A little later the H.Q. 4th Army moved to the devastated country close to Villers Carbonelle on the Péronne side. It was a wonderful bit of camouflage work. This great H.Q. just looked like an undulating bit of country even when right up beside it. I remember standing in the middle of it one frosty moonlight night, and it was impossible to believe that there were hundreds of human beings all around me there in the middle of that abomination of desolation.
I also painted Brigadier-General Dame Vaughan Williams of the Q.M.W.A.A.C.'s at her H.Q., St. Valery—a strong-minded, gentle, earnest worker, much loved by those under her. She held a château in a large garden and held it well. The mess was excellent.
Some civilians had now come back to Amiens, and it was possible to get a room in the "Hôtel de la Paix," so I left St. Valery and came to live there. This hotel escaped better than any other house in Amiens from the shells and bombs. The glass was, of course, broken, and slates knocked off, but that was all, except where little bits had been knocked out of the walls by shrapnel. It was wonderful to be there and watch the town coming to life again week by week.
After a time the Allied Press came and patched up their château, or parts of it. Some of the correspondents slept there and some got billets outside. Shops began to open. The Daily Mail came once more, and gradually the streets filled with people, these streets, the pavements of which were now more hostile than ever. Even a few of the girls came and settled there—"early birds."
That sweet, natural woman, Sister Rose, had remained in Amiens all through the bombardment, and when the people began returning, she was asked one day: "Are not you pleased, Sister Rose, to have the people round you again?" To which she replied: "Yes, of course I am in some ways, but I loved the bombardment. I felt the whole city was mine, each street became very intimate, and I could walk through them and pray out loud to my God in peace. But now! why, if I prayed to my God in the streets of Amiens they would think me a damned lunatic!" I can understand her very human feeling at that time—people who had run away from the city in its agony returned when its tribulation was over, and claimed it as their own again when the calm of evening had come; while she, Sister Rose, had borne the burden and heat of the day. But this feeling soon left her, and she worked whole-heartedly once more to succour the poor in distress in the city she loved so well.
XXXVI. General Lord Rawlinson, Bart., G.C.B., etc.