“Your mother lived here a long time and probably knew how to choose. I've seen so many things in France that I want to get away from. Manure-piles!”
Lanny laughed. Having spent nearly all his life in France, he assumed that this national institution was necessary to the agricultural procèss. But Jerry said they ordered things differently in Kansas; everything there was clean and agreeable, even the hogs. Lanny was amused, because when Jerry Pendleton had first made his appearance on the Riviera he had described his home state as a dull, provincial place, and had earnestly desired not to go back and help run two drug stores.
But now what a change! “I fought to save these people,” said the lieutenant of a machine-gun company, “and now I have to bite every franc to see if it's made of lead.”
“That can happen anywhere in Europe,” replied his friend.
“It doesn't happen in Koblenz,” declared the other, emphatically. He was part of the army which had gone into the Rhineland to guard the bridgeheads pending the signing of a treaty. Jerry's brigade was covering a semicircle of German territory, some forty miles in diameter on the far side of the river, and his company had been quartered for three months in a tiny village where they had every opportunity to know the population. The lieutenant himself was billeted in a farmhouse where everything was so neat, and the old couple so kind, so patient and humble, grateful for the tiniest favor — it was exactly as Kurt had told Lanny it would be, the doughboys had learned that the Germans were not the Huns they had been pictured. More and more the Americans were wondering why they had had to fight such people, and how much longer they were going to have to stay and blockade them from the rest of the world.
The Rhineland is a rich country and produces food and wine in abundance; but it had been just behind the fighting front for four years and the retreating German armies had carried off all they could. Now the people were living on the scantiest rations and the children were pale and hollow-eyed. The well-fed Yanks were expected to live in houses with undernourished children and pregnant women and never give them food. There were strict orders against “fraternizing with the enemy”; but did that include stuffing half a load of bread into your overcoat pocket and passing it out to the kids?
And what about the Fräuleins, those sweet-faced, gentle creatures with golden or straw-colored braids down their backs, and white dresses with homemade embroidery on the edges? Their fellows had been marched back into the interior of Germany, and here were handsome upstanding conquerors from the far-off prairie states, with chocolates and canned peaches and other unthinkable delicacies at their disposal. Lieutenant Pendleton chuckled as he told about what must surely have been the oddest military regulation ever issued in the history of warfare; the doughboys had been officially informed that entering into intimate relations with German Fräuleins was not to be considered as “fraternizing” within the meaning of the army regulations!
“Is that why you've lost interest in Cannes?” asked Lanny, with a grin.
“No,” said Jerry, “but I'll tell you this. If somebody doesn't hurry up and make up his mind about peace terms, a lot of our fellows are just going to take things into their own hands and go home — and their Fräuleins with them. What's the matter with these old men in Paris, Lanny?”
“I'll introduce you to some of them,” answered the youth, “and you can find out for yourself.”