Complete Text (Part 9)

until they made you think of the old patriarchs in the happy times of univer- sal peace. But these moments of respite were short. As we came out of the woods we met an officer who secured a horse and a bicycle for us and sent ahead word about us to the next station, where three automobiles were very kindly placed at our disposal. In that way we finally reached V . We had been travelling since dawn and arrived at the IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 137 close of the day. It was impossible to find a single free room in any hotel, but for- tunately some hospitable people took care of us and, military to the last, found quar- ters for us with some people of the village. We were looking forward to the prospect of enjoying a little rest there while we waited for orders from Paris, but on the second morning we learned that the town was to be evacuated and that we must leave in a hurry. I asked the authorities for some means of transportation. They sent us an automobile much too small to hold us all. To my great anxiety I had to leave my nurses behind me for a while, but I could come back for them that very evening. My chauffeur under- stood the value of time in these days of in- vasion, but he had to moderate his speed in going through the village of Souain, all pre- pared for defence and destined to become in a few days the scene of that hard struggle, so bloody and so glorious for one of our regiments. Already on that very evening we 138 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL ran into chains stretched across the streets, and we were challenged at every street cor- ner. That was our very last sight of what was soon to be the field of battle." Stories of this kind are like scraps of the gigantic strife which, blown by the battle winds, reach even to those fortunate parts of the country that are sheltered from the horrible devastation and immediate fear. We listen and say nothing. Silence is the fervent homage called forth by the courage and all the inexpressible feelings aroused by such memories. Little children of 1914, you must listen later on, without saying anything; you must devoutly listen to the "true stories," ter- rible and glorious, made up of danger, of heroism and of tears, which are being pre- pared for you in every home in France. IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I39 NEWS FROM THE MECHINS It was understood that the Mechins would write me about their sad voyage home. Poor people, I saw them crowd into the third-class railway carriage where all around them were young soldiers of their son's age who had been wounded, but who had recovered and were going home to their lucky parents. The Mechins left in sorrow from the same station at which they had ar- rived two months before with hearts so full of hope. At dusk as they climbed sadly into the great brilliant express train, their son's lonely grave was sinking into darkness under the shadow of the pines. A tri-colour ribbon tied to the cross drooped in the dampness of the November night. But the Mechins are French peasants in the best sense of the word; possessing beside their deep Christian faith, that peaceful balance of soul and body which is the result of the healthy life in the 140 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL fields. They have also the touch of fatalism which teaches them to say in the face of trouble, "Well, since we can do nothing about it — " Above all, they feel a fine and constant sense of responsibility to the earth, and have the habit of putting aside even the greatest sorrows to meet a demand that can- not wait, and which calls them to the work of each season. All this was in the letter which Pere Mechin wrote to me and in which was en- closed, as a sign of respect, a visiting card carefully printed, "Mechin, farmer." Fine souls with a proud title. I shall probably never see the Mechins again, but the letter I shall always keep. "Madame: I have the honour to tell you that we reached home at six in the evening after a journey of thirty hours. All our children and grandchildren were waiting for the arrival of the diligence. How many tears were shed with ours I It is hard for us to be comforted for the loss of our beloved IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I4I child, but we must conquer our grief so that we can do our duty as working people. As I said to my family, it is a duty more than ever, now that the little one has died, to de- fend the soil that we are cultivating. Poor, dear child, his face is always before our eyes. "I end, dear lady, in begging you to ac- cept our thanks, and in sending you a warm handclasp of friendship. My wife, my chil- dren and my grandchildren join me. "Mechin, Pere. "Decorated in 1870. "Please remind Sister Gabrielle of her promise to have a wreath of laurel put on the grave of Private Mechin. We do not want them to put anything else." No, truly, nothing else should be put there. Strew not upon this urn you close The flower of Aphrodite, the rose. For love came not his way. 142 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL Nor even gently o'er it shower The immortelle, old age's flower. He lived but for a day. But lest men feel that to his shade All flowers have been denied. Pluck for him laurel from the woods around, *Twas for his land he died.^ A LAMENT Sister Gabrielle pointed out to me to- day one of the wounded who was growing worse. Absorbed by so many operations she could not wait by that bed of pain. I took her place there, and can you imagine the la- ment full of sadness and tender with an in- expressible tenderness which came from the lips of that young man"? "Poor France, how your children suffer! Poor, poor France." He was pitying her for the martyrdom which she is suffering through her own flesh ^ The Phoenician Women, adapted by G. Rivollet. Act IV, Scene I. IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I43 and blood. How completely he felt that he was her son. And certainly she has never been more gloriously, more cruelly or more tenderly a mother than she is to-day. Her care for her soldier children reaches to the smallest hut of her land. We think of them, we work for them, everywhere, every day uninterruptedly. There is nothing like the pity which they inspire. It touches the very bottom of your heart and makes you suffer not with a sympathetic but with a personal sorrow. It haunts you and follows you everywhere. It is indeed the national soul of France which shudders and weeps in every one of us, which ceaselessly implores relief, at the cost of every sacrifice of her heroic and unhappy children. SOME LETTERS Here are some letters from abroad, which hail France as once more the great nation of the past. Ah I That does indeed do one 144 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL good after so often bringing back from abroad the bitter memory of the hardly dis- guised contempt felt towards us beyond our frontiers. "Our ties with France are com- ing to mean to us all that is dearest and most sacred," the Marquise X writes from Rome. And here are letters from our friends, the English, always calm, even in their heroism, and sound in their judgment. September 3rd. Naturally I can not talk to you, my dear madam, of anything but this terrible war. Our people are slow to begin; but you will see that they are equally slow to give up what they take hold of. When "the spirit of battle" has once entered into us we will go on to the very end. It is a splendid sight to see how our men fight, and perhaps our little force — which, besides, will grow larger very soon — will help toward the happy result. On both sides the losses will certainly be terrible, but par- ticularly on the German side. Nevertheless, we must brave everything and prepare ourselves for every sacrifice both of a private and a public kind so that we may escape the Teutonic peril. My daughter is busy in the hospital, but she would prefer to go to France in one of the ships with the troops. It is truly splendid to think that our IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I45 two nations, so often enemies in the past, are to- day fighting side by side in this most critical hour of their history. Good-bye, and may we meet again once more in happier days. November 10th. I have been so fearfully busy at the war depart- ment that until now I have not been able to find the time to answer your interesting letter. I work for twelve hours every day, including Simdays, and when I do get home all I can do is to go to bed, dead from fatigue. To-day, however, I have come to the seashore for twenty-four hours' rest and that has enabled me to have the pleasure of writing to you. What a time of gloomy anxiety we are going through ! I hope that your wounded are getting better and that you have good news from those who are still fighting. In the midst of your own family troubles it should be a cause of great pride and of consolation to you to feel that the whole world has its eyes fixed on your com- patriots and that it knows that they are fighting even better, if that is possible, than they ever fought before — with all the old dash which be- longs peculiarly to them and which has made them famous in history and also with a new tenacity which I would describe, if you will let me, as rather English. You have in Jofi're a great leader. He and our own General French have curious like- nesseSj moral and even physical, and we like to 146 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL point them out. So far as I can judge the Ger- mans are failing completely in their successive plans of going to Paris and to Calais. We can congratulate ourselves mutually on these defeats. The way in which they come back again and again to the attack brings them to certain deaths and even if the Allies suffer great losses^ the Germans will meet with incalculable and irreparable ones. As to how long the horrible war will last^ how can I tell you anything? Nobody can know any- thing about it. If things go on the way they are going at present, it will die out of itself by the exhaustion of Germany. The result, whether more or less near, will depend a good deal on what is going to be done by the Russians, whose millions of men are j ust beginning to really move. But you as well as I, we must both "possess our souls in patience" and forbid ourselves to allow our thoughts to dwell imnecessarily on the horror of the slaughter. It is better to save our strength for work. Here we are waiting for some wounded soldiers and my daughter has a great deal to do in getting the house ready. We shall also have some con- valescent officers in need of the open air and those who may have been mentally deranged by their terrible experiences. Once more I beg of you, let us force ourselves to look forward and to think of the better times which are coming. C. R . IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I47 And here are some letters from our own side, and from what indeed is particularly our own side, those fields of French heroism where, behind a veil of mystery which we must respect, the army that is saving us is manoeuvring. This is from one of our best officers, who so writes to his wife that he makes it possible for her to follow, almost day by day, his hard campaign life : September 25th. I am scribbling this letter to you during the heaviest bombardment that I have suffered so far. The Germans are trying with their shells to drive us from this village which we have held for eight days in spite of all their efforts. Shells of very large calibre rain with a deafening noise on the shattered farms and set on fire the few which are still left standing. At this moment our life is like a penny tossed in the air, and what will happen is so much a matter of chance that no one's heart beats any the faster for it. We have just finished a game of bridge and I can assure you that it was not all this which made us stop it. The men are just going to eat their soup; they are waiting for the end of the tornado to go and retrieve those of their soup kettles that haven't been tipped over. Perhaps this is the forerunner of a German at- 148 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL tack. So much the better. An attack — wherever it comes from — would be a change from this ex- asperating condition of waiting face to face with each other for days, and which can not last. After the Marne, we need another victory to free our Northern frontier. May we soon have it. September 29th. After some sharp disturbances, it seems to me as if to-night there was going to be a few moments' calm. I'm hurrying to take advantage of it with you. Our position is maintained in the ruined village which we captured by a night attack on the evening of the ISth, lost on the 14th toward noon, recaptured by another night attack on the 15 th, and since then have held in spite of an un- believable bombardment. It is telling you enough to say that we are in a part of the great battle where the struggles of the two sides to gain the ground in front neutralize and counterbalance each other. The Germans do this poor burned and dev- astated village the honour of treating it like a fort. These deluges of iron and fire fortunately produce more fear than harm, but they are, above all, a severe test of morale. Our regiment is win- ning a fine reputation for itself in the army for keenness and tenacity, and I imderstand they are thinking of congratulating it for this officially. Our units, which are now made up almost entirely of reservists, are behaving well. Ah! there is no IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I49 longer the fire and youthful dash that our regu- lar companies had at the beginning of the war. The men are slow to manoeuvre, they think a little too much about eating and sleeping, but they are determined, tenacious, firm under fire, profoundly anxious to expel the invader, and bearing up well under the prodigious fatigue of our life. We have neither undressed nor taken off our shoes for nearly three weeks, and in the course of that time we spent five or six days in a heavy rain in the woods, crouching in the bottom of chalky trenches, from which we came out in the morning in a condition which you can imagine! There is no question, naturally, of our having our horses, who remain with our orderlies five or six kilometres in the rear. The provisioning on the whole is carried out very well. The wagons come up during the night to within one thousand five hundred to two thou- sand metres of the line. We send squads back to them and in the morning the companies find that they have almost all they need. Thanks to the smoking ruins, the men can do their cooking with- out attracting the attention of the lookouts or the aviators of the enemy, but if ever that attention is attracted we get a hail of "plums." There is nothing to buy in this country, so com- pletely deserted and ravaged. When we dislodge some frightened peasant from the ruins of a cellar we hurry him to the rear. We buy or kill the few rare animals which are still left in the stables in 150 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL order to use to the limit what the country still has to give, and at any rate to make it useless to the enemy. Here we only find some starved pigeons for poultry and some frightened cows whose milk we struggle for, and once in a great while a few potatoes and some cauliflower and carrots. They say that the Germans are in serious need of food and that they live only on canned things. They hold on just the same and won't let themselves be pushed out. That will be done nevertheless. The most terrible thing is the 'prospect of a hard win- ter's campaign. The few days of rain last week gave us a sharp foretaste of it. The thought of you never leaves me, any more than the wallet in which I have your photograph and that of the children, and also the prayer to the Virgin "for those who love one another and are separated." But my courage does not desert me either; does it not spring from our love.'' May God do as he wills with us, but may he always bless us, together or apart. Neighbourhood of Ypres, November 8th, 1914. We have just undergone the most awful day of fighting which we have so far lived