CHÂLONS.—CHÂTEAU DE JEAN D’HEURS.—REVIGNY, THE “LINING” OF THE FRONT
Each, on comparing notes, was found to have spent the night on the
outside of the bed. One of the party, who naturally wishes to remain
anonymous, found a _cafard_, the classic cockroach, in her ear toward
dawn, and Aurora was welcomed by no hymn of praise from her.
Now we are sitting drinking lemonade on the pavement in front of the
abode of iniquity. We have been twice through the hot town, which
consists of a modern town around the station, and a picturesque old one
on a hill at the back, to find the proper authorities for the stamping
of our papers with the military _permis_ to go to the château of Jean
d’Heurs, belonging to Madame Achille Fould, for luncheon. We caught the
major by a hair’s breadth; he was disappearing around the corner by the
military _commandature_ on his bicycle. Then to the _préfecture_ for
permission to telephone to Châlons for rooms that night; on returning,
found Miss M. and Miss N. awaiting us. They have been working at the
“Foyer des Alliés” near the station. They want now to get a much-needed
canteen in shape at Châlons, and are asking us to help. The word from the
colonel of Verdun is an “open sesame,” and we will investigate _en route_
to Paris.
CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE, _10 o’clock p.m._
It’s been as long as to Tipperary since the scrawl at Bar-le-Duc.
At 11.30 we got into the comfortable motor Madame Fould sent to bring
us to Jean d’Heurs’ for lunch. It’s a beautiful old château of the
eighteenth century, given by Napoleon to the Maréchal Oudinot, and in
the Fould family since those days, though not lived in until the war
by the present generation. It made us feel quite like “folks” as a
side-whiskered, highly respectable, rather aged majordomo received us and
led us up a broad stairway and showed us into a big library where Madame
Fould, her seven _infirmières_, and a young officer were waiting. After
that, a perfect lunch in the way of each thing being of the freshest and
most delicate and tasting of itself. The young officer was recovering
from a wound received at Verdun last September, followed by a trepanning,
evidently highly successful, as, in addition to all his senses, he had a
thick mat of hair.
The library, to which we returned for coffee, was lined with the most
precious books in the most precious bindings, one whole side containing
first editions only from Voltaire and J.-J. Rousseau to Châteaubriand and
Taine. And I ran my fingers with such a friendly feeling over some soft
and lustrous bindings.
The vast spaces of the château are now made into wards, and relays of
several hundred men are cared for in them. White hospital beds are pushed
against elaborately frescoed walls and Empire gildings. Everything in
spotless order. Afterward we went out into the beautiful old park, where
convalescent men were sitting or lying about under the great trees. The
park is now closed to visitors, the fair sex from neighboring villages
having been too generous in their offerings on the altar of Priapus. It’s
a lovely spot, and Madame Fould has had her hospital going since the
beginning of the war.
At two o’clock we motored into Revigny, accompanied by the handsome
young trepanned officer, who deposited us at the military headquarters
for the stamping of our safe-conducts. Mrs. C. P., who can put her head
through a stone wall, without injuring it, as neatly as any one I ever
saw, proceeded to perform the feat, with the result that the major in
command gave us all permission for the next _étape_, Châlons. Then Mrs.
C. P.’s young son, serving with the American Ambulance, met us, motoring
over from Z——; a friend came with him, originally from Swarthmore,
Pennsylvania, rather discouraged at the quiet of the _secteur_ in which
he was stationed. But all he has to do is to wait. Everybody at the front
eventually gets what’s “coming to him.” Mrs. C. P.’s boy had on his
_Croix de Guerre_, got for fearless ambulance work at Verdun during one
of the big attacks.
Revigny seen from the inside is a hole of holes—but through it defile
continually the blue-clad men of France. Twelve thousand had already
passed through that day. In the _carrefour_ of the road by the station
is a ceaseless line of convoys coming from or going to Verdun. This once
banal little village has come to have something symbolic about it, though
looking, as one passes by, like dozens of other destroyed villages. But
inside it is the lining of the war—that thing of dust, fatigue, thirst,
hunger, sadness, fear, despondence, hopelessness, running up and down the
gamut of spiritual and physical miseries. “Theirs not to reason why.” ...
The English canteen is the only bright spot in the whole place. Those
sad-eyed men, like us, love and regret, and are beloved and regretted;
women have let them go in fear and dread; and all over Europe it is the
same, east, west, north, and south—all they love they lay down at the
word of command. I watched for an hour the blue stream of heavily laden
men as they passed in, coming up to the counter with their battered
quart cups, drinking their coffee standing, in haste, that the comrade
following might be sure to get his drink, the sweat dripping from their
faces. Fifteen minutes later a great thunder-storm broke, and thousands
of sad-eyed men were huddled together, shelterless, like sheep, suddenly
soaked; the hateful dust became the still more hateful mud. I left it all
in complete desolation of spirit, and wondering, Is God in His heaven?
Revigny was worse to my spiritual sense almost than the
battle-field—there all was consummated. Here the men are still passing up
to sacrifice.