The A. E. F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces. Heywood Hale Broun
have been using a substitute for sugar for seven months," replied the merchants.
"Well, then," said the food director, "it will save eggs."
"We have hit upon a method which makes eggs unnecessary," replied the ice cream makers.
"At any rate," persisted the food director, "my order will save unnecessary consumption of milk."
"We use a substitute for that, too," the confectioners answered, and they were allowed to go on with their trade.
The cooks are even more ingenious than the confectioners. As long as they have the materials with which to compound sauces, meat makes little difference. War bread might be terrapin itself after a French chef has softened and sabled it with thick black dressing. Americans found that the French took food much more seriously than we do in America. Patrons always reviewed the carte du jour carefully before making a selection. It was not enough to get something which would do. The meal would fall something short of success if the diner did not succeed in getting what he wanted most. No waiter ever hurried a soldier who was engaged in the task of composing a dinner. He might be a man who was going back to the trenches the next day and in such a case this last good meal would not be a matter to be entered upon lightly. After all, if it is a last dinner a man wants to consider carefully, whether he shall order contrefilet à la Bourguignon or poulet roti à l'Espagnol.
Whatever may be his demeanor while engaged in the business of making war or ordering a meal, the Frenchman makes his permission a real vacation. He talks a good deal of shop. The man at the next table is telling of a German air raid, only, naturally, he calls them Boches. A prison camp, he explains, was brilliantly illuminated so that the Boche prisoners might not escape under the cover of darkness. One night the enemy aviators came over that way and mistook the prison camp for a railroad station. They dropped a number of bombs and killed ten of their comrades. Everybody at the soldier's table regarded this as a good joke, more particularly as the narrator vivified the incident by rolling his war bread into pellets and bombarding the table by way of illustration, accompanied by loud cries of "Plop! Plop!"
Practically every man on permission in Paris is making love to someone and usually in an open carriage or at the center table of a large restaurant. Nobody even turns around to look if a soldier walks along a street with his arm about a girl's waist. American officers, however, frowned on such exhibitions of demonstrativeness by doughboys and in one provincial town a colonel issued an order: "American soldiers will not place their arms around the waists of young ladies while walking in any of the principal thoroughfares of this town."
Still it was not possible to regulate romance entirely out of existence. "There was a girl used to pass my car every morning," said a sergeant chauffeur, "and she was so good looking that I got a man to teach me 'bon jour,' and I used to smile at her and say that when she went by and she'd say 'bon jour' and smile back. One morning I got an apple and I handed it to her and said 'pour vous' like I'd been taught. She took it and came right back with, 'Oh, I'm ever so much obliged,' and there like a chump I'd been holding myself down to 'bon jour' for two weeks."
There could be no question of the devotion of Paris to the American army. Indeed, so rampant was affection that it was occasionally embarrassing. One officer slipped in alighting from the elevator of his hotel and sprained his ankle rather badly. He was hobbling down one of the boulevards that afternoon with the aid of a cane when a large automobile dashed up to the curb and an elderly French lady who was the sole occupant beckoned to him and cried: "Premier blessé." The officer hesitated and a man who was passing stepped up and said: "May I interpret for you?" The officer said he would be much obliged. The volunteer interpreter talked to the old lady for a moment and then he turned and explained: "Madame is desirous of taking you in her car wherever you want to go, because she says she is anxious to do something for the first American soldier wounded on the soil of France."
The devotion of Paris was so obvious that it palled on one or two who grew fickle. I saw a doughboy sitting in front of the Café de la Paix one bright afternoon. He was drinking champagne of a sort and smoking a large cigar. The sun shone on one of the liveliest streets of a still gay Paris. It was a street made brave with bright uniforms. Brighter eyes of obvious non-combatants gazed at him with admiration. I was sitting at the next table and I leaned over and asked: "How do you like Paris?"
He let the smoke roll lazily out of his mouth and shook his head. "I wish I was back in El Paso," he said.
I found another soldier who was longing for Terre Haute. Him I came upon in the lounging room of a music hall called the Olympia. Two palpably pink ladies sat at the bar drinking cognac. From his table a few feet away the American soldier looked at them with high disfavor. Surprise, horror and indignation swept across his face in three waves as the one called Julie began to puff a cigarette after giving a light to Margot. He looked away at last when he could stand no more, and recognizing me as a fellow countryman, he began his protest.
"I don't like this Paris," he said. "I'm in the medical corps," he continued. "My home's in Terre Haute. In Indiana, you know. I worked in a drug store there before I joined the army. I had charge of the biggest soda fountain in town. We used to have as many as three men working there in summer sometimes. Right at a good business corner, you know. I suppose we had almost as many men customers as ladies."
"Why don't you like Paris?" I interrupted.
"Well, it's like this," he answered. "Nobody can say I'm narrow. I believe in people having a good time, but – " and he leaned nearer confidentially, "I don't like this Bohemia. I'd heard about it, of course, but I didn't know it was so bad. You see that girl there, the one in the blue dress smoking a cigarette, sitting right up to the bar. Well, you may believe it or not, but when I first sat down she came right over here and said, 'Hello, American. You nice boy. I nice girl. You buy me a drink.' I never saw her before in my life, you understand, and I didn't even look at her till she spoke to me. I told her to go away or I'd call a policeman and have her arrested. I've been in Paris a week now, but I don't think I'll ever get used to this Bohemia business. It's too effusive, that's what I call it. I'd just like to see them try to get away with some of that business in Terre Haute."
Some of the visiting soldiers took more kindly to Paris as witness the plaint of a middle-aged Franco-American in the employ of the Y. M. C. A.:
"I'm a guide for the Young Men's Christian Association here in Paris," he said, "but I'm a little bit afraid I'm going to lose my job. They make up parties of soldiers at the Y. M. C. A. headquarters every day and turn them over to me to show around the city. Well, Monday I started out with twelve and came back with five and today I finished up with three out of eight. I can't help it. I've got no authority over them, and if they want to leave the party, what can I do? But it makes trouble for me at headquarters. Now, today, for instance, I took them first of all to the Place Vendome. There were seven infantrymen and an artilleryman. They seemed to be interested in the column when I told them that it was made out of cannon captured by Napoleon. They wanted to know how many cannon it took and what caliber they were and all that. Everything went all right until we started for the Madeleine. We passed a café on the way and one of the soldiers asked: 'What's this "vin" I see around on shops?' I told him that it was the French word for wine and that it was pronounced almost like our word 'van' only a little bit more nasal. They all looked at the sign then, and another soldier said: 'I suppose that "bières" there is "beers," isn't it?'
"I told him that it was and another guessed that 'brune ou blonde' must mean 'dark or light.' When I said that it did, he wanted to know if he couldn't stop and have one. I told him that I couldn't wait for him, as the whole trip was on a schedule and we had to be at the Madeleine at three o'clock. 'Well,' he said, 'I guess it'll be there tomorrow,' and he went into the café. Another soldier said: 'Save a "blonde" for me,' and followed him, and that was two gone.
"After I had showed the rest the Madeleine I told them that I was going to take them to St. Augustin. The artilleryman wanted to know if that was another church. I said it was and he said he guessed he'd had enough for a day. I tried to interest him in the paintings in the chapel by Bouguereau and Brisset, but he said he wasn't used to walking so much anyway. He was no doughboy, he said, and he left us. We lost another fellow at Maxim's and the fifth one disappeared in broad