Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

However, on that Sunday morning in September there was no pig, and our "satiable curiosity" led us far from poor battered Brabant. Our road was to the right and "uphill all the way." The apple trees on the Route Nationale were crusted with ripe red fruit, but we resisted temptation, our only loot being a shell-case which we discovered in a field, which was exceedingly heavy and with which we weighted ourselves for the sake of an enthusiastic youngster at home. My arm still aches when I think of that shell-case, for by this time the sun had burst out, it was torridly hot, the apple trees gave very little shade, and our too, too solid flesh was busily resolving itself into a dew.

However, we persevered, the object of our pilgrimage being a square hole dug in a sunny orchard on the brow of the hill above Villers. Some rude earthen steps gave access to it, the roof was supported by two heavy beams, and the floor and sides were lined with carved panels wrenched from priceless old armoires taken from the village. It is known as the Crown Prince's Funk Hole, and the story goes that from its shelter he ordered, and subsequently watched, the destruction of the village. The dug-out, a makeshift affair, the Crown Prince's tenancy being of short duration, is well placed. The hill falls away behind it, running at right angles to the opening there is a thick hedge, trees shelter it, the line of a rough trench or two, now filled in, runs protectingly on its flank. The fighting in this region was open, a war of movement lasting only a few days, so trench lines are not very plentiful. Just opposite the mouth of the dug-out there is a fenced-in cross, a red képi hangs on the point, a laurel wreath tied with tri-coloured ribbon is suspended from the arms. "An unknown French soldier." Did he fall there in the rush of battle, or did he creep up hoping to get one clean neat shot at the Prince of Robbers and so put him out of action for ever?

As for Villers itself, it was wiped out of existence. One house, and only one, remains, and even that is battered. One might speculate a little on the psychology of houses. The pleasant fire-cracker pastilles that wrought so much havoc elsewhere were impotent here. The Germans flung in one after another, we were told, using every incendiary device at their disposal, but that house refused to burn. There it stands triumphantly in its tattered garden, not far from the church, and when I saw it an old woman with a reaping-hook in her hand was standing by the hedge watching me with curious eyes. We had separated, my companion and I, farther down the long village street, she to meditate among the ruins, I to mourn over the shattered belfry-tower, the bell hurled to the ground, the splintered windows, the littered ruined interior. In the cemetery were many soldiers' graves; on one inscribed, "Two unknown German officers," some one had scribbled "À bas les Boches," the only instance that came to my knowledge of the desecration of a German grave. And even here contrition followed fast upon the heels of anger, and heavy scrawlings did their best to obliterate the bitter little phrase. The French—in the Marne at least—have been scrupulous in their reverence for the German dead, the graves are fenced in just as French graves are, and the name whenever possible printed on the cross. I suppose that even the soppiest sentimentalist would not ask that they should be decorated with flowers?

As I left the graveyard and looked back at the desolation that once was Villers, but where even now wooden houses were springing hopefully from the ground, the old woman with the reaping-hook spoke to me. My dress betrayed me; she knew without asking that I was British. And, as is the way with these French peasants, she fell easily and naturally into her story. I wish I could tell it to you just as she told it to me, but I know I shall never find her simple dignity of phrase, or her native instinct for the mot juste. However, such as it is you shall have it, and if it please you not, skip. That refuge is always open to the bored or tired reader.

II

Old Madame Pierrot was disturbed in spirit. She could see the flames leaping above burning villages across the plain, the earth shook with the menace of the guns, the storm was rising, every moment brought the waves of the encroaching sea nearer to her home. Yet people said that Villers was safe. The Germans could never get so far as that, they would be turned back long before they reached the hill. She was alone in her comfortable two-storied house (the house she had built only a few years before, and which had a fine yard behind it closed in by spacious stables, cow-houses and barns), and she was sadly in need of advice. She had no desire whatever to make the personal acquaintance of any German invader. Even the honour of receiving the Crown Prince made no appeal to her soul. She had heard something of his arch little ways and his tigerish playfulness, and though she could hardly suppose that he would favour a woman of her dried and lean years with special attention, she reasonably feared that she might be called on to assist at one of his festivals. And an Imperial degenerate will do that in public which decent women are ashamed to talk about, much less to witness. So Madame was perturbed in soul. The battle raged through the woods and over the plain, it crept nearer ... nearer....

"Madame, Madame, come. Is it that you wish the Germans to get you?" A wagon was drawn up at the door, in it were friends who lived higher up the street. "Come with us to Laimont. You will be safer there."

So they called to her and put an end to her doubt. Snatching up a basket, she stuffed into it all the money she had in the house, various family papers and documents, and then, just as she was, in her felt-soled slippers with her white befrilled cap on her head, in her cotton dress without even a shawl to cover her, she clambered into the wagon and set out. Laimont was only a few miles away; indeed, I think you can see the church spire and the roofs of the houses from the hill. There the wagon halted. In a few hours the Germans would be gone, and then one could go peaceably home again. But time winged away, the battle raged more fiercely than ever, soon perhaps Laimont itself would be involved and see hand-to-hand fighting in its streets.

Laimont! Madame was desolée. Où aller? Farther south, farther east? The Germans were everywhere. And voyager comme ça in her old felt slippers, in her working clothes, without wrap or cloak to cover her? Impossible. The wagon must wait. There was still time. Ces salauds would not reach Laimont yet. Why, look! Villers itself was free. There was no fire, no smoke rising on the hill. Her friends would wait while she went back au grand galop to put on her boots, and her bonnet and her Sunday clothes. "Hé, mon Dieu, it is not in the petticoat of the fields that one runs over France."

Away she went, her friends promising to wait for her. Laden down by the shell, we who were lusty and strong found the road from Villers to Laimont unendingly long, yet no grisly fears gnawed at our heart-strings, no sobs rose chokingly to be thrust back again ... and yet again. Nor had we the hill to climb, and no shells were bursting just ahead. So what can it have been for Madame? But she pressed on; old, tired and, oh, so dismayed, she panted up the steep hill that curls into the village, and walked right into the arms of the Crown Prince's men. In a trice she was a prisoner, one of eighty, some of whom were soldiers, the rest civilians, who, like herself, had committed the egregious folly of being born west of the Rhine, and were now about to suffer for it.