After the bath, met a couple of the boys and we hustled around to get things fixed up for supper. None of the cafés or restaurants have started in to serve meals so we went into the market and got some steak and potatoes. The prices are sky high, but one has to eat. These we took around to a small café and had them cooked up. The steak was tough, but the “cuisinier” had cooked it in a most delicious way — with Pinard. The potatoes as usual were French Fried. We had brought along our own wine or we would have been out of luck.
After supper we drifted around to a dance hall. It was crowded, about ten men to one girl, so we didn’t try our luck at the French dancing. All they do is whirl—always in one way and they never reverse. Once in awhile you see someone trying to do the old turkey trot. After sticking around a short while, we started home. No ride this time—no luck at all, so we burnt up the road for the ten kilom’s.
Yesterday I was over to Sedan. It was raining so hard that I didn’t do much chasing around. Of the two cities Charleville is the more picturesque with its long sloping roofs and its quaint old fashioned French appearance. Sedan looks more modern, more like the States.
The day we moved, five of us got left behind. That is there wasn’t enough room in the remaining camion—the others had pulled out and we thought they were waiting somewhere down the line. The first stop we knew was to be at Boulzicourt, so we started out on foot. All of us were dressed pretty warmly, as we had expected to hold down the front end of a camion. It was raining and soon our overcoats were weighing close to a ton. Up the line about three miles, I discovered that two letters for one of the boys had been forgotten in the shuffle. It was up to me to go back and one of the boys said he’d come along. Back we went and rescued the mail. We got under way again and this time had the luck to jump an ambulance that was going straight through. It was going, it didn’t even hit the high spots. About half way we passed the other three birds riding the back end of a truck. We pulled into Boulzicourt and discovered that the camion had moved on to a place called Flize, which is on the way to Sedan.
A camion came bowling along so we hopped aboard. Of course it was going to the wrong village, but we didn’t worry—one can always catch a ride. At Mézières the truck pulled up and we jumped off. It was still raining and we weren’t what you would call dry. Hungry and not a thing could be had in the way of food. Nothing in the shops, but we did manage to get coffee. Along towards night, we ran into a Frenchman that set us up to one fine supper with wine and rum. About that time we decided we might as well be setting out for the camp. It was raining great guns and was so dark that we gave it up as a bad job. Instead we got a room over a café. The woman who ran the place came over on the ark. She had remained during the years that the Boche held the town, and, as a consequence kept running in German with her French—something that happens quite frequently in these parts. Our room was a wonder. The bed boasted seven mattresses; reminded me of the fairy story of how to tell a real princess—when a bunch of Janes claimed the crown and to test them out they put them to bed on a stack of mattresses. Underneath was a pea. The fake ones slept like a log, but she of the purple couldn’t sleep at all and, in the morning, she was black and blue from the lump raised by the pea. We either are not of the purple or there was nothing under the mattresses, for we certainly tore off the sleep. Just before we turned in there was an awful banging on Madame’s door, and yells in French, German, and Sanscrit I guess. She had locked herself in. We went out and discovered the key sticking into the lock of her door. We gave it a turn, but the door stayed shut. We gave it a couple of more turns, and tried other combinations—still the door refused to open. In the meantime the old girl was yelling “nicht’s” and “ja’s” and French cuss words. We expected the whole town to show up. Finally Bill had the brilliant idea of seeing how our door worked. We went over to try it out and in fooling with it the door knob came out in my hand. I went over, stuck it into Madame’s door and “Voilà” the caged bird was free. In the morning we set out for Flize.
