Pierrot, Dog of Belgium

by Walter A. Dyer

Gran’père had complained sometimes of being stiff in the joints, and Lisa wondered if this soldier might not be suffering from an acute attack of this affliction. She did not know just how to put her question, so she asked, in Flemish, “Do you bend?”

Lisa had a sweet little voice for one pitched in so high a key, and it made the soldier smile more broadly. He shook his head and uttered some extraordinarily gruff words that meant nothing to Lisa. She was satisfied that he did not bend, though somewhat reassured by the apparent mobility of his neck.

Her eye was attracted by a slight movement of his right hand, which hung by his side, and going quickly over to him she raised it and discovered that his arm, at least, was quite properly hung from the shoulder. Whereat the soldier laughed aloud, but checked himself very suddenly as his comrades and the officer appeared from around the house. Then Lisa heard her mother calling her, and hastened in.

After a final inspection of the house the officer called to the soldier in front and they all started off across the fields toward Madame Verbeeck’s house. As they passed the kitchen window bold little Lisa thrust her head out, and the Bavarian soldier brushed his lips across the top of her yellow head so quickly that no one saw, not even the vigilant officer nor anxious Mère Marie. Lisa called a shrill good-bye after him and waved her hand, but he marched straight ahead with the others without turning back. Perhaps he heard, though.

After the soldiers had failed to find the grain under the floor, Mère Marie felt quite safe, but she began to be worried about the small quantity. No one seemed to know how long the war would last. One said three years; another believed the English would be over in a few weeks, and then the Germans would go flying back home; others declared that, whatever happened, Belgium was doomed, and the sooner the poor people left the country the better.

Mère Marie did not know whom to believe, but she decided that it would be only prudent to husband her little store of grain so that it would last all winter. She estimated the amount on hand, and also the late cabbages and turnips and everything else she could count on for food, and divided the whole by the number of winter days. When she discovered how little that allowed for each day, with nothing extra for Sundays, she began to be frightened. She consulted Gran’père, and he agreed that they should restrict themselves to short rations.

Mère Marie explained this to the children as best she could, but little Lisa did not understand very well. So when she discovered how very little she might have to eat, even when she was most hungry, she would cry sometimes. But Henri, who was nearly nine years old now and had been learning much about the doctrine of courage from Gran’père, bore the deprivation without complaint and even shared his last few morsels with Lisa.

It would seem as though the Van Huyks had suffered enough for one family, but when you remember all the poor Belgian families that had been left starving or had been broken up or sent fleeing to strange lands or wiped out altogether, when you recall what happened about Aershot and Louvain, you will see that the Van Huyks still had something to be thankful for even when the worst came. For they were still all alive and well; even Père Jean had not yet been reported among the dead or missing; while all Belgium was lying prostrate beneath a load of want and sorrow and horrible dread. For war is cruel and winter is cruel, and the poor folk of Flanders and Brabant were without hope.

Late in October there came a banging of rifle-butts on the door and again a group of soldiers in green-blue overcoats invaded the little tile-roofed cottage on the Waterloo Road. They had been drinking and were very rude and boisterous. They ransacked the premises and cursed because they found so little. One of them struck old Gran’père across the face with the back of his hand and another seized Mère Marie and, in spite of her struggles, kissed her on the cheek. Worse things might have befallen them had not one of the soldiers, angered at the lack of loot, set fire to the house and the barn.