In the meantime the air had been full of rumors regarding the “Big Bertha” who had been conveniently silent ever since my arrival in Paris. It was persistently said that on Monday morning seventeen of these ladies bearing the same name would again begin a bombardment of Paris, and I confess that it gave me something of a shock, when, on the Monday morning after my concert while I was still luxuriating in bed—thinking with pleasure of the triumphs of the day before and with eager anticipation of my approaching trip to Chaumont—I suddenly heard a curious reverberation, different from the explosions of the Gothas or of the answering air-guns. It was the first greeting of Madame Bertha, and this greeting was repeated punctiliously every fifteen minutes throughout the day, the shells striking in Paris in different quarters.
It was interesting to watch the French people. After every shot, crowds of them would run into the streets, talking, gesticulating, and speculating where that particular shell had fallen. This would go on for thirteen or fourteen minutes and then all would scoot back into their shops and houses as they knew that the next shell was about due.
That evening I had been invited to dine at Mrs. Edith Wharton’s, at her lovely apartment in the Rue de Varennes. Just as I got to her door a Frenchman stopped and said to me that he had been at the concert on the preceding day. He then added: “I see that you are making the acquaintance of ‘La Grosse Berthe.’ ” Thinking that he referred to the return of the bombardment, I smiled assent, and then proceeded to Mrs. Wharton’s apartment. I found our great novelist with two other ladies, an American officer, and an American composer, my dear friend Blair Fairchild, who had been living in Paris for several years and was acting most ably as distributing agent for the money which our “Society of American Friends of Musicians in France” was sending over. The dinner proceeded as if we lived in times of deepest peace. It was served with punctilious efficiency, the flowers were charming, and the conversation delightful, and it was only when dinner was half over that I found out, quite casually, that what my French gentleman at the door had referred to was, that only two minutes before my arrival the last shell of the Big Bertha had fallen on the roof of the house opposite, demolishing it and parts of the upper story.
On the following Wednesday, July 17, I took the morning train for Chaumont, again comfortably clad in civilian clothes. I was met at the station by a young officer, Lieutenant Wendell, nephew of my old friend Evart Wendell, who took me to general headquarters and introduced me to Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, secretary of the General Staff, who explained to me in detail various points on which General Pershing desired information and assistance. I was then most comfortably put up at the guest-house, formerly a large private residence in the town, which had been taken over by General Pershing to accommodate his visitors. I was to dine at his château that evening, and spent a great part of the afternoon walking through the quaint old hill town situated on a high cliff overlooking the valley of the Marne. It was during this walk that I saw the only drunken American private during my three months’ stay in France. I was following a picturesque road leading out of the town into the country, when a colored boy in khaki reeled toward me and said: “ ’Scuse me, sah. Are you a Frenchman?” I said “No,” and he replied: “Then foh Gawd sake, will you please tell me whar ah can get a drink?” I answered: “No. You have evidently had enough already.” He tried to follow me and I, seeing two white soldiers approaching, turned to them, and said: “I think you had better take care of this boy. He has had too much to drink.” They briskly answered: “Certainly, sir.” But as they went up to him he kept peering at me and said: “I want to talk to that gen’leman. That’s Mr. Damrosch!” I laughed out loud, for here I was, over three thousand miles from home, and this boy, who perhaps had musical inclinations and had heard me conduct in some concert, recognized me even through the alcoholic vapors which surrounded him so thickly that one could have cut them with a knife.
One of the other visitors at the guest-house was General Omar Bundy, who commanded the first division and had come to Chaumont to receive the congratulations of the commander-in-chief on the splendid work of his division. He proved a delightful gentleman, and we chatted together very amicably as a motor-car took us that evening about five miles beyond Chaumont through most lovely country to the château surrounded by exquisite gardens and woods which General Pershing had taken for his personal residence. A scene of greater peace and tranquillity could not be imagined, and literally the only sign and symbol of war was the solitary sentry pacing up and down before the entrance, with bayonet fixed.
As this happened to be the first day of General Foch’s great attack in which he pushed the Germans back six miles, General Pershing, who had been at the front all day, had not yet returned, and General Bundy and I walked through the grounds in the lovely evening twilight for perhaps half an hour, when a motor-car drove up and our great commander-in-chief, accompanied by his aide, immediately came over to us and made us welcome in hearty and simple fashion. He reminded me that we had met at the Presidio in San Francisco during the great exhibition of 1915, and indeed I remembered it well, for shortly afterward he had been sent to the Mexican border in command of the troops, and while there had been overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy of the death of his wife and children, who were suffocated in a fire at night which destroyed their home at the Presidio.
So much has been written regarding the wonderful impression which General Pershing made in Europe on all who came in contact with him that it is not necessary for me to more than echo the general chorus of praise—soldierly, dignified, courteous, and simple in his bearing, wearing a uniform as only a man can who has been a soldier all his life.
We entered the house and shortly after sat down to dinner. The party consisted of the commander-in-chief, General Bundy, and a most delightful staff of eight officers—I being the only civilian. As such I expected and half hoped that the talk would be all about the wonderful success of the first day’s push by Foch, of which I had already heard enthusiastic rumors in the town, or of great military secrets, affairs of strategy, monster guns, thousands of airplanes, and new, mysterious machines of destruction. But, to my surprise, the conversation during almost the entire dinner was of music, of its influence in raising the spirits of the soldier, in giving him the right kind of recreation and the necessary relief from the monotony of camp work or the horrors of battle. General Pershing told me that after hearing some of the crack military bands of France and England he had been so overwhelmed by the consciousness of our inferiority that he was eager to know if something could not be done to improve the general standard of our army bands, and, more particularly, whether it might not be possible at least to take out the best players from among the bands then in France and to form a headquarters band of superior excellence, led by the best bandmaster among them, and in this way form a model which the others could endeavor to copy. This suggestion seemed to me excellent, and I asked how many bandmasters there were at present in France, as I would like to examine them as to their fitness. General Pershing said, with a smile, that there were over two hundred, but this did not phase me and I agreed to examine them all, provided that proper arrangements could be made for a fitting test of their qualifications. Various plans for such an examination were discussed and General Pershing finally decided to send them all to Paris in batches of fifty every week, together with a military band which should be stationed there for the following four or five weeks, thus giving me abundant opportunity to test their efficiency in conducting as well as in harmony and orchestration. It seemed to me at the time remarkable that, in the midst of war and with all its many immediate necessities weighing upon him, General Pershing should have had the acumen to perceive the value of music in war time and to interest himself in its improvement.
As I sat there, the memory of the hollow-cheeked Bandmaster Tyler who had stood next to me at the Fourth of July parade in Paris suddenly came back. I thought to myself that here I was, the only civilian at the table, and that therefore I might say anything I pleased without being put up against a wall at sunrise and shot, for at the worst they could only consider me as very ignorant of army customs. Therefore I watched for my opportunity and suddenly plunged in and spoke of my conversation with Bandmaster Tyler while we were waiting for our marines to march down the Champs-Élysées. I said that in my humble opinion it was a great mistake to use musicians as stretcher-bearers in battle, not that their lives as soldiers were any more valuable than those of any others in the army, but that a stretcher-bearer could be trained in a very short time while it took many months to train a bandsman; that the Canadian regiments had followed the same custom during the first months of the war, but the results had been so dire in destroying the bands and their usefulness, that the soldiers themselves had implored their commanding officers not to let their bandsmen be sacrificed in this way, as there was nothing so terrible as coming back after battle to a silent and therefore desolate camp. After I had finished my rather impassioned peroration, General Bundy and others heartily agreed with me, but General Pershing said nothing at all, and I felt that I had perhaps talked too much and mal à propos. But the following morning, as I was seated with Colonel Collins at general headquarters arranging the details of my examinations, he smilingly handed me an order from the commander-in-chief which had just arrived and which was to be sent to the division commanders, to the effect that “from now on bandsmen are not to be used any longer as stretcher-bearers except in cases of extreme military urgency.”
One of General Pershing’s remarks during the dinner is so characteristic that I repeat it here. He said: “When peace is declared and our bands march up Fifth Avenue I should like them to play so well that it will be another proof of the advantage of military training.” Subsequent developments and meetings with this interesting man further deepened the impression which he made upon me.