Part 10

At the office in the Women’s Bureau it took less than ten minutes to get through the red tape and settle my future, as follows: I’m to be a canteen worker. I pay all my own expenses. And I literally do pay them, with my cafeteria money and a check I received for writing a movie. I’ve signed on for six months, during which time I can’t marry an American army officer--without losing my job and getting sent home to America. Wow! For further orders report to Number Four, Place de la Concorde, Paris, France, seat of a world war for civilization. Think of it, oh, my soul! Well, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, the Murray family gives its heart and its hand to this vote!

The last week has been one mad, wild, excited scramble--with canteen uniforms, French lessons, gum boots, telephones, typhoid and paratyphoid injections, girls dropping in to say good-by, mamma dismal as a corbie crow weeping off in odd corners, and papa humming mournfully: “‘I didn’t raise my kidlet to be a soldierette.’”

On Tuesday night I said good-by to Robert. We dined together downtown and then Bob said, “Let’s go round to Lucille’s and dance.”

And so we did. But I just couldn’t seem to put any spirit into it.

“Do you realize, Bob,” I said, “that this is our last dance together?”

I suppose my voice sounded rather wabbly, for Robert gave me a sharp look and said, “Not on your life! Where did you get hold of that notion? Are you going to throw up the sponge?”

And then I remembered that my case was exactly that of a million other women scattered all over the land, who were still keeping the flag flying, as Edith had said; and so I bucked up and we finished up with a very good time.

ON SHIPBOARD, November 12th.

I begged papa and mamma not to come down to New York to see me off, but of course they would. However, it turned out all right. Papa blew us to a two-course dinner without wine downstairs in a famous grill frequented by successful actors and artists and writers, after which he packed us off to a musical comedy and kept up a light artillery of jokes all through the evening, and we both laughed so hard that mamma finally lost patience and declared we were a perfect scandal. There was just one awful moment at the last. That was on the boat when papa gave me a big still hug and then held his cheek close to mine the way he’s done ever since I was a baby.

“Papa,” I whispered fiercely into his ear, “if you make me cry now I’ll kill you!”

“Shucks, honey!” he murmured back. “If Miss Rankin can cry in Congress I guess a green little soldierette can shed a few tears when bidding a fond farewell to native land and mother, without grave dishonor. Still, I don’t want to cramp your style. Cable us when you land. Be a good girl--but not goody. And now, so long, dear. God bless us all together!”

And still smiling and steady he shook hands with me just as if I were his son, and then marched mamma, sobbing audibly, gently off by the arm. I went downstairs to my cabin.

No danger of my being sick. My bunk mate is! I hardly know how to describe my feelings after we had really started and there was time to look about--it all seemed so sort of natural and matter-of-fact, and France still merely a small pink dab on the map. It wasn’t a bit startling to be out of sight of land and hear people discussing submarines and lifeboats, but it was a horrible sensation to have the boat plunge down and leave your stomach in midair. A gorgeous sunset to-night, but it’s rough and going to be rougher, I fear. I walked about some, and then decided discretion was the better part of valor and retired to my deck chair.

November 15th.

Three awful days in my cabin, too sick to stir. But to-day it’s smooth and the air is marvelous. After a fine salt bath I came up and pranced about the deck; and there were lots of nice people to prance with--naval officers, Belgian generals, French _permissionnaires_, and any number of Y.M.C.A.-ers and Red Cross men. Played shuffleboard; tried the dining-room for ten minutes, and then decided to have all my meals on deck in order to watch for the submarines.

November 24th.

Land is in sight--a long low ribbon of mist away on the starboard. That’s France! It still doesn’t seem reasonable. The trip has been nothing at all. Evenings we would sit out on deck. It was weird with never a light, even cigarettes forbidden; inky blackness on deck, and stumbling and pitching into someone at every step. It was awesome from the stern to see two big black funnels silhouetted against the starry sky, the phosphorescence of the water rivaling the splendor of the heavens; and to realize that all the time this huge mechanical monster beneath our feet was plowing steadily, silently forward, carrying seven hundred human lives across three thousand miles of water.

PARIS, November 26th.

Paris at last, beautiful, soft, gray, in a blur of rain. I reported at Number Four, Place de la Concorde, heard a speech by the commissioner, and was assigned right away. It’s just exactly what I wanted and didn’t dare to dream I’d get! I’m to work in a canteen in one of the biggest aviation camps in France. With our own American men! We’ll live in barracks, get up at reveille, five-thirty a.m., and---- But I’m somewhat hazy as to our duties. Time will reveal. After the conference I met Lucile B----, a Bryn Mawr girl, and found she’s to canteen with me at the same barracks. We embraced and nearly fell downstairs in our excitement. Lucile has moved her things over to my hotel so we can chum together.

November 27th.

Slept--off and on--and had a breakfast in bed, after the luxurious Continental fashion,--wouldn’t Delia sniff?--and then I read Baedeker’s Paris aloud while Lucile unpacked. We lunched and did accounts and then walked over to Red Cross Headquarters. After reporting there we got our provisional cards of identity and went down to a shop on the boulevard and ordered bracelets of identity. Had my hair washed by a poilu on permission and tried out my Boston French on him. He understood me better than I did him! Later Lucile and I taxied over to Napoleon’s tomb, saw the German airplanes in the court of the Invalides, and then went on to Notre Dame. It is wonderful inside, so high and spacious and old and gray, with a scented misty twilight air as though dimmed by many prayers. I made two prayers myself--one personal, and the other impersonal for our army, and I only hope they come true.

November 28th.

While waiting to be sent to camp I delved into the subject of canteens in general. And I found that the old canteen idea is as different from the new canteen idea as day is from night. A canteen before this war meant simply a place where a soldier could buy a drink and perhaps procure notions, buttons and needles and thread. But that old idea has expanded and developed until now it really comprises a whole welfare center, a regular community plant for dispensing food and comfort and good cheer. There are restaurants, writing rooms, infirmaries, sleeping quarters, pianos, phonographs, entertainments--everything you can possibly think of to keep a collection of men far from home happy and sane and sound. Of course not all these canteens are alike, for each one caters to some particular need and thus develops along a particular line. Its location determines its special bent.

There are, I was told at headquarters, several types of canteen.

Number One: These are the metropolitan canteens of Paris, situated at the big railway stations--the Gare du Nord, the Gare de l’Est and the Gare Saint Lazare--which catch all the troops coming into or leaving the city.

Number Two: These are the canteens of the _Grande Ceinture_, at little stations on the environs of Paris, where innumerable troop trains pass through daily, carrying thousands of soldiers from England, Italy, America, Saloniki, Portugal, Africa. These troops never even enter Paris, but are shifted on the outskirts of the city.

Number Three: Canteens in the French war zone behind the actual fighting lines in the big transportation centers.

Number Four: Canteens right on the French Front, in dugouts and _abris_. In these canteens there are no women helpers.

Number Five: Canteens in the American training camps, behind the war zone. That’s the kind I’m assigned to. It’s the biggest American aviation center in France.

Number Six: Canteens for American soldiers dotted along the lines of communication from the coast ports to the final training centers. All these canteens are under the control of the American Red Cross.

December 1st.

In barracks! Yesterday was my first day. I got up in the dark at bugle call, five-thirty A.M., and dressed in the cold--our stoves are not up yet and I don’t know who’s going to start the fires when they are!--had some hot coffee and went over to serve behind the counter, serving coffee, chocolate and sandwiches. A long queue of soldiers stood in line straight through the morning, and, work as hard as I could, the line constantly augmented. Some wanted to linger and chat. It was good, they said, to see a real live American girl who could talk God’s language, and not that scrambled-egg affair the Frenchies handed out. One confided he’d not seen a genuine honest-to-goodness girl for four months; since he’d left home, and added that he liked ’em on the American plan better than on the European plan. I couldn’t do much more than smile in answer, for the orders flew thick and fast.

By noon the place was so crowded you couldn’t see for the forest of campaign hats. A babel of voices; a rattle of dishes; the phonograph going; the piano banging; a bunch of enlisted men trying out Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory; canteeners running back and forth with meals for the officers, whose tables were in behind the counter; rain trickling down my neck from an overhead leak; sleet and windy rain shaking the windowpanes; sneezes and coughs mingling with shouts of laughter; and always the far door opening to let in the storm and still more and more men, till they were packed like sardines in rows--these are my impressions of that first noon hour.

Suddenly: “_Otto, Sie haben etwas vergessen!_” I heard a low guttural voice speaking close behind my ear.

“_Ja, ich weiss_,” replied another.

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.