We had been in these villages only for a few days when orders reached us to entruck and proceed to some towns only a short distance from Paris. This appealed to us all, for if we were going to train and rest for a month, no more delightful place could be chosen for one and all than the vicinity of Paris.
The buses arrived and all night we jolted southwest through the forest of Chantilly. By morning we arrived and detrucked and the brown columns wound through the fresh green landscape to the charming little gray stone towns. The town where we were to stay was called Ver. It was built on rolling country and its gray cobble-paved streets twisted and wound up hill and down through a maze of picturesque gray houses in whose doors well-dressed, bright-cheeked women and children stood watching us. On the hill were the remains of an old wall and château, and at the foot, through a broad meadow shaded with trees, a fair-sized brook rippled. Jean Jacques Rousseau lived and wrote there. How he could have been such a hypocrite and have lived in such a charming place is more than I can see.
The men were delighted. "Say, Buddie, this is some town; look at that stream!"—"Bonne billets."—"Let's fight the rest of the war here"—were some of the remarks I heard as the column swung in.
Everything was ideal. The stream above mentioned furnished a bathtub for the command. We had had no opportunity for about two months to thoroughly bathe, as we had been on active work the entire time, and you can imagine in just what condition we were. To put it in the words of one of my company commanders, "The command was as lousy as pet coons." The first day we spent in orienting ourselves, getting the kitchens arranged and the billets comfortable. Meanwhile the troops were down bathing in the stream, to the admiring interest of the French inhabitants, who lined the bridge. To our staid Americans the unconventional attitude of interest in bathing troops displayed by the French inhabitants of all ages and both sexes was a source of constant embarrassment. I have known a platoon sergeant to guide his men to quite a distant point to take their baths. When I asked him why, he replied, "Sir, it isn't decent with all them frogs looking on."
That evening, at officers' meeting, everyone was on the crest of the wave, "sitting on the world," as the doughboy puts it. The officers established their mess in various houses, and I remember to this day Lieutenant Kern, as gallant an officer as ever it was my pleasure to know, who was mortally wounded some three days from this time, telling me that they had the prettiest French girl in all of France as a waitress at his company mess and that they were all going to give her lessons in English. We talked over training and made all arrangements for a long stay. The only dissenting voice was that of the medical officer, Captain E. D. Morgan. He, Cassandra-like, prophesied that the town was too nice and we would be moved soon.
Next morning, while I was out going over the village, selecting drill grounds and planning the schedule, a motorcycle orderly arrived and handed me a message which read, "You will be prepared to entruck your battalion at two this afternoon." This meant no rest for us. We realized that a move on our part now meant one thing and one thing only, that something serious had arisen, and that we were going in again. Rumor had been rife for two or three days past that the big Hun offensive was about to start again. In the army, among the front-line troops, practically all you get is rumor about what is happening daily. Where the rumor starts from it is impossible to say, but it travels like lightning. Officers' call was sounded, and when they had assembled, I read them the order and told them it was my opinion we were going into a big battle right away. The men were immediately assembled and told the same thing. We always felt that all information possible should be given to the men. Instead of the command being downcast at the idea of leaving their well-deserved rest, their spirits rose. Immediately bustle and preparation was evident everywhere in the town.
By one o'clock the truck train was creaking into place on the road. Oddly enough the truck train was made up of White trucks, made in Cleveland, with Indo-Chinese drivers and was under the command of a French officer. The troops filed by in columns of twos toward the entrucking point. The men were laughing and joking. "They can't do without us now, Bill." "Say, Nick, look over there" (pointing toward a grave yard), "them's the rest billets of this battalion, and that" (indicating a rather imposing tomb) "is the battalion headquarters." Many of them were singing the national anthem of the doughboy, Hail! Hail! the Gang's All Here.
I got into the automobile of the French commander of the train, taking with me Lieutenant Kern, as he was pretty well played out and I wanted to spare him as much as possible. The French train commander had no idea what our ultimate destination was. All he knew was a route for about sixty kilometers, at the end of which he was to report for further orders at a little town. As we ran up and down the column of trucks checking the train to make sure that all units were present and all properly loaded, the men were singing and cheering.
As all afternoon we jolted northward through clouds of dust, rumors came in picked up from French officers on the roadside. The Hun had attacked in force east and west of Rheims in a desperate attempt to break the French army in two. East of Rheims they had met with a stone-wall resistance by Gouraud's army and been hurled back with heavy loss. West of Rheims their attack had been more successful, and they were reported to have broken through, crossed the Marne, and to be now moving on Châlons.
As night fell the jolting truck train pressed ever farther north. At the regulating station, by the shaded flare of an electric torch, we got our orders: we were to proceed to Palesne. We guessed on receiving them what our mission was. We were pushing straight north into the reëntrant into the German lines, at the peak of which was Soissons. Our destination was a large wood. We realized that we were probably to form part of an offensive to be made against the Hun right flank, which should have as its object, first, by pressure at this point, to stop the attack on Châlons; second, if it was possible, to penetrate far enough to force the evacuation of the Château-Thierry salient by threatening their lines of communication. In the early dawn the troops detrucked, sloshed through the mud, and bivouacked in the woods. Every care possible was taken to get the troops under cover of the woods and the trucks away before daylight in order to avoid any possible chance of observation by the Germans.