The Soul of the War Part 15

From one of these women, a lady named Mme. Duterque, who had left Arras with a small boy and girl, I heard the story of her experiences in the bombarded town. There were hundreds of women who had similar stories, but this one is typical enough of all those individual experiences of women who quite suddenly, and almost without warning, found themselves victims of the Invasion.

She was in her dressing-room in one of the old houses of the Grande Place in Arras, when at half-past nine in the morning the first sh.e.l.l burst over the town very close to her own dwelling-place. For days there had been distant firing on the heights round Arras, but now this sh.e.l.l came with a different, closer, more terrible sound.

"It seemed to annihilate me for a moment," said Mme. Duterque. "It stunned all my senses with a frightful shock. A few moments later I recovered myself and thought anxiously of my little girl who had gone to school as usual a few streets away. I was overjoyed when she came trotting home, quite unafraid, although by this time the sh.e.l.ls were falling in various parts of the town."

On the previous night Mme. Duterque had already made preparations in case the town should be bombarded. Her house, like most of the old houses in Arras, had a great cellar, with a vaulted roof, almost as strong as a castle dungeon. She had stocked it with a supply of sardines and bread and other provisions, and as soon as she had her little daughter safe indoors again she took her children and the nurse down to this subterranean hiding-place, where there was greater safety. The cave, as she called it, was dimly lighted with a paraffin lamp, and was very damp and chilly, but it was good to be there in this hiding-place, for at regular intervals she could hear the terrible buzzing noises of a sh.e.l.l, like some gigantic hornet, followed by its exploding boom; and then, more awful still, the crash of a neighbouring house falling into ruins.

"Strange to say," said Mme. Duterque, "after my first shock I had no sense of fear, and listened only with an intense interest to the noise of these sh.e.l.ls, estimating their distance by their sound. I could tell quite easily when they were close overhead, and when they fell in another part of the town, and it seemed to me that I could almost tell which of my friends' houses had been hit. My children, too, were strangely fearless. They seemed to think it an exciting adventure to be here in the great cellar, making picnic meals by the light of a dim lamp. My little boy amused himself by playing canes (hop-scotch), and my daughter was very cheerful. Still, after a little while we suffered. I had forgotten to bring down water or wine, and we also craved for something more comforting than cold sardines. In spite of the noise of houses falling into ruins--and at any moment mine might fall above my head--I went upstairs and began to cook some macaroni. I had to retreat in a hurry, as a sh.e.l.l burst quite close to my house, and for a moment I thought that I should be buried under my own roof. But I went up again in one of the intervals of silence, found the macaroni cooked to a turn and even ventured to peep out of doors. There I saw a dreadful sight. The whole of the Grande Place was littered with broken roofs and shattered walls, and several of the houses were burning furiously. From other parts of the town there came up great volumes of smoke and the red glare of flames."

For three days Mme. Duterque kept to her cellar. Unknown to herself, her husband, who had come from Boulogne to rescue her, was watching the battle from one of the heights outside the town, which he was forbidden to enter by the soldiers. On a Thursday morning she resolved to leave the shelter of her underground vault. News had been brought to her by a daring neighbour that the Germans had worked round by the railway station and might enter the town.

"I had no fear of German sh.e.l.ls," she said, "but I had a great fear of German officers and soldiers. Imagine my fate if I had been caught by them, with my little daughter. For the first time I was filled with a horrible fear, and I decided to fly from Arras at all costs."

With her children and the nurse, she made her way through the streets, above which the sh.e.l.ls were still cras.h.i.+ng, and glanced with horror at all the destruction about her. The Hotel de Ville was practically destroyed, though at that time the famous belfry still stood erect above the ruined town, chiming out the hours of this tragedy.

Mme. Duterque told me her story with great simplicity and without any self-consciousness of her fine courage. She was only one of those thousands of women in France who, with a spiritual courage beyond one's understanding, endured the horrors of this war. It was good to talk with them, and I was left wondering at such a spirit.

It was with many of these fugitives that I made my way back. Away in the neighbourhood of Hazebrouck the guns were still booming, and across the fields the outposts of French cavalry were waiting for the enemy.

4

It was better for women and children to be in Arras under continual sh.e.l.l-fire than in some of those villages along the valleys of the Marne and the Meuse and in the Department of the Seine, through which the Germans pa.s.sed on their first march across the French frontier.

It was a nicer thing to be killed by a clean piece of sh.e.l.l than to suffer the foulness of men whose pa.s.sions had been unleashed by drink and the devil and the madness of the first experience of war, and by fear which made them cruel as beasts.

I think fear was at the heart of a good deal of those atrocious Bets by which the German troops stained the honour of their race in the first phases of the war. Advancing into a hostile country, among a people whom they knew to be reckless in courage and of a proud spirit, the generals and high officers were obsessed with the thought of peasant warfare, rifle-shots from windows, murders of soldiers billeted in farms, spies everywhere, and the peril of franc-tireurs, goading their troops on the march. Their text-books had told them that all this was to be expected from the French people and could only be stamped out by ruthlessness. The proclamations posted on the walls of invaded towns reveal fear as well as cruelty. The mayor and prominent citizens were to surrender themselves as hostages. If any German soldier were killed, terrible reprisals would be exacted. If there were any attempt on the part of the citizens to convey information to the French troops, or to disobey the regulations of the German commander, their houses would be burned and their property seized, and their lives would pay the forfeit. These bald- headed officers in pointed helmets, so scowling behind their spectacles, had fear in their hearts and concealed it by cruelty.

When such official proclamations were posted up on the walls of French villages, it is no wonder that the subordinate officers and their men were nervous of the dangers suggested in those doc.u.ments, and found perhaps without any conscious dishonesty clear proof of civilian plots against them. A shot rang out down a village street. "The peasants are firing on us!" shouted a German soldier of neurotic temperament. "Shoot them at sight!" said an officer who had learnt his lesson of ruthlessness. "Burn these wasps out! Lieber Gott, we will teach them a pretty lesson!"

They had all the material for teaching the pretty lessons of war-- inflammable tablets which would make a house blaze in less than five minutes after they had been strewn about the floors and touched by a lighted match (I have a few specimens of the stuff)--incendiary bombs which worked even more rapidly, torches for setting fire to old barns and thatched roofs. In the wonderful equipment of the German army in the field this material of destruction had not been forgotten and it was used in many little towns and villages where German soldiers heard real or imaginary shots, suspected betrayal from any toothless old peasant, and found themselves in the grip of fear because these Frenchwomen, these old men of the farm and the workshop, and even the children, stared at them as they pa.s.sed with contemptuous eyes and kept an uncomfortable silence even when spoken to with cheerful Teuton greetings, and did not hide the loathing of their souls.

All this silence of village people, all these black looks seemed to German soldiers like an evil spell about them. It got upon their nerves and made them angry. They had come to enjoy the fruits of victory in France, or at best the fruits of life before death came. So these women would not smile, eh? Nor give their kisses nor their love with amiability? Well, a German soldier would have his kisses even though he had to hold a shrieking woman to his lips. He would take his love even though he had to kill the creature who refused it. These Frenchwomen were not so austere as a rule in times of peace. If they would not be fondled they should be forced. Herr Gott! they should know their masters.

5

At the little town of Rebais in the department of Seine-et-Marne there was a pretty Frenchwoman who kept a grocer's shop and did not care for the way in which some German soldiers made free with her biscuits and sweetmeats. She was a proud and fearless young woman, and when the soldiers grinned at her and tried to put their arms about her she struck them and called them unpleasant names and drew an open knife. So she wanted her lesson? Well, she had a soft white neck, and if they could not put their arms about it they would put a rope round it and hang her with her pride. But she was strong and quick as well as proud. She cut their rope with her knife and fought like a wild thing. So they slashed at her with their fists and bruised all her beauty by the time one of their officers came in and ordered them away. No one would court her after the lesson they had given her.

At Saint-Denis-en-Rebais, on September 7, an Uhlan who was eager for a woman's love saw another pretty woman who tried to hide from him. There was a mother-in-law with her, and a little son, eight years of age. But in war-time one has to make haste to seize one's victim or one's loot. Death is waiting round the corner. Under the cover of his rifle--he had a restless finger on the trigger--the Uhlan bade the woman strip herself before him. She had not the pride or the courage of the other woman. She did not want to die, because of that small boy who stared with horror in his eyes. The mother-in-law clasped the child close and hid those wide staring eyes in her skirts, and turned her own face away from a scene of b.e.s.t.i.a.l violence, moaning to the sound of her daughter's cries.

6

At the town of Coulommiers on September 6 a German soldier came to the door of a small house where a woman and her husband were sitting with two children, trying to hide their fear of this invasion of German troops. It was half-past nine in the evening and almost dark, except for a glow in the sky. The soldier was like a shadow on the threshold until he came in, and they saw a queer light in his eyes.

He was very courteous, though rather gruff in his speech. He asked the husband to go outside in the street to find one of his comrades.

The man, afraid to refuse, left the room on this errand, but before he had gone far heard piercing cries. It was his wife's voice, screaming in terror. He rushed back again and saw the German soldier struggling with his wife. Hearing her husband's shout of rage, the soldier turned, seized his rifle, and clubbed the man into an adjoining room, where he stayed with the two little children who had fled there, trying to soothe them in their fright and listening, with madness in his brain, to his wife's agony through the open door a yard away. The husband was a coward, it seems. But supposing he had flung himself upon the soldier and strangled him, or cut his throat? We know what would have happened in the Village of Coulommiers.

7

On September 7 ten German hors.e.m.e.n rode into the farm of Lamermont, in the commune of Lisle-en-Barrois. They were in good humour, and having drunk plenty of fresh milk, left the farmhouse in a friendly way. Shortly after their departure, when Farmer Elly and his friend, the sieur Javelot, breathed more easily and thanked G.o.d because the danger had pa.s.sed, some rifle-shots rang out.

Somewhere or other a dreadful thing was happening. A new danger came to the farm at Lamermont, with thirty men of a different patrol, who did not ask for milk but blood. They accused the farm people of having killed a German soldier, and in spite of the protests of the two men, who had been sitting quietly in the kitchen, they were shot in the yard.

8

At Triaucourt the Germans were irritated by the behaviour of a young girl named Mlle. Helene Proces, who was bold enough to lodge a complaint to one of their officers about a soldier who had tried to make love to her in the German way. It was a fine thing if German soldiers were to be punished for a little sport like that in time of war!

"Burn them out!" said one of the men. On a cold autumn night a bonfire would warm things up a little. ... It was the house of M. Jules Gaude which started the bonfire. It blazed so quickly after the torch had touched his thatch that he had to leap through the flames to save himself, and as he ran the soldiers shot him dead. When the houses were burning the Germans had a great game shooting at the people who rushed about the streets. A boy of seventeen, named George Lecourtier, was killed as he thrust his way through the flames. A gentleman named Alfred Lallemand--his name ought to have saved him--was chased by some soldiers when he fled for refuge to the kitchen of his fellow-citizen Tautelier, and shot there on his hearthside. His friend had three bullet-wounds in the hand with which he had tried to protect the hunted man. Mlle. Proces, the young girl who had made the complaint which led to this trouble, fled into the garden with her mother and her grandmother and an aunt named Mile. Mennehard, who was eighty-one years old. The girl was able to climb over the hedge into the neighbour's garden, where she hid among the cabbages like a frightened kitten. But the old people could not go so fast, and as they tried to climb the hedge they were shot down by flying bullets. The cure of the village crept out into the darkness to find the bodies of those ladies, who had been his friends.

With both hands he scooped up the scattered brains of Mile.

Mennehard, the poor old dame of eighty-one, and afterwards brought her body back into her house, where he wept at this death and destruction which had made a h.e.l.l of his little village in which peace had reigned so long.

And while he wept merry music played, and its lively notes rattled out into the quiet night from an open window quite close to where dead bodies lay. The German soldiers enjoyed themselves that night in Triaucourt. Like so many Neros on a smaller scale, they played and sang while flames leapt up on either side of them. Thirty-five houses in this village were burnt to cinders after their old timbers had blazed fiercely with flying sparks which sparkled above the helmets of drunken soldiery. An old man of seventy named Jean Lecourtier, and a baby who had been only two months in this strange world of ours were roasted to death in the furnace of the village. A farmer named Igier, hearing the stampede of his cattle, tried to save these poor beasts, but he had to run the gauntlet of soldiers who shot at him as he stumbled through the smoke, missing him only by a hair's-breadth, so that he escaped as by a miracle, with five holes in his clothes. The village priest, Pere Viller, leaving the body of his old friend, went with the courage of despair to the Duke of Wurtemberg, who had his lodging near by, and complained to him pa.s.sionately of all these outrages. The Duke of Wurtemberg shrugged his shoulders. "Que voulez-vous?" he said. "We have bad soldiers, like you have!"

9

At Montmirail a man named Francois Fontaine lived with his widowed daughter, Mme. Naude, and his little grandchild Juliette. A German noncommissioned officer demanded lodging at the house, and on the night of September 5, when all was quiet, he came undressed into the young widow's room and, seizing her roughly, tried to drag her into his own chamber. She cried and struggled so that her father came running to her, trembling with fear and rage. The Unter-qffizier seems to have given some signal, perhaps by the blowing of a whistle. It is certain that immediately after the old man had left his room fifteen or twenty German soldiers burst into the house and dragged him out into the street, where they shot him dead. At that moment the child Juliette opened her bedroom window, looking out into the darkness at this shadow scene. It was not Romeo but Death who called this little Juliette. A bullet hit her in the stomach, and twenty-four hours later she died in agony.

I need not add to these stories, nor plunge deeper into the vile obscenity of all those crimes which in the months of August and September set h.e.l.l loose in the beautiful old villages of France along a front of five hundred miles. The facts are monotonous in the repet.i.tion of their horror, and one's imagination is not helped but stupefied by long records of outrages upon defenceless women, with indiscriminate shooting down village streets, with unarmed peasants killed as they trudged across their fields or burned in their own homesteads, with false accusations against innocent villagers, so that hostages were collected and shot in groups as a punishment for alleged attacks upon German soldiers, with old French chateaux looted of all their treasures by German officers in search of souvenirs and trophies of victory for their womenfolk, and with drunken orgies in which men of decent breeding became mere animals inflamed with l.u.s.t.

10

The memory of those things has burnt deep into the brains of the French people, so deep that in some cases there is the fire of madness there.

In a small chateau in France an English friend of mine serving with a volunteer ambulance column with the French troops on the Meuse was sitting at ease one night with some of his comrades and fellow- countrymen. The conversation turned to England, because April was there, and after ten months of war the thoughts of these men yearned back to their homes. They spoke of their mothers and wives and children. One man had a pretty daughter, and read a piece of her latest letter, and laughed at her gay little jests and her descriptions of the old pony and the dogs and the antics of a black kitten. Other men gave themselves away and revealed the sentiment which as a rule Englishmen hide. In the room was a French officer, who sat very still, listening to these stories. The candles were burning dim on the table when he spoke at last in a strange, hard voice:

"It is good for you Englishmen when you go back home. Those who are not killed out here will be very happy to see their women again.

You do not want to die, because of that. ... If I were to go home now, gentlemen, I should not be happy. I should find my wife and my daughter both expecting babies whose fathers are German soldiers...

England has not suffered invasion."

11

The most complete destruction I saw in France was in Champagne, when I walked through places which had been the villages of Sermaize, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Blesmes, and Huiron. Sermaize was utterly wiped out. As far as I could see, not one house was left standing. Not one wall was spared. It was laid flat upon the earth, with only a few charred chimney-stacks sticking out of the piles of bricks and cinders. Strange, piteous relics of pretty dwelling-places lay about in the litter, signifying that men and women with some love for the arts of life had lived here in decent comfort. A notice-board of a hotel which had given hospitality to many travellers before it became a blazing furnace lay sideways on a ma.s.s of broken bricks with a legend so frightfully ironical that I laughed among the ruins: "Chauff.a.ge central"--the system of "central heating" invented by Germans in this war had been too hot for the hotel, and had burnt it to a wreck of ashes. Half a dozen peasants stood in one of the "streets"--marked by a line of rubbish-heaps which had once been their homes. Some of them had waited until the first sh.e.l.ls came over their chimney-pots before they fled. Several of their friends, not so lucky in timing their escape, had been crushed to death by the falling houses. But it was not sh.e.l.l-fire which did the work. The Germans strewed the cottages with their black inflammable tablets, which had been made for such cases, and set their torches to the window- curtains before marching away to make other bonfires on their road of retreat. Sermaize became a street of fire, and from each of its houses flames shot out like scarlet snakes, biting through the heavy pall of smoke. Peasants hiding in ditches a mile away stared at the furnace in which all their household goods were being consumed. Something of their own life seemed to be burning there, leaving the dust and ashes of old hopes and happiness.

"That was mine," said one of the peasants, pointing to a few square yards of wreckage. "I took my woman home across the threshold that was there. She was a fine girl, with hair like gold, Monsieur. Now her hair has gone quite white, during these recent weeks. That's what war does for women. There are many like that hereabouts, white-haired before their time."

I saw some of those white-haired women in Blesmes and Huiron and other sc.r.a.p-heaps of German ruthlessness. They wandered in a disconsolate way about the ruins, watching rather hopelessly the building of wooden huts by a number of English "Quakers" who had come here to put up shelters for these homeless people of France.

They were doing good work--one of the most beautiful works of charity which had been called out of this war, and giving a new meaning to their name of the Society of Friends. But though they were handy in the use of the wood given them by the French Government for this purpose, not all their industry nor all their friendliness could bring back the beauty of these old-world villages of Champagne, built centuries ago by men of art and craft, and chiselled by Time itself, so that the stones told tales of history to the villagers.

It would be difficult to patch up the grey old tower of Huiron Church, through which sh.e.l.ls had come cras.h.i.+ng, or to rebuild its oak roof whose beams were splintered like the broken ribs of a rotting carcase. A white-haired priest pa.s.sed up and down the roadway before the place in which he had celebrated Ma.s.s and praised G.o.d for the blessings of each day. His hands were clenched behind his bent back, and every now and then he thrust back his broad felt hat and looked up at the poor, battered thing which had been his church with immense sadness in his eyes.