Well, we started out carrying each two jugs and as we went the fellow which acts as usher, or sentry on the road hollers at us do we know the way and Ceasare and him jabbered at each other in French in the remarkable fluent way they do over here. And Ceasare laughed and when we asked what it was he said the guy told him to look out Fritz didnt get us on the open road, which was certainly some joke for of course we hadn't been able to get near enough to Fritz to hear him in some time. So we laughed, too, for if any snipers had managed to stay behind and opened up on us we could of spotted them and wiped them out if they had kept it up.
Well sweetie, there wasnt any road exactly toward the place we was bound for on account of our having done considerable trespassing on private property and taking little notice of fences whether barbed-wire or civilian or shell-holes or trenches but having went straight ahead. And after the last 5 years on upper Broadway you will realize it comes easy enough to me, I often having come unharmed from the Claridge to the Astor, and the French fields has nothing on that crossing. So to me that first part of the trip was as little or nothing and I was the cheerfulist of the party though we was all pretty cheerful and singing a little song of Ceasare's which I dont know what it means but I guess I'd better not write it in for fear you would.
Well, it was late afternoon and awful cold for the time of year, and I was thinking that at home the frost was on the pumpkin and the pumpkin would soon be in the pie and the turkey was about to get the axe and Halloween was due and a lot of nice things like that. And after a lot of kilomets had been covered, we come to the funny little town which looked like the back-drop to the opening seane in a musical comedy only all shot to pieces like it had been on the road with a No. 2 company for a long and successful tower.
Well, we come to it, anyhow, and being on duty in a way as far as them jugs went—we went with them and took what we could afford our ownselves while we watched papa Ceasare fill 'em up. Then the tobacco dept. claimed our attention only to find there wasn't any!
Well, sweetie, I have tried to put over the way I felt at these glad tidings and the censor wouldn't of stood for it, so out she goes! But I felt that way all right and so did Mac and Ceasare.
"I'll no beleeve ut!" says Mack which he talks a funny kind of way like Harry Lauder. "I'll no beleeve ut—theer must be some someplace aboot!"
"Say la guyer!" says Ceasare and gives a shrug, although he was a lot more disappointed than Mac on account of Mac's really caring more for liquor than smoke any day. "Say la Guyer!" he says, and asks his pa why it happened and his pa tells him and he translates it to Mac and me.
"He say a young lady have took it all only hour ago for free to soldiers," he explains.
And take it or leave it, but I was certainly a little sore for although I am the first to believe in the other fellow getting it, still this time we all felt like the other fellow was us, and no doubt she had took it to the nearest camp or hut, and so I ast which way was it she went for mebbe we would get some of it. And then come a big surprise.
"No 'ospitil here!" Ceasare explained again. "An no 'ut! It ees too soon after we take it. Then papa says she is first cross red lady we have seen and she speak in French!"