They were climbing out of the cattle cars into the mud of the freight
yards. They numbered about fifty,--the old, the halt, the blind and
the children. We were whizzing past on a motor ambulance with two
desperately wounded men inside, headed for a hospital a half mile away.
The Medical Major said that unless we hurried the men would probably
be dead when we arrived. So we could not lessen speed as those from
Quesnoy-sur-Somme descended painfully from the cattle cars. Instead,
we sounded the siren for them to get out of the way. The mud from our
wheels splattered them. But it was not mud--not regular mud. It was
black, unhealthy ooze, generated after a month of rain in the aged
layers of train soot. It was full of fever germs. Typhoid was on the
rampage.
As we passed the sentinels at the gates of the yards we were forced to
halt in a jam of ammunition and food wagons. To the army that survives
is given the first thought. The wounded in the ambulance could wait. We
took right of way only over civilians--including refugees.
We asked a sentinel concerning those descending from the cattle cars,
"_là bas_." He said they came from a place called Quesnoy-sur-Somme.
It was not a city he told us, nor a town--not even a village.
Just a straggling hamlet along the river bank--a place called
Quesnoy-sur-Somme.
The past tense was the correct usage of the verb. The place _was_ that;
but now--now it is just a black path of desolation beside a lifeless
river. The artillery had thundered across the banks for a month. The
fish floated backs down on the water.
When the ammunition and food wagons gave us room enough, we again raced
through the streets and delivered our wounded at the hospital--alive.
Then we returned to the freight yards for more. Several ambulance
columns had worked through the night from the field hospitals to the
freight yards. There the men were sorted and the less desperate cases
entrained.
We plowed our way carefully through the ooze of the yards, for ahead
of us walked those from Quesnoy-sur-Somme on their way to the _gare_.
They walked slowly--painfully, except the children, who danced beside
our running board and laughed at the funny red crosses painted on the
canvas sides of the ambulance. It was raining--as usual. The sky was
the coldest gray in the universe, and the earth and dingy buildings,
darker in tone, were still more dismal. But one tiny child had a fat
slab of bread covered thickly with red jam. She raised her sticky pink
face to ours and laughed gloriously. She waved her pudgy fist holding
the bread and jam, and shouted, "_Vive la France!_"
We were now just crawling through the mire. The refugees surrounded us
on all sides. The mother seized the waving little arm, and dragged the
child away. The woman did not look at us. She just plodded along, her
eyes fixed on the mud that closed over her shoes at every step. She
was bareheaded and the rain glistened in great drops upon her hair.
The child hung back. The mother merely tightened her grip, doggedly
patient. She was past either curiosity or reproof.