"And they thought we wouldn't fight"Gibbons, Floyd Phillips
History
"And they thought we wouldn't fight"
Gibbons, Floyd Phillips
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
But she was a girl and her name was Yvonne. The red-winged letter on her
coat lapel placed her in the automobile service and the motor ambulance
stationed at the road side explained her special branch of work. She
inquired the meaning of my correspondent's insignia and then
explained that she had drawn pastelles for a Paris publication before
the war, but had been transporting _blesses_ since. The French lesson
proceeded and Spokane Steve and I learned from her that the longest word
in the French language is spelled "Anticonstitutionellement." I
expressed the hope that some day both of us would be able to pronounce
it.
On the girl's right wrist was a silver chain bracelet with
identification disk. In response to our interested gaze, she exhibited
it to us, and upon her own volition, informed us that she was a
descendant of the same family as Jeanne d'Arc. Steve heard and winked to
me with a remark that they couldn't pull any stuff like that on anybody
from Spokane, because he had never heard that that Maid of Orleans had
been married. Yvonne must have understood the last word because she
explained forthwith that she had not claimed direct descendence from the
famous Jeanne, but from the same family. Steve looked her in the eye and
said, "Jay compraw."
She explained the meaning of the small gold and silver medals suspended
from the bracelet. She detached two and presented them to us. One of
them bore in relief the image of a man in flowing robes carrying a child
on his shoulder, and the reverse depicted a tourist driving a motor
through hilly country.
"That is St. Christophe," said Yvonne. "He is the patron saint of
travellers. His medal is good luck against accidents on the road. Here
is one of St. Elias. He is the new patron saint of the aviators. You
remember. Didn't he go to heaven in a fiery chariot, or fly up on golden
wings or something like that? Anyhow, all the aviators wear one of his
medals."
St. Christophe was attached to my identification disk. Steve declared
infantrymen travelled too slowly ever to have anything happen to them
and that he was going to give his to a friend who drove a truck. When I
fell in line with the next passing battery and moved down the road,
Spokane Steve and the Yvonne of the family of Jeanne had launched into a
discussion of prize fighting and chewing tobacco.
* * * * *
In billets that night, in a village not far from Beauvais, the singing
contest for the prize of fifty dollars offered by the battalion
commander Major Robert R. McCormick was resumed with intense rivalry
between the tenors and basses of batteries A and B. A "B" Battery man
was croaking Annie Laurie, when an "A" Battery booster in the audience
remarked audibly,
"Good Lord, I'd rather hear first call." First call is the bugle note
that disturbs sleep and starts the men on the next day's work.
A worried lieutenant found me in the crowd around the rolling kitchen
and inquired:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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