On the Edge of the War Zone Part 20

Amelie greeted him with: "Well, young man, we thought you were lost!"

He laughed, as he explained that he had been to make a toilet, see the regimental tailor, and order a new topcoat.

"I would not, for anything in the world, have had madame see me in the state I was in an hour ago. She has to see my rags, but I spared her the dirt," and he held up the coat to show its rudely sewed-up rents, and turned over his helmet to show the hole in the top.

"And here is what hit me," and he took out of his pocket a rough piece of a sh.e.l.l, and held it up, as if it were very precious. Indeed, he had it wrapped in a clean envelope, all ready to take up to Paris and show his mother, as he is to have his leave of a week while he is here.

I felt like saying "Don't," but I didn't. I suppose it is hard for an ambitious soldier of twenty to realize that the mother of an only son, and that son such a boy as this, must have some feeling besides pride in her heart as she looks at him.

So now we are settled again, and used to the trotting of horses, the banging of grenades and splitting of mitrailleuses. From the window as I write--I am up in the attic, which Amelie calls the "atelier,"

because it is in the top of the house and has a tiny north light in the roof--that being the only place where I am sure of being undisturbed-- I can see horses being trained in the wide field on the side of the hill between here and Quincy. They are manoeuvring with all sorts of noises about them--even racing in a circle while grenades and guns are fired.

In spite of all that, there came near being a lovely accident right in front of the gate half an hour ago.

The threshing-machine is at work in front of the old grange on the other side of the road, just above my house. The men had come back from breakfast, and were starting the machine up just as two mounted soldiers, each leading two horses, rode out of the grange at Amelie's, and started down the hill at a trot. The very moment the horses were turning out to pa.s.s the machine,--and the s.p.a.ce was barely sufficient between the machine and the bank--a heedless man blew three awful blasts on his steam whistle to call his aids. The cavalry horses were used to guns, and the shrill mouth whistles of the officers, but that did not make them immune to a steam siren, and in a moment there was the most dangerous mix-up I ever saw. I expected to see both riders killed, and I don't know now why they were not, but neither man was thrown, even in spite of having three frightened horses to master.

It was a stupid thing for the man on the machine to do. He would have only had to wait one minute and the horses would have been by with a clear road before them if they shied. But he "didn't think." The odd thing was that the soldiers did not say an ugly word. I suppose they are used to worse.

You have been reproaching me for over a year that I did not write enough about the war. I do hope that all this movement about me interests you. It is not war by any means, but the nearest relation to it that I have seen in that time. It is its movements, its noise, its clothes.

It is gay and brave, and these men are no "chocolate soldiers."

x.x.xII

January 30, 1917

My, but it is cold here! Wednesday the 24th it was 13 below zero, and this morning at ten o'clock it was 6 below. Of course this is in Centigrade and not Fahrenheit, but it is a cold from which I suffer more--it is so damp--than I ever did from the dry, sunny, below zero as you know it in the States. Not since 1899 have I seen such cold as this in France. I have seen many a winter here when the ground has hardly frozen at all. This year it began to freeze a fortnight ago. It began to snow on the 17th, a fine dry snow, and as the ground was frozen it promises to stay on. It has so far, in spite of the fact that once or twice since it fell the sun has shone. It looks very pretty, quite unnatural, very reminiscent of New England.

It makes life hard for us as well as the soldiers, but they laugh and say, "We have seen worse." They prefer it to rain and mud. But it makes roading hard; everything is so slippery, and if you ever happened to see a French horse or a French person "walking on ice"

I don't need to say more.

Well, the unexpected has happened--the cavalry has moved on.

They expected--as much as a soldier ever expects anything--to have divided their time until March between our hill and the trenches in the Foret de Laigue. But on the twenty-second orders began to rush in from headquarters, announcing a change of plan; a move was ordered and counter-ordered every few hours for three days, until Thursday afternoon, the twenty-fifth, the final order came--the whole division to be ready to mount at seven-thirty the next morning, orders for the direction to come during the night.

You never saw such a rushing about to collect clothes and get them dried. You see it has been very hard to get washing done. The Morin, where the wash-houses are, is frozen, and even when things are washed, they won't dry in this air, and there is no coal to heat the drying-houses.

However, it was done after a fashion. Everyone who had wood kept a fire up all night.

On Wednesday afternoon I had a little tea-party for some of the sous- officiers--mere boys--a simple goodbye spread of bread and b.u.t.ter and dry cookies,--nothing else to be had. I could not even make cake, as we have had no fine sugar for months. However, the tea was extra good--sent me from California for Christmas--and I set the table with all my prettiest things, and the boys seemed to enjoy themselves.

They told me before leaving that never since they were at the front had they been anywhere so well received or so comfortable as they have been here, and that it would be a long time before they "forgot Huiry." Well, we on our side can say that we never dreamed that a conscript army could have a whole regiment of such fine men. So you see we are all very much pleased with each other, and if the 23d Dragoons are not going to forget us, we are as little likely to forget them.

Thursday evening, before going to bed, the Aspirant and I sat at the kitchen table and made a lot of sandwiches, as they are carrying three days' provisions. They expected a five hours' march on the first day, and a night under the tents, then another day's march, during which they would receive their orders for their destination. When the sandwiches were done, and wrapped up ready for his orderly to put in the saddlebags, with his other provisions, he said: "Well, I am going to say goodbye to you tonight, and thank you for all your kindness."

"Not at all," I answered. "I shall be up in the morning to see you start."

He protested. It was so cold, so early, etc. But my mind was made up.

I a.s.sure you that it was cold,--18 below,--but I got up when I heard the orderly arrive in the morning. I had been awake for hours, for at three o'clock the horses were being prepared. Every man had three to feed and saddle, and pack. Orderlies were running about doing the last packing for the officers, and carrying kits to the baggage-wagons.

Amelie came at six. When I got downstairs I found the house warm and coffee ready. The Aspirant was taking his standing. It was more convenient than sitting in a chair. Indeed, I doubt if he could have sat.

I had to laugh at the picture he made. I never regretted so much that I have not indulged in a camera. He was top-booted and spurred. He had on his new topcoat and his mended helmet--catch a young soldier who has been hit on the head by his first obus having a new and unscarred one. He was hung over with his outfit like a Santa Claus. I swore he could never get into the saddle, but he scorned my doubts.

To the leather belt about his waist, supported by two straps over his shoulders, were attached his revolver, in its case with twenty rounds of cartridges; his field gla.s.ses; his map-case; his bidon--for his wine; square doc.u.ment case; his mask against asphyxiating gas; and, if you please, his kodak! Over one shoulder hung a flat, half-circular bag, with his toilet articles, over the other its mate, with a change, and a few necessary articles.

He looked to me as if he would ride two hundred pounds heavy, and he hasn't an ounce of extra flesh on him.

I laughed even harder when I saw him mounted. In one side of the holster was his gamelle; in the other, ammunition. The saddlebags contained on one side twenty pounds of oats for the horse; on the other three days' provisions for himself. I knew partly what was in that bag, and it was every bit as heavy as the horse's fodder, for there were sandwiches, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tinned meat, peas, corn, fruit, etc. Behind the saddle was rolled his blanket, inside his section of tent cover,--it takes six of them to make a real tent. They are arranged to b.u.t.ton together.

I was sitting in the bedroom window when he rode on to the terrace. I had to laugh as I looked down at him.

"And why does madame laugh?" he asked, trying to keep a sober face himself.

"Well," I replied, "I am only wondering if that is your battle array?"

"Certainly," he answered. "Why does it surprise you?"

I looked as serious as I could, as I explained that I had supposed, naturally, that the cavalry went into action as lightly equipped as possible.

He looked really indignant, as he snapped: "That would be quite unnatural. What do you suppose that Peppino and I are going to do after a battle? Wait for the commissary department to find us? No, madame, after a battle it will not be of my mother nor home, nor even of you, that we will be thinking. We shall think of something to eat and drink." Then he added, with a laugh, "Alas! We shan't have all these nice things you have given us. They will have been eaten by tomorrow."

I apologized, and said I'd know better another time, and he patted his horse, as he backed away, and said to him: "Salute the lady, Peppino, and tell her prettily that you had the honor of carrying Teddy Roosevelt the day he went to the review." And the horse pawed and bowed and neighed, and his rider wheeled him carefully as he saluted and said: "Au revoir, I shall write, and, after the war, I shall give myself the pleasure of seeing you," and he rode carefully out of the gate--a very delicate operation, as only half of it was open. Laden as the horse was, he just made it, and away he galloped down the hill to Voisins, where the cavalry was a.s.sembling.

I stayed in the window a few minutes to wave a goodbye to the men as they led each their three horses down the hill. Then I put on my heaviest coat, a polo cap, all my furs and mittens, thrust my felt shoes into my sabots, and with one hand in my m.u.f.f, I took the big French flag in the other and went through the snow down to the hedge to watch the regiment pa.s.s, on the road to Esbly.

Even before I got out of the house the news came that the 118th Regiment of infantry, the boys who retook Vaux in the great battle at Verdun, had been marching in from Meaux, and were camped, waiting to take up the billets the 23d Dragoons were vacating.

I stood in the snow for nearly half an hour, holding up the heavy flag, which flapped bravely in the icy wind, and watching the long grey line moving slowly along the road below. I could see half a mile of the line --grey, steel-helmeted men, packed horses, grey wagons--winding down the hill in the winter landscape, so different from the France I had always known. Hardly a sound came back--no music, no colors-- the long, grey column moved in a silent, almost colorless world. I shifted the heavy flag from one hand to the other as my fingers got stiff, but, alas! I could not shift my feet. Long before the line had pa.s.sed I was forced to fasten the flag to a post in the hedge and leave it to float by itself, and limp into the house. As a volunteer color- bearer I was a failure. I had to let Amelie take off my shoes and rub my feet, and I had hard work not to cry while she was doing it. I was humiliated, especially as I remembered that the boys had a five hours' march as their first etape, and a bivouac at the end of it.

I had intended to go out later on the route Madame to watch the cavalry coming down from the hills on the other side of the Morin, but I could not face the cold. There is nothing heroic about me. So I contented myself with helping Amelie set the house in order.

Needless to tell you that no one knows what this unexpected big movement of troops means.

It is inevitable that we should all imagine that it concerns the coming spring offensive. At any rate, the cavalry is being put back into its saddles, and the crack regiments are coming out of Verdun--the famous corps which has won immortal fame there, and written the name of Verdun in letters of flame in the list of the world's great battles, and enshrined French soldiers in the love of all who can be stirred by courage in a n.o.ble cause, or know what it means to have the heart swell at the thought of the "sacred love of home and country."

Although I have sworn--and more than once--that I will not talk politics with you again, or discuss any subject which can be considered as its most distant blood relation, yet every time you reiterate "Aren't the French wonderfully changed? Aren't you more and more surprised at them?" it goes against the grain.

Does it never occur to you that France held her head up wonderfully after the terrible humiliation of 1870? Does it never occur to you what it meant to a great nation, so long a centre of civilization, and a great race, so long a leader in thought, to have found herself without a friend, and to have had to face such a defeat,--a defeat followed by a shocking treaty which kept that disaster forever before her? Do you never think of the hidden shame, the cankering mortification of the consciousness of that nation across the frontier, which had battened on its victory, and was so strong in brute force, that, however brave a face one might put on, there was behind that smiling front always a hidden fear of Germany--an eternal foe, ever gaining in numbers and eternally shaking her mailed fist.

No nation so humiliated ever rose out of her humiliation as France did, but the hidden memory, the daily consciousness of it, set its outward mark on the race. It bred that sort of bravado which was eternally accusing itself, in the consciousness that it had taken a thrashing it could never hope to avenge. Count up the past dares that France has had to take from Germany, so strong in mere numbers and physical strength that to attempt to fight her alone, as she did in 1870, meant simply to court annihilation, and fruitlessly. That does not mean that France was really afraid, but only that she was too wise to dare attempt to prove that she was not afraid. So many things in the French that the world has not understood were the result of the cankering wound of 1870. This war has healed that wound. Germany is not invincible, and the chivalrous, loving aid that rallied to help France is none the less comforting simply because since 1914 all nations have learned that the trend of Germany's ambition was a menace to them as well as to France.