barracks. We stopped and visited them, and they showed us their
quarters: In barns, in lofts of houses, in cellars, in vacant
stores--everywhere that human beings could slip in, the American
soldiers had installed themselves. The Y.M.C.A. hut was finished,
and in it a score of boys were writing letters, playing rag-time
on the pianos, and jollying the handsome, wise-looking American
women at the counter across one end of the room. An Irish Catholic
padre in a major's uniform was in charge of the sports of the camp
and he literally permeated the Y.M.C.A. hut. He was the leader of
the men. The little village where this troop lived faded into the
plain and we rode again for five miles or so, and then came to another
and another and still another. At that time thirteen villages in
an arc of forty miles or so contained most of our American troops.
We stopped many times on our long day's journey. Once we stopped
for mid-day dinner and there came to Henry and me our first
estrangement. It is curious, as the poet sings, "how light a thing
may move dissension between hearts that love--hearts that the world
in vain has tried and sorrow but more closely tied." Well--the
thing that came between us was cooking--cooking that has parted
more soul mates than any other one thing in the world! For two
weeks more or less we had been eating in the French mess, or eating
at country hotels or country homes in France, eating good French
country cooking, and it was excellent. A mid-day meal typically was
a melon, or a clear soup, or onion soup, brown and strong; a small
bit of rare steak or chop, or a thin sliced roast in the juice with
browned potatoes or carrots, a vegetable entree--peas, spinach,
served dry and minced, or string beans; then raw fruit, and cheese.
The bread, of course, was black war bread, but crusty and fine. That
was my idea of a lunch for the gods. What we got at the American
mess was this: a thick, frowsy, greasy soup--a kind of larded