Wars I Have Seen (35 page)

Speaking of all this there is this about a Jewish woman, a Parisienne, well known in the Paris world. She and her family took refuge in Chambery when the persecutions against the Jews began in Paris. And then later, when there was no southern zone, all the Jews were supposed to have the fact put on their carte d’identité and their food card, she went to the prefecture to do so and the official whom she saw looked at her severely Madame he said, have
you any proof with you that you are a Jewess, why no she said, well he said if you have no actual proof that you are a Jewess, why do you come and bother me, why she said I beg your pardon, no he said I am not interested unless you can prove you are a Jewess, good day he said and she left. It was she who told the story. Most of the French officials were like that really like that.

And now everybody says all the time that American officers are passing through Culoz, you can tell them they all say because of their large hats. Do American officers wear large hats, oh yes they say. Do they, I wonder, or is it only a sort of cowboy idea that the population have. Perhaps the American do wear large hats, we are so eagerly waiting to see.

What a day what a day of days, I always did say that I would end this book with the first American that came to Culoz, and to-day oh happy day yesterday and to-day, the first of September 1944. There have been six of them in the house, two of them stayed the night and then three were there besides the first three not here at Culoz but at Belley. Oh happy day, that is all that I can say oh happy day.

This is the way it happened. We go to Belley about once a month to go shopping and the bank and things like that and yesterday Thursday was the day, so we went over in a taxi, and when we got to Belley as I got out of the taxi several people said to me, Americans are here. I had heard that so often that I had pretty well given up hope and I said oh nonsense but yes they said, and then the son of the watchmaker who had been the most steadfast and violent pro-ally even in the darkest days came up to me and said the Americans are here. Really I said yes he said well I said lead me to them, all right he said they are at the hotel so we went on just as fast as we could and when we got to the hotel they tried to stop me but we said no and went in. I saw the proprietor of the hotel and I said is it true there are Americans, yes he said come on, and I followed and there we were Alice Toklas panting behind and Basket very excited and we went into a room filled with maquis
and the mayor of Belley and I said in a loud voice are there any Americans here and three men stood up and they were Americans God bless them and were we pleased. We held each other’s hands and we patted each other and we sat down together and I told them who we were, and they knew, I always take it for granted that people will know who I am and at the same time at the last moment I kind of doubt, but they knew of course they knew, they were lieutenant Walter E. Oleson 120th Engineers and private Edward Landry and Walter Hartze, and they belonged to the Thunder-birds and how we talked and how we patted each other in the good American way, and I had to know where they came from and where they were going and where they were born. In the last war we had come across our first American soldiers and it had been nice but nothing like this, after almost two years of not a word with America, there they were, all three of them. Then we went to look at their car the jeep, and I had expected it to be much smaller but it was quite big and they said did I want a ride and I said you bet I wanted a ride and we all climbed in and there I was riding in an American army car driven by an American soldier. Everybody was so excited.

Then we all said good-bye and we did hope to see them again, and then we went on with our shopping, then suddenly everybody got excited army trucks filled with soldiers were coming along but not Americans, this was the French army in American cars and they were happy and we were happy and tired and happy and then we saw two who looked like Americans in a car standing alone and I went over and said are you Americans and they said sure, and by that time I was confident and I said I was Gertrude Stein and did they want to come back with us and spend the night. They said well yes they thought that the war could get along without them for a few hours so they came, Alice Toklas got into the car with the driver and the colonel came with me, oh a joyous moment and we all drove home and the village was wild with excitement and they all wanted to shake the colonel’s hand and at last we got into the house, and were we excited. Here were the first Americans
actually in the house with us, impossible to believe that only three weeks before the Germans had been in the village still and feeling themselves masters, it was wonderful. Lieutenant Colonel William O. Perry Headquarters 47th Infantry Division and private John Schmaltz, wonderful that is all I can say about it wonderful, and I said you are going to sleep in beds where German officers slept six weeks ago, wonderful my gracious perfectly wonderful.

How we talked that night, they just brought all America to us every bit of it, they came from Colorado, lovely Colorado, I do not know Colorado but that is the way I felt about it lovely Colorado and then everybody was tired out and they gave us nice American specialties and my were we happy, we were, completely and truly happy and completely and entirely worn out with emotion. The next morning while they breakfasted we talked some more and we patted each other and then kissed each other and then they went away. Just as we were sitting down to lunch, in came four more Americans this time war correspondents, our emotions were not yet exhausted nor our capacity to talk, how we talked and talked and where they were born was music to the ears Baltimore and Washington D. C. and Detroit and Chicago, it is all music to the ears so long long long away from the names of the places where they were born. Well they have asked me to go with them to Voiron to broadcast with them to America next Sunday and I am going and the war is over and this certainly this is the last war to remember.

Write about us they all said a little sadly, and write about them I will. They all said good-bye Gerty as the train pulled out and then they said, well we will see you in America, and then they said we will stop on our way back, and then they said we will see you in California and then one said, you got to get to New York first.

It is pretty wonderful and pretty awful to have been intimate and friendly and proud of two American armies in France apart only by twenty-seven years. It is wonderful and if I could live twenty-seven more years could I see them here again. No I do not think so, maybe in other places but not here.

In the beginning when the Americans were here we had officers and their companion drivers. They were companion drivers, companions and drivers drivers and companions. The French revolution said, liberty brotherhood and equality, well they said it and we are it, bless us.

Of course the driver is a little prouder when it is a colonel than when it is a lieutenant or captain, well just a little. The first one was Lieutenant-Colonel Peary of Colorado, he came with me in the taxi from Belley and Miss Toklas went with Jake in the jeep, his name was not Jake but the colonel called him Jake because he used, while sitting in the jeep waiting, to sign his name as autograph for the French who crowded around him and wanted it, just like a film star, so the colonel called him Jake.

Well Miss Toklas asked him if the other one was a soldier like himself, they were our first Americans and we did not know how to tell one from the other as on the outside they all look alike particularly when their outside jacket is buttoned up, Miss Toklas
asked him and he said with contentment oh he is a lieutenant colonel.

After that we had lots of officers and finally I met three majors in Aix-les-Bains. I said well it’s all right, but now we have had everything from a second lieutenant to a full colonel and indeed several specimens of each now I want a general. The majors at least one of them said I think I can get you one. Would you like General Patch. Would I, I said, well I guess I would. If, said he, you write him a note I am sure he would come. He gave me an old card, I had already given him my autograph on a piece of French paper money, it is hard to write on French paper money but I finally did get the habit, so I wrote the note to General Patch and of course we thought it all a joke but not at all. About ten days later, came the personal secretary of General Patch with a nice driver from Arkansas who said modestly he always drove the general, and they brought me a charming letter from the general saying he would be coming along very soon, to eat the chicken dinner I had offered him. The secretary said that the general would be coming along in about two weeks. When that time came heavy fighting began in the Vosges mountains, the general’s headquarters moved away from our region, and now we are still waiting, but he surely will come, he said he would and he will.

Gradually as the joy and excitement of really having Americans here really having them here began to settle a little I began to realise that Americans converse much more than they did, American men in those other days, the days before these days did not converse. How well I remember in the last war seeing four or five of them at a table at a hotel and one man would sort of drone along monologuing about what he had or had not done and the others solemnly and quietly eating and drinking and never saying a word. And seeing the soldiers stand at a corner or be seated somewhere and there they were and minutes hours passed and they never said a word, and then one would get up and leave and the others got up and left and that was that. No this army was not like that, this army conversed, it talked it listened,
and each one of them had something to say no this army was not like that other army. People do not change no they don’t, when I was in America after almost thirty years of absence they asked me if I did not find Americans changed and I said no what could they change to except to be American and anyway I could have gone to school with any of them they were just like the ones I went to school with and now they are still American but they can converse and they are interesting when they talk. The older Americans always told stories that was about all there was to their talking but these don’t tell stories they converse and what they say is interesting and what they hear interests them and that does make them different not really different God bless them but just the same they are not quite the same.

We did not talk about that then. We had too much to tell and they had too much to tell to spend any time conversing about conversation. What we always wanted to know was the state they came from and what they did before they came over here. One said that he was born on a race track and worked in a night club. Another was the golf champion of Mississippi, but what we wanted most was to hear them say the name of the state in which they were born and the names of the other states where they had lived.

After every war, there have only been two like that but I do not think that just to say after the other war makes it feel as it does, no I do mean after every war, it feels like that, after every war when I talk and listen to all our army, it feels like that too, the thing I like most are the names of all the states of the United States. They make music and they are poetry, you do not have to recite them all but you just say any one two three four or five of them and you will see they make music and they make poetry.

After the last war I wanted to write a long book or a poem, I never did either but I wanted to, about how Kansas differed from Iowa and Iowa from Illinois and Illinois from Ohio, and Mississippi from Louisiana and Louisiana from Tennessee and Tennessee from Kentucky, and all the rest from all the rest, it would be most exciting, because each one of them does so completely
differ from all the rest including their neighbors. And when you think how ruled the lines are of the states, no natural boundaries of mountains or rivers but just ruled out with a ruler to make lines and angles and all the same each one of the states has its own character, its own accent, just like provinces in France which are so ancient. It does not take long to make one state different from another state not so very long, they are all just as American as that but they are all so different one from the other Dakota and Wyoming and Texas and Oklahoma. Well any one you like. I like them all.

After all every one is as their land is, as the climate is, as the mountains and the rivers or their oceans are as the wind and rain and snow and ice and heat and moisture is, they just are and that makes them have their way to eat their way to drink their way to act their way to think and their way to be subtle, and even if the lines of demarcation are only made with a ruler after all what is inside those right angles is different from those on the outside of those right angles, any American knows that.

It is just that, I do not know why but Arkansas touched me particularly, anything touches me particularly now that is American. There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is.

After all the excitement of all the jeeps and all the officers and all the drivers was over we were quiet a little while and we wondered are they all gone will we not see them again, and then Culoz which is a small town but a railroad center began to have them and we began to have them.

Troop trains began to pass through the station on their way to the front.

I was coming home from a walk and an F. F. I. said to me there is a train of your compatriots standing at a siding just below, I
imagine it would please you to see them, thank you I said it will and I went quickly. There they were strolling along and standing about and I said Hello to the first group and they said Hello and I said I am an American and they laughed and said so were they and how did I happen to get caught here and I told them how I had passed the war here, and they wanted to know if there was snow on the mountains in winter and there was a large group of them and I told them who I was thinking some one of them might have heard of me but lots of them had and they crowded around and we talked and we talked. It was the first time I had been with a real lot of honest to God infantry and they said they were just that. We began to talk states and they wanted to know about our life under the Germans and I told them and they were interested, and they told me about where they had been and what they thought of the people they had seen and then they wanted autographs and they gave me pieces of money to write on, and one Pole who was the most extravagant gave me a hundred franc bill to sign for him, funny that a Pole should have been the most wasteful of his money, perhaps he was only going to spend it anyway, and one of them told me that they knew about me because they study my poems along with other American poetry in the public schools and that did please me immensely it most certainly did and then I left and they left.