You don’t know how war and sergeant’s stripes have changed me. I’m very strict and stern now, and accustomed to being obeyed. You ought to see how embarrassed I get when strangers call me sergeant (no one else ever does). Guess it hasn’t spoiled me much.
Well here I am wasting time chattering when I ought to be telling you all about Nice and how I went and how I came. But I’m not going to do that. It talks much better than it writes. Suffice it to say that I left Paris on Wednesday, the 12th, at 9 PM arrived there again on Thursday, the 20th , at 5 PM. That gave me about six days in Nice, which is almost as good as if I had had my leave there.
Perfect freedom, beautiful surroundings, good weather and nothing to do but enjoy myself. How could I fail to like it? I did Nice thoroughly, and even went to Monte Carlo, which is only about fifteen kilometers distant. I couldn’t get into the casino, because American soldiers are not allowed in after 10 AM, at which hour the play starts. I could not do, for military reasons, several of the things I wanted to. For instance, the day before I got there, Bori sang in the Monte Carlo Opera in Boheme. She did not sing again while I was there, or I might have taken a chance and gone over to hear her. Battisini, the tenor whom I was to hear the time I went with the Bellamys in Paris, was also at Monte Carlo. The exterior of the opera there is quite pretentious, and those two names sound big; perhaps it’s good.
You see I was obliged to remain at Nice to await another courier from Paris and I couldn’t go far, for fear that the very minute I left he’d arrive.
But I did manage to get in that little ride to Monte Carlo and am glad of it, thought I had only an hour there. The trip is along the seashore, which is clean and blue. It differs from most seashores in that it is mountainous. The Maritime Alps come right to the Mediterranean there. They are steep, high and green. If one continues on from Monte Carlo a way, there is Menton, and then the Italian border. I wouldn’t go there just to say I’d stepped on Italian soil, and there is nothing of any greater interest near enough to the border for American visitors.
I passed many places going and coming that I should like to be able to visit. Cannes, for instance, and Marseilles, which is a most interesting city, I understand. Also Tarascon, famous for Daudet’s “Tartarin”, and Avignon, once the seat of the popes. This last named place appealed to me especially for some reason. It is in a perfectly beautiful section, and is itself a gem. Well, some day, maybe.
When I got back there was nothing new. They tell me I got fat and sun-burned. The first thing I did was to count noses. I find them all here. No one else went home, and as far as I can see at the present writing, there is no good sign of any one’s going right away. The rate of return of the A.E.F. seems to be improving, however. The standard of nine divisions in two months (that’s about 275,000 men), in addition to a lot of casuals (that’s odds and ends, not solid combat divisions) is not so hard to figure on. That would get the whole A.E.F. home by October, and there is no reason to believe that we are to be the very last.
It is now nine-thirty PM, and I am to go out tomorrow early, for a day in the country, so I think I’ll stop.
Next post March 24.
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 