Passed by the censor

by Wythe Williams

An old woman entered the store to buy tobacco. She was bent and withered and her hand trembled as she drew the few coppers from her purse. Her voice was high and quavery when she spoke to the girl. She said that her son had just been wounded near Verdun. His condition was desperate, but they were bringing him home—to her—to die on the old Brittany farm, on the hillside overlooking the sea.

"Ah, la guerre," she murmured, "c'est terrible."

She explained that her other boys had been lost on a fishing schooner five years ago. She had tried to keep this one—had wanted him so much and tried so hard. But if she could see him again it would be better. She sighed and tucked purse and tobacco under her apron and clattered out on her heavy wooden sabots—her head bowed under her years and her woe. "C'est pour la patrie," she murmured as she passed through the door.

The next day was a Sunday. On Sunday all Brittany goes to church, and when one is in Brittany—well, one goes to church too. After the service I walked through the churchyard, which is also the graveyard of the village. It was so quiet, so restful and far removed from the world and the war, that I was content to remain there, for the eleven soldiers not guarding the cable were disporting themselves on the beach.

I found a wonderful old wall at one end of the graveyard. It was very old and overgrown with moss and ivy. It was a dozen feet high and crumbling in places. I did not know then that the wall was one of the sights of that countryside, but I did know when I saw it that I was looking upon the record of mighty tragedies. For it was covered over with little slabs, sometimes almost lost to view under the climbing vines. On the slabs were written the names of the men of the village who had gone to sea and never been heard of again. The dates were all there and the names of the ships. On several were the names of two or more brothers—on another slab were listed the males of three generations of one house. There were hundreds of names, the dates going back nearly a hundred years. Over many slabs with more recent dates were hung wreaths of flowers.

It is called the wall of the disappeared.

I read all the slabs with keenest interest; this record of toll taken by an element more resistless even than war. Indeed the battles of the nations seemed puny against the evidences of inexorable might written on the wall of the disappeared.

Near the end of the wall a woman was praying. She was all in black, with the huge Breton widow's cowl drawn over her head, so that she looked like a witch in Macbeth. Above her head I noticed a freshly painted slab newly fixed in the wall. I read the inscription over her shoulder. The date was September, 1915. Instead of the name of a fishing boat that went to pieces in a gale off Iceland, was recorded the man's regiment, followed by his name and the words, "disappeared in the battle of the Marne."

The morning following I awoke early, with the sun and the sea sparkling at my window. I got into a regulation bathing suit and rushed down the old stone jetty for a plunge before breakfast. The water was so fresh—so full of life—the day was so wonderful—that I forgot all about the twelve soldiers, the old woman whose wounded son was coming home to die, the soldier of the battle of the Marne whose name was on the wall of the disappeared.

There was no such thing as war as I dived off the jetty's end, deep into the cold, clean water. I opened my eyes under the water and could see the rocks on the bottom, still many feet below.