“The cameras that you brought with you. You are supposed to have a consignment of equipment for the Photo Division, which you brought with you from the States. Do you?”
“Oh yes, sir,” Deveraux put in. “Each man in these sections brought a sealed case with him. Special equipment.”
“Well, that’s OK then …”
“But I don’t think that they are cameras.”
“Why not?”
“Sir,” Lutz said, “perhaps you should take a look at the cases.”
Edward looked at the three perplexed faces before him.
“OK,” he said. “Deveraux, will you bring one over here?”
“Yes, sir.” He ran off down the platform and disappeared into the crowd.
Edward turned to the two lieutenants still beside him.
“Tell me about the men. They’ve all had training with cameras, I suppose,” he said. Dawson looked at his feet, then away down the platform.
“Well …” he said.
“Perhaps I had better not suppose anything. What kind of training have they had?”
“They’ve all had basic training. Army wouldn’t send them abroad otherwise.”
“What about flight training? Have they flown before?”
“I have. So have Deveraux and Lutz here, and the noncoms, Sergeant Daniels, a few more. Some of the others have some experience with taking pictures.”
“About how many of them know how to use a camera?”
“I really couldn’t say for certain. Perhaps ten or so.”
“In each section?” But he knew the answer before Dawson spoke:
“No, sir. Ten in all.”
Edward shook his head in amazement. “OK,” he said. “OK. It isn’t your fault. You’d better go and help the rest of the men get ready to move out.”
“Yes, sir.” The two men saluted energetically, as if to say at least they could do that right, and walked rapidly away. Edward raised his hand after them in a half-effort, but he was too overwhelmed to hide his disappointment. Only ten of them with training in photography. It was a disaster.
A few minutes later Lutz came back down the platform toward him, with one of the sergeants following close behind. They both wore worried expressions.
“What’s the problem?” Edward asked.
“There’s a man with our unit who isn’t on any of the rosters. None of the others have ever seen him before. He insists he’s meant to be here. Says he knows you, sir.”
“Knows me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, send him down here. Tell him to hurry. I don’t want him to hold us up.”
“I don’t know if he can do that … hurry, that is …”
“What do you mean?” asked Edward.
“Well, his legs are kind of a mess.”
A moment later he recognized the slow, uneven gate and unblinking eyes as Gilles Marchand pulled himself down the platform until he stood in front of them. Gilles saluted, his face expressionless as ever.
“What is he doing here?” Edward asked. The men looked at him blankly. He turned to the sergeant.
“What’s your name?”
“Reece, sir.” He was a tall man with colorless skin and hair, as though he had been bleached slowly by the sun. His chin sloped into his neck until it vanished.
“What is he doing here?” Edward repeated.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What did you think a kid with one good leg was doing headed for the front?”
“I didn’t notice his legs.”
“Well, I’m glad we’ve hired you as an observer. So far you’re doing an excellent job.”
He turned to Marchand.
“What are you doing here?”
“They are closing up the office in Paris in a few weeks and moving everyone to Chaumont. They won’t need me. I know as much about cameras as the others. I want to work as an observer.” He met Edward’s gaze and stared straight back at him, his eyes unwavering.
“But you aren’t American.”
“Lots of Americans fought for France before America came into the war.”
“What about your foot?”
“I don’t need to walk around inside the airplane, sir,” said Marchand as if nothing could have been more obvious. “Please. I want to fly.”
Edward hesitated.
“Come in the car with me up to the airfield. We’ll talk to Colonel van Horn when we get there.”
Deveraux appeared carrying two identical wooden cases, one in each arm. When Edward saw them, his stomach sank. There was no possibility that they contained cameras. They were oblong and nearly flat. They looked like cases for woodwind instruments.
“Are they all like that?” Edward asked.
“Yes, sir,” Deveraux said.
“And those are the only things they have?” Deveraux nodded.
“Well, we’d better have a look inside them and see what we’ve got here.” They laid the cases on the ground. Deveraux knelt down beside one. He broke the seal and sprung the two catches at either end, then began to pry open the lid. Lutz, Reece, and Edward all bent over him, peering down, like people crowding around a man who has fallen in the street. Edward thought, What a comic spectacle we would be to anyone with the time to notice.
Lutz eased the lid up on the first case. Inside lay a long, wooden handle with a flat steel trowel at one end that finished in a point.
“An entrenching tool,” said Reece, nodding, pleased with his own perspicacity. Edward stared at it in disbelief.
“My God,” he said. “They sent you men all the way from America with seventy-five top-secret shovels.” He turned away. “Special equipment …”
Edward walked up the platform to clear his head. He looked back at where the lieutenants were gathered in a small group near the case open on the ground. The men stood around awkwardly, shifting in place, unsure of what to do next, of how to respond to this new turn of events. They kept looking down at the entrenching tool, as though they were checking to make sure it was still a spade and hadn’t turned into a camera while they weren’t paying attention.
Through his irritation he suddenly felt a wave of sympathy for them. They were well meaning and certainly not stupid. They had just arrived and they clearly wanted to do their best. But they looked to Edward like a flock of confused birds, all alarmed by the same noise but not knowing whether to fly off or stay where they were … and all at once he began to laugh. He tried to stop so the men wouldn’t notice, but he couldn’t, and the infection spread. Lutz looked up and saw Edward with his hand over his mouth. He snorted once and immediately tried to suppress it but instead let out a sound that could have come from a donkey. That set the rest of them off.
“Entrenching tools …” Edward mouthed between spasms of giggles. “Entrenching tools … unbelievable …”
Eventually, he caught his breath and wiped his eyes. He turned to Lutz and Deveraux. “Get the men formed up into companies,” he said, trying to sound stern and commanding. “We have several miles to walk to the airfield before supper.”
From the station steps he watched them getting ready to march, the lieutenants counting heads and calling roll. How, he wondered, are we ever going to begin work? Barnes had said they wanted photographs of the front by the middle of the week. But with no cameras, what could they do?
“We’re ready to go, sir,” Dawson reported to him.
“OK. Move out, Lieutenant,” Edward said. And they filed down the road, the sound of their footsteps keeping clumsy time.
COLONEL ROBERT VAN HORN was a short man with big, solid shoulders and a face that fell naturally into an attitude of barely contained irritation. He spoke in short, explosive bursts and paced while he talked, a combination that made him seem threatening even when he was pleased.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” he said when Edward and the three lieutenants entered his office. He flung his arm toward a circle of chairs opposite his desk. “Find your rooms comfortable? Good. Pl
eased to hear it.” He had not waited for a reply. “We’ve had a new advance out of the Aisne salient in the past two days, at the western side, toward the railway junction in Compiègne. Not the huge show we are expecting soon, but some fireworks. They crossed about ten miles on a front south of Noyon and then halted without reaching the junction.” Van Horn himself stopped pacing when he said this, as if to illustrate. Then he began again in the other direction.
“We still can’t say for sure whether this is preparation for a big push, or a decoy,” he continued. “If this is the real thing, they will want to make good on these advances soon. The longer they wait, the more Yanks will be added to the line. So we are expecting another large-scale offensive soon. I’m sure I don’t have to say that this makes the work you are doing even more urgent.”
Van Horn pointed to a map that covered one wall. It was thick with different-colored pins “These are French units,” he said, pointing to the green markers, “these,” indicating the black ones, “are German. And these,” he pointed to a couple of isolated red pins near them, “are American.”
“We’ve got boys from the 42nd Marines in the line, and 2nd and 3rd divisions up between Château Thierry and Lucy-le-Bocage.” Above them the semicircle of black pins swelled forward menacingly. “We need to know where the Germans will come from next. We have a squadron of DH-4s that can start taking observers on reconnaissance flights as soon as you can process their photographs. When will you be ready?”
Edward cleared his throat. “There’s a problem,” he said. “The equipment that was supposed to come for these men has not arrived. We have no cameras for them, and none of the other photographic materials we’ll need. No paper, no developer—”
“I didn’t ask you about problems,” van Horn said, catching him up short. “I asked for an estimate of when you can have your operation up and running.”
“Three days.” Edward was almost surprised to hear himself speak with such certainty, but there it was: he’d said it and he sensed that it was the right answer. He felt the other men in the room exhale collectively, relieved. Across the desk, van Horn waited for him to continue. “Where are the other American installations in this section of the front?” He stood up and walked to the map, so he was standing beside the colonel.
“Here,” van Horn pointed, “at Châlons-sur-Marne. There is a supply depot and an American Red Cross hospital. There’s also a French airfield.”
“Give me a telephone and a car,” Edward said. “We’ll have our men ready in three days to start shooting.”
“Very good, Captain,” said van Horn. He turned to the lieutenants. “The tasks will be divided up as follows: Dawson, you will be responsible for the observers and the flight schedules and routes; for the moment, you’ll want to send them out on high-altitude runs keeping close to our side of the lines.
“Deveraux, you’ll oversee developing and printing; and Lutz, you’re in charge of the photo interpreters. You’ll also be Captain Steichen’s assistant. Any questions?”
“Sir …”
“Yes, Lutz?”
“If I’m to work with the interpreters, will I be flying?”
“Everyone will be expected to fly when they are needed. As the ones with the most experience, officers will go up everyday.”
“Excuse me, sir,” asked Deveraux. “But did you say we’ll be flying in de Havilland 4s?”
“That is correct, Lieutenant. Is there a problem with that?”
“No, sir. Just …”
“The pilots at Tours,” Lutz said, “thought DH-4s were …”
“What is it Lieutenant?” Van Horn drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently.
“They called them ‘flaming coffins,’ sir. They said they were badly designed and dangerous. That they crash during landing.”
“All airplanes are dangerous,” van Horn said. He looked fixedly at Deveraux. He seemed to be daring the lieutenants to continue this line of questioning. Lutz sat looking unhappily at his folded hands.
“Yes, sir, of course, but …”
“The DH-4 is nose-heavy,” Edward cut in. “But the pilots here have been trained to fly them and they’ll know how to compensate for it. I went up in them with British pilots at St-Omer many times. They are fine planes.”
While he was speaking, he’d avoided looking at van Horn, but now he glanced over and the colonel looked, not pleased exactly, but less annoyed than Edward had yet seen him.
“Oh, well, of course, sir, we didn’t mean to imply …”
“No, of course you didn’t,” Edward said.
“Well, if there are no other questions, you three are dismissed.” The lieutenants stood, saluted and filed out, obviously grateful to be going. Van Horn watched them leave, then turned to Edward.
“That was not badly handled, Steichen,” he said. “You restored their confidence.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Van Horn sat down in the chair behind his desk. He seemed about to say something, but instead he looked Edward over with narrowed, appraising eyes. At last he said: “I’m curious. What were the St-Omer pilots doing with the DH-4’s? I’ve seen those damn things fall on their noses like rocks, back when I was flying. Not pretty.”
“They sandbagged the tails,” Edward said. “Made them murder to steer, but at least they could land.”
“Sandbags?”
“The height of modern technology, sir.”
Van Horn frowned. “Well, I don’t know what these kids are complaining about. They come out here expecting it to be some kind of cakewalk, and then they are surprised when it is hard work.” He looked across, again with his eyes narrowed. Edward wasn’t sure if he was looking for agreement or disagreement; he sat, saying nothing.
Abruptly, van Horn stood up and rang the bell to call his secretary.
“Well, Captain, unless there are any other matters we need to discuss …”
“Actually, sir, there is one more thing.” Van Horn folded his arms across his chest and waited for Edward to continue. “We have a boy who would like to join our section who is not officially enlisted.” And he explained about Gilles Marchand, how he had followed them east, how he wanted to fly.
“It shows spirit,” van Horn said, “following you out here. It shows initiative. You say he can work a camera?”
“He claims to be able to. And if he can’t, he’s no worse off than most of the others.”
“Well, I’ll consider it.” There was a knock at the door and van Horn’s secretary came in. Van Horn said: “My assistant will show you to an office you can use. My driver is at your disposal,” and he presented the door to Edward as though it were a work of art. The interview was over.
Two Women. Île de La Cité, 1903. Pigment print.
SHE HAS NEVER seen him act like this before. He is restless and uneasy. Several times during dinner he jumps up from the table and paces the room for no reason. He’s not really listening to a word anyone says; he just nods and looks away toward the dark squares of the windows.
She doesn’t know what to make of it. Usually, he is so attentive to the people around him, to her. When Marion Beckett asks him about the exhibition in London, he changes the subject right away. Usually, he likes nothing more than to discuss his work, especially with Marion, who generally has insightful, useful things to say. Clara wonders if perhaps he is tired from his journey—he arrived home just this morning—but that would explain only the dark circles under his eyes, the fatigued way he leans his elbows on the table, not the agitation, this energy that seems to have no specific purpose. Even Arthur notices.
“What is wrong, Ed? All night you’ve been wriggling around like a fish on a hook.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“I don’t believe you. Miss Smith, what have you been doing to him? Or is this how all young men act when they’re six months engaged?”
“I haven’t been doing anything to him,” Clara says. Typical of Arthur to be so appallingly crass. “You must remembe
r, Mr. Carles, I’ve not seen him in a week. There must be some other girl who is driving him to distraction.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” Edward says. He fishes in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case, then goes over to the open window and leans out of it. He lights a cigarette, flinging the match into the darkness below.
“I know,” he announces so the whole room can hear. “Let’s all walk down to the river and look at the cathedral. This is too nice of an evening to be cooped up indoors. Who’s coming?”
“I’m in.” Arthur stands up. Never short of enthusiasm, at least.
“Marvelous idea,” says Leo Stein. “It’s a sight worth seeing, on a clear night.”
“Isn’t it very spooky?” asks Clara.
“Not at all. It’s magnificent.”
There are murmured affirmatives from the rest of the group—Mildred, Marion, Lottie and a boy called Billy Paddock who is courting her.
“Good,” says Edward. “Let’s go.”
Then there’s a scramble for hats and jackets as they make their way into the hallway, down the stairs and out into the evening street. Edward comes last, a quietly triumphant grin on his face. He loves things like this, loves to be the one who directs the next scene, who decides where the players will stand. He’s good at it—people follow his lead naturally. He takes Clara’s arm, and she feels that flush of excitement that comes over her when he is around. They have known each other now for more than a year, and she still experiences that same dizzying sweetness when he touches her.
“Oh,” he says, suddenly, “let me just run home and get my camera.”
“Must you?” Clara asks. “Won’t you walk with the rest of us?”
“It will only take me three minutes. I’ve wanted to shoot that place at night for ages.”
“Well, I’ll come with you, then. For the walk.”
“Oh no, darling, there’s no need. You go ahead. I’ll meet you on the bridge.” He is already several paces down the street, waving them to go on without him.
“What he means is that he really wants to take more pictures of his lovely fiancée,” says Arthur.
“Well, in that case,” she says, “I give him my blessing.”
The Last Summer of the World Page 9
