A TRUE STORY OF THE WAR
(BEING PART OF THE DIARY OF AN INHABITANT)
_Somewhere in Belgium,
Sunday._
Sunday again, but hardly to be imagined in these troublous times and
places, with adventure for one’s bedfellow, war for one’s profession,
and bloodshed and horrors for one’s constant reflection. Despite all
this there exists, and must always exist in every war that peculiar
intermingling, that strange blend of horror and sentiment, hate and
romance, that mixture of dross and gold. The feelings and actions
that bring out all that is the most savage, the most primitive in
man’s nature, at the same time endowing him with the tenderness and
unselfishness of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the fortitude and
forbearance of a saint. Romance! I have a most charming instance to
give to you my dear M----.
We met him first in December, 1914, in the little old-world town of
S----. In fact I had the good fortune to be billeted upon him. The
better class, or rather all those inhabitants who could afford it,
had fled from the town at the first advance of the Hun hordes. But he
had elected to risk his neck, and stay to comfort, and if possible
to protect, the women and children. He was a queer old character was
Père Dreyfus; he had lived in the little town now thirty years, since
he came there first as a stripling curate. His curling brown hair had
turned to an austere gray, his cheeks were hollow and shrunken, and
his old back was bent almost double with shouldering other people’s
burdens. By the general population he was almost idolized, men, women
and even small children brought their troubles to Père Dreyfus, and
they never went away without receiving the closest attention, and the
warmest sympathy. As they loved and idolized him, so he reciprocated
their feelings, and never tired of talking of them, in the long dark
evenings, when we had the pleasure of sharing his company over a glass
of old port, with Monsieur le Maire. He would relate vividly and with
force, how in the great advance, the Uhlan patrols had ridden into the
town, camped there for thirty-six hours, then returned the way they
had come without, strange to say, molesting any of the population. But
there was one thing that Père Dreyfus did not believe in, and that was
the air.
“Bah,” he was wont to say, with a contemptuous snap of his bony
fingers; “mere playthings, toys, those air-machines, toys that will be
shot down before they have been in the air for half-an-hour on end.” He
had incidentally never seen an aeroplane in flight, and little did he
guess how those mere playthings were to affect his own life.
The cold, dreary winter had blossomed forth into glorious spring-tide,
when again I came to S----. The old town had not changed much; if
anything it was sleepier and drearier than ever. My first visit was
to the little corner house by the great stone church; but the little
corner house was no more, in its place was a pile of shattered masonry.
With vague misgivings I sought M. le Maire, and found him in his
stuffy, dingy little office in the Hôtel de Ville. He was poring over
some musty documents as I entered, but immediately left them to shake
me effusively by the hand. “But where is Père Dreyfus?” I demanded of
him. Where? He gave that impressive shrug of the shoulders peculiar to
the Latin, and rolled his eyes meaningly towards the heavens.
“Dead?” I exclaimed. “How did he die?”
“Ze airplanes,” he replied; “how you call them? Ze flying machines come
one night, and drop a bomb. When I go search in ze morning, ze worthy
Father is no more.”
Thus briefly, in as many words he recounted another tragedy of this
awful war. Fortune is, indeed, a fickle jade. It had been her will
that.... But there, the story is best told in the worthy Father’s own
words. I quote extracts from a little diary that it was his habit to
keep, and which was all that now remained to enable us to glean a true
glimpse of the old Father’s personal feelings in the matter.
_Monday._--The incessant thunder of heavy artillery the whole
night long. Thus it has been for the past fourteen months,
night after night without a break. I notice it no longer; it
has become part and parcel of my everyday existence. Up at ----
yesterday those devils shot Meurice. For what reason I have
not yet heard. I wonder what has become of his wife and two
children? God help them if they are in their hands! Yesterday
as I walked from ---- I noticed high up in the sky three black
specks coming over in a north-easterly direction. Our soldiers
said they were German aeroplanes, but they passed away again
without attempting to drop any bombs. It is not these things
that we fear, but those fiendish 17-inch shells, which come
over sometimes in the middle of the night and tear away a
street of houses, killing, wounding, maiming. Unhappy Belgium.
_Wednesday._--No change! M. le Maire asked me if I would billet
two British soldiers to-day. I found them pleasant fellows
enough; young lieutenants of an infantry regiment. Such youths,
one of them cannot be more than eighteen years of age: a
handsome boy, with the deep blue eyes and fair curling hair,
typical of his race. They appear to regard the war more in the
light of a big picnic. But they have not yet been up to the
firing lines, nor seen the terrors of battle. Again to-day two
enemy air machines came over. They hit Laroche’s wine store
and killed him and his wife and children. Nevertheless, I
cannot help thinking that they are but of minor importance when
compared with those diabolical shells.
_Thursday._--The two soldiers left again this afternoon,
smiling and joking as they came. All the afternoon and far
into the night the infantry have been marching past, along
the road, thousands of them, regiment after regiment, with
their bands playing gayly at their head. The men all happy and
contented, marching as if they were going on parade, instead
of up to the firing line, many of them never to return. They
have brave hearts these English! Many wagons of ammunition have
been placed in the wood behind this house. They call it an
ammunition park. Why, I know not.
_Friday._--All to-day it rained and thundered. Thundered as
if God in His Heaven were venting His wrath on the warring
world below. For one long day there has been no booming of
those awful guns. The road has become bare and deserted. In
the evening came men into my house from the ammunition wagons
in the wood. They told me that they had caught a spy. I am not
surprised; this district swarms with them. But what otherwise
can be expected if, previous to the war, the entire business
relations of the neighborhood were conducted with the Germans?
Every purchasable article from a motor-car to a needle was
supplied from Berlin. This man was discovered in a deserted
part of the wood, sending messages on a telegraph key. A
sapper of the engineers saw the wire laid across the ground,
and curious to know whither it led followed it along until
he discovered this man. He will trouble us no more. But the
unhappy result of it is, they say he signaled the position to
the enemy, who will undoubtedly bombard us when the weather
becomes fine again.
_Saturday._--A fine clear morning. I hoped that the words of
the sapper would prove themselves to be incorrect, and so they
were to a certain degree. Anxiously I awaited the bombardment,
and it must be confessed with a great misgiving in my heart.
Ten o’clock! Eleven o’clock! Twelve o’clock! And still they did
not open fire. But just before one a German Taube flew over.
Unlike the air machine in the previous visits it did not fly
away immediately, but came gradually lower in long sweeping
circles, until with my glasses I was able to distinguish the
two black crosses on the wings. Then the pom-poms began to bark
and screech, and the heavens all round were marked with small
white clouds of smoke no bigger than a man’s hand in size, and
fascinating to watch. He was a cool fellow, the pilot of that
air machine: undismayed by the bursting shrapnel he continued
to circle round overhead, as if taking the exact bearings of
the ammunition camp.
_Monday._--I was roused from my bed by a series of violent
explosions. It is that infernal bombardment come at last, I
thought to myself. But no! The air above was filled with a
loud hum as of a hundred motors. I looked above me to find the
face of the sky darkened with aircraft, all of them with the
black cross on either wing; from all sides they appeared to be
circling in. And every moment there would be the unpleasant
rush of the falling bomb. A shattering explosion. A burst
of flame! And the yell or cry of the dead and dying, the
heartbreaking neigh of a wounded horse, the crash of falling
timber. The series of smaller explosions as the ammunition and
cartridges went off. For ten awful moments this continued, bomb
followed bomb, explosion followed explosion, shrieks, cries,
groans. It was a living hell. My God, these aircraft are more
to be feared than those infernal guns. I--I----
Here the old Father’s narrative ends, and across the page were two dull
brown splashes, that tell their story but too plainly.