Chapter 8 No.8

No Place for a Lady

-1-

And so-This was Brest, France! Two more weeks almost disappeared into history. I was getting inured to this army life, for it was getting so that I didn't notice how fast the days flew by. There was something doing every day and I was busy-which probably accounts for the speedy passage of time.

I'd been thinking it over and decided when I got back home I'd write to the Secretary of War and suggest that they put a huge sign up in front of the entrance to this man's war and put on the sign these words: FOR MEN ONLY. This business certainly was for men only. It was no place for a woman-at least, not a nice woman, I mean a decent girl like me. Of all the rough-necks-I never imagined there were so many in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. I was meeting them here, though. I was thrown in with people that I'd never meet in the course of a lifetime at home: I mean, some of these men were specimens such as I would never have an opportunity of knowing in the United States. I guess one never knows how the other half lives nor how they think, but I was beginning to get a pretty good conception.

However, to get back to the story:-We came ashore on a dirty old lighter that must have been a coal barge before the war. The day we landed was one of the three hundred and fifty days of rain in the customary French year. Up around that part of Brittany, the natives must be thankful that Leap Year doesn't come every year, because the chances are it would be just another rainy day. The usual quota of sunshiny days there is one-per-month. I always recalled France as a land of sunshine and sparkle, but the first ten days in Brest sadly disillusioned me. We had only one day that didn't show a rainfall!

And imagine poor little me tramping through the mud and water in a cold, drizzling downpour-me, who was experiencing the first "hike" of this kind in my life! Everyone except the high officers had to march from the docks out to the Pontanezan Barracks, a walled camp that was built by Napoleon more than a hundred years ago. This place is four miles out of Brest, and it wouldn't have been such a bad walk if there hadn't been so much mud and other contributing causes for discomfort. We never had any adequate drill on board the transport, most of us were suffering from the effects of that awful dysentery, all of us were weak of legs and weaker in the stomach. It was certainly one tough stretch, and I hope I don't have to go to war like that any more. I'd prefer to ride to my death in a G.M.C. or a flivver ambulance.

When we were just getting started, Ben let Esky out of his barracks bag and observed very sourly, "If this ain't a hell of a fine way to welcome a bunch o' real heroes, my old man was a priest!"

A priest by the name of Garlotz! "Was he a priest, Ben?" the man on the other side of him inquired, probably for the sake of hearing Ben's profanity.

"Priest hell!" declared the big boy. "I don't think he knew what a priest looks like. My old man helped build the subway with a pick and shovel!" And he proceeded, between curses anent the weather, the frogs, the officers, the Government, the President, and General Pershing's progeny even unto the fourth and fifth generations, to tell us about his "old man" who, it seems, was a remarkably able man who never got a nickel for fighting but could beat the daylights out of his prize-fighting son any time he became drunk enough to so desire. Anyone would have to read between the lines of that speech to discern the fact that Ben must really have thought a lot of his father. Personally, it never before occurred to me that he had a father: a man like Ben is so eye-filling that you just don't think of him as having a family somewhere, and a father and mother just like ordinary people.

Well, anyway, the column moved slowly forward, the under-officers feeling the strain every bit as much as the enlisted men and allowing us to break ranks and "fall out" with unexpected frequency. I guess we fell out at least five times before we reached the gate to the barracks, and when we arrived there we stood around for more than half an hour waiting to be assigned to quarters, while rumors of all kinds were running around and considerable confusion arose as a result of someone's remark that we'd probably have to sleep in pup tents outside the walls because the barracks within were all filled. This rumor threw Ben into a fit of profanity that could not be stopped until orders came to move along. Ben had no use whatever for pup tents. He said, "I can't get my feet under cover in one of those damned pillow cases!" Like most rumors in the army, this one proved false and we finally found ourselves located in a wooden shed just off the parade ground of the camp. We were soaked to the skin, but mighty glad to be there.

Everybody ditched his luggage and made a line for the little corrugated iron building around the corner. The dysentery was still operative.... Nobody was very hungry that noon, but by nighttime we were all ready for chow.

One reason for this was that we had no sooner begun to take life easy in our new quarters than Chilblaines appeared on the scene without any warning and told the top-kicker he had come over to see that the men got a work-out. "They might catch cold if they remain idle now, sergeant. Get them out and we'll warm them up for a half hour or so. Can't afford to leave any of them in the hospital here."

Well, everybody was sore. You could see that the top-kicker didn't like the idea at all, and the rest of us couldn't begin to express our thoughts. Whoever expected a headquarters company to go out and drill like a crew of infantrymen? Some of these fellows couldn't do much better than I did, and I had some tall and quick thinking to do to keep in line as we marched up and down and back and forth the length and breadth of that parade ground. Chilblaines kept us at it for an hour and some of us almost sat down in our tracks when he finally dismissed us. It was then that someone offered the information that "Chilblaines rode out with the General-that's why he felt so fresh and strong."

The chorus of curses and other kindred expressions that greeted this announcement almost made me deaf. Ben's opinion sounded literary and mild compared to the others, and he said, "Chilblaines musta been born in dog days, cause he's a son-of-a-b-- as sure as hell!"

I said that I thought he had an overdeveloped sense of his own importance in this army and that he probably figured this was a way to prove his leadership.

"Leadership hell!" growls Ben. "That guy couldn't lead me nowhere. I wouldn't even let him lead me to a drink of good rye whisky right this minute. If we was in the front lines and he told me to go forward I'd turn around and knock his teeth down his throat so he couldn't give orders." The thought of such a golden pleasure, however remote as a possibility, was a never failing source of enjoyment for Ben. His idea of heaven would be to have Chilblaines and himself locked in a room together.... Well, my opinion of Chilblaines is unprintable, too.

That drilling in the rain was a tea party, compared to what happened the following morning. At four A.M. we were called up by the top-kick, who was very apparently pretty mad about something. He ordered us all out in our slickers-which could mean just one thing: a bath.

As soon as Ben heard what was coming, he divined at once the fine Italian hand of Chilblaines. "That b--! There ain't a drop of white man's blood in that whorehound's veins!" He cursed him, between shivers, for all he had around his huge frame was the far too small slicker which the Q.M.C. clerk said was the largest size they had. "Jesus Maria! Gettin' a guy up at this hour, before daybreak, to take a bath!"

"Pipe down there!" ordered the top-kicker from the front of the shed. "There's only one bath and this is the only hour we could get. Come along!"

But Ben was not to be so quickly calmed. "God Almighty!" he exclaimed. "You'd think we was criminals in a prison, instead of volunteers in an army!"

Meantime I was thinking in double time, for this call to the showers presented an unexpected problem that had to be solved at once. The top-kick was exhorting them to snap into it and I had to suppose that he would wait at the door to see that everyone went. I waited until Ben started for the door, then when he was directly between me and the sergeant, I ducked under my bunk and pulled Esky down beside me so that, with the blankets hanging down and Esky covering the front, I hoped to escape the top-kick's inquisitive eye.

Sure enough, he came down the line to see that everyone had gone. For a breathless moment I was convinced that he was inspecting my bunk with suspicion. Then suddenly he turned and went away, closing the door behind him. But I waited several minutes, to make sure that he had gone.

Then I pushed Esky out of the way and threw off the slicker. Down at the end of the shed were two fire buckets, and to these I ran. I dowsed my head in one of them and poured the other over my legs. Then I ran back to my bunk and pulled off my shirt, and back to the buckets again. I was shivering all over, but I made sure that I was wet enough to look it, then I returned to the bunk and got ready for the crucial moment.

I had to stand there with the towel in my hand for several minutes before the first of the bathers returned, but as soon as the door opened I started a vigorous rubbing, and slipped into my clean shirt. I heard one of the men swear and another said, "I never saw such cold water in my life!"

When the top-kick appeared I was frantically rubbing my head and neck. He was shivering himself but he made a trip down the aisle and stopped rather suspiciously near me. I thought he was going to say something, but I exclaimed, "God, but that water was cold, sergeant!" And I was shivering so genuinely that he was impressed. He looked around our end of the shack and went back to his own bunk to dress.

Ben had come in during the inspection and when the sergeant had retreated, he leaned across the bunk and said, very confidentially, "He asked me where you was and I said 'He's been here and gone back already.' It was colder'n a ninety-year-old witch an' I don't blame ya a bit fer duckin' it!"

Good old Ben! He sure was a simple and good-hearted friend to me. He was so omnisciently clever about some things, so clever he readily accepted the simplest and plainest explanation and let it go at that. And he took pleasure in helping to slip anything over on anyone in authority. I thanked him sincerely for telling the top-kicker that lie and we proceeded to get dressed for what turned out to be a very dismal, dreary, hopeless day, the first of a series that were distinguished by their similarity in the matter of dreariness.

There was nothing much for any of us to do these days. Now and then the General had something to get out, but he had simply been marking time for the most part and when he marked time I exhibited my ability as a lock-stepper. Marking time was the one part of the manual of drill that I did best.

Ben and I listened to all the current rumors. We heard that we were going south from here to train for immediate action; that the Germans were raising hell and we'd be in the trenches in two weeks; that we were going to Italy to help the wops lick the Austrians; that ... that ... that ... and so on almost ad infinitum. And I knew that all of them were entirely false and without foundation. I don't understand how rumors traveled so well in the army, but they certainly did spring up and cover the camp overnight. The whole army seemed to be just one vast buzz all the time. Every man you met had some inside news to impart. None of this bothered me, however, for the General had told me that the division would go to a training area for at least a month before being used for anything.

I went into Brest several times, but there was no particular excitement or entertainment to be found down there, because part of the city was under quarantine for cholera and the authorities had restricted all places of amusement that might interest me. Ben said he hadn't seen a single one of these mademoiselles that looked clean enough to be of interest to a man of his tastes, and I quite agreed with him. Most of them were disappointing-nothing like before the war. Now they all looked so hard and worn, and the ones that American soldiers met were the same ones that the English, Australians, Italians, Portuguese and French Colonials had met before us. An American soldier must be conceited indeed if he thinks he could teach these girls anything in the way of love and its devices.

It seemed to me that the French people were of two minds about us. The lower classes seemed to welcome us with open arms, call benedictions upon our heads, but they looked upon us as wild specimens of humanity from the outskirts of civilization. And in this view the upper-class Frenchmen concurred, I imagine, for the major portion of all France had had little or no acquaintance with Americans, not even the tourist class which has always been distinguished traditionally for its ignorance, lack of taste and vulgar displayism. As far as I could make out, the better-class French people were not quite certain whether we were savage barbarians or civilized Indians. They thought that they had nothing in common with us except this little matter of a war and the fact that we both belonged to the same species of the animal kingdom. They were glad of our help-just as they had been glad to use their own varicolored colonials, those half-savages who used knives instead of guns and refused to go into action without bayonets.

It struck me that they felt toward us much the same as we would feel toward an army of Russians or Japanese in America: we would rejoice over their coming to our aid, but we would feel rather condescending toward them and surely would not relish the thought of our daughters mingling with them as social equals. Nice French girls would not have anything to do with American soldiers: any more than nice American girls would accept Japanese soldiers without reservations.... From some of the first-person narratives I'd heard in this camp, I should say that some of these Americans were sadly deluded on this point. Their "conquests" weren't much to rave about, if they only knew the truth.

It was the lower classes that took us to their hearts. They discovered that Americans were jolly good fellows with pockets full of francs and a tremendous fancy for wine, women and excitement. Naturally they weren't so finicky. They weren't used to being finicky anyway. From the stories I heard, it seemed that they were even open-hearted enough to accept our colored soldiers as genuine American Indians: they thought the darkies were real cavemen, noble specimens of virile nature, who looked every inch the part and apparently, with a mademoiselle, more than established the fact of their virility. In some camp towns, the street girls didn't have anything to do with the white soldiers. Obviously they were as deluded as our soldiers were in other places.... Indeed, that was my view of the whole works just now: everyone misunderstood everyone else, and the result was a sort of not unpleasant but not very congenial confusion.... Of course, the mademoiselle end didn't interest me, but Ben said he just found out about a place where he could get a girl for a cake of American soap. I told him he'd better swipe a carton from the canteen and start a harem. He said that when the regulars first appeared in France it was possible to get the prettiest and most adept girl in town for a tobacco coupon, and he was bemoaning the fact that he had a whole box full of coupons at home that he was too late to use now. It certainly was tough: he should have enlisted a year earlier: he would have had children scattered all over France by now! I'll bet he was a son-of-a-gun with the women: sometimes he reminded me of nothing so much as a great animal, a sort of Bull of the Camps, as it were. Of course, I knew that he was more than an animal: the things he said very often showed unmistakable signs of intelligence, and he certainly was a good friend to have.

We had to drill several times, and every morning we had calisthenics. The setting-up stuff didn't bother me but the drilling was a little too much-I guess I wasn't built for that kind of stuff. My back got a kink in it and the muscles of my legs seemed to knot right up after a mile or so of walking under the strain of drill. Every morning when I heard the call to "fall in" my mind would start to sing that army ballad about the sergeants "who are the worst of all," because

"He gets you up in the morning before the bugle call;

And it's Squads Right! Squads Left!

Right Front Into Line!

Then the dirty son-of-a-b--, he gives you double time!"

Of course it really wasn't the top-kicker's fault. He didn't like to drill any more than we, but orders is orders. Even Esky didn't care for this kind of exercise. He came out with us the first couple of mornings, but very quickly decided that this was not his kind of play. Now he didn't pay any attention to "fall in" but as soon as he heard "fall out" he was right in the middle of things, begging the fellows to play with him. He got enough exercise. He was the mascot of this Headquarters Company.

I wrote home twice during the fortnight. Nothing much to tell them except the events of our last four weeks, and to send my new address with A.P.O. number.

At last we received our first mail from the States and I didn't know just what to make of it. There was a gushing letter from Vyvy-apparently Leon carried out my instructions and told her that he was coming over at once. But the letter from Aunt Elinor was not so reassuring, particularly the following parts:

"Leonard Lane is at Booneville.... Has a broken arm to show for his wild ride in that snowstorm.... Was lucky to be rescued less than an hour after the accident, but it was in the country and he did not reach me by phone until midnight.... He has not been home since that time.... Left the hospital and went direct to Booneville. But he will not stay here long. As soon as his arm is safely mended he will do something.... Poor boy ... just a bunch of nerves.... And I am very near a breakdown. If anything happens to you I shall never forgive myself.... Why did you have to be so foolish!

"Vyvy has called several times. She expects to hear from you as soon as you land. She also informs me that your Jay-Jay has been transferred and expects to go to France very soon. I intend to get in touch with him and ask him to look you up."

Well, the last man in the world I wanted to meet was Jay-Jay. I'm quite sure that I couldn't be with him very much before he would become suspicious. In fact I thought he suspected something already, because in the other letter which I received from Aunt Elinor, there was this disquieting information:

"Jay-Jay called, expecting to find you here. I was really sorry to tell him that you had suddenly decided to go out West as a camp entertainer. I don't think he believed it: he seemed very surprised and said he couldn't understand that at all. 'Why didn't she let me get her a place?' he asked, but of course I told him that there was no telling what you might do. He asked about Leon and I gave him your address and asked him to see you and let me know how you are getting along. I'm so worried about you-but then you probably are better able to take care of yourself than your brother. I hope so.

"Vyvy met Jay-Jay in town. He said he had seen Leon in camp the day after her party, and Vyvy told him he must be mistaken because Leon did not leave here until three o'clock in the afternoon. I don't know what he thinks, but he must have some ideas of his own.... I think you would do well to tell him the truth and let him help you. He has influence, you know, and might be able to make things easier for you.

"Another week or so and Leonard's arm will be out of the sling. He is determined to act at once. I don't know what he will do but will let you know as soon as I hear from him...."

Auntie was foolish. The idea of my confessing to Jay-Jay and being under obligation to him for his silence! I knew him well enough to know that he would be delighted to have something like that on me. He was just the kind that would take advantage and I was in no position to defend myself under the circumstances. No, sir-I didn't want to see Mr. Marfield at all, and if I did see him, I didn't know what I'd say or do. He was suspicious already. If God was really with me, he'd keep us from meeting. I didn't like his type of officer anyway-and the more I thought about him, the less I liked him. I always said there was something about him I didn't like: it was that suspiciousness, I guess. You didn't feel that you could trust him at all, and I certainly did not want to take any chances on a man like that in a time like this!

My troubles seemed to be beginning. I hadn't had a good bath since that one on board ship and I couldn't see how I could get one until we moved from this place: there wasn't a single public bath in the unrestricted area in Brest. And to add to all this my tummy was feeling not so good and my back was aching sort of ominously. If it wasn't one damned thing it was another. Armies and war certainly are For Men Only. This was no place for one woman, and I can't imagine what it would be like if this camp were full of women instead of men. Anyways it would be worse than now. Women just can't be bunched and crowded in together.

It occurred to me that I might try Christian Science. They claim that if you have enough faith and wish hard enough, you can do anything-even grow a new limb where one has been amputated. I guess it would take more than Christian Science to change me into a man now: perhaps if my mother and father had used Christian Science, the change could have been made, or rather the necessity of change prevented. However, I doubt very much if those devilish little ova and those other jiggers, gametes or spermatozoa or whatever they call them, pay much attention to what their owners think and wish. I guess we are God's children, after all-more than our parents' probably.

Anyway, I wished I were Leonard Lane. I didn't feel so good. Maybe "fightin' is a lot of fun" but I just didn't feel kittenish enough to enjoy this prelude to battle.

And with that Jay-Jay to think about besides!

-2-

Unexciting days passed until a day came when we learned that we were leaving for Le Mans in the morning. Didn't know how long we'd be there, but from all I could learn Le Mans was a training area and the division might be there for a month or six weeks. The General seemed to think that we would be used as a replacement division. I didn't know where he got the idea but that was the dope.

Nothing new happened, except that I heard from home again and Aunt Elinor said Vyvy heard that Jay-Jay had left the United States: if that was the case, he was liable to blow in any time and if he should discover that my outfit was still here, I didn't see how I could avoid being found by him. Naturally I was glad we were moving out in the morning. He wouldn't be free to hop all over the A.E.F. looking for me and it might be a long time before he got to Le Mans, by which time I shouldn't be there. There was still hope.

Ben and I attended a song-fest in the afternoon-one of those affairs where a professional pep-guy gets up on a platform and leads the drunk-driven cattle in singing and cheering. Well, there was some excuse for cheering, as to-day the sun let us have a glimpse of himself, and that was cause for celebrating around this neck of the land of the franc and the plumbingless house. The songs, however, were really not much to write home about. Ben had learned already that "Pack Up Your Troubles" and "Madelon" were not army songs at all: they were for dress parade, he said. The real army songs were too dirty filthy rotten to sing at any sanctioned get-together. The real barrack-room ballads were fit only for barrooms and bedrooms and bathrooms-that is, if you sing in your bath.... To-day we waited patiently to see if they would sing something interesting, but the best they had to offer was "Keep the Home Fires Burning"-and Ben almost choked on his tobacco-quid when they started that. If there was one song that should never have been written, it was that! I quite agreed with Ben on that point. Ben said, "That song's a lotta bull an' what a man wants in a time like this is more calves and less bull!" Ben was certainly droll: he stood beside the "Y" window, waiting for the song leader to pass-I swear he only missed the poor devil's nose by an inch. When my boy friend hurled the saliva, fond mothers shooed their loved ones off the street. A veritable Hawkeye!