I ARRIVED IN PARIS on May 10, 1940, which wasn't bad timing. Hitler marched into Belgium just as I marched into the Ritz Bar. The first thing I did was to order a drink. I don't know what Hitler did first.
A month before, the theater of war had moved to Norway. In New York we mistakenly believed that perhaps the war would be fought in Norway. Looking back it seems pretty stupid but we weren't alone. Those magnificent armchair domestic foreign correspondents who tell us via radio just what is going to happen were all excited about Norway. Even the sober authentic correspondents in London believed that the English Government would make every effort to defend Norway. "Every effort" meant that the whole navy would swing into action; that the still untested air force would go to work and the army would put down its tea and take up a bayonet. But we all lived in a fool's paradise in those blissful days when it was still a "phoney" war.
Charlie Colebaugh, the Managing Editor of Collier's, woke me one morning very early. I've always believed that telephone calls which are made before noon aren't worth listening to. This was an exception. It wasn't very long.
"Get to Norway," Charlie said.
"Norway? How the hell do you go to Norway?" I was still half asleep.
"That's your little problem," he said and hung up.
"Pack my things, I'm going to Norway," I yelled at my plump, motherly maid.
"Right away," she said soothingly and brought me a glass of Alka-Seltzer.
The problem of getting to Norway wasn't as easy as the travel advertisements might lead one to believe. You couldn't go directly. I cabled London and found that the Government was not allowing any correspondents to follow the army to the scene of the fighting. A long while afterwards we found out why. There were some correspondents there already. Leland Stowe was earning the Pulitzer Prize by his magnificent stories from Oslo. Whether he'll actually get it or not doesn't matter. We, his colleagues, have already awarded it to him and knowing Lee I dare say he'd rather have the admiration of his colleagues (which he has---one hundred per cent) than have a scroll with his name emblazoned on it.
We finally decided that I'd go by way of Germany. The German army was being very tender with neutral correspondents then. Then too, I'd worked in Berlin and knew enough German to tell a wiener schnitzel from a Reichsoberregierungsrat.
It was a matter of hours to get my passport okayed by the Secretary of State and then I blithely walked into the office of the German Consulate General. There might be a delay of a day or two, he told me suavely, but in these days as a matter of form they had to make application to Berlin. It didn't turn out to be a matter of form. Two days later I was told that my visa had been denied. From a pipe-line I had into the Consulate I found out that the Gestapo had sent back just one word about me, "undesirable." Pressed for details by the Consulate General, who seemed honestly anxious to facilitate things, it developed that two stories I had written the year before had come to the attention of the Gestapo. They were "Portrait of a Murderer," the story of young Herschel Grynszpan who had killed Ernst von Rath, the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris; the other was a story on the Jewish persecutions called "Unwanted." So I never got to Germany. But I will. It may take a long time before I march in behind the English Army, but some day we'll march under the Brandenburg Tor on Unter den Linden and a lot of us have made a pledge as to just what we are going to do when we pass under that war memorial.
I aimed for London. I went on the Conte di Savoia to Naples and then overland to Paris. There were only seventy passengers on the lovely ship, which meant that we each had a steward to wait on us. This seemed to be a very comfortable war back in those dim days of April, 1940. There was a man named Graves Smith on board and because he was the only other person around who liked to sit up after dark we became quite friendly. He was in the rubber business and was on his way to England to buy some.
"How much rubber you going to buy?" I asked him.
"All they got," Smith said calmly.
He taught me a lot about the rubber business. It seems that you sell rubber before you buy it. You sell it for delivery next year and then you hustle around the world looking for it, trying to buy it at a cheaper price than the price for which you've sold it. It seemed a silly way to do business to me.
"I've got a stock market system something like that," I told him. "It never misses."
He perked up his ears. "What is it?"
"I buy on Monday, sell on Friday," I told him airily.
He looked thoughtful. "I don't get it," he said.
"It's easy to explain," I told him. "Actually, Smith, writing is just a hobby to me. I'm really a Wall Street operator on a big scale. By buying on Monday it is obvious that any inflation is immediately prevented and then owing to government demands for money, conversion to stabilize would increase the floating debt way out of proportion. But if you sell on Friday what happens? Now the diversion of expenditure is gradual and the manipulation of convertible bonds can be liquidated, that is, of course, provided there are no interlocking directorates. If there are interlocking directorates then of course it is entirely different. Then I usually buy on Wednesday morning and sell in April."
"Will you have another drink?" Smith said.
Smith told me about a subsidiary company in which he was interested. I thought he was giving me the same kind of double talk I'd been giving him until he showed me a prospectus and letters dealing with it. He and several associates had formed a company for the purpose of manufacturing artificial rubber breasts. There were, Smith explained, several such articles on the market; in fact he named half a dozen film stars (female) who were regular customers. But there was one thing lacking; those now on the market had to be strapped in the back or they wouldn't stay in place. The gay deceivers which his company was already manufacturing would be cup-shaped on the inside and would stay in place by suction. A woman could wear a backless evening gown and no one would be the wiser.
"Best of all," Smith said earnestly, "we can make them for a few cents and sell them quite cheaply. And they are all chocolate flavored."
I rolled my head with that punch. "I should think if you could get the natural . . ."
"Listen. I'm not kidding," Smith said. "Rubber in its crude state has a very definite odor. Chocolate is the strongest deodorant known to the trade. By mixing peppermint or clove . . ."
"There's a rock outside, let's go out and look at it," I told Smith.
"What's a rock doing out in the ocean?" he said warily.
"It's a rock called Gibraltar put up by the Prudential Insurance Company." We went out and looked at the rock.
It went like that all the way to Paris. We had a lot of fun. The weather was nice; life was good. By now the wireless told us that the balloon had gone up and come down in Norway. It looked as though I were in for a soft assignment. Naturally the Germans wouldn't dare to attack Belgium and Holland. And of course the Maginot Line was impregnable. Heigh-ho! Paris would be fun and I'd run over to London for a couple of weeks and play around with Arthur Christiansen, the editor of the Express, and Frank Owen who ran the Standard and Sidney Bernstein and Nat Gubbins, to me the world's funniest writer, and Ewart Hodgson and Paul Holt and the rest of Fleet Street. I was at home in Fleet Street. Yes, this was the life. And on an expense account too. It seemed too good to be true....
So I walked into the Ritz Bar on May 10th and I've been running in circles ever since. First I ran toward the front; then away from it and since then I've been running away from bombs and that's mighty wearing on the feet.
Before you can cover a war you have to be accredited to the fighting forces. Getting accredited to the French Army during the Spring of 1940 was a little bit like getting into the Kingdom of Heaven on a bicycle. The long thin line of red tape which finally strangled France began at the top, coiled in thoroughly illogical circles all over the place and then wound up in that gloomy building which had once been the Hotel Continental. Until the Bureau Central Militaire de la Circulation and its ill-begotten child the Ministry of Information began to operate in that gloomy building, Red Tape was only in its infancy. Never before had such a compendium of dreary and confused minds ever been assembled under one roof. They had plenty of paper, lots of pencils, hundreds of rubber stamps and minds as blank as the white cliffs of Calais. They were meticulously polite and they were glad to see you whenever you dropped in but they were a bit slow on getting things done.
There is an old political adage which says "If you can't lick 'em, jine 'em." I always operate on that basis. Ken Downs, an old friend of mine, was in charge of the International News Service in Paris. Because Downs filed dispatches about every hour while my stories went out at most once a week I couldn't beat Downs. So I joined him. Within two hours of the time I arrived in Paris, Downs took me to the Hotel Continental to apply for my accreditization. Monsieur Pierre Comert, Press Liaison officer for the Foreign Office who took care of these things was charming.
"First you must get a letter from the American Ambassador," he explained. "Then get six photographs of yourself. Fill out this form and then come back. I am sure it can be arranged."
Within two hours I had the six pictures; I had a letter from Ambassador Bullitt; I had filled out the necessary forms (in triplicate) and I had been fitted for a uniform. The French insisted upon all correspondents wearing uniforms when visiting the front. Their reasoning was sound. The front even then was always under observation by the Germans. If they saw a man in civilian clothes mingling with the French soldiers they might think him to be a Cabinet Minister and send some bombing planes over to get him.
I returned to Monsieur Comert. He was all smiles and full of courtesy. "Phone me in a few days," he said. "I'll try to hurry it through."
I phoned him the following day. He was a little unhappy at my hurry.
"These things take time," he said mournfully. "First your application goes to the Deuxième Bureau, then it must go to the War Office. It may take three weeks or a month."
"So it's like that?" I said.
"Yes, it is like that," Monsieur Comert said softly.
I went into a huddle with myself. There wasn't a story in Paris worth writing. I wanted to get to the front and I couldn't get out of Paris until I was accredited. I came out of the huddle with an idea. I wrote out a cable and stuck it in my pocket. Then I went to see Monsieur Comert again. He looked a little pained when I walked into his office.
"I just want some advice, Monsieur Comert," I said very humbly. "I am sending a cable to President Roosevelt asking him to cable Premier Reynaud to facilitate my accreditization. I don't want to go over your head, however. And I suppose the censor will have to read my cable. It is rather a personal one and I wonder if you wouldn't take it on yourself to censor it."
I handed him the cable I had typed out. He read it with startled eyes, as well he might. The cable read: "Dear Uncle Franklin, am having difficulty getting accredited to French Army. Time is important. Would you phone or cable Premier Reynaud and ask him to hurry things up. It was grand of you to phone me last night. Please give my love to Aunt Eleanor. Quent."
Monsieur Comert was speechless for a moment. "You are a nephew of the President?" he said in awe. "But of course, Quentin Reynolds---Quentin Roosevelt. I suppose Quentin is an old family name. Well, now imagine you being the President's nephew. . . ."
"I never talk about it," I said modestly. "I prefer to get along on my own. Really, I wish you wouldn't mention it to anyone."
"Of course not," he said hastily. "This changes everything. I'll get right on the phone and fix things up."
"Good. Then I won't bother sending the cable." I put out my hand to take it off his desk.
"Ah no," he said smiling. "Let me send it for you. I will send it through government channels. It will reach the White House much quicker that way."
I winced at that. I could imagine Margaret Le Hand or Steve Early opening it, reading it, and wondering who this madman was who called the President "Uncle Franklin." But I couldn't withdraw now. In any case within twenty-four hours I got my precious pink card which read: "Quentin Reynolds, Nationalité Américaine. Est autorisé à circuler dans la zone des armées français en fonction des exigences de sa mission de reporter aux armées. Correspondent de guerre accredité par le G.Q.G."
I was accredited to the French Army. Now I could go to work.
THERE WERE PROBABLY a hundred English and American correspondents accredited to the French Army. They divided us into three groups and took us on organized sorties. If we had cars of our own we drove them. Ken Downs had a magnificent new Ford. He and Bob Cooper of the London Times and I teamed up. We made a good combination because no one of us was opposition to the other. Our group was told that it had been arranged for us to visit the front-line airdromes. It seemed like a grand trip and the prospect of getting a good story seemed bright.
Our first stop was an airdrome not far from Chantilly. The actual fighting, of course, was going on fifty miles north, but this was considered to be one of the front-line airdromes. It was well camouflaged. It had once been a track for the training of horses. Now dull gray airplanes hid under the leafy trees which bordered the track. The General in charge was all right. He explained how his particular command operated. Then----it was a warm morning---he asked us into the squadron mess.
The General apologized because the champagne wasn't iced. Champagne is not the ordinary ration of fighting pilots at airdromes near the front. Nor do you usually associate champagne with dugouts and sandbags piled high and a dozen uniformed, tired men leaning wearily against a makeshift bar. But visitors are rare in the region of the front and fighting men like to have a convivial drink.
The General was short and stocky and he had none of the stuffed dignity of the peacetime general. His Croix de Guerre had sixteen palms on it; he had downed twenty-eight planes in the last war. He sipped his wine and talked proudly, affectionately about the men who stood with us in the large, well-lighted dugout.
"You don't hear so much of our French fighting planes," he said. "It's because our pilots are team-workers. Our fighters have two jobs: protection and destruction. They protect other airforce units and land units. They destroy bombers and reconnaissance enemy planes. They are wonderful, really, and as for the British pilots, oh! they are great!" He was a tough, blunt general who talked the language of his men; who drank wine with his men; whose eyes met theirs with sympathy and affection.
There was a tall, dark lad named Paul. An hour earlier he had downed his third Dornier. The rest of them were kidding him about what they called his blind flying. When I asked him what they meant he explained ruefully,
"This morning I was up there flying through a cloud," he said, "when without any warning, a big bomber loomed in front of me. Neither of us had time to shoot. I just zoomed over him, almost scraping his wings. Then I turned and went after him. But the sky was full of clouds and I couldn't see him. just on a hunch I kept firing in one direction and then I heard an explosion. I'd gotten him all right, though I never did see him. He crashed only five kilometers from here."
These fighting men worked long hours. They started at 4 A.M. and worked until eight at night. The rest of the time they were of course, subject to call.
They all looked tired, but grim. They were up against it and they knew it, but they knew too that they were fighting not only for their own lives but for the life of their country. Because they were usually outnumbered four or five to one they had of necessity become great pilots and terrific shots. "That Joseph now," the General laughed. "He has the Croix Noir in his eyes."
Joseph, the Alsatian, sheepishly grinned at what his general had said. The others looked at him with a little awe. He did seem to have the black cross of the German air force in his eyes. Every time he went up he found some enemy aircraft. He had come back that morning with a sorry-looking ship. His Morane had been riddled with bullets. They counted 331 bullet holes and two cannon holes in it. But somehow or other he had landed safely, had taken another ship and had gone up to get two more Germans.
"It sounded," Joseph said unexpectedly, "as though I were a kettledrum and they were playing me. It went 'boom, boom,, boom.' Then my ship started to f all apart so I came home. Look, your glass is empty."
A dozen pilots looked unhappy and disturbed. The glass of a visitor should never be anything but full. But we left.
Outside the dugout there was a space, perhaps four feet square, and a pilot with six palms on his Croix de Guerre was bending over it anxiously. He had just tacked a sign on a pole. It read: "Watch out for the flowers."
"How can they come up if people step on them?" he asked seriously. "They wouldn't be up for another month anyway," he added.
Another month? There were a hundred men and a hundred planes in this particular group. How many would be there in another month?
We went to Chantilly, two miles away. There was an inn there with a garden and we sat there drinking coffee. Only the ancient proprietor and his wife were left. Everyone else had been evacuated. The sun bathed the garden and a cool breeze brought the scent of honeysuckle from the nearby forest. It was no day for death to show her ugly head. But she did.
First I heard the bombs. They were like off-stage noises heard faintly. But they got closer and louder and now fifteen specks, silver against the blue of the sky, appeared. They were up about ten thousand feet. Tiny, black, harmless-looking dots dropped from them: half-ton messages from eternity.
It was the first time I had ever heard bombs explode. I thought and was thrilled by the fact that they had landed very close. Actually the nearest had landed on the airdrome we had just left; a mile away. I didn't realize then that my apartment in London would catch three direct hits within two weeks only a few short months later. This seemed very thrilling at the time and safe enough, too. Now it has ceased being thrilling and it has ceased being safe. It's only horrible now---then it was thrilling.
To get back to Chantilly. The bombers veered north. The anti-aircraft began but the sharp flashes found only blue sky. Now the roar of the fighting planes inserted a new note in this symphony of thunder. They roared up, trying to gain altitude quickly. They circled, their noses pointing high, as high as they could point without going into a spin. Six of them wheeled into formation and lit out after the bombers, hardly distinguishable now. Six against fifteen! The fighters were streaking across the sky after their prey. Then they too disappeared. The garden was quiet again but the breeze didn't bring the scent of honeysuckle. It brought a sharp, pungent small. Here and there on the horizon lazy spirals of black smoke appeared. I debated whether to go back. It would be better to think that those fighting men, whose only worry was my empty glass and flowers that shouldn't be stepped on, were all safe.
We met eight French air generals that day. All were magnificent. It is the custom now to decry everything that the French Army or air force did. But I don't know one correspondent who spent any time at the French front who has anything but admiration for the way the fighting men of France conducted themselves. The French Army didn't collapse from below---the French air force never collapsed. The outmoded planes they were forced to use collapsed and there came a time when there was no ammunition for their guns---but the pilots themselves put it out until the last. I was there.
I met a handsome Corsican who commanded one of the largest airdromes in the north. He was hobbling painfully on a stick and I asked him the obvious question.
"No, not wounded," he said ruefully. "Just a touch of gout."
A few moments later I stood beside him and watched his group take off. Bombers had been heard operating not far off. The pilots, looking grotesque in their heavily padded suits and their heavy helmets and fantastic goggles, climbed into the two-seater Potezes, the one-man Moranes and Blochs; mechanics whirled propellers and they were off. They took off three at a time and within five minutes thirty of them were in the air. Some flew to the northeast where bombers had been reported. Three of them flew directly north. I questioned the commander with my eyes. "Reconnaissance," he said briefly. "We want information."
An hour later two of those three planes came back. One youngster rushed from his plane as soon as it landed. He looked very tired but triumphant. He had a package of notes in his hand. "How is it going?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "It's tough going."
It was tough going. At the time we never realized how tough it was. We were greatly impressed with the air force of France that lovely afternoon late in May. The pilots looked as though they had just stepped out of Hell's Angels or Wings. They were all good-looking and nonchalant and they flew their little airplanes beautifully. We were just learning then about Messerschmitts. Everything being equal, even a Morane had the same chance against a Messerschmitt as a cow would have against a bull. It took us another month to learn that.
There had been about twenty of us in this particular trip. We returned to Paris and wrote our stories. The story of the afternoon made a nice feature. I blithely wrote three thousand words quoting the various air force generals; quoting and naming the ace pilots we had met and to whom we had talked. The next day I was informed that eight hundred words had been cut out of my story. I couldn't use any names. I couldn't describe the various airdromes. I couldn't describe the workings of a Potez or a Bloch. I pleaded. I yelled. I screamed. But the red tape of the censor was thick enough to drown even my voice. The others had the same experience.
Downs, Cooper and I were disgusted with organized sorties after that. And with the censor too. We sat in the Ritz Bar feeling sorry for ourselves and drinking champagne orange. Three days a week no whiskey or brandy was sold in France. H. R. Knickerbocker had just arrived in Paris from New York. Knick was a great favorite with the French Government because for years he had been throwing verbal punches at Hitler and had written several powerful articles pleading for America's immediate entrance into the war. Knick was treated with very soft gloves by even the moribund Ministry of Information. Knick was a friend of Reynaud's and of Mandel. He could get just about what he wanted.
Bob Cooper told us that Knick and Tom Delmar of the London Express had gotten permission to go to the front alone. That made Bob and me mad. Downs didn't mind much because Knick worked for INS. But with the instinct of wanting to be the first one at a fire, which burns in the heart of any good reporter, Ken was a bit downcast.
"If only the three of us could get permission to visit the front," Cooper said, "we could get some grand stories."
Bob Cooper is the mildest man I ever met. He has large blue eyes and a baby face. Let me hasten to add that he is married and has two children. I couldn't imagine Cooper really getting angry. He was too damned nice. But I had an idea and if I could get Bob good and mad ...
"Another round of drinks," I said, and then ignoring Cooper, I turned to Downs. "I always thought The Times was the greatest newspaper in England, Ken. I thought it was virtually the voice of the Government."
Ken caught my wink. "It used to be," he said sadly. "I can remember the time when a correspondent from The Times was practically God."
"I remember working in Berlin," I said, still ignoring Bob. "Norman Ebbutt and Douglas Reed of The Times got every facility they asked for, but they were two pretty tough guys. They stood up for their rights."
"I stand up for my rights, too," Cooper said sullenly.
"Nothing personal, Bob old boy," I said hastily. "Of course you stand up for your rights. It doesn't matter to me that Tom Delmar is up at the front now and you aren't. Sure let the Express get a beat. Who cares?"
"Funny though," Downs said, "to see the Express getting precedence over The Times."
"Oh, well, it can't be helped," I sighed.
We sat there waiting for the poison to sink in. Finally Cooper banged his glass on the table.
"They can't do that to me," he yelled. "I'm going to see Comert or Colonel Schieffere. By God, I'll see Reynaud if I have to."
"Give me the bill," I called. "All right, Bob, since you feel that way, Ken and I will go along with you. Ken has the car here."
He was still grumbling incoherently as we climbed into the car. Downs drove to the Hotel Continental in two minutes. If we could keep Bob mad he might pull it off. I kept prompting him.
"Churchill always gives his speeches to The Times in advance. . . The Times is more than a newspaper. The Times is England. It's a cricket field, it's a bowler hat, it's the spirit of ... of .. ."
"Nelson, the spirit of Nelson," Downs broke in. "They can't insult The Times like that, Bob."
" . . And then tell him---" we were outside Comert's office now---"that we three always travel together. Say Ken and I own the car between us. We always travel together so he'll have to give you three passes."
The door opened and Downs began to whistle. "God Save The King." We sat down and waited. We heard a loud, angry voice bellowing behind the closed door. We heard the soothing plaintive voice of M. Comert. Then there was silence. Finally the door opened and Cooper emerged. He had three pink slips in his hand.
We were off. We planned to meet at Downs' office in the rue Caumartin in an hour. We packed our knapsacks. A knapsack will hold a couple of shirts, a toilet kit, a half-dozen cans of sardines and chicken, and four bottles of brandy. Each of us, thinking that the others might neglect that all-important item had brought four bottles. Downs brought four bottles of wine. Cooper had four bottles of Johnny Walker, Black Label. We were off for Nancy and Verdun and the Ligne Maginot. We were off to the front.
It was a beautiful warm day and there's nothing much wrong with the north of France either. We hauled the top of the car down and took off our hats and let the sun give us a going over. Life was good. This was a good war. Of course we didn't know then about the nightmare to come.
"Remember that rooster they had for a mascot at that fighter squadron we visited?" Cooper said drowsily.
"Do you want a rooster, Bob?" Downs and I would have given him anything. "We just want you to be happy, Bob."
"No, I don't want a rooster," he drawled. "But all these squadrons have mascots. We ought to have a mascot too."
We discussed what kind of mascot would be good to have with us. We went through the animal and vegetable kingdoms without agreeing on anything.
Then Cooper settled it with one brilliant stroke.
"A willing peasant," he said triumphantly. "That's what we ought to have. Very blond and maybe about twenty."
Downs and I could only gaze in awe at the genius of Cooper. If he wished to have a willing peasant he should have one. Then we heard an angry buzzing not too far away. Ken put on the brakes and the car screeched to a stop. We tumbled out hurriedly. The Germans were machine-gunning a lot of cars lately. There was a ditch alongside the road. We huddled there. A dozen Heinkels were floating lazily overhead. But they didn't drop anything and soon they went on.
We had four glorious days, but we never found a willing peasant for a mascot. We visited the front and we talked to German prisoners and we thought the French Army was wonderful. And once near Montmédy I spent an afternoon in a pillbox between the lines. . . .
PIERRE LAUGHED AND SAID, "The fools, they missed again. That is two hundred and five shells today."
We were in an advanced observation post on a hill and some distance away was another hill. A German battery was on that hill. It kept firing at the farmhouse in the valley. The farmhouse had a red roof and its sides were pure white. Only the chimney had suffered, but the farmhouse wore its crooked chimney in a very jaunty manner, as an amiable drunk wears a battered hat. This was a gallant farmhouse, perhaps because it knew that it had a whole German division worried.
Our little concrete-and-steel observation post was fooling everyone but the sun. It had been dug into the side of the hill and evergreens had been placed over the steel and the concrete. Sturdy scrub oak and fir trees had been planted in front of it. For the moment this post was the eyes of the army; at least of that part of the army that was defending this sector. Behind us were heavy French tanks and light quick tanks, machine-gun detachments, heavy 155's and lighter 75's
We knew what was behind us all right. We knew too that the Germans were in front of us. We could see the flashes from their guns and sometimes through our glasses we could see something move for a moment, but against the dark green foliage of the woods we couldn't tell whether we had seen a tank or an ammunition wagon.
Technically we were in what army people still call No Man's Land. But we were very snug and comfortable in our little pillbox and very safe too. Pierre sat on one side of me and André on the other. Bright young artillery sergeants, these two. There were two slits through the steel and the concrete. Each one was a foot long and ten inches wide. Pierre and André talked and laughed but their eyes never strayed from those slits. Hardly ever. I mentioned that our little nest was fooling everyone but the sun.
Andre said, "In English you say it like this, you say it is hot like hell?"
"You said it, kid! It is hot like hell." I wiped the sweat from my forehead. André laughed and then Pierre laughed as though they shared some secret joke. They did share a joke. A swell joke. Pierre got up and went back through the dark tunnel that led to another part of our observation post.
Pierre came back. He had a large aluminum canteen with him and its sides were gleaming with cold sweat. He had three tin cups with him. He laughed and poured cold wine into the cups. I had met Pierre and André an hour before but we were pals now. They had accepted me.
"To what shall we drink?" Pierre said.
"To the little farmhouse," I said, and we all laughed and drank to the little farmhouse. We looked and it was still almost intact. The wine was cold and it was beautiful.
We sat in companionable silence watching the scene below us. The German guns were firing fast. We knew that a division of Germans had orders to break through. A division is 15,000 men. That's a lot of men. They were all there in front of us. Some were to the right, thousands of them were behind the hill from which the battery was firing. Thousands were to the left. The French guns were firing fast but we couldn't hear them as well; we were so much closer to the German guns. When a shell leaves a gun it whistles for perhaps five seconds. We could see the flashes of the German guns, hear the whistle and then hear the dull boom.
Cooper and Downs and I had split up. They had given each of us an accompanying officer to take care of us. The last five miles of my trip had to be made on foot. That wasn't good because it had rained the night before and the paths were ankle-deep in mud. The last two miles weren't easy. But they were interesting. A young lieutenant was with me. We'd cross a road and bump into a queer-looking concrete object; a pillbox commanding every horizon. Guns would bristle from a dozen slits in the concrete. An anti-tank ditch would stop us then. It meant destruction for any German tank that blundered into it.
Of course we didn't know then that General Corap's army was beginning to crack at Sedan and at Abbeville. We thought we were watching a great army. We didn't know that there weren't shells for those nice-looking guns. We didn't know that the General Staff had nothing at all to combat the sixty-ton tanks that would be coming over soon. We only knew that the soldiers were fine and that the officers we met were gay and friendly and that they were filled with confidence and with a fierce hatred of Germany.
Then came the last mile and the lieutenant laughed and said that from now on we'd be under observation by the Germans. There were two open fields to be crossed. The German shells had been dropping here all morning. There is a technique about crossing open fields at the front. The young lieutenant asks you whether the restaurants in Paris are still as good as ever. You light a cigarette and start walking casually across the field with him. And you tell him about the food in Paris. You start with the pâté maison at Pierre's, then touch on the fish at Armenonville and by the time you are discussing the small wild strawberries that Maxim serves you are safely across. Of course you're sweating a little.
Then finally you are at the last outpost. You go down into a large dugout and for a while watch the colonel in action. He has men at telephones and others with maps and he sits with his staff. His command has the fight of its life on its hands today. Earlier in the day, prisoners had been captured. I had talked to them. I had read instructions taken from their pockets. "Stand fast," they read, "if you retreat you will be court-martialed." The instructions were signed, "Your Fuehrer." Yes, the colonel had a fight on his hands. He knew that 15,000 men had been ordered to break through his lines or else. But he didn't seem worried.
"How long you been here?" Pierre asked me suddenly.
"Four days and four nights."
"You like it?" André asked.
Like it? That wasn't a tough question to answer. At this moment I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world. I wasn't with the army, I was in front of the army. A month ago I was listening to Eddy Duchin and loving it; I was having a drink with my colleagues at Colliers and loving that. I was worried about Carl Hubbell's left arm and Mel Ott's legs. Now? Now I was in a steel-and-concrete observation post in No Man's Land, watching flashes from German guns a mile away, listening to the roar of French guns in the rear. Like it? Hell! I loved it. Today the front was mine.
"Le Boche,"--'André said, and there was excitement in his voice.
I never met a French Army man who ever referred to the Germans as anything but "le Boche." They never said Germans. I looked through the slit and the woods seemed quiet. Then I looked up. It was a Messerschmitt. That's a good plane. He was flying lazily down our valley. By now this valley belonged to us. He flew quite close to us and Pierre swore very indelicately in French. His right wing almost kissed our side of the hill but, of course, he didn't know we were there. He was up for reconnaissance. Then, miraculously, two black specks appeared. I knew where they had come from. I'd spent last night there at that little lopsided ridiculous airdrome. Then they weren't specks. They were French Moranes---small, maneuverable ships. Nothing like the Messerschmitt. But nothing is, except the English Hurricane and Spitfire.
The Messerschmitt wheeled quickly. We watched and the guns suddenly stopped. The three planes wheeled all over the valley in front of us. Then one of the French planes seemed to get tired. When planes are shot they invariably blow up in a glorious cloud of flame and smoke. It's always like that in the movies, anyhow. Actually planes don't always die spectacularly. They die slowly. The French plane wobbled and then glided down happily in back of us. It seemed to be well under control, but it was out of the fight.
Now it was one against one. A Messerschmitt against a Morane. The Messerschmitt dived at the Morane and I held my breath. Eight hours ago I had sat in a Morane.
"It is simple," the pilot explained. "You hold the wheel with your left hand. When the Boche gets within the circle of your arm, your right hand presses this button on the dashboard. Simple? That releases your guns, 'Dop, dop, dop.'"
That's what the pilot of that little Morane was doing now. Within two minutes one of these pilots would be dead. It isn't fun seeing men killed. I see men killed quite often, now, but it's hard to get accustomed to it.
The experts could tell you the maneuvers. The Messerschmitt was above the Morane and then suddenly the little French plane raised its nose in the air. He raised his nose and gained attitude and suddenly he was on top of the Messerschmitt. Pierre grabbed my arm. I realized suddenly that my mouth was dry, and that the neckband of my shirt was too small. I've seen all the great fighters of our time but I never saw anyone like this anonymous French pilot. He was up against superior speed, superior armament, superior maneuverability. And yet he wasn't getting hurt.
Then suddenly the Messerschmitt wheeled sharply to the right and passed perhaps within two hundred yards of our little nest. And the Morane was a hundred yards behind him. The Morane was firing. I couldn't see the lead but I could see smoke trailing: from the wings. They hit something. The pilot? I don't know. You aim for the pilot now in air fights. His motor is armored too well. Shoot off half his tail and he can still hobble to the ground; aim for the pilot.
I think the pilot was hit. The Messerschmitt wobbled questioningly, uncertainly, and then dropped rather slowly into the woods a mile away, the woods which hid the German battery that had been sending shells at that farmhouse all day.
It was very quiet, the guns of both sides hadn't resumed and, ridiculously, birds were singing protestingly above us. There was a phone at Pierre's elbow. Every ten minutes he had talked into the phone. He had usually said, in French, "Nothing to report."
Now he said it again. He was talking to a dugout two miles back. "Nothing to mention, everything is quiet, Captain." He was right, of course. Only a reporter who didn't know any better would be tense and excited at what he had seen these past few hours.
My escorting lieutenant had appeared from somewhere. We said good-bye to Pierre and André and started back. It was a long walk and then the darkness fell like a quick, black blanket. It began to rain; slow, miserable rain. There was no path to guide us. Now and then one of us would slip and more than once we ran into barbed wire. But we couldn't show a light, couldn't even smoke. Finally we got to a small village where troops were quartered. We went into headquarters. A dozen officers sat around smoking. It had been a hard day for them. One of them grinned and said unexpectedly, "On les aura."
They all smiled and something came back to their faces. "On les aura" is an expression made famous by General Pétain during the last war. He was at Verdun and things were bad. He sent one three-word message to Paris: "On les aura." It means, "We will get them."
The men around me were smiling now. One found nothing but supreme confidence at the front. Defeatist talk was the theme song of the loafers in the Paris bars. You never heard that kind of talk from soldiers at the front. They knew they were in a tough war but they felt too that they were going to win---or die. You got to believe them. I did.
I walked outside into the night. The guns were roaring again but that is a sound that is unheard after a while. Like the sound of city street traffic, it is all part of the scene.
It was pitch-black, but now and then flashes from the guns would streak upward through the night to light it for a moment. Trucks were rumbling past. Through the blackness I could distinguish a white square on the side of each truck. Inside the white square there was a red cross. These trucks were going away from the front. They were all full. One truck stopped and there was incredibly the sound of swearing in an unmistakable American voice. This was one of a group of ambulances belonging to the American field service. One after another they passed ghostlike through the night. There were a lot of them. They told the story of what had happened. It had been a tough day.
BOB MONTGOMERY had come over to join a group of Americans who were driving ambulances. Downs and I were back in Paris again trying to think up a new excuse to get to the front. Meanwhile the three of us ate at Maxim's and at Pierre's and the war seemed quite far away. Nearly every day we'd drop into the American Embassy to see the Military Attaché, Colonel Fuller, the smartest military man I ever met. Gradually the red pins on his war map were coming closer to Paris. The débâcle of Sedan and Abbeville had come and gone. We even survived the horrible nightmare of Dunkirk. Just---we thought---a temporary setback. They'd never take Paris.
Colonel Fuller was the only man in Paris who knew what was coming. He advised us to make plans to get out. He told us "off the record" that the French Army wouldn't even bother to defend Paris. We listened patiently and then went to the Crillon or the Ritz bar and said cheerfully, "Fuller is a great guy but he doesn't know what he's talking about." Of course he was one hundred per cent right.
It was Montgomery who gave us the excuse of getting to the front again. He was leaving for Beauvais to join his group. Why not stow away in his ambulance? So we packed our knapsacks again and we went off gaily, bouncing happily inside the brand-new ambulance. It was a lot of fun---until we got to Beauvais.
At first it is hard to watch men die, but after a while you get quite accustomed to it. Actually they make it easier for you because they die very quietly. The wounded don't cry. In a way it is harder to watch a city die. Beauvais was a middle-aged city still in the prime of life and it died very gallantly but not at all quietly. Perhaps the story of the life and death of this city and of the manner in which it was killed might be worth the telling.
It was an ordinary French city, proud of its beautiful cathedral and of its home for the aged. It boasted a little, too, of a large school for boys which was on top of a hill overlooking the city. The city was very close to the front, so close that the wounded were brought directly to it from the front.
Downs, Montgomery and I met the city at ten o'clock one night. The city was very beautiful at night but perhaps that was because nearly a third of it was in flames. The Germans had been bombing it all day and, quite by chance no doubt, they had scored a direct hit on the home for the aged. They had also scored a direct hit on a hospital in the center of the town, which was unfortunate because the hospital had been full of badly wounded. The school for boys on top of the hill had been turned into a front-line hospital and the wounded were brought there.
Orders had been given for the ambulances to move the wounded out of this hospital to the railroad station. There was a train there to take the wounded south. Twenty American ambulances did the work. They worked nearly all night loading up, then in pitch darkness crawling down the winding road to the station and afterwards returning for more.
I stayed at the hospital. I went into the operating room and it was very busy. There were two surgeons and three operating tables. A surgeon would look at the wound and then nod to an assistant. The wounded man would be put on the table and an ether cone would be placed over his face. Then his clothes would be ripped off and the surgeons would work quickly, deftly. Each surgeon had three assistants who weren't doctors at all.
A French artilleryman was on the table waiting and he was smiling gently and talking very fast. "It was good. It was good." The captain caught my questioning eye and he smiled. "Ten to one we got. There were only a few of us with our seventy-fives. The tanks came at us and we fired and fired and we destroyed those tanks as fast as they came to us. Each of our seventy-fives got ten tanks before they got us. The general had said, 'Hold your place or die.' We did. Only I am left, but each of us got ten tanks."
Then this captain raised his hand to his lips and kissed it. "I tasted Boche blood," he said quietly, and then he laughed much too loudly and repeated, "I tasted Boche blood." He kept laughing and the surgeon put a needle into the fleshy part of his arm, and then the surgeon shook his head and motioned to the orderlies to take the captain off the table. It was a pity the surgeon couldn't have done anything for this man but the surgeon knew what he was doing.
Both surgeons had been doing this ten hours now and they looked tired. Everything about them was tired except their hands, which were quick and fine and sure. They had run out of rubber gloves and they worked barehanded, occasionally dipping their hands into a pail of disinfectant. This operating room had been a playroom when the hospital had been a school for boys. There were pictures painted on the wall.
They brought in a huge Senegalese. They lifted him to the table and his eyes glanced at the wall to his left. Mickey Mouse was playing on that wall and near him was Popeye the Sailor eating a can of spinach. I caught the eye of the big Senegalese and grinned and he grinned back. Then I looked down at his leg which the doctor was examining and I stopped grinning. It wasn't a pretty wound. It was just above the ankle. The surgeon felt the thigh and nodded. It was firm there. Then he took a pot of iodine and swabbed the man's thigh with it and at first I didn't understand. They started to tie the hands of the black man to the table and he didn't like that. They do that because often the wounded get delirious as they are getting the ether and they thrash their arms around. But he let down quietly enough and they put the ether cone on his face. Then the doctor reached for something and he held the man's thigh with one hand and I walked to the next table.
I stayed there an hour, and it wasn't morbid curiosity because no one in his right mind would be curious about the reactions of men in a first-line operating room. I was there because this was my trade.
I mean my trade is to find out everything it is possible to find out about war.
One by one, men were brought in and then a little later brought out again and not once was there a sound in the room except for the crisp directions from the surgeons and, of course, the sound of the guns, if you count that as a sound.
I left when they brought two women in who had been hurt in the bombing of the home for the aged. Both were very old but neither said anything. The wounded don't cry, not even the civilian wounded. But I left.
Outside the night was heavy with darkness. Except, of course, for the flames from the burning part of the town. But that was half a mile away. The darkness partially hid hundreds of still forms lying on the ground in front of a long shed where the wounded were first brought.
I picked my way among them and went into the shed. Three nurses and one doctor were there. There were eighty-four wounded soldiers lying on the floor, sitting on chairs, on benches, and there were three wounded women lying there too. The nurses were examining wounds, putting disinfectants on the wounds, bandaging them. They were very wonderful. They gave their patience and their skill in the same abundance to a dull-witted black Senegalese and to a handsome French captain. One of the nurses stopped for a breath and she told me proudly that she and the other two nurses were from Beauvais; had been born here, and would die here. I was getting a warm friendly feeling for this city. This after all is the story of the city and I mention the hospital and the wounded merely as incidents connected with the death of the city; symptoms perhaps of how it died and why.
The night was alive with small noises---the sounds of the ambulances coming in; the whispers of the stretcher bearers; the "Easy, boy, easy, you'll be all right" of the American ambulance drivers. Now and then they would have to wait a few minutes for a load and then I would have a smoke with Larry Morgan whom his pals called Man-Mountain Dean because of his black beard; with the ridiculously youthful-looking Jon Thorenson or with Carl Quigley or Dave Stetson or Montgomery or Jack James.
Peter Muir, in charge of the drivers, was everywhere at once giving directions. The boys whispered that he hadn't been to bed in four days.
Montgomery drove up. Picture audiences. who used to watch the dapper white-tied Montgomery wouldn't have recognized this untidy apparition with blood on his hands and with grease and dirt on his uniform.
"The train is about full," he said gloomily. "This'll be our last load. These poor devils will have to stay here."
I went down to the railroad station with the last load. The long train stood there looking ghostlike in the darkness. Perhaps two hundred soldiers were lying on the station platform waiting their turn. But there was only room for the most urgent cases. It was very quiet there at the station. Downs and I helped pull out the stretchers. Then we'd hand them into the cars. We unloaded three of the four from our ambulance.
"No more room," a man in the car said tersely.
"We'll find room," Jack James said simply. James is tall and hard. I walked through the cars with him. Each one was filled. There wasn't an inch of room left on the train. We had to bring our lone casualty back up the winding road to the hill top. I sat in the front with Montgomery and James.
James said, "I haven't the nerve to tell him."
He and Montgomery looked. at me. "He'd never understand my French," I said.
Montgomery took a deep breath, lit a cigarette and climbed down from the ambulance. He put the cigarette between the boy's lips and said, "There's another train in a few hours, kid. Don't worry. You'll be all right."
We drove back to the camp the boys had made under a large shed that had recently sheltered horses. The night was just beginning to get tired of it all and there was a glimmer of gray in the East. We sat under the shed on straw and drank whiskey and muddy water and it was good. Some of the boys flopped down on the straw and went right to sleep. I wish we could have taken the stretchers out of the ambulances and slept on them but the stretchers were full of rather horrible reminders of the many wounded who had lain in them today and even at the front it is silly not to consider infection. It's bad enough being killed by a shell or a bomb-who wants to be killed by a bug?
I had been at or near the front with the French Army for some time now and it was exciting to be with Americans again. We talked of colleges we had been to and of football and of a man named Roosevelt. One of the Boston men said, "Tonight I'd slug anyone who made a crack about Roosevelt." I liked that and I took out a pack of American cigarettes I'd been hoarding and gave it to him. I regretted it later and maybe sometime I can get it back from the President.
We were on a hill and from it we could see the city dying. The light from the flames was dull now because the dawn was thinning it out, so we slept after a fashion, but in an hour a man blew three notes on a bugle and that woke us. In this city that was the "alerte." That meant German planes are coming.
We walked sleepily out from under the shed and into the open field. It was bright daylight although it was only five-thirty. We heard the drone of the planes and knew without looking up that these were the two-motored Dornier bombers. But we looked up. There were only six of them flying in their familiar triangle with the odd two following the base of the triangle. We yawned. This hadn't been worth waking up for. But then we saw another formation of six following and another and another....
They weren't high. They started dropping bombs. They were big bombs. We lay down in the fields, for there were no ditches, no holes to get into. We lay there looking at them. A few anti-aircraft guns began to bark foolishly. The planes came over us. The bombs dropped close to us. They made a heavy noise and you shook your head to clear it of the concussion.
"There's a hundred of them," someone called from behind a bush.
"I count one hundred and twenty," someone else said.
The bombs fell and whistled loudly and then exploded and you wished you were somewhere else. They were falling on our city. Thank God that one train had pulled out! The bombs kept falling forever. Five minutes can be forever. Then the planes disappeared into the sun. They hadn't been interrupted once.
Someone made coffee. We all felt tired now. A French artilleryman who had been manning an anti-aircraft gun in the next field came over for coffee. He had strong glasses with him. He had counted one hundred and twenty-six. That's a lot of planes.
Jack James said, "Anyone who says he isn't scared up here is either a liar or a damn fool."
We all nodded agreement. It was nice to know that James had been scared a little. He was the best of us, we all felt, tough, hard-working and with the gentleness of big, tough men. Once he said that he had been scared, we all felt better and we could lift our filled coffee cups without spilling more than a few drops. The planes came back three times within the next two hours. The tension drained us of vitality. In disgust James and Larry Morgan and Fuller pulled straw over them and went back to sleep.
Now a lazy column of black smoke came up from our city. Our city had been given its death blow and we knew it. It could never be proud of its lovely cathedral again. Its few small factories were smoldering sullenly.
Two hours after the planes had left for the last time there were three dull explosions. The planes had dropped delayed-action bombs. That's bad, because the ambulance men go into wreckage as soon as the planes leave, trying to save some people, and the thought that these time bombs may be lurking underneath a destroyed wall makes you work very quickly and sometimes you can't work as efficiently---Mind you, it doesn't prevent them from going into the buildings which are still hotly writhing in their death agony, but it forces them to work too quickly.
Edwin Watts was hurt by one of these. He was in a building when a delayed bomb exploded near by. The wall of the house began to totter and somehow Watts braced himself against the wall and held it upright until the injured were gotten out. He wasn't badly hurt.
Orders came from somewhere for us to leave the dying city. We wanted to ask questions: What of the boy we couldn't get on the train last night? What of that smiling nurse who had said she was born in the city and would die in it? What of the big Senegalese? We had orders to get out.
That meant that there was nothing the boys could do. They and their twenty ambulances had to move back a few miles. They hated to leave this city because they had come to love it and if that seems silly maybe we all get a little silly hearing guns all the time and watching bombers drop death encased in steel containers. Silly or not, it is true. I hated to leave it and didn't have the excuse the ambulance drivers had. They thought they could still do something. I was a parasite, watching things, giving nothing, helping none. But I hated to leave this dying city.
A soldier came to the camp and said that the Colonel in charge wanted to see. Downs and me. His headquarters was in an old château, spotlessly clean. We stood in front of him like two schoolboys caught playing hookey. We knew that we had no right being this far up, and he knew that we knew it.
"You'll have to report to the General in charge of this part of the army," he said. "It is a rule. You have no right to be here. The Deuxième Bureau has phoned me and given me orders. Proceed immediately to Lyons-la-Forêt and report to the General."
We said we couldn't leave; we had no means of transportation.
"You can walk," he said abruptly. "It's only forty kilometers."
I pointed to what was probably the healthiest ankle in France.
"Mais, mon Colonel, the ankle, you can see."
The Colonel expressed sympathy and he smiled with his tired gray-blue eyes and said, "I will arrange transportation."
He gave us a car and a driver but after we'd gone a while we asked the driver to stop. We wanted to take another look at this little city. It was dying, all right. Those four ugly columns of black smoke were thick now. Mind you, in the military sense, the loss of this little city meant nothing. There were no munition factories here. It wasn't any kind of military base. It was just a small, insignificant French city that fate had tossed into the path of the ruthless god of war. Its death did not help the German cause in the slightest.
We watched it burn for a little while and then told the driver to get on. It was a pretty silent ride. It may be that those American ambulance drivers had so flavored the city with their presence that for us it had become a part of our country. All I can say is that it was mighty tough to watch it die and some day
I'd like to meet those who killed it. I'd like to have Downs and James and Morgan and Thorenson and Montgomery and the rest of them with me. Yes, that would be nice.
We drove on and then the driver asked us if we had a map. He didn't quite know where Lyons-la-Forêt was. We had a map and we found that we were on the right road. Then we hurried on. It was strangely peaceful. The blue sky was herringboned with ripples of fleecy clouds. To the right we could hear the French guns.
"Listen to the echo of them from the left, Ken," I said. "There must be mountains off there and the sound hits the mountains and bounces back."
We approached a small village and we asked the driver to stop at a bistro. We wanted cold beer. It was warm; we hadn't slept all night; we were thirsty. We stopped at the one bistro the town had and to our surprise it was closed. We drove around the town and found it deserted. It had been completely evacuated. It gave one an eerie feeling to be walking around a lovely town like this without hearing a sound. We drove on a bit faster now. None of us knew why but all three of us---even the soldier driving---were a bit worried. Some nameless small fear seemed to be riding with us. We didn't pass a car; didn't see a plane, a tank or an ammunition wagon. The absence of life was uncanny. Then after nearly an hour we reached Lyons-la-Forêt, a lovely secluded village half hidden by heavy trees. We drove to headquarters. The General wasn't in but his aide-de-camp was. He looked puzzled when we said we had driven from Beauvais.
"What road did you take?" he asked.
I showed him our map with the road penciled. He looked startled, then he threw back his head and roared with laughter. Downs and I looked at one another wondering what it was all about.
"You drove all the way through. . . ." Here the aide-de-camp broke down with laughter.
"Through what?" I asked.
"Through No Man's Land," he managed to choke out.
Downs and I felt ourselves getting pale. No wonder we had felt a strange tension. No wonder the village through which we passed was evacuated.
"I guess those weren't echoes we heard," Downs said. "Will you join us in a drink, mon Capitaine? I think after that the drinks should be on us."
(Note to Ken Downs---Still we had a lot of fun that day, Ken, didn't we? Remember that grand Bordeaux we had at the Captain's mess? Remember the ride back to Paris---ninety miles in ninety minutes? Remember how envious the rest of them were when we walked into the Ritz bar and told them where we'd been and what stories we'd gotten? It was fun working with you, Ken. We must do it again some time.)