It is impossible to soldier without being to some extent affected by the life. It is demoralizing. It gets to be a positive joy to do things you know are wrong and you don’t really want to do, just because you’re told not to. It is lowering in mental fitness for work. There is always the knowledge that no matter how little you do and how badly that little is done, you can’t lose your job – you’ll always be fed and clothed, and housed. Lots of fellows go through a couple of years of the army that way, and are just as well thought of. I think I might have, myself, if they’d tried to make me do something I didn’t like. A good scheme is not to know anything.
It is discouraging to see what gets people ahead in the army sometimes. At others it is pleasant to be just a private and be able to laugh at what passes for non-coms or officers. There are times when I feel that it doesn’t pay to do or be anything worthwhile in the army.
For five months now I have owned briquettes and consequently am a pretty good alibi-thinker-up. Frank has heard them all, but says this one takes the prize; Monday night I was out celebrating the signing of the armistice. I was in a café with four other fellows, one of whom (let’s call him George) was all corned up. A French soldier roused George’s alcoholic ire for some inexplicable reason, and George threatened him. I got one of the boys to hold George while I held the frog, but George broke loose, hit the frog in the eye, throwing him back against me, and his head hit me in the eye. We managed to get bacchian Mars out of the place before the whole French army should arrive and beat him up. But Tuesday morning I had one of the prettiest blinkers you ever saw. I was unmercifully kidded about it. People I’d never seen before stopped me to hear the tale and then laughed disbelievingly. Every officer in the place had his say and I’m sure not a man overlooked it. Tuesday I stayed home and treated it, and by now it’s lots better. But Frank still calls me “Dead-eye Dick.”
Paris has been celebrating all week, but I haven’t been down since the first night. Vincennes is good enough for a fellow with a darkened eye and a lightened purse. I don’t know why I can’t find as good an alibi for the latter as for the former.
So far the highest point of the celebration, as I see it, was on Monday morning. It was a forenoon fool of rumors, for no Paris paper could conceive of such a thing as an extra, and between 6 and 12 there is no regular edition of anything. But at 10:30 one of the chief men in the factory reported the arrival of official word that hostilities would stop at 11. Think what it means to these French who have been fighting for over 4 years.
Then at 11 o’clock, the buzz of machinery in the great factory stopped suddenly and we all knew it was true. The girls working in the factory were all excited – they gathered in groups, puzzled, talking, laughing. Suddenly one of them – a little thin flighty thing – got up on her sewing machine and started to sing, in her thin, sweet little voice, and it was quiet all at once. We all gathered around. It was the Marseillaise. Nothing else was ever like that, or will be again.
There was no more work that day. After lunch our crowd got out the band instruments and staged a parade that was lots of fun. After circling the square to or three times they headed for Paris and grew to an army in no time.
It is funny how the British say they and the French won the war. The French are not so selfish – they give a measure of credit to all the Allies. But the Americans have the warmest spot in their hearts, and they lean toward situation, and scarcely a “man in the rue,” Paris, will argue with him. The American flag flies beside the French all over. Even the Vincennes fort floats them side by side. It makes me almost patriotic.
The weather is crisp and clear here, too, and log fires abound, when we can find the logs.
Next post November 24
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 