Our Army at the Front Part 1

Our Army at the Front.

by Heywood Broun.

CHAPTER I

THE LANDING OF PERSHING

A ship warped into an English port. Along her decks were lines of soldiers, of high and low degree, all in khaki. From the sh.o.r.e end of her gang-plank other lines of soldiers spread out like fan-sticks, some in khaki, some in the two blues of land and sea fighters. Decorating the fan-sticks were the scarlet and gold of staff-officers, the blue and gold of naval officers, the yellow and gold of land officers, and the black of a few distinguished civilians.

At the end of one sh.o.r.e-line of khaki one rigid private stood out from the rest, holding for dear life to a ma.s.sive white goat. The goat was the most celebrated mascot in the British Army, and this was an affair of priceless consequence, but that was no sign the goat intended to behave himself, and the private was responsible.

Weaving through this picture of military precision, three little groups of men waited restlessly to get aboard the ship. One was the lord mayor of the port city, his gilt chains of office blazing in the forenoon brightness, with his staff; another was the half-dozen or so of distinguished statesmen, diplomats, and military heroes bringing formal welcome to England; the third was the war correspondents and reporters from the London newspapers.

The waiting was too keen and anxious for talk. Excitement raced from man to man.

For the ship was the _Baltic_. The time was the morning of June 8, 1917.

The event was the landing of John J. Pershing, commander of America's Expeditionary Force. And the soldiers with him were the herald of America's coming--the holding of her drive with an outpost.

When the grandchildren of those soldiers learn that date in their history lessons it is safe to a.s.sume that all its historical significance will be fairly worked out and articulate.

It is equally safe to say that in the moment of its happening few if any of its partic.i.p.ants, even the most consequential and far-seeing, had a personal sense of making history. Of all the pies that one may not both eat and have, the foremost is that very taking part in a great occasion. All the fun of it is being got by the man who stays at home and reads the newspapers, undistracted by the press of practical matters in hand.

True, for the landing of General Pershing there was the color of soldiery, the blare of bra.s.s bands, the ring of great names among the welcomers. There was, of course, the overtone picture of a great chieftain, marching in advance of a great army, come to foreign lands to add their might to what, with their coming, was then a world in arms.

The future might see, blended with the gray hulk of the _Baltic_, the shadowy shape of the _Mayflower_ coming back, still carrying men bound to the service of world freedom.

But what they saw that morning was, after all, a very modern landing, from a very modern ship, with sailors hastily tying down a gang-plank, and doing it very well because they had done it just that way so many times before.

The Royal Welsh Fusiliers were down to give a military welcome, with their mascot and their crack band. The lord mayor, Lieutenant-General Pitcairn Campbell, Admiral Stileman, and other men from both arms of England's service were there, not to feel of their feelings, but to make the landing as agreeable and convenient as possible, and to convey to General Pershing, with Anglo-Saxon mannerliness and reticence, their great pleasure at having him come.

As soon as there was access to the ship General Campbell and Admiral Stileman went aboard and introduced themselves to General Pershing. They met, also, a few of the American staff-officers, and returned salutes from the privates who made up the Pershing entourage of 168 men.

There were congratulations on the ship's safe arrival, which reminded General Pershing and some of his officers that they wanted, before leaving the ship, to pay their respects to the skipper who had carried them through the danger zone without so much as a sniff at a submarine.

This done, the little company of officers walked down the gang-plank, talking cheerily of their satisfaction at meeting, of their hard work on the ship, of the weather, and what-not, all the while the soldiers on the decks behind them waved hands and handkerchiefs in a general overflow of well-being, and finally--set foot in England!

One may not go too far in describing the contents of a general's mind without some help from him, but it's a fair guess that if General Pershing is as kin to his kind as he seems to be, the very precise moment of this setting foot in England escaped his notice altogether, and was left free for the historian to embroider how he pleased. For General Pershing was in the act of being led to the salute of a guard of honor by General Campbell. And almost immediately after that precise moment the Welsh Fusiliers' band began the "Star-Spangled Banner," and again it's a good bet that General Pershing and his staff thought not a thing about England and a lot about home.

But so the historic moment came, and so it went. And presently the American vanguard was finding its places in the special train to London.

Perhaps England knew that a great hour was in the making, for her rolling green hills gave back the warmth of a splendid sun, and her hedgerows and wild blooms braved forth in crystal air. Those of the newcomers who saw England first that afternoon thanked their stars fervently that England and democracy were on the same side.

In mid-afternoon the train reached London, and here the Americans were greeted, not alone by soldiers and England, but by the English. The secret of their coming, carefully kept, had given the port civilians no chance. But they knew it in London and the station was crowded to its doors.

General Pershing stepped from the train as soon as it stopped.

Amba.s.sador Walter Hines Page came over to him, both hands outstretched, and asked leave to introduce another general who had taken an Expeditionary Force to France--General Sir John French. Other introductions followed--to Lord Derby, General Lord Brooke, and Sir Francis Lloyd. And there was a hearty handshake from a fighter who needed no introduction--Rear-Admiral William E. Sims.

Inside and outside the station the civilians cheered. None of them needed to have General Pershing pointed out to them. He was unmistakable. No man ever looked more the ordained leader of fighting men. He was tall, broad, and deep-chested, splendidly set up; and to the care with which Providence had fashioned him he had added soldierly care of his own.

He might have been patterned upon the Freudian dream of Julius Caesar, if Julius was in truth the unsoldierly looking person they made him out to be, whose majesty lay wholly in his own mind's eye.

The gallant look of General Pershing fanned the London friendliness to contagious flames of enthusiasm. He and his officers were cheered to their hotel, the soldiers were cheered to their barracks in the Tower of London.

At the hotel they found three floors turned over to them, arranged for good, hard work, with plenty of desk-room, and boy and girl scouts for running errands. Squarely in the entrance was a money-changer's desk, with a patient man in charge who could, and did, name the number of cents to the shilling once every minute for four days. A little English lady who visited America complained bitterly, just after arrival, "Why didn't they make their dollar just four shillings?" thereby summing up the only really valid source of acrimony between England and America.

The money-changer made the international amity complete.

Once installed, General Pershing and his staff fell to and worked, continuing the organization that had been roughly blocked out on the _Baltic_, and building up the liaison between English and American army procedure, begun by the help of British and Canadian officers on board, by frequent conferences with England's State, War, and Navy Departments.

The day after the arrival General Pershing went to "breakfast at Windsor," the first meeting between America's fighter and England's King. Here, at last, the momentousness of the matter found voice.

King George, having done with the introductory greeting, said earnestly: "I cannot tell you how much your coming means to me. It has been the great dream of my life that my country and yours would join in some great enterprise ... and here you are...."

After this visit, prolonged by an inspection of the historic treasures of Windsor Castle, General Pershing made the rule of unbroken work for himself and his officers till his task in London was finished and he should leave for France to join his First Division.

He made what he expected to be a single exception to this rule. He went to a dinner-party, at which he met Lloyd-George, Arthur Balfour, just back from his American mission, and half a dozen others of commensurate distinction. He found that his exception was no exception at all. The English do not merely have the reputation of doing their real work at their dinner-parties--they deserve that reputation. Staff-officers, telling all about it later on, said that it could hardly have been distinguished from a cabinet meeting, or a report from the Secretary of State for War. So were the final plans made and the business of the nations settled.

Concerning all these meetings and all the national feeling that was behind them, General Pershing and his officers were of one voice--that England's welcome had been precisely of the sort that pleased them most.

It was reticent, charming, too genuine for much open expression, too chivalrous at heart to be obtrusive.

What with spending most of each twenty-four hours at work, the American vanguard finished up its affairs in four days. And early on the morning of June 13, long before the break of day, General Pershing and his officers and men boarded their Channel boat, the _Invicta_, and set sail for France.

CHAPTER II

"VIVE PAIR-SHANG!"

THE _Invicta_ came into Boulogne harbor in the early morning, to find that her attempts at a secret crossing had amounted to nothing at all.

Everybody within sight and ear-shot was out to show how pleased he was, riotously and openly, indifferent alike to the hopes of spy or censor.

The fishing-boats, the merchant coastwise fleet, the Channel ships and hordes of little privately owned sloops and yawls and motor-boats all plied chipperly around with "bannieres etoilees" fore and aft. The sun was very bright and the water was very blue, and between them was that exhilarating air which always rises over the coasts of France, whenever and wherever you land on them, which not all the smoke and grime of the world's biggest war could deaden or destroy.

The _Invicta's_ own flags were run up at the harbor mouth. Again the lines of khaki-colored soldiers formed behind the deck-rails, and again the chieftain from overseas stood at the prow of his ship and waited the coming of a historic moment.

When the _Invicta_ was made fast and her gang-plank went over, there was a half-circle of s.p.a.ce cleared in the quay in front of her by a detachment of grizzled French infantrymen, their horizon-blue uniforms filmed over with the yellow dust of a long march.

Behind the infantrymen the good citizens of Boulogne were yelling their throats dry. When General Pershing stopped for an instant's survey at the head of the gang-plank, with his staff-officers close behind him, the roar of welcome swelled to thunder and resounded out to sea. When he marched down and stepped to the quay, there was a sudden, arresting silence. Every soldier was at salute, and every civilian, too. In that tense instant a new world was beginning, and though it was as formless as all beginnings, the unerringly dramatic and sensitive French paid the tribute of silence to its birth. The future was to say that in that instant the world allied on new bases, that men now fought together not because their lands lay neighboring, or were jointly menaced by some central foe, but because they would follow their own ideal to wherever it was in danger. An American general had brought his fighters three thousand miles because a principle of world order and world right needed the added strength of his arms. And never before had American soldiers come in their uniforms to do battle on the continent of Europe.

The moment's silence ended as startlingly as it began. Bands and cheerers set in again on one beat. The officers who had come to make a formal welcome fell back and let the unprepared public uproar have way.

General Pershing and his officers walked through aisles strenuously forced by the infantrymen, to where carriages waited to carry them through the Boulogne streets.

It must have seemed to the little American contingent as if every Frenchman in France had come up to the coast for the celebration.

From the carriages the crowds stretched solid in every direction. The streets were blanketed under uncountable flags. Every window held its capacity of laughing and cheering Frenchwomen.