Letters written home from France in the first half of 1915

Front matter

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LETTERS WRITTEN HOME FROM FRANCE

Preface

Although so many Americans are giving heart and energy to the effort of lightening in some way the suffering of Europe, only a small proportion has chosen to take a part within the line of action. Those of us who have any one we care for there in the midst of it all know that, like men who go to explore mysterious distances, they are generally very much beyond our horizon for months at a time — at least as regards correspondence. An intense sympathy for the purpose they have gone to serve makes news of them doubly welcome when it does come. Believing that those who have pleasant memories of the writer of these letters would be interested in reading these impressions written home, his mother and father have generously consented to put them into this form.

Having by affiliation with the work in which he is engaged a detailed knowledge of the circumstances surrounding it, it devolves upon me to say in justice that these pages give little idea of the very difficult task their author has successfully accomplished. Largely through his perseverance against great odds the American Ambulance Field Service, working constantly under fire along the whole western battle front, has become a very distinguished organization, trusted and relied upon by the armies of France. Whatever political impressions the French civilian may have gathered in regard to us as a nation, through the utterances of misrepresentative individuals, the French soldier, living or dying, has now finer evidence of the spirit of our countrymen.

No man — whether critic or enemy — may challenge the valor of France, nor her right to all honor ; so to one who, stirred by passionate allegiance to her cause, has brought this tribute of our friendship for her to so high a standard, we owe truly a debt of gratitude. The opportunity and the will to do a work worth while have been spent here to full purpose. Many a young American who has had a part in this service will carry from it an inspiration which is better than peace — for having labored among the men and women of France he will have known the vision of supreme sacrifice.

H. D. S.

Gloucester, May, 1916.

LETTERS FROM FRANCE

LETTERS FROM FRANCE

12 West 51st Street, New York,

December 3, 1914.

Dear Mother and Father:

I have been turning things over in my mind lately and have about decided that I must go over to France for a few months. There are many reasons for doing so, the possibility of having even an infinitesimal part in one of the greatest events in all history — the possibility of being of some service in the midst of so much distress — the interest of witnessing some of the scenes in this greatest and gravest of spectacles — and above all the chance of doing the little all that one can for France.

You need not fear, if I go, that I shall expose myself to any serious risks. If I can I should like to get attached to the ambulance service, or, if that is impossible, to one of the relief commissions (to help, perhaps, in looking after the distribution of food and relief in some French town, — or something of the sort). But I shall not get in the way of the armies. What do you think about it?

Is n't it a great chance ? Is n't it a piece of good fortune that I happen to be free in this great moment of history? And is n't it worth while to make some sacrifice in order to have one's little share in the great events that are going on?

I have been staying for a day or so at the Davisons', and am going back to Gloucester on Friday.

CO

II Gloucester, Massachusetts

December ly, 1914.

Only a line or two to tell you 'how happy and busy I am. As I telegraphed you, I have heard from Mr. Bacon and have arranged to join the American Ambulance. I have bought a whole equipment of sheep-lined coats and vests, even Jaeger underwear, — which I never dreamed that I should come to, — and also a heavy sleeping-bag, which I shall probably never use, but which ought to be serviceable in case we should have to sleep out of doors on cold nights.

I got a fine letter this morning from Ambassador Jusserand. I have also ventured to write to Mr. Herrick and Colonel Roosevelt for letters which might be of service in some unforeseen emergency and which probably will await me at the steamer. The time is so short and I am so busy. Don't worry about me. Remember I have a strong body and I seldom mind the cold, — and for that matter I have every known device for keeping the cold out. Remember, too, that I am doing the thing I want most to do and am very happy in the thought of it.

i*i

Ill

On the train Boston to New York,

December i8 y 1914..

Dear Mother and Father:

The feverish three or four days of preparation are over, and the story is about to begin. I have every known variety of clothing to protect against the cold, packed in a steamer trunk, a valise, and a suit-case.

Last night I motored up to Boston and had a farewell dinner with Mrs. Gardner in Fenway Court. We talked for hours, just we two alone, wondering much what the future had in waiting, and then about eleven I went down to the theatre, picked up my friend, Leslie Buswell, and we bundled into our woollen helmets, opened the throttle, and tore to Gloucester, imagining that we were in the war zone and had a message to deliver to General Joffre which must reach headquarters before 1 a.m. "Madame" had a nice supper awaiting us at one o'clock before the open fire in my upstairs study, and there we talked and talked and talked almost until dawn.

So ended 19 14 for me in Gloucester, a dear evening spent alternately with two good friends (Y and L. B.), and now here I am, more eager than I have ever been for anything, headed for the land I love next to my own — awaiting whatever the future may have in store.

I expect to meet other friends to-night in New York. To-morrow morning I get my steamer passage, letter of credit, etc., and at 3 p.m. we sail.

IV 12 West 51st Street, New York

December ig, ig 14. 6 p.m.

I had thought by this time to be on the high seas, as the Touraine was scheduled to sail at 3 p.m. ; but instead I am sitting on the top of the Davisons' house in their solarium preparing to dine with the Davison boys and to go with them to the theatre. For some reason, at the last moment the Touraine's sailing was postponed until to-morrow.

We were all on the boat, — Harry Sleeper came on unexpectedly from Boston to see me off and C. B. was down there and Mrs. Davison and the dear Davison boys, — and all my luggage, and parcels of books and flowers and little presents from different people, — and some immense rolls of cloth for our uniforms, of which I am to take charge on the way to Paris.

But here we are still in New York!

In the mean time I have taken a lesson in running a Ford, — which is not the easy thing I had imagined it to be. You have to do everything contrary as regards pedals and levers to what you do with the Packard, and I am glad to have had this little chance to learn the rudiments. To-morrow morning early I am going down to Long Island with the Davisons, and as they have a Ford down there the boys are going to give me a lesson and I am to drive the car back to New York.

The Touraine is a slow boat and is not expected to reach Boulogne until Tuesday the 29th. So on Xmas think of me as in mid-ocean. I shall not be lonely, as there are various friends aboard. I saw Huntington Wilson (who used to be Assistant Secretary of State in my Washington days) among the passengers, and my roommate on the boat, Charley Appleton, is a very nice fellow who graduated at Harvard six or seven years ago.

I hope you are not worried. The possibility of that is the only thing about the trip that makes me anxious. For the rest, I am keen about the prospect. It is the most worthwhile thing I have ever done, and the most interesting.

We expect to sail now on Sunday afternoon.

A Bord de la Touraine,

December 20, 1914.

Dear Mother and Father:

The steamer is to sail, they say, at 3 p.m. to-day (Sunday). It was booked to sail yesterday at the same hour.

Last evening, I went to the theatre and spent the night with the Davisons and to-day I went down to Long Island, and drove their little Ford car back to New York, which was good practice.

I also stopped at the Carlton and saw Mr. Herrick, who has just returned from France, and who happened to be in New York, and from him I got a good deal of information about conditions in Paris. I hear from all sides that he has been a successful and popular ambassador, and that it was a thousand pities he was not allowed to remain as our representative in France. Some of the things he said last autumn will certainly be remembered for a long time by the French people. When the other ambassadors left for Bordeaux, with the President and the Senate and Chamber, Mr. Herrick remained, saying that " a dead ambassador might be able to render a greater service to France and the world than a live one " ; subtly implying that if he were killed by the Germans, America might come to the aid of France. And when the German hordes were almost within cannon range of Paris, he touched the hearts of the French people by saying that he would do his utmost to prevent the bombardment of their beautiful capital, "because Paris belongs not merely to France, but to the whole world." The French people must have appreciated such apt expressions of friendship in those hours of profound apprehension. He has intelligence and heart and the bel air. I like him and am sure he merits all the

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homage he has received for his handling of conditions in Paris.

Miss Beaux was here at the boat again to see me off at i p.m., the proposed hour of sailing, and Harry is still here (2 p.m.). He will stay until we actually push off. Heaven certainly is kind in the friends that have been given me.

I found your telegram and letter. I am glad you are not sorry that I am going.

I shall be back almost before you know it. And so once more, good-bye.

VI A Bord de la Touraine

December 21, 1914.

We have ploughed along through gray rain and rough seas all day, and, as it is the shortest day of the year and we are up around the Grand Banks, the night shut in soon after four o'clock. I have dozed in my steamer chair most of the day, and shall do the same during the eight or nine days to follow. Unless some German cruiser gives us chase, there promises to be little diversion.

The Touraine may have been a "floating palace" in the palmy eighties, but she could not be so regarded to-day. She is comfortable and cozy and fairly clean, but seems more like a river steamer than an ocean liner. There are less than thirty passengers aboard, and most of them are Frenchmen going back to join the army.

We have a little table of five. Most of the men who had agreed to come backed down at the last moment, so there are only four men and one woman aboard bound for the American Ambulance, although it is expected that more will follow by later steamers. There is a Yale graduate named Richardson, somewhat over forty, I should say, — of a rather serious, and inquiring turn of mind, — a dependable type. There is a young Harvard graduate named Rumsey, perhaps twenty-seven or thereabouts, short, red-haired, a member of the Porcellian Club at Harvard. He used to play football at Harvard, has lived on ranches in the West, is a tightly knit little athlete with, I should imagine, no end of courage and a zest for adventure. There is another young Harvard man of about the same age named Charley Appleton, a cousin of the Meyers', who lives in Ipswich in the summer and in New

York in the winter. I knew him at Harvard. Then there is a trained nurse from Cambridge, — a woman of perhaps thirty to thirty-five, — a nice little woman taking her first trip across, and full of interest in the great adventure. She will probably teach us everything we need to know about "first aid" on the way over.

We have a small table by ourselves, and are probably destined to get very well acquainted as time goes on. No one seems to know exactly what he is to do when he gets over, but they are all expecting to help carry wounded soldiers to and from the hospitals in the immediate rear of the lines. Perhaps they may spend their first weeks carting beds and groceries from Paris to Neuilly. That would certainly be less interesting, however useful it might be.

VII A Bord de la Touraine

December 25, 1914.

Dear Mother and Father:

Often to-day my thoughts have run back over fifteen hundred miles of trackless water and one thousand miles of land to you all happily gathered about the Christmas tree. It has not been a forlorn day for me. Here in the middle of the Atlantic we have not quite realized that it was Christmas. We had a little snow last night and quite a gale, but to-day the sun has shone most of the day, the air has been mild, and it is only when one closes one's eyes tight that one can really believe that this is the day of days in the whole year's calendar and that snowy landscapes and ice probably prevail over most of the United States. This afternoon they had "sports" and races on the deck. My name appeared on the programme by some one's mischievous suggestion, but I did not perform. We shall not land in Havre until Tuesday the 28th, and shall not reach Paris until the 30th. Meanwhile we are steaming along the ocean lane, guarded, the captain says, by British cruisers about twenty miles away on either side just over the horizon.

I have enjoyed having Huntington Wilson aboard, and what questions relative to the universe, past, present, and future, have not been settled, or at least dissected, by us it would be hard to find.

O]

VIII A Bord de la Touraine

December 2Q, 1914..

Dear Mother and Father:

Just a word written in my berth late in the last night aboard the Touraine. We are skirting the English coast, which can be dimly seen out of my porthole in the moonlight or can be presumed from the lights along the shore. We have had a gay and warm-hearted evening from dinner until now at about 1.30 a.m.

Our little coterie — Huntington Wilson; of whom you know; a Hindu prince, with an unpronounceable name and

a willowy little sprite of an English wife ; Madame ,

the charming, young, and intelligent wife of a French playwright who is not travelling with her; a strange Franco- American product named Madame , slender, with

wild red hair, and wilder than her hair, animated beyond anything I have ever seen in any human being; "Larry" Rumsey, laconic but quick-witted; Charley Appleton; and a pleasant French youth, who has been living in Canada, but is bound back to France to join the army, — they all seem to-night old acquaintances. Yet few of them had entered into each other's previous experience and few will probably have any relation with the lives of any of the rest in the future. For several days, perhaps because of our common interest in the outcome of the war, we have been on very friendly terms, have talked endlessly, and played or laughed and even sung together.

To-night, when we "broke up" singing "Tipperary" after a long and happy evening of lively talk in French and English, I am sure we all felt touched with a sense of tenderness and regret.

December 2Q. 8.30 a.m.

We are approaching the French coast. There are all sorts of vessels coming and going across the Channel (except German vessels). We land about 9.30.

IX Hotel Terminus, Paris

December jj, 1914. 10 p.m.

Dear Mother and Father:

Paris at last!

We reached the mouth of the harbor at Havre on Tuesday morning, but what with the heavy sea and an unfavorable tide, the captain did not feel it safe to try and make the dock until night. So we steamed tediously around and around all day, and it was long after dark when the prow finally turned landwards. It was about seven o'clock of a moonlit, starlit night when we drew up at the landing. We had just time to get across the city to the railway station in season to take a night train to Paris, which we were told would get us here by one o'clock. We had to show our passports to French soldiers at the dock and at the railway station, and there were a good many English soldiers, trimly dressed in khaki, patrolling the streets (because many of the British transports land at Havre), and of course we all felt the thrill of setting foot in a country which we loved and which was in the throes of an epoch-making war. We bought the English and French papers to find what had happened while we were at sea, and to help pass the hours on the long night trip. There were no sleepers or first-class carriages, and most of the train was overflowing with reservists who had come over in the steerage of our steamer to join the army.

We did not reach Paris until seven o'clock the next morning, and there was practically no sleep during the night. The railroads are used at night for transporting the army and its supplies, and I suppose the Government did not realize what discomfort they were causing us by leaving us for hours on sidings. As a matter of fact, it was not an altogether dismal night. We got out at many stations and talked to the sentinels who were patrolling the frosty tracks and platforms; we visited with our steamer friends in the other compartments; we read and chatted and argued and dozed and sang and finally the morning and Paris arrived.

That was yesterday morning. And in the mean time we have done and seen many things.

What of Paris ? What impression does one get, who knows it well in times of peace, seeing it now in this moment of gigantic stress ? I don't know that I had ever tried to picture precisely what I ought to expect to see. But I had read that the automobiles and taxicabs had all been commandeered and taken to the front, and I rather expected it would be difficult to get our luggage from the station. I had read so much about the size of the armies that I rather supposed there would be few men on the streets, and they mostly boys or old men. I had read that so many stores had been made over into hospitals that I imagined the usual throngs of shoppers on the boulevards would be missing, and that many window shades would be drawn and many shutters down in the shopping districts. In fact, I suppose I had expected to find Paris a somewhat deserted city with little traffic of the usual character, but with soldiers marching, drums beating, cavalry clattering over the pavements.

Much of this may have been true of Paris in the days of mobilization, or in the terrible days of early September, when every one thought that it was only a question of days or hours when the Germans would occupy the city. But whether or not that was the case some months ago, things are very different now. As we emerged from the station, the usual rows of taxicabs were lined up outside, and as we have come and gone about Paris during the last two days it has been hard to see that there is any less than the usual number of taxis or other autos tearing about the streets. Outwardly life seems to be going on as usual. The boulevards are lined as ordinarily during the holidays with little barracks, where Christmas toys are sold, and the sidewalks and department stores are thronged as of old with holiday shoppers. We walked down by the Seine yesterday afternoon, and the usual loafers were fishing from the bridge and embankments, or strolling past the old book-dealers who display their secondhand wares in boxes along the rail on the left bank of the Seine. One sees no marching troops and very few individual soldiers. Paris seems as calm and undisturbed as ever. To the casual observer it would seem as if the war must be over, or only a dream, or in some other country than France. This is the really astonishing fact.

If you look a little more carefully, however, you will notice from the posters on the kiosks that few of the theatres are open except for performances of a philanthropic or patriotic character. If you go down to the Louvre, you will find that its doors have been closed to the public for five months. If you pass some of the larger hotels, you will find that many of them bear Red Cross signs and are evidently used to-day as hospitals. If you look for the gay fashionable restaurants where frivolity was wont to flourish, you will find them closed or sedate and respectable. But above all, if you regard the women you pass on the street you will note that about one in every three wears mourning.

I don't know that anything has impressed me more than a walk which we took late yesterday afternoon through the old Quartier Latin, and which ended in the church of St. Etienne du Mont. I wanted to go to Notre Dame "to burn a candle " for France, but it was closed, so we went on to St. Etienne up on the hill near the Pantheon, where the remains of Saint Genevieve are entombed in a golden reliquary, a quaint old church which I used often to visit in my student days. We entered the church when the last twilight was percolating through the stained glass and sat in one of the chapels in quasi-darkness for half an hour watching old women and young women, dressed in black, as they burned their candles about the reliquary and wept and prayed for their loved ones who had given all that they had or could hope for to France.

Although Paris is only about seventy miles from the German lines, it is calm and without excitement. The people are utterly confident that the Germans are helpless so far as Paris is concerned. Moreover, they are confident that, cost what it may cost, they are going to win. They realize that the war must last indefinitely. They know that more and more of their boys have got to die. There are six hundred thousand of them, I am told, at present in the hospitals! They know how terrible the price of victory must be, but life without it — life under German domination — would be unsupportable, and they are ready to pay the cost. This is all I can write now. Next time, I shall try to tell you something about the Ambulance.

Good-night!

X

p rue Angelique Fevien, N euilly-sur-Seine,

Thursday night, January 7, 1915.

A week has passed since I have had a chance to write you, a week busy, full of interest, and different from any week I have ever spent.

The main hospital of the American Ambulance (and you understand that "Ambulance Americaine" is the name of the whole great undertaking, including two large hospitals, many ambulances in the narrow sense of the word, and hundreds of surgeons, nurses, and attendants) is located in Neuilly, a suburb northwest of Paris, through which the Germans would have passed had they succeeded in getting to Paris in September. The organizers of the hospital succeeded in persuading the French Government to put at their disposal an immense school-building in Neuilly, which was in process of erection, the Lycee Pasteur. It is a handsome building of brick and stone, built around a courtyard, and what would have been schoolrooms, large and well lighted, have become wards of the hospital, or dormitories for the nurses, or dining-rooms for the great staff of doctors, ambulance drivers, nurses, and orderlies, not less than three hundred and fifty — probably more. One wing of the hospital is devoted to the transportation service and includes rooms for the staff of this department, a guardroom for the drivers and orderlies, rooms for those in charge of supplies, and a big garage. Here and in the neighboring yard the various squads of ambulances are equipped, which are to go to the front at one or another point along the five hundred miles of trenches that stretch from the British Channel to Switzerland. Several of the autoambulances run every day between the hospital in Neuilly and the railway station in Aubervilliers, another suburb of Paris, bringing over wounded who have been sent there from the front by train.; The principal work of the automobile corps, however, has no direct relation to the hospital at Neuilly. The corps of drivers and orderlies is grouped in squads of about fifteen or eighteen men, who have charge of perhaps ten ambulances each, and these squads go out for service along "the front," carrying wounded from the field dressing-stations to the nearest hospitals. One squad of ten autos left yesterday for the neighborhood of Beauvais, another squad is up near Belgium, in the English lines. My squad, as soon as we can get equipped, will leave for somewhere else. We hope to get off early next week, but we are subject to the orders of the French Government and cannot know our destination in advance. We shall be gone for an indefinite period, sleeping either in the ambulances, or in buildings "to which we may be billeted by the army, and getting our rations from the army.

The preparations for such an undertaking involve more than you suppose of detail. In the first place, we have to get a great variety of papers from the Government, a permit to stay in France, a certificate of immatriculation with the Prefet de Police, an identity card, a driving-license and others, all of which have to be signed and stamped by official after official at bureau after bureau. I had to take my driving examination yesterday with a fussy and pompous old French official, who made me so anxious with his injunctions and admonitions that I nearly ran over, first a tram-car, and then a flock of sheep, either one of which would have been fatal to my hopes, whatever its effect on the car or the sheep. In the end he "passed" me, but it took the greater part of an afternoon of waiting, driving, backing, stopping, turning here and turning there according to his orders. As I had never driven a Ford but once or twice in my life, and in

1^1 driving a Ford you have to remember not to do anything that you have been accustomed to do in driving any other car, you can imagine that I was on tenter-hooks. The old boy would wait until we got to a crowded corner and suddenly scream, "A gauche" (to the left), and then, as I had to dodge trams and people crossing the street, he would say, "Ah! too fast! too fast! you are like the taxi-drivers, who are assassins." After a time I \ discovered that the thing to do to please him was to drive all the time as if following a hearse at a funeral. And when I tried that I "stalled" my engine twice!

The Ford cars as they arrive have only a chassis, and upon them we have a carriage-builder construct a light ambulance body capable of carrying three stretchers. We can carry three wounded lying down, or five or six sitting up. We have to paint these cars ourselves, try them out and adjust them, equip them with supplies and tools, take off the tires sent with them and put on non-skid tires, etc. I spend most of my days kneeling in the mud and practising the business of painter, carpenter, chauffeur, and washer in turn.

Then we have to equip ourselves with uniforms (the organizers of the hospital have selected a uniform practically identical with the British), with sleeping-bags, blankets, water-bottles and a long list of miscellaneous incidentals, such as a knapsack, a whistle, two pairs of heavy shoes, two khaki-colored shirts, four towels, four pairs of heavy socks, two pairs of heavy gloves, etc., etc. It all takes time, and involves trips into Paris.

My section is made up of a fine lot of fellows ; two or three were artists in peace time, one an architect in New York, some were stock-brokers, some real-estate dealers, some are students just out of college; some are millionnaires, some paupers. They are like "les cadets de Gascogne." So far it seems as if we were preparing for a camping lark in the country rather than for serious work with an army in the field in the greatest of all wars.