Part 6 (1/2)

As soon as the troops marched by, General Pers.h.i.+ng sent orders for all the officers to a.s.semble. They gathered in a great half circle before the French President who spoke to them slowly and with much earnestness.

Indeed, he spoke so slowly that fair scholars could follow his discourse. Even those who could grasp no more than such words as ”Lafayette” and ”President Wilson” and ”la guerre” listened with apparent interest. M. Poincare called attention to the fact that the day was the anniversary of the Battle of the Marne and also the birthday of Lafayette. These days, he said, linked together the two nations which were making a common cause in the struggle for civilization and he ended with a dramatic sweep of his arm as he exclaimed, ”Long live the free United States.” However, he called it Les Etats Unis which made it more difficult.

”What did he say?” a group of doughboys asked a sergeant chauffeur who had been stationed near enough to hear the speech. ”I didn't get it all,” said the sergeant, ”but it sounded a good deal like 'give 'em h.e.l.l.'”

The President and his party spent the rest of the afternoon inspecting the billets of the Americans. In one barn Poincare insisted on climbing up a ladder to see the quarters at close range and as he climbed slowly and clumsily it came to my mind that the presidential waist line, the knickerbockers and the yachting cap were all symbols of the fact that France even in war was still a civil democracy.

Still it must be admitted that the next civilian we saw was more warlike than any of the soldiers. The only military equipment worn by Georges Clemenceau was a pair of leather puttees which didn't quite fit, but he had eyes and eyebrows and a jaw which all combined to suggest pugnacity.

He was not then premier and indeed he had been in political retirement for some time, but he made a greater impression on the soldiers than any of our visitors because he spoke in English. It was on September 16, 1917, that Clemenceau saw American soldiers, but he had seen them once before and that was in Richmond in 1864 when Grant marched into the city. Clemenceau was then a school teacher in America. The old Frenchman watched the sons and grandsons of those dead and gone fighters and expressed the wish that he might see American troops once again when they marched into Berlin.

The doughboys he saw in France were not the seasoned troops which swung by him on those dusty Virginia roads so many years ago, but in their hands were new weapons which might have turned the tide at Bull Run and changed Gettysburg from victory into a rout. Certainly Pickett would have never swept up to the Union lines if there had been machine guns such as those with which the rookies blistered the targets for the edification of the distinguished guests and the bombs which sent the pebbles sky high might have given pause even to Stonewall Jackson.

There were sports as well as military exercises in the program arranged for Clemenceau. There were footraces and a tug of war and boxing matches. In one of these American blood was freely shed on French soil for a middleweight against whom the tide of battle was turning b.u.t.ted his opponent and cut his forehead.

I did not see Joffre when he paid a visit to the army zone and reviewed the troops but he left a glamor for us all in our messroom where he had dinner with General Pers.h.i.+ng. It was a reporterless dinner so it meant less to us than to Henriette who served the dinner for the two generals.

Nothing much had ever happened to Henriette before. She looked like Jeanne d'Arc, but the only voices she ever heard cried, ”L'eau chaude, Henriette,” or ”Hot water” or ”OEufs” or ”Eggs.” And if they were not wanted right away they must be had ”toute de suite.”

It was Henriette who brushed the boots and cleaned the dishes and swept the floors and every night she waited on peasants and peddlers and reporters. Once she had a major in the reserve corps. He was attached to the quartermaster's department. But on the historic night she stood at the right elbow of General Joffre and the left elbow of General Pers.h.i.+ng. I was away at the time and the correspondents were telling me about it before dinner. While we were talking she came into the room with the roast veal and I said, ”Henriette, they tell me that while I was away you waited upon Marshal Joffre and General Pers.h.i.+ng.”

One of the men at the table made a warning gesture, but it was too late.

Henrietta put the hot veal down to cool on a side table and pointed to the seat nearest the window. A large man from a press a.s.sociation sat there but she looked through him and saw the hero of the Marne.

”Marechal Joffre la,” said Henriette. She turned to a nearer seat and pointing to the shrinking representative of the Chicago _Tribune_ explained, ”General Pears.h.i.+ng ici.”

One of the men rose from the table then and got the veal. Something was said about fried potatoes, but Henriette remained to tell me about the historic dinner. She admitted that she was very nervous at first. That was increased by the fact that General ”Pears.h.i.+ng” ate none of his pickled snails. The Marechal had fifteen. The soup went well, Henriette said, and General Pears.h.i.+ng cheered her up enormously by his conduct with the mutton. The chicken was also a success. After the chicken the generals held their gla.s.ses in the air and stood up. Henriette noticed that when Marechal Joffre stood up he was ”gros comme une maison.”

As he left the room Marechal Joffre pinched her cheek but the mark was gone before she could show it to the cook. For all that Henriette had something to show that she waited upon generals at the famous dinner.

She opened a new locket which she wore around her neck and took out a small piece of gilt paper. She would not let me touch it, but when I looked closely I saw that it had printed upon it ”Romeo and Juliet.”

”It's the band off the cigar Pers.h.i.+ng smoked at the dinner,” explained one of the correspondents. Henriette put the treasure back in her locket and sighed. ”Je suis tres contente,” she said.

CHAPTER IX

LETTERS HOME

The British army tells a story of a soldier who had been at the front for a year and a half without ever once writing home. This state of affairs was called to the attention of his officer who summoned the soldier and asked him if he had no relatives. The Tommy admitted that he had a mother and an aunt.

”I want you to go back to quarters,” said the captain, ”and stay there until you've written a letter. Then bring it to me.”

The soldier was gone for two hours and then he returned and handed the officer a single sheet of letter paper. His note read, ”Dear Ma--This war is a blighter. Tell auntie. With love--Alfred.”

It was different in the American army. The doughboys wrote to their families to the second and third cousin. One soldier turned fifty-two letters over to his lieutenant for censors.h.i.+p in a single day. The men hardly seemed to need the suggestion posted on the wall of every Y.M.C.A. hut: ”Remember to write to mother today.” Of course it was not always mother. I came upon a couple of lieutenants one afternoon hard at work on an enormous batch of letters. It was originally intended that the chaplain should censor all the mail for the regiment but it was found that the task would be far beyond the powers of any one man. In time the job came to absorb a large part of the energy of the junior officers.

”This,” said one of the officers, ”is the fifth soldier who's written that 'our officers are brave, intelligent and kind!' I know I'm brave and intelligent, but I'm not so d.a.m.ned kind,” and he ripped out half a page of over faithful description of the country.

”The man I have here,” said the second officer, ”has got a joke. He says, 'If I ever get home the Statue of Liberty will have to turn round if she ever wants to see me again.' It was all right the first time, but now I've got to his tenth letter and he's still using it.”