Chapter 8

The first elements of the 29th Division landed at Brest early in June 1918 and were quickly sent off for combat training with French and British advisors. Many of the young men still looked rather sallow as they were packed into boxcars. The rest of the division came in later that month as part of several convoys, some of which landed first at Portsmouth, England.

The long ocean voyage on the converted Hamburg-American liner, always with the fear of lurking U-boats, was a first for most of the 4,200 soldiers, all wearing their life vests day after day. Many of them were violently ill within a few days and some of them never got their "sea legs" and stayed in their narrow bunks or hung over the rail all the way to France, avoiding even the sight of food and trying to live on bread and broth. For everyone, including the officers, there were cramped quarters, little exercise, meager food in the two daily meals and almost nothing to do except exchange rumors, shoot craps, masturbate and write letters which they knew would be censored.

The men had been provided with a long list of subjects they were to avoid in their letters home. Sammy wrote a full page to all his relatives on the eleven-day crossing and one longing note each day to Millie which he dated, numbered and folded into a single envelope. He, along with all the other men, filled out a card that was mailed home to tell his parents that he had safely arrived in France.

As he looked out over the gray ocean day after day, seeing enemy periscopes in every whitecap, Sammy wondered if he would someday be taking a trip in the other direction. Already several men in the division had died in accidents or of illness, and he knew the Huns were waiting for him with their machine guns and their poison gas. For the hundredth time at least, Sammy wondered if he would run, if he might be a coward when the time came. He tried to pray and failed, distracted time after time but another whitecap on the horizonless sea.

In France, as soon as they moved into their billets at Champlitte, the men were issued the long-promised wool uniforms, including overseas caps. The new khaki uniforms with their big pockets, high collars and dark buttons both fit and felt much better than the clothes they had trained in. They even got new leg wrappings along with advice not to pull their puttees too tight unless they wanted trench foot. They also received their steel helmets, another Gillette razor and a new-style gas mask as well as several pairs of socks and repeated warnings to keep their feet dry and their cock in their pants. Most found that with the gas mask on they could see about ten feet straight ahead and almost nothing to the sides and that they really had to suck in air in order to breathe.

Somehow the French seemed to be convinced that all Americans were rich and stupid, and the price of everything, including sex, mounted rapidly. Bottles of inferior wine soon were selling for a dollar each and calvados was often twice that. When the men were paid it was in francs and that led to more confusion and more inflation, but Sammy found he could get a hatful of grapes for five francs, a real bargain in his mind.

Every payday resulted in hundreds of hangovers, numerous fights and lots of money changing hands on OD blankets as well as in rancid bedrooms and the dark corners of alleys. The men of the 29th soon found out that both the British and French forces issued condoms to their men, but there were none forthcoming for the Yanks. It was not long before men were reporting to sick call with very nasty lesions on their private parts and voracious lice they called crabs in their pubic hair.

In fact, after their initial transport in boxcars labeled "quarante hommes et huit chevaux" to their billeting area, almost all the soldiers had lice crawling on them. Picking off lice and killing them in a fire or with a pinch of the fingernails became an important part-time job for most doughboys, one they seldom wrote home about.

They learned how to build, reinforce and maintain both main and communicating trenches and bombproof dugouts and how to string and cut barbed wire entanglements. All of them were briefly exposed to mustard gas in windowless, makeshift chambers. By the end of July they were transported to the Alsace region in what they called "sliding door Pullmans" and underwent more rigorous and realistic training just behind the front where Tommys and Poilus tried to frighten them with horror stories and where German planes occasionally flew over to attack observation balloons and bomb the front lines and artillery parks.

For Sammy, the best days were the busiest ones because they left him no time to think or worry. When he could fall into his blanket and quickly sleep, all the phantoms his imagination created in lonely moments vanished. Still the distant thunder of artillery made his stomach ache and his temples pound. He found he could not always conjure up an image of Millie anymore, just a girl, a ripe girl, but sometimes, just before he fell asleep, he could feel her hair and taste her lips. Some nights, just before he slept, he pleasured himself shamelessly.

The 29th relieved "Galloping" Jim Parker's 32nd Red Arrow Division, composed of National Guard units from Wisconsin and Michigan, in a long-quiet area and trained with the battered XL Corps of the French army. From the French, the American learned the ins and outs of trench warfare and soon knew which shells to duck and which to ignore. Within a week they could talk about whiz-bangs and flying pigs with the élan of grizzled veterans and never crouched down when "outgoing mail" whirred overhead. They went on patrols along the flanks and then across "no-man's land" to gather information and, if possible, capture German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers for the intelligence officers.