REPATRIÉES
I
"Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle, the children are coming!"
Christmas had come and gone in a convulsion of parties, January
had dripped monotonously into the abyss of time. The day was dank
and cheerless, rain--the imperturbable rain of France--was falling
placidly, persistently, yet through the unfathomable seas of mud that
engulf Bar-le-Duc in winter I saw Madame Lassanne running towards me. I
was miry, wet and exceedingly cross; Madame was several times mirier,
her clothes were a sodden sop, but her eyes were like a breeze-ruffled
pool that the sun has been kissing. She clutched a telegram in one
shaking hand, she waved it under my eyes, she cried out something quite
unintelligible, for a laugh and a sob caught it and smothered it as she
fled. I watched her splash through the grey liquid sea--she was running
but she did not know it. The train was not due for an hour yet.
Some days later I swam out to the farm (you don't walk in Bar in
winter unless you have webbed feet, and then you fly), and there I
found Madame Breda and the aunt whose name I have most reprehensibly
forgotten, and Roger and Marie, and yet another old lady, and Madame,
and they were all living in one small room and they all talked
together, and Roger--discerning infant--howled at my uniform, and
Marie stared at me out of great round eyes, and gradually little by
little I pieced together the story.
When shells were falling on the village Madame Breda, as you know,
set off with the children, but turning north instead of south, walked
right into the line of battle. A handful of French (it was in August
1914) were flying before vastly superior German forces. They rode down
the road at breakneck speed. "Sauve qui peut!" The cry shattered the
air. One man's horse was shot under him. He scrambled to his feet,
terror in his eyes, for the Germans were close behind. A comrade reined
up, in a moment he had swung himself behind him and the mad race for
life swept on, the men shouting to Madame Breda to fly. "Sauvez-vous,
sauvez-vous." What she read in their eyes she never forgot. But flight
for her and the children was out of the question, they were literally
too frightened to move. A few minutes later they were toiling back
along the road to a little village called, I think, Canel, with German
soldiers mounting guard over them. There they were kept for six days,
during three of which no bread was obtainable, and they nearly died of
hunger. Then they were taken to Nantillois, their old home, where they
remained for two months. Food was scarce, the soldiers brutal. "There
are no potatoes," they cried to the Commandant; "what shall we eat?"
"Il y a des betteraves,"[9] he replied coarsely as he turned away.
[9] Literally, "There is beet," but the peasants sometimes used the
word indifferently for any kind of root-vegetable such as turnips, etc.
These French peasants must come of a sturdy stock, they are so
difficult to kill. They existed somehow--only the baby died.
And then they were marched off again, this time to Carignan, once a
town of perhaps 2,500 inhabitants, of whom some 1,100 remained. Here
they were not treated badly, the garrison consisting of oldish men,
reservists, with little stomach for the atrocities that followed in the
wake of the first army. At Nantillois some ugly things appear to have
happened, but at Carignan the Mayor managed to _tenir tête_, behaving
like a hero at first and later like a shrewd and far-seeing man.
Some day, I hope a volume will be written in honour of these French
mayors. Sermaize, left defenceless, was an exception. For the most
part they stuck to their posts, shielding and protecting them in
every way, raising indemnities from the very stones, placating irate
commandants, encouraging the stricken, and all too often dying like
gallant gentlemen when the interests of Kultur demanded that the blood
of innocent victims should smoke upon its altars.
Madame Breda told me that the Mayor of Nantillois bought up all the
flour he could find in the mills and shops during the first week of
war, hiding it so successfully the Germans never found it. I confess I
received this information with frank incredulity, for knowing something
of the ways of the gentle Hun, I am profoundly convinced that if you
set him in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, telling him that a grain
of gold had been hidden there, he would nose round till he found it.
And it wouldn't take him long, for his scent is keen. But Madame was
positive. French wit was more than a match for German cunning, and the
flour was distributed by a man whose life would not have been worth
five minutes' purchase if his "crime" had been found out.
In spite of the flour, however, and in spite of the washing that
brought Madame in a small weekly wage, "ce n'était pas gai, vous
savez." One doesn't feel hilarious on a ration of half-a-pound of
meat per week, half-a-pound of black bread per day, and potatoes and
vegetables doled out by an irascible Commandant.
I wonder what we would feel like if we were obliged to go to a German
officer and beg from him our food? We would starve first? But what
if two small hungry children clutched at our skirts and wailed for
bread? When the American Relief came in and the people were able to buy
various necessaries, including bacon at one franc sixty a pound, things
were a little better. To those who were too poor to buy, that gem of a
Mayor gave _bons_ (free orders).
And so the months went by. Then one day soldiers tramped about
selecting two people from one family, three from another, separating
mother from daughter, sister from sister, but happily this time
including the whole Breda family on their list.
"You are to go away."
"Away? Ah, God, where?"
"Oh, to Germany, and then to Morocco."
The poor wretches, believing them, were filled with infinite grief and
dismay. They were crowded into wagons and driven to Longuyon, herded
there like cattle for sixteen days, and finally taken through Germany
into Switzerland and thence into France. In Germany women wearing Red
Cross badges gave them food, treating them well; at the Swiss frontier
they were rigorously searched, a man who had one hundred and fifty
francs in German gold being given paper money instead, and losing, if
Madame Breda was correctly informed, thirty-six francs on the exchange.
At Annemasse there is a _Bureau des Réfugiés_ so splendidly organised
that _repatriés_ can be put into immediate touch with their relatives,
no mean feat when you think of the dismemberment of Northern France.
So behold Madame Breda joyfully telegraphing to Madame Lassanne, and
the latter waiting at the station with tears raining down her face, and
limbs trembling so much they refused to support her!
Poor soul! The end of her calvary was not yet. Roger did not know
her. And his nerves had been so much affected by what he, baby though
he was, had gone through that for weeks he hid his face in his
grandmother's arms and screamed when his mother tried to kiss him.
Screamed, too, at sudden noises, at the approach of any stranger, or at
sight of a brightly-lighted room. No wonder he howled at the uniform.
And old Madame Breda, staunch, loyal thing that she was, had been too
sorely tried. The long strain, the months of haunting anxiety and dread
had eaten away her strength, and soon after coming to Bar she sank
quietly to rest.
She talked to me of Carignan once or twice, saying it was a vast
training-camp for German recruits, mere boys (_des vrais gosses_), few
over seventeen years of age.
Once a French aviator, hovering over the town, was obliged to descend
owing to some engine trouble. He was caught, tried as a spy and
condemned to death. Asking for a French priest to hear his last
confession, he was told it could not be permitted. A German ministered
to him instead (what a refinement of cruelty!), and remaining with
him to the end, declared afterwards that he died "comme un héros, un
Chrétien, et un brave."
Another aviator, similarly caught, was also shot, though both, by every
rule of the game, should have been treated as prisoners of war.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, c'est un vrai calvaire qu'on souffre là bas," cried
Madame Breda, tears standing thick in her eyes; and thinking of other
_repatriées_ whom I had met and whose stories burned in the memory
I knew that she spoke only the truth. For _là-bas_ is prison. It is
home robbed of all its sacredness, its beauty, its joy, its privacy;
it is life without freedom, and under the shadow of a great fear.
Shall I tell you of those other _repatriées_? I promised to spare you
atrocities, but there is a martyrdom which should call forth all our
sympathy and all our indignation, and they, poor souls, have endured it.
II
Madame Ballay is a young, slight, dark-eyed woman, wife of a railway
employee, into whose room I stumbled accidentally one day when looking
for some one else, an "accident" which happened so frequently in Bar
we took it as a matter of course. No matter how unceremonious our
entry, our reception was invariably the same, and almost invariably
had the same ending--that of a new name inscribed upon our books, a
fresh recipient gratefully acknowledging much-needed help. Almost
invariably, but not quite. Once at least the ending was not routine. A
dark landing, several doors. I knock tentatively at one, a voice shouts
_Entrez_, and I fling open the door to see--well, to see a blue uniform
lying on the floor and a large individual rubbing himself vigorously
with a towel. "Pardon, Madame!" he exclaimed, pausing in his towelling.
He was not in the least nonplussed, but for my part, not having come
to France to study the nude, I fled--fled precipitately and nearly
fatally, for the stairs were as dark as the landing, and my eyes were
still filled with the wonder of the vision. And though many months have
gone by, I am still at a loss to know why he told me to come in!
But nothing will ever teach me discretion, and so I still knock at
wrong doors, though not always with such disastrous results, and often
with excellent ones, as it has enabled us to help people who would
have been too shy or too proud to knock at _our_ door and ask to be
inscribed upon our books.
When the war broke out the Ballays, whose home was down Belmont way,
were living in Longuyon, where Monsieur had been sent some two years
before. They had very few friends, so when the mobilisation order
came, when from every church steeple rang out the clear, vibrant,
emotion-laden call to arms, Madame was left alone and unprotected
with her baby girl. There was no time to get away. The Germans surged
over the frontier with incredible swiftness, and almost before
the inhabitants knew that war had begun were in the streets. Then
realisation came with awful rapidity, for Hell broke loose in the town.
Shots rang out, wild screams of terror, oaths, shoutings, the rush of
frightened feet, of heavy, brutal pursuit. Women's sobs throbbed upon
the air, the wailing of children rose shrill and high; drunken ribald
song, hammering upon doors, orders sharply given! Madame cowering in
her kitchen saw ... heard.... She gathered her child into her arms.
Where could they fly for safety? The door was broken open, a German,
drunk, maddened, rushed in and seized her. Struggling, she screamed
for help, and her screams attracted the attention of some men in a
room below. They dashed up, and the soldier, alarmed, perhaps ashamed,
slunk away. Snatching up the child, the unfortunate mother fled to
the woods. There, with many other women and children, she wandered
for two days and two nights. They had no food, nothing but one tin
of condensed milk, which they managed to open and with which they
coloured the water they gave the children. Starving, exhausted, unable
to make her way down through France, she was compelled to return to
the town, three-quarters of which, including the richer residential
portions, had been wantonly fired. The few people she had known were
gone, her own house destroyed. She wandered about the streets for five
days and nights, penniless and starving, existing on scraps picked up
in the gutter, sleeping in doorways, on the steps of the church. Then
she stumbled upon a Belmont woman living in a street that had escaped
destruction. The woman was kind to her, taking her in and giving her
lodging, but unable to give her food, as she had not enough for herself.
Madame was nearly desperate when some German soldiers asked her to do
their washing, paying her a few sous, with which she was able to buy
food for herself and the child. But she was often hungry, there was
never enough for two. The men were reservists, oldish and quiet, doing
no harm and living decently. It was the first armies that were guilty
of atrocities, and in Longuyon their score runs high. They behaved
like madmen. Ninety civilians were wantonly shot in the streets, among
them being some women and children. A woman, Madame said, took refuge
in a cellar with several children--five, I think, in all; a soldier
rushed in with levelled rifle. She flung herself in front of the little
ones, but with an oath he fired, flung her body on one side and then
killed the children. Soldiers leaning from a window shot a man as he
walked down the street. They caught some civilians, told one he was
innocent, another that he had fired on them, shot some, allowed others
to go free; they quarrelled among themselves, they shot one another.
Women, as a rule, they did not shoot. But the women paid--paid the
heaviest price that can be demanded of them; nor did the presence of
her children save one mother from shame. I have heard of these soldiers
clambering to the roofs and crawling like evil beasts from skylight to
skylight, peering down into dark attics and roof-rooms, searching for
the shuddering victims who found no way of escape. And then, their rage
and fury spent, they swept on, crying, "Paris kaput, À Paris, Calais,
Londres. London kaput. In a fortnight" ... and the reservists marching
in took their places.
For seven months Madame Ballay was unable to leave the town. She knew
nothing of what was happening in France, heard no news of her husband,
did not know whether he was dead or alive.
"But I was well off," she said, "because of the washing. There were
women--oh, rich women, Mademoiselle, bien élevées--who slowly starved
in the streets, homeless, houseless, living on scraps, on offal and
refuse. Sometimes we spared them a little, but we had never enough for
ourselves."
Seven months jealously guarding the two-year old baby from harm and
then repatriation, a long, weary journey into Germany, a night in a
fortress, then by slow stages into Switzerland and over the frontier to
France.
What a home-coming it might have been! But the baby had sickened;
underfed and improperly nourished, it grew rapidly worse, it had
no strength with which to fight, and M. Ballay, hurrying down from
Bar-le-Duc in response to his wife's telegram (she discovered his
whereabouts through the _Bureau des Réfugiés_), arrived just two hours
after the last sod had been laid upon its tiny grave.
"She was my only comfort during all those months," the poor creature
said, tears raining down her face, "and now I have lost her." When she
had recovered her self-control I told her I knew of people who refused
to believe stories of atrocities, and would certainly refuse to believe
hers.
"It is quite true," she said simply, "I SAW it," and then she added
that the reservists sometimes gave food to the starving women who were
reduced to beg for bread. "When they had it they would give soup to
the children, but often they had none to spare, and the women suffered
terribly."
Think of it, in all the rigour of a northern winter. Think of this for
delicately nurtured women. Madame shivered as she spoke of it, and it
was easy to tell what had painted the dark shadows under her eyes and
the weary lines--lines that should not have been there for many a long
year yet--round her mouth.
III
For us the whole system--if, indeed, there is any system--of
repatriation was involved in mystery. Convoys were sent back at erratic
intervals, chosen at haphazard, young and old, strong and weak, just
anyhow as if in blind obedience to a whim. No method appeared to govern
procedure, convoys being sometimes sent off just before an offensive,
sometimes during weeks of comparative calm.
Probably the key to the mystery lay in the military situation; we
noticed, for instance, that many were sent back just before the
offensive at Verdun. Food problems, too, may have exerted an influence,
as every _repatriée_ assured us that Germany was starving. In the
winter of 1915-1916 so many of these unfortunate people crossed the
frontier, the Society decided to equip a Sanatorium for them in the
Haute-Savoie, near Annemasse. Many were tubercular, others threatened
with consumption, but no sooner was the Sanatorium ready than the
Germans, as might be expected, stopped the exodus, and it was not until
the following winter or autumn that they began to come in numbers
again. Of these, a doctor who worked among them for many weeks gave
me a pathetic account. Their plight, she said, was pitiable. They
wept unrestrainedly at finding themselves on French soil again;
even the strongest had lost her nerve. Shaken, trembling in every
limb, starting at every sound, they had all the appearance of people
suffering from severe mental shock; many were so confused as to be
almost unintelligible, others had lost power of decision, clearness of
thought, directness of action. The old were like children. There were
women who sat day after day, plunged in profound silence from which
nothing could rouse them. Others chattered, chattered unceasingly
all day long, babbling to any one who would listen, utterly unable
to control themselves. Some were thin to emaciation, others, on the
contrary, were rosy and plump. Of food they never had enough. That
was the complaint of them all. The American supplies kept them from
starvation. "One would have died of hunger only for that," they said,
but the Germans would not allow free distribution. What they got they
had to pay for, but in some Communes the Mayors were able to arrange
that penniless folk should pay after the war, _i. e._ the Commune lent
the money or paid on condition that it would be refunded later.
Coffee made chiefly from acorns, black bread, half-a-pound of meat per
week (a supply which sometimes failed), these Germany provided--that is
to say, allowed to be sold, and it is but just to add that though every
woman declared that the Boches themselves went hungry, those I spoke to
added that they never tampered with the American supplies, though one
or two mentioned that inferior black flour was sometimes substituted
for white of a better quality. Paraffin was rarely obtainable, and fuel
scarce.
Martial law, of course, prevails. House doors must never be locked,
windows must be left unbarred, there are fixed hours for going to
the fields, fixed hours after which one must be indoors at night. Any
soldier or officer may walk into any house at any hour he chooses. "You
never know when the butt-end of a rifle will burst your door open and
a soldier walk in." A man passing down the street and looking in at
a window sees a woman with her children sitting down to their midday
meal. It is frugal enough, but it smells good.
He realises that he is hungry, he stalks in and helps himself to what
he wants. If they go without, what matter? Falsehoods of every kind are
freely circulated. France has been defeated; England has betrayed her;
the English have seized Calais; the English have been driven into the
sea; London has fallen. With the utmost duplicity every effort is made
to undermine faith in the Alliance, to persuade people that England is
a traitor to their cause, hoodwinking them in order to gain her own
ends.
A peasant told one of our workers that she, too, had been a prisoner,
and though hungry, was not otherwise ill-treated. One day when she and
the other women went to get their soup the Germans, as they ladled
it out, said, "There is dessert for you to-day" (the dessert being
repatriation). "Yes, you are going back to France; but there is no
bread there, so we don't know how you will live. You must go through
Switzerland, where there is no food either. The best thing for you to
do is to throw yourselves into Lake Constance."
It is by such apish tricks as these that the lot of the unhappy people
is made almost intolerable.
No letters, no newspapers, no news, only a few guarded lines at rare
intervals from a prisoner in Germany--is it any wonder that the
strongest nerves give way, and that hysterical women creep over the
frontier to France? They are alone, they are cold and hungry, and oh,
how desperately they are afraid! They dare not chat together in the
street, a soldier soon stops all THAT, and at any moment some pitiful
unintentional offence may send them under escort into Germany.
A woman owns a foal, chance offers her an opportunity of selling it;
she does so, and is sentenced to imprisonment in Germany for a year.
She has sinned against an unknown or imperfectly understood law. She
has no counsel to defend her; her trial, if she is honoured with one,
is the hollowest mockery.
There is living in the rue St Mihiel in Bar-le-Duc, or there was in the
spring of 1917, a woman who spent six months in a German prison. Her
offence? A very natural one. She had heard nothing of her husband for
two years; then one day a neighbour told her she had reason to believe
that he was a prisoner in Germany. A hint to that effect had come in a
letter. If Madame wrote to a soldier in such and such a prison he might
be able to give her news of him.
The letter was written, despatched, and opened by the German censor.
Now it is a crime to try and elicit information about a prisoner even
if he happens to be your husband, and even if you have heard nothing
of him for two long years. Madame was separated from her children and
speedily found herself in a German prison--one, too, which was not
reserved for French or Belgian women, but was the common prison of a
large town. Here she was classed with the "drunks and disorderlies,"
the riff-raff, women of no character, and classed, too, with Belgian
nuns and gentlewomen, many of them of the highest rank, whose offence
was not that of writing letters, but of shielding, or being accused of
shielding, Belgian soldiers from the Germans who were hunting them down
like rats.
Compelled to wear prison clothes, to eat the miserable prison fare,
work and associate with women of the worst character, many of them
had been there for years, and some were serving life-sentences.
Representations had been made on their behalf, but for a long time in
vain. Then as a great concession they were given permission to wear
their own clothes and exercise in a yard apart, but the concession was
a grudging one, and when one of the nuns dared to ask for more food she
was promptly transferred back again to the main building.
When the release of prisoners is being discussed round the Peace Table,
it is to be hoped that the needs of these women will not be forgotten.
IV
It happened to be my fortune to visit within a fortnight two women,
natives of Conflans-Jarny, both _repatriées_ and neither aware that
the other was in the town. Indeed, I think they were unacquainted.
Yet each told me identically the same story. One was the wife of a
railway employee, the other of rather better position and a woman of
much refinement of mind. Both came to Bar early in 1917, and both were
profoundly moved as they told their tale.
"We did not know the Germans were coming," they said. "People thought
they would pass over on the other side of the hill." And so, in spite
of heavy anxiety, Conflans went about its usual affairs one brilliant
August day. There were only a few troops in the town--even the military
authorities do not seem to have suspected danger; but the sun had not
travelled far across the cloudless sky when down from the hill a woman,
half distraught, half dead with fear came flying.
"The Germans!" she gasped, and looking up Conflans saw a wide tongue
of flame leaping upwards--the woman's farmhouse burning--and wave upon
wave of grey-coated men surging like a wind-driven sea down every road,
down the hill-side. The soldiers seized their rifles, their hasty
preparations were soon made, they poured volley after volley into the
oncoming mass, they fought till every cartridge was expended and their
comrades lay thick on the ground. Then the Germans, who outnumbered
them ten, twenty, fifty to one, clubbed their rifles and the massacre
began. There was no quarter given that day. "They beat them to death,
Mademoiselle, and we--ah, God! we their wives, their sisters, their
mothers looked on and saw it done." Conflans lay defenceless under the
pitiless sun. Some twenty-seven civilians, including the priest, were
promptly butchered in the streets, and one young mother, whose baby,
torn from her arms, was tossed upon a bayonet, was compelled to dig a
hole in her garden, compelled to put the little lacerated body in a
box, compelled to bury it and fill in the grave. Other things happened,
too, of which neither woman cared to speak.
And so Conflans-Jarny passed into German hands.
As time wore on Russian prisoners were encamped there. They worked in
the fields, in the mines and in the hospitals.
"Ah, les pauvres gens! Figurez-vous, Mademoiselle, in the winter when
snow was on the ground, when there was a wind--oh, but a wind of ice!
they used to march past our street clad only in their cotton suits.
Some had not even a shirt. They were dying of cold, but they were so
strong they could not die. They were blue and pinched. They shook as if
they had an ague. Sometimes, but not often, we were able to give them
a little hot coffee; they were so grateful, they tried to thank us....
(Tears were pouring down Madame Cholley's face as she spoke.) I worked
in the hospital because I had no money with which to buy food--they
gave me two sous an hour--and I used to see _les pauvres Russes_
grubbing in the dust-bins and manure heaps looking for scraps; they
would gnaw filth, rotten vegetable stumps, offal, tearing it with their
teeth like dogs. Once as they marched I saw one step into a field to
pick up a carrot that lay on the ground. The guard shot him dead. And
those that worked in the mines--ah, God only knows what they suffered.
They lived underground, one did not know, but strange stories reached
us. So many disappeared, they say they were killed down there and
buried in the mine."
Then silence fell on the little room, silence broken only by the sound
of Madame's quiet weeping.
Presently she told me that the allowance of food was one pound of
coffee a month, coffee made chiefly from acorns, four tins of condensed
milk at nineteen sous a tin, for three people, and one pound of fat per
head per month. Haricot beans were not rationed, and bread she must
have had, too, but I omitted to make a note of the amount. There was no
paraffin, so in the winter she tried to make candles out of thread and
oil, but the latter was dear and scarce. Meat "had not been seen in the
commune for a year."
"Oh yes, the Germans are starving."
This was the text from which every _repatrié_ tried to draw comfort,
and it may be inferred that there was shortage in the villages. Once
I even heard of shortage in a hospital, my informant being a young
man, manager of a big branch store in the Northern Meuse, who had been
married just three months before war was declared. He was wounded in
August 1914 and taken to Germany, where one leg was amputated, the
other, also badly injured, being operated on at least twice. Yet in
December 1916 it was not healed. He was well treated on the whole, he
told me, but his food was wretched. Coffee and bread in the morning,
thin soup and vegetables at midday, coffee and bread at night.
"When we complained the orderlies said we got exactly the same food as
they did," and he, too, added the unfailing, "Germany is starving."
A pathetic little picture he and his wife made in their shabby room,
she a young, pretty, capable thing who nursed him assiduously, he
helpless on his _chaise-longue_ with yet another operation hanging
over him. The wound was suppurating, it was feared some shrapnel still
remained in the leg. Pension? He had none, not even the _allocation_.
He had applied, of course, but was told he must wait till after the
war. He had not even got the _Medaille Militaire_ or the _Croix de
Guerre_, though he said it was customary in France to give either one
or the other to mutilated and blinded men.
There must be many sad home-comings for these _repatriés_. So many get
back to find that those they loved have been killed or have died while
they were away, so many return to find Death wrapping his wings closely
about the makeshift home that awaits them.
"They sent me to Troyes because my husband was working on the railway
there, but for a whole day I could get no news of him. Then they said
he was at Châlons in the hospital. I hurried there--he died two hours
after my arrival in my arms."
How often one hears such stories. And yet one day the world may hear a
still more tragic one, the day when the curtain of silence and darkness
that has fallen over the kidnapped thousands of Lille and Belgium is
lifted, and we know the truth of them at last.