Christmas had come and gone in a convulsion of parties, January had dripped monotonously into the abyss of time. The day was dank and cheerless, rain—the imperturbable rain of France—was falling placidly, persistently, yet through the unfathomable seas of mud that engulf Bar-le-Duc in winter I saw Madame Lassanne running towards me. I was miry, wet and exceedingly cross; Madame was several times mirier, her clothes were a sodden sop, but her eyes were like a breeze-ruffled pool that the sun has been kissing. She clutched a telegram in one shaking hand, she waved it under my eyes, she cried out something quite unintelligible, for a laugh and a sob caught it and smothered it as she fled. I watched her splash through the grey liquid sea—she was running but she did not know it. The train was not due for an hour yet.
Some days later I swam out to the farm (you don't walk in Bar in winter unless you have webbed feet, and then you fly), and there I found Madame Breda and the aunt whose name I have most reprehensibly forgotten, and Roger and Marie, and yet another old lady, and Madame, and they were all living in one small room and they all talked together, and Roger— discerning infant—howled at my uniform, and Marie stared at me out of great round eyes, and gradually little by little I pieced together the story.
When shells were falling on the village Madame Breda, as you know, set off with the children, but turning north instead of south, walked right into the line of battle. A handful of French (it was in August 1914) were flying before vastly superior German forces. They rode down the road at breakneck speed. "Sauve qui peut!" The cry shattered the air. One man's horse was shot under him. He scrambled to his feet, terror in his eyes, for the Germans were close behind. A comrade reined up, in a moment he had swung himself behind him and the mad race for life swept on, the men shouting to Madame Breda to fly. "Sauvez-vous, sauvez-vous." What she read in their eyes she never forgot. But flight for her and the children was out of the question, they were literally too frightened to move. A few minutes later they were toiling back along the road to a little village called, I think, Canel, with German soldiers mounting guard over them. There they were kept for six days, during three of which no bread was obtainable, and they nearly died of hunger. Then they were taken to Nantillois, their old home, where they remained for two months. Food was scarce, the soldiers brutal. "There are no potatoes," they cried to the Commandant; "what shall we eat?" "Il y a des betteraves,"[9] he replied coarsely as he turned away.
These French peasants must come of a sturdy stock, they are so difficult to kill. They existed somehow—only the baby died.
And then they were marched off again, this time to Carignan, once a town of perhaps 2,500 inhabitants, of whom some 1,100 remained. Here they were not treated badly, the garrison consisting of oldish men, reservists, with little stomach for the atrocities that followed in the wake of the first army. At Nantillois some ugly things appear to have happened, but at Carignan the Mayor managed to tenir tête, behaving like a hero at first and later like a shrewd and far-seeing man.
Some day, I hope a volume will be written in honour of these French mayors. Sermaize, left defenceless, was an exception. For the most part they stuck to their posts, shielding and protecting them in every way, raising indemnities from the very stones, placating irate commandants, encouraging the stricken, and all too often dying like gallant gentlemen when the interests of Kultur demanded that the blood of innocent victims should smoke upon its altars.
Madame Breda told me that the Mayor of Nantillois bought up all the flour he could find in the mills and shops during the first week of war, hiding it so successfully the Germans never found it. I confess I received this information with frank incredulity, for knowing something of the ways of the gentle Hun, I am profoundly convinced that if you set him in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, telling him that a grain of gold had been hidden there, he would nose round till he found it. And it wouldn't take him long, for his scent is keen. But Madame was positive. French wit was more than a match for German cunning, and the flour was distributed by a man whose life would not have been worth five minutes' purchase if his "crime" had been found out.
In spite of the flour, however, and in spite of the washing that brought Madame in a small weekly wage, "ce n'était pas gai, vous savez." One doesn't feel hilarious on a ration of half-a-pound of meat per week, half-a-pound of black bread per day, and potatoes and vegetables doled out by an irascible Commandant.
I wonder what we would feel like if we were obliged to go to a German officer and beg from him our food? We would starve first? But what if two small hungry children clutched at our skirts and wailed for bread? When the American Relief came in and the people were able to buy various necessaries, including bacon at one franc sixty a pound, things were a little better. To those who were too poor to buy, that gem of a Mayor gave bons (free orders).
And so the months went by. Then one day soldiers tramped about selecting two people from one family, three from another, separating mother from daughter, sister from sister, but happily this time including the whole Breda family on their list.