Part 4 (1/2)
As soon as the instructor's back was turned the soldier was up on his elbows again. ”h.e.l.l,” he said, ”there ain't any bullets.”
In later phases of training the inferiority of the American to the French in imagination showed clearly. French veterans or recruits for that matter could work themselves up to a frenzy in sham battles and dash into an empty trench with a shout as if it were filled with Germans. Americans could not do that. They found it difficult to forget that practice was just practice.
CHAPTER VI
SUNNY FRANCE
Later on ”Sunny France” became a mocking byword uttered by wet and muddy men, but during the early days in the training area no one had any just complaint about the weather. Come to think of it there wasn't anything very wrong with those early days in rural France. Five o'clock was pretty early for getting up but the sun could do it and keep cheerful.
It was glorious country with hills and forests and plowed fields and red roofed villages and smooth white roads. The country people didn't throw their hats in the air like Parisians, but they were kindly though calm.
”Down in ----,” said a little doughboy who came from an Indiana farm, ”everybody you meet says 'bon jour' to you whether they know you or not.
That means 'good morning.' I was in Chicago once and they don't do it there.”
It wasn't Eden though. There was the tobacco situation against that theory. To a good many soldiers, pleasant weather and kindly folk and ample rations meant nothing much. These were minor things. The quartermaster had no Bull Durham. When the supply of American tobacco and cigarettes ran out the men tried the French products but not for long. ”So they call these Grenades,” muttered a soldier as he examined a popular French brand of cigarettes, ”I guess that's because you'd better throw 'em away right after you set 'em going.”
French matches were less popular than French tobacco. The kind they sold in our town and thereabouts were all tipped with sulphur and usually exploded with a blue flame maiming the smoker and amusing the spectators. Political economists and others interested in the law of supply and demand may be interested to know that when the tobacco famine was at its height a package of Bull Durham worth five cents in America was sold by one soldier to another for five francs. This shortage has since been relieved from several sources, but there has never been more tobacco than the soldiers could smoke.
Reading matter was also ardently desired during the early months in the Vosges. An enterprising storekeeper in one town sent a hurry call to Paris for English books and a week later she proudly displayed the following volumes on her shelves: ”The Life of Dean Stanley,” ”Sermons by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon,” ”The Jubilee Book of Cricket,” ”The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Lord of Brampton),” and ”The Recollections of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West.”
A few companies had libraries of their own. I wonder who made the selection of t.i.tles. The volumes I picked out at random in one village were: ”The Family Life of Heinrich Heine,” ”Fourteen Weeks in Astronomy,” ”Recollections and Letters of Renan,” ”Education and the Higher Life,” ”Bible Stories for the Young,” and ”Henry the Eighth and His Six Wives.” The librarian said that the last was the most popular book in the collection although several readers admitted that it did not come up to expectations. Just as I was going out the top sergeant came in to return a book. I asked him what it was. He said, ”It's a book called 'When Patty Went to College.'”
Our town was big and had moving pictures twice a week, but up the line in the little villages there was no such source of amus.e.m.e.nt. After the men had been in training for a week or more, a French Red Cross outfit stopped at one of the villages with a traveling movie outfit and announced that they would show a picture that night. According to the announcement the picture was ”Charlot en 'Le Vagabond.'” It sounded foreign and forbidding. The doughboys antic.i.p.ated trouble with the t.i.tles and the closeups of what the heroine wrote and all the various printed words which go to make a moving picture intelligible. Still they were patient when the t.i.tle of the picture was flashed on the screen and they tried to look interested. The first scene was a road winding up to a distant hill and down the highway with eccentric gait there walked a little man strangely reminiscent. He drew nearer and nearer and as the figure came into full view the soldier in front of me could stand the strain no longer. He jumped to his feet.
”I'm a son of a gun,” he shouted, ”if it isn't Charlie Chaplin.”
Recognition upon the part of the audience was instantaneous and enthusiasm unbounded. If the Americans go out tomorrow and capture Berlin they cannot possibly show more joy than they did at the sight of Charlie Chaplin in France. Never again will the French be able to fool them by disguising him as ”Charlot.”
After a bit the soldiers learned to entertain themselves and several companies developed a number of talented performers. The first company show I attended mixed boxing and music. They began with boxing. There was a short intermission during which the first tenor fixed up a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. He had received a bit the worst of it in the heavyweight bout. The other members of the quartet gave him cotton and encouragement. Finally he put on his s.h.i.+rt and hitching up his voice, began, ”Naught but a few faded roses can my sweet story tell.” His comrades joined him at ”My heart was ever light,” and they finished the ballad in perfect alignment.
Almost all the songs were sentimental and many were old. They had ”Dearie,” and ”Where the River Shannon Flows,” and that one about Ireland falling out of Heaven (just as if the devil himself had not done the very same thing). Later there were ”Mother Machree” and ”Old Kentucky Home.” Patriotism was not neglected. ”When I Get Back Home Again to the U.S.A.” was the favorite among the recent war songs. The only savor of army life in the program on this particular evening was in a couple of Mexican songs brought up from the border by men who went to get Villa. They brought back ”Cucaracha” with all its seventeen obscene Spanish verses. There was also one parody inspired by this war and sung to the tune of ”My Little Girl, I'm Dreaming of You.” It went something like this:
America, I'm dreaming of you And I long for you each day America, I'm fighting for you Tho' you're many miles away We'll knock the block right off the Kaiser And we'll drive them 'cross the Rhine-- And then we'll sail back home to you, dear To the tune of ”Wacht am Rhein”!
The American soldier does not seem to be much of a song maker. Songs by soldiers and for soldiers are not common with us yet. We have nothing as close to the spirit of the trenches as the British ditty ”I want to go home,” which always leaves the auditor in doubt as to whether he should take it seriously and weep or humorously and laugh. Possibly there is something of both elements in the song. The mixture has been typical of the British att.i.tude toward the war. Here is the song:
I want to go 'ome I want to go 'ome The Maxims they spit And the Johnsons they roar I don't want to go to the front any more Oh take me over the seas Where the Alley-mans can't get at me Oh my; I don't want to die, I want to go 'ome.
The American army is still looking for a song. None of the new ones has achieved universal popularity. However the many who heard the quartet of Company L sing on this particular evening seemed to have no objection to the old songs. In fact they were new to many in the audience for as the concert went on French soldiers joined the audience and townspeople hung about the edges of the crowd. They listened politely and applauded, though indeed one must get a strange impression of America if his introduction is through our popular songs. Such a foreigner is in danger of believing that ours is a June land in which the moon is always s.h.i.+ning upon a young person known as ”little girl.” Yet the French expressed no astonishment at the songs. Only one feature puzzled them profoundly. At the end of a particularly effective song the captain said, ”Those men sang that very well. Bring 'em each a gla.s.s of water.”
No villager could quite understand why a man who had committed no more palpable crime than tenor singing should be forced to partake of a drink which is cold, tasteless and watery.
Most the villages in our part of France had only one dimension. They consisted of a line of houses on either side of the roadway and they were always huddled together. Land is too valuable in France to waste it on lawns and suchlike. Some of the villages were tiny and shabby, but none was too small or too mean to be without its little cafe. It took the doughboys some little time to get over their interest in the startling fact that champagne was within the reach of the working man, but they went back to beer in due course and now champagne is among the things which shopkeepers must not sell to American soldiers. The prohibition of the sale of cognac and champagne is all that the army needs. Beer and light wines are not a menace to the health or behavior of our army. Beer is by far the most popular drink and it would be an ambitious man indeed who would seek the slightest deviation from sobriety in the thin war beer of France. He might drown.
Absolute prohibition for the army in France would be well nigh impossible. It would mean that every inn and shop and railroad station and farmhouse would have to be cla.s.sed as out of bounds. In fact prohibition could not be enforced unless our soldiers were ordered never to venture within four walls. Wine is to be had under every roof in France and you can get it also in not a few places where the roof has been shot to pieces. The French are interested in temperance just now.
On many walls posters are exhibited showing a German soldier and a black bottle with the caption, ”They are both the enemies of France,” but when a Frenchman talks of temperance or prohibition or the abolition of the liquor traffic he never thinks of including wine or beer. The civil authorities of France would not be much use in helping the American army enforce a bone-dry order. They simply wouldn't understand it.
There was some excessive drinking when the army first came to France but it has been checked. A number of influences have made for discretion.