MORE STORM-WRACK
A small volume might be written about those days at the Marché Couvert,
about the war gossip that circulated, the adventures that were related.
In spite of the terrific shelling of Verdun only one civilian
was reported to have been killed during that first week, and she
imprudently left her cellar. The bombardment was methodical. Three
minutes storm, then three minutes calm, then three minutes storm again.
Then the pulse-beat lengthened: fifteen minutes storm, fifteen minutes
calm. A priest told Madame B. that, stop-watch in hand, he was able to
visit his people during the whole of the time, diving in and out of
cellars with a regularity equalled only by that of the Germans. Two
women, on the other hand, ran about their village _comme des fous_
for eight days, shells dropping four to the minute, but no one was
hurt, because the inhabitants had all gone to their cellars. How they
themselves escaped they did not know. They had no cellar, that was why
they ran.
Another woman was in her kitchen when a shell struck the house. Seeing
that her sister was badly hurt she ran out, ran all the way down the
village street, scoured the vicinity looking for a doctor, found
one, brought him back, and as she was about to help him to dress her
sister's wound, realised that her foot was wet, and looking down saw
that her boot was full of blood. Not only had the shell, or a fragment
of shell, torn her thigh badly, but it had shattered her hand as well.
Only the thumb and index finger can be moved a little now, the other
fingers are bent and twisted, without any power, the arm is shrivelled
and cannot be raised above her head.
This woman was one of several who were turned out of the Civil Hospital
one bitter afternoon when the wind cut into our flesh and sharp hail
stung our faces. No doubt the hospital was full, no doubt a large
number of bed or stretcher cases had come in, but somehow we could find
no excuse for the thoughtlessness which turned that pitiful band of
ailing, crippled, or blinded women into the dark streets to stumble and
fumble their way through a strange town and then face the horror of the
market. Some were frankly idiotic from fright, strain and age-weakened
intellect; all were terrified, cold and suffering. One, very old, sat
on the ground talking rapidly to herself. "She is détraquée," they
whispered, so she was tucked up on a palliasse, covered with rugs and
left to her mumbling, her monotonous, wearying babble. Next morning our
nurse, going her rounds, found that the unfortunate creature was not
_détraquée_ but delirious, that her temperature was high and both lungs
congested. It was just a question whether she would survive the journey
to Fains, where, in the Departmental Lunatic Asylum, some wards had
been set aside for the overflow from the hospital.
One of our coterie, burning with what we admitted was justifiable
wrath, gave a hard-hearted official from the Prefecture a Briton's
opinion of the matter.
"It was inhuman to treat these women so. Some of them were wandering
in the streets for hours. Why didn't you send them direct to Fains?"
"There was no conveyance, the hospital was full ..." so he excused
himself.
"But they cannot stay here," she thundered. "It is utterly unfit. They
need nursing, comfort, special care."
"Oh, well, there is always the Ornain," he replied, with a gesture
towards the river, and the Briton, unable to determine whether a snub,
a sarcasm, or an inhumanity was intended, for the only time in our
knowledge of her was obliged to leave the field to France.
But she was restored to her wonted good-humour later on by an old lady
who undressed placidly in the new dormitory, peeling off one garment
after another because she "had not taken her clothes off for three days
and three nights," who then knelt placidly by her bedside and said her
prayers, asking, as she tucked the blankets round her, at what time she
would be called in the morning.
CALLED! In that Bedlam!
Most of them were "called" by the big steam whistle at the factory long
before the cocks began to crow. Zeppelins, tired of inactivity, began
to prowl at night. One, as everybody knows, was brought down in flames
near Révigny--a shred of its envelope lies in my writing-case, my only
_souvenir de la guerre_, unless a leaflet dropped by a Taube counts
as such--causing great excitement among the boys in the hospital at
Sermaize. No sooner did they hear the guns and the throb of its engines
than with one accord they scrambled from their beds and rushed to the
verandah, where a wise matron rolled them in blankets and allowed
them to remain to "see the fun," a breach of discipline for which
she was amply rewarded when, seeing the flames shoot up through the
skies, the boys rose to their feet and shrilled the "Marseillaise" to
the night in their clear, sweet trebles. A dramatic moment that! The
long, low wooden hospital a blur against the moonlit field, behind and
all around the woods, silent, dark, clustering closely, purple in the
half-light of the moon, the boys' white faces, their shrill cheer, and
through the sky the wide fire of Death falling, to lie a mammoth dragon
on the whitened fields. It is said that there was a woman in that
Zeppelin--some fragments of clothing, a slipper were found....
Another, more fortunate, dropped bombs at Révigny and Contrisson,
where by bad luck an ammunition wagon was hit. One at least of the
wagons caught fire, but was quickly uncoupled by heroic souls who
were subsequently decorated. The first explosion shook our windows
in Bar-le-Duc, and then for two or more hours we heard report after
report as shell after shell exploded. In the morning wild tales were
abroad. The main line to Paris had been cut, Trèmont (miles in the
other direction) had been bombed, numbers of civilians had been killed
and injured; Révigny was in even smaller shreds than before; in short,
Rumour, that busy jade, was having a well-occupied morning. But that
is not unusual in the War Zone. She is rarely idle there. The number
of times we were told a bombardment by long-range guns was signalled
for Bar is incalculable. The town passed from one _crise de nerfs_ to
another, some one was always in a panic over a coming event which did
not honour us even by casting its shadow before.
The Zeppelins, to be quite frank, were a nuisance. They never
reached the town, which has reason to be grateful for the narrowness
of its valley and the protecting height of its hills, but they made
praiseworthy attempts at all sorts of odd hours, and generally the
most inconvenient that could well be chosen. The doings at Révigny and
Contrisson warned us that a visit might be fraught with disagreeable
results, for Bar is a concentrated place, it does not straggle, and
when raids occur practically every street is peppered.
So though we did not go to the cellars, we felt it incumbent upon us
to be ready to do so should necessity arise, which probably explains
why the syren invariably blew when one or two shivering wretches were
sitting tailor-wise in rubber or canvas basins, fondly persuading
themselves that they were having a bath.
When there are twenty degrees of frost, when water freezes where it
falls on your uncarpeted bedroom floor, bathing in a canvas basin has
its drawbacks; but if, just as your precious canful of hot water has
been splashed in and you "mit nodings on" prepare to get as close
to godliness as it is possible for erring mortal to do, the syren's
long, lugubrious note throbs on the air, well, you float away from
godliness fairly rapidly on the wings of language that would have
shocked the most condemnatory Psalmist of them all. I really believe
those Zeppelins KNEW when our bath-water boiled. We went to bed at
ten-thirty or we waited till midnight. "Let's get the beastly thing
over, it is such a bore dressing again." We dodged in at odd hours of
the evening, it was just the same. Venus was always surprised. In the
end, and when in spite of nightly and daily warnings, nothing happened,
our faith in French airmen became as the rock that moveth not and
is never dismayed. Though syrens hooted and bugles blew, though the
town guard turning out marched under our windows, the unclothed soaped
and lathered and splashed with unemotional vigour, while the clothed
chastely wondered what would happen if a bomb struck the house and
Venus.... Oh, well, the French rise magnificently to any situation.
Once I confess to rage. We had a visitor. We had all worked hard all
day at the market, we had come home after ten, and, wearied out, had
tucked ourselves into bed, aching in every limb. The visitor and the
smallest member of the coterie returned even later. Slumber had just
sealed my eyelids when a voice said in my ear, "Miss Day, I'm so sorry,
there's a Zeppelin." Just as though it were sitting on the roof, you
know, preparing to lay an egg.
"Call me when the bombs begin to fall." Slumber seized me once more.
Again the voice. "I think you must get up; Visitor says it is not safe."
"Oh, go to--the Common-room."
It was no use. I was dragged out. There are moments when one could
cheerfully boil one's fellow-creatures in a sausage-pot.
At the market when danger threatened every one was ruthlessly hunted to
the cellar. And French cellars are the coldest things on earth. Even
on the hottest day in summer they are cool, in the winter they would
freeze a polar bear. Indeed, we were sometimes tempted to declare that
the cellars did more harm than Zeppelin or Taube.
Air-raids affect different people differently. One woman said
they--well, she said, "Ça fait sauter (to jump) l'estomac," which
must have been sufficiently disagreeable; another declared, "Ça
fait trop de bile." Nearly all developed nerve troubles, and Madame
Phillipot--who succeeded Madame Drouet as our _femme de ménage_,
refused to undress at night. In vain we reasoned with her. She slept
armed _cap-à-pie_, ready for immediate flight, and not until a slight
indisposition gave us a weapon, which we used with unscrupulous skill
and energy, did we wring from her a promise to go to bed like a
respectable Christian. Madame Albert died trembling in the darkness
one night: an old woman, affected by bronchial trouble, flying from
Death, found him in the icy cellar; many a case of bronchitis and lung
trouble was reported as an outcome of these nightly raids, children
especially began to suffer, their nerves breaking down, their little
faces becoming pinched, dark shadows lying under their eyes.
In the War Zone people don't write letters to the Press discussing the
advisability of taking refuge in a raid, nor do they talk of "women
and children cowering in cellars." No one suggests that the well-to-do
"should set an example or show the German they are not afraid." France
is too logical for nonsense of that kind. It knows that soldiers do
not sit on the parapet of a trench when strafing is going on--it would
call them harsh names if they did, and so would we. It believes in
reasonable precautions. After all, the German object is to kill as many
civilians as possible--why gratify him by running up the casualty rate?
Why occupy ambulances that might be put to better use? Why occupy the
time of doctors and nurses who are more urgently wanted in the military
wards? Why put your relatives to the expense of a funeral? Why indeed?
Why court suicide for the sake of a stupid sentiment? Logic echoes
why? Logic goes calmly to its cellar or to that of its neighbour, if
it happens to be out and away from its own when trouble begins. Logic
comes up again and goes serenely about its business when trouble is
over.
Only the nerve-wrecks, people who have sustained long bombardment by
shell-fire for the most part, really lose presence of mind. And for
them there is every excuse. Let no one who has not suffered as they
have presume to judge them.
Once--it was downright wicked, I admit--two of us, both, be it
confessed, wild Irishwomen, with all the native and national love of
a row boiling in our veins, hearing the syren one evening, somewhere
about nine o'clock, put on our hats and coats, and kilting our skirts,
set off up the hill. We left consternation behind us, but then we did
so want to see a Zeppelin!
The valley was bathed in soft fitful light. The moon was almost full,
but misty clouds flitted across the sky, fugitives flying before a
wooing wind. Below us the town lay in darkness. Not a lamp showing.
About us rose the old town, the rue Chavé looming cliff-like high above
our heads. We pressed on, pierced the shadows of that narrow street and
gained the rue des Grangettes, there to be met with a sight so weird,
so suggestive of tragedy I wish I could have painted it. From the tall,
grim houses men and women had poured out. Children sat huddled beside
them, others slept in their mother's arms. On the ground lay bags and
bundles. Whispers hissed on the air. It was alive with sibilant sound.
No one talked aloud. They were as people that watch in an ante-room
when Death has touched one who relinquishes life reluctantly in a room
beyond. In the rue Tribel were more groups. In the rue des Ducs de
Bar still more. We thought the population of those old ghost-haunted
houses must all have come forth from a shelter in which they no longer
trusted. A Zeppelin bomb, it is said, will crash through six storeys
and break the roof of the cellar beneath. Here in the street there
was no safety. But in the woods beyond the town, in the woods high on
the hill.... Many and many a poor family spent long night hours in
the cold, the wet and the storm, their little all gathered in bundles
beside them during those intense months of early spring. We felt--or at
least I know that I felt--as we walked through this world of whispering
shadow, utterly unreal. I ceased to believe in Zeppelins; earth,
material things slid away, in the cloud-veiled moonlight values became
distorted; I felt like a spectator at a play, but a play where only
shadows act behind a dim, semi-transparent screen.
Then we came to the Place Tribel, and the world enclosed us again. A
soldier with a telescope swept the heavens, others gazed anxiously
out over the hills towards St Mihiel. The night was very still and
beautiful; strange that out there, somewhere in the void, Death should
be riding, coming perhaps near to our own souls, with his message
written already upon our hearts. In the streets below a bugle call rang
out clear and sweet, the _Alerte_, the danger signal.... We thought of
the hurried wretches making their way to the woods.... Odd that one
should want to see a Zeppelin!