The A. E. F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces. Broun Heywood

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СКАЧАТЬ and the hats of the crowd came off. As the last note died away one of the Americans relaxed from attention and leaned over the rail toward a small group of newspapermen from America.

      "Do they allow enlisted men to drink in the saloons in this town?" he asked.

      Somebody else wanted to know, "Is there any place in town where a fellow can get a piece of pie?" A sailor was anxious to rent a bicycle or a horse and "ride somewhere." Later the universal question became, "Don't any of these people speak American?"

      The men were hustled off the ship and marched into the long street which runs parallel with the docks. They passed within a few feet of the Germans. There was less than the length of a bayonet between them but the doughboys did credit to their brief training. They kept their eyes straight ahead.

      "How do they look?" one of the newspapermen asked a German sergeant in the group of prisoners.

      "Oh, they look all right," he said professionally, "but you can't tell yet. I'd want to see them in action first."

      "They don't lift their knees high enough," he added and grinned at his little joke.

      A French soldier came up then and expostulated. He said that we must not talk to the Germans and set his prisoners back to their task of lifting rails. There were guards at both ends of the street, but scores of children slipped by them and began to talk to the soldiers. There were hardly half a dozen men in the first regiment who understood French. Veterans of the Mexican border tried a little bad Spanish and when that didn't work they fell back to signs. The French made an effort to meet the visitors half way. I saw a boy extend his reader to a soldier and explain that a fearfully homely picture which looked like a caterpillar was a "chenille." The boy added that the chenille was so ugly that it was without doubt German and no good. Children also pointed out familiar objects in the book such as "Chats" and "Chiens," but as one soldier said: "I don't care about those things, sonny: haven't you got a roast chicken or an apple pie in that book?"

      Some officers had tried to teach their men a little French on the trip across, but not much seemed to stick. The men were not over curious as to this strange language. One old sergeant went to his lieutenant and said: "You know, sir, I've served in China and the Philippines and Cuba. I've been up against this foreign language proposition before and I know just what I need. If you'll write down a few words for me and tell me how they're pronounced I won't have to bother you any more. I want 'Give me a plate of ham and eggs. How much? What's your name?' and 'Do you love me, kid?'"

      The vocabulary of the officers did not seem very much more extensive than that of the men. While the troops were disembarking officers were striving to get supplies started for the camp several miles outside the city. All the American motor trucks had been shipped on the slowest steamer of the convoy but the French came to our aid. "I have just one order," said the French officer, who met the first unit of the American Expeditionary Army, "there is no American and no French now. There is only ours."

      Although the officer was kind enough to make ownership of all available motor trucks common, he could not do as much for the language of the poilus who drove them. I found the American motor truck chief hopelessly entangled.

      "Have you enough gasoline to go to the camp and back?" he inquired of the driver of the first camion to be loaded. The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he did not comprehend. The officer smiled tolerantly and spoke with gentle firmness as if to a wayward child. "Have you enough gasoline?" he said. Again the Frenchman's shoulders went up. "Have you enough gasoline?" repeated the officer, only this time he spoke loudly and fiercely as if talking to his wife. Even yet the Frenchman did not understand. Inspiration came to the American officer. Suddenly he gesticulated with both hands and began to imitate George Beban as the French waiter in one of the old Weber and Fields shows. "'Ave you enough of ze gaz-o-leene?" he piped mincingly. Then an interpreter came.

      After several companies had disembarked the march to camp began, up the main street and along the fine shore road which skirts the bay. The band struck up "Stars and Stripes Forever" and away they went. They did not march well, these half green companies who had rolled about the seas so long, but they held the eyes of all and the hearts of some. They glorified even cheap tunes such as "If You Don't Like Your Uncle Sammy Go Back to Your Home Across the Sea," and Sousa seemed a very master of fire when the men paraded to his marches. These American units did not give the impression of compactness which one gets from Frenchmen on the march. The longer stride gives the doughboy an uneven gait. He looks like a man walking across a plowed field and yet you cannot miss a sense of power. You feel that he will get there even if his goal is the red sun itself at the back of the hills.

      There was no long drawn cheer from the people who lined the streets to see the Americans pass. Even crowds in Paris do not cheer like that. Instead individuals called out phrases of greeting and there was much handclapping. Although mixed in point of service the men ran to type as far as build went. They amazed the French by their height, although some of the organizations which followed the first division are better physically. Of course these American troops are actually taller than the French and in addition they are thin enough to accentuate their height. It was easy to pick out the youngsters, most of whom found their packs a little heavy. They would stand up straighter though when an old sergeant moved alongside and growled a word or two. It was easy to see that these sergeants were of the old army. They were all lank men, boiled red from within and without. They had put deserts and jungles under foot and no distance would seem impossible for them along the good roads of France.

      As ship after ship came in more troops marched to camp. The streets were filled with the clatter of the big boots of doughboys throughout the morning and well into the afternoon. There were American army mules, too, and although the natives had seen the animal before in French service, he attracted no end of attention. In his own particular army the mule seems more picturesque. He has never learned French. It seems to break his spirit, but he pranced and kicked and played the very devil under the stimulus of the loud endearments of the American mule drivers.

      The French were also interested in a company of American negroes specially recruited for stevedore service. The negroes had been outfitted with old cavalry overcoats of a period shortly after the Civil War. They were blue coats with gold buttons and the lining was a tasteful but hardly somber shade of crimson. Nor were the negroes without picturesque qualities even when they had shed their coats and gone to work. Their working shirts of white were inked all over with pious sentences calculated to last through the submarine zone, but piety was mixed. One big negro, for instance, had written upon his shirt: "The Lord is my shepherd," but underneath he had drawn a large starfish for luck. A few daring ones had ornamented themselves with skulls and crossbones. To the negroes fell the bitterest disappointment of the American landing in France. Two Savannah stevedores caught sight of a black soldier in the French uniform and rushed up to exchange greetings. The Senegalese shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the flood of English.

      "That," said one of the American darkies, "is the most ignorantest and stuck up nigger I ever did see." They were not yet ready to believe that the negro race had let itself in for the amazing complications of a foreign language.

      Later in the day the town was full of the eddies which occur when two languages meet head on, for almost all the soldiers and sailors received leave to come to town. They wanted beer and champagne and cognac, chocolate, cake, crackers, pears, apples, cherries, picture postcards, sardines, rings, cigarettes, and books of French and English phrases. The phrase books were usually an afterthought, so commerce was conducted with difficulty. A few of the shopkeepers equipped themselves with dictionaries and painstakingly worked out the proper reply for each customer. Signs were much more effective and when it came to purchase, the sailor or soldier simply held out a handful of American money and the storekeeper took a little. To the credit of the shopkeepers of the nameless port, let it be said that they seemed in every case to take no more than an approximation СКАЧАТЬ