Spanish-American war and seeing all those middle-western men in San Francisco, made me realise what realism is.
Just to-night June 1943 I was out walking in the twilight in the mountain village of Culoz where I live now and my dog Basket was running around and a young man in working clothes said he is a nice dog but I have been whistling to him and he wont come. Oh I said you have to do more than whistle, you have to talk English and he said my father could and I could too once but I now have forgotten. And I said but how is that not that you have forgotten but that your father talked English, that he said is very simple he is an American, ah I said yes, he came to France in the last war as a soldier he married a Frenchwoman, he got a good job at Chaumont and he stayed, and in ’38 we intended to go away but my mother fell ill and we did not leave. And she, I said, oh she is dead, and he, oh he is in a concentration camp when America came into the war they came and took him, and you, we are fourbrothers and a sister, and the oldest is an actor in the Comedie Française and the second is a plumber and the third is head butcher in a camp of youth and here I am working for farmers and my name is Robert Nelson White and I looked as if I was not sure that all he said was so and he said here are my papers, they do not spell white right, but my name there is Robert White, I left out the Nelson all right. And it all made me feel a little funny anything these days these strange days can make you feel a little funny so I shook hands with him and we went up Basket and I up the hill and he Robert Nelson White went on down, down the hill.
Now all that made me feel all the more how different was that Spanish-American war. I asked Robert Nelson White if his father was a Frenchman by blood, if his grandfather or grandmother either one was French but no he said he was always American his people never had been anything but American and his little sister of fourteen was at school and he and his brother had crossed the lines at night to come into the free zone and here he was.
In the Spanish-American war romance was simple and realistic like the young Californians who went to the war and General King wrote novels about it and in one he said and I threw the bridle of my horse to my orderly Ned Hanford, and it was Ned Hanford and when he read these simple words, he had a thrill he always had a thrill. That was the way it was then in the Spanish-American war. It was then that they began to think about realism. The Red Badge of Courage by Crane, and any simple description of war as done by the Russians, later on a naval battle in the next war, the Russo-Japanese war, which described it just as it was not as it felt or looked. But anyway there they were they middle-western boys in San Francisco, and there was Chinatown and there was the French quarter, and there were the Lurline baths and there was everything that they never had seen before. It is always that way in war, always.
And now in June 1943, it is trying, there are so many sad things happening, so many in prison, so many going away, our dentist’s son and he was only eighteen and he should have been taking hisentrance university examinations and he with others in a camion took shoes and clothes and weapons to give to the young men who had taken themselves to the mountains, to avoid being sent away and what has happened to him and to them. I have just met a very charming woman courageous and lives in an old castle and has five children and the youngest one is twenty-one and he has gone, she has never lost any money but life is always dearer and she and her children have worked very hard to keep their castle sheared their own sheep, and everything, and now she said, of course she would not mind Christian’s going away, that is to say not to mind if it were not the times are so uncertain and so troubling, and he is very sweet and he is big and tall and very winning and since he was born
Just to-night June 1943 I was out walking in the twilight in the mountain village of Culoz where I live now and my dog Basket was running around and a young man in working clothes said he is a nice dog but I have been whistling to him and he wont come. Oh I said you have to do more than whistle, you have to talk English and he said my father could and I could too once but I now have forgotten. And I said but how is that not that you have forgotten but that your father talked English, that he said is very simple he is an American, ah I said yes, he came to France in the last war as a soldier he married a Frenchwoman, he got a good job at Chaumont and he stayed, and in ’38 we intended to go away but my mother fell ill and we did not leave. And she, I said, oh she is dead, and he, oh he is in a concentration camp when America came into the war they came and took him, and you, we are fourbrothers and a sister, and the oldest is an actor in the Comedie Française and the second is a plumber and the third is head butcher in a camp of youth and here I am working for farmers and my name is Robert Nelson White and I looked as if I was not sure that all he said was so and he said here are my papers, they do not spell white right, but my name there is Robert White, I left out the Nelson all right. And it all made me feel a little funny anything these days these strange days can make you feel a little funny so I shook hands with him and we went up Basket and I up the hill and he Robert Nelson White went on down, down the hill.
Now all that made me feel all the more how different was that Spanish-American war. I asked Robert Nelson White if his father was a Frenchman by blood, if his grandfather or grandmother either one was French but no he said he was always American his people never had been anything but American and his little sister of fourteen was at school and he and his brother had crossed the lines at night to come into the free zone and here he was.
In the Spanish-American war romance was simple and realistic like the young Californians who went to the war and General King wrote novels about it and in one he said and I threw the bridle of my horse to my orderly Ned Hanford, and it was Ned Hanford and when he read these simple words, he had a thrill he always had a thrill. That was the way it was then in the Spanish-American war. It was then that they began to think about realism. The Red Badge of Courage by Crane, and any simple description of war as done by the Russians, later on a naval battle in the next war, the Russo-Japanese war, which described it just as it was not as it felt or looked. But anyway there they were they middle-western boys in San Francisco, and there was Chinatown and there was the French quarter, and there were the Lurline baths and there was everything that they never had seen before. It is always that way in war, always.
And now in June 1943, it is trying, there are so many sad things happening, so many in prison, so many going away, our dentist’s son and he was only eighteen and he should have been taking hisentrance university examinations and he with others in a camion took shoes and clothes and weapons to give to the young men who had taken themselves to the mountains, to avoid being sent away and what has happened to him and to them. I have just met a very charming woman courageous and lives in an old castle and has five children and the youngest one is twenty-one and he has gone, she has never lost any money but life is always dearer and she and her children have worked very hard to keep their castle sheared their own sheep, and everything, and now she said, of course she would not mind Christian’s going away, that is to say not to mind if it were not the times are so uncertain and so troubling, and he is very sweet and he is big and tall and very winning and since he was born
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