Part 2
What was I to do in this war town seventeen kilometers from the soundless front (I had been told that when Verdun was thundering people rocked in their beds)? It was too hot to walk and there was nothing more to see. There was, indeed, no resource but the necklace of Marie Antoinette.
The room was dark, with a window in one corner. I carried the least uncomfortable chair to this window, and there, amid the silences of the tomb and the aromas of the stable, I read a story of 1784. This was the war zone which it took weeks of plotting and the most powerful influences to reach.
However, there was still the morrow and Bar-le-Duc.
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=HORRORS OF THE HOTEL LIFE IN THE WAR ZONE=
PARIS, August 8.
Looking from the windows of the train between Paris and Châlons, I had seen little evidence of war beyond the rigid sentries with their upright guns standing beside the track at intervals of two or three hundred yards—two beside the bridges which have been rebuilt and are once more of stone. But on the following day, after passing Vitry, the crosses among the wheat became abundant, and between Révigny and Bar-le-Duc there had evidently been no attempt to till the fields, which had a curious burned look. This, I was afterward told, was due to the poisonous gases and frequent bombardments. More than half of Révigny is in ruins, and wrecks strew the way to the far more important town, which is intact.
Once more the train, which had started at Paris and was bound for Nancy, was crowded with officers and soldiers, but a great many descended at Bar-le-Duc, no doubt to go by automobile to Verdun or by branch lines to other points near the front. At all events, I left the train with such a mass of blue uniforms that it was a long time before I could reach the exit gate, and then, as I was the only stranger, I was held up until a more important official could be found to inspect my carnet rouge. As he was very amiable and passed me on promptly, I asked him to tell me the name of the best hotel in Bar-le-Duc. He threw his hands up. Mon Dieu! The best! There was a place called Hotel du Commerce. But! Well, I had been told at Châlons that it was the “least bad,” and started off with resignation. After all, one is not trained to expect luxuries in the war zone, and the hotel at Châlons had been endurable.
I emerged into the large open space behind the station. It was filled with that curious surging mass of soldiers who in time come to seem almost like “properties.” There were also two or three gray army automobiles, but not a cab, not a tram, not a porter. I inquired if it were possible to find a boy to carry my bag. No. Visitors were unusual. Boys did not come down to the station in the hope of picking up a franc. Where was the Hotel du Commerce? A vague sweep of the hand toward the straggling gray distance. Fortunately, my bag was light, as one takes the least possible on these incursions, but American women hate carrying things, and I had also a book and a parasol. However, there was no alternative and I started off, down a long, winding, dusty road without trees—the thermometer was about 80, and it was half-past 12—toward the town.
Like all French towns, it swept about itself in circles, coiled upon itself, abruptly uncoiled and wandered off into nowhere. As far as might be possible I kept straight ahead, every soldier of whom I asked the way replying that he was a stranger also, and knew naught of the Hotel du Commerce. Finally I met a short fat man in civilian clothes, who interrupted himself—he was gesticulating violently to a friend who had arrived on the train—and told me to turn into the long street just above and keep on. It was a very long street and so many similar streets branched out of it that it was difficult to know which was which. And it was dull and dirty and gray and deserted, save for the strolling poilus.
Nevertheless, it had a character of its own! Every hundred yards or so along the base of the houses I noticed a pile of sand bags and a poster printed in heavy black letters and numbers: “Cave voutée, pour 100 (or 50) personnes.” It was very hot but my brains were not addled. Bar-le-Duc is subject to frequent air raids and many have been killed by the bombs, which do not bury themselves in the earth, by the way, but explode as they touch and scatter death far and wide. These were the famous stone cellars into which the population tumbles pêle-mêle the moment the whistles shriek. I wondered if it would be my lot to spend a few hours in one of those damp “caves” with a mass of sweltering humanity. Almost I would brave the taube.
I must have walked fully a kilometer from that station, when, asking once more to be directed to the Hotel du Commerce, I was told that I stood before it. I looked up and saw faded letters confirming the fact, and then along its lower front in search of a door. The only mode of ingress, a large archway, apparently led to the rear. As I dislike asking too many questions, I explored this vaulted passageway and came upon a door at the side. I opened it without ceremony and found myself in quite the dirtiest cashier’s office I have ever seen. ....
The girl was even more impertinent and indifferent than the one at Châlons. As girls are now scarce in the war zone, no doubt the few left become spoiled with too much attention. There was a dining room beyond, and I determined to banish my midday hunger before entering upon further adventures. There are two things that the French, no matter of what degree, morals, manners, or disposition, invariably understand, and those are politeness and formality. You gain nothing by sharpness or hauteur; on the contrary, you stand to lose all. When Americans attempt familiarity with strangers they receive contempt. Bearing this principle in mind, one can never go wrong in France.
As the dining room beyond and, no doubt, the hotel itself, was crowded with officers, there was a manifest intention on the young woman’s part to treat me as if I did not exist. I, therefore, inquired in my best manner if I could leave my things in the office and have déjeûner. She nodded and I went into a long, low, crowded dining room, which, had it not been for the uniforms, would have looked exactly like a Western eating shed. There was a seat vacant at one of the longer tables, to which I made my way unescorted. The entire company was waited on by two boys of about 16. They looked distracted. The tablecloth was soiled, but I was prepared to accept trifling variations upon ordinary standards with equanimity. I secured the attention of one of the boys, and, being left to my own devices for some time, my eyes, after wandering up and down the room, fell once more upon the table. I made another discovery. It was covered with flies. Large, torpid, viscous flies. I had a vision of these flies rising in a dark cloud from the battlefields of Verdun and traveling to Bar-le-Duc on top of the hundreds of covered army wagons that go back and forth daily.
While I was digesting this horrid fact a plate of potatoes swimming in oil was placed before me. I waved it away. Oil to me is more abhorrent than milk. It was succeeded by a dish of tripe. I covered my eyes and shuddered. C’est la guerre. Oh, yes. But—Mon Dieu!
I managed to make a spare meal of mutton that tasted as if killed an hour before, and dry potatoes, but dared not touch the water, and rose from that table in the least possible time, determined to accomplish the object of my visit during the afternoon and return to Paris that night. I did not even want to look at the upper rooms. Turpentine I felt would avail not in this hotel, which looked a thousand years old and resurrected from the dead.
I returned to the office. There was now an older woman there, and, chastened by years and the rivalry of youth, she answered my questions amiably. No, there was not a conveyance of any sort to be had in the city. How, then, was I to find the Commissaire of Police and have my carnet rouge viséd, how visit the hospitals, which were out of town? She could not say. Then I bethought me once more of the letter given me by the War Office. I would go straight to military headquarters and ask them for an automobile. She vaguely directed me, and once more I started forth, leaving my things in her charge. The woman had told me to turn to the right. As I was leaving the girl called out that I must turn to the left. I revolved with that helpless feeling one has occasionally in the war zone, and they both began to talk at once, as is the habit of French people of that class when giving advice. If they had been ten they would all have talked at once and advised me differently.
I escaped to the street and, seeing a white-haired man standing in front of a provision store, I went over and asked him to direct me. This he not only did intelligently, but ran a block after me bare-headed to tell me of a better turning. I walked quite half a mile and finally reached a fine building situated in a park. I entered the grounds without hindrance, but a soldier barred the way when I attempted to pass under the arch that leads to the offices about the courtyard. He looked amazed. I showed my carnet rouge. He drew his eyelids together and I encountered the familiar steel. I was not to be overawed by a common soldier, but to save time I showed the letter. He had been quite polite, but now he relaxed his military mask and smiled. The entire staff was out for lunch and I could not enter until their return, but if I would graciously sit under the trees——.
It was cool under the trees and I was glad to rest. The soldier sent me an encouraging smile occasionally and finally made a triumphant signal indicating that the military nabobs were coming. A moment later several imposing figures marched past. They were chatting amiably and I was thankful that destiny had so arranged matters that I was to ask my favors of them after lunch. I knew they had not déjeuned at the Hotel du Commerce.
I was summoned to the presence immediately. They acted exactly as I had anticipated, for they were Frenchmen, and gentlemen, and of exceeding importance. Of course they read the letter at once; in fact, I shoved it under their noses before they had time to say “How do you do?” and when I asked for an automobile assented promptly.
“Will you give your man orders to get me back to the station for the 5:20 train?” I asked. “I will not sleep in that hotel or eat another meal there if I have to walk back to Paris.” They laughed sympathetically and assured me that I should accomplish the object of my visit in comfort and take my train. The chauffeur would take the best of care of me.
So it proved. I visited both of the great hospitals, Savonières and Hôpital Central, inside of an hour, for a military automobile goes like lightning and turns aside for no one. The former hospital is situated in a beautiful park some distance from Bar-le-Duc, and the greater one in a cup of the hills, and looks like a new Western mining town. There are some twenty or thirty barracks, two of concrete; but it is so unmistakably a hospital and nothing else (in France) that a taube recently had no difficulty in picking out the main building and dropping a bomb in the operating room. It killed two men on the tables.
It is not my purpose to describe the hospitals here. I visited them in behalf of Le Bienêtre du Blessé, and later, when writing more fully of that oeuvre, shall describe these and other military hospitals which receive the wounded straight from Verdun. There had been few during the last two or three days, they told me, and the guns were still silent.
My amiable chauffeur then took me for a drive within the city limits, and once more I saw a silent shuttered town. No doubt the greater part of the population had been evacuated (military euphemism for turned out), but I saw thousands of military wagons (camions) and a signpost with an arrow painted on it and the words “à Verdun.” It brought it pretty close, but I reflected that this was about as close as I would get. As we approached the station I observed that the roof looked as if it had been through a hurricane, and my driver nodded. Yes, they dropped a bomb there every once and a while. They usually came about 5 o’clock. It was now 3 and I had two hours and twenty minutes to wait in that station.
However, it was easy to get out of, the sky was so blue and clear that the taubes could be seen a long way off, and I certainly did not propose to wait until 5:20 in that hotel. I had retrieved my belongings, visited the police, and there was nothing to do but make myself as comfortable as possible and read Dumas.
The station was already packed with soldiers waiting for various trains. They move so constantly, these poilus, they produce an impression of indescribable confusion. I have never seen them betray the least excitement, any more than I have ever surprised an expression of anxiety on their cheerful faces, but the repose of their officers is unknown to them. Their bodies and their tongues never cease from movement. I often wonder if they ever feel tired. They look as if they could endure Verduns for the term of their natural lives.
There was a small first class waiting room and I took refuge in it. An officer was asleep on a bench. Another was talking to his mother and there were two other women in the room. Presently there entered a drunken Algerian soldier. He was very drunk and he carried a gun almost as tall as himself. As he was out of place in a ladies’ waiting room two poilus entered and attempted to induce him to leave. He shouted defiance and, lifting his gun, flung it to the floor with a crash. It made such a noise that the soldiers without surged to the doorway. It is to our credit that not one of the women jumped. He repeated this performance four times, and we sat quite still and looked at him with curiosity.
If any one had told me a month earlier that I should sit unmoved while a drunken soldier flung a loaded gun on the floor in front of me—twice it pointed directly at me—I should have dismissed him as a contemptible flatterer. But there is something about this military area—well you simply experience no sensations at all. You are in the zone of death. Human life has no value whatever. You, too, suddenly become as callous as if inoculated.
He was led out, and I opened my book. But the room was very warm. I asked the doorkeeper to let me wait for the train on the platform beside the tracks. Of course he refused. Petty officials never deviate from their cast-iron rules. However, he was a réformé, with one arm, and I determined to take a base advantage of him. The next time he had occasion to open the door I was behind him, and I walked out and seated myself on a bench in the fresh air. “Now,” I said, “here I am, and here I shall stay. What are you going to do to me?” For a moment he scowled at me, then shrugged his shoulders and walked away. A few moments later the other women followed my example, and we sat and talked, occasionally glancing up through the shattered glass roof; particularly as the hour of 5 approached.
One of the women, who looked like a farmer’s wife, judging by her dress and the large basket she held on her lap, told me that she had come from the south of France to the Hôpital Central just too late to see her boy, who was dead of typhoid fever. Once or twice she looked as if she were going to cry, but did not. The mothers of France are stoics these days.
No taubes appeared, and I slept in Paris. The next day I took my wrath to the War Office. I now have a promise of a military automobile for a trip to Révigny, Nancy and Remiramont. No Rheims, no Verdun—unless we can cajole some General within the lines. It is astonishing the high value the French place upon the life of a mere woman. James M. Beck visited Amiens on his way from England to Paris, and within two days of his arrival went off on a tour of the immediate front. The day after his return, off he went again with Owen Johnson, to call on General Joffre. I reminded my friends in the War Office that men were as easily killed as women, even American men. But they seem to think that the explosion of an American woman, especially if she happened to be “of a prominence,” would make too much noise in the world to be agreeable. They have trouble enough on their hands.
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=THE WAR ZONE BY AUTOMOBILE=
PARIS, August 18.
Once more I was summoned to the War Office, this time to be informed that although they wanted me to feel satisfied and really see something of the great drama, they would not take the responsibility of sending me so far into the military zone unless I obtained the personal escort of an American Army officer. And where, I demanded, was I to find an American Army officer in Paris? They suggested the American Clearing House.
I took my troubles to Mr. Beatty, through whose hands, expert and generous, so many millions’ worth of donations have passed for the benefit of afflicted France, and who seems to respond automatically to the most unreasonable demand. For me he produced an American Army officer six feet high, very imposing and distinguished, and the matter was settled.
We started on the following Tuesday—Major C., Mme. Lyon, a mechanician, and our driver, Monsieur G. B., whom I shall call the Lieutenant to avoid confusion, although as a matter of fact, and to his natural chagrin, there were no stripes on his sleeve. Refused for the army on account of an accident to his shoulder in boyhood, which prevented him from handling a gun properly, he had offered his services as driver at the outbreak of the war. Like many others, he anticipated a short war, or he would have gone as interpreter to the British Army (he is an Oxford man); that way lies promotion, and for the driver there is none. As he is a young man, wealthy, pampered, living his own life in his own way up to August, 1914, he is now no doubt enjoying the novel experience of hard and incessant work, constant danger and unremitting discipline, with no hope of reward. It was our gain, for he was altogether charming, and it was impossible to pity him, as, gay and grim, he certainly was determined to do what he could do for his country.
The Marquise d’Andigné (who was Miss Goddard of Providence), the President of Le Bienêtre du Blessé, was to have been one of the party, but as she was detained at the last minute I was asked to visit the hospitals in her place and ascertain which had received supplies and what each needed most. We started at 7:30 from Paris in admirable weather.
Traveling by automobile in the war zone is far more complicated than by train. Even in a gray military car, with two men in horizon blue on the front seat, you are held up at the entrance and exit of every town and hamlet, and often half way between, by the sudden appearance of a sentinel in the middle of the road, holding his gun horizontally above his head. He is accompanied by two others, who examine your papers, and if they possess the average quick intelligence of their race they make short work of it. If the first in authority happens to be slow, conscientious, and suspicious, he will pore over the papers for five minutes, and not infrequently disappear with them into his hut. Once they held us up so long in the blazing sun that our Lieutenant, who was not a patient mortal, poked his head into one of these tiny headquarters and demanded what was the matter, while even Major C. had visions of being turned back. They would give no answer until the Lieutenant made a second invasion, and then they informed him that they could not understand why the papers indicated four men and one woman in the party and the automobile contained two women. Mme. Lyon’s first name is Martin! Why they could not have come out and asked instead of wasting their time and ours can only be explained by the fact that to a Frenchman time is nothing.
All this, save for the heat, concerned me not at all. I had not a second’s responsibility on this trip. Major C. and the Lieutenant carried the papers, and although I am a feminist and admit no inferiority to man except in the matter of physical prowess, personally, when I have a man to take care of me, I am as meek as a lamb. He is welcome to all the responsibility and all the work. I never worry him by a suggestion. Our American officer in his khaki uniform, sitting like a ramrod on one of the single seats of the tonneau, inspired both curiosity and respect and spent a good part of his days returning salutes.
Our adventures were almost too insignificant to mention. I, alas! am a mascot. If I were taken to the front and given the hospitality of a trench I am positive that the guns for some inscrutable reason would be paralyzed. It has always been as if some mysterious force surrounded me, permitting me to see all that is necessary for my work at a safe distance, but saving even my nerves from shock. During the San Francisco earthquake I was in Berkeley! It is very annoying. I should have liked an adventurous life.
Nevertheless, the trip, which lasted four days, was more than interesting. It was as unlike traversing the war zone by train as possible. In the first place the roads, which I expected to see (and feel) cut to pieces by the enormous amount of artillery and heavy camions that have rumbled over them constantly during the last two years, were in perfect condition. I don’t know when they work on these roads, but while we were in the war zone there was but one short stretch under repair, and they were as dusty as California roads in Summer time. We must have passed during these four days no less than several thousand of these covered army wagons, great and small, which convey to the front every war commodity from soldiers to beef. I asked our Lieutenant how many of these camions France possessed and he said that, although he had never seen the amount stated, each was numbered and he had seen numbers as high as 130,000. This, of course, included every sort of vehicle, and we saw many kitchen wagons. The cooks, by the way, are among the heroes of the war and perish in large numbers.
If I was forced to complain of an unnatural calm during my first two visits into the war zone I had my fill of noise and incessant motion on this trip. Aside from the gray lumbering camions in their clouds of dust, there were, every few miles, “parcs” of artillery, the famous seventy-fives, hundreds of them, either undergoing repairs or awaiting demand. Of course, these parcs were filled with soldiers and their officers, and, indeed, before the end of those four days, it seemed to me that there must be as many men in the further precincts of the war zone doing practically nothing as there were at the front.
In certain of the larger towns, which for obvious reasons must not be named, the streets were so packed with soldiers that the car was obliged to crawl. All of these men were frankly loafing. Some of them were resting after the prescribed number of days in the trench, but as many more had never been to the front at all. They were ordered into the war zone that they might be on hand when needed, but meanwhile they were amusing themselves as best they could, and the majority looked bored. In one beautiful little town through which the Germans did not pass during their retreat from the Marne, I saw a number of soldiers seated on the banks of a stream fishing. Their only excitement they owe to the frequent visits of the taubes, but whether they avail themselves of the cellars hospitably marked “Cave Voutée,” I forgot to ask. Probably not.