May 8, 1918 - Another day trip to quiet front

Don Martin diary entry for Wednesday, May 8, 1918: 

Went to Boucq with [Edwin] James [New York Times]. Got nothing. Whole front quiet. Got some oil today and now I have a lamp instead of a candle to write and read by. It is a big improvement. Spent part of the evening at the club with Percy Noel of the Chicago News.

Weather rainy and  raw.
        The following upbeat, patriotic - and lengthy - story, about what the American troops that had arrived in France were doing and the French reaction to their presence in France, was written, maybe on May 8, dated May 10, and mailed to New York. It appeared in the June 16 Sunday edition of the New York Herald.

American Troops Slated for Three More Months’ Training Go Into Line

Great Movements of General Pershing’s Men Indicate They Will Take Much More Important Part in Present Offensive Than Was Expected

By DON MARTIN.

 [Special to the Herald.]

WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE, May 10

         Americans in France who are familiar with the gigantic things Uncle Sam is doing here sometimes wonder if the people who are subscribing for Liberty Loans and giving their full moral support to the national government fully realize what their money and their support are making possible over here is France. 

         The rule of the army is that Americans must not boast. In simpler, backwoods language, Americans must saw wood and let the other guy do the talking. Consequently the folks back home get only fragmentary pictures of what Uncle Sam, three thousand miles away, is accomplishing. 

          Forests in places have been cleared away to make room for sidings. Immense structures have come almost like magic out of the ground. Railway tracks have been laid so swiftly that one could almost see them extend themselves. To see a thousand hardy, eager young Americans working in an isolated part of France is a sight to be encountered many times any day. And the work has just begun. 

Building Lines of Communications

         Only a few weeks ago while driving along a well known highway of eastern France I saw young engineers surveying along a distance of perhaps twenty miles. They were young college men. A few days later they were thirty miles further along the road, and where they had been were gangs of men digging holes and unloading coils of wire from trucks. Next day tamstack poles were scattered along the route. What I saw along this fifty mile strip was merely a duplication of what was going on in every fifty mile sector all the way from the coast to the front line. Now there is a fully equipped American telephone line with ten wires. It is part of the line of communication.

         This is just an incident in the enormous programme of organization and preparation which the United States is carrying out. If we lack perhaps in the long military experience of some of the other nations, no one can accuse Americans of backing on quick organization and achievement in construction work. France is marveling at the speed with which our engineers and their bands of men have progressed with their mammoth tasks. She knows now, although she never really doubted, that the United States is in the war to a finish and is determined to prosecute it with the same vigor she has every other conflict she has ever engaged in.

          Although no one could ever have accused the people of France of being indifferent to what the United States was doing for the cause of civilization, one must to-day recognize the enthusiasm of the people of all parts of France for the Americans. There has been no change of heart, but there has been a marked change of outward manifestation.

         American soldiers, as Secretary Baker predicted, have been pouring into France for several weeks. They are distributed in villages where until now no American was ever seen. The French people, who in many parts of the nation are as provincial as the dwellers in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia, now realize that America is here. They are having their first glimpse of what an American looks like, and they have looked and have been pleased. 

          Little is published in the French newspapers about the arrival of the Americans. Little is printed about the Americans at all. An idea of what the average French resident of a small town thinks may be gained from the following: -- In a village which sits just off a main road and looks to-day as it probably looked five hundred years ago, I asked a leading resident, a stalwart, intelligent farmer, how many men he thought the United States had in France. 

         “Oh, I suppose about ten thousand,” he replied.

        I asked another resident, a younger man, who keeps a butcher shop.

     “I hear there are to be a million next year,” he answered. 

          Their knowledge, or lack of it, is the exact equivalent of the misinformation of the Americans in France. If an American could go around to the American camps giving authentic information as to just how many fighting men the United States now has in France, he would find listeners as eager as a flock around a New England village gossip who has returned with news of the handsome young girl who ran away to the city some months ago.

         One has to but visit the villages of France to know that the number is large. One has but to see the gigantic barracks being erected here and there along the line of communications to realize that stupendous things are in the immediate future. At one point thirty one story frame buildings, each 100 feet in length, were built in two weeks. Now they are filled with soldiers going through intensive training for service at the front. 

          So, as the Americans are gradually coming to realize that somewhere back home there has been wonderful speed and efficiency in getting men across the Atlantic, the people of France are beginning to understand that Uncle Sam has a vast army here already. How much of it will participate in the great battle which started on March 21 and is still going on, no one can foretell. It is known only that American troops have been moving about recently and that many troops which were slated for three months’ additional training behind the battle lines were found to be in a state of such perfection that they were ready to meet any emergency. 

French Rejoice: Americans in Line

         Americans were sent to the big front not long after the battle began. Official announcement to that effect was made. Publication of this fact caused a feeling of exultation to sweep over France. Everywhere one could hear the French saying: --

          “America is now in the line.”

         Americans had been in the front line long before that, but not in the front line of the biggest battle of the war. The French newspapers commented widely on the matter and later gave great prominence to the statement of General Pershing that anything America has is at the disposal of France for what use she wished to make of it. 

           This may be referring to what Pershing said when he went to meet Foch on March 27: "I have come to tell you that the American people would consider it a great honor for our troops to be engaged in the present battle. I ask you for this in their name and my own." (Andrew Carroll, My Fellow Soldiers, p172, Penguin Press, 2017)

      This was regarded by France as the most generous and patriotic offer ever made by one nation to another, and if anything were needed to prove the magnanimity and sincerity of the United States that offer did it. Since it was announced, and since American troops have been constantly on the move, American flags have appeared from windows in a thousand places in France where they never were seen before; shops in the tiniest villages have stocks of small American flags to sell and the peasants, usually indifferent, stop in the fields and in front of their homes to gaze at the Americans passing by.

          There is nothing studied about it. It is spontaneous. Realities having taken the place of promises, the people of France are overjoyed. They never feared the result of the big battle now going on. Possibly they worried sometimes about the capacity of a nation bled as France has been bled to continue indefinitely if years were required to give the Germans the licking they deserve. But now they are flushed with optimism and confidence, and they are swelled with pride and a new love for America.