CHAPTER VI
TO THE FRONT
There was real news to be gleaned from these unfortunates who came into the station at Amiens soon after the boys took their places there with some of the other scouts of the troop. Women, children and old men—not a young man was among them, of course—they poured from the freight cars that in the main they occupied. And they were willing to talk; more than willing, indeed. They told of how the Germans had come. First the Uhlans riding through, stern and silent, willing to leave the inhabitants alone, as a rule, if they themselves were let alone. Then the infantry, rolling along in great grey masses. And with them came the spoiling of the countryside.
"They took everything—food, wine, everything our army had not had," said one woman to Frank and Henri, as she walked through the streets with them. Frank was carrying her baby for her. "They left us with nothing! And then they burned all the houses in my street because, they said, there must be clear space for their guns to fire!"
It was a simple matter to distribute these poor refugees. The town of Amiens had troubles of its own but it forgot them now, and set itself doggedly to work the relief of the far more acute distress of those from the countryside to the north and east. Always the stories of those who had fled before the German hosts were the same.
"The Germans haven't got an army!" cried Henri, bitterly. "It's a war machine they send against us! They do not fight like men, but like railroad trains!"
They were learning more in this task of escorting the refugees than all the bulletins had been able to tell them. No censors could close the mouths of these poor people, and they were not only willing to talk—they craved listeners.
"It makes it easier to bear what we have suffered when we know that others know what the Germans have done," said the woman with the baby. "We women—we gave our husbands, and those who had sons gave their sons. Now we have given all to France. Let the men win back enough for us to live—that is all that we ask."