The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl
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THE UNCENSORED LETTERS OF A CANTEEN GIRL NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1920 3i 570 ^1 Copyright, 1920 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY TO PAT GATTS BRADY SNOW NEDDY BILL NICK HARRY JERRY and THE REST THIS BOOK is DEDICATED 436oo9 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I BOURMONT Company A i CHAPTER II GONCOURT The Doughboys 59 CHAPTER III Rattentout The Front. .;.... 87 CHAPTER IV GONDRECOURT The Artillery 112 CHAPTER V Abainville The Engineers 132 CHAPTER VI Mauvages The Ordnance 167 CHAPTER Vn Verdun The French 214 CHAPTER VIII CONFLANS Pioneers, M. P.'s and Others 237 FOREWORD ToM. D. M. andM. H. M: My dears. 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 fire-place with my toes tucked up on an orna- mental 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 shame- lessly, 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. Divisional Haute then fol- T , Secretary, Bourmont, Mame; lowed 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 caf^ at its foot, bribed an old Frenchman with a fifty franc note to wheel him to the summit in a wheel-barrow. The Frenchman, for whose powers one must have great respect, achieved the feat eventually, the spectators agreeing the ride a bar- gain at the price. Two-thirds of the way up the hill on the steep street called gran- diosely Le Faubourg de France we have our billet, at the home of ar bourmont :;.''. M<)i^$i^CQ:;and Madian^e Chaput. These are an adorable old couple; Mddame ^stately yet lovably gentle soul, Monsieur le Command- ant, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War and member of the Ugion 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 Hke every other house on the street the doors bear Httle boards with the billeting capacity of house and stable stenciled on them, so many HommeSf 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 let- ters; "Sherman was right." At first the owner was furious at this defacement of his property, but when someone explained the sig- nificance 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 Bam, 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 comer-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 com- COMPANY A 3 — panion the Gendarme on account of her vigorous brisk bearing, live in the Salle des AssieUes, 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 d 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, in- sects, birds, Httle houses, Chinamen fishing in tiny boats, inter- spersed with spirited representations of the Galhc 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. ^^ "fa coute" he averred proudly, quarante francst" Since that moment I have been vaguely uneasy. What if, in a moment of exasperation, I should throw an ink-bottle at the Gen- darme's head, and—shatter a plate worth forty francs! Our room is the third one back. The front room is kitchen, din- ing and living room. The in-between room is quite bare of furni- ture, 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 Kttle 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 rAmerique,^' she cried, clapping her old hands, and, ^^Vive VAmeriqueV^ again. Bourmont, it seems, is army Divisional Headquarters. It is also headquarters for this division of the Y. There is a hut here, a ware- house, and headquarters offices, emplo)dng a personnel of sixteen 4 BOURMONT 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 Uke 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 Thie- bault. On the way I pass lads in olive drab with whom I exchange a smile and a hello, villagers bareheaded, 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 some- thing 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 VEcho 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 Thiehatdt des Crapauds they call it, Saint Thiebault of the Toads.