Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

Seven months jealously guarding the two-year old baby from harm and then repatriation, a long, weary journey into Germany, a night in a fortress, then by slow stages into Switzerland and over the frontier to France.

What a home-coming it might have been! But the baby had sickened; underfed and improperly nourished, it grew rapidly worse, it had no strength with which to fight, and M. Ballay, hurrying down from Bar-le-Duc in response to his wife's telegram (she discovered his whereabouts through the Bureau des Réfugiés), arrived just two hours after the last sod had been laid upon its tiny grave.

"She was my only comfort during all those months," the poor creature said, tears raining down her face, "and now I have lost her." When she had recovered her self-control I told her I knew of people who refused to believe stories of atrocities, and would certainly refuse to believe hers.

"It is quite true," she said simply, "I SAW it," and then she added that the reservists sometimes gave food to the starving women who were reduced to beg for bread. "When they had it they would give soup to the children, but often they had none to spare, and the women suffered terribly."

Think of it, in all the rigour of a northern winter. Think of this for delicately nurtured women. Madame shivered as she spoke of it, and it was easy to tell what had painted the dark shadows under her eyes and the weary lines—lines that should not have been there for many a long year yet—round her mouth.

III

For us the whole system—if, indeed, there is any system—of repatriation was involved in mystery. Convoys were sent back at erratic intervals, chosen at haphazard, young and old, strong and weak, just anyhow as if in blind obedience to a whim. No method appeared to govern procedure, convoys being sometimes sent off just before an offensive, sometimes during weeks of comparative calm.

Probably the key to the mystery lay in the military situation; we noticed, for instance, that many were sent back just before the offensive at Verdun. Food problems, too, may have exerted an influence, as every repatriée assured us that Germany was starving. In the winter of 1915-1916 so many of these unfortunate people crossed the frontier, the Society decided to equip a Sanatorium for them in the Haute-Savoie, near Annemasse. Many were tubercular, others threatened with consumption, but no sooner was the Sanatorium ready than the Germans, as might be expected, stopped the exodus, and it was not until the following winter or autumn that they began to come in numbers again. Of these, a doctor who worked among them for many weeks gave me a pathetic account. Their plight, she said, was pitiable. They wept unrestrainedly at finding themselves on French soil again; even the strongest had lost her nerve. Shaken, trembling in every limb, starting at every sound, they had all the appearance of people suffering from severe mental shock; many were so confused as to be almost unintelligible, others had lost power of decision, clearness of thought, directness of action. The old were like children. There were women who sat day after day, plunged in profound silence from which nothing could rouse them. Others chattered, chattered unceasingly all day long, babbling to any one who would listen, utterly unable to control themselves. Some were thin to emaciation, others, on the contrary, were rosy and plump. Of food they never had enough. That was the complaint of them all. The American supplies kept them from starvation. "One would have died of hunger only for that," they said, but the Germans would not allow free distribution. What they got they had to pay for, but in some Communes the Mayors were able to arrange that penniless folk should pay after the war, i. e. the Commune lent the money or paid on condition that it would be refunded later.

Coffee made chiefly from acorns, black bread, half-a-pound of meat per week (a supply which sometimes failed), these Germany provided—that is to say, allowed to be sold, and it is but just to add that though every woman declared that the Boches themselves went hungry, those I spoke to added that they never tampered with the American supplies, though one or two mentioned that inferior black flour was sometimes substituted for white of a better quality. Paraffin was rarely obtainable, and fuel scarce.

Martial law, of course, prevails. House doors must never be locked, windows must be left unbarred, there are fixed hours for going to the fields, fixed hours after which one must be indoors at night. Any soldier or officer may walk into any house at any hour he chooses. "You never know when the butt-end of a rifle will burst your door open and a soldier walk in." A man passing down the street and looking in at a window sees a woman with her children sitting down to their midday meal. It is frugal enough, but it smells good.