Bourmont, January 20.
I’m off for Paris! My eyes have been in a horrid state for the last week. I have had all the doctors in the neighborhood treating them and they only get worse and worse. The Chief is going up to Paris tomorrow and has decided that the best thing to do is to take me along to see a specialist.
Madame is so much better that I don’t feel uneasy at leaving her. But I hate to desert the boys, especially as the hut is in such a state. Yesterday we had a storm and the wind almost wrecked our tent. There was one moment while I was out at dinner, when such a gust hit it, that, as the boys said, “She sure seemed a goner.” At that moment there was a stampede for the door, the boys shooting out of the tent “just like seeds from an orange when you squeeze it.” But thanks to the Secretary and a crowd of boys who got out and hung for dear life on to the guy ropes, the tent came through damaged but still standing. When I returned after mess I found our hut with two great gaping rents torn in the outer walls and the inner lining all ripped loose and hanging down from the ceiling, so that one felt exactly as if one were inside a punctured zeppelin.
Reports coming in this morning from other points on the division state that two tents actually did collapse during the tempest, and that one man, caught beneath the wreckage, had his collarbone broken. So we can count ourselves lucky.
Tonight I said au ’voir to Company A, telling them that if payday should occur during my absence, I hoped they all would be very, very good. Some of the boys lugubriously predicted that I would never return, while others darkly insinuated that they suspected I was “goin’ to Paris to git married.” To show them what my intentions honestly were, I inquired if there were any errands I could do for them in the city. Corporal G. looked at me, stammered, hesitated. There was something he would like, only he didn’t want to bother me. What was it? He paused, grew red, then blurted it out.
“If it ain’t too much trouble, could you send me a picture post-card while you’re away? I ain’t never had a post-card from Paris.”
Hôpital Claude-Bernard
Porte D’Aubervilliers
Paris, January 25.
This is a hideous hospital. They wake you up in the middle of the night to wrap you in a mustard poultice. They wake you up in the wee sma’ hours and order you to brush your teeth. And nobody in the whole establishment from head-doctor to scrub-lady knows a word of English; except the night-nurse and she knows “mumpsss!” like that she says it, “MUMPSSSSS!” Not that I have them; I have the measles. I don’t know where I got them. They were, so far as I am aware, almost the only known malady which we didn’t have at Bourmont. Probably some lad who was passing through the town and stopped in at the canteen gave them to me. It was undoubtedly the measles that were affecting my eyes; sometimes it seems they act that way.