“Oh I let him go; I figured if he wanted to get away that bad he had a right to.”
Up this same canal a few weeks ago came a flotilla of French submarines bound for the Rhine, the sailors startling the inhabitants by their sudden appearance in the streets in their naval uniforms and their casual references to their ships close at hand. Somebody was unkind enough to declare that the subs had started their journey from the coast on Armistice Day, but I am sure this must be a libel.
This afternoon I asked if I might work in the canteen. This is in a French house, a few doors beyond the beautiful Officers’ Club, the home of one of the wealthy manufacturers of the Confiture de Bar-le-Duc, lent by him, rent-free for the use of the Americans during the war. In the course of the afternoon I became the possessor of a puppy-dog presented me by a motor-truck driver, who, following some careless remark of mine about wishing I had a puppy, dropped the scared little black thing in my arms and fled. As soon as I could collect my senses I flew around the counter and out the door after him, calling on him to take his dog back. But when I reached the street, motor-truck and driver both had vanished. I would have loved to keep the little beggar, but here I am, a transient traveller bound for nobody knows where; what could I do? I explained my dilemma to the grinning crowd in the canteen. One of the boys spoke up.
“I’ll take him and give him to my French girl,” he said. I relinquished the little fellow regretfully. I hope Mademoiselle makes him a good foster-mother.
A little while later I noticed a boy at the counter who wore three service stripes and two wound stripes. “What’s your division?” I asked. He told me. He belonged to my old regiment! He had been in the Milk Battalion at Goncourt, and he remembered me. He was a Class B man now and in the post office at Bar-le-Duc.
“What of the rest?” I asked.
“They’re mostly dead,” he answered, and he told me how, after one charge, out of the whole Company M six men and the captain had come back.
I broke down and cried; I couldn’t help it. The boy, embarrassed, drew away. He is the only man I have seen out of my regiment since last March, and all he could say was, “They’re mostly dead!” Dead at Château-Thierry, dead on the Marne, dead by Soissons, dead in honor, dead with glory. America, will you ever forget?
Bar-le-Duc, February 18.
Everyone here is incensed this morning over the action of the French troops in the matter of the theatre. It seems that the Americans had arranged a schedule of movies and shows to be given at the local theatre a month in advance. A soldier show was billed for tonight, the company had reached town, the audience was beginning to gather from the nearby villages, when the French troops who began to arrive in town yesterday announced that they had their own exclusive and immediate uses for the building. All efforts to arbitrate the matter have so far failed. And now word comes that a French lieutenant in order to be ready to repel any possible move on the part of the Americans to take possession of the theatre for the night has had his bed made up in one of the boxes!