On our next day’s march we passed through several such ruined villages; and, in the intervening country, had found women and old men working on their little farms, with faith in their armies and brave soldiers that was wonderful and pathetic.
Later we found peasants laboring to raise crops on land not over a mile from the trenches where battles raged.
And all through our march through ruined France were white-aproned women sitting in ruined doorways, or in huts of corrugated sheet iron sewing and knitting for their children, or for their absent loved ones fighting for “beautiful France.” Though their part of it was blighted by the invader, they were clinging to their ruined homes with a tenacity of faith in their armies almost beyond belief. The love of home and country was stronger in their hearts than the fear of death.
It was well for them and us that we saw these things, for it strengthened our resolve to fight to the death those who had blighted these homes. So we marched on, in storm and sunshine, observing all these bitter cruelties, gaining with every step new resolution to rescue France from her brutal invaders.
It seems to me that the German authorities, who sanctioned all the cruelties of this war, little comprehended how firm a friend they were making of America for France, and how steadfast an enemy for themselves, when their pitiless hands were laid on all that is sacred in humanity, love, and religion.
At one mass of ruined homes, where we had halted, we were sheltered for a night in the wine cellars. One of the cellars the Germans had used as a range-finder. These cellars were so vast, that even the German hordes had not been able to deplete its stores of wine by their thirsty demands, though their destructiveness was seen on every side.
We passed through town after town without roofs to the houses and with precious little of the walls left standing. All the orchards were relentlessly cut or sawed down, leaving behind them little of value save the unconquerable spirit of their brave and home-loving people.
We slept in barns and houses and under the unroofed sky, as we halted on our march. At one of our halting places, after a fatiguing day, we slept in an immense electric-lighted cave, big enough to shelter several thousand people.
It had been excavated, we were told, by French soldiers,—prisoners of war, under the direction of their German taskmasters. It was divided into rooms, in many cases luxuriously fitted with baths, bed furniture, rugs, and set bowls with water.
Apparently all the material for its furnishing was plundered from destroyed villages and near-by homes. Some of these were left with scrupulous care, as though their German occupants expected to return and resume their use. In several of these were insulting inscriptions such as “Gottstrafe England, der Schweinhund!”