Most Honored Sir:
Though we have spent a most agreeable time in your regiment—of which we have a good opinion, although the discipline is sometimes rather more lax than we are accustomed to—we feel that the moment has come for us to join our friends, which we were unable to do at the mobilization, when we naturally preferred the Foreign Legion to a concentration camp.
We will give a good account of you to our friends and hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again before long.
Otto X——
Ober-Lieutenant, Potsdam Guards.
Hermann Y——
Lieutenant, Potsdam Guards.
Wouldn't that fease you? The Colonel nearly blew up.
Well, at nightfall we resumed our march by separate companies. Our Captain didn't know the country, so of course we got lost. It was raining heavily, and the mud was frequently knee deep. Add to that incessant tumbles into numberless shell holes full of water, and you will realize that we were a pretty sad procession that finally at three A. M. scrambled into the stinking ditch where we were to spend the greater part of the next three months.
For three or four days we had nothing to do but dodge the shrapnel and try and keep warm, as the enemy maintained a constant artillery fire—with a regular interval for luncheon—starting about six A. M. and stopping toward five P. M.; and they got the range. I tell you, one lies pretty flat when there's any shrapnel about. Some of the English boys were killed the second day, but we Americans have been fine and lucky—only one killed the whole time, though we have had some very narrow shaves. For instance, Thaw had his bayonet knocked off his rifle by a "sniper" while on sentry-go, and another boy named Merlac had his pipe taken clean out of his mouth by a shrapnel ball in the trenches. It didn't hurt him at all, but I never saw any one look so surprised in my life. Shortly afterward Jimmy Bach (who is now in the Aviation Corps with Thaw and me) had his head cut by a rifle bullet which just grazed it without doing more than make a deepish scratch. I myself had a close squeak the very day of our arrival in the trenches. A piece of shell weighing three or four pounds smashed to bits the pack on my back—including my best pipe, which I couldn't replace until I got back to Paris—without so much as bruising me, though it scared me something dreadful.
Farewell, Whiskers!
Our company had an eight days' "shift" in the trenches, followed by three days' rest at a camp four miles in the rear.
During the week's duty it was impossible to wash or take off one's clothes, and we quickly got into a horrible condition of filth. To begin with, there was a cake of mud from head to foot about half an inch thick; but what was worse was the vermin which infested our clothes almost immediately and were practically impossible to get rid of. They nearly broke the heart of Lieutenant Bloch. He had a wonderful crop of bright red whiskers, of which he was as proud as a kitten with its first mouse, because he thought they gave him a really warlike appearance, and he was always combing them and squinting at them in a little pocket mirror. Well, one day the lice got into these whiskers and fairly gave him hades. He bore it for a week, scratching away at his chin until he was tearing out chunks of hair by the roots; but at last he could stand no more, and had to have the whole lot shaved off. He was the saddest thing you ever saw after that, with a little chinless face like a pink rabbit, and was so ashamed he hardly dared show himself in daylight.
But mud and vermin were only minor worries, really; our proper serious troubles were cold and hunger. It's pretty cool in the middle of France toward the end of November, and for some reason—I guess because they were such a lot of infernal thieves at our depot—we never got any of the clothes and warm wraps sent up from Paris for us. It was just throwing money away to try it. My wife mailed me three or four lots of woolen sweaters and underclothes, but I never received a single thing, and the rest of the boys had much the same experience.
Running the Gauntlet.
That was bad, but the hunger was something fierce. The Foreign Legion is not particularly well fed at any time—coffee and dry bread for breakfast, soup with lumps of meat in it for luncheon, with rice to follow, and the same plus coffee for dinner, and not too much of anything, either. But in our case all the grub had to be brought in buckets from the relief post, four miles away, by squads leaving the trenches at three A. M., ten A. M., and five P. M., and a tough job it was, what with the darkness and the mud and the shell holes and the German cannonade, to say nothing of occasional snipers taking pot shots at you with rifles. I got one bullet once right between my legs, which drilled a hole in the next bucket in line and wasted all our coffee.