Only once did Marcel fail us, and that was because the rightful owner of the cauldron left the basse-cour for her newly erected baraque. She requested our kind permission to transport thither her property. “There is another cauldron at Buverchy, which I think you could rent in place of mine,” she suggested. “It belonged to my cousin, Mme. Bouvet, and is now in Mme. Josse’s yard. No one is using it.” Marcel was dispatched to make inquiries, and later, with horse and wagon, to fetch the cauldron home. But meantime there had dawned a morning when we were not wakened by the clump-clump of Marcel’s sabots, and the setting down of the water jug with a thud upon the frozen ground.
For wood, we depended largely on the chivalry of nearby encampments of troops, French, English, Canadian or American, to whom our need became apparent. For food, we were supplied by the Army with our quota of bread and a soldier, M. Jean, to fetch it. Vegetables and some fruit we obtained from our villages, of which we had sixteen in our charge. Often these were presents, thrust upon us through gratitude; nor could we pay for them. Meat was plentiful in all the towns of the Zone, where the Army was charged with supplying the civilian population with food. Anyone, going on any errand, marketed; and the dispensary jitney, which might have started in the morning with doctors, nurses, kits, and relief supplies, often returned at night overflowing with cabbages, potatoes, pounds of roast, bags of coal, and bidons of oil.
Our relief supplies came through more regular channels, largely from Paris, where one member of the Unit devoted all her time to buying. These were either shipped to the nearest railroad station, or sent by the French Army, free of charge, in a thundering camion. We never knew when to expect this last, nor what it would contain. Sunday seemed a favourite day for its arrival. On one occasion, there were three pigs, loose and hungry, and no pen to put them in; seventy-five crated chickens followed, with the request that the number be verified, and the crates returned. Such were the colonel’s orders. But, seeing that the Unit carpenter had to construct a chicken yard, this command was modified by a judicious distribution of cigarettes. Mixed cargoes of Red Cross boxes, stoves, bundles of wool from the Bon Marché which had burst en route, and sundries, were even harder to deal with.
We had no store room. The cave of the Château, seeping with tons of débris which in places bent with its weight the steel ceiling, and open along one whole side to the elements,—this contained our dairy, our lumber, our fuel, our vegetables, our groceries, and our relief supplies. It abounded in rats, cats, and bats. But such as it was, it was the centre of our activities. By night often weirdly lighted with candles, by day never empty, laughter rather than complaints floated from its dim interior. Here we held our first store; here the children who had trudged over from Canizy, Hombleux or Esmery-Hallon waited in line for their milk; here were assembled and tied up the thousands of packages for our fêtes de Noël. As winter advanced, we prepared for a day in the cave by encasing our feet in peasants’ socks and sabots, and our hands in worsted mittens. The soldiers in the trenches had nothing on us.
Whether at home or on the road, our days were long and arduous, and seldom what we had planned. Even Sunday became part of the working week, for then we attempted to entertain our official supervisors and co-laborers, and all chance acquaintances. M. le Commandant of the Third Army has dined with us; the ladies of the American Fund for French Wounded, under whom we held our section, have come to call; the Friends walk over from Esmery-Hallon where they are building baraques for the commune; a lonesome Ambulance boy who has tramped ten miles and must retrace his steps before dark, drops in; a squad of Canadian Foresters rides through the gate; reporters, accompanied by a French officer, harry us with questions. But most frequent, and most welcome of all our visitors, are our countrymen, the—th New York Engineers. They came from home, those men, to be the first of our army under fire. But during the early days of the autumn, their talk was not of their work, but of ours. They brought us slat walks, called duck walks, to keep us out of the mud, and wood, and benches, and stoves. They came with mandolins and guitars and violins to give an entertainment to our villagers, and stayed for a buffet dinner and dance. They sent their trucks to take us in turn to a party at their encampment. But all that was before the Cambrai drive. As we, in our baraques, listened night and day to that bombardment, we little knew the heroic part taken in it by our Engineers. Surprised, unarmed, with pick and shovel they stood and fought; and later, hastily equipped with rifles, helped save the day for England on the bitterly contested front. But you have doubtless read of them in the papers, for they were the first of our soldiers to die in battle and to be mentioned in the orders of the day.
CHAPTER III
M. LE MAIRE
By rights, Canizy belongs with three other hamlets, to the commune of Hombleux. The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality also the mayor of Canizy. But each of the hamlets has an acting mayor besides. And, to complicate this matter of mayors still further, the real mayor of the commune has left his post to reside in his mansion in the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Inquiring into the reason of his non-residence, I was told that he was broken in health, and belonged to a political party which, at the moment, was no longer in power. Hence the so-called mayors, with whom rests the welfare of our villages.
Before the war, the present mayor of Hombleux was one of the grands cultivateurs. With Mme. la Baronne, Mme. Desmarchez and M. Gomart, he owned most of the rich acres encircling the town. Hombleux itself contained then about 1200 inhabitants, and was an industrial as well as an agricultural centre, having a distillery and two refineries for sugar-beets. Of the factories, practically nothing now remains, and of the inhabitants, 250 have survived the German deportations. Zélie, the kitchen maid, has told me of these last. “The first deportation,” she said, “was one of five hundred. The officers came to the doors at seven o’clock with the names, and told us to be ready to start at dawn. O Mademoiselle, the night! All the neighbours ran to and fro; all night we washed and sewed and ironed, and in the morning, each with a sack of fresh linen, my father, my sister, M. le Curé,—the flower of our village,—were marched away. And after, what weeping!” Zélie put down her broom to wring her hands, as if still dry-eyed from too much suffering. “The next time,” she continued, “the Boches gave us no warning. They came at midnight, and dragged us from our beds.” “Did you then go?” I inquired. “But yes,” she replied, and her eyes flashed. “They tried to make us work; there were five of us, friends, from our village. But work for the enemies of France? We would not! They put us in prison; they fed us almost nothing, but we would not work. One day they summoned us. ‘Go,’ they said, ‘go where you like, beasts of the Somme!’ Hungry, foot-sore, travelling mostly by night from the frontier, we came home. It was midnight when we reached Hombleux. In my own house, my mother had barred the door. I tapped on the window to wake her. At first, she would not believe that it was I. Even now, she looks at me with a question in her eyes as if asking continually, ‘Zélie, is it thou?’”