Part 1

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The Stars and Stripes

_The Official Newspaper of the A. E. F._

_By and For the Soldiers of the A. E. F._

VOL. 1--NO. 1.

FRANCE, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1918.

PRICE: 50 CENTIMES.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR CHIEF

In this initial number of THE STARS AND STRIPES, published by the men of the Overseas Command, the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces extends his greetings through the editing staff to the readers from the first line trenches to the base ports.

These readers are mainly the men who have been honored by being the first contingent of Americans to fight on European soil for the honor of their country. It is an honor and privilege which makes them fortunate above the millions of their fellow citizens at home. Commensurate with their privilege in being here, is the duty which is laid before them, and this duty will be performed by them as by Americans of the past, eager, determined, and unyielding to the last.

The paper, written by the men in the service, should speak the thoughts of the new American Army and the American people from whom the Army has been drawn. It is your paper. Good luck to it.

(Signed) JOHN J. PERSHING, Commander-in-Chief, A. E. F.

---- MEN ON LEAVE NOT TO BE LED ROUND BY HAND ---- Impression That They Will Be Chaperoned Wholly Erroneous. ---- SAVOY FOR FIRST GROUP ---- Zone System to Be Instituted and Rotated to Give All Possible Variety. ---- "PINK TICKETS" FOR PARIS. ---- Special Trains to Convey Soldiers to Destinations--Rules Are Explicit. ----

As a great deal of misapprehension regarding leaves, the conditions under which they are to be granted, etc., has existed in the A.E.F. for some time past, the complete and authoritative rulings on the subject are given below.

A.E.F. men whose leaves fall due on or about February 15 will be allowed to visit the department of Savoy, in the south-east of France, during their week of leisure. That department constitutes their "leave zone" for the present. When their next leaves come around four months hence it is planned to give them a different leave zone, and to rotate such zones in future, in order to give all an equal chance to see as much of France as possible.

While the Y.M.C.A. has worked hard and perfected arrangements for soldiers' accommodations and provided amusements at Aix-les-Baines, one of the famous watering-places in Savoy, no man is bound in any way to avail himself of those accommodations and amusements if he does not so desire. In other words, there are no strings attached to a man's leave time, provided he does not violate the obvious rules of military deportment. The widespread idea that there will be official or semi-official chaperonage of men on leave by the Y.M.C.A. or other organizations is, therefore, incorrect.

Leaves Every Four Months.

The general order from Headquarters, A. E. F., on the subject of leaves is both complete and explicit. Leaves will be available for soldiers only after four months' service in France, and will be granted to officers and men in good standing. The plan is to give every soldier one leave of seven days every four months, excluding the time taken in traveling to and from the place in France where he may spend his holiday. As far as practicable, special trains will be run for men on leave.

A man may not save up his seven days leave with the idea of taking one of longer duration at a later date. He must take his leaves as they come. Regular leave will not be granted within one month after return from sick or convalescent leave.

In principle, leaves will be granted by roster, based on length of time since last leave or furlough; length of service in France; length of service as a whole lot. Officers authorized to grant leaves are required to make the necessary adjustments of leave rosters so as to avoid absence of too many non-coms, or specially qualified soldiers at any time. Not more than ten per cent. of the soldiers of any command are to be allowed away at the same time, nor, it is stipulated, is any organization to be crippled for lack of officers.

Leave areas, as stated above, will be allotted to divisions, corps, or other units or territorial commands, and rotated as far as practicable. Allotments covering Paris, however, will be made separately from all other areas, so as to limit the number of American soldiers visiting Paris on leave. For this reason the leave tickets will be of different color, those consigning a man to his unit's regular leave area being white, and those permitting a visit to Paris being pink, dividing the American permissionaires into white ticket men and pink ticket men.

Exceptional Cases.

In case a man has relatives in France, it is provided that he may, for that reason or some other exceptional one, be granted leave for another area than that allotted to his unit with the stipulation that the number of men authorized to visit Paris shall not be increased in that way. For the present, officers will not be restricted as to points to be visited on leave, other than Paris. Any leaves which may be granted by Headquarters to go to allied or neutral countries will be counted as beginning on leaving France and terminating on arrival back in France. The French Zone of the Armies, and the departments of Doubs, Jura, Ain, Haute-Savoie, Seine Inferieure and Pyrenees Orientales, and the arrondissements of Basses-Pyrenees touching on the Spanish frontier may not, however, be visited without the concurrence of the Chief French Military Mission.

Leave papers will specify the date of departure and the number of days' leave authorized. The leave will begin to run at 12.01 a. m. (night) following the man's arrival at the destination authorized in his leave papers, and will end at midnight after the passing of the number of days' leave granted him. After that, the next leave train must be taken by that man back to his unit. Or if he is not near a railroad line over which leave trains pass, he must take the quickest available transportation back to connect with a leave train. Each man on leave will carry his ticket as well as the identity card prescribed in G. O. 63, A. E. F.; and he will be required to wear his identification tag.

Travel Regulations.

Before going on leave, a man must register his address, in his own handwriting. He must satisfy his company or detachment commander that he is neat and tidy in appearance. He must prove to that officer's satisfaction that he has the required leave ticket, and so forth, and sufficient funds for the trip.

All travel on leave by men of units situated within the French Zone of the Armies will, as far as possible, be on the special leave trains. Transportation on these trains will be furnished by the Government, and rations will be provided for both going and returning journeys. Commutation and rations while on leave will not be paid in any case. Travel on regular trains will be at the expense of the officer or soldier so traveling, at one-fourth the regular rate. Commissioned officers and army nurses will be entitled to first class, field clerks and non-commissioned officers to second class, and all others to third class accommodations on regular trains.

Except on special leave trains, soldiers will be allowed to purchase second-class seats, but if a shortage of such seats should occur, they will not displace regular passengers.

Lodgings In Leave Zone

On their arrival at destination, all men will have their leave papers stamped with the date of arrival, and will have noted on them the date and hour of the train to be taken on expiration of their leave, by the American Provost Marshal at the railroad station, or by the French railroad officials. They will report to the Provost Marshal for information, for the looking over of leave papers, and for the selection of an assignment to lodgings and registry of address. If there is no Provost Marshal in the place to which they go, they will register their addresses and submit their leave papers for O. K.ing at the French Bureau de la Place of a garrisoned town, or else at the Gendarmerie, or police station. They will exhibit their leave papers to the French authorities at any time upon request.

Lodgings will be paid for in advance. If they prove unsatisfactory, a man may apply to the Provost Marshal for a change. Men who are unable to pay, or who commit any serious breach of discipline, will be promptly returned to their units. Misconduct will be reported by American Provost Marshals direct to the man's regimental or other Commander for disciplinary action--and for consideration at the next turn of leave.

In case of groups of men on leave traveling, the senior non-commissioned officer will be responsible for the conduct of the men. No liquor and no fire-arms or explosives of any sort may be carried by any soldier going to or returning from leave.

---- OFF FOR THE TRENCHES. ----

When a certain regiment of American doughboys departed from its billets in a little town back of the front and marched away to our trenches in Lorraine, this poem was found tacked up on a billet door:--

By the rifle on my back, By my old and well-worn pack, By the bayonets we sharpened in the billets down below, When we're holding to a sector, By the howling, jumping hector, Colonel, we'll be Gott-Strafed if the Blank-teenth lets it go.

And the Boches big and small, Runty ones and Boches tall, Won't keep your boys a-squatting in the ditches very long; For we'll soon be busting through, sir, God help Fritzie when we do, sir-- Let's get going, Colonel Blank, because we're feeling mighty strong.

---- TOOTH YANKING CAR IS TOURING FRANCE ---- Red Cross Dentist's Office ---- Lacks Nothing but the Lady Assistant ----

The latest American atrocity--a dentist's office on wheels!

Gwan, you say? Gwan, yourself! We've seen it; most of the chauffeurs have seen it; the Colonel and everybody else who gets about at all has seen it. That's what it is, a portable dentist's office--chair, wall-buzzer and all, with meat-axes, bung-starters, pinwheels, spittoons, gobs of cotton batting, tear gas, laughing gas, chloroform, ether, _eau de vie_, gold, platinum and cement to match. Everything is there but the lady assistant, and even she may be added in time.

If you wanted to be funny about the thing, you might call this motorized dentist's parlor the crowning achievement of the Red Cross; for, strange to say, it is the Red Cross, commonly supposed to be on the job of alleviating human misery, that has put the movable torture chamber on the road, to play one-tooth stands all along the countryside. But no one wants to be funny about a dentist's office that, instead of lying in wait for you, comes out on the road and chases you. It's too darn serious a matter; you might almost say that it flies in the teeth of all the conventions, Hague and otherwise.

It looks part like an ambulance, but it isn't. An ambulance carries you somewhere so that you can get some rest; a traveling tooth-yankery doesn't give you a chance to rest. It's white, is the outside of the car, just like a baby's hearse, and just about as cheerful to contemplate. On its side it says, "Dental Traveling Ambulance No. 1"--the No. 1 part gleefully promising, no doubt, that this isn't the end of them by any means, but that there may be more to follow.

Useful As a Tank?

Somebody had a nerve to invent it, all right, as if we didn't have troubles enough as it is, dodging the regimental dentist, and ducking shells, and clapping on gas masks, and all the rest. It is designed, according to one who professes to know about it, to kill the nerves of anything that gets in front of it; so we one and all move that it, instead of the tanks, be sent "over the top" and tried on the Boches. The minute they see a fully-lighted, white-painted car, with the dentist, arrayed with all his instruments of maltreatment, standing ready for action by his electric chair, those Boches will just turn around and run, and run, and run, and won't stop running till they get smack up against their own old barbed wire on the Eastern front. The crowned heads of Europe tremble before the advance of the crowned teeth of America, as you might say if you were inclined to joke about it; which we aren't.

For French Patients First

One of the Red Cross people, who was standing by ready for the command "Clear guns for action!" told THE STARS AND STRIPES that the peripatetic pain producer wasn't to be used so much for the American troops' discomfort as to fix up the cavities and what-not of the civil population of France. That was encouraging news, for while we don't bear our allies any ill-will, we think they ought to have the honor of trying out the experiment first "_Apres vous, mon chere Gaston,_" as the saying goes.

After all the French people in need of dental treatment have been treated, however, the Red Cross person went on to say that it might be tried out on the Americans--yanks for the Yanks, as you might say, if you were inclined to be funny about it, as you ought not to be; but we prefer to think that the war will be over by that time. Anyhow, who ever heard of an American who would own up to having anything the matter with his jaw.

Be that as it may, when you see the cussed thing on the road, jump into the ditch and lie low. It's real, and it means business.

---- ANZAC MAKES SAFE GUESS. ----

A company commander received an order from battalion headquarters to send in a return giving the number of dead Huns in the front of his sector of trench. He sent in the number as 2,001.

H. Q. rung up and asked him how he arrived at this unusual figure.

"Well," he replied. "I'm certain about the one, because I counted him myself. He's hanging on the wire just in front of me. I estimated the 2000. I worked it out all by myself in my own head that it was healthier to estimate 'em than to walk about in No Man's Land and count 'em!"--_Aussie_, the Australian Soldiers' Magazine.

---- HUNS STARVE AND RIDICULE U.S. CAPTIVES ---- A.E.F. Soldiers Compelled to Clean Latrines of Crown Prince. ---- GIVEN UNEATABLE BREAD. ---- Photographed Sandwiched Between Negroes Wearing Tall Hats. ---- EMBASSY HEARS THE FACTS. ---- Repatriate Smuggles Addresses of Prisoners' Relatives Into France. ----

Ridicule, degrading labor, insufficient food and inhumane treatment generally are the lot of American soldiers taken prisoner by the Huns. This is the experience of three Americans captured last Autumn by the German Army at the Canal de la Marne au Rhin, in the forest of Parcy, near Luneville. The deposition of M. L. Rollett, a repatriated Frenchman who was quartered in the same town with the American prisoners, made before First Secretary Arthur Hugh Frazier of the United States Embassy in Paris, throws ample light on the methods of the Boche dealing with his captives.

"How were the Americans treated?" M. Rollett was asked.

"They were obliged to clean the streets, and the latrines of the Crown Prince [The heir to the German throne had his headquarters at that time in Charleville, the captured French town to which the Americans were taken.] This was done in order to make them appear ridiculous. They were photographed standing between six negroes from Martinique; and when the photograph was taken the negroes were ordered to wear tall hats."

"Did the Americans have sufficient food?" Secretary Frazier inquired.

"No," replied M. Rollett. "Their food was insufficient. They received a loaf of bread every five days, which was as hard as leather and almost uneatable. Occasionally they received a few dried vegetables."

Fed by French People.

"Could they subsist on this food?"

"No, but the inhabitants of Charleville formed a little committee to supply the prisoners with food and with linen. The food had to be given to them clandestinely."

M. Rollett, who left Charleville on December 19, 1917, to come into France by way of Switzerland, visited the Embassy to forward to the relatives of the three American prisoners messages saying that they were still alive. The addresses they gave him were: Mrs. James Mulhull, 177 Fifth street, Jersey City, N. J.; Mrs. R. L. Dougal, 822 East First street, Maryville, Miss.; and Mrs. O. M. Haines, Wood Ward, Oklahoma. On the day the Americans were captured, he added, the American communique (published later on by the Germans) had reported five men killed and seven wounded.

"How did you bring these addresses away without being discovered?" the Embassy Secretary asked M. Rollett.

"They were written," he replied, "on a piece of linen which a young girl who speaks English had sewed under the lining of a cloak belonging to one of my daughters."

"Black Misery" In Germany.

In conclusion, M. Rollett was asked if, from his journey from Charleville through Germany to Switzerland, he could form any idea as to conditions in Germany.

"No," he answered, "because we traveled through Alsace-Lorraine at night; but the German soldiers talked very freely about conditions in Germany, and they said that life in all parts of the Empire is black misery. They all long for peace; and the soldiers are in dread of the British and French heavy artillery."

M. Rollett's disposition was subscribed and sworn to before Secretary Frazier on January 9, 1918, and a copy of it is in the archives of the American Embassy.

---- MARINES ADVISE SWIGGING. ---- For Hikers They Say, It Is Better Than Sipping. ----

Quantico, Va.--The drinking of water at frequent intervals while on long hikes is not recommended by U. S. Marines, stationed here.

While the average man should consume, according to medical authorities, from two to three quarts a day, troops on the march should drink this amount at regular periods and not sip a mouthful at a time, say the Marine officers.

In Haiti, the Philippines and other countries where the Marines have been compelled to hike long and hard, men who constantly sipped at their canteens were the first to become exhausted. On the contrary, the men who drank their fill every two or three hours, and not between times, proved to be the best hikers.

---- FREE SEEDS FOR SOLDIER FARMERS ---- Congress Votes Us Packets but Overlooks Hoes and Spades ---- PRIZES FOR BIG PUMPKINS ---- A.E.F. Garden Enthusiasts Speculate Upon Probability of Flower Pots in Tin Derbies. ----

_Sergeant Carey, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? Tomato buds, and Kerry spuds, And string beans all in a row?_

That's the song some of us will be singing when the ground gets a little softer--oh yes, it will be much muddied before long--and the grass, what there is left of it, gets a little greener, and the dickey-birds, begin to sing sweet "Oui, oui," in the tree-tops.

For be it known that by and with the consent of the Congress of the United States, that ancient and venerable and highly profitable body which votes the money to buy us our grub has, out of the kindness of its large and collective heart, extended its privilege of free seed distribution to the United States Quartermaster Corps. So, if you haven't received your little package of bean seed, pea seed, anise seed, tomato seed, lettuce seed, pansy seed, begonia seed, and what not, trot right up to the supply sergeant's diggings and ask him when it's coming in.

Oui, Oui--Spuds and Beans!

No kidding; you know yourself you're grumbling now because all you get in the line of vegetables is spuds, and beans, and tomatoes and beans, and spuds, and spuds, and beans, and beans, and spuds and beans, and beans, and beans, and beans, and beans, and beans and--what was that other vegetable you gave us last night, Mess-Sergeant?--oh, yes, beans; all of them canned, with now and then, on Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Yom Kippur and Hallowe'en, a few grains of canned corn. If you want fresh vegetables, therefore, it's up to you to grow them. Unfortunate people who live in big cities are able to grow them in cute little window boxes, and thus cut down the high cost of living. Why shouldn't you, with a steel helmet for a flower pot, be able to do the same?

Go to the French thou sluggard doughboy. Consider their ways. Get wise.

They're hard up for food, as you know; and at that, to judge from the reports from back home, they're no blooming curiosities. But look at what they do about it. Instead of folding their hands, saying, "C'est la guerre," they go out and dig, and then plant, and then hoe, and finally they have fresh vegetables--and backaches--to show for it. You can't go anywhere along the roadsides or up the hillsides these days without stumbling over their neat and well-kept-up little garden patches. And, with butter selling at what it is, and eggs selling for what they do, and everything else in the eats line skybooting in price, those little garden patches come in mighty handy. It's worth trying.

No Favors for Lemon Squads

Although no official announcement has been made as yet, it is safe to surmise that some company commanders will offer prizes for the squads producing the biggest pumpkins, the best summer squashes, and the most luscious watermelons. (Texas troops please heed.) Company commanders, you know, have never been in the habit of awarding prizes for the squads producing the most lemons, but, then, war changes every thing.

So keep your old campaign list for garden wear (if the Q.M. will let you); make a pair of overalls out of the burlap the meat comes done up in; use your trench pick and shovel, plus your bayonet, to do the plowing, and scatter the tender seedlets. If a few acorns come along with the rest of the plantables, plant them, too, for if we're going to be over here a good long time the shade from these oaks will come in mighty handy when we're old men and have time to sit down.