January 30. They have relented. They have shortened my stay. I am to be let out tomorrow, but I must reposer a few days before going back to work. Bother! I haven’t heard anything from Bourmont for ten days and I am full of uneasy apprehensions. Since I have been in the hospital the cyclamen has been the only word I have had from the outside world. I have been cut off as completely as if I were in a tomb. Ah well, some day I’ll get back to the hut again I suppose, and when I do, if those boys aren’t almost half as glad to see me as I am to see them, why I’ll know that some other canteen lady has been surreptitiously stealing their affections, and I shall put poison in her soup.
Hôpital Claude-Bernard
Paris, January 31.
I have been in a big air raid; this is just how it all happened:
It was a white night in the hospital for me. I had lain for hours, it seemed, in the little blue room watching through the glass panes of my door the coiffed head of a young infirmière bent over her embroidery. She sat outside my door because there was a light in the hall just there. Suddenly my drowsy ears were pierced by a long weird hoot. In an instant the girl had leaped to her feet and switched off the light, then she turned and ran down the hall. A moment later and the building was in darkness. I jumped from my bed and ran to the window. The light in front of the munitions factory was out, there seemed an uncanny silence, the machinery had been stopped. I hurried to the door. The corridor was full of hastening forms, infirmières, their loose white robes showing dimly in the grey light.
“Qu’est ce qui arrive?” I demanded.
“Les Boches!”
The night nurse was peering from my window.
“It’s the first warning,” she whispered. “See! the lights of Paris still shine.”