Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front Part 29

I wish you would come out and have dinner with us. There is to be mutton."

I accepted promptly, but it was the situation and not the mutton that appealed to me. It was arranged that they should go ahead and set things in motion for the meal, and that I should follow later.

At the door one of them turned and smiled at me.

"They are sh.e.l.ling the village," she said. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all," I replied. And I meant it. For I was no longer so gun-shy as I had been earlier in the winter. I had got over turning pale at the slamming of a door. I was as terrified, perhaps, but my pride had come to my aid.

It was the English officers who disapproved so thoroughly who told me about them when they had gone.

"Of course they have no business there," they said. "It's a frightful responsibility to place on the men at that part of the line. But there's no question about the value of what they are doing, and if they want to stay they deserve to be allowed to. They go right into the trenches, and they take care of the wounded until the ambulances can come up at night. Wait until you see their house and you will understand why they got those medals."

And when I had seen their house and spent an evening with them I understood very well indeed.

We gathered round the fire; conversation was desultory. Muddy and weary young officers, who had been at the front all day, came in and warmed themselves for a moment before going up to their cold rooms.

The owner of the broken wind shield arrived and was placated.

Continuous relays of tea were coming and going. Colonel ----, who had been in an observation balloon most of the day, spoke of balloon sickness.

"I have been in balloons of one sort and another for twenty years," he said. "I never overcome the nausea. Very few airmen do."

I spoke to him about a recent night attack by German aviators.

"It is remarkable work," he commented warmly, "hazardous in the extreme; and if anything goes wrong they cannot see where they are coming down. Even when they alight in their own lines, landing safely is difficult. They are apt to wreck their machines."

The mention of German aeroplanes reminded one of the officers of an experience he had had just behind the firing line.

"I had been to the front," he said, "and a mile or so behind the line a German aeroplane overtook the automobile. He flew low, with the evident intention of dropping a bomb on us. The chauffeur, becoming excited, stalled the engine. At that moment the aviator dropped the first bomb, killing a sow and a litter of young pigs beside the car and breaking all the gla.s.s. Cranking failed to start the car. It was necessary, while the machine manoeuvred to get overhead again, to lift the hood of the engine, examine a spark-plug and then crank the car.

He dropped a second bomb which fell behind the car and made a hole in the road. Then at last the engine started, and it took us a very short time to get out of that neighbourhood."

The car he spoke of was the car in which I had come out to the station. I could testify that something had broken the gla.s.s!

One of the officers had just received what he said were official percentages of casualties in killed, wounded and missing among the Allies, to the first of February.

The Belgian percentage was 66 2-3, the English 33 1-3 and the French 7. I have no idea how accurate the figures were, or his authority for them. He spoke of them as official. From casualties to hospitals and nurses was but a step. I spoke warmly of the work the nurses near the front were doing. But one officer disagreed with me, although in the main his views were not held by the others.

"The nurses at the base hospitals should be changed every three months," he said. "They get the worst cases there, in incredible conditions. After a time it tells on them. I've seen it in a number of cases. They grow calloused to suffering. That's the time to bring up a new lot."

I think he is wrong. I have seen many hospitals, many nurses. If there is a change in the nurses after a time, it is that, like the soldiers in the field, they develop a philosophy which carries them through their terrible days. "What must be, must be," say the men in the trenches. "What must be, must be," say the nurses in the hospital. And both save themselves from madness.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE

And now it was seven o'clock, and raining. Dinner was to be at eight.

I had before me a drive of nine miles along those slippery roads. It was dark and foggy, with the ground mist of Flanders turning to a fog.

The lamps of the car shining into it made us appear to be riding through a milky lake. Progress was necessarily slow.

One of the English officers accompanied me.

"I shall never forget the last time I dined out here," he said as we jolted along. "There is a Belgian battery just behind the house. All evening as we sat and talked I thought the battery was firing; the house shook under tremendous concussion. Every now and then Mrs. K---- or Miss C---- would get up and go out, coming back a few moments later and joining calmly in the conversation.

"Not until I started back did I know that we had been furiously bombarded, that the noise I had heard was sh.e.l.ls breaking all about the place. A 'coal-box,' as they call them here, had fallen in the garden and dug a great hole!"

"And when the young ladies went out, were they watching the bombs burst?" I inquired.

"Not at all," he said. "They went out to go into the trenches to attend to the wounded. They do it all the time."

"And they said nothing about it!"

"They thought we knew. As for going into the trenches, that is what they are there to do."

My enthusiasm for mutton began to fade. I felt convinced that I should not remain calm if a sh.e.l.l fell into the garden. But again, as happened many times during those eventful weeks at the front, my pride refused to allow me to turn back. And not for anything in the world would I have admitted being afraid to dine where those two young women were willing to eat and sleep and have their being day and night for months.

"But of course," I said, "they are well protected, even if they are at the trenches. That is, the Germans never get actually into the town."

"Oh, don't they?" said the officer. "That town has been taken by the Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting."

"Where do they go at such times?" I asked.

"I never thought about it. I suppose they get into the cellar. But if they do it is not at all because they are afraid."

We went on, until some five of the nine miles had been traversed.

I have said before that the activity at the front commences only with the falling of night. During the day the zone immediately back of the trenches is a dead country. But at night it wakens into activity.

Soldiers leave the trenches and fresh soldiers take their places, ammunition and food are brought up, wires broken during the day by sh.e.l.ls are replaced, ambulances come up and receive their frightful burdens.

Now we reached the zone of night activity. A travelling battery pa.s.sed us, moving from one part of the line to another; the drivers, three to each gun, sat stolidly on their horses, their heads dropped against the rain. They appeared out of the mist beside us, stood in full relief for a moment in the glow of the lamps, and were swallowed up again.

At three miles from our destination, but only one mile from the German lines, it was necessary to put out the lamps. Our progress, which had been dangerous enough before, became extremely precarious. It was necessary to turn out for teams and lorries, for guns and endless lines of soldiers, and to turn out a foot too far meant slipping into the mud. Two miles and a half from the village we turned out too far.

There was a sickening side slip. The car turned over to the right at an acute angle and there remained. We were mired!

We got out. It was perfectly dark. Guns were still pa.s.sing us, so that it was necessary to warn the drivers of our wrecked car. The road was full of sh.e.l.l holes, so that to step was to stumble. The German lines, although a mile away, seemed very near. Between the road and the enemy was not a tree or a shrub or a fence--only the line of the railway embankment which marked the Allies' trenches. To add to the dismalness of the situation the Germans began throwing the familiar magnesium lights overhead. The flares made the night alike beautiful and fearful. It was possible when one burst near to see the entire landscape spread out like a map--ditches full of water, sodden fields, sh.e.l.l holes in the roads which had become lakes, the long lines of poplars outlining the road ahead. At one time no less than twenty starlights hung in the air at one time. When they went out the inky night seemed blacker than ever. I stepped off the road and was almost knee-deep in mud at once.

The battery pa.s.sed, urging its tired horses to such speed as was possible. After it came thousands of men, Belgian and French mostly, on their way out of the trenches.

We called for volunteers from the line to try to lift the car onto the road. But even with twenty men at the towing rope it refused to move.

The men were obliged to give it up and run on to catch their companies.

Between the _fusees_ the curious shuffling of feet and a deeper shadow were all that told of the pa.s.sage of these troops. It was so dark that one could see no faces. But here and there one saw the light of a cigarette. The mere hardship of walking for miles along those roads, paved with round stones and covered with mud on which their feet slipped continually, must have been a great one, and agonizing for feet that had been frosted in the water of the trenches.

Afterward I inquired what these men carried. They loomed up out of the night like pack horses. I found that each soldier carried, in addition to his rifle and bayonet, a large knapsack, a canteen, a cartridge pouch, a brown haversack containing tobacco, soap, towel and food, a billy-can and a rolled blanket.

German batteries were firing intermittently as we stood there. The rain poured down. I had dressed to go out to tea and wore my one and only good hat. I did the only thing that seemed possible--I took off that hat and put it in the automobile and let the rain fall on my unprotected head. The hat had to see me through the campaign, and my hair would stand water.