Joe Attacks a French Officer During the Armistice Celebrations

Joe Williams’s attack on a French officer during the 1918 Armistice celebrations turns the night’s exuberant public rejoicing into a sudden act of jealousy and violence. In St. Nazaire, Joe sees Jeanette dancing with a Senegalese officer and pulls her away; when he strikes the officer, the blow does not even make him move. A waiter and French soldiers intervene, Jeanette is knocked down, and a man brings a bottle down on Joe’s head, leaving him unconscious.

Celebration and Confrontation

Armistice night had loosened the town into a mass celebration. Soldiers poured out of camps and barracks, strangers clapped one another on the back, drinks and champagne passed through the crowd, and the officers’ café gathering dissolved before it got beyond soup: the revelers were dancing in the kitchen, the cook had passed out, and allied flags were carried through the room. The noise and physical closeness of the festivities form the backdrop to Joe’s narrower purpose. He went looking for Jeanette, a woman he had taken up with during visits to port, because she had promised to spend the night with him before the date became Armistice Day. He had treated her well, brought presents from America, and carried sugar in his raincoat pockets; he also felt flush with cash and expected to find her before he became too drunk to manage himself.

In a red-plush cabaret lined with mirrors, the music shifted from The Star-Spangled Banner to a foxtrot as celebrants cried out for America and pressed drinks on Joe. He was dancing with another woman when he spotted Jeanette, wearing an American flag over her dress, with a tall Senegalese officer in gold braid. Joe pulled her away and hit the officer as hard as he could. The officer remained standing, his face showing a puzzled smile, while the room erupted into shouting. Joe’s response to Jeanette’s dancing turns a festive display of allied fellowship into a possessive confrontation, and the officer’s composure only sharpens the mismatch between Joe’s fury and the ineffectual blow.

The Fight and Its Abrupt End

As the waiter and French soldiers tried to pull Joe away, Jeanette moved between him and the waiter and was struck in the jaw, falling flat. Joe then knocked down two of the soldiers and backed toward the door. In the cabaret mirrors he saw a large man in a blouse raising a bottle over his head with both hands, but he could not turn in time. The bottle struck his skull and knocked him unconscious, ending the attack amid the celebration. The blow reverses Joe’s brief, self-assertive violence: after striking the officer who had not even budged, he is brought down by an unseen assailant before he can leave.

The Voyage and His Changing Wartime Outlook

After returning from a voyage on which he had been ill, Joe steadied himself in Brooklyn and attended the Shipping Board shore school at Pratt Institute, earning a second mate’s license. He then made repeated passages between New York and St. Nazaire aboard the wooden Owanda, a difficult vessel whose recurring calls brought him back to the port where he knew Jeanette. His life there was shaped by both routine and uncertainty: he was building a maritime career while the war’s outcome and the political labels attached to it seemed to carry consequences for his future.

Letters from Janey, overseas with the American Red Cross and strongly patriotic, helped turn Joe toward the argument that civilization had to be defended. Reports in the newspapers said the Germans were being defeated, and he saw wartime service as an opportunity so long as he was not branded pro-German or Bolshevik. He opened a savings account and bought a Liberty Bond. That gradual movement toward patriotic commitment forms an uneasy background to the Armistice celebration: the public language of allied solidarity surrounds Joe, but his response to Jeanette and the Senegalese officer becomes personal and possessive rather than communal.

The Cost of Possessive Violence

Joe’s pursuit of Jeanette makes her the occasion for the confrontation, but not its protected center. When she tries to get between him and the waiter, Joe’s own fighting leaves her struck and sprawled on the floor. The episode thus turns his claim on her into harm to her: the woman he had gone searching for becomes the person his violence physically reaches, while the officer he attacks remains standing. That reversal gives the brawl a consequence beyond Joe’s defeat; his possessiveness injures the very person whose attention he sought.