Not the most reassuring thought in the world, that French fliers had marked this place for destruction. In the waiting-rooms I saw nothing but soldiers—fresh troops with clean uniforms, unshaven men whose clothes were brownish with the mud of the trenches. By that time I had become used to being saluted, and to enjoy the click of a sentry's heels. While Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann was telephoning for a military automobile I noticed one of the Landwehr guards begin to eye suspiciously the photographers and their formidable luggage. I saw him call another of the dark-coated Landwehr, and they were obviously on the point of making a possible arrest when the Ober-Lieutenant returned, averting the situation.
We were, the Ober-Lieutenant informed us, to wait in the Café de Paris,—which was just across the square from the station,—until he returned.
"The telephones have all been cut," he explained with a smile. "I shall have to walk to Headquarters and bring back a motor for us. I may be gone half an hour, or an hour, but please remain in the café. Remember Lille is a captured city."
So we crossed the square, Dawson, Theyer and I, while the wind brought us the grumbling of heavy cannon from the West where, not fifteen miles away, the Germans were making their terrific drive on that segment of the Allies' line, extending out from the Channel shore. Boo-omm, Boo-omm, Boo-omm, with the last syllable prolonged like a low note on the piano. Army transports rattled over the cobbled square; one of the gray motors with its muffler cut out, snorted past; and then the eye began to take in its surroundings.
There on my left, as I went away from the station, I saw a place of destruction, an entire block of ruined buildings, their shattered sides rearing with hideous ugliness against the perspective of untouched houses beyond. Blackened walls, gaping holes, roofless skeletons of houses; and within, a chaos of plaster and falling floors, one house after another, some almost razed to the ground, others with only their tops shot off, but all desolation and ruin. It was not the destruction that made me stop in the square and stare about me, for I had become sated with shelled houses, all the way from Charleville to Lille; it was amazement at the artillery fire that could lay low an entire block and not even drop a shell. The undisturbed cobbles in the square confirmed this conclusion. What deadly accuracy! How, if something be marked for destruction in this war, can it escape? I stood in the square for several minutes and counted thirty-eight soldiers and sixty civilians walk past the ruins and no one so much as turned his head to glance even indifferently upon them.
"How long," I asked the fatherly, white-haired Frenchman who brought us our coffee in the Café de Paris, "is it, since those buildings over there were destroyed?"
"A month, sir," he said, and in a moment he added wearily, "Our city has been captured and recaptured three times."
And it was easy then to know why they had all walked by without the slightest interest in the ruins beside them; think of people becoming bored with destruction! A typical French café with its big window, the Paris gave a view of the sidewalk. I saw a beautiful, dark-eyed French boy, dirtily clad, selling post cards of Lille to a good natured German infantryman. The soldier went away and then, what appeared to be the other members of the firm, a bigger and a smaller boy, darted from a doorway to divide the spoils with the dark-eyed youngster who had closed the deal. I saw five different parties of German soldiers come into the Café de Paris, and I heard not even a loud word or jest against the French; and three black-bearded Frenchmen played dominoes nearby. The soldiers ordered their coffee, or wine, paid for it, and minded their own business, just as they would at home, perhaps even more scrupulously so.
Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann was an hour longer than he expected, but he had good news for me.
"I have a car outside," he said hurriedly. "We shall bring Mr. Dawson and Mr. Theyer to the Staff and then I shall take you to an aeroplane base not far from here. It has been arranged for you to go up—if you wish."