13 Those That Never Sing

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Chapter ThirteenMarching as to War

Josie ran the weathered newspaper clipping between her thumb and forefingers and felt

the dry texture again before rereading the report.

A casualty list issued in Washington on July20 contains 101 names.²

Killed in action, 21; died of wounds, 12;Died of disease, 8; severely wounded, 59;Missing, 1.

Army: Killed in ActionSERGEANT.

Ralph Barker, Mount Vernon, Ind.PRIVATES

Louis U. Chartier, 255 Massaesic StreetManchester, N.H.

Albert E. Dralle, Seward, Kan.William Duffy, Minersville, Pa.Erwin Martinson, Anchor, Ill.

Bill had clipped the report and wrote a note that he enclosed with the clipping,



I am sending you a clipping of this paper edited in Paris with a list of casualties. The one from Seward Kansas, I went to his funeral. He belonged to

the bunch from Kansas that I met. He was killed the same time Paul Alexander of Nickerson was wounded. If you think of it, Pete Henry might know him, I didn¶t

however, but he was from near home.

Sitting in the rocking chair in the front room, Josie folded the clipping back into the letter

it had come from and rocked fretfully. Al Dralle had gone to school with Fay in Nickerson.

He¶d even come home once or twice with Fay over weekends. He was a fine young man, Josie

remembered. Fay will be so disappointed to hear the news. As she pondered the course of the

War in France, she reached down into the sewing bag that she kept beside her favorite chair and

found the letter that had come from Bill last week. She wanted to read it again and believe that

he was still well.

Somewhere in France July 31 ±18

Dear Mother and all²

Well just such a lovely evening and have just had a great feed and feeling fine

once more. Just sat down for a smoke and picked up my pen and am sitting here looking at my little parlor ³ at the pretty greens and the little stream running along in front, the

paved highway for my sidewalk, the red orange sun growing old in the west, a slyairplane now and then purring along and I am just wondering, well yes, and thinking of

home and of you all. Oh yes, I do that quite often, but say, this is sure a fine sight and beautiful. The harvest is about over, wild raspberries are ripe and grow all over the

hillsides. And gardens! You might call it a garden spot for they utilize every inch of ground it seems, if it isn¶t shot up too much.

Oh I might go on until this would be all cut up by the censor. I will try and get it

all to you. So don¶t kick if it is short for it is better than not, if you get it.

I rec¶d a letter from you a few days ago of July 2nd

and it was good-- also one from Ramsey. He is doing what he can, I guess.

Say a little thing happened on the boat coming over which I never have told you.

I met a Wm. G. Holmes from Missouri in the Infantry. He heard my name and called and showed me his tag which we all have and it caused a little friendship. So now if you read



of a Wm. G. Holmes in the list of casualties, be sure it¶s a Signal Corps man before you put up any crepe.

Am still missing that old hot Kansas sun, although it is warmer here than our last

two stops.

I will ring off and drop you a few lines occasionally. Don¶t you stop, write good long letters and tell Fay he had better give me a few details of the games. Also Speck

and Blubber a record of the young jacks that Skip and themselves have caught.

With love and best wishes to all I am as ever Your Son and Bro

Bill

July 31, 1918

Camp ³Nice,´ Somewhere in France

After he finished writing the letter to his family, Bill put down his pen and scooped up a

mouthful of wild raspberries. They were so sweet he wanted to send them back to Kansas with

his letter. Of all his memories of France, he reckoned that the raspberries and MeurtheetMoselle

might always be the sweetest.

For compared to the previous encampments the Signal Corps had in France, Meurthe et

Moselle felt more like a resort. Here, instead of sleeping rolls and tents, the command billeted

the men in the private homes and inns in the little village, most of which were empty except for

the soldiers. Many of the full-time residents had evacuated or abandoned their homes to flee

south, away from the front. Bill¶s accommodations, an alpine lodge with large crossbeam

timbers in the great room, included meals made from fresh food, a clean bed, and access to the

rest of the home. He enjoyed the company of his best buddies in the Corps. The lodge had its

own wine cellar and the men were amazed and gratified to discover it was not yet depleted,

though it might be if their unit stayed very much longer.



So it happened that this evening Bill sat in a wicker lawn chair at a round table beneath

the tallest pine tree he could ever remember seeing. As he put his letter home in the envelope

and addressed it, his friend, Rowland, a good ole boy out of Odessa, Texas, pulled up a chair

beside him and took out a pouch of tobacco to roll a cigarette. Bill invited himself to have a

bowlful of Rowland¶s tobacco and tamped it into his pipe with his index finger.

³What are you planning this fine evening, my good man?´ Rowland asked.

Bill drew on his little briar pipe and shook his head. ³Nothing so far.You?´

³Well, since we¶re free to stroll this alpine wonderland, I thought you might want to visit

some of the locals I heard about.´³A new friend? You don¶t even speak the language. Who¶s this?́

³Oh I speak enough to get by. Some phrases are more important than others. For

example.µ Parlez-vousanglais?¶ µ Encore de la bière, silvousplais!¶

µQuellesbellesmésangesvousavez!¶ µVeux-tu me baisercesoir ?¶ His French had a dreadful

southern twang. ³Let¶s you and me go have us a cultural experience tonight,´ Rowland said,

giving Bill a nudge as he winked. He slid a small piece of paper that had been carefully torn out

of the corner of a piece of French stationery. On it, someone had written in pencil:

Madame Chrétien9 Rue en Grand Puits

MontsurMeurthe(MeurtheetMoselle)

³What¶s this about?´ Bill asked, grinning, suspecting he would like the answer.

³Don¶t you worry about that now, son. Just get off your arse, grab your wallet and come

on.´



The two soldiers set out as dusk fell over the village. They had no difficulty finding the

residence, but when they knocked on the door, no one answered immediately. Finally, a peep-

hole moved on the door and from inside the boys heard a husky female baritone say, ³Qui estlà?´

³Signal Corps! Mademoiselle, Ouvrez, sivousplais!´ Bill thought Rowland sounded like

a bumpkin, but at this point he had signed on for the run of the show.

The door opened a few inches and a Teutonic-looking woman with unnaturally blonde

hair looked them over. Her particularly generous cleavage erupted at the top of a slightly

threadbare, black floor-length gown (a dressing gown?) caught tightly at the waist with a

sinister-looking silk rope.³Looking for a leetle party?´ the woman suggested, rolling the ³r´ in ³party´ with a very

thick French accent.

³You bet!´ Rowland answered, pushing the door in too eagerly. ³Are you Madame

Chretien?´

³ Entréz, mesamis,´ the hostess replied, stepping aside to reveal a dimly lit parlor with

several overstuffed pieces of furniture. ³ Je màppelle Madame Chrétien.´

³Well, mon nom is Rowland and this here¶s my friend, Bill. We¶re looking for someone

to spend some time with tonight.´

For just a moment, Bill marveled at his situation. Was he really in a French whorehouse?

He could not take the shit-eatin¶ grin off his face. Dumbstruck, he followed Rowland into the

parlor and stood awkwardly near his side, still speechless.

³You will have some wine, yes?´ Mme. Chrétien offered.

³That would be mighty nice of you, merci beaucoup!´



Mme. Chrétien smiled and turned, rolling her eyes. She brought the boys glasses of wine

that Bill thought tasted like vinegar. He wondered how long it had been since grapes had been

harvested in France and how any wine at all had survived after so many years of war. Mme.

Chrétien proved quite adept at explaining the terms of engagement in English for Bill and

Rowland. Before their wine glasses were half empty, each had parted with a silver dollar for the

evening¶s entertainment.

With that, Mme. Chrétien summoned four young women from a room Bill guessed to be

the dining room, though it was separated from them by a heavy velvet drape that Mme. Chrétien

held open for them. The women appeared in filmy negligees and brightly colored foundationgarments visible beneath. Two of the girls might have been sisters, with thick black hair and

heavy eyebrows. Bill wondered if they were gypsies. One of the girls had fine blonde hair but

was thin with tiny breasts and dark circles under her eyes. The last girl looked much healthier.

She was almost as tall as the men. She had red hair caught up in a twist at the back of her neck.

Bill shuddered as he saw Rosa¶s eyes in her face. Her complexion was smooth, like fresh cream

with a hint of rose water.

Rowland said, ³How much for these two?´ indicating the girls Bill supposed might be

gypsies.

Mme. Chrétien said something to the girls, ³Vousvoulezbaisercemec-là avec le petit

queue?´ The girls giggled and covered their mouths so that Bill and Rowland could not see their

teeth.

Rowland gave Mme. Chrétien another dollar and stepped forward to claim his prizes.

The girls caught his arms on either side and led him to a door and a staircase beyond it.

³Quelestvotre nom?´ Bill asked the redhead.



³ É milie´ she answered, coyly.

³ Je suis à vous le soir ?´ clumsily putting together his request from his phrase book.

³Oui,´ Émilie answered and stepped towards him, reaching for his hand which she took

and led him also up the stairs.

Mme. Chrétien smiled and tucked the coins inside her brassiere. µC'est la vie,¶ she

thought.

Once upstairs, Émilie led Bill into a bedroom at the end of a dark hallway. She closed

the door behind them and unbuttoned the jacket of his uniform. The room glowed in a flickering

amber light, owing to oil lamps on either side. She slid the jacket over his shoulders and it fellwith a thud as she kissed his neck and chest. Bill felt movement in his pants as his member

engorged. Émilie unbuckled his belt and opened his woolen trousers. The buckle fell with a

metallic thump on the bare wood floor. Naked except for his underwear, he felt awkward with

his knee high boots continuing to hold the bottoms of his pants in place; he could not very well

move. Émilie peeled back his union suit until it, too, wrapped around his ankles, further

hobbling him.

Bill imagined he was quite a sight, as he stood there naked from the knees up while the

girl¶s mouth covered his body. Émilie removed her negligee and let it waft to the floor. The

undergarment she wore beneath her corset barely covered her breasts. Bill could see that she

wore nothing below the waist except silk stockings, rolled to the knee and a pair of old, scuffed

shoes with high heels rounded from wear. She guided him backwards towards the bed and laid

him down. By now he was fully erect and and he reached out to kiss her.

³ Non,´ she said, turning away. Instead of allowing Bill to kiss her she undid his boots.

She pulled first one and then the other off and then his pants and the union suit he wore below



his uniform. This left Bill naked but for his socks, which she ignored as she climbed atop him in

bed. Bill smelled her body odor covered by French perfume and the pungent fragrance of her

femininity.

As he pushed himself further onto the bed, Émilie straddled his waist and lowered herself

onto him. He was instantly lost in her as his consciousness floated away. Émilie let down her

long red hair and used it like a feather duster across his skin, now electric with sensitivity. It had

been a long time. He remembered his last night with Rosa after dinner at Uncle Sherman¶s, the

night before he boarded the train to Ft.Leavenworth. That cold January night he had shivered in

the icy chill of Rosa¶s room in the little house on Washington Street, so many nights ago, so far away. He felt all goose flesh again tonight in the stale darkness of Mme. Chrétien¶s guest room

while Émilie rhythmically pumped atop him. He wondered if he would ever be with a woman

again after this. Or see Rosa. He wanted it to last, but his excitement and pleasure were too

great and he felt himself approaching orgasm. Émilie moaned softly as she rocked atop his body.

Bill let out a little cry as he came into her and then he suddenly sobbed into her shoulders, crying

out of control.

This unexpected and unbridled emotion startled Émilie but she folded his head into her

arms and held him, rocking him gently. She kissed him on his ears, his cheek, everywhere but

his lips and held him tighter and tighter. His emotions gradually came under control. The two of

them rolled over onto their sides together, still one flesh and held onto each other. The room

became perfectly quiet now, soft in its warmth, surrounding them. But in the distance Bill heard

the explosions of artillery somewhere in the darkness outside their sanctuary. They clung more

tightly to one another. Neither spoke. Both seemed to sense the great danger of the world in



which they lived. Both seemed to know that these few moments of tenderness might be the last

they would ever experience.

When he returned to his quarters, Bill pulled off his boots and draped the pieces of his

uniform over the end of the bed where he could put his feet under them. He reached into his kit

and found the black and white photograph he had received at mail call a few weeks before. It

was a photograph of Rosa Kelley standing in someone¶s back yard, shrubbery immediately behind her and a good-sized elm tree in the background. She wore a light-colored summer dress,

caught and gathered below her breasts; long beads of a darker color hung round her neck. Her

red hair shone dark in the full sun of the picture, cut shorter now than he remembered. She

looked straight into the camera and smiled thinly, holding up her left hand, as if waving to him.

He stared at her picture for a few minutes and then turned it over and read her note again.

June 27, 19183:30 P.M.

If you get this let me know

and I will send another inthe next letter. Should you

answer and want me to keep still about hearing from you,

I certainly will.

She left her picture unsigned. Bill did not care who knew that she was writing to him.

She could tell the world. He put the picture back into his kit and lay down to try to get some

sleep before dawn.



The Signal Corps held up in MeurtheetMoselle for six more days before heading out

again. The battle that the men had whispered about for so many weeks would unfold in a small

village just a few kilometers away in less than two weeks. It would be the beginning of the end

of the Great Adventure: the final destruction in the Great War.

13 Those That Never Sing

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