I suppose it was three months later when I saw the first crowds coming
back to their homes in Amiens. The tide had turned and the enemy was
in hard retreat. Amiens was safe again! They had never had any doubt
of this homecoming after that day nearly three months before, when,
in spite of the enemy's being so close, Foch said, in his calm way, “I
guarantee Amiens.” They believed what Marshal Foch said. He always knew.
So now they were coming back again with their little bundles and their
babies and small children holding their hands or skirts, according as
they had received permits from the French authorities. They were the
lucky ones whose houses still existed. They were conscious of their own
good fortune and came chattering very cheerfully from the station up the
Street of the Three Pebbles, on their way to their streets. But every
now and then they gave a cry of surprise and dismay at the damage done
to other people's houses.
“O la la! Regardez ca! c'est affreux!”
There was the butcher's shop, destroyed; and the house of poor little
Madeleine; and old Christopher's workshop; and the milliner's place,
where they used to buy their Sunday hats; and that frightful gap where
the Arcade had been. Truly, poor Amiens had suffered martyrdom; though,
thank God, the cathedral still stood in glory, hardly touched, with only
one little shellhole through the roof.
Terrible was the damage up the rue de Beauvais and the streets that went
out of it. To one rubbish heap which had been a corner house two girls
came back. Perhaps the French authorities had not had that one on their
list. The girls came tripping home, with light in their eyes, staring
about them, ejaculating pity for neighbors whose houses had been
destroyed. Then suddenly they stood outside their own house and saw that
the direct hit of a shell had knocked it to bits. The light went out
of their eyes. They stood there staring, with their mouths open... Some
Australian soldiers stood about and watched the girls, understanding the
drama.
“Bit of a mess, missy!” said one of them. “Not much left of the old
home, eh?”
The girls were amazingly brave. They did not weep. They climbed up a
hillock of bricks and pulled out bits of old, familiar things. They
recovered the whole of a child's perambulator, with its wheels crushed.
With an air of triumph and shrill laughter they turned round to the
Australians.
“Pour les bebes!” they cried.
“While there's life there's hope,” said one of the Australians, with
sardonic humor.
So the martyrdom of Amiens was at an end, and life came back to the city
that had been dead, and the soul of the city had survived. I have not
seen it since then, but one day I hope I shall go back and shake hands
with Gaston the waiter and say, “Comment ca va, mon vieux?” (“How goes
it, my old one?”) and stroll into the bookshop and say, “Bon jour,
mademoiselle!” and walk round the cathedral and see its beauty in
moonlight again when no one will look up and say, “Curse the moon!”
There will be many ghosts in the city at night--the ghosts of British
officers and men who thronged those streets in the great war and have
now passed on.