“you sure had a tough time getting here, jimmy, compared to me. i came over on an old ocean liner. we had good clean bunks and three settings at table. there were regular bill o’ fares and live waiters. only took eight days to come over. what was your first impression of france and where did you land at brest?” o. d.’s brown eyes didn’t show a bit of sleepiness and his ears were cocked for every word that jimmy mcgee was willing to spill.
“hell, no—not at brest, that must have been a good town in them days. there was a rule made at the beginning of the war not to give this division anything good. we stayed in brest that night and started for st. nazaire toot sweet the next day. god help anybody, even the m. p.’s who had to fight the guerre in st. nazaire. that town is the first place the lord made and he forgot about it ten minutes after putting it up. it’s worse than the town old bill blodgett comes from.
“well, we got in the harbor there ’bout two o’clock. it was kinda foggy and rainin’ off and on. ’ain’t quit since then. still they call it ‘sunny france.’ after a lot of waitin’ around they shoved us in the canal locks, and i’m a liar if we didn’t go right through the middle of the town. some of the houses on both sides of the locks looked like twins or else as if they had been pushed apart so as the canal could run through the town.
“guess the first impression i got was that the americans was still a new play toy for the french, ’cause there was a gang of kids and people runnin’ up and down the docks shoutin’ and wavin’ to us. then i began to notice the buildings—whew! they looked old enough to be great-grandfathers to some of those four-hundred-year-old houses down in st. augustine, florida. most of ’em had café or van rouge written all over them. i never saw so many cafés in all my life. course the french people looked funny as hell to us. some were all dolled up in fine clothes and others looked as if they would catch cold for want of somethin’ to cover them. there was more soldiers walkin’ up and down on the piers than we had in the whole american army at that time. i thought we must be pretty near the front as there was so many. some of the frenchmen wore helmets. that’s about all that most of the frogs have got left now. never saw so many widows in all my days. most of the women who was dressed up at all wore black and long veils. they made me think ’bout the war, and i felt kinda good ’cause there wasn’t any woman to wear black in case i got knocked off at the front.
“some americans, who acted as though they had just bought the town and could end the war with a snap of their fingers, came down to the edge of the locks and began shootin’ the bull. most of the americans wanted to know how the football games were coming off in the states. we told them we didn’t know as they hadn’t started good when we left. i had to explain to one guy that we didn’t come over on an express and that it took nearly a month to get here. he began tellin’ me where we could get our money changed and where the best champagne was and how to do things in general while in france. i asked him if he had been to the front yet and he said, ‘oh no, i’m a receivin’-clerk, with the grade of corporal.’ ‘the hell you are! i thought you had been up endin’ the war,’ says i. but he didn’t seem to get my meanin’.
“they kept us on that boat two days. durin’ that time some little french kids who could parley a little english rowed out in a tub and sold us beaucoup van rouge and cognac. about half of the ship got zig-zag toot sweet. i thought they’d put us in irons.
“finally we got marched ashore and through the town to our barracks. some barracks for a white man i’ll say. no bunks. no floor. no stoves. nothing but a roof and the ground. it comes easy now to cushay on a bag of ten-penny nails, but in them days sleepin’ on the cold bumpy ground was just as bad as missin’ your weekly saturday bath in the states.
“i’ll never forget my first night in france. i got put in the jug. those damn american m. p.’s of course. ever since then i ain’t had much love for that branch of the service. course we don’t see too much of them up at the front, but they get in a man’s way now and then. seems as though you had to have a pass to be on the streets. as usual i never had any pass, so they grabbed me, samson, johnson, and kicky hull. when we got to the brig we found practically the whole outfit lined up there.
“we had a fair time the first few days. but i had a job tryin’ to compree this foolish-looking french money. say, o. d., ain’t it the worst stuff you ever handled? for one good ten-spot, american dough, i’d give ’em all the frankers they ever printed. pas bon, that stuff.
“i met one fine french family in that town. there was the mother, father, and girl. her name was suzanne, and, honest, boy, she was a little rose mademoiselle. pretty and delicate-like, you know, and could speak english in that bon way that these janes over here parley american after studyin’ it. lots better than you or me can. suzanne and her people were regular folks. why, they were almost the same as americans. had all kinds of stuff in the house, stoves and pianos, like us, and did mostly as we do, except i never saw them drinking water.
“well, suzanne had a fiancée, a young french lieutenant, and she was always talkin’ about him and how much she loved him. she hated the germans worse than rats. all suzanne wanted to do was end the war, have her fiancé come home and get married. her people was pretty wealthy for french people. had a big stationery and athletic-goods store. they sure tried to make life worth while for old samson and myself. believe sammy was a bit stuck on suzanne, but he never said nothin’ ’bout it to me. he could parley a little bit, and it used to get me mad as hell to go into a store or any place and have him start that french stuff and talk to the people when i couldn’t get a word of the lingo.
“we must have had a reputation as chambermaids for mules, ’cause they put the battery to work in another corral, cleaning it up and feedin’ the animals. sometimes they used to wake us up in the middle of the night and send us down to ships that had just come in so that we could lead the mules up to the corral. that was some job. the mules would be wilder than ever after bein’ penned up on a boat so long, and time they’d hit the street they usually started tearin’ off. if any of us happened to have hold of them mules at the time, we mostly went with the mule.
“after a month of that kind of work we were sent to camp coetquidan to learn how to fight the guerre with real cannon. when we got to camp the other batteries had already found out how to fire the guns and were blowin’ away at anything for a target. it didn’t take us long to find out how those six-inch howitzers worked. the french called ’em sonn sankont-sanks, which means one hundred and fifty-fives.
“i’ll never get in another guerre again as long as i live, but if i do get mixed up in another i’ll keep clear of france and especially coetquidan. rain—mud—mud—rain. all day and all night at that hole. we slept in the barracks that napoleon and his army used to cushay in. no wonder he always had his hand in his shirt. guess he was scratchin’. no, there wasn’t any cooties there. but they had some kind of bed-ticks or ground rats that used to bite us up pretty bad. bein’ about the first fightin’ troops over we couldn’t expect to have gloves, shower-baths, and warm barracks. the only thing that was issued was beaucoup reserve officers.
“i got a pass to be away from camp for two days and went down to a place called rennes, ’bout thirty-eight kilofloppers from camp. it took six hours to get there on the little narrow-gauge, and i spent all my time down there in a big house where i got a bain—that’s what the frogs say for bath—tryin’ to get clean. didn’t get another bain until two months later at the front.
“saw a lot of boche prisoners down there. course we seen quite a few at st. nazaire, but didn’t have a chance to say anything to ’em. they must have knew we was green at this guerre stuff, as they asked us for cigarettes and chocolate, and we was fools enough to hand ’em some. catch me givin’ them dirty sausage-meats cigarettes now. ‘caput’ for ’em all, that’s what the frogs say.
“after christmas passed and we got our first real batch of mail—say, o. d., i guess you get a bunch of mail from your ma and sis, don’t you?” asked jimmy.
“i’ve been getting about four letters a week, but guess i’ll have to wait until it gets forwarded to me now,” acknowledged o. d.
“mon du!” was the ejaculation, “four a week. gosh, you’re lucky. why, i’ve only got seventeen since i hit this country. course there’s nobody to write me but a few of the boys down at the newspaper office who couldn’t pass the physicals——”
“is that a fact, jimmy?”
“oui. bet your tin hat.”
“don’t see how you stand this life without letters.”
“comes tough at times, ’specially when the other guys gets beaucoup letters. kinda feel like a nobody. but generally somethin’ turns up—we start drivin’—or the boches get some guts and throw a few over. then there ain’t much chance to think about such things.” jimmy spoke as if a few letters could do a great deal toward winning wars.
“by george, i’m goin’ to get mary to write to you right—— how do you say it in french, jimmy?”
“toot sweet,” prompted the yank, with new hope in his tones.
“well, i’ll have mary write you toot sweet, then—that is, if you want me to.”
“want you to—— whew, boy, that’ll save my life. will you?” he asked, eagerly.
“sure,” assured o. d.
