I have been too tired to write these last few days. Tired from working long, long hours and steadily, for two of our officers are out of the game for a while --- one with a broken arm and one sick --- and much has fallen on me to do. There has been a battle ---you will have read of it and forgotten it before this comes ---at Craonne and Cerny and we have served a little bit in it by day and night, going as close as we dared and catching now and then a glimpse of it from some hilltop.
But now with this Sunday and to-morrow comes a needed rest, for I've been put on the "Service de Jour" for five days and stay in camp as an American noncom. aide on the staff.
To-night the battle sounds are stilled out yonder and I have sat upon the hilltop looking down the long deep valley, where, in spite of all that threatens it so close, peace reigns and the ripe fields shine golden when the sun goes down. The dusk has given way to dark, but I have lingered on beneath an overhanging shelf of rock and write now with a wavering gas torch beside me.
The first two months are gone, and I am happy in the work if you can call it happiness to serve, working hard, and trying to do well. I've wondered if you thought it strange that, having come to help in saving men from battlefields, I have so calmly turned to this more deadly work of hauling ammunition. But I'm sure that you must understand that I have found it best, and here can do the most in the time I have. I've told you before how it was liberating men my own father's age from hard, rough work to go back to their farms. I've told you that we from a race bred amidst things mechanical have taken hold and work with better speed and skill than they could ever manage who were here before. It's less humane, we see the fighting side of the war more than the other and are of the fighting force, but it is best. Out here one faces issues squarely ---one has to. Each day of the last five, when I have had the running of eighteen to twenty-four machines, I have had to make decisions that sometimes balanced the safety of my comrades. Now the things I used to ponder over I know about.
There is some talk current that our army plans to take the service over, and then doubtless I shall go back to the ambulance service if there are cars (seventy-five were sunk last week). But it may be that my time will be up before this comes around, if at all.
It seems as if we could n't even sign ourselves "Somewhere in France" any more, for we are everywhere every day. We have been continuously on the road. There is a terrible battle on up ahead---you will have read of it--- on the Craonne Plateau. We don't get much authentic news, but an English paper only two days old that drifted into camp yesterday called it "a second Verdun," and we are hauling thousands and thousands of shells. For the past three days we have been in no more than four consecutive hours in which we had to get fuel, food, and provisions for the next trip.
It has been pretty hard to keep up so long, of course, and more than once, as I chased up and down the line in the "flivver," I discovered drivers wobbling about on the road nearly asleep. We have an accident or two at night. A car on which I was riding the other night met eight runaway horses (four of them mounted) hitched to a gun and dropping downhill at an awful speed. It was too dark to see them coming, but we heard the frantic shouting and whistling by the drivers and took a fifteen-foot embankment through a stone wall and a telephone post to keep from being hit. Fortunately, there was no car behind us, and they went on safely until stopped --- it would n't have been nice for the eight horses and four men to get caught between that truck and the heavy gun at the speed everybody was going. The car had a slightly bent bumper and a badly wrecked motor from going through that wall and the pole, but went home under its own power after four others had been hitched on to pull it up the bank. I had been slightly sleeping and was strapped in, as a result of which I got a bruised chin when it was snapped down against my knees by the shock. The other men were thrown clear and not hurt.
A car caught on fire this morning, but the fifth fire-extinguisher we tried worked all right. The night before one of our machines was in collision with another and the driver only had his finger cut from the back shock of the wheel. You see there is plenty of excitement, but nobody is ever much hurt. Indeed, it is remarkable considering what it means for miles upon miles of camions going one way to be passing equal numbers going the other.
I suppose one can't realize the magnitude of all this till one sees it. Can you imagine all the traffic on Michigan Boulevard turned into trucks and horses going on roads one third as wide as it is, day and night? Can you imagine this happening on every road going up to the front in a distance greater than that from Indianapolis to Chicago? The other day we passed five solid miles of horses and guns going up --- it is not an uncommon sight, but a wonderful one. Think what it takes to feed that many men and horses, then multiply by thousands. Think that beyond the rail terminals it must all be hauled by horses and motor-car. Then there are the shells. We are only one section of twenty-four cars out of more than two hundred thousand, yet every time we load with shells the load, exclusive of the cars, which are exceedingly valuable, is between $78,000 and $100,000 worth, depending on the kind. We are learning to shrug our shoulders and say, C'est la guerre! in the best French fashion now to almost everything that goes wrong.
We are beginning really to see the war now. Things that I had only dimly realized are too fully apparent to be misunderstood. This is the biggest battle since the spring drives and we are pretty close to it --- it is beyond words.
To-day has been one of happy surprises all through. I did n't get the sleep I had hoped for last night, but got in about four o'clock this morning to find two letters from home, and one promised me photographs; I do hope they come soon, for I want them very much.
My next surprise was to get eight whole hours of delicious sleep that put me in good shape for the day's run, which was a short one. After seeing the convoy safely started home, I got permission to take one of the staff cars and go to Compiègne, some forty miles away, for much-needed medical supplies (I am playing doctor here for the little cuts and things), and there I met my little friend Doris again. I had never thought to ask where she lived, and perhaps should not have seen her if she had n't hailed me from a carriage with a good old American "Hello, Johnny!" She was with her father and mother to whom she introduced me rather embarrassingly as "the man that kissed me good-bye at Bordeaux." Her father is a captain, and talked to me quite cordially in very good English, but I had to hurry away much before I wanted to. I promised Doris that I would come back some day and tell her the story of how the elephant got his nose and about the ride of the Brushwood Boy again, and rode away with her shaking her little yellow head at me and calling me "méchant" for scaring her father's horse with my exhaust. The little incident, reminding me so much of other things and breaking so pleasantly in on the war business, was very sweet. Oh, yes! and she asked me if my Doris wrote me letters and I was very glad to tell her yes, indeed! She was very proud of her father, and he did look fine in his uniform.
And to go on --- when I got home about nine o'clock there was a package on my trunk which, opened, showed a beautiful honest-to-goodness Italian mandolin. I had said to my lieutenant a little while ago that I wished that I could have brought mine, so he sent into Paris for one without telling me and had it brought to me with a nice little note appreciating the way I had handled some broken-down cars in a nasty bit of shell-fire, and saying it was a pleasure to do what he could for any of us at any time. And now it is long past time for "lights out."
I put a shoulder out the day before yesterday and, of course, it had to be the right one. It is nothing much --- we were in a bad hole and I was cranking, standing up to my knees in mud. The motor backfired and I could n't get out of the way, so they had to snap the shoulder back into place and tie it there in a sling. I've slipped the arm out for a minute to write this, but it's a bit tortuous and I shan't try much.
I am glad for the rest, for we've been working awfully hard. This is n't very painful, but I'm alone about eighteen hours a day except for the cook, who can't talk any English.
A week has passed since I dislocated that shoulder and, of course, it is much better, though I still keep it in a sling and have been out only when it was necessary. It is still rather hard to make the fingers work to write.
The rainy season seems to have started, although it is not due for at least a month yet. We have had ten days of rain, and the bottom is beginning to drop out of even the best of the roads It is very hard on both the men and the cars, of course, but encore, c'est la guerre. Some of our cars that went out at seven yesterday morning are not in yet --- we had another load of "seventy-fives" to haul and had to leave them, but some one has gone after them now. I rather dread getting back to that, but I've had a good deal more than my share of a" loaf."
Two letters came last night that helped a lonesome evening very much. I can't help but hope that C----- does n't pass for the officers' training, so that he may be spared this hell. It does n't seem, however, as if the war could keep up so long that he would ever get to the trenches, and the rest of it is not so bad.
There is n't much to write these days---plenty of hard work and long hours take up most of the time. My shoulder is well now and I have gone back to the trenches.
It has been rainy and cold here steadily for some eight or ten days --- the roads are awful going for the big trucks and the men come in so tired from a fifteen to twenty hours' struggle that they flop into bed without even taking their boots off.
There has been plenty of action up here lately and some good friends in the ambulance service have been killed in the last ten days. We have been hauling ammunition and don't get up so far as the ambulances, but after the attack I suppose we will get our share of the bad places in hauling up engineering material for the new position.
We have had uncanny luck so far --only seven or eight hit in the whole five hundred of us in the transport so far and only two hospital cases in that number.
We are all surprisingly well and are pretty content with things as they are, although the work has been trying for the last two weeks.
I had dinner with a French artillery officer the other night in his dugout behind the battery of "one hundred and fifty-fives" that lies over to one side of one of the parks. I had gone up ahead of a convoy with the lieutenant to locate a park we had never been to before and met the officer by chance on a hillside. He was most cordial and offered us a very decent meal with champagne, rum, and some very decent Dutch cigars afterward; where he got the latter I have no idea.
We had plenty of time, as we did not have to meet the convoy till dark (eight-thirty), so he took us up to the pits, showed us their maps and range-finders, and allowed us to fire the first two shots of the evening salvo. Many of the fellows have been treated very well also by other officers --- apparently they think rather well of the service.
Time to go to work now. Good-night. (But while it is seven-thirty here, it is only one o'clock in the afternoon there, so it really is n't "good-night.")
I'm feeling ever so much better now --shoulder all well and everything, except that I'm a bit tired from being out most all night on convoy. However, that's all in the job and the sun is shining, and this is Katharine's birthday at home, so there is nothing at all to do but be happy and write letters.
Speaking of things for the "tummy," I have instructed my orderly to post a notice to the effect that I am open to invitations to Christmas dinner anywhere in the United States of America, but will restrict it to ------ county, state of---- because I happen to remember something about boundary lines. While I'm handing out this advance dope, --- I'm taking plenty of time because it will be two months before I can receive an invitation to accept, and it will take another month to send the acceptance back, --- while I'm handing out this dope, I would also suggest that you remove the front steps and put a ladder so I can mount as I do in my present home. Then get a full set of tin dishes and knives and forks, call me to mess by pounding on an old shellcase with a coal-shovel serve me out of a tin dipper and put me in the back yard to eat it. Any old kind of a tin can will do to wash the dishes in; never mind a dishtowel --- our best drivers are n't using them in France this season.
Never mind a bed: just give me a blanket and I'll use the floor --- it's not too soft. I'll probably get up at five o'clock, but you will have to remind me to wash my face and shave. Water can't be wasted for such purposes here, but maybe I can learn again some day.
If you should have occasion to put me into an automobile, just take off the springs, put on a fifteen-mile-an-hour governor, and start me across lots through Lake E---- or any marshlands you may know of, and I shall feel at home.
By the way, I can't drink coffee unless it is made of ground acorns and chicory, and can't smoke anything but hay and mullen leaves mixed --- pas de vrai tabac. Water, however, I think I shall appreciate --- we get enough to remember what it tastes like, though the everlasting pinard (vin rouge) is safer as a steady diet.
It's hard sometimes to quit being serious when I write, but I want you to know that I'm not forgetting how to laugh out here when the biggest game is to get home from each trip with a whole skin.
August 10.
DEAR SIS:--
I found out by chance to-day that this was August 10th and remembered, of course, that it was your birthday. I can send you the merest greeting from here, but with it goes the best wishes to you and love and hopes that the next will find us all together again.
I went back to the trucks yesterday (I had been using the lieut.'s flivver as easier riding on account of my bad shoulder).
To-day, as if in honor of your birthday, is the first time the sun has shown in ten days. We have had incessant rain and fog, and the bottom is gone from a lot of the roads. It is pretty wearing both on the drivers and the cars. I shudder to think of the tire bills that will have to come as a result of the skidding in the mud. Thank goodness, they are Government cars.
One of our cars got lost the other night and wandered clear up to the second line of trenches, but a fortunate fog kept it from being seen and blown up.
We have been awfully lucky all around. T.M. 184 has had only six men hit all together, and in each case the éclats barely nicked the skin. One man got caught between a truck and a freight car the other day, though, and I suppose he will die. He was in T.M. 133 and I did not know him.
Please write me as often as you can and don't mind if the letters are not always promptly answered. Sometimes we work for a couple of weeks in eighteen-to-twenty-seven-hour shifts and then have three or four days off, and it is at those times that I do most of my writing.
It is nearly three o'clock and we are due to take a bunch of stuff up to the ruins of an old castle in front of the batteries. I suppose it will take us at least all night. They shell the road a good bit, and we have to wait till the fire has slackened sometimes. I don't like the place much --- some day we are n't going to have our luck with us when we go in there. The captain does n't like it because he may lose some trucks --- I have other reasons. Mais --- c'est la guerre!
I come to the end of a nearly perfect day as I write now, and I draw a little circle around the date of another Sunday nearer home with a glad tired feeling --- happier than I have been for days. It was three o'clock this morning before our run of yesterday was finished. We had ridden all night under clear bright skies and once, whence we crossed a high foothill, it seemed almost that we were riding through the stars --- in still, peaceful spaces where the mountains hid the sight and sound of war and blotted out all evil things. So when the last car had reported in and I was free, I could n't want to leave it all for sleep, but took instead a knapsack with a little food and crept away up through the shadow of the highest hill, to wait the coming of the sun down the narrow valley to the east. How still and subtly the gray overcast the stars and the white dew-fogs of the night lifted and smoked away from the jewel-tipped fields below! How gently the red-pink clouds slid aside to let the big red ball roll through and change to glittering yellow in the clearer air, while coming it painted the hillsides downward to the valleys with its light! Then the world awoke to meet the morning. The birds came forth and sang as they soared and dipped among the fields, while all the world was for the moment gunless and still. Behind me my comrades slept the dead sleep of fatigue --- unknowing. Out yonder men slept in sodden misery in holes --- too tired to care if there was beauty near.
It is the war --- and, oh, how terrible! Why should it be that these poor folk must suffer so? Why should one have to think that all the blue farm smoke that rises here and there was made by fires that women built because their men had gone to help the stricken home land? Why, while the château over there stands out so white and pretty in the morning, must one know that the roof is gone and the walls on the other side were broken because an enemy came to destroy and kill and reap an awful harvest in the fields where grain has given way to the forms of men at the sowing-time?
It is this that can make us hate and "carry on"; that blinds our eyes to the purple of the gentians and the deep red of the poppies; that takes us away from the ones we love till the debt is paid. So be it for a little while longer, at least. So be it till I've done my bit and can come back; but to-day I've lived so far away from it and so near to home that I come back home tonight with new heart and a better willingness to wait out my three months and do my best.
For to-day, when the air grew warm and I had eaten a little bit, I wandered away on a well-earned holiday to see the land as I liked. And as I walked I thought of many things and home of all things most.
Then at length I turned away from the road up a little path to the top of Mont Notre Dame where the villagers around about --- old men and the women --- were come to worship and to pray for France in the cathedral that stands there on the ancient rock.
I couldn't help slipping into the doorway to see the service, for I knew it must be beautiful in there under the great stone arches that master builders had so lovingly wrought long, long ago in the days before the New World was even a myth. Somehow I knew that the priest would be white-haired and majestic --- that the place would be cool and dark with the stillness of dead centuries. Somehow I knew that only peace could reign in there and rest for tired hearts and holiness and love. But I could n't stay, --- I, with my uniform of war, was out of place in there, --- and I left it to its simple people to go into the sunshine and the woods. And the breath of the place, the mysticism of the rose-lit windows and the orange burning of the tapers, went with me as I left and brought me happiness of heart.
And to-night the world is the same. Up yonder on the slope the boys have gone to watch the star shells drift their lights along the front and the great searchlights flash across the sky. They are singing and the west breeze that brings the sound, carrying also the sweet odor of fresh-cut hay, is likewise of home. So it is of all such things that the day has been happily filled, and now in a little time the moon will come out and the bugle will send us to bed.
It is very splendid to be giving so much time to the Red Cross work --- you will always be glad that you have in years to come; for that is the only truly glorious part of the war --- the Red Cross. I have seen what that help means to the wounded, and I know. Your bit in the scheme of things is better than mine. More than once I have wished that I could be in that sort of work instead of helping the other way, but my part of giving is so small in a land that has given so much that it does n't matter. If they need us most here, ours is neither to reason why nor to ponder, but to do what we can to help in our allotted time. The Frenchman's philosophy is after all good. C'est la guerre --It is war. And if you are not in the trenches, you are lucky not to be; if you are in the trenches, you are lucky not to be wounded; if you are wounded, you are lucky not to have been killed; if you have been killed, then you have died a good way in a good cause, and you are lucky to be out of it all. What happens in between does n't matter if you are doing your best honorably --- it is war.
We can't help being fatalistic about our chances in things. If it is coming to us, then it will come in spite of anything, if not, so much the better. But I, for one, feel somehow sure that nothing is coming to me, and they believe very much in that sort of a "hunch" out here. I shall probably come home utterly without either glory or wounds so far as that is concerned.
They are still talking a good deal about the army taking the service over --- there is nothing definite yet, but if they do it will mean I come home three or four weeks sooner. The ambulance service won't want us only for a month, so it will mean coming home.
There will be just a little regret in coming so, but, oh, how happy will I be to get back again!
|
Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he plays his part well. Come out of the ordeal safe and sound, be has had an experience in the light of which all life thereafter will be three times richer and more beautiful; wounded, he will have the esteem and admiration of all men and the approbation of his own conscience; killed, more than any other man, he can face the unknown without misgiving --- that is, so long as death comes upon him in a moment of courage and enthusiasm, not of faltering or fear.... Never have I regretted what I am doing, nor would I at this moment be anywhere else than I am. I pity the poor civilians who shall never have seen or known the things that we have seen and known. Great as are the pleasures that they continue to enjoy and that we have renounced, the sense of being the instrument of Destiny is to me a source of greater satisfaction. (SEEGER.) |
I don't remember when nor how this little clipping came to me. I found it, perused it lightly enough, then kept it to reread many times, and to ponder more than once the words the poet wrote. He lived and died out here in that philosophy and found it good --- even to that last hour, when men in battle come to choose this life or that death in brave deeds. In writing he has passed the clean thought on to those of us who find our power of words too slight to formulate a doctrine of our own to guide us through these fields. And I have made it mine.
I send it to, you now because the time has come when you and I must face a little more squarely the eventuality for me of which he wrote himself.
The work out here, though not so continuous as it was, is becoming even a bit more dangerous for us, and the time may come when the luck that guides us over roads on which other men fall will not be with us. Already there are those whom I had met in the quick and ready friendship which springs up out here, who have died. So far they have been all of the ambulance force and beyond the little circle I am in, but friends, nevertheless, whom one sees go down with vast regret, though there is little time for sorrowing.
Of us one only has been killed and eight have been hurt, but some strange power protects us somehow while Frenchmen fall around us --- it is uncanny.
For me it is easy enough to look into the possibilities of the next three months with calmness and unfearing. The environment breeds such a spirit without recklessness, and such a philosophy as was Seeger's, and is mine, permits no such thing as cowardice. Regrets, if there are to be any in my service, are few and petty.
More than once, when with a too great imagination I have realized the true part of a munitions carrier, I have wished for the more humanitarian air that lives, supposedly at least, among the hospital folk.
Times I have felt unkindly toward who pointed the way to the bigger, more exacting duty of this service. Times I have felt it was not enough to haul things by which men kill, but as though it were my place to take a gun from some old, wornout man, who had a right to rest while I, who am young and strong, went in his place.
So much I have seen and calculated by the short measuring-stick of my newfound sense of judgment, that it still seems up to me to go in hard and die if need be, to help scourge the fields of France of the demoniac rage of the Huns and the counterrage of unstrung France and Britain.
Even here we are only in the outer eddies of the awful whirlpool, but we see all and hear all and try to understand. It makes fighters of us all, but withal we long for peace and hate the wanton, ghastly horrors of the trench.
In an hour I go up to a place that I particularly hate. There have been two men there in charge who spoke English, and I was fond of having a glass of cognac and a cigarette with them when we went up. I saw the last one go, three nights ago --pieces of the same shell went through the top of one of my cars and rattled off the top of my helmet almost harmlessly.
Just a little note now, for in a little while I must go on a ninety-mile run and it will probably be night again to-morrow before I get back. Here are some pictures. They are pretty bad, but we can't get any good print-paper over here -no chemicals.
It took me two days instead of one to get back home again, and I am a bit tired, but could sleep now and then strapped to the seat on the way home. We ran into a cloudburst up in the hills and eleven cars out of eighteen mired down. Then there was heavy shelling of the road and we had to wait while it slackened and the road was cleared of a wrecked artillery train, but at last we made it and back.
As to the letter and package from Paris, you should feel highly honored, for the man who acted as my postman was a high man in the French diplomatic service --of the old royal blood. I met him, by the way, through the joint agency of Mme. Crane and Lady Austin, of the British Red Cross, who has done me several favors. I have had many interesting experiences of this sort that I shall tell you of some day.
"Os" appeared out of nowhere to-day and departed the same way after leaving your draft and promising to take this letter through to you; so I shall write you such things as I can that are not definitely military information. I have told you already, I think, that the war has killed France. We had n't realized that at home, but I know now. Boys from sixteen to eighteen years and men above fifty have been called, and after them there is nothing left.
There can be no big French offensive, for the reserves are exhausted almost completely and there remain only enough troops to hold the present positions. This big battle on the Plateaux Hurtebrise and Californie has been almost entirely defensive and the resistance and cost of it have been terrible all along the Chemin des Dames. Things will stand still until our army comes --- every one seems to believe that; then a series of drives that will clear France of the Huns will occupy a year and a half or so. It seems impossible that it can take longer than that, for though the Germans may never be crushed, though the French probably never will set foot on German soil as victors, certainly the impossibility of any but an Allied victory must become apparent to even self-centered Prussia.
The situation is infinitely pathetic. Two great homesick, footsore armies wallow in the loathful mud, neither wanting nor daring to give in to the other. France is like a terrier dog with a throat-grip on a bigger dog to which she holds while she bleeds to death. Help from us must come soon if it is to be help.
But there is no lack of food certainly, even if the male population is now so far gone as to make a dubious future. We have enough certainly, though it is of a mean sort except the extra that we buy. If you sent me bread from home, it would get here sooner after baking than what we get here, and sometimes the mule and horseflesh are a little putrid, but that is army life and not altogether the war.
There is n't much sickness among us ---only now and then some dysentery which I mostly treat myself (as I am more or less established as the camp "first-aider"). But among the French soldiers there is a terrible amount. The French army sanitation even in the infirmaries and hospitals is nauseating. Vermin are omnipresent, but with great care I have avoided everything but fleas, which will leave with cold weather and are not very annoying.
There was a very good map of the sector we are in on page 1 of the July 8 "Literary Digest," a copy of which came to camp last night. Look up Rheims, Pouilion, Guyencort, Berry-au-Bac, the whole territory along the Chemin des Dames, Soissons, Soupir, Coucy, and the territory north to the Oise River and you will know where we are working.
Things continue about the same --- we are only under shell-fire about three nights a week, but it is hot enough while it lasts. We had our first experience with machine-gun fire this week, but it was passing a hundred feet over our heads and was therefore quite harmless. (It was missing a hilltop artillery road just ahead of us and coming on over the hill.)
I suppose we will move camp in about a week, as the Boche planes have the ten American camps in the town pretty well spotted. They've come close to getting to us several times, but have been beaten off. Apparently the French are unable to keep them from crossing the lines, for we see them continually. One was brought down a mile away one day last week after blowing up two of our captive balloons. I am repeatedly impressed that the most important thing for our country to do is to train thousands of aviators. French supremacy in the air is tottering for want of pilots.
Must run now --- there is work to do. Luck to you all --- try not to worry about things ---they aren't so bad and the worst apparently is over for the year. Both sides are getting ready to dig in for the winter ---work is slacking, but the rains are making it harder all the time, for the roads are getting bad.
I am wonderfully well and don't know I have bones and muscles and things any more. The jolting is getting us all a bit in the kidneys, but it is not serious yet and we are being treated.
I am glad of this chance to tell you what I can. To be sure it is not much out of all we see and know, but we took the French army oath with regard to military operations.
I find there is still a little time to write before "Os" starts back, so here is for another little line. Camp life has been fairly exciting these last three days, for the Boche airmen evidently got some good photographs of our camp and have been trying to get to us. We have seen three planes brought down in rather thrilling duels and the Boche have retaliated by blowing up three observation balloons immediately in front of us. This last was accomplished in something under four minutes and was to say the least spectacular.
As a consequence we have literally taken to the woods. Our camp has been moved a mile or two up on to a hillside and in a grove of trees. Next week we are to cover our trucks for the first time with "camouflage" (imitation of foliage and ground-work painted on the canvas).
I am glad I had not planned on going to the training-school, as orders went out to limit the class to twenty-five and the two men who went were sent back. I suppose, however, that they will get to go next month anyhow. Meantime I am automatically reduced two ranks, as they were my superiors. I am now brigadier again, but those things don't matter a great deal somehow any more.
"Os" says the army may take over the service in two months. It may be true. If it is, I am undecided what I shall do. Although we are much needed in the French army, the American army can get plenty of better drivers --- professionals --- who want the job, too. Colonel Wharton, Q.M.C., advised me to go home and get a commission in the transport service. He says I will never be subject to draft, but since I have the experience and want to be in the army, they will doubtless waive the physical exams.
Must go ---
Good-morning --
I hope you like the stationery, for I started out after it at four bells this morning and rode seven miles and back on horseback to get it. It was the first time I had been on a horse for so long that I can't remember, and fourteen miles is not to be snickered at even if I did walk the beast most of the way back. There is a cavalry troop en repos about a quarter of a mile away, and I made it a visit last night in which I used all fifty of my French words and two packages of cigarettes for the loan of a horse and instruction in how to change speeds on it. I'm going to try it again some day or so if my strength holds out.
Just now we are about to be busy moving camp, as the Boche avions have apparently located us and we don't want our sleep to be disturbed. Life has been far from dull this week. We have seen four of our own balloons blown up just in front of us and three German bombing-planes brought down around the camp. In order to discourage such intimacy we have selected a new site in a forest. We will take to the woods to-day.
An army Y.M.C.A. arrived with a tent, a movie show, a Victrola, and a piano. But then pianos are n't so rare. I was down thirty feet underground in an artillery dugout the other night and found one that had been salvaged from some place or other. The only man who could play it was killed while they were letting it down and its case was well nicked by bits of the same shell, but it made a nice ornament they said. They even appreciated my efforts on it. I should like to go back sometime, but the road and the obus parc where we were going that night have both been blown up, so there is no chance.
The old adage, "Talking is still done by hand in France," has just been borne out again. I've had to tie up a Frenchman's elbow. He sprained it trying to translate "Crank up your motor "from French into English --- that's a fact. I put on an elegant-looking bandage and got somebody to take a picture of it for him. This particular fellow is about as camera-shy as a thousand-dollar-a-week movie actor. But he has a heart of gold, for he will steal even the captain's automobile to go get us cigarettes and things when we can't get away to do it. His two favorite American expressions, out of a vocabulary of about a hundred words, are, "It is a gift," and "You darn fool." He uses both indiscriminately, but he is the best friend I have among the French in spite of the frequent use of the last compliment.
August 26, 1917.
We've just finished moving camp into the woods as a result of some aerial activities that threatened to get unpleasant. We are now halfway up a hillside in a pretty little grove of trees that hides us thoroughly.
Aside from that there is nothing much doing. We have been working in the daytime, which is not so very exciting, except for the air fights over us. We are just jogging along waiting for something to happen and praying we will be sent down to Verdun where there is a lively battle on.
Yesterday we were up near a battery of "two hundred and fortys" mounted on railway cars, and as I have nothing to do in the parcs when there is no shelling, I went over and begged permission to shoot her a few times. There are two heavy armored cars on an inclined track and one stands out to one side to fire the piece by pulling a long chain. When "she" goes off, the recoil drives the two cars about thirty feet up the track, after which she rolls back down into place again. When the sun is shining, one can see the huge balls flying through the air until they go out of sight over the hill and break with a heavy roar. This was the first time I had fired a mounted battery piece and nearly completes the list.
O----- W----- is hereabouts on some sort of inspection trip and I have seen him once or twice. Incidentally he brought me some money from father, which, if already spent, was nevertheless welcome.
R----. L----- is over here as a correspondent for the "Chicago Tribune" and says that France seems to be trying to cure the world both of the tobacco habit and the drink habit. Certainly the tobacco we get would make good stuff to fumigate a greenhouse, and if they would wait a week, the wine we drink, because we can't get water, would make a delectable vinegar.
I hope you have started something to smoke over to me. We have three more months from to-day, and if I don't get something from home pretty soon, I shall either have to give up smoking or give up using my lungs. Most anything comes through if you send it in packages not weighing over about four pounds. I understand that a clearing-house for packages to France has been established in New York and that we can get our stuff sent through it.
Time for supper --- it is not interesting, but is at least filling, and as good, I suppose, as possible. I had a letter from you last night mailed August 8. The bread we had for supper was dated July 19. C'est la guerre!
I just finished a letter to K----- in which I wrote her that there was no news and now risk the monotony of repetition by telling you the same. We haven't worked at night for a week, and day runs are always much the same except for watching the aeroplanes and now and then shooting a few cannons here and there. I have even tried my hand with the anti-aircraft guns but could n't make anybody dodge. I saw a wonderful picture of our own cantonment that a Boche had taken before he was brought down a few days ago. They must have been taken from a long way up, but one could even count the stripes on the big American flag we have. I'm rather glad he did n't get home with them, although he deserved to. We watched the battle from our abris and saw the plane fall wing over wing for nearly four thousand feet, then right itself and flutter to the ground. We learned afterward that the pilot had been killed and the observer had crawled over, pushed the pilot's body out of the way, and righted the plane, but to no avail because the motor had been wrecked by a shell.
I had my first smash-up on our last night trip. I don't drive much any more, for the non-com.'s don't have that in their duties, but I try to keep my hand in so that if anything happens, I can jump in and take a turn at it. This night we were passing a supply-train on a narrow road, and one team gave me no road to spare, but I went ahead. I collected two sets of fancy harness, parts of a wheel, a lot of profanity that I did n't mind a bit since I couldn't understand it, and had two horses fight for the honor of sitting in my lap. You can't hurt these big trucks, and I ducked before the horse climbed aboard. Nobody was hurt and everybody was used to having it happen. The matter was too small even to report on,. but at home I suppose there would have been a crowd and a deuce of a racket. However, the penalty for showing a light along that piece of road would have been more than driving without one at home. C'est la guerre!
We are now established in our new home on the hillside and quite comfy. Thank goodness, the auto-trailers don't leak, for after ten days of sunshine, it has begun to rain eighteen hours out of twenty-four again. I shall send you some pictures soon. They are nice --- the pictures.
At first the rains made the work more or less "blue" when they continued for such long stretches, but now I put on my raincoat as I dress and forget about it. In fact, I have two raincoats now and wear one over the other to keep dry.
To-night the wind howls through the trees and whines at the windows while the rain splatters gustily against the walls. One has a cozy feeling even without a fireplace --- shut in here secure from the storm. "Out there" the big guns are booming a furious barrage before some night attack and the ground even here trembles a little from the shock. For us it means work on the morrow to feed the guns and rehabilitate the reserve supply of shells. No doubt I shall be called off of my repos and by night to-morrow shall be very, very muddy and very, very tired.
It comes that way sometimes ---days when getting up at three in the morning to jolt over untold miles of road, with rain beating in your face till it seems as if the skin would break, is discouraging. There are times when the incompatibility of French and English ways, the inefficiency of loading gangs, and the difficulty of talking a strange language about extraordinary things try the temper beyond endurance. And there are times after days like these --- days that are eighteen hours long with discouragement in every one --when coming home to a muddy camp brings thoughts of some other home and the loved ones.
They say that the first rain of winter is here, though it seems strange, as this is the first of September only and everything still so green. But one can get used to anything in time. It no longer smarts as it did. Life is never really dull, though even excitement pails on one at times.
I am writing this on the last day of my permission, and am in quite the happiest mood I have been in in France.
At the end of my first three months of service I was given seven days repos with three extra tacked on for good service, so set out to see France and I have made a fairly good job of it.
I wish you could have been along, for you would have enjoyed it as I did even if travelling conditions were a bit hard.
It was up in the north of France that I spent most of my time. The hills are steep and rugged there and the valleys deep and beautiful. Everything is so old and ingrown and peaceful that I should have been content merely to walk around there and forget things, but we had an itinerary planned before leaving Paris and stuck to it.
We went to a seaport base for the American sub-chasers, and the five of us immediately became the guests of the fleet. We were dined by various officers, who were anxious to hear our yarns of the life at the front, shown over the ship, and taken on trips through the submarine nest and the fairways of the harbor.
At night, on our last day there, we took a long ride, in the fast power boat that belonged to one of the ships, which I shall never forget for its grandeur. It was moonlight and a mist hung on the mountains and shadowed two century-old fortifications of the old harbor. Those things are worth while.
To be sure, there was one not altogether pleasant incident on that last night, but since my head has quit aching I rather value it as an experience to remember. It was on the quay when we were put ashore that last night in considerable of a river fog that came down while we were putting in. I got lost from the others and was set upon from behind by some seafaring man. I rather think he meant to shanghai me until he found me in officer's uniform, but he contented himself with laying my scalp open in spite of my cap and taking about ninety francs off of me. I suppose I will have a neat little scar atop my dome, but he ought to have a broken wrist, for I fetched him what I fancy was a rather decent whack across the arm with a leaded cane I carry for such purposes at the front. After I got fixed up, it did n't matter much --- I had to come "home" that much sooner, but that was all.
I shall be here overnight and go back to the front to-morrow.
It seems probable that the army will get around to taking the service over in October. I suppose I had better stick it out here, for I will at least have some choice of service, while it seems probable I should be caught in the draft, eyes or no eyes, and put in the infantry at home. If it is possible, I should like to skip home for a week, but I don't know. The voyage is not so very dangerous --- you will notice that they have not sunk many passenger ships lately and that the French line has lost only one boat in passenger traffic in the war.
Please write me about the draft and send me such clippings as you can. This being away from the front and living humanly again has brought thoughts of home folks and things pretty close. You've no idea how good it was to get up there among white people who talk your lingo after the endless days of trying to be French. It is difficult to write and talk good English after so much of the army slang and the French that we have.
Two years is a long time to look forward to home, but I do still, although I realize the chance of the game.
September 9, 1917.
I have been writing to father all about my trip north in France and what a splendid time I had running around among the officers of the fleet and seeing everything. You I will tell about my trip around Paris and Versailles in a Ford. It was also lots of fun. You see, I've made many friends over here who have been exceedingly kind to me and things come rather cheaply, so one can do a good deal on rather a small amount. We have free railway transportation anywhere in France, and hotel bills and food are all it costs us. The hotels are still fairly cheap, although the food costs money nowadays, but I have completed ten days of travel now on something like forty-five dollars, which I drew in advance from the money deposited by the frat. And in that time I made a flying trip to Bordeaux by daylight and saw the great vineyards and the mountainside châteaux, and a trip to see a seaport in the extreme north.
But to return to Paris and Versailles ---I have met a Lady Austin of the English Red Cross several times both near the front and in Paris and she has supplied me with bandages, medicines, etc., so I made a call upon her here after my return to Paris. She very kindly got me the use of one of the Fords that makes the rounds of the Paris hospitals every day, and before I was through with the joy-ride I found I had been all over Paris. After that she obtained for me permission to go to Versailles on board an ambulance, so I saw it too. You will have known all the places I saw and doubtless they are unchanged. I have enjoyed every minute of my holiday and to-morrow I go back.
I had your letter containing the good news that honest-to-goodness tobacco was en route, and the clever clipping. The man who wrote the latter did n't say enough. I don't know what patois I speak --- probably not any, for I get it from Normans, Bretons, Belgians, and Parisians, and it is doubtless an awful jumble, but it gets across. I am gradually learning to swear in French, but just now my efforts are so laughable that the person addressed usually laughs himself into such a good humor that there is no use swearing at him. C'est la guerre!
I nearly forgot to tell you the only amusing thing that has occurred to me in France. To begin at the beginning ---when we were coming down from the north, we climbed into first-class compartments, although our transportation called for third, and passed the buck back and forth and did n't understand French to such an extent that the train guard and all his crew gave us up and let us ride there. There were two American naval officers aboard who had cornered a mighty pretty English girl ambulance driver who was just back from "blighty" leave in London. One was sitting on each side of her in the carriage and they were having a gay little flirtation, but yours truly, not to be outdone, sat down across from her and started talking French to her, which neither of the officers could understand. Things progressed nicely as far as I was concerned, although I don't think the officers were entirely happy. However, the climax came when we were going through the mountains, and it was a regular burlesque sort of an incident. You know mountains have tunnels and tunnels are only good for one thing when there is a pretty girl along. After going through a few tunnels, one comes to recognize the symptoms of the approach to one, but the navy men were n't wise. I was. I gave the lady the wink and just as we entered, she leaned forward and I leaned forward ---all was dark---some big masculine hand grabbed mine and gave it an awful squeeze before the owner realized it was the wrong one. I heard the (although I was busy) impact of two bearded faces and a couple of muffled "damns." The next minute we shot out into the light and one of the Americans had moved to one corner --- the other to the other; everybody was a bit flushed and uncomfortable---looking except the girl, who was lying back laughing at them. I was a bit fussed myself, but it was a nice kiss, anyhow. C'est la guerre!
Maybe I had better explain my job ---you asked me what I was corporal of. I am enlisted in the French army until November 26. I was appointed a corporal in the French Army by my French captain.
Each of the twenty sections of the American group is composed of forty-five men, four non-coms. and an American who holds a lieutenancy. Over here we are called brigadiers instead of corporals, for we are attached to artillery divisions and artillery non-coms. are supposed to rank infantry non-coms. That is merely a matter of compliment to us, I suppose.
For a brief period I was promoted to the rank of top sergeant when the two sergeants were sent down to the officers' training-school. But through some error on the part of the authorities, their names had not been put on the roster at the school and they were sent back to the front again, so I was reduced again.
Please, please try to get some dope on the draft and what they are going to do with us over here. I have refused to worry about it during my vacation, but I must do so now. It seems to be certain that we shall be taken over by the Government. They expect to enlist us the first of October, but will not pay us until our term is up with the service. They have been enlisting men for drivers at home with the rank of sergeant, but they will make us privates. The men who stayed at home and got their three months of theoretical training will officer us who have had six months' practical work in the field. I, for instance, know every road, every supply parc, every ammunition dépôt along seventy miles of front. I have worked hard on my French and can talk enough to get by now, but some man with a shoulder-strap but only a vocabulary of five words will get the advantage of my knowledge.
I have studied the methods of the parcs --how to load, the military rules of the road, how to save time, how to keep a convoy together --- a dozen things that our army needs to know.
Perhaps you who don't realize over there what we are really up against may think this a selfish way to look at it --- or unpatriotic even. But over here we know better than to want to die for our country in any capacity it wants us to. It is better to live for her, and the French teach us that a man is not giving his best except in the place where his mind is used best. It breeds an undemocratic atmosphere, perhaps, but it is the war. The question for France is solved by the more or less ignorant peasant class. Men who are educated --- trained --- are hard to replace.
But the people back home have n't realized the least thing of what the war is. They are playing petty politics --- fooling away time every hour of which costs men's lives. Oh, wait till they've had a taste of it --- wait till the first casualty list comes in --- wait --- for the Germans will know when our troops go in and they will get the awfulest bit of hell the master-demons can devise. If they go into a big battle there will be thirty or forty thousand ---nearly as many as are here now --- that will go. Then you will wake up over there --- meantime, the men who are here in the infantry now will never go back home.
Did I ever tell you about my dog? I think not, for I have n't had him long, although I have known him since he was a fuzzy little puppy. His other master was French, so the little fellow does n't speak much English yet, and I talk to him mostly in French.
No dog, I think, was ever more appropriately named. Born with the army, of parents that had lived in the trenches, --the veriest ragtag mongrel family tree, --he was brought back to grow up into a long, curly-haired, half-blond, half-brunette, clumsy puppy. "Poilu," the name given the French soldier, means in the language "the hairy one." So the little dog, which is mostly a bundle of hair, with four legs sticking out, and two big intelligent eyes to mark his head, is called "Poilu." His other master is gone to Italy with his regiment. The dog stayed behind with me, and though he moped at first, I think he is happy now.
Poilu is very wise for his months. He always knows what one is talking about and he never asks foolish questions ---is, in fact, that one being in France who does n't ask, "When do you think the war will end?"
Perhaps he knows and won't tell. I have asked him, but he only looked wise and wagged his tail intelligently. Everybody over here asks that question first; it's debated in the barracks eternally; it is asked across the table in every café; if you offer a Frenchman a lift, you do it in the certain knowledge that he will ask you that and expect a hopeful answer, such as "March" or "April."
But Poilu does n't care. War is rather a nice adventure. There is a wonderful amount of food to be had for the begging; there are many people who pet and pamper and don't scold if you curl up on their beds for a nap. The road out in front is a never-ending kaleidoscope of moving men and horses to bark at and other dogs to sniff at.
Military etiquette does n't bother at all. Poilu is the only poilu in all the armies that can rub against the legs of generals and sniff at them without rebuke. I would spend the rest of the war in durance vile if I showed my contempt for a certain French captain the way Poilu does.
But Poilu is n't always haughty. When he has been naughty and knows it, he is very humble and apologetic and so appealing that it is extremely hard to be stern. Then, when he is a "good doggie," we go for walks along the river-bank and he finds sticks to be thrown.
Afterwards, when we are tired, we sit down on some stone or log and I smoke and he meditates. If there is no one around, I talk to him about home and ask him if he wants to go back with me and play with David and Charlotte.
He does n't understand all this very well because I say it in English, but he must know from the tone of my voice that it is something nice. He wags his tail and does his best to smile, and perhaps he thinks David and Charlotte are something good to eat, for he tries to stick his big ugly head into my pocket to find some sweets.
Anyway, whether he understands or not, I know it would be very nice to have him home, for I am rather fond of the little bundle and I would like to have him back with all my loved ones --- and be there myself.
I shall not be able to bring him, I suppose, but he will always be a pleasant memory among many that aren't so pleasant.
Bless you, Poilu, ---you are a good friend.