First World War Centennial

XVIII

AMERICANS SITTING IN THE

HE was a homesick looking lad. I sold him something or other at the can­teen counter; then he drifted over and sat down against the wall of the hut. The place was full of men, but there was a vacant chair next to him. I watched his downcast features for a while, and then sat down beside him.

"Ever get homesick over here?" I asked.

"Me? Homesick? That's the least of my troubles."

"What are your troubles, then?"

"It's my blankety blank company. If I was in a decent company I'd never worry."

"What's the matter with 'em?"

"Oh, they think they know it all, and they don't know nothing. They are most of them new recruits; if they'd all been down at the border and seen some service they'd be dif­ferent."

I was still searching for the real trouble for I was convinced it lay deeper. By and by I got the facts. The boy was from Wisconsin. His father had fought for Germany in '70. His uncle was now a German prisoner in French hands, and the boy had seen and talked with him at the seaport

He had also recently received a letter from his folks back in Wisconsin saying that he need never come home again, since he had taken up arms against the fatherland. More than that, his comrades in the company were none too cordial with him on account of his German name.

"It makes no difference. I'm going to stick. I'm an American, whatever my people were, and I'm going to see it through. I'm just waiting until I see whether I get promotion. The sergeant is recommending me for a stripe. If I don't get it—well, I can hold my own with any man in the blank'd company, and the first one that says anything to me I'm going to biff him."

Just then three breezy young "Sammies"—that is the name by which the American sol­diers are going to be known over here, just as the English are "Tommies;" there was much grave editorial discussion in London on this subject; it would not do to say Yankees, or Yanks, as this might offend the Americans; so "Sammies" was adopted, from Uncle Sam, and Sammies they will remain—well, I say, three young lads came breezing into the hut and making straight for my friend opened up on him:

"Hello, Herman; by gosh, I haven't seen you since we left Brownsville. Wherever you"

"Hello, Shorty; hello, Bill; hello, Jim. I'm sure glad to see you. When'd you land here?"

"Just now. We've been wiring the new headquarters for General Pershing, about so many kilometers from here. We landed at"

"Say, Shorty," said the German lad wist­fully, "how can I get transferred to your com­pany?"

Then followed a stream of border reminis­cence, and Herman's face gradually cleared and brightened. At last I got up, knowing he was now in good hands, and walked away, while he waved his hand to me and smiled, saying, "See you to-morrow."

To-day at mess one boy, who goes by the nickname of "Dutch," was quietly munching in a corner when some fellow cried out: "Hey, Dutch, what are you, German or Holland-Dutch?" "I'm German I I'm no flat-headed Dutchman!" growled the lad. "Got any folks in Germany?"

"Yes, I did have, anyway. Three or four uncles and seven cousins. Most of 'em all killed off, though."

"Too bad, too bad," said somebody con­ventionally.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Dutch. "Saved me from having to kill 'em."

Under the apparently flippant words lay a whole world of grim pathos.

It is rather hard lines for German-American boys in the army; they are between two mill­stones. Yet it is a strange fact that many of the non-commissioned officers are either Ger­man, Polish, Hungarian or Russian Jews. The men remark about it and declare that, if the sergeants and corporals would give their real names, you would find most of them ending in "ski" and "off" and the like. "Why," said one of the boys to me, "they can't give orders in English!" I myself inquired my way from one of them one evening, and I could scarcely understand his reply. These lads of foreign birth feel that they have to make good, are devoted to duty, punctilious, ambitious and anxious for the extra pay.

Much has been written about the ingenuity of Tommy Atkins in communicating with his new French neighbors; well, the American is not lacking in ingenuity, whatever else he may lack. I was dining at the officers' mess of a certain company, one evening, just after the new steel helmets had been issued. One big lieutenant, who had evidently come up through the ranks, a rollicking, black-mustached, hail-fellow-well-met type of fellow, who smiled per­petually from ear to ear and showed a mouth full of fine white teeth—by Jove, what a re­lief it is to see so many beautiful teeth in men's heads as I see these days!—insisted upon wearing his helmet at the table.

He had no more than got seated until he began to roar: "Mam'selle! Gertrude! Eat! Oui, oui! I talk French. Oui, oui means 'all gone!' Gertrude!"

When Gertrude appeared—a smiling bru­nette, an Italian girl, in a French estaminet, the big lieutenant carried on all the conversa­tion with her in this lingo and with his ges­tures in spite of the fact that an interpreter, a handsome French officer, sat there engaging in the universal laughter. The lieutenant got up and moved about the place, thrusting his nose into the pie—glorious pie it was—tossing his cigarette stub out the window, and along with it a string of greetings to women and children who chanced to pass. Everybody got a share of his attentions and—his French! I am reminded of a sign once displayed in a Paris cafe window: "Wanted, American wait­ers who can speak French."

Someone asked the restaurateur if he hadn't plenty of French waiters who could speak French. He replied, "Mais oui, I want waiters zat can speak ze kind of French zat ze Ameri­cans speak!"

One middle-aged corporal, the other after­noon, hung around the Y. M. canteen counter until closing time, and the secretary started away for dinner. The corporal followed, and then the secretary realized that the man had something on his mind. "Anything I can do for you, corporal?"

"Yes, sir, a very great favor, sir," answered the corporal, with evident hesitation. "Could you write out something for me in French if I tell you what to write?"

"I think I could. What is it?"

"Well, sir, it's this way," hesitated the cor­poral. "I'm billeted in a house with the nicest little French woman and her two clean, pretty little children. Her husband is away at the front. Well, sir, the other night some French officers came around and they wanted me to go and have a good time with them, and I did. I got a little off, I suppose; you know this wine—well, anyway, I don't exactly know what happened, but that nice little woman hasn't been the same to me any more. I think she must be mad on me. I want to apologize to her, tell her I'm sorry, and it won't happen again; or if she still feels mad on me, and wants me to change my quarters, I'll go way. If I write this out, sir, could you put it over into French?"

"I'll do my best, corporal," answered the secretary. That night the corporal brought his composition, fearfully and wonderfully con­structed, to the hut; and it was duly turned into the vernacular of the vicinity; and the corporal went away proud and happy. The secretary never heard directly of the outcome; but two days later there was a ball game; the corporal drifted in and bought two cakes of chocolate, and a little later the secretary saw the corporal sitting at the game with two nice, clean little children beside him munching chocolate. If that corporal should survive the war, and the French husband should not, the chances are the United States would be short one citizen and France would gain a husband for one of her widows. Such is the history of armies in foreign lands. One man in this division has already married a peasant girl here.

Another lad brought a letter in French to one of the secretaries for translation. The secretary told me what it contained. It was an answer to a proposal of marriage. The young woman said: "Your country and my country are at war. You are over here to do your part and I am trying to do mine. It is no time to talk about marriage. When the war is over, if you are still alive and I am, too, it will then be time enough to talk about getting mar­ried."

I call that pretty good horse sense, don't you? You may just count upon it, however, that many a man who comes over here will never get back, who does not fall in battle. France will be shy a good many men and have an over supply of women. Inevitable marriages will follow.

There are three topics of conversation at officers' mess, three eternal questions. The first is women. One officer the other night, talking about learning French declared the only way to master this tongue is with "one of these long haired dictionaries." It goes without say­ing—which, by the way, is a French idiomatic phrase—it goes without saying that the eternal feminine is the first everlasting subject with men.

Then the second question is "shop," military discussion. Can we break the Hindenburg line? Is there to be open fighting? Will the war be finished with airplane and machine gun cooperating with infantry? "I'm for a corps of cavalry!" cried a colonel.

Says a very bright captain of a machine gun company, a West Pointer: "Cavalry is a thing of the past. The machine gun, with indirect fire, forming the barrage, cooperating, to be sure, with heavy guns and infantry, is the way through the German line. Of course, the line will be broken. It will be costly, but it will be broken."

Then follows the third subject—death! They may carry themselves as airily as they please, but these officers are never free from the thought of the great transition. They have most of them been up the line, or near it, on observation; and they know, as I know and have good cause to know, what awaits the combatant in that line. The enlisted men are less disturbed by the presence of the overhang­ing shadow. They are younger and not so well informed. Besides, responsibility is not rest­ing upon them. Theirs but to do and die. One lad bought a safety razor of the very best kind in the canteen one night and three extra packages of blades. I sold it to him. Then I said: "You must expect to do a deal of shav­ing, my son?" "Well," he replied, "I don't suppose in be able to get one of these things again in this country." I could not but wish that he may live to use up all those blades.

It is the officer, however, who, more sensi­tively constituted, more cultivated and imagin­ative, is able to visualize the impending dan­ger; and when you see him sitting unoccupied for a few minutes, there comes into his eye that far-away, absorbed expression that has grown so familiar to me among British and French officers and men; and you know, as if his forehead were plate glass, the thoughts too deep for words that are living and moving in his brain.

The enlisted man frankly declares that the war will be over before he ever sees the line. The wish is plainly father to the thought. The officer labors under no such self-born delusion. He knows the chances are all for a long, hard struggle yet before us and one in which Amer­ica will have to pay her price. If the republic does not realize this now she will wake up to it as soon as one division is cut to pieces, one transport sunk. Then will a flame of fire run from New York to San Francisco, from Port­land to Galveston and the great pacific, sleep­ing people will arouse itself from half-slumber and really exert its power. Unless something very unforeseen occurs we shall pay back some of our obligation to the land of Lafayette with rich, young American blood.

But these men, I know, will not falter. As a young lad said to me, quietly, "There is not a coward among them." They come of fight­ing blood. They will go grimly through the task given them to perform, the task of ren­dering war impossible and unnecessary for their sons and their sons' sons, that they, in turn, may give their fighting qualities to the causes of freedom and democracy, the solution of the problems of peace, the betterment of humanity, the ideals toward which the world is blindly groping upward through mud and blood and smoke.