Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

"But they cannot stay here," she thundered. "It is utterly unfit. They need nursing, comfort, special care."

"Oh, well, there is always the Ornain," he replied, with a gesture towards the river, and the Briton, unable to determine whether a snub, a sarcasm, or an inhumanity was intended, for the only time in our knowledge of her was obliged to leave the field to France.

But she was restored to her wonted good-humour later on by an old lady who undressed placidly in the new dormitory, peeling off one garment after another because she "had not taken her clothes off for three days and three nights," who then knelt placidly by her bedside and said her prayers, asking, as she tucked the blankets round her, at what time she would be called in the morning.

Called! In that Bedlam!

Most of them were "called" by the big steam whistle at the factory long before the cocks began to crow. Zeppelins, tired of inactivity, began to prowl at night. One, as everybody knows, was brought down in flames near Révigny—a shred of its envelope lies in my writing-case, my only souvenir de la guerre, unless a leaflet dropped by a Taube counts as such—causing great excitement among the boys in the hospital at Sermaize. No sooner did they hear the guns and the throb of its engines than with one accord they scrambled from their beds and rushed to the verandah, where a wise matron rolled them in blankets and allowed them to remain to "see the fun," a breach of discipline for which she was amply rewarded when, seeing the flames shoot up through the skies, the boys rose to their feet and shrilled the "Marseillaise" to the night in their clear, sweet trebles. A dramatic moment that! The long, low wooden hospital a blur against the moonlit field, behind and all around the woods, silent, dark, clustering closely, purple in the half-light of the moon, the boys' white faces, their shrill cheer, and through the sky the wide fire of Death falling, to lie a mammoth dragon on the whitened fields. It is said that there was a woman in that Zeppelin—some fragments of clothing, a slipper were found....

Another, more fortunate, dropped bombs at Révigny and Contrisson, where by bad luck an ammunition wagon was hit. One at least of the wagons caught fire, but was quickly uncoupled by heroic souls who were subsequently decorated. The first explosion shook our windows in Bar-le-Duc, and then for two or more hours we heard report after report as shell after shell exploded. In the morning wild tales were abroad. The main line to Paris had been cut, Trèmont (miles in the other direction) had been bombed, numbers of civilians had been killed and injured; Révigny was in even smaller shreds than before; in short, Rumour, that busy jade, was having a well-occupied morning. But that is not unusual in the War Zone. She is rarely idle there. The number of times we were told a bombardment by long-range guns was signalled for Bar is incalculable. The town passed from one crise de nerfs to another, some one was always in a panic over a coming event which did not honour us even by casting its shadow before.

The Zeppelins, to be quite frank, were a nuisance. They never reached the town, which has reason to be grateful for the narrowness of its valley and the protecting height of its hills, but they made praiseworthy attempts at all sorts of odd hours, and generally the most inconvenient that could well be chosen. The doings at Révigny and Contrisson warned us that a visit might be fraught with disagreeable results, for Bar is a concentrated place, it does not straggle, and when raids occur practically every street is peppered.

So though we did not go to the cellars, we felt it incumbent upon us to be ready to do so should necessity arise, which probably explains why the syren invariably blew when one or two shivering wretches were sitting tailor-wise in rubber or canvas basins, fondly persuading themselves that they were having a bath.

When there are twenty degrees of frost, when water freezes where it falls on your uncarpeted bedroom floor, bathing in a canvas basin has its drawbacks; but if, just as your precious canful of hot water has been splashed in and you "mit nodings on" prepare to get as close to godliness as it is possible for erring mortal to do, the syren's long, lugubrious note throbs on the air, well, you float away from godliness fairly rapidly on the wings of language that would have shocked the most condemnatory Psalmist of them all. I really believe those Zeppelins KNEW when our bath-water boiled. We went to bed at ten-thirty or we waited till midnight. "Let's get the beastly thing over, it is such a bore dressing again." We dodged in at odd hours of the evening, it was just the same. Venus was always surprised. In the end, and when in spite of nightly and daily warnings, nothing happened, our faith in French airmen became as the rock that moveth not and is never dismayed. Though syrens hooted and bugles blew, though the town guard turning out marched under our windows, the unclothed soaped and lathered and splashed with unemotional vigour, while the clothed chastely wondered what would happen if a bomb struck the house and Venus.... Oh, well, the French rise magnificently to any situation.

Once I confess to rage. We had a visitor. We had all worked hard all day at the market, we had come home after ten, and, wearied out, had tucked ourselves into bed, aching in every limb. The visitor and the smallest member of the coterie returned even later. Slumber had just sealed my eyelids when a voice said in my ear, "Miss Day, I'm so sorry, there's a Zeppelin." Just as though it were sitting on the roof, you know, preparing to lay an egg.