The A.E.F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces Part 5

The officer grinned. "Pers.h.i.+ng's in town," he said and so he was.

We found him in a kitchen talking about onions to a cook. He asked each soldier in turn what sort of food he was getting. Some were too frightened to do more than mumble an inaudible answer. A few said, "Very good, sir." And one or two had complaints. The General listened to the complaints attentively and in each case pressed his questions so as to make the soldier be absolutely concrete in his answers. Next he turned upon an officer and wanted to know just what the sewage system of the town was. The officer was a das.h.i.+ng major and he seemed ill at ease when Pers.h.i.+ng asked how many days a week he inspected the garbage dump.

"That isn't enough," said the General when the major answered. "I want you to pay more attention to those things."

From the kitchen he went into every billet in the village. In two he climbed up the ladders to see what sort of sleeping quarters the men had in their lofts. In one billet a soldier stole a look over his shoulder at the General as he pa.s.sed. Pers.h.i.+ng turned immediately.

"That's not the way to be a soldier," he said. "You haven't learned the first principle of being a soldier." He turned to a second lieutenant.

"This man doesn't stand at attention properly," he explained. "I want you to make him stand at attention for five minutes."

The next offender was a captain who had one hand in his pocket while giving an order. The General spoke to him just as severely as he had to the enlisted man. Then he was into his car and away to the next village.

Pers.h.i.+ng is always on the move. One of his aides told me that he never had more than five minutes' notice of where the General was going or how long he would stay. No man in the army has covered so much territory as Pers.h.i.+ng. He has been in practically every village occupied by the American troops. He has inspected every hospital and every training camp. One day he will be at a port looking at the accommodations which are being made for incoming vessels and on the next he will have jumped from the base to a front line trench. He has been on all the Western fronts except the Italian. His French and British and Belgian hosts find him a most ambitious guest. He wants to see everything. Once while observing a French offensive he expressed a desire to go forward and see a line of trenches which had just been captured from the Germans. The French tried to dissuade him but the General complained that he could not see just how things were going from any other position and so into the German trench he went.

Pers.h.i.+ng has developed in France. Like every other man in the American army he has had to study modern warfare, but more than that he has caught something of the spirit of the French. He has acquired some of their ability to put a gesture into command, to utilize personality in the inspiration of troops. He is not yet the equal of the French in this respect. Joffre, for instance, fully realized the military usefulness of his enormous popularity and capitalized it. It was not mere luck that he became a tradition. Petain, while by no means the equal of Joffre on the personal side, knows how to talk to soldiers and to townsfolk and to make himself a big human force.

While he is still a homeopath, General Pers.h.i.+ng realizes more than he ever did before the value of a pat on the back given at the right time.

I saw him do one of those little gracious things in a base hospital which was caring for the first American wounded. A youthful doughboy was lying flat on his back wondering just how long it was going to be before supper time came round when all of a sudden there was a clatter at the door. The doughboy was afraid it was going to be some more nurses and doctors. They had bothered him a lot by bandaging up his arm every little while and it hurt, but when he looked up at the foot of his bed there stood the man with four stars on his shoulders. The little doughboy grinned a bit nervously. He thought it was funny that he should be lying on his back and General Pers.h.i.+ng standing up.

The General was somewhat nervous and embarra.s.sed, too. He still lacks a little of the French feeling for the dramatic in the doing of these little things. He had to clear his throat once and then he said, "I want to congratulate you. I envy you. There isn't a man in the army who wouldn't like to be in your place. You have brought home to the people of America the fact that we are in the war."

The doughboy didn't say anything, but the nurse who made the rounds that evening wondered why a patient who was doing so well should have a pulse hitting up to ninety-six.

Earlier in the summer General Pers.h.i.+ng encountered some far more embarra.s.sing tests. He had to handle bouquets. The donor was usually a French girl and a very little one. When Pers.h.i.+ng and Petain made a joint trip through the American army zone there were two little girls and two bouquets in each village. General Petain, after receiving his bouquet, would bend over gracefully and kiss the little girl, adding one or two kindly phrases immediately following "ma pet.i.te." General Pers.h.i.+ng began by patting the little girls on the head, but he realized it was not enough and after a bit he began to kiss them, too; only once or twice he got tangled up in their hats and found it hard to maintain military dignity. He handled the flowers gingerly. He seemed to regard each bouquet as a bomb which would explode in five seconds but each time there was some aide ready to step forward and relieve him.

The att.i.tude of the average West Pointer towards his men is generally speaking the same as that of General Pers.h.i.+ng. Some observers think the West Point att.i.tude too strict, but I was inclined to believe that the men from the academy handled men better than the reserve officers. They are strict, it is true, but at the same time they have been trained to look after the needs of their men closely. The trouble with the average reserve officer is that he has not had time to learn how much he must father his men and mother them, too, for that matter. He does not know probably just how dependent the average soldier is upon his officer.

Perhaps the strictest officer of all is the man who was once a non-com.

The former doughboy knows the tricks of the enlisted man and he is determined that n.o.body shall put anything over on him. He is often just a little bit afraid that the soldiers are going to trade on the fact that he was once an enlisted man. I once saw a soldier offer some cigars to two officers. One of the officers was a West Pointer and he laughed and took a cigar but the former non-com. refused very sternly. He could not afford to be indebted to an enlisted man.

I do not wish to imply that the men who come up from the ranks do not make good officers. As a matter of fact they are among the best, once their preliminary self-consciousness has worn off. The transition from stripes to bars is perfect torture to some of them. One company had a crack soldier who had been a sergeant for seven years. He was recommended for promotion and was sent to an officers' training school in France. He did very well but just a week before he was to receive his commission he succeeded in gaining permission to be dropped from the school and go back to his old company as sergeant. At the last minute he had decided that he did not want to be an officer.

I watched him put a company through its drill two days after his return.

They moved with spirit and precision under his commands but when it was all over I found one reason why he didn't want to be an officer.

"That was very good today," he said. "You done well."

The first lieutenant smiled. He had a right to smile, too, for the return of the sergeant to his company had almost cut his work in half.

He knew his value well enough.

"The best I can do is teach the men," he said. "It takes an old sergeant to learn them."

CHAPTER VIII

MEN WITH MEDALS

General Petain was the first of many famous Frenchmen who came to see the American troops in training. He also had the additional object of reviewing the cha.s.seurs and of distributing medals, for this crack division had been withdrawn from one of the most active sectors to instruct the doughboys. General Pers.h.i.+ng accompanied Petain. The blue devils were drawn up in formation in the middle of a big meadow cupped within hills. The seven men who were to be honored stood in a line in front of the division. Six were officers and they awaited the pleasure of the general with their swords held at attention. The seventh man who stood at the right of the little line was an old sergeant with a great flowing gray and white mustache. The rifle which he held in front of him overtopped him by at least a foot.

The ceremony began with a fanfare by the trumpeters. As the last notes came tumbling back from the hills Petain moved forward. We found that he was not so tall as Pers.h.i.+ng nor quite as straight. The French leader is also a little gray and about his waist there is just a suggestion of the white man's burden. But he is soldierly for all that and his eyes are marvelously keen and steady. His tailor deserved a decoration. The general wore only one medal, but that was as large as the badge of a country sheriff. It was a great silver s.h.i.+eld hung about his neck and indicated that he was a commander of the Legion of Honor. He stopped in front of the first officer in the little line waiting to be honored and spoke to him for a moment. Then he pinned a red ribbon on his coat and kissed the man first on the left cheek and then on the right. The doughboys looked on in amazement.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," said one under his breath, "it's true."

Four men received the red ribbons, but the other three were down only for the military medal which is a high decoration but less esteemed than the Legion of Honor. No kisses went with the green and yellow ribbons of the military medal but only handshakes. Petain stopped in front of the old sergeant at the end of the line and looked at him for a minute without speaking. Then he called an orderly.

"This man has three palms on his croix de guerre," said Petain.

Now a palm means that soldier has been cited for conspicuous bravery in the report of the entire army.

"The military medal is not enough for this man," continued Petain. "Step forward," he said.

The old sergeant trembled a little as he stood a tiny, solitary gray figure in front of the whole division.

"Bring back the trumpets," Petain commanded and for the lone poilu the fanfare was sounded again.

"I make you a chevalier of the Legion of Honor," said the commander in chief of the French army to the old sergeant, and after he had pinned the red ribbon to his breast he added a hug to the conventional two kisses. The poilu moved back to the ranks steadily, but as soon as the general had turned his back the sergeant pulled out his handkerchief and wept. The soldiers greeted their comrade with cheers and laughter.

"Now," said Petain turning to Pers.h.i.+ng, "let's take it easy for a little while. I've seen plenty of reviews."

The French general walked across the s.p.a.ce cleared for the review and began to talk with people in the fringe of spectators gathered around the edge of the meadow. He talked easily without any seeming condescension.

"How are you, my little man?" he said, patting a boy on the head. "In what military cla.s.s are you?"

Encouraged by his father the boy said that he was in the cla.s.s of 1928.

"Oh," said the general, "that's a long time off. We shall have beaten the Boches before then."

Next it was a peasant girl who attracted his attention.

"Where have you come from?" he inquired with as much apparent interest as if he were talking with a soldier just back from Berlin. "That was a long walk just to see soldiers," he said when the girl told him that she lived in a little village about ten miles distant. "But we are glad to have you here," he added.

And so he moved on down the line with handshakes for the grownups, pats on the head for little boys and kisses for little girls. He turned back to his reviewing station then and the French troops swept by with brave display: They were very smart and brisk, horse, foot and artillery, but Petain found a few things to criticize although he mingled praise generously with censure. He told the officers to know their men and to get on such terms with them that the soldiers would not be afraid to speak freely. He told of reforms which he planned to introduce in the French army. He favored longer leaves from the front, he said, and better transportation for the poilus.

"I shall have time tables made for the men on leave," he said and then for an instant he became the shrewd French business man rather than the das.h.i.+ng general.

"I have figured out," he explained, "that the army can afford to sell these time tables for five sous. It wouldn't do to give them away.

n.o.body would value them then."

A week later we had another visitor. French generals and all their resplendent aides clicked their heels together and stood at attention as this civilian pa.s.sed by. He was a short stoutish man in blue serge knickerbockers and a dark yachting cap. His tailor deserved no decoration for this seemed a secondary sort of costume and headgear in a group loaded down with gold braid and valor medals. But their swords flashed for the man in the yachting cap and a great general saw him into his car, for the stoutish visitor was the President of the French Republic. Generals Petain and Pers.h.i.+ng accompanied Poincare in his car up to the drill ground. It was an American division which marched this morning. In fact it was the same unit which had marched through the streets of the port only a few months before. They had grown browner and straighter since that day and they looked taller. Group consciousness had dawned in them now. The only lack of discipline was shown by the mules. It must be admitted that the mule morale left much to be desired.

Many were new to the task of dragging machine guns and those that did not sulk tried to run away. Strong arms and stronger words prevailed upon them.

"Remember," the driver would plead, "you have a part in making the world safe for democracy," and in a trice all the evil would flee from the eyes and the heels of the unruly animals.

A number of bands helped to keep the men swinging into the face of a driving rain. The French officers who accompanied Petain and Poincare were somewhat surprised when one regiment went by to the tune of "Tannenbaum," but General Pers.h.i.+ng explained that it had been played in America for years under the name of "Maryland, My Maryland." He had a harder task some minutes later when a band struck up a regimental hymn called "Happy Heinie," which borrows largely from "Die Wacht am Rhein"

for its chorus.