Besides Emil and Guillaume we have four soldier friends-of-the-family, as it were, who also frequent the back room. The canteen is supposed to be a strictly civilian affair, but we make an exception in favour of the four camarades, and they repay us by helping chop the stove-wood which is stacked in a great pile outside the door and is nothing more or less than the stakes to which were once fastened barbed-wire entanglements. Each stake still bears two little rings of wire around it and every few days one has to clear out the accumulation of barbed-wire entanglements from the chocolate-stove. Les défences de Verdun the poilus call the wood-pile. The poilus are all artillerymen from a regiment of “75s.” Guillaume has brought down three Boche planes, he tells me, and Emil five. One of the poilus is a handsome brigadier, or corporal, who wears wooden shoes. I said something about sabots the other day. But don’t they wear sabots in America? The poilus were astonished to learn that wooden shoes were unknown among us! There is also a sergeant who is the aristocrat of our little circle, a dreamy looking lad, a student of architecture at the Beaux Arts. Yesterday he shyly proffered me an envelope; in it was a pretty pen-and-ink sketch of two little girls, one in the costume of Alsace, the other of Lorraine, proffering bouquets, and underneath was written, “Souvenir of a Frenchman who thanks America for having given the victory more quickly.” Our poilu friends are constantly straying into the back room in order to read the newspapers here and to get a cup of hot chocolate. Every now and then they all get together and hold a vin rouge tea party. On these occasions it is evidently a mystery to them why, though I join them in eating bread and cheese, I always refuse the vin rouge!
The politeness of the poilus is equalled by that of the clientele. They are extraordinarily grateful for what little we do for them. Today an old lady, in spite of anything I could say, insisted on tipping me with a two franc piece! I spent it buying chocolates and cigarettes for the poilus at the Canteen-in-the-Convent. Every class of society flows into my little canteen from gently bred ladies under the escort of immaculate officers to old men who resemble nothing but the forlornest vagabonds. The cheerfulness and courage of the refugees in general is astonishing. One would think that a room full of people engaged in such a mournful mission would be a gloomy place, but on the contrary, although occasionally you see a woman quietly sobbing, at most times we fairly buzz with pleasant sociability. The women come in with faces bright with excitement. “Oh the poor Cathedral!” they cry.
“Did you find anything of your home?” I ask. For a moment the tears swim in their brave eyes. “Rien” they answer shaking their heads. “Nothing!”
Today an old man in a long white apron smock was the centre of attention here. He was busy searching the ruins of his house for buried treasure. Every little while he would come back to the canteen with the fruits of his pathetic salvaging,—a few silver spoons, some paint brushes, a bolt of black velvet ribbon,—place them in a basket and then return to look for more. Two German prisoners were digging for him. Finally he came back with six unbroken champagne glasses and a face scored with tragedy. He had been hoping against hope to recover the treasures in his wine cellar but he was too late, not a bottle was there left!
Verdun, February 28.
This morning I went out on a truck to Fort Douaumont. This is the fort which was captured by the Germans, held by them for five months, and then retaken by the French and marks the enemy’s nearest approach to the city. Oddly enough the French were the gainers through this occupation to the extent of a splendid electric lighting system introduced by the Germans into the fort!
A modern fort does not resemble in the least the idea that one has of a “fort.” Viewed from outside it is nothing more or less than a hole in the ground. Once inside we had the sense of being in a monster ant-hill as we followed our guide through a network of tunnelled corridors. We saw the room of the Commandant with its wonderful relief maps both French and German of the Verdun hills, we saw the war-museum, the Foyer, the store-rooms and engine-rooms, the magazine rooms where the big shells were stacked like cord wood, and we climbed up into the turrets of the disappearing guns. In this strange fort which has been both friend and enemy we looked through one empty doorway into a pit of ruins open to the sky, under the wreckage sixteen Germans lay, they said; it was here that a French shell had broken through. We passed by another door which bore a sign on it announcing that this was the tomb of five French mitrailleurs who had been killed by a German shell in the room within; instead of burying the bodies they had simply sealed up the door and left them. Then we ducked through a little low door and climbed up over the hillock which forms the roof of the fort as it were. All about us stretched the abomination of desolation of the battle-fields, wracked tortured earth, seared and scarred into a yellow-grey desert waste. Here and there lay bones, human bones, sometimes scattered loose, sometimes gathered in a little heap with a rusty helmet and a broken rifle lying close beside them. Only a few hundred feet from the road, the man who guided the party told us, he came yesterday upon two unburied bodies.
To the northeast we could just discern a large wooden cross. A French officer who was stationed at the fort pointed it out to us. Here, he said, lay buried no less than twelve hundred French soldiers. They had been given a line of trench to hold, the officers were taken from them, they were to expect no reinforcements or relief. They were left there knowing it was only a question of days or hours. When the French finally reached the line again every man was dead. So they left them where they lay and filled the trench in over them, but each man’s rifle they took and planted upright in the earth beside him. There is a heroic theme for a poet!
When I reached the canteen again I found a ragged disconsolate old soul occupying one of the benches. On seeing me he began a sad recital of sore feet, ending with the petition that I procure him a pair of rubber boots and emphasizing the point by taking off his shoes then and there and exhibiting his troubles,—which weren’t pretty,—to me. I was perplexed, not knowing what to do, when the friendly M. P. on the beat happened in; so I put the case up to him. He told me that there was a salvage dump at the station. We set out together and succeeded in finding an enormous pair of rubber overshoes, and, what’s more, in getting away with them. The old man was pleased as Punch, put them on and hobbled off in them. Tonight someone told me a melancholy tale. An M. P. stationed upon the hill had spied an old Frenchman going by in a pair of American overshoes and had straightway held him up and ordered him to relinquish what was Government property. And the old man perforce had to sit down in the street and take off his shoes.
Speaking of boots reminds me of the tale told me by a doughboy the other day; a tale of a pair of tan shoes, handsome, shiny, new tan shoes which was sold to every man in turn in his whole company only to be finally purchased as a bargain at thirty-five francs by an unsuspecting Frenchman. They were beautiful shoes, the boy assured me, the only trouble was that they both happened to be for the left foot.