Part 3
TRENCHES.--Long narrow excavations in earth or chalk, sometimes filled with mud containing soldiers, bits of soldiers, salvage and alleged shelters.
WIND UP.--An aerated condition of mind due to apprehension as to what may happen next, in some cases amounting to an incurable disease closely allied to "cold feet."
ZERO.--A convenient way of expressing an indefinite time or date, i.e., will meet you at zero; call me at zero plus 30; or, to a debt collector, pay day at zero.--_Aussie_, the Australian Soldiers' Magazine.
---- OUR OWN HORSE MARINES. ----
Horace Lovett, U. S. Marine Corps, on duty "somewhere over here," has just been appointed a horseshoer of Marines with the rank of corporal. In the same company Sergeant John Ochsner is stable sergeant and Corporal Stanley A. Smith is saddler. No, you have guessed wrong. The captain's name is not Jinks but Drum--Captain Drum of the horse and other marines.
---- HIS MORNING'S MAIL IS 8,000 LETTERS ---- Base Censor Reads Them All, Including 600 Not in English ----
"Now, how the devil did he pick mine out of the pile?"
Shuddering, a young American in France gazed at the envelope before him, addressed in his own handwriting, to be sure, but with its end cut open and a stout sticker partially closing the cut. Stamped upon the face of the envelope were the fatal words "Examined by Base Censor." And the words, because of the gloom they brought the young man, were properly framed within a deep black border.
It was this way: The young man in question had been carrying on, for some time, a more or less hectic correspondence with a _mademoiselle tres charmante_ in a not far distant town. That in itself would be harmless enough if he had sent his letters through the regular military channels--that is, submitted them to his own company officers to be censored. But dreading the "kidding" he might receive at the hands of his platoon commander--which he needn't have dreaded at all, for American officers are gentlemen and gentlemen respect confidence--he had been using the French postal service for his intimate and clandestine lovemaking. That, as everyone knows or ought to know, is strictly forbidden but the young man being "wise," thought he could put one over on the army. Result: That much dreaded bogey-man, the Base Censor knew just how many crosses he had made at the bottom of his note to Mlle. X.
But he needn't have worried a bit, for the bogey-man isn't a likely rival of any one. In fact, he isn't a man at all, but a System--just as impersonal as if he wrote his name, "Base Censor, Inc." Also, he is pretty well-nigh fool-proof and puncture-proof--which again removes him from consideration as "a human."
Remembers No Secrets
All delusions to the contrary, the censorship, though it learns an awful lot, doesn't care a tinker's hoot about nine-tenths of the stuff it learns. It isn't concerned with Private Jones's morals, with Corporal Brown's unpaid grocery bills, with Sergeant Smith's mother-in-law, with Lieutenant Johnson's fraternity symbols. It is, however, actively concerned in keeping out of correspondence all matters relating to the location and movement of troops, all items which pieced together might furnish the common enemy with information which would be valuable to him in the conduct of his nefarious enterprises.
In addition to keeping such damaging information out of soldiers' and officers' correspondence, the base censorship is lying in wait for everything and anything in the mail line which the senders hope to slip through uncensored. It regularly goes over a large proportion of the mail which has already been vised by company officers. It sifts through all mail for the army from neutral countries; and finally it censors all letters in foreign languages, written by men in the A. E. F.--letters which company officers are forbidden to O. K.
In the exercise of this last-named function lies perhaps the greatest task allotted to the base censorship. Our army is probably the most "international" in history, and it sends letters to the base written in forty-six different languages, excluding English. Out of 600 such letters--a typical day's grist--the chances are but half will be written in Italian, followed in the order of their numerousness, by those inscribed in Polish, French and Scandinavian. The censor's staff handles mail couched in twenty-five European languages, many tongues and dialects of the Balkan States and a scattering few in Yiddish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Persian and Greek, to say nothing of a number in Philippine dialects.
A Few Are in German
An interesting by-product of the censors' work is the discovery of foreign language interpreters within the ranks of the army. One soldier, for example, wrote in Turkish and wrote so well that the censor handling the letters in that tangled tongue passed on his name to those higher up. As a result, the man was detailed to the interpreters' corps where he is now serving his adopted country ably and well.
Seldom, say the members of the censor's staff, is anything forbidden found in the foreign language letters. The only striking feature about them as a whole is the small number that are written in German. In fact the Chinese letters as a rule outnumber those expressed in the language of the Kaiser.
Besides all this thousands of letters are sent direct to the base censors every day, in cases where soldiers are unwilling that their own immediate superiors should become acquainted with the contents. To humor, therefore, the enlisted man in a former National Guard unit whose censoring officer he suspects of trying to cut him out with The Girl Back Home, the base censor takes the responsibility off the company officer's shoulders; and the enlisted man feels oh! so much relieved.
Those clever chaps who devise all sorts of codes to tell the home folks just where they are in France, meet short shrift at the censor's hands. For example, one of them was anxious to describe a certain city in this fair land. "You know grandmother's first name," he wrote naively, thinking it would get by. But the particular censor it came before, having a New England grandmother of his own, promptly sent the letter back with the added comment, "Yes, and so do I! Can it!"
Another man was so bold as to write: "The name of the town where I am located is the same as that of the dance hall on Umptumpus avenue in ----" well, a certain well-known American city. He was also caught up; for the censor, being himself somewhat of a man of the world, shot the letter back with the tart comment: "I've been there, too."
Those two men, however, were more fortunate than the average in having their letters sent back to them for revision. The usual scheme is for the censor to clip out completely the portion of the letter carrying the damaging information. In case, therefore, a man has written something innocuous--but interesting none the less to his correspondent--on the other side, he is simply "out of luck." One can see it pays to be careful.
On the whole--aside from the mania which seems to have possessed some men to give away the location of their units in France--the censoring officials declare that the army deserves a great deal of credit for living up to both the letter and the spirit of the censor's code. They do, however, find fault with the men who continually "over-address" their letters--that is, who persist in tacking on the number of their divisions to the company and regimental designations. This, for military reasons, is forbidden, but many men seem as yet unaware of the fact.
Many Thank-you Letters
During the first half of January the base censor's office alone handled more than 8,000 letters a day--two thousand a day increase over December, due, no doubt, to the thank-you letters which our dutiful soldier-men felt compelled to write in return for those bounteous Christmas boxes. In the spring, though more transports will be coming over, more men will be writing letters, but still the work will go on. The abuse of the letter-writing privilege by one man might mean the loss of many of his comrades, so the long and tough job of censoring must be "seen through."
So, you smarty with the private code to transmit all sorts of dope to the folks, have a care! No matter how the letters pile up, old Base Censor, Inc., is always on the job! Like the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo, he'll get you in the end, no matter how lucky and clever you think yourself. Or, as Indiana's favorite poet might put it,
"The censor-man 'ull git you ef you don't watch out!"
---- MIRABELLE ----
One striking feature of the war is the number of women and girls engaged in various kinds of work back of the lines. The British Army has thousands of them doing clerical work or driving ambulances, while in the A.E.F. their activities so far have been limited to canteen work with the Red Cross or Y. M. C. A.
Most of them are practical individuals doing a lot of good, but occasionally one slips over imbued with the idea that soldiers are sort of overgrown bacteriological specimens to be studied and handled only with sterilized gloves.
Possibly one of the latter inspired a certain A.E.F. private to lapse into poetry after he had stowed her baggage away and heard her dissertation on what the camp needed. His verses were:
The ether ethered, The cosmos coughed, Mirabelle whispered-- The words were soft:
"I shall go," Mirabelle said-- And her voice, how it bled!-- "I shall go to be hurt By the dead, dead, dead. To be hurt, hurt, hurt"-- Oh, the sad, sweet mien, And the dreepy droop Of that all-nut bean!
"One must grow," Mirabelle wailed, "And one grows by the knife. I shall grow in my soul In that awful strife. Let me go, let me grow," Was the theme of her dirge; "Let the sobbiest of sobs Through my bosom surge."
The sergeant took a lean On the canteen door The captain ran away: "What a bore! What a bore!"
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---- THE MACHINE-GUN SONG. ---- (As rendered by a certain battalion of Amex _mitrailleurs_, to the tune of "Lord Geoffrey Amherst.") ----
We've come from old New England for to blast the bloomin' Huns, We have sailed from afar across the sea; We will drive the Boche before us with our baby-beauty guns To the heart of the Rhine countree! And to his German majesty we will not do a thing But to spray his carcass with our hail; And when we're through with pepp'ring him, we'll make the lobster sing As we ride him into Berlin on a rail!
CHORUS.
Oh, machine guns, machine guns! They're the things to rake the Kaiser aft and fore! May they never jam on us Till we've gone and won this gosh-darn war!
Oh, machine guns are the handy things to drive the Fritzy out When he hides back of bags of sand; And machine guns are the dandy things to put the Hun to rout If he tries to regain his land. So just keep the clips a-comin', and we'll give her all the juice As we speed along our glorious way: And Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff will beat it like the deuce When the little old rat-rattlers start to play!
CHORUS.
Oh, machine guns, machine guns! They're the things to rake the Kaiser aft and fore! May they never jam on us Till we've gone and won this gosh-darn war!
---- CAN'T DO WITHOUT 'EM ----
Scene: An A.E.F. cookshack, during sanitary inspection.
Enter, to the cook standing at attention, one major, U.S.M.C., accompanied by one major, British Army Medical Corps.
U.S. Major: "Well cook, how's everything going?"
Cook: "Rotten, sir; men are either all sick or away on D.S., and there's only the mess sergeant and myself to look out for things. You can't get along without K.P.'s."
U.S. Major (to his British friend): "Major, you told me you knew a good deal of American Army slang; what would you say our friend the cook meant by 'K.P.'s'?"
British Major: "K.P.'s? Why, ah-er, I should say that cook was undoubtedly referring to the Knights of Pythias!"
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---- ONE EYE IS NOT TRUE BLUE. ---- So a Hoosier Patriot Tries to Return It to Berlin. ----
Paul Gary of Anderson, Indiana, is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered by Sergeant G. C. Wright.
"Didn't you know that the loss of an eye would prevent your enlisting?" asked the sergeant.
"I thought it might," explained Gary, "but this glass blinker is the only part of me that was made in Germany, and I want to take it back."
He was advised to mail it.
---- QUITE RIGHT. ----
"Do you suffer from headaches?" queried the M. O.
"Certainly I do," rejoined the hurried infantry officer. "If I enjoyed them as I do whisky and soda, I wouldn't have consulted you!"--_Aussie_, the Australian Soldiers' Magazine.
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---- GERMAN BRANDS YOUNG MOTHER WITH AN IRON. ---- Victim of a Violation Officially Labeled by Army Authorities. ---- PAINT BADGE FOR OTHERS ---- Children of German Fathers Catalogued as the Government's Property. ---- FORCED INTO MENIAL SERVICE ---- An Officer Formerly in British Army Tells How Kultur Repopulates Itself. ----
A new and startling story of German atrocities is told by an American formerly in the service of the British Army, but now attending one of the A.E.F. schools in preparation for a commission in the American Army. It is in accordance with other stories of the prostitution of womanhood which the Kaiser is forcing in order to repopulate the German Empire.
The rapid British advance at Cambria, in November, when towns which the Germans had occupied for three years were captured before the latter could deport the civilian population into Germany as is their custom, disclosed the latest effort of the German army. French women and girls had been made the victims.
"Among the refugees who passed along the roads making their way southward farther into France after we made our first big advance were scores of women and girls, each marked on her breast by a cross in red paint," said the officer. "These were disclosed when the refugees passed in front of our medical officers who were inspecting them. All of them were about to become mothers, and the French interpreter who was assisting the medicos explained that the cross indicated that German soldiers were the fathers. The crosses had been painted on them, the women explained, to show that their children would belong to the German Government.
This Iron Cross Red Hot.
"One of these unfortunates, apparently not more than seventeen years of age, had not only been painted but branded with a hot iron so that she would be marked for life with the sign of the cross. She said that a German officer would be the father of her child. This officer, the girl said, had been quartered in her parents' home and she had been forced to accede to his desires.
"After her health became such that he had no further use for her, she said, he ordered her to act as his personal servant, doing the menial work in his chamber. It was not long until she was unable to continue this and then, angered at her weakness, he ordered soldiers to scour the paint from her breast and burn the cross into her flesh. When this was done, she was forced to leave her home and taken to a maternity hospital which the army had established for other girls and women of the town in the same condition.
An Eye-Witness on "Kultur."
"I myself saw the girl who had been branded and the others who had been painted like sheep and heard their stories, as I had been detailed to supervise the return of the refugees. Thank God, America, by coming into the war, will help to stamp out this beastly 'kultur' from the world and make it a safe, clean place to live in for your womenfolk and mine--our mothers, our sweethearts, our wives, and our daughters. I have a daughter just seventeen years old," concluded the American grimly.
---- WHEN THE FRENCH BAND PLAYS. ----
There's a military band that plays, on Sunday afternoons, In a certain nameless city's quaint old square. It can rouse the blood to battle with its patriotic tunes, And still render hymns as gentle as a prayer. When it starts "Ave Maria" there is no one in the throng But would doff his cap, his heart to heaven raise; And who would shrink from combat when, with brasses sounding strong, There is flung out on the breeze "La Marseillaise"?
When it starts to render "Sambre et Meuse," the march that won the day At the battle of the Marne, one sees again The grey-green hosts of Hundom melt before the stern array Of our gallant sister-ally's blue-clad men. And when it plays our Anthem, with rendition bold and clear-- While the khaki lads stand steady--then we feel That, though tongues and ways may vary, we've found brothers over here, Tried in war, and in allegiance true as steel.
For it's olive-drab, horizon-blue, packed closely side by side, Till their color sets ablaze the grey old square; And it's olive-drab, horizon-blue, whatever may betide, That will blaze the path to victory "up there." So, while standing thus together, let us pledge anew our troth To the Cause--the world set free!--for which we fight. As the evening twilight gilds the ranks of blue and khaki both, And the bugles die away into the night.
---- WHEN PACKS ARE LIGHTEST ---- BY CHAPLAIN MOODY. ----
Probably the cow is the least complaining and discriminating of all animals, yet it is worthy of note that the wise farmer who understands his cows does everything to make them as happy as possible and studies their comfort and convenience as far as possible. This is not because he is a sentimentalist, but for the very opposite reason. He knows his cows will give more milk and he will get more money therefrom if they are contented in their bovine minds and not worried by the high cost of living and other problems.
The expert poultry man will tell you that the frame of mind of his feathered employes has a very direct bearing on the egg output, and so he tries to study their happiness.
Recently experiments have been carried on in some factories with phonographs, and it has been proven that if the fingers of the employes are stimulated by some music they enjoy, it is possible to get more work out of them. In some Cuban cigar factories it is the customary thing to employ a man to read to the cigar makers some story which they like, as, under these conditions, they work better and faster.
All this is not done out of sentiment, again, but because it contributes to efficiency. The cow, the hen, the factory girl and the cigar wrapper do better work for being in a pleasant frame of mind.
While we of the American Expeditionary Forces do not fall into any of these classes, the same is nevertheless probably true of us. We can be better soldiers if we are cheerful than we can if we are not. It may be difficult to see how you can sight a gun any better for smiling or bayonet a man more effectively when you are cheerful. But if we believe what we are told, this is so, and, hence, since we all want to be good soldiers, it becomes a duty toward this end to be happy, just as it is a duty to wash your face or police your bunk, or to keep your rifle clean. It is a _duty_ to be happy.
That is all very well and good to say, some one interrupts at this point, but you cannot be happy when your feet are sore or you do not have all you want to eat. Or, it would be easy to be happy if the mail would come, or they would "bust" the Mess Sergeant, or take some other great step forward in the improvement of the army. But we all know better.