The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me

by William Allen White

There we made preparations to go to the headquarters of the American Army. In Paris also we got into our new regulation Red Cross uniforms. Ever since man first pinned a buffalo tail to the back of his belt, and stuck a rooster feather in his matted hair, he has been proud of his uniform. Sex vanity expresses itself most gorgeously in a uniform, and when they put Henry and me into uniforms, even carefully repressed Red Cross uniforms, open at the neck and with blue dabs on our coat lapels to distinguish us from the "first class fighting man," we were so proud that often five or six consecutive minutes passed when we weren't afraid of what our wives would say about the $124 each had spent for the togs. At times our attitude toward our wives was not unlike that of drunken rabbits hunting brazenly for the dogs! But when we slipped into citizen clothes, sobriety and remorse covered us, and we shook sad heads. We wore the uniforms little about Paris; for our Sam Browne belts kept us returning salutes until our arms hurt. They couldn't break me of the habit of saluting with a newspaper or a package or a pencil in my hand. And my return of the interminable round of salutes from French, British, and Italian soldiers who throng Paris, probably insulted—all unbeknownst to me—hundreds of our allies, and made them sneer at our flag. So it seemed best for us to wear these uniforms only where soldiers congregated who would know us for the gawks that we were and forgive us our military trespasses. Then a real day came when our Red Cross duties took us to General Pershing's headquarters.

[Illustration: He was a rare bird; this American going on a big drunk on water]

For Americans during the year 1918, "Somewhere in France," will mean the Joan of Arc country. It is not in the war zone, but lies among the hills of Central France, a four or five hours' auto ride from Paris. To reach the American "Somewhere in France" from Paris, one crosses the battle-field of the Marne, and we passed it the day after the third anniversary, when all the hundreds of roadside graves that marked the French advance were a-bloom and a-flutter with the tri-colour. Great doings were afoot the day before on that battle-field. Bands had played triumphant songs, and orators had spoken and the leaders of France—soldier and civilian—had come out and wept and France had released her emotions and was better for it. We passed through Meaux and hurried on east to St. Dizier, where we stopped for the night. We put up at a dingy little inn, filled to overflowing with as curious a company as ever gathered under one roof. Of course there were French soldiers—scores of them, mostly officers in full dress, going to the line or coming from it. Then there were fathers and mothers of soldiers and sisters and sweethearts of soldiers and wives of soldiers bound for the front or coming home. And there we were, the only Americans in the house, with just enough French to order "des oeufs" and coffee "au lait" and "ros bif and jambon and pain" and to ask how much and then make them say it slowly and stick the sum up on their fingers. We were having engine trouble. And our car was groaning and coughing and muttering in the gloomy little court of the inn. Around the court ran the sleeping rooms, and under one end, forty feet from the diningroom, was what was once the stable, and what now is the garage. Frenchmen wandered up, looked at our chauffeur (from Utica, N. Y.) tried to diagnose the case, found we did not understand and then moved away. But it was a twelve-cylinder American machine and the Frenchmen, discovering that, kept coming back to it. As we sat on the cement platform of the tavern, kicking our heels against it and bemoaning the follies of youth which had corrupted our Freshman and Sophomore French, there came and sat beside us a pretty woman. She had black snappy eyes, fresh dark skin, and jet black hair, so curly that it was almost frowsy. She listened to us for a moment, then hopped aboard our talk like a boy flipping a street car: "Kansas—eh? I once lived in Oklahoma City. My father ran the Bee Hive!"

"Angels of mercy, angels of light!" This from me. "Say, will you interpret for us?"

"Sure mike! sir," she said. And then added: "And if it's engine trouble my husband upstairs is a chauffeur. Shall I get him?" And when she returned with him, he fell to, glad enough to get a look into a twelve-cylinder American car. Henry stood by him, and with the woman acting as interlocutor, between our driver and her husband we soon had the trouble located and the dissimulator—Henry maintains that all engine trouble is connected in some way with a dissimulator—rectified, and while the job was going on, he expounded the twelve cylinders to the French, puffed on his dreadnaught pipe, and left the lady from Oklahoma City to me. She was keen for talk. Between her official communiques to her husband and our driver, she got in this:

"Yes, I know Frank Wickoff in Oklahoma City—knew him when he was poor as Job's turkey, and then my folks used to borrow money at his bank. Before we came to Oklahoma City we lived in Austin. We ran the Good Luck, or was it the Fair; no, we ran the Fair in Dallas." At a quick look at her face from me she laughed and said: "Oh, yes, I'm Jew all right. No," she returned to a query, "I never was in Wichita. But when we moved to Blackwell we used to take the Beacon!"

"Henry, come here," came the call from me. "Here is old Subscriber and Constant Reader!" Then Henry came up and the subsequent proceedings interested me no more. For Henry took the witness. And the three of us, kicking our heels on the cement wall below us, sat swapping yarns about mutual friends in the Southwest. It seems that in France the lady is a pedlar who goes from town to town on market day with notions and runs a little notion wagon through the country between times. She told us of an air raid of the night before on St. Dizier where eleven people had been killed and urged us to stay for the funeral the next day. It was to be a sight worth seeing. Most of the dead were women and children. There was nothing military in the little town but the two hotels that housed soldiers and their friends and relatives going to the front and coming back. Yet the Germans had come, dropped a score of bombs on the town, then had flown away for another town, dropping their hateful eggs across country as they went. Luneville had lost half a dozen, Fismes half a score, and other towns of the neighbourhood, accordingly—all civilians, mostly women and children; and not a town raided had any military works or if it had a munition factory, the bombs had hit miles from the plants.

[Illustration: Henry puffed on his dreadnaught pipe and left the lady from Oklahoma City to me]

We were beginning to realize slowly what a hell of torture and disease and suffering this war means to France. Half a million tuberculars in her homes, spreading poison there; two million homeless refugees quartered beyond the war zone; millions of soldiers living in the homes fifty miles back from the line, every month bringing new men to these homes left by their comrades returning to the battle front; air raids by night slaying women and babies; commerce choked with the offering to the war god; soldiers filling the highways; food, clothing and munitions taking all the space upon the railroads; fuel almost prohibitively high; food scarce; and always talk of the war—of nothing, absolutely nothing but the war and its horrors. That France has held so long under this curse proves the miracle of her divine courage! As we sat under the shrouded torches in the inn courtyard and considered what life really means to the men and women of St. Dizier, once more we wondered how we at home would react under the terrific punishment which these people are taking; what would Wichita do with her houses bombed, her homes crowded with refugees; her parks and schools and public buildings turned into barracks, her stores filled with gaping empty shelves, her railroad yards clogged with munitions, and ever the mourners going about the street and man to his long home. How would Emporia act with the pestilence that stalketh in darkness for ever near her; with her women and children slaughtered, merely to break the morale of the people and cause them to plead for peace; with cripples from the war hidden away in a hundred sad homes, with fatherless children and children born out of wedlock among the things that one had to face daily? Perhaps our young Jewish friend thought we were wearying of her. For she rose and said, "Well, good-night, gents—pleasant dreams!"

Pleasant dreams—indeed!