The Legionnaire: American Boys in the Great War

By Harold Mills

THE LEGIONNAIRE

American Boys in the Great War

...the best WWI flying story since The Blue Max.

Karl Kunkle: Book Reviewer

The story follows the lives of two boys who grow up in an orphanage in North Carolina and adopt each other to become brothers for life. They join the group of young Americans who rush to France at the outbreak of WWI to join the Foreign Legion and fight in Mankinds last great conflict.

The protagonist, Ward Cartwright, and his brother, Dan Cason, survive the second battle of the Marne then, at Artois Ridge, Ward is wounded twice and told that he is no longer fit for infantry duty. Rather than be mustered out because of his wounds, Ward applies for pilot training and is accepted because flying is a sitting down job and does not require the pilot to march and carry heavy loads.

On convalescent leave in Paris before going to flight school, Ward meets and flls in love with Antoinette Packham, an English girl who works in the British Embassy. During subsequent meetings over a period of a year their feelings for each other grow more intense and they eventually marry.

Dan joins Ward in flight school and, after graduation, goes to the famous Lafayette Escadrille while ward is assigned to a regular French unit on the front at Verdun where he distinguishes himself by shooting down a German plane on his first combat patrol.

As one of the worlds first fighter pilots, Ward discovers within himself a natural talent for flying and fighting in the sky. Within a few weeks he has downed five enemy planes thus becoming an Ace and a hero in the French press. One of his fellow pilots, as a joke, tells reporters that Ward is the illegitimate spawn of a liaison between an American girl and a French Count. The newspapers pick up the story and soon Ward is known on the western front and in the papers back in the U.S. as Duke Cartwright.

Axel Uhler is Wards Doppelganger in the Imperial German Air Service. Easy to recognize because of the green snake coiled three times around the fuselage of his fighter, which is always painted white, Uhler kills several of Wards friends and Ward has sworn to kill the Snake. They meet and fight several times over the Marne and the Somme rivers but each time the German either gets the upper hand or outmaneuvers Ward and escapes.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, Antoinette is fired from hr job when the embassy officials discover that she is pregnant. When Ward sees her at their apartment in Paris, he realizes that she is terrified by the almost nightly Gotha bombing raids so he sends her to have their child at her ancestral home in England. Early in 1917, she dies giving birth to their son.

America enters the war in 1917 and most of the Americans serving with the French transfer to the U.S. Aero Service. One of the exceptions is Lannie Morris who saved Wards life at Artois Ridge and later became histories first black fighter pilot. In spite of having flown at the front for over two years the U.S. Army is not ready to accept the grandson of a slave as an officer and gentleman. They turn him down as physically unfit to fly.

Wards final fight occurs two days before the end of the war when The Duke and The Snake clash over Verdun where they first met. The two aces engage in a fierce and prolonged dogfight high over the raped city with its necklace of cemeteries faceted by the white crosses of almost half a million men. Wounded and with his Spad leaking oil and coolant, Ward finally gets Uhler centered in his ring sight but before he can press the toggles to fire his machine guns Antoinettes voice comes to him from the void telling him to stop. Two days later the Armistice is signed. The killing is over.

There are funny moments in The Legionnaire such as when Ward and his friends stage a fake bomb raid on Arras in order to steal cha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 18, 2001
• ISBN: 9781453550656

Harold Mills

From his front yard, when he was growing up in the 1930's, Harold Mills could see the biplanes taking off and landing at the Salisbury, NC Airport. He learned to fly before he learned to drive a car. He served 22 years as an Air Force Photo Interpreter and 18 years as Executive Director of a health association. He has been married to the same girl since 1949. They have four children and three grandchildren.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

January 1991

By noon the snow that started as flurries just before ten o’clock had settled into a steady curtain of fine flakes that cut visibility to about two-hundred yards. The grass and shrubs were covered and some of the cars were spinning their wheels as they went up the grade in front of Ward Cartwright’s house.

Mrs. Hinson, the housekeeper, poked her head in the den where Ward was seated watching the flames of a gas log. I’m leaving a little early, Colonel, before the roads get too bad. I made you a sandwich out of that left over roast beef and put it in the fridge.

Thank you, Katie. I’m sorry. I should have told you to go earlier, but I’ve been distracted waiting to hear if my headstrong granddaughter has slid into a ditch.

Don’t you worry about Miss Belle. She’ll most likely come charging up the driveway any time now, driving like it was a sunny day in June.

I expect you’re right, Katie. You be careful now and if it’s bad in the morning you stay home. I’ve been mostly shifting for myself for quite a few years so I can manage another day or two as long as there’s a few cans of beans and some of those oatmeal cookies in the pantry.

Ward Cartwright was a man in the late winter of an eventful life. He had celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday just the month before and, except for a slight hearing loss, was in remarkably good shape. Mentally nimble, he was physically more agile than most seventy-year-old men. He was slender, with snow white hair combed straight back from a high, scarred, forehead. A missing right earlobe made his angular face look slightly out of kilter. He wore maroon corduroy trousers and a blue sweater, colors reminiscent of the Foreign Legion uniform he had worn as a young man.

When Mrs. Hinson had gone Ward went to the big front window for at least the fifth time that morning for a quick look down the street. Any reasonable person would stay home in such weather but he knew that such a thought would probably not even cross Belle’s mind. She had said she would be there and it would take more than a mild blizzard to stop her. Then Ward spotted the familiar chalky blue Volkswagen Rabbit at the bottom of the hill. It sailed around a Chevvy station wagon that had come to a standstill with its back wheels spinning. The VW cruised another hundred feet up the hill and skidded slightly turning in the drive.

As the boxy little car stopped under the overhang at the back of the sun porch and its clattering diesel engine was turned off, Ward hurried back to the den and resumed his seat by the fireplace. Before he picked up the book he was reading, he glanced over at a framed picture on the side table and muttered, She gets her wild streak from you, you know.

The sepia toned picture was of a much younger Ward Cartwright standing with his late wife Belle, namesake to the VW driver. Both Ward and Belle were laughing, their hair was wind blown and they were both wearing white shirts with jodhpurs and black riding boots. The background of the picture was the radiator and large wooden propeller of a vintage Jenny biplane.

The younger Belle bustled into the room, dumped her old Piedmont Airline bag in the nearest chair and shed her jacket, knit cap and gloves before crossing the room to kiss Ward on the cheek. Did you think I wouldn’t make it, Grandpa?

As a matter of fact I’ve been dozing. Is it still snowing?

Belle smiled. She had seen him at the window when she turned in the driveway. "Getting worse. I may have to stay overnight. I’m all alone anyway with both boys away at school and Glenn has a layover in L.A. Sounds like the title to a cheap novel

-LAYOVER IN L.A."

That’s what you should be doing if you’re so dead set on being a writer. Write a novel. Make a lot of money and let me wither away in peace.

Wither away? Do I hear you feeling sorry for yourself, Ward Cartwright? I seem to remember at your ninety-fifth birthday party last month you said you’d never felt better.

I lied. I feel like a creaky old man.

Actually, you are a creaky old man but you’ve never let it slow you down before.

I shoulda known better’n to expect any sympathy from a Stinky Butt grandchild. You’ve always had things your own way. Your daddy never did spank you enough.

My daddy, your son, never spanked me at all, as you well know. And don’t call me Stinky Butt. It may have been cute when I was three years old but it’s not dignified to call the thirty-six year old mother of your great grandchildren, Stinky Butt.

Belle, a strikingly beautiful, five foot nine inch, freckle faced redhead with emerald green eyes, had badgered Ward for over a year to allow her to write a book about his experiences in the First World War.

Belle was proud of her famous grandfather who had joined the French Foreign Legion before the United States entered the war. He had fought in the trenches as an infantryman before transferring to the Air Service and becoming one of the leading fighter aces of both the Lafayette Flying Corps and the American Air Service. She knew that he had been approached by respected and skilled writers in the past. Those researching scholarly work, he helped with insights and free access to his extensive file of pictures. Those wanting to write his biography had been turned away without explanation.

Although she had never written a book, Belle had the advantage over other potential biographers. She had unlimited access to the old air fighter. As the oldest grandchild and only granddaughter, she knew she occupied a special place in his heart. But her main advantage was a trait that she had inherited from Ward himself. She was persistent. She would never stop until she had achieved whatever she set her sights on.

She had finally finagled his consent at the small birthday party before Christmas when he turned ninety-five. After he had mellowed on a glass of wine, she invoked the name of the one person Ward had always respected above all others, his adoptive brother, Dan Cason.

She had said. Grandpa, you know I’m going to write that book even without your help. I made several tapes with Uncle Dan before he died, so I pretty much have the story. He told me that the only way to get you to cooperate was to grind you down, but I’m not going to badger you about it any more after this. I’m just going ahead with it.

He smiled. That sounds like something Dan would say.

So how about it, Grandpa? Last chance. I promise to never ask again. Do we do the book together or do I do it without your help?

OK. Let’s do it.

OK? You really mean you’ll do it?

"Yes, dammit, I’ll do it. Dan’s tapes wouldn’t help very much. We were in different escadrilles most of the time. So I suppose it’s the only way to keep you from publishing a mangled version of my Legionnaire days that people would think was authentic just because the author was my granddaughter."

Now, after the months of persuasion, the moment of truth had finally arrived. There was no way that a little snow would have kept Belle away on this special day. Nevertheless, she was worried that she might make a misstep and Ward would back out. She needn’t have worried. Without her knowing it, Ward had spent a week going back through old letters and photo albums, refreshing his memory. With his thoughts well organized, Ward was ready to start.

I see you brought tape machines so I assume you don’t plan to try taking this down in shorthand.

The tape recorder is easier. Besides, I don’t know shorthand.

"Well, I’ve been thinking about it and the way I see it the story breaks down into three parts. There was the time in the trenches; after that flying in a French escadrille; then the U.S. Air Service. So why don’t we cover the first part. Then, when you have it typed up, I’ll go over it for errors and we can go on to the next part and so-forth. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks."

Belle sighed. She had known from the beginning that if she could win her grandfather over he would take charge. It was his nature. From this point all she could do was prompt him with a question occasionally and hang on for the ride.

That’s a good idea, Grandpa, doing it in three parts. There’s just one thing. I want you to start back at the very beginning.

Whaddya mean? Back at the orphanage?

Yes. Back at Barium Springs. The story has to include how you and Uncle Dan became brothers.

Ward sat for a few minutes, staring into the gas flames which were licking around the fake logs. Then he sat up a little straighter and seemed to square his shoulders.

OK, Stinky Butt, turn on your damned tape recorder.

*      *       *

PART I

MUD MASHERS

1

1895-1914

My name is Ward Harlow Cartwright. I was born in Montgomery County, North Carolina on December 3, 1895. My mother and father died in a flu epidemic in 1900 when I was five years old and; having no known relatives, I was placed in the Presbyterian orphans’ home at Barium Springs in Iredell County.

I had been at the home about a year when Daniel Odell Cason, Jr. came. Dan’s father had been killed in a sawmill accident down on the Lumber River, and his mother died three months later giving birth to a baby girl. The baby was taken to Arkansas to be raised by an aunt, but she and her husband already had three boys and two girls and couldn’t afford to take in both of the orphaned children.

We were drawn together from the very beginning. Because he was seven months older, Dan seemed to think he should take charge and make all the decisions for both of us. If I wanted to work in the garden, Dan volunteered both of us to wash windows. When I wanted to work in the cannery where it was warm, Dan got us assigned as milk boys at the dairy barn. When the used clothing was distributed, Dan’s always seemed to fit. The sleeves and pants legs were always too short on mine. I would forget my history assignment; Dan would read ahead; I got C’s in English, Dan got A’s; but I got good grades in arithmetic and I don’t think Dan ever learned all his multiplication tables.

I grew up to be taller and never missed an opportunity to remind him that, even though he was older, he was shorter. He could be the most obstinate and exasperating person I have ever known, but he was my best friend. Orphans learn very early in life the meaning of the word adoption. When we were eleven years old we read about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and, just as Tom and Huck might have done, we stole out of the Synod Cottage one summer night under a full moon, wearing nothing but our summer union suits and made our way to a large, flat topped boulder in a wooded area close by. We sat facing each other on top of the boulder, a candle between us. Trying not flinch or cry out, we each punctured the ball of our thumbs with a safety pin and, pressed the fresh bleeding wounds together, and solemnly swore to adopt each other and be brothers for life. And we were.

Reverend Wakefield, the Superintendent, gave each of us two dollars when we left the orphanage in 1910. There were no child labor laws then, and many children went to work in the mills when they were nine or ten years old, so it was no problem for a couple of almost-grown boys to find work. For the next few years we bounced around from job to job—the veneer plant in Lenoir, the cotton mills in Gastonia and Fort Mill, the rock quarry in Rowan County. We harvested peanuts, picked cotton—anything to earn money.

In the summer of 1914 Dan was learning to run slubbers while I was laying up roving for the spinners in the Corriher Mill in Landis. We had grown into fairly presentable young men. We spent most of our money on clothes, probably because we grew up wearing cast-offs and it felt so good to have new clothes that fit. I was six feet tall with dark skin and black hair (I could remember my daddy telling me that I was one-fourth Cherokee Indian) combed straight back. Dan was five-feet-seven inches, compact and muscular with light curly hair and deep blue eyes. We looked pretty good when we stepped out on Sunday in our blue serge suits and white shirts with detachable collars. We both had bought straw boaters and soft, high-topped shoes worn with black silk socks.

Things were going real good, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that Sunday morning when Dan hit me with his latest wild idea. What I couldn’t foresee was that this one would point us down the road that we would follow for the rest of our lives.

We were sitting on the front porch of Mrs. Davis’ boarding house, feet propped up on the banister, reading the Sunday paper. I had been bitten by the aviation bug, and I remember that I was interested in an article about how the fighting in Europe had forced Rodman Wanamaker to cancel plans to fly the Atlantic in the special three-engined plane, America, that he had commissioned Glen Curtis to build.

Dan was reading the latest news of the war when suddenly he dropped his chair down on all four legs with a bang, That’s for us, Ward! Let’s go to France. Join the Foreign Legion. Fight the Germans.

I cocked an eye at him, then continued reading as if he had not spoken. Dan was always coming up with a scheme to make us rich or famous or both. I knew that he would be off on something else in a matter of a week or so. Best to just ignore him.

He continued, "There’s a whole bunch of Americans already over there, and more leaving every day. Two brothers from Asheville are there and a feller from down in Carthage has signed up to drive an ambulance. There are lawyers and businessmen and a whole bunch from Harvard College.

I folded my paper and stood, still ignoring what Dan was saying, Think I’ll walk down to the water tank and see what’s going on.

The tank that supplied water for the entire village stood at the north end of the mill. It was a gathering place for some of the young, single mill workers on Sunday afternoons, and a good spot for idle speculation about girls, the latest dirty jokes and an occasional checker game.

Dan followed me out onto the dusty street. It was a perfect September day—bright sun, leaves still on the trees and just a hint in the air that fall was on the way. As we circled a streaming pile of horse apples in the road, Dan said, Well, what do you think?

About what?

About going to France. Joining the Foreign Legion. Haven’t you been listening?

I’ll tell you, Daniel. As your ideas go, this one’s not too bad. Certainly better than when you steered us into a job picking cotton in South Carolina, and a heck of a lot better than when we wound up quarrying pink granite down south of Salisbury. But it just don’t measure up to when you wanted us to go to New York and work in the moving picture business. A trip to France might be nice if they weren’t shooting each other over there. If President Wilson declares war, then I’ll go, but in the meantime, I ain’t about to get my rear end shot off in somebody else’s war. So just forget it, Little Buddy.

Dan didn’t bring up the subject again for a week. Then it was almost a duplicate of the previous Sunday. He started talking about all those college boys from Yale and Harvard and other schools who were headed to France to fight for liberty and how we owed France so much going back to Rochambeau and Lafayette. And there was a bunch of stuff about the Foreign Legion being the world’s most romantic and respected fighting force.

I told you before, forget it, Dan. Then I got up and headed down to the water tank. I didn’t have the foggiest idea who Rochambeau might be, but this pretty girl I had been trying to make time with lived on Lafayette Street in Salisbury. About all I knew about France was that they drank a lot of wine, and of course I had seen that deck of French playing cards down at George Leonard’s pool room.

On Wednesday of the following week Dan and I were walking back to the boarding house after our ten-hour shift. He had been unusually quiet and all I was thinking about was taking off my shoes to let my feet breathe and pumping a bucket of water to dump over my head. So, when he dropped his bombshell, I wasn’t sure he had said what he said.

Ward, I’ve been putting off telling you but, I’ve decided. I’m going to France. I’m quitting my job the end of this week.

What? What’d you say?

I said, I’m going to France. I’m quitting my job the end of the week, and I’m going to join the French Foreign Legion. I know you think it’s crazy, and you’re probably right, but I’ve got to do it, Little Brother.

I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. We had been together every day since I was six years old—which was about as far back as my memory stretched.

Whadda mean ‘you’ve got to go.’ You don’t have to go— it ain’t your war—you don’t owe them damn people a damn thing. And as for that Foreign Legion, they’re just a bunch of thieves, murderers and rapists who change their names to ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones’ and join up to dodge the law. Besides that, where are you going to get the money to go to France?

I was about half mad and half hurt. How could he just up and go without me? We were brothers, dammit—closer than real brothers—we were brothers by choice.

The United States is shipping lots of goods to Europe now so it should be no problem working my way over on a merchant ship—scrubbing decks, polishing brass, things like that.

By this time we were back in the room we shared and I was removing my brogans and socks. I know what it is. You think you can go over there and get to be buddies with all them college boys, but it won’t do you any good. Them snot- nosed rich kids don’t care a damn about some linthead mill worker with no momma and daddy. Hell, you didn’t even take French in school.

Ward, you really should watch your language. About every other word that comes out of your mouth lately is ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ and your grammar is terrible.

Well, you won’t have to listen to my bad grammar while you’re over there across the water associating with all them high and mighty college boys with their piles of money and good grammar to boot. Besides, you’ll probably get yourself killed and it’ll serve you right.

Ward, go with me. You don’t want to spend your life here in a cotton mill hoping for a two-cent raise and winding up an old man with a Monday morning cough from breathing lint all your life.

Is that what this is all about? Big Brother dreams up another idiot scheme and little Ward is supposed to trail along? Well, not this time. If you have to go, then go, but I don’t have to go and I ain’t going . . . and that’s my final word on the subject.

Dan came across the room and sat on my bed beside me. Ward. His voice was as smooth as syrup pouring over pancakes, This is going to be the biggest conflict in the history of the world and probably the last great war mankind will ever see on this earth. If we don’t go and experience it first hand we’ll never forgive ourselves. It will be the major event of our generation, a great adventure, and someday we’ll be proud to tell our children and grandchildren that we were there.

I picked up one of my brogans and threw it as hard as I could against the wall over Dan’s bed. Then I stalked out and went down to the pool room, barefoot, and lost fifty- cents shooting eight-ball at ten-cents a game.

Two weeks later we were in Charleston where Dan got us a job tending horses, destined for the French army, on a cattle boat bound for Bordeaux. I never got beyond holding hands and a peck on the cheek with the girl on Lafayette Street.

I can think of a lot more pleasant ways to take an ocean cruise than shoveling horse manure, hoisting feed from the hold twice a day and cleaning the stalls for six-hundred- fifty seasick horses. On top of that, there were twenty-five of us crowded into a space that normally slept fourteen; the food was lousy and there was never enough of it.

The thing that surprised me (but not Dan) was the discovery that, of the twenty-five hands hired to look after the horses, six of us were going to France to join the Legion. There were twin brothers, John and James Cook from Glen Springs, New York, who had dropped out of their senior year at The Citadel because they were afraid the war would be over before they graduated. Ralph Belcher, a dentist from Hershey, Pennsylvania, was twenty-eight years old and said he just felt life was passing him by. And Frank Kopp, who volunteered only that he was a school teacher from Parkersburg, West Virginia.

On December 3rd, 1914, twenty days after leaving Charleston, we sailed up the Gironde River and docked at Bordeaux. A light snow was falling. It was my nineteenth birthday.

*      *      *

2

Winter 1914-15

The early snow was not heavy but had accumulated on the tree limbs and in the grassy areas along the sidewalks. It accented the old buildings and reminded me of some of the pictures in my geography book back at Barium Springs.

The cobblestone streets were filled with horse-drawn carts and funny looking cars with names I had never heard. The sidewalks were crowded with people. Some of the men wore those little black berets that looked like something a girl should wear.

I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. It seemed strange that even the little kids spoke and understood French but it was even stranger that the horses and dogs understood the foreign words also.

And there were the public urinals: green metal booths about eight feet long and open at the top so that people, even women, passing on the sidewalk could see you while you were peeing. Dan, Frank, Ralph and I stood side-by-side and took a leak and Ralph tipped his hat to a lady passing by.

The Cook twins were embarrassed over our antics. In fact, the Cook twins seemed to be embarrassed just to be seen with us. They were evidently from a pretty well-to-do family and never missed an opportunity to remind everyone that they had trained at the Citadel to be officers. I’m sure they expected the French to fall all over themselves in gratitude for two great twenty-year-old leaders who had come to Europe to guide the poor ignorant French and English armies along the path to victory over the barbarian Huns. With Dan and me, they were always very cool, as if they could smell something unpleasant. I think the fact that we were relatively uneducated and penniless offended them.

The recruiting station was on a side street not far off the Rue de Victor Hugo. We were expecting the recruiters to get a least a little bit excited over six Americans who had just traveled three thousand miles to help them defeat the Boche, but it seems that quite a few others had preceded us, so we were no novelty. The sergeant explained that we could apply for enlistment but the longstanding rule was that new recruits would not be accepted until the day following the applications.

We rented rooms on the Rue Notre Dame, and the next morning at seven o’clock sharp we were back in the recruiting office where we certified that we were over eighteen years old and, after a very thorough physical examination, five of us signed the articles which made us soldiers in the Army of France, in the division la Legion Etrangere, for the duration of the war. Our pay would be one sou (a penny) a day. We were given five francs (a dollar) expense money and a ticket on the train leaving from the Gare St. Jean to Toulouse, where one of the legion training camps (the Perigon Barracks) was located. We were not required to renounce our American citizenship nor to swear allegiance to France.

Doctor Ralph Belcher, the dentist, flunked the physical exam for, of all things, bad teeth.

He walked with us to the Gare St. Jean where we were to catch our train. We talked about everything else. Ralph was already an outsider. Finally, when we found we had an hour to wait, Dan blurted out the question that was on all our minds.

Dammit, Ralph, how in the world could you, of all people, let your teeth get so bad you flunk an army physical?

Ralph smiled for the first time since we had left the recruiting station. The fact is Dan, I hate having my teeth worked on—probably more than anyone here. I can’t stand those damn needles and drills.

Then why, Frank asked, did you go to tooth school in the first place? I should think you would have been happier doing something else.

Yeah, Ralph, said one of the Cooks, if you wanted to be a soldier why didn’t you go to military school like we did?

Actually, I didn’t want to be a dentist, but my father is a dentist so I had to be a dentist. Hell, I’d rather be a carpenter or an engineer, but the only way to keep peace in the family was to go to dental school and join my dad in his practice. I had no real choice in the matter short of running away from home.

Is that how you wound up on a cattle boat going to France, Ralph? I asked. You snuck out one night and ran away from home?

That’s basically what I did, Ward. Only it was daytime. I’d been reading about all the Americans going to France and there I was, twenty-eight years old, still living at home under my father’s thumb. Something snapped in my head. I withdrew some money from the bank, told my father I was meeting some friends and went straight to the train station. I caught the first train out of Hershey, which happened to be going to Philadelphia. I sent my mother a wire from Philly telling her not to worry, then caught the train to Charleston. No one back home knows where I am or what I’m doing.

So, what do you do now? Dan asked. Get your teeth fixed and try again or go home and face the old man?

I’ll never go home with my tail between my legs, Dan. I’ve decided to go to Paris and get in touch with the Red Cross. An American named Richard Norton has organized a motor ambulance corps and he’s looking for drivers. It might not be as exciting as the legion, but what the hell. . . . Maybe my fate is to save lives rather than take them.

Orphanage life probably helped Dan and me adapt to barracks life easier than some of the boys who came from college campuses or the protection of wealthy families. It was tough for those who have the arrogance of wealth and the lifelong habit of questioning anything that may not please them to learn to obey without question the shouted orders of corporals and sergeants who obviously sprang from the lower classes.

Our living quarters was a big open room with thirty-two board bunks covered with thin straw-filled mattresses. Our bunkmates were from Russia, Greece, Spain, Italy and Poland, as well as ten Americans. During the free time, before lights out, when everyone was talking the sound was like the Tower of Babel brought forward to the twentieth century.

The community toilet consisted of two rows of six square porcelain bowls set flush with the floor. There were two raised pads in the shape of a shoe sole near the front of each bowl and a hole at the back. In the rafters of the tile-roofed shed, which housed the installation, was a huge tank which periodically flushed the entire twelve bowls. Those of us who had grown up in rural surroundings had had many occasions to squat in the woods as it were, but the city dwellers did not have the benefit of our broad experience. I’m sure that some were suffering cramps before they were finally forced to use the facility.

We were issued coarse white fatigue uniforms, a blue/grey greatcoat, a nine-foot long blue sash and little billed cap that the French called a kepi. Dan and I were lucky because we had worn heavy brogans and work socks to work on the boat. We were allowed to keep them and were paid the twenty francs in lieu of new issue. The others were issued stiff, hobnailed shoes and square pieces of muslin that were supposed to be applied to the feet in some mysterious pattern to protect against chafing.

Our days fell into a routine. We were awakened by a bugle at four a.m. and given hot coffee. Then we were off on a long march, returning in time for the first of our two daily meals at ten-thirty. The morning meal was usually a soup with bits of bread, vegetables, coffee and, often, red wine. The afternoon meal of stew, coffee and wine was at five-thirty. At this time, we were issued a half loaf of coarse bread which had to last until the next day.

The remainder of our twelve- hour training day was taken up with drill, marksmanship with the 1866/93 Lebel, 8mm, tubular magazine fed, eight- shot, bolt action rifle, familiarization sessions on the St. Etienne machine gun and some instruction in the fine art of digging trenches.

The majority of our time was spent in bayonet practice. With the thin rapier-like bayonet attached, the Lebel was six-feet long and weighed over nine pounds. When we charged a half mile across the practice ground and leaped, panting, into trenches to skewer straw filled dummies, we looked like nothing so much as dismounted lancers. And, since the General Staff was convinced that the only way to win the war was to demoralize the Boche by forcing him to eat cold steel, we spent hour after hour, with one-hundred pound sacs on our backs, charging the make-believe German trenches giving our Rosalie’s, our bayonets, a taste of the straw Squareheads.

Of the other Americans in the company, I had gotten acquainted with Ed Sharp, a former prison guard from Yuma, Arizona, and Drew Sanders from Paris, Texas (he said it as one word; Paristexas); and Lanny Morris, of Phoenix City, Alabama. Sanders had been lots of things, the most notable of which was a bartender in a bordello in New Orleans. Morris spoke fluent French. He had been playing jazz trumpet with an all Negro band in Paris when the war started. The other band members went home but Lanny stayed, To fight for the only country that never seemed to notice I was black.

I shook hands with Leonard Perrim and Bill McLean, both Harvard men. They had hooked up with John and James Cook so I doubted I’d get to know either of them very well.

On our first free Sunday, six of us, me and Dan, Frank, Ed Sharp, Drew Sanders and Lanny, walked into Toulouse together. It was one of those bright, crisp autumn days that stand out in my memory, because on that walk into Toulouse the six of us got to know each other as only those sharing hardships and hard work can know each other. It was an unspoken bond that I’m sure the others felt as well. We talked easily with each other; we kidded each other. By the time the day was over, we were good friends.

We had been in training a little over three weeks when one of the headquarters’ sergeants announced to the entire training battalion that five hundred volunteers were needed to augment one of the regiments on the front. Half of the volunteers would be legion veterans from Africa. The remainder would be taken from recruits with past military experience.

Practically all of the Americans stepped forward to volunteer.

Dan grabbed my arm and said, Come on.

We don’t have any military experience, I whispered.

Leave it to me, he whispered back.

What followed during the interviews was the damnedest bunch of made-up stories and outright lying I have ever heard. The Cook twins were perhaps the only ones who told the truth.

Frank Kopp claimed to be a graduate at the West Virginia Ecole Militaire. Drew Sanders said he fought with the U.S. Army in the Philipines. Lanny Morris told the sergeant that he had helped put down an insurrection in El Salvador. Leonard Perrim and Bill McLean swore that they had fought in the liberation of the Virgin Islands. When our turn came, we stepped up together. I had no idea what Dan had cooked up, and I almost laughed out loud when Dan said, My brother and I were Sergeants in the Salvation Army, Sergeant.

We looked so young I’m sure that he was not fooled, and he likely knew what the Salvation Army was, but he had a quota to fill. If you are brothers, he said, why do you have different last names?

We had different fathers, Sergeant, Dan said with a straight face.

In the four weeks since arriving at the Perigon Barracks Dan had discovered a natural talent for languages and was speaking passable French, which must have impressed the Sergeant. And brothers with different fathers were not unheard of in France.

Expliquer,s’il vous plait, he said. How is that former sergeants drill so poorly?"

We had been standing at ease. Dan snapped to attention, clicking his heels. Mon Sergeant, ours was a guerrilla army. We had no need for parade ground drill.

With that we were in like burglars.

Later I told him, Dan, you silver-tongued devil. I figured they would see through your phony story and we’d stay here at least until you learned to shoot, but now I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t back out if for no other reason than to keep you from getting your ass shot off.

He was grinning like a thief, Why hell, Ward, if we hang around here much longer, the war will be over and all we’ll have to show for it will be blistered feet. Besides, all our friends are going and we don’t want to be left behind with the slackers and old men.

*      *      *

3

Winter 1915

We spent two days on the train, forty men in each boxcar, from Toulouse to Mailly-le-Camp, twenty miles south of Chalons. Mailly was a sprawling army staging area which had been near the center of the most intense fighting during the Battle of the Marne. The camp became famous when the French had mobilized the Paris Fire Brigades and rushed them there in taxicabs to stop a German breakthrough that could have swept all the way to Paris.

We grew accustomed to the large caliber guns, sounding like distant thunder, from the northeast where the front had stabilized. The thing that disturbed me was the trees. Splintered bone white trunks, shattered by shellfire, reaching up for limbs that were no longer there.

A hospital for wounded horses served several purposes. Because of the serious lack of transport for supplies, those horses too seriously hurt to save were slaughtered for food. We arrived at the camp on Christmas Day, just in time for a holiday dinner which consisted of large helpings of roast filet de cheval. It was not bad. Better than our usual stew.

All the American volunteers were assigned to the Premier Regiment on the front at the base of Reims Mountain. We left Mailly two days after Christmas for the thirty-five mile march north through Vertus and Epernay. Civilians who had returned to those ruined villages stood silently watching as we marched past. No one smiled or even lifted a hand.

We spent the winter in the maze of trenches which had been dug into the white chalky soil of the Champagne district. Between turns keeping watch from the firing steps, we huddled around fires in dugouts which had been dug in the sides of the trenches. When in reserve we lived in crude shelters fashioned from logs, tree branches and pieces of canvas.

It rained almost every day and the trenches served as drainage ditches for the polluted waters from the battlefield. We walked in mud, slept in mud, slipped and fell in mud. We scraped mud from our clothing with our bayonets only to accumulate a new layer of mud. Our feet were constantly wet and cold and a new affliction called trench foot entered our vocabulary alongside trench fever caused by the constant bites of body lice.

Death was so commonplace that mangled and bloody bodies didn’t rate a second glance. We grew accustomed to the overall smell–the mingled stench of unwashed bodies and burned cordite. Over it all, the almost sweet smell of putrefying corpses lying in the mud and shell holes between the lines until they rotted and were mixed into the soil by mortar and artillery shellfire.

We manned listening posts at night, sometimes close enough to hear the Boche soldiers moving about in their trench. Nicholas Kordochenko, a big jolly Russian who spoke fluent German, liked to slip into their trenches, quietly bayonet one or two of the squareheads, and steal their rations. It must have been demoralizing for them to know that someone could come into their trench any time after dark. We started calling Kordochenko Ivan the Terrible.

Every time a French or German observation plane would fly over, I’d look up and daydream about what it would be like to fly around up there in the clean air, above the mud. Every day the German Taubes and French Moranes would go about their business of making pictures or marking artillery positions. I even heard that some of the planes were being equipped with machine guns so they could shoot at the other machines.

I told Dan that I was going to apply for the Air Service. He said that Leonard Perrim had already tried and was told that the Air Service only accepted French citizens.

On the first day of March the Germans attacked after a three hour artillery barrage. I watched the grey clad figures rise out of their trench as if they were emerging from the earth and start in our direction. A shudder went down my back.

Our 75’s blasted gaps in their line, and the St. Etienne’s, like an invisible mowing machine on our flanks cut down whole groups. The trench mortars on