Part 9 (1/2)
”It was the hour of tea when the young man came in. In fresh white _coif_ and ap.r.o.n of blue, a Red Cross girl presided behind the altar of the sacred inst.i.tution, where the pot simmered and lemon and sugar graced the brew. In a charmed circle around the attractively furnished room which, among its other attractions, boasted a piano, a pretty reading lamp, and a writing desk, sat some fifteen other officers--most of them dusty and tired from long traveling, some shy, some talkative, two gray-bearded, most of them mere boys, all warming themselves in the civilizing atmosphere of the subtle ceremony. On the table piled on a generous dinner plate was the marvel on which the young lieutenant's eyes rested--doughnuts.
”Forty-eight thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five doughnuts. Not to be sure, all on that dinner plate--the great number is that of the doughnuts officially stirred up, dropped in deep fat, and distributed from the Red Cross houses and station canteens during the month of July, 1918. Other good things were served in a similar abundance that same month; 19,760 hot and cold drinks, 13,546 sandwiches, and 19,574 tartines, not to mention 2,460 salads and 4,160 dishes of ice cream--these last, of course, special hot-weather foods. But the doughnuts were the pride and glory of the Toul establishment--the masterpiece by which its praises were known and sung in the long trenches that scarred the fair Lorraine hills. They were the real American article--except also for the traditional rolling in the sugar barrel, now vanished like the dodo--soft and golden and winningly round.
They were made by a Frenchwoman, but her instructor was a genuine Yankee soldier cook, who learned the art from his mother in the Connecticut Valley, where they cherish the secret of why the doughnut has a hole. He was particularly detailed to initiate the Frenchwoman into the mysteries of the art by an army colonel who understood doughnuts and men and who sat at tea with the directress one day when the Red Cross outpost at Toul still was young.”
The directress was, of course, Miss Andress, and it was in those early days she still was the staff and the staff was the directress; and never dreaming of the summer nights when her commodious resthouse in the Route de Paris, with its accommodations for eight men and twenty-five officers, would be called upon in a single short month to take care of 560 officers and 2,124 enlisted men--and would take care of every blessed one of them to the fullest extent.
Enough again of figures. At the best they tell only part of the story.
The boys who enjoyed the multifold hospitalities of the Red Cross in Toul--that quaint, walled, and moated fortress town of old France, with its churches and its exquisite cathedral rising above its low roofs--could tell the rest of it; and gladly did when the opportunity was given them. For instance here is a human doc.u.ment which came into my hands one day when I was at the Toul canteen:
”_Dear Red Cross Girls at the Canteen_:
”I always wanted to tell you how I appreciated all the nice things you have done for us since I have been over here and would have, but perhaps you'd think I was making love to you for I felt I wanted to get you in a great big bunch and give you a great big hug. No, I wouldn't need any moonlight and s.h.i.+very music, for it isn't that kind of a hug--the kind of hug I wanted to give is the kind a brother gives his sister; or a boy gives his mother when he wants her to know that he loves her and appreciates her.... You girls are for the boys of the fighting power and you don't ask any questions and you don't bestow any special favors and so we all love you.
”(A soldier) MR. BUCK PRIVATE.”
Sometimes actions speak louder than words. There came a time--in September, 1918--when the troops were moving pretty steadily through Toul and up toward the Argonne. The Red Cross girls were hard put to it to see that all the boys had all the food and drink and lodgings and baths that they wanted; but they saw that these were given and in generous measure, even though it meant ten and twelve and fourteen and even sixteen hours of work at a stretch. They had their full reward for their strenuous endeavors, not always in letters, or even in words.
Sometimes the language of expression of the human face is the most convincing thing in all the world.
It was a boy from Grand Island, Nebraska, who slouched into the Toul canteen in the station yard on one of the hottest of those September nights. He was tired and dirty, and his seventy-five pounds of equipment upon his back must almost have been more than mortal might bear. But he did not complain--it was not the way of the doughboy. He merely shoved his pack off upon the floor and inquired in a quiet, tired voice:
”Anything that you can spare me, missy?”
He got it. Sandwiches, coffee, the promise of a bath; finally the bath itself.... When the boy--he was indeed hardly more than a boy despite his six feet of stature--left the Red Cross colony he had been fairly transformed. He was cleaner, cooler, almost younger, and seeping over with appreciation.
”It was wonderful,” he blurted out. ”I'd like to thank you--in a practical way, sort of. Let me send you something down from the front--a souvenir like.”
The Red Cross girl who had first taken him in tow and to whom he was now talking did not fully comprehend his remark. Another boy from another Grand Island already was engrossing her attention. But the word ”souvenir” registered ever and ever so slightly.
”Get me a German,” she said laughingly and lightly as she gave him her name, and turned to the boy from the other Grand Island.
In a few days it came; a sizable pasteboard box by Uncle Sam's own army parcel post over there in France.
The girl opened it quickly. There it all was--the revolver, the helmet, the wallet, with all the German small change, the cigarette case, all the small accouterments of a private in an infantry regiment, even down to the b.u.t.tons. In the package was a roughly written little note.
”I was a-going to send you his ears, too,” it read, ”only our top sergeant didn't seem to think that ears was a nice thing to send a lady.”
A chapter of this book could easily be confined to the episodes--sometimes discouraging and at other times highly amusing--in the personal histories of the canteen workers, both men and women. There were many times when girls rode eight miles in camions to their work, and many of these girls who were well used to limousines and who knew naught of trucks until they came to France. Often those were the lucky times. For there were the other ones, too, when there was a shortage of camions and a woman must pull on her rubbers and be prepared to walk eight or ten miles with a smile on her face, and after that was done to be on her feet for eight long hours of service. It was a hard test, but the American girls stood it.
There were the women in the little out-of-the-way canteens who struggled with coal which ”acted like coagulated granite,” to quote the words of one of them, and refused to ignite, save by patience and real toil.
There were long hours on station platforms feeding men by pa.s.sing food through car windows because there was not even time for the men to alight and enter the canteens. Moreover, the soldiers had a habit at times of leaving their savings for a canteen girl to send to the folks at home, and although this was not a recognized official part of their jobs, and, in fact, involved a tremendous amount of work, the trust was not refused. The women workers fussed with these and many other errands while the coffee brewed and the chocolate boiled.
In such canteens as those which at first catered to all of the Allies, the menus were arranged in favor of the heaviest patronage. For the visiting _poilus_ there was specialization in French dishes. When the Italians were expected, macaroni was quite sure to become the _piece de resistance_. But for the Yankee boy there has apparently never been anything to excel or even to equal good white bread, good ham, and good coffee. French coffee may be good for the French--far be it from me to decide upon its merits--but to the American doughboy give a cup of Yankee coffee, cooked, if you please, in Yankee style. On such a beverage he can live and work and fight. And perhaps some of the marvelous quality of our American fighting has been due in no small measure to the good quality of our American coffee.