A Hilltop on the Marne - Mildred Aldrich
Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and what is more I slept well. I was
physically tired. The last thing I saw as I closed up the house was the
gleam of the moonlight on the muskets of the picket pacing the road, and
the first thing I heard, as I waked suddenly at about four, was the
crunching of the gravel as they still marched there.
I got up at once. It was the morning of Friday, the 4th of September. I
dressed hurriedly, ran down to put the kettle on, and start the coffee,
and by five o'clock I had a table spread in the road, outside the gate,
with hot coffee and milk and bread and jam. I had my lesson, so I
called the corporal and explained that his men were to come in relays,
and when the coffee-pot was empty there was more in the house; and I
left them to serve themselves, while I finished dressing. I knew that
the officers were likely to come over, and one idea was fixed in my
mind: I must not look demoralized. So I put on a clean white frock,
white shoes and stockings, a big black bow in my hair, and I felt equal
to anything--in spite of the fact that before I dressed I heard far off
a booming-could it be cannon ?--and more than once a nearer
explosion,--more bridges down, more English across.
It was not much after nine when two English officers strolled down the
road--Captain Edwards and Major Ellison, of the Bedfordshire Light
Infantry. They came into the garden, and the scene with Captain Simpson
of the day before was practically repeated. They examined the plain,
located the towns, looked long at it with their glasses; and that being
over I put the usual question, "Can I do anything for you?" and got the
usual answer, "Eggs."
I asked how many officers there were in the mess, and he replied "Five";
so I promised to forage, and away they went.
As soon as they were out of sight the picket set up a howl for baths.
These Bedfordshire boys were not hungry, but they had retreated from
their last battle leaving their kits in the trenches, and were without
soap or towels, or combs or razors. But that was easily remedied. They
washed up in relays in the court at Amelie's--it was a little more
retired. As Amelie had put all her towels, etc., down underground, I
ran back and forward between my house and hers for all sorts of things,
and, as they slopped until the road ran tiny rivulets, I had to change
shoes and stockings twice. I was not conscious till afterward how funny
it all was. I must have been a good deal like an excited duck, and
Amelie like a hen with a duckling. When she was not twitching my sash
straight, she was running about after me with dry shoes and stockings,
and a chair, for fear "madame was getting too tired"; and when she was
not doing that she was clapping my big garden hat on my head, for fear
"madame would get a sunstroke." The joke was that I did not know it was
hot. I did not even know it was funny until afterward, when the whole
scene seemed to have been by a sort of dual process photographed
unconsciously on my memory.
When the boys were all washed and shaved and combed,--and
they were so larky over it,--we were like old friends. I did not know
one of them by name, but I did know who was married, and who had
children; and how one man's first child had been born since he left
England, and no news from home because they had seen their mail wagon
burn on the battlefield; and how one of them was only twenty, and had
been six years in the army,--lied when he enlisted; how none of them had
ever seen war before; how they had always wanted to, and "Now," said the
twenty-years older, "I've seen it--good Lord--and all I want is to get
home," and he drew out of his breast pocket a photograph of a young girl
in all her best clothes, sitting up very straight.
When I said, "Best girl?" he said proudly, "Only one, and we were to
have been married in January if this hadn't happened. Perhaps we may
yet, if we get home at Christmas, as they tell us we may."
I wondered who he meant by "they." The officers did not give any such
impression.
While I was gathering up towels and things before returning to the
house, this youngster advanced toward me, and said with a half-shy
smile, "I take it you're a lady."
I said I was glad he had noticed it--I did make such an effort.
"No, no," he said, "I'm not joking. I may not say it very well, but I
am quite serious. We all want to say to you that if it is war that
makes you and the women you live amongst so different from English
women, then all we can say is that the sooner England is invaded and
knows what it means to have a fighting army on her soil, and see her
fields devastated and her homes destroyed, the better it will be for the
race. You take my word for it, they have no notion of what war is like;
and there ain't no English woman of your class could have, or would
have, done for us what you have done this morning. Why, in England the
common soldier is the dirt under the feet of women like you."
I had to laugh, as I told him to wait and see how they treated them when
war was there; that they probably had not done the thing simply because
they never had had the chance.
"Well," he answered, "they'll have to change mightily. Why, our own
women would have been uncomfortable and ashamed to see a lot of dirty
men stripping and washing down like we have done. You haven't looked as
if you minded it a bit, or thought of anything but getting us cleaned up
as quick and comfortable as possible."
I started to say that I felt terribly flattered that I had played the
role so well, but I knew he would not understand. Besides, I was
wondering if it were true. I never knew the English except as
individuals, never as a race. So I only laughed, picked up my towels,
and went home to rest.
Not long before noon a bicycle scout came over with a message from
Captain Edwards, and I sent by him a basket of eggs, a cold chicken, and
a bottle of wine as a contribution to the breakfast at the officers'
mess; and by the time I had eaten my breakfast, the picket had been
changed, and I saw no more of those boys.
During the afternoon the booming off at the east became more distinct.
It surely was cannon. I went out to the gate where the corporal of the
guard was standing, and asked him, "Do I hear cannon?" "Sure," he
replied. "Do you know where it is?" I asked. He said he hadn't an
idea--about twenty-five or thirty miles away. And on he marched, up and
down the road, perfectly indifferent to it.
When Amelie came to help get tea at the gate, she said that a man from
Voisins, who had started with the crowd that left here Wednesday, had
returned. He had brought back the news that the sight on the road was
simply horrible. The refugies had got so blocked in their hurry that
they could move in neither direction; cattle and horses were so tired
that they fell by the way; it would take a general to disentangle them.
My! wasn't I glad that I had not been tempted to get into that mess!
Just after the boys had finished their tea, Captain Edwards came down
the road, swinging my empty basket on his arm, to say "Thanks" for his
breakfast. He looked at the table at the gate.
"So the men have been having tea--lucky men--and bottled water! What
extravagance!"
"Come in and have some, too," I said.
"Love to," he answered, and in he came.
While I was making the tea he walked about the house, looked at the
pictures, examined the books. Just as the table was ready there was a
tremendous explosion. He went to the door, looked off, and remarked, as
if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Another division
across. That should be the last."
"Are all the bridges down?" I asked.
"All, I think, except the big railroad bridge behind you--Chalifert.
That will not go until the last minute."
I wanted to ask, "When will it be the 'last minute'--and what does the
'last minute' mean?"--but where was the good? So we went into the
dining-room. As he threw his hat on to a chair and sat down with a
sigh, he said, "You see before you a very humiliated man. About half an
hour ago eight of the Uhlans we are looking for rode right into the
street below you, in Voisins. We saw them, but they got away. It is
absolutely our own stupidity."
"Well," I explained to him, "I fancy I can tell you where they are
hiding. I told Captain Simpson so last night." And I explained to him
that horses had been heard in the woods at the foot of the hill since
Tuesday; that there was a cart road, rough and winding, running in
toward Conde for over two miles; that it was absolutely screened by
trees, had plenty of water, and not a house in it,--a shelter for a
regiment of cavalry. And I had the impertinence to suggest that if the
picket had been extended to the road below it would have been impossible
for the Germans to have got into Voisins.
"Not enough of us," he replied. "We are guarding a wide territory, and
cannot put our pickets out of sight of one another." Then he explained
that, as far as he knew from his aeroplane men, the detachment had
broken up since it was first discovered on this side of the Marne. It
was reported that there were only about twenty-four in this vicinity;
that they were believed to be without ammunition; and then he dropped
the subject, and I did not bother him with questions that were bristling
in my mind.
He told me how sad it was to see the ruin of the beautiful country
through which they had passed, and what a mistake it had been from his
point of view not to have foreseen the methods of Germans and drummed
out all the towns through which the armies had passed. He told me one
or two touching and interesting stories. One was of the day before a
battle, I think it was Saint-Quentin. The officers had been invited to
dine at a pretty chateau near which they had bivouacked. The French
family could not do too much for them, and the daughters of the house
waited on the table. Almost before the meal was finished the alerte
sounded, and the battle was on them. When they retreated by the house
where they had been so prettily entertained such a few hours before,
there was not one stone standing on another, and what became of the
family he had no idea.
The other that I remember was of the way the Germans passed the river at
Saint-Quentin and forced the battle at La Fere on them. The bridge was
mined, and the captain was standing beside the engineer waiting to give
the order to touch off the mine. It was a nasty night--a Sunday (only
last Sunday, think of that!)--and the rain was coming down in torrents.
Just before the Germans reached the bridge he ordered it blown up. The
engineer touched the button. The fuse did not act. He was in despair,
but the captain said to him, "Brace up, my lad--give her another
chance." The second effort failed like the first. Then, before any one
could stop him, the engineer made a dash for the end of the bridge,
drawing his revolver as he ran, and fired six shots into the mine,
knowing that, if he succeeded, he would go up with the bridge. No good,
and he was literally dragged off the spot weeping with rage at his
failure--and the Germans came across.
All the time we had been talking I had heard the cannonade in the
distance--now at the north and now in the east. This seemed a proper
moment, inspired by the fact that he was talking war, of his own
initiative, to put a question or two, so I risked it.
"That cannonading seems much nearer than it did this morning," I
ventured.
"Possibly," he replied.
"What does that mean?" I persisted.
"Sorry I can't tell you. We men know absolutely nothing. Only three
men in this war know anything of its plans,--Kitchener, Joffre, and
French. The rest of us obey orders, and know only what we see. Not even
a brigade commander is any wiser. Once in a while the colonel makes a
remark, but he is never illuminating."
"How much risk am I running by remaining here?"
He looked at me a moment before he asked, "You want to know the truth?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Well, this is the situation as near as I can work it out. We infer
from the work we were given to do--destroying bridges, railroads,
telegraphic communications--that an effort is to be made here to stop
the march on Paris; in fact, that the Germans are not to be allowed to
cross the Marne at Meaux, and march on the city by the main road from
Rheims to the capital. The communications are all cut. That does not
mean that it will be impossible for them to pass; they've got clever
engineers. It means that we have impeded them and may stop them. I
don't know. Just now your risk is nothing. It will be nothing unless
we are ordered to hold this hill, which is the line of march from Meaux
to Paris. We have had no such order yet. But if the Germans succeed in
taking Meaux and attempt to put their bridges across the Marne, our
artillery, behind you there on the top of the hill, must open fire on
them over your head. In that case the Germans will surely reply by
bombarding this hill." And he drank his tea without looking to see how I
took it.
I remember that I was standing opposite him, and I involuntarily leaned
against the wall behind me, but suddenly thought, "Be careful. You'll
break the glass in the picture of Whistler's Mother, and you'll be
sorry." It brought me up standing, and he didn't notice. Isn't the mind
a queer thing?
He finished his tea, and rose to go. As he picked up his cap he showed
me a hole right through his sleeve--in one side, out the other-and a
similar one in his puttee, where the ball had been turned aside by the
leather lacing of his boot. He laughed as he said, "Odd how near a chap
comes to going out, and yet lives to drink tea with you. Well, good-bye
and good luck if I don't see you again."
And off he marched, and I went into the library and sat down and sat
very still.
It was not more than half an hour after Captain Edwards left that the
corporal came in to ask me if I had a window in the roof. I told him
that there was, and he asked if he might go up. I led the way, picking
up my glasses as I went. He explained, as we climbed the two flights of
stairs, that the aeroplane had reported a part of the Germans they were
hunting "not a thousand feet from this house." I opened the skylight.
He scanned in every direction. I knew he would not see anything, and he
did not. But he seemed to like the view, could command the roads that
his posse was guarding, so he sat on the window ledge and talked. The
common soldier is far fonder of talking than his officer and apparently
he knows more. If he doesn't, he thinks he does. So he explained to me
the situation as the "men saw it." I remembered what Captain Edwards had
told me, but I listened all the same. He told me that the Germans were
advancing in two columns about ten miles apart, flanked in the west by a
French division pushing them east, and led by the English drawing them
toward the Marne. "You know," he said, "that we are the sacrificed
corps, and we have known it from the first--went into the campaign
knowing it. We have been fighting a force ten times superior in
numbers, and retreating, doing rear-guard action, whether we were really
outfought or not--to draw the Germans where Joffre wants them. I reckon
we've got them there. It is great strategy-Kitchener's, you know."
Whether any of the corporal's ideas had any relation to facts I shall
never know until history tells me, but I can assure you that, as I
followed the corporal downstairs, I looked about my house--and, well, I
don't deny it, it seemed to me a doomed thing, and I was sorry for it.
However, as I let him out into the road again, I pounded into myself
lots of things like "It hasn't happened yet"; "Sufficient unto the day";
and, "What isn't to be, won't be"; and found I was quite calm. Luckily
I did not have much time to myself, for I had hardly sat down quietly
when there was another tap at the door and I opened to find an officer
of the bicycle corps standing there.
"Captain Edwards's compliments," he said, "and will you be so kind as to
explain to me exactly where you think the Uhlans are hidden?"
I told him that if he would come down the road a little way with me I
would show him.
"Wait a moment," he said, holding the door. "You are not afraid?"
I told him that I was not.
"My orders are not to expose you uselessly. Wait there a minute."
He stepped back into the garden, gave a quick look overhead,--I don't
know what for, unless for a Taube. Then he said, "Now, you will please
come out into the road and keep close to the bank at the left, in the
shadow. I shall walk at the extreme right. As soon as I get where I
can see the roads ahead, at the foot of the hill, I shall ask you to
stop, and please stop at once. I don't want you to be seen from the
road below, in case any one is there. Do you understand ?"
I said I did. So we went into the road and walked silently down the
hill. Just before we got to the turn, he motioned me to stop and stood
with his map in hand while I explained that he was to cross the road
that led into Voisins, take the cart track down the hill past the
washhouse on his left, and turn into the wood road on that side. At each
indication he said, "I have it." When I had explained, he simply said,
"Rough road?"
I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest weather.
"Wooded all the way?" he asked.
I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could
not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Conde.
"Humph," he said. "Perfectly clear, thank you very much. Please wait
right there a moment."
He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture in the air with his
hand above his head. I turned to look up the hill also. I saw the
corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four
abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding
down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a
pedal.
"Thank you very much," said the captain. "Be so kind as to keep close
to the bank."
When I reached my gate I found some of the men of the guard dragging a
big, long log down the road, and I watched them while they attached it
to a tree at my gate, and swung it across to the opposite side of the
road, making in that way a barrier about five feet high. I asked what
that was for? "Captain's orders," was the laconic reply. But when it
was done the corporal took the trouble to explain that it was a
barricade to prevent the Germans from making a dash up the hill.
"However," he added, "don't you get nervous. If we chase them out it
will only be a little rifle practice, and I doubt if they even have any
ammunition."
As I turned to go into the house, he called after me,--
"See here, I notice that you've got doors on all sides of your house.
Better lock all those but this front one."
As all the windows were barred and so could be left open, I didn't mind;
so I went in and locked up. The thing was getting to be funny to
me,--always doing something, and nothing happening. I suppose courage
is a cumulative thing, if only one has time to accumulate, and these
boys in khaki treated even the cannonading as if it were all "in the
day's work."
It was just dusk when the bicycle corps returned up the hill. They had
to dismount and wheel their machines under the barricade, and they did
it so prettily, dismounting and remounting with a precision that was
neat.
"Nothing," reported the captain. "We could not go in far,--road too
rough and too dangerous. It is a cavalry job."
All the same, I am sure the Uhlans are there.
XIII
September 8, 1914.
I had gone to bed early on Friday night, and had passed an uneasy night.
It was before four when I got up and opened my shutters. It was a
lovely day. Perhaps I have told you that the weather all last week was
simply perfect.
I went downstairs to get coffee for the picket, but when I got out to
the gate there was no picket there. There was the barricade, but the
road was empty. I ran up the road to Amelie's. She told me that they
had marched away about an hour before. A bicyclist had evidently
brought an order. As no one spoke English, no one understood what had
really happened. Pere had been to Couilly--they had all left there.
So far as any one could discover there was not an English soldier, or
any kind of a soldier, left anywhere in the commune.
This was Saturday morning, September 5, and one of the loveliest days I
ever saw. The air was clear. The sun was shining.
The birds were singing. But otherwise it was very still. I walked out
on the lawn. Little lines of white smoke were rising from a few
chimneys at Joncheroy and Voisins. The towns on the plain, from
Monthyon and Penchard on the horizon to Mareuil in the valley, stood out
clear and distinct. But after three days of activity, three days with
the soldiers about, it seemed, for the first time since I came here,
lonely; and for the first time I realized that I was actually cut off
from the outside world. All the bridges in front of me were gone, and
the big bridge behind me. No communication possibly with the north, and
none with the south except by road over the hill to Lagny. Esbly
evacuated, Couilly evacuated, Quincy evacuated. All the shops closed.
No government, no post-office, and absolutely no knowledge of what had
happened since Wednesday. I had a horrible sense of isolation.
Luckily for me, part of the morning was killed by what might be called
an incident or a disaster or a farce--just as you look at it. First of
all, right after breakfast I had the proof that I was right about the
Germans. Evidently well informed of the movements of the English, they
rode boldly into the open. Luckily they seemed disinclined to do any
mischief. Perhaps the place looked too humble to be bothered with.
They simply asked--one of them spoke French, and perhaps they all
did--where they were, and were told, "Huiry, commune of Quincy." They
looked it up on their maps, nodded, and asked if the bridges on the
Marne had been destroyed, to which I replied that I did not know,--I had
not been down to the river. Half a truth and half a lie, but goodness
knows that it was hard enough to have to be polite. They thanked me
civilly enough and rode down the hill, as they could not pass the
barricade unless they had wished to give an exhibition of "high school."
Wherever they had been they had not suffered. Their horses were fine
animals, and both horses and men were well groomed and in prime
condition.
The other event was distressing, but about that I held my tongue.
Just after the Germans were here, I went down the road to call on my new
French friends at the foot of the hill, to hear how they had passed the
night, and incidentally to discover if there were any soldiers about.
Just in the front of their house I found an English bicycle scout,
leaning on his wheel and trying to make himself understood in a
one-sided monosyllabic dialogue, with the two girls standing in their
window.
I asked him who he was. He showed his papers. They were all right--an
Irishman--Ulster--Royal Innisfall Fusiliers--thirteen years in the
service.
I asked him if there were any English soldiers left here. He said there
was still a bicycle corps of scouts at the foot of the hill, at Couilly.
I thought that funny, as Pere had said the town was absolutely deserted.
Still, I saw no reason to doubt his word, so when he asked me if I could
give him his breakfast, I brought him back to the house, set the table
in the arbor, and gave him his coffee and eggs. When he had finished,
he showed no inclination to go--said he would rest a bit. As Amelie was
in the house, I left him and went back to make the call my encounter
with him had interrupted. When I returned an hour later, I found him
fast asleep on the bench in the arbor, with the sun shining right on his
head. His wheel, with his kit and gun on it was leaning up against the
house. It was nearly noon by this time, and hot, and I was afraid he
would get a sunstroke; so I waked him and told him that if it was a rest
he needed,--and he was free to take it,--he could go into the room at
the head of the stairs, where he would find a couch and lie down
comfortably. He had sleepily obeyed, and must have just about got to
sleep again, when it occurred to me that it was hardly prudent to leave
an English bicycle with a khaki-covered kit and a gun on it right on the
terrace in plain sight of the road up which the Germans had ridden so
short a time before. So I went to the foot of the stairs, called him,
and explained that I did not care to touch the wheel on account of the
gun, so he had better come down and put it away, which he did. I don't
know whether it was my saying "Germans" to him that explained it, but
his sleepiness seemed suddenly to have disappeared, so he asked for the
chance to wash and shave; and half an hour later he came down all
slicked up and spruce, with a very visible intention of paying court to
the lady of the house. Irish, you see,--white hairs no obstacle. I
could not help laughing. "Hoity-toity," I said to myself, "I am getting
all kinds of impressions of the military."