Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (92 page)

It is pretty wonderful and pretty awful to have been intimate and friendly and proud of two American armies in France apart only by twenty-seven years. It is wonderful and if I could live twenty-seven more years could I see them here again. No I do not think so, maybe in other places but not here.

In the beginning when the Americans were here we had officers and their companion drivers. They were companion drivers, companions and drivers drivers and companions. The French revolution said, liberty brotherhood and equality, well they said it and we are it, bless us.

Of course the driver is a little prouder when it is a colonel than when it is a lieutenant or captain, well just a little. The first one was Lieutenant-Colonel Perry of Colorado, he came with me in the taxi from Belley and Miss Toklas went with Jake in the jeep, his name was not Jake but the colonel called him Jake because he used, while sitting in the jeep waiting, to sign his name as autograph for the French who crowded around him and wanted it, just like a film star, so the colonel called him Jake.

Well Miss Toklas asked him if the other one was a soldier
like himself, they were our first Americans and we did not know how to tell one from the other as on the outside they all look alike particularly when their outside jacket is buttoned up, Miss Toklas asked him and he said with contentment oh he is a lieutenant-colonel.

After that we had lots of officers and finally I met three majors in Aix-les-Bains. I said well it’s all right, but now we have had everything from a second lieutenant to a full colonel and indeed several specimens of each now I want a general. The majors at least one of them said I think I can get you one. Would you like General Patch. Would I, I said, well I guess I would. If, said he, you write him a note I am sure he would come. He gave me an old card, I had already given him my autograph on a piece of French paper money, it is hard to write on French paper money but I finally did get the habit, so I wrote the note to General Patch and of course we thought it all a joke but not at all. About ten days later, came the personal secretary of General Patch with a nice driver from Arkansas who said modestly he always drove the general, and they brought me a charming letter from the general saying he would be coming along very soon, to eat the chicken dinner I had offered him. The secretary said that the general would be coming along in about two weeks. When that time came heavy fighting began in the Vosges mountains, the general’s headquarters moved away from our region, and now we are still waiting, but he surely will come, he said he would and he will.

Gradually as the joy and excitement of really having Americans here really having them here began to settle a little I began to realise that Americans converse much more than they did, American men in those other days, the days before these days did not converse. How well I remember in the last war seeing four or five of them at a table at a hotel and one man would sort of drone along monologuing about what he had or had not done and the others solemnly and quietly eating and drinking and never saying a word. And seeing the soldiers stand at a corner or be seated somewhere and there they were and minutes hours passed and they never said a word, and then one would get up and leave and the others
got up and left and that was that. No this army was not like that, this army conversed, it talked it listened, and each one of them had something to say no this army was not like that other army. People do not change no they don’t, when I was in America after almost thirty years of absence they asked me if I did not find Americans changed and I said no what could they change to except to be American and anyway I could have gone to school with any of them they were just like the ones I went to school with and now they are still American but they can converse and they are interesting when they talk. The older Americans always told stories that was about all there was to their talking but these don’t tell stories they converse and what they say is interesting and what they hear interests them and that does make them different not really different God bless them but just the same they are not quite the same.

We did not talk about that then. We had too much to tell and they had too much to tell to spend any time conversing about conversation. What we always wanted to know was the state they came from and what they did before they came over here. One said that he was born on a race track and worked in a night club. Another was the golf champion of Mississippi, but what we wanted most was to hear them say the name of the state in which they were born and the names of the other states where they had lived.

After every war, there have only been two like that but I do not think that just to say after the other war makes it feel as it does, no I do mean after every war, it feels like that, after every war when I talk and listen to all our army, it feels like that too, the thing I like most are the names of all the states of the United States. They make music and they are poetry, you do not have to recite them all but you just say any one two three four or five of them and you will see they make music and they make poetry.

After the last war I wanted to write a long book or a poem, I never did either but I wanted to, about how Kansas differed from Iowa and Iowa from Illinois and Illinois from Ohio, and Mississippi from Louisiana and Louisiana from Tennessee and Tennessee from Kentucky, and all the rest from all the rest, it
would be most exciting, because each one of them does so completely differ from all the rest including their neighbors. And when you think how ruled the lines are of the states, no natural boundaries of mountains or rivers but just ruled out with a ruler to make lines and angles and all the same each one of the states has its own character, its own accent, just like provinces in France which are so ancient. It does not take long to make one state different from another state not so very long, they are all just as American as that but they are all so different one from the other Dakota and Wyoming and Texas and Oklahoma. Well any one you like. I like them all.

After all every one is as their land is, as the climate is, as the mountains and the rivers or their oceans are as the wind and rain and snow and ice and heat and moisture is, they just are and that makes them have their way to eat their way to drink their way to act their way to think and their way to be subtle, and even if the lines of demarcation are only made with a ruler after all what is inside those right angles is different from those on the outside of those right angles, any American knows that.

It is just that, I do not know why but Arkansas touched me particularly, anything touches me particularly now that is American. There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is.

After all the excitement of all the jeeps and all the officers and all the drivers was over we were quiet a little while and we wondered are they all gone will we not see them again, and then Culoz which is a small town but a railroad center began to have them and we began to have them.

Troop trains began to pass through the station on their way to the front.

I was coming home from a walk and an F.F.I. said to me there is a train of your compatriots standing at a siding just below, I imagine it would please you to see them, thank you I said it will and I went quickly. There they were strolling along
and standing about and I said Hello to the first group and they said hello and I said I am an American and they laughed and said so were they and how did I happen to get caught here and I told them how I had passed the war here, and they wanted to know if there was snow on the mountains in winter and there was a large group of them and I told them who I was thinking some one of them might have heard of me but lots of them had and they crowded around and we talked and we talked. It was the first time I had been with a real lot of honest to God infantry and they said they were just that. We began to talk states and they wanted to know about our life under the Germans and I told them and they were interested, and they told me about where they had been and what they thought of the people they had seen and then they wanted autographs and they gave me pieces of money to write on, and one Pole who was the most extravagant gave me a hundred franc bill to sign for him, funny that a Pole should have been the most wasteful of his money, perhaps he was only going to spend it anyway, and one of them told me that they knew about me because they study my poems along with other American poetry in the public schools and that did please me immensely it most certainly did and then I left and they left.

I came away meditating yes they were American boys but they had a poise and completely lacked the provincialism which did characterise the last American army, they talked and they listened and they had a sureness, they were quite certain of themselves, they had no doubts or uncertainties and they had not to make any explanations. The last army was rather given to explaining, oh just anything, they were given to explaining, these did not explain, they were just conversational.

Then more troop trains came along and we took apples down to them and we talked to them and they talked to us and I was getting more impressed with their being different, they knew where they were and what they were and why they were, yes they did, they had poise and not any of them was ever drunk, not a bit, it was most exciting that they were like that.

The last American army used to ask questions, why do the French people put walls around their houses what are they afraid of what do they want to hide. Why do they want to stay and work this ground when there is so much better land to find. This army does not ask questions like that, they consider that people have their habits and their ways of living, some you can get along with and others you can’t, but they all are perfectly reasonable for the people who use them. That is the great change in the Americans, they are interested, they are observant, they are accustomed to various types of people and ways of being, they have plenty of curiosity, but not any criticism, that is the new army. It was all very exciting.

Then one day down at the station, it was raining, I saw three American soldiers standing, I said hello what are you doing, why we just came here, they said, to stay a few days. I laughed. Is it A.W.O.L. I said or do you call it something else now, well no they said we still call it that. And said I what are you going to do, just stay a few days they said. Come along I said, even if you are A.W.O.L. you will have to be given some tea and cake so come along. They came. One from Detroit, one little one from Tennessee, one big young one from New Jersey. We talked, it seemed somehow more like that old army, their being A.W.O.L. and deciding to stay here a few days. They came back with me, and we talked. They were interested, Tennessee said honestly he was tired of ten inch shells, he just had had enough of ten inch shells. The other two seemed to be just tired, they were not particular what they were tired of, they were just tired. We talked and then in talking to them I began to realise that men from the South seemed to be quite often men who had been orphans since they were children, the men from Tennessee and from Arkansas seemed to tend to be orphans from very young, they were members of large families and the large family once having been made, they promptly became orphans, I also began to realise that there were lots of pure American families where they were lots of brothers and sisters. The last army seven to eleven in a family was rare, but now it seemed to be quite common. Not emigrant families but pure American families. I was very much interested. And now the difference
between the old army and the new began to be so real to me that I began to ask the American army about it. In the meanwhile the three A.W.O.L.s after moving into the village and then moving out and then moving in again did finally move out. They came to see us before they left, they did not say where they were going and they said it had been a pleasure to know us.

In the meanwhile, five M.P.s had come to stay in the station to watch the stuff on the trains and see that it did not get stolen, and with these we got to be very good friends, and they were the first ones with whom I began to talk about the difference between the last army and this army. Why is it, I said.

They said, yes we know we are different, and I said and how did you find it out. From what we heard about the other army, that made us know we were very different, I said there is no doubt about that, you don’t drink much I said, no we don’t and we save our money they said, we don’t want to go home and when we get there not have any money, we want to have a thousand dollars or so at least to be able to look around and to find out what we really want to do. (Even the three A.W.O.L.s felt like that about money.) Well I explained what one used to complain of about American men was that as they grew older they did not grow more interesting, they grew duller. When I made that lecture tour in ’35 to the American universities I used to say to them, now all sorts of things interest you but what will happen to you five years hence when you are working at some job will things interest you or will you just get dull. Yes said one of the soldiers yes but you see the depression made them know that a job was not all there was to it as mostly there was no job, and if there was it was any kind of job not the kind of job they had expected it to be, you would see a college man digging on the road doing anything and so we all came to find out you might just as well be interested in anything since anyway your job might not be a job and if it was well then it was not the kind of a job it might have been. Yes that did a lot, they all said, it certainly did do a lot.

Yes said one of the younger ones even if you were only kids
during the depression you got to feel that way about it. Anyway they all agreed the depression had a lot to do with it.

There is one thing in which this army is not different from that other army that is in being generous and sweet and particularly kind to children.