Read Ebook: The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl by Morse Katharine Duncan

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Ebook has 1368 lines and 97282 words, and 28 pages

French money, Belgian money, Swiss money, English money, Spanish money, Italian money, Greek money, Canadian money, Luxembourg money, Indo-Chinese money, money from Argentine Republic, and yesterday a German mark even, all come across the counter and go into the till without comment. But when any American money comes in I always feel badly over it. For, be it a crisp five dollar bill, an eagle quarter or only a buffalo nickel I know it signifies just one thing,--bankruptcy.

Bourmont, December 7.

To be a corporal in the Ninth Infantry, it is said, a man must be able to speak eight languages, one for each soldier in his squad. The same could be said with almost equal truth of our regiment. I don't know whether it is this mixture of many nationalities that gives my family its flavour; be that as it may, Company A has more color, more character, more individuality to the square inch than I had dreamed any such group could possess. And they are so funny, so engaging in their infinite variety and their child-like naivete!

First there are Gatts and Maggioni; Gatts, lean, tall, honest-eyed, with a grin that won't come off and a quaint streak of humour,--Gatts who looks pure Yankee, but is, if the truth were told, three-quarters German,--Gatts who hangs about my counter hour after hour; and by his side sticks little Maggioni, who told the recruiting officer that he was seventeen but whose head just tops the canteen shelf, and who looks, with his pink cheeks and his great dark eyes, like nothing in the world but an Italian cupid in the sulks. The two have struck up the oddest comradeship.

"Me an' Gatts, we're goin 'to stick side by side," explains Maggioni, "an' if I see a crowd o' Germans pilin' onto him, why I'll just go right after 'em, an' if too many of 'em come for me ter oncet, why Gatts here, he'll just lay right into 'em."

And Gatts nods, looking down at Maggioni with a parent's indulgent eye.

"He thinks he's a tough guy for sich a little feller," he comments reflectively; "but he's the only one in the regiment that knows it."

"You all think I'm mighty little!" snaps the cupid. "When I joined at Syracuse everybody said to me 'Baby, where'd you leave your cradle?' But lemme tell you, I've growed since I've been in the army!"

"Waal I do believe there's one part of him that's growed;" Gatts is very solemn.

"What's that?" I ask.

"His feet."

Private Gatts has promised me one of the Kaiser's ears!

Then there is Brady, "Devil Brady" the little black Irish coal-miner from Oklahoma, who spends his days trying to get put in the guard-house, so he won't have to drill.

"I'm plumb disgusted," he confided to me today. "I never worked so hard in my life as I did the other night gettin' drunk, an' then the guard was so much drunker than I was, I had to carry him to the guard-house. I thought sure they'd give me thirty days at least, but they only kept me twenty-four hours and then out!"

"Hard luck," I sympathized.

"I just knew how it would be," he mourned. "It was Friday the thirteenth when I joined the army; there were just thirteen of us fellers, and the thirteenth was a nigger."

He tells me the most wonderful yarns about the miners and their pet rats, about explosions and disasters and rescue parties. Last night he told me the story of one mine-horror that will stick in my memory.

"And we shoveled the last three men and a mule into one bag," he finished.

Now and then I catch a glimpse of Jenicho the Russian giant, but he is very shy. A huge lumbering fellow, sluggish, and seemingly stupid, with little pig eyes that are quite lost to sight when he smiles, Jenicho is the butt of the Company. When he joined the regiment last summer, they tell me, he knew no word of English. The first phrase that he acquired was; "You no bodder me." For the boys can't resist the temptation to plague Jenicho, and though his strength is such that if he once should get his hands on his tormentors he could break them into bits, he is so slow withal that they always can elude him. Not long ago Jenicho was walking post one night when the Officer of the Day hailed him and announced himself. To which Jenicho lustily responded; "Me no give damn. Me walk post, gun loaded, bay'net fixed. You no bodder me. Me shoot!" And the Officer of the Day discreetly walked on.

Then there is little Philip R. who plays our decrepit old piano quite brilliantly by ear, and who is, he tells me, half Greek and half Egyptian. Philip R. is the pet of a French family in one of the neighboring villages. He stopped at a house to ask for a drink of water when out walking one day. Madame asked him in, pressed him to stay to supper. The family made much of him, and all because forsooth he was the first "American" they had ever seen. Since then he has been a constant welcome visitor.

There is St. Mary too. If you can conceive of a cherub eating watermelon you have a perfect picture of St. Mary. St. Mary converses entirely in words of one syllable and very few at that. He makes smiles serve for speech. St. Mary loses everything he owns; not long ago he lost his overcoat, now he has lost his bayonet. Yet St. Mary is the best natured boy in the company; he needs to be. When St. Mary helps me stir the chocolate it seems as if half the company lined up on the other side of the counter to shout; "St. Mary! Take your dirty hands out er that there chocolate!" and St. Mary never says a word but grins until his eyes are nothing but little slits and ducks his head until only the curls on top are visible.

"St. Mary, he's kind o' simple," explains Private Gatts. "But there ain't anybody in camp that's got a better heart."

And there is Bruno, Angelo Bruno, a little grinning goblin of a man, but strong, they say, as a gorilla. Bruno gives the non-coms no end of trouble; he's a "tough nut to manage." Whenever he is told to do anything that does not suit his tastes, he merely shrugs his shoulders, "No capish," and that's the end of it. The other day while on guard he was interrogated by the Officer of the Day.

"What's your name?"

"Bruno."

"What are your general orders?"

"Angelo."

The Officer gasped, thought he would try again. "What are your special orders?"

Bruno saw a light. "They're ina my pock!"

When I first came to Saint Thiebault I was puzzled by the silver half-francs in my cash drawer which were bent in the middle, some of them so far as almost to form a right-angle. Then the boys explained. Bruno was once a strong man in a circus sideshow. He did things with his teeth. The crooked half-francs were the results of his exhibiting his prowess to the boys. So now when damaged half-francs appear I know that our little Angelo has been trying his teeth again. At present our social intercourse with Bruno is limited. He is serving thirty days in the guard-house. But every day or two he slips into the hut to do his shopping, the kind-hearted guard standing at the door, as he does so, a sheepish look on his face. If there is one military duty which the doughboy hates above all others, it is this job of "chasing prisoners," and when you meet a file of guard-house habitu?s escorted by a rifle in the rear, it is invariably the guard, and not the prisoners, who looks the culprit! The interest of Bruno's visits lies largely in seeing what is his latest acquisition in the way of jewelry. For Bruno has a pretty taste for finery and enlivens the dull evenings of his captivity by winning away the ornaments of his fellow prisoners. Already he has come into the canteen decked out with seven large rings and a fat watch and chain. Today he appeared with his latest prize, a pair of gold-rimmed eye glasses. They are hideously unbecoming, they pinch his nose so that it hurts, moreover he can't more than half see out of them, and yet it is quite evident those eyeglasses are the pride of his heart.

Last week our Secretary conceived a big idea. He would educate A Company. He would teach them to read, write and speak English. He started a class. On the first night there was a large crowd, eager and interested; the second night there were six, the pupils when sought out complaining they were "tired" or "busy;" the third night there was Saint Mary who made one; the fourth night the class died an easy death. I am afraid Company A is going to continue uneducated. As Brady said:

"There were just two things I learned in school; one was to throw a spit ball, the other was to bend a pin convenient for somebody to sit on." And it looks as if it would have to go at that.

Bourmont, December 9.

There is something queer about me. I don't mind the mud, I don't mind the rain, I don't mind the hill, I don't even mind the mess. Of course I admit that the food isn't quite what one is used to, and the surroundings are a trifle unsavoury, but it is, after all, so much better than the state of semi-starvation that I was led to half anticipate, that I for one am quite content.

Our mess is held at the house of an old couple who live a little way above our billet on the hill. The house was differentiated from the others in the row by a spindling and discouraged tree which stood in a green tub outside; as this was the only tree in front of a house on the whole street it has always been easy to pick out our otherwise undistinguished entrance. Last night however, the weather waxing colder, the tree moved indoors. This morning the whole Y. personnel wandered distractedly up and down the hill trying to identify the mess-house door, until some kindly villagers, sensing the situation, came out on their front steps and pointed us to the place.

The house, like most of the village dwellings, consists, downstairs, of just two rooms. In the front room the family cooks, eats and spends its days. In the back room the family sleeps, and here we have our mess. The drawback of this arrangement is that one has to pass through the kitchen in order to reach the dining-room and this is likely to spoil one's pleasure in the meal that follows. As for me, I go on the principle that what one doesn't know won't take one's appetite away, and so hurry through the kitchen with one eye shut and the other fixed on the door ahead of me.

"You aren't taking rice tonight?"

"Thanks no. Saw the old lady picking 'em out this noon."

"That's nothing. I saw the old man picking 'em out of the beans yesterday."

But why should people come to war if they are going to be so squeamish?

A few days ago one rash soul among us conceived a hankering for salad. She went to Madame and, being ignorant of the French word, demanded simply.

Madame shook her head uncomprehending, but finally as the words were repeated a light dawned.

She turned and hurried upstairs, descending triumphantly a moment later with a large bundle of old letters! In just what form she expected us to have them served I have not yet been able to ascertain.

The mess-room is so crowded that to reach a seat often requires considerable manoeuvering. In one corner stands an ancient dressmaker's dummy--by popular vote awarded as sweetheart to the most bashful man at table; in the corner opposite is the bed of Madame and Monsieur. The men who get up for early breakfast, swallow their bread and jam and coffee with Monsieur watching from his couch of ease. Today Madame was indisposed and when we came to supper we found that she had retired already. All through the meal she lay there, under the red feather-bed, looking like a dingy, weazened old corpse, staring at the ceiling, her mouth wide open.

For the last few days we have had a visiting clergyman with us. To all appearances a meek and long-suffering little man, he has been giving special revivalistic discourses at the huts and eating at our mess. This morning he was asked to say grace. In the middle of a long and earnest exhortation I was startled to hear these words: "Oh Lord, Thou knowest we are apt to grow lean and to starve in Thy service!" I fairly had to stuff one of the one franc canteen handkerchiefs, which serve as napkins at the mess, into my mouth to keep from laughing.

Bourmont, December 12.

In Paris a man who lectured to us said: "Get the fellows who have influence with you, and you can swing the crowd." Sometimes I think that if Pat were our enemy instead of our friend we might almost as well shut up the hut. For Pat the sharp-shooter, Pat the dare-devil, Pat, who in company phrase "has Harry Lauder and George Cohen stopped in a hundred places," Pat the happy-go-lucky adventurer is one of the leading spirits in Company A. He has served, it seems, already in the war with the Canadian army.

"But how did you get out of it?" I asked.

Whereupon Pat regaled me with a wonderful rigmarole involving an extraordinary case--his own--of shell-shock out of which I could make neither head nor tail. Later, from one of the Secretaries who had been at Saint Thiebault before I came, I learned the truth. When America had declared war, Pat had deserted from the Canadian in order to enlist in the American army. Pat had showed him a letter from one of his old-time friends; it ended:

"Of course I wouldn't think of splitting on an old pal like you, Pat, but I do need twenty dollars like hell."

"What did you do?" asked the Secretary.

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