CHAPTER XXI

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.