536 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



hatches in a heavy sea. Strangely 

 enough, it turned the weather in a way 

 contrary to what we had dared expect. 



The walls were easy. Lumber was 

 plentiful at the captured dump and a 

 four-line team furnished transportation. 

 Last of all came the question of windows, 

 and that was a puzzler, for a pane of un- 

 broken glass was rarer than hen's teeth 

 in all that shell-crushed plain. The men 

 were patient, however, and contrived to 

 locate a sufficient quantity, searching for 

 days throughout the shelters and dugouts 

 that burrowed deep into the hillsides. 



Our carpenter was, by all odds, the 

 hardest-working person at Brigade, for 

 while the other men were gathering ma- 

 terial he was always kept busy trying to 

 hold up his end of the job, and he suc- 

 ceeded. On Christmas Eve the last board 

 had been nailed on the walls and the last 

 bench completed. We really had a mess 

 hall that was worthy of the name. 



All afternoon we had lugged in the 

 greens and hung them everywhere, until 

 the rafters and unpainted walls were 

 hidden under an amazing curtain of 

 spruce boughs, pines, cedars, holly, mis- 

 tletoe, and ivy. The old verse was liter- 

 ally true : 



"Lo, Christmas Day is here at last, 

 Let every one be jolly; 

 The posts are all with ivy dressed, . 

 And all the walls with holly." 



Rickety German trench stoves about 

 two feet high stood in each corner. 

 When they did not smoke too much, they 

 kept the place comfortably warm, only 

 threatening to burn us up at times, greens 

 and all. 



TARA, TH]5 PRIDE) 01? THE MESS HAU, 



Tara, the pride of the mess, stood in a 

 cleared place at one end, apart from the 

 long tables and benches we had built out 

 from the walls. Tara was a piano, a war- 

 scarred veteran. Tara by name, because 

 having lost his entire front casing in 

 action, he looked more like a harp than 

 anything else and, thanks to a weakness 

 in the legs, had to lean against the wall 

 for support. 



Tara had fallen upon evil days be- 

 fore coming into our hands. Originally 

 French, four years of German pounding 



had left their mark upon his keys. Then 

 had come the Allied shelling, and Tara, 

 with front boards shot to splinters, had 

 stood for many weeks while the constant 

 drizzle of the Meuse had soaked down 

 upon him through the roofless jumble of 

 stone that had been a house. The effect 

 was that Tara's keys were mute, wedged 

 solidly together, in fact — that is, until the 

 trench stoves had got in their work. 



We had carried Tara with infinite trou- 

 ble to the driest of our dugouts — the one 

 where the moisture only dripped from 

 the roof at one end. Here we had sur- 

 rounded him with trench stoves all stoked 

 to the limit and going full tilt, with a man 

 specially detailed to keep up the fires. 

 The keys, one at a time, had responded 

 to this heroic treatment, until now, on 

 Christmas Day, Tara had once more 

 found his soul. 



SENDING A TRUCK ACROSS FRANCE 



The problem of food had seemed over- 

 whelming at first. We might well have 

 been in some mountain fastness, for all 

 the free communication there was with 

 the outside world. Such roads as there 

 were presented more the appearance of 

 quarries than anything else. Railways 

 could not be considered. Our quarter- 

 master depot had trouble enough in get- 

 ting the very necessities of life out to us, 

 let alone Christmas luxuries. Finally we 

 cut the Gordian Knot by attempting the 

 impossible and sending our little Ford 

 truck all the way across France, from the 

 ruined hills of Verdun, on past Ste. 

 Menehould and the shell-torn forest of 

 the Argonne ; then east to the great Route 

 Nationale and Paris. 



The Brigade Fund, helped out by a do- 

 nation from the officers, had been put to 

 good use and few, if any, troops of the 

 A. E. F. still standing by their arms on 

 the old battle line had a finer dinner than 

 that we saw spread out before us as we 

 entered the mess hall after our Christmas 

 games. 



The men sat down on both sides of the 

 rough boards that served as tables. When 

 all had found a place, the General him- 

 self entered the room. He spoke but a 

 few words ; yet no man present, officer 

 or private, will ever forget the scene. It 

 was a soldier's greeting to soldiers, just 



