Don Bennett's War - Chapter 9

Don Bennett's War

Chapter 9 - North to battle

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On our thirteenth day, we received our orders to travel to the front, and so that afternoon we got most of our equipment and belongings ready to go. The next morning we put on our packs, slung our rifles and marched five miles to the rail station at Aix. There we hunted out our assigned 40 & 8 (40 hommes [men] and 8 chevaux [horses]) boxcars, climbed into them, and settled down for our train ride to the front. There were eighteen men in our car which took up all the room when we took off our packs and laid down on our beds (rough floor). Before we stretched out though, we had to brush the horse manure out the door. With quite a few jerks and lunges, quite a few train whistles and quite a few shufflings and reshufflings, we finally started northward Alsace. We passed the time playing cards, cooking our meals of canned and K rations on our small gasoline stoves, or taking turns sitting in one of the two doorways with our feet hanging nearly to the tracks and watching the French countryside go by (which reminded me of Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy of the comic strips). We had plenty of chances to relieve ourselves, for the stops were often and we also had open doors, but if we were going fast, it resulted in complaints from the car behind us.

On our second day of traveling we came to Lyons, the largest city in France. Here we stopped for an hour in the yard, which was next to and above one of the main thoroughfares. While we were standing near the rail and looking at the town, many people, young and old, men and women, began to gather and beg for cigarettes. We tossed our cigarettes one by one, and sometimes by the pack, to the people, and they would run and scramble for each one dropped - like a man feeding dogs. Some scantily clad women came out of the house across the street and tried to tempt us by showing more of their bodies and telling of their cheap price, but the men had too many morals or too little time.

The second night it began to rain and I awoke to water dripping on me. I tried to move to a drier place, but there was too many men and too little dry spots. The next day, however, we pulled into Dijon and during our long stop there, we climbed on top of the car next to us, and with our bayonets took off the whole tarpaper roof, threw it over on ours and nailed it on. that night, however, it blew off, but the rain had nearly stopped then.

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