SEEING THE WAR THROUGH A WOMAN'S EYES
Soul-Stirring Description of Scenes Among the Wounded in Paris
Told by (Name Suppressed)
I—"THEY HAVE NOTHING LEFT—NOT EVEN TEARS"
What I have seen—can that be told? When will words be found simple enough and infinite enough to tell of so much heroism, so much sorrow, so much beauty, so much terror? All those sublimities: how can they be explained without losing their soul, without taking away their value, which is of mystery and miracle? All those hideous things, all those unnatural crimes; how can they be revealed with cold and ponderous reasoning, while one is still trembling, keeping back tears, smothering cries?
It must be done, though, and that French shyness that hates all that is bluff or bragging, and which fain would wait that our glory and suffering be understood, it too must be conquered. We must rise above that too delicate conscience which says: "Speak? What good will it do? Truth is luminous; it shines before all eyes." Yes, but it must be helped to shine, and without delay.
That is why, I have decided to address the American nation, to tell it that which I know, that which is evident, undeniable—to take it to the frightful and divine Calvary of truth.
For six months I have been living among our soldiers, our wounded. I live in my Paris. That Paris that every one visits and that no one knows. I have only left it for some brief excursions to the cathedrals in agony, to the villages in ashes, to the ambulances at the front, to the old peasants who have nothing left—not even tears! To the little orphans with tragic and stupefied eyes.
Sent to distribute woolens to the combatants, I have heard a language, haughty and superb. I have clasped the rude hands, sometimes deformed, of more than twenty-two thousand soldiers, some wounded, others well again, returning to the firing line, a flame in their eyes and in their hearts. I have bent over more than ten thousand beds of mutilated young men, many of them with gangrene. I have held hundreds in my arms on the operating tables—I who could not support the sight of blood, nor of illness—hundreds of poor things with atrocious wounds, and only felt during those minutes one care—a superhuman desire to discover in the surgeon's look or attitude the hope the poor boy would be saved.
II—"IF HE DIED, I SHOULD HAVE FELT GUILTY"
I remember, above all, a youth twenty years old, who had such a complicated wound in the chest that it is indescribable. I held the poor, inert body while the surgeon lay wide open the thorax. "Take him back," said the surgeon, "and be careful." I did so. Then from the deep, bleeding wound the whole chest emptied itself, as one empties a bucket of I don't know what unnamable liquid. The surgeon approached then, and leaning over the now visible palpitating lung murmured: "What can be done? It will only begin again." However, he did find out what could be done. He had him put back in his bed—he was still unconscious. Sitting near him, filled with anxiety I waited his awakening. I wanted him to be saved, that child! While he was being chloroformed a few minutes before, while he was holding my hand without saying a word, there was in his look, before his eyes closed, such a gentle desire to live, such a prayer for protection—such confidence in the infinite aid I gave him. If he died I should have felt myself guilty—I don't know of what.
He awoke—looked at me and smiled. He then murmured: "Why are you so good to us, madame? We are not near to you."
To this dying child, to give him back his life, it was necessary I should explain to him his glory. I said: "Not near, my boy? Why, understand then what I owe you! If the enemy has not entered our Paris—if Notre Dame is intact—if I, myself, am living—it is because you gave your blood for us. But that is not all. When you fight for France you do not only fight for your country, you do not only save your native land; you save an ideal, an ideal supreme, universal. In helping all that is pure and beautiful in the world you save the liberty of peoples, the liberty of the soul. You say to each one of us 'the yoke that weighs you down I shall help you to cast off.'
"You do not understand me well, my boy. But see—you must live. Later in the eternal books of history you will learn the meaning of the blood you have given. You must live! You must live! Years from now your little children will look at you with eyes of love and admiration because you were a soldier in the great war. They will know the meaning of the medal shining on your chest, and for generations they will be proud of the honour of their name. You must live, my dear boy!"
As I spoke something wonderful illuminated the youth's eyes. "Oh, I shall live, madame. One only has to will it. I shall live."
He is saved!
I do not know why I stopped to recount the agony and resurrection of that child, because almost all of them are divinely alike—childlike, confident, smiling.
Another had had a whole leg amputated—a young man of twenty-two, with a charming face. Doubtless he had already been loved by some pretty girl. At last the day came when for the first time he was to get out of bed and try to walk with crutches. I dreaded that moment. I expected complaints. I already had made up my consoling arguments.
Ah, how little I knew the soul of our children of France. He arose, poor boy, so thin, on his one leg; and as he was also wounded in one arm, in spite of the crutches he couldn't balance himself. That made him laugh; made him laugh!
I turned him over to a nurse because tears were choking me. But they were not tears of sorrow; they were sobs of tenderness, respect, admiration.
Another had received nine wounds. He didn't want to have them spoken of. He only wanted to talk about his days of battle—to live them over again. "Those last days, madame, we were so near the enemy that they could not get to us to bring us our rations. We had to find our nourishment ourselves. When evening arrived some of us would steal out of the trenches and pick carrots—we lived eleven days like that. One day I brought down a pigeon. When I was able to get it we broiled it with matches. Ah, that was a royal feast! How glad we were!"
"Content" (glad, happy), that was the word he used most frequently. One morning when I got to the hospital, believing him still very ill, he greeted me with, "I go back to my depot in three days; in a fortnight I shall be under fire! Oh, how 'content' I am!"
Since then he has written me, "I received the tobacco. We had an awful fight at ——. I have a finger less and am still in the ambulance, but still 'content.'"
III—STORY OF THE DYING ALGERIAN
Ah, let me still tell of my country's smile in her sorrow—so sweet, and which is such a comfort to my heart. I have so much to tell that is horrible.
Another time I conducted a celebrated visitor to a "tirailleur" (a part of the colonial infantry who leave the ranks in action and fight individually). This "tirailleur" had had his right arm amputated. I said, "he is an Algerian." The wounded man looked at me reproachfully with his great soft eyes, saying: "Don't say Algerian, madame, me French, me give arm for France."
Another time I was with another Algerian; this one was about to die; nothing could save him. I was trying to soften his agony. He let me go on awhile, then suddenly stopped me with the melancholy childish accent of the Arabs, saying: "Don't bother about me any more, madame. All over. Me dead in two hours. Me just as happy as if get well. Thee write my mother that." I wrote his mother. She replied: "He has served France well. Allah has taken him to his breast."
IV—"WHAT I HAVE SEEN IN PARIS"
What I have seen! I have seen Paris under the Teutonic shadow cast from the north. Three days, on opening my windows at dawn, I anxiously listened for the expected rumble of the cannonading. Nothing.... It will be soon, this evening, to-morrow, I said. Everything in my threatened city became sacred to me. For me to die, that was nothing. But for Paris to be destroyed; my Paris! the city that cannot be described; cannot be explained! I couldn't stand that. I burst out weeping in the deserted streets, leaning perchance against a humble and old house. This mere relic had feelings, regrets, like the most sublime monuments.
The gravest day dawned. Those who only stayed in Paris for the pleasure they receive from it, and those who have children to take care of, were hastening toward the stations or crowding into automobiles. I stayed there. My heart wrung with agony, I drifted through my ordinary occupations. Then the unbelievable happened. As I was crossing the Place de la Madeleine, in a semi-dazed condition, a little boy, about five or six years old, ran up to me and gave me a slip of paper. I saw distractedly that he was decently dressed and had large blue eyes. I automatically opened the paper. The following unheard of phrase was typewritten on it: "France is invincible."
I turned toward the child: "Who gave you that?"
"Madame," said the little one, raising his head with a look that was grand, immense, "We wrote them ourselves, all night." Tears filled my eyes; I had a presentiment they were tears of deliverance. So, while we knew the Uhlans were in Chantilly, while in the hearts of the grown-up people horror placed its claws on faith, on hope, there was a little child with immense blue eyes, who knew nothing, like the good shepherds, St. Genevieve and Joan of Arc, but who knew that "France was invincible" and who passed the night writing it.
Yes, the miracle that saved Paris was revealed to us. But there was another miracle, something imponderable, which was the soul of the little boy with his eyes of light—which is the soul of Paris.
Paris ... even during those hours did not lose its sweet disposition of smiling independence. And it was among the children that we found the most touching proofs. One day—at the hour when the German aviators were storming Paris with bombs—we called it our five o'clock taube—I went out with a friend near the Park Monceau. All the passers-by were walking with their noses in the air, as they already had got the habit of the visits of "the bad pigeons."
One little boy had his bicycle to follow the flight, another a pair of opera glasses. But look around in the sky as I might, I could see nothing. Then a little boy, this one about six or seven years old, pulled my coat. "Straight up, madame; straight up, over my head!" That's how they frightened our little kiddies!
The next day I was passing through a thickly populated neighbourhood over which they had been flying for an hour. Suddenly a child bolted out of a house as fast as it could go. But his mother caught him and administered two resounding slaps. "I told you to stay in the house." "Ah," protested the urchin, "ye don't only keep me from seein' de tobe, but cher lick me in der bargain."
These are trifles, will perhaps be said. Do you think so? Nothing is small that reveals the immortal soul of a people. And we found it so everywhere. Don't lose patience with me if I speak without order. My words resemble the days I am living. They have a unity, however, as from them always shines forth the trials, the smiles, the bravery of my country.
V—"THEY ARE ALL DEAD NOW"
What have I seen?... I saw a white glove stained with a gray spot and a brown spot. Here is its history. When war was declared all the young students of the Saint Cyr Army School were promoted second lieutenants. Their average age was about twenty years. How happy they were to fight for France. But to fight was not enough. They must do it with grace, with style, carelessly, according to French traditions. They all swore, those boys, to go to the first battle wearing white gloves. They kept their word. But the white gloves made them a mark for the ambushed sharpshooters. They are all dead. The glove I saw belonged to one of them. The gray spot is of brain—the brown spot is blood. Piously this relic was brought to the mother of the dead young man. This special one was only nineteen years old.
And let us not think that it was a useless sacrifice. It is well that in the beginning of this war of surprises, mud and shadow, some of our children died in the light, facing the enemy, and facing the sun, for the good renown of French allegiance.
What I have seen ... Yesterday I received a letter. It came from a sergeant in the Argonne, an uneducated workman. Here it is, with the spelling and punctuation corrected:
"Madame, thanks for letting me know that my wife has had a little girl. But do not think I am worried. We love our families, but our duty is to love our country first. And if I do, those at home will be taken care of, I know it, madame.
"I'm going to tell you something you'll be glad to hear, not at the beginning, but you'll see at the end. A couple of weeks ago we lost a trench and almost everybody was massacred, including our commander. I escaped with a few more of my men. From our new trench we could see the bodies of our comrades and officers down there. The worst of it was that the Germans would get behind them to shoot at us. Ah, that all those Frenchmen, dead for their country, were made to protect the enemy! I couldn't look at that. So here's what I did. I said to my men, 'I'm going for them, but if I stay there I don't want my body to be made a rampart. Tie a rope around my body and if you see I'm done for, pull me back by it.' At first things went all right. I got back three of our comrades' corpses. But the Germans began to see something was up. To mix them up I ordered a feint on the right—another on the left. I kept on.
"I was all right. Never would those people suspect that I would risk my life to save dead bodies. So I had the joy of getting them all back—there were sixty-seven. And can you believe it, madame, there were two men still living. They are in a good way to getting well, and they can indeed say they came back from pretty far off. We buried the others. They are now sleeping peacefully. But I couldn't resist letting those in the opposite trench know. Not a bad trick, was it, madame?"
VI—"THEY WILL PAY FOR THIS MISERY"
What have I seen.... The other morning among the men who came to the vestiaire (wardrobe), where I am occupied part of the time, and who are generally very gay and good-humoured, there was a young soldier with a sober, set, disagreeable face. I shook him up with, "Why, what's the matter that a French soldier makes such a face? Won't you look me in the face and make me a nice smile?" But he didn't change expression. I took him to one side. "What's the matter with you, my child? First of all, where are you from?"
"I am from the North, madame."
"Oh, then I understand why you are sad. You do not know where your dear ones are."
He looked at me with a fierce, wild expression and suddenly replied: "I do know, madame. My elder brother was killed beside me, struck by the same shell that wounded me. That is war. They have burned my home, killed my mother and my father. My sister, sixteen years old, has been violated and abused; my little sister, of nine years, has disappeared." A black flame burned in the sombre look of the boy and made it unbearable. I received that look straight in my eyes. "Tell me, madame, we will get to their country, won't we, won't we?"
"Why, certainly, my boy—nothing surer."
"Oh, madame, they will pay for all this misery. But do not fear, their women and children will not be touched."
"Their women and children will not be touched." That is what this martyr of barbarism and of the cruelty of the enemy found in his heart to say—this sombre, uncultivated child of a northern village. I shook his rough hand—I squeezed it—I kissed the poor cheeks of this orphan with maternal kisses, and I said: "I thank thee."
VII—"THE CHILDREN WHO ARE MUTILATED"
But they—what are they doing with our little children? Here's a letter from a lady friend—a great musician. "My son-in-law, Lieutenant —— has been defending Verdun since August. He's all right. But when will these barbarians be entirely driven away? Lately my son-in-law had a German soldier who was very badly wounded picked up. When stripping him to give him aid they found a child's hand in his pocket. He was immediately shot."
Don't think it's a single case. The children who are mutilated, assassinated, burned, are counted by hundreds. At Blamont, in the presence of the Baroness de V——, the Germans killed a child in its mother's arms. "Why did you do that?" asked the Baroness. "We are obliged to, otherwise we are shot," replied the men.
Witnesses who have seen like things are too numerous to be counted. Everybody in France remembers the sad question of the little girl who asked her mother, "Will Santa Claus bring me back my hands for Christmas?"
Some time I shall go into the details of the arrival of the Belgian children in Paris, with their terrorized looks, their screams of fear if anyone approached them. I haven't yet the courage to go over it. The memory I am going to call up is almost as frightful, though. It was Sunday, August 30. All at once I got a telephone call from a hospital where I often assisted: "Come, quick; they're bringing a lot of wounded."
As I arrived they were carrying in a young woman, either dead or unconscious. Everybody was under the strain of deep emotion. We undressed her. Her body was horribly mutilated with hideous wounds. She was the victim of the first "taube," as the Parisiennes called the German aeroplanes. She was passing along the street, humble and inoffensive. Her husband was at the front. She had a child at home. From above death smote her. The French gave men wings, and that is how the barbarians use them.
I left the young woman dead. I went to see the child. He was playing at a table, laughing. The contrast was so sad I couldn't stand it. I took away his toys. "You mustn't play any more just now, baby. You will not see your mother again to-day." He looked up at me sadly as if he understood. I took him in my arms and wept over him.
There is a little—so little—of what I have seen and heard.
Just as I finished writing I received a photograph from the painter Guirand de Scévola, showing an old woman of sixty-five, who had been attacked—then slaughtered. With it was a part of the Belgium official report, not yet made public. I shall divulge the paragraph: "September 11th, Josephy Louis Buron, of the Twenty-fourth regiment of the line, declared that having been made prisoner by the Germans, near Aerschot, they made him plunge both hands into a kettle of boiling water. Dr. Thone, of the Twenty-fourth regiment of the line, declared he saw the wounds of the hero." (Told in the New York American.)