The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1917-11-01
PERSHINC'S Mem
SING OF HOME To
DRIVE OFF BLUES
Twilight Fills Camp With
Sentimental Ditties and
Love Notes

American Field Headquarters,
France, Nov. IA dark, moonless sky,
st1ppIed with pin points of silver light,
the sound of restless hoofs stamping
in the mule barn-and that gone,
homesick feeling. 1t was natural
that the Yankee soldiers should gath
er round the darkenfng embers in the
cook shack tonight and sing TILL they
had to go to bed.
Sentiment seemed to fall over the
camp all of a sudden. Perhaps it was
air or the sight of brown, stubbled,
harvest fields where gnarled old peas
ant women went up and down the
rows cleaning stray wisps of wheat.
Anyway, as soon as the vesper chow
had been tucked away the fellows be-
gan to drift down the battalion street
singuIarly silent for American. French
housewives, tanned about the face and
wide about the middle, sat in their
doorways, knitting or grooming to
cranky, tired children.
From the edge of a wood, hun
dred yards up the HILL came the sad
discord of a single flute. The top
sergeant said 1t was "that crazy An
derson guy practising progressive ex-
ercise number one.' with the ambi-
band.
Shadows rushed down from the
hills and darkness turned the groups
of khaki into mere blots moving about
in gloom. Then somebody with a ten
or voice began the sob stuff, while
some one else accompanied him on a
mouth organ.
'"Ain't that great % said the top ser
geant. Take me back to Chicago
and the summer nights on the lake,
when we'd paddle our canoes about a
mile out and sing just like that
The song came from the little cir
Gle around the cooks fire. The cook
shack really isn't a shack at adjust
a canvas roof, with a stovepipe run
ming through it and 1eafy branches
spread ON top to fool the German
aeroplanes. So the song was uncon-
fined by walls, but free to overwhelm
the sobbing of Anderson's flute.
Just song at twi-iIi-ight,
Wen the light a-are 1o-ow-
Every one sang, some worse than
others, and a raw kid from Memphis
threw a rock at a. French hound be-
cause the dog threw in his own mourn
full howl to swell the volume.
Sentimental stuff having the call,
the Memphis lad rose and acclaimed
THE Face son the Barroom Flo" to
the growing audience. Sitting at his
feet boy from Iowa was reading a
letter from home, holding 1t SO as to
catch the freight.
my girl gives me lot of good
| advice about likker,'' said he.t That's
a sign she cares for me-
There followed songs and selec-
| lions, solos and choral effects. It was
| Mother Machree'' and then that one
| about the train that's coming around
the bend; sgood-by. my lover. good-by''
Some highbrow guy who used to be a
reporter in Tulsa, Okla, tried to get
away with a poem by a gent named
Wilde-'I never saw a man who look
ed so wistfully at the day He
kept on and on for many stanzas, but
4 quit when he was drowned out by
the close harmony bawling of ''Whis-
key, oh, whiskey, you amt no friend
/ of mine
/ Inevitably Home, Sweet Home
came around on the program. It was
interrupted by bugle blast. The
Americans moved along to their bill
4 let's, the Iowa boy tucking away his
/ letter, having read it four times The
mules stamped and ratified their halter
Ichains in the stable. The sentimental
stuff gave way to the common sense
crunching of gravel under the SEN
try's feet.