[And do the little Boche children hug their father?]
Even in the fields, a child cannot play. One day I was taken by a bevy of laughing little girls to see an obus which had fallen in the graveyard near the entrance to the church. It had lain there some months unexploded, hidden by grass and weeds. But the preparations for All Saints’ Day, as punctiliously made last autumn as in times of peace, revealed it. The girls danced about it like sprites, touching it spitefully with their toes. “Take care,” I cried. “Come away.” Merry laughter greeted my alarm. “There are many of them,” said dare-devil Thérèse; “they do no harm.” Nevertheless, knowing that a farmer had been killed while ploughing, not far away, by just such a shell, I sent word to the military authorities who removed this particular obus, before the next Sunday’s mass. The Government recognises the danger, and prints large placards of warning, which are hung up in the schoolrooms.
The schools themselves are depressing enough, for against no class of buildings did the Germans vent more hatred. Throughout the devastated area, they were completely destroyed. Ecole des Filles, or Ecole des Garçons may still be seen in white capitals adorning a gaping arch or a jagged wall. But the schools, such as they are, are held in half-ruined dwellings, or in baraques. One such dilapidated interior bore, beside the warning against spent shells, the following “Fable for the day,” written in the teacher’s slant hand upon the blackboard: “At our last breath, we shall have nothing. Since we have neither father nor mother, we are now orphans. Nevertheless, we must do right. We must do right because it is right.”
In Canizy, as I have said, there was no school. The walls even of the former school building were razed to the ground. But the children were supposed to attend the school of another commune, that of Offoy, a mile and a half distant along the canal. This seemingly simple provision for education was made impossible by the fact that regiments continuously en repos at Offoy used the sandy buttes formed by the Somme at this point for mitrailleuse practice. One saw them every afternoon at half past two, bringing out their gruesome targets, in the shape of a human head and shoulders, and sentineling the crossroads with notices and red flags. Then woe to the urchin lingering perhaps in Offoy on some belated errand. Like the rabbits he must stay under cover until the fusillades should cease. Yet the children of the village were not wholly neglected. It was their former teacher, now resident in Hombleux, who taught them the stirring Petit Soldat. And from Offoy came M. l’Aumônier, of whom you shall hear later, to teach them the catechism and to receive them into the church. “They are very gentils, the children of Canizy,” he assured me one day. “They are not like the children of the other villages. They have brave parents; they are well brought up.”
Well brought up, yes, in all the usages of docility and endurance. Shifting of troops, obedience to military masters, slavery and pillage, such are the facts which these children have learned for three years. But grafted as the lesson has been upon a spirit gentle by nature, the result is terrible in its sombreness. Robert Gense, uncannily helpful; Raymond Carpentier, threadbare and bowed at fourteen,—a look like that of a faithful, whipped dog in his eyes,—Elmire Carlier, whose lovely mouth is carved in patience, the Tabarys, ragged and elfin—these are the children of Picardy. But where is the spontaneity of childhood? Where may one find it in the track of war?
Garde à vous!
—Compagnie!... halte!
[Company ... halt!]