My, but it is cold here! Wednesday the 24th it was 13 below zero, and
this morning at ten o'clock it was 6 below. Of course this is in
Centigrade and not Fahrenheit, but it is a cold from which I suffer
more--it is so damp--than I ever did from the dry, sunny, below zero
as you know it in the States. Not since 1899 have I seen such cold as
this in France. I have seen many a winter here when the ground has
hardly frozen at all. This year it began to freeze a fortnight ago. It
began to snow on the 17th, a fine dry snow, and as the ground was
frozen it promises to stay on. It has so far, in spite of the fact that
once or twice since it fell the sun has shone. It looks very pretty, quite
unnatural, very reminiscent of New England.
It makes life hard for us as well as the soldiers, but they laugh and
say, "We have seen worse." They prefer it to rain and mud. But it
makes roading hard; everything is so slippery, and if you ever
happened to see a French horse or a French person "walking on ice"
I don't need to say more.
Well, the unexpected has happened--the cavalry has moved on.
They expected--as much as a soldier ever expects anything--to have
divided their time until March between our hill and the trenches in the
Forêt de Laigue. But on the twenty-second orders began to rush in
from headquarters, announcing a change of plan; a move was
ordered and counter-ordered every few hours for three days, until
Thursday afternoon, the twenty-fifth, the final order came--the whole
division to be ready to mount at seven-thirty the next morning, orders
for the direction to come during the night.
You never saw such a rushing about to collect clothes and get them
dried. You see it has been very hard to get washing done. The Morin,
where the wash-houses are, is frozen, and even when things are
washed, they won't dry in this air, and there is no coal to heat the
drying-houses.
However, it was done after a fashion. Everyone who had wood kept a
fire up all night.
On Wednesday afternoon I had a little tea-party for some of the sous-
officiers--mere boys--a simple goodbye spread of bread and butter
and dry cookies,--nothing else to be had. I could not even make
cake, as we have had no fine sugar for months. However, the tea
was extra good--sent me from California for Christmas--and I set the
table with all my prettiest things, and the boys seemed to enjoy
themselves.
They told me before leaving that never since they were at the front
had they been anywhere so well received or so comfortable as they
have been here, and that it would be a long time before they "forgot
Huiry." Well, we on our side can say that we never dreamed that a
conscript army could have a whole regiment of such fine men. So you
see we are all very much pleased with each other, and if the 23d
Dragoons are not going to forget us, we are as little likely to forget
them.
Thursday evening, before going to bed, the Aspirant and I sat at the
kitchen table and made a lot of sandwiches, as they are carrying
three days' provisions. They expected a five hours' march on the first
day, and a night under the tents, then another day's march, during
which they would receive their orders for their destination. When the
sandwiches were done, and wrapped up ready for his orderly to put in
the saddlebags, with his other provisions, he said: "Well, I am going
to say goodbye to you tonight, and thank you for all your kindness."
"Not at all," I answered. "I shall be up in the morning to see you start."
He protested. It was so cold, so early, etc. But my mind was made
up.
I assure you that it was cold,--18 below,--but I got up when I heard
the orderly arrive in the morning. I had been awake for hours, for at
three o'clock the horses were being prepared. Every man had three
to feed and saddle, and pack. Orderlies were running about doing the
last packing for the officers, and carrying kits to the baggage-wagons.
Amélie came at six. When I got downstairs I found the house warm
and coffee ready. The Aspirant was taking his standing. It was more
convenient than sitting in a chair. Indeed, I doubt if he could have sat.
I had to laugh at the picture he made. I never regretted so much that I
have not indulged in a camera. He was top-booted and spurred. He
had on his new topcoat and his mended helmet--catch a young
soldier who has been hit on the head by his first obus having a new
and unscarred one. He was hung over with his outfit like a Santa
Claus. I swore he could never get into the saddle, but he scorned my
doubts.
To the leather belt about his waist, supported by two straps over his
shoulders, were attached his revolver, in its case with twenty rounds
of cartridges; his field glasses; his map-case; his bidon--for his wine;
square document case; his mask against asphyxiating gas; and, if
you please, his kodak! Over one shoulder hung a flat, half-circular
bag, with his toilet articles, over the other its mate, with a change, and
a few necessary articles.
He looked to me as if he would ride two hundred pounds heavy, and
he hasn't an ounce of extra flesh on him.
I laughed even harder when I saw him mounted. In one side of the
holster was his gamelle; in the other, ammunition. The saddlebags
contained on one side twenty pounds of oats for the horse; on the
other three days' provisions for himself. I knew partly what was in that
bag, and it was every bit as heavy as the horse's fodder, for there
were sandwiches, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tinned meat, peas, corn,
fruit, etc. Behind the saddle was rolled his blanket, inside his section
of tent cover,--it takes six of them to make a real tent. They are
arranged to button together.
I was sitting in the bedroom window when he rode on to the terrace. I
had to laugh as I looked down at him.
"And why does madame laugh?" he asked, trying to keep a sober
face himself.
"Well," I replied, "I am only wondering if that is your battle array?"
"Certainly," he answered. "Why does it surprise you?"
I looked as serious as I could, as I explained that I had supposed,
naturally, that the cavalry went into action as lightly equipped as
possible.
He looked really indignant, as he snapped: "That would be quite
unnatural. What do you suppose that Peppino and I are going to do
after a battle? Wait for the commissary department to find us? No,
madame, after a battle it will not be of my mother nor home, nor even
of you, that we will be thinking. We shall think of something to eat and
drink." Then he added, with a laugh, "Alas! We shan't have all these
nice things you have given us. They will have been eaten by
tomorrow."
I apologized, and said I'd know better another time, and he patted his
horse, as he backed away, and said to him: "Salute the lady,
Peppino, and tell her prettily that you had the honor of carrying Teddy
Roosevelt the day he went to the review." And the horse pawed and
bowed and neighed, and his rider wheeled him carefully as he saluted
and said: "Au revoir, I shall write, and, after the war, I shall give
myself the pleasure of seeing you," and he rode carefully out of the
gate--a very delicate operation, as only half of it was open. Laden
as the horse was, he just made it, and away he galloped down the
hill to Voisins, where the cavalry was assembling.
I stayed in the window a few minutes to wave a goodbye to the men
as they led each their three horses down the hill. Then I put on my
heaviest coat, a polo cap, all my furs and mittens, thrust my felt shoes
into my sabots, and with one hand in my muff, I took the big French
flag in the other and went through the snow down to the hedge to
watch the regiment pass, on the road to Esbly.
Even before I got out of the house the news came that the 118th
Regiment of infantry, the boys who retook Vaux in the great battle at
Verdun, had been marching in from Meaux, and were camped,
waiting to take up the billets the 23d Dragoons were vacating.
I stood in the snow for nearly half an hour, holding up the heavy flag,
which flapped bravely in the icy wind, and watching the long grey line
moving slowly along the road below. I could see half a mile of the line
--grey, steel-helmeted men, packed horses, grey wagons--winding
down the hill in the winter landscape, so different from the France I
had always known. Hardly a sound came back--no music, no colors--
the long, grey column moved in a silent, almost colorless world. I
shifted the heavy flag from one hand to the other as my fingers got
stiff, but, alas! I could not shift my feet. Long before the line had
passed I was forced to fasten the flag to a post in the hedge and
leave it to float by itself, and limp into the house. As a volunteer color-
bearer I was a failure. I had to let Amélie take off my shoes and rub
my feet, and I had hard work not to cry while she was doing it. I was
humiliated, especially as I remembered that the boys had a five
hours' march as their first étape, and a bivouac at the end of it.
I had intended to go out later on the route Madame to watch the
cavalry coming down from the hills on the other side of the Morin, but
I could not face the cold. There is nothing heroic about me. So I
contented myself with helping Amélie set the house in order.
Needless to tell you that no one knows what this unexpected big
movement of troops means.
It is inevitable that we should all imagine that it concerns the coming
spring offensive. At any rate, the cavalry is being put back into its
saddles, and the crack regiments are coming out of Verdun--the
famous corps which has won immortal fame there, and written the
name of Verdun in letters of flame in the list of the world's great
battles, and enshrined French soldiers in the love of all who can be
stirred by courage in a noble cause, or know what it means to have
the heart swell at the thought of the "sacred love of home and
country."
Although I have sworn--and more than once--that I will not talk politics
with you again, or discuss any subject which can be considered as its
most distant blood relation, yet every time you reiterate "Aren't the
French wonderfully changed? Aren't you more and more surprised at
them?" it goes against the grain.
Does it never occur to you that France held her head up wonderfully
after the terrible humiliation of 1870? Does it never occur to you what
it meant to a great nation, so long a centre of civilization, and a great
race, so long a leader in thought, to have found herself without a
friend, and to have had to face such a defeat,--a defeat followed by a
shocking treaty which kept that disaster forever before her? Do you
never think of the hidden shame, the cankering mortification of the
consciousness of that nation across the frontier, which had battened
on its victory, and was so strong in brute force, that, however brave a
face one might put on, there was behind that smiling front always a
hidden fear of Germany--an eternal foe, ever gaining in numbers and
eternally shaking her mailed fist.
No nation so humiliated ever rose out of her humiliation as France
did, but the hidden memory, the daily consciousness of it, set its
outward mark on the race. It bred that sort of bravado which was
eternally accusing itself, in the consciousness that it had taken a
thrashing it could never hope to avenge. Count up the past dares that
France has had to take from Germany, so strong in mere numbers
and physical strength that to attempt to fight her alone, as she did in
1870, meant simply to court annihilation, and fruitlessly. That does not
mean that France was really afraid, but only that she was too wise to
dare attempt to prove that she was not afraid. So many things in the
French that the world has not understood were the result of the
cankering wound of 1870. This war has healed that wound. Germany
is not invincible, and the chivalrous, loving aid that rallied to help
France is none the less comforting simply because since 1914 all
nations have learned that the trend of Germany's ambition was a
menace to them as well as to France.