Our Army at the Front

Dense crowds of soldiers patrolled the streets leading down to the Grand Boulevards, through which the distinguished little procession was to take its way, and other soldiers lined up at attention in the boulevards.

Paris turned loose, with her heart in her mouth and her enthusiasm at red heat, is not easily forgotten. On this June day her raptures were immemorial. They were of a sort to call out the old-timers for standards of comparison.

Every sentence now spoken in France begins either "Avant la guerre" or "Depuis la guerre." Nobody can ignore the fact that with August, 1914, the whole of life changed. To the old-timers who wanted to tell you what Paris was like the afternoon Pershing arrived, there were only two occasions possible, both "Depuis la guerre."

The first great day was that following the order for general mobilization, when exaltation, defiance, threat, and frenzy packed the national spirit to suffocation, and when the streets flowed with unending streams of grim but undaunted people. Tragic days and relief days followed. But the next great time, when tragedy did not outweigh every other feeling, was that 14th of July, 1916, when the military parades were begun again, for the first time since the war, and in the line of march were detachments from the armies of all the Allies.

The third great French war festival was for Pershing. The crowds were literally everywhere. The streets through which the motors passed were tightly blocked except for the little road cleared by the soldiers. The streets giving off these were jammed solid. American flags were in every window, on every lamp-post, on every taxicab, and in every wildly waving hand.

Although the soldiers could force a way open before the motor-cars, no human agency could keep the way free behind them. The Parisians wanted not merely to see Pershing – they wanted to march with him. So they fell in, tramping the boulevards close behind the cars, cheering and singing to their marching step.

Only when General Pershing disappeared under the arched doorway of the Hotel Crillon, and let it be known that he had other gear to tend, did the city in procession break apart and go about its several private celebrations.

But all that afternoon and all that night, wherever men and women collected, or children were underfoot, it was "Vive l'Amérique" and "Vive le Generale Pair-shang" that echoed when the glasses rose.

When General Pershing, after the tremendous experience of his European landing, asked for the quiet and shelter of his own quarters at the Crillon, his intention was that his retirement should be complete. He said flatly that a man who had just witnessed such a tribute to his country as Paris had made that afternoon was no better than he should be if he did not feel the need of solitude.

But the inevitable aftermath of the great event the world over is the talking with the newspapers. And sure enough, no sooner was General Pershing safe in his retreat than the Paris reporters were knocking at the door. The American correspondents who had travelled over from London on the Invicta had had emphatic instructions to stay away, story or no story. But one distinguished Frenchman broke the rules, and to François de Jessen, of Le Temps, General Pershing did finally give a statement. How reluctantly one may see from the statement's contents.

"I came to Europe to organize the participation of our army in this immense conflict of free nations against the enemies of liberty, and not to deliver fine speeches at banquets, or have them published in the newspapers," said General Pershing. "Besides, that is not my business, and, you know, we Americans, soldiers and civilians, like not only to appear, but to be, businesslike. However, since you offer me an opportunity to speak to France, I am glad to make you a short and simple confession.

"As a man and as a soldier I am profoundly happy over, indeed proud of, the high mission with which I am charged. But all this is purely personal, and might appear out of proportion with the solemnity of the hour and the gravity of events now occurring. If I have thought it proper to indulge in this confidence, it is because I wish to express my admiration of the French soldier, and at the same time to express my pride in being at the side of the French and allied armies.

"It is much more important, I think, to announce that we are the precursors of an army that is firmly resolved to do its part on the Continent for the cause the American nation has adopted as its own. We come conscious of the historic duty to be performed when our flag shows itself upon the battle-fields of the world. It is not my role to promise or to prophesy. Let it suffice to tell you that we know what we are doing, and what we want."

Two rememberable experiences waited the next day for General Pershing. The first was his visit to des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon; the second, his appearance in the French Chamber of Deputies. If he had known what it was to be the hero of all Paris at once, he was to learn how special groups regarded him, and what the French highest-in-command thought fitting for America's leader.

At all of General Pershing's appearances in Paris in these first days a detachment of soldiers had to be constantly before him, widening a way for him through the crowds that waited his coming. On the morning of his visit to the tomb of Napoleon the broad Champs de Mars, in front of des Invalides, was impassable except by the soldiers' flying wedge. Shouts in French rang out steadily as he made his way toward des Invalides' entrances, and suddenly a man cried, in accented English: "Behind him there are ten million more."

But once inside des Invalides General Pershing was alone with General Niox, who was in charge of the famous treasure building, and General Joffre. Between Pershing and Joffre there had begun one of those intense friendships that form too impetuously for ordinary explanation. It was full-grown at the end of their first meeting, a matter of seconds. And though at this time their friendly intercourse was halted sometimes by the fact that neither spoke the other's language, they were continually together.

So it was General Joffre who walked beside him when General Pershing followed General Niox down to the entrance of the crypt, and stood before the door. All the world may go to this door, if its behavior is good, but only royal applicants may go beyond it.

General Pershing was to go inside. General Niox handed him the great key, then turned away with Joffre, while Pershing, after a moment's hesitation, fitted the key and crossed the threshold. When he came out again he was taken to see the Napoleonic relics, which lay in rows in their glass cases. Two of them, the great sword and the Grand Cross cordon of the Legion of Honor, had never been touched since the time of Louis Philippe. As Pershing and Joffre bent over them General Niox came to a momentous decision. He opened the cases and handed the two to General Pershing. France could do no more.

Pershing held them for a moment and nobody spoke. Then he handed back the cordon, kissed the sword-hilt and presented it, and in profound silence the three men left the treasure hall.

Between this visit and that to the Chamber of Deputies there were many official calls, including one to President Poincaré at the Elysée Palace, which ended in a formal luncheon to Pershing by President and Madame Poincaré, with most of the important men of France as fellow guests.

General Pershing was recognized as he entered the gallery of the Chamber of Deputies, and all other business except that of doing him honor was promptly put by. Full-throated cheering began and would not die down. Finally Premier Ribot commenced to speak, and the deputies stopped to listen.

"The people of France fully understand the deep significance of the arrival of General Pershing in France," he said. "It is one of the greatest events in history that the people of the United States should come here to struggle, not in the spirit of ambition or conquest, but for the noble ideals of justice and liberty. The arrival of General Pershing is a new message from President Wilson which, if that is possible, surpasses in nobility all those preceding it."

And Viviani said, a few minutes later: "President Wilson holds in his hand all the historic grandeur of America, which he now puts forth in this fraternal union extended to us by the Great Republic."

These two speeches opened a flood-gate. Long after the cheering deputies had said their good-bys to General Pershing, the French writers, made articulate by the example of Ribot and Viviani, were busily preparing appreciations and commentaries of the Pershing arrival. The most picturesque of these was Maurice de Waleffe's, in Le Journal: "'There are no longer any Pyrenees,' said Louis XIV, when he married a Spanish princess. 'There is no longer an ocean,' General Pershing might say, with greater justice, as he is about to mingle with ours the democratic blood of his soldiers. The fusion of Europe and America is an enormous fact to note."

A more powerful speech was that of Clemenceau, now Premier of France, but then an earnest private citizen, writing for his paper. "Paris has given its finest welcome to General Pershing," he wrote. "We are justified. We are justified in hoping that the acclamation of our fellow citizens, with whom are mingled crowds of soldiers home on leave, have shown him clearly, right at the start, in what spirit we are waging the bloodiest of wars; with what invincible determination, never to falter in any fibre of our nerves or muscles. Unless I misjudge America, General Pershing, fully conscious of the importance of his mission, has received from the cordial and joyous enthusiasm of the Parisians that kind of fraternal encouragement which is never superfluous, even when one needs it not.

"Let him have no doubt that he, too, has brought encouragement to us, the whole of France, that followed with its eyes the whole of his passage along the boulevards; to all our hearts that salute his coming with joy at the supreme grandeur of America's might enrolled under the standard of right.

"This idea M. Viviani, just back from America, splendidly developed in his eloquent speech to the Chamber of Deputies in the presence of General Pershing.

"General Pershing himself, less dramatic, has given us, in three phrases devoid of artificiality, an impression of exceptionally virile force. It was no rhetoric but the pure simplicity of the soldier who is here to act, and who fears to promise more than he can perform. No bad sign, this, for those of us who have grown weary of pompous words, when we must pay so dearly for each failure of performance.

"Not long ago the Germans laughed at the 'contemptible English Army,' and we hear now that they regard the American Army as 'too ridiculous for words.' Well, the British have taught even Hindenburg himself what virile force can do toward filling gaps in organization. Now the arrival of Pershing brings Hindenburg news that the Americans are setting to work in their turn – those Americans whose performance in the War of Secession showed them capable of such 'improvisation of war' as the world had never seen – and I think the Kaiser must be beginning to wonder whether he has not trusted rather blindly in his 'German tribal God.' He has loosed the lion from its cage, and now he finds that the lion has teeth and claws to rend him.

"The Kaiser had given us but a few weeks in which to realize that the success of his submarine campaign would impose the silence of terror on the human conscience throughout the world. Well, painful as he must find it, Pershing's arrival, with its consequent military action, cannot fail to prove to him that, after all, the moral forces he ignored must always be taken into account in forecasting human probabilities. Those learned Boches have yet to understand that in the course of his intellectual evolution, man has achieved the setting of moral right above brute force; that might is taking its stand beside right, to accomplish the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. That is the lesson which Pershing's coming has taught us, and that is why we rejoice."

But even while the commentators were at their task General Pershing had left off celebrating and got to work. The First Division was on the seas.

A few very important persons in France and America knew where they were to land, and when, but nobody in the world knew just what was to be done for and with them once they landed, for the plans did not even exist. It was the business of the general and his staff to create them. And they say that the amount of work done in those first days in France was incredible even to them when they looked back on it.

As a first step American headquarters were installed in 31 Rue Constantine, a broad, shaded street near the Hôtel des Invalides, overlooking the Champs de Mars. The house had belonged once to a prodigiously popular Paris actress, and it was correspondingly magnificent.

But the magnificence, except that which was inalienably in space and structure, was banished by the busy Americans. In the hallway they stretched a plank railing, behind which American private soldiers asked and answered questions. Under the once sumptuous stairway there were stacks of army cots. The walls were bulletined and covered with directions carefully done in two languages. The chief of the Intelligence Section had the ex-dining-room, and the adjutant-general had the ballroom on the second floor. Even so, it was not long before this spaciousness was insufficient, and the headquarters brimmed over into No. 27 as well.

It was in these two houses that the whole army organization was plotted out, and General Pershing made good his prediction that the Americans would not merely seem, but would be, businesslike.

After ten days or so of beaver-like absorption in their jobs the American headquarters announced to the war correspondents that they must take a certain train at a certain hour, under the guidance of Major Frederick Palmer, press officer and censor, to a certain port in France. There, at a certain moment, they would see what they would see.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST DIVISION LANDS

THEY saw the gray troop-ships steaming majestically into the middle distance from the gray of the open sea, with the little convoy fleet alongside. It was a gray morning, and at first the ships were hardly more than nebulous patches of a deeper tone than sea and sky. As they neared the port, and took on outline, the watchers increased, and took on internationalism.

The Americans, who had come to see this consequential landing, some in uniform and some civilians, had arrived in the very early morning, before the inhabitants of the little seaport town were up and about, let alone aware of what an event was that day to put them into the history books.

But it never takes a French civilian long to discover that something is afoot – what with three years of big happenings to sharpen his wits and keep him on the lookout.

At the front of the quay were Americans two deep, straining to make out the incoming ships, on tiptoe to count their number, breathless to shout a welcome to the first "Old Glory" to be let loose to the harbor winds. Forming rapidly behind the Americans were French men, French women, and French children, indifferent to affairs, kitchens, or schools, chattering that "Mais surement, c' sont les Américains – regardez, regardez!.."

Ignominiously in the rear, but watching too, were the German prisoners who worked, in theory at least, at transferring rails from inconvenient places to convenient ones for the loading of coaster steamers. They said little enough, having learned that a respectful hearing was not to be their lot for a while. But they moved fewer rails than ever, and nobody bothered to speed them up.

The great ships came in slowly. Before long, the watchers could see lines of dull yellow banding the gray hulks, and then the yellow lines took on form and separateness, and were visible one soldier at a time.

Last, one ship steamed apart from the others and made direct for the quay, and the solemn business of landing American troops on French soil was about to begin.

There was to be a certain ceremony for the landing, but, like all the ceremonies conceded to these great occasions by the American Army, it was to be of extreme simplicity. When they were near enough to the quay to be heard, the transport band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," while all the soldiers stood at salute, and then they played the "Marseillaise," while everybody on ship and shore stood at salute. With that, they called it a morning, as far as celebration was concerned, and to the accompaniment of a great deal of talk and a volley of light-hearted questions, they began to disembark.

The first question, called from some distance away, was: "What place is this?" The next was, "Do they let the enlisted men drink in the saloons over here?" and there was a miscellany about apple pie and doughnuts, cigarettes, etc. And very briefly after the first soldiers were ashore nothing could be heard but "Don't they speak any English at all?"

The outstanding impression of that morning may be what it will to the French civilians, to the American newspaper correspondents, and to the officers both ashore and on board. To the privates of the First Division it will always be the incomprehensible nonsense that goes by the name of the French language, spoken with perfect assurance by people old enough to know better, who refuse to make one syllable of intelligible sound in answer to even the simplest requests.

The privates were prepared to hear the French speak their own language at mention of Alsace-Lorraine and war aims, or to propound their private philosophies that way. They granted the right of the French to talk how they pleased of their emotional pleasure at seeing the troops, or of any other subject above the timber-line.

What staggered them was the insane top-loftiness of using French to ask for ham and eggs, and beer, or the way to camp. For nothing, not volumes of warning before they left home, nor interminable hours of French-grammar instruction on board the troop-ships, had really got it deep inside the American private's head that French was not an accomplishment to be used as evidence of cosmopolitan culture, but a mere prosy necessity, without which daily existence was a nightmare and a frustration.