A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

I go into this that the American housekeepers who read these articles may see how cheerfully the allies are bearing what our people would consider a real food shortage. They have enough over there, and will have as long as we give of our store, but we are not by any means supporting our allies in luxury. On what they have, however, they live and keep up a spirit that is truly marvelous.

One evening in my London hotel I sat down to dinner near a table where five young people, evidently brothers and sisters, were quietly making merry. One of the men was in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps, the other, although of military bearing, was in the correct evening clothes of the British civilian.

I noticed that the girl sitting next the man in evening clothes was assiduous in her attentions to him, and it occurred to me that English women too often spoiled their brothers, made them selfish. This golden-haired English girl cut up her brother’s food, even fed it to him. I thought it a little absurd.

But when they rose from the table I saw with a shock that the splendid young man had had both arms cut off below the elbows. He probably had been an artillerist. At all events here he was, a helpless cripple. But from the gay demeanor of that family no one would have dreamed that they had a care in the world. They were carrying on, they would have told you.

I saw more of the French than of the English; therefore I saw more instances of their incomparable courage in the midst of war and carnage. I was in Paris when the long-distance gun of the Germans began to bombard the city.

Every fifteen minutes “boom” went the gun, and you held your breath wondering where the shell had fallen and how many people it had killed and wounded.

It was nerve-racking, there is no use denying the fact. In a battle the shells come tearing through the sky, screeching and whining as they come. But in such a long-distance bombardment there are no preliminary sounds. A house explodes before your eyes, the pavement rises up in a geyser of earth and stones, the earth of a park or public garden suddenly flies up in a huge, fan-shaped eruption of smoke and dirt.

Afterward you hear the BOOM! It seems incredible that only three or four minutes ago men in gray-green uniforms, seventy miles away in Germany, loaded that gun, pulled a string or lever or whatever they do pull, and started that shell toward Paris.

It seems impossible to believe that while you stand there wondering, those same men are loading the big gun to again bombard an open town, full of women and children, regardless of where the shell falls.

One Sunday afternoon, just before I came away, I went down into the island of the old city, the original Paris, to say good-by to certain beautiful things I love. It was a lovely spring day and the quay of flowers and the Palace quay were crowded with Parisians out for a Sunday walk. The women wore their spring finery, and there were many little girls in shining white dresses and veils of their first communion.