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March 17, 1918 - A day preparing to leave Paris for the front

     The first hundred postings of this Don Martin blog has been reached. We have seen Don Martin move from political reporter in New York City to war reporter in London, and now to France, where his transformation to a war correspondent will be completed. As a reminder, earlier posts can be seen by clicking on the three red lines at top right, then clicking on down arrow by Archive. The first postings in December introduce the blog.
   
Don Martin diary entry for Sunday, March 17, 1918: 
Began the day with a walk on the Champs Elysees and the Bois du Boulogne with [Burn] Price. 
Bois de Boulogne

Maybe in normal times it outshines N.Y. but now it is no more attractive than 5th Ave. or Riverside Drive. I came back to the hotel, wrote a 2 column story on Paris in wartime; sent a cable to Dorothy and packed up ready for a trip to the American front – Gondrecourt – tomorrow morning. Start at 8, so must get my baggage checked tonight. Looks now as if I am after all to see the actual war front. Understand the living conditions are very bad but if I get a clean place to sleep I shall be all right. Had dinner with Price and then came to the hotel to write some letters and to get my baggage to the station.

Weather good.
     He wrote a letter to Dorothy the evening of March 17  telling her about his preparations to leave Paris the next morning:
Packing up a “hold all” and stuffing other things in a suitcase to be left behind, and making sure that everything is all right is quite a job... I went to the station with my typewriter and the hold-all and left them – checked them as we say at home – and now I shall get up at 6 a.m. to get an eight o’clock train. I must allow an hour at the station to get my ticket, get my baggage and make the crazy Frenchmen at the station understand what I mean. I may miss the train anyhow; then I shall have to wait a day. Travelling is a hard job now. Passports have to be fixed up everywhere and the suspicion is that everyone is a spy or something of that sort. I shall get to a small place called Gondrecourt at one in the afternoon and will then take an automobile to some other place where I shall make my headquarters. ... If I find that there is nothing to be seen at the front, and no place to sleep but in some old shack, I probably will not stay more than a month.
There hasn’t been an air raid since Monday night. Maybe the Germans are getting enough of them now that the French and British have been bombing their towns. There doesn’t seem to be any chivalry in war since Germany ran amuck. It is just barbarism.
     Don Martin's mention of 'barbarism' will be repeated as he comes face to face with the realities of the Great War on the ground.

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