Followed a tremendous banging and kicking at all the stable doors along the street accompanied by a torrent of vivid and spicy admonitions. The Gendarme and I gasped and chuckled. This was rich. Were we always to be awakened in so picturesque a fashion? But the next morning we listened in vain. First Call was blown at the far end of the street and followed by a solemn silence; and so it has been ever since. Now that American ladies are known to be living on the street Company H must get up decorously.
Goncourt, February 12.
The fireplace is easily the feature of our funny little hut. Around this at night the lads crowd perched on packing-boxes to smoke, chew gum and gossip. As the first mad rush of business at the canteen dies down a little I edge up towards the fireplace in order to get a wee share in the conversation.
They have caught a spy! One of the cooks in F Company. He was a deserter from the German Army some one said. They caught him putting dope in the slum. The doctors were analyzing it now. It’s a wonder the whole company wasn’t poisoned. Yes, and they found plans of the camp in his pocket too. He hasn’t eaten a thing since they arrested him. All he does is just to walk up and down the guard-house. Seems as if he were kind of crazy.
And so they gossip. A sad-eyed bugler remarks to me that he’d be a rich man if he only had all the hob-nailed shoes that had been thrown at him. Another boy wonders what he’d do if he had “both arms shot off and then the gas alarm sounded.” And always they must be rowing about their respective states.
“Neebraska! Where’s Neebraska? Is that in the United States or Canada?”
“Noo Hampshire! Huh! There ain’t nothin’ but mountains there. Why my old man told me that when they let the cows out to grass there they had to put stilts on one side of ’em so they won’t fall off’n the pasture.”
Then they turn on me.
“Boston! When you get ten miles from Boston you can smell the beans bakin’.”
“But I don’t come from Boston,” I protest.