The A. E. F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces

The General was somewhat nervous and embarrassed, too. He still lacks a little of the French feeling for the dramatic in the doing of these little things. He had to clear his throat once and then he said, "I want to congratulate you. I envy you. There isn't a man in the army who wouldn't like to be in your place. You have brought home to the people of America the fact that we are in the war."

The doughboy didn't say anything, but the nurse who made the rounds that evening wondered why a patient who was doing so well should have a pulse hitting up to ninety-six.

Earlier in the summer General Pershing encountered some far more embarrassing tests. He had to handle bouquets. The donor was usually a French girl and a very little one. When Pershing and Pétain made a joint trip through the American army zone there were two little girls and two bouquets in each village. General Pétain, after receiving his bouquet, would bend over gracefully and kiss the little girl, adding one or two kindly phrases immediately following "ma petite." General Pershing began by patting the little girls on the head, but he realized it was not enough and after a bit he began to kiss them, too; only once or twice he got tangled up in their hats and found it hard to maintain military dignity. He handled the flowers gingerly. He seemed to regard each bouquet as a bomb which would explode in five seconds but each time there was some aide ready to step forward and relieve him.

The attitude of the average West Pointer towards his men is generally speaking the same as that of General Pershing. Some observers think the West Point attitude too strict, but I was inclined to believe that the men from the academy handled men better than the reserve officers. They are strict, it is true, but at the same time they have been trained to look after the needs of their men closely. The trouble with the average reserve officer is that he has not had time to learn how much he must father his men and mother them, too, for that matter. He does not know probably just how dependent the average soldier is upon his officer.

Perhaps the strictest officer of all is the man who was once a non-com. The former doughboy knows the tricks of the enlisted man and he is determined that nobody shall put anything over on him. He is often just a little bit afraid that the soldiers are going to trade on the fact that he was once an enlisted man. I once saw a soldier offer some cigars to two officers. One of the officers was a West Pointer and he laughed and took a cigar but the former non-com. refused very sternly. He could not afford to be indebted to an enlisted man.

I do not wish to imply that the men who come up from the ranks do not make good officers. As a matter of fact they are among the best, once their preliminary self-consciousness has worn off. The transition from stripes to bars is perfect torture to some of them. One company had a crack soldier who had been a sergeant for seven years. He was recommended for promotion and was sent to an officers' training school in France. He did very well but just a week before he was to receive his commission he succeeded in gaining permission to be dropped from the school and go back to his old company as sergeant. At the last minute he had decided that he did not want to be an officer.

I watched him put a company through its drill two days after his return. They moved with spirit and precision under his commands but when it was all over I found one reason why he didn't want to be an officer.

"That was very good today," he said. "You done well."

The first lieutenant smiled. He had a right to smile, too, for the return of the sergeant to his company had almost cut his work in half. He knew his value well enough.

"The best I can do is teach the men," he said. "It takes an old sergeant to learn them."

CHAPTER VIII

MEN WITH MEDALS

GENERAL PÉTAIN was the first of many famous Frenchmen who came to see the American troops in training. He also had the additional object of reviewing the chasseurs and of distributing medals, for this crack division had been withdrawn from one of the most active sectors to instruct the doughboys. General Pershing accompanied Pétain. The blue devils were drawn up in formation in the middle of a big meadow cupped within hills. The seven men who were to be honored stood in a line in front of the division. Six were officers and they awaited the pleasure of the general with their swords held at attention. The seventh man who stood at the right of the little line was an old sergeant with a great flowing gray and white mustache. The rifle which he held in front of him overtopped him by at least a foot.

The ceremony began with a fanfare by the trumpeters. As the last notes came tumbling back from the hills Pétain moved forward. We found that he was not so tall as Pershing nor quite as straight. The French leader is also a little gray and about his waist there is just a suggestion of the white man's burden. But he is soldierly for all that and his eyes are marvelously keen and steady. His tailor deserved a decoration. The general wore only one medal, but that was as large as the badge of a country sheriff. It was a great silver shield hung about his neck and indicated that he was a commander of the Legion of Honor. He stopped in front of the first officer in the little line waiting to be honored and spoke to him for a moment. Then he pinned a red ribbon on his coat and kissed the man first on the left cheek and then on the right. The doughboys looked on in amazement.

"Well, I'll be damned," said one under his breath, "it's true."

Four men received the red ribbons, but the other three were down only for the military medal which is a high decoration but less esteemed than the Legion of Honor. No kisses went with the green and yellow ribbons of the military medal but only handshakes. Pétain stopped in front of the old sergeant at the end of the line and looked at him for a minute without speaking. Then he called an orderly.

"This man has three palms on his croix de guerre," said Pétain.

Now a palm means that soldier has been cited for conspicuous bravery in the report of the entire army.

"The military medal is not enough for this man," continued Pétain. "Step forward," he said.

The old sergeant trembled a little as he stood a tiny, solitary gray figure in front of the whole division.

"Bring back the trumpets," Pétain commanded and for the lone poilu the fanfare was sounded again.

"I make you a chevalier of the Legion of Honor," said the commander in chief of the French army to the old sergeant, and after he had pinned the red ribbon to his breast he added a hug to the conventional two kisses. The poilu moved back to the ranks steadily, but as soon as the general had turned his back the sergeant pulled out his handkerchief and wept. The soldiers greeted their comrade with cheers and laughter.

"Now," said Pétain turning to Pershing, "let's take it easy for a little while. I've seen plenty of reviews."

The French general walked across the space cleared for the review and began to talk with people in the fringe of spectators gathered around the edge of the meadow. He talked easily without any seeming condescension.

"How are you, my little man?" he said, patting a boy on the head. "In what military class are you?"

Encouraged by his father the boy said that he was in the class of 1928.

"Oh," said the general, "that's a long time off. We shall have beaten the Boches before then."

Next it was a peasant girl who attracted his attention.

"Where have you come from?" he inquired with as much apparent interest as if he were talking with a soldier just back from Berlin. "That was a long walk just to see soldiers," he said when the girl told him that she lived in a little village about ten miles distant. "But we are glad to have you here," he added.

And so he moved on down the line with handshakes for the grownups, pats on the head for little boys and kisses for little girls. He turned back to his reviewing station then and the French troops swept by with brave display: They were very smart and brisk, horse, foot and artillery, but Pétain found a few things to criticize although he mingled praise generously with censure. He told the officers to know their men and to get on such terms with them that the soldiers would not be afraid to speak freely. He told of reforms which he planned to introduce in the French army. He favored longer leaves from the front, he said, and better transportation for the poilus.

"I shall have time tables made for the men on leave," he said and then for an instant he became the shrewd French business man rather than the dashing general.

"I have figured out," he explained, "that the army can afford to sell these time tables for five sous. It wouldn't do to give them away. Nobody would value them then."

A week later we had another visitor. French generals and all their resplendent aides clicked their heels together and stood at attention as this civilian passed by. He was a short stoutish man in blue serge knickerbockers and a dark yachting cap. His tailor deserved no decoration for this seemed a secondary sort of costume and headgear in a group loaded down with gold braid and valor medals. But their swords flashed for the man in the yachting cap and a great general saw him into his car, for the stoutish visitor was the President of the French Republic. Generals Pétain and Pershing accompanied Poincaré in his car up to the drill ground. It was an American division which marched this morning. In fact it was the same unit which had marched through the streets of the port only a few months before. They had grown browner and straighter since that day and they looked taller. Group consciousness had dawned in them now. The only lack of discipline was shown by the mules. It must be admitted that the mule morale left much to be desired. Many were new to the task of dragging machine guns and those that did not sulk tried to run away. Strong arms and stronger words prevailed upon them.

"Remember," the driver would plead, "you have a part in making the world safe for democracy," and in a trice all the evil would flee from the eyes and the heels of the unruly animals.

A number of bands helped to keep the men swinging into the face of a driving rain. The French officers who accompanied Pétain and Poincaré were somewhat surprised when one regiment went by to the tune of "Tannenbaum," but General Pershing explained that it had been played in America for years under the name of "Maryland, My Maryland." He had a harder task some minutes later when a band struck up a regimental hymn called "Happy Heinie," which borrows largely from "Die Wacht am Rhein" for its chorus.

As soon as the troops marched by, General Pershing sent orders for all the officers to assemble. They gathered in a great half circle before the French President who spoke to them slowly and with much earnestness. Indeed, he spoke so slowly that fair scholars could follow his discourse. Even those who could grasp no more than such words as "Lafayette" and "President Wilson" and "la guerre" listened with apparent interest. M. Poincaré called attention to the fact that the day was the anniversary of the Battle of the Marne and also the birthday of Lafayette. These days, he said, linked together the two nations which were making a common cause in the struggle for civilization and he ended with a dramatic sweep of his arm as he exclaimed, "Long live the free United States." However, he called it Les Etats Unis which made it more difficult.

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

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

Still it must be admitted that the next civilian we saw was more warlike than any of the soldiers. The only military equipment worn by Georges Clemenceau was a pair of leather puttees which didn't quite fit, but he had eyes and eyebrows and a jaw which all combined to suggest pugnacity. He was not then premier and indeed he had been in political retirement for some time, but he made a greater impression on the soldiers than any of our visitors because he spoke in English. It was on September 16, 1917, that Clemenceau saw American soldiers, but he had seen them once before and that was in Richmond in 1864 when Grant marched into the city. Clemenceau was then a school teacher in America. The old Frenchman watched the sons and grandsons of those dead and gone fighters and expressed the wish that he might see American troops once again when they marched into Berlin.

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

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

I did not see Joffre when he paid a visit to the army zone and reviewed the troops but he left a glamor for us all in our messroom where he had dinner with General Pershing. It was a reporterless dinner so it meant less to us than to Henriette who served the dinner for the two generals. Nothing much had ever happened to Henriette before. She looked like Jeanne d'Arc, but the only voices she ever heard cried, "L'eau chaude, Henriette," or "Hot water" or "Œufs" or "Eggs." And if they were not wanted right away they must be had "toute de suite."

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

One of the men at the table made a warning gesture, but it was too late. Henrietta put the hot veal down to cool on a side table and pointed to the seat nearest the window. A large man from a press association sat there but she looked through him and saw the hero of the Marne. "Maréchal Joffre là," said Henriette. She turned to a nearer seat and pointing to the shrinking representative of the Chicago Tribune explained, "General Pearshing ici."

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

As he left the room Maréchal Joffre pinched her cheek but the mark was gone before she could show it to the cook. For all that Henriette had something to show that she waited upon generals at the famous dinner. She opened a new locket which she wore around her neck and took out a small piece of gilt paper. She would not let me touch it, but when I looked closely I saw that it had printed upon it "Romeo and Juliet."

"It's the band off the cigar Pershing smoked at the dinner," explained one of the correspondents. Henriette put the treasure back in her locket and sighed. "Je suis très contente," she said.

CHAPTER IX

LETTERS HOME

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

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

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

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

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

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

It has been found that more than fifty per cent. of the mail sent home consists of love letters. The fact that they have to be censored does not cramp the style of the writers in the least. One letter was so ardent as to arouse admiration. "This man writes the best love letter I ever read," said a lieutenant, looking up. "The only trouble is that he's writing to five girls at once and he uses the same model every time. Two of the girls live in the same town at that."

Most of the letters were cheerful. Some courageously so. One man who was near death from tuberculosis wrote home once a day recounting imaginary events which had happened outside the walls of his hospital. In his letters he would send himself on long marches over the hills of France and describe the woods and meadows and plowed fields as they looked to him on bright mornings. He described in detail work which he was doing in bombing and the only complaint he ever made was on a day when he had coughed himself to such weakness that he could hardly finish his daily letter. He wrote to his mother then and asked her to excuse the briefness of his note. He explained that he was pretty well fagged out from a long afternoon of bayonet drill.

The soldiers frequently commented on the kindliness of the French people and they were also fond of boasting, with perhaps doubtful justification, that they were already proficient in the French language. A few were desirous of giving the folk back home a thrill. One man working as company cook at a port in France, some three or four hundred miles from the firing line, wrote a weekly letter describing all sorts of war activities. He made up air raids and heavy bombardments and fairly tore up the village in which he was living. Curiously enough he never made himself conspicuous in these actions. According to the letters he was just there with the rest taking the "strafing" as best he could.

The officer who censored his first warlike letter cut out all the imaginative flights, but two days later the soldier wrote another letter even more thrilling. He complained that it was difficult to write because the explosion of big shells nearby made the house rock.

The lieutenant called him up then and said, "You're writing a lot of lies home, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," said the soldier.

"Well, what are you doing it for?" continued the officer.

The soldier shifted about in embarrassment and then he said, "Well, you see, sir, those letters are to my father. He went into the Union army when he was sixteen and fought all through the last two years of the war. He lives in a little town in Ohio and the people there call him 'Fighting Bill' on account of what he did in the Civil War. Well, when I went away to this war he began to go round town and tell everybody that I was going to do fighting that would make 'em all forget about the Civil War. He used to say that I came of fighting stock and that I'd make 'em sit up and take notice. It would be pretty tough for him, sir, if I had to write home and say that I was cooking down in a town where you can't even hear the guns."

"That's all right," said the lieutenant, "but some of the people who've got sons in this regiment will be doing a lot of worrying long before they have any need to."

"No, sir," said the soldier, "my father don't know what regiment I'm with. I was transferred when I got over here and the only address he's got is the military post office number."

"I don't know what to say in that case," replied the lieutenant. "It's a cinch you're not giving away any military information and I can't see how you're giving, any aid and comfort to the enemy. I guess you can go on with that battle stuff. Make the bombardments just as hard as you like, but keep the casualties light."

In contrast to the attitude of the veteran back in Ohio was a letter which a captain received from the mother of one of his men.

"My son is only nineteen," she wrote. "He has never been away from home before and it breaks my heart that he should be in France. It may sound foolish but I want to ask you a favor. When he was a little boy I used to let him come into the kitchen and bake himself little cakes. I think he would remember some of that still. Can't you use him in the bakery or the kitchen or some place so he won't have to be put in the firing line or in the trenches? I will pray for you, captain, and I pray to God we may have peace for all the world soon."

The captain read the letter and then he burned it up. "If the rest of the men in the company heard of that they would jolly the life out of that boy," he said. But he sat down and wrote to the mother, "Your boy is well and I think he is enjoying his work. I cannot promise to do what you ask because your son is one of the best soldiers in my company. We are all in this together and must share the dangers. I pray with you that there may be peace and victory soon."

No complete story of America's part in the war will ever be written until somebody has made a collection and read thousands of the letters home. The doughboy is strangely inarticulate. He can't or he won't tell you how he felt when he first landed in France, or heard the big guns or went to the trenches. He is afraid to be caught in a sentimental pose but this fear leaves him when he writes. In his letters he will pose at times. This is not uncommon. Many a man who would never think of saving anything about "saving France" will write about it in rounded sentences. His deepest and frankest thoughts will come out in letters.

Of course the censors stand between these makers of history and posterity. We must wait for our chronicles of the war because of the censor. The newspaper stories about our troops in France on their tremendous errand should ring like the chronicle of an old crusade, but it is hard for the chronicler to bring a tingle when he must write or cable "Richard the deleted hearted."