"
"What did you say his name was?" I asked.
"Rosenbaum," the boy replied. "Rosenbaum from New York."
"Say, if they'd only recruit a regiment like that from America, we'd
send the whole German army back to Berlin naked," added another soldier
who was standing near.
Then we all had another good laugh, which in its turn disturbed the old
men playing checkers on the bench under the trees back of Notre Dame.
But the soldier who told me the story added thoughtfully a truth that
every one in France knows.
"At that, I'm tellin' you, boy, there aren't any braver soldiers in the
American army than them Jewish boys from New York. I got 'o hand it to
them."
"Yes, we all do," I replied.
This good-natured raillery goes on all over the army, for it is a
cosmopolitan crowd, such as never before wore the uniform of the United
States, and each group, the negro group, the Italian group, the Jewish
group, the Slav group, the Western group, the Southern group, the
Eastern group, all have their little fun at the expense of the others,
and out of it all comes much sunshine and laughter, and no bitterness.
The Jewish boy loves to repeat a good joke on his own kind as well as
the others. I myself saw the letter that a Jewish boy was writing to
his uncle in New York, eulogizing the Y. M. C. A.
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