Last night they bombed Gondrecourt. We were startled out of our sleep by the explosions. Lying in bed I could hear the angry growling gr-gr-gr which distinguishes the German plane, as it flew over Abainville headed back towards the lines. Would it drop another bomb? It seemed to take an interminable time to pass over us. Finally the growling hum grew faint, died away. Then the real excitement of the night began. Swarming into the streets, men, women and children, they proceeded to turn the occasion into a social event. Standing in the square in the moonlight, all talking at once and all talking at the top of their voices, they discussed, narrated, compared, commented, sympathized, while high above all the din I could hear Madame’s voice in semi-hysterical outbursts of emotion. How they could find so much to say about it I can’t imagine. If Hindenburg’s whole army had suddenly appeared in Gondrecourt they couldn’t have been more excited. I went to sleep and left them still busy analyzing, as I took it, their psychological reactions.
This morning we learned that the bombs, falling at the edge of the town, had injured nothing except a few trees.
“What would you do if they should start to bomb Abainville?” I asked Madame when she brought me my morning toast and chocolate.
“I? I would go to the church.”
“What you, the infidel! You who never go to mass!”
“I know.” Madame smiled a little sheepishly. “And yet all the same, one would feel safer there.”
At the canteen a lieutenant who was just finishing his course at Gondrecourt came in.
“Nobody can imagine who should have wanted to bomb the school,” he declared, “unless it was some former pupil.”
“Why I was told that the Gondrecourt School was the ranking school of France!” I exclaimed.
“Made a mistake in the last syllable,” he responded sourly, “it should have been spelled e-s-t.”