Part 11

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.”

“No; but it’s this way, ma’am. My wife, she’s went and divorced me. And it’s all along of my bad die-ges-tion. I don’t blame her no way. I reckon that bad die-ges-tion did sort of get between her and me. But that ain’t what I aim to say in the letter. It’s about this here new insurance. I’ve made mine out in her name.”

“But if she’s divorced you on account of your bad die-ges-tion she has no claim on you now.”

“I don’t give a whoop in hell about that,” he responded soberly. “I want her to get it, that’s all. And I kind of thought maybe you might fix it up for me in a letter, so’s she’d understand, and tell her I don’t bear no grudge. I got a bad die-ges-tion.”

And so I fixed it up for him in a letter; and there’s one woman in America who has lost a man with a mighty good heart even if he has a bad die-ges-tion.

January 10th.

Transferred again. But this time I’m settled for good. This is a canteen of Type Number Three, in the French war zone, in a big transportation center within sound of the guns of Verdun. Anywhere from three to ten thousand troops pass through daily. Here again, this canteen is absolutely different from the two others, because the conditions are different. It is a canteen which the French call _grand luxe_. A beautiful spacious building, given by the French Government; tastefully decorated interiors; rest rooms with papers, writing materials, piano, tables and easy-chairs; restaurant; sleeping quarters, hot baths; gardens with statuary; and _abris_ in case of aërial attack--altogether the poilu’s delight.

“_Très chic, hein?_” murmurs the Frenchman. He stares about him at the clean airy place, gay with chintz curtains, painted garlands on the walls, and even the electric globes veiled with soft yellow Chinese silk. And he catches the idea at once. “_Pas militaire, pas du tout du tout._” That’s it exactly. It’s not military at all at all. The French artist who conceived the scheme was so nauseated with everything military that he let himself loose on this canteen to make it cozy and homelike and gay. Its soft beauty delights the poilu; and its baths, its disinfecting plants where he can rid himself of vermin, its kiosk where he can buy his beloved _pinard_, its hot chocolate--made with milk, after an American recipe--contribute to make it a very paradise of canteens. Its fame is known all over the French war zone. The poilus come miles to see if it’s as good as report.

At night in the rest room they lie outstretched in those canvas easy-chairs--just how easy none but a weary poilu can know!--and they stare through dreamy half-closed eyes at the warm charm of the place, soaking it in at every pore; the smoke of countless cigarettes rises in a kind of enchanted mist; there is an occasional bubble of laughter or the low-toned give-and-take of _copains_ round the brazier; but chiefly there is silence, luxurious well-earned ease for tired limbs--linked sweetness long drawn out. Occasionally, when the wind is right, a vague distant rumble seems to echo in the air. Is it thunder, or is it bombardment? Or are those ears so accustomed to the ceaseless roar of heavy artillery that they still hear it resounding, even in this quiet spot? A poilu rolls over, opens one eye, listens.

“What is that? _Les canons?_”

His companion cocks an ear.

“_Mais non._”

“_Mais oui._”

“You’re crazy! Whence, then?”

The first soldier sits up and takes his bearings.

“’Tis Verdun,” he proclaims. “_N’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?_”

“Yes,” replies the canteener at the desk; “we can often hear the guns of Verdun on a thick night.”

“Me--I come from Verdun,” says the poilu, always ready for a chat.

“Were you one of those who held Verdun when the Crown Prince made that terrible attack?”

“_Oui._”

“Ah, those glorious heroes of Verdun!” murmurs the canteener with misty eyes.

The simple poilu looks at her, puzzled, angry, and finally blazes forth:

“Heroes! Heroes! I’m always hearing about those people--those heroes. But I never saw anything of them. They weren’t in the fight. I tell you, it was we, we Frenchmen alone, who won Verdun!”

The canteener apologizes to the unconscious hero.

In a canteen of this description, serving anywhere from three to ten thousand men a day, the work must be organized down to its last detail. And it is. The mechanism runs as smoothly as a well-oiled automobile. For one thing, our directrice has a “flair” for handling people, for getting along with the French domestics--we have a kitchen staff alone of twenty--and for making her workers contented and at home. Nor is the work itself so hard as in the other canteens. For one thing, labor is plentiful. For another, we live in a town. And in our time off we can shop or stroll or laze about the comfortable big house we’ve leased for quarters. Our hours, too, are well arranged. As the canteen remains open all night and meals are served straight round the clock, the day is divided into four shifts: From seven A.M. to one P.M.; from one to seven; from seven to eleven-thirty; and from eleven-thirty P.M. to seven A.M. In addition there is an extra shift to help at the rush hours, which occur usually about ten A.M. and four P.M. At these times the big dining-room resembles nothing so much as a six-o’clock subway rush. The poilus are packed in tight as they can squeeze--every one with his head pointed toward the _caissé_, where are sold the tickets for the _repas complet_. Each meal costs seventy-five centimes.

January 16th.

Of all the shifts I love the morning best. Then the men come storming in so ravenous that it’s a pleasure to see them eat. And then is when they’re gayest. The afternoon is apt to be prosaic. But the night shift is the most interesting of all. Then things seem to stand out, to take on personality, to become more alive, vivid and real. Then impressions, pictures, scenes are stamped on the brain as clean as if cut with a die, true in every trivial detail. Soldiers playing cards by the light of a flickering candle, their huge ungainly shadows capering up against the wall.

Now and again from the shadows emerges a clear profile, aquiline, delicate, a living medallion with closed eyes. Over in yonder corner, for example, is a boy fast asleep. His head tilted against the wall reveals a face as finely chiseled as any on an old Roman coin. His curly lashes lie flat on his thin cheeks. His nostrils are slightly pinched. Two perpendicular lines run from nose to jaw. How young he looks, how white and worn! His mobile mouth, softly closed, droops at the corners, like that of a tired child. He stirs and mutters something. And now he smiles! He is dreaming, that boy, I know. If his mother could see him now!... The rear door opens, the guard thrusts in a head and calls a certain train. The young soldier rouses, staggers for his pack, drunk with sleep, his face still soft with dreams.

I remember one night a slumbering poilu sprang to his feet, shouting “_Aux armes!_” And his voice was so thrilling and terrible, so charged with hoarse command, that all the soldiers leaped up, wide awake on the instant, and glared wildly about them. The next minute the room was filled with curses, not loud but deep.

Work of this kind, hard and monotonous as it undoubtedly is, is yet the most satisfying in the world--provided one has a gift for it. It takes hold of the heart. It is immediate, it has the warm personal touch, and it ties you straight up with humanity in the raw. The abstract philosophy of the war--who is the most to blame and why--ceases to vex you. You become absorbed in your own little circle. Life beyond it seems remote. You love the poilu and he loves you--and makes no bones about it. So let the Huns rage over behind yonder ridge, and imagine vain things. Somehow, all that does not concern you. You have become confident, gay, certain of destiny--like the simple little poilu. It’s service that does it.

Last night when I returned home from work it had stopped raining. Overhead the great overturned cup of sky glittered and gleamed--with half its stars dropped down into the dark flowing river by my side. And there was a second moon down there, pale and drowned. An enchanted mist, fine as a bride’s veil, hung over all. By night the Marne is beautiful. Far off came the boom of the Verdun guns, that hammering which has been going on now for years, “as if two armies of giants were striking unceasingly at an unshakable gate of bronze.” Here it was nothing but an echo on the wind. There, as one Tommy put it, it was “hell multiplied by six.”

They say the Germans will break through this way. I think of the thousand thousand poilus who have tramped through our canteen, each one an anonymous hero--and I smile. It’s all right. Let the Huns come on!

OLD GLORY AND VERDUN

In the beginning we did not intend to go to Verdun. We did not dream that it was even within the bright realms of possibility. At the moment--a supremely painful and suspense-filled moment, fraught with danger to France and the Allied world--Verdun belonged strictly to the forbidden zone. Forbidden to all outsiders, men and women, to all civilians and civilian affairs; forbidden, indeed, to all the world save those grim horizon-blue-clad veterans who were rushing northward by trainloads, together with heavy effectives.

Permission had been stopped. Stopped also the parcels to the Front. It was not the hour for the manifestation of woman or love or the transmission of tokens of affection. It was the hour for men and arms. Paris, a military camp shelled in the day by long-range guns and bombed in the night by Gothas, was locked to the north with a staunch lock, and the Grand Quartier General held the key. You could come in if you chanced to be caught up there when the storm broke, but you could not get out again. For it was the closing week of March, 1918. The long-awaited, much-heralded offensive had arrived. For months it had been the first word in the mouths of privates, officers, statesmen, editors--the entire civilized world. When, where, how--some one of those three aspects of the universal question cropped up in every conversation in the course of half an hour.