A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

I picked up the smallest babe, a little boy of four, and asked him if he needed shoes. “Oui, madame,” he did, and stockings, too, for his feet were literally on the ground. I grabbed a bunch of stockings, found the right size, and explored that great pile of shoes until that infant was fitted, and then I attended to the rest, for all those children needed both shoes and stockings.

So, it appeared to me that night, did almost every child in France. They came on and on, some in their mother’s arms, some toddling along, some leading other children. I worked steadily, with only a pause now and then when a new trainload came in and were fed.

The shoes were new and they rubbed off, and soon my hands and face and big gingham apron were streaked and spotted with black. I was almost as dirty as the refugees, but still the children demanded shoes.

They forgot that they had endured agonies of fear and horror, they forgot the roar of the shells in the village streets. They forgot the hunger and thirst and the deadly weariness of the flight. Their little stomachs were full, they were warm and safe, and they had new stockings and new shoes on their feet.

They had more, for when my part was done other women took them in hand and gave them new shirts and gowns and the shiny black pinafores which every French child, boy as well as girl, looks upon as an indispensable article of dress. If you could have seen their smiles, heard their lisping words of gratitude, felt their warm little handclasps, oh, you fortunate and generous givers, you would have been repaid a thousand, thousand times for your gift to the Red Cross.

Because the French rarely have large families, it must not be thought that they do not value children. They adore children, as a matter of fact, and their gratitude to the Red Cross for what was done for children during those days of flight and anguish was pathetic to see and hear.

Women came into the basement of the Gare du Nord in a condition of half nudity. When the storm burst they gathered up their babies, took what they could carry of household goods and treasures, and simply fled. Much of what they carried was lost by the wayside. Their clothes were rags. Some of the rags were taken off by the mothers that the children might be kept alive, for the weather was cold and rainy. But when these poor women came into the Red Cross room their first thought was always for their babies.

“You have need of shoes yourself, madame,” I said to more than one. She always answered, “Yes, but le petit first.”

When you saw a woman who would not eat, who cared not at all for the new blouse or the warm coat they offered her, who wept unceasingly or wore a look of wild misery like insanity, you knew that she had lost her children in the flight. That happened not infrequently. Part of the money you gave the Red Cross is spent to find those lost children and bring them back to the desolate mother’s breast.

Late one night during that exciting period in March the workers at the Gare du Nord found a boy of thirteen who had been separated early in the flight from his family. He had walked a distance of twenty kilometers, twelve and a half miles, before he reached the railroad station, and he carried with him on that walk, and on the journey to Paris, two bags of feed for the horse, four or five pounds of beans in a paper sack, a cross-cut saw, two axes, some harness and a gas mask. When the Red Cross workers discovered him he was about all in, but he was brave. He sat on his baggage and ate sandwiches and drank hot chocolate like a famished tramp.