been utilised to form the back ends of houses and barns and cowsheds. One of the first of those pitiable caravans of innocents that swelled the ranks of the Children's Crusade had been recruited here; and through the ages this town, inconsequential as it had become in these latter times, gave to France and to the world a great chronicler, a great churchman and at least one great warrior.
What a transformation the mere coming of our troops had made! In the public pond a squad of supply-trainsmen were sluicing down four huge motor trucks that stood hub deep in the yellow water—“bathing the elephants” our fellows called this job. Over rutted paving stones that once upon a time had bruised the bare feet of captured Frankish warriors Missouri mules were yanking along the baggage wagons, and their dangling trace chains clinked against the cobbles just as the fetters on the ankles of the prisoners must have clinked away back yonder.
In a courtyard where Roman soldiers may have played at knucklebones a portable army range sent up a cloud of pungent wood smoke from its abbreviated stack, and with the smell of the fire was mingled a satisfying odour of soldier-grub stewing. Plainly there would be something with onions in it—probably “Mulligan”—for supper this night.