THE WOMEN OF FRANCE
Lonely and still the village lies,
The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.
The road is straight as the bullet flies,
And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.
Shadowy forms creep through the night,
Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;
A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,
A scream as a woman's soul takes flight
Through the quivering morning air.
We had been working all morning in a cornfield near an _estaminet_ on
the La Bassée Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt
very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a
sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by
drinking white wine in an _estaminet_ by the La Bassée Road.
"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we
entered.
"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor
explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on
sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approach of a (p. 280)
sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the
trench."
"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant
looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and
the back room empty."
Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear,
where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating
over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor
peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a
fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over
sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from
the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript
pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of
bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long
rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.
"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.
I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris,
speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work
since five o'clock that morning.
"The Germans will never get back here again unless as prisoners." (p. 281)
"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.
"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz
like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten,
our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip!
pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing
can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. _Plusieurs
morts, plusieurs blessés._ Run! Some go right, some left. The second
shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes
the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as
the 75."
"What about the gun that sent this over?"
Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic
shells with which the Germans raked La Bassée Road in the early stages
of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not
the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell
is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson."
The shell relic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, (p. 282)
was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye,
opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene
of the great war become fashionable, the woman of the _estaminet_ is
going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many
mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way
with a long purse, "après la guerre." At present a needy urchin will
sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and
horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely
with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.
"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the
clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which
lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But
compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes
boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out
before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in
shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes
silently, it's quicker than its own sound."
"Do you work here?" asked Pryor. (p. 283)
"I work here," said the potato-peeler.
"In a coal-mine?"
"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."
"Always?"
"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for
seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez
to-day."
"Oh!" I ejaculated.
"Oh!" said Pryor. "Seen some fighting?"
"Not much," said the man, "not too much." His eyes lit up as with fire
and he sent a potato stripped clean of its jacket up to the roof but
with such precision that it dropped down straight into the bucket.
"First we went south and the Germans came across up north. 'Twas turn
about and up like mad; perched on taxis, limbers, ambulance waggons,
anything. We got into battle near Paris. The Boches came in clusters,
they covered the ground like flies on the dead at Souchez. The 75's
came into work there. 'Twas wonderful. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Men were
cut down, wiped out in hundreds. When the gun was useless--guns had
short lives and glorious lives there--a new one came into play (p. 284)
and killed, killed, until it could stand the strain no longer."
"Much hand-to-hand fighting?" asked Pryor.
"The bayonet! Yes!" The potato-peeler thrust his knife through a
potato and slit it in two. "The Germans said 'Eugh! Eugh! Eugh!' when
we went for them like this." He made several vicious prods at an
imaginary enemy. "And we cut them down."
He paused as if at a loss for words, and sent his knife whirling into
the air where it spun at an alarming rate. I edged my chair nearer the
door, but the potato-peeler, suddenly standing upright, caught the
weapon by the haft as it circled and bent to lift a fresh potato.
"What is that for?" asked Pryor, pointing to a sword wreathed in a
garland of flowers, tattooed on the man's arm.
"The rapier," said the potato-peeler. "I'm a fencer, a master-fencer;
fenced in Paris and several places."
The woman of the house, the man's wife, had been buzzing round like a
bee, droning out in an incoherent voice as she served the customers.
Now she came up to the master-fencer, looked at him in the face for a
second, and then looked at the bucket. The sweat oozed from her (p. 285)
face like water from a sponge.
"Hurry, and get the work done," she said to her husband, then she
turned to us. "You're keeping him from work," she stuttered, "you two,
chattering like parrots. Allez-vous en! Allez-vous en!"
We left the house of the potato-peeler and returned to our digging.
The women of France are indeed wonderful.
That evening Bill came up to me as I was sitting on the banquette. In
his hand was an English paper that I had just been reading and in his
eye was wrath.
"The 'ole geeser's fyce is in this 'ere thing again," he said
scornfully. "Blimy! it's like the bad weather, it's everywhere."
"Whose face do you refer to?" I asked my friend.
"This Jimace," was the answer and Bill pointed to the photo of a
well-known society lady who was shown in the act of escorting a
wounded soldier along a broad avenue of trees that tapered away to a
point where an English country mansion showed like a doll's house in
the distance. "Every pyper I open she's in it; if she's not makin'
socks for poor Tommies at the front, she's tyin' bandages on (p. 286)
wounded Tommies at 'ome."
"There's nothing wrong in that," I said, noting the sarcasm in Bill's
voice.
"S'pose its natural for 'er to let everybody know what she does, like
a 'en that lays a negg," my mate answered. "She's on this pyper or
that pyper every day. She's learnin' nursin' one day, learnin' to
drive an ambulance the next day, she doesn't carry a powder puff in
'er vanity bag at present----"
"Who said so?" I asked.
"It's 'ere in black and white," said Bill. "'Er vanity bag 'as given
place to a respirator, an' instead of a powder puff she now carries an
antiskeptic bandage. It makes me sick; it's all the same with women in
England. 'Ere's another picture called 'Bathin' as usual.' A dozen of
girls out in the sea (jolly good legs some of 'em 'as, too) 'avin' a
bit of a frisky. Listen what it says: 'Despite the trying times the
English girls are keepin' a brave 'eart----' Oh! 'ang it, Pat, they're
nothin' to the French girls, them birds at 'ome."
"What about that girl you knew at St. Albans?" I asked. "You remember
how she slid down the banisters and made toffee."
"She wasn't no class, you know," said Bill. (p. 287)
"She never answered the verse you sent from Givenchy, I suppose," I
remarked.
"It's not that----"
"Did she answer your letter saying she reciprocated your sentiments?"
I asked.
"Reshiperate your grandmother, Pat!" roared Bill. "Nark that language,
I say. Speak that I can understand you. Wait a minute till I
reshiperate that," he suddenly exclaimed pressing a charge into his
rifle magazine and curving over the parapet. He sent five shots in the
direction from which he supposed the sniper who had been potting at us
all day, was firing. Then he returned to his argument.
"You've seen that bird at the farm in Mazingarbe?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied. "Pryor said that her ankles were abnormally thick."
"Pryor's a fool," Bill exclaimed.
"But they really looked thick----"
"You're a bigger fool than 'im!"
"I didn't know you had fallen in love with the girl," I said "How did
it happen?"
"Blimey, I'm not in love," said my mate, "but I like a girl with a
good 'eart. Twas out in the horchard in the farm I first met 'er. (p. 288)
I was out pullin' apples, pinchin' them if you like to say so, and I
was shakin' the apples from the branches. I had to keep my eyes on the
farm to see that nobody seen me while I shook. It takes a devil of a
lot of strength to rumble apples off a tree when you're shakin' a
trunk that's stouter than the bread basket of a Bow butcher. All at
once I saw the girl of the farm comin' runnin' at me with a stick.
Round to the other side of the tree I ran like lightnin', and after me
she comes. Then round to the other side went I----"
"Which side?" I asked.
"The side she wasn't on," said Bill. "After me she came and round to
her side I 'opped----"
"Who was on the other side now?" I inquired.
"I took good care that she was always on the other side until I saw
what she was up to with the stick," said Bill. "But d'yer know what
the stick was for? 'Twas to help me to bring down the apples. Savve.
They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.
The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every
shell-shattered village from Souchez to the sea! What labours (p. 289)
they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the
Church of ----, where the woman nearest the German lines sells rum
under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace and
power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men destroy
and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one villages which
fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their day's work under
shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to pounce on them at
every corner.
I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture
when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again
when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same
field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that
the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she
replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked
"Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the trenches
nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French have gone
further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out and trench
but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiers have come and (p. 290)
my husband had to go away," she says. "He went south beyond Souchez,
and now he's dead."
The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and
bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter
when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers
were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.
A woman sells _café noir_ near Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks
that was once her home. Once it was _café au lait_ and it cost four
sous a cup, she only charges three sous now since her cow got shot in
the stomach outside her ramshackle _estaminet_. Along with a few mates
I was in the place two months ago and a bullet entered the door and
smashed the coffee pot; the woman now makes coffee in a biscuit tin.
The road from our billet to the firing line is as uncomfortable as a
road under shell fire can be, but what time we went that way nightly
as working parties, we met scores of women carrying furniture away
from a deserted village behind the trenches. The French military
authorities forbade civilians to live there and drove them back to
villages that were free from danger. But nightly they came back,
contrary to orders, and carried away property to their temporary (p. 291)
homes. Sometimes, I suppose they took goods that were not entirely
their own, but at what risk! One or two got killed nightly and many
were wounded. However, they still persisted in coming back and
carrying away beds, tables, mirrors and chairs in all sorts of queer
conveyances, barrows, perambulators and light spring-carts drawn by
strong intelligent dogs.
"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.