Some infantry, I think they were Landwehr, on guard here to-day, were quite distressed at the sight of weeping women and children. Later in the day a little deputation of them waited upon me at the inn. “Would you please go round the village, Fräulein,” they said, “and tell the women and children that we mean them no harm? Have we not wives and children too?” One of them opened his wallet or pocket-book and showed me the photo of a pretty curly-headed German child. Needless to say, I did go round and reassure the people. The result was that the Landwehr were the richer that evening by the peasants’ last pots of appetising home-made jam.
I have to go into the bar and translate in my bad German for the soldiers. Yesterday some of the Uhlans’ horses, picketed in the village street, put their heads through a front window of the inn. I was called in by both sides to assess the damage. It was rather embarrassing, especially as I had to make out the account in greasy German coin! The Uhlans paid up at once, as usual, but the tender-hearted hotel-keeper refused to ask anything approaching the value of the window. The soldiers are annoyed with me sometimes for not being able to procure them special kinds of German beer. Cognac is the drink they love, but the officers have particularly ordered they shall not be served with it.
This business of barter and exchange is often very trying. I had a terrible transaction to-day with a Prussian non-commissioned officer over a box of cigars. It nearly turned my hair grey! We ultimately sold it him for a franc. Anyway, I feel proud to have done my share towards the annihilation of the enemy. A few drops of Prussic acid would have been wholesome by comparison!
IN THE WOODS
Monday—Notices have now been posted up in all the Belgian villages that, since the Belgian civilians, both men and women, have shot at the Germans and even killed their wounded, anyone who offers the slightest resistance will be at once shot down. The house to house search for arms is rigorously prosecuted. A man in the village is shot to-day. He was working in the fields and ran away instead of facing round and throwing up his arms when challenged.
In one village, so the Germans themselves tell me, they have shot twenty-nine men out of thirty-four. They assert that their soldiers were fired on as they entered the street.
The Kaiserliche regiment is encamped at Malempré, a mile away. They have taken an ox and one or two sheep and roasted them whole. They have also forced the peasants to dig up their own fields of potatoes for the soldiers and stood over them to ensure the order being carried out at once. The Germans give a bit of paper, in exchange, a governmental I.O.U. redeemable at the end of the war ... if there is an end and the peasants are alive to see it!
“All will be paid,” says an orderly complacently, as he triumphantly carries off our last fresh eggs. But what is the use of German money or governmental I.O.U.’s when one cannot reach the town for fresh supplies.
“All will be paid.” What a mockery! Stay. They are right. All will be paid. With more than money. With blood and treachery and women’s tears....
I sat up all last night as usual. Paraffin and candles have long given out, but luckily there was a thrice-blessed moon. In the queer half-light, the sentries looked like so many demons pursued by their own shadows. Soldiers were sleeping all about the hard cobblestone street as though lying quietly in their beds at home. Only the Cuirassiers under my window kept up a constant noise. Their horses, too, were stamping and moving continually in the stables as though anxious to get away.