We in America find it possible to read with calm pulse and an
attitude of cold, reasoned impartiality the stories that are
written in red blood and heroic action by real participants in
the great war. Their language, like their viewpoint, seems to us
extreme, violent, embittered. Yet, inasmuch as the presence of
stern reality, which colors viewpoint and language, is the same
that inspired the valorous action itself, we submit, exactly as it
came from Paris, this article, which recounts at first hand the
desperate courage of Mlle. Moreau.
In the musty archives of the French Government she is merely Emilienne
Moreau, youngest of her sex to have achieved mention in Gen. Joffre's
Order of the Day and the right to wear upon her breast the Cross of
War. But to thousands upon thousands of French and British soldiers,
she is the Jeanne d'Arc of Loos--whose valiant spirit won back Loos for
France.
The Official Journal has only this to say about Emilienne Moreau:
"On Sept. 25, 1915, when British troops entered the village of Loos,
she organized a first-aid station in her house and worked day and
night to bring in the wounded, to whom she gave all assistance, while
refusing to accept any reward. Armed with a revolver she went out and
succeeded in overcoming two German soldiers who, hidden in a nearby
house, were firing at the first-aid station."
No mention is made in the official record of the fact that she shot
down the two Germans when their bayonets were within a few inches of
her body; and that later on she destroyed, with hand bombs snatched
from a British grenadier's stock, three more foemen engaged in the same
despicable work.
Nor is it set forth how, when the British line was wavering under the
most terrible cyclone of shells ever let loose upon earth, Emilienne
Moreau sprang forward with a bit of tri-colored bunting in her hand
and the glorious words of the "Marseillaise" upon her lips, and by
her fearless example averted a retreat that might have meant disaster
along the whole front. Only the men who were in that fight can fully
understand why Sir Douglas Haig was right in christening Emilienne
Moreau the Joan of Arc of Loos.
All this happened during the last great offensive of the allies
in Artois, between Arras and La Bassee. For almost a year before
Emilienne Moreau, who is now just seventeen, had lived in Loos under
the rule of the invader. During almost all of that time the village had
been under the allies' artillery fire. Yet neither she nor her parents
made any attempt to move to a safer place.
Their home was in Loos, and some day, they felt sure, the Germans would
be driven back. They were always short of food. Sometimes they faced
death by starvation, as well as by bombardment.
But they remained, and Emilienne even contrived to continue the studies
by which she hoped to become a school teacher.
Like the historic Maid of Orleans, the maid of Loos has not only the
warlike but the diplomatic genius. Despite the dangers she faced
because she was both young and comely, she succeeded in gaining the
Germans' confidence to such an extent they entrusted to her much of the
administration of what remained of the village.
Children whose parents had been killed or taken away as prisoners
were put in her care, and she was permitted to give them what little
schooling was possible under the conditions. She was at the same time
the guardian angel of her entire family; for her father, a hot-blooded
old veteran of 1870, frequently put them in danger of drastic
punishment by his furious denunciations of the enemy.
His chagrin so embittered him that, what with that and scanty
nourishment, he died. Then Emilienne became the protectress and sole
support of her mother and her ten-year-old brother.
She buried her father with her own hands, in a coffin built by her
brother and herself, there being neither undertakers nor carpenters
left in Loos. And she continued to go quietly about her many tasks,
still stifling within her the resentment against the ever-present
"Boche," until there came that glorious day when she knew the allies'
offensive had begun.
For three days the girl huddled in the cellar with her terror-stricken
mother and little brother waiting for the end of that awful cannonade
which she realized was destined to bring the British to Loos.
Every minute of those seventy-two hours she and every one of the
handful of old men, women and children in the village were facing
death, but she told an English officer after it was all over that to
her it had been the happiest time since the German occupation began.
As soon as Emilienne heard among the deep notes of the guns the sharp
reports of rifles she rushed out into the street and into the midst of
the first phase of the battle. The British were driving the Germans
before them at the point of the bayonet, but there was still much
desperate activity going forward with bombs and hand grenades, for
remnants of the German main line were ensconced strongly in various
fortlets and bombproofs scattered among the trenches. On every street
of Loos the wounded lay thickly.
Emilienne saw there was only one way she could help them, and so very
swiftly she turned the Moreau house into a miniature hospital, and with
the aid of the British Red Cross men she tended as many wounded as she
could drag from the maelstrom of the fight.
It was when the first lull came that she detected the firing upon her
first-aid station. How she followed and shot down the two Germans
responsible for this wanton attack is narrated in the official report.
Not long afterward she located three more in the act of perpetrating
the same outrage, and this trio she despatched with grenades borrowed
from a British sergeant.
Although it was the first time in the war that a woman had fought with
hand bombs, such was the confusion of the battle that her brave exploit
passed unremarked until it was revealed by a special correspondent of a
Paris newspaper, the _Petit Parisien_, who got the story from British
soldiers. From the same source all France learned that because a young
girl had been courageous enough to sing the "Marseillaise" amidst the
din of battle the British troops had ceased to falter in their advance,
and the village of Loos had again become part of France.
The spirit of Jeanne d'Arc, which inspired Mlle. Emilienne, is abroad,
not only in her native France, but among the women of France's allies
as well. Their heroines emerge in the war news day by day--sometimes
individually, sometimes en masse.
There is an actual "Regiment de Jeanne"--a whole corps of French
and Belgian women commanded by Mme. Louise Arnaud, who has obtained
permission from the War Minister to put them in uniform. The corps
is for general service at the front, one-third of the members to be
enrolled as combatants, drilled and armed like ordinary soldiers, and
all able to ride and swim.
Mme. Arnaud is the widow of an officer who was killed in the war. Her
father was a merchant ship captain of Calais. Her new "amazon" command
is to be officially designated the "Volunteer Corps of French and
Belgian Women for National Defence."
Servian and Russian women are fighting alongside the men in the
trenches along the Balkan and other fronts to-day. Mme. Alexandra
Koudasheva, a distinguished Russian literary lady and musician, has
been appointed Colonel of the Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment of the Czar's
army, for her valiant services in the field.
England has the London Women's Volunteer Reserve, headed by Col.
Viscountess Castlereagh, which drills regularly at Knightsbridge
Barracks and has reached a high state of efficiency, both in
manoeuvers and the manual of arms.
Many of the English women soldiers are assisting the authorities as
guards of railway bridges and other points of military importance in
out of the way parts of the country.
The British Government shows no disposition to make use of the women
in fighting, but many of the women themselves are eager to fight. The
"suffragettes" have made themselves remarkable by demanding a more
vigorous prosecution of the war.
The reports generally agree that the women fight with great bravery and
some even say that they display greater bloodthirstiness than men. This
is an interesting question which has hardly yet been settled, although
psychologists have furnished an explanation why we should expect them
to be more ferocious. They are of course more emotional and when
circumstances such as an attack on their homes or children force them
to overcome their womanly instincts and resort to fighting, they throw
away all restraint and fight with mad, instinctive ferocity.