Reading matter was also ardently desired during the early months in the Vosges. An enterprising storekeeper in one town sent a hurry call to Paris for English books and a week later she proudly displayed the following volumes on her shelves: "The Life of Dean Stanley," "Sermons by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon," "The Jubilee Book of Cricket," "The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Lord of Brampton)," and "The Recollections of the Rt. Hon. Sir Algernon West."
A few companies had libraries of their own. I wonder who made the selection of titles. The volumes I picked out at random in one village were: "The Family Life of Heinrich Heine," "Fourteen Weeks in Astronomy," "Recollections and Letters of Renan," "Education and the Higher Life," "Bible Stories for the Young," and "Henry the Eighth and His Six Wives." The librarian said that the last was the most popular book in the collection although several readers admitted that it did not come up to expectations. Just as I was going out the top sergeant came in to return a book. I asked him what it was. He said, "It's a book called 'When Patty Went to College.'"
Our town was big and had moving pictures twice a week, but up the line in the little villages there was no such source of amusement. After the men had been in training for a week or more, a French Red Cross outfit stopped at one of the villages with a traveling movie outfit and announced that they would show a picture that night. According to the announcement the picture was "Charlot en 'Le Vagabond.'" It sounded foreign and forbidding. The doughboys anticipated trouble with the titles and the closeups of what the heroine wrote and all the various printed words which go to make a moving picture intelligible. Still they were patient when the title of the picture was flashed on the screen and they tried to look interested. The first scene was a road winding up to a distant hill and down the highway with eccentric gait there walked a little man strangely reminiscent. He drew nearer and nearer and as the figure came into full view the soldier in front of me could stand the strain no longer. He jumped to his feet.
"I'm a son of a gun," he shouted, "if it isn't Charlie Chaplin."