One detachment has passed; the rumbling has increased till your windows shake as though in an earthquake. The camions and guns are going by, an endless defile of monster trucks, ending with the rolling kitchen, lumbering forward, smoking from all its pipes and caldrons, with the regimental cook springing up to inspect the progress of his savory ragoût.
After the formless tumult of the wheels, the stony street resounds again to the age-old rhythm of marching men. Another detachment....
You dress quickly, seize the big box of cigarettes kept ready for this time, and, taking the children by the hand, go out to help welcome the newcomers as they settle down for their three weeks' rest.
I have told you that Crouy has a thousand inhabitants. There are twelve hundred men in a regiment. Perhaps you can imagine that when the troops are there men seem to ooze from every pore of the town. There are no great barracks erected for them, you understand. Somehow Crouy people make themselves small, move over to the edge, and make the necessary room. There are seventy soldiers sleeping on straw in the big hall which was before the war used for a concert-room or for amateur theatricals; two hundred are housed in what is left of the old salles de garde of the ruined castle, old guard-rooms which after five hundred years see themselves again filled with French fighting-men; every barn-loft is filled with them; every empty shed has a thick layer of straw on the ground and twenty to thirty men encamped; every empty stable has been carefully cleaned and prepared for them; every empty room harbors one or more officers; every attic has ten or fifteen men. One unused shop is transformed into the regimental infirmary, and hangs out the Red Cross flag; another sees the quartermaster and his secretaries installed at desks improvised from pine boards; a sentry stands before the Town Hall where the colonel has his headquarters, and another guards the fine old house which has the honor of sheltering the regimental flag.
The street, our quiet, sleepy street, is like an artery pulsing with rapid vibrations; despatch-riders dash up and down; camions rumble by; a staff-car full of officers looking seriously at maps halts for a moment and passes on; from out the courtyard where a regimental kitchen is installed a file of soldiers issues, walking on eggs as they carry their hot stew across the street to the lodging where they eat it. Our green-vegetable woman, that supreme flower of a race of consummate gardeners, arrives at the house, breathless and smiling, with only an onion and a handful of potatoes in her usually well-garnished donkey-cart.
"Que voulez-vous, madame?" she apologizes, sure of your sympathy. "The instant I leave the garden, they set upon me. You can't refuse your own soldiers, can you! With my Jacques at the front?"
Everywhere, everywhere where there is a scrap of cover from the sky, are huddled horses, mules, guns, wagons, and camions. Every spreading chestnut-tree harbors, not a blacksmith, but a dozen army mules tied close to the trunk. Near the station the ground under the close-set double line of trees in the long mall is covered to its last inch with munition-wagons and camions, and to reach the post-office on the other side of the little shady square you must pick your way back of lines of guns, set end to end, without an inch to spare. The aviators, whose machines wheel ceaselessly over the town, can see no change in its aspect, unless perhaps the streets and courtyards send up to the sky a gray-blue reflection like its own color. Not another trace of twelve hundred men with all their impedimenta betrays to the occasional German airman that Crouy's life is transformed.
Three times a week, in the late afternoon, just before sunset, the regimental band gives a concert, in our big open square under the sycamores, where, in the softer passages of the music, the sound of splashing water mingles with the flutes. All Crouy puts on its Sunday best and comes out to join itself to the horizon-blue throngs, and the colonel and his staff stand under the greatest of the sycamores, listening soberly to the music and receiving paternally the salutes of the men who saunter near him.
Once during their stay there is a prise-d'armes, on the square, when the men who have especially distinguished themselves are decorated with the croix de guerre. All Crouy goes to see that, too—all Crouy means now, you must remember, old men, women, little children, and babies—and stands respectfully, with tear-wet eyes, watching the white-haired colonel go down the line, pinning on each man's breast the sign of honor, taking his hand in a comrade's clasp and giving him on both cheeks a brother's kiss. That is a sight the children there will not forget, those two, bronzed, grave soldiers' faces, meeting under their steel casques in the salutation of blood-kin.