When they said “Leave Area” to me my heart sank. The Lady in the Office explained to me how very important she considered the work, and the assignment, she added, need not be permanent. “Very well” I said, “I’m willing to go there temporarily.”
I left Paris Tuesday, taking the night train. Getting off was something of an ordeal. The lighting at the stations, as on the streets, has been reduced almost to the vanishing point. The great Gare de Lyon was filled with a mass of distraught humanity over whom the few violet-blue bulbs cast a ghostly glimmer. There were no porters to take one’s luggage; a number of women had possessed themselves of the baggage trucks and were pushing them, heaped high with bags and household stuff, recklessly through the crowds. I could find no officials anywhere about. All the French orderliness and red tape seemed to have been swept clean away and the result was chaos. Somehow, I don’t know quite how, I found my train and reached my seat.
Three very fat old gentlemen and one old lady occupied the compartment with me. The fat gentlemen had one little spoiled dog between them which they kept passing from one to the other, in order that each in turn might kiss him. The old lady had a bird in a cage; presently she opened her hand-bag and brought out her supper, a loaf of bread, unwrapped, together with a good-sized turtle. For a moment; such were her raptures over her pet, I thought that she was going to kiss the turtle. The first minute that one of my companions entered the compartment, each informed all the rest that he or she was not running away from the air-raids or the long range guns. “I? I am not afraid of the Kaiser’s Gothas! I laugh at them!” A few minutes later however they began: Ah, what a fearful night, last night had been! Five hours in the Caves! No sleep at all! One might as well be a mole and take up one’s dwelling underground. What a life! Oh it was terrible, terrible! Then one old gentleman turned proudly to the little fat canine. “But of a verity, my little Toto is possessed of a sagacity extraordinary. The moment that he hears the sirens, he will run down into the cellar, and nothing can induce him to come up again until the ‘all clear’ has sounded!”
We pulled into Aix soon after dawn as the rising sun was touching the tops of the mountains and the morning mists were hovering over the lake. Whatever the work may prove to be like here, the place is surpassingly lovely. It is too early for the summer resort pleasure seekers. The French don’t care for it here until it grows really hot, they tell us. But to me the season is at its most appealing moment. One glimpses pink peach blossoms against the blue lake over which stand purple mountains with snow still lying on their summits. Several of the large hotels and casinos have been requisitioned for French convalescent hospitals, but the largest of all has been taken over by the Y. From this canteen excursions are constantly setting out, motor-boats on the lake, motor cars to Chambery, the cog-wheel railway up Mt. Revard, picnics, hikes and fishing parties, yet many of the boys seem to find it pleasantest to do nothing,—just to sit around in lazy comfort all day long, watching the others playing billiards, listening to the orchestra in the afternoon Beneath the gold mosaic casino dome, sitting luxuriously in a box at the vaudeville in the evening, gaining a maximum of pleasure with a minimum of exertion. Many of the boys came here with their heads full of pessimistic expectations.
“They told us it would be Reveille and Retreat and one day’s K. P. for each of us,” confided one lad to me.
Some brought their mess-kits and some even their blankets. When they find themselves guests in hotels that are among the finest in Europe, lodged in comfortable rooms, eating real food off tables furnished with china-ware and linen, at first they are fairly dazed.
“I’m feared somebody’ll pinch me an’ I’ll wake up,” declared one lad today.
More than one has told me, that the first night he got here, he could not go to sleep in bed at all and only finally achieved slumber by rolling himself in blankets on the floor.
There are no troops from the line here at present; only boys from forestry regiments, motor mechanics and a few lads from medical detachments. They are holding up the leaves of all combatant troops on account of the drive. It may be that presently they will hold up all leaves altogether. Then we will have to shut up shop here temporarily.
It is the pleasant custom here for the Y ladies to go down to the train every night to see the boys off.