Читать книгу "And they thought we wouldn't fight" - Floyd Phillips Gibbons - Страница 11

Table of Contents

The first executive work of the American Expeditionary Forces overseas was performed in a second floor suite of the Crillon Hotel on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. This suite was the first temporary headquarters of the American commander.

The tall windows of the rooms looked down on the historic Place which was the scene of so many momentous events in French history. The windows were hardly a hundred yards from the very spot where the guillotine dripped red in the days of the Terror. It was here that the heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette dropped into the basket.

During General Pershing's comparatively brief occupancy of these headquarters, the reception rooms were constantly banked with fresh-cut flowers, the daily gifts of the French people,—flowers that were replenished every twenty-four hours. The room was called the "Salon des Batailles."

In one corner of the room, near a window overlooking the Place, was General Pershing's table. It was adorned with a statuette of General Joffre and a cluster of miniatures of captured German standards. Extending from the floor to the ceiling on one of the walls were two enormous oil copies of "La Bataille de Fontenoy" and the "Passage du Rhin." A large flag-draped photograph of President Wilson occupied a place of honour on an easel at one end of the room.

During the first week that General Pershing stopped at the hotel, the sidewalk and street beneath his windows were constantly crowded with people. The crowds waited there all day long, just in the hope of catching a glimpse of the American commander if he should happen to be leaving or returning to his quarters. It seemed as if every Parisienne and Parisian had taken upon herself and himself the special duty of personally observing General Pershing, of waving him an enthusiastic "vive" and possibly being within the scope of his returning salute.

But the American commander would not permit demonstrations and celebrations to interfere with the important duties that he faced. Two days are all that were devoted to these social ceremonies which the enthusiastic and hospitable French would have made almost endless. Dinners, receptions and parades were ruthlessly erased from the working day calendar. The American commander sounded the order "To work" with the same martial precision as though the command had been a sudden call "To arms."

On the morning of the third day after General Pershing's arrival in Paris, the typewriters began clicking incessantly and the telephones began ringing busily in the large building which was occupied on that day as the headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces in France.

This building was Numbers 27 and 31 Rue de Constantine. It faced the trees and shrubbery bordering the approach to the Seine front of the Invalides. The building was two stories high with grey-white walls and a mansard roof. At that time it could be immediately identified as the one in front of which stood a line of American motor cars, as the one where trim United States regulars walked sentry post past the huge doors through which frequent orderlies dashed with messages.

Ten days before, the building had been the residence of a Marquis and had contained furniture and art valued at millions of francs. All of those home-like characteristics had been removed so effectively that even the name of the kindly Marquis had been forgotten. I am sure that he, himself, at the end of that ten-day period could not have recognised his converted salons where the elaborate ornamentation had been changed to the severe simplicity typical of a United States Army barracks.

General Pershing's office was located on the second floor of the house and in one corner. In those early days it was carpetless and contained almost a monkish minimum of furniture. There were the General's chair, and his desk on which there stood a peculiar metal standard for one of those one-piece telephone sets with which Americans are familiar only in French stage settings. A book-case with glass doors, a stenographer's table and chair, and two red plush upholstered chairs, for visitors, comprised the furniture inventory of the room.

One of the inner walls of the room was adorned with a large mirror with a gilt frame, and in the other wall was a plain fireplace. There were tall windows in the two outer walls which looked out on the Rue de Constantine and the Rue de Grenelle. Opposite the Rue de Grenelle windows there was a small, deeply shaded park where children rolled hoops during the heat of the day and where convalescent French soldiers sat and watched the children at play or perhaps discussed the war and other things with the nurse-maids.

This was the first workshop in France of the American commander-in-chief. Adjoining rooms to the left and right were occupied by the General's staff and his aides. And it was in these rooms that the overseas plans for the landing of the first American armed contingent in France were formulated.

It is safe now to mention that St. Nazaire on the west coast of France was the port at which our first armed forces disembarked. I was in Paris when the information of their coming was whispered to a few chosen correspondents who were to be privileged to witness this historical landing.

This was the first time in the history of our nation that a large force of armed Americans was to cross the seas to Europe. For five and a half months prior to the date of their landing, the ruthless submarine policy of the Imperial German Government had been in effect, and our troop ships with those initial thousands of American soldiers represented the first large Armada to dare the ocean crossing since Germany had instituted her sub-sea blockade zone in February of that same year.

Thus it was that any conversation concerning the fact that our men were on the seas and at the mercy of the U-boats was conducted with the greatest of care behind closed doors. In spite of the efforts of the French agents of contra espionage, Paris and all France, for that matter, housed numerous spies. There were some anxious moments while that first contingent was on the water.

Our little group of correspondents was informed that we should be conducted by American officers to the port of landing, but the name of that port was withheld from us. By appointment we met at a Paris railroad station where we were provided with railroad tickets. We took our places in compartments and rode for some ten or twelve hours, arriving early the next morning at St. Nazaire.

This little village on the coast of Brittany was tucked away there in the golden sands of the seashore. Its houses had walls of white stucco and gabled roofs of red tile. In the small rolling hills behind it were green orchards and fields of yellow wheat. The villagers, old women in their starched white head-dresses and old men wearing faded blue smocks and wooden shoes, were unmindful of the great event for which history had destined their village.

On the night before the landing the townspeople had retired with no knowledge of what was to happen on the following day. In the morning they awoke to find strange ships that had come in the night, riding safely at anchor in the harbour. The wooden shutters began to pop open with bangs as excited heads, encased in peaked flannel nightcaps, protruded themselves from bedroom windows and directed anxious queries to those who happened to be abroad at that early hour.

St. Nazaire came to life more quickly that morning than ever before in its history. The Mayor of the town was one of the busiest figures on the street. In high hat and full dress attire, he hurried about trying to assemble the village orchestra of octogenarian fiddlers and flute players to play a welcome for the new arrivals. The townspeople neglected their café au lait to rush down to the quay to look at the new ships.

The waters of the harbour sparkled in the early morning sunlight. The dawn had been grey and misty, but now nature seemed to smile. The strange ships from the other side of the world were grey in hulk but now there were signs of life and colour aboard each one of them.

Beyond the troop ships lay the first United States warships, units of that remarkable fighting organisation which in the year that was to immediately follow that very day were to escort safely across three thousand miles of submarine-infested water more than a million and a half American soldiers.

The appearance of these first warships of ours was novel to the French townspeople. Our ships had peculiar looking masts, masts which the townspeople compared to the baskets which the French peasants carry on their backs when they harvest the lettuce. Out further from the shore were our low-lying torpedo destroyers, pointed toward the menace of the outer deep.

Busy puffing tugs were warping the first troop ship toward the quay-side. Some twenty or thirty American sailors and soldiers, who had been previously landed by launch to assist in the disembarkation, were handling the lines on the dock.

When but twenty feet from the quay-side, the successive decks of the first troop ship took on the appearance of mud-coloured layers from the khaki uniforms of the stiff standing ranks of our men. A military band on the forward deck was playing the national anthems of France and America and every hand was being held at the salute.

As the final bars of the "Star Spangled Banner" crashed out and every saluting hand came snappily down, one American soldier on an upper deck leaned over the rail and shouted to a comrade on the shore his part of the first exchange of greetings between our fighting men upon this historic occasion. Holding one hand to his lips, he seriously enquired:

"Say, do they let the enlisted men in the saloons here?"

THE FIRST AMERICAN FOOT ON FRENCH SOIL

THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF FRANCE

Another soldier standing near the stern rail had a different and more serious interrogation to make. He appeared rather blasé about it as he leaned over the rail and, directing his voice toward a soldier on the dock, casually demanded:

"Say, where the Hell is all this trouble, anyhow?"

These two opening sorties produced a flood of others. The most common enquiry was: "What's the name of this place?" and "Is this France or England?" When answers were made to these questions, the recipients of the information, particularly if they happened to be "old-timers in the army," would respond by remarking, "Well, it's a damn sight better than the Mexican border."

As our men came over the ship's side and down the runways, there was no great reception committee awaiting them. Among the most interested spectators of the event were a group of stolid German prisoners of war and the two French soldiers guarding them. The two Frenchmen talked volubly with a wealth of gesticulation, while the Germans maintained their characteristic glumness.

The German prisoners appeared to be anything but discouraged at the sight. Some of them even wore a smile that approached the supercilious. With some of them that smile seemed to say: "You can't fool us. We know these troops are not Americans. They are either Canadians or Australians coming from England. Our German U-boats won't let Americans cross the ocean."

Some of those German prisoners happened to have been in America before the war. They spoke English and recognised the uniforms of our men. Their silent smiles seemed to say: "Well, they don't look so good at that. We have seen better soldiers. And, besides, there is only a handful of them. Not enough can come to make any difference. Anyhow, it is too late now. The war will be over before any appreciable number can get here."

But the stream of khaki continued to pour out of the ship's side. Company after company of our men, loaded down with packs and full field equipment, lined up on the dock and marched past the group of German prisoners.

"We're passing in review for you, Fritzie," one irrepressible from our ranks shouted, as the marching line passed within touching distance of the prisoner group. The Germans responded only with quizzical little smiles and silence.

Escorted by our own military bands, the regiments marched through the main street of the village. The bands played "Dixie"—a new air to France. The regiments as a whole did not present the snappy, marching appearance that they might have presented. There was a good reason for this. Sixty per cent. of them were recruits. It had been wisely decided to replace many of the old regular army men in the ranks with newly enlisted men, so that these old veterans could remain in America and train the new drafts.

However, that which impressed the French people was the individual appearance of these samples of American manhood. Our men were tall and broad and brawny. They were young and vigorous. Their eyes were keen and snappy. Their complexions ranged in shade from the swarthy sun-tanned cheeks of border veterans to the clear pink skins of city youngsters. But most noticeable of all to the French people were the even white rows of teeth which our men displayed when they smiled. Good dentistry and clean mouths are essentially American.

The villagers of St. Nazaire, old men and women, girls and school children, lined the curbs as our men marched through the town. The line of march was over a broad esplanade that circled the sandy beach of the bay, and then wound upward into the higher ground back of the town. The road here was bordered on either side with ancient stone walls covered with vines and over the tops of the walls there extended fruit-laden branches to tempt our men with their ripe, red lusciousness. As they marched through the heat and dust of that June day, many succumbed to the temptations and paid for their appetites with inordinately violent colics that night.

A camp site had been partially prepared for their reception. It was located close to a French barracks. The French soldiers and gangs of German prisoners, who had been engaged in this work, had no knowledge of the fact that they were building the first American cantonment in France. They thought they were constructing simply an extension of the French encampment.

That first contingent, composed of United States Infantrymen and Marines, made its first camp in France with the smallest amount of confusion, considering the fact that almost three-quarters of them hadn't been in uniform a month. It was but several hours after arriving at the camp that the smoke was rising from the busy camp stoves and the aroma of American coffee, baked beans and broiled steaks was in the air.

On the afternoon of that first day some of the men were given permission to visit the town. They began to take their first lessons in French as they went from café to café in futile efforts to connect up with such unknown commodities as cherry pie or ham and egg sandwiches. Upon meeting one another in the streets, our men would invariably ask: "Have you come across any of these FROGS that talk American?"

There was nothing disrespectful about the terms Frogs or Froggies as applied to their French comrades in arms. American officers hastened to explain to French officers that the one piece of information concerning France most popularly known in America was that it was the place where people first learned to eat frog legs and snails.

The Frenchmen, on the other hand, were somewhat inclined to believe that these first Americans didn't live up to the European expectations of Americans. Those European expectations had been founded almost entirely upon the translations of dime novels and moving picture thrillers of the Wild West and comedy variety.

Although our men wore the high, broad-brimmed felt hats, they didn't seem sufficiently cowboyish. Although the French people waited expectantly, none of these Americans dashed through the main street of the village on bucking bronchos, holding their reins in their teeth and at the same time firing revolvers from either hand. Moreover, none of our men seemed to conclude their dinners in the expected American fashion of slapping one another in the face with custard pies.

There was to be seen on the streets of St. Nazaire that day some representative black Americans, who had also landed in that historical first contingent. There was a strange thing about these negroes.

It will be remembered that in the early stages of our participation in the war it had been found that there was hardly sufficient khaki cloth to provide uniforms for all of our soldiers. That had been the case with these American negro soldiers.

But somewhere down in Washington, somehow or other, some one resurrected an old, large, heavy iron key and this, inserted into an ancient rusty lock, had opened some long forgotten doors in one of the Government arsenals. There were revealed old dust-covered bundles wrapped up in newspapers, yellow with age, and when these wrappings of the past were removed, there were seen the uniforms of old Union blue that had been laid away back in '65—uniforms that had been worn by men who fought and bled and died to free the first black American citizens.

And here on this foreign shore, on this day in June more than half a century later, the sons and the grandsons of those same freed slaves wore those same uniforms of Union blue as they landed in France to fight for a newer freedom.

Some of these negroes were stevedores from the lower Mississippi levees. They sang as they worked in their white army undershirts, across the chest of which they had penciled in blue and red, strange mystic devices, religious phrases and hoodoo signs, calculated to contribute the charm of safety to the running of the submarine blockade.

Two of these American negroes, walking up the main street of St. Nazaire, saw on the other side of the thoroughfare a brother of colour wearing the lighter blue uniform of a French soldier. This French negro was a Colonial black from the north of Africa and of course had spoken nothing but French from the day he was born.

One of the American negroes crossed the street and accosted him.

"Looka here, boy," he enquired good-naturedly, "what can you all tell me about this here wah?"

"Comment, monsieur?" responded the non-understanding French black, and followed the rejoinder with a torrent of excited French.

The American negro's mouth fell open. For a minute he looked startled, and then he bulged one large round white eye suspiciously at the French black, while he inwardly debated on the possibility that he had become suddenly colour blind. Having reassured himself, however, that his vision was not at fault, he made a sudden decision and started on a new tack.

"Now, never mind that high-faluting language," he said. "You all just tell me what you know about this here wah and quit you' putting on aihs."

The puzzled French negro could only reply with another explosion of French interrogations, coupled with vigorous gesticulations. The American negro tried to talk at the same time and both of them endeavouring to make the other understand, increased the volumes of their tones until they were standing there waving their arms and shouting into one another's faces. The American negro gave it up.

"My Gawd," he said, shaking his head as he recrossed the street and joined his comrades, "this is shore some funny country. They got the mos' ignorantest niggers I ever saw."

Still, those American blacks were not alone in their difficulties over the difference in languages. I discussed the matter with one of our white regulars who professed great experience, having spent almost one entire day on mutual guard with a French sentry over a pile of baggage.

"You know," he said, "I don't believe these Frenchies ever will learn to speak English."

Our veterans from Mexico and the border campaigns found that their smattering of Spanish did not help them much. But still every one seemed to manage to get along all right. Our soldiers and the French soldiers in those early days couldn't understand each other's languages, but they could understand each other.

This strange paradox was analysed for me by a young American Lieutenant who said he had made a twelve-hour study of the remarkable camaraderie that had immediately sprung up between the fighting men of France and the fighting men of America. In explaining this relationship, he said:

"You see, we think the French are crazy," he said, "and the French know damn well we are."

Those of our men who had not brought small French and English dictionaries with them, made hurried purchases of such handy articles and forthwith began to practice. The French people did likewise.

I saw one young American infantryman seated at a table in front of one of the sidewalk cafés on the village square. He was dividing his attention between a fervent admiration of the pretty French waitress, who stood smiling in front of him, and an intense interest in the pages of his small hand dictionary.

She had brought his glass of beer and he had paid for it, but there seemed to be a mutual urge for further conversation. The American would look first at her and then he would look through the pages of the book again. Finally he gave slow and painful enunciation of the following request:

"Mad-am-moy-sell, donnie moy oon baysa."

She laughed prettily as she caught his meaning almost immediately, and she replied:

"Doughboy, ware do you get zat stuff?"

"Aw, Hell," said the young Infantryman, as he closed the book with a snap. "I knew they'd let those sailors ashore before us."

From the very first day of the landing we began to learn things from the French and they began to learn things from us. Some of our men learned that it was quite possible to sip an occasional glass of beer or light wine without feeling a sudden inclination to buy and consume all there remained in the café.

The French soldiers were intensely interested in the equipment of our land forces and in the uniforms of both our soldiers and sailors. They sought by questions to get an understanding of the various insignia by which the Americans designated their rank.

One thing that they noticed was a small, round white pasteboard tag suspended on a yellow cord from the upper left hand breast pocket of either the blue jackets of our sailors or the khaki shirts of our soldiers. So prevalent was this tag, which in reality marked the wearer as the owner of a package of popular tobacco, that the French almost accepted it as uniform equipment.

The attitude of our first arriving American soldiers toward the German prisoners who worked in gangs on construction work in the camps and rough labour along the docks was a curious one. Not having yet encountered in battle the brothers of these same docile appearing captives, our men were even inclined to treat the prisoners with deference almost approaching admiration.

In a measure, the Germans returned this feeling. The arrival of the Americans was really cheering to them. The prisoners disliked the French because they had been taught to do so from childhood. They hated the English because that was the hate with which they went into battle.

It sounds incongruous now but, nevertheless, it was a fact then that the German prisoners confined at that first American sea-base really seemed to like the American soldiers. Maybe it was because any change of masters or guards was a relief in the uneventful existence which had been theirs since the day of their capture. Perhaps the feeling was one of distinct kindred, based on a familiarity with Americans and American customs—a familiarity which had been produced by thousands of letters which Germans in America had written to their friends in Germany before the war. On the other hand, it may simply have been by reason of America's official disavowal of any animosity toward the German people.

One day I watched some of those prisoners unloading supplies at one of the docks in St. Nazaire, more or less under the eyes of an American sentry who stood nearby. One group of four Germans were engaged in carrying what appeared to be a large wooden packing case. Casually, and as if by accident, the case was dropped to the ground and cracked.

Instantly one of the prisoners' hands began to furtively investigate the packages revealed by the break. The other prisoners busied themselves as if preparing to lift the box again. The first German pulled a spoon from his bootleg, plunged it into the crevice in the broken box and withdrew it heaped with granulated sugar. With a quick movement he conveyed the stolen sweet to his mouth and that gapping orifice closed quickly on the sugar, while his stoical face immediately assumed its characteristic downcast look. He didn't dare move his lips or jaws for fear of detection.

Of course these Germans had been receiving but a scant ration of sugar, but their lot had been no worse than that of the French soldiers guarding them previously, who got no sugar either. American soldiers then guarding those prisoners reported only a few of them for confinement for these human thefts.

Surreptitiously, the American guards would sometimes leave cigarettes where the prisoners could get them, and even though the action did violate the rules of discipline, it helped to develop further the human side of the giver and the recipient and at the same time had the result of making the prisoners do more work for their new guards.

It should be specially stated that lenience could not and was not extended to the point of fraternisation. But the relationship that seemed to exist between the German prisoners and American soldiers at that early date revealed undeniably the absence of any mutual hate.

Around one packing case on the dock I saw, one day, a number of German prisoners who were engaged in unpacking bundles from America, and passing them down a line of waiting hands that relayed them to a freight car. One of the Germans leaning over the case straightened up with a rumpled newspaper in his hand. He had removed it from a package. A look of indescribable joy came across his face.

"Deutscher, Deutscher," he cried, pointing to the Gothic type. The paper was a copy of the New York Staats-Zeitung.

The lot of those prisoners was not an unhappy one. To me it seemed very doubtful whether even a small percentage of them would have accepted liberty if it carried with it the necessity of returning to German trenches.

Those men knew what war was. They had crossed No Man's Land. Now they were far back from the blazing front in a comparatively peaceful country beyond the sound of the guns. If their lot at that time was to be characterised as "war," then in the opinion of those Germans, war was not what Sherman said it was.

Their attitude more resembled that of the unkissed spinster who was taken captive when the invading army captured the town. She flung herself into the arms of the surprised commander of the invaders and smilingly whispered, "War is war."

The German prison camps at St. Nazaire were inspected by General Pershing on the third day of the American landing when he, with his staff, arrived from Paris. The General and his party arrived early in the morning in a pouring rain. The American commander-in-chief then held the rank of a Major General. In the harbour was the flagship of Rear Admiral Gleaves.

There was no delay over the niceties of etiquette when the question arose as to whether the Rear Admiral should call on the Major General or the Major General should call on the Rear Admiral.

The Major General settled the subject with a sentence. He said, "The point is that I want to see him," and with no further ado about it General Pershing and his staff visited the Admiral on his flagship. After his inspection of our first contingent, General Pershing said: