(C) Those from Quesnoy-sur-Somme
They were climbing out of the cattle cars into the mud of the freight yards. They numbered about fifty,—the old, the halt, the blind and the children. We were whizzing past on a motor ambulance with two desperately wounded men inside, headed for a hospital a half mile away. The Medical Major said that unless we hurried the men would probably be dead when we arrived. So we could not lessen speed as those from Quesnoy-sur-Somme descended painfully from the cattle cars. Instead, we sounded the siren for them to get out of our way. The mud from our wheels splattered them. But it was not mud—not regular mud. It was black unhealthy ooze, generated after a month of rain in the aged layers of train soot. It was full of fever germs. Typhoid was on the rampage.
As we passed the sentinels at the gates of the yards we were forced to halt in a jam of ammunition and food wagons. To the army that survives is given the first thought. The wounded in the ambulance could wait. We took right of way only over civilians—including refugees.
We asked a sentinel concerning those descending from the cattle cars, "là bas." He said they came from a place called Quesnoy-sur-Somme. It was not a city he told us, nor a town—not even a village. Just a straggling hamlet along the river bank—a place called Quesnoy-sur-Somme.
The past tense was the correct usage of the verb. The place was that; but now—now it is just a black path of desolation beside a lifeless river. The artillery had thundered across the banks for a month. The fish floated backs down on the water.
When the ammunition and food wagons gave us room enough, we again raced through the streets and delivered our wounded at the hospital—alive. Then we returned to the freight yards for more. Several ambulance columns had worked through the night from the field hospitals to the freight yards. There the men were sorted and the less desperate cases entrained.
We plowed our way carefully through the ooze of the yards, for ahead of us walked those from Quesnoy-sur-Somme on their way to the gare. They walked slowly—painfully, except the children, who danced beside our running board and laughed at the funny red crosses painted on the canvas sides of the ambulance. It was raining—as usual. The sky was the coldest gray in the universe, and the earth and dingy buildings, darker in tone, were still more dismal. But one tiny child had a fat slab of bread covered thickly with red jam. She raised her sticky pink face to ours and laughed gloriously. She waved her pudgy fist holding the bread and jam, and shouted, "Vive la France!"
We were now just crawling through the mire. The refugees surrounded us on all sides. The mother seized the waving little arm, and dragged the child away. The woman did not look at us. She just plodded along, eyes fixed on the mud that closed over her shoes at every step. She was bareheaded and the rain glistened in great drops upon her hair. The child hung back. The mother merely tightened her grip, doggedly patient. She was past either curiosity or reproof.
Our car ran so slowly that accidentally we killed the engine. I got out to crank her up and meantime the forlorn mass surged by. Two soldiers herded them over the slippery tracks to a shed beside the gare where straggled some rough benches. We lined our car up behind the other ambulances. Then we went to look at the refugees.