A Hilltop on the Marne - Mildred Aldrich
I can assure you that, as I watched the work of billeting a regiment in
evacuated houses, I was mighty glad that I was here, standing, a willing
hostess, at my door, but giving to my little house a personality no
unoccupied house can ever have to a passing army. They made quick work,
and no ceremony, in opening locked doors and taking possession. It did
not take the officer who had charge of the billeting half an hour,
notebook in hand, to find quarters for his horses as well as his men.
Before the head of the regiment appeared over the hill names were
chalked up on all the doors, and the number of horses on every door to
barn and courtyard, and the fields selected and the number of men to be
camped all over the hill. Finally the officer returned to me. I knew
by his manner that Amelie, who accompanied him, had been giving him a
"talking to."
"If you please, madame," he said, "I will see now what you can do for
us"; and I invited him in.
I don't suppose I need to tell you that you would get very little idea
of the inside of my house from the outside. I am quite used now to the
little change of front in most people when they cross the threshold. The
officer nearly went on tiptoes when he got inside. He mounted the
polished stairs gingerly, gave one look at the bedroom part-way up,
touched his cap, and said: "That will do for the chef-major. We will
not trouble you with any one else. He has his own orderly, and will eat
outside, and will be no bother. Thank you very much, madame"; and he
sort of slid down the stairs, tiptoed out, and wrote in chalk on the
gatepost, "Weitzel."
By this time the advance guard was in the road and I could not resist
going out to talk to them. They had marched out from the south of Paris
since the day before,--thirty-six miles,--without an idea that the
battle was going on the Marne until they crossed the hill at Montry and
came in sight of its smoke. I tell you their faces were wreathed with
smiles when they discovered that we knew the Germans were retreating.
Such talks as I listened to that afternoon--only yesterday--at my gate,
from such a fluent, amusing, clever French chap,--a bicyclist in the
ambulance corps,--of the crossing the Meuse and the taking, losing,
re-taking, and re-losing of Charleroi. Oddly enough these were the
first real battle tales I had heard.
It suddenly occurred to me, as we chatted and laughed, that all the time
the English were here they had never once talked battles. Not one of
the Tommies had mentioned the fighting. We had talked of "home," of the
girls they had left behind them, of the French children whom the English
loved, of the country, its customs, its people, their courage and
kindness, but not one had told me a battle story of any kind, and I had
not once thought of opening the subject. But this French lad of the
ambulance corps, with his Latin eloquence and his national gift of humor
and graphic description, with a smile in his eyes, and a laugh on his
lips, told me stories that made me see how war affects men, and how
often the horrible passes across the line into the grotesque. I shall
never forget him as he stood at the gate, leaning on his wheel,
describing how the Germans crossed the Meuse--a feat which cost them so
dearly that only their superior number made a victory out of a disaster.
"I suppose," he said, "that in the history of the war it will stand as a
success--at any rate, they came across, which was what they wanted. We
could only have stopped them, if at all, by an awful sacrifice of life.
Joffre is not doing that. If the Germans want to fling away their men
by the tens of thousands--let them. In the end we gain by it. We can
rebuild a country; we cannot so easily re-create a race. We mowed them
down like a field of wheat, by the tens of thousands, and tens of
thousands sprang into the gaps. They advanced shoulder to shoulder.
Our guns could not miss them, but they were too many for us. If you had
seen that crossing I imagine it would have looked to you like a disaster
for Germany. It was so awful that it became comic. I remember one
point where a bridge was mined. We let the first divisions of artillery
and cavalry come right across on to our guns--they were literally
destroyed. As the next division came on to the bridge--up it went--men,
horses, guns dammed the flood, and the cavalry literally crossed on
their own dead. We are bold enough, but we are not so foolhardy as to
throw away men like that. They will be more useful to Joffre later."
It was the word "comic" that did for me. There was no sign in the fresh
young face before me that the horror had left a mark. If the thought
came to him that every one of those tens of thousands whose bodies
dammed and reddened the flood was dear to some one weeping in Germany,
his eyes gave no sign of it. Perhaps it was as well for the time being.
Who knows?
I felt the same revolt against the effect of war when he told me of the
taking and losing of Charleroi and set it down as the most "grotesque"
sight he had ever seen. "Grotesque" simply made me shudder, when he
went on to say that even there, in the narrow streets, the Germans
pushed on in "close order," and that the French mitrailleuses, which
swept the street that he saw, made such havoc in their ranks that the
air was so full of flying heads and arms and legs, of boots, and
helmets, swords, and guns that it did not seem as if it could be
real--"it looked like some burlesque"; and that even one of the gunners
turned ill and said to his commander, who stood beside him: "For the
love of God, colonel, shall I go on?" and the colonel, with folded arms,
replied: "Fire away."
Perhaps it is lucky, since war is, that men can be like that. When they
cannot, what then? But it was too terrible for me, and I changed the
subject by asking him if it were true that the Germans deliberately
fired on the Red Cross. He instantly became grave and prudent.
"Oh, well," he said, "I would not like to go on oath. We have had our
field ambulance destroyed. But you know the Germans are often bad
marksmen. They've got an awful lot of ammunition. They fire it all
over the place. They are bound to hit something. If we screen our
hospital behind a building and a shell comes over and blows us up, how
can we swear the shell was aimed at us?"
Just here the regiment came over the hill, and I retreated inside the
gate where I had pails of water ready for them to drink. They were a
sorry-looking lot. It was a hot day. They were covered with dirt, and
you know the ill-fitting uniform of the French common soldier would
disfigure into trampdom the best-looking man in the world.
The barricade was still across the road. With their packs on their
backs, their tin dippers in their hands for the drink they so needed,
perspiring in their heavy coats, they crawled, line after line, under
the barrier until an officer rode down and called sharply:--
"Halt!"
The line came to a standstill.
"What's that thing?" asked the officer sternly.
I replied that obviously it was a barricade.
"Who put it there?" he asked peremptorily, as if I were to blame.
I told him that the English did.
"When?"
I felt as if I were being rather severely cross-examined, but I answered
as civilly as I could, "The night before the battle."
He looked at me for the first time--and softened his tone a bit--my
white hair and beastly accent, I suppose--as he asked:
"What is it for?"
I told him it was to prevent a detachment of Uhlans from coming up the
hill. He hesitated a moment; then asked if it served any purpose now.
I might have told him that the Uhlans were still here, but I didn't, I
simply said that I did not know that it did. "Cut it down!" he ordered,
and in a moment it was cut on one end and swung round against the bank
and the regiment marched on.
It was just after that that I discovered the explanation of what had
happened to my Irish scout on Saturday. An exhausted soldier was in
need of a stimulant, and one of his comrades, who was supporting him,
asked me if I had anything. I had nothing but the bottle out of which
the Irish scout had drunk. I rushed for it, poured some into the tin
cup held out to me, and just as the poor fellow was about to drink,
his comrade pulled the cup away, smelt it, and exclaimed, "Don't drink
that--here, put some water in it. That's not cider. It's eau de vie
des prunes."
I can tell you I was startled. I had never tasted eau de vie des
prunes,--a native brew, stronger than brandy, and far more
dangerous,--and my Irishman had pulled off a full champagne glass at a
gulp, and never winked. No wonder he fell off his wheel. The wonder is
that he did not die on the spot. I was humiliated. Still, he was Irish
and perhaps he didn't care. I hope he didn't. But only think, he will
never know that I did not do it on purpose. He was probably gloriously
drunk. Anyway, it prevented his coming back to make that visit he
threatened me with.
The detachment of the regiment which staggered past my gate camped in
the fields below me and in the courtyards at Voisins, and the rest of
them made themselves comfortable in the fields at the other side of the
hill and the outbuildings on Amelie's place, and the officers and the
ambulance corps began to seek their quarters.
I was sitting in the library when my guest, Chef-Major Weitzel, rode up
to the gate. I had a good chance to look him over, as he marched up the
path. He was a dapper, upright, little chap. He was covered with dust
from his head to his heels. I could have written his name on him
anywhere. Then I went to the door to meet him. I suppose he had been
told that he was to be lodged in the house of an American. He stopped
abruptly, halfway up the path, as I appeared, clicked his heels
together, and made me his best bow, as he said:--
"I am told, madame, that you are so gracious as to offer me a bed."
I might have replied literally, "Offer? I had no choice," but I did not.
I said politely that if Monsieur le Chef-Major would take the trouble to
enter, I should do myself the distinguished honor of conducting him to
his chamber, having no servant for the moment to perform for him that
service, and he bowed at me again, and marched in--no other word for
it--and came up the stairs behind me.
As I opened the door of my guest-room, and stood aside to let him pass,
I found that he had paused halfway up and was giving my raftered green
salon and the library beyond a curious glance. Being caught, he looked
up at once and said: "So you are not afraid?" I supposed he was inspired
by the fact that there were no signs of any preparations to evacuate.
I replied that I could not exactly say that, but that I had not been
sufficiently afraid to run away and leave my house to be looted unless I
had to.
"Well," he said, with a pleasant laugh, "that is about as good an
account of himself as many a brave soldier can give the night before his
first battle "; and he passed me with a bow and I closed the door.
Half an hour later he came downstairs, all shaved and slicked up--in a
white sweater, white tennis shoes, with a silk handkerchief about his
neck, and a fatigue cap set rakishly on the side of his head, as if
there were no such thing as hot weather or war, while his orderly went
up and brought his equipment down to the terrace, and began such a
beating, brushing, and cleaning of boots as you never saw.
At the library door he stopped, looked in, and said, "This is nice"; and
before I could get together decent French enough to say that I was
honored--or my house was--at his approval, he asked if he might be so
indiscreet as to take the liberty of inviting some of his fellow
officers to come into the garden and see the view. Naturally I replied
that Monsieur le Chef-Major was at home and his comrades would be
welcome to treat the garden as if it were theirs, and he made me another
of his bows and marched away, to return in five minutes, accompanied by
half a dozen officers and a priest. As they passed the window, where I
still sat, they all bowed at me solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped
to ask if madame would be so good as to join them, and explain the
country, which was new to them all.
Naturally madame did not wish to. I had not been out there since
Saturday night--was it less than forty-eight hours before? But equally
naturally I was ashamed to refuse. It would, I know, seem
super-sentimental to them. So I reluctantly followed them out. They
stood in a group about me--these men who had been in battles, come out
safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one
would go into a ballroom--while I pointed out the towns and answered
their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than
the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm.
All the time the cannon was booming in the northeast, but they paid no
more attention to it than if it were a threshing-machine.
There was a young lieutenant in the group who finally noticed a sort of
reluctance on my part-which I evidently had not been able to conceal--to
looking off at the plain, which I own I had been surprised to find as
lovely as ever. He taxed me with it, and I confessed, upon which he
said:--
"That will pass. The day will come--Nature is so made, luckily--when
you will look off there with pride, not pain, and be glad that you saw
what may prove the turning of the tide in the noblest war ever fought
for civilization."
I wonder.
The chef-major turned to me--caught me looking in the other
direction--to the west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill.
"May I be very indiscreet?" he asked.
I told him that he knew best.
"Well," he said, "I want to know how it happens that you--a foreigner,
and a woman--happen to be living in what looks like exile--all alone on
the top of a hill--in war-time?"
I looked at him a moment--and--well, conditions like these make people
friendly with one another at once. I was, you know, never very
reticent, and in days like these even the ordinary reticences of
ordinary times are swept away. So I answered frankly, as if these men
were old friends, and not the acquaintances of an hour, that, as I was,
as they could see, no longer young, very tired, and yet not weary with
life, but more interested than my strength allowed. I had sought a
pleasant retreat for my old age,--not too far from the City of my
Love,--and that I had chosen this hilltop for the sake of the panorama
spread out before me; that I had loved it every day more than the day
before; and that exactly three months after I had sat down on this
hilltop this awful war had marched to within sight of my gate, and
banged its cannon and flung its deadly bombs right under my eyes.
Do you know, every mother's son of them threw back his head--and laughed
aloud. I was startled. I knew that I had shown unnecessary feeling--but
I knew it too late. I made a dash for the house, but the lieutenant
blocked the way. I could not make a scene. I never felt so like it in
my life.
"Come back, come back," he said. "We all apologize. It was a shame to
laugh. But you are so vicious and so personal about it. After all, you
know, the gods were kind to you--it did turn back--those waves of
battle. You had better luck than Canute."
"Besides," said the chef-major, "you can always say that you had front
row stage box."
There was nothing to do to save my face but to laugh with them. And they
were still laughing when they tramped across the road to dinner. I
returned to the house rather mortified at having been led into such an
unnecessary display of feeling, but I suppose I had been in need of some
sort of an outlet.
After dinner they came back to the lawn to lie about smoking their
cigarettes. I was sitting in the arbor. The battle had become a duel
of heavy artillery, which they all found "magnificent," these men who
had been in such things.
Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his feet.
"Listen--listen--an aeroplane."
We all looked up. There it was, quite low, right over our heads.
"A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before he had got the words out of his
mouth, Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry from the field behind
us--the soldiers had seen it. The machine began to rise. I stood like
a rock,--my feet glued to the ground,--while the regiment fired over my
head. But it was sheer will power that kept me steady among these men
who were treating it as if it were a Fourteenth of July show. I heard a
ping.
"Touched," said the officer as the Taube continued to rise. Another
ping.
Still it rose, and we watched it sail off toward the hills at the
southeast.
"Hit, but not hurt," sighed the officer, dropping down on the grass
again, with a sigh. "It is hard to bring them down at that height with
rifles, but it can be done."
"Perhaps the English battery will get it," said I; "it is going right
toward it."
"If there is an English battery up there," replied he, "that is probably
what he is looking for. It is hardly likely to unmask for a Taube. I
am sorry we missed it. You have seen something of the war. It is a
pity you should not have seen it come down. It is a beautiful sight."
I thought to myself that I preferred it should not come down in my
garden. But I had no relish for being laughed at again, so I did not
say it.
Soon after they all went to bed,--very early,--and silence fell on the
hilltop. I took a look round before I went to bed. I had not seen
Amelie since the regiment arrived. But she, who had done
everything to spare me inconvenience, had fourteen officers quartered in
her place, and goodness knows how many horses, so she had little time to
do for me.
The hillside was a picture I shall never forget. Everywhere men were
sleeping in the open--their guns beside them. Fires, over which they
had cooked, were smouldering; pickets everywhere. The moon shed a pale
light and made long shadows. It was really very beautiful if one could
have forgotten that to-morrow many of these men would be sleeping for
good--"Life's fitful dream" over.
XVI
September 8, 1914.
This morning everything and everybody was astir early. It was another
gloriously beautiful day. The birds were singing as if to split their
throats. There was a smell of coffee all over the place. Men were
hurrying up and down the hill, to and fro from the wash-house, bathing,
washing out their shirts and stockings and hanging them on the bushes,
rubbing down horses and douching them, cleaning saddles and
accouterments. There is a lot of work to be done by an army besides
fighting. It was all like a play, and every one was so cheerful.
The chef-major did not come down until his orderly called him, and when
he did he looked as rosy and cheerful as a child, and announced that he
had slept like one. Soon after he crossed the road for his coffee I
heard the officers laughing and chatting as if it were a week-end house
party.
When Amelie came to get my breakfast she looked a wreck--I saw one of
her famous bilious attacks coming.
It was a little after eleven, while the chef-major was upstairs writing,
that his orderly came with a paper and carried it up to him. He came
down at once, made me one of his pretty bows at the door of the library,
and holding out a scrap of paper said:--
"Well, madame, we are going to leave you. We advance at two."
I asked him where he was going.
He glanced at the paper in his hand, and replied:--
"Our orders are to advance to Saint-Fiacre,--a little east of Meaux,--
but before I go I am happy to relieve your mind on two points. The
French cavalry has driven the Uhlans out--some of them were captured as
far east as Bouleurs. And the English artillery has come down from the
hill behind you and is crossing the Marne. We follow them. So you see
you can sit here in your pretty library and read all these nice books in
security, until the day comes--perhaps sooner than you dare hope--when
you can look back to all these days, and perhaps be a little proud to
have had a small part in it." And off he went upstairs.
I sat perfectly still for a long time. Was it possible that it was only
a week ago that I had heard the drum beat for the disarming of the Seine
et Marne? Was there really going to come a day when all the beauty
around me would not be a mockery? All at once it occurred to me that I
had promised Captain Simpson to write and tell him how I had "come
through." Perhaps this was the time. I went to the foot of the stairs
and called up to the chef-major. He came to the door and I explained,
asking him if, we being without a post-office, he could get a letter
through, and what kind of a letter I could write, as I knew the
censorship was severe.
"My dear lady," he replied, "go and write your letter,--write anything
you like,--and when I come down I will take charge of it and guarantee
that it shall go through, uncensored, no matter what it contains."
So I wrote to tell Captain Simpson that all was well at Huiry,--that we
had escaped, and were still grateful for all the trouble he had taken.
When the officer came down I gave it to him, unsealed.
"Seal it, seal it," he said, and when I had done so, he wrote, "Read and
approved" on the envelope, and gave it to his orderly, and was ready to
say "Good-bye."
"Don't look so serious about it," he laughed, as we shook hands. "Some
of us will get killed, but what of that? I wanted this war. I prayed
for it. I should have been sad enough if I had died before it came. I
have left a wife and children whom I adore, but I am ready to lay down
my life cheerfully for the victory of which I am so sure. Cheer up. I
think my hour has not yet come. I had three horses killed under me in
Belgium. At Charleroi a bomb exploded in a staircase as I was coming
down. I jumped--not a scratch to show. Things like that make a man feel
immune--but Who knows?"
I did my best to smile, as I said, "I don't wish you courage--you have
that, but--good luck."
"Thank you," he replied, "you've had that"; and away he marched, and
that was the last I saw of him.
I had a strange sensation about these men who had in so few days passed
so rapidly in and out of my life, and in a moment seemed like old
friends.
There was a bustle of preparation all about us. Such a harnessing of
horses, such a rolling-up of half-dried shirts, but it was all orderly
and systematic. Over it all hung a smell of soup-kettles--the
preparations for the midday meal, and a buzz of many voices as the men
sat about eating out of their tin dishes. I did wish I could see only
the picturesque side of it.
It was two o'clock sharp when the regiment began to move. No bands
played. No drum beat. They just marched, marched, marched along the
road to Meaux, and silence fell again on the hillside.
Off to the northeast the cannon still boomed,--it is still booming now
as I write, and it is after nine o'clock. There has been no sign of
Amelie all day as I have sat here writing all this to you. I have tried
to make it as clear a statement of facts as I could. I am afraid that I
have been more disturbed in putting it down than I was in living it.
Except on Saturday and Sunday I was always busy, a little useful, and
that helped. I don't know when I shall be able to get this off to you.
But at least it is ready, and I shall take the first opportunity I get
to cable to you, as I am afraid before this you have worried, unless
your geography is faulty, and the American papers are as reticent as
ours.
THE END
APPENDIX
In connection with the foregoing narrative this order issued by General
Joffre on September 4,1914, which has but just become available for
publication, has special interest and significance:--
1. It is fitting to take advantage of the rash situation of the First
German Army to concentrate upon it the efforts of the Allied Armies on
the extreme left. All dispositions will be made in the course of
September S to start for the attack on September 6.
2. The disposition to be carried out by the evening of September 5 will
be:--
(a) All the available forces of the Sixth Army to be to the northeast of
Meaux, ready to cross the Ourcq between Lizy-sur-Ourcq and May-en-Multien,
in the general direction of Chateau-Thierry. The available elements of
the First Cavalry Corps which are at hand will be placed for this
operation under the orders of General Maunoury (commanding the Sixth
Army).
(b) The British Army will be posted on the front of Changis-Coulommiers,
facing eastward, ready to attack in the general direction of Montmirail.
(c) The Fifth Army, closing a little to its left, will post itself on
the general front of Courtacon-Esternay-Sezanne, ready to attack in the
general direction from south to north, the Second Cavalry Corps securing
the connection between the British Army and the Fifth Army.
(d) The Ninth Army will cover the right of the Fifth Army, holding the
southern exits from the march of Saint-Gond and carrying part of its
forces on to the plateau north of Sezanne.