Part 3 (1/2)

A couple of days afterward came the Fourteenth of July. The French had a parade, and our troops took part in it. The French troops came first past the reviewing officers, who were both French and American. The infantry of each battalion pa.s.sed first, bayonets glittering, lines smartly dressed; following them in turn the machine-gun companies, or ”jacka.s.s batteries,” as they were called by our men, the mules finely currycombed and the harness s.h.i.+ning. Their bands, with the bra.s.s trumpets, played snappily. Altogether they gave an appearance of confident efficiency. Then came our troops--in column of squads. What held good in Paris still held good--our splendidly trained little army did not dare trust itself to take up platoon front.

CHAPTER IV

TRAINING IN FRANCE

”I wish myself could talk to myself as I left 'im a year ago; I could tell 'im a lot that would save 'im a lot in the things that 'e ought to know.

When I think o' that ignorant barrack bird it almost makes me cry.”

KIPLING.

A day or two after the Fourteenth of July review the rest of the troops arrived and my personal fortune hung in the balance, as I was still unattached. Colonel Duncan, afterward Major General Duncan, commander of the Seventy-seventh and Eighty-second divisions, was then commanding the Twenty-sixth Infantry. One of his majors had turned out to be incompetent. He came to General Sibert and asked if he had an extra major to whom he could give a try-out.

”Yes,” replied General Sibert. ”Why not try Roosevelt?”

”Send him along and I will see what he's good for,” was Duncan's reply.

I went that day, took command of my battalion the day after, and never left the Twenty-sixth Infantry, except when wounded, until just before coming back to this country after the war.

Most of the Twenty-sixth Infantry was billeted in a town called Demange-aux-Eaux, one of the largest in the area. By it flowed a good-sized stream, a convenient bathtub for officers and men alike. We started at once cleaning up places for the company kitchens, getting the billets as comfortable as possible and selecting sites for drill grounds.

The men, who up to this time had been bewildered by the rapid changes, now began to find themselves and make up to the French inhabitants. I have seen time and time again a group composed of two or three _poilus_ and two or three doughboys wandering down the street arm in arm, all talking at once, neither nationality understanding the other and all having a splendid time. The Americans' love for children a.s.serted itself and the men made fast friends with such youngsters as there were.

It is a sad fact that there are very few children in northern France. In the evenings, after their drill was over, the men would sit in groups with the women and children, talking and laughing. Sometimes some particularly ambitious soldier would get a French dictionary and laboriously endeavor to pick out, word by word, various sentences.

Others, feeling that the French had better learn our language rather than we learn theirs, endeavored to instruct their new friends in English.

About this time that national inst.i.tution of France, _vin ordinaire_, was introduced to our men. The two types, _vin blanc_, white wine, and _vin rouge_, red wine, were immediately christened _vin blink_ and _vin rough_. The fact that this wine could be bought for a very small amount caused much interest. Champagne also came well within the reach of everyone's purse. To most of the men, champagne, up to this time, had been something they read about, and was connected in their minds with Broadway and plutocracy. It represented to them untold wealth completely surrounded by stage beauties. Here, all of a sudden, they found champagne something which could be bought by the poorest buck private.

This, in some cases, had a temporarily disastrous effect, for under circ.u.mstances such as these a number of men might naturally feel that they should lay in a sufficient supply of champagne to last them in memory, if nothing else, through the rest of their lives.

I remember particularly one of my men who dined almost exclusively on champagne one evening and returned to his company with his sense of honor perhaps slightly distorted and his common sense entirely lacking.

The company commander, Captain Arnold, of whom I spoke before, was standing in front of his billet when this man appeared with his rifle on his shoulder, saluted in the most correct military manner, and said, ”I desire the company commander's permission to shoot Private So-and-So, who has made some very insulting remarks concerning the town in which I lived in the United States.”

Trouble of all sorts, however, was very small considering the circ.u.mstances, and decreased with every month the troops were in France.

We always found that the new men who arrived for replacements were the ones who were most likely to overstep the bounds, and with them it was generally the novelty rather than anything else.

Then came the question of French money. We were all paid in francs. To begin with, our soldiers received eight or ten times as much pay as the average French soldier. This put them in the position of bloated plutocrats. Then, too, none of us had very much idea of what French money meant. Since the war the paper of which French money was made had been of very inferior quality, and I know I personally felt that when I could get anything concrete, such as a good dinner, in exchange for these very dilapidated bits of paper, I had made a real bargain. The soldiers, I am sure, were of the same opinion. Prices tripled wherever we were in France. Indeed, I doubt if in all their existence the little villages in our training area had ever had a tenth part of the money in circulation that appeared just after pay day for the troops.

Of course, the French overcharged our men. It's human nature to take as much as you can get, and the French are human. One should remember, in blaming them for this, that our troops, before sailing for France, were overcharged by people in this country. When the doughboy wanted eggs, for instance, he wanted them badly, and that was all there was to it. In every company there was generally one good ”c.r.a.p shooter.” What the French did not get he got, and, contrary to the usual theory of gamblers' money, he usually saved it. One of the trials of an officer is the men's money. Before action, before any move, the men who have any money always come to their C. O. and ask him to keep it for them. I remember once an old sergeant came to me and asked me to keep two or three thousand francs for him. I did. Next day he was A. W. O. L. He had not wanted to keep the money for fear of spending it if he got drunk. When he came back I tried him by court-martial, reduced him to the ranks, and gave him back his money.

During the twenty months that I spent in Europe I was serving with troops virtually the entire time, commanding them in villages all through the north of France, through Luxembourg and Germany, and in all that period I never had one complaint from the inhabitants concerning the treatment by our men of either women or children. When we went into conquered territory we did not even consider it necessary to speak to the men on this point, and our confidence was justified. Occasionally a man and his wife would call on me and ask if Private ”So-and-So” was really a millionaire in America, as he had said, because, if so, they thought it would be a good thing for him to marry their daughter. This would, however, generally smooth itself out, as Private ”So-and-So,” as a rule, had no intention of marrying their daughter, and they had no intention of letting her marry him when they found out that the statement concerning his family estates in America was, to put it mildly, highly colored. Oddly enough, this is not as queer as one might think. The company cook in one of the companies of our battalion inherited, while in Europe, about $600,000. It never bothered him from any standpoint. He still remained cook and cooked as well as ever.

The average day's training was divided about as follows: First call about 6 o'clock, an hour for breakfast and policing. After that, the troops marched out to some drill ground, where they maneuvered all day, taking their lunch there and returning late in the afternoon. Formal retreat was then held, then supper, and by 10 o'clock taps sounded. The American troops experienced a certain amount of difficulty in fixing on satisfactory meeting grounds with the corresponding French units with whom they were training. Our battalion, however, was fortunate, but another battalion of our regiment had at periods to turn out before daylight in order to make the march necessary to connect.

This battalion during the early part of our training was billeted in the same town. One day their first call sounded at somewhere around 4.15. A good sergeant, Murphy by name, an old-timer who had been in the army twenty-four years, had his platoon all in one billet. He heard the first call, did not realize that it was not for him, and turned his platoon out. By the time he had the platoon filing out he discovered his mistake. At the same time he noticed that one of the men had not turned out. Murphy was a strict disciplinarian and he took a squad from the platoon and went in to find the man. The man explained that this was not the correct call. Sergeant Murphy said that that made no difference, that when a platoon was formed, the place for every man was with the platoon, and, to the delight of the platoon and particularly the squad which a.s.sisted him, escorted the recalcitrant sleeper out and dropped him in the stream.

Sergeant Murphy was the type of man who is always an a.s.set to a command.

On the way to Europe he had been in charge of the kitchen police on board the transport and here had earned himself the name of ”Spuds”