TALE OF THE SAVING OF PARIS
How a Woman's Wit Averted a Great Disaster
Little by little the "inner history" of the Great War is coming to light. This remarkable story shows how the presence of mind of a humble woodman's widow, in the early days of hostilities, led to the preservation of the Western Railway of France, on which at that time Paris depended for its supplies and the transport of troops. Told in the Wide World.
I—IN NORMANDY—STORY OF OCTAVIE DELACOURT
In a clearing of the Forêt de Lyons, near Martagny, in Normandy, and by the side of a barely distinguishable road, stands the rustic half-timbered cottage of Octavie Delacourt. A solitary habitation indeed, but one well fitted to the mental outlook of a lonely woman—no fair young heroine of romance, as some readers may hastily conclude, but a widow of over fifty with hair turning a silvery grey. Her husband—a forester, and the builder of the little home—had died from a fever a year before the war. Childless, she had elected to live on there alone, partly through necessity, partly because of the memories which the surroundings stirred in her mind whenever she went forth to collect sticks for her fire, or when, lying in bed at night, she heard the wind in the trees. Twenty years with "her man," twenty years of labour in common, had made her a fervent lover of the forest. It had become, as it were, her domain. Certainly no one knew better its confusing tangle of roads and pathways.
The outbreak of the war naturally had an effect on the mind and habits of Octavie Delacourt, but, alone in the world as she was, it affected her much less than it had done her friends and acquaintances in the neighbouring villages. In her case the war fever took the form of restlessness—an eager, insatiable desire to learn the truth about the danger which was threatening her dear France.
As the cloud darkened over the country her anxiety for news grew keener and keener. It seemed as though her sub-conscious self was aware that the tide of invasion was drawing nearer and nearer to the fair fields and orchards of Normandy, and that one morning she would wake up to find Martagny, Gournay, and Les Andelys in the hands of the Boches. So every day, in those early weeks of the war, she was up betimes and, having carefully done up her grey tresses and put on a newly-ironed blue apron, set forth to one or other of the neighbouring villages, where she would be able to read the latest "communiqué" and pick up any stray item of news that might filter through from Paris.
About eight o'clock on the morning of September 16th, 1914, Octavie Delacourt set out in this way, her destination on this occasion being Gournay and the house of an old friend of her husband, a small landowner named Rismude. It is a good distance by road from Martagny to Gournay, so she decided to take a short cut through the Forêt de Lyons. Setting her best foot foremost, she struck off through the trees with the swinging stride of a hardy countrywoman, and soon picked up a little pathway amidst the undergrowth which she knew would lead her in the right direction. After walking for some ten minutes at full speed, she came to a part of the forest known as "La Molière," the site of a disused chalk quarry, the gasping white mouth of which is partly hidden by dense foliage. It was here that her eye—long experienced in woodcraft—noticed something unusual near the path she was following: a number of green branches, freshly cut from the trees, which someone—apparently in vain—had been trying to make into a fire. Stopping in front of the charred remains, she could not suppress the utterance of the reflection which sprang to her mind:—
"How stupid to cut green branches for a fire!"
Hardly had the words passed her lips than Octavie felt a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. With thumping heart and suddenly blanched face she spun half round and beheld her aggressor—a heavy-featured man in a strange dress who, with a cynical smile on his thick lips and a hard look in his little grey eyes, had noiselessly appeared from behind a tree.
"How you frightened me!" exclaimed Octavie, retaining her self-possession, in spite of her fright, and endeavouring to shake off the leaden fingers which weighed on her slender frame.
But not a word in reply came from the mysterious man, who might have been made of cast-iron, so motionless did he stand. Gradually, as Octavie Delacourt fell to examining him, the hideous truth began to dawn upon her, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had never set eyes before on a German soldier; she had never even seen a picture of one. But she had heard tell of their uniform, in a vague sort of way, and suddenly, one might say instinctively, she recognized the ash-grey dress and the round cap of the same colour. How came the wearer of these tell-tale clothes to be in her forest, not fifteen miles from Les Andelys, and within rifle-shot of her native village of Martagny?
II—WAS HE GOING TO BAYONET HER?
The mystery terrified her. However, no trace of fear or the tumult in her breast appeared on her face. Her simple peasant logic told her that would have been fatal. In the presence of the hidden and perhaps imminent danger into which she divined she had stumbled, she told herself, with feminine shrewdness, that at all costs she must preserve a brave countenance and combat the enemy by craft.
"What do you want with me? Can I be of any service to you? If you have lost your way I can set you right. No one knows the forest better than I."
She paused and smiled.
The German soldier's only reply was a sort of grunt and a slightly relaxed hold on her shoulder. At the same time he led her in the direction of a deep excavation, formerly used as a wolf-trap. What was he going to do to her? She now noticed that he carried in his right hand a bayonet, with which he swished, as they walked along, at the tall grass and weeds. Was he going to kill her? She would have turned and fled like a hare but for the grip in which she was held. Perhaps, after all, she thought, there was greater safety in non-resistance than in attempted flight. So she allowed herself to be led to the very edge of the excavation before saying to her captor, in a pleading voice:—
"You are not going to do me any harm, are you? I'm only a poor, inoffensive woman."
Whilst making this appeal, standing on the edge of what she imagined might be her grave, she noticed that the greater part of the hole was skilfully hidden by a roof of branches. The next moment she heard the man with the bayonet whistle, whereupon the head of a blond, blue-eyed giant, also dressed in grey, but with the rank marks of an officer, suddenly appeared through the aperture. Words in a gutteral tongue passed between the two soldiers. Then the fair-complexioned Boche, eyeing her critically, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, uttered an order, and disappeared.
The leaden hand immediately fell from Octavie Delacourt's shoulder and she was once more free. Now, however, all her strength seemed to have gone from her. The feeling that she had just escaped a very real danger robbed her of her desire to flee. Slowly, timidly, like a frightened animal, she moved away, with her head slightly turned towards her captor, who stood watching her, as a cat will a mouse, his bayonet still in his hand and a look of mingled cruelty and regret on his coarse, heavy features. A few steps more and he called to her to halt.
"Has he changed his mind?" thought Octavie, seeing him walk towards her. No; he intended to do her no harm; all he wanted to do was to take her by the hand and lead her in an entirely opposite direction to the one she was heading in. This done, he released her.
Once through the trees, and hidden from view, Octavie Delacourt made a détour and ran as fast as her legs would carry her to Neuf-Marché. At first she thought of returning to Martagny, but the fear of being recaptured restrained her. Moreover, she felt that she had now an urgent duty to perform—to inform the nearest authorities of her discovery. That it foreboded something extremely serious for the country she could now no longer doubt for a moment. In her flight she had caught sight through an opening in the trees, of a third grey-clad soldier, lying flat on his stomach at the edge of the forest and, with his rifle close to hand, watching the movements of a peasant guiding his plough.
Dupont, the aubergiste of Neuf-Marché, listened to her story with a puzzled face. But, though his scepticism was great, he did not allow it to get the better of his judgment. "Nothing would astonish him in these times," he declared; so off he went in search of the garde champêtre, one of the keepers of the forest. He was lucky in catching him before he went for his leisurely morning round, and brought him to the inn, ready to explode with hilarity.
"My poor woman, you must be suffering from illusions," he exclaimed, bursting into a roar of laughter. "Prussians in the Forêt de Lyons? No more than there are cockchafers on a switch!"
Whilst he hastened to turn to his wine and touch glasses with the innkeeper, Octavie, seeing that it would be useless to discuss the matter, slipped out without a word and hurried off to the gendarmerie. Here Quartermaster Crosnier was almost as difficult to convince as the garde champêtre.
"Prussians at Martagny?" he said, with wrinkled brow and a look of doubt in his eyes, as he twisted his moustache. "Are you quite sure? You astonish me."
"Yes, I'm quite sure," affirmed Octavie, in an almost supplicating voice. "Quite, quite sure. And if you go after them, take care you go in force, otherwise they will kill you. There is one Boche, as I've told you, at the edge of the wood, ready to fire, and I've no doubt there are others also lying in waiting."
"Certainly we shall go and see if there's anything in what you say, my good woman," replied the Quartermaster, in a condescending tone, which proved to her that he was still undecided whether to accept her story for gospel.
However, there was no knowing. So he promised he would see to the matter at once. Fraets and Lebas, his gendarmes, should accompany him into the wood. They would look into the mystery as a matter of duty.
III—"BUT FOR A CURSED COUNTRY WOMAN!"
On leaving the constabulary Octavie Delacourt, not wholly satisfied that she had set the administrative machinery sufficiently in motion, asked herself what more she could do. All at once she thought of the post-mistress she knew at Mainneville, a village some three miles off. Excellent idea! A post-mistress had both the telegraph and telephone at her disposal, and she knew that this official, at any rate, would not laugh at her. Pulling herself together once more, she set off at a brisk walk—almost a run—in the direction of Mainneville.
There, as she had foreseen, she met with the most sympathetic of receptions. Mme. B——, the post-mistress, lost not a moment in telephoning to M. Armand Bernard, the Prefect of the Eure, who immediately passed on the news to his colleagues of the adjoining departments. Within half an hour not a prefect, not a commissary of police, not a gendarme with a radius of a hundred miles was uninformed. The Germans in the Forêt de Lyons and their accomplices were entrapped, as it were, within the meshes of a net.
Octavie Delacourt went to sleep that night content indeed. But she little knew what a service she had rendered to France—nothing less, in fact, than the saving of the Western Railway line, on which Paris depended at that time for its supplies and the transport of troops.
The facts relating to the capture of the Huns in the Forêt de Lyons, and those working in conjunction with them, were briefly recorded at the time, but, overshadowed by the greater events of those early days of the war, their true significance was lost sight of. A Prussian captain, a non-commissioned officer, and eleven engineers were arrested at Oissel, thanks to the good marksmanship of Sergeant Leroy, of the G.V.C. Service, who punctured with rifle-bullets the tyres of the motor-cars in which they were fleeing. One of the cars bore the plate and number of the prefect of police of Aix-la-Chapelle. In a motor-lorry which formed part of the convoy was half a ton of explosives.
In the course of his examination the German officer declared that he had crossed the departments of the Somme and the Oise without being troubled, and that he had come into the Eure with the intention of blowing up the Oissel bridge, or, failing this, that of Manoir. He added that "but for a cursed countrywoman" whom one of his men had caught in the forest, and whom he ought to have "suppressed," he would certainly have succeeded.
This happened about three o'clock in the afternoon. Less than an hour later it was discovered that the capture had not been made without bloodshed. Between the "Molière" quarry and the excavation where the blond Hun had appeared to Octavie Delacourt three bodies were found stretched on the ground—those of the luckless Quartermaster Crosnier and his gendarmes, who had been shot almost point-blank when calling on the automobilists to surrender.
Octavie Delacourt's presence of mind, bravery, and persistence were recognized by the French Government. But the service she rendered was infinitely greater than either the praise or the monetary reward—one hundred francs!—which she received for having been instrumental in preventing the perpetration of an act which might have resulted in grave disaster to the capital of France.