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By Root 9093 0

sick about what they ought to do. Steve said he was going home and C.O. and to hel with it; Ripley and Schuyler said they didn't care what they did as long as they kept out of the American army, and talked about joining the For-eign Legion or the Lafayette Escadril e. Fred Summers said, "Fel ers, this war's the most gigan-tic cockeyed graft of the century and me for it and the cross red nurses." At the end of first week he was holding down two Red Cross jobs, each at twentyfive a week, and being kept by a middleaged French marraine who owned a big house in Neuil y. When Dick's money gave out Fred borrowed some for him from his marraine, but he never would let any of the others see her. "Don't want you fel ers to know what I'm in for," he'd say.

At lunchtime one day Fred Summers came round to

say that everything was fixed up and that he had jobs for them al . The wops, he explained, were pretty wel shot after Caporetto and couldn't get out of the habit of retreating. It was thought that sending an American Red Cross ambulance section down would help their morale. He was in charge of recruiting for the time being and had put al their names down. Dick immediately said he spoke Italian and felt he'd be a great help to the morale of the Italians, so the next morning they were al at the Red Cross office when it opened and were duly enrol ed in Section 1

of the American Red Cross for Italy. There fol owed a couple more weeks waiting around during which Fred

-191-Summers took on a mysterious Serbian lady he picked up in a café back of the Place St. Michel who wanted to teach them to take hashish, and. Dick became friends with a drunken Montenegran who'd been a barkeep in New York and who promised to get them al decorated by King

Nicholas of Montenegro. But the day they were going to be received at Neuil y to have the decorations pinned on, the section left.

The convoy of twelve Fiats and eight Fords ran along the smooth macadam roads south through the Forest of Fontainebleau and wound east through the winecolored hil s of central France. Dick was driving a Ford alone and was so busy trying to remember what to do with his feet he could hardly notice the scenery. Next day they went over the mountains and down into the val ey of the Rhone, into a rich wine country with planetrees and cypresses, smel ing of the vintage and late fal roses and the south. By Montélimar, the war, the worry about jail and protest and sedition al seemed a nightmare out of another century. They had a magnificent supper in the quiet pink and white town with cêpes and garlic and strong red wine.

"Fel ers," Fred Summers kept saying, "this ain't a war, it's a goddam Cook's tour." They slept in style in the big brocadehung beds at the hotel, and when they left in the morning a little schoolboy ran after Dick's car shouting Vive l'Amerique and handed him a box of nougat, the local specialty; it was the land of Cockaigne.

That day the convoy fel to pieces running into Mar-seil es; discipline melted away; drivers stopped at al the wineshops along the sunny roads to drink and play craps. The Red Cross publicity man and the Saturday Evening Post correspondent who was the famous writer, Mont-gomery El is, got hideously boiled and could be heard whooping and yel ing in the back of the staffcar, while the little fat lieutenant ran up and down the line of cars at every stop red and hysterical y puffing. Eventual y they

-192-were al rounded up and entered Marseil es in formation. They'd just finished parking in a row in the main square and the boys were settling back into the bars and cafés round about, when a man named Ford got the bright idea of looking into his gasoline tank with a match and blew his car up. The local firedepartment came out in style and when car No. 8 was properly incinerated turned their high-pressure hose on the others, and Schuyler, who spoke the best French in the section, had to be dragged away from a conversation with the cigarette girl at the corner café to beg the firechief for chrissake to lay off.

With the addition of a fel ow named