March, 1920
Le Havre, France
It was with a deep sense of melancholy that I stood along the rail at the stern of the ocean liner, watching the coast of France recede into the distance.
I was going home, after seven years of service with the American Embassy in Paris, and while part of me was glad to be returning to America, a larger part of me knew I was leaving behind a large part of my life.
It was a cold, blustery day on the cusp of spring, and I had my overcoat buttoned to the top to ward off the chill that came from the ocean. I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I watched France fade away in the ever-growing distance.
Just then I felt the soft touch on my arm, and I looked over at the woman next to me, with the sleeping child on her shoulder. I looked in her eyes for just a moment, and saw reflected there the pain and weariness that had nearly consumed us over the previous two and a half years.
"Come, Robert, I must take the child down below," she said. "Why don't you join us. You will catch your death of cold out here."
"In a few minutes," I replied. "I'd like to stay alone for a moment. I have much on my mind. I'll be down shortly."
"As you wish," she said, and turned to go back toward the stairway that led to our cabin.
I looked back to get one final glimpse of the land I had come to love over the previous seven years, during that awful time when hell visited earth. But the land had already been obscured by the low-hanging clouds and the distance we had already sailed, leaving me with nothing but empty ocean with which to share my thoughts.
I thought back over everything that had happened over that period, of the friends I had made both in my own embassy and the embassies of other nations that had been allied with France, of Marcel and, of course, of Madeleine.
^ ^ ^ ^
Nov. 11, 1918
Paris, France
At 11 a.m. that morning, the guns went silent, ending the Great War after slightly over 51 months of bloodshed.
I was back at the American Embassy, awaiting the final word from Gen. Pershing's staff that the Germans had laid down their arms, in accordance with the terms of the armistice they had signed a few days before, and that the war really was over.
A few minutes before 11, the telephone rang in Ambassador Sharp's office. He picked up the earpiece, listened for a few seconds, then answered, "Good, congratulations."
After hanging the earpiece back on its receiver, he turned to us with a smile, and said the two words that we'd been waiting months to hear, "It's over."
We shook hands around the room with a sense of satisfaction, but without the jubilation that was sure to be felt around the world -- at least among the victorious Allies. Those of us in the diplomatic community knew there was plenty of work left to do.
For those of us in the American Embassy, we knew that winning the war was only part of the battle. We wanted to win the peace, as well, and we knew that doing so might put us at odds with our allies, the French and British.
But that would be a problem for the months ahead. Today was a day for celebration.
Minutes later, when the clock reached the top of the hour, the news began to spread all over Paris. Church bells rang throughout the city, and crowds of celebrants began to fill the streets.
Mr. Sharp had given us the rest of the day off, and I had made my way through the thickening crowds to Marcel's, where it had all started for me.
As soon as I entered the bistro, Marcel came over to me and we embraced in a way that only close friends do. There were tears of joy streaming down his face, which I knew reflected the palpable relief all over the world that this four-year long nightmare was finally over.
I made my way back to the kitchen, where I found Madeleine directing the cook and filling food orders. She saw me, and we hugged deeply, just letting the love flow from one to the other.
The previous months had been hard on us, and our relationship had been tested in profound ways, so that embrace reflected our hopes that maybe things would get better.
Madeleine hadn't worked in the bistro much in recent months, for a variety of reasons, which had much to do with the trials and tribulations that had beset us. My mind wandered back over the weeks and months, and I replayed the events in my memory.
Ironically, things began turning bad as a result of a blessed event.
I happened to be back in Paris in early August, 1917, when Madeleine reached me at the embassy with the news that she was pregnant.
Naturally, I was overjoyed. Our hopes that we had talked about when we had first been courting included filling our home with children.
However, Madeleine was sick a lot during that period with persistent morning sickness. After speaking to her physician, I was reassured that everything was progressing normally, so I returned to the front and Gen. Pershing's headquarters.
The pace of American arrivals was quickening, and my workload was heavy. Our troops needed to be trained in the new warfare that existed on the Western Front, and my expertise was needed both in lecturing the officers mostly, plus I was also being assigned to assess German troop strengths.
One of my signal skills was accurately gauging the relative strength of enemy troops in a particular sector based on a number of factors that included reports from secret agents working behind German lines.
Obtaining this information was the most dangerous part of my job, because it put me close to the front, and even occasionally required me to go behind the lines.
Still, the bulk of my work involved analysis of information and organizing that data in a form that was easily understandable to the generals and diplomats with whom I was working.
That was what I was doing on the fateful day in October when I got an urgent telegram from the embassy informing me that Madeleine had been hospitalized.
I managed to reach Marcel by telephone -- no small feat under the conditions -- and he informed me that Madeleine had miscarried the baby. There was more, but before he could tell me what it was, we lost the connection.
My first inclination was to drop everything to be with my wife, and I was prepared to do so, but Gen. Pershing wasn't willing to let me go. That caused a rift between us that never really healed.
Up to then we had settled into the same kind of working relationship we'd had in the Philippines, one where we seemed to think alike. That was what had bonded us then, and we had fallen into a similar role in France.
For 10 days we argued about it. His view was that it was a particularly bad time for me to be leaving his headquarters. He was at that moment fighting with the French and British about the American role in the war, and he needed all the help he could muster.
As expected, they saw American troops as trench fodder to shore up their flagging resources. On the other hand, Pershing -- with the backing of the president -- was adamant about keeping American troops together and intact.
We were willing to enter the breech wherever needed, but Pershing, stubborn Missourian that he was, didn't budge on the issue of keeping the U.S. Army troops unified and under his command.
Moreover, he argued with me that other soldiers weren't able to rush off and hold their wives' hands, so why should I be allowed to leave?
I finally pointed out quite heatedly that I wasn't a soldier any more and he wasn't my boss. Finally my view prevailed, although it took direct intervention by Ambassador Sharp to allow me to return to Paris.
When I got there, I found the situation was much worse than initially feared. Madeleine had lost the baby -- that was a given -- but because of the damage that had been done, she had had an emergency hysterectomy, a dangerous and potentially life-threatening procedure.
And I found I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. While I had been fighting with Pershing to get the leave to come back to Paris, Madeleine, when she got out of surgery, was increasingly upset that I wasn't there to be with her.
At an intellectual level, she understood my situation, but it did little to salve her emotional feelings of abandonment.
To make matters worse, I felt guilty for not being there for her. I believed I had let her down at the moment of her greatest crisis. I blamed the Army in general and Pershing in particular for causing a rift in my marriage, and I never really forgave either.
Madeleine eventually forgave me, but it was a wedge in our relationship that we had to work to overcome, and that time would not come for quite awhile.
It was a solid month before Madeleine was released from the hospital, and emotionally, she never quite got over it. Not only did we lose the baby, but she lost the ability to have any more children. Marie would be our only child.
From that moment, a dark cloud began to hover over our lives, especially when I learned that female problems of a similar nature had been what caused Marie Levesque's premature death a dozen years earlier.
Of course, I still spent a lot of time at the embassy, and in communication with American headquarters at the front. I still had work to do, and it didn't stop because I had personal problems.
Before returning to the front in early December, I hired a housekeeper and nanny for Madeleine and Marie. I could afford it, and it was a necessity given our situation.
Greta Carstens came highly recommended by Mrs. Sharp herself, who had found her nearly destitute at a social relief station in Paris.
She was in her mid-40s and originally from Belgium. She and her husband had fled the German onslaught in 1914, leaving with just what they could carry with them. They had left behind two sons and several daughters.
