XVII
OUR ARMY OVERSEAS
WE were within sound of the guns once more, lulled to sleep by their rumble and awakened in the morning by-American bugles sounding reveille. By the time I was out on the village street the lads had had their breakfast and were swinging along toward their day's work at the training grounds.
In advance was a pick and shovel outfit, followed by infantry with steel helmets and full packs. After all the foreign troops I had watched, these home huskies looked good to me. They are slim legged, red and brown faced, spring heeled lads with a jauntiness of step all their own.
They show up well on the boulevards of Paris, along the railways, where they are at work running trains and studying block systems and building lines, on station platforms, in fields and village streets. Perhaps I should not say "streets"; for I inquired my way to divisional headquarters from one of them, and he replied in his broad southern drawl: "Up this first alley—y'all can't miss it!"
He pointed to the principal thoroughfare of the municipality and called it "alley." It sounded very much like home. Then his last phrase, "You can't miss it," sounded very British; for after the most intricate directions given you in England by an obliging person, "third turning on the left, fourth on the right, bearing all the while north by east," the Englishman invariably adds, in the cheeriest of voices; "You cawn't miss it!"
We had had a never-to-be-forgotten ride. We followed the winding curve of the clear, blue Marne; we noted the lines along which the first great plunge of the German forces were made; we saw where they were headed off, pushed back; we stood where their desperate stand was made and the great battle was fought upon which hung the fate of civilization.
Then we traveled miles of roadway bordered by the scattered and clustered graves of heroic men, buried where they fell. Here was one with its wooden cross and its French flag in the middle of a field all alone; here was one just inside the wire fencing of the railway right of way; here were two in a little grove of trees, sleeping beneath the Union Jack, side by side; here half a dozen in the corner of a sheep pasture; yonder, three or four surrounded by plowed ground.
On every road-crossing and on every railway station were printed names that, for three years, we have read in communiques over and over until they have become household words. Here, on the river bank, was a famous shambles; here, in this village, was fought out one of the most stubborn small actions; this railway station is denuded of glass in its trainshed—the work of aerial bombs—and the rain pours down as if the platforms were out of doors, while passengers stand with umbrellas and waterproofs dripping.
Yonder are walls pitted and scarred with rifle and shell fire; and in the fields, hobbling about with tools, or on the roadways stumping along by carts, are the remnants of cannon fodder chewed up and spat out from the maw of Mars.
The Americans there seemed to be mostly southerners. The brogue of Alabama, Tennessee and the Carolinas, anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line, seemed the predominant strain in the greeting from the men as they shook hands with us after the evening meeting at the Y. M. C. A. tent. The officers, too, that I met seemed to hail largely from the South.
Our very first experience in this area one night was a truly southern meeting at the station gates. It was raining heavily, and the telegram announcing our arrival from Paris to the Y. M. officials probably did not arrive until the week after. So we were a pair of wet and lost souls, until an American officer, bundled in waterproofs, drawled out:
"Where y'all goin'? Come, get into my car. Yes, throw your baggage in. Come right along."
My seat was beside the sergeant driving the Cadillac, and I said to him:
"The major is a southerner, isn't he?"
"Humph!" snorted the sergeant. "He's a major general!"
To give still more the atmosphere of Dixie, there is a big negro cook in a certain company. Down at the French port, where the boys landed, he saw another gentleman of color strolling about, and immediately breezed up to him as to a brother and opened up, "Boy, howdy!" The second negro replied in French. They stood eyeing each other. Then they got excited, talked rapidly, each in the tongue to which he was born, and louder all the time, as they gesticulated wildly. Finally the Dixie cook turned away and, with infinite disgust, said to the paymaster, standing near:
"Humph! That boy—he ain't no nigger nohow!"
This big cook has a voice like a bass violin and called out to every lad a half block away, "Boy, howdy," as nearly as I can make out and spell the vernacular greeting current in the American army.
Just outside the tent where I was visiting was another negro, a chauffeur, tinkering with a red Triangle car and explaining its working to two American girls with Y. M. C. A. badges upon their arms, who were probably to take charge of this machine, or to work in some canteen near by.
Across the road were supply company men butchering a hog, and a supply officer sitting on horseback overseeing the job. The cooking and eating seemed all to be done in the streets and the rain. The men are billeted in barns, haymows, anywhere they can find shelter, in quarters that no British Tommy would long endure. For mine, I drew a luxurious billet in the estaminet, under the roof, with no window, but a bit of a skylight open for air.
I saw van loads of portable huts on the railway sidings as I went along—if they will only get there some day! Boats from America is what is needed, just as Lloyd George said:
"Ships, more ships, and then ships!"
I have reason to believe that American engineers will lay the trackage of our supply lines fast enough if they can only get the stuff to lay. But nobody can make railways without bricks, straw and rails.
I must say, however, that the American boys bear their discomforts with as little complaining as men could. I looked into a stable where twenty-eight men were quartered, found them cleaning their rifles, boots and brass buttons.
"Comfortable?" I asked. "Fine, sir," came the answer. "Lots better than a pup tent in the cactus!"
"Any sick?"
"I'm the only one, sir," answered one rather pale. "Just got out of hospital to-day. Not enough blood and a touch of rheumatism."
I could get no word of complaint out of them or any man I talked with in the Y. M. hut. They were anxious only about one thing, and that was to get up into the line and fight.
"We're ready now!" they cried. "Let us at 'em!"
We would call out sometimes to a thousand Sammies in the Y. M. C. A. audience: "Can you fellows sing Tack up your troubles in your old kit bag?'"
Then there would invariably come back a roar:
"We ain't got no troubles!"
The Y. M. C. A. was doing its best, with a few huts, some tents and a limited number of motor trucks. Much of their material equipment has been greatly delayed in transit. In spite of this, however, twelve stations have been opened in this advanced line, covering a stretch of some twenty miles.
The huts are overcrowded all the time, and will soon be replaced with larger and better ones, the present ones being turned over to the army for barracks.
There are three of four pianos in the huts here, and more arriving.
One must remember in estimating the promptness of the Y. M., that it was informed last spring that no American troops would be sent over here until fall; then suddenly, under urgent requests from the Allies, plans were changed, and the troops are pouring across with their supplies as rapidly as ships can be found to bring them.
Considering all the circumstances, therefore, it appears to me that the red triangle is doing wonderfully well; and the soldiers said to me: "I don't know what we'd do without this hut to come to. I guess we'd die!"
The health of the boys was excellent, aside from injuries by accident in bomb practice and the like, where the risks are inevitable.
There was practically no illness.
None of them, of course, were in the trenches; although the officers go up in batches to observe. I talked with one of our captains who was with the Foreign Legion, the other day, at the big push beyond Verdun. His eyes glowed as he told of the experience.
Sanitation seemed well looked after, and certain measures of prophylaxis are being rigidly enforced to prevent incapacitation of men in the fashion in which some of the armies suffered earlier in the war. The fact, too, that the camps are rural prevents much of this danger to our American troops.
It would be better, however, if our men had less money. The officers feel that these young lads are too heavily paid, or at least, that they are allowed to draw too much of their pay.
The French soldiers and the French people are not accustomed to seeing so much money flashed about. Prices are shot to pieces. Farmers' wives, good women, are subjected to a fearful temptation in these days of want for their families and themselves.
Soldiers do not need much money; there are very few places in which they can legitimately use it; the officers urge them to put it in war bonds; the Y. M. C. A. offers to send any man's money home for him; but neither can do more than exercise moral suasion. They are recommending to the government, I understand, that some adequate measures be devised for the corrections of these dangers.
They are a lively lot, these boys. They do not know yet the camp songs that every British Tommy knows, and that are ringing in the English music halls, songs even of American origin, some of them; but they quickly learn them, and there is nothing that promotes morale more effectively than good singing.
I have a doggerel rhyme composed by a lad billeted in a haymow with fourteen others. He sings the praises of the whole fourteen by name, and tells of the qualities and exploits of each in a manner that reminds one of the rhymes emanating from British trenches. Here is one verse of it; and it is noteworthy that the name mentioned is of German origin:
First of all is Corporal Weiss, He's been with us quite a while;
And when it comes to cracking jokes, He can make the devil smile. When we think of the number of German names that will come over with our army—I a half dozen occur in this barrack rhyme—we can only wonder what the French police will do with them all.
We American travellers have consumed time enough ourselves with our plainly English patronymics, in consulting and being examined by officers of the secret service, both English and French, to render us apprehensive about our soldiers. Perhaps, after all, the onus of responsibility will rest upon America herself.
One day, one of our boys with a German name, stood watching a group of Roche prisoners file by, when suddenly his eyes met those of his own brother among the Huns. The American soldier shouted his brother's name; and this violated the rule that none but their captains may communicate with prisoners. He found himself, therefore, in difficulties with the French.
When, however, he explained the circumstances, an exception was made, and he was allowed to hold a few minutes' conversation with his brother. Then the prisoner moved away with the file, and the great gulf of the world war yawned again between the two.
Out there in the village street—beg pardon, I should say "alley"—was ranged a battery of machine guns of the crack machine gun company of our army. I suppose there was a score of the guns.
I was told that the men of this branch, all of whom were down on the Mexican border, were in the best physical condition of any of our troops, and were ready then, trained to the point, to go to the front. Our French neighbors—the populace, I mean—wonder why we do not start at once for the trenches. They say that they themselves had to go at once, why do not we?
They do not realize that it takes more than men; it takes artillery, commissary, an elaborate preparation, before we can go forward and take over our part of the line. When we do go forward, I am told, it will be in force, and in such a force as to be felt. Meantime, give us time, and boats, and boats, and boats.
I saw a number of other machine gun companies and talked with their officers. They are enthusiastic, both about the discipline of their men and their marksmanship.
I heard varied reports as to how the men are behaving themselves. On the whole, however, after careful listening to evidence, I was inclined to believe that drinking was not excessive. Pure water is sometimes scarce, and the men can hardly be expected to forego the native wines altogether. A few men got drink at nights, but only a few, and those always the same ones. A few were laid up in hospital through their own fault, but only a few.
Taken for all in all, I believe our men will make a record comparable to that of the British in France, which is a record that will be an everlasting credit to the British Empire.
One night I strolled into the little cemetery near one of the camps and found two new graves, marked with the names, companies and regiments of two American boys. These are the first two to lie asleep under French soil. I learned, upon inquiry, that one of these had been drowned while bathing in a neighboring stream, while the other had shot himself, during the night, not long ago.
I must confess to a strong tug at the heart strings as I thought of the hundreds and thousands of our boys who, in my judgment, will sleep in this far land before we have done our utmost duty here.