A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

The first anniversary of the American entrance into the world war was the occasion of what almost might be called special American editions of most of the large English and French newspapers. Columns of space in these papers were devoted to encomiums of praise of our enterprise, our ingenuity, our manifold and miraculous accomplishments in the space of twelve short months. Miraculous was a word most frequently used, miraculous and astounding.

It is too bad that the people of the United States can not at present be told all of the amazing feats of building, engineering, transportation and railroad construction which have so impressed the allies abroad. It would inspire and encourage them to know it, but unfortunately it is necessary to keep as many of the details as possible a secret from Germany. Before the fateful August day in 1914, when the vast German army started on its march across doomed Belgium, the war lords knew the French railroad system as well as they knew their own. They had maps of every foot of railroad in the French republic. They had an accurate catalogue of French rolling stock, and they knew exactly the number and capacity of railroad manufacturing and repair shops. They probably knew the railroad men of the country down to the last patch on an engineer’s overalls.

But the Germans do not know what has happened to the French railroad system since April 6, 1917, the date of our entrance into the war. Of course we do not want them to know, but I don’t mind telling them that what has happened deserves the adjectives lavished on us by the English and French newspapers. I have been over hundreds of miles of that part of the French railroad system which moves our men and their supplies from ocean ports to the fighting front, and I agree with Secretary Baker when he said, on his departure from France, that what had been accomplished was inspiring to behold.

I shall never forget a Sunday that I spent at a railroad station in a town in central France. The town, which can not be named, is a small and not very important manufacturing city, but it is now one of the important junctions in the chain of railroads leading from the southwestern and northwestern seaports to the battle-front of the northeast.

The day was Sunday, just three days after the great push of March twenty-first began. I was returning to Paris after a visit to certain large aviation fields in the neighborhood, and got off at this junction for luncheon and a change of cars. Few French trains now carry restaurant wagons, and travelers, except on express trains, have to carry luncheon baskets or depend on station buffets.

I arrived at the junction at eleven o’clock, but I did not take the two o’clock Paris express, as I had planned. I stayed in the station all day and all evening watching the breath-taking procession of trains tearing northward to the fight, and the equally amazing procession of trains rolling southward and bearing the flotsam and jetsam of battle—wounded and dying men, despairing refugees, damaged guns, broken airplanes. French trains, including our own over there, move methodically in blocks called marches. They never have any traffic tie-ups, because all the trains move at exactly the same speed, and every train has its prescribed place in the marche, just so far ahead or behind the next train. It is an excellent system. But it seemed to me that day that the trains would certainly telescope one another, they came on and on so unceasingly and so close together.

The trains moving northward were laden with soldiers, horses, guns, airplanes, ammunition wagons, food, supplies of every conceivable description. Trainload after trainload of horses, eight to a car with four men, generally asleep on the hay in the middle space of the car. The horses, beautiful, tragic creatures, going to almost certain destruction wrung the heart to see. They gazed out at the flying landscape and the cheering station crowds with big, soft, uncomprehending eyes. How I wish we did not have to use horses in war. Of course the lives of men are far more valuable, but the men at least know why they fight and die.

Trainloads of men, so many that within an hour I had ceased to count them, rolled through that junction. Men from England, Frenchmen hurriedly recalled from leave in their southern homes. All ages. I saw French boys who must have been eighteen, but who looked younger by two years, and I saw men who might have been grandfathers. These older men do not often fight. They serve meals in the trenches and perform other non-combatant services. All France—all—is mobilized for some kind of service.

Sometimes these troop trains made brief stops at our station. Of course, there was a Red Cross canteen there, and I worked with the fine French women who were in charge of it, ladling hot coffee into mugs, and handing thick sandwiches to the crowding, hungry poilus. Some of the trains had their own kitchens, portable affairs on flat cars, and when the train stopped the men fairly boiled out of the carriages, pails and bowls in hand, to get the delicious soup prepared by the cooks. The Red Cross women supplemented the meal with sandwiches and coffee, at least when time permitted, which was not often. Those troop trains were on their way north with no unnecessary stops.

More often than not the trains did not stop. Once as a train was rolling through the station a soldier called to me asking for the newspaper I held in my hand. Of course I gave it to him, sprinting along the platform at a lively rate. The next time I saw a train coming I ran to the newsstand and bought three francs’ worth of papers, about as many as I could carry, and had them ready for rapid distribution to the effusive and laughing soldiers.