Part 4

The captain blew his whistle to indicate that the game was over. His boys quit happily, and we left him after agreeing to show up at his billet in time for lunch.

“We have a fairly good cook,” he promised. “But what is much more important, we have a beautiful young lady to wait on us.”

Our next stop was at a trench school. Americans, under French tutelage, had constructed a perfect--so we were told--system of ditches and entanglements, and had shown aptitude in learning the offensive and defensive points of this pleasant method of warfare. They were now engaged in bomb-throwing drill. Some of them had tried the baseball throw, but had found the grenades too heavy. Several crooked-arm throws would do things to a person’s elbow. But, according to the officers, the youngsters had done very well with the bowling motion and had surprised the French with their accuracy.

This officer, another captain, spoke in complimentary terms of the French assistance.

“They’ve been more than diligent with us,” said he. “They’ve never shown impatience when we failed to grab their point, but have gone over it and over it till we’ve learned it to suit them. The difference in languages makes it hard sometimes to get what they’re after, but they eventually manage to make themselves understood. The only fault I have to find with them,” he confided, “is that they don’t give us credit for knowing anything at all. They tell us this thing’s a rifle, and the thing on the end of it is a bayonet, and so forth. And one of them showed me a barbed-wire entanglement one day, and told me what it was for. I’d always been under the mistaken impression that it was used for bed-clothes.”

We had to turn down this captain’s luncheon invitation, but we stopped at his house for light refreshment. His lieutenant, a young University of Michigan boy, had come over on the first transport, and related interesting details of that historic trip.

We went on to the other captain’s, and lunched with him and his major and colonel. The beautiful young lady proved every bit as pretty as a pair of army shoes. But the food was good and the captain’s French better. He kept hurling it at the beautiful young lady, who received it with derisive laughter. His accent, it appeared, was imposseeb.

“I like to make her laugh,” he told me. “It takes me back home among the coyotes.”

On the street of the village I held converse with a private, aged about twenty-three. I said I supposed he was glad it was pay-day.

“What’s the difference!” he said. “I got more money now than Rockefella. I ain’t spent more’n a buck since we been over, and then it was just to be spendin’ it, not because they was anything to buy. I seen a fella the other day light a cigarette with one o’ these here dirty twenty-franc notes. He was sick o’ carrying it round. And they was another fella went up to one o’ these here village belles and slipped her a hundred francs. He never seen her before, and he won’t never see her again. He just says ‘Souvenir’ and let it go at that.”

“Did she take it?”

“Oh, I guess not! She’s to gay Paree by this time already.”

“She won’t burn up that town with a hundred francs.”

“No, but all these girls don’t think o’ nothin’ but gettin’ there. From what I seen of it, I’d just as soon be in Akron.”

“Oh, I’d hardly say that!”

“Talk about spendin’ money! They was a poor fella here last week that got rid of a lot of it. He bought himself a bottle o’ champagne wine. I don’t think he’d tasted it before, but it’s cheap over here. So he got a hold o’ this bottle and poured it into him like it was excelsior water, and it acted on him like it was laughin’ gas. He went up alongside the officers’ billet and sang ’em a vocal solo. The captain heard him--you could of heard him in San Francisco--and the captain come out and invited him in. And when he got him in there he says: ‘So-and-So, how much did this little bun cost you?’ So the fella told him a buck and a half. So the captain says: ‘You’ve underestimated the amount by about seventy bucks. You’ll get your next pay the last day of October.’”

I asked my new friend how he liked his billet.

“Great!” he said. “I and a couple other fellas has a room next to a pig on one side and a flock o’ chickens on the other. We never get lonesome, and it makes it nice and handy when we want some ham and eggs. I know one fella that rooms next to a settlement o’ rats. Night times he sets his flashlight so’s it throws a narrow path o’ light acrost the floor, then he puts a little piece o’ meat in the path and stands over it with a bayonet. When Mr. Rat gets there the fella comes down whang with the bayonet and fastens him to the floor. It’s good target practise, and he’d ought to be sure fire by the time it’s Huns instead o’ rats.”

“Maybe,” said I, “the Huns would know better than to come out in the light.”

“They’d go anywheres for a piece o’ meat,” said the private.

He had to depart and report for muster. We took another road home, a road frequented by sheep and railroad crossings, both of which slow you up considerably.

In France the gates--strong iron ones--at grade crossings are kept closed except when some one wants to cross the tracks. The some one makes known his desire by tooting his horn or shouting, and the gatekeeper--usually an old lady with the pipe-smoking habit--comes out of her shack and opens the gates, expending anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour on the task. The salary attached to the position is the same as that of a French private: ten centimes a day, which is two cents in regular money. I presume the gatekeepers have a hot time in the old town on pay night.

As for the sheep, when you come up behind them you might as well resign yourself to staying behind them till they reach the village for which they are headed. They won’t get out of the way of their own accord, and neither the dog nor the aged shepherd will make any effort to sidetrack them.

Having led them into the village, the shepherd proceeds to deliver them to their respective owners. He stops in front of a house, plays a certain tune on his horn, and the sheep or sheeps belonging to that house step out of ranks and sheepishly retire for the night, or perhaps sit up a while in the parlor and talk war with the family.

There must be a lot of intermarrying among the sheeps of one village. A great many of those in the flock we saw looked enough alike to be cousins or something.

Somebody suggested a poker game for this evening’s entertainment, but I got all I wanted of that great sport coming across the bounding blue.

It has rained only an hour in two days, and the boys say we’ll get it good to-morrow.

_Saturday, September 1. In an American Camp._

As exclusively predicted by everybody, it was pouring when we arose this morning, but rain doesn’t keep you indoors in France. If it did, you would live indoors.

We splashed the thirty miles to the other end of the camp and inflicted ourselves on a major of marines. He seemed deliberately unfriendly at first, but it was only his manner. After five minutes of awkward monosyllabic dialogue he gave us the usual refreshments and took us out to see the town, the name of which should be Mud if it isn’t.

“This is a grand climate,” he said. “They must have had conscription to get people to live here.”

He took us to the camp kitchen, of which he was evidently and justly proud. It was a model of convenience and cleanliness. He spoke to the cook.

“Are you very busy?” he asked.

“No, sir,” was the reply.

“Then I’d shave if I were you,” said the major.

“Daily shaving,” he told us when we got outside, “ought to be compulsory in our army as it is in the British. When a man hasn’t shaved he isn’t at his best, physically, morally, or mentally. When he has he’s got more confidence in himself; his morale is better. Shaving has a psychological effect, and I try to impress my men with the importance of it. They say it’s a difficult operation here, but I guess if the Tommies can do it in the trenches, we can in these billets.”

We remarked on the increasing popularity of mustaches among the men.

“I don’t object to them,” said the major. “Neither do I see any sense to them. To my mind they’re in a class with monocles or an appendix. But so long as the men keep their cheeks and chins smooth, they’re at liberty to wear as much of a misplaced eyebrow as they can coax out.”

The major showed us his hospital and his dentist shop and marched us up a steep hill, where, in the rain, we saw a great many interesting things and promised not to write about them.

After lunch we decided it would be patriotic to go home and remove our wet clothes. In my case, this meant spending the rest of the day in my room, and that’s where I am.

_Sunday, September 2. Paris._

The driver assigned to take me to the train, which left from the next village this morning, lost his way, and we reached the station just as the engine was sounding the Galli-Curci note that means All Aboard. There was no time to buy a ticket, and you can’t pay a cash fare on a train in France. But the conductor, or whatever you call him here, said I could get a ticket at the destination, Paris; in fact, I must get a ticket or spend the rest of my unnatural life wandering about the station.

I found a seat in a compartment in which were a young American officer, beginning his forty-eight hours’ leave, and a young French lady who looked as if she had been in Paris before. The young officer and I broke into conversation at once. The young lady didn’t join in till we had gone nearly twenty kilomet’s.

Captain Jones, which isn’t his name, called attention to the signs on the window warning MM. Les Voyageurs to keep their anatomies indoors. The signs were in three languages. “Ne pas Pencher au Dehors,” said the French. The English was “Danger to Lean Outside.” And the Wop: “Non Sporgere”--very brief. It was evident that a fourth variation of the warning had been torn off, and it didn’t require a William Burns to figure out in what language it had been written.

“If there were a boche on this train,” said Captain Jones, “he could lean his head off without hurting any one’s feelings.”

“Languages are funny,” continued the captain sagely. “The French usually need more words than we do to express the same thought. I believe that explains why they talk so fast--they’ve got so much more to say.”

I inquired whether he knew French.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve been over here so long that I can even tell the money apart.”

The dining-car conductor came in to ask whether we wanted the first or second “série” luncheon. You must reserve your seat at table on trains here or you can’t eat. We decided on the second, and so did our charming compartment mate. Captain Jones, supposing she could not understand English, said: “Shall you take her to lunch or shall I?”

I was about to be magnanimous when she remarked, with a scornful glance at the captain: “I shall myself take me to lunch if monsieur has no objection.”

The cap was temporarily groggy, but showed wonderful recuperative powers and in five minutes convinced her that he would toss himself into the Seine if she refused to eat with us. She accepted, after some stalling that convinced me she had been cordially inclined all the while.

General polite conversation ensued, and soon came the inevitable French question: How many American soldiers were there in France? I have heard it asked a million times, and I have heard a million different answers. The captain gave the truthful reply: “I don’t know.”

“This war,” he said, “should be called the War of Rumors. The war will be over by Christmas. The war won’t be over for ten years. The boche is starving. The Allies are getting fat. The boche has plenty to eat. The Allies are dying of hunger. Our last transport fleet sank five subs. Our last transport fleet was sunk by a whole flotilla of subs. Montenegro’s going to make a separate peace with Bosnia. There is talk of peace negotiations between Hungary and Indiana. Ireland, Brazil and Oklahoma are going to challenge the world. They’re going to move the entire war to the Balkans and charge admission. The Kaiser’s dying of whooping cough. You can learn anything you want to or don’t want to know. Why”--this to me--“don’t you fellas print the truth?”

“And where,” I asked him, “would you advise us to go and get it?”

“The same place I got it,” said the captain.

“And what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

We adjourned to the diner. A sign there said: “Non Fumeurs.” The captain pointed to it.

“That’s brief enough,” he said. “That’s once when the French is concise. But you ought to see the Chinese for that. I was in a town near the British front recently where some Chinese laborers are encamped. In the station waiting-room, it says: ‘No Smoking’ in French, English, Russian and Italian. The Russian is something like ‘Do notski smokevitch,’ and the Italian is ‘Non Smokore’. Recently they have added a Chinese version, and it’s longer than the Bible. A moderate smoker could disobey the rules forty times before he got through the first chapter and found out what they were driving at.”

Be that as it may, I have observed that everybody in France smokes whenever and wherever he or she desires, regardless of signs. We did now, and so did our guest, while waiting for the first course, which was black bread baked in a brickyard.

“I would love to go to America,” said mademoiselle.

“You wouldn’t care for it,” replied the captain promptly. “It’s too wild.”

“How is it wild?”

“Every way: manners, habits, morals. The majority of the people, of course, are Indians, and you just can’t make them behave.”

She asked whether either of us had ever been in New York. The captain said he’d passed through there once on the way to Coney Island. She wanted to know if New York was bigger than Paris. “It’s bigger than France,” said Captain Jones.

Monsieur was trying to make a game of her.

“Well, anyway,” said the captain, “you could lose France in Texas.”

What was Texas?

“Texas,” said the captain, “is the place they send soldiers when they’ve been bad. It’s way out west, near Chicago.”

The lady had heard of Chicago.

“This gentleman works there,” said the captain. “He’s part Indian, but he was educated at Carlisle and is somewhat civilized. He gets wild only on occasions.”

The lady regarded me rather scaredly.

“He lives on the plains outside the city,” continued the captain, “and rides to his work and back on a zebra. Practically all the suburban savages have zebras, and the Chicago traffic police have a fierce time handling them during their owners’ working hours. They run wild around the streets and in the department stores, and snap at women, especially brunettes.”

We had attained the potato course. The French positively will not serve potatoes as other than a separate course. I was about to help myself to a generous portion when the captain cried: “Here! Better leave those things alone. You know what they do to you.”

I told him I didn’t believe two or three would hurt, and proceeded to take three.

“When a half Indian eats potatoes,” said the captain, “he usually forgets himself and runs amuck.”

Our guest probably didn’t know what a muck was, but it had an unpleasant sound, and the look she gave me was neither friendly nor trusting.

“The greatest difference between France and America,” continued Captain Jones, “is in the people. In America a man ordinarily takes the initiative in striking up an acquaintance with a woman. He has to speak to her before she’ll speak to him. This would never do in France, where the men are too shy. Then there’s a difference in the way men treat their wives and horses. Americans use whips instead of clubs. And Americans have funny ideas about their homes. Private bedrooms and playrooms are provided for their pets--zebras, lizards and wild cats--and the little fellows are given to understand that they must remain in them and not run all over the house, like one of your cows.”

He paused to ask me how the potatoes were acting. I said it was too soon to tell, but I felt a little dizzy in the head. He suggested it were better to go back to our compartment, where there were less things to throw in the event of my reaching the throwing stage.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if I am deprived of knives, forks and plates, I will pick on human beings, and I usually aim out the windows.”

But he said he was sick of the atmosphere in the diner. We asked for l’addition and argued over who should pay it. I won, and when he had been given his change we returned to our own car, where mademoiselle demonstrated her fear of my expected outbreak by going to sleep.

We turned our attention to the scenery, the most striking feature of which was the abundance of boche prisoners at work in the fields.

“Lucky stiffs!” said the captain. “The war is over for them if they can just manage not to escape, and I guess there’s no difficulty about that. Better food than the soldiers, a soft job, and a bed to sleep in. And wages besides. Every private in the Fritz army would surrender if the officers hadn’t given them a lot of bunk about the way German prisoners are treated. They make them believe we cut off their feet and ears and give them one peanut and a glass of water every two weeks.”

Paris hove into view, and we quarreled about the girl. The fair thing, we decided, would be to turn over her and her baggage to a porter and wish her many happy returns of the day. We were spared this painful duty, however, for when she awoke she treated both of us as strangers. And the gentleman who attended to her baggage was not a porter, but a French aviator, waiting on the station platform for that very purpose.

“She’ll tell him,” guessed the captain, “that an American soldier and half Indian tried to flirt with her on the train, but she froze them out.”

Captain Jones stuck with me till my exit ticket was procured, a chore that ate up over an hour. Then we climbed into a dreadnought and came to this hotel, where I sat right down and versified as follows:

TO AN AMERICAN SOLDIER

_If you don’t like the nickname Sammy, If it’s not all a nickname should be, You can pick out Pat or Mike, Whatever name you like-- It won’t make no difference to me. Want a Thomas or Harry or Dick name? Dost prefer to be called Joe or Lou? You’ve a right to your choice of a nickname; Oh, Mr. Yank, it’s up to you._

V

MY ADVENTURES AT THE BRITISH FRONT

_Monday, September 3. Paris._

In this morning’s mail was a letter from Somewhere in London, replying favorably to my request to go to the British front. I was directed to take the letter to the assistant provost marshal, who would slip me a pass and inform me as to the details of the trip.

At the A. P. M.’s I was given the pass and with it “an undertaking to be signed by all intending visitors to the front.” There are ten rules in the undertaking, and some of them are going to be hard to obey. For example:

“I understand that it is impossible to arrange for me to see relatives serving with the fighting forces.”

“I will not visit the enemy front during the present war.”

But No. 6 is the tough one:

“In no circumstances will I deliver a political or electioneering speech to troops.”

I must pray for strength to resist natural impulses along this line.

Wednesday morning, said the A. P. M., would be our starting time. And he told us when and where to take the train--“us” because I am to be accompanied by a regular correspondent, one who carries a cane and everything.

Mr. Gibbons, the regular correspondent, informs me I must wear a uniform, and to-morrow morning I am to try on his extra one, which he has kindly offered.

Another chore scheduled for to-morrow is the squaring of myself with the boss of the French Maison de la Presse, who invited me to visit the devastated territory Thursday and Friday. The invitation was accepted, but the British and French dates conflict, and I would rather see one real, live front than any number of broken-down barns and boched trees.

_Tuesday, September 4. Paris._

I reported, after the French idea of breakfast, at the Maison de la Presse. This is situate on the fourth floor of a building equipped with an elevator that proves the fallacy of the proverb “What goes up must come down.” You can dimly see it at the top of the shaft, and no amount of button pushing or rope pulling budges it.

During the long climb I rehearsed the speech of apology and condolence framed last night, and wondered whether monsieur would be game and try to smile or break down completely or fly into a rage. He was game, and he not only tried to smile, but succeeded. And his smile was in perfect simulation of relief. These French are wonderful actors.

I returned thence to Mr. Gibbons’ room for my fitting. His extra uniform consisted of a British officer’s coat and riding breeches, puttees and shoes. Cap and khaki shirt I had to go out and purchase. The store I first selected was a gyp joint and wanted twenty-seven francs for a cap. I went to another store and got exactly the same thing for twenty-six. A careful shopper can save a lot of money in Paris.

Provided with cap and shirt, the latter costing a franc less than the former, I went to a secluded spot and tried on the outfit, Mr. Gibbons assisting. We managed the puttees in thirty-five minutes. It is said that a man working alone can don them in an hour, provided he is experienced.

“You look,” Mr. Gibbons remarked when I was fully dressed, “as if you had been poured into it.”

But I felt as if I hadn’t said “when” quite soon enough. Mr. Gibbons and I differ in two important particulars--knee joints--and though I tried to seem perfectly comfortable, my knees were fairly groaning to be free of the breeches and out in the open fields.

“Wear it the rest of the day and get used to it,” advised Mr. Gibbons.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to rumple it all up. I want to keep it neat for to-morrow.” And against his protest I tore myself out and resumed my humble Chicago garb.

It’s no wonder regular correspondents and British officers are obliged to wear canes. The wonder is that they don’t use crutches.

We leave at nine to-morrow morning. This means that myself and puttees will have to get up at four.

_Wednesday, September 5. With the British._

The major has a very good sense of the fitness of things. The room where I’m writing, by candlelight, is the best guest room in our château and was once occupied by the queen.

The rules of the household call for the dousing of down-stairs glims at eleven o’clock. After that you may either remain down there in total darkness or come up here and bask in the brilliant rays of a candle. You should, I presume, be sleepy enough to go right to bed, but you’re afraid you might forget something if you put off the day’s record till to-morrow.

I overslept myself, as they say, and had to get Mr. Gibbons to help with the puttees. The lower part of the breeches, I found, could be loosened just enough to make the knee area inhabitable.