Their stoves were burning brightly and the hurriedly erected stove pipes, leaning wearily against the stone wall enclosing the quay, topped the wall like a miniature of the sky line of Pittsburgh. The boiling coffee pots gave off a delicious steam. In the language of our battery, the "Whime say" delivered the goods.
During it all the mules brayed and the supply company men swore. Most humans, cognizant of the principles of safety first, are respectful of the rear quarters of a mule. We watched one disrespecter of these principles invite what might have been called "mulecide" with utter contempt for the consequences. He deliberately stood in the dangerous immediate rear of one particularly onery mule, and kicked the mule.
His name was "Missouri Slim," as he took pains to inform the object of his caress. He further announced to all present, men and mules, that he had been brought up with mules from babyhood and knew mules from the tips of their long ears to the ends of their hard tails.
The obdurate animal in question had refused to enter the door of the car that had been indicated as his Pullman. "Missouri Slim" called three other ex-natives of Champ Clark's state to his assistance. They fearlessly put a shoulder under each of the mule's quarters. Then they grunted a unanimous "heave," and lifted the struggling animal off its feet. As a perfect matter of course, they walked right into the car with him with no more trouble than if he had been an extra large bale of hay.
"Wonderful mule handling in this here army," remarked a quiet, mild-mannered man in uniform, beside whom I happened to be standing. He spoke with a slow, almost sleepy, drawl. He was the new veterinarian of the supply company, and there were a number of things that were new to him, as his story revealed. He was the first homesick horse doctor I ever met.
"I come from a small town out in Iowa," he told me. "I went to a veterinary college and had a nice little practice, – sorter kept myself so busy that I never got much of a chance to think about this here war. But one day, about two months ago, I got a letter from the War Department down in Washington.
"They said the hoss doctor college had given them my name as one of the graduates and the letter said that the War Department was making out a list of hoss doctors. The letter asked me to fill out the blank and send it to Washington.
"'Joe,' my wife says to me, 'this here is an honour that the country is paying to you. The Government just wants the names of the patriotic professional citizens of the country.' So we filled out the blank and mailed it and forgot all about it.
"Well, about two weeks later, I got a letter from Washington telling me to go at once to Douglas, Arizona. It sorter scared the wife and me at first because neither of us had ever been out of Iowa, but I told her that I was sure it wasn't anything serious – I thought that Uncle Sam just had some sick hosses down there and wanted me to go down and look them over.
"Well, the wife put another shirt and a collar and an extra pair of socks in my hand satchel along with my instruments and I kissed her and the little boy good-bye and told them that I would hurry up and prescribe for the Government hosses and be back in about five days.
"Two days later I landed in Douglas, and a major shoved me into a uniform and told me I was commissioned as a hoss doctor lieutenant. That afternoon I was put on a train with a battery and we were on our way east. Six days later we were on the ocean. We landed somewhere in France and moved way out here.
"My wife was expecting me back in five days and here it is I've been away two months and I haven't had a letter from her and now we're moving up to the front. It seems to me like I've been away from Iowa for ten years, and I guess I am a little homesick, but it sure is a comfort to travel with an outfit that knows how to handle mules like this one does."
The supply company completed loading, and the homesick horse doctor boarded the last car as the train moved down the track. Our battery took possession of the platform. A train of empties was shunted into position and we began loading guns and wagons on the flat cars and putting the animals into the box cars.
Considerable confusion accompanied this operation. The horses seemed to have decided scruples against entering the cars. It was dark and the rain came down miserably. The men swore. There was considerable kicking on the part of the men as well as the animals.
I noticed one group that was gathered around a plunging team of horses. The group represented an entanglement of rope, harness, horses and men. I heard a clang of metal and saw the flash of two steel-shod hoofs. A little corporal, holding his head up with both hands, backed out of the group, – backed clear across the platform and sat down on a bale of hay.
I went to his assistance. Blood was trickling through his fingers. I washed his two scalp wounds with water from a canteen and applied first aid bandages.
"Just my luck," I heard my patient mumbling as I swathed his head in white strips and imparted to him the appearance of a first-class front line casualty.
"You're lucky," I told him truthfully. "Not many men get kicked in the head by a horse and escape without a fractured skull."
"That isn't it," he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet – that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat fell off my head."
By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train examining the halter straps in the horse cars and assuring himself of the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what developed to be a wild night ride.
The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a horse and a man, if placed out in any large open space, are capable of getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them figuratively on the neck and tell them to lie down together and sleep through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases. The described condition does not encompass the best understood relation of the two as travelling companions.
On our military trains in France, the reservations of space for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space is reserved for the four two-footed animals.
Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central space. If the movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the central space. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the floor of the central space is a lively existence, while "riding the rattlers with a horse outfit."
Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting with four artillerymen in the central space between the side doors which had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by roping it off.
On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new fits of excitement.
We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.
"Yeah," observed Shoemaker, driver of the "wheelers" on No. 4 piece, "Yeah, but there ain't no mast to climb up on and get out of the way on in this here boxcar."
"I'd rather take my chances with a cannon any day," said 'Beady' Watson, gunner. "A cannon will stay put when you fix it. There's our piece out on the flat car and she's all lashed and blocked. It would take a wreck to budge her off that flat. I wish the B. C. had let me ride with the old gun out there. It would be a little colder but a lot healthier. Try to go to sleep in here and you'll wake up with a horse sitting on you."
"Where do you suppose we are going anyway?" asked Slater, fuse cutter in the same section. "I'm strong for travel, but I always like to read the program before we start to ramble. For all we know we might be on our way to Switzerland or Italy or Spain or Egypt or somewhere."
"Why don't you go up and ask the Captain?" suggested Boyle, corporal in charge of the car. "Maybe the Colonel gave him a special message to deliver to you about our dusty-nation. You needn't worry though. They ain't going to bowl us out of France for some time yet."
"Well, if we're just joy-riding around France," replied Slater, "I hope we stop over to feed the horses at Monte Carlo. I've heard a lot about that joint. They say that they run the biggest crap game in the world there, and the police lay off the place because the Governor of the State or the King or something, banks the game. They tell me he uses straight bones and I figure a man could clean up big if he hit the game on a payday."
"Listen, kid, you've got this tip wrong," said Shoemaker. "If there's anything happens to start a riot among these horses, you are going to find that you're gambling with death. And if we ever get off this train, I think we have a date with Kaiser Bill."
"I've got a cousin somewhere in the German army. He spells his 'Shoemaker' with a 'u.' My dad told me that my grandfather and this cousin's grandfather had a business disagreement over a sauerkraut factory some time before the Civil War and my grandfather left Germany. Since then, there ain't been no love lost between the branches of the family, but we did hear that Cousin Hans had left the sauerkraut business and was packing a howitzer for the Kaiser."
"Well, I hope we come across him for your sake," said Watson. "It's kinda tough luck to get cheated out of a big business like that, but then you must remember that if your cousin's grandfather hadn't pulled the dirty on your grandfather, your grandfather might never have gone to America and most likely you'd still be a German."
"I guess there's some sense in that, too," replied Shoemaker; "wouldn't that been hell if I'd been on the other side in this war? But anyhow, I do hope we run into Cousin Hans somewhere."
The horses had been comparatively quiet for some time, but now they seemed to be growing restless. They pricked their ears and we knew something was bothering them. The discussion stopped so that we could listen better.
Above the rattle of the train, there came to us the sound of firing. It seemed to come from the direction in which we were going. With surprising quickness, the explosions grew louder. We were not only speeding toward the sounds of conflict, but the conflict itself seemed to be speeding toward us.
Then came a crash unmistakably near. One of the horses in the forward end reared, and his head thumped the roof of the car. Once again on four feet, he pranced nervously and tossed his blood-wet forelock. Immediately the other horses began stamping.
Another crash! – this time almost directly overhead. In the light of the swinging lantern, I could see the terror in the eyes of the frightened brutes. We clung to their halters and tried to quiet them but they lifted us off our feet.
"Put a twitch on that one's nose and hold him down," Boyle ordered.
"Gosh," said Slater, obeying, "we must be right up on the front line. Hope they don't stop this train in No Man's Land. Hold still, you crazy b – "
"Cousin Hans must have heard you talking," Watson shouted to Shoemaker. "Maybe you're going to see him quicker than you expected."
The train was slowing down. The brakes shrieked and grated as we came to a jerky stop. Three of us braced ourselves at the heads of the four horses in the rear of the car and prevented them from sliding on top of us. Boyle and Slater were doing their best to quiet the forward four. The explosions overhead increased. Now we heard the report of field pieces so close that they seemed to be almost alongside the track.
There came a sharp bang at one of the side doors, and I thought I recognised the sound of the lead-loaded handle of the captain's riding whip. His voice, coming to us a minute later above the trampling and kicking of the panic-stricken animals, verified my belief.
"Darken that lantern," he shouted. "Keep all lights out and keep your helmets on. Stay in the cars and hang on to the horses. There is an air raid on right above us."
"Yes, sir," replied Boyle, and we heard the captain run to the next car. I blew out the light and we were in complete darkness, with eight tossing, plunging horses that kicked and reared at every crash of the guns nearby or burst of the shells overhead.
We hung on while the air battle went on above. One horse went down on his knees and in his frantic struggles to regain his feet, almost kicked the feet from under the animal beside him.
At times, thunderous detonations told us that aerial bombs were doing their work near at hand. We supposed correctly that we were near some town not far behind the lines, and that the German was paying it a night visit with some of his heaviest visiting cards.
I opened one side door just a crack and looked out. The darkness above blossomed with blinding blotches of fire that flashed on and off. It seemed as though the sky were a canopy of black velvet perforated with hundreds of holes behind which dazzling lights passed back and forth, flashing momentary gleams of brilliance through the punctures. Again, this vision would pass as a luminous dripping mass would poise itself on high and cast a steady white glare that revealed clusters of grey smoke puffs of exploded shrapnel.
We had to close the door because the flashes added to the terror of the horses, but the aerial activity passed almost as suddenly as it had come and left our train untouched. As the raiding planes went down the wind, followed always by the poppings of the anti-aircraft guns, the sound of the conflict grew distant. We got control over the horses although they still trembled with fright.
There came another rap at the door and I hurriedly accepted the captain's invitation to accompany him forward to a first-class coach where I spent the remainder of the night stretched out on the cushions. As our train resumed its way into the darkness, I dreamed of racing before a stampede of wild horses.
CHAPTER VII
INTO THE LINE – THE FIRST AMERICAN SHOT IN THE WAR
A damp, chill, morning mist made the dawn even greyer as our battery train slid into a loading platform almost under the walls of a large manufacturing plant engaged in producing war materials.
In spite of the fact that the section chiefs reported that not a man had been injured, and not so much as a leg broken in the crowded horse cars, every man in the battery now declared the absence of any doubt but the air raid had been directly aimed at Battery A.
"There might be a spy in this here very outfit," said 'Texas' Tinsdale, the battery alarmist. "Else how could them German aviators have known that Battery A was on the road last night? They knew we was on the way to the front and they tried to get us."
"Hire a hall," shouted the gruffy top sergeant. "We've got two hours to unload. A lot of you fireside veterans get busy. Gun crews get to work on the flats and drivers unload horses. No chow until we're ready to move out."
The sign on a station lamp-post told us the name of the town. It was Jarville. But it jarred nothing in our memories. None of us had ever heard of it before. I asked the captain where we were.
"Just about thirty miles behind the front," he replied. "We are moving up to our last billets as soon as we unload and feed."
The horses had made the ride wearing their harness, some of which had become entangled and broken in transit. A number of saddles had slipped from backs and were down behind forelegs.
"We're learning something every minute," the captain exclaimed. "American army regulations call for the removal of all harness from the horses before they are put into the cars, but the French have learned that that is a dangerous practice over here.
"You can't unload unharnessed horses and get them hitched to the guns as quick as you can harnessed horses. The idea is this. We're pretty close behind the lines. A German air party might make this unloading platform a visit at any time and if any of them are in the air and happen to see us unloading, they'd sure call on us.
"The French have learned that the only way to make the best of such a situation, if it should arise, is to have the horses already harnessed so that they can be run out of the cars quickly, hitched to the guns in a jiffy and hurried away. If the horses are in the cars unharnessed, and all of the harness is being carried in other cars, confusion is increased and there is a greater prospect of your losing your train, horses, guns and everything from an incendiary bomb, not to mention low flying machine work."
His explanation revealed a promising attitude that I found in almost all American soldiers of all ranks that I had encountered up to that time in France. The foundation of the attitude was a willingness to admit ignorance of new conditions and an eagerness to possess themselves of all knowledge that the French and British had acquired through bitter and costly experience.
Further than that, the American inclination pushed the soldier students to look beyond even those then accepted standards. The tendency was to improve beyond the French and British, to apply new American principles of time or labour-saving to simple operation, to save man-power and horseflesh by sane safety appliances, to increase efficiency, speed, accuracy – in a word, their aim was to make themselves the best fighting men in the Allied cause.
One instance of this is worthy of recounting. I came upon the young Russian who was the battery saddler. He was a citizen of the United States whose uniform he wore, but he was such a new citizen, that he hardly spoke English. I found him handling a small piece of galvanised iron and a horse shoe. He appeared to be trying to fit the rumpled piece of metal into the shoe.
In his broken English he explained that he was trying to fashion a light metal plate that could be easily placed between a horse's shoe and the hoof, to protect the frog of the foot from nails picked up on the road. With all soldiers wearing hobnailed boots, the roads were full of those sharp bits of metal which had caused serious losses of horseflesh through lameness and blood poisoning.
The unloading had continued under the eyes of smiling French girls in bloomers who were just departing from their work on the early morning shift in the munition factory beside the station. These were the first American soldiers they had seen and they were free to pass comment upon our appearance. So were the men of Battery A, who overlooked the oiled, grimed faces and hands of the bloomered beauties, and announced the general verdict that "they sure were fat little devils."
The unloading completed, a scanty snack consisting of two unbuttered slices of white bread with a hunk of cold meat and maybe the bite of an onion, had been put away by the time the horses' nose bags were empty. With a French guide in the lead, we moved off the platform, rattled along under a railroad viaduct, and down the main street of Jarville, which was large enough to boast street car tracks and a shell-damaged cathedral spire.
The remaining townsfolk had lived with the glare and rumble of the front for three years now and the passage back and forth of men and horses and guns hardly elicited as much attention as the occasional promenade of a policeman in Evanston, Illinois. But these were different men that rode through those streets that day.
This was the first battery of American artillery that had passed that way. This was an occasion and the townspeople responded to it. Children, women and old men chirped "vivas," kissed hands, bared heads and waved hats and aprons from curb and shop door and windows overhead.
There was no cheering, but there were smiles and tears and "God bless you's." It was not a vociferous greeting, but a heart-felt one. They offered all there was left of an emotion that still ran deep and strong within but that outwardly had been benumbed by three years of nerve-rack and war-weariness.
Onward into the zone of war we rode. On through successive battered villages, past houses without roofs, windows with shattered panes, stone walls with gaping shell holes through them, churches without steeples, our battery moved toward the last billeting place before entering the line.
This was the ancient town of Saint-Nicolas-du-Port on the banks of the river Meurthe. Into the Place de la Republic of the town the battery swung with a clamorous advance guard of schoolchildren and street gamins.
The top sergeant who had preceded the battery into the town, galloped up to the captain upon our entry and presented him with a sheaf of yellow paper slips, which bore the addresses of houses and barns and the complements of men and horses to be quartered in each. This was the billeting schedule provided by the French major of the town. The guns were parked, the horses picketed and the potato peelers started on their endless task. The absence of fuel for the mess fires demanded immediate correction.
It was a few minutes past noon when the captain and I entered the office of the French Town Major. It was vacant. The officers were at déjeuner, we learned from an old woman who was sweeping the commandant's rooms. Where? – Ah, she knew not. We accosted the first French officer we met on the street.
"Where does the Town Major eat?" the Captain inquired in his best Indianapolis French. After the customary exchange of salutes, introductions, handshakes and greetings, the Frenchman informed us that Monsieur Le Commandant favoured the pommard, that Madame Larue served at the Hôtel de la Fountaine.
We hurried to that place, and there in a little back room behind a plate-cluttered table with a red and white checkered table cloth, we found the Major. The Major said he spoke the English with the fluency. He demonstrated his delusion when we asked for wood.
"Wood! Ah, but it is impossible that it is wood you ask of me. Have I not this morning early seen with my own eyes the wood ordered?"
"But there is no wood," replied the Captain. "I must have wood for the fires. It is past noon and my men have not eaten."
"Ah, but I am telling you there is wood," replied the Major. "I saw your supply officer pay for the wood. By now I believe it has been delivered for you in the Place de la République."
"But it hasn't," remonstrated the Captain, "and the fires have not yet been started, and – "
"But it is on the way, probably," said the Major. "Maybe it will be there soon. Maybe it is there now."
The Captain took another tack.
"Where was the wood bought?" he asked.
"From the wood merchant beyond the river," replied the Major. "But it is already on the way, and – "
"How do you go to the wood merchant?" insisted the Captain. "We have got to have the wood toot sweet."
"Ah! tout de suite—tout de suite—tout de suite," repeated the Major in tones of exasperation. "With you Americans it is always tout de suite. Here – "
He took my notebook and drew a plan of streets indicating the way to the place of the wood merchant. In spite of his remark and the undesired intrusion of business upon his déjeuner, the Major's manner was as friendly as could be expected from a Town Major. We left on the run.
The wood merchant was a big man, elderly and fat. His face was red and he had bushy grey eyebrows. He wore a smock of blue cloth that came to his knees. He remonstrated that it was useless for us to buy wood from him because wood had already been bought for us. He spoke only French. The Captain dismissed all further argument by a direct frontal attack on the subject.
"Avez-vous de bois?" asked the Captain.
"Oui," the merchant nodded.
"Avez-vous de chevaux?" the Captain asked.
"Oui," the merchant nodded again.
"Avez-vous de voiture?" the Captain asked.
"Oui," – another nod.
"All right then," continued the Captain, and then emphasising each word by the sudden production of another stiff finger on his extended hand, he said, "Du bois – des chevaux – une voiture– de whole damn business – and toot sweet."
In some remarkable fashion the kindly wood merchant gathered that the Captain wanted wood piled in a wagon, drawn by a horse and wanted it in a hurry. Tout de suite, pronounced "toot sweet" by our soldiers, was a term calling for speed, that was among the first acquired by our men in France.
The old man shrugged his shoulders, elevated his hand, palm outward, and signified with an expression of his face that it was useless to argue further for the benefit of these Americans. He turned and gave the necessary loading orders to his working force.
That working force consisted of two French girls, each about eighteen years of age. They wore long baggy bloomers of brown corduroy, tight at the ankles where they flopped about in folds over clumsy wooden shoes. They wore blouses of the same material and tam o'shanter hats to match, called bérets.
Each one of them had a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. One stood on the ground and tossed up the thirty or forty-pound logs to her sister who stood above on top of the wagon. The latter caught them in her extended arms and placed them in a pile. To the best of my recollection, neither one of the girls missed a puff.
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.