CHAPTER V
WITHIN SOUND OF THE GUNS
THE men had traveled to Paris in passenger coaches, but when it came time to move the first division to its training area in the Vosges our soldiers rode like all the other allied armies in the famous cars upon which are painted "Hommes 36; chevaux en long, 8." And, of course, anybody who knows French understands the caption to mean that the horses must be put in lengthwise and not folded. No restrictions are mentioned as to the method of packing the "hommes."
The journey lay through gorgeous rolling country which was all a sparkle at this season of the year. Presently the vineyards were left behind and the hills became higher. Now and again there were fringes of pine trees. At one point it was possible to see a French captive balloon floating just beyond the hilltops, but we could not hear the guns yet. French soldiers in troop trains and camps near the track cheered the Americans and even a few of the Germans inside a big stockade waved at the men who were moving forward to study war. The trains stopped at a little town which lay at the foot of a hill. It was a mean little town, but on the hill was the fine old tower of a castle which had once dominated the surrounding country.
From this town, which was chosen as divisional headquarters, regiments were sent northeast and northwest into tiny villages which were no more than a single line of houses along the roadway. A few one-story wooden barracks had been built for the Americans, but ninety per cent. of the men went into billets. They were quartered in the lofts of barns of the better sort. The billeting officers would not consider sheds where cattle had been kept. Few troops had been quartered in this part of the country previously and so the barns were moderately clean.
The effort to make cleanliness and sanitation something more than relative terms was the first thing which really threatened Franco-American amity. The decision of American officers that all manure piles must be removed from in front of dwelling houses met a startled and universal protest. Elderly Frenchwomen explained with great feeling that the manure piles had been there as long as they could remember and that no one had ever come to any harm from them. The American officers insisted, and at last a grudging consent was forced. I saw one old lady almost on the point of tears as she watched the invaders demolish her manure pile. At last she could stand no more. "They make a lot of dust," she said critically, and went into the house.
A few days after the Americans arrived in camp came their instructors. A crack division of Alpine Chasseurs was chosen to teach the Americans. Nobody called these men froggies. They called them "chassers." It was enough to see them march to know that they were fighting men. Their stride was short and quick. Each step was taken as if the marcher was eager to have it over and done with so that he could take another. Even their buglers won admiration, for they had a trick of throwing their instruments in the air and catching them again that brought envy to the heart of every American band. Indeed, a good deal of friendly rivalry developed from the beginning and in the early days, at least, the French had all the better of it. They could lift heavier weights than our men, who averaged much younger. Little Frenchmen standing five feet three or four would seize a rifle close to the end of the bayonet and slowly raise it with stiff arm to horizontal and down again. American farmer boys tried and failed. Of course, this was a crack French division which drew its men from various organizations, while our division was just the average lot and perhaps not quite that since there was a larger percentage of recruits than is usually found in the regular army.
Although our men were somewhat outclassed by their instructors in these early days, they were game in their effort to keep up competition. Almost the first work to which the troops were set was trench digging. This is one of the most important arts of war and also the most tiresome. Somebody has said of the Canadians: "They will die in the last ditch, but they won't dig it." The Americans have a similar aversion for work with pick and shovel, but trench digging came to them as a competition. I saw a battalion of the chasseurs and a battalion of marines set to work in a field where every other blow of the pick hit a rock. There was no chance to loaf, for when a marine looked over his shoulder he could see the French picks going for dear life down at the other end of the trench. At four-thirty the men were told to call it a day. The chasseurs leaped out of their trench; threw down their tools, and began to sing at top voice a popular Parisian love ditty entitled "Il faut de l'amour." One of the French officers told me afterwards that it was the invariable custom of his men to sing at the end of work, but the marines thought the "chassers" were merely showing off the excellent nature of their wind. More slowly the Americans clambered out of their trench, but they were ready when the last French note died away and piped up somewhat breathlessly: "Hail! Hail! the gang's all here!"
American company commanders were quick to appreciate the value of organized singing in the training of troops, and for the next few days the doughboys were drilled to lift their voices as well as their picks. Most of all, music was appreciated in the long hikes of the early training period. A good song did much to make a marching man forget that he had a fifty-pound pack on his back.
"I know I'm beginning to get a real company now," one captain told me, "because whenever they're beginning to feel tired they start to sing and freshen up." "No," he said, in reply to a question, "they didn't just start. It needed a little fixing. I noticed that when the Frenchmen stopped work they always started back to camp singing. 'We can do that,' I told my men when we started back. 'Let's hear a little noise.' Nothing happened. Nobody wanted to begin. They were scared the others would laugh at them. I can't carry a tune two feet, but I just struck up 'We'll hang the damned old Kaiser to a sour apple tree' to the tune of 'John Brown's Body.' A few joined in, but most of them wouldn't open their mouths. I told 'em, 'I'm just going to keep on marching this company until everybody's in on the song. I don't care if we have to march all night.' That got 'em going. Now they like it. They're thinking up new songs every day. I can save my voice now."
One of the reasons for sending the men into the Vosges for training was to get them within sound of the guns, but it was almost a week before we heard any of the doings at the front. It was at night time that we first heard the guns. It was a still, windless night and along about eight o'clock they began. You couldn't be quite sure whether you heard them or felt them, but something was stirring. It felt or sounded a good deal as if some giant across the hills had slammed the door of his castle as he left home to take the morning train for business. Up at the northern end of the training area the sound of the guns was much more distinct. In fact, they were loud enough some nights to become identified in the mind as events and not mere rumblings. A Sammy up in that village stopped our car one morning and asked if we couldn't give him a newspaper.
"I suppose you want to know how the baseball games are coming out," somebody suggested.
"To hell with baseball, I want to know about the war," said the soldier. "I'm with these mules," he said, pointing to half a dozen animals tethered on the bank of a canal. "I've been with them right from the beginning. I came over on the same steamer with 'em. I rode up with 'em in the train from —— and here we are again. I don't hear nothing. They could capture Berlin and nobody'd tell me about it. All I do is feed these damned mules. 'Big Bill,' that one on the end, is sick, and I've got to hang around and give him a pill every six hours. I wish he'd choke. I don't like him as well as the rest of the mules and I hate 'em all.
"It'll be fine, won't it, when somebody asks me: 'Daddy, what did you do in the great war?' and I say: 'Oh, I sat up with a sick mule.'"
Back of the hills from some indefinite distance came the sound of big guns. They raged persistently for ten minutes and then quit. "Big Bill" began to rear around and kick. The soldier cursed him.
"Those guns were going like that all night, but mostly around two o'clock," he said. "Nobody around here knows anything about it. I wish I could get hold of an American paper and find out something about that fight. I've sent to Memphis for The News Scimitar, but somehow it don't seem to get here. I wish those guns was near enough to drop something over here on the mules, especially 'Big Bill,' but I'm out of luck."
The nearest approach of the war was in the air. It wasn't long before German planes began to scout over the territory occupied by the Americans. One battalion almost saw an air fight. It would have seen it if the Major hadn't said "Attention!" just then. The battalion was drilling in a big open meadow when there came from the East first a whirr and then a machine. The machine, flying high, circled the field. The soldiers who were standing at ease stared up at the visitor, but it was too high to see the identifying marks. Soon there was no doubt that the machine was German, for little white splotches appeared in the sky. It looked as if Charlie Chaplin had thrown a cream pie at heaven and it had splattered. An anti-aircraft gun concealed in a woods several miles away was firing at the Boche. Presently the firing ceased and there was a whirr from the West. A French plane flew straight in the direction of the German, who climbed higher and higher. As the planes drew nearer it was possible to see machine gun flashes, but just then the Major called his men to attention. Regulations provide that eyes must look straight ahead, but it was a hard test for recruits and there may have been one or two who stole a glance up there where the planes were fighting. In each case an officer was on the culprit like a flash.
"Keep your head still," shouted a lieutenant. "That's a private fight. It's got nothing to do with you."
Soon the German turned and flew back in the direction of his own lines and when the necks of the doughboys were unfettered and they could look up again the sky was clear. Even the cream puff splotches were gone.
On another afternoon a Boche plane flew over the entire American area. It circled a field in divisional headquarters where a baseball game was in progress and flew home.
"I know why that German flew home after he reached ——," an officer explained. "Don't you see? He was trying to find out if we were Americans and that baseball game proved it to him."
The greatest aerial display occurred on a morning when a French officer was instructing an American company in the art of trench digging. He spoke no English, but an interpreter of a sort was making what shift he could. The doughboys tried to look interested and didn't succeed. It was harder when out from behind a cloud came one aeroplane, then another and another. When half a dozen had appeared from behind the cloud one doughboy could stand the strain no longer.
"Look," he shouted, "they're hatching them up there."
The French instructor finally granted a recess of ten minutes but before the time was up the planes had maneuvered out of sight. In spite of all the German activity in the air only one attempt was made to bomb the Americans during the summer. A single bomb was dropped on a village where the marines were stationed, but it did no damage.
The second week in the training area found the doughboys increasing their curriculum to include bombs and machine guns. It had not been possible to do much in the finer arts of war previously because of the absence of interpreters. A number of these had been mobilized now but they varied in quality. As one American officer put it, "Interpreters may be divided into three classes: those who know no English; those who know no French; and those who know neither."
However, the Americans managed to get their instruction in some way or other. No interpreters were needed with the machine guns. Instead each American company was divided up into little groups and a chasseur placed at the head of each group. I watched the instruction and found that little language was needed. The Frenchman would take a machine gun or automatic rifle apart and holding up each part give its French name. The Americans paid no particular attention to the outlandish terms which the French used for their machine gun parts, but they were alert to notice the manner in which the gun was put together and in the group in which I was standing two Americans were able to put the gun together without having any parts left over after a single demonstration.
Of course, a little language was used. Some of the marines had picked up a little very villainous French in Hayti and they made what shift they could with that. A few French Canadians and an occasional man from New Orleans could converse with the chasseurs and one or two phrases had been acquired by men hitherto entirely ignorant of French. "Qu'est-ce-que c'est?" was used by the purists as their form of interrogation, but there were others who tried to make "combien" do the work. "Combien," which we pronounced "come bean," was stretched for many purposes. I have heard it used and accepted as an equivalent for "whereabouts," "what did you say," "why," "which one" and "will you please show us once more how to put that machine gun together."
Not only did the Americans show an aptitude for getting the hang of the mechanism of the machine gun and the automatic rifle, but they shot well with them after a little bit of practice.
The first man I watched at work with the automatic rifle was green. He had taken the gun apart and put it together again with an occasional "regardez" and bit of demonstration from one of the Frenchmen, but the weapon was not yet his pal. He picked the gun up somewhat gingerly and aimed at the line of targets a couple of hundred yards away. Then he pulled the trigger and the bucking thing, which seemed to be intent on wriggling out of his arms, sprayed the top of the hill with bullets. The French instructor made a laughing comment and an American who spoke the language explained, "He says you ought to be in the anti-aircraft service."
The next man to try his luck was a non-commissioned officer long in the army. He patted the gun and wooed it a little in whispers before he shot. It was a French gun, to be sure, but the language of firearms is international. "Behave, Betsy," he said and she did. He sprayed shots along the line of targets at the bottom of the hill as the gun clattered away with all the clamor of a riveting machine at seven in the morning. When they looked at the targets they found he had scored thirty hits out of thirty-four and some were bull's-eyes. The French instructor was so pleased that he stepped forward as if to hug the ancient sergeant but the veteran's look of horror dissuaded him.
Bombing proved the most popular part of training and particularly as soon as it was possible to work with the live article. First of all dummy bombs were issued. A French officer carefully explained that the bomb should be thrown after four moves, counting one, two, three, four, as he posed something like a shot putter before he let the bomb go with an overhand, stiff, armed fling. He illustrated the method several times, but the first American to throw sent the bomb spinning out on a line just as if he were hurrying a throw to first from deep short. The Frenchman reproved him and explained carefully that, although it might be possible to throw a bomb a long way in the manner in which a baseball is thrown, it was necessary for a bomber to hurl many missiles and that he must preserve his arm. He also pointed out that the bomb would never land in the trenches of the enemy unless it was thrown with a considerable arc.
The men then kept to the exercises laid down by the instructor, but just before they stopped one or two could not resist the temptation of again "putting something on to it" and letting the bomb sail out fast. One lefthander who had pitched for a season in the Southern League was anxious to make some experiments to see if he couldn't throw a bomb with an out curve but he was informed that such an accomplishment would have no military utility.
The first American wounded in France was the victim of a bombing accident. A soldier threw a live bomb more than thirty meters from a trench. When the bomb burst a fragment came whirling back in some curious manner and fell into a box of grenades upon which a lieutenant was sitting. The fragment cut the pin of one of the bombs and the whole box went off with a bang. The lieutenant received only a slight cut on his forehead, but a French interpreter thirty yards away was knocked unconscious and lost the sight of his right eye. This Frenchman had spent two years under fire at Verdun without being scratched and here was his first wound come upon him on a quiet afternoon in a meadow miles from the lines.
The men threw bombs from deep trenches and they were instructed to keep cover closely after hurling a grenade just as if there was a German trench across the way. But curiosity was too strong for them. Each wanted to see where his particular bomb hit and how much earth it would tear up. The bombs made only small scars in the earth, but they sent fragments of steel casing flying in all directions and several men were cut about the face by splinters.
The seeming inability of the American to visualize battle conditions in training retards his progress in spite of his aptitude in other directions. A French officer was directing a platoon of Americans one day in skirmishing. They were to fire a round, run forward twenty paces, throw themselves flat and run forward again. One doughboy would raise himself up on his elbows and look about. The Frenchman, very much excited, ran over to him and said, "You must keep your head down or you will get shot. You must remember that bullets are flying all about you."
As soon as the instructor's back was turned the soldier was up on his elbows again. "Hell," he said, "there ain't any bullets."
In later phases of training the inferiority of the American to the French in imagination showed clearly. French veterans or recruits for that matter could work themselves up to a frenzy in sham battles and dash into an empty trench with a shout as if it were filled with Germans. Americans could not do that. They found it difficult to forget that practice was just practice.
CHAPTER VI
SUNNY FRANCE
LATER on "Sunny France" became a mocking byword uttered by wet and muddy men, but during the early days in the training area no one had any just complaint about the weather. Come to think of it there wasn't anything very wrong with those early days in rural France. Five o'clock was pretty early for getting up but the sun could do it and keep cheerful. It was glorious country with hills and forests and plowed fields and red roofed villages and smooth white roads. The country people didn't throw their hats in the air like Parisians, but they were kindly though calm.
"Down in ——," said a little doughboy who came from an Indiana farm, "everybody you meet says 'bon jour' to you whether they know you or not. That means 'good morning.' I was in Chicago once and they don't do it there."
It wasn't Eden though. There was the tobacco situation against that theory. To a good many soldiers, pleasant weather and kindly folk and ample rations meant nothing much. These were minor things. The quartermaster had no Bull Durham. When the supply of American tobacco and cigarettes ran out the men tried the French products but not for long. "So they call these Grenades," muttered a soldier as he examined a popular French brand of cigarettes, "I guess that's because you'd better throw 'em away right after you set 'em going."
French matches were less popular than French tobacco. The kind they sold in our town and thereabouts were all tipped with sulphur and usually exploded with a blue flame maiming the smoker and amusing the spectators. Political economists and others interested in the law of supply and demand may be interested to know that when the tobacco famine was at its height a package of Bull Durham worth five cents in America was sold by one soldier to another for five francs. This shortage has since been relieved from several sources, but there has never been more tobacco than the soldiers could smoke.
Reading matter was also ardently desired during the early months in the Vosges. An enterprising storekeeper in one town sent a hurry call to Paris for English books and a week later she proudly displayed the following volumes on her shelves: "The Life of Dean Stanley," "Sermons by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon," "The Jubilee Book of Cricket," "The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Lord of Brampton)," and "The Recollections of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West."
A few companies had libraries of their own. I wonder who made the selection of titles. The volumes I picked out at random in one village were: "The Family Life of Heinrich Heine," "Fourteen Weeks in Astronomy," "Recollections and Letters of Renan," "Education and the Higher Life," "Bible Stories for the Young," and "Henry the Eighth and His Six Wives." The librarian said that the last was the most popular book in the collection although several readers admitted that it did not come up to expectations. Just as I was going out the top sergeant came in to return a book. I asked him what it was. He said, "It's a book called 'When Patty Went to College.'"
Our town was big and had moving pictures twice a week, but up the line in the little villages there was no such source of amusement. After the men had been in training for a week or more, a French Red Cross outfit stopped at one of the villages with a traveling movie outfit and announced that they would show a picture that night. According to the announcement the picture was "Charlot en 'Le Vagabond.'" It sounded foreign and forbidding. The doughboys anticipated trouble with the titles and the closeups of what the heroine wrote and all the various printed words which go to make a moving picture intelligible. Still they were patient when the title of the picture was flashed on the screen and they tried to look interested. The first scene was a road winding up to a distant hill and down the highway with eccentric gait there walked a little man strangely reminiscent. He drew nearer and nearer and as the figure came into full view the soldier in front of me could stand the strain no longer. He jumped to his feet.
"I'm a son of a gun," he shouted, "if it isn't Charlie Chaplin."
Recognition upon the part of the audience was instantaneous and enthusiasm unbounded. If the Americans go out tomorrow and capture Berlin they cannot possibly show more joy than they did at the sight of Charlie Chaplin in France. Never again will the French be able to fool them by disguising him as "Charlot."
After a bit the soldiers learned to entertain themselves and several companies developed a number of talented performers. The first company show I attended mixed boxing and music. They began with boxing. There was a short intermission during which the first tenor fixed up a bloody nose. He had received a bit the worst of it in the heavyweight bout. The other members of the quartet gave him cotton and encouragement. Finally he put on his shirt and hitching up his voice, began, "Naught but a few faded roses can my sweet story tell." His comrades joined him at "My heart was ever light," and they finished the ballad in perfect alignment.
Almost all the songs were sentimental and many were old. They had "Dearie," and "Where the River Shannon Flows," and that one about Ireland falling out of Heaven (just as if the devil himself had not done the very same thing). Later there were "Mother Machree" and "Old Kentucky Home." Patriotism was not neglected. "When I Get Back Home Again to the U.S.A." was the favorite among the recent war songs. The only savor of army life in the program on this particular evening was in a couple of Mexican songs brought up from the border by men who went to get Villa. They brought back "Cucaracha" with all its seventeen obscene Spanish verses. There was also one parody inspired by this war and sung to the tune of "My Little Girl, I'm Dreaming of You." It went something like this:
| America, I'm dreaming of you |
| And I long for you each day |
| America, I'm fighting for you |
| Tho' you're many miles away |
| We'll knock the block right off the Kaiser |
| And we'll drive them 'cross the Rhine— |
| And then we'll sail back home to you, dear |
| To the tune of "Wacht am Rhein"! |
The American soldier does not seem to be much of a song maker. Songs by soldiers and for soldiers are not common with us yet. We have nothing as close to the spirit of the trenches as the British ditty "I want to go home," which always leaves the auditor in doubt as to whether he should take it seriously and weep or humorously and laugh. Possibly there is something of both elements in the song. The mixture has been typical of the British attitude toward the war. Here is the song:
| I want to go 'ome |
| I want to go 'ome |
| The Maxims they spit |
| And the Johnsons they roar |
| I don't want to go to the front any more |
| Oh take me over the seas |
| Where the Alley-mans can't get at me |
| Oh my; I don't want to die, |
| I want to go 'ome. |
The American army is still looking for a song. None of the new ones has achieved universal popularity. However the many who heard the quartet of Company L sing on this particular evening seemed to have no objection to the old songs. In fact they were new to many in the audience for as the concert went on French soldiers joined the audience and townspeople hung about the edges of the crowd. They listened politely and applauded, though indeed one must get a strange impression of America if his introduction is through our popular songs. Such a foreigner is in danger of believing that ours is a June land in which the moon is always shining upon a young person known as "little girl." Yet the French expressed no astonishment at the songs. Only one feature puzzled them profoundly. At the end of a particularly effective song the captain said, "Those men sang that very well. Bring 'em each a glass of water."
No villager could quite understand why a man who had committed no more palpable crime than tenor singing should be forced to partake of a drink which is cold, tasteless and watery.
Most the villages in our part of France had only one dimension. They consisted of a line of houses on either side of the roadway and they were always huddled together. Land is too valuable in France to waste it on lawns and suchlike. Some of the villages were tiny and shabby, but none was too small or too mean to be without its little café. It took the doughboys some little time to get over their interest in the startling fact that champagne was within the reach of the working man, but they went back to beer in due course and now champagne is among the things which shopkeepers must not sell to American soldiers. The prohibition of the sale of cognac and champagne is all that the army needs. Beer and light wines are not a menace to the health or behavior of our army. Beer is by far the most popular drink and it would be an ambitious man indeed who would seek the slightest deviation from sobriety in the thin war beer of France. He might drown.
Absolute prohibition for the army in France would be well nigh impossible. It would mean that every inn and shop and railroad station and farmhouse would have to be classed as out of bounds. In fact prohibition could not be enforced unless our soldiers were ordered never to venture within four walls. Wine is to be had under every roof in France and you can get it also in not a few places where the roof has been shot to pieces. The French are interested in temperance just now. On many walls posters are exhibited showing a German soldier and a black bottle with the caption, "They are both the enemies of France," but when a Frenchman talks of temperance or prohibition or the abolition of the liquor traffic he never thinks of including wine or beer. The civil authorities of France would not be much use in helping the American army enforce a bone-dry order. They simply wouldn't understand it.
There was some excessive drinking when the army first came to France but it has been checked. A number of influences have made for discretion. One of the most potent is the opportunity for promotion in an army in the field. Officers have been quick to point this out to their men. One captain called his company together in the early days and said, "Some of the men in this company are going out and getting pinko, stinko, sloppy drunk. Any man who gets drunk goes in the guard house of course and more than that he will get no promotion from me. I'm going to pick my sergeants from the fellows that have got sense. You may notice that some of the men who drink are old soldiers. Don't take an example from that. Remember that's why they're old soldiers. There isn't any sense in blowing all your money in for booze. Now if I took my pay in a lump at the end of a month I could buy every café in this town and I could stay drunk for a year. That would be fine business, wouldn't it?"
"I guess maybe I exaggerated a little about the length of time I could stay drunk," the captain told me afterwards, "but do you know that talk seems to have done the trick."
One factor which worked for temperance was the French fashion of making drinking deliberate and social. When an American can be induced to sit down to his potion he is comparatively safe. These little village cafés did no harm after the first brief period when the American soldier had his fling and they served the good purpose of encouraging fraternization between doughboy and poilu.
The contact with French soldiers brought no great vocabulary to our men but if they learned few words they did get the hang of making their wants understood. In a week or two innkeepers or women in shops had no trouble at all in attending to the wants of Americans. Probably the French people made somewhat faster linguistic progress than the soldiers. The Americans were willing to be met at least halfway. When I asked one doughboy, "How do you get along with the French? Can you make them understand you?" he said, "Why, they're coming along pretty well. I think most of 'em will pick it up in time."
But there was one French word the soldiers had to learn. That was "fineesh." The children forced that word upon them. They were always at the heels of the American soldiers. They galloped the doughboys up and down the village streets in furious piggyback charges. They borrowed jam from company cooks and rode in the supply trucks. Of course there had to be an end to the rides, sometimes, and even to the jam and the only way to convince the children of France that an absolute unshakable limit had been reached was to thrust two hands aloft and cry "fineesh." The old women liked the doughboys too because they would draw water from the wells for them and occasionally lend a hand in moving wood or wheat or fodder. Nor do I mean to imply that the younger women of the little villages did not esteem the doughboys. "Tell 'em back home that there aren't any good looking women in France," was the message that ever so many soldiers asked me to convey to anxious individuals in America. I hand the message on but must refuse to pass upon its sincerity.
American officers got along well with the French but they never reached the same degree of chumminess that the men did. They met French officers at more or less formal luncheons and had to go through a routine of speeches largely concerned with Lafayette and Rochambeau and Washington. Poilus and doughboys did not go so far back for their subjects of conversation. The American enlisted man had a great advantage over his officer in the matter of language. He might know less French, but he was much more ready to experiment. An officer did not like to make mistakes. His was defensive French, a weapon to be used guardedly in cases of extreme need. When a visiting officer hurled a compliment at him he replied, but he seldom took the initiative. After all he was an American officer and he feared to make himself ridiculous by poor pronunciation and worse grammar. The soldier had no such scruples. He saw no reason why he should be any more abashed by French grammar than by English and as for pronunciation he followed the advice of a little pamphlet called "The American in France" which was rushed out by some French firm for sale to the American army. In the matter of pronunciation the book said, "Since pronunciation is the most difficult part of any language the publishers of this book have decided to omit it." The soldiers were ready to adopt this method and only wished that it could be extended to other things. To trench digging for instance.
The most daring man in the use of an unfamiliar language was not a soldier but a second lieutenant. He took great pride in his talent for pantomime and asserted that his vocabulary of some thirty words and his gestures filled all his needs. He was somewhat startled though on an afternoon when he went into a shop to purchase "B.V.D.'s" and found the store in charge of the young daughter of the proprietor. Pantomime seemed hardly the thing and so he paused long to think up a word for the garment he wanted or some approximation. At last he smiled and exclaimed brightly, "Chemise pour jambes, s'il vous plait."
Stores were not the strong point of our bit of France. We soon came to regard our town as a metropolis because people journeyed there to make "shopping tours." One afternoon I marked fifteen visiting soldiers with their eyes glued against a shop window which displayed half a dozen electric flashlights, two quarts of champagne, a French-English dictionary and a limited assortment of postcards. These, of course, were barred from the mail by censorship but the soldiers collected them to be taken home after the war.
"These French postcards aren't exactly what some of the boys back home are going to expect," one soldier admitted. "I went to three shops now but the others have been ahead of me and all I could get was these two. One's a picture called 'l'eglise' and the other's 'la maison de Jeanne d'Arc.'"
The shops had hard work in keeping up with more commodities than picture postcards. There seemed to be an insatiable demand for canned peaches and sardines. Somehow or other men who have been on a long march simply crave either sardines or canned peaches. The doughboys did a good deal of eating at their own expense. Army food was plentiful and moderately varied. Beans and corned beef hash were served a good many times perhaps, but there was no lack of fresh meat and there was plenty of jam and of carrots and onions and heavy gravy. Food, however, was an outlet for spending money and in some villages the men got so eager that they would buy anything. Little traveling shops in wagons came through the smaller villages in the northern part of the training area loaded with all sorts of gimcracks intended for the peasant trade. The peddlers had no time to put in a special line for the soldiers. They found that it was not necessary. Desperate men with pockets full of money would purchase even the imitation tortoise shell sidecombs which the itinerant merchants had to sell.
The purchasing capacity of the soldier was not limited to his pay alone. The villagers were wildly excited about the white bread issued to the American army. It was the first they had seen since the second year of the war. One old lady seized a loaf which was presented to her and crying "il est beau," sat down upon a doorstep and began to eat the bread as if it were cake. The rate of exchange fluctuated somewhat but there were days when a loaf of white bread could be exchanged for a whole roast chicken.
The eagerness of the American soldier to spend his money had the result of tempting French storekeepers to raise their prices and as the cost of living mounted the civilian population began to complain. Even the soldiers had suspicions at last that they were being charged too much in some stores and the American officers took over price control as another of their many responsibilities.
"I went to the mayor," one town major explained, "and I said, 'Look here, Bill, I don't mind 'the shopkeepers putting a little something over. All I ask is that they just act reasonable. They'll get all the money in time anyhow, and so I wish you'd tip them off not to be in so much of a hurry.' He couldn't talk any English, that mayor couldn't, but the interpreter told him about it and he went right to the front for us. From that day to this we've had only one complaint about anything in our village. That came from an old lady who had some doughboys billeted in a barn next to the shed where she kept her sheep. She came to me and said the soldiers talked so much at night that the sheep couldn't sleep."
CHAPTER VII
PERSHING
NOBODY will ever call him "Papa" Pershing. He is a stepfather to the inefficient and even when he is pleased he says little. In the matter of giving praise the General is a homeopath. For that reason he can gain enormous effect in the rare moments when he chooses to compliment a man or an organization. Pershing believes that discipline is the foundation of an army.
"I think," said one young American officer, "that his favorite military leader is Joshua because he made the sun and the moon stand at attention." In other words Pershing is a soldiers' soldier. No man can strike such hard blows as he does and leave no scars. There are men here and there in the army who do not love him but their criticism almost invariably ends, "but I guess I'll have to admit that he's a good soldier."
Pershing is not a disciplinarian merely for the sake of discipline but he believes that it is the gauge of the temper of any military organization. His interest in detail is insatiable. He can read a man's soul through his boots or his buttons. Next to the Kaiser, Pershing hates nothing so much as rust and dust and dirt. Perhaps round shoulders should go in the list as well, and pockets. Certainly he makes good the things he preaches. There is no finer figure in any army in Europe. The General is fit from the tip of his glistening boots to his hat top. We saw him once after he had walked through a front line trench on a rainy day. There were sections of that trench where the mud was over a man's shoetops and the back area which had to be crossed before the trench system was reached was a great lake of casual water fed at its fringes by roaring rain torrents. And yet the general came out of the trench without a speck of mud on his boots in spite of the fact that he had plunged along with no apparent regard for his footing.
There was dust behind him, though, on the afternoon he first came to the training area to see his men. News reached our town that the general was up in the northern end of the training zone and moving fast. An officer passing by gave me a lift in his car and when we arrived at the next village half a dozen soldiers who were sitting on a bench jumped up for dear life and jarred themselves to the very heels with the stiffest of military salutes.
The officer grinned. "Pershing's in town," he said and so he was.
We found him in a kitchen talking about onions to a cook. He asked each soldier in turn what sort of food he was getting. Some were too frightened to do more than mumble an inaudible answer. A few said, "Very good, sir." And one or two had complaints. The General listened to the complaints attentively and in each case pressed his questions so as to make the soldier be absolutely concrete in his answers. Next he turned upon an officer and wanted to know just what the sewage system of the town was. The officer was a dashing major and he seemed ill at ease when Pershing asked how many days a week he inspected the garbage dump.
"That isn't enough," said the General when the major answered. "I want you to pay more attention to those things."
From the kitchen he went into every billet in the village. In two he climbed up the ladders to see what sort of sleeping quarters the men had in their lofts. In one billet a soldier stole a look over his shoulder at the General as he passed. Pershing turned immediately.
"That's not the way to be a soldier," he said. "You haven't learned the first principle of being a soldier." He turned to a second lieutenant. "This man doesn't stand at attention properly," he explained. "I want you to make him stand at attention for five minutes."
The next offender was a captain who had one hand in his pocket while giving an order. The General spoke to him just as severely as he had to the enlisted man. Then he was into his car and away to the next village.
Pershing is always on the move. One of his aides told me that he never had more than five minutes' notice of where the General was going or how long he would stay. No man in the army has covered so much territory as Pershing. He has been in practically every village occupied by the American troops. He has inspected every hospital and every training camp. One day he will be at a port looking at the accommodations which are being made for incoming vessels and on the next he will have jumped from the base to a front line trench. He has been on all the Western fronts except the Italian. His French and British and Belgian hosts find him a most ambitious guest. He wants to see everything. Once while observing a French offensive he expressed a desire to go forward and see a line of trenches which had just been captured from the Germans. The French tried to dissuade him but the General complained that he could not see just how things were going from any other position and so into the German trench he went.
Pershing has developed in France. Like every other man in the American army he has had to study modern warfare, but more than that he has caught something of the spirit of the French. He has acquired some of their ability to put a gesture into command, to utilize personality in the inspiration of troops. He is not yet the equal of the French in this respect. Joffre, for instance, fully realized the military usefulness of his enormous popularity and capitalized it. It was not mere luck that he became a tradition. Pétain, while by no means the equal of Joffre on the personal side, knows how to talk to soldiers and to townsfolk and to make himself a big human force.
While he is still a homeopath, General Pershing realizes more than he ever did before the value of a pat on the back given at the right time. I saw him do one of those little gracious things in a base hospital which was caring for the first American wounded. A youthful doughboy was lying flat on his back wondering just how long it was going to be before supper time came round when all of a sudden there was a clatter at the door. The doughboy was afraid it was going to be some more nurses and doctors. They had bothered him a lot by bandaging up his arm every little while and it hurt, but when he looked up at the foot of his bed there stood the man with four stars on his shoulders. The little doughboy grinned a bit nervously. He thought it was funny that he should be lying on his back and General Pershing standing up.
The General was somewhat nervous and embarrassed, too. He still lacks a little of the French feeling for the dramatic in the doing of these little things. He had to clear his throat once and then he said, "I want to congratulate you. I envy you. There isn't a man in the army who wouldn't like to be in your place. You have brought home to the people of America the fact that we are in the war."
The doughboy didn't say anything, but the nurse who made the rounds that evening wondered why a patient who was doing so well should have a pulse hitting up to ninety-six.
Earlier in the summer General Pershing encountered some far more embarrassing tests. He had to handle bouquets. The donor was usually a French girl and a very little one. When Pershing and Pétain made a joint trip through the American army zone there were two little girls and two bouquets in each village. General Pétain, after receiving his bouquet, would bend over gracefully and kiss the little girl, adding one or two kindly phrases immediately following "ma petite." General Pershing began by patting the little girls on the head, but he realized it was not enough and after a bit he began to kiss them, too; only once or twice he got tangled up in their hats and found it hard to maintain military dignity. He handled the flowers gingerly. He seemed to regard each bouquet as a bomb which would explode in five seconds but each time there was some aide ready to step forward and relieve him.
The attitude of the average West Pointer towards his men is generally speaking the same as that of General Pershing. Some observers think the West Point attitude too strict, but I was inclined to believe that the men from the academy handled men better than the reserve officers. They are strict, it is true, but at the same time they have been trained to look after the needs of their men closely. The trouble with the average reserve officer is that he has not had time to learn how much he must father his men and mother them, too, for that matter. He does not know probably just how dependent the average soldier is upon his officer.
Perhaps the strictest officer of all is the man who was once a non-com. The former doughboy knows the tricks of the enlisted man and he is determined that nobody shall put anything over on him. He is often just a little bit afraid that the soldiers are going to trade on the fact that he was once an enlisted man. I once saw a soldier offer some cigars to two officers. One of the officers was a West Pointer and he laughed and took a cigar but the former non-com. refused very sternly. He could not afford to be indebted to an enlisted man.
I do not wish to imply that the men who come up from the ranks do not make good officers. As a matter of fact they are among the best, once their preliminary self-consciousness has worn off. The transition from stripes to bars is perfect torture to some of them. One company had a crack soldier who had been a sergeant for seven years. He was recommended for promotion and was sent to an officers' training school in France. He did very well but just a week before he was to receive his commission he succeeded in gaining permission to be dropped from the school and go back to his old company as sergeant. At the last minute he had decided that he did not want to be an officer.
I watched him put a company through its drill two days after his return. They moved with spirit and precision under his commands but when it was all over I found one reason why he didn't want to be an officer.
"That was very good today," he said. "You done well."
The first lieutenant smiled. He had a right to smile, too, for the return of the sergeant to his company had almost cut his work in half. He knew his value well enough.
"The best I can do is teach the men," he said. "It takes an old sergeant to learn them."
CHAPTER VIII
MEN WITH MEDALS
GENERAL PÉTAIN was the first of many famous Frenchmen who came to see the American troops in training. He also had the additional object of reviewing the chasseurs and of distributing medals, for this crack division had been withdrawn from one of the most active sectors to instruct the doughboys. General Pershing accompanied Pétain. The blue devils were drawn up in formation in the middle of a big meadow cupped within hills. The seven men who were to be honored stood in a line in front of the division. Six were officers and they awaited the pleasure of the general with their swords held at attention. The seventh man who stood at the right of the little line was an old sergeant with a great flowing gray and white mustache. The rifle which he held in front of him overtopped him by at least a foot.
The ceremony began with a fanfare by the trumpeters. As the last notes came tumbling back from the hills Pétain moved forward. We found that he was not so tall as Pershing nor quite as straight. The French leader is also a little gray and about his waist there is just a suggestion of the white man's burden. But he is soldierly for all that and his eyes are marvelously keen and steady. His tailor deserved a decoration. The general wore only one medal, but that was as large as the badge of a country sheriff. It was a great silver shield hung about his neck and indicated that he was a commander of the Legion of Honor. He stopped in front of the first officer in the little line waiting to be honored and spoke to him for a moment. Then he pinned a red ribbon on his coat and kissed the man first on the left cheek and then on the right. The doughboys looked on in amazement.
"Well, I'll be damned," said one under his breath, "it's true."
Four men received the red ribbons, but the other three were down only for the military medal which is a high decoration but less esteemed than the Legion of Honor. No kisses went with the green and yellow ribbons of the military medal but only handshakes. Pétain stopped in front of the old sergeant at the end of the line and looked at him for a minute without speaking. Then he called an orderly.
"This man has three palms on his croix de guerre," said Pétain.
Now a palm means that soldier has been cited for conspicuous bravery in the report of the entire army.
"The military medal is not enough for this man," continued Pétain. "Step forward," he said.
The old sergeant trembled a little as he stood a tiny, solitary gray figure in front of the whole division.
"Bring back the trumpets," Pétain commanded and for the lone poilu the fanfare was sounded again.
"I make you a chevalier of the Legion of Honor," said the commander in chief of the French army to the old sergeant, and after he had pinned the red ribbon to his breast he added a hug to the conventional two kisses. The poilu moved back to the ranks steadily, but as soon as the general had turned his back the sergeant pulled out his handkerchief and wept. The soldiers greeted their comrade with cheers and laughter.
"Now," said Pétain turning to Pershing, "let's take it easy for a little while. I've seen plenty of reviews."
The French general walked across the space cleared for the review and began to talk with people in the fringe of spectators gathered around the edge of the meadow. He talked easily without any seeming condescension.
"How are you, my little man?" he said, patting a boy on the head. "In what military class are you?"
Encouraged by his father the boy said that he was in the class of 1928.
"Oh," said the general, "that's a long time off. We shall have beaten the Boches before then."
Next it was a peasant girl who attracted his attention.
"Where have you come from?" he inquired with as much apparent interest as if he were talking with a soldier just back from Berlin. "That was a long walk just to see soldiers," he said when the girl told him that she lived in a little village about ten miles distant. "But we are glad to have you here," he added.
And so he moved on down the line with handshakes for the grownups, pats on the head for little boys and kisses for little girls. He turned back to his reviewing station then and the French troops swept by with brave display: They were very smart and brisk, horse, foot and artillery, but Pétain found a few things to criticize although he mingled praise generously with censure. He told the officers to know their men and to get on such terms with them that the soldiers would not be afraid to speak freely. He told of reforms which he planned to introduce in the French army. He favored longer leaves from the front, he said, and better transportation for the poilus.
"I shall have time tables made for the men on leave," he said and then for an instant he became the shrewd French business man rather than the dashing general.
"I have figured out," he explained, "that the army can afford to sell these time tables for five sous. It wouldn't do to give them away. Nobody would value them then."
A week later we had another visitor. French generals and all their resplendent aides clicked their heels together and stood at attention as this civilian passed by. He was a short stoutish man in blue serge knickerbockers and a dark yachting cap. His tailor deserved no decoration for this seemed a secondary sort of costume and headgear in a group loaded down with gold braid and valor medals. But their swords flashed for the man in the yachting cap and a great general saw him into his car, for the stoutish visitor was the President of the French Republic. Generals Pétain and Pershing accompanied Poincaré in his car up to the drill ground. It was an American division which marched this morning. In fact it was the same unit which had marched through the streets of the port only a few months before. They had grown browner and straighter since that day and they looked taller. Group consciousness had dawned in them now. The only lack of discipline was shown by the mules. It must be admitted that the mule morale left much to be desired. Many were new to the task of dragging machine guns and those that did not sulk tried to run away. Strong arms and stronger words prevailed upon them.
"Remember," the driver would plead, "you have a part in making the world safe for democracy," and in a trice all the evil would flee from the eyes and the heels of the unruly animals.
A number of bands helped to keep the men swinging into the face of a driving rain. The French officers who accompanied Pétain and Poincaré were somewhat surprised when one regiment went by to the tune of "Tannenbaum," but General Pershing explained that it had been played in America for years under the name of "Maryland, My Maryland." He had a harder task some minutes later when a band struck up a regimental hymn called "Happy Heinie," which borrows largely from "Die Wacht am Rhein" for its chorus.
As soon as the troops marched by, General Pershing sent orders for all the officers to assemble. They gathered in a great half circle before the French President who spoke to them slowly and with much earnestness. Indeed, he spoke so slowly that fair scholars could follow his discourse. Even those who could grasp no more than such words as "Lafayette" and "President Wilson" and "la guerre" listened with apparent interest. M. Poincaré called attention to the fact that the day was the anniversary of the Battle of the Marne and also the birthday of Lafayette. These days, he said, linked together the two nations which were making a common cause in the struggle for civilization and he ended with a dramatic sweep of his arm as he exclaimed, "Long live the free United States." However, he called it Les Etats Unis which made it more difficult.
"What did he say?" a group of doughboys asked a sergeant chauffeur who had been stationed near enough to hear the speech. "I didn't get it all," said the sergeant, "but it sounded a good deal like 'give 'em hell.'"
The President and his party spent the rest of the afternoon inspecting the billets of the Americans. In one barn Poincaré insisted on climbing up a ladder to see the quarters at close range and as he climbed slowly and clumsily it came to my mind that the presidential waist line, the knickerbockers and the yachting cap were all symbols of the fact that France even in war was still a civil democracy.
Still it must be admitted that the next civilian we saw was more warlike than any of the soldiers. The only military equipment worn by Georges Clemenceau was a pair of leather puttees which didn't quite fit, but he had eyes and eyebrows and a jaw which all combined to suggest pugnacity. He was not then premier and indeed he had been in political retirement for some time, but he made a greater impression on the soldiers than any of our visitors because he spoke in English. It was on September 16, 1917, that Clemenceau saw American soldiers, but he had seen them once before and that was in Richmond in 1864 when Grant marched into the city. Clemenceau was then a school teacher in America. The old Frenchman watched the sons and grandsons of those dead and gone fighters and expressed the wish that he might see American troops once again when they marched into Berlin.
The doughboys he saw in France were not the seasoned troops which swung by him on those dusty Virginia roads so many years ago, but in their hands were new weapons which might have turned the tide at Bull Run and changed Gettysburg from victory into a rout. Certainly Pickett would have never swept up to the Union lines if there had been machine guns such as those with which the rookies blistered the targets for the edification of the distinguished guests and the bombs which sent the pebbles sky high might have given pause even to Stonewall Jackson.
There were sports as well as military exercises in the program arranged for Clemenceau. There were footraces and a tug of war and boxing matches. In one of these American blood was freely shed on French soil for a middleweight against whom the tide of battle was turning butted his opponent and cut his forehead.
I did not see Joffre when he paid a visit to the army zone and reviewed the troops but he left a glamor for us all in our messroom where he had dinner with General Pershing. It was a reporterless dinner so it meant less to us than to Henriette who served the dinner for the two generals. Nothing much had ever happened to Henriette before. She looked like Jeanne d'Arc, but the only voices she ever heard cried, "L'eau chaude, Henriette," or "Hot water" or "Œufs" or "Eggs." And if they were not wanted right away they must be had "toute de suite."
It was Henriette who brushed the boots and cleaned the dishes and swept the floors and every night she waited on peasants and peddlers and reporters. Once she had a major in the reserve corps. He was attached to the quartermaster's department. But on the historic night she stood at the right elbow of General Joffre and the left elbow of General Pershing. I was away at the time and the correspondents were telling me about it before dinner. While we were talking she came into the room with the roast veal and I said, "Henriette, they tell me that while I was away you waited upon Marshal Joffre and General Pershing."
One of the men at the table made a warning gesture, but it was too late. Henrietta put the hot veal down to cool on a side table and pointed to the seat nearest the window. A large man from a press association sat there but she looked through him and saw the hero of the Marne. "Maréchal Joffre là," said Henriette. She turned to a nearer seat and pointing to the shrinking representative of the Chicago Tribune explained, "General Pearshing ici."
One of the men rose from the table then and got the veal. Something was said about fried potatoes, but Henriette remained to tell me about the historic dinner. She admitted that she was very nervous at first. That was increased by the fact that General "Pearshing" ate none of his pickled snails. The Maréchal had fifteen. The soup went well, Henriette said, and General Pearshing cheered her up enormously by his conduct with the mutton. The chicken was also a success. After the chicken the generals held their glasses in the air and stood up. Henriette noticed that when Maréchal Joffre stood up he was "gros comme une maison."
As he left the room Maréchal Joffre pinched her cheek but the mark was gone before she could show it to the cook. For all that Henriette had something to show that she waited upon generals at the famous dinner. She opened a new locket which she wore around her neck and took out a small piece of gilt paper. She would not let me touch it, but when I looked closely I saw that it had printed upon it "Romeo and Juliet."
"It's the band off the cigar Pershing smoked at the dinner," explained one of the correspondents. Henriette put the treasure back in her locket and sighed. "Je suis très contente," she said.
CHAPTER IX
LETTERS HOME
THE British army tells a story of a soldier who had been at the front for a year and a half without ever once writing home. This state of affairs was called to the attention of his officer who summoned the soldier and asked him if he had no relatives. The Tommy admitted that he had a mother and an aunt.
"I want you to go back to quarters," said the captain, "and stay there until you've written a letter. Then bring it to me."
The soldier was gone for two hours and then he returned and handed the officer a single sheet of letter paper. His note read, "Dear Ma—This war is a blighter. Tell auntie. With love—Alfred."
It was different in the American army. The doughboys wrote to their families to the second and third cousin. One soldier turned fifty-two letters over to his lieutenant for censorship in a single day. The men hardly seemed to need the suggestion posted on the wall of every Y.M.C.A. hut: "Remember to write to mother today." Of course it was not always mother. I came upon a couple of lieutenants one afternoon hard at work on an enormous batch of letters. It was originally intended that the chaplain should censor all the mail for the regiment but it was found that the task would be far beyond the powers of any one man. In time the job came to absorb a large part of the energy of the junior officers.
"This," said one of the officers, "is the fifth soldier who's written that 'our officers are brave, intelligent and kind!' I know I'm brave and intelligent, but I'm not so damned kind," and he ripped out half a page of over faithful description of the country.
"The man I have here," said the second officer, "has got a joke. He says, 'If I ever get home the Statue of Liberty will have to turn round if she ever wants to see me again.' It was all right the first time, but now I've got to his tenth letter and he's still using it."
It has been found that more than fifty per cent. of the mail sent home consists of love letters. The fact that they have to be censored does not cramp the style of the writers in the least. One letter was so ardent as to arouse admiration. "This man writes the best love letter I ever read," said a lieutenant, looking up. "The only trouble is that he's writing to five girls at once and he uses the same model every time. Two of the girls live in the same town at that."
Most of the letters were cheerful. Some courageously so. One man who was near death from tuberculosis wrote home once a day recounting imaginary events which had happened outside the walls of his hospital. In his letters he would send himself on long marches over the hills of France and describe the woods and meadows and plowed fields as they looked to him on bright mornings. He described in detail work which he was doing in bombing and the only complaint he ever made was on a day when he had coughed himself to such weakness that he could hardly finish his daily letter. He wrote to his mother then and asked her to excuse the briefness of his note. He explained that he was pretty well fagged out from a long afternoon of bayonet drill.
The soldiers frequently commented on the kindliness of the French people and they were also fond of boasting, with perhaps doubtful justification, that they were already proficient in the French language. A few were desirous of giving the folk back home a thrill. One man working as company cook at a port in France, some three or four hundred miles from the firing line, wrote a weekly letter describing all sorts of war activities. He made up air raids and heavy bombardments and fairly tore up the village in which he was living. Curiously enough he never made himself conspicuous in these actions. According to the letters he was just there with the rest taking the "strafing" as best he could.
The officer who censored his first warlike letter cut out all the imaginative flights, but two days later the soldier wrote another letter even more thrilling. He complained that it was difficult to write because the explosion of big shells nearby made the house rock.
The lieutenant called him up then and said, "You're writing a lot of lies home, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," said the soldier.
"Well, what are you doing it for?" continued the officer.
The soldier shifted about in embarrassment and then he said, "Well, you see, sir, those letters are to my father. He went into the Union army when he was sixteen and fought all through the last two years of the war. He lives in a little town in Ohio and the people there call him 'Fighting Bill' on account of what he did in the Civil War. Well, when I went away to this war he began to go round town and tell everybody that I was going to do fighting that would make 'em all forget about the Civil War. He used to say that I came of fighting stock and that I'd make 'em sit up and take notice. It would be pretty tough for him, sir, if I had to write home and say that I was cooking down in a town where you can't even hear the guns."
"That's all right," said the lieutenant, "but some of the people who've got sons in this regiment will be doing a lot of worrying long before they have any need to."
"No, sir," said the soldier, "my father don't know what regiment I'm with. I was transferred when I got over here and the only address he's got is the military post office number."
"I don't know what to say in that case," replied the lieutenant. "It's a cinch you're not giving away any military information and I can't see how you're giving, any aid and comfort to the enemy. I guess you can go on with that battle stuff. Make the bombardments just as hard as you like, but keep the casualties light."
In contrast to the attitude of the veteran back in Ohio was a letter which a captain received from the mother of one of his men.
"My son is only nineteen," she wrote. "He has never been away from home before and it breaks my heart that he should be in France. It may sound foolish but I want to ask you a favor. When he was a little boy I used to let him come into the kitchen and bake himself little cakes. I think he would remember some of that still. Can't you use him in the bakery or the kitchen or some place so he won't have to be put in the firing line or in the trenches? I will pray for you, captain, and I pray to God we may have peace for all the world soon."
The captain read the letter and then he burned it up. "If the rest of the men in the company heard of that they would jolly the life out of that boy," he said. But he sat down and wrote to the mother, "Your boy is well and I think he is enjoying his work. I cannot promise to do what you ask because your son is one of the best soldiers in my company. We are all in this together and must share the dangers. I pray with you that there may be peace and victory soon."
No complete story of America's part in the war will ever be written until somebody has made a collection and read thousands of the letters home. The doughboy is strangely inarticulate. He can't or he won't tell you how he felt when he first landed in France, or heard the big guns or went to the trenches. He is afraid to be caught in a sentimental pose but this fear leaves him when he writes. In his letters he will pose at times. This is not uncommon. Many a man who would never think of saving anything about "saving France" will write about it in rounded sentences. His deepest and frankest thoughts will come out in letters.
Of course the censors stand between these makers of history and posterity. We must wait for our chronicles of the war because of the censor. The newspaper stories about our troops in France on their tremendous errand should ring like the chronicle of an old crusade, but it is hard for the chronicler to bring a tingle when he must write or cable "Richard the deleted hearted."
When a censor wants to kill a story he usually says, "Don't you know that your story may possibly give information to the Germans?" The correspondent then withdraws his story in confusion. Of course what he should answer is, "Very well, that story may give information to the Germans, but it will also give information to the Americans and just now that is much more important."
There are certain military reasons for not naming units and not naming individuals, but the war is not being fought by the army alone. If the country is to be enlisted to its fullest capacity it must have names. The national character cannot be changed in a few months or a year. The newspapers have brought us up on names. It is too much to expect that the folk back home can keep up on their toes if the men they know go away into a great silence as soon as they cross the ocean and are not heard of again unless their names appear in casualty lists. We can't do less for our war heroes than we have done for Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson and Smokey Joe Wood. That is not only for the sake of the people back home, but for those at the front as well. They like to know that people are hearing about them. It is not encouraging to them to receive papers and learn that "certain units have done something." Just as soon as possible they want to see the name of their regiment and of D company and K and F and H. The English name their units after a battle and so must we. And we must have plenty of names. It helped Ty Cobb not a little in the business of being Ty that thousands of columns of newspaper space had built up a tradition behind him. When Joe Wood got in a hole it is more than probable that he realized that he must and would get himself out again because he was "Smokey Joe." We must do as much for private Alexander Brown and corporal James Kelly, and for sergeants and major generals, too. We are not a folk who thrive on reticence. It is true that we like to blow our own horn but it must be remembered that Joshua brought down a great fortress in that manner. The trumpets are needed for America. We cannot fight our best to the sound of muffled drums.
The man abroad who is sending back the stories of the war must deal with the French censor as well as the American, and that reminds us of Pétain's mustache. When the great general came to our camp all the newspaper stories about his visit were sent to the French military censor. All were allowed to pass in due course except one. The correspondent concerned went around to find out what was wrong.
"I'm sorry," said the censor, "but I cannot allow this cable message to go in its present form. You have spoken of General Pétain's white mustache. I might stretch a point and allow you to say General Pétain's gray mustache, but I should much prefer to have you say General Pétain's blonde mustache."
"Make it green with small purple spots, if you like," said the correspondent, "but let my story go."