"I saw the first tide of these poor people when the Germans came near to
Ham and Péronne and Roye," wrote Philip Gibbs on March 29. "Some of them
had been once in the hands of the Germans, and at this second menace
they left their homes and their fields and their shops, and came
trekking westward and southward.
"One's heart bleeds to see these refugees, and it is the most tragic
aspect of these days. There are many old people among them, old women in
black gowns and caps who come hobbling very slowly down the highway of
war, and old men with bent backs who lean heavily on their gnarled
sticks as the guns go by, and the fighting men.
"I saw one old man near Ham who was trundling along a wheelbarrow, and
on this was spread a mattress, and on that was his wife. She looked 90
years of age, with her white, wrinkled face, and she was fast asleep,
like a little child. Many children are on the roads, packed tight into
farm carts with household furniture and bundles of clothing, and poultry
and pigs and new-born lambs. The noise of the gunfire is behind them,
and they move faster when it grows louder. They are very brave, these
boys and girls and these old people. There is hardly any weeping or any
look on their faces of grudge against this unkind turn of fate. They
seem to accept it with stoical resignation, with most matter-of-fact
courage, and their only answer to pity is a smile and the words, 'C'est
la guerre.' Those are words I first heard in the early weeks of the war
and hoped never to hear again.
"Many of these people trek in family groups and gatherings of families
from one village. Small boys and girls drag tired cows after them. The
other day one of these cows leaned against every tree she passed and
then sat down, and the girl with her looked around helplessly, not
knowing what to do. This morning I saw the girl wearing a veil and
dressed in an elegant way, taking the cow with her. She was quite alone
on the road. It is queer and touching that most of these fugitives wear
their best clothes, as though on a fête day. It is because they are
clothes they want to save and can only have by wearing them in their
flight.
"In one small town the fear of the German entry came at night, a bright,
moonlight night into which there came many German bombing squadrons. The
citizens had shut up their shops and stood about talking anxiously. Then
fear and rumor spread among them, and all through the night there was an
exodus of small families and solitary girls and comrades in misfortune,
stealing away like shadows from homes they loved, from little fortunes
or their shops, from all their normal life into the open country, where
the moonlight lay white and cold on the fields. Behind them bombs were
being dropped, and some of their houses were destroyed.
"C'est la guerre!"