"Call me when the bombs begin to fall." Slumber seized me once more. Again the voice. "I think you must get up; Visitor says it is not safe."
"Oh, go to—the Common-room."
It was no use. I was dragged out. There are moments when one could cheerfully boil one's fellow-creatures in a sausage-pot.
At the market when danger threatened every one was ruthlessly hunted to the cellar. And French cellars are the coldest things on earth. Even on the hottest day in summer they are cool, in the winter they would freeze a polar bear. Indeed, we were sometimes tempted to declare that the cellars did more harm than Zeppelin or Taube.
Air-raids affect different people differently. One woman said they—well, she said, "Ça fait sauter (to jump) l'estomac," which must have been sufficiently disagreeable; another declared, "Ça fait trop de bile." Nearly all developed nerve troubles, and Madame Phillipot—who succeeded Madame Drouet as our femme de ménage, refused to undress at night. In vain we reasoned with her. She slept armed cap-à-pie, ready for immediate flight, and not until a slight indisposition gave us a weapon, which we used with unscrupulous skill and energy, did we wring from her a promise to go to bed like a respectable Christian. Madame Albert died trembling in the darkness one night: an old woman, affected by bronchial trouble, flying from Death, found him in the icy cellar; many a case of bronchitis and lung trouble was reported as an outcome of these nightly raids, children especially began to suffer, their nerves breaking down, their little faces becoming pinched, dark shadows lying under their eyes.
In the War Zone people don't write letters to the Press discussing the advisability of taking refuge in a raid, nor do they talk of "women and children cowering in cellars." No one suggests that the well-to-do "should set an example or show the German they are not afraid." France is too logical for nonsense of that kind. It knows that soldiers do not sit on the parapet of a trench when strafing is going on—it would call them harsh names if they did, and so would we. It believes in reasonable precautions. After all, the German object is to kill as many civilians as possible—why gratify him by running up the casualty rate? Why occupy ambulances that might be put to better use? Why occupy the time of doctors and nurses who are more urgently wanted in the military wards? Why put your relatives to the expense of a funeral? Why indeed? Why court suicide for the sake of a stupid sentiment? Logic echoes why? Logic goes calmly to its cellar or to that of its neighbour, if it happens to be out and away from its own when trouble begins. Logic comes up again and goes serenely about its business when trouble is over.
Only the nerve-wrecks, people who have sustained long bombardment by shell-fire for the most part, really lose presence of mind. And for them there is every excuse. Let no one who has not suffered as they have presume to judge them.
Once—it was downright wicked, I admit—two of us, both, be it confessed, wild Irishwomen, with all the native and national love of a row boiling in our veins, hearing the syren one evening, somewhere about nine o'clock, put on our hats and coats, and kilting our skirts, set off up the hill. We left consternation behind us, but then we did so want to see a Zeppelin!
The valley was bathed in soft fitful light. The moon was almost full, but misty clouds flitted across the sky, fugitives flying before a wooing wind. Below us the town lay in darkness. Not a lamp showing. About us rose the old town, the rue Chavé looming cliff-like high above our heads. We pressed on, pierced the shadows of that narrow street and gained the rue des Grangettes, there to be met with a sight so weird, so suggestive of tragedy I wish I could have painted it. From the tall, grim houses men and women had poured out. Children sat huddled beside them, others slept in their mother's arms. On the ground lay bags and bundles. Whispers hissed on the air. It was alive with sibilant sound. No one talked aloud. They were as people that watch in an ante-room when Death has touched one who relinquishes life reluctantly in a room beyond. In the rue Tribel were more groups. In the rue des Ducs de Bar still more. We thought the population of those old ghost-haunted houses must all have come forth from a shelter in which they no longer trusted. A Zeppelin bomb, it is said, will crash through six storeys and break the roof of the cellar beneath. Here in the street there was no safety. But in the woods beyond the town, in the woods high on the hill.... Many and many a poor family spent long night hours in the cold, the wet and the storm, their little all gathered in bundles beside them during those intense months of early spring. We felt—or at least I know that I felt—as we walked through this world of whispering shadow, utterly unreal. I ceased to believe in Zeppelins; earth, material things slid away, in the cloud-veiled moonlight values became distorted; I felt like a spectator at a play, but a play where only shadows act behind a dim, semi-transparent screen.
Then we came to the Place Tribel, and the world enclosed us again. A soldier with a telescope swept the heavens, others gazed anxiously out over the hills towards St Mihiel. The night was very still and beautiful; strange that out there, somewhere in the void, Death should be riding, coming perhaps near to our own souls, with his message written already upon our hearts. In the streets below a bugle call rang out clear and sweet, the Alerte, the danger signal.... We thought of the hurried wretches making their way to the woods.... Odd that one should want to see a Zeppelin!