It was all of no use. Nobody was willing to go, not even those who eagerly wished to escape.
The organisers of the convoys were amazed. They determined that certain persons should go by foul means since they would not go by fair means. The commandant of every village was ordered to eject so many persons. The number for Morny was fixed at twenty. There were two volunteers besides ourselves, an elderly lady, Mme. Charvon, and her granddaughter; both wanted to go back to Paris. Thirteen reluctant emigrants were then to be picked up among the people. Bubenpech chose at random a woman from Braye, her five small children, and her old father, then three orphan boys, and a family including an invalid father, a mother, and two little girls.
These had two sons, sixteen and eighteen years old, who would stay behind if the parents went. They raised an outcry.
"My poor boys!" the mother moaned; "am I going to abandon them like that? We beg nothing of the Germans! We want only to be left together."
She went to the "bureau," threw herself at the feet of Bubenpech, who scouted her demand with disdain, and had her kicked out of doors. The morning we were to start she pretended to be ill, and kept to her bed. The lieutenant despatched four men who took her out of bed, heedless of her resistance, and made her get into the cart, with a blanket as sole wrapper. We heard the poor woman sob while she put on her stays and petticoats in the jolting cart that took us to Laon. And the folly of it was that another woman of Cerny wished for nothing better than to go.
"Since my sister and father are sent away," she said, "I choose rather to go with them; I have no mind to stay here alone with my two babies."
It was not to be. Three persons eager to stay were forced to go; three others, nothing loath to go, were bidden to stay. Thus had our leaders settled the matter.
In other villages it was still worse. A man of Barenton set his house on fire and hanged himself rather than leave. Some persons were sent away because the Germans coveted their houses for one purpose or another. At Vivaise the wife of an adjutant was compelled to leave her well-furnished house for the reason that it pleased those gentlemen. So a blind woman and her invalid husband, both aged seventy-five, were banished from Verneuil. In tears they left their small house where they had lived happily for many a year, their garden, whose fruits were sufficient for their scanty needs. Besides, they had a few fowls and a little money, and so they were not in the least a charge upon the Germans. Of course they expected everything to be plundered and destroyed, and, weak and old as they were, they saw no hope that they would ever come back.
We were volunteers, at one moment distressed at the thought that we left three of our own people in the lurch, at another mad with joy that we should soon be at liberty, or trembling with fear lest we should hear bad news of those whose fate was hidden from us.
About the end of March, after many tears had been shed, embraces and kisses exchanged, after the very dogs had been hugged, we found ourselves in front of the "bureau" with the other departing travellers. We all got into two big carts, and sat down on our luggage. The departures were somewhat delayed. We had to wait for the woman who did not want to go away.