Bourmont, December 20.Such a strange, incredible thing has happened,—a thing that has upset all my preconceived ideas of human nature. It began with Malotzzi. Malotzzi as his name betrays is a “wop;” he is also the smallest fellow in the company which contains many small men. Nor is he only small, but with his thin olive-tinted face and his slender body, he looks so delicate, so ethereal that you feel a breath of wind might fairly blow him away. To the company he is “a good kid, quiet, never makes any trouble.” To me he has always seemed an elfin, changeling creature, a strayed pixie, whose impishness has turned to gentleness. Child of the tenements that he is, he is possessed of the most exquisite old-fashioned courtesy that I have ever yet encountered; and he has the starriest eyes of any mortal born.Not long ago he came to the counter to show me a post-card from his sweetheart. It had an ugly picture of a red brick city block upon it, and the message scrawled in an unformed hand beneath contained little except the simple declaration that when he came home she would go with him to the photographer’s over the candy store at the corner and they would have their pictures taken together. Yet no flaming and lyric love-letter could have rendered him more naively proud. Malotzzi with a sweetheart! It was absurd, he was nothing but a child! I can well believe that Malotzzi wouldn’t make a very “snappy” soldier.This afternoon when the company was out for drill, a certain Second Lieutenant discovered that Malotzzi hadn’t got his pack rolled up right. This was not the first time he had offended in this manner. The Lieutenant had warned him. He was angry. He took Malotzzi over to the bath-house, stripped off his blouse, tied his hands so he couldn’t struggle, and beat him with a gunstrap until he fainted.The story flashed around the camp. When I came back from supper I found the boys at white-heat with indignation. They fairly seethed with anger. I think if the Lieutenant had happened in, they might have killed him. Presently a little crowd carried Malotzzi in. They rolled back his sleeves and showed me the great purple welts upon his arms. His back was all like that, they said. He had to be held up in order to keep his feet.“You had better take him to the hospital,” I told them.They carried him out again. He is at the hospital now, where he is likely to stay for some time. His lungs are delicate and the beating caused congestion. The medical officer made a report and the Lieutenant has been placed under arrest.I have never met the Lieutenant to know him, but curiously, the Secretary, who messes with the officers, asserts that of all the men there this Lieutenant has always appeared as the most clean-spoken, the most cultured, the most gentlemanly. And the boys have always considered him a very decent sort. The whole thing is absolutely and blankly incomprehensible to me. There is one explanation the boys offer; which is that the Lieutenant, having a yellow streak, has lost his nerve at the prospect of going to the front, and has done this as a desperate expedient, in the hope of being dishonorably discharged. The only other possible explanation which I can come upon is that the Lieutenant has a German name.Bourmont, December 23.The burning question that is on every lip: Will the Christmas turkeys come?We had been promised turkey. What’s more I had been promised some of that turkey too, at Company A’s mess table. Now uncertainty holds us in torment. Every sort of a rumor is rife. Some darkly insinuate that neighboring organizations have sidetracked those turkeys. Others declare that the turkeys, having been smuggled in by night, are now actually in camp among us.“Huh!” snorts my friend the Tall Kentuckian. “Funny turkeys they have in this army! I done heard those turkeys had four legs and a pair of horns!”Of course Christmas won’t be Christmas without the turkeys, but anyway we have done our best to bring Christmas into the hut. The question of Christmas trees was taken up in the Bourmont office some days ago. An application was made to the Mayor; the Mayor referred the matter to the representative of the Bureau of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry proved to be a good scout. He ruminated a while, “Mademoiselle,” said he, “this matter is so tied up with red tape, that if one were to unwind it all, it would be New Year’s before you got your tree. My advice is that you select your tree, wait until after dark, then go out, cut it down close to the ground, and cover the place carefully with snow.”Tonight when the subject of Christmas trees came up in the canteen I repeated this anecdote to the boys. It was then growing dusky. Several boys immediately disappeared. In an hour they were back again, dragging not one, but two beautiful hemlocks. We set up the more perfect one, and cut the other up for trimmings. With flags, paper festoons, Japanese lanterns, tinsel which the French call “angel’s hair,” and tree ornaments the hut was transformed in a twinkling as if by magic. Now it is no longer a muddy-floored tent, but a green bower threaded with myriad bits of bright color, and I have really never seen anything of the sort that was any prettier.Yesterday several cases of free tobacco from the Sun Tobacco Fund arrived in camp. The boys in the orderly room opened the cases last night and hunted through and through them, trying to find packages which bore the names of unmarried lady donors. Unfortunately the Misses who contributed were few and far between, but hope dies hard.“Say, mightn’t Asa be a girl?” the lads are asking me eagerly today.“Lucien ain’t a man’s name, is it?”Enclosed in each package is a postal-card on which one may, if so inclined, return thanks to the giver. The boys who are taking the trouble to write are doing it frankly with the hope that this may encourage the recipient to repetition. How to tactfully suggest this without seeming greedy is a problem whose delicacy proves difficult.“You tell me how to say it,” they tease.“Say, won’t you write it for me, please ma’am?”I saw one postal-card accomplished after an evening of concentrated effort; “Your precious and admired gift,” it began.Already Santa Claus in the person of Mr. Gatts has presented me with a beautiful white silk apron embroidered with large bunches of life-like violets.Bourmont, Christmas Day.Joyeux Noël!As I came in last night there was a great log burning on the hearth.“C’est la bouche de Noël,” said Madame and explained how it would burn all night, then Christmas morning she would take the little end that was left and put it away in the loft until the next Christmas: it would protect the house from lightning; it was a very ancient custom.Back in theSalle des AssiettesI found our table spread as for a little fête with a wonderful cake and a bottle tied up with a bouquet of chrysanthemums and long ribbon streamers of red white and blue. I was so innocent that I supposed at first that the chrysanthemums were in the bottle, an improvised vase, but Madame quickly enlightened me: “C’est le vin blanc,” she explained to my embarrassment.The Gendarme and I took counsel together as to how we could best express our feelings on this occasion toward the Family Chaput, the household having been increased over night by the arrival of the married daughter and her small boy and girl. After various projects had been considered and abandoned, we finally took the little stand from our room, dressed it with evergreen and tinsel, then heaped it with nuts, candies, chocolate bars, and little jars of jam all from the canteen, together with a few small toys, and carried it in and placed it in front of the hearth. The family appeared delighted. We observed, however, that after the first toot, baby Max’s whistle was swiftly and silently confiscated. Later whenLa Petite, the little maid-of-all-work who takes care of our rooms, came in, we had a few trinkets dug from the depths of our trunks to bestow on her. Later still I carried chocolates andconfitureto my little old ladies of the Rue Dieu.This Christmas day I fancy will be long remembered by the inhabitants of this part of France; for in every one of the villages about, our soldiers have given the French children a Christmas tree. I went to see the tree at Saint Thiebault. The ancient church, its chill interior ablaze with light, was crowded with villagers all dressed in their fête day best. The old people were just as excited and eager as the children; not one had ever seen a Christmas tree before. They stood on the pews in order to get a better view. The tree which was very large and beautiful stood just outside the altar rail. It bore a gift for every child in Saint Thiebault. While the tree was slowly being unburdened of its load, the band-master’s choir, high up in the choir-loft, sang an accompaniment. Some of the selections were of a sacred character, others frankly secular, such as Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes; but as one of the choristers remarked;“As long as we sing them slow and solemn the Frenchies won’t know the difference.”After the Christmas tree I went around to the little local hospital to take some gifts to the patients. There were half a dozen of them lying on cots in the bare barracks room, a dreary set in a drearier setting. In one corner lay a boy who muttered incoherently. He had just been brought in, they told me, and was very ill: the doctors were puzzled to know what was the matter with him. I left some little gifts for him when he should be better.It was half-past four when I reached the hut. Suddenly it popped into my head that we ought to have a Santa Claus. At half-past six Santa walked in through the door. It was Pat in a big red nose, a red peaked cap, much white cotton-batting beard and whiskers, rubber boots, the Chief’s fur coat, covered over for the night with turkey-red bunting, and a fat pack slung over one shoulder. I had just dressed him in the mess hall, and for an impromptu Santa Claus, I flatter myself he was quite effective. The boys whooped. When they discovered who it was behind that nose, they yelped like terriers.“Ain’t he the beauty! Oh you whiskers! Say Pat, kiss me quick!”We got Santa safely behind the counter and then opened the pack. It was full of foolish little things; tricks, puzzles, games, mottoes, whistles, tin trumpets, paper “hummers”. The boys went wild. It was the musical instruments that made the hit. For two hours that hut shrieked pandemonium. Every last man in the company tootled and squawked as if his life depended on it, and every last one of them was tootling a different tune.“C’est des grands gosses!” Truly, as Madame Chaput says, they’re nothing after all but so many big little boys.After the stuff was distributed the Secretary and I invited the boys to partake of hot chocolate and sandwiches. But to our disappointment they only took a languid interest in the treat. Instead of the five and six cups apiece which many often swallow, not one of them consumed more than a cup and three-quarters. Too late we realized; they had already gorged themselves on the contents of their Christmas boxes from home.Reports coming in from the village stated that one American Christmas custom had made a strong appeal to the feminine portion at least of the population. Quantities of mistletoe grow hereabouts. The French, although averring that it brings good-luck, consider it a pest and let it go at that. It took the American doughboys to enlighten theMademoisellesas to its Anglo-Saxon significance. It would be curious, I have been thinking, if the adoption of this ancient privilege should prove one of the lasting evidences of the American troops in France!As I left the canteen I learned that the boy who had been so sick at the hospital was dead.Bourmont, December 26.Last night was a wild night in the barracks. This morning the hut was full of echoes of it. Company A indeed wore a jaded look. They had had very little sleep it was explained. And it was all on account of the Christmas hummers.“I ain’t got nothin’ against you people, but I shore don’t think you gave A Company a square deal,” remarked my friend the Tall Kentuckian as he lit his cigarette at the counter.“Why, didn’t you like the present that Santa Claus brought you?” I teased.“Huh! I would shore have singed the ol’ gentleman’s whiskers for him last night if I could have caught him!” He went on to explain; “We’d just get settled down good to sleep when some guy or other would start up a-squawkin’ on one of them things. An’ Sergeant ——, well he’d had just enough to make him fightin’ mad, an’ he shore would rare around that there barracks tryin’ to find them fellers. Why, half the corporals in the outfit was marchin’ up and down the place most all the night long, shyin’ hob-nailed shoes in what they guessed was the direction of them noises.”I began to discern what a night of terror it had been.“Yes suh!” declared the Kentuckian. “There was one feller with a hummer we couldn’t get. He kept blowin’ Tipperary. He must have blowed it for two hours steady, on an’ off. I guess he had every last hob-nailed shoe in the hull barracks throwed at him.”Nor is this all. It seems I have committed a ghastlyfaux pas. I have gotten the Y. in dreadfully dutch with the officers. It is all along of the Christmas calendars. The Christmas calendars arrived at the canteen just the day before Christmas. They were designed to be sold to the boys for five cents apiece in order that they might have something to send to the folks at home as a Christmas greeting. But since they reached us so very late the Secretary and I decided we didn’t have the face to put them on sale.“Let’s give them away,” I suggested, and on his agreeing, laid them in heaps on the counter and invited the boys to help themselves. The boys weren’t bashful. They helped themselves with enthusiasm and zeal. They came back for more and more. For the rest of the day no one did a thing at the hut but sit at the tables and address envelopes. One boy, I learned later, sent off as many as thirty-five. I was awfully pleased to have the boys appreciate the calendars so. And I never once for a moment thought of the censors; but presently I heard from them. The company censors, two of the younger lieutenants, had been looking forward, it seems, to some leisurely care-free hours at Christmas. When the stacks of calendars started coming in they saw their holiday vanish into thin air, nay more, they saw themselves sitting up nights for weeks to come censoring those precious calendars. And they were swearing, raving mad. They were going to run the Y. out of the town! They were going to shut down the hut! Finally they compromised the matter with their consciences by censoring half and chucking the other half into the stove. But even then they couldn’t stop fussing and fuming over it. Tonight just to top the matter off, we received a sharp reprimand from the Business Manager at Bourmont for being so extravagant as to give the calendars away, unauthorized. Was there ever such a tragedy of good intentions?Bourmont, December 27.Today we buried the lad who died on Christmas night. I had never seen a military funeral before and I had never dreamed that such a ceremony could be so thrillingly beautiful.The company formed at three o’clock in the road in front of the canteen, then filed slowly through the streets of the little grey age-old village. The band marching at the head of the procession played theMarche Funèbreof Chopin. After the band came the officers of the company and then the firing squad of eight sharp-shooters, followed by an ambulance carrying the boy’s coffin covered with a great flag. Behind, marched the whole of Company A and after them crowded a throng of villagers. All the men in town, with the innate respect that the French have for death, stood uncovered as we passed, while many of the women watched with tears streaming down their faces.We passed through the village and down the road to the little grey-walled cemetery, ringed around with evergreens and now deep in freshly fallen snow. All about stretched virgin shining snowfields and over them to the east rose Bourmont like a dream city, etched as delicately as by a silver-point against the soft dove-colored sky.The majestic phrases of the Catholic burial service rang out clearly on the frosty air:Eternal rest grant him, O Lord,And let perpetual light shine upon him!The coffin with the great flag burning in blue and scarlet was lowered into the grave. Slowly, with perfect expression, a bugler blew the poignant, unforgettable notes of Taps. The rifles of the firing squad cracked sharply; three volleys, it was over.“Will they leave him there?” An old Frenchwoman asked one of the boys afterwards.“’Till the war is over, then likely they will send him home.”“But why? He won’t be lonely here. There will always be some one to put flowers on his grave.”Tonight I was talking to the Supply Sergeant about the lad.“I think he died of a broken heart as much as anything,” he told me. “They wouldn’t let his mother see him at the dock when we sailed. She came to say good-bye but it was against the rules. He never could get over that; he kept brooding all the time and fretting for her. I read some of her letters to him. They seemed more like a sweetheart’s than a mother’s.”The doctors, however, diagnosed his disease as spinal meningitis. They have ordered the barracks in which he slept to be quarantined. Already a half a dozen boys in quarantine have taken to their beds, but this we hope is largely due to over-stimulated imaginations. Even if the disease doesn’t spread, however, I am wondering what will become of ninety-seven lively boys bottled up for two weeks in one barracks. Already various ones have eluded the guard and come sneaking furtively into the canteen to buy their cigarettes and chocolates. Whenever one of these unfortunates is recognized a regular howl goes up all over the hut.“Outside! You’re one of the crumby ones!” they jeer, or; “Convict! Get back to your cell!”Bourmont, December 28.The worst of my job is playing dragon to the French children. In view of the fact that if allowed in the hut at all they swarm in, in such numbers as to fairly overrun it, and pester the boys with their insatiable appeals for “goom” and chocolate, it has seemed best to make a strict rule against their admission. (Besides which I don’t approve of giving them gum, for in the face of anything one can do or say they will insist on swallowing it, which is, I’m sure, not at all good for their tummies!) But in spite of this prohibition the place holds an irresistible attraction for them. At night one can often see their faces pressed flat against the isinglass windows as they peer inside; while chiefly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons they will slip slyly in, and then if the dragon isn’t on the jump to explain to each and every one in her very best French, that she is so sorry but it really is forbidden, why in a twinkling the hut becomes full of them. And they are so picturesque, so appealing, so full of shy wonder at the gramophone with the wheel that “marches by itself” that it is very hard to turn them out.Since Christmas I have been kept busy by a tiny tad of a ragamuffin with a funny round cropped black head and a face as solemnly expressionless as a little carved Buddha. He slips in among the tables and he is positively too small to be seen. The Christmas tree with its shining ornaments is his stealthy objective. In vain I explain matters politely to him; without a sound, without the hint of a flicker in his little beady black eyes, he turns and clumps out in his ridiculoussabots, only to presently slip in again. And now it seems he has lain low and sagaciously observed my habits; for returning to the hut after mess this noon, I met him trudging along the Rue Dieu, his eyes encountering mine blandly without embarrassment, his absurd little figure bulging all over with purloined Christmas tree ornaments. In the hut I found our poor tree stripped to a height of four feet from the floor of all its finery.These last few evenings the hut has been given over to writing Christmas thank-you letters home. The official writer of love letters for the company has been working overtime; not that his clients cannot write themselves, but because they feel he is more able to do justice to the subject. Every night now I see him sitting out in front of the counter, his Jewish profile bent low over the table as he covers sheet after sheet with his fine and fanciful handwriting, while next him perches anxiously the interested party, watching developments and occasionally proffering a suggestion. When it is done they must bring it to me for my approval.“That’s a real classy letter, ain’t it?” the lover will query proudly and I assure him that it is indeed.“When she gets that, I bet she’ll come across with that sweater she told me she was makin’ for me, all right!”“Say do you think that ought to be good for acartoonof cigarettes?” another one inquires.Of course there are many who, no matter what the effort, prefer to write their own. Sometimes when cleaning up the canteen tables I come upon specimens of such, first drafts discarded on account of blots. One such love letter, classic in its brevity, picked up the other day, ran:Dear Sweetheart,I am writing you a few interesting lines which I hope will be the same to you wishing you a merry Xmas and a happy New YearYour loving friendPvt. ——Of late I have been moved to speculate wonderingly on the mental processes of the American public. I have been going through the stacks of magazines in the warehouse sent from the States for one cent per to provide amusement for the doughboys’ leisure moments. Among the rest I found the Upholsterer’s Monthly, The Hardware Dealer’s Journal, The Mother’s Magazine, Fancy Work and The Modern Needleworker. I showed some of these prizes to one of the boys; “Gee, but that’s the kind of snappy stuff to send a feller over the top!” was his comment. That numbers of the Undertaker’s Journal have also been discovered among the donations from home I have heard asserted on excellent authority, but as yet I have not personally come across any.Just as we were closing tonight, Pat came up to the counter, solemnly leaned across it:“Have you seen the new shoes they’re issuin’? he demanded. “They’ve got pitchers on them so a feller can’t see his own feet!”Bourmont, January 2, 1918.Once a week our peripatetic movie-machine makes its appearance among us. Louis, the sixteen year old French operator, unpacks the big cases, sets up the apparatus, and, if our luck holds, we have a show. Owing to the short range of the little machine the screen must be hung in the middle of the hut. This means that half the audience must view the pictures from the back, the essential difference being that the lettering is then reversed; “The Jewish Picture Show,” the boys call this. But then as half of us can’t read anyway, why should we mind?The joy of the show lies in the audience. Just as soon as the lights are put out the fun begins: “Everbody watch their pocketbooks!” goes up the shout and from that moment we are never still.The curly-headed heroine makes her coquettish entrance.“Ooo la la! Oooo la la!” rises the enthusiastic welcome.A bottle is displayed; “Cognac!” the yell shakes the roof.The neglected wife begins to waver in response to the tempter’s wiles; “Now don’t forget your general orders, little lady!” admonishes an earnest voice.Lovers indulge in a prolonged embrace; “Aw quit! Quit it! Yer make me homesick!” goes up the agonized appeal.The enraptured lover stands registering ecstasy; “Hit him again, he’s coming to!” comes the derisive shout.And so it goes. The actors aren’t on the screen, they’re in the house, and truly there isn’t a dull moment on the programme!Last night, however, instead of the joyous chorus of running comment a subdued and decorous silence reigned, broken only by a few half-hearted sallies. What was the matter? I racked my brain to find the cause. All the joy had gone from the show. The evening was stale, flat and unprofitable. When the lights were lit again the mystery was immediately made plain. At one end of the counter stood an officer. I wonder if he dreamed what a spoil-sport he had been?Once a week also a lady comes from the Bourmont office to give us a French lesson; not that Company A betrays any burning desire to learn toparlez-vous, but just that it seems obviously the proper thing to do under the circumstances, so French they must be taught willy-nilly. There were two lessons to be sure in which they took a degree of interest; the lesson about buying and counting money, and the lesson about food and drink. But when they had once learned to ask the price of things and to understand the answer, and had learned the words for eggs, bread, butter, beer, ham, beefsteak, chicken and French fried potatoes, their interest lapsed until it became positive boredom. Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes.Private Dostal opened the programme; a large red-faced lad with a bland and simple cast of countenance, he is the comic balladist of the company. His first contribution was a selection popularly known among us asBeside the dyin’ boxcar, the empty hobo lay, a piece with a vast number of verses in which the dying hobo repents an ill-spent life, only, in the last line, to “jump up and hop the train.” For an encore we hadPapa Eating Noodle Soupwhich could best be described as a “gleesome, gluesome” recitative, the chorus of each of numerous verses consisting of a realistic imitation of Papa partaking of the Soup. Mr. Gatts gave us a jig. Then Bruno who, as the boys say; “Could sing pretty good, only he don’t sing nothin’ but wop,” favored us withOh Maria, prefacing his performance with the earnest admonition, “No laffin! nobody!” and after that with an Italian folk dance in which he looked more like a grotesque little punchinello than ever. Our light-weight boxing champion then gave usLove’s Old Sweet Songand the heavy-weight champion popularly known asMagulligan, together with Mr. Bruno renderedBye low my Baby, antiphonal fashion. The last number was furnished by a poilu who had wandered in, in company with one of the boys. He sang a long dramatic ballad, entitledThe Last Cuirassier, depicting some incident in the Franco-Prussian War. Just what the boys made of it I don’t know, but to me it was intensely thrilling, not on account of the words for I couldn’t catch them, but on account of the fervor, the imaginative sympathy, the martial spirit which that old fellow in his faded trench coat threw into his tones.When the show was over Pat stood up on the counter and announced that as long as all the performances had been of such superlative merit, it was impossible for the judges to decide between them. So we handed out a couple of packages of “smoking” to each one of the artists, and everybody was satisfied.Once too we had a party, an athletic stunt party. There were potato-races and sack-races, string-eating contests, three-legged and obstacle-races; but the sensational, the crowning event was, of course, the pie-race. The pies which were of French manufacture had only been arranged after difficulties: consulting theboulangèreat Bourmont I had discovered that the calendar now only allows two pie-days per week, Sunday and Wednesday; since the party was to be Friday, pie was unlawful, unless—and here the law, like all good laws allowed a loop-hole—unless the pie be made with commissary flour! The pie-race was the “dark horse” on the programme. Fearing that if the boys learned beforehand of the prospective pie not only would we be mobbed by would-be contestants but also that their interest in the rest of the programme would suffer, we had kept the pie-race a profound secret. Smuggled in when the hut was empty those pies had reposed serenely under the counter all afternoon and contrary to my fears not a boy had sniffed them! When the proper moment came the pies were placed on a board in the middle of the floor, the contestants, of whom Pat was one, knelt with their hands tied behind them. At the wordgo!they fell to. The hut howled. Then it was discovered that Corporal G. laboured under a cruel handicap;hispie was a cherry pie and every cherry had a stone in it. Half-way through his pie, Pat, jerking one hand loose, seized a large piece, plastered it on the head of his opponent opposite; the race ended in a riot. Strangely enough, when peace was restored not a trace of pie could be found anywhere,—nowhere, that is, except in the back hair of the contestants.Bourmont, January 6.Now I know how the prince in the fairy tale felt when he was bidden to climb the mountain of glass. For Bourmont Hill is sheeted with ice, and it is fairly as much as one’s life is worth to attempt to go up or down. Every morning I stand and look at that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder if I may possibly reach the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes in the shape of a French lad insabots, sometimes as a stalwart doughboy with a sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go slipping, slithering down the hill-side. In the middle of the road yelling doughboys, seated on cakes of ice, whiz by at a mad rate of speed; long before they reach the bottom of the slope, the ice-cake splinters into bits, but the doughboy shoots on downward, sprawling, spinning like a top, while you hold your breath and gape to see that his neck isn’t broken. For the French people all this supplies the sensation of a life-time; they crowd their front doors and their front yards laughing, shrieking warning or encouragement, as they watch the progress of the mad Americans up and down the hill.“If one could only have a movie of Bourmont Hill on a day like this!” sighs the Gendarme.The other day I encountered a sergeant of engineers on the hill-side.“You ought to have a sled, Little Girl,” he told me.“Well why don’t the engineers make me one?” I unthinkingly retorted.“Sure and they will!” he answered.Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have that sled made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. And as for starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just as soon attempt Niagara in a barrel.Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the canteen I wash my chocolate cups with the dishpan on the stove in order to keep the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry at the corner of the counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. At night the ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black ruin all around them. What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a vexing problem; I might I suppose take them home each night with me and sleep with them underneath my pillow. In the little umbrella-stand stoves the green wood, which comes in so freshly cut, that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined around them, simply will not burn, and the stoves will smoke,mon Dieu, how they will smoke! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes, secured shakily by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company with the stoves, and then the clouds pour forth as if we housed a captive Etna.In the barracks the boys tell me their shoes freeze to the floor over night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the sake of warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of a deadly crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an acute one. The boys who have money to burn are spending it to purchase extravagantly priced fur-lined gloves. The boys who can’t afford them, wait until they see somebody lay a pair down.The taking of baths has become an act of heroism.“Took a bath today,” growls a lad. “Think I ought to get a service stripe for that.”While another boy grins; “Gee but I’m feelin’ rich! Took a bath today and found two pair o’socks and three shirts I didn’t know I had!”“Now ain’t you sorry you cut off the bottom of your coat!” a long-coated doughboy taunts an abbreviated one. “I told you not to. First, you’re out of luck at Reveille ’cause the Top Kick can see you ain’t got no leggin’s on. An’ now before you know it, you’ll be havin’ chilblains in your knees.”“You should worry,” growls back the short-coated one. “I couldn’t stand that thing flappin’ ’round my feet no longer. An’ most of the other guys done it too.”Which is true. Before this cold spell set in, half the boys in the company had taken a slice off the bottom of their overcoats, a procedure which leads to an odd effecten masseas each has chosen his own length which means everything from knees to ankles, and drives the exasparated Loots to demanding; “D’you want to know what you look like? Well, you look likehell!”In the village streets snow-ball fights are in order. As soon as the boys start an offensive, all the inhabitants of theFaubourg de Francerun out and put up their shutters. Better to sit in the dark while the battle rages than to risk a pane of precious window-glass! Yesterday out at Iloud the boys caught the Y Secretary, a meek and mild little man, in the road and started to give him a thorough pelting. He ran for the hut, they chased him, he gained his refuge, locked the door after him; they proceeded to heap about half a ton of snow against it, making it immovable. The unhappy man had to remove a window frame and crawl out through the opening, then spend the rest of the afternoon digging out his hut door.Here at our billet our little pea-green porcelain stove with the lavender thistles growing over it has proved to be more ornamental then useful. Since the Gendarme is one of your naturally efficient souls, I feel that such practical details as building fires belong to her. If she wishes to coax and cozen the wretched thing for an hour on end, well and good. As for me I prefer to go and hug the cook stove in Madame’s parlor. French fires don’t burn the way American fires do, I tell Madame. But to her the matter is quite simple. The stove, she says, doesn’t understand English.Today I met the sergeant of engineers. Some imp impelled me to question jovially;“Where’s that sled you promised me?”“It’s almost done.” My knees went weak beneath me.Tonight I confided my apprehensions to the Gendarme. She looked at me with an unpitying eye.“The more goose you, for encouraging him,” was her cold comfort. “What are you going to do about it?”“I’m going to pray for a thaw,” I told her.Bourmont, January 8.Life at the Maison Chaput doesn’t flow quite so peacefully these days as it did before Christmas. The disturbing factor is four-year old Max, left by his mother to visit his grandparents. Max is a spoiled child according to the Chaput point of view. He is expected to walk a chalk line with his little red felt toes, and failing this, he is spanked early and often. It is unlucky for him that the fagots by the hearth afford a continual supply of handy switches.“The little Jesus will never bring you anything again at Christmas,” warns Grandmamma; “never again! And neither will thePère Nicolas!” Then she appeals to me; “All the little children in America are always well-behaved, are they not?”“But yes, certainly!” I reply, avoiding Max’s eye.Coming home in the evening I often stop on my way back to the chillySalle des Assiettes, in response to an urgent invitation, to warm myself at the fireplace. Old Monsieur will be sitting on one side of the hearth and I on the other, while Baby Max toasts his toes in their scarlet slippers on a stool between us. Sometimes they will sing for me. Monsieur had a fine voice when he was young and even now he sings with a delightful air, a sort of indescribable old gallantry that is a joy to me. When he and Max sing together the effect is irresistible.“Now we will singLe Drapeau de la France,” cries Monsieur. “We must stand for this!” And Monsieur in his gay red neck cloth and little Max in his blue checked pinafore stand up before the fire and sing with their hearts in the words “Saluons le drapeau de la France.” When they come to that line, Monsieur le Commandant veteran of 1870 and baby Max salute together.Then, “Vive la France!” I cry, and “Vive la France!” they echo.When new troops pass through town Max must always run to the door to cry “Bonjour les Américans!” a salutation which is often followed I fear by a request for cigarettes, for Max, baby that he is, enjoys a smoke, much to his grandparents’ amusement.Among the china-ware at the Maison Chaput there is a funny little jug which the Gendarme and I use for fetching hot water. It is made in the shape of a fat frog with a blue waistcoat and a pipe in one of his webbed feet. I had thought it was the famous frog who would a-wooing go, but Monsieur has his own explanation. It is the original St. Thiebault toad he declares, to tease me. Every time I come to draw a little hot water from the stove he must crack the self-same joke.“C’est le crapaud de Saint Thiebault,” he cries and baby Max pipes up; “Il a soif!”Yesterday as I was passing through the front room on my way to the canteen Monsieur stopped me to draw me into conversation. There were several neighbors present. They gathered in a ring around me. I could see they had some weighty question to put to me. After a moment’s hesitation it came out:“Pourquoi,” they demanded, “pourquoi, does the American soldier blow his nose with his fingers?”I stared, taken aback. In order to make their meaning quite clear they illustrated with expressive gestures.“Why,” I stammered, “does the poilu never do such a thing?”“But never!” they declared in chorus. “The poilu always uses his handkerchief!” And again they illustrated in pantomime.I labored to explain; the French climate had given the boys colds, and the question of laundry and clean handkerchiefs presented difficulties....“But,” declared old Monsieur sagely, “in America I have heard it is the custom. There all thehaut monde, it is said, lawyers, doctors, ministers, statesmen, blow their noses in that manner!”This was too much. I hurried from the room.This morning Monsieur accused me of being a coquette. Hotly I denied the charge. But why then, he rejoined triumphantly, had I asked for a looking-glass in my bed-room?Bourmont, January 9.Company A is going to China! Somebody heard somebody say that somebody told him that the Chaplain had said so. The boys are all excitement over the idea.“Won’t that be jolly! You’ll all be coming home with little shiny pigtails hanging down your backs!” I tease them.“Yes sir! an’ we’ll learn to eat our chow with chopsticks!” I have solemnly promised the boys that if Company A goes to China I will go too. What’s more I will learn to make Chop Suey for them. I have always wanted to visit China.Thus does the army rumor make sport of us. Reports of this sort incessantly spring up among us, flourish for a day, to be forgotten on the morrow. It is just a sign I suppose of the restlessness that is rife among the boys, the nostalgia, the rebellion at the grinding monotony of their lives. Half the men in the company, it seems, have gone to their officers begging to be transferred into one of the two divisions that have already been in the lines.“I’m sick o’ this kind o’ life; what I came over here for was to fight,” they growl.In the canteen they look at the French National Loan poster which has the Statue of Liberty on it, and speculate as to their chances of ever seeing her again.“Oh boy! but I bet there’ll be some noise on board ship when we catch sight o’ that ol’ gal again!”“They wouldn’t be breakin’ my heart if they gave out orders tonight to start for home termorrer.” The chorus groans assent. “No sir!” speaks up Private Gatts, “I don’t want to go home until I’ve killed some of them Germans.”“Aw, come off,” rises the incredulous jeer; “you know, if they’d let you, you’d start out to walk to Saint Nazaire tonight if you had to carry your full pack an’ your rife an’ your extra shoes.”To beguile the tedium they indulge in what appears to be, next to crap-shooting, the most popular indoor sport of the A. E. F.—mustache raising. I don’t believe there’s a man in the company outside of Cummings and Maggioni who hasn’t tried his luck at it. Sometimes it seems as though an epidemic of young mustaches will break out overnight as it were. The second lieutenants jeer and witticize in vain. There is one squad who have solemnly pledged themselves to remain mustachioed until they “can the Kaiser;” but for the most part, the little “Charlies” are fleeting affairs that come and go according to their owner’s whim. This makes it quite confusing for me, because no sooner have I got to know a lad with a mustache by sight, than he shaves it off and alters his appearance so that I have to learn him all over again. But even the excitement of raising a mustache and having your picture taken and sending it back home to your best girl and then waiting to hear what she will say about it, affords only a brief diversion. And when that is done, we are face to face again with the stark sheer stupidity of drilling and hiking, hiking and drilling, day after day, week in and week out, in the slush, the mud, and the rain.“Another day, another dollar,” remarks my friend Mr. Brady with philosophic resignation as he comes in from walking post at night, “Betsy the Toad-sticker,” as he familiarly terms his rifle, over his shoulder.“I sure was strong on the patriotic stuff when I enlisted,” mourns a lad cast in a less stoic mould, “but since I got over here I’ll tell the world my patriotism is all shot to pieces.”“Who called this here landSunny France, I’d like to know?” is the indignant question which someone is bound to propose at least once a day.“I’ve only seen the sun twice since I’ve been here,” complained one lad, “and then it was kind of mildewed.”“It stopped raining for three hours the other day,” remarked another, “an’ I wrote home to my folks an’ told ’em what a long dry spell we’d been having.”Altogether we are inclined to take a very pessimistic view at present of our surroundings.“This land is a thousand years behind the times,” is the reiterated comment, and who can blame them, having seen nothing of France but these tiny primitive mud-and-muck villages? “It ain’t worth fightin’ for. Why if I owned this country I’d give it to the Germans and apologize to ’em.”“It ain’t the country, it’s the people in it,” asserted another lad darkly.While the Tall Kentuckian declared, “When I came to France, the height of my ambition was to kill a German. Now the height of my ambition is to kill a Frenchman.”What can one say to them? I try fatuously to comfort by reminding them of the good time coming when we all get home again. I paint rosy pictures of a grand parade of the division up Fifth Avenue, but they are sceptical.“Huh! That won’t be for us! All the fuss will be for the National Guard and the draft guys. The reg’lars don’t never get no credit.”Then someone will start to hum the song which goes;
Bourmont, December 20.
Bourmont, December 20.
Such a strange, incredible thing has happened,—a thing that has upset all my preconceived ideas of human nature. It began with Malotzzi. Malotzzi as his name betrays is a “wop;” he is also the smallest fellow in the company which contains many small men. Nor is he only small, but with his thin olive-tinted face and his slender body, he looks so delicate, so ethereal that you feel a breath of wind might fairly blow him away. To the company he is “a good kid, quiet, never makes any trouble.” To me he has always seemed an elfin, changeling creature, a strayed pixie, whose impishness has turned to gentleness. Child of the tenements that he is, he is possessed of the most exquisite old-fashioned courtesy that I have ever yet encountered; and he has the starriest eyes of any mortal born.
Not long ago he came to the counter to show me a post-card from his sweetheart. It had an ugly picture of a red brick city block upon it, and the message scrawled in an unformed hand beneath contained little except the simple declaration that when he came home she would go with him to the photographer’s over the candy store at the corner and they would have their pictures taken together. Yet no flaming and lyric love-letter could have rendered him more naively proud. Malotzzi with a sweetheart! It was absurd, he was nothing but a child! I can well believe that Malotzzi wouldn’t make a very “snappy” soldier.
This afternoon when the company was out for drill, a certain Second Lieutenant discovered that Malotzzi hadn’t got his pack rolled up right. This was not the first time he had offended in this manner. The Lieutenant had warned him. He was angry. He took Malotzzi over to the bath-house, stripped off his blouse, tied his hands so he couldn’t struggle, and beat him with a gunstrap until he fainted.
The story flashed around the camp. When I came back from supper I found the boys at white-heat with indignation. They fairly seethed with anger. I think if the Lieutenant had happened in, they might have killed him. Presently a little crowd carried Malotzzi in. They rolled back his sleeves and showed me the great purple welts upon his arms. His back was all like that, they said. He had to be held up in order to keep his feet.
“You had better take him to the hospital,” I told them.
They carried him out again. He is at the hospital now, where he is likely to stay for some time. His lungs are delicate and the beating caused congestion. The medical officer made a report and the Lieutenant has been placed under arrest.
I have never met the Lieutenant to know him, but curiously, the Secretary, who messes with the officers, asserts that of all the men there this Lieutenant has always appeared as the most clean-spoken, the most cultured, the most gentlemanly. And the boys have always considered him a very decent sort. The whole thing is absolutely and blankly incomprehensible to me. There is one explanation the boys offer; which is that the Lieutenant, having a yellow streak, has lost his nerve at the prospect of going to the front, and has done this as a desperate expedient, in the hope of being dishonorably discharged. The only other possible explanation which I can come upon is that the Lieutenant has a German name.
Bourmont, December 23.
Bourmont, December 23.
The burning question that is on every lip: Will the Christmas turkeys come?
We had been promised turkey. What’s more I had been promised some of that turkey too, at Company A’s mess table. Now uncertainty holds us in torment. Every sort of a rumor is rife. Some darkly insinuate that neighboring organizations have sidetracked those turkeys. Others declare that the turkeys, having been smuggled in by night, are now actually in camp among us.
“Huh!” snorts my friend the Tall Kentuckian. “Funny turkeys they have in this army! I done heard those turkeys had four legs and a pair of horns!”
Of course Christmas won’t be Christmas without the turkeys, but anyway we have done our best to bring Christmas into the hut. The question of Christmas trees was taken up in the Bourmont office some days ago. An application was made to the Mayor; the Mayor referred the matter to the representative of the Bureau of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry proved to be a good scout. He ruminated a while, “Mademoiselle,” said he, “this matter is so tied up with red tape, that if one were to unwind it all, it would be New Year’s before you got your tree. My advice is that you select your tree, wait until after dark, then go out, cut it down close to the ground, and cover the place carefully with snow.”
Tonight when the subject of Christmas trees came up in the canteen I repeated this anecdote to the boys. It was then growing dusky. Several boys immediately disappeared. In an hour they were back again, dragging not one, but two beautiful hemlocks. We set up the more perfect one, and cut the other up for trimmings. With flags, paper festoons, Japanese lanterns, tinsel which the French call “angel’s hair,” and tree ornaments the hut was transformed in a twinkling as if by magic. Now it is no longer a muddy-floored tent, but a green bower threaded with myriad bits of bright color, and I have really never seen anything of the sort that was any prettier.
Yesterday several cases of free tobacco from the Sun Tobacco Fund arrived in camp. The boys in the orderly room opened the cases last night and hunted through and through them, trying to find packages which bore the names of unmarried lady donors. Unfortunately the Misses who contributed were few and far between, but hope dies hard.
“Say, mightn’t Asa be a girl?” the lads are asking me eagerly today.
“Lucien ain’t a man’s name, is it?”
Enclosed in each package is a postal-card on which one may, if so inclined, return thanks to the giver. The boys who are taking the trouble to write are doing it frankly with the hope that this may encourage the recipient to repetition. How to tactfully suggest this without seeming greedy is a problem whose delicacy proves difficult.
“You tell me how to say it,” they tease.
“Say, won’t you write it for me, please ma’am?”
I saw one postal-card accomplished after an evening of concentrated effort; “Your precious and admired gift,” it began.
Already Santa Claus in the person of Mr. Gatts has presented me with a beautiful white silk apron embroidered with large bunches of life-like violets.
Bourmont, Christmas Day.
Bourmont, Christmas Day.
Joyeux Noël!
As I came in last night there was a great log burning on the hearth.
“C’est la bouche de Noël,” said Madame and explained how it would burn all night, then Christmas morning she would take the little end that was left and put it away in the loft until the next Christmas: it would protect the house from lightning; it was a very ancient custom.
Back in theSalle des AssiettesI found our table spread as for a little fête with a wonderful cake and a bottle tied up with a bouquet of chrysanthemums and long ribbon streamers of red white and blue. I was so innocent that I supposed at first that the chrysanthemums were in the bottle, an improvised vase, but Madame quickly enlightened me: “C’est le vin blanc,” she explained to my embarrassment.
The Gendarme and I took counsel together as to how we could best express our feelings on this occasion toward the Family Chaput, the household having been increased over night by the arrival of the married daughter and her small boy and girl. After various projects had been considered and abandoned, we finally took the little stand from our room, dressed it with evergreen and tinsel, then heaped it with nuts, candies, chocolate bars, and little jars of jam all from the canteen, together with a few small toys, and carried it in and placed it in front of the hearth. The family appeared delighted. We observed, however, that after the first toot, baby Max’s whistle was swiftly and silently confiscated. Later whenLa Petite, the little maid-of-all-work who takes care of our rooms, came in, we had a few trinkets dug from the depths of our trunks to bestow on her. Later still I carried chocolates andconfitureto my little old ladies of the Rue Dieu.
This Christmas day I fancy will be long remembered by the inhabitants of this part of France; for in every one of the villages about, our soldiers have given the French children a Christmas tree. I went to see the tree at Saint Thiebault. The ancient church, its chill interior ablaze with light, was crowded with villagers all dressed in their fête day best. The old people were just as excited and eager as the children; not one had ever seen a Christmas tree before. They stood on the pews in order to get a better view. The tree which was very large and beautiful stood just outside the altar rail. It bore a gift for every child in Saint Thiebault. While the tree was slowly being unburdened of its load, the band-master’s choir, high up in the choir-loft, sang an accompaniment. Some of the selections were of a sacred character, others frankly secular, such as Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes; but as one of the choristers remarked;
“As long as we sing them slow and solemn the Frenchies won’t know the difference.”
After the Christmas tree I went around to the little local hospital to take some gifts to the patients. There were half a dozen of them lying on cots in the bare barracks room, a dreary set in a drearier setting. In one corner lay a boy who muttered incoherently. He had just been brought in, they told me, and was very ill: the doctors were puzzled to know what was the matter with him. I left some little gifts for him when he should be better.
It was half-past four when I reached the hut. Suddenly it popped into my head that we ought to have a Santa Claus. At half-past six Santa walked in through the door. It was Pat in a big red nose, a red peaked cap, much white cotton-batting beard and whiskers, rubber boots, the Chief’s fur coat, covered over for the night with turkey-red bunting, and a fat pack slung over one shoulder. I had just dressed him in the mess hall, and for an impromptu Santa Claus, I flatter myself he was quite effective. The boys whooped. When they discovered who it was behind that nose, they yelped like terriers.
“Ain’t he the beauty! Oh you whiskers! Say Pat, kiss me quick!”
We got Santa safely behind the counter and then opened the pack. It was full of foolish little things; tricks, puzzles, games, mottoes, whistles, tin trumpets, paper “hummers”. The boys went wild. It was the musical instruments that made the hit. For two hours that hut shrieked pandemonium. Every last man in the company tootled and squawked as if his life depended on it, and every last one of them was tootling a different tune.
“C’est des grands gosses!” Truly, as Madame Chaput says, they’re nothing after all but so many big little boys.
After the stuff was distributed the Secretary and I invited the boys to partake of hot chocolate and sandwiches. But to our disappointment they only took a languid interest in the treat. Instead of the five and six cups apiece which many often swallow, not one of them consumed more than a cup and three-quarters. Too late we realized; they had already gorged themselves on the contents of their Christmas boxes from home.
Reports coming in from the village stated that one American Christmas custom had made a strong appeal to the feminine portion at least of the population. Quantities of mistletoe grow hereabouts. The French, although averring that it brings good-luck, consider it a pest and let it go at that. It took the American doughboys to enlighten theMademoisellesas to its Anglo-Saxon significance. It would be curious, I have been thinking, if the adoption of this ancient privilege should prove one of the lasting evidences of the American troops in France!
As I left the canteen I learned that the boy who had been so sick at the hospital was dead.
Bourmont, December 26.
Bourmont, December 26.
Last night was a wild night in the barracks. This morning the hut was full of echoes of it. Company A indeed wore a jaded look. They had had very little sleep it was explained. And it was all on account of the Christmas hummers.
“I ain’t got nothin’ against you people, but I shore don’t think you gave A Company a square deal,” remarked my friend the Tall Kentuckian as he lit his cigarette at the counter.
“Why, didn’t you like the present that Santa Claus brought you?” I teased.
“Huh! I would shore have singed the ol’ gentleman’s whiskers for him last night if I could have caught him!” He went on to explain; “We’d just get settled down good to sleep when some guy or other would start up a-squawkin’ on one of them things. An’ Sergeant ——, well he’d had just enough to make him fightin’ mad, an’ he shore would rare around that there barracks tryin’ to find them fellers. Why, half the corporals in the outfit was marchin’ up and down the place most all the night long, shyin’ hob-nailed shoes in what they guessed was the direction of them noises.”
I began to discern what a night of terror it had been.
“Yes suh!” declared the Kentuckian. “There was one feller with a hummer we couldn’t get. He kept blowin’ Tipperary. He must have blowed it for two hours steady, on an’ off. I guess he had every last hob-nailed shoe in the hull barracks throwed at him.”
Nor is this all. It seems I have committed a ghastlyfaux pas. I have gotten the Y. in dreadfully dutch with the officers. It is all along of the Christmas calendars. The Christmas calendars arrived at the canteen just the day before Christmas. They were designed to be sold to the boys for five cents apiece in order that they might have something to send to the folks at home as a Christmas greeting. But since they reached us so very late the Secretary and I decided we didn’t have the face to put them on sale.
“Let’s give them away,” I suggested, and on his agreeing, laid them in heaps on the counter and invited the boys to help themselves. The boys weren’t bashful. They helped themselves with enthusiasm and zeal. They came back for more and more. For the rest of the day no one did a thing at the hut but sit at the tables and address envelopes. One boy, I learned later, sent off as many as thirty-five. I was awfully pleased to have the boys appreciate the calendars so. And I never once for a moment thought of the censors; but presently I heard from them. The company censors, two of the younger lieutenants, had been looking forward, it seems, to some leisurely care-free hours at Christmas. When the stacks of calendars started coming in they saw their holiday vanish into thin air, nay more, they saw themselves sitting up nights for weeks to come censoring those precious calendars. And they were swearing, raving mad. They were going to run the Y. out of the town! They were going to shut down the hut! Finally they compromised the matter with their consciences by censoring half and chucking the other half into the stove. But even then they couldn’t stop fussing and fuming over it. Tonight just to top the matter off, we received a sharp reprimand from the Business Manager at Bourmont for being so extravagant as to give the calendars away, unauthorized. Was there ever such a tragedy of good intentions?
Bourmont, December 27.
Bourmont, December 27.
Today we buried the lad who died on Christmas night. I had never seen a military funeral before and I had never dreamed that such a ceremony could be so thrillingly beautiful.
The company formed at three o’clock in the road in front of the canteen, then filed slowly through the streets of the little grey age-old village. The band marching at the head of the procession played theMarche Funèbreof Chopin. After the band came the officers of the company and then the firing squad of eight sharp-shooters, followed by an ambulance carrying the boy’s coffin covered with a great flag. Behind, marched the whole of Company A and after them crowded a throng of villagers. All the men in town, with the innate respect that the French have for death, stood uncovered as we passed, while many of the women watched with tears streaming down their faces.
We passed through the village and down the road to the little grey-walled cemetery, ringed around with evergreens and now deep in freshly fallen snow. All about stretched virgin shining snowfields and over them to the east rose Bourmont like a dream city, etched as delicately as by a silver-point against the soft dove-colored sky.
The majestic phrases of the Catholic burial service rang out clearly on the frosty air:
Eternal rest grant him, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon him!
The coffin with the great flag burning in blue and scarlet was lowered into the grave. Slowly, with perfect expression, a bugler blew the poignant, unforgettable notes of Taps. The rifles of the firing squad cracked sharply; three volleys, it was over.
“Will they leave him there?” An old Frenchwoman asked one of the boys afterwards.
“’Till the war is over, then likely they will send him home.”
“But why? He won’t be lonely here. There will always be some one to put flowers on his grave.”
Tonight I was talking to the Supply Sergeant about the lad.
“I think he died of a broken heart as much as anything,” he told me. “They wouldn’t let his mother see him at the dock when we sailed. She came to say good-bye but it was against the rules. He never could get over that; he kept brooding all the time and fretting for her. I read some of her letters to him. They seemed more like a sweetheart’s than a mother’s.”
The doctors, however, diagnosed his disease as spinal meningitis. They have ordered the barracks in which he slept to be quarantined. Already a half a dozen boys in quarantine have taken to their beds, but this we hope is largely due to over-stimulated imaginations. Even if the disease doesn’t spread, however, I am wondering what will become of ninety-seven lively boys bottled up for two weeks in one barracks. Already various ones have eluded the guard and come sneaking furtively into the canteen to buy their cigarettes and chocolates. Whenever one of these unfortunates is recognized a regular howl goes up all over the hut.
“Outside! You’re one of the crumby ones!” they jeer, or; “Convict! Get back to your cell!”
Bourmont, December 28.
Bourmont, December 28.
The worst of my job is playing dragon to the French children. In view of the fact that if allowed in the hut at all they swarm in, in such numbers as to fairly overrun it, and pester the boys with their insatiable appeals for “goom” and chocolate, it has seemed best to make a strict rule against their admission. (Besides which I don’t approve of giving them gum, for in the face of anything one can do or say they will insist on swallowing it, which is, I’m sure, not at all good for their tummies!) But in spite of this prohibition the place holds an irresistible attraction for them. At night one can often see their faces pressed flat against the isinglass windows as they peer inside; while chiefly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons they will slip slyly in, and then if the dragon isn’t on the jump to explain to each and every one in her very best French, that she is so sorry but it really is forbidden, why in a twinkling the hut becomes full of them. And they are so picturesque, so appealing, so full of shy wonder at the gramophone with the wheel that “marches by itself” that it is very hard to turn them out.
Since Christmas I have been kept busy by a tiny tad of a ragamuffin with a funny round cropped black head and a face as solemnly expressionless as a little carved Buddha. He slips in among the tables and he is positively too small to be seen. The Christmas tree with its shining ornaments is his stealthy objective. In vain I explain matters politely to him; without a sound, without the hint of a flicker in his little beady black eyes, he turns and clumps out in his ridiculoussabots, only to presently slip in again. And now it seems he has lain low and sagaciously observed my habits; for returning to the hut after mess this noon, I met him trudging along the Rue Dieu, his eyes encountering mine blandly without embarrassment, his absurd little figure bulging all over with purloined Christmas tree ornaments. In the hut I found our poor tree stripped to a height of four feet from the floor of all its finery.
These last few evenings the hut has been given over to writing Christmas thank-you letters home. The official writer of love letters for the company has been working overtime; not that his clients cannot write themselves, but because they feel he is more able to do justice to the subject. Every night now I see him sitting out in front of the counter, his Jewish profile bent low over the table as he covers sheet after sheet with his fine and fanciful handwriting, while next him perches anxiously the interested party, watching developments and occasionally proffering a suggestion. When it is done they must bring it to me for my approval.
“That’s a real classy letter, ain’t it?” the lover will query proudly and I assure him that it is indeed.
“When she gets that, I bet she’ll come across with that sweater she told me she was makin’ for me, all right!”
“Say do you think that ought to be good for acartoonof cigarettes?” another one inquires.
Of course there are many who, no matter what the effort, prefer to write their own. Sometimes when cleaning up the canteen tables I come upon specimens of such, first drafts discarded on account of blots. One such love letter, classic in its brevity, picked up the other day, ran:
Dear Sweetheart,I am writing you a few interesting lines which I hope will be the same to you wishing you a merry Xmas and a happy New YearYour loving friendPvt. ——
Dear Sweetheart,
I am writing you a few interesting lines which I hope will be the same to you wishing you a merry Xmas and a happy New Year
Your loving friend
Pvt. ——
Of late I have been moved to speculate wonderingly on the mental processes of the American public. I have been going through the stacks of magazines in the warehouse sent from the States for one cent per to provide amusement for the doughboys’ leisure moments. Among the rest I found the Upholsterer’s Monthly, The Hardware Dealer’s Journal, The Mother’s Magazine, Fancy Work and The Modern Needleworker. I showed some of these prizes to one of the boys; “Gee, but that’s the kind of snappy stuff to send a feller over the top!” was his comment. That numbers of the Undertaker’s Journal have also been discovered among the donations from home I have heard asserted on excellent authority, but as yet I have not personally come across any.
Just as we were closing tonight, Pat came up to the counter, solemnly leaned across it:
“Have you seen the new shoes they’re issuin’? he demanded. “They’ve got pitchers on them so a feller can’t see his own feet!”
Bourmont, January 2, 1918.
Bourmont, January 2, 1918.
Once a week our peripatetic movie-machine makes its appearance among us. Louis, the sixteen year old French operator, unpacks the big cases, sets up the apparatus, and, if our luck holds, we have a show. Owing to the short range of the little machine the screen must be hung in the middle of the hut. This means that half the audience must view the pictures from the back, the essential difference being that the lettering is then reversed; “The Jewish Picture Show,” the boys call this. But then as half of us can’t read anyway, why should we mind?
The joy of the show lies in the audience. Just as soon as the lights are put out the fun begins: “Everbody watch their pocketbooks!” goes up the shout and from that moment we are never still.
The curly-headed heroine makes her coquettish entrance.
“Ooo la la! Oooo la la!” rises the enthusiastic welcome.
A bottle is displayed; “Cognac!” the yell shakes the roof.
The neglected wife begins to waver in response to the tempter’s wiles; “Now don’t forget your general orders, little lady!” admonishes an earnest voice.
Lovers indulge in a prolonged embrace; “Aw quit! Quit it! Yer make me homesick!” goes up the agonized appeal.
The enraptured lover stands registering ecstasy; “Hit him again, he’s coming to!” comes the derisive shout.
And so it goes. The actors aren’t on the screen, they’re in the house, and truly there isn’t a dull moment on the programme!
Last night, however, instead of the joyous chorus of running comment a subdued and decorous silence reigned, broken only by a few half-hearted sallies. What was the matter? I racked my brain to find the cause. All the joy had gone from the show. The evening was stale, flat and unprofitable. When the lights were lit again the mystery was immediately made plain. At one end of the counter stood an officer. I wonder if he dreamed what a spoil-sport he had been?
Once a week also a lady comes from the Bourmont office to give us a French lesson; not that Company A betrays any burning desire to learn toparlez-vous, but just that it seems obviously the proper thing to do under the circumstances, so French they must be taught willy-nilly. There were two lessons to be sure in which they took a degree of interest; the lesson about buying and counting money, and the lesson about food and drink. But when they had once learned to ask the price of things and to understand the answer, and had learned the words for eggs, bread, butter, beer, ham, beefsteak, chicken and French fried potatoes, their interest lapsed until it became positive boredom. Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.
For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes.
Private Dostal opened the programme; a large red-faced lad with a bland and simple cast of countenance, he is the comic balladist of the company. His first contribution was a selection popularly known among us asBeside the dyin’ boxcar, the empty hobo lay, a piece with a vast number of verses in which the dying hobo repents an ill-spent life, only, in the last line, to “jump up and hop the train.” For an encore we hadPapa Eating Noodle Soupwhich could best be described as a “gleesome, gluesome” recitative, the chorus of each of numerous verses consisting of a realistic imitation of Papa partaking of the Soup. Mr. Gatts gave us a jig. Then Bruno who, as the boys say; “Could sing pretty good, only he don’t sing nothin’ but wop,” favored us withOh Maria, prefacing his performance with the earnest admonition, “No laffin! nobody!” and after that with an Italian folk dance in which he looked more like a grotesque little punchinello than ever. Our light-weight boxing champion then gave usLove’s Old Sweet Songand the heavy-weight champion popularly known asMagulligan, together with Mr. Bruno renderedBye low my Baby, antiphonal fashion. The last number was furnished by a poilu who had wandered in, in company with one of the boys. He sang a long dramatic ballad, entitledThe Last Cuirassier, depicting some incident in the Franco-Prussian War. Just what the boys made of it I don’t know, but to me it was intensely thrilling, not on account of the words for I couldn’t catch them, but on account of the fervor, the imaginative sympathy, the martial spirit which that old fellow in his faded trench coat threw into his tones.
When the show was over Pat stood up on the counter and announced that as long as all the performances had been of such superlative merit, it was impossible for the judges to decide between them. So we handed out a couple of packages of “smoking” to each one of the artists, and everybody was satisfied.
Once too we had a party, an athletic stunt party. There were potato-races and sack-races, string-eating contests, three-legged and obstacle-races; but the sensational, the crowning event was, of course, the pie-race. The pies which were of French manufacture had only been arranged after difficulties: consulting theboulangèreat Bourmont I had discovered that the calendar now only allows two pie-days per week, Sunday and Wednesday; since the party was to be Friday, pie was unlawful, unless—and here the law, like all good laws allowed a loop-hole—unless the pie be made with commissary flour! The pie-race was the “dark horse” on the programme. Fearing that if the boys learned beforehand of the prospective pie not only would we be mobbed by would-be contestants but also that their interest in the rest of the programme would suffer, we had kept the pie-race a profound secret. Smuggled in when the hut was empty those pies had reposed serenely under the counter all afternoon and contrary to my fears not a boy had sniffed them! When the proper moment came the pies were placed on a board in the middle of the floor, the contestants, of whom Pat was one, knelt with their hands tied behind them. At the wordgo!they fell to. The hut howled. Then it was discovered that Corporal G. laboured under a cruel handicap;hispie was a cherry pie and every cherry had a stone in it. Half-way through his pie, Pat, jerking one hand loose, seized a large piece, plastered it on the head of his opponent opposite; the race ended in a riot. Strangely enough, when peace was restored not a trace of pie could be found anywhere,—nowhere, that is, except in the back hair of the contestants.
Bourmont, January 6.
Bourmont, January 6.
Now I know how the prince in the fairy tale felt when he was bidden to climb the mountain of glass. For Bourmont Hill is sheeted with ice, and it is fairly as much as one’s life is worth to attempt to go up or down. Every morning I stand and look at that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder if I may possibly reach the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes in the shape of a French lad insabots, sometimes as a stalwart doughboy with a sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go slipping, slithering down the hill-side. In the middle of the road yelling doughboys, seated on cakes of ice, whiz by at a mad rate of speed; long before they reach the bottom of the slope, the ice-cake splinters into bits, but the doughboy shoots on downward, sprawling, spinning like a top, while you hold your breath and gape to see that his neck isn’t broken. For the French people all this supplies the sensation of a life-time; they crowd their front doors and their front yards laughing, shrieking warning or encouragement, as they watch the progress of the mad Americans up and down the hill.
“If one could only have a movie of Bourmont Hill on a day like this!” sighs the Gendarme.
The other day I encountered a sergeant of engineers on the hill-side.
“You ought to have a sled, Little Girl,” he told me.
“Well why don’t the engineers make me one?” I unthinkingly retorted.
“Sure and they will!” he answered.
Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have that sled made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. And as for starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just as soon attempt Niagara in a barrel.
Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the canteen I wash my chocolate cups with the dishpan on the stove in order to keep the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry at the corner of the counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. At night the ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black ruin all around them. What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a vexing problem; I might I suppose take them home each night with me and sleep with them underneath my pillow. In the little umbrella-stand stoves the green wood, which comes in so freshly cut, that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined around them, simply will not burn, and the stoves will smoke,mon Dieu, how they will smoke! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes, secured shakily by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company with the stoves, and then the clouds pour forth as if we housed a captive Etna.
In the barracks the boys tell me their shoes freeze to the floor over night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the sake of warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of a deadly crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an acute one. The boys who have money to burn are spending it to purchase extravagantly priced fur-lined gloves. The boys who can’t afford them, wait until they see somebody lay a pair down.
The taking of baths has become an act of heroism.
“Took a bath today,” growls a lad. “Think I ought to get a service stripe for that.”
While another boy grins; “Gee but I’m feelin’ rich! Took a bath today and found two pair o’socks and three shirts I didn’t know I had!”
“Now ain’t you sorry you cut off the bottom of your coat!” a long-coated doughboy taunts an abbreviated one. “I told you not to. First, you’re out of luck at Reveille ’cause the Top Kick can see you ain’t got no leggin’s on. An’ now before you know it, you’ll be havin’ chilblains in your knees.”
“You should worry,” growls back the short-coated one. “I couldn’t stand that thing flappin’ ’round my feet no longer. An’ most of the other guys done it too.”
Which is true. Before this cold spell set in, half the boys in the company had taken a slice off the bottom of their overcoats, a procedure which leads to an odd effecten masseas each has chosen his own length which means everything from knees to ankles, and drives the exasparated Loots to demanding; “D’you want to know what you look like? Well, you look likehell!”
In the village streets snow-ball fights are in order. As soon as the boys start an offensive, all the inhabitants of theFaubourg de Francerun out and put up their shutters. Better to sit in the dark while the battle rages than to risk a pane of precious window-glass! Yesterday out at Iloud the boys caught the Y Secretary, a meek and mild little man, in the road and started to give him a thorough pelting. He ran for the hut, they chased him, he gained his refuge, locked the door after him; they proceeded to heap about half a ton of snow against it, making it immovable. The unhappy man had to remove a window frame and crawl out through the opening, then spend the rest of the afternoon digging out his hut door.
Here at our billet our little pea-green porcelain stove with the lavender thistles growing over it has proved to be more ornamental then useful. Since the Gendarme is one of your naturally efficient souls, I feel that such practical details as building fires belong to her. If she wishes to coax and cozen the wretched thing for an hour on end, well and good. As for me I prefer to go and hug the cook stove in Madame’s parlor. French fires don’t burn the way American fires do, I tell Madame. But to her the matter is quite simple. The stove, she says, doesn’t understand English.
Today I met the sergeant of engineers. Some imp impelled me to question jovially;
“Where’s that sled you promised me?”
“It’s almost done.” My knees went weak beneath me.
Tonight I confided my apprehensions to the Gendarme. She looked at me with an unpitying eye.
“The more goose you, for encouraging him,” was her cold comfort. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to pray for a thaw,” I told her.
Bourmont, January 8.
Bourmont, January 8.
Life at the Maison Chaput doesn’t flow quite so peacefully these days as it did before Christmas. The disturbing factor is four-year old Max, left by his mother to visit his grandparents. Max is a spoiled child according to the Chaput point of view. He is expected to walk a chalk line with his little red felt toes, and failing this, he is spanked early and often. It is unlucky for him that the fagots by the hearth afford a continual supply of handy switches.
“The little Jesus will never bring you anything again at Christmas,” warns Grandmamma; “never again! And neither will thePère Nicolas!” Then she appeals to me; “All the little children in America are always well-behaved, are they not?”
“But yes, certainly!” I reply, avoiding Max’s eye.
Coming home in the evening I often stop on my way back to the chillySalle des Assiettes, in response to an urgent invitation, to warm myself at the fireplace. Old Monsieur will be sitting on one side of the hearth and I on the other, while Baby Max toasts his toes in their scarlet slippers on a stool between us. Sometimes they will sing for me. Monsieur had a fine voice when he was young and even now he sings with a delightful air, a sort of indescribable old gallantry that is a joy to me. When he and Max sing together the effect is irresistible.
“Now we will singLe Drapeau de la France,” cries Monsieur. “We must stand for this!” And Monsieur in his gay red neck cloth and little Max in his blue checked pinafore stand up before the fire and sing with their hearts in the words “Saluons le drapeau de la France.” When they come to that line, Monsieur le Commandant veteran of 1870 and baby Max salute together.
Then, “Vive la France!” I cry, and “Vive la France!” they echo.
When new troops pass through town Max must always run to the door to cry “Bonjour les Américans!” a salutation which is often followed I fear by a request for cigarettes, for Max, baby that he is, enjoys a smoke, much to his grandparents’ amusement.
Among the china-ware at the Maison Chaput there is a funny little jug which the Gendarme and I use for fetching hot water. It is made in the shape of a fat frog with a blue waistcoat and a pipe in one of his webbed feet. I had thought it was the famous frog who would a-wooing go, but Monsieur has his own explanation. It is the original St. Thiebault toad he declares, to tease me. Every time I come to draw a little hot water from the stove he must crack the self-same joke.
“C’est le crapaud de Saint Thiebault,” he cries and baby Max pipes up; “Il a soif!”
Yesterday as I was passing through the front room on my way to the canteen Monsieur stopped me to draw me into conversation. There were several neighbors present. They gathered in a ring around me. I could see they had some weighty question to put to me. After a moment’s hesitation it came out:
“Pourquoi,” they demanded, “pourquoi, does the American soldier blow his nose with his fingers?”
I stared, taken aback. In order to make their meaning quite clear they illustrated with expressive gestures.
“Why,” I stammered, “does the poilu never do such a thing?”
“But never!” they declared in chorus. “The poilu always uses his handkerchief!” And again they illustrated in pantomime.
I labored to explain; the French climate had given the boys colds, and the question of laundry and clean handkerchiefs presented difficulties....
“But,” declared old Monsieur sagely, “in America I have heard it is the custom. There all thehaut monde, it is said, lawyers, doctors, ministers, statesmen, blow their noses in that manner!”
This was too much. I hurried from the room.
This morning Monsieur accused me of being a coquette. Hotly I denied the charge. But why then, he rejoined triumphantly, had I asked for a looking-glass in my bed-room?
Bourmont, January 9.
Bourmont, January 9.
Company A is going to China! Somebody heard somebody say that somebody told him that the Chaplain had said so. The boys are all excitement over the idea.
“Won’t that be jolly! You’ll all be coming home with little shiny pigtails hanging down your backs!” I tease them.
“Yes sir! an’ we’ll learn to eat our chow with chopsticks!” I have solemnly promised the boys that if Company A goes to China I will go too. What’s more I will learn to make Chop Suey for them. I have always wanted to visit China.
Thus does the army rumor make sport of us. Reports of this sort incessantly spring up among us, flourish for a day, to be forgotten on the morrow. It is just a sign I suppose of the restlessness that is rife among the boys, the nostalgia, the rebellion at the grinding monotony of their lives. Half the men in the company, it seems, have gone to their officers begging to be transferred into one of the two divisions that have already been in the lines.
“I’m sick o’ this kind o’ life; what I came over here for was to fight,” they growl.
In the canteen they look at the French National Loan poster which has the Statue of Liberty on it, and speculate as to their chances of ever seeing her again.
“Oh boy! but I bet there’ll be some noise on board ship when we catch sight o’ that ol’ gal again!”
“They wouldn’t be breakin’ my heart if they gave out orders tonight to start for home termorrer.” The chorus groans assent. “No sir!” speaks up Private Gatts, “I don’t want to go home until I’ve killed some of them Germans.”
“Aw, come off,” rises the incredulous jeer; “you know, if they’d let you, you’d start out to walk to Saint Nazaire tonight if you had to carry your full pack an’ your rife an’ your extra shoes.”
To beguile the tedium they indulge in what appears to be, next to crap-shooting, the most popular indoor sport of the A. E. F.—mustache raising. I don’t believe there’s a man in the company outside of Cummings and Maggioni who hasn’t tried his luck at it. Sometimes it seems as though an epidemic of young mustaches will break out overnight as it were. The second lieutenants jeer and witticize in vain. There is one squad who have solemnly pledged themselves to remain mustachioed until they “can the Kaiser;” but for the most part, the little “Charlies” are fleeting affairs that come and go according to their owner’s whim. This makes it quite confusing for me, because no sooner have I got to know a lad with a mustache by sight, than he shaves it off and alters his appearance so that I have to learn him all over again. But even the excitement of raising a mustache and having your picture taken and sending it back home to your best girl and then waiting to hear what she will say about it, affords only a brief diversion. And when that is done, we are face to face again with the stark sheer stupidity of drilling and hiking, hiking and drilling, day after day, week in and week out, in the slush, the mud, and the rain.
“Another day, another dollar,” remarks my friend Mr. Brady with philosophic resignation as he comes in from walking post at night, “Betsy the Toad-sticker,” as he familiarly terms his rifle, over his shoulder.
“I sure was strong on the patriotic stuff when I enlisted,” mourns a lad cast in a less stoic mould, “but since I got over here I’ll tell the world my patriotism is all shot to pieces.”
“Who called this here landSunny France, I’d like to know?” is the indignant question which someone is bound to propose at least once a day.
“I’ve only seen the sun twice since I’ve been here,” complained one lad, “and then it was kind of mildewed.”
“It stopped raining for three hours the other day,” remarked another, “an’ I wrote home to my folks an’ told ’em what a long dry spell we’d been having.”
Altogether we are inclined to take a very pessimistic view at present of our surroundings.
“This land is a thousand years behind the times,” is the reiterated comment, and who can blame them, having seen nothing of France but these tiny primitive mud-and-muck villages? “It ain’t worth fightin’ for. Why if I owned this country I’d give it to the Germans and apologize to ’em.”
“It ain’t the country, it’s the people in it,” asserted another lad darkly.
While the Tall Kentuckian declared, “When I came to France, the height of my ambition was to kill a German. Now the height of my ambition is to kill a Frenchman.”
What can one say to them? I try fatuously to comfort by reminding them of the good time coming when we all get home again. I paint rosy pictures of a grand parade of the division up Fifth Avenue, but they are sceptical.
“Huh! That won’t be for us! All the fuss will be for the National Guard and the draft guys. The reg’lars don’t never get no credit.”
Then someone will start to hum the song which goes;