Part 1 (2/2)

This time the thing was a black object not more than fifty yards away.

The captain signaled the gunner not to fire again and he let it be known that this was nothing but a barrel. Later it was rumored that it was a mine, but then there were all sorts of rumors during those last two days when we ran along with lifeboats swung out. There was much talk of a convoy, but none appeared.

Many pa.s.sengers slept on deck and some went to meals with their lifebelts on. Everybody jumped when a plate was dropped and there was always the possibility of starting a panic by slamming a door. And so we cheered when the steamer came to the mouth of the river which leads to Bordeaux. We cheered for France from friends.h.i.+p. We cheered from surprise and joy when the American flag went up to the top of a high mast and we cheered a little from sheer relief because we had left the sea and the U-boats behind us.

They had been with us not a little from the beginning. Even on the first day out from New York the s.h.i.+p ran with all lights out and portholes s.h.i.+elded. Later pa.s.sengers were forbidden to smoke on deck at night and once there was a lifeboat drill of a sort, but the boats were not swung out in the davits until after we met the submarine.

Early in the voyage an old lady complained to the purser because a young man in the music room insisted on playing the Dead March from ”Saul.”

There was more cheerful music. The ambulance drivers saw to that. We had an Amherst unit and one from Leland Stanford and the boys were nineteen or thereabouts. It is well enough to say that all the romance has gone out of modern war, but you can't convince a nineteen-year-older of that when he has his first khaki on his back and his first anti-typhoid inoculation in his arm. They boasted of these billion germs and they swaggered and played banjos and sang songs. Mostly they sang at night on the pitch black upper deck. The littlest ambulance driver had a nice tenor voice and on still nights he did not care what submarine commander knew that he ”learned about women from her.” He and his companions rocked the stars with ”She knifed me one night.” Daytimes they studied French from the ground up. It was the second day out that I heard a voice from just outside my porthole inquire ”E-S-T--what's that and how do you say it?” Later on the littlest ambulance driver had made marked progress and was explaining ”Mon oncle a une bonne fille, mais mon pere est riche.”

Romance was not hard to find on the vessel. The slow waiter who limped had been wounded at the Marne, and the little fat stewardess had spent twenty-two days aboard the German raider _Eitel Friedrich_. There were French soldiers in the steerage and one of them had the Croix de Guerre with four palms. He had been wounded three times.

But when the s.h.i.+p came up the river the littlest ambulance driver--the one who knew ”est” and women--summed things up and decided that he was glad to be an American. He looked around the deck at the Red Cross nurses and others who had stood along the rail and cheered in the submarine fight, and he said:

”I never would have thought it of 'em. It's kinda nice to know American women have got so much nerve.”

The littlest ambulance driver drew himself up to his full five feet four and brushed his new uniform once again.

”Yes, sir,” he said, ”we men have certainly got to hand it to the girls on this boat.” And as he went down the gangplank he was humming: ”And I learned about women from her.”

CHAPTER II

THE A. E. F.

The dawn was gray and so was the s.h.i.+p, but the eye picked her out of the mist because of two broad yellow stripes which ran the whole length of the upper decks. As the s.h.i.+p warped into the pier the stripes of yellow became so many layers of men in khaki, each motionless and each gazing toward the land.

”Say,” cried a voice across the diminis.h.i.+ng strip of water, ”what place is this anyhow?” The reply came back from newspapermen whose only companions on the pier were two French soldiers and a little group of German prisoners.

”Well,” said the voice from the s.h.i.+p, ”this ought to be better than the Texas border.”

The American regulars had come to France.

The two French soldiers looked at the men on the transport and cheered, flinging their caps in the air. The Germans just looked. They were engaged in moving rails and after lifting one they would pause and gaze into s.p.a.ce for many minutes until the guards told them to get to work again. But now the guards were so interested that the Germans prolonged the rest interval and stared at the s.h.i.+p. News that s.h.i.+ps were in was carried through the town and people came running to the pier. There were women and children and old men and a few soldiers.

n.o.body had known the Americans were coming. Even the mayor was surprised and had to run home to get his red sash and his high hat. Children on the way to school did not go further than the quay, for back of the s.h.i.+p, creeping into the slip, were other s.h.i.+ps with troops and torpedo boat destroyers and a cruiser.

Just before the gangplank was lowered the band on the first transport played ”The Star Spangled Banner.” The men on the s.h.i.+p stood at attention. The crowds on sh.o.r.e only watched. They did not know our national anthem yet. Next the band played ”The Ma.r.s.eillaise,” and the hats of the crowd came off. As the last note died away one of the Americans relaxed from attention and leaned over the rail toward a small group of newspapermen from America.

”Do they allow enlisted men to drink in the saloons in this town?” he asked.

Somebody else wanted to know, ”Is there any place in town where a fellow can get a piece of pie?” A sailor was anxious to rent a bicycle or a horse and ”ride somewhere.” Later the universal question became, ”Don't any of these people speak American?”

The men were hustled off the s.h.i.+p and marched into the long street which runs parallel with the docks. They pa.s.sed within a few feet of the Germans. There was less than the length of a bayonet between them but the doughboys did credit to their brief training. They kept their eyes straight ahead.

”How do they look?” one of the newspapermen asked a German sergeant in the group of prisoners.

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