On the Edge of the War Zone Part 24

I wonder now how "Willie,"--as we used to call him in the days when he was considered a joke,--feels over his latest great success--the democratic conversion, or I suppose I should, to be correct, say the conversion to democracy, of all Russia? It must be a queer sensation to set out to accomplish one thing, and to achieve its exact reverse.

Yesterday--it was Sunday--just capped the week of excitement. It was the third beautiful day in the week,--full of sunshine, air clear, sky blue.

In the morning, the soldiers began to drop in, to bring back books and get more, to talk a little politics, for even the destruction of the Zeppelin at Compiegne, and the news that the English were at Bapaume, was a bit damped by the untimely fall of Briand.

The boys all looked in prime condition, and they all had new uniforms, even new caps and boots. The Canadian, who usually comes alone, had personally conducted three of his comrades, whom he formally introduced, and, as I led the way into the library, I remarked, "Mais, comme nous sommes chic aujourd'hui," and they all laughed, and explained that it was Sunday and they were dressed for a formal call.

If any of them guessed that the new equipment meant anything they made no sign. I imagine they did not suspect any more than I did, for they all went down the hill to lunch, each with a book under his arm.

Yet four hours later they were preparing to advance.

It was exactly four in the afternoon that news came that the French had pierced the line at Soissons--just in front of us--and that Noyon had been retaken--that the cavalry were a cheval (that means that the 23d Dragoons have advanced in pursuit)--and, only a quarter of an hour after we got the news, the a.s.semblage general was sounded, and the 118th ordered sac au dos at half past six.

For half an hour there was a rush up the hill--boys bringing me back my books, coming to shake hands and present me with little souvenirs, and bring the news that the camions were coming--which meant that the 118th were going right into action again. When a regiment starts in such a hurry that it must take a direct line, and cannot bother with railroads, the boys know what that means.

I know you'll ask me how they took the order, so I tell you without waiting. I saw a few pale faces--but it was only for a moment. A group of them stood in front of me in the library. I had just received from the front, by post, the silk parachute of a fusee volante, on which was written: "A Miss Mildred Aldrich Rama.s.se sur le champ de bataille a 20 metres des lignes Boches. Souvenir de la patrouille de Fevrier 22, 1917," and the signature of the Aspirant, and that was the only way I knew he had probably been on a dangerous mission.

It was the first time that I had ever seen one any nearer than in the air, during the exercises by night of which I wrote you, and one of the boys was explaining it, and its action, and use, and everyone but me was laughing at the graphic demonstration. I don't know why I didn't laugh. Usually I laugh more than anyone else.

Sometimes I think that I have laughed more in the last two years than in all the rest of my life. The demonstrator looked at me, and asked why I was so grave. I replied that I did not know--perhaps in surprise that they were so gay.

He understood at once. Quite simply he said: "Well, my dear madame, we must be gay. What would we do otherwise? If we thought too often of the comrades who are gone, if we remembered too often that we risked our skins every day, the army would be demoralized. I rarely think of these things except just after an attack.

Then I draw a deep breath, look up at the sky, and I laugh, as I say to my soul, 'Well, it was not to be this time, perhaps it never will be.' Life is dear to each of us, in his own way, and for his own reasons. Luckily it is not so dear to any of us as France or honor."

I turned away and looked out of the window a moment--I could not trust myself,--and the next minute they were all shaking hands, and were off down the road to get ready.

The loaded camions began to move just after dark. No one knows the destination, but judging by the direction, they were heading for Soissons. They were moving all night, and the first thing I heard this morning was the bugle in the direction of Quincy, and the news came at breakfast time that the 65th Regiment--the last of the big fighting regiments to go into action at Verdun, and the last to leave, was marching in. The girl from the butcher's brought the news, and "Oh, madame," she added, "the Americans are with them."

"The what?" I exclaimed.

"A big American ambulance corps--any number of ambulance automobiles, and they have put their tents up on the common at Quincy."

You can imagine how excited I was. I sent someone over to Quincy at once to see if it was true, and word came back that Captain Norton's American Corps Sanitaire--forty men who have been with this same division, the 31st Corps--for many months--had arrived from Verdun with the 65th Regiment, and was to follow it into action when it advanced again.

This time the cantonnement does not come up to Huiry--only to the foot of the hill at Voisins.

Of course I have not seen our boys yet, but I probably shall in a few days.

x.x.xVIII

March 28, 1917

Well, all quiet on the hilltop again--all the soldiers gone--no sign of more coming for the present. We are all nervously watching the advance, but controlling our nerves. The German retreat and the organized destruction which accompanies it just strikes one dumb. Of course we all know it is a move meant to break the back of the great offensive, and though we knew, too, that the Allied commanders were prepared for it, it does make you shiver to get a letter from the front telling you that a certain regiment advanced at a certain point thirty kilometres, without seeing a Boche.

As soon as I began to read the account of the destruction, I had a sudden illuminating realization of the meaning of something I saw from the car window the last time I came out from Paris. Perhaps I did not tell you that I was up there for a few days the first of the month?

Of course you don't need to be told that there has been a tremendous amount of work done on the eastern road all through the war. Extra tracks have been laid all the way between Paris and Ch.e.l.les, the outer line of defenses of the city--and at the stations between Gagny and Ch.e.l.les the sidings extend so far on the western side of the tracks as to almost reach out of sight. For a long time the work was done by soldiers, but when I went up to Paris, four weeks ago, the work was being done by Annamites in their saffron-colored clothes and queer turbans, and I found the same little people cleaning the streets in Paris. But the surprising thing was the work that was accomplished in the few days that I was in Paris. I came back on March 13, and I was amazed to see all those miles and miles of sidings filled with trucks piled with wood, with great posts, with planks, with steel rails, and what looked the material to build a big city or two.

I did not wonder when I saw them that we could not get coal, or other necessities of life, but it was not until I read of the very German-like idea of defending one's self on the property of other people that I realized what all that material meant, and that the Allies were prepared for even this tragic and Boche-like move. I began to get little cards and letters back from the 118th on the twenty-third. The first said simply:

Dear Madame,

Here we are--arrived last night just behind the line,--with our eyes strained towards the front, ready to bound forward and join in the pursuit.

Of course I have seen the Americans--a doctor from Schenectady and forty men, almost all youngsters in their early twenties. In fact twenty-two seems to be the popular age. There are boys from Harvard, boys from Yale, New England boys, Virginia boys, boys from Tennessee, from Kentucky, from Louisiana, and American boys from Oxford. It is a first-line ambulance corps,--the boys who drive their little Ford ambulances right down to the battlefields and receive the wounded from the brancardiers, and who have seen the worst of Verdun, and endured the privations and the cold with the army.

When a Virginia man told me that he had not taken cold this winter, and showed me his little tent on the common, where, from choice, he is still sleeping under canvas, because he "likes it," I could easily believe him. Do you know,--it is absurd--I have not had a cold this winter, either? I, who used to have one tonsilitis per winter, two bronchitis, half a dozen colds in my head, and occasionally a mild specimen of grip. This is some record when you consider that since my coal gave out in February we have had some pretty cold weather, and that I have only had imitation fires, which cheer the imagination by way of the eyes without warming the atmosphere. I could fill a book with stories of "how I made fires in war time," but I spare you because I have more interesting things to tell you.

On the twenty-sixth we were informed that we were to have the 65th Regiment cantoned on the hill for a day and a night. They were to move along a bit to make room for the 35th for a few days. It was going to be pretty close quarters for one night, and the adjutant who arranged the cantonnement was rather put to it to house his men.

The Captain was to be in my house, and I was asked, if, for two days --perhaps less--I could have an officers' kitchen in the house and let them have a place to eat. Well,--there the house was--they were welcome to it. So that was arranged, and I put a mattress on the floor in the atelier for the Captain's cook.

We had hardly got that over when the adjutant came back to look over the ground again, and see if it were not possible to canton a demi-section in the granges. I went out with him to show him what there was--a grange on the south side, with a loft, which has already had to be braced up with posts, and which I believe to be dangerous.

He examined it, and agreed: a grange on the north side, used for coal, wood, and garden stuff, with a loft above in fair condition, but only accessible by ladder from the outside. He put up the ladder, climbed it, unlocked the door, examined it, and decided that it would do, unless they could find something better.

So soldiers came in the afternoon and swept it out, and brought the straw in which they were to sleep, and that was arranged.

It was about seven the next morning when they began to arrive. I heard the tramp of their feet in the road, as they marched, in sections, to their various cantonnements. I put a clean cap over my tousled hair, slipped into a wadded gown and was ready just as I heard the "Halte," which said that my section had arrived. I heard two growly sounds which I took to be "A droite, marche!"--and by the time I got the window open to welcome my section I looked down into an Indian file of smiling bronzed faces, as they marched along the terrace, knapsacks and guns on their backs, and began mounting the ladder.

Soon after, the Captain's cook arrived with his market baskets and took possession of the kitchen, and he was followed by orderlies and the kits, and by the officer who was to be the Captain's table companion.

As Amelie had half a section cantoned in her courtyard she was busy there, and I simply showed the cook where things were, gave him table cloths and napkins, and left him to follow his own sweet will, free to help himself to anything he needed. If you remember what I told you about my house when I took it, you can guess how small I had to make myself.

I can tell you one thing--on the testimony of Amelie--the officers eat well. But they pay for it themselves, so that is all right. The cook was never idle a minute while he was in the house. I heard him going up to bed, in his felt shoes, at ten o'clock--Amelie said he left the kitchen scrupulously clean--and I heard the kitchen alarm clock, which he carried with him going off at half past five in the morning.

I had asked the Captain when the regiment was to advance, and he said probably the next morning, but that the order had not come.

Twice while I was at dinner in the breakfast room, I heard an orderly come in with despatches, but it was not until nine o'clock that the order "sac au dos" at half past ten the next morning--that was yesterday--was official, and it was not until nine in the morning that they knew that they were leaving in camions--which meant that they were really starting in the pursuit, and the American division was to follow them.

The officers had a great breakfast just after nine--half a dozen courses. As they did not know when, if ever, they would sit down to a real meal at a table again they made their possibly last one a feast.

As they began just after nine and had to be on the road at half past ten I don't need to tell you that the cook had no time to clear up after himself. He had just time--with his mouth full of food--to throw his ap.r.o.n on the floor, s.n.a.t.c.h up his gun and his knapsack and buckle himself into shape as he sprinted up the hill to overtake his company.

As for me--I threw on a cape and went across the road to the field, where I could see the Grande Route, and the chemin Madame leading to it. All along the route nationale, as far as I could see with my field-gla.s.s, stood the grey camions. On the chemin Madame the regiment was waiting. They had stacked their guns and, in groups, with cigarettes between their lips, they chatted quietly, as they waited.

Here and there a bicyclist was sprinting with orders.

Suddenly a whistle sounded. There was a rattle of arms as the men unstacked their guns and fell into line, then hundreds of hobnailed boots marked time on the hard road, and the 65th swung along to the waiting camions, over the same route I had seen Captain Simpson and the Yorkshire boys take, just before sundown, on that hot September day in 1914.

As I stood watching them all the stupendousness of the times rushed over me that you and I, who have rubbed our noses on historical monuments so often, have chased after emotions on the scenes of past heroism, and applauded mock heroics across the footlights, should be living in days like these, days in which heroism is the common act of every hour. I cannot help wondering what the future generations are going to say of it all; how far-off times are going to judge us; what is going to stand out in the strong limelight of history? I know what I think, but that does not help yet.

Do you know that I had a letter from Paris this week which said: "I was looking over your letters written while we were tied up in London, in August, 1914, and was amused to find that in one of them you had written 'the annoying thing is, that, after this is over, Germany will console herself with the reflection that it took the world to beat her.'"

It is coming truer than I believed in those days,--and then I went back to dishwashing.

You never saw such a looking kitchen as I found. Leon, the officers'

cook--a pastry cook before he was a soldier--was a nice, kindly, hard- working chap, but he lacked the quality dear to all good house- keepers--he had never learned to clean up after himself as he went along. He had used every cooking utensil in the house, and such a pile of plates and gla.s.ses! It took Amelie and me until two o'clock to clean up after him, and when it was done I felt that I never wanted to see food again as long as I lived. Of course we did not mind, but Amelie had to say, every now and then, "Vive l'armee!" just to keep her spirits up. Anyway it was consoling to know that they have more to eat than we do.

The American corps had to leave one of their boys behind in our ambulance, very ill with neuritis--that is to say, painfully ill. As the boys of the American corps are ranked by the French army as officers this case is doubly interesting to the personnel of our modest hospital. First he is an American--a tall young Southerner from Tennessee. They never knew an American before. Second, he is not only an honorary officer serving France, he is really a lieutenant in the officers' reserve corps of his own State, and our little ambulance has never sheltered an officer before.