Monday we were up at five thirty, and finally, after interminable bustle and waiting and crowding, we and our luggage were through the customs. The Y.M.C.A. here weren't expecting us, and were rather overwhelmed at the prospect of housing us. They got accommodations for the first thirty (of the alphabet) at a good hotel. The remaining sixty-five were sent to a Y.M.C.A. hut called Lincoln Lodge, where one floor of soldiers' barracks was turned over to us. Imagine a huge chill room with brick walls, containing four hundred double-decker beds and nothing else. The atmosphere was like a tightly bottled and preserved London fog. It was raining outside. On each bed was a burlap-hay mattress and a coarse blanket. After lunch downstairs I fixed myself up in my own blankets with my fur coat on top, got very comfortable and had a three hours' rest. Every night I ever spent on the rocky ground at our Mountain Lake stood me in good stead, and I didn't mind my lumpy, "rolly" mattress a bit, but it has been hard on many of the girls. That night I slept twelve and a half hours, and woke at nine thirty yesterday much refreshed. In the morning I helped with the dish washing down in the canteen in the basement; such a filthy place I don't wonder the "flu" spreads. I don't want to begin to criticise so soon, but if I see much more of the conditions I saw there I shall do my little bit to instigate a reform, at least where I work.
In the afternoon I went with a nice Washington girl, Miss P. and a great enormous Irish officer with a gentle smile and sweet voice, to see a German submarine in the harbor. It was one of their largest models which has surrendered. We were allowed on board and examined it all. It gave me a strange feeling to be walking that deck and to read the German signs everywhere, and to see those deadly guns, now become the playthings of little boys who swarmed over the boat and up into the gunners' seats.
New Year's Eve the Y.M.C.A. made use of all of us girls and gave a dance, five of us furnishing the music, I alternately playing my guitar and then using it as a drum, beating it on the back with my ring. It made quite a hit. And really with two violins, ukulele and piano we weren't a half bad orchestra. The "Y" men were immensely grateful as they had searched the town unsuccessfully for a band. The place was jammed with soldiers, American, Canadian and British, and really it was a very jolly, nice affair. And now we are on the point of departure for London.
Paris, January 12, 1919.
So much has happened since I wrote you from Liverpool and we have all passed through so many moods that I wonder whether I can think back and tell you everything. We left Liverpool for London a hundred strong, the Y.M.C.A. having reserved enough first class coaches for us all. We were a jolly party in our compartment. I played the guitar and we all sang. We had afternoon tea served at stations and it was all very much like peace times except that the train was not heated at all and was excessively damp and cold, and in the compartments were various signs ordering the public to keep the shades down after dark and on no account to let any light show. The English landscape was beautiful, soft and undulating, but damp looking. That dampness gets into your soul. The trees were brown, without leaves, yet the grass in the fields was vivid green.
We arrived in London after dark, about eight p.m. There we were met by some "Y" men, and after the identification of baggage, which with a hundred girls is a desperate affair, we were all loaded into huge trucks or "brakes" as they call them, and carted to our various destinations. About twenty of us were dumped out at the Melbourne Hotel, a decidedly God-forsaken place just off Russell Square. There I shared a room with Miss P. an awfully nice Washington girl. If you could see that room! It was desperately cold, and so damp the towels were wet. A broken gas mantle way up near the ceiling gave a dim greenish light which seemed to mix up with the fog and become part of the oppressing atmosphere. We were back in the land of pitcher and bowl and slop jar, and brushing your teeth from a tumbler. Neither of us had heroism enough to bathe, but crawled into our humid bed with sweaters and warm wrappers and bedsocks on, and all the capes and fur coats piled on top. Somehow we shivered ourselves to sleep.
The next morning the sun was actually shining. After a sloppy breakfast, we all reported at the Imperial Hotel where we were given instructions on all kinds of things. We were to be sent to Paris in relays just as quickly as possible. In the meantime London was ours. Miss P., who knew London, and I went shopping. I was chiefly interested in discovering all evidences of war. London had changed somehow, yet not exactly in the way one might vaguely imagine. Shops were all thriving apparently, Liberty's windows as entrancing as ever, movement and crowds everywhere. Yet if you observed closely you saw how few automobiles and taxis there were, though the busses were the same as ever, except that there were women-conductors. The streets were absolutely flooded with men in uniform, soldiers of all kinds. There were many Australians and New Zealanders, tall, lean men with weather-beaten faces and a certain attractive swagger which is augmented by their broad-brimmed hats turned up at one side. Canadians were everywhere, and in less numbers, Americans. And of course the British in their splendid uniforms with their unmistakable bearing. I was glad to see so many, many specimens of noble Anglo-Saxons. They seem to me to be the hope of England. The most striking of all are the Scotch; perfect giants of men, in their kilts and plaids, bare knees and all. Then there were many wounded, men wearing the blue hospital uniform, with arms and legs gone, heads bandaged, limping forth to get the air; but most of them smiling. Miss P. and I decided that the greatest evidence of the terrible strain of war was in the expression of people on the street. No one ever smiled. Faces were dull and joyless. Clothes were old. Shoes were shapeless and soggy. Every one seemed hopeless rather than actively sorrowful. And in the keen, blonde faces of the men one sees about Whitehall, the men on the inside of affairs, there was a far-away, set, determined expression.
We had arrived in London on New Year's day, Wednesday, and were to leave on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we were all taken to South Hampton and after interminable business at the customs house we boarded a channel boat for Havre. A smooth passage. At 5.45 a.m. I looked out of the porthole and there was the shore of France, all black, with little lights twinkling and a great white searchlight flashing back and forth over the water. After breakfast, when we went up on deck, the sky was rosy with the approaching sunrise, and suddenly in a burst of glory the sun came out of a golden cloud and warmed us all! It was an indescribably beautiful scene. The masts of many ships and all the ropes and rigging against the glowing pink clouds in the sky, the beloved bustle of a harbor, the French language, the smiling French faces, the excitement of arrival at dawn, all made us happy, and I, for one, loved France with all my heart at that moment. We were gathered on the wharf for some time, where we watched red-capped German prisoners unloading our trunks from the ship. Then, in rows of fours, we were marched up through the muddy streets to the Y.M.C.A. headquarters. There we were given a good, direct talk by the man in charge and were again marched off for an early luncheon. My admiration for the Y.M.C.A. is rising continually. I am proud and thrilled to be a part of it. I am glad I came.
"Première Classe" coaches were reserved for us on our trip to Paris. We left Havre at noon, closely packed into our compartments. Such wonderful country as we went through! We stopped at Rouen and had fine views of the Cathedral, the excited "Y" girls running from one side of the car to the other in their effort to miss nothing. In the Rouen station a fine old lady was giving coffee at a Red Cross canteen. A continuous stream of soldiers in blue came up to her booth. I saw one greenish-coated Italian soldier step up and order coffee just as a French soldier was beginning his. The two chinked their cups together, while the shrewd-faced old lady in her flowing Red Cross cap beamed at them.
The train then became crowded, and a French soldier came into our compartment. I got to talking with him. He had been a prisoner in Germany ever since August, 1914, and had been back in France just five days. He was very young, with one of the saddest faces I ever saw. I asked him how he had been treated. He said that he had never seen any cruelty to prisoners, except that the last two years of the war they had been so poorly nourished. Much else he told us about the French attitude toward their allies. I have talked with many French and American boys during this past week and have heard many stories, but they must wait till I get home. Apparently the men in the ranks from Australia, Canada and the United States, get on well with each other and with the French, but they say many things against the English. I think this is due to a sort of provincial antipathy on the part of our boys to anything "different" from what they are used to. I have run against this attitude in many since I have been here and it seems to me a great pity. Whenever I hear boys talking against the English I am going to try to make them see differently. I have found one exception. Such a nice boy whom I talked with yesterday in the train. He had been in the one U.S. division that fought at Ypres. As he described the battle line his face was drawn with the horror of it, yet he had to talk about it, and I let him, hoping he would "get it off his chest" that way. "One thing is," he said, "that no one knows what the British have been through in this war. Terrible as the Marne and the Argonne were, Ypres was ten times worse. It was the most frightful place on the front, and the British have done wonders in holding it."