It was a pitiful adventure to go through Amiens in the days of
its desolation, and we who had known its people so well hated its
loneliness. All abandoned towns have a tragic aspect--I often think
of Douai, which was left with all its people under compulsion of the
enemy--but Amiens was strangely sinister with heaps of ruins in its
narrow streets, and the abominable noise of high-velocity shells in
flight above its roofs, and crashing now in one direction and now in
another.
One of our sentries came out of a little house near the Place and said:
“Keep as much as possible to the west side of the town, sir. They've
been falling pretty thick on the east side. Made no end of a mess!”
On the way back from Villers-Bretonneux and the Australian headquarters,
on the left bank of the Somme, we ate sandwiches in the public
gardens outside the Hotel du Rhin. There were big shell-holes in the
flower-beds, and trees had been torn down and flung across the pathway,
and there was a broken statue lying on the grass. Some French and
English soldiers tramped past. Then there was no living soul about in
the place which had been so crowded with life, with pretty women and
children, and young officers doing their shopping, and the business of a
city at work.
“It makes one understand what Rome was like after the barbarians had
sacked and left it,” said a friend of mine.
“There is something ghastly about it,” said another.
We stood round the Hotel du Rhin, shut up and abandoned. The house next
door had been wrecked, and it was scarred and wounded, but still stood
after that night of terror.
One day during its desolation I went to a banquet in Amiens, in the
cellars of the Hotel de Ville. It was to celebrate the Fourth of July,
and an invitation had been sent to me by the French commandant de place
and the English A. P. M.
It was a beau geste, gallant and romantic in those days of trouble, when
Amiens was still closely beleaguered, but safer now that Australians and
British troops were holding the lines strongly outside, with French on
their right southward from Boves and Hangest Wood. The French commandant
had procured a collection of flags and his men had decorated the
battered city with the Tricolor. It even fluttered above some of the
ruins, as though for the passing of a pageant. But only a few cars
entered the city and drew up to the Town Hall, and then took cover
behind the walls.
Down below, in the cellars, the damp walls were garlanded with flowers
from the market-gardens of the Somme, now deserted by their gardeners,
and roses were heaped on the banqueting-table. General Monash,
commanding the Australian corps, was there, with the general of the
French division on his right. A young American officer sat very grave
and silent, not, perhaps, understanding much of the conversation about
him, because most of the guests were French officers, with Senators and
Deputies of Amiens and its Department. There was good wine to drink from
the cold vaults of the Hotel de Ville, and with the scent of rose and
hope for victory in spite of all disasters--the German offensive had
been checked and the Americans were now coming over in a tide--it was a
cheerful luncheon-party. The old general, black-visaged, bullet-headed,
with a bristly mustache like a French bull--terrier, sat utterly silent,
eating steadily and fiercely. But the French commandant de place, as
handsome as Athos, as gay as D'Artagnan, raised his glass to England
and France, to the gallant Allies, and to all fair women. He became
reminiscent of his days as a sous-lieutenant. He remembered a girl
called Marguerite--she was exquisite; and another called Yvonne--he had
adored her. O life! O youth!... He had been a careless young devil, with
laughter in his heart....