Wherever M. l’Aumônier went, went also a clean, blond soldier boy of twenty, who was studying to be a priest like his friend. He spoke English, which he had learned as a shipping clerk in an exporting house at Havre. “Our Colonel,” he explained, “is very much interested in the civilians, particularly in the children. He even sent one of his captains to Paris to buy warm clothing for every one of them in Offoy. He is a very rich man and very kind. He has detailed me to help M. l’Aumônier all that I can.”
We were walking along the canal as we spoke, and the wind blew straight from the north. M. l’Aumônier said something in a low voice, and the boy whipped off his scarf. “Yes, please, you are cold; you must take it,” and perforce the scarf was wound about my neck.
“How long are you to be here?” I asked, dreading to see this regiment pass back to the front.
“Me, I do not know. I have been wounded, you know; twice with the bayonet, and ten days ago I was gassed. The lungs pain me yet,—I cannot do much work.”
“You,” broke in his superior, “you, Mademoiselle, will go before we do—for you have told me that you leave soon for America. At least, you will have seen something, and can tell them there of the misery which France suffers.”
“But one sees so little,—the trenches, the battles, the hardships of the soldiers, I know nothing of these.”
“The trenches? There is little to see; is it not so, comrade? But this,” he swept his arm to indicate the circle of destruction all about us, “this you know. Tell them of the agony and of the fortitude of Picardy.”
We had come to the parting of our ways. Turning west, I was confronted by a winter sunset; bare branches, crimson streamers, cold lakes of turquoise; and bleak against this background, the ruins of Canizy. M. l’Aumônier was right; of this one who has seen it cannot help to speak; of the terrible devastation, of the silent courage of those who live in it and fight, unheralded, their fight for France.