Saturday Billy and I went to theatre – the Ba-ta-clan. They told us it was a musical show, and we had visions of “Oh Boy,” etc. It turned out to be a sort of “burlesque” show – a species whose name is interesting but not very instructive. For it burlesques nothing and no one. It was a shade above an American burlesque in staging etc. and below it in moral tone. But it was funny.
Sunday morning I went to Rheims. Were you ever on an excursion? That was one. Cinders, garlic, rain, oranges, delays and smells. Bustle to get aboard the train at 8 A.M. and get a seat. Trample on everyone to get out of it at 8:30. Then three more hours of riding, standing, lying, sitting, kneeling, crouching – anything in the way of a position. These French trains are the limit of discomfort. Every thing is too small. You can’t stretch without begging the pardon of everyone this side of the engineer.
The train goes through many an old be-battled town. Meaux, Chateau-Thierry, Dormans, Epernay. Miles of ruins, trenches and barbed wire. Camouflaged dugouts, gun emplacements, piles of shells, graves, shell-holes – all the leavings of a war.
Then, after more miles of gas-stunted vineyards, Rheims. The cathedral is on a high spot of the city and can be seen for miles over the flat country. It is a magnificent specimen. Somehow I couldn’t feel so bad about the destruction of a church, as I did about the fact that the pile dates back more than ten centuries, and then must end in a pile of stones.
The town itself is to me more touching. It is the center of the champagne industry, and once prospered mightily. It had a population of 115,000. Now there may be 500 or so returned refugees. A couple of pitifully pitched together shops are open. One family has a brave little restaurant in the lower part of a ruined house. “Boucherie” was chalked over the door of what must have been a house once, but now looks like a bit of exhumed Pompeii.
We bought some bread, cheese, jam and wine and ate them in the train on the way home. We started at four and got to Paris at eight. It’s only a hundred miles. There were eight of us together and we sang all the way home to the edification of the French passengers.
There is much more to say about it, but it will keep till I get back. Next Sunday it will be Chateau-Thierry, unless I happen to get there during the week.
Ernie Schoedsack is back from the discharge camp all set for the Red Cross. He expects to leave for Poland on Thursday, and is as wild as a boy the day before a party. He’s a great kid.
There is a certain part of the lab. here, where officers may not enter, and where enlisted men congregate. It is sacred to enlisted men and the old French sweeper-up. Besides, it is the only place where one can smoke during the day. Smoking in this lavatory is a terrible offense, but, since no officer ever goes there and everyone else always does, there have been no punishments. It is the slackers’ paradise, and within its doors all rumors originate. Someone got hold of a bulletin board and put it up for recording rumors. Now there is a laugh every minute. All the wit of the section goes to enliven that board. The latest cartoon and jingle talent comes to the surface. There is a crowd around it all day, new stuff on it all the time and no one ever knows who does it. They blame all the best stuff on me, but so far I’m quite innocent. If our dear Major ever saw some of the things they say about him and his gold-leaved complacence, he’d court martial the whole outfit. It is funny, however.
Billy turned cook. He was dying of ennui up in the shop, and so applied for the job of assistant cook. He began today with a day off. He works only on alternate days.
It is Spring here now. Warm and rainy. Funny country. Wish I were back where winter is winter and Spring looks green. Here you can’t tell them apart.
Maybe if I spoke to them about it they’d let me go home about April 10th. There is a rumor about that Lieut. Cushing is to go home with some men to work in Washington. If he does, I’ll go along, because he is about all that makes life bearable here all day long. We have a good time together.
A new promotion list is going through, but of course I’m not on it. I guess I shall not go any higher in this war; but watch me in the next one – I’m going to have the best title imaginable – Mr. And I’m going to wave a flag and stand on the corner and say, “There they go.”
Next post February 19.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 