“Oh boy! but that’s the best thing I’ve had in France!” declared another.
While a third announced; “Gee, but I’m full all the way up! If I drink another drop I sure will bust”—a confession which may have contained more fact than fancy, for some of the boys did drink so much that they got sick right then and there. It was an orgy. And when the last of the four huge containers had been drained to a drop, why everyone, I believe, for once had had enough.
“You’ve got all the business in town right here tonight,” one of the boys informed me. “I just took a look in at the cafés. Every one of them is empty.”
Personally I feel that the party was a Great Success. We shall have to have one just like it every Sunday.
Mauvages, January 1, 1919.
Mes meilleurs voeux de Bonne Année! or, as the boys say; “Bun Annie!” We welcomed the new Year in con molto giubilo. Downstairs at my billet there was music until late and after that sounds as of a repetition of the Christmas party. At twelve o’clock by the old church bell, the band, which I had imagined long since safe and sound in bed, burst forth into music and straggled down the street playing “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight,” and all the rest of the most rakish airs in its repertoire. I stepped out on my Juliet balcony. The boys were setting off pyrotechnics of all sorts “salvaged” from the dump; flares, colored lights, and rockets. The street burned out of the darkness in rose-colored mist against which showed black silhouettes of soldiers who waved their arms and shouted and sang; while from the edge of the village sounded a sharp tattoo of rifle shots. Just as the light was beginning to fade out I heard an emphatic bang of the front door below me and looking down saw two figures; a little brisk bustling one and a tall, lean one go hurrying down the path and out the gate. It was our Colonel and an attendant officer. Retribution, I knew, was bearing down upon the revellers. Sure enough, this morning I learned that the Colonel, sallying forth, had struck right and left, leaving a trail of arrests all over town.
But even with the Colonel’s sortie, quiet did not descend on Mauvages for some time. The party below-stairs was not confined to the mess-hall this time but was also being celebrated in the kitchen. At about one o’clock a K. P. stumbled up the stairs and knocked on the door of the Curé’s chamber just across from me. He had some champagne for the Curé, he explained in thick and execrable French. The Curé must drink it in honor of the New Year. It was good champagne. I could hear the Curé replying from his bed in rapid deprecating sentences, but the K. P. held to his point; he had set his heart on the old man’s joining the celebration. “Champagne bun,” he kept repeating, “Vous camarade. Bun annie.” For a long time they carried on the argument, but finally, as the priest implacably refused to open his door, the genial K. P. gave up in disgust, confiding to his friends as he reached the floor that the Curé was, after all, nothing but a dried up old fish.
This morning I went down to Headquarters to turn in my accounts. Alas, for the vanity of human intentions! At Christmas I had sent little boxes of fudge to several of the men at the office, hoping thereby to curry favour for my canteen and counteract any bad impressions which our delinquencies in the matter of attending Sunday Services and appropriating other people’s autos might have caused. Now I find I have made more enemies among the ones that I left out, than I made friends of the ones I favoured.
In spite of this sad condition of affairs I managed to tease one driver into agreeing to take me to Vaucouleurs. At Vaucouleurs I had been told that there was a commissary where one could purchase candles, and the boys are desperately anxious for candles. At first I did not quite understand so burning a desire as they exhibited, but now I am wise. They want them—poor wretches!—so they can “read their shirts,” before they go to bed! I stayed down in Gondrecourt, missing dinner, and then set out for Vaucouleurs with my heart full of hope and my pockets crammed with currency. It was a long, cold trip in the driving, drizzly rain. Arrived at Vaucouleurs we found that, being the first of the month, the commissary was closed for inventory.
Mauvages, January 3.