THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE
And now it was seven o'clock, and raining. Dinner was to be at eight.
I had before me a drive of nine miles along those slippery roads. It
was dark and foggy, with the ground mist of Flanders turning to a fog.
The lamps of the car shining into it made us appear to be riding
through a milky lake. Progress was necessarily slow.
One of the English officers accompanied me.
"I shall never forget the last time I dined out here," he said as we
jolted along. "There is a Belgian battery just behind the house. All
evening as we sat and talked I thought the battery was firing; the
house shook under tremendous concussion. Every now and then Mrs. K----
or Miss C---- would get up and go out, coming back a few moments later
and joining calmly in the conversation.
"Not until I started back did I know that we had been furiously
bombarded, that the noise I had heard was shells breaking all about
the place. A 'coal-box,' as they call them here, had fallen in the
garden and dug a great hole!"
"And when the young ladies went out, were they watching the bombs
burst?" I inquired.
"Not at all," he said. "They went out to go into the trenches to
attend to the wounded. They do it all the time."
"And they said nothing about it!"
"They thought we knew. As for going into the trenches, that is what
they are there to do."
My enthusiasm for mutton began to fade. I felt convinced that I should
not remain calm if a shell fell into the garden. But again, as
happened many times during those eventful weeks at the front, my pride
refused to allow me to turn back. And not for anything in the world
would I have admitted being afraid to dine where those two young women
were willing to eat and sleep and have their being day and night for
months.
"But of course," I said, "they are well protected, even if they are at
the trenches. That is, the Germans never get actually into the town."
"Oh, don't they?" said the officer. "That town has been taken by the
Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over
into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting."
"Where do they go at such times?" I asked.
"I never thought about it. I suppose they get into the cellar. But if
they do it is not at all because they are afraid."
We went on, until some five of the nine miles had been traversed.
I have said before that the activity at the front commences only with
the falling of night. During the day the zone immediately back of the
trenches is a dead country. But at night it wakens into activity.
Soldiers leave the trenches and fresh soldiers take their places,
ammunition and food are brought up, wires broken during the day by
shells are replaced, ambulances come up and receive their frightful
burdens.
Now we reached the zone of night activity. A travelling battery passed
us, moving from one part of the line to another; the drivers, three to
each gun, sat stolidly on their horses, their heads dropped against
the rain. They appeared out of the mist beside us, stood in full
relief for a moment in the glow of the lamps, and were swallowed up
again.
At three miles from our destination, but only one mile from the German
lines, it was necessary to put out the lamps. Our progress, which had
been dangerous enough before, became extremely precarious. It was
necessary to turn out for teams and lorries, for guns and endless
lines of soldiers, and to turn out a foot too far meant slipping into
the mud. Two miles and a half from the village we turned out too far.
There was a sickening side slip. The car turned over to the right at
an acute angle and there remained. We were mired!
We got out. It was perfectly dark. Guns were still passing us, so that
it was necessary to warn the drivers of our wrecked car. The road was
full of shell holes, so that to step was to stumble. The German lines,
although a mile away, seemed very near. Between the road and the enemy
was not a tree or a shrub or a fence--only the line of the railway
embankment which marked the Allies' trenches. To add to the dismalness
of the situation the Germans began throwing the familiar magnesium
lights overhead. The flares made the night alike beautiful and
fearful. It was possible when one burst near to see the entire
landscape spread out like a map--ditches full of water, sodden fields,
shell holes in the roads which had become lakes, the long lines of
poplars outlining the road ahead. At one time no less than twenty
starlights hung in the air at one time. When they went out the inky
night seemed blacker than ever. I stepped off the road and was almost
knee-deep in mud at once.
The battery passed, urging its tired horses to such speed as was
possible. After it came thousands of men, Belgian and French mostly,
on their way out of the trenches.
We called for volunteers from the line to try to lift the car onto the
road. But even with twenty men at the towing rope it refused to move.
The men were obliged to give it up and run on to catch their
companies.
Between the _fusées_ the curious shuffling of feet and a deeper shadow
were all that told of the passage of these troops. It was so dark that
one could see no faces. But here and there one saw the light of a
cigarette. The mere hardship of walking for miles along those roads,
paved with round stones and covered with mud on which their feet
slipped continually, must have been a great one, and agonizing for
feet that had been frosted in the water of the trenches.
Afterward I inquired what these men carried. They loomed up out of the
night like pack horses. I found that each soldier carried, in addition
to his rifle and bayonet, a large knapsack, a canteen, a cartridge
pouch, a brown haversack containing tobacco, soap, towel and food, a
billy-can and a rolled blanket.
German batteries were firing intermittently as we stood there. The
rain poured down. I had dressed to go out to tea and wore my one and
only good hat. I did the only thing that seemed possible--I took off
that hat and put it in the automobile and let the rain fall on my
unprotected head. The hat had to see me through the campaign, and my
hair would stand water.
At last an armoured car came along and pulled the automobile onto the
road. But after a progress of only ten feet it lapsed again, and there
remained.
The situation was now acute. It was impossible to go back, and to go
ahead meant to advance on foot along roads crowded with silent
soldiers--meant going forward, too, in a pouring rain and in
high-heeled shoes. For that was another idiocy I had committed.
We started on, leaving the apologetic chauffeur by the car. A few feet
and the road, curving to the right, began to near the German line.
Every now and then it was necessary to call sharply to the troops, or
struggling along through the rain they would have crowded us off
knee-deep into the mud.
"_Attention!"_ the officer would call sharply. And for a time we would
have foot room. There were no more horses, no more guns--only men,
men, men. Some of them had taken off their outer coats and put them
shawl-fashion over their heads. But most of them walked stolidly on,
already too wet and wretched to mind the rain.
The fog had lifted. It was possible to see that sinister red streak
that follows the firing of a gun at night. The rain gave a peculiar
hollowness to the concussion. The Belgian and French batteries were
silent.
We seemed to have walked endless miles, and still there was no little
town. We went over a bridge, and on its flat floor I stopped and
rested my aching feet.
"Only a little farther now," said the British officer cheerfully.
"How much farther?"
"Not more than a mile,"
By way of cheering me he told me about the town we were
approaching--how the road we were on was its main street, and that the
advanced line of trenches crossed at the railroad near the foot of the
street.
"And how far from that are the German trenches?" I asked nervously.
"Not very far," he said blithely. "Near enough to be interesting."
On and on. Here was a barn.
"Is this the town?" I asked feebly.
"Not yet. A little farther!"
I was limping, drenched, irritable. But now and then the absurdity of
my situation overcame me and I laughed. Water ran down my head and off
my nose, trickled down my neck under my coat. I felt like a great
sponge. And suddenly I remembered my hat.
"I feel sure," I said, stopping still in the road, "that the chauffeur
will go inside the car out of the rain and sit on my hat."
The officer thought this very likely. I felt extremely bitter about
it. The more I thought of it the more I was convinced that he was
exactly the sort of chauffeur who would get into a car and sit on an
only hat.
At last we came to the town--to what had been a town. It was a town no
longer. Walls without roofs, roofs almost without walls. Here and
there only a chimney standing of what had been a home; a street so
torn up by shells that walking was almost impossible--full of
shell-holes that had become graves. There were now no lights, not even
soldiers. In the silence our footsteps re-echoed against those
desolate and broken walls.
A day or two ago I happened on a description of this town, written by
a man who had seen it at the time I was there.
"The main street," he writes, "is like a great museum of prehistoric
fauna. The house roofs, denuded of tiles and the joists left naked,
have tilted forward on to the sidewalks, so that they hang in mid-air
like giant vertebrae.... One house only of the whole village of ----
had been spared."
We stumbled down the street toward the trenches and at last stopped
before a house. Through boards nailed across what had once been
windows a few rays of light escaped. There was no roof; a side wall
and an entire corner were gone. It was the residence of the ladies of
the decoration.
Inside there was for a moment an illusion of entirety. The narrow
corridor that ran through the centre of the house was weatherproof.
But through some unseen gap rushed the wind of the night. At the
right, warm with lamplight, was the reception room, dining room and
bedroom--one small chamber about twelve by fifteen!
What a strange room it was, furnished with odds and ends from the
shattered houses about! A bed in the corner; a mattress on the floor;
a piano in front of the shell-holed windows, a piano so badly cracked
by shrapnel that panels of the woodwork were missing and keys gone;
two or three odd chairs and what had once been a bookcase, and in the
centre a pine table laid for a meal.
Mrs. K----, whose uncle was a cabinet minister, was hurrying in with a
frying-pan in her hand.
"The mutton!" she said triumphantly, and placed it on the table,
frying-pan and all. The other lady of the decoration followed with the
potatoes, also in the pan in which they had been cooked.
We drew up our chairs, for the mutton must not be allowed to get cold.
"It's quite a party, isn't it?" said one of the hostesses, and showed
us proudly the dish of fruit on the centre of the table, flanked by
bonbons and nuts which had just been sent from England.
True, the fruit was a little old and the nuts were few; but they gave
the table a most festive look.
Some one had taken off my shoes and they were drying by the fire,
stuffed with paper to keep them in shape. My soaking outer garments
had been carried to the lean-to kitchen to hang by the stove, and dry
under the care of a soldier servant who helped with the cooking. I
looked at him curiously. His predecessor had been killed in the room
where he stood.
The German batteries were firing, and every now and then from the
trenches at the foot of the street came the sharp ping of rifles. No
one paid any attention. We were warm and sheltered from the wind. What
if the town was being shelled and the Germans were only six hundred
feet away? We were getting dry, and there was mutton for dinner.
It was a very cheerful party--the two young ladies, and a third who
had joined them temporarily, a doctor who was taking influenza and
added little to the conversation, the chauffeur attached to the house,
who was a count in ordinary times, a Belgian major who had come up
from the trenches to have a real meal, and the English officer who had
taken me out.
Outside the door stood the major's Congo servant, a black boy who
never leaves him, following with dog-like fidelity into the trenches
and sleeping outside his door when the major is in billet. He had
picked him up in the Congo years before during his active service
there.
The meal went on. The frying-pan was passed. The food was good and the
talk was better. It was indiscriminately rapid French and English.
When it was English I replied. When it was French I ate.
The hostess presented me with a shrapnel case which had arrived that
day on the doorstep.
"If you are collecting trophies," said the major, "I shall get you a
German sentry this evening. How would you like that?"
There was a reckless twinkle in the major's eye. It developed that he
had captured several sentries and liked playing the game.
But I did not know the man. So I said: "Certainly, it would be most
interesting."
Whereupon he rose. It took all the combined effort of the dinner party
to induce him to sit down and continue his meal. He was vastly
disappointed. He was a big man with a humorous mouth. The idea of
bringing me a German sentry to take home as a trophy appealed to him.
The meal went on. No one seemed to consider the circumstances
extraordinary. Now and then I remembered the story of the street
fighting a few nights before. I had an idea that these people would
keep on eating and talking English politics quite calmly in the event
of a German charge. I wondered if I could live up to my reputation for
courage in such a crisis.