Courage!
How it did run hand in hand with endeavor all through the progress of this war. And it was not limited to the men of the actual fighting forces. The Red Cross had more than its even share of it. The great, appealing roll of honor in the Hotel Regina headquarters—the list of the American Red Cross men and women who gave their lives in the service of their country—was mute evidence of this. Courage in full measure, and yet never with false heroics. Full of the sturdy everyday courage, the courage of the casual things, exemplified, for instance, in this letter from the files of the Stores Section, written by the agent in charge of another of its warehouses in northern France:
"A shipment of four rolls of oiled cloth arrived most opportunely a few days ago and one roll is being employed locally to repair the many panes of window glass destroyed in last night's air raid. In connection with this raid it may be added that one of our chauffeurs nearly figured as a victim of this raid, the window in his lodging being blown in and a large hole knocked in the roof of his house.
"I presume that it is violating no military secret to add that another raid from thebochesis looked for to-night and in case it does come the other rolls of window cloth may come into play...."
It was in these very days of the great spring offensive of 1918, that the Supplies Department, like the Transportation Department of our Red Cross overseas, began to have its hardest tests. For in addition to the regular routine of its great warehousing function, there came, with the rapidly increasing number of troops, hospitals and refugees, rapidly increasing special duties for it to perform; greatly increased quantities of goods to be shipped. AndI think it but fair to state that without the vision of one man, Major Field, there might not have been many supplies to ship. Immediately after his appointment as Chief of the Bureau of Supplies, Major Field began to purchase goods, in great quantities and an almost inconceivable variety. He bought in the French market, in the English market, in the Spanish market, from the commissary stores of the United States Army—in fact from every conceivable corner and source of supply; as well as from some which apparently were so remote as hardly to be even conceivable. He stored away beds, tents, sheets, clothing, toilet articles, and cases of groceries by the thousands, and still continued to buy. The Red Cross gasped. The A. E. F. protested. The vast warehouses were filled almost to the bursting point. Major Field listened to the protestations, then smiled, and went out, buying still more supplies. His smile was cryptic, and yet was not; it was the smile of confidence, the smile of serenity. And both confidence and serenity were justified. For the days of the drive showed—and showed conclusively—that if our American Red Cross had not been so well stocked in supplies it would have failed in the great mission overseas to which we had intrusted it.
"The ——th Regiment has moved up beyond its baggage train. Can the Red Cross ship blankets and kits through to it?"
This was a typical emergency request—from an organization of three thousand men. It was answered in the typical fashion—with a full carload of blankets and other bedding. The kits followed in a truck.
"A field hospital is needed behind the new American lines," was another. It, too, was answered promptly; with several carloads of hospital equipment, surgical dressings, and drugs. These things sound simple, and were not. And the fact that they were many times multiplied added nothing to the simplicity of the situation. In fact there came a time when it was quite impossible to keep any exactaccount of the tonnage shipped, because the calls came so thick and fast and were so urgent that no one stopped for the usual requisitions but answered any reasonable demands. The requisition system could wait for a less critical time, and did.
One day a message came that a certain field hospital was out of ether—that its surgeons were actually performing painful operations upon conscious men—all because the army had run out of its stock of anæsthetics. The men at the American Red Cross supply headquarters sickened at the very thought; they moved heaven and earth to start a camion load of the precious ether through to the wounded men at the field hospital, and followed it up with twenty-five truckloads of other surgical supplies.
Under the reorganization of the American Red Cross in France which was effected under the Murnane plan, the entire work of purchase and warehousing was brought under a single Bureau of Supplies, which was ranked in turn as a Department of Supplies. This Bureau was promptly subdivided into two sections: that of Stores and that of Purchases. Taking them in the order set down in the official organization plan, we find that the headquarters section of Stores—situated in Paris—was charged with the operation of all central and port warehouses and their contents and was to be in a position to honor all properly approved requisitions from them, so far as was humanly possible. It was further charged to confer with the comptroller of our French American Red Cross organization and so to prepare a proper system and check upon these supplies. In each of the nine zones there were to be subsections of stores, answerable for operation to the Zone Manager and for policy to the Paris headquarters, but so organized as to keep not only sufficient supplies for all the ordinary needs of the zones, but in various well-situated warehouses, enough for occasions of large emergency—and all within comparatively short haul.
The Sectionof Purchases corresponded to the purchasing agent of a large corporation. Remember that the purchasing opportunities in France were extremely limited, so that by far the greater part of this work must be performed by the parent organization here in the United States, and sent—as were the circus tents—in response to requisitions, either by cable or by mail. Incidentally, however, remember that no small amount of purchasing for the benefit of our army and navy in France was done both in England and in Spain, which, in turn, was a relief to the overseas transport problem. For it must ever be remembered that the famous "bridge across the Atlantic" was at all times, until after the signing of the armistice at least, fearfully overcrowded. It was only the urgent necessities of the Red Cross and its supplies that made it successful in gaining the previous tonnage space east from New York, or Boston, or Newport News. And even then the tonnage was held to essentials; essentials whose absoluteness was almost a matter of affidavit.
Yet even the essentials ofttimes mounted high. Before me lies a copy of a cablegram sent from Paris to Washington early in January, 1919. It outlines in some detail the foodstuff needs of the American Red Cross in France for the next three months. Some of the larger items, intons, follow:
Sugar50Rice100Tapioca10Cheese50Coffee50Chocolate50Cocoa100Bacon50Salt Pork50Ham50Prunes50Soap100Apricots25Peaches25
And all of this in addition to the 10,000 cases of evaporated milk, 5,000 of condensed milk, 3,000 of canned corn beef, 2,000 of canned tomatoes, 1,000 each of canned corn and canned peas, and 1,000 gross of matches, while thequantities ordered even of such things as cloves and cinnamon and pepper and mustard ran to sizable amounts.
I have no desire to bore you with long columns or tables of figures—for this is the story of our Red Cross with our army in France and not a report. Yet, after all, some figures are impressive. And these given here are enough to show that of all the cogs and corners of the big machine, the Purchase and Stores sections of the organization in France had its full part to do.
By July, 1917, the first Divisions of our amazing army began to seep into the battle countries of Europe. It had not been the intention of either our War Department or its general staff to send the army overseas until the first of 1918; the entire plan of organization and preparation here in the United States had been predicated upon such a program. Yet the situation overseas was dire indeed. Three years of warfare—and such warfare—had begun to fag even the indomitable spirits of England and of France. The debacle of Russia was ever before the eyes of these nations. In the words of their own leaders, their morale was at its lowest point. France, in one glorious moment in 1917, had seemed, under the leadership of Nivelle, to be close to the turning point toward victory. But she had seen herself miss the point, and was forced again in rugged doggedness to stand stoutly with England and hold the line for the democracy of the world.
In such an hour there was no opportunity for delay; not even for the slight delay incidental to raising an American Army of a mere half million, training it in the simplest possible fashion, and then dispatching it overseas. Such a method would have been more gratifying to our military pride. We sacrificed that pride, and shall never regret the hour of that decision. We first sent hospital detachments from our army medical service to be brigaded with the British, who seemed to have suffered their most severe losses in their hospital staffs, and sent engineer regiments not only to build the United States Military Railroad, of which you have already read, but also to aid the weakened land transport sections of the French and British armies. AndGeneral John J. Pershing, with adequate staff assistance, crossed to Paris to prepare for the first and all-glorious American campaign in Europe.
OUR RED CROSS AT THE FRONT A typical A. R. C. dugout just behind the linesOUR RED CROSS AT THE FRONTA typical A. R. C. dugout just behind the lines
"The program had been carefully drawn up," wrote Lieutenant Colonel Repington, the distinguished British military critic, in a review on the performance of our army in theLondon Morning Post, of December 9, 1918. "It anticipated the orderly arrival in France of complete units, with all their services, guns, transport, and horses, and when these larger units had received a finishing course in France and had been trained up to concert pitch it was intended to put them into the line and build up a purely American Army as rapidly as possible. After studying the situation, the program and the available tonnage in those days, I did not expect that General Pershing could take the field with a trained army of accountable numbers much before the late summer or autumn of 1918."
Yet by the first day of January, 1918, there were already in France four American Divisions, each with an approximate strength of 28,153 men, by February there were six Divisions, and by March, eight. It is fair to say, however, that even by March only two of the Divisions were fit to be in the line, and none in the other active sectors. Training for modern warfare is indeed an arduous task. Yet our amazing army did not shirk it, and even in the dispiriting and terrifying days of the spring of 1918 kept to its task of preparing itself for the great ordeal just ahead, and, almost at the very hour that the last great German drive began to assume really serious proportions, was finishing those preparations. Ten Divisions were ready, before the spring was well advanced, to stand shoulder to shoulder with British Divisions should such an unusual course have been found indispensable. In fact, anticipating this very emergency, brigading with the British had already been begun. But as the British reinforcements began pouring into Northern France the possibilities of the emergency arising diminished. And five ofour Divisions were returned south into the training camps of the United States Army.
The War Department figures of the size of our army in France throughout 1918—which at the time could not be made public, because of military necessities—tell the story of its rapid growth. They show the number of Divisions in France and in line and in reserve to have been as follows:
1918In FranceIn Line and ReserveApril 1103May134June166July249August3220September3725October4031November4230
This tabulation takes no count whatsoever of the noncombatants of the S. O. S.—as the army man knows the Service of Supplies—or the other great numbers of men employed in the rearward service of the United States Army. It is perhaps enough to say that the largest number of our troops employed in France was on September 26, the day that General Pershing began his Meuse-Argonne offensive. On that day our army consisted of 1,224,720 combatants and 493,764 noncombatants, a total of 1,718,484 men in its actual forces.
It is known now that if the war had continued we should probably have doubled those figures within a comparatively few months and should have had eighty Divisions in France by April, 1919, which would have made the United States Army by all odds the most considerable of any of the single belligerent nations fighting in France.
We have told elsewhere a little of the romance of the transport of our men; here in cold figures—statistics which scorn romance in their composition—is their result. We shall see through our Red Cross spectacles again andagain the performances of that army, as the men and the women of the American Red Cross saw them.
In the meantime let us turn again, therefore, to Lieutenant Colonel Repington, whose reputation in this regard is well established, and find him saying of the commanding general of our army:
"To my mind, there is nothing finer in the war than the splendid good comradeship which General Pershing displayed throughout, and nothing more striking than the determined way in which he pursued the original American plan of making the American arms both respected and feared. The program of arrivals, speeded up and varied in response to the appeal of the Allies, involved him in appalling difficulties, from which the American army suffered to the last. His generous answer to cries for help in other sectors left him for long stretches almost, if not quite, without an army. He played the game like a man by his friends, but all the time with a singleness of purpose and a strength of character which history will applaud; he kept his eyes fixed on the great objective which he ultimately attained and silenced his detractors in attaining it. To his calm and steadfast spirit we owe much. To his staff, cool amidst the most disturbing events, impervious to panic, rapid in decision, and quick to act, the allied world owes a tribute. To his troops, what can we say? They were crusaders. They came to beat the Germans and they beat them soundly. They worthily maintained the tradition of their race. They fought and won for an idea."
Truer words have not been written. To one who has made even a superficial study of our army in France, the figure of the doughboy—the boy from the little home in Connecticut or Kansas or Oregon—looms large indeed. I did not, myself, see him in action. Other and abler pens have told and are still telling of his unselfishness, his audacity, his seemingly unbounded heroism both in the trenches and upon the open field of battle. The little rowsof crosses in the shattered forest of the Argonne or upon the roads leading from Paris into Château-Thierry, elsewhere over the face of lovely France, tell the story of his sacrifice more graphically than any pen may ever tell it.
Frequently I have seen the doughboy in Paris as well as in the other cities and towns and in our military camps in France. He is an amusing fellow. One can hardly fail to like him. I have talked with him—by the dozens and by the hundreds. I have argued with him, for sometimes we have failed to agree. But I have never failed to sympathize, or to understand. Nor, as for that matter, to appreciate. No one who has seen the performance of our amazing army in France, or the immediate results of that performance, can fail to appreciate. If you are a finicky person you may easily see the defects that haste brought into the making of our expeditionary army—waste in material and in personnel here and there; but, after all, these very defects are almost inherent in any organization raised to meet a supreme emergency, and they appear picayune indeed when one places them alongside the marvel of its performance—when one thinks of Château-Thierry or Saint Mihiel or the Argonne.
It is not the province of this book to describe the operations of our army in France except in so far as they were touched directly by the operations of our Red Cross over there. So, back to our text. You will recall that Major Grayson M.-P. Murphy, our first Red Cross Commissioner to France, and his staff arrived in Paris coincidently with General Pershing on the thirteenth of June, 1917. They went right to work, despite terrific odds, in the building of a working organization. At about the hour of their coming there was developing here in the United States a rather distinct feeling in certain widespread religious and philanthropic organizations that they should be distinctly represented in our war enterprise in Europe. The patriotism that stirred these great organizationswas admirable; it was unmistakable, and finally resulted in certain of the larger ones—the Young Men's Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus, the Young Women's Christian Association and the Salvation Army—being given definite status in the war work overseas. In the case of the Y. M. C. A.—by far the largest of all these organizations—it was allotted the major problem of providing entertainment for the enlisted men and the officers at the camps in France, in England, in Italy and, in due time, in the German valley of the Rhine. At a later hour the very difficult problem of providing canteens, that would be, in effect, nothing more nor less than huge post exchanges, was thrust upon the Y. M. C. A. It accepted the problem—not gladly, but in patriotic spirit—and even though the experiment brought upon its shoulders much thoughtless and bitter criticism, saw it bravely through.
The Y. M. C. A. therefore, was to undertake, speaking by and large, the canteen problem of the camps, while that of the hospitals, the docks at the ports of debarkation and embarkation, the railroad junctions, and the cities of France was handed to the American Red Cross. The Red Cross began its preparations for this particular part of its task by establishing stations for the French Army, which, pending the arrival of the American forces, would serve admirably as experiment stations. Major Murphy at once conferred with the French military authorities and, after finding from them where their greatest need lay, proceeded without delay to the establishment of model canteens on the French lines of communication; in the metropolitan zone of Paris and at the front. And before our army came, and the great bulk of the work of our Red Cross naturally shifted to it, these early canteens supplied rations to literally millions of French soldiers.
"In view of keeping up the good spirits of troops it is indispensable that soldiers on leave be able to find, while waiting at railroad stations in the course of their journeys,canteens which will allow them to have comfortable rest and refreshment. Good results have already been obtained in this direction, but it is necessary to improve the canteens already existing and to create new ones in stations that do not already have them."
The above is a translation of a quotation from a note written by the French Minister of War to a general of his army, at about the time of our first Red Cross Commission over there. If one were to attempt to translate between the lines he would be certain to find that the soldiers going home on leave or discharge, obliged to wait long hours in railroad stations, sometimes without food or other comforts, and ofttimes, too, forced to sleep upon a cold, stone-flagged floor, had often a greatly lowered morale as the result of such an experience. And if their mental state was not lowered, their physical condition was almost sure to be.
So it was that the American Red Cross jumped into the immediate assistance of its rather badly burdened French brothers—the various organizations ofCroix Rouge Française. It seized as its most immediate opportunity, Paris, and particularly the junction points of theGrande Ceinture, the belt-line railroad which completely encircles the outer environs of the city, and provides track-interchange facilities for the various trunk-line railroads which enter her walls from every direction. For lack of funds and a lack of personnel the French Red Cross authorities were about to close some of the canteens which they already had established upon theGrande Ceinture, while the real necessity was that more should be opened. Such a disaster our American Red Cross prevented. On July 18, 1917, Colonel Payot, Director of the French Army Transports, wrote to H. H. Harjes—at that time representative of the American Red Cross at the general headquarters of the French Army—giving a list of railroad stations where canteens were needed, and in the order of their urgency. In the correspondence which followed between the French authoritiesand the American Red Cross, various agreements were reached.
It was agreed that the French administration would furnish the necessary buildings and provide electric light, running water, and coal for heating. On the other hand, the American Red Cross undertook to furnish all other supplies—cooking appliances, coal for cooking, equipment, stores, medical supplies, and personnel. As early as July 31, Major Perkins wrote that our American Red Cross was now ready to serve a full meal at seventy-five centimes (fourteen or fifteen cents) a person, and other drinks and dishes at small cost to thepoilu. Men without funds on receiving a voucher from theCommissaire de la Gare(railroad-station agent) could obtain meals and hot drinks without charge. The sale of wine, beer, and spirits was prohibited in our canteens. And because of the French coöperation in their establishment, they were namedLes Cantines des Deux Drapeauxand bore signs showing both the Tricolor of France and our own Stars and Stripes, with their designating name beneath.
The original list of outside stations suggested by the French authorities were five in number: Pont d'Oye, Châlons, Épernay, Belfort, and Bar-le-Duc. Finally it was decided to reduce this list—the hour of the arrival of the American forces in number steadily drawing nearer—and Châlons and Épernay were definitely chosen for American Red Cross canteen work. At that time both of these cities of the Champagne district were well behind the lines; afterwards the Germans came too close for comfort and shelled them badly, which meant the withdrawal of the French troops and a closing of the neat canteens for a time; but they were reopened. When I visited Épernay in January 1919, the Red Cross canteen there was again open and in charge of two young ladies from Watertown, N. Y.—the Misses Emma and Kate Lansing, sisters of the then Secretary of State. You could not keep down the buoyant spirit of our Red Cross.
Beforethe American Red Cross undertook to establish fully equipped canteens—on the scale of those at Châlons and at Épernay—the London Committee of the French Red Cross had been operating at many railroad stations small canteens known as theGouttes de Café, where coffee and bouillon were served free to the soldiers in passing trains. In several cases agreements were made with the French society by which certain individualGouttes de Cafépassed to the control of the American Red Cross and were, in other cases, absorbed in the larger installation which it was prepared to support. This, however, took place only when the demands of the situation really called for a larger canteen, prepared to serve full meals and operate dormitories and a recreation room. Occasionally it was found advisable for our Red Cross to inaugurate a canteen of its very own, while theGoutte de Cafécontinued to carry on its own work on the station platform or in the immediate vicinity.
I remember particularly the situation in the great central station of the Midi Railroad in Bordeaux. This huge structure is a real focal point of passenger traffic. From beneath its expansive train shed trains come and go; to and from Paris and Boulogne and Biarritz and Marseilles and many other points—over the busy lines, not only of the Midi, but of the Paris-Orléans and the Etat. A great proportion of this traffic is military, and long ago the French Red Cross sought to accommodate this with a hugeGoutte de Caféin a barnlike sort of room in the main station structure and opening direct upon its platforms. I glanced at this place. It was gloomy and ill-lighted by the uncertain, even though dazzling, glow of one or two electric arc lights. It was fearfully overcrowded.Poilusoccupied each of the many seats in the room and flowed over to the floor, where they sat or reclined as best they might on the benches or on their luggage. The place was ill-ventilated, too. It was not one that offered large appeal.
How different the appearance of the canteen of our ownRed Cross. It had a far less advantageous location; well outside the station train shed and only to be found by one who was definitely directed to it. Two buildings had been erected and another adapted for the canteen. They were plain enough outside, but inside they were typically American—which meant that light and color and warmth had been combined effectively to produce the effect of a home that might have been in Maine, or Ohio, or Colorado, or California, or any other nice corner of the old U. S. A. There was homelike atmosphere, too, in the long, low buildings enhanced by the unforgetable aroma of coffee being made—being made American style, if you please. That building boasted a long counter, and upon the counter miniature mountains of ham sandwiches and big brown doughnuts—sandwiches and doughnuts which actually had been fabricated from white flour—and ham sandwiches with a genuine flavor to them. And all in great quantity—2,000 meals in a single day was no unusual order—and for a price that was nominal, to put it lightly.
In another building there were more of the lights and the warm yellows and greens of good taste in decoration; a big piano with a doughboy at it some twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four—whole companies of divans and regiments of easy-chairs: American newspapers, many weekly publications, a lot of magazines, and books in profusion. The room was completely filled, but somehow one did not gain the sensation of its being crowded. The feeling that one carried from the place was that a bit of the U. S. A. had been set right down there at the corner of the great and busy chief railway terminal of the French city of Bordeaux. Only one forgot Bordeaux.
What was done at Bordeaux—and also at St. Nazaire and Nantes and Brest and Tours and Toul and many, many other points—by our Red Cross in the provision of canteen facilities was repeated in Paris, only on a far larger scale than at any other point. The A. R. C. L. O. C.canteens in Paris—there seems to be no holding in check that army passion for initialization—soon after the signing of the armistice had reached fourteen in number, of which about half were located in or close to the great railroad passenger terminals of the city. The others were hotels, large or small, devoted in particular to the housing of the doughboy and his officers on the occasions of their leaves to the capital—for no other point in France, not even the attractions of Biarritz or the sunny Riviera, can ever quite fill the place in the heart of the man in khaki that Paris, with all her refinements and her infinite variety of amusements, long since attained. These last canteens we shall consider in greater detail when we come to find our doughboy on leave. For the present we are seeing him still bound for the front, the war still in action, the great adventure still ahead.
A single glance at the records of the organization of the Army and Navy Department under which the canteen work along the lines of communication is grouped at the Paris headquarters of the American Red Cross, shows that it was not until February, 1918, that the inrush of the American Army in France had assumed proportions ample enough to demand a segregation of canteen accommodations for it from those offered to thepoilus. As I have said, the canteens for thepoiluswere in the general nature of training or experimental stations for our really big canteen job over there, and as such more than justified the trouble or the cost; which does not take into the reckoning the valuable service which they rendered the blue-clad soldiers of our great and loyal friend—the French Republic.
Take Châlons, for instance: Châlons set an American Red Cross standard for canteens, particularly for such canteens as would have to take care of the physical needs and comforts of soldiers, perhaps in great numbers. This early Red Cross station was set in a large barracks some fifty yards distant from the chief railroad terminal of that busy town. And, as it often happened that the leave permitsof thepoilusdid not permit them to go into the town, a fenced passage, with a sentinel, was builded from the train platforms to the canteen entrance. At that entrance, a coat room where the soldier could check his bulky kit was established.
On going into the restaurant of the canteen one quickly discovered that what might otherwise have been a dull and dreary barracks' interior had been transformed by French artists—the French have a marvelous knack for doing this very sort of thing—into a light, cheerful, and amusing room. The effect on thepoiluswho visited it for the first time was instantaneous; they had not been used to that sort of thing.
At one end of the gay and happy room was the counter from which the meals were served by the American women working in the canteen. The soldier went first to the cashier and from her bought either a ticket for a complete meal, or for any special dish that might appeal to his fancy or to his jaded appetite. He then went to the counter, was handed his food on a tray, and took it to one of the clean, white-tiled tables that lined the room. Groups of friends might gather at a table. But no one was long alone, unless he chose to be. Friendships are made quickly in the spirit of such a place, and the chatter and laughter that pervaded it reflected the gayety of its decorations.
After eating, if it was still summer, thepoilumight stroll in the garden where there were seats, a pergola, even a Punch and Judy Theater—for your Frenchman, be he Parisian or peasant, dearly loves hisguignol—or he might find his way to the recreation room, where there were writing materials, games, magazines, lounging chairs, a piano and a victrola. Here men might group around the piano and sing to their hearts' content. And here the popularity ofMadelonwas quite unquestioned.
And after all of this was done, he might retire to the dormitories with absolute assurance that he would be called in full time for his train—whether that train left at oneo'clock in the morning or at four. And if he so chose, in the morning might refresh himself in the fully equipped washrooms, shower baths, or the barber shop, have his coffee and eggs, his fruit and his belovedconfitureand go aboard the train in the full spirit of a man at complete peace with the world.
The orders that came in February, 1918, calling for the segregation of the accommodations for the A. E. F. from those given to the French, did not result in withdrawing financial support from Châlons and the other canteens which our Red Cross had established particularly for thepoilus, but did result in the establishment of rest stations, or canteens, exclusively for our own men. This organization of canteens extended particularly along the lines of communication between the area of action and the Service of Supplies zone, and was quite distinct from the canteen organizations at the ports and the evacuation hospitals; these last we shall come to consider when we see the part played by our Red Cross in the entire hospital program of the A. E. F. The Lines of Communication task was a real job in itself.
One could hardly rub the side of a magic lamp and have a completely equipped canteen materialize as the fulfillment of a wish. Magic lamps have not been particularly numerous in France these last few years. If they had been France might have been spared at least some of her great burden of sorrow. And so, even for our resourceful Red Cross, buildings could not always be provided, nor chairs, nor counters, nor even stoves. That is why at Vierzon, a little but a very busy railroad junction near Nevers, there was, for many months, only a tent. But for each dawn of all those months there was the cheering aroma of fresh coffee steaming up into the air from sixmarmites, as the French know our giant coffee containers. And the figures of American girls could be seen silhouetted against the glow of bonfires, while the line of soldiers, cups inhand, which started at that early hour, would continue for at least another eighteen, or until well after midnight.
Remember, if you will, that making coffee for a canteen is not making it for a household dining room. One does not measure it by teaspoonfuls. It is an affair of pounds and of gallons. The water—ten gallons for eachmarmite—was procured from a well which had been tested and adjudged pure. The sandwiches, with their fillings of meat or of jelly, were not the dainty morsels which women crumble between their fingers at bridge parties. They were sandwiches fit for fighting men. They were the sort that hungry soldiers could grip with their teeth.
Because of the necessary secrecy in reference to the exact numbers of passing troops, in turn because of military necessities, the American Red Cross was not permitted during the war to keep an exact record of the number of men who visited its canteens. But where hundreds were accommodated, even at as comparatively small a place as Vierzon, thousands were fed at the larger places, such as Dijon or Toul, for instance. And it is to be noted that in all these canteens food was being served to regular detachments of the A. E. F. as well as to casuals leaving or rejoining their commands.
In the great September drive of 1918 a canteen was set up by the roadside at Souilly. Night and day and without intermission it was maintained. It was there that stretcher bearers and ambulance drivers were given hot drinks and warm food—all that they wanted of both—and where sometimes they toppled over from sheer fatigue and wearied nerves. From this one tent—and this is but one instance typical of many, many others—three hundred gallons of chocolate were served daily. And while bread was procured with the utmost difficulty, no boy was turned away hungry. Many times the snacks of food so offered were, according to the statements of the soldiers themselves, the first food that they had received for three days.
And whetherthe canteen of our Red Cross was in a tent or a pine structure with splintery and badly put together walls, or, as ofttimes it was, in the corner of a baggage room of a railroad station, an attempt was always made to beautify it. We learned several things from the French since first we moved a part of America into their beloved land, and this was one of them. The example of the Châlons canteen was not lost. There is a psychological effect in decorative beauty that is quite unmistakable; translated it has a definite and very real effect upon that important thing that all really great army generals of to-day know as morale. It was the desire for good morale, therefore, that prompted the women of our Red Cross to decorate their canteens. And because skilled decorative artists were not always at hand, as they were as Châlons, makeshifts—ingenious ones at that—were often used. Magazine covers could be fashioned into mighty fine wall posters. In some instances, camouflage artists and their varied paint pots were called into service. For window curtains materials of gay colors were always chosen and, wherever it was possible, the lights were covered with fancy shades, designed according to the individual taste or the ingenuity of some worker.
Pianos were dug out of ruined houses or were even brought from captured German dugouts. Abochepiano served as well as any other for the "jazz" which we took to poor France from the United States. The pianos in these Red Cross canteens hardly would have passed muster for a formal concert. But that did not matter much. It mattered not that they had the toothless look of old age about them, where the ivory keys had been lost; they were still something which a homeless Yankee boy might play—where he might still build for himself a bridge of favorite tunes right back into the heart of his own beloved home.
At Issoudon, the canteen reached an ideal of organization not always possible in some more isolated spots. Atthat point there was a mess for officers, a canteen for enlisted men, and clubrooms with books and the like for both. Moreover, a resthouse was inaugurated for officers and men by the Red Cross for the accommodation of those who stayed there overnight or even for a considerable number of hours. Eventually this last project was absorbed by the army, which took it under its direct control. The army knew a good thing when it saw it. The Issoudon resthouse was a good thing. It served as a model for a much more elaborate scheme of entertainment for our khaki-coated men which, at a later time, was established by the American Red Cross in Paris. And which—so far at least as the officers were concerned—also was taken over by the army.
"A piece of fairyland" was the name that a doughboy with a touch of sentiment gave to the canteen at Nevers. A gardener's lodge attached to a château was loaned the American Red Cross by a titled and generous lady. It possessed a "living room" and a dining room that needed few changes, even of a decorative order. Upon the veranda, which commanded a view of a gentle and seemingly perennial garden, were many easy-chairs, while somewhere among these same hardy flowers was builded a temporary barracks for the housing of casuals and for shower baths for the cleanly comfort of the guests.
In the course of my own travels through the Red Cross areas in Europe I came to another canteen center other than that of the Bordeaux district, which still clings to my memory. I am referring to Toul, that ancient walled city of eastern France which has been a great fortress for so many centuries that mortal man seems fairly to have lost count of them. Few doughboys there are who traveled at all across the land of the lilies who can easily forget Toul—that grim American army headquarters close by its stone walls and ancient gates, amaraisof tight-set buildings and narrow stone-paved streets and encircled by a rowof hills, which bore a row of fortresses. If the line had failed to hold at Verdun or at Pont-à-Mousson, Toul would certainly have become the next great battle ground, another gray city for which men might give their short lives in order that it might continue its long one.
This "if" was not realized—thank God for that! And the French, with their real generosity, realizing that the American headquarters in their eastern territory must be a city of great accessibility and real military strategic importance, quickly tendered Toul, which was accepted by our army in the same generous spirit in which it was offered by our Allies.
With Toul settled as a military center the problem of the Red Cross in connection with it at once became definite and important. It, of course, demanded immediate as well as entirely comprehensive solution. And that it had both was due very largely to the efforts of one woman, Miss Mary Vail Andress, of New York.
Miss Andress, who was one of the very first group of women to be sent by our Red Cross to France, arriving there August 24, 1917, came to Toul in January, 1918. Captain Hugh Pritchitt, who had been assigned to the command of the American Red Cross work at that American Army headquarters point, already of great and growing importance, had preceded her there by but four days, yet had already succeeded in making a definite survey of the entire situation. Out of that survey, and the more extended knowledge of the problem that came to the Red Cross folk as they studied it in its details, came the big canteen activities. For before the American Red Cross had been in the ancient French town a full fortnight, the men of the American Expeditionary Forces began pouring through it in great numbers. It takes only a single glance at the map to realize the reason why; for to the east of Toul are Nancy, Pont-à-Mousson, and the Lorraine line, while to the north and even a little to the west one finds Saint Mihiel, Verdun, St. Menehold, and the Argonne—places that alreadyare household names all the way across America, while from Toul to the south and west, even unto the blue waters of the Atlantic, stretch the main stems of the United States Military Railroad in France—that remarkable railroad which, as you already know, really is no railroad whatsoever.
So do not wonder that at the ancient railway station just north of the town walls and contiguous to the well-traveled Route de Paris, 1918 saw more and more of the long special trains stopping and debouching boys in khaki—hungry boys, thirsty boys, tired and dirty boys, and no provision for the relief of any of these ordinary human miseries.
It was a real situation, and as such the New York woman in the steel gray Red Cross uniform quickly sensed it. She moved toward its solution; which was easier said than done. For one thing the Red Cross chiefs in Paris, considering the thing judiciously from long range, were not at all sure of its practicability. But Miss Andress had no doubts, and so persisted at Paris until Paris yielded and permission was granted her to start a small canteen; yet this was only the first step in the solution of her problem. A second and even greater one was the securing of a location for canteen facilities. The meager facilities of Toul, selected as the field headquarters of an American Army, had been all but swamped by the fearful demands made upon them. Yet Miss Andress, moving heaven and earth itself, did secure a small apartment house in that same well-traveled Route de Paris, which was well enough, so far as it went, but did not go half far enough. She quickly determined that this building would serve very well as a hotel or resthouse for the casual soldiers and officers passing through the town, but that the real canteen would have to be right at the station itself.
Now the station of the Eastern Railway at Toul was amply large for the ordinary peace-time needs of the eleven thousand folk who lived in the town, but long since its modest facilities had also been swamped by the war-timenecessities thrust upon it. It was humanly impossible to crowd another single facility within its four tight brick walls. They told her as much.
"I know that," said Miss Andress quietly. "We shall have to have a big tent set up in the station yard. I shall speak to the railway authorities about it, and gain their permission."
In vain the army officers argued with her as to the futility of such a step. They, themselves, had thought of such procedure for their own increasing activities, but had been refused a tent, very politely but very firmly. Yet those refusals were not final. There were two other factors now to be taken into consideration—one was the potency of the very phrase,Croix Rouge Américaine, with the French, and the other was the persuasive ability of a bright New York woman who, having made up her mind what it was that she wanted to get, was not going to be happy until she had gotten it.
She got the tent—the permission and all else that went with the getting it up, of course. In the spring of 1919 it still was there, although in use as a check room instead of a canteen; for the canteen service long before had outgrown even its generous facilities. It spread in various directions; into a regular hotel for enlisted men, right across the narrow street from the station; a resthouse for both officers and enlisted men back on the Route de Paris about a block distant; a huge new canteen on the station grounds, and still another on one of the long island-platforms between the tracks, so that men held in passing trains—all of which stopped at Toul for coal and water, if nothing else—and so unable to go even into the station to feel the comforting hand of the Red Cross, might be served with good things of both food and drink.
To maintain four such great institutions, even though all of them were within a stone's throw of one another, was no child's play. The mere problem of providing those good things to eat and drink was of itself a really huge job.For by January, 1919, in the sandwich room of the enlisted men's hotel across the street, 2,400 pounds of bread a day were being cut into sandwiches. These sandwiches were worthy of investigation. They were really worth-while—the Red Cross kind. I have sampled them myself—all the way from Havre to Coblenz and south as far as Bordeaux, and so truthfully can call them remarkable. For fancy, if you can, corned beef—the miserable and despised "corn willie" of the doughboy—being so camouflaged with pickles and onions and eggs as to make many and many a traveling hungry soldier for the nonce quite unaware that he was munching upon a foodstuff of unbridled army ridicule. And ham, with mustard, and more of the palatable camouflage. Oh, boy, could you beat it? And, oh, boy, did you ever eat better doughnuts—outside of mother's, of course—than those of the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army, too, gave you?
In the big kitchen of the American Red Cross canteen hotel at Toul they cooked three thousand of these last each twenty-four hours, which would have been a sizable contract for one of those white-fronted chains of dairy restaurants whose habitat is New York and the other big cities of the United States, while four thousand cups of coffee and chocolate went daily to wash down these doughnuts—and the sandwiches.
Figures are not always impressive. In this one instance, however, I think that they are particularly so. Is it not impressive to know that in a single day of September, 1918, when the tide of war had turned and the oncoming hosts of Yanks were turning the flanks of thebochefarther and farther back, ground once lost never to be regained—in the eight hours of that day, from five o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon, just 2,045 men were served by the American Red Cross there at the Toul station, while in the month of January, 1919, just 128,637 hungry soldiers were fed and refreshed there?
Figures do not, of course, tell the story of the resthouse—thatapartment home first secured by Miss Andress—but the expressions of gratefulness that come from the fortunate folk who have been sheltered beneath its hospitable roof are more than ordinarily eloquent. It is not a large building; a structure rather ugly than otherwise. But it has spelled in every true sense of the word: "Rest." Yet to my mind its really unique distinction lies in another channel; it is the only army facility that I chanced to see in all France which extended its hospitality under a single roof to both officer and enlisted man, and so bespoke a democracy which, much vaunted at times, does not always exist within the ranks of the United States Army. For so far as I could discover, there was not the slightest particle of difference in the cleanliness and comfort between the beds assigned to the enlisted men in the upper floor of the house and those given to the officers in its two lower floors. When they passed its threshold the fine distinction of rank ceased. The Red Cross in its very best phases does not recognize the so-called distinction of rank.
Its hospitality at Toul did not cease when it had offered food and drink and lodging to the man in khaki who came to its doors. A very humble yet greatly appreciated comfort to a man coming off a hot, overcrowded, and very dirty troop train was nothing more nor less than a good bath. The bathhouse was a hurried but well-adapted one in the basement of the enlisted men's hotel. Two Russian refugees ran the plant and did well at it—for Russian refugees. A system was adopted, despite Slavic traditions, by which at a single time sixteen men might be undressing, sixteen taking a quarter-hour bath, and a third sixteen dressing again—all at the same time. In this way 250 men could bathe in a single hour, while the daily average of the institution during the busy months of the war ordinarily ran from eight hundred to nine hundred. It has handled 1,200 in asingle working day, giving the men not only a bath, hot or cold, as might be desired, but a complete change of clean underclothing—all with the compliments of the Red Cross. The discarded garments were gathered in huge sacks, some twenty-five of these being forwarded daily to the army laundries in the neighborhood.
"The Red Cross in Toul?" said a young lieutenant of engineers one day to Miss Gladys Harrison, who was working there for the American Red Cross. "It saved my life one forlorn night. Every hotel in town was full to the doors, it was raining bullets outside and no place to sleep but the banks of the canal, if—if the Red Cross hadn't taken me in."
Let Miss Harrison continue the story; she was extremely conversant with the entire situation in Toul, and so most capable to speak of it.
"It was the hour of tea when the young man came in. In fresh whitecoifand apron of blue, a Red Cross girl presided behind the altar of the sacred institution, where the pot simmered and lemon and sugar graced the brew. In a charmed circle around the attractively furnished room which, among its other attractions, boasted a piano, a pretty reading lamp, and a writing desk, sat some fifteen other officers—most of them dusty and tired from long traveling, some shy, some talkative, two gray-bearded, most of them mere boys, all warming themselves in the civilizing atmosphere of the subtle ceremony. On the table piled on a generous dinner plate was the marvel on which the young lieutenant's eyes rested—doughnuts.
"Forty-eight thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five doughnuts. Not to be sure, all on that dinner plate—the great number is that of the doughnuts officially stirred up, dropped in deep fat, and distributed from the Red Cross houses and station canteens during the month of July, 1918. Other good things were served in a similar abundance that same month; 19,760 hot and cold drinks,13,546 sandwiches, and 19,574 tartines, not to mention 2,460 salads and 4,160 dishes of ice cream—these last, of course, special hot-weather foods. But the doughnuts were the pride and glory of the Toul establishment—the masterpiece by which its praises were known and sung in the long trenches that scarred the fair Lorraine hills. They were the real American article—except also for the traditional rolling in the sugar barrel, now vanished like the dodo—soft and golden and winningly round. They were made by a Frenchwoman, but her instructor was a genuine Yankee soldier cook, who learned the art from his mother in the Connecticut Valley, where they cherish the secret of why the doughnut has a hole. He was particularly detailed to initiate the Frenchwoman into the mysteries of the art by an army colonel who understood doughnuts and men and who sat at tea with the directress one day when the Red Cross outpost at Toul still was young."
The directress was, of course, Miss Andress, and it was in those early days she still was the staff and the staff was the directress; and never dreaming of the summer nights when her commodious resthouse in the Route de Paris, with its accommodations for eight men and twenty-five officers, would be called upon in a single short month to take care of 560 officers and 2,124 enlisted men—and would take care of every blessed one of them to the fullest extent.
Enough again of figures. At the best they tell only part of the story. The boys who enjoyed the multifold hospitalities of the Red Cross in Toul—that quaint, walled, and moated fortress town of old France, with its churches and its exquisite cathedral rising above its low roofs—could tell the rest of it; and gladly did when the opportunity was given them. For instance here is a human document which came into my hands one day when I was at the Toul canteen: