By CHARLES BERNARD NORDHOFF BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1917 AND 1918, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY CHARLES BERNARD NORDHOFF ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE FLEDGLING...

We were put on active duty at the front about the first of the year; in fact, I spent New Year's night in a dugout within pistol-shot of the Germans. It was quite a celebration, as the French Government had provided champagne, cakes, and oranges for all, and every one was feeling in a cheery mood. When dinner was over, each of us chipped in his day's ration of army wine (about a pint), and with a little brandy, some oranges, sugar, and a packet of spices I had been commissioned to get, we brewed

I had an interesting day yesterday. The commandant asked for a car—he is the head medical officer—to visit some posts, and I was lucky enough to land the job. He is a charming, cultivated man, and made it very pleasant for his chauffeur. We visited a number of posts, inspecting new dugout emergency hospitals, and vaccinating the stretcher-bearers against typhoid—a most amusing process, as these middle-aged fellows have the same horror of a doctor that a child has of a dentist. Reluctant was scar

I finished the paragraph above just as a wave of rifle and machine-gun fire rolled along the lines. Running out of the abri to see what the excitement was about, I saw two French aeros skimming low over the German trenches—where every one with any kind of a fire-arm was blazing away at them. Fortunately, neither one was hit, and after a couple of retaliatory belts, they rose and flew off to the south. The Germans began to waste shrapnel on the air, and indiscreetly revealed the location of a bat

I have met some interesting types lately. One is Jean B——, a sergeant of infantry. Jean has been about the world a good bit, and when the war broke out was just finishing a contract in Spain. He promptly came to France and volunteered, and had only fifteen days of training before being sent to the front for a big attack. Knowing nothing of military matters and having distinguished himself in the first day's fighting, he was made a corporal at once; and next day, when the attack began again, he a

I am writing this in a new post of ours—a village several kilometres from the lines, where there are still civilians. As the hospital is very noisy at night, and one would have to sleep in a barrack, packed in among the wounded, I have arranged with a motherly old woman (patronne of the local café) to let me have her spare room. I found an old cowbell and by an arrangement of strings and hooks have rigged it so that it can be rung at night from the street below. Talk about luxury! I have a real

I am sitting again in the little post I told you about in my last letter. The old lady is tidying up the café, the early morning sun is shining in gayly through the many-paned windows, and outside, along the picket-line, the mules are squealing and kicking while they have their morning bath. Pretty soon I shall go out foraging for a brace of eggs, and with these, a piece of cheese, and some coffee shall make my déjeuner. The local barrack is the only one I have found where one simply cannot eat,

This afternoon the general of the division ordered us to present ourselves at headquarters at four o'clock. From lunch on there was a great shaving and haircutting, brushing and pressing of uniforms, and overhauling of shoes and puttees. Four o'clock found us lined up at the door of the wonderful old château, and next moment a superb officer, who spoke English,—of the Oxford variety,—stepped out, introduced himself all around with charming courtesy, took our names, and ushered us in. The general

Sunday, another lovely day. It is 7 A.M. , and already the indefinable Sunday atmosphere has come over the camp. The shower-baths are open and strings of men are coming and going with towels on their arms. Under the trees little groups are shaving and cutting one another's hair, amid much practical joking and raillery. One becomes very fond of the French soldier. Large floods of rhetoric have been poured out in describing him, and yet nearly every day one discovers in him new and interesting tra

At last I am free to sit down quietly for a letter to you. It has been a week of rather frenzied running about—passing examinations, and the like. I arrived here in the expectation of taking the first boat, crossing the continent, and seeing you. A talk with some American officers changed the whole aspect of affairs and showed me that, if I was to be of any use, my job was to remain here. At home, it seems, men are a drug on the market—the rub is to train them and fit them in. Here, on the other

I have passed the French examination and am to leave for the school in a day or two. I have been lucky! It was interesting at the Paris recruiting office. I stood in line with dozens of other recruits for the Foreign Legion—all of us naked as so many fish, in the dirty corridor, waiting our turns. Each man had a number: mine was seven—lucky, I think! Finally the orderly shouted, "Numéro sept," and I separated myself from my jolly polyglot neighbors, marched to the door, did a demi-tour à gauche,

Here at Avord there are about seventy-five Americans of every imaginable sort—sailors, prize-fighters, men of the Foreign Legion, and a good scattering of University men. As good a fellow as any is H——, formerly a chauffeur in San Francisco. He is pleasant, jolly, and hard-working, with an absurdly amiable weakness for "crap-shooting," in which he indulges at all times, seconded by an American darky who is a pilot here—and a good one. I can hear them as I write, snapping their fingers as the dic

Soon after my stay at Nice I went for a month to the Combat and Acrobatic School of Pau, which completes the most dangerous of all the flying training. A wonderful experience—somersaults, barrel-turns, corkscrew dives, every conceivable aerial caper, and long flights daily: skimming the highest peaks of the Pyrenees at three hundred feet above the snow—trips to Biarritz and along the coast, flying ten feet above the waves, etc. It is hard to say enough in praise of the school at Pau—the hundreds