"Good God!" exclaimed the Adjutant. "Madame!"
He thrust a way through the men to her, but when he spoke to her and asked her to come with him, she clutched and held his wrist, and stood there and made him—short of using force to her—stand and listen with the men. A dozen times he tried to interrupt, but she would not be interrupted, so at last he left her to go on with her tale and asked the other officer to go and bring the C.O.
But before the C.O. came, he, like the men, was under the spell of the woman and of her tale, was listening, like them, with his heart turning cold and a deadly bitter anger rising in his heart. She spoke to them in English, breaking off at times into voluble torrents of French, checking herself and going back and repeating as best she could in English again. But although French words and phrases and sentences were mixed through her English, the tale was horribly plain and clear, the stories detailed and circumstantial enough to make it evident they were desperately true.
She told of women, girls, girl-children, outraged, and afterwards, in some cases, mutilated and bayoneted; she told of old men and boys hauled out and stood against a wall and shot while their women were made to stand and look on; of one woman who refused to make coffee for the Germans until they dipped the head of her infant in a pan of boiling water; of another woman who was crucified, pinned to the door with bayonets while the arm of her child was broken and its body was flung down on the ground before her and left there writhing ... all this and more she told, and helped her story out with rapid gesticulations and imitative motions and sounds of the child squirming and whining and the helpless mother wrenching at the pinning bayonets, while the men pressed in, glowering and cursing under breath, and behind them the pipe music skirled and wailed "roofs to the flames, and their flesh to the eagles."
And then, lastly, she told them of herself and her daughter, the girl of fifteen, fresh from a convent school, timid as a child and shrinking from the look, much less the touch of a man ... and of what they had done to her, while they held her daughter and made her watch; and then had done to the daughter, while she in turn was held to see and not allowed to look away or even close her ears to the cries. She told it all, sparing herself and her child no word and no item of their shame; and then—this was just before the Colonel arrived—she paused and looked round at the ring of savage faces about her, and lifted her two hands and shook them above her head.
"I am French, and you are Anglais," she cried, "but I am woman and you are men. I have told you, so that you may know the animals you fight. I have asked your music-man will he play this song you have, that with the music I say it to you 'Give their roofs to the flames, their flesh to the eagles.' And if ever you have Germans soldat at your mercy, and they cry for pity, remember this village, and its women and my daughter, and me. Give us revanche ... their flesh to the eagles...."
The Colonel broke in here, and, finding she was not to be stopped, turned and ordered the men away, and when they had gone, handed Madame over to some of the village women who watched timidly from their doors. Madame had told nothing but truth they assured him. Mademoiselle? Ah, ma'm'zelle could not be seen; she hid in a cellar and screamed like one mad if any entered or spoke—like mad did one say, but truly she was mad; and Madame scarcely less mad.[30]
They had one more glimpse of Madame as they marched out, a glimpse of her standing in a door and waving and calling something to the pipers as they came past. They knew or guessed what she wanted and the tune they were playing swung abruptly into "The Gathering," and the battalion tramped past the woman to the vengeful skirl of " ... flesh to the eagles."
Affairs had not gone well with the battalion, or what was left of it, through the battle. They had been ordered to advance and take a certain position in what was supposed to be the flank, had forced their way forward over the open under a scourging shell-fire, had suffered heavy losses, and at last gained the point from which they were to make the final attacking rush. But now that they were here it seemed impossible for men to go further and live. A stretch of open still lay before them, and this was swept with a tornado of rifle and machine-gun fire. What was supposed to be a flank of the enemy had become a frontal position, strongly held and evidently meant to be bitterly defended. It was vital to the success of the day that it should be taken, for various tactical reasons we need not touch here. The Colonel had passed the word through his officers and N.C.O.'s of what they were needed to do, and, briefly, why and how much depended on them.