A soldier's mother in France

“I know that my boy is being well cared for in his regiment, and I’m not afraid of what may happen to him as long as he is on duty. But what about his off hours? What is to prevent him from falling into bad company?”

I know that this thought has troubled the minds of many mothers of soldiers now in France. And no wonder. Ever since the first training camps were set up in this country the most lurid tales have been spread abroad about the alleged immorality of the soldiers’ off hours. Some of these tales were spread by pro-Germans, pacifists and cowards who hoped to defeat the draft laws. Others were the result of a certain kind of imagination. The vast majority of them were untrue.

But even if any of them were true, if boys of twenty-one, away from the restraining influences of home, found unusual opportunities for immorality right here in the United States, what must it be in France? Many American women have it firmly fixed in their minds that France is a shocking immoral country. It isn’t, but I do not hope to be able to unsettle the conviction.

I will content myself with saying that even if France were a second Sodom or Gomorrah, our soldiers would be safe there. As safe, or safer, than they would be at home. The reason is that they are under military discipline and military supervision every hour of their lives. In their off hours they are supervised by the most efficient and powerful police force in the world, the military police of the American army.

Military police is what we call them for short. They are really assistant provost marshals. They are everywhere in France where there are American soldiers. They police Paris and all other cities, towns and villages in our zone. They are found sitting at a little table in all the railroad stations, and every traveling American soldier, be he officer, non-com or private, has to report the minute he arrives to the station marshal. This applies to all holders of military passes, Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. workers, and war correspondents.

The marshal examines the papers of the traveling officer or soldier, stamps them and enters the name and destination of the traveler in his book. This happens when the soldier leaves his base and when he returns. They keep track of our men on all their travels.

They also keep track of our soldiers in their daily walks abroad, whether on duty or pleasure bent. There are certain rules in our expeditionary force which apply to all alike, from General Pershing down to Bill Smith, private, just arrived from Camp Funston or Camp Upton. One of these rules is that no member of the expeditionary force may associate with women of the submerged class.

If a military policeman sees an officer or a soldier in such company it is his duty immediately and without any delay to separate the two, and gather the offending man in. If he fails to do so, and the fact is established, the policeman is punished. But he doesn’t fail.

Some of our younger officers, only a few, I was assured, didn’t believe at first that a simple private soldier would dare arrest them for the offense of having a “good time.” Two of these very new lieutenants tested it out in Paris once. They annexed a pair of women of the underworld and started out to find whatever may be left of the night life of the French capital.

What was their indignation when a slim youth of about twenty-three, wearing the uniform of a private, with the sole addition of a brassard marked A. P. M., walked up to them, saluted and stepped politely between them and the open door of the taxi-cab.

“Beg pardon, sirs,” he said courteously, “I am obliged to remind you that you are transgressing the provisions of section —— of regulation —— of orders —— relating to associations with women. I shall have to request you to accompany me to headquarters.”

The two very new young officers declined the invitation, first with indignation, then with good-natured appeals to the soldier’s sporting blood. The soldier remained adamant, and then one of the officers, getting genuinely angry, thrust his fist under the man’s nose. “What would you do if I were to push your face in and go on my way?”

The soldier policeman promptly drew his automatic and thrust it under the lieutenant’s nose. “I would do my duty, sir,” he replied, still courteously. But he was an American and couldn’t hold in any longer. “By God,” he exclaimed, “I wish you’d try it on. You’re the kind of an officer the American army could afford to lose suddenly.”

That settled it. The two officers went to headquarters, and they were punished. The one that attempted to frighten the young policeman got sent back to the United States. The men at headquarters agreed with the policeman that the United States army could afford to lose a man like that.

The military policeman, who is found all over our zone in France, does not wear blue clothes and a peaked cap. Neither does he carry a baton. He wears his soldier uniform and a white arm band on which the letters A. P. M., assistant provost marshal, appear in letters of red. He wears a belt and a pistol and he carries plenty of ammunition with him.

He is a part of a service which has at its head General Allaire, chief provost marshal of the army, one of General Pershing’s staff. General Allaire lives at the sequestered little town which houses the rest of the staff. Under him are many officers who command the regiments of assistant provost marshals, and they are held responsible for the order and good conduct of the army.

In Paris the military police have their headquarters in an old-fashioned building in the Rue Ste. Anne, close to the heart of old Paris. The place was a hotel in pre-war days, and it looks very much like a hotel now, with all the boarders in uniform. The big dining-room has less style about it than formerly. At present it is furnished with long pine tables, scrubbed clean, and the dishes are mostly white enamel ware.

A one-armed French soldier, with a most engaging smile and a pretty good knowledge of English, acts as elevator boy, and he told me once that when the war was over he was going to America. “I want to know how it feels,” he said, “to belong, even for part of my life, to a country that can produce such boys as these.”

They are a picked lot. It is an honor to be in the service, and only those in whose honor as well as valor the authorities have the greatest confidence, ever make the service.

In Paris the lieutenant under whose direct command the force works is the most single-minded man I think I have ever met. His whole existence seems bound up in his men. He even spends his off hours with them. One Monday when I went to the house in the Rue Ste. Anne to have a military pass stamped by the proper provost marshal, this lieutenant of police told me that the day before, Sunday, he had taken the half of his men who were off duty to Versailles. They had a wonderful day, he said. The authorities even opened the palace museum for the Americans.

“Next Sunday,” he said, “I am going to take the other half of the force down the Seine to a beautiful place where we can have dinner out-of-doors and have a look at French life of the old régime. I mean that my men shall get all there is in a foreign sojourn.”

I told him that I thought he was pretty fine to give all his leisure to his soldiers. He blushed like a boy and said: “They deserve it and I enjoy it. Besides, it is a part of my job to make these men as intelligent individuals as possible. They need to be intelligent. They have eight hours a day of particularly responsible work.

“Here in Paris they have to keep their eyes out for deserters. It is their business to know that every American soldier who walks through a street here has a right to do it. They have to be keen to look for spies in American uniforms. Oh, yes, they have picked up more than a few of these gentry. They might have slipped past the French soldiers, because they don’t know Americans, but they couldn’t fool a U. S. A. P. M. Every suspicious character gets nabbed sooner or later. If there is any doubt about his status our men bring him in here. If he can satisfy us, all right. But there is never an apology due him from the policeman.

“One of our men may be transferred from patrol work to riding on railroad trains and keeping track of our soldiers on their travels. He may be transferred to the front, where he becomes a traffic cop and also one of the men who take captured Germans in charge.

“We have a school here for our motorcycle cops. These men become inspectors of police. They have an added responsibility. They speed directly to the scene of any great or small disaster, and they assist the French gendarmes and military police. When the long-distance gun hit that church on Good Friday, killing seventy-six people, our men were the first on the spot. They rescued the wounded and brought out the dead. They also did excellent service in that great fire near Paris when the powder works blew up.

“As quickly as an air raid is over our men are out on their cycles looking up the damage inflicted by the bombs. They report back here where every bomb fell. Often they are able to put out small fires caused by the bombs.

“They are a fine bunch,” ended the lieutenant. “Not one of my men has ever been in trouble, and the fact that our cooler here in Paris often has as many as a hundred and fifty people in it shows not only that their work is essential, but that it is performed to the king’s taste.”

With that kind of a police force and that kind of officers commanding it, you can be sure that your sons haven’t very much opportunity to go astray. Once in a while a man may evade the military police. Occasionally I have seen it done. But it happens rarely, and the chances are a hundred to one against it happening twice to any one man.