THE UNCENSORED LETTERS OF A CANTEEN GIRL

These letters were all written for you; scratched down on odds and ends of writing paper, in a rare spare moment at the canteen; at night, at my billet, by candle-light; in the mornings, perched in front of Madame’s fireplace with my toes tucked up on an ornamental chaufrette foot-warmer. Why were they never sent? Simply because all letters mailed from France in those days, must of course pass under the eyes of the Censor. And as the Censor was likely to be a young man who sat opposite you at the mess-table, it meant that one mustn’t say the things one could, and one couldn’t say the things one would. So, after my first fortnight over there I decided to write my letters to you just as I would at home, putting down everything I saw and thought and did, quite brazenly and shamelessly, and then keep them,—under lock and key if need be,—until I could give them to you in person.

Written with the thought of you in my mind, these letters are first of all for you, and after that for whoever they may concern, being a true record of one girl’s experience with the A. E. F. in France during the Great War.

CHAPTER I: BOURMONT—COMPANY A

Bourmont, France, Nov. 24, 1917.

My village has red roofs. When I first came to France and saw that the villages were two kinds; those with red roofs and those with grey, I prayed le bon Dieu that mine should be a red-roofed one. Heaven was kind. Every little house in town is covered with rose-colored tiles. We came here yesterday from Paris. Our orders, which were delivered to us in great secrecy, read: Report to Mr. T——, Divisional Secretary, Bourmont, Haute Marne; then followed a schedule of trains. That was all we knew except that some one told us that at Bourmont it had rained steadily all fall.

“It cleared off for several hours once,” concluded our informant. “But that was in the middle of the night when nobody was awake to see.”

Bourmont is a city set upon a hill, a hill that rises so sharply, so suddenly, that no motor vehicle is allowed to take the straight road up its side, but must follow the roundabout route at the back. Already we have heard tales about our hill; one of them being of a lad belonging to a company of engineers stationed here, who in a spendthrift mood, being disinclined to climb the hill one night after having dined at the café at its foot, bribed an old Frenchman with a fifty franc note to wheel him to the summit in a wheelbarrow. The Frenchman, for whose powers one must have great respect, achieved the feat eventually, the spectators agreeing the ride a bargain at the price.

Two-thirds of the way up the hill on the steep street called grandiosely Le Faubourg de France we have our billet, at the home of Monsieur and Madame Chaput. These are an adorable old couple; Madame a stately yet lovably gentle soul, Monsieur le Commandant, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War and member of the Légion d’Honneur. His wonderful old uniforms with their scarlet trousers and gold epaulets rub elbows with my whipcord in the wardrobe.

Outside, the Maison Chaput resembles all the other houses which, built one adjoining another, present a solid grey plaster front on each side of the street. Like all the rest it has two doors, one opening into the house and one into the stable, and like every other house on the street the doors bear little boards with the billeting capacity of house and stable stenciled on them, so many Hommes, so many Off. (for Officiers). It is told how one lad after walking the length of the street exclaimed;

“Gee! Looks as if this were Dippyville. There’s one or two off in every house!”

Another boy gazing ruefully at the sign on his billet door, groaned;

“Twelve homes! Why, there ain’t one there!”

One stable door nearby wears the legend in large scrawling letters; “Sherman was right.” At first the owner was furious at this defacement of his property, but when someone explained the significance of the words to him, he became mollified and even took a pride in them.

“Where are you stopping?” asks one boy of another.

“Me? Oh, at the Hotel de Barn, four manure-heaps straight ahead and two to the right.”

The distinguishing feature of the Maison Chaput is the corner-stone. This shows as a white stone tablet at one side of the door. On it is carved “Laid by the hand of Emil Chaput, aged one year. Anno. 1842.” It is the same Emil Chaput who with his tiny baby hand “laid” the corner-stone who is now our genial host.

“It is droll,” said Madame; “When strangers come to town they must always stop and read the corner-stone. They think the tablet is placed there to mark the birthplace of some famous man.”

The Gendarme and I,—Madame has christened G—— my companion the Gendarme on account of her vigorous brisk bearing,—live in the Salle des Assiettes, at least that is what I have named it, for the walls of the room which evidently in more pretentious days served as a salle à manger, are literally covered with the most beautiful old plates. Not being a connoisseur I don’t know what their history is nor what might be their value; I only know that they are altogether lovely. The designs are delicious; flowers, insects, birds, little houses, Chinamen fishing in tiny boats, interspersed with spirited representations of the Gallic cock in rose and scarlet. I exclaimed over them to Madame, whereat Monsieur, candle in hand, bustled across the room and called on me to regard one in particular.

“Ça coute,” he averred proudly, “quarante francs!”

Since that moment I have been vaguely uneasy. What if, in a moment of exasperation, I should throw an ink-bottle at the Gendarme’s head, and—shatter a plate worth forty francs!

Our room is the third one back. The front room is kitchen, dining and living room. The in-between room is quite bare of furniture, lined all about with panelled cupboards, and quite without light or air except that which filters in through the opened doors. In one of these cupboards Monsieur le Commandant spends his nights. When the hour for retiring comes, he opens a little panelled door and climbs into the hole in the wall thus revealed, leaving the door a crack open after him. When we pass through on our way to breakfast we hurry by the cupboard with averted faces. The family Chaput are not early risers.

Already Madame has taken us into her warm heart. She will be our mother while we are in France, she tells us. Everything about us is of absorbing interest. When the Gendarme exhibited her wardrobe trunk, she was fairly overcome.

“Ah, vive l’Amérique,” she cried, clapping her old hands, and, “Vive l’Amérique!” again.

Bourmont, it seems, is army Divisional Headquarters. It is also headquarters for this division of the Y. There is a hut here, a warehouse, and headquarters offices, employing a personnel of sixteen or seventeen. By tomorrow the Gendarme and I will know what our work is to be.

Bourmont, November 28.

I have a canteen; the Gendarme, who has had some business training, is to work in the office. My canteen is in Saint Thiebault, the village next door. In the morning I go down the hill, past the grey houses built like steps on either side—some with odd pear trees, their branches trained gridiron-wise flat against the fronts,—over the river Meuse, here a sleepy little stream, to Saint Thiebault. On the way I pass lads in olive drab with whom I exchange a smile and a hello, villagers bare-headed, in sabots, and poilus in what was once horizon blue. In Paris the uniforms were all so beautiful and bright, but here at Bourmont one sees the real hue, faded, discolored, muddy, worn. The soldiers, middle-aged men for the most part, slouch about, occupied with homely, simple tasks, chopping wood and drawing water. One feels there is something painfully improper in the fact that they should be in uniform; they should, each and every one, be propped comfortably in front of their own hearthsides reading l’Echo de Paris, in felt slippers while their wooden shoes rest on the sill outside. And yet these very ones, I think as I look at them, may be the defenders of Verdun, the victors of the Marne, the veterans of a hundred battles!

The Bourmontese, who are proud and haughty folk, and call themselves a city though they number only a few hundred souls, look with disdain on the smaller village of Saint Thiebault, Saint Thiebault des Crapauds they call it, Saint Thiebault of the Toads. Approaching Saint Thiebault one sees two unmistakable signs of American occupancy; first, a large heap of empty tin cans and then the Stars and Stripes fluttering from a flag pole in the centre of the village. For Saint Thiebault is Regimental Headquarters and it is the boast of the old Colonel that wherever the regiment has gone that flag has gone too. Down the main street of the town I go, past the drinking fountain placarded; “Do not drink, good only for animals,” but at which, nevertheless, the doughboys frequently refresh themselves, cheerfully risking death, not to mention a court-martial, in order to get a drink of unmedicated water; and out along the Rue Dieu until I turn off the highway just beyond the village wash-house. The wash-house, known to the French as la Fontaine, is a beautiful little building like a tiny stone chapel, with tall arched windows filled with iron grills. Through the centre runs a long oblong pool; at its brim the women kneel to do their scrubbing, handsome peasant wenches many of them, with fresh, high coloring. Often one sees a soldier leaning against the grill, engaged in some attempt at gallantry through the bars. Sometimes one even glimpses a form in olive drab kneeling by the side of one of the peasant girls, he scrubbing his socks, and she her stays, while she gives him a lesson in French and in laundering à la Française. When the Americans first came to Saint Thiebault they had only a small-sized guard-house. Then came one historic payday when after months of penury the troops were paid. That night the accommodations at “the brig” proved inadequate and the wash-house had to be requisitioned for the over-flow. This was well enough until the lodgers fell to fighting among themselves and so fell headlong into the pool. Then such a hullabaloo broke loose that the whole camp turned out to see who had been murdered.

Back of the wash-house lies a group of long French barracks, and here lives Company A of the —— Regiment, infantry and “regulars.” Beyond the mess-hall is the hut, a French abri tent with double walls. Ducking under the fly, one finds oneself in a long rectangular canvas room, lighted by a dozen little isinglass windows. The room is filled with folding wooden chairs and long ink-stained tables over which are scattered writing materials, games and well-worn magazines. Opposite the door, at the far end, is the canteen counter, a shelf of books at one side, a victrola and a bulletin board, to which cartoons and clippings are tacked, on the other. Back of the counter on the wall, held in place by safety pins, are the hut’s only decorations, four of the gorgeous French war posters brought with me from Paris. There are two stoves resembling umbrella-stands for heating in the main part of the hut and behind the counter another, about the size and shape of a man’s derby hat, on which I must make my hot chocolate. For lights at night I am told that occasionally one can procure a few quarts of kerosene and then the lamps that stand underneath the counter are brought out and for a few days we shine; but usually we manage as our ancestors did with candle-light. Our candlesticks form a quaint collection; some are real tin bourgeois brought from Paris, some strips of wood, some chewing-gum boxes, while others are empty bottles, “dead soldiers” as the boys call them. As for the bottles, I am particular about the sort that I employ and none of mine are labeled anything but Vittel Water. Others I observe are not so circumspect,—yesterday I chanced in at a canteen in a neighboring village kept by a Y man; on a shelf three “dead soldier” candlesticks stood in a row and their labels read; Champagne, Cognac, Benedictine! For the rest, the hut is equipped with a wheezy old piano, a set of parlor billiards, and a man secretary. It is invariably dense with smoke, part wood and part tobacco, and usually crowded with boys.

The first night after the Chief had taken me over to call at my canteen and I had had one cursory glance at them, I came back feeling that my hut contained the roughest, toughest set of young ruffians that I had ever laid eyes on. The second night I came home and fairly cried myself to sleep over them—they seemed so young, so pitiful and so puzzled underneath their air of bravery, so far away from anything they really understood and everybody that was dear to them. It was Cummings in particular I think who did it for me. He owns to seventeen but I would put fifteen as an outside estimate. A mere boy who hasn’t got his growth yet, with soft unformed features and a voice as shrill as a child’s, I am sure he ran away from home to go to war just as another lad might have run away to see the circus. Although the regiment is a regular army organization, a large part of the men were raw recruits only last summer, a fact which causes the old-timers, whose service dates from Border days or before, no little regret.

“This Man’s Army ain’t what it used to be,” they complain; “it’s getting too mixed.”

The “veterans” have a stock saying which they employ to put the youngsters in their places: “Call yourself a soldier do you? Why I’ve stood parade rest longer than you’ve been in the army!”

This is sometimes varied, when the speaker happens to be the tough sort, by; “Huh! I’ve put more time in the guard-house than you have in the army!”

Tonight a boy came up to the counter and asked: “Goin’ to serve hot chocolate tonight?”

“Sure thing!”

“Then I guess I won’t go out and get drunk.”

It’s going to be hot chocolate or die in that hut every night after this!

Bourmont, November 31.

I don’t like my uniform. I don’t like women in uniform anyway. I suppose it is because one is so used to the expression of a woman’s personality in dress that when she dons regulation garb she seems to lose so much. And then to really carry off a uniform requires a flair, a dash, a swagger, and such are rarely feminine possessions. The consensus of opinion seems to bear me out.

“Of course I think women in uniforms look very snappy,” confided a lad to me today; “but somehow they don’t look like women to me!”

“Pas joli,” says Monsieur le Commandant severely, referring to my hat. “Pas joli!” But when I put on my old blue civilian coat he fairly goes into raptures.

“Be-u-ti-ful!” he ejaculates. “Be-u-ti-ful! Toilette de ville. Pas toilette de Y. M. C. A.!”

Besides the suit and cape I had made in Paris, they gave me two canteen aprons, aprons such as French working women wear, voluminous, beplaited, made in Mother Hubbard style. Now there is one point on which I am resolved. They can court martial me, they can send me home, or they can lead me out and shoot me at sunrise, but they cannot make me wear those aprons! What’s more, the very first minute that I have to myself I’m going to cut them up and make them into canteen dish-cloths.

Bourmont, December 3.

This French money is the very plague; not because it is French but because it is so flimsy. It may perhaps measure up to the national standards, but it fails utterly to meet American requirements; the difference lying chiefly in the fact that the French don’t shoot craps. It comes into the canteen in all stages of disintegration.

“She’s kinder feeble. Will she pass?” inquires a lad anxiously.

“With care maybe, and the help of a little sticking plaster,” I reply; and getting out the roll of gummed paper kept handily in the cash-drawer, I proceed to patch up the tattered bill.

“Guess this one must have been up to the front; it’s all shot to pieces,” another lad apologizes; then, at my casual references to shooting craps, grins guiltily. “But say now, ain’t it the rottenest money you ever did see?” “The United States ought to teach these Frenchies how to make paper money,” remarks a third; while still another adds; “When I’m to home I write to my girl on better paper than that.”

Sometimes the bills come in as a mere mass of crumpled tatters; then one must play picture-puzzle piecing it together. Sometimes they are beyond repair; for at times you will receive two halves of different notes pasted neatly together, or at other times one with the corner bearing an essential number lacking. The French banks refuse to pay a cent on their paper money unless it is just so.

“I’m sorry, but that bill’s no good,” you will occasionally have to tell a boy. Usually he will grin cheerfully as he stuffs it back into his pocket.

“Oh well, I’ll pass it along in a crap game.”

Then too, the boys have no respect for foreign money and so handle it carelessly with an obvious contempt that is irritating to the French.

“Tain’t real money,” they declare.

The paper francs and half-francs they call “soap coupons.”

“Why, you might just as well be spendin’ the label off a stick o’ chewin’ gum!” they jeer.

Next to the paper money that comes to pieces in their fingers, the boys detest the big one and two cent coppers. Known to the navy as “bunker-plates,” in the army they pass as “clackers.” “You get a pocket-full o’ them things and you think you’ve got some money, and all the time it ain’t more than ten cents altogether,” they grumble.

“I can’t be bothered carryin’ that stuff around,” they declare when I beg them to pay me in coppers. “I always throw ’em away or give ’em to the kids.” A prejudice which greatly complicated the matter of making change until I had an inspiration. Now I give them their small change in boxes of matches or sticks of chewing gum.

Then there is the annoyance of the local money. Since the war, the cities of France have taken to issuing their own paper francs and half-francs. We accept all this local money in the canteens and send it to Paris to be redeemed. But the French tradespeople in general refuse to honor these bills except in the city that issues them or its immediate vicinity. Many a puzzled doughboy has been driven to indignant protest or even to “chucking the stuff away” in his exasperated disgust when told by the shopkeepers that his paper money was pas bon. But the grievance is not quite all on one side: no small amount of worthless Mexican money, brought over by Border veterans, I am told, was palmed off on shopkeepers at the port when the Americans first landed!

In contrast to their disdain for this foreign currency the boys cherish to a degree that is half funny, half pathetic, any specimens of “real money” that they are lucky enough to possess.

“Say, I had an American dollar bill in my hand the other day,—I felt just as if the old flag was waving over me!” And another lad; “Saw a U. S. Dollar bill today. Oh boy! but it looked a mile long to me!”

If anyone displays an American greenback at the counter a little riot is sure to ensue. All the boys nearby crowd about, feast their eyes on it, touch it, pat it, kiss it even.

“Lemme see!” “Ain’t she a beauty?” “That’s the real stuff!” “Say, how much will you sell her for?”

Even the half-dollars, quarters and dimes are precious.

“You don’t get that one,” they say as they pull a handful of change from their pockets. “That’s my lucky piece. I’m savin’ that there little ol’ nickel to spend on Broadway.”

French money, Belgian money, Swiss money, English money, Spanish money, Italian money, Greek money, Canadian money, Luxembourg money, Indo-Chinese money, money from Argentine Republic, and yesterday a German mark even, all come across the counter and go into the till without comment. But when any American money comes in I always feel badly over it. For, be it a crisp five dollar bill, an eagle quarter or only a buffalo nickel I know it signifies just one thing,—bankruptcy.

Bourmont, December 7.

To be a corporal in the Ninth Infantry, it is said, a man must be able to speak eight languages, one for each soldier in his squad. The same could be said with almost equal truth of our regiment. I don’t know whether it is this mixture of many nationalities that gives my family its flavour; be that as it may, Company A has more color, more character, more individuality to the square inch than I had dreamed any such group could possess. And they are so funny, so engaging in their infinite variety and their child-like naivete!

First there are Gatts and Maggioni; Gatts, lean, tall, honest-eyed, with a grin that won’t come off and a quaint streak of humour,—Gatts who looks pure Yankee, but is, if the truth were told, three-quarters German,—Gatts who hangs about my counter hour after hour; and by his side sticks little Maggioni, who told the recruiting officer that he was seventeen but whose head just tops the canteen shelf, and who looks, with his pink cheeks and his great dark eyes, like nothing in the world but an Italian cupid in the sulks. The two have struck up the oddest comradeship.

“Me an’ Gatts, we’re goin ’to stick side by side,” explains Maggioni, “an’ if I see a crowd o’ Germans pilin’ onto him, why I’ll just go right after ’em, an’ if too many of ’em come for me ter oncet, why Gatts here, he’ll just lay right into ’em.”

And Gatts nods, looking down at Maggioni with a parent’s indulgent eye.

“He thinks he’s a tough guy for sich a little feller,” he comments reflectively; “but he’s the only one in the regiment that knows it.”

“You all think I’m mighty little!” snaps the cupid. “When I joined at Syracuse everybody said to me ‘Baby, where’d you leave your cradle?’ But lemme tell you, I’ve growed since I’ve been in the army!”

“Waal I do believe there’s one part of him that’s growed;” Gatts is very solemn.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“His feet.”

Private Gatts has promised me one of the Kaiser’s ears!

Then there is Brady, “Devil Brady” the little black Irish coal-miner from Oklahoma, who spends his days trying to get put in the guard-house, so he won’t have to drill.

“I’m plumb disgusted,” he confided to me today. “I never worked so hard in my life as I did the other night gettin’ drunk, an’ then the guard was so much drunker than I was, I had to carry him to the guard-house. I thought sure they’d give me thirty days at least, but they only kept me twenty-four hours and then out!”

“Hard luck,” I sympathized.

“I just knew how it would be,” he mourned. “It was Friday the thirteenth when I joined the army; there were just thirteen of us fellers, and the thirteenth was a nigger.”

He tells me the most wonderful yarns about the miners and their pet rats, about explosions and disasters and rescue parties. Last night he told me the story of one mine-horror that will stick in my memory.

“And we shoveled the last three men and a mule into one bag,” he finished.

Now and then I catch a glimpse of Jenicho the Russian giant, but he is very shy. A huge lumbering fellow, sluggish, and seemingly stupid, with little pig eyes that are quite lost to sight when he smiles, Jenicho is the butt of the Company. When he joined the regiment last summer, they tell me, he knew no word of English. The first phrase that he acquired was; “You no bodder me.” For the boys can’t resist the temptation to plague Jenicho, and though his strength is such that if he once should get his hands on his tormentors he could break them into bits, he is so slow withal that they always can elude him. Not long ago Jenicho was walking post one night when the Officer of the Day hailed him and announced himself. To which Jenicho lustily responded; “Me no give damn. Me walk post, gun loaded, bay’net fixed. You no bodder me. Me shoot!” And the Officer of the Day discreetly walked on.

Then there is little Philip R. who plays our decrepit old piano quite brilliantly by ear, and who is, he tells me, half Greek and half Egyptian. Philip R. is the pet of a French family in one of the neighboring villages. He stopped at a house to ask for a drink of water when out walking one day. Madame asked him in, pressed him to stay to supper. The family made much of him, and all because forsooth he was the first “American” they had ever seen. Since then he has been a constant welcome visitor.

There is St. Mary too. If you can conceive of a cherub eating watermelon you have a perfect picture of St. Mary. St. Mary converses entirely in words of one syllable and very few at that. He makes smiles serve for speech. St. Mary loses everything he owns; not long ago he lost his overcoat, now he has lost his bayonet. Yet St. Mary is the best natured boy in the company; he needs to be. When St. Mary helps me stir the chocolate it seems as if half the company lined up on the other side of the counter to shout; “St. Mary! Take your dirty hands out er that there chocolate!” and St. Mary never says a word but grins until his eyes are nothing but little slits and ducks his head until only the curls on top are visible.

“St. Mary, he’s kind o’ simple,” explains Private Gatts. “But there ain’t anybody in camp that’s got a better heart.”

And there is Bruno, Angelo Bruno, a little grinning goblin of a man, but strong, they say, as a gorilla. Bruno gives the non-coms no end of trouble; he’s a “tough nut to manage.” Whenever he is told to do anything that does not suit his tastes, he merely shrugs his shoulders, “No capish,” and that’s the end of it. The other day while on guard he was interrogated by the Officer of the Day.

“What’s your name?”

“Bruno.”

“What are your general orders?”

“Angelo.”

The Officer gasped, thought he would try again. “What are your special orders?”

Bruno saw a light. “They’re ina my pock!”

When I first came to Saint Thiebault I was puzzled by the silver half-francs in my cash drawer which were bent in the middle, some of them so far as almost to form a right-angle. Then the boys explained. Bruno was once a strong man in a circus sideshow. He did things with his teeth. The crooked half-francs were the results of his exhibiting his prowess to the boys. So now when damaged half-francs appear I know that our little Angelo has been trying his teeth again. At present our social intercourse with Bruno is limited. He is serving thirty days in the guard-house. But every day or two he slips into the hut to do his shopping, the kind-hearted guard standing at the door, as he does so, a sheepish look on his face. If there is one military duty which the doughboy hates above all others, it is this job of “chasing prisoners,” and when you meet a file of guard-house habitués escorted by a rifle in the rear, it is invariably the guard, and not the prisoners, who looks the culprit! The interest of Bruno’s visits lies largely in seeing what is his latest acquisition in the way of jewelry. For Bruno has a pretty taste for finery and enlivens the dull evenings of his captivity by winning away the ornaments of his fellow prisoners. Already he has come into the canteen decked out with seven large rings and a fat watch and chain. Today he appeared with his latest prize, a pair of gold-rimmed eye glasses. They are hideously unbecoming, they pinch his nose so that it hurts, moreover he can’t more than half see out of them, and yet it is quite evident those eyeglasses are the pride of his heart.

Last week our Secretary conceived a big idea. He would educate A Company. He would teach them to read, write and speak English. He started a class. On the first night there was a large crowd, eager and interested; the second night there were six, the pupils when sought out complaining they were “tired” or “busy;” the third night there was Saint Mary who made one; the fourth night the class died an easy death. I am afraid Company A is going to continue uneducated. As Brady said:

“There were just two things I learned in school; one was to throw a spit ball, the other was to bend a pin convenient for somebody to sit on.” And it looks as if it would have to go at that.

“Why, those birds don’t even understand their own names,” complain the officers; “except on payday, and then they’ll answer no matter how you pronounce them.”

Bourmont, December 9.

There is something queer about me. I don’t mind the mud, I don’t mind the rain, I don’t mind the hill, I don’t even mind the mess. Of course I admit that the food isn’t quite what one is used to, and the surroundings are a trifle unsavoury, but it is, after all, so much better than the state of semi-starvation that I was led to half anticipate, that I for one am quite content.

Our mess is held at the house of an old couple who live a little way above our billet on the hill. The house was differentiated from the others in the row by a spindling and discouraged tree which stood in a green tub outside; as this was the only tree in front of a house on the whole street it has always been easy to pick out our otherwise undistinguished entrance. Last night however, the weather waxing colder, the tree moved indoors. This morning the whole Y. personnel wandered distractedly up and down the hill trying to identify the mess-house door, until some kindly villagers, sensing the situation, came out on their front steps and pointed us to the place.

The house, like most of the village dwellings, consists, downstairs, of just two rooms. In the front room the family cooks, eats and spends its days. In the back room the family sleeps, and here we have our mess. The drawback of this arrangement is that one has to pass through the kitchen in order to reach the dining-room and this is likely to spoil one’s pleasure in the meal that follows. As for me, I go on the principle that what one doesn’t know won’t take one’s appetite away, and so hurry through the kitchen with one eye shut and the other fixed on the door ahead of me.

Said my right-hand neighbor to my left-hand neighbor at supper the other day, as he offered him the pièce de résistance of the meal:

“You aren’t taking rice tonight?”

“Thanks no. Saw the old lady picking ’em out this noon.”

“That’s nothing. I saw the old man picking ’em out of the beans yesterday.”

But why should people come to war if they are going to be so squeamish?

A few days ago one rash soul among us conceived a hankering for salad. She went to Madame and, being ignorant of the French word, demanded simply.

“Avez-vous lettice?”

Madame shook her head uncomprehending, but finally as the words were repeated a light dawned.

“Ah oui, oui, oui!”

She turned and hurried upstairs, descending triumphantly a moment later with a large bundle of old letters! In just what form she expected us to have them served I have not yet been able to ascertain.

The mess-room is so crowded that to reach a seat often requires considerable manœuvering. In one corner stands an ancient dressmaker’s dummy—by popular vote awarded as sweetheart to the most bashful man at table; in the corner opposite is the bed of Madame and Monsieur. The men who get up for early breakfast, swallow their bread and jam and coffee with Monsieur watching from his couch of ease. Today Madame was indisposed and when we came to supper we found that she had retired already. All through the meal she lay there, under the red feather-bed, looking like a dingy, weazened old corpse, staring at the ceiling, her mouth wide open.

For the last few days we have had a visiting clergyman with us. To all appearances a meek and long-suffering little man, he has been giving special revivalistic discourses at the huts and eating at our mess. This morning he was asked to say grace. In the middle of a long and earnest exhortation I was startled to hear these words: “Oh Lord, Thou knowest we are apt to grow lean and to starve in Thy service!” I fairly had to stuff one of the one franc canteen handkerchiefs, which serve as napkins at the mess, into my mouth to keep from laughing.

Bourmont, December 12.

In Paris a man who lectured to us said: “Get the fellows who have influence with you, and you can swing the crowd.” Sometimes I think that if Pat were our enemy instead of our friend we might almost as well shut up the hut. For Pat the sharp-shooter, Pat the dare-devil, Pat, who in company phrase “has Harry Lauder and George Cohen stopped in a hundred places,” Pat the happy-go-lucky adventurer is one of the leading spirits in Company A. He has served, it seems, already in the war with the Canadian army.

“But how did you get out of it?” I asked.

Whereupon Pat regaled me with a wonderful rigmarole involving an extraordinary case—his own—of shell-shock out of which I could make neither head nor tail. Later, from one of the Secretaries who had been at Saint Thiebault before I came, I learned the truth. When America had declared war, Pat had deserted from the Canadian in order to enlist in the American army. Pat had showed him a letter from one of his old-time friends; it ended:

“Of course I wouldn’t think of splitting on an old pal like you, Pat, but I do need twenty dollars like hell.”

“What did you do?” asked the Secretary.

“Sure an’ I sent him the money,” grinned Pat.

Shortly after I first became acquainted with him, Pat, who is naturally gallant, with a tongue inclined to blarney, extracted a promise from me. Some day, after the war, if we should happen to meet, say, strolling down Fifth Avenue, Pat “dressed in a nice blue serge suit” is going to “take me away from the other feller” and take me out to dinner. It was after solemly pledging my word to this agreement that I learned that Pat had formerly been a saloon keeper and had had an extensive police-court record. Immediately I began to hope that Pat would forget that post-war party, but not he. Instead, he is constantly reminding me of it, always before an audience, dwelling on it and elaborating it, until now I find it has grown from a mere dinner, to dinner, the theatre and a dance!

Lithe, wiry, lean-faced with close-cropped hair, pale blue gimlet eyes and an almost unvarying expression of intense seriousness on his face, Pat, when present, is the life of the hut. Forever at his clowning, you would never dream from his demeanour that Pat’s domestic affairs are in a state little short of catastrophic. His wife, according to her photograph a handsome, sullen, passionate type, half Mexican, ran away about a year ago, taking with her all his money that happened to be handy, together with his new automobile. Encountering some of Pat’s friends, she had explained her apparently care-free single state by telling them that Pat was dead. Now she has discovered that Pat is in France, she is all for reconciliation. She has written him a letter in which she addresses him as her dear husband about six times to each sheet, informing him that she needs money, and inquiring of him what he wished her to do with his clothes.

“What did you answer?” I asked, for Pat, who must always share his correspondence, had shown me the letter.

“I told her,” grinned Pat, “she cu’d keep the clothes and maybe she’d find another man to fit ’em.”

But there is another and more serious side to the matter. It seems that the lady in the case has written to the Captain of A Company, requesting him to forward a large proportion of Pat’s pay to his deserving and indigent wife. Whether or not this will be done is still uncertain. Pat refuses to discuss the possibilities, but from the glint in his eyes I have a premonition that if next pay day Pat finds any considerable deduction made from his pay, that that night one wild Irishman will run amuck in Saint Thiebault.

Occasionally in the midst of Pat’s racy discourses I overhear things not meant for my ears, such as his remarking how in Rochester once he “went on a seven day’s pickle in company with a female dreadnut.” But usually he is very careful to only “pull gentle stuff” in my hearing. The other day he delivered himself of a wonderful dissertation on the deceitfulness of pious people, ending with this gem;

“So whenever I see one of these guys comin’ towards me with a gold crown on his bean, looking’ as if he couldn’t sin if he had to, why I nip tight on to my pocketbook and I cross to the other side of the street!”

Today Pat came into the canteen with a newspaper clipping and a letter to show me. The letter was from the Chief of Police of K——, one of the many cities in which Pat has resided during his short but crowded life, the clipping from the K—— Daily Sheet. The clipping was comprised of a letter which Pat had written to the Chief of Police giving in humorous phrase his version of life in France and an accompanying paragraph stating that though the writer had given the police force no little anxiety during his residence in K——, still he had been in spite of all, a good-hearted and likable rascal, and now that he had gone to war for his country, bygones should be bygones and K—— must be proud of him. The letter from the Chief was in much the same vein.

“Yes,” ruminated Pat; “I kept the old feller pretty busy, though me an’ him were friends just the same. But it sure would get the old man’s goat, just after he’d had me up and fined me, to come home and see me settin’ at his dinner-table alongside of his pretty daughter.”

Bourmont, December 14.

Because it took too much time right in the most important part of the day to climb Bourmont Hill for mess at night, I have arranged to take my suppers with two little old ladies here in Saint Thiebault. The suppers are to consist of a bowl of cocoa and a slice of bread with jam. The little ladies supply the bread and milk for the cocoa and I supply the rest, paying them one franc a day.

At half-past five I put on my things, light my little candle-lantern and set forth. The boys, coming in after mess, will be crowding the hut; a chorus of anxious voices queries.

“You’re comin’ back sure, ain’t you?”

And, “What time is that hot chocolate goin’ to be ready?”

I pick my way down the slippery duck-boards to the highway. Trudging along the muddy road, friendly voices hail me from the dark. I am known by the little light I carry. At number two Rue Dieu I rap and enter, trying desperately to leave some of the mud from my boots on the door-step, for in this land of wooden shoes scrapers are as unknown as they are unnecessary. Once inside I have to fairly strain my eyes in order to be able to see anything, for all the light in the room is supplied by the embers on the hearth and one tiny gasolene lamp with a flame not much bigger than the point of a lead pencil. Kerosene is unobtainable for civilian use; the price of candles is prohibitive.

“C’est la guerre. Cest la misère,” say the little old ladies. “One must sit in the dark—“Cest triste comme ça.”

My candle doubles the illumination, yet in spite of that, so strong is the instinct for economy, they will not rest easy until they have blown it out.

The little old ladies are cousins. The elder of the two, “Madame,” is lame and has snow-white hair. She sits by the fire always in the self-same spot. The younger, “Mademoiselle,” is a tiny dwarfish creature with a back that is not quite straight. Over her dark dress she wears a jaunty little scarlet apron sewn with black polka dots. I am grateful for that apron; it makes the one bit of color in the sombre room.

I sit in front of the fire at the round table and sip my chocolate. The table has an oil-cloth cover on which is printed a map of France, so as I eat my supper I can take a lesson in geography. It is a pre-war tablecloth I fancy; over at one edge shows a slice of Germany. The little old ladies point to that side of the table with scorn, “Les sales Bodies sont là!” they explain.

I wonder that it doesn’t give them heart-burn to look down and see the captive and devastated districts of France lying beneath their tea cups. Think of setting your salt-cellar on the city of Lille or your mustard pot on the sacred citadel of Verdun!

As I sup I endeavour to converse politely, but as my French is little more than camouflage, this is a dubious proceeding. Whenever I prove particularly stupid, out of the corner of my eye I catch Madame shaking her old head at Mademoiselle despairingly.

“Elle ne comprend pas!” she murmurs sotto voce, pityingly; “elle ne comprend pas!”

At odd times they turn an honest penny by doing a little sewing for the villagers. But life is very difficult these days: the prices of everything have gone so high. Why, wooden shoes that cost five francs before the war now fetch fifteen!

Tonight I noticed an item in a Parisian Journal lying by my plate. It was to the effect that at the Madeleine that day Mlle. X had married Lieut. Z., a veteran of the war who had lost both arms and both legs. I showed it to the little ladies.

“Ah oui!” sighed Mademoiselle with a shiver. “Elle a beaucoup de courage, celle-là!”

And Madame shook her white head and echoed. “Oui, elle a beaucoup de courage!”

Upstairs an American officer is billeted. I fancy his presence supplies a certain dash of romance to the little old ladies’ lives. The Americans are nice, they say, and make little noise in the village; when the Russians were here it was different.

“It will be lonely when the Americans are gone,” sighs Mademoiselle. “The houses will seem empty.”

Bourmont, December 18.

Yesterday I explored the top of Bourmont Hill. It is here that the Quality Folk live, and here are some stately old houses with beautiful carved doorways and even an occasional gargoyle. Here too the general commanding the Division lives, and I have often observed with glee corpulent colonels and rotund majors puffing and blowing and growing red in the face as they climbed the hill to Headquarters. At the top of the hill there are two churches. Some two weeks ago, it is whispered, a spy was caught signaling from the tower of Notre Dame. His signals, it is said, were flashed to another spy stationed on the hills to the east, who in turn sent the messages on to the lines. The Curé of Notre Dame is being held under suspicion of complicity.

From Notre Dame an avenue bordered by magnificent old trees sweeps around to the Calvary, a tall wooden cross surmounting a curious structure of rough stone, ringed about with shallow steps—the Mecca of many pilgrimages. Beyond the Calvary one comes to the Mystery of Bourmont. A faded sign declares Défense d’éntrée, but one looks the other way and slips by. For once past the gate you are in an atmosphere of enchantment. No one seems to know just what it is, nor how it came about; I can get no intelligent explanation from Madame or Monsieur. To me it seems like the forgotten playground of an old mad king in some fantastic legend. For here among the trees are stone stairs, walls and terraces, and, cut in the curiously cleft rocks, are niches and tunnelled passage-ways, all mantled over now with green moss and ivy, the whole making one think of a dream garden out of Mæterlinck.

Coming down Bourmont Hill afterwards I was startled by the beating of a drum; looking back I saw a woman, bare-headed, her blue apron fluttering in the wind, descending the street after me; from her shoulders was slung the drum which she was beating with a martial vim. It was the town-crier, le tambour as the French put it. Arrived at an appropriate spot, she stopped, pulled out a paper, cried “Avis!” and began to read in a rapid high official monotone. The wash-house was to be closed between two and four o’clock the following afternoon on account of the new water system the Americans were installing. Certain requisitions of grain were to be levied.... The villagers were notified to call at the Mayory for their bread cards, without which, after such a date, no bread could be obtained.... One or two women came to the doors of the houses and listened. She took no notice of them. The reading over, she rolled the paper up with a quick decisive gesture, and resumed her march, the sharp rub-a-dub-dub of her drum pursuing me all the way to Saint Thiebault.

Of late the air has become fairly vibrant with disquieting rumours: one does not know what to believe, what to reject.

The Germans are massing for a gigantic drive on Nancy. In three weeks, some say, the offensive is to begin; three days, say others. Nancy is to be another Verdun. If they break through they will pass this way. The American troops are being withdrawn from this neighborhood: any day the order may come for us to leave. At Paris the political situation is dark. Some people even fear a popular uprising against the government. I hinted at this to Monsieur, he shook his old head hopelessly. But yes, things were in a bad way. Now if France only had Veelson at her head! France and Veelson! His gesture indicated the grandeur of such a contingency. As it was, France lacked a leader. And underneath all this runs another rumour, still darker, still more disquieting. The French, the gallant French, they say, are “laying down.” They are ready to make peace at any price. They are played out, sick to death of it all!

“Forty-two months in the trenches!” cried a sergeant en-permission last night; “It is enough! I am through. Let the Americans do it!”

And this feeling, they tell us, is wide-spread. The people see our soldiers day after day, in the training camps, inactive. “What are they here for?” they are asking. “Why don’t they fight? Are they going to wait until it is all over?”

Will our soldiers, half-trained as they are, and a mere handful, be forced, to satisfy them, into the trenches?

In the canteen I look into the boys’ faces and smile, but my heart turns sick within me.

Bourmont, December 20.

Such a strange, incredible thing has happened,—a thing that has upset all my preconceived ideas of human nature. It began with Malotzzi. Malotzzi as his name betrays is a “wop;” he is also the smallest fellow in the company which contains many small men. Nor is he only small, but with his thin olive-tinted face and his slender body, he looks so delicate, so ethereal that you feel a breath of wind might fairly blow him away. To the company he is “a good kid, quiet, never makes any trouble.” To me he has always seemed an elfin, changeling creature, a strayed pixie, whose impishness has turned to gentleness. Child of the tenements that he is, he is possessed of the most exquisite old-fashioned courtesy that I have ever yet encountered; and he has the starriest eyes of any mortal born.

Not long ago he came to the counter to show me a post-card from his sweetheart. It had an ugly picture of a red brick city block upon it, and the message scrawled in an unformed hand beneath contained little except the simple declaration that when he came home she would go with him to the photographer’s over the candy store at the corner and they would have their pictures taken together. Yet no flaming and lyric love-letter could have rendered him more naively proud. Malotzzi with a sweetheart! It was absurd, he was nothing but a child! I can well believe that Malotzzi wouldn’t make a very “snappy” soldier.

This afternoon when the company was out for drill, a certain Second Lieutenant discovered that Malotzzi hadn’t got his pack rolled up right. This was not the first time he had offended in this manner. The Lieutenant had warned him. He was angry. He took Malotzzi over to the bath-house, stripped off his blouse, tied his hands so he couldn’t struggle, and beat him with a gunstrap until he fainted.

The story flashed around the camp. When I came back from supper I found the boys at white-heat with indignation. They fairly seethed with anger. I think if the Lieutenant had happened in, they might have killed him. Presently a little crowd carried Malotzzi in. They rolled back his sleeves and showed me the great purple welts upon his arms. His back was all like that, they said. He had to be held up in order to keep his feet.

“You had better take him to the hospital,” I told them.

They carried him out again. He is at the hospital now, where he is likely to stay for some time. His lungs are delicate and the beating caused congestion. The medical officer made a report and the Lieutenant has been placed under arrest.

I have never met the Lieutenant to know him, but curiously, the Secretary, who messes with the officers, asserts that of all the men there this Lieutenant has always appeared as the most clean-spoken, the most cultured, the most gentlemanly. And the boys have always considered him a very decent sort. The whole thing is absolutely and blankly incomprehensible to me. There is one explanation the boys offer; which is that the Lieutenant, having a yellow streak, has lost his nerve at the prospect of going to the front, and has done this as a desperate expedient, in the hope of being dishonorably discharged. The only other possible explanation which I can come upon is that the Lieutenant has a German name.

Bourmont, December 23.

The burning question that is on every lip: Will the Christmas turkeys come?

We had been promised turkey. What’s more I had been promised some of that turkey too, at Company A’s mess table. Now uncertainty holds us in torment. Every sort of a rumor is rife. Some darkly insinuate that neighboring organizations have sidetracked those turkeys. Others declare that the turkeys, having been smuggled in by night, are now actually in camp among us.

“Huh!” snorts my friend the Tall Kentuckian. “Funny turkeys they have in this army! I done heard those turkeys had four legs and a pair of horns!”

Of course Christmas won’t be Christmas without the turkeys, but anyway we have done our best to bring Christmas into the hut. The question of Christmas trees was taken up in the Bourmont office some days ago. An application was made to the Mayor; the Mayor referred the matter to the representative of the Bureau of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry proved to be a good scout. He ruminated a while, “Mademoiselle,” said he, “this matter is so tied up with red tape, that if one were to unwind it all, it would be New Year’s before you got your tree. My advice is that you select your tree, wait until after dark, then go out, cut it down close to the ground, and cover the place carefully with snow.”

Tonight when the subject of Christmas trees came up in the canteen I repeated this anecdote to the boys. It was then growing dusky. Several boys immediately disappeared. In an hour they were back again, dragging not one, but two beautiful hemlocks. We set up the more perfect one, and cut the other up for trimmings. With flags, paper festoons, Japanese lanterns, tinsel which the French call “angel’s hair,” and tree ornaments the hut was transformed in a twinkling as if by magic. Now it is no longer a muddy-floored tent, but a green bower threaded with myriad bits of bright color, and I have really never seen anything of the sort that was any prettier.

Yesterday several cases of free tobacco from the Sun Tobacco Fund arrived in camp. The boys in the orderly room opened the cases last night and hunted through and through them, trying to find packages which bore the names of unmarried lady donors. Unfortunately the Misses who contributed were few and far between, but hope dies hard.

“Say, mightn’t Asa be a girl?” the lads are asking me eagerly today.

“Lucien ain’t a man’s name, is it?”

Enclosed in each package is a postal-card on which one may, if so inclined, return thanks to the giver. The boys who are taking the trouble to write are doing it frankly with the hope that this may encourage the recipient to repetition. How to tactfully suggest this without seeming greedy is a problem whose delicacy proves difficult.

“You tell me how to say it,” they tease.

“Say, won’t you write it for me, please ma’am?”

I saw one postal-card accomplished after an evening of concentrated effort; “Your precious and admired gift,” it began.

Already Santa Claus in the person of Mr. Gatts has presented me with a beautiful white silk apron embroidered with large bunches of life-like violets.

Bourmont, Christmas Day.

Joyeux Noël!

As I came in last night there was a great log burning on the hearth.

“C’est la bouche de Noël,” said Madame and explained how it would burn all night, then Christmas morning she would take the little end that was left and put it away in the loft until the next Christmas: it would protect the house from lightning; it was a very ancient custom.

Back in the Salle des Assiettes I found our table spread as for a little fête with a wonderful cake and a bottle tied up with a bouquet of chrysanthemums and long ribbon streamers of red white and blue. I was so innocent that I supposed at first that the chrysanthemums were in the bottle, an improvised vase, but Madame quickly enlightened me: “C’est le vin blanc,” she explained to my embarrassment.

The Gendarme and I took counsel together as to how we could best express our feelings on this occasion toward the Family Chaput, the household having been increased over night by the arrival of the married daughter and her small boy and girl. After various projects had been considered and abandoned, we finally took the little stand from our room, dressed it with evergreen and tinsel, then heaped it with nuts, candies, chocolate bars, and little jars of jam all from the canteen, together with a few small toys, and carried it in and placed it in front of the hearth. The family appeared delighted. We observed, however, that after the first toot, baby Max’s whistle was swiftly and silently confiscated. Later when La Petite, the little maid-of-all-work who takes care of our rooms, came in, we had a few trinkets dug from the depths of our trunks to bestow on her. Later still I carried chocolates and confiture to my little old ladies of the Rue Dieu.

This Christmas day I fancy will be long remembered by the inhabitants of this part of France; for in every one of the villages about, our soldiers have given the French children a Christmas tree. I went to see the tree at Saint Thiebault. The ancient church, its chill interior ablaze with light, was crowded with villagers all dressed in their fête day best. The old people were just as excited and eager as the children; not one had ever seen a Christmas tree before. They stood on the pews in order to get a better view. The tree which was very large and beautiful stood just outside the altar rail. It bore a gift for every child in Saint Thiebault. While the tree was slowly being unburdened of its load, the band-master’s choir, high up in the choir-loft, sang an accompaniment. Some of the selections were of a sacred character, others frankly secular, such as Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes; but as one of the choristers remarked;

“As long as we sing them slow and solemn the Frenchies won’t know the difference.”

After the Christmas tree I went around to the little local hospital to take some gifts to the patients. There were half a dozen of them lying on cots in the bare barracks room, a dreary set in a drearier setting. In one corner lay a boy who muttered incoherently. He had just been brought in, they told me, and was very ill: the doctors were puzzled to know what was the matter with him. I left some little gifts for him when he should be better.

It was half-past four when I reached the hut. Suddenly it popped into my head that we ought to have a Santa Claus. At half-past six Santa walked in through the door. It was Pat in a big red nose, a red peaked cap, much white cotton-batting beard and whiskers, rubber boots, the Chief’s fur coat, covered over for the night with turkey-red bunting, and a fat pack slung over one shoulder. I had just dressed him in the mess hall, and for an impromptu Santa Claus, I flatter myself he was quite effective. The boys whooped. When they discovered who it was behind that nose, they yelped like terriers.

“Ain’t he the beauty! Oh you whiskers! Say Pat, kiss me quick!”

We got Santa safely behind the counter and then opened the pack. It was full of foolish little things; tricks, puzzles, games, mottoes, whistles, tin trumpets, paper “hummers”. The boys went wild. It was the musical instruments that made the hit. For two hours that hut shrieked pandemonium. Every last man in the company tootled and squawked as if his life depended on it, and every last one of them was tootling a different tune.

“C’est des grands gosses!” Truly, as Madame Chaput says, they’re nothing after all but so many big little boys.

After the stuff was distributed the Secretary and I invited the boys to partake of hot chocolate and sandwiches. But to our disappointment they only took a languid interest in the treat. Instead of the five and six cups apiece which many often swallow, not one of them consumed more than a cup and three-quarters. Too late we realized; they had already gorged themselves on the contents of their Christmas boxes from home.

Reports coming in from the village stated that one American Christmas custom had made a strong appeal to the feminine portion at least of the population. Quantities of mistletoe grow hereabouts. The French, although averring that it brings good-luck, consider it a pest and let it go at that. It took the American doughboys to enlighten the Mademoiselles as to its Anglo-Saxon significance. It would be curious, I have been thinking, if the adoption of this ancient privilege should prove one of the lasting evidences of the American troops in France!

As I left the canteen I learned that the boy who had been so sick at the hospital was dead.

Bourmont, December 26.

Last night was a wild night in the barracks. This morning the hut was full of echoes of it. Company A indeed wore a jaded look. They had had very little sleep it was explained. And it was all on account of the Christmas hummers.

“I ain’t got nothin’ against you people, but I shore don’t think you gave A Company a square deal,” remarked my friend the Tall Kentuckian as he lit his cigarette at the counter.

“Why, didn’t you like the present that Santa Claus brought you?” I teased.

“Huh! I would shore have singed the ol’ gentleman’s whiskers for him last night if I could have caught him!” He went on to explain; “We’d just get settled down good to sleep when some guy or other would start up a-squawkin’ on one of them things. An’ Sergeant ——, well he’d had just enough to make him fightin’ mad, an’ he shore would rare around that there barracks tryin’ to find them fellers. Why, half the corporals in the outfit was marchin’ up and down the place most all the night long, shyin’ hob-nailed shoes in what they guessed was the direction of them noises.”

I began to discern what a night of terror it had been.

“Yes suh!” declared the Kentuckian. “There was one feller with a hummer we couldn’t get. He kept blowin’ Tipperary. He must have blowed it for two hours steady, on an’ off. I guess he had every last hob-nailed shoe in the hull barracks throwed at him.”

Nor is this all. It seems I have committed a ghastly faux pas. I have gotten the Y. in dreadfully dutch with the officers. It is all along of the Christmas calendars. The Christmas calendars arrived at the canteen just the day before Christmas. They were designed to be sold to the boys for five cents apiece in order that they might have something to send to the folks at home as a Christmas greeting. But since they reached us so very late the Secretary and I decided we didn’t have the face to put them on sale.

“Let’s give them away,” I suggested, and on his agreeing, laid them in heaps on the counter and invited the boys to help themselves. The boys weren’t bashful. They helped themselves with enthusiasm and zeal. They came back for more and more. For the rest of the day no one did a thing at the hut but sit at the tables and address envelopes. One boy, I learned later, sent off as many as thirty-five. I was awfully pleased to have the boys appreciate the calendars so. And I never once for a moment thought of the censors; but presently I heard from them. The company censors, two of the younger lieutenants, had been looking forward, it seems, to some leisurely care-free hours at Christmas. When the stacks of calendars started coming in they saw their holiday vanish into thin air, nay more, they saw themselves sitting up nights for weeks to come censoring those precious calendars. And they were swearing, raving mad. They were going to run the Y. out of the town! They were going to shut down the hut! Finally they compromised the matter with their consciences by censoring half and chucking the other half into the stove. But even then they couldn’t stop fussing and fuming over it. Tonight just to top the matter off, we received a sharp reprimand from the Business Manager at Bourmont for being so extravagant as to give the calendars away, unauthorized. Was there ever such a tragedy of good intentions?

Bourmont, December 27.

Today we buried the lad who died on Christmas night. I had never seen a military funeral before and I had never dreamed that such a ceremony could be so thrillingly beautiful.

The company formed at three o’clock in the road in front of the canteen, then filed slowly through the streets of the little grey age-old village. The band marching at the head of the procession played the Marche Funèbre of Chopin. After the band came the officers of the company and then the firing squad of eight sharp-shooters, followed by an ambulance carrying the boy’s coffin covered with a great flag. Behind, marched the whole of Company A and after them crowded a throng of villagers. All the men in town, with the innate respect that the French have for death, stood uncovered as we passed, while many of the women watched with tears streaming down their faces.

We passed through the village and down the road to the little grey-walled cemetery, ringed around with evergreens and now deep in freshly fallen snow. All about stretched virgin shining snowfields and over them to the east rose Bourmont like a dream city, etched as delicately as by a silver-point against the soft dove-colored sky.

The majestic phrases of the Catholic burial service rang out clearly on the frosty air:

Eternal rest grant him, O Lord,

And let perpetual light shine upon him!

The coffin with the great flag burning in blue and scarlet was lowered into the grave. Slowly, with perfect expression, a bugler blew the poignant, unforgettable notes of Taps. The rifles of the firing squad cracked sharply; three volleys, it was over.

“Will they leave him there?” An old Frenchwoman asked one of the boys afterwards.

“’Till the war is over, then likely they will send him home.”

“But why? He won’t be lonely here. There will always be some one to put flowers on his grave.”

Tonight I was talking to the Supply Sergeant about the lad.

“I think he died of a broken heart as much as anything,” he told me. “They wouldn’t let his mother see him at the dock when we sailed. She came to say good-bye but it was against the rules. He never could get over that; he kept brooding all the time and fretting for her. I read some of her letters to him. They seemed more like a sweetheart’s than a mother’s.”

The doctors, however, diagnosed his disease as spinal meningitis. They have ordered the barracks in which he slept to be quarantined. Already a half a dozen boys in quarantine have taken to their beds, but this we hope is largely due to over-stimulated imaginations. Even if the disease doesn’t spread, however, I am wondering what will become of ninety-seven lively boys bottled up for two weeks in one barracks. Already various ones have eluded the guard and come sneaking furtively into the canteen to buy their cigarettes and chocolates. Whenever one of these unfortunates is recognized a regular howl goes up all over the hut.

“Outside! You’re one of the crumby ones!” they jeer, or; “Convict! Get back to your cell!”

Bourmont, December 28.

The worst of my job is playing dragon to the French children. In view of the fact that if allowed in the hut at all they swarm in, in such numbers as to fairly overrun it, and pester the boys with their insatiable appeals for “goom” and chocolate, it has seemed best to make a strict rule against their admission. (Besides which I don’t approve of giving them gum, for in the face of anything one can do or say they will insist on swallowing it, which is, I’m sure, not at all good for their tummies!) But in spite of this prohibition the place holds an irresistible attraction for them. At night one can often see their faces pressed flat against the isinglass windows as they peer inside; while chiefly on Saturday and Sunday afternoons they will slip slyly in, and then if the dragon isn’t on the jump to explain to each and every one in her very best French, that she is so sorry but it really is forbidden, why in a twinkling the hut becomes full of them. And they are so picturesque, so appealing, so full of shy wonder at the gramophone with the wheel that “marches by itself” that it is very hard to turn them out.

Since Christmas I have been kept busy by a tiny tad of a ragamuffin with a funny round cropped black head and a face as solemnly expressionless as a little carved Buddha. He slips in among the tables and he is positively too small to be seen. The Christmas tree with its shining ornaments is his stealthy objective. In vain I explain matters politely to him; without a sound, without the hint of a flicker in his little beady black eyes, he turns and clumps out in his ridiculous sabots, only to presently slip in again. And now it seems he has lain low and sagaciously observed my habits; for returning to the hut after mess this noon, I met him trudging along the Rue Dieu, his eyes encountering mine blandly without embarrassment, his absurd little figure bulging all over with purloined Christmas tree ornaments. In the hut I found our poor tree stripped to a height of four feet from the floor of all its finery.

These last few evenings the hut has been given over to writing Christmas thank-you letters home. The official writer of love letters for the company has been working overtime; not that his clients cannot write themselves, but because they feel he is more able to do justice to the subject. Every night now I see him sitting out in front of the counter, his Jewish profile bent low over the table as he covers sheet after sheet with his fine and fanciful handwriting, while next him perches anxiously the interested party, watching developments and occasionally proffering a suggestion. When it is done they must bring it to me for my approval.

“That’s a real classy letter, ain’t it?” the lover will query proudly and I assure him that it is indeed.

“When she gets that, I bet she’ll come across with that sweater she told me she was makin’ for me, all right!”

“Say do you think that ought to be good for a cartoon of cigarettes?” another one inquires.

Of course there are many who, no matter what the effort, prefer to write their own. Sometimes when cleaning up the canteen tables I come upon specimens of such, first drafts discarded on account of blots. One such love letter, classic in its brevity, picked up the other day, ran:

Dear Sweetheart,

I am writing you a few interesting lines which I hope will be the same to you wishing you a merry Xmas and a happy New Year

Your loving friend

Pvt. ——

Of late I have been moved to speculate wonderingly on the mental processes of the American public. I have been going through the stacks of magazines in the warehouse sent from the States for one cent per to provide amusement for the doughboys’ leisure moments. Among the rest I found the Upholsterer’s Monthly, The Hardware Dealer’s Journal, The Mother’s Magazine, Fancy Work and The Modern Needleworker. I showed some of these prizes to one of the boys; “Gee, but that’s the kind of snappy stuff to send a feller over the top!” was his comment. That numbers of the Undertaker’s Journal have also been discovered among the donations from home I have heard asserted on excellent authority, but as yet I have not personally come across any.

Just as we were closing tonight, Pat came up to the counter, solemnly leaned across it:

“Have you seen the new shoes they’re issuin’? he demanded. “They’ve got pitchers on them so a feller can’t see his own feet!”

Bourmont, January 2, 1918.

Once a week our peripatetic movie-machine makes its appearance among us. Louis, the sixteen year old French operator, unpacks the big cases, sets up the apparatus, and, if our luck holds, we have a show. Owing to the short range of the little machine the screen must be hung in the middle of the hut. This means that half the audience must view the pictures from the back, the essential difference being that the lettering is then reversed; “The Jewish Picture Show,” the boys call this. But then as half of us can’t read anyway, why should we mind?

The joy of the show lies in the audience. Just as soon as the lights are put out the fun begins: “Everbody watch their pocketbooks!” goes up the shout and from that moment we are never still.

The curly-headed heroine makes her coquettish entrance.

“Ooo la la! Oooo la la!” rises the enthusiastic welcome.

A bottle is displayed; “Cognac!” the yell shakes the roof.

The neglected wife begins to waver in response to the tempter’s wiles; “Now don’t forget your general orders, little lady!” admonishes an earnest voice.

Lovers indulge in a prolonged embrace; “Aw quit! Quit it! Yer make me homesick!” goes up the agonized appeal.

The enraptured lover stands registering ecstasy; “Hit him again, he’s coming to!” comes the derisive shout.

And so it goes. The actors aren’t on the screen, they’re in the house, and truly there isn’t a dull moment on the programme!

Last night, however, instead of the joyous chorus of running comment a subdued and decorous silence reigned, broken only by a few half-hearted sallies. What was the matter? I racked my brain to find the cause. All the joy had gone from the show. The evening was stale, flat and unprofitable. When the lights were lit again the mystery was immediately made plain. At one end of the counter stood an officer. I wonder if he dreamed what a spoil-sport he had been?

Once a week also a lady comes from the Bourmont office to give us a French lesson; not that Company A betrays any burning desire to learn to parlez-vous, but just that it seems obviously the proper thing to do under the circumstances, so French they must be taught willy-nilly. There were two lessons to be sure in which they took a degree of interest; the lesson about buying and counting money, and the lesson about food and drink. But when they had once learned to ask the price of things and to understand the answer, and had learned the words for eggs, bread, butter, beer, ham, beefsteak, chicken and French fried potatoes, their interest lapsed until it became positive boredom. Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.

For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes.

Private Dostal opened the programme; a large red-faced lad with a bland and simple cast of countenance, he is the comic balladist of the company. His first contribution was a selection popularly known among us as Beside the dyin’ boxcar, the empty hobo lay, a piece with a vast number of verses in which the dying hobo repents an ill-spent life, only, in the last line, to “jump up and hop the train.” For an encore we had Papa Eating Noodle Soup which could best be described as a “gleesome, gluesome” recitative, the chorus of each of numerous verses consisting of a realistic imitation of Papa partaking of the Soup. Mr. Gatts gave us a jig. Then Bruno who, as the boys say; “Could sing pretty good, only he don’t sing nothin’ but wop,” favored us with Oh Maria, prefacing his performance with the earnest admonition, “No laffin! nobody!” and after that with an Italian folk dance in which he looked more like a grotesque little punchinello than ever. Our light-weight boxing champion then gave us Love’s Old Sweet Song and the heavy-weight champion popularly known as Magulligan, together with Mr. Bruno rendered Bye low my Baby, antiphonal fashion. The last number was furnished by a poilu who had wandered in, in company with one of the boys. He sang a long dramatic ballad, entitled The Last Cuirassier, depicting some incident in the Franco-Prussian War. Just what the boys made of it I don’t know, but to me it was intensely thrilling, not on account of the words for I couldn’t catch them, but on account of the fervor, the imaginative sympathy, the martial spirit which that old fellow in his faded trench coat threw into his tones.

When the show was over Pat stood up on the counter and announced that as long as all the performances had been of such superlative merit, it was impossible for the judges to decide between them. So we handed out a couple of packages of “smoking” to each one of the artists, and everybody was satisfied.

Once too we had a party, an athletic stunt party. There were potato-races and sack-races, string-eating contests, three-legged and obstacle-races; but the sensational, the crowning event was, of course, the pie-race. The pies which were of French manufacture had only been arranged after difficulties: consulting the boulangère at Bourmont I had discovered that the calendar now only allows two pie-days per week, Sunday and Wednesday; since the party was to be Friday, pie was unlawful, unless—and here the law, like all good laws allowed a loop-hole—unless the pie be made with commissary flour! The pie-race was the “dark horse” on the programme. Fearing that if the boys learned beforehand of the prospective pie not only would we be mobbed by would-be contestants but also that their interest in the rest of the programme would suffer, we had kept the pie-race a profound secret. Smuggled in when the hut was empty those pies had reposed serenely under the counter all afternoon and contrary to my fears not a boy had sniffed them! When the proper moment came the pies were placed on a board in the middle of the floor, the contestants, of whom Pat was one, knelt with their hands tied behind them. At the word go! they fell to. The hut howled. Then it was discovered that Corporal G. laboured under a cruel handicap; his pie was a cherry pie and every cherry had a stone in it. Half-way through his pie, Pat, jerking one hand loose, seized a large piece, plastered it on the head of his opponent opposite; the race ended in a riot. Strangely enough, when peace was restored not a trace of pie could be found anywhere,—nowhere, that is, except in the back hair of the contestants.

Bourmont, January 6.

Now I know how the prince in the fairy tale felt when he was bidden to climb the mountain of glass. For Bourmont Hill is sheeted with ice, and it is fairly as much as one’s life is worth to attempt to go up or down. Every morning I stand and look at that dizzying slide aghast, and wonder if I may possibly reach the foot alive; then assistance comes, sometimes in the shape of a French lad in sabots, sometimes as a stalwart doughboy with a sharp-pointed staff, and together the two of us go slipping, slithering down the hill-side. In the middle of the road yelling doughboys, seated on cakes of ice, whiz by at a mad rate of speed; long before they reach the bottom of the slope, the ice-cake splinters into bits, but the doughboy shoots on downward, sprawling, spinning like a top, while you hold your breath and gape to see that his neck isn’t broken. For the French people all this supplies the sensation of a life-time; they crowd their front doors and their front yards laughing, shrieking warning or encouragement, as they watch the progress of the mad Americans up and down the hill.

“If one could only have a movie of Bourmont Hill on a day like this!” sighs the Gendarme.

The other day I encountered a sergeant of engineers on the hill-side.

“You ought to have a sled, Little Girl,” he told me.

“Well why don’t the engineers make me one?” I unthinkingly retorted.

“Sure and they will!” he answered.

Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have that sled made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. And as for starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just as soon attempt Niagara in a barrel.

Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the canteen I wash my chocolate cups with the dishpan on the stove in order to keep the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry at the corner of the counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. At night the ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black ruin all around them. What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a vexing problem; I might I suppose take them home each night with me and sleep with them underneath my pillow. In the little umbrella-stand stoves the green wood, which comes in so freshly cut, that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined around them, simply will not burn, and the stoves will smoke, mon Dieu, how they will smoke! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes, secured shakily by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company with the stoves, and then the clouds pour forth as if we housed a captive Etna.

In the barracks the boys tell me their shoes freeze to the floor over night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the sake of warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of a deadly crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an acute one. The boys who have money to burn are spending it to purchase extravagantly priced fur-lined gloves. The boys who can’t afford them, wait until they see somebody lay a pair down.

The taking of baths has become an act of heroism.

The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl

THE UNCENSORED LETTERS OF A CANTEEN GIRL

CHAPTER I: BOURMONT—COMPANY A