A "Y" Girl in France: Letters of Katherine Shortall Part 3

And now, to pa.s.s briefly over the next four days in Pouillenay, I am back in Paris. Where they will send me I haven't the least idea. I volunteered to go home, because the "Y" is swamped with workers now, and had the satisfaction of being told that I was not the kind they wanted to send home. This means a good deal to me because I am quite aware that, not being as strong as the majority, I have given fewer hours of service than most of them, and now to have from all sides tokens of appreciation is overwhelmingly gratifying.

I have a "Memory Book" of the 2nd Bn., 311th Inf. which you will be interested in seeing when I get home. The Major wrote a little verse on the first page, stamping it with the official seal. It goes:

She put the "Pull" in Pouillenay, Likewise the push there, too.

Her middle name's Efficiency, And la.s.sie--here's to you!

By the way, if any members of the Battalion come to see you, I know you will give them a real welcome. Also, if by chance the 78th Divisional Show should play in Chicago, it really would be jolly to do something for the Cast and Management. It is to be composed largely of boys from our Battalion.

Goodbye. There is lots more to say, but I really can't.

American Y.W.C.A. Hostess House, Chateau "La Gloriette,"

Chaumont, May 24th.

Paris is over with. There was much waiting and rus.h.i.+ng and guessing and meeting of friends. I have seen so many, old and new-made, ladies and gentlemen. I have run around in civilian clothes--my uniform went to the cleaner's--and have gone to the theatre and dined in restaurants and listened to orchestras, dodged taxis and ridden in them, gone to bed late, spent some money,--in short, have done all the things I ordinarily avoid doing.

In Paris you see more Americans then French, and more American women than men, all in a.s.sorted uniforms. They certainly have brought a mob of women over here! and now they are trying to s.h.i.+p them home as fast as possible. The Y.M.C.A. is sending workers, men and women, home at the rate of several hundred a week.

They have given me a rea.s.signment. Yesterday I came to Chaumont where G.H.Q. is stationed, and I shall be sent out from here--somewhere, to do--something. At present I don't know anything about it. Meanwhile I am most comfortably lodged in the Y.W.C.A. Hostess House, a large and beautiful chateau with lovely grounds. I am now sitting on an old stone wall on the hillside which I came upon after following a shady path. Beside me are bushes drooping with white and purple lilacs, all about me birds are warbling, and beyond and below is a panorama of sunny France through which runs a white road where American trucks go thundering by in clouds of dust. And it is all very lazy and hazy and--satisfactory. For I don't seem to be thinking beyond. One doesn't when one is "militaire." One gives oneself up to the powers above. No one doesn't, either! Not at critical moments. One can steer and veer--gently.

Now it begins to look as though the work of the Y.M.C.A. were nearly over. No more personnel is allowed in Germany, the army of occupation being fully equipped, and if there is nothing to do, one ought to go home. If, after the signing of the Peace, it seems necessary to keep our army over here some time, I shall make an effort to be sent to the Rhine. Wherever our boys are waiting, and getting disgusted, I want to be.

It is likely that a good friend of mine, a Lieutenant of Co. F may come to see you. I asked him to, as he lives near Chicago. He is a fine fellow and has been so kind to me. I think he would enjoy our home. I can see the garden and everything, and sometimes--I wish I were there.

Chaumont, June 11th, 1919.

Again I sit in the garden of the chateau, but what a world of things I have seen and done since I last wrote you from this spot! I have a sinking feeling, that this is going to be a long letter, and I wonder how I will ever find time to finish it.

The day after my last long letter I left Chaumont with another girl to go to an entraining point just out of Gondrecourt, where we were to serve chocolate to the departing troops. We started in an automobile with all our baggage, a "Y" man being our chauffeur. As usual, orders were vague and mixed, and we landed in several wrong towns, before we found out where we were wanted. This however entailed so much driving over exceptionally lovely country, that we really didn't mind. At length, in the late afternoon we reached our destination, Barisey la Cote, a railhead, and I believe the most desolate spot in France.

Picture a freight yard in all its heat and hideousness, and a collection of wooden barracks, no trees, and you will see the place.

Big Bay is pretty in comparison. The water was bad, and had to be chlorinated and hauled from afar, the weather was blazing hot, the dust lay inches deep on the roads, ready to rise in a stifling cloud at the pa.s.sage of any vehicle. Here we found some five hundred men (about a hundred colored), and many hundreds of mules and horses. Part of the 7th Division was there temporarily on its way home. The rest were the railhead force.

The first thing for us to do was to search for a billet. As always, the officers could not be outdone in their courtesy to us women in the A.E.F. and every effort was made to make us comfortable. A little asbestos shack of two rooms was turned over to us, and an orderly a.s.signed to us. I wish you could have seen "Mac, the housekeeper" as we came to call him, the most lovable little Irishman who took the best of care of us. For beds we had two wooden frames with chicken wire stretched over them, and plenty of blankets. As we expected to stay ten days it was worth while making our little home attractive, so with a few scarfs that I had, and flowers, photographs and books, we made a charming living-room which men and officers appreciated to the full. My companion, Miss B., is a jolly girl and we have become great pals. She plays ragtime "to beat the band," which is a good accomplishment over here. Both of us being short and dark, we have been taken for sisters everywhere.

The entraining work at the railhead left us a great deal of spare time, and we decided to open a little "Y". An open shed with a roof was procured and we started in to arrange it. The boys entered into the idea with enthusiasm. One volunteered to wire it for electric lights, others put down a floor, and everybody helped decorate it with flags, and bright chintz which the Y.M.C.A. gave us. A lieutenant lent me a truck, and through a stroke of luck I obtained a piano which was the finis.h.i.+ng touch. We soon had a gay, festive pavilion, and how those boys, who were just sick with boredom, flocked there! Again I felt that this work was immeasurably worth while. Miss B. and I worked together pretty well, luckily. We had dances and stunt shows, and singing all the time, and lemonade always on tap, both at the railway station and at our "Y," so you see our hands were full. Most of the men were westerners, and enlisted, not drafted, and I couldn't help compare them with my boys of the 78th. As a cla.s.s, I believe they are more forceful and more responsive. It is the independent, tall ranch owner or cow puncher, in comparison with the small storekeeper or factory hand. Don't think I am forgetting for a moment my friends in my dear battalion who stood above the average, but they _did_ stand above the average. As a crowd, the western boys sing better, dance better, talk better, and swear louder! But everywhere in the United States is the respect for the American woman the same, and everywhere our soldiers are our devoted, helpful brothers.

Well--to cut this short--I forgot to tell you about the darkies! It was my first experience with them over here. Against the advice of a southern lieutenant, I went into their barracks one day and got to talking with them. "Don't any of you boys play or sing?" I asked.

"Yes'm. Ah'm a musician mahself," modestly replied a coal black boy.

"Are you? well what do you play?" "Oh, mos' anything, ma'am." "Do you play the guitar?" "Yes'm, we've got a guitar but the _strangs_ is broke." Of course I was able to remedy that, and gave them all the "strangs" they needed, in addition lending them my guitar, which they never failed to return to me in good condition at the specified time.

They had a great time, sitting out on piles of lumber, tw.a.n.ging the guitars and singing. You could almost imagine you were down on the old Mississippi. Whenever I pa.s.sed, some one would call out, "Miss, ain't you gwine to play for us?" And I would take the guitar and sing, while black, attentive faces packed close all around me. "Give us jes one mo', Miss," they would plead when I started to go. My greatest hit was "When Yankee Doodle learns to parley-vous francais," and when I would come to "Ulala! Sweet Papa!" they would smack their knees, and giggle with delight. One evening they came down to our "Y" and one clogged, while another played the piano, and another evening they came and sang to us. On the whole the white boys were on good terms with the blacks, though they had one little row while we were there. The whites were playing the blacks at baseball. The game was a comic affair, and was proceeding with the utmost good nature, when one boy thoughtlessly called a darky a "n.i.g.g.e.r." Great outrage! The colored boys refused to play, the game was called off, and the black team retreated in sulky silence. However, they all made up the next day, and the game was resumed.

Now I must skip over all the little human events that go to make our days, and tell you about our trip to the front. I have seen it, the strip of land on which the world's attention has been focused for so long. I have been to No Man's Land, and the Argonne, and Verdun. For a long time I had no desire to go. Something in me shrank from the thought of hundreds of unimaginative tourists speeding over the ground where men have so recently died by the thousands. It seemed like flaunting our lives in the very faces of those who had laid down theirs that we might live more happily. Also, from all we have heard, and read, and felt, I thought I could picture the war and the front as vividly as if I had been there. And so I could. Strange as it may sound, nothing surprised me up there. I am not filled with any more hatred or horror after seeing it than I was before. It is now a vast desolation. I hope the world is going to be better for it. Perhaps the flowers that are even now covering the raw wounds in the earth are the flowers of hope, ready to sow the seeds of promise. I don't know whether to describe to you just what I have seen or not. I'll try.

We were a party of eight Y.M.C.A. workers, four men and four girls. We travelled in two ramshackle old Fords. Ours had come from a salvage pile, but it still had plenty of life in it, and got over the ground with a terrific amount of noise and jarring. The noise was indeed a G.o.dsend, for it made conversation impossible, and mercifully obliterated even our most brilliant sallies of wit. I was able to retreat behind the motor's unm.u.f.fled roaring far into the landscape and into my own thoughts, and there I stayed most of the time.

We left Gondrecourt on Thursday afternoon, June 5th. It was one of those soft days, delicious humid air, that brought out all the fragrance of the country, a gray sky and a soft light that gave us the true essence of the colors in the fields because there were no shadows. A tapestry day, when all shades were subdued, woven through a warp of mist.

This part of France, gently undulating, with fields of grain and carefully tended wood, is very lovely. There is a luxuriant grace about it. It is a land of carved stone crosses. We kept pa.s.sing them by the roadside, beautiful in form and varied in design. It is the land of Jeanne d'Arc, and often we pa.s.sed her image with a vase of fresh flowers beneath it.

In the early evening we arrived at Bar-le-Duc, a sweet little city built round the famous old chateau on the hill. As we drove through the streets I was struck by the sign "Cave," "Cave Voutee," or "Cave, 12 hommes," printed on the fronts of the houses. All places of shelter from bombs were clearly marked. Turning a corner we came upon a building in ruins. Then upon one with a hole in the roof. Bar-le-Duc had not escaped the enemies' ravages. There we spent the night. The next day we lunched at St. Menehould, then went out into the Argonne itself. Oh, I can't describe it! Think of cultivated fields giving way to vast rank stretches; ditches and sh.e.l.l holes everywhere; rusty, tangled barbed wire on all sides; miles and miles of broken, sagging telephone wires; pathetic pulverized villages, scarcely discernible on the plain; tops of hills sawed off and furrowed by sh.e.l.l fire; lonely wooden crosses dotting the fields everywhere; refuse of all kinds along the roadside--a man's puttee, a wrecked automobile, rusty iron, a rifle belt, piles of unexploded sh.e.l.ls; and signs in French and English bearing severe traffic orders spoke eloquently of the mad congestion on the roads, now so lonely. This whole immense silence and desertion told of pressing crowds, of fierce exertion, of wild excitement, of cursing and of praying, of roaring and blazing and dying. Eight months ago it was h.e.l.l on fire. And now there was not a soul in sight, nor a sound. The hot sun beat on it all. Now and then came a fetid odor that turned you sick. The war is over.

Stopping at a prison camp for gasoline, a lieutenant came up to me, and seeing the lightning streak on my shoulder he told me that he too belonged to the 78th and remembered meeting me last winter. He offered to take me and whoever else was interested through the wood of Ardennes where the 78th had fought in October. You can imagine I was glad to go. So I have seen the scarred and blasted woods and ravines through which my boys panted and bled and kept on. I seemed to almost live through it with them, and I felt the exhilaration of battle more than the horror, and wished fervently that I could have been a man fighting with them. We came to a place where the Germans had blown up two engines. Right there Lieut. S. said the 311th had its supply dump.

And sure enough, on a tree I saw the good old Lightning Sign! I took it down, for I know the boy who made all the signs, and intend to give it to some one for a souvenir.

But to skip over more quickly, we spent that night at Romagne, where the great American-Argonne cemetery is being made. The next day we visited Grand Pre, the town which the 78th took; a terrible wreck, bearing the signs of hot street fighting, the standing walls being nicked and riddled with machine gun fire. Here again my spirit was back with my fighting boys reliving it all with them.

And then, following the long desolate front, we went to Verdun. But I can't give you any more descriptions. That Verdun battle field! That stronghold, which the Germans did not pa.s.s! I will never forget it.

Even the Argonne is a green, fertile place in comparison. Blasted skeleton forests, dead fields, plowed and plowed again with sh.e.l.ls.

Death, and the silence of death.

I found myself repeating under my breath some verses of poetry that had caught my eye last winter, written by an officer.

"Nous avons cherche la Victoire.

Ou se cache-t-elle, dis-moi?

Et, repa.s.sant la Meuse noire, Elle me crie, 'Au fond de toi.'"

and

"Est-ce vrai que la mort est une vie immense?

Est-ce vrai que la vie est l'amour de mourir?"

_Lieut. Joachim Gasquet, auteur des "Hymnes de la Grande Guerre."_

In such ways I tried to understand and to visualize all that had taken place there.

We returned to Gondrecourt Sunday evening. On Monday I had a new and comic experience. The Y.M.C.A. announced an auction of all its supplies and I was asked to conduct it, being the only American who spoke French. They tell me that I have missed my vocation, that I ought to have been a saleslady. Any way I made a lark out of it, and gave the shrewd old French ladies t.i.t for tat, which delighted them.

Now I am back in Chaumont working in the library of the "Y." It is a temporary job. I have half an idea I shall be homeward bound soon.

Goodbye dear family. This pen will drive me distracted, and they cost ten dollars over here!

June 25th.

Officers' Hut, Chaumont.

Another change of job. From buck privates to elderly majors and lieutenant colonels! About a week ago I was a.s.signed to the Officers'

Hut at Chaumont. This has been, naturally, the largest and pleasantest officers' "Y" in France, but owing to the daily diminis.h.i.+ng of the personnel at G.H.Q. the business of the "Y" is rapidly falling off. I was sent here princ.i.p.ally on account of my knowledge of French. Ahem!

There is a large restaurant and a French force employed, and I am the medium of communication with them. I manage to keep the peace by translating the orders diplomatically, softening them and _politening_ them.

There are many pleasant aspects to this work. I enjoy very much being with cultivated people again, though my fondness for the expressive doughboy is as great as ever. After all, there is something comfortable about good grammar, and I confess that a conversation with a dash of high-browism contains a pleasure all its own.

The first day I was here I met Colonel MacC. of Chicago. He has been very kind to me. Sunday evening he took me to call on some French friends of his and we had a very delightful time.

The atmosphere of Chaumont is totally different from that of dear little Pouillenay. There are many American girls, Red Cross, Y.M.C.A.

and Y.W.C.A., and giddy telephone girls. Every night there is a party at the chateau and much gaiety. The boys here certainly have a great deal of entertainment. The social pace is too much for me. I get out of things as much as I can without being too rude. It won't last much more than a week anyway, and then I shall be ready and glad to come home.

Peace has come! "Le jour de gloire est arrive." Early yesterday morning, I was awakened by the strains of a band approaching nearer and nearer. It didn't sound like an American band, and I jumped out of bed to see what it was. There in the early grayness of morning French soldiers were marching to a band composed of bugles and drums. They marched seriously, with rifles over their shoulders and bayonets fixed. This was their triumphant march, yet there was no triumph in it. As I watched the little blue figures keeping step to their strange yet spirited march, the tears came to my eyes, and I felt the tragedy of France, and I loved her. In Paris they say there were all sorts of gay doings, in which the Americans took part, but I shall always remember this little column of men, marching solemnly through the town of Chaumont.