Inside the tiny French tavern restaurant, Madame Gervaud sat, rocked and knitted, Outside , the rain slanted down on the narrow cobbled street . Now and then a track or a jeep splashed by, the occupants huddled miserably against the downpour. “You are wet?” asked Madame Gervaud politely but strictly rhetorically. “C’est la guerre. Soldiers always are wet. It was thus the last time. Come in and dry yourself.”[1]

Half of this was spoken in French, half in English, but blended so well is was easy to understand. Obviously today was not the first time American doughboys had dried themselves beside the pot-bellied stove at Madam Gervauds cafe in a little village near Dijon.

Three soldiers now stood with their backs to the stove, damp but not too dispirited. They watched Madame s granddaughter waiting on tables where a handful of doughboys and French civilians were sitting.

Madame smiled slightly, wrinkles creasing her face which might have been 50 or 90 years old.

“Soldiers always are the same,” she said, “always wet but always watching. The last time it was that one’s mother.”

Meanwhile “that one” slipped from table to table, always smiling back at the soldiers, meeting those who attempted anything more than a smile with playful but effective slaps.

The café is only a little hole in the wall along the narrow street. The only glow inside except for the dim afternoon daylight filtered in through the now mudspattered windows came from the stove, two candles at the bar and a faint light from the kitchen door beyond.

Suddenly, the whole scene seemed like an uncanny parody—like history in reverse, like a camera flashback to a generation ago.

There was garbled argument. The table was littered with brown bread, meat and wine, beer here and there, and glasses of cognac. It was the old paratroopers vs. infantry business—who had done the most, who had been at the front longest, who took the most casualties.

“Was it like this the last time, Madame?”

“Oui, oui,” said Madame, still knitting, “always the same. The soldiers always wet, always eat, always drink , always make love, always argue. C’est la guerre.”

“What else, Madame?”

Her eyes seemed to turn inward. Her voice became a sing-song. “When the sun shines, soldiers always laugh. When it rains, they’re always homesick, they hate the army, hate the officers.”

The argument at the table ended in a roar of laughter at some joke. Three soldiers got up to go, instinctively hunching their shoulders at the prospect of facing rain again. Their cries, “Au revoir, Madamoiselle; au revoir, Madame!” blended with the cries at the table, “Encore vin rouge, Mademoiselle!”

One thick layer of wet cold air entered the café as the door opened and closed.

“Always soldiers go away,” Madame said in a voice suddenly hard and brittle, “but not always do they come back.”

Suddenly withdrawn, she resumed her knitting and rocking in silence.

Flushed and smiling “that one” brought a new bottle of wine to the soldiers at the table. The cat rose and stretched. The candle sputtered. Damp clothes steamed.

Outside the rain kept slanting viciously down the narrow street.[1]

~~~~~

[1] Kenneth L. Dixon. Associated Press Staff Writer. With the A. E. F. in France. “War Comes And Goes, Yet It Never Changes.” News Clipping found in one of Phil’s scrapbooks. (Read more about Mr. Dixon’s compelling war coverage here)

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