The first half of our journey was covered at the usual terrifying rate of speed. The last half was a snail’s crawl which grew slower and slower as we neared our objective. Countless troops, afoot and in motors, hundreds of ammunition and supply trucks, and an incredible number of businesslike and apparently new guns, these took up a healthy three-quarters of the road and, despite our importance, didn’t hunch to let us pass.
When we sounded our horns to warn of our approach, the subalterns, or whatever you call them, would look round, stand at attention and salute, first the Captain with the Monocle, and then, when our car came up, me. Me because I was the only one in the second machine who wore a British officer’s cap. I returned about three salutes, blushing painfully, and then threw my cap on the floor of the car and rode exposed. Saluting is a wear and tear on the right arm, and being saluted makes you feel slackerish and camouflagy, when you don’t deserve it.
We attained the foot of the observation hill round noon, left our machines, and ate our picnic lunch, consisting of one kind of sandwiches and three kinds of wine. Then we accomplished the long climb, stopping halfway up to don helmets and masks. Our guide told us that the boche, when not otherwise pleasantly employed, took a few shots at where we were standing to test his long-distance aim.
I wore the mask as long as I could, which was about half an hour. It was unpleasantly reminiscent of an operation I once had, the details of which I would set down here if I had time. Without it, I found, I could see things much more plainly. Through strong field glasses the British trenches were discernible. The German front line was behind a ridge, two hundred yards away—from the British, not us—and invisible. No drive was in progress, but there was the steady boom, boom of heavy guns, the scary siren, with a bang at the end, of grenades, and an occasional solo in a throaty baritone which our captain told us belonged to Mr. Trench Mortar.
The firing was all in one direction—toward the northeast. Fritz was not replying, probably because he had no breath to waste in casual repartee.
Convinced that our hill was a zone of safety, for this afternoon at least, I wanted to stay up there and look and listen till it was time to go home. But our captain had arranged a trip to a sniping school, and our captain would rather have broken his monocle than have made the slightest alteration in the program for the day.
To the sniping school we went, and saw the snipers sniping on their snipes. It was just like the sniping school I had visited at the American camp, and I got pretty mad at our captain for dragging us away from a sight far more interesting. But he redeemed himself by having the major in charge show us real, honest-to-goodness camouflage, staged by an expert.
We were taken to a point two hundred yards distant from a trench system.
“Standing up in front of one of those trenches,” said the major, “there’s a sergeant in costume. He’s in plain sight. Now you find him.”
Well, we couldn’t find him, and we gave up.
“Move, Sergeant!” shouted the major.
The sergeant moved and, sure enough, there he was!
“I had him spotted all the time,” said The Doctor.
The major directed the sergeant to change to a costume of a different hue. When the change had been made we were required to turn our backs till he had “hidden” himself again. Again he was “in plain sight,” and again we had to give up. Again he was ordered to move, and we saw him, this time in colors diametrically opposed to those of his first garb.
“I had him spotted all the time,” said The Doctor.
The sergeant went through his entire repertory of tricks, but the rest must not be reported.
It occurred to me on the way back to our machines that some football coach could make a fish out of the defensive team by camouflaging his back field.
Our captain and the Harvard prof. climbed into the front car, leaving The Doctor, his secretary, and me to bring up the rear. The sec. sat with the driver; The Doctor and I in the back seat.
“How long have you been over here?” inquired The Doctor at length.
I told him.
“How many American soldiers are there in France?”
I told him.
After an impressive pause, he said:
“As a matter of fact, there are really—” And he increased my estimate by four hundred percent. “Of course,” he continued, “I have the right figures. They were furnished me by the Defense League before I left home. They naturally wouldn’t give them to a writer because they don’t want them published.”
“And naturally,” says I, “whenever they tell a writer anything in strict confidence, he rushes to the nearest Local and Long Distance Telephone Booth and gets Wilhelmstrasse on the wire.”
“Oh, no,” said The Doctor. “But a writer might think it was his duty to send the correct information to his paper.”
“Did you ever hear of the censorship?” I asked him.
“There are ways of eluding it.”
“And do you think all writers are that kind?”
He shrugged a fat shoulder.
“Not all, possibly a very few. But one never can tell the right kind from the wrong.”
His guard was down, and I took careful aim:
“Do you think the Defense League used good judgment in entrusting that secret to you, when you spill it to the first irresponsible reporter you happen to run across?”
If I hadn’t won this argument, I wouldn’t repeat it.
Not until we reached our château did I realize why I had been so catty. I’d gone without my tea.
Sunday, September 9. Paris.
Mr. Gibbons and I this morning bade
