If you had ventured into Bar-le-Duc during the stormy days of 1916, when the waves of the German ocean beat in vain against the gates of Verdun, you might have thought that the entire French army was quartered there. Soldiers were everywhere. The station-yard was a wilderness of soldiers. In faded horizon-blue, muddy, inconceivably dirty, with that air of je ne sais quoi de fagoté which distinguishes them, they simply took possession of the town. The pâtisseries were packed—how they love cakes, choux-à-la-crême, brioches, madeleines, tarts!—the Magasins Réunis was a tin in which all the sardines were blue and all had been galvanised into life; fruit-shops belched forth clouds that met, mingled and strove with clouds that sought to envelop the vacated space; in the groceries we, who were women and mere civilians at that, stood as suppliants, "with bated breath and whispering humbleness," and generally stood in vain. But for Madame I verily believe we would have starved. Orderlies from officers' messes away up on the Front drove, rode or trained down with lists as long as the mileage they covered, lists that embraced every human need, from flagons of costly scent to tins of herrings or pâté-de-foie-gras, or Petit Beurre, Lulu (the most insinuating Petit Beurre in the world), from pencils and notepaper to soap, from asparagus and chickens—twelve francs each and as large as a fair-sized snipe—to dried prunes and hair-oil. We even heard of one popotte which pooled resources and paid twenty-five francs for a lobster, but perhaps that tale was merely offered as a tax upon our credulity.
Bar-le-Duc was delirious. Never had it known such a reaping, never had it heard of such prices. It rose dizzily to an occasion which would have been sublime but for the inhumanity of the Petite Vitesse which, lacking true appreciation of the situation, sat down upon its wheels and ceased to run.
Not that the Petite Vitesse was really to blame. It yearned to indulge in itinerant action, but there was Verdun, with its gargantuan mouths wide open, all waiting to be fed, and all clamouring for men, munitions and ravitaillement of every kind. In those days all roads led to Verdun—all except one, and that the Germans were hysterically treading.
However, we wasted no sympathy on the shopkeepers. Their complete indifference to our needs drove every melting tenderness from our hearts, or, to be quite accurate, drove it in another direction—that of the poor poilu who had no list and no fat wallet bulging with hundred-franc notes. And I think he richly deserved all the sympathy we could give him. Think of the streets as I have described them when talking of the Marché Couvert, call to mind every discomfort that weather can impose, add to them, multiply them exceedingly, and then extend them beyond the farthest bounds of reason, and you have Bar in the spring of 1916. Cold, wet, snow, sleet, slush, wind, mud, rain—interminable rain—did their worst with us, and in them all and under most soldiers lived in the streets. The débitants and café-restaurants were closed during a great part of the day, there was literally nowhere for them to go. They huddled like flocks of draggled birds in the station-yard, some in groups, some in serried mass before the barrier, some stamping up and down, some sitting on the kerb or on the low stone parapet from which the railings spring, and while some, pillowing their heads on their kits, went exhaustedly to sleep, others crouched with their backs against the wall. They ate their bread, opened their tins of conserve—generally potted meat or sardines—sliced their cheese with a pocket-knife, or absorbed needed comfort from bottles which, for all their original dedication, were rarely destined to hold water! On the Canal bank they sat or lay in the snow, on ground holding the seeds of a dozen chilly diseases in its breast; on the river banks they sprang up like weeds, on the Boulevard every seat had its quota, and we have known them to have it for the night. In all the town there was not a canteen or a foyer, not a hut nor a camp, not a place of amusement (except a spasmodic cinema), not a room set apart for their service. They might have been Ishmaels; they must have been profoundly uncomfortable.
Yet no one seemed to realise it. That was the outstanding explosive feature of the case. Late in the spring, towards the end of April or in May, buffets were opened in the station-yard under the ægis of the Croix Rouge. At one of these ham, sardines, bread, post cards, tobacco, chocolate, cakes, matches, pâté, cheese, etc., could be bought; at the other wine, and possibly beer. The space between was not even roofed over, and, their small purchases made, the men had to consume them—when eatable—in the open. But of real solicitude, in the British sense of the word, for their comfort there was none.
France has shown herself mighty in many ways during the war, but—with the utmost diffidence I suggest it—not in her care for the men who are waging it. Our Tommies, with their Y.M.C.A. huts and Church Army and Salvation huts, with their hot baths, their sing-songs in every rest-camp, their clouds of ministering angels, their constellations of adoring satellites waiting on them hand and foot, are pampered minions compared with the French soldier. For him there is neither Y.M.C.A., Church Army nor Salvation Army. He comes, some three thousand of him, en repos to a tiny village, such as Fains or Saudrupt, Trémont or Bazincourt, he is crowded into barns, granges, stables and lofts, he is route-marched by day, he is neglected by evening. No one worries about him. Amusement, distraction there is none. No club-room where he may foregather comfortably, no cheery canteen with billiards and games, no shops in which if he has money he can spend it. Blank, cheerless, uncared-for nothingness. He gets into mischief—what can you expect? He goes back to the trenches, and shamed eyes are averted and hearts weighed with care hide behind bravado as he goes.
Sometimes you hear, "The men are so weary and so dispirited they do no harm." They are like dream people, moving through a world of shadows. Those who go down into hell do not come back easily to the things of earth. Sometimes you hear tales that make you wince. The pity of it! And sometimes you meet young girls who, tempted beyond their strength, are paying the price of a sin whose responsibility should rest on other shoulders.
"My friend the Aumonier at F—— does not know what to do with his men," said the Abbé B. to me one day. "They are utterly discouraged, he cannot rouse them; they vow they will not go back to the trenches." And then he talked of agitators who tried to stir up disaffection in the ranks, Socialist leaders and the like. (France has her Bolos to meet even in the humblest places.) But I could not help thinking that the good Aumonier's task would have been a lighter one had plenty of wholesome recreation been provided for his men in that super-stupid, dull and uninteresting village of F——.[11]
The migratory soldier going to or from leave, or changing from one part of the Front to another, might, as we have seen, wait hours at a junction, cold and friendless, without where to lay his head. And just why it was not particularly easy to discover. We divined a psychological problem, we never really resolved it.
Does logic, carried to its ultimate conclusion, leave humanity limping behind it on the road?