This week has gone by in a whirl. Because it was our first and presumably our last week in the big hut we wanted to make it just as nice as was humanly possible. And this hasn’t been an easy task because with the regiment putting on the last touches before they go to the front, there hasn’t been a bit of spare man-power available to help us; and the mere problem of keeping that huge place anything like clean has almost swamped us. After mess at night, to be sure, we have no lack of assistance. The boys swarm into the little kitchen in droves, eager to help stir the chocolate, or cut the bread for the sandwiches. If only ten out of every dozen would be content to stay the other side of the counter, it would simplify matters, but much as they may be underfoot one hasn’t the heart to turn them out. Those who can’t get into the kitchen hang about the doors, looking in, teasing for a “hand-out” of bread and jam. “I’m just so hungry,” sighed a lad plaintively today, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, “I could eat the jamb off the door!”
We have a Frenchwoman to help us in the kitchen. She is a treasure, shy and bright-eyed as a brown bird, and so tiny that we have to set a packing-box by the stove for her to stand on when she stirs the chocolate. She is deaf and speaks patois, so between her strange French and mine still stranger we have droll times making each other understand. Yet, none the less, she and the boys manage to keep up a running fire of badinage and when they become too rowdy, the tiny thing turns ridiculously bellicose and threatens to whip them all with her chocolate paddle. At night we all go home together and one tall lad must always come along in order to help Madame over the road of a thousand mud holes that leads from the hut to the highway, lest she be drowned in transit. She carries a funny little gasolene lamp that gives about as much light as an ambitious fire-fly and all the way to the main road one can hear her moaning; “Mon Dieu, quel chemin! Mon Dieu, quel chemin!”
This has been our week’s programme:
| Sunday. | Hot chocolate and cookies Religious Service with special music Song Service. More chocolate |
| Monday. | French Classes Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches |
| Tuesday. | Boxing and Wrestling Matches Hot chocolate and sardine sandwiches |
| Wednesday. | Band Concert Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches |
| Thursday. | Movies Hot chocolate and cookies |
| Friday. | Sing Fest with Solos Hot chocolate and jam sandwiches |
| Saturday. | Stunt Programme Canned fruit and cookies |
The hut has been filled every night, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, the auditorium packed and the writing-room holding at least a hundred more, while the chocolate line, coiling and curling about like a monster snake, has for hours seemed absolutely endless. We have worked out a system for the chocolate serving—the Gendarme is cashier, taking the money and making change, fifty centimes or nine cents for a cup of chocolate and a sandwich, or six spice cookies, or four fig ones. One boy ladles out the chocolate. I push the cups over the counter, another boy hands out the cookies, a third gathers up the dirty cups and carries them to the kitchen, where three or four others are busy washing and wiping them, while Heaven only knows how many more are around the stove, helping Madame stir the next kettleful, opening milk cans, or dipping water into a third container. Thus we keep the line merrily wagging along.
Last night, quite unknown to the men, Pershing himself came to town, whirled in after dark in his big limousine and whirled away again as suddenly and secretly as he had arrived. He came to give the officers final instructions as to their conduct at the front.
The first faint wistful scents of Spring are in the air. This morning Madame brought to our room a tiny bouquet of snow-drops. And one hears from Saint Thiebault a rumour of early violets.
Goncourt, March 10.
This morning shortly after I reached the hut, one of the men from the Bourmont office came in with a note for me, it read:
My dear Miss ——