''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' - Floyd Phillips Gibbons (fantasy books to read txt) 📗

While the loading proceeded, the wood merchant, speaking slowly in French, made us understand the following:

"Many peculiar things happen in the war, Monsieur," he said. "Your country, the America, is the land of wonders. Listen, my name is Helois. Ten days ago there came to me one of the washerwomen who clean the clothes on the banks of the Meurthe, and she said to me:

"'Ah, Monsieur, the wood merchant. You are the sly fox. I have your secret.' And I say to her that I know not of what she speaks.

"'You boast in the town that your two sons are at the front,' she said, 'but I know that one at least of them is not.' And I was dumbfounded. I say to her, 'Woman, it is a lie you tell me. Both of my boys are with their regiments, in the trenches even now, if by the grace of the good God they still live.'

"'No,' she say to me, 'one of your sons hides in the hotel of Madame Larue. How do I know this secret, Monsieur the wood merchant? I know because this day have I washed the shirt, with his name on it, at the river bank. His name, Helois,—the Lieutenant Helois—was stamped on the collar and the shirt came from the hotel, La Fontaine.'

"I tell her that it is a mistake—that it is the great injustice to me she speaks, and that night I dressed in my best clothes to penetrate this mystery—to meet this man who disgracefully used the name of my son—to expose this impostor who would bring shame to the name of Helois, the wood merchant, whose two sons have been fighting for France these three long years.

"And so, Monsieur, I meet this man at the hotel. She was right. His name was Helois. Here is his card. The Lieutenant Louis F. Helois, and he is a lieutenant in the United States Army."

"So it was a mistake," replied the Captain, handing the card back to the wood merchant, whose lobster red features bore an enigmatical smile.

"No,—not the mistake, the truth," replied the wood merchant. "Not my son—but my grandson—the son of my son—the son of my third son who went to America years ago. And now he comes back in the uniform of liberty to fight again for France. Ah, Messieurs les Officiers—the sons of France return from the ends of the world to fight her cause."

While the wood merchant was telling us that the American grandson had only stopped three days in the town and then had moved up to service at the front, the air was shattered by a loud report. It was the snap of the whip in the hands of the young French amazon, standing high on the load of wood. We escorted the fuel proudly to the Place de la République. Soon the fires were burning briskly and the smell of onions and coffee and hot chow was on the air.

The stoves were pitched at the bottom of a stone monument in the centre of the square. Bags of potatoes and onions and burlap covered quarters of beef and other pieces of mess sergeants paraphernalia were piled on the steps of the monument, which was covered with the green and black scars from dampness and age.

The plinth supported a stone shaft fifteen feet in height, which touched the lower branches of the trees. The monument was topped with a huge cross of stone on which was the sculptured figure of the Christ.

Little Sykoff, the battery mess sergeant, stood over the stove at the bottom of the monument. He held in his hand a frying pan, which he shook back and forth over the fire to prevent the sizzling chips in the pan from burning. His eyes lowered from an inspection of the monument and met mine. He smiled.

"Mr. Gibbons," he said, "if that brother of mine, who runs the photograph gallery out on Paulina and Madison Streets in Chicago, could only see me now, he sure would tell the Rabbi. Can you beat it—a Jew here frying ham in the shadow of the Cross."

It was rather hard to beat—and so was the ham. We made this concession as we sat on the plinth of the monument and polished our mess kits with bread. And such bread—it was the regulation United States army issue bread—white, firm and chuck full of nourishment—bread that seemed like cake to the French youngsters who tasted it and who returned with open mouths and outstretched hands for more of the "good white bread."

After the meal, those members of Battery A not detailed for immediate duty denied themselves none of the joys that a new town, in a strange land, holds for a soldier.

Saint-Nicolas-du-Port boasts a remarkable cathedral of mediæval architecture, of enormous dimensions. It was crumbling with age, but still housed the holy. Time and the elements had left the traces of their rough usage upon the edifice.

Half of the statues on the broad façade of the cathedral had been broken, and now the niches afforded domiciles for families of pigeons. On the ground, in a careless pile, to one side of the frontal arch, was an ignominious pile of miscellaneous arms and legs and heads of sculptured figures, resting there in anything but saintly dignity. Two of our young artillerymen were standing in front of the cathedral surveying it.

"Certainly is in need of repairs," said one of them. "I'll bet they haven't done no bricklaying or plumbing on this place since before the Civil War."

"That ain't hardly the right way to treat old Saints," replied his companion, referring to the pile of broken statuary. "Seems like they ought to cement the arms and legs and heads back on those old boys and old girls and put them back on their pedestals. I guess, though, there ain't nobody living to identify the pieces, so they could get the right arms and heads on the right bodies."

Our battery had among its drivers an old timer who might have been called a historian. His opinion held weight in the organisation. He professed to be able to read American ball scores and war news out of French newspapers, a number of which he always carried. Later that day, I heard him lecturing the cathedral critics on their lack of appreciation of art and history.

"New things ain't art," he told them; "things has got to be old before they are artistic. Nobody'd look at the Venus dee Milo if she had all her arms on. You never hear nobody admiring a modern up-to-date castle with electric lighting and bath tubs in it. It simply ain't art.

"Now, this cathedral is art. This country around here is just full of history. Here's where whole book stores of it was written. Why, say, there was batteries of artillery rolling through this country a million years ago. It was right around here that Napoleon joined forces with Julius Cæsar to fight the Crusaders. This here is sacred ground."

In the evening, a number of the battery, located the buvette that carried across its curtained front the gold lettered sign bar Parisian. It was a find. Some thirty American artillerymen crowded around the tables.

Cigarette smoke filled the low-ceilinged room with blue layers, through which the lamp light shone. In one corner stood a mechanical piano which swallowed big copper sous and gave out discord's metallic melody. It was of an American make and the best number on its printed programme was "Aren't you Coming Back to Old Virginia, Molly?" Sous followed sous into this howitzer of harmony and it knew no rest that night. Everybody joined in and helped it out on the choruses.

Things were going fine when the door opened at about nine thirty, and there stood two members of the American Provost Guard. They carried with them two orders. One instructed Madame, the proprietress, to dispense no more red ink or beer to American soldiers that night, and the other was a direction to all Americans around the table to get back to their billets for the night.

The bunch left with reluctance but without a grumble. It was warm and comfortable within the bar Parisian and Madame's smiles and red wine and beer and Camembert cheese composed the Broadway of many recent dreams. But they left without complaint.

They made their rollicking departure, returning Madame's parting smiles, gallantly lifting their steel helmets and showering her with vociferous "bong swore's." And—well it simply must be told. She kissed the last one out out the door and, turning, wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron. Madame had seen youth on the way to the front before.

The billets were comfortable. Some were better than others. Picket line details slept in their blankets in the hay over the stables. Gun crews drew beds and pallets on the floor in occupied houses. In these homes there was always that hour before retirement for the night when the old men and remaining women of the French household and their several military guests billeted in the place, would gather about the fireplace in the kitchen and regale one another with stories, recounted by the murder of French and English languages and a wealth of pantomime.

Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the town-crier—he who daily beat the drum in front of the Hôtel de Ville and read lengthy bulletins, was interested in the workings of Gunner Black's colt automatic. Gunner Black, most anxious to show her, demonstrated the action of the pistol but, forgetting that inevitable shell in the chamber, shot himself in the arm.

It was only an incident. The noise scared Louise, but not the wound. She had seen too many Americans get shot in the moving pictures.

The captain and I were quartered in the house of the Curé of the cathedral. The old housekeeper of the place made the captain blush when she remarked her surprise that there were such young captains in the American army. Her name was Madame Dupont, and she was more than pleased to learn from the captain that that had been the maiden name of his mother.

The captain's room had the interior dimensions and heavy decorations of the mystic inner sanctum of some secret grand lodge. Religious paintings and symbols hung from the walls, which were papered in dark red to match the heavy plush hangings over the ever closed windows.

Two doors in the blank wall swung open revealing a hermetically sealed recess in which a bed just fitted. This arrangement, quite common in France, indicated that the device now popular in two-room sleeping apartments in America, must have been suggested by the sleeping customs of mediæval times.

Early the next morning, our battery pulled out for the front. We were bound for the line. We took the roads out of Saint Nicolas to the east, making our way toward that part of the front that was known as the Luneville sector. Our way lay through the towns of Dombasle, Sommerviller, Maixe, Einville, Valhey, Serres, to the remains of the ruined village of Hoeville.

The sector runs almost along the border between France and old Lorraine, occupied by the Germans since 1870. Even the names of the old French towns beyond the border had been changed to German in the effort of the Prussians to Germanise the stolen province.

It was in this section during the few days just prior to the outbreak of the war that France made unwise demonstration of her disinclination toward hostilities with Germany. Every soldier in France was under arms, as was every soldier in Europe. France had military patrols along her borders. In the French chamber of deputies, the socialists had rushed through a measure which was calculated to convince the German people that France had no intentions or desire of menacing German territory. By that measure every French soldier was withdrawn from