The Red Cross Barge

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

1

Still draped in the black-and-silver trappings laboriously hung by the women of Valoise to do funeral honour to Dr. Rouannès, the parish church, when Jeanne Rouannès entered it, was already transformed into a hospital ward; and, as she came slowly back to normal conditions of heart and brain, she was amazed to see all that these capable, if rough-looking, German medical orderlies had accomplished.

Not only had every kind of bed already been commandeered from the houses round, but through medieval glass which the Great Revolution had spared, the sun shone on huge cases containing every kind of surgical requisite ready for immediate use.

An operating theatre equipment had been set out in the Lady Chapel, and a wave of colour flooded the French girl's face when she saw that the trestles on which her father's rude coffin had rested were now serving as the base of the principal operating table. She could not help wondering in her ignorance why all these elaborate preparations had been made, for the only wounded occupant of this strange war-hospital was a two-year-old girl, injured in the head by a fragment of one of the half-dozen shells which had fallen in the town two hours before.

'To the little child attend you,' the Herr Doktor muttered in her ear. 'I will ensure that no disagreeables you befall. The Herr Stabsarzt is a good man—perhaps have you of him heard, my gracious miss; he is the surgeon Octavius Mott of Ems. Very famous and skilful is he.'

Quickly, and yet with much ceremony, he brought her up to the big, shaggy, spectacled German, who greeted her courteously with the words, uttered in a French as good as her own, 'We shall have plenty of work for you presently, Mademoiselle.'

Then, as Max Keller, in a quick, rather anxious undertone, explained that Mademoiselle Rouannès was the just orphaned daughter of a French Red Cross doctor, the Herr Stabsarzt became perceptibly more cordial. 'She does not look strong enough for the labours which will presently begin. You must watch over the poor bereaved one,' he said kindly; 'she looks a truly refined, gentle being, as well as full of French prettiness and grace. There are plenty of ugly old women in this town whom we shall be able to make useful when the wounded come in.'

The Herr Doktor's face became transformed. He could have knelt and kissed the hand of the great, the skilful, the so understanding and humane Octavius Mott! The Herr Stabsarzt, looking at him from out his shrewd little eyes, saw something in the plain sensitive face that touched him. 'So?' he said to himself, 'there is already an excellent Franco-German alliance established here!'

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The soldier looters of Valoise slept heavily that night. Their miserable victims, those among them who had not fled into the surrounding country, crowded back into their ravished, empty houses, and into those out-buildings and stables which had escaped the notice of the marauders—anywhere to be free of hateful and terrifying presences. They hoped, poor wretches, with that curious hope and faith in the future, which in the French temperament survives all material disasters, and makes recuperation comparatively easy, that with the morning the enemy would hasten away from the sacked town. This, as they all knew, was what had happened elsewhere.

But, with the breaking of the cloudless dawn, came a new terror to the unhappy people, for shells again began dropping into the town, and, for a while at least, panic and confusion reigned, even among the sated German soldiery. The French batteries, hidden away to the right of Valoise, had evidently obtained trustworthy information from within the town, for their attack was carefully directed to the group of villas on the hill where the officers had established themselves, but the church,—the church which now flew the Red Cross flag, and was still the glory of Valoise, was spared.

At last the French guns found another range, that of the German batteries, and as these replied, so strange and so exciting was the artillery duel, that women, and even children, crowded into the streets and, with upturned faces, watched the shells from the even then famous '75, and the heavier German missiles, go hurtling by overhead.

And then very soon, from the plains below and the woods above Valoise, the wounded came pouring in. They were brought in every kind of vehicle, from the luxurious motor ambulances belonging to the German Red Cross, to handcarts drawn by donkeys and by dogs.

At the end of the first hour, Jeanne Rouannès told herself that there was no room for more. But on and on they came, in a terrible, continuous procession, and place still had to be found for them. After the beds had all been filled, the stone floor, hastily covered with stacks of straw, had to serve as resting-place for many more. Very soon, too, all the houses, and the often more comfortable stables and out-buildings of the town, were also full and overfull....

The French Red Cross nurse was ordered to remain in the church, and reluctantly she found herself compelled to admire the energy, the method, the quick, if to her heartless, type of efficient intelligence, the German surgeons there brought to their terrible tasks. In whatever part of the church she happened to be, whatever the duty in which she was engaged, during those hours of horror and strain, when all the miraculous resources of youth—her fine health of body, and finer stoicism of soul—alone brought her through the awful ordeal, the Herr Doktor watched over, and as far as was in his power, helped her to perform her arduous, pitiful works of mercy.

Very soon—so soon that it seemed retrospectively to have been at the end of the first morning—everything a normal surgeon and his dressers require had been used up, and that though, by the forethought of Herr Doktor Max Keller, all the clean, looted linen which had been put safely away for transport to Germany had early been requisitioned by the Field Ambulance.

The German wounded far outnumbered the French, and at first the fact had filled the French Red Cross nurse with a relief of which she felt ashamed.

Then suddenly she understood the strange disparity! To these keen, clear-thinking German surgeons their own countrymen came first as a matter of course, and the best was naturally reserved for them. They were skilful, and as humane as it was in them to be, to all those whom they attended, but the grey-clad wounded were obviously the most important.

The knowledge that this was so filled Jeanne Rouannès with revolt, and bitter anger. As she half mechanically performed the duties set her, she thought of her own shattered countrymen, lying for the most part outside and unattended; and she was filled with repugnance, even horror, for all these Germans, both the wounded and the whole, who lay and stood about her. As far as was possible, she lavished the small surgical science she possessed, and the measureless pity and tenderness that was hers in ample measure, on the few French wounded who were brought into the church.

Then suddenly a strange thing happened. A dying German, to whom she had just given an injection of camphorated oil, held out his hand, gropingly. She took the rough, blackened hand in hers, and he murmured 'Mutter,' in a voice full of agonised longing and entreaty. From that moment Jeanne Rouannès no longer made, even in her inmost heart, any distinction between the French and German wounded. She tended them as far as was in her power, and in the measure of her strength, with the same kindness and untiring devotion.

In addition to the wounded—the wounded brought in from the scenes of the fierce rearguard actions now being fought round Valoise—were the injured townspeople, the old women and the little children who became unwitting targets for the bombs, the shells, and even the arrows, which now and again fell from the German aeroplanes circling in the air above.

Occasionally, not often, the French Red Cross nurse would obtain permission to go out into the town to attend on some of them; and perhaps because the thought of any personal danger was so far from them both, during those strange and terrible days, the Herr Doktor Max Keller and Jeanne Rouannès, when engaged on such outside works of mercy, met with none of the mishaps which befell many of those about them.

Such trifling, even childish, incidents and happenings remained imprinted on her heart! Thus, she was shaken with rage and disgust when shown that the curiously shaped steel arrow which had fatally injured a little child, had fastened to it, not only a miniature German flag, but an absurd message, written in bad French, pinned to the flag.

As to the sights which filled her eyes when she was away from the shadowed church, the one which remained the most vividly present to her, in after days, was the effect produced by a fragment of shell which happened to unseal the top of a hydrant. Just out of reach of a fiercely burning building, the water rose like a colossal fountain, throwing exquisite sprays of prismatic colour into the sunny air.

All through those four September days, while friend and enemy destroyed the Haute Ville of Valoise, the sun shone hotly in a clear sky, the air was filled with a soft, luminous haze which rose from the river, and the fierce fighting in the woods behind the town went on in glades and coverts filled with the magic beauty of early autumn scents and tints.