A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

I have seen some of the effects of a partial success of the German war lords’ plan, and I, the mother of a soldier on the French front, say to the mothers of other soldiers that I would be ashamed to have him anywhere else. Not long before leaving France I saw him for a short hour, a simple enlisted man in a humble post of duty. The spring wind blowing over the devastated and ravished plains bore the roaring of artillery plainly to our ears. Every day since then those guns have roared nearer, and now that part of France is closed to civilians.

The next message that came out of the sector where the Americans hold the line brought mourning and tears to many women. And yet I can truthfully say that I would be happier to have my son dead in France, sleeping in a soldier’s grave beyond the sea, than to have him alive and safe, shirking his duty in a bullet-proof job at home.

I do not believe that in the years to come there is going to be much happiness for the men who are shirking, nor for the women who may be encouraging them to shirk. The shirkers are going to play a very pitiful part in the national life of this country after the war. The men who come home will be the rulers of America’s future destiny. They will be the strong builders of our greatness. They are learning in this war how to build.

CHAPTER II
I ADOPT THE AMERICAN ARMY

Looking back over my three months in France, most of the time spent in visiting American military camps, some experiences stand out above all others. One, a precious personal experience, gave me my first insight into the splendid idealism and individual worth of the enlisted men of our army. I had gone to France a newspaper correspondent, without a single plan, without even a hope of seeing my soldier son. I had no intention of using my privileged position to seek him out. I did not know where he was, nor did I ask.

The American soldier abroad is theoretically still in America. He gets his letters through an American branch post-office in Paris, and they are sent to him in care of his regiment and his company, with no more definite address than “American Expeditionary Force.” My son knew my Paris address, but he could not, even had he wished to do so, tell me his.

With a few thousand more impatient youngsters my boy had enlisted before the draft, fearing that he might draw a late number. He signed up on the day when I sailed for Russia, and he was in France nearly two months before I returned to the United States. Thus our separation had been a longer one than was usual in this war. So when he wrote me in February that he had been given a week’s leave and hoped to be sent to Aix-les-Bains, I hoped so too most fervently, because I had been ordered to Aix-les-Bains to write the story of the first vacation of our soldiers.

I arrived two days after the first contingent of men, the dried mud of the trenches caking their uniforms and their worn boots, had marched to music and cheers through the flag-draped streets of Aix. I drove directly from the station to the headquarters of the provost marshal, and asked if a certain private soldier was in town, and if so where. He was there, and a sympathetic young man in uniform of the military police searched the lists for the record of his hotel. It is part of the intelligent care taken of our soldiers overseas that even on their permissions, or leaves from duty, the highest authorities know exactly where they live and how. No mother need worry lest her son get lost in France. He can’t get lost.

In two minutes I had my son’s address and was on my way to the hotel. He was not there, but the black-eyed little patronne, also sympathetic, found me a room on his floor. It was near the luncheon hour and I sat down at the window nearest the street, eagerly scrutinizing every soldier who passed, especially those who turned in at the hotel gate. Finally a soldier came swinging down the street, and it seemed to me that he looked familiar. Yet I was not sure. Could nine months make such a difference in a boy of twenty? This one, with the absurd little tooth-brush mustache and the cap on the side of his head, was taller, broader, straighter than my son. He was more intensely alive. Yet he walked like my Julian.

I waited for him to come up-stairs, but he did not come. I decided that he had gone directly to the dining-room, so I went down-stairs and into the big room, every table of which was filled with uniformed men, eating, laughing and talking.