“Beg pardon, sirs,” he said courteously, “I am obliged to remind you that you are transgressing the provisions of section —— of regulation —— of orders —— relating to associations with women. I shall have to request you to accompany me to headquarters.”
The two very new young officers declined the invitation, first with indignation, then with good-natured appeals to the soldier’s sporting blood. The soldier remained adamant, and then one of the officers, getting genuinely angry, thrust his fist under the man’s nose. “What would you do if I were to push your face in and go on my way?”
The soldier policeman promptly drew his automatic and thrust it under the lieutenant’s nose. “I would do my duty, sir,” he replied, still courteously. But he was an American and couldn’t hold in any longer. “By God,” he exclaimed, “I wish you’d try it on. You’re the kind of an officer the American army could afford to lose suddenly.”
That settled it. The two officers went to headquarters, and they were punished. The one that attempted to frighten the young policeman got sent back to the United States. The men at headquarters agreed with the policeman that the United States army could afford to lose a man like that.
The military policeman, who is found all over our zone in France, does not wear blue clothes and a peaked cap. Neither does he carry a baton. He wears his soldier uniform and a white arm band on which the letters A. P. M., assistant provost marshal, appear in letters of red. He wears a belt and a pistol and he carries plenty of ammunition with him.
He is a part of a service which has at its head General Allaire, chief provost marshal of the army, one of General Pershing’s staff. General Allaire lives at the sequestered little town which houses the rest of the staff. Under him are many officers who command the regiments of assistant provost marshals, and they are held responsible for the order and good conduct of the army.
In Paris the military police have their headquarters in an old-fashioned building in the Rue Ste. Anne, close to the heart of old Paris. The place was a hotel in pre-war days, and it looks very much like a hotel now, with all the boarders in uniform. The big dining-room has less style about it than formerly. At present it is furnished with long pine tables, scrubbed clean, and the dishes are mostly white enamel ware.
A one-armed French soldier, with a most engaging smile and a pretty good knowledge of English, acts as elevator boy, and he told me once that when the war was over he was going to America. “I want to know how it feels,” he said, “to belong, even for part of my life, to a country that can produce such boys as these.”
They are a picked lot. It is an honor to be in the service, and only those in whose honor as well as valor the authorities have the greatest confidence, ever make the service.
In Paris the lieutenant under whose direct command the force works is the most single-minded man I think I have ever met. His whole existence seems bound up in his men. He even spends his off hours with them. One Monday when I went to the house in the Rue Ste. Anne to have a military pass stamped by the proper provost marshal, this lieutenant of police told me that the day before, Sunday, he had taken the half of his men who were off duty to Versailles. They had a wonderful day, he said. The authorities even opened the palace museum for the Americans.