Back to the Front (24 page)

The music stops. They are in front of the bungalow. The colonel looks on with a bemused smile.

"Thank you for the dance, sir."

"Thank you, madam."

The young man crosses the silent yard and regains his place in the rank. Glances are stolen, the moment is held. All is quiet
. . .

All is quiet indeed. It's supposed to be, in this part of the world. I close my
eyes
to the stars over the Front. They were his stars, too.

Good night, Grandfather. I hope you don't mind me borrowing the memory. What else do men think about when they're stuck out
in a field?

Sleep comes quickly.

4. Suippes to Ste. Menehould

Army towns seem to fit a pattern no matter where they're placed. Once you're in one, it's easy to hitch a ride, buy a beer,
or start a fight. I've arrived in the town of Suippes dusty and hungry after a night outdoors and a morning's detour to the
Navarin Farm monument out at the Front. There I saw more names upon names, testament to the offensives of 1915.

North of Navarin was the
Tranchee des Tantes
(Aunts' Trench), a German defensive position that the French infantry took on September 25,1915, as part of a massive attack
along the Front between Auberive and the Argonne. The generals, inured to failure in Champagne, refused to believe reports
stating that the Aunts' Trench had been taken by their men. They resisted pleas to resight the artillery accordingly and stop
shelling the trench. No fewer than ten French reconnaissance planes flew from Suippes over the position and reported that
yes, indeed, the Aunts' Trench was held by French units. For three days headquarters refused to believe them, having no faith
in the newfangled technology of aviation. By the time a survivor had managed to crawl back and convince the doubting staff
officers, it was too late. Yet another chapter in the annals of Great War generalship had been written.

"C
RAZY FUCKIN' BASTARDS,
whadda they want now?" My note-taking about Navarin in a Suippes lunch room has been interrupted
by what sounds like a Yankees fan.

"Crazy fuckin' bastards!"

I look up, fearful that I'm about to be involved in some NATO headbutting tournament. I expect to see some demented G.I. on
hangover leave from his home base in Germany.

Instead, the speaker is the cafe's owner, an elderly gent with whom I had spoken French on my way to this table. He is immensely
pleased with his deception.

"Bastards, whadda they want now?"

The inflection is perfect, even if the meaning of it all has become cryptic. He pulls up a chair and explains in his native
French that he says his crazy bastards line to any American he encounters. He introduces himself as Roger.

He's up and out of the chair again, dashing past the cash register to pour a few beers for the crewcuts at the bar. He returns
with a badge.

Roger turns out to be the honorary police chief of Lackawanna, New York. Do I know it? Of course, I must. He owes this position
to a Second World War acquaintance with whom he has long corresponded. He does not take the distinction lightly—I am asked
to examine the badge several times, which I do. It is not certain that the people of Lackawanna need a police chief whose
knowledge of the English language stops at one flawless phrase. But Roger intends to find out. Once he gets tired of Suippes,
he's going to retire to Lackawanna. I don't ask when this is going to occur: Roger is in his late seventies.

M
Y LAST DAY
in Champagne continues at random. I decide to travel around the outside perimeter of the forbidden Suippes miltary
base. Roger arranges a ride for me to the village of Sommepy-Tahure. Today I'll give up the animal acquaintance with the land
that walking confers for some speed.

My ride, a wiry middle-aged fellow, cheerfully informs me that there is a killer on the loose in the area of Mourmelon and
Suippes. Several young conscripts have been found molested and murdered by the side of deserted country roads like the one
we're traveling. He says that these murders are not only a criminal offense, but also, technically, a destruction of army
property. If you pick up a soldier hitching and get into an accident, you're held liable by the army. The same must be true
of murder.

He asks me, creepily, what I think.

I say that I'm going to visit my uncle. He doesn't believe me, but neither of us cares.

M
Y GREAT-UNCLE
Tommy is a no-show today, as are all my other ghosts from the Great War. Walking cross-country to the distant
village of Cernay-en-Dormois, I realize that it is time to get out of this landscape of fenced-off military bases. Even though
the scenery has improved—wooded hillocks and fields of dairy cows have taken over from yesterday's vacuum—I prefer my armies
and my murderers to be stashed safely in the past.

Within minutes of arriving in Cernay, I am on the back of a motorcycle screaming southward. I asked some lawn chair loungers
for the quickest way to get to Ville-sur-Tourbe, a Front-line town, so that I could spend the night there. You can't stay
there, they protested, you must go to Saint Minoo.

Saint Minoo? Before I can unfold my map a youth named Thierry has already wheeled his bike out of a garage.

Now he is talking to me from the front of his motorcycle as we tear through the country air.

"Yah ka oo eh ohn ohoh vachement eee. Oo eh eh ohrss eh oo moto?"

"Oui,"
I reply.

S
AINT MINOO, LIKE
the entire day, turns out to be full of surprises. Ste. Menehould, as it is spelled but not pronounced,
lay far enough behind the Front to have preserved some of its older neighborhoods. It sits in a defile carved by the River
Aisne through the forested hills that mark the transition between Champagne and the Argonne. A statue of its most beloved
son, Dom Perignon, the clever monk who first put the bubbles in champagne, stands at the western entrance of the town. The
sculptor has put a sly, cackling smile on his face, as if the old vintner were half-Voltaire, half-Mephistopheles. Perhaps
he just knows the town's odd secret.

It takes me a while, too. I first assume that the highlight of tourism in Ste. Menehould is its local government building,
erected in 1730 and fairly frequently remodeled ever since. Then I think civic pride must be linked to the elegant, eighteenth-century
square dominating the eastern end of the town. Wrong again. In the main market street leading from the square, I come across
a series of establishments exclusively devoted to the study, sale, consumption, and veneration of pigs' feet. The lowly trotter,
not Dom Perignon or civic architecture, is Ste. Menehould's claim to fame.

The Soleil d'Or seems to be the trotter temple. Garish flashing lights adorn the restaurant's exterior, attracting the eye
to the large trophy window that gives out onto the street. Yet the trophies here are not just for the biggest pig foot feast
of the year; some commemorate the owner's exploits with pedal-operated sailboats. The largest cup marks his prowess in being
the first to cross the English Channel in one such contraption. Two small station wagons parked in front of the restaurant
are painted with the French word
Pedalovoile
(pedal-sailing), proof that the man's obsession is full blown. I cannot resist going in. A long-distance hiker walks into
the establishment of a pedal maniac to dine on a plate of feet—perhaps I have joined the Donner Party after all.

The interior is an antiquarian's dream. Tables, chairs, and cooking utensils from the eighteenth century and earlier occupy
a low-ceilinged back room. It is here where the trotters are served breaded, roasted, baked, stuffed, stewed, or any of a
number of ingenious ways listed on the menu to disguise the revolting combination of gristle, fat, grease, blood, and bone
that constitute the delicacy. The only other diners in the room are the two fattest people I have seen since moving to Europe.
How fat are they? It is a wonder their arms can reach the table. They are so big that the hefty pile of trotters in front
of them look like the legs from an underfed quail. When my sole breaded pigs foot is placed before me, it looks monstrously
large, like a football without the laces. I poke at it gingerly with my fork, then notice the two wet-chinned mountains at
the next table smiling at my squeamishness. I promise myself never to come back to Saint Minoo.

C
HAPTER
6

Lorraine I Alsace

I. The Argonne

B
USHWHACK: TO MAKE
one's way through thick woods by cutting away bushes and branches.

Today is the first day of the rest of my walk. The Argonne, a forest that is a lozenge-shaped patch of dense greenery between
Champagne and Lorraine, must be crossed before reaching Verdun. It was once well known in both French and American folklore
as a place where tremendous sacrifices had been made. To say "Argonne" to an American of the 1930s was like saying "Normandy"
to his counterpart in the 1950s. The word meant France, the war, the battlefield, abroad. For the French, of course, the Argonne
was simply another bloody episode in a sanguinary pageant.

Ignoring the dark clouds scudding in from the east, I head along a track out of Ville-sur-Tourbe toward Hardemont Wood. My
passage causes a lot of bovine discussion among the reclining occupants of the fields, but no animal bothers to stroll over
and include me in the debate. The wind begins to whip up and a few droplets come singing down, although not so many as to
cause alarm. To my right another village lies nestled in the embrace of a broad and gentle ridge. A large black mass moves
in, draining the red rooftops and steeple of their color in the darkening shadow. To my left, about four hundred yards distant,
a tall spinney of poplars sways in a snapping breeze that drives yet another black cloud forward over the land. Above this
windbreak three hawks hover motionless, enjoying a small Wagnerian moment. Miraculously my stretch of moist cowpath is spared
the rain clouds. I reach the forest edge, pause, then enter.

In moments, my boots are covered in mud, and my progress is like that of an astronaut on a damp planet, one foot squelching
in front of the other. My path goes through two dark canyons of trees before bordering on a stagnant watercourse. It is there
that the insect attacks begin—mosquitoes, bees, and two very large and stupid flies that keep buzzing directly at my right
eyeball. After swatting ineffectually for a time, I begin spitting at them, presenting the edifying spectacle of a bowed and
muddied backpacker seething with obscenities and spittle. I step over what looks to be a dead dog and arrive, at last, at
a clearing. Only it isn't—every square inch of cleared land is taken up by sunflowers. Beautiful. Even the path is gone. I
feel as if I'm intruding on a crowd of rush-hour commuters.

Unwilling to turn back, I scrape my way along the edge of the field. As it is a dull overcast day, the flowers have nothing
to look at but me. A strange sort of self-consciousness sets in as I walk past these vegetal voyeurs, but it is quickly banished
when the drone of my accompanying insects reaches symphonic proportions. I begin yelling in rage, only to wake a pondful of
ducks at some unseen haven one or two hundred yards to my left. They set up a raucous, laughing chorus of derision at my yelps
and shouts. Chastened but still muttering, I continue picking my way around the wall of sunflowers. I was never a Boy Scout.

A large open field appears on my right, newly plowed and free of insect-harboring weeds. I run toward it, almost tumbling
headfirst into a hitherto unnoticed drainage ditch separating field from forest. I clamber down and up the ditch, treading
with a squirt on the tonguelike orange slugs that trail their slime over the moist leaves. I won't be eating escargots for
many years. At last I am in the field, a muddy but open space that rises slightly toward the east. All is now peace and tranquillity
as a village appears on a rise a mile away. Calculating that I should head toward the woods opposite the village, I set a
lively pace to make up for lost time. A dip in the field reveals a red Massey-Ferguson tractor sitting idly in a hollow a
stone's throw away. The muddy furrows give way to burnt hay stubble covered with millions of ladybugs.

I walk on, content to be out in the open, until I happen to glance once more over to the left to take in the bucolic village
scene. It is no longer visible. A thick black curtain of rain is advancing rapidly toward me. I look over at the distant woods,
their shades of dull green now a dark mass of indistinguishable shapes. The rain begins sweeping horizontally across the field,
making any further advance an exercise in melodrama. Just the two of us out here, me and the tractor. The tractor! I squint
to see if it's worth the trouble. Yes, it has a cab. I begin running over the ladybugs and damp cinders to shelter. Soaking,
I climb into the cab and listen to the wind rock the machine in its muddy moorings.

The worst of the squall passes and I step down into the morass left by the rain. I move toward the woods in the insistent
drizzle, knowing that ahead of me, at least, there will be a fairly dry forest floor. The last fifty yards I cover like a
swamp creature, sodden and mud-caked and foul-tempered. I slide into the forest, only to find that the track I've taken abruptly
ends in a thicket of brush and thorns. Outside the rain and mud, inside the brush and—trenches! They are here, camouflaged
under a cover of wet leaves but unmistakably Great War pits, sinuously twisting beneath the obstacles on the forest floor.
I climb down into one that's going my way—east—and begin to walk in what might pass for a war buffs dream. Thus far, I had
only scratched the surface of the Western Front. Now I am in it.

I pick my way carefully down the trench, conscious that the leafy carpet below and the canopy of undergrowth above might conceal
twisted metal, live ammunition, or worse. The twists and turns go on for a few hundred yards before I reach an impasse formed,
unexpectedly, of treetops. The trench has unhelpfully led to the top of a cliff, out of which tall oaks are growing. Seeing
the impassable steepness of the slope, I clamber out of the snaking main trench and look around for another route. I see a
straight communication trench leading south and decide to give it a try. Within minutes, I come face-to-face with a young
deer, staring with indignant fright at my twig-snapping approach. It bounds out of the trench and leaves me alone again. A
quarter of an hour later, I am in a shaved wheatfield, in sight of a lovely sylvan village. The trenches have gotten me out
of trouble.

Mud-covered and flushed, I enter the lone cafe of Vienne-le-Chateau. Conversation pauses for a moment, then resumes. I order
a hot chocolate and listen to the regulars complaining about this spell of March weather in August. The bartender insists
I have some hot food. I munch a few proffered fried potatoes and gaze hopefully at a map that is supposed to show me the way
through the heart of the Argonne.

T
HE WHOLE PROBLEM
with this forest is its denseness. In 1914 and 1915 both the French and the Germans found it impossible
to take in its entirety. Indeed, in eight months of deadly skirmishes in this tiny Frontline part of the Argonne—an area only
seven miles wide by two miles deep—150,000 men were killed. In 1918 the Americans advanced through it, at a similar human
cost. The latter Argonne operation was more chaotic and haphazard than any offensive of the entire war—thousands fell as massive
traffic jams on narrow roads slowed the delivery of needed ammunition and supplies to the troops doing battle. Not that they
had set out with a paucity of means. The American army began here its budget-busting twentieth-century tradition of overkill
in firepower and funding. The initial bombardment of September 26, 1918, on the German positions expended more explosives
in three hours than had been used in all of the American Civil War. One historian, John Toland, calculated the cost of this
murderous sound and light show to be $1 million a minute.

The Meuse-Argonne offensive, as it is known in military histories, gave rise to two now obscure American legends of the Great
War. One of the stories concerns the so-called Lost Battalion, a group of 550 men who were surrounded at Charlevaux, a wooded
vale located about six miles north of where I am currently eating my midday potatoes. Commanded by Charles Whittlesey, a storklike
Wall Street lawyer known for his imperturbable demeanor, the encircled battalion held out for three days and nights of repeated,
merciless attacks from all sides. In fact, mercy was shown on one occasion: a German squad, led by an officer who had learned
English selling tungsten for six years in Seattle, pleaded with Whittlesey's men to surrender. They refused. A subsequent
attempt by the main American force to take the pressure off the embattled soldiers backfired badly when the artillery started
shelling the precise spot where the Lost Battalion was holding its ground. Dozens of men died in the first moments of this
"friendly fire," and it looked as if most of the unit was going to be annihilated. A courier pigeon named Cher Ami —which
was later stuffed and given to the Smithsonian—eventually got through to the gunners with a message to point their cannons
somewhere else. When the Lost Battalion was finally rescued on October 7, 1918, only 194 men were healthy enough to walk away
from the most famous death trap of the American war effort. Whittlesey had survived, but not for long. In November 1921, he
boarded an ocean liner bound for Havana, had a drink at the bar, then went out on deck and threw himself overboard.

The other war story shows the hero in a better light. It occurred the day after the Lost Battalion was found and relieved,
in the nearby village of Chatel-Chehery. There, Alvin York of Tennessee, a hard-drinking hell-raiser turned born-again teetotaler,
would perform a barely credible stunt that would eventually make him the most decorated American soldier of the Great War.
During an American attack that was clearly a fiasco in the making, York crept away from his decimated platoon and surreptitiously
made his way to a hiding place near the enemy lines. A backwoods marksman, York began picking off German machine-gunners without
giving away his position. One gunner would fall, another would take his place, York would fire again, that gunner would fall,
another would take his place, York would fire again, and so on. Soon the yokel's unerring aim had spooked scores of Germans
into surrendering to what they thought was a far superior force. Incredibly, Alvin York had single-handedly killed 28 German
soldiers and captured 132 others.

Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander-in-chief in 1918, although no fan of the awkward Goliath that was the American army,
called the Tennessean's act "the greatest single feat of arms accomplished in this war." York is reported to have remarked,
"It weren't no trouble nohow for me to hit them big army targets. They were so much bigger than turkeys' heads." The story
of this Hun-killing hick had so charmed Americans that when the time came to convince the country to go to war again, the
Alvin York saga exploit was dusted off and given an anti-isolationist edge. Gary Cooper played the title role in the 1941
film,
Sergeant York.
Its bellicist tone matched the mood of the time. The Howard Hawks film won the Academy Award for best actor, an ironic turnaround
from ten years earlier when
All Quiet on the Western Front
had won the top honor.

In the autumn of 1918, however, the WASP Whittlesey and the cracker York came to symbolize the American offensive in the Argonne.
Recriminations would come later, once hindsight practitioners took a close look at John Joseph Pershing, the man who brought
the Americans to slaughter. Crushed by the death of his wife and three daughters in a fire in 1915, Pershing was reputed to
be a dour taskmaster, mistrustful of his European counterparts and mule-headed in repeating their mistakes* Commended for
keeping the American troops away from the profligate French and British commanders clamoring for more men, Pershing nonetheless
threw many American lives away by organizing overam-bitious offensives with untrained troops and sending men walking into
machine-gun fire. Whatever the verdict of history, the millions of doughboys clinched the victory on the Western Front, a
bald fact that French and British histories continue to begrudge their junior partner. Even when totting up casualties, these
European history books always underline that more American soldiers died of influenza than in battle. I've even done it just
now, and I have no ax to grind.

Feeling sufficiently dry and warm to brave the rest of the Argonne, I take the road out of
Vienne-le-Chateau to La Harazee. Two young women on my way out of town look at me as if I were the Antichrist. I really should
buy a hairbrush.

Soon I am once again alone, on a snail-smothered pathway that fords a tiny stream, skirts a trout pond, and crosses a couple
of marshy meadows. At La Harazee a couple of moss-covered manor farmhouses stand in a clearing with a chapel and a large French
military cemetery. I consult my map and take the track leading from the cemetery into the woods. The darkness closes around
me.

The muddy path is, in fact, the parapet of an old Great War trench. The earthwork of the ditch's lip has been shored up over
the years, so that any walker through this stretch of the woods is, in fact, "over the top." The parapet path eventually becomes
a logging road, until that in turn narrows into waterlogged tire tracks. Finally I head into the thicket beside the road,
where the ground seems marginally drier. Two hours of bushwhacking ensues as I struggle cross-country. Fortunately the sun
has come out overhead, giving the foliage a friendly speckled look that helps allay my natural tendency to panic. I have read
too many war books about men getting sucked into the mud, or being blown up by old shells. I don't like being lost in the
Argonne.

I eventually emerge into a clearing. Scarcely thirty yards away from me is a small stela in honor of the 150 R.I.
{Régiment dlnfanterie)
and a French tricolor fluttering on a flagstaff, proof that my wandering has kept me near the Front. The rest of the huge
clearing, which is perhaps half a mile wide and about two long, contains nothing. The trees have been cut and hauled away.
The brush has been burned in smudge fires—a few large piles of sticks smolder in the distance. This is the heart of the Bois
de la Gruerie, the scene of horrendous French losses in 1915. My map shows the emplacement of the monument, but also hiking
trails and logging roads that are nowhere to be seen. I venture into the vast openness, peering at the forest edge for the
sign of a break, or a path. Two deer lazily walk out of the woods and pay me no heed. I steady my compass, look at the map,
then at the deer, then back at the compass—and decide to go to the right. Ahead of me now is a stand of pines, looking dark
and impenetrable even in the hot afternoon sunshine. Once past the first screen of undergrowth, I am relieved by what I see
on the forest floor. The trenches once again, heading east. If there is no path or road, then I shall follow the scars of
the Front. They once led all the way to Switzerland; for my purposes, I just want them to get me out of the woods.