''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' by Floyd Phillips Gibbons (smart books to read .txt) 📕

The American negro's mouth fell open. For a minute he looked startled, and then he bulged one large round white eye suspiciously at the French black, while he inwardly debated on the possibility that he had become suddenly colour blind. Having reassured himself, however, that his vision was not at fault, he made a sudden decision and started on a new tack.

"Now, never mind that high-faluting language," he said. "You all just tell me what you know about this here wah and quit you' putting on aihs."

The puzzled French negro could only reply with another explosion of French interrogations, coupled with vigorous gesticulations. The American negro tried to talk at the same time and both of them endeavouring to make the other understand, increased the volumes of their tones until they were standing there waving their arms and shouting into one another's faces. The American negro gave it up.

"My Gawd," he said, shaking his head as he recrossed the street and joined his comrades, "this is shore some funny country. They got the mos' ignorantest niggers I ever saw."

Still, those American blacks were not alone in their difficulties over the difference in languages. I discussed the matter with one of our white regulars who professed great experience, having spent almost one entire day on mutual guard with a French sentry over a pile of baggage.

"You know," he said, "I don't believe these Frenchies ever will learn to speak English."

Our veterans from Mexico and the border campaigns found that their smattering of Spanish did not help them much. But still every one seemed to manage to get along all right. Our soldiers and the French soldiers in those early days couldn't understand each other's languages, but they could understand each other.

This strange paradox was analysed for me by a young American Lieutenant who said he had made a twelve-hour study of the remarkable camaraderie that had immediately sprung up between the fighting men of France and the fighting men of America. In explaining this relationship, he said:

"You see, we think the French are crazy," he said, "and the French know damn well we are."

Those of our men who had not brought small French and English dictionaries with them, made hurried purchases of such handy articles and forthwith began to practice. The French people did likewise.

I saw one young American infantryman seated at a table in front of one of the sidewalk cafés on the village square. He was dividing his attention between a fervent admiration of the pretty French waitress, who stood smiling in front of him, and an intense interest in the pages of his small hand dictionary.

She had brought his glass of beer and he had paid for it, but there seemed to be a mutual urge for further conversation. The American would look first at her and then he would look through the pages of the book again. Finally he gave slow and painful enunciation of the following request:

"Mad-am-moy-sell, donnie moy oon baysa."

She laughed prettily as she caught his meaning almost immediately, and she replied:

"Doughboy, ware do you get zat stuff?"

"Aw, Hell," said the young Infantryman, as he closed the book with a snap. "I knew they'd let those sailors ashore before us."

From the very first day of the landing we began to learn things from the French and they began to learn things from us. Some of our men learned that it was quite possible to sip an occasional glass of beer or light wine without feeling a sudden inclination to buy and consume all there remained in the café.

The French soldiers were intensely interested in the equipment of our land forces and in the uniforms of both our soldiers and sailors. They sought by questions to get an understanding of the various insignia by which the Americans designated their rank.

One thing that they noticed was a small, round white pasteboard tag suspended on a yellow cord from the upper left hand breast pocket of either the blue jackets of our sailors or the khaki shirts of our soldiers. So prevalent was this tag, which in reality marked the wearer as the owner of a package of popular tobacco, that the French almost accepted it as uniform equipment.

The attitude of our first arriving American soldiers toward the German prisoners who worked in gangs on construction work in the camps and rough labour along the docks was a curious one. Not having yet encountered in battle the brothers of these same docile appearing captives, our men were even inclined to treat the prisoners with deference almost approaching admiration.

In a measure, the Germans returned this feeling. The arrival of the Americans was really cheering to them. The prisoners disliked the French because they had been taught to do so from childhood. They hated the English because that was the hate with which they went into battle.

It sounds incongruous now but, nevertheless, it was a fact then that the German prisoners confined at that first American sea-base really seemed to like the American soldiers. Maybe it was because any change of masters or guards was a relief in the uneventful existence which had been theirs since the day of their capture. Perhaps the feeling was one of distinct kindred, based on a familiarity with Americans and American customs—a familiarity which had been produced by thousands of letters which Germans in America had written to their friends in Germany before the war. On the other hand, it may simply have been by reason of America's official disavowal of any animosity toward the German people.

One day I watched some of those prisoners unloading supplies at one of the docks in St. Nazaire, more or less under the eyes of an American sentry who stood nearby. One group of four Germans were engaged in carrying what appeared to be a large wooden packing case. Casually, and as if by accident, the case was dropped to the ground and cracked.

Instantly one of the prisoners' hands began to furtively investigate the packages revealed by the break. The other prisoners busied themselves as if preparing to lift the box again. The first German pulled a spoon from his bootleg, plunged it into the crevice in the broken box and withdrew it heaped with granulated sugar. With a quick movement he conveyed the stolen sweet to his mouth and that gapping orifice closed quickly on the sugar, while his stoical face immediately assumed its characteristic downcast look. He didn't dare move his lips or jaws for fear of detection.

Of course these Germans had been receiving but a scant ration of sugar, but their lot had been no worse than that of the French soldiers guarding them previously, who got no sugar either. American soldiers then guarding those prisoners reported only a few of them for confinement for these human thefts.

Surreptitiously, the American guards would sometimes leave cigarettes where the prisoners could get them, and even though the action did violate the rules of discipline, it helped to develop further the human side of the giver and the recipient and at the same time had the result of making the prisoners do more work for their new guards.

It should be specially stated that lenience could not and was not extended to the point of fraternisation. But the relationship that seemed to exist between the German prisoners and American soldiers at that early date revealed undeniably the absence of any mutual hate.

Around one packing case on the dock I saw, one day, a number of German prisoners who were engaged in unpacking bundles from America, and passing them down a line of waiting hands that relayed them to a freight car. One of the Germans leaning over the case straightened up with a rumpled newspaper in his hand. He had removed it from a package. A look of indescribable joy came across his face.

"Deutscher, Deutscher," he cried, pointing to the Gothic type. The paper was a copy of the New York Staats-Zeitung.

The lot of those prisoners was not an unhappy one. To me it seemed very doubtful whether even a small percentage of them would have accepted liberty if it carried with it the necessity of returning to German trenches.

Those men knew what war was. They had crossed No Man's Land. Now they were far back from the blazing front in a comparatively peaceful country beyond the sound of the guns. If their lot at that time was to be characterised as "war," then in the opinion of those Germans, war was not what Sherman said it was.

Their attitude more resembled that of the unkissed spinster who was taken captive when the invading army captured the town. She flung herself into the arms of the surprised commander of the invaders and smilingly whispered, "War is war."

The German prison camps at St. Nazaire were inspected by General Pershing on the third day of the American landing when he, with his staff, arrived from Paris. The General and his party arrived early in the morning in a pouring rain. The American commander-in-chief then held the rank of a Major General. In the harbour was the flagship of Rear Admiral Gleaves.

There was no delay over the niceties of etiquette when the question arose as to whether the Rear Admiral should call on the Major General or the Major General should call on the Rear Admiral.

The Major General settled the subject with a sentence. He said, "The point is that I want to see him," and with no further ado about it General Pershing and his staff visited the Admiral on his flagship. After his inspection of our first contingent, General Pershing said: