by John Erle Davis*
An Armistice Day STORY
The Armistice in World War I was declared at 11 a.m., November 11, 1918, 14 years ago today.
Armistice Day and its mist of fading memories – some rosy and gold, some gray and sad. Most people had great fun in American cities that day and night. But there were some places where the fun was muted.
The scene is an American base hospital camp near an ancient French city where the cathedral cornerstone bears the legend “Anno Domini 1421.” The morning is mild and clear. Vague rumors of the war’s end are in the air.
An American colonel from the Argonne drive, dragging around on crutches, amiably discusses the possibilities with gas-burned buck prlvates.
A half-blind, one-armed English-speaking prisoner of war hopes to God it’s about all over. He explains, as tears fill his eyes, that he has not in three years seen his wife and young sons somewhere in East Prussia.
Comes 11 o’clock, and the soft breeze is laden with the musical booming of bells in distant church towers. Hobbling wounded…French, AmerIcans and Germans…are grinning and shaking hands, the enemy pathetically eager to be friendly.
Groups are singing — the Germans some measured, mellow, moving song about home; the French their rollicking “Madelon”; the Americans their foolish, stuttering, gay “B-b-beautiful K-k-Katie, beautiful Katie…at the k-k-kitchen door.”
Excitement mounts. It is quiet in the half-empty, long wooden-hut wards. The men are speculating on how soon they will be back in the States. The sergeant major is besieged for passes. Everybody who has francs in his pocket wants to go to town and celebrate, even the hobblers.
The mail comes. The orderly hands a cablegram to the favorite lieutenant of the outfit. He stares at the contents, then says, “Well, I’ll be damned. My mother’s dead.” He giggles a little hysterically.
A sergeant speaks to him, “I heard, lieutenant…I’m terribly sorry,” and offers his hand. The lieutenant grasps it, then hurries to his quarters. There will be no celebration for him this day.
A long detachment of convalescent soldiers in double file, out for exercise, clop-clops through nearby winding village streets chanting the ribald American Army classic “Mademoiselle from Armentieres.”
Now it is night. Place Royale and Rue St. Pierre glitter with festoons of colored lights that have been hurriedly strung on building fronts and across streets in the afternoon. Huge, drab, muddy trucks one after another stop by the big fountain and let out uniformed Americans keen for a big time.
The streets are jammed from wall to wall with French and Americans…soldiers, sailors and civilians. And girls. Everywhere girls — kissing, squealing, romping, making roughhouse with the men. Mardi Gras without masquerading.
Hours of this. Then pairs of American military police come pushing through the crowds, stopping at intervals, blowing whistles, shouting:
“Tenshun, soldiers! All hospital men report to quarters at once! All passes cancelled. Trucks are waiting at Place Royale…Tenshun, Soldiers! All hospital men report…”
Later the trucks rumble back into the hollow square of the camp. All huts, offices and kitchens are brightly lighted. Things are stirring. In the big Receiving Hut, stoves roar and become red-bellied, shooting dashes of sparks into the darkness above the roof. There is a sprinkle of rain.
A sergeant checks the count of clean folded blankets dumped upon a rising pile. Medical officers come in, and nurses in gray dresses, long blue capes and little white caps – ready for business.
The mess sergeant starts the cooks to making cauldrons of coffee and soup, and heating barrels of water for baths.
Over in the village, a long hospital train backs quietly and smoothly in on a sidetrack. Presently the ambulances are coming into the hollow square, to be unloaded by husky litter bearers, then gunning off for another load, and another, and another.
It is a busy night. Three trains. The sprinkle of rain becomes a downpour.
The Receiving Hut is crowded with rows of litters…holding the morning’s crop of slaughter up on the lines…muddy, filthy, bloody, lousy, hungry, tired miserable men. Officers move back and forth along the rows…looking at bandages, reading tags, calling ward assignments:
“Depressed skull fracture. Number three.” “Mustard-gas contact, Number seventeen.” “Compound fracture of right femur. Number nine.” “Phosgene gas inhalation. Number six.” And so they go.
And the litter-bearers whisk the wounded away to clean beds, fresh dressings, hot food, baths, rest, peace, sleep… for some the first and last Armistice Day.
Dawn comes. The rain stops. Raw wind whips the dripping trees. They groan.
In the little Dying Room in the prisoner-of-war hut, a blond youth, his skin the shade of putty, lies moaning and murmuring on a bed moans, “Mutter…Mutter…Mutter.”
A comrade stands beside him, fingering a rosary, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in German, “Vater Unser, der du bist in Himmel . . .”
Standing by the window, a medical officer loads his hypodermic. “Poor kid,” he says. “Gas gangrene. Not a chance he’ll ever see his mother again…”
Armistice Day, and its mist of fading memories.
*Sergeant 1/C, Base Hospital 11, 35th Division, AEF (American Expeditionary Force)
