Part 10

I whirled, visions of spies, explosions and poisoned soup rushing wildly through my brain.

“What’s this?” I cried. “German? In an American aviation camp? What are you two doing here?”

They stared at me stupidly. One held a mop and the other held a broom. Of course they were spies!

“You are Germans--_Deutsch_?” I challenged again, sure that I had uncovered a regular Guy Fawkes plot.

“_Ja_,” admitted the one called Otto, and jerked a thick dirty thumb toward his working blouse, on the chest of which was inscribed in big black letters “P G” with a slim little “i” between, so that it read “PiG.”

“Pig!” I said wonderingly.

A soldier across the counter came to my aid. “Prisoners of war,” he explained briefly. “P. G. stands for _prisonnier de la guerre_. Some joker slipped the middle “i” over onto him. And it’s not so far wrong at that! Look at the beggars’ fat jowls. They help round the camp, unloading trucks, scrubbing up the barracks, and so on. For obvious reasons they’re not allowed in the kitchens. They have their own quarters behind barbed-wire entanglements--but you just bet they don’t try very hard to get away. This is better than machine-gun fire.”

“Are they good workers?”

“Not so you’d notice--but they make up by being fine eaters. You should see them tuck away the grub that Uncle Sam sends three thousand miles across the sea to feed his Allies. I reckon they figure that the more they eat the less there’ll be for the enemy, and there’s more than one way of killing a cat. The French are too easy on them, and that’s the fact.”

In the afternoon things went easier for a while. As it was still raining we had mess in the canteen and then sat and made up jam sandwiches. Along about five another tremendous rush began. I was put on the _marmites_. These are big urns of coffee which are constantly filled and refilled from the boiling-hot vats on the stove. It is heavy, dirty, back-breaking work, and inside of an hour my clean blue blouse and spotless collar looked as though I had slid down a chimney. And my hands--was I ever proud of these red, chapped, grubby-nailed horrors? _Nota bene_: If you love to be dainty, don’t be a canteen maid.

At nine-thirty P.M. we closed, and I was so dead tired that I tumbled into bed and unlaced my boots by the feel. The first shift is from seven A.M. until four P.M., and the second from noon to nine-thirty P.M. But some of the workers are down with severe colds, their substitutes have not yet arrived, and that means double duty for the rest. From five in the morning until nine at night is some day’s job, believe me! You have to be hardened before you can stand the pace. A delicate girl would crumple up inside of a week. Of course when we get organized and a system blocked out things will move more smoothly. At present we’re a brand-new plant.

December 5th.

Superb aviation weather! For the past week it’s been blowing, hailing, raining, snowing, thawing, and then beginning all over again _da capo_ with unabated zeal, like a child with only one tune. Water overhead and slush underfoot. Colds, pneumonia, tonsillitis, dipththeria, grippe--these are the enemies our soldiers have to face and conquer or be conquered by, every single day. And yet, despite the hostile weather, the men go up for practice just the same. And thus far only one death.

Our stoves are up. The P. G.’s have put them in every room. No more rising in the dark in freezing temperature and washing in the water from your hot-water bottle. And we’ve appointed a fireman to build the fires. We’re to take the job week about. As there’s no water laid on in our barracks yet, we’ve had also to appoint a water bearer to keep the jugs filled and on the fire. Each morning the P. G.’s swab down the green linoleum floors of our quarters fresh and clean--and inside an hour they are caked with real estate. Entire town lots come away with our boots.

This morning when I went over to the canteen the cook had not shown up. And in front a long line of waiting doughboys stood, beating a hungry tattoo on the counter. What to do? Of course we could have turned them out while we rounded up another cook, but that’s not what we’re here for. “Get round your job,” said Axiom One, and feeding these men was it. So I went into the kitchen. A soldier volunteered his aid. And all through the morning hours we two worked like firemen at a ten-story fire. Bacon and eggs, _repas complet_; we cooked and cooked and cooked.

In the afternoon as a change I was assigned to go on a camion to the neighboring farms and collect butter, eggs, vegetables and fruit. It was lowering when we set forth, with a raw chill wind that blew every way at once, and presently the air turned black and the water came down like a waterspout out of the sky. Nevertheless we completed our circuit. It was twilight when we returned. I went into the canteen kitchen.

“Well, he’s been and gone!” a chorus of voices cried.

“Who?” I inquired, catching my breath. They tossed me a card and a note.

It was Bob! He had got a day’s leave unexpectedly and he spent four hours of it coming down to see me, found me gone, and spent another four getting back again. He’d sent a wire last night, but of course it hadn’t reached me. I suppose it will arrive the morning after eternity and rout me out of bed!

I went back to quarters feeling pretty blue. There were little zigzags of fiery pain running up and down my neck from bending so long over the stove; my skirts were sopping; and my feet in their heavy boots with their excess acreage of mud were so heavy I could scarcely drag them after me. I opened the door upon a cozy scene. Lucile was making tea. She had lifted the lid of the small fat-bellied stove in the center of the room, and with a long fork she was toasting the nubbins of war bread down over the live coals. Somebody strange was sitting in our one easy-chair.

“Come in,” cried Lucile, “and shut that door! Here’s a lady from ‘The Saturday Evening Post’; she’s come down to look at the animals in the zoo.”

“Well, what do you think of us?” I asked.

“I think,” she replied, looking first at Lucile bending over the stove, then round at the bare board walls hung thick with mackintoshes and storm skirts, at the shelves containing each girl’s toilet articles, at the cots ranged along the sides covered with dark army blankets, at the trunks standing everywhere, at a leak in the roof from which the rain was decanting with a steady tap-tap onto my pillow, and finally back at Lucile again--“I think it’s a cross between a girls’ boarding house, an East Side tenement and a Western mining shack. And I think you girls are ripping to rough it like this!”

“Pooh!” said Lucile, taking up her banjo and beginning to strum. “We love the hardships. Of course a weakling couldn’t stand the racket. You have to be sound through and through, or sooner or later it gets you. In a month or so, though, we’re going to have enlarged quarters, and then two girls will have a cubby-hole to themselves and we’ll be rid of all this clutter. Also we’re going to start an officers’ club where we serve hot meals to the aviators; in the same building will be recreation rooms, and just outside a garden and a tennis court. Then we’ll be _grand luxe_! As yet we’re still in the making, like creation on the fourth day.”

“How do you keep clean?” the visitor wanted to know.

“You don’t,” I said grimly. “Look! But since Lucile has bought a rubber bathtub we manage a bath once in a while.”

“She thinks our boots are funny,” said Lucile.

“She wouldn’t think they were quite so funny if she had had to oil them and keep them clean. You should have seen mine the other day when I slipped and fell in front of the post-office. I thought the whole camp and the hangars and the flying field were coming right along with me like the top of a layer cake. I give you my word, for a second I was afraid to move my feet for fear I’d lift the town.”

The lady rose to go. Lucile went over to her trunk and got her diary, which the lady had asked to see. After some debate I gave her mine, too. I only hope she uses discretion!

December 11th.

Dazzling sunshiny weather. I counted seventeen planes up. Got back my diary. The lady said she read it in bed and whooped so over some of the passages that we could have heard her clear out to camp, it was the parts where I told what I thought about men. She swore, though, she wouldn’t use them; and I hope she keeps her word! Worked at the _marmites_ in the forenoon and behind the counter in the afternoon. Right in the middle of the rush, when I was pushing hot chocolate and sandwiches across the counter as fast as my two hands could fly, I suddenly heard a voice say: “One coffee, please--and step lively!”

It was Robert! I was so busy that there was no time then for more than a handshake. After Robert had squeezed my hand he turned it over in his palm and stared steadily down at it, all chapped and rough and red. I cut my thumb yesterday, and the bandage was ragged and coffee-stained. Altogether, not a hand that you’d enter at a beauty show. But Bob only said “Bully little flapper!” and couldn’t seem to let go of it. Then for an hour he helped me. He’d got another leave, he said, and thought he’d try my camp again.

At four I went off duty and the directrice lent us her sitting-room, where we had tea together and--well, sort of caught up on arrears. Afterward we strolled about the camp in the early twilight and came by the post-office for the mail. Robert and I stood off at one side and watched the soldiers hurrying from all directions like ants converging upon that one radiant doorway of warm streaming light. The board walks resounded to their footsteps. On and on they came, some on the dead run. It was weird to see those figures suddenly evolve out of the gloom.

“And that’s not all,” said Robert. “This one camp with its thousands of men is the epitome of scores of other camps over here, where at this twilight hour exactly the same performance is taking place--thousands on thousands of lonesome soldiers hastening, with eagerness in their hearts, to get that word from home. That’s one end of the line. At the other end are the girls and wives and mothers at home writing those letters with cheerfulness and faith--thousands of Susie Smiths and Mamie Joneses! A Whitman could make a fine poem out of that, naming every girl and her town. And between those two ends so far apart is the big invisible rope of love. They talk about the necessity of guns and effectives, but, by George, if they lived in one of these god-forsaken little villages behind the Front they’d realize that it’s the guns plus the letters of the Susie Smiths and Mamie Joneses which are going to win this war!”

December 20th.

Robert left that same night, and ever since I’ve been laid up with tonsillitis--the first time I’ve been ill in my life. It was a splendid opportunity to think--only there wasn’t anything to think about. That’s the bother with this war--it kills thought. But I kept the fires up and the big jugs heating for the baths, and cleaned the girls’ boots, and talked with the P. G.’s, and indexed our new library, and counted the flies on the wall, and made the tea every afternoon. Nevertheless I could feel my brain begin to disintegrate with idleness. That’s the worst trouble with the soldiers in the trenches--nothing to do. It gives them the _cafards_, the black butterflies, the blue devils, the jimjams, the hump.

Christmas Day.

Raining again, slowly but surely. However, I’m on my job again--in waders; and with three pairs of heavy woolen stockings underneath. These frame buildings just can’t help but leak, and they always want to leak wherever the back of your neck is. To-day we gave out Red Cross Christmas boxes to all the soldiers and cadets and officers. You should have seen the rush! Men who at home were used to receiving from their fathers a six-cylinder car as a gift and then remarking casually “Oh, thanks awf’lly, old chap!” came crowding up for those boxes, as eager as kids for tin horns. And there was no put-on about it. They wanted their Christmas presents!

After a full day we had mess--turkey!--with some of the officers, and then half a dozen of us went over to the Y. M. C. A. hut to see the movies. We sat in the front row--six women among five hundred men. These evening entertainments are a great boon. And the shows are so well attended that they have to give two performances each night. Later we danced, overshoes and all. After that we tramped over to the barracks of the P. G.’s to see their Christmas tree. Altogether it was a strange Christmas. Where shall we be this time next year? All those solid husky youngsters who filled the hall with their jolly laughter? All these slim young aviators with their budding mustaches and their straight, keen, fearless eyes? What has 1918 in store for us?

December 31st.

I’ve been transferred! There was a call for more workers at a certain canteen, and so some of us were shifted round. Now I am at X----, which is a canteen on the environs of Paris, of Number Two Type. Here thousands of troops pass through each day from all parts of France, carrying the Allied man power for redistribution upon every Front. Occasionally soldiers lie over a few hours while new trains are being made up, but usually they go straight through, with a ten-minutes’ stop for food. Sometimes the men have traveled from thirty-six to forty-eight hours without a bite to eat. Thus our chief work is upon the platforms or _quais_, distributing hot coffee, chocolate and sandwiches. The heavy rushes come between six and eight in the morning, at noon, and once more at dusk. Often there will be trains on two tracks at the same time, one full of grim, silent troops bound for the Front, the other filled with jolly _permissionnaires_ going home on leave. There is a sharp contrast of mood between those two trainloads of Frenchmen, so close together upon those narrow parallel tracks. The incoming ones face home and a brief spell of happiness; the outgoing ones face--another year! And the unending weariness of it, the bitter black nostalgia, is to be read in those black eyes straining out at you from the windows.

This is to-day’s record--my first day here: I rose and was on the _quai_ by six-thirty. It was dark, and the cold was appalling. It had been snowing, and a high wind slapped icy particles against my cheek. The pavement of the _quai_, where it was not covered with snow, was caked with dirty, slippery ice so that one had to step gingerly for fear of accident. My feet were freezing, despite the customary three pairs of stockings and heavy boots.

“You’ll have to get some clogs,” said a white-haired American worker beside me. “Look!” She lifted her skirts and I beheld thick wooden-soled boots--sabots with leather tops. “Sweet, aren’t they? But better than frozen feet!”

The train was late. The _marmites_ of boiling hot coffee stood waiting by the track, each with its padded flannel jumper to keep the contents hot. The basket of ham sandwiches, apples and Camembert cheese were covered with oilcloth as protection from the wet. The workers, some Americans, some French, in blue blouses and veils, swathed to the eyes in their mantles, huddled in the sheltered lee of the station and stamped their feet and swung their arms to keep warm. Those drafty _quais_ in the raw dawns are the native heath of pneumonia microbes.

Suddenly the captain of the _gare_ blew his whistle.

“Here she comes!” cried the white-haired American, and seized her coffee cart and started down the track. The rest of us followed with sandwiches. The long train slowed to a halt. Snow piled high upon the roofs of the cars; snow upon the steps and vestibules; icicles dripping from the eaves--and nobody descended! Not a move or a stir. It looked like a specter train.

“_Café! Café, messieurs! Descendez, messieurs!_ You have ten minutes!”

It was the gay voice of a little French canteener as she ran from car to car, tapping on the windowpanes. And then--bang! Some of the windows were let down, heads began to poke out, and tin cups stained with _pinard_ appeared at the end of arms.

“No, no, messieurs. Descend if you please. You have time. And we can’t wait on you all up there. Ah, you little monster”--this to a big giant who suddenly loomed above--“come down from that window. The coffee is good and hot!”

That cheerful, laughing voice, so absolutely French in its intonations, roused the silent train. And then they came pouring out like a cloudburst and almost mobbed the coffee machine. Hundreds of hands and cups were under the faucet at once.

“_Dix centimes, messieurs! Dix centimes, n’est-ce pas?_”

The little mademoiselle shook her tin cup, and the sous rattled into it--but still the men did not speak. They drank their beloved scalding hot beverage in silence. The snow fell steadily, tipping their mustaches, the visors of their kepis, the edges of their coats--with a powder of white, like silhouettes. And still they uttered no word! Remember, it is the day before New Year’s--a day dear to every Frenchman’s heart--and these men were returning to the Front. The whistle blew.

“_En voiture!_”

The circle of hands about the coffee machine melted as if by magic. The train sucked them in. And still not a single word had been spoken! I turned, that strange grim muteness of a voluble warm-hearted race sinking into my heart. I turned, and the spell was broken. I heard a young French voice. It was a soldier, who at the risk of losing his train had lingered to thank the white-haired canteener for filling his coffee cup. She was down on her knees in the snow, decanting the last drop of precious liquid from the machine. Her white hair was powdered still whiter with shining crystals. Her face streamed with perspiration and was rosy from exertion.

“Ah, madame,” said the soldier, “it is the sympathy and courage of women like you that give us strength to go on with this dirty war!”

She did not understand a word of his rapid lingo, but she patted his arm and smiled. Each comprehended the other! The next instant the train was a rushing shadow on the blinding white landscape.

And then before we could draw breath or refill our _marmites_ another train was upon us. This time it was _permissionnaires_ returning home. They hopped out like joyous schoolboys, with a fusillade of teasing banter.

“Aha! ’Tis the pretty little Americans! Say! You are all right, you know, you Americans!”

“I have an American marraine. Will you be my marraine, mademoiselle? You don’t know how nice I am! Not ‘naughty boy’!”

“Look! Ham sandwiches! My God, we’re in Paradise!”

They bought out the apple basket and had apple fights. And while we were rushing the growlers cross-tracks for more coffee they marched up and down arm in arm and chanted in our honor a trench ditty about a new relative they’ve acquired. The chorus, loosely translated, runs like this:

“_’Tis my Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam! He is a fine copain.[1] He comes from Amérique. The terror of the German, ’Tis my Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam! He is sympathique. The great Républicain. The victory of demain, ’Tis to Uncle Sam, Sam, Sam!_”

And when at length the train pulled out, heads were thrust from the windows, cups and kepis were waved, and a rousing “_Vive l’Amérique!_” floated back to us. For these men were going home.

[1] _Pal._

January 4, 1918.

Aside from the work on the _quais_ we also run a canteen in behind the station, where we serve meals to the men obliged to wait for their trains. In addition next month we intend to start a buffet counter right on the tracks, where the hungry soldier passing through with only ten minutes at his command may obtain a solid meal of soup, meat, vegetables and coffee. The benefit of this kind of service to troops traveling, sometimes in open cattle cars, a day and a night without food, can never be estimated.

In our canteen we feed all the sons of earth--even German prisoners. Yesterday was our banner day. We began with some English from the Royal Flying Corps. Then followed in rapid succession Alpins Chasseurs; a company of Arabs, whose French officer had a tiny baton with which he waved them in and out and set them down to table like children in a row; Senegalese; Annamites; American negroes; Canadians; Hindus; Chinese; Portuguese; and train upon train of French and American troops. We were so rushed in the cluttered and cramped little kitchen that we had to establish a sort of bucket brigade to pass the food forward to the men.

Our cook, a mountain of jelly, is almost the ugliest woman in France; and her husband, a cross-eyed, bandy-legged little ogre, is certainly the ugliest man. And yet each considers the other a perfect paragon of beauty. Léonie brags about her handsome _mari_; and André chants the praises of his exquisite “_petit ange_,” and they nod and smile and coo endearing compliments to each other among the pots and pans. By profession André is a sexton, and it is only in his off hours, when he is not sweeping the church or burying the dead, that he consents to grace our kitchen with his Apollolike form.

Besides serving food, a canteen of this description is a sort of emergency bureau where almost anything may turn up. Buttons are sewn on, wounds bandaged, cough medicine administered, letters written home, and general physical and moral good cheer kept on tap day and night. After the great Italian débâcle, when thousands of French troops were being rushed down, our canteeners worked twenty-four hours at a stretch upon these icy _quais_. The emergency came in a minute, and they had to handle it in a minute. And the food they served was all the food those famished troops received. No time to halt and feed hungry mouths, with the Prussians battering down the gates of Italy! At another canteen, farther south, a trainload of French wounded came through from Italy. And the canteeners flew aboard with food, bandages and first-aid appliances, and in the brief time allotted transformed those starving, untended sufferers.

The other day a bunch of Montana cow punchers tramped into the canteen, and when the leader--a loose, lank, lean giant of seven feet nothing--saw the American flag he took off his hat and said, “Thank Gawd, boys, we’re found--at last. We’re home.”

It turned out that in the shift of trains they had somehow got separated from their detachment, and for over two days they had wandered about the frozen little town, without a word of French, without money--for they had not yet received their pay--and consequently without lodging or food.

“But why on earth don’t you ask for something to eat?” I exclaimed. “You’re nothing but great big sillies!”

The leader drew himself up proudly. “I reckon we warn’t going to let none of them fly Frenchies get onto our little private plight and give us the merry ha-ha--was we, boys?”

“Not by a dern sight!” agreed the strayed mavericks stoutly.

We fitted them out with food, postals, an English-French dictionary, some French money with written instructions as to its value, and steered them on their way.

Yesterday I had an experience of still another sort. It was in the middle of a bleak afternoon, and the canteen was empty. I was sitting in the kitchen by the stove, making up the baskets for the evening rush on the _quais_--so many slices of ham, so many apples, so many pieces of cheese--when the far door opened, an American soldier drifted in, leaned over the buffet for a time, and finally with a strong Texas drawl said: “I wish you’d write me a letter, ma’am--to my wife.”

“What’s the matter with your writing it yourself?”

“I don’t know exactly what to say. It’s dog-gone delicate, and that’s a fact. You see, I got a bad die-ges-tion.” He pronounced it as if it were three words, with a heavy stress on the “die.”

“But you don’t write with your die-ges-tion.”