We had to go down to Brest by train because our wagon broke down just outside of Paris and when the General heard that it would take perhaps two days to fix it, he told Ben to stay there and bring it down, and the rest of us took a train.

It was sure one long tiresome journey even in a half-decent French train—which corresponds to a third-rate American railroad bus.

And then to cap it all, when we arrived in the station, a sergeant rushed up and took our baggage, threw it on a truck and drove away before we could even begin to wonder at such actions. The General had wired for a reservation at the HÔtel Continentale, so we proceeded thither at once. The maÎtre bowed us in and told the General that his bags had already arrived and were in his suite.

We went up and almost immediately the General thought of something he wanted from his trunk. I went over to get it, the trunk opened easily enough, but there on the very top of the contents was a pair of very fancy garters, a pair of silk bloomers, a shimmy and a pair of silk hose, all more or less mussed, as if they had been worn. I took so long getting what he wanted that the General finally came over, and when he saw the assortment of ladies’ wear he exploded like an H.E.

“What in the devil is this?” he demanded. “Is this a joke Sergeant?”

I said that I didn’t know anything about it.

He was dumfounded. Chilblaines was smiling behind his hand and I was having a hard time controlling myself, for the very idea of the General taking such souvenirs from a woman was utterly ludicrous.

Then he took a look at the end of the trunk and he, too, began to laugh. “Huh—that’s not my trunk!” he declared, reaching down to read the tag on it. “Colonel Everard Clark, Base Headquarters, Brest, Finistere.... Well, Colonel, this is very illuminating, indeed!” He stopped and looked at me, saying with a broad smile, “The Colonel must be running a laundry.”

Well, I thought the General was a good sport to take it like that. Even when I suggested that it was all probably due to a mistake on the part of the non-com who brought up the luggage, he just smiled and said, “We’ll just leave it open like that and wait for the Colonel to come for it.”

Sure enough, not many minutes elapsed before the Colonel appeared, very much winded, to ask if we had his luggage. “That fool sergeant brought your kits to my room.”

“Is this your trunk?” inquired the General, indicating the open trunk with the underthings gleaming from the top.

The Colonel was very much embarrassed but he admitted that it was his, explaining hastily, “Some things I bought to send home.”

“Oh—” exclaimed the General. “Bought them from a living model, eh?... Or did you just try them on to see if they would fit?”

“I—er—that is—you see,” the Colonel tried to explain. “I bought them——”

“I don’t doubt it at all, Colonel,” declared the General, laughing, “and I’ll wager you paid a high price for them, too!”

“Rather expensive,” admitted the Colonel lamely.

“I’m sure your wife will be glad to get them,” the General observed cheerfully. “Wives always appreciate such things, I believe.”

The Colonel was very embarrassed. He tried to smile but couldn’t. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. Finally he just slammed down the lid and seized the handle of the trunk. On his way to the door he saluted and said, “I’ll send your things right down, sir.”

After he had gone the General shook his head and smiled broadly, saying again, “I’m sure his wife would be glad to get her hands on those things!”

It was all very funny and it made me think of a verse of Parley-Vous that I had heard many times, about

Ben finally arrived in Brest, about four days late. Said the roads were terrible—but I knew Benny had a pretty good time along the route. Anyway, we went on down to St. Nazaire and went traveling around after we got here, looking over everything from wharfs to warehouses and hospitals.

Naturally, if there was anything going on anywhere, we would be just in time to get in on it: and that’s what happened at St. Nazaire, about the third day we were there, for the “flu” hit the place and just naturally knocked all the red tape and organization into a cocked hat. That whole area was a huge madhouse for more than a week, and I doubt if anyone knew really whether he was going or coming. I felt sick just from thinking about it.

The terrible plague swept into St. Nazaire on the ships that came from the States and swept its way across the whole area within two days’ time. It was awful. Death must have grinned in glee as he counted the thousands of strong young bodies turned purple and black, falling into his lap.... Coming with the suddenness of a Brittany storm, the epidemic spread its net of conquest, virtually unopposed, and it seemed as if the grinning skeleton behind it knew that the victims were helpless, stupid as dumb beasts, bewildered and terrified but utterly helpless to cope with this onrush of sickening death.

The worst of it came with the arrival of two great transports, loaded with thousands of cases, dead and alive, of this mystifying plague. As soon as General Backett heard of the seriousness of the situation and learned how inadequate were the facilities for handling this burden, he promptly insisted that he be allowed to go to work and that his car and his assistants be used wherever necessary. He himself undertook duties from which he graduated thirty years before, and Chilblaines, made useful in various capacities by the General and other superiors, very soon felt that he had done his bit for one war.

Ben and I worked like niggers, after converting the car into an ambulance. We made so many trips between the docks and the hospitals that it seemed impossible that the ships could carry any cargo besides this one of dead and dying.

“They ought to be flying black flags,” I told Ben, as we helped an ambulance driver slide a stretcher bearing a dying man into his car.

“Shut up!” he retorted. “Ya gotta laugh at ’em an’ tell ’em they’ll be all well in a coupla days.... Don’t kill ’em with talkin’ if they ain’t dead already.”

But cheer was out of the question. We arrived at the hospital just after the ambulance and the man we had helped to lift in was dead and turned purple. “He died sometime on the road,” whispered the driver. “Damned near scared me pink when I opened the door an’ saw that in front o’ me!... He didn’t look so bad when we put him in here, did he?”

“Boy,” muttered Ben, “ya can’t tell anything by looks in this stuff!... They look all right—ya turn yer back a minute—and when ya look again they’re deader’n hell an’ turnin’ all colors o’ the rainbow.”

Once, some days later, while helping to unload a hospital train, Ben was carrying the forward end of a stretcher and in stepping down from the train onto the platform he gave the burden a twist in an effort to avoid slipping. He turned around and smiled at the poor chap whose never-to-be-worn shoes hung over the bar of the stretcher, but the smile didn’t get a smile in return. Instead, the man launched into a stream of vile invectives that made my listening ears burn with shame.

“Don’t be grinnin’ at me, ya big slop-eared bastard!” he cried out. “I don’t want any o’ your God damn smiles!... An’ handle that careful, ya leather headed cow! Whatta ya tryin’ to do, ya thickhead!... Tryin’ ta dump me outa here?... Just try an’ shake me up! Any lip from anyone o’ ya an’ I’ll get up an’ knock the brains outa yer head!”

Ben tried at first to smile away the legless man’s curses, but I could see that he was having a hard job of it. I don’t think Ben ever took that kind of talk from any man in his life, so I expected him to drop his end at any minute or at least turn around and blast hell out of the fellow in terms as good as he gave. But Ben plodded on, while the man continued his profane yelling.

“What the hell ya doin’ in France anyway? You dirty slackers with yer yella bellies.... Why don’t ya go up an’ fight instead o’ layin around here, three hundred miles from the front!... Why? Cause yer a bunch o’ God damn cowards!... Don’t laugh at me, ya big pill-roller!... Put me down!... Put me down, ya God damn slacker....”

But Ben went on while I followed in more or less fear lest the shell-shock case suddenly heave himself out of the stretcher. We reached the ambulance in safety, however, and after the canvassed poles and their burden had been deposited in the racks, Ben bawls out, “There ya’re, big boy! Sorry I can’t stay an’ talk to ya.” I closed the doors and the car bounced away over the cobblestones.

“Gee, couldn’t that guy cuss!” exclaimed my comrade as we walked back for the next cripple. “I never was talked to like that since I was a kid an’ dropped a hammer on the old man’s head.... If that guy’d had two feet, I’d a socked him galleywest right there!”

Some of the men standing around were smiling, as if the incident had been a good joke on the big fellow. What utter damn fools some people are! I gripped Ben’s arm and told him “I’m glad you controlled yourself, Ben.... It would have made a fine fool out of you if you had told him where to get off.”

He just laughed. “What the hell could a guy do with a bird like that?... The poor bastard’s had enough trouble to make any man cuss.”

“Yes—he’s entitled to be called a hero, I suppose.”

“Well, he sure sounded like the genuine article alright,” he agreed.

I told the General about the incident the next day and he surprised me by saying, “We’ll give him a surprise, Sergeant.... Garlotz has been a good man all the way through, and anyway we shouldn’t be riding around behind an ordinary private: I think we can find a little extra pay for him before long.”

So I didn’t say anything to Ben about the matter, but soon after the General broke the news to him and told him it was a reward for good behavior and especially for his decency to the legless man.

Ben thanked him and I expected him to thank me when we were alone, but when that moment came he appeared to be genuinely distressed over the business. “If I fight I get throwed in the jug and stay a private,” he argued. “If I don’t fight, I get congratulations and stripes. What the hell kind of a war is this, anyway?”

Well, there was no explaining such things to a man like that, so I just let him argue.