Once I introduced a French officer to Colonel William J. Donovan, of the 165th Infantry. In the course of my introduction I mentioned the fact that Colonel Donovan came from Buffalo. After Donovan had gone, the Frenchman remarked to me, "Buffalo is very wild, is it not?" I answered him guardedly, "Not very." He explained, "But it is the place where you hunt that great animal, is it not?"
Something that struck me forcibly was the total lack of roving desire among the peasants. Where they had been born, there they desired to live and die. This you would see in the poilu in the trenches, whose idea always was to return home again to the house where he was born.
There is also a very real democracy in the French army. This should be borne in mind by all those who go about talking of the military aristocracy which would be built up by universal service in this country. In France I have seen sons of the most prominent families, the descendants of the old haute noblesse, as privates or noncommissioned officers. I also have seen in the little French villages a high officer of the French army returning to his family for his leave, that family being the humblest of peasants, living in a cottage of two rooms. I have dined with a general, been introduced by him to the remainder of his family, and found them privates and noncommissioned officers.
The French sent to the Gondecourt area a division of the "Chasseurs Alpins" to help train us. The chasseurs are a separate unit from the French infantry and have their own particular customs. To begin with, their military organization is slightly different, in that they do not have regiments and the battalion forms the unit. Their uniforms are dark blue with silver buttons, and they do not wear the ordinary French cap, but have a dark-blue cloth bérèt, or tam-o'-shanter, with an Alpine horn embroidered in silver as insignia. The corps is an old one and has many traditions. Their pride is to consider themselves as quite apart from the infantry; indeed, they feel highly insulted if you confuse the two, although, to all intents and purposes, their work is identical. They have songs of their own, some of them very uncomplimentary to the infantry, and highly seasoned, according to our American ideas. They have a custom when marching on parade of keeping a step about double the time of the ordinary slow step. Their bugle corps, which they have instead of our regimental brass bands, are very snappy and effective, and the men have a trick of waving their bugles in unison before they strike a note, which is very effective. They have no drums. These quaint, squat, jovial, dark-haired fellows were billeted in the villages all around our area.
The billeting party, after working very hard and accomplishing very little, divided the area up as the French suggested. In advance of the remainder of our troops the battalion of the Sixteenth Infantry, which paraded in Paris on the Fourth of July, arrived. We were all down at the train to meet them, as was a battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins. They came in the ordinary day coaches used in France. I remember hearing an officer say that these were hard on the men. It was the last time that I ever saw our troops travel in anything but box cars, and this arrangement was made, I think, as a special compliment by the French Government.
A couple of days afterward came the Fourteenth of July. The French had a parade, and our troops took part in it. The French troops came first past the reviewing officers, who were both French and American. The infantry of each battalion passed first, bayonets glittering, lines smartly dressed; following them in turn the machine-gun companies, or "jackass batteries," as they were called by our men, the mules finely currycombed and the harness shining. Their bands, with the brass trumpets, played snappily. Altogether they gave an appearance of confident efficiency. Then came our troops—in column of squads. What held good in Paris still held good—our splendidly trained little army did not dare trust itself to take up platoon front.
CHAPTER IV
TRAINING IN FRANCE
"I wish myself could talk to myself as I left 'im a year ago;
I could tell 'im a lot that would save 'im a lot in the things that 'e ought to know.
When I think o' that ignorant barrack bird it almost makes me cry."