Sometimes he moaned gently. He sat like this all day, refusing to talk to anybody, or to eat anything, or to be comforted. The farmer's wife told us that the day before a shell had hit his cottage and killed his horse. He was the village carrier. The horse was perhaps as old as himself—as horses' years are measured—still it had been his companion and means of livelihood, and now it was taken from him. He could not understand it all—why the shell had come to wreck his home and kill his horse. He just sat there moaning and staring before him. We turned away. Neither we nor the farmer's wife could do anything. But with the weeping woman at the table it might be different. The farmer's wife thought that we, being British officers, could do something. She brought the woman up to us and she told us her tale. Her husband, it seemed, had been hit by a bullet while working in his field. He now lay out there wounded. She could not say she was sure if he was dead, but could we go and get him in. They had fired at her when she tried to go out to him. It was terrible to feel he was still lying there. We asked where the field was and then looked at each other helplessly. It lay in no man's land, between ours and the German lines. Perhaps at night, but for the rest of the day, no—we could do nothing. While we were drinking our soup two more refugees came in: a broken-looking middle-aged peasant, with red-rimmed eyes and thin shambling legs, and his wife. He was clinging round his wife's neck, tears pouring from the red-rimmed eyes. He, too, like the old peasant by the stove, was speechless; his wife told us that the Germans had taken him and made him march in front of them for three days.
She repeated the words "trois jours," her voice shaking with passion. The farmer's wife set the couple at the table and gave them soup from the pot. I wondered that she, too, did not join in the general weeping; but she went quietly and sadly about her work, saying little, giving food and drink to the afflicted people who had come to her kitchen, tending her pots and pans and fire. She asked no questions about the enemy, where they were or when we should drive them from the farm. She showed no signs of the night of terror she must have passed as the fight raged about her house. It was as though she stood for the spirit of France, proud to suffer for her country, confident in the prowess of her men, and patient and undoubting that they would succeed.
Later, when Goyle came, she ushered us all into the parlour she had reserved for our use. She watched us for a moment as we opened a tin of bully beef and pulled some biscuits from our pockets, and then, motioning to us to put these things away, began to dust the table and lay a cloth. In a short while she had put before us a dainty lunch, soup, boiled chicken, a stew of vegetables, coffee, and cheese. We would have preferred our servants to have done the cooking and waited on ourselves, so that she could look after her own people, but she insisted on doing everything herself, bringing each dish in. We asked her if we could do anything for her, and she drew up a methodical list of things she wanted from a neighbouring village—coffee, rice, flour, and oil for her lamp. I got up to get these things, and at the door she stopped me and pressed her well-worn purse into my hand to buy the things. I had difficulty in making her take the money back.
Outside the farm I found a party of men burying one of the company who had been killed in the night. They had wrapped him in his coat, and were digging a rough grave by the roadside. One of the men was at work on a wooden cross made of two bits of board from the lid of a ration-box. He had scrawled R.I.P. and the date in large letters, and was laboriously tracing out the dead man's name and number.
The village where I was to get the provisions lay about half a mile away along an open, desolate road. All along the road men lay entrenched. The word had gone round that the enemy had withdrawn, and most of the men were sleeping beside their rifles. Some of the inhabitants of the village were coming back after the attack, and I found a tiny store open where I could get the things the farmer's wife required. On my way back I passed a wine shop, which was crowded with peasants, all talking and drinking coffee and little glasses of rum.
I wondered what they thought of it all, and imagined they were too bewildered to have any opinions. On all their faces were evident signs of satisfaction at being able to return to the village. They thought that the "boches" were by now probably running back hard to Germany, and all would be over in a few days.
As I stood in the doorway three civilian youths approached, two of them supporting a third between them. The lad in the middle looked white and scarcely able to stand. I went up to see if I could do anything. The two with him told me that they had found the boy lying in a field; he had been hit in five places by shrapnel. They thought he must have been lying there unattended for three days. The boy himself watched me with dumb, pain-ridden eyes. Very weakly and slowly he raised his hand to his mouth and pointed to his tongue, which was black and swollen. "Soif," he whispered. Of course, he had had no water all the time. I had him taken into a cottage and laid on a table. I got a glass of water from a well and held it to his lips. He was too weak to raise his head, but his friends supported him, and he drank the water slowly and steadily. As he drank a little smile played about his lips, and when the glass was empty, before they laid him down, he nodded his head and smiled at me as only those smile for whom one has done some last service and whose life is nearly done.
I made my way back to the farm with sickness in my heart. Not all the fighting nor the strain of war had affected me as the sight of those suffering, helpless people whose ground we were using for our battlefield.
That night we said good-bye to the farmer's wife and pushed on beyond the farm. We were all happy to feel we were leaving her behind the security of our lines. As she stood at the door and watched us go there was still the same look in her eyes as when we came—a look of sadness, resignation, and infinite courage.