A couple of hours later the shelling had ceased so completely that it was comparatively safe for anyone to wander about the field which had so recently been the scene of one of the greatest battles in history. Here and there, in shellholes marked by a bit of rag tied to a stick, we found many of our own boys and the boys of other Canadian battalions who needed attention. Stretcher parties were made up, generally of German prisoners, and the wounded were cleared with all possible speed.
One poor young chap we discovered late in the afternoon in an advanced shellhole, with his leg badly wounded and broken, he having lain there from 6.15 in the morning. Yet he smiled good-humoredly and thanked us gratefully for what we did, asking only for a cigarette after we fixed him up. Field ambulance stretcher bearers and German prisoners under Captain K——, M.C., of No. — Canadian Field Ambulance, worked tremendously to clear the field. Other working parties were encountered at different points, all with the same object.
In our rounds we visited all that remained of Thelus and saw some of the many captured guns. One of the most interesting visits we made was to a cave at Les Tilleuls, near Thelus, which was being used as H.Q. for another battalion as well as H.Q. for C Company of our own. Here Lieutenant J—— greeted us warmly but failed to tell us the details of his own exploit, which has acquired a fame it well deserves and for which he received the Military Cross. Here is the story:
Lieutenant J—— was second in command of C Company, the C.O. being "Old Pop," who was killed early in the fight, the command of the company devolving upon his subordinate. He is a boy of twenty-two, a bank clerk in civil life, as mild, gentle and good natured a lad as one could find in a day's march. He had led his men on till they obtained their objective, and then he and a corporal who were scouting about came to this cave with its long, winding staircase. They threw down a couple of Mills bombs, drew their revolvers, and went down, to be confronted in flickering candle light by one hundred and five German officers and men, all armed.
Bluffing that they had a large force upstairs, they covered and disarmed the 105 Germans, took them prisoners, and, hunting up an escort for them, sent them to the rear. Those are the cold, bare, undecorated facts. And then to complete as pretty a bit of work as was done at Vimy Ridge, Lieutenant J—— took a German carrier pigeon that he found in the cave, tied to its leg a message giving the necessary essentials, and finishing with the words, "everything bright and cheery," he freed it. It found its way to our battalion H.Q. at Ulmer House, where we had the pleasure of reading the note!
To stand at the mouth of this cave and look about on all sides as far as the eye could see, and to know that all that shell-racked ground was won in a few hours by the citizen army of Canada made one feel a legitimate pride in being a native of that land. And the stories which kept dribbling in for days, as we held the line, of the gallantry of this man or the nobly inspiring death of that one, were of deep interest to us all.
Of our own battalion we lost on the 9th, 217 men out of a total of 657, and ten officers—not counting two who were slightly wounded—out of twenty-two of us. Three of our officers were killed outright: "Old Pop;" Lieutenant Beechraft, an American lawyer from Michigan, who often said to me with a confident smile: "The Germans have not yet made a shell to get me." And he was right, poor Tom, for I saw him lying dead that day on the field with a German rifle bullet wound in his head. The third of our officers killed was Major Hutchins, a man well past fifty, who had recently joined us and who had taken a Lieutenant's position of platoon commander in order to serve at the front. This was his first fight, and he was killed by a shell while leading his platoon across No Man's Land. All honor to his gray hairs, and may they ever be an inspiration to younger men!
One of the best stories of this battle concerned a Canadian Brigade on our left under the command of Brigadier General H——. This brigade on April 9 took all its objectives except one very difficult hill, No. 140, nicknamed, because of its shape, the Pimple. The General of the division sent word to Brigadier General H—— that he was going to send in some British troops to aid him in capturing this hill. Brigadier General H—— is a bonnie fighter, an Anglo-Indian who has been living some years in British Columbia, and he has a temper much resembling an Irish terrier's. He curtly sent back word that his Canadians needed no assistance. Knowing him well, the General of division good-naturedly replied that if General H—— succeeded in taking this difficult hill they would give him the title Lord Pimple. The next day the division received the following message:
Have taken, am consolidating, and will hold Hill 140.
(Sgd.) LORD PIMPLE.
The main facts of this story can be verified in the official records of this division.
I have a vivid recollection of General H—— when he was Lieutenant Colonel in command of the —th Canadian Battalion. I had been sent there to relieve the regular Medical Officer who was away on leave in England. Lieutenant Colonel H—— was also away on leave during my first few days' service with his battalion.
On a certain day when we were being relieved from the front line opposite Bully Grenay I had not yet seen General H——. On going out with my orderlies we were to pass along Damoisette trench, which was one of the front support trenches, and was an "out" trench that day. We found it blocked by some other officers of our battalion and a couple of platoons, for this trench was being heavily shelled just ahead of the block. We joined the others and waited some time, when an officer said:
"By G—, I take enough chances without waiting here for the Huns to drop those shells on our heads. I am going out Caron d'Aix," which was an "in" trench that day for this relief. But the relief was to have been completed at 10 a.m., and it was then 10:15, so we would hardly cause any obstruction. This fact, combined with the fact that probably everyone, as is often the case, was waiting for someone else to propose going back, made us all turn about and retrace our steps. We were going along Caron d'Aix trench when I heard an angry voice behind me demanding:
"Doctor, what are you doing in this trench? Don't you know that this is an 'in' trench?"
I turned and saw a thin-lipped, square-jawed Lieutenant Colonel who, I guessed at once, was our returned O.C. I explained that Damoisette was being shelled heavily, that relief was complete, and that only three of the men ahead were mine. His face was quite dark and frowning, and I could see that he was debating as to whether he should give me a strafing, or pass it over. Finally, he said sharply:
"All right; carry on."
That night at Bully I did not look forward with any great pleasure to my dinner, for I had heard of his reputation as to temper, and I expected he would say a few things to me, though, as Kelly well put it, "it's none of an officer's business to put his nose against an advancin' German shell." But I plucked up my courage and entered the H.Q. mess room, to be greeted in a kindly and friendly manner by Lieutenant Colonel H——.
"How are you, doctor? I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before," shaking my hand.
"Pardon me, sir, but you met me in a trench today where I had no right to be."
"No. You were quite right to be there. I made inquiries, and find you were right. And anyway, I had no damned right to be there myself."
In the time that I remained with his battalion I found him always to be a courteous gentleman, but with an irascible temper. One would not be surprised if, since his becoming a Brigadier General, his temper is less touchy. And the incident of the Pimple shows that he is an efficient officer, well worthy of the land of his forefathers, and a credit to the country of his adoption and of his men.
One day toward the end of March, 1917, our battalion was in reserve in huts and tents at Bois des Alleux, a mile or so back of Mt. St. Eloy, so I took advantage of a fine afternoon to ride about the country. Making a detour through fields to avoid being stopped by some officious transport control, I came to the Route Nationale running from Bethune to Arras.
To my surprise it looked like the Strand on a busy day, for it was full of marching troops, transport wagons, hurrying motor cars with staff officers, and double-decked motor busses painted gray, full of Tommies, gay and happy, going to a railhead to enjoy a well-earned leave. One could not but wonder in what part of London these motor busses used to carry their passengers, and think how strange it was to see them now hurrying along a French road within shell fire of the Germans. As I rode along the well-paved route, our trench lines could be seen in the nearby fields, and the picturesque towers of Mt. St. Eloy were on my left, seen through the nets stretched from tree to tree to hide the traffic from the watchful eyes of the German observers.
Riding toward Arras, eight kilometers away, I came up with an English officer riding in the same direction. When I joined him he was at first, as all English officers are, a little loath to be joined by a stranger, though the latter wears the same uniform. But gradually he thawed and became the likable, courteous chap that the English officer nearly always becomes on closer acquaintance. He informed me that one required a pass to enter Arras, but as he had one and was going in to see his commanding officer, he offered to take me in as the medical officer of his battalion. Availing myself of this brotherly offer, I rode with him along the net-guarded road till we came to the outskirts of Arras where a sentry allowed me to enter with him. We put up our horses at the old French cavalry barracks, now occupied by British—not Canadian—troops, and then we started out to search for his C.O.
We came first to what was once the attractive Boulevard Carnot, now "Barbwire Square," as it was nearly filled with this material to keep the soldiers out of it to prevent them from being hit by the German shells which landed there daily, either from the enemy lines only 100 yards away, or from hostile aeroplanes. The Huns had the range of this street to a nicety. As we walked along the street shells bursting a couple of blocks away threw pieces of rock so near our heads that we were glad when we reached the end of it.
We wandered about the streets, deserted by nearly all civilians except an old man here and there walking about with bowed head, or an old woman long past the days of her beauty being spoiled by the splinters of a shell. Except in a shop where I coaxed a young woman to sell me a souvenir spoon, in two hours I saw only one young woman in the streets. She was hurrying along with a parcel under her arm, paying no heed to the sharp, cutting explosions of our 18-pounders nearby or to the explosions of the German shells a few blocks away. She looked for all the world like a young housewife returning home after a morning's shopping.
The houses that lined the streets were nearly all closed. All of them showed marks of shell fire, some being completely demolished, others having only the rear walls standing with parts of the sides pointing outward like arms stretching forth for their loved ones. The immense station of the Chemin de Fer du Nord was a mass of ruins. The stone Cathedral was represented by the lower part of the tower, and a brass bell lying on the pavement, the bell that had in times of peace so often called the faithful to prayer. The Avenue Pasteur—France is a country that recognizes its scientists—showed few complete buildings, and ironically one noted the ruin that German shells had made of the Avenue Strassbourg.
Here and there a stone barricade had been built, loopholes being left for machine-guns, to prevent a possible German advance. Notices told all to keep near the walls and away from the open streets to avoid shell fire. Estaminets, cafés, épiceries, and restaurants were all damaged and closed. Joyful nights and gay days were things of the past in this shadow of a prosperous city.À la mode Parisienne, the sign over a ladies' suit store, was all that remained of the center of fashion of the women of Arras.
Altogether Arras, which had been a well-built and modern city of 25,000 people, had become a deserted village. What shutters remained were closed and riddled with shrapnel, and the place had a sad, forbidding air, as if the inhabitants had flown because of some horrible plague. It reminded one of the ruins of Pompeii. In one square stood the pedestal only of a monument erected, it said, in 1910, "in honor of the sons of Arras who had died for their native land." When the monument is rebuilt the dead heroes in whose honor it was erected will have been joined by many comrades.
I passed out of the walls, depressed by the unhappy wreck of a once prosperous city destroyed by the highly refined methods of warfare developed by twentieth century German kultur.
(Trench Stew)
Usually hunting partridge or grouse is the pleasure only of those who remain at home; but one day, while sitting in a dugout, I enjoyed a wonderful meal.
Our dugout was in a communication trench some five hundred yards from the front line, and probably six hundred from the German. The dugout was one of those steel-roofed affairs, the roof forming a graceful semicircle of one-eighth-inch metal, covered with sand a foot thick, carelessly shoveled on. My orderlies were Corporal Roy, a Canadian boy of twenty; Private Jock whose well-developed sense of dry Scotch humor showed itself by his irritating the men about him by any method of teasing which came easiest, but whose personal good nature and loyal love of doing his duty, be it the most arduous and dangerous, made everyone forgive him any of his annoying tricks; and my batman, Private John, a decent, clean and brave Canadian boy who, by the way, was one of the best men I ever had to look after my comforts, or lessen my discomforts, whichever way you choose to put it.
This fine, cool winter day we had been standing at the door of our dugout peeping over a comparatively safe bit of parapet, watching some of our sixty-pound trench mortars hurtle through the air and burst in the German lines. At last, tiring of the performance, I went inside and sat down to read one of Jeffrey Farnol's latest books. A few minutes later Roy came hurrying in, grabbed his rifle, and went racing out again. Wondering what was the cause of this strange behavior, and hearing a shot, I went out.
Turning into the main communication trench, I was just in time to see Corporal Roy climbing back over the parapet with a plump, dead partridge in his hand. Only those of you who have been living for some months on army rations can appreciate the glorious anticipations which a fat, plump partridge can conjure up in one's imagination. His rifle was leaning against the parados, and Roy explained to us that he had seen two partridges, but had only succeeded in getting one. His impatience getting the better of his judgment, he did not wait till dark to go out and get his prize, but went over the parapet in plain view of German snipers only six hundred yards away, and brought in his bag of game.
The partridge was cleaned by John and Jock and with the addition of a little mutton and carrots from last night's rations, I made a stew of it. All agreed—perhaps my boys didn't dare to disagree—that it was delicious.
This is the recipe forRagoût à la mode de guerre: Shoot a partridge over the parapet on a bright day; take your life in your hands to go out and get the victim; clean it—but not too clean; mix with it a little mutton and carrots; stew it in a canteen or dixie over a charcoal brazier, with plenty of the penetrating charcoal fumes entering your lungs; and perform all these rites in a dugout with enemy shells popping about in the neighborhood. If you have carefully carried out all these directions, then, being sufficiently hungry, add a goodly portion of that most savory of sauces—appetite—to the dish. I promise you that, though your tastes areblaséto the last degree, you will admit thatRagoût à la mode de guerremakes a meal fit for the discriminating palate of a king.
Leave is the be-all and end-all of anyone who has been at the front for any great time. It is supposed to come every three months. It never does, but you know that if you stay long enough it will come, for Army Headquarters, Corps H.Q., Divisional H.Q. and finally Brigade H.Q. (I don't dare mention Battalion H.Q.!) "may use all of the leave some of the time, and some of the leave all of the time, but they cannot go on using all of the leave all of the time," to paraphrase Mr. P. T. Barnum in regard to fooling the people.
So all you must do is to possess your soul in patience, avoid getting directly in front of a shell or bullet, and some day in the dim and distant future leave will come for you to expose yourself once again to the temptations of the World, the Flesh and the Devil in London; that is, if any of them remain when the Bishop of London, the Food Controller, the Anti-Treating Laws, and the Provost Marshal have done their work.
One day a fellow officer (in this connection I nearly said sufferer) informs you that his batman was told by the O.C.'s batman that he had heard that the Brigadier General was taking leave the end of the month. After that you go on hearing by devious routes that the Brigade Majors, Captains, and Lieutenants are going soon, and suddenly you realize that shortly your own Battalion Headquarters will find leave filtering through on them. And perchance, toward the end of the list, you know you come somewhere.
It is then you look up your bank account, if you happen to have any, and you take no extra chances either with shells or superstitions, for soldiers are almost as superstitious as sailors.
You could barely find in the British Armies ten men who would light three cigarettes with one match, and that despite the fact that the match ration is sometimes as absent as the rum ration. We none of us are superstitious, but we adhere to the same platform as did a very charming Canterbury lady. Her two sons, as fine chaps as England produces, were at the front, and as she and I, walking down St. George's Place, came to a ladder leaning against the wall of a building, she carefully walked round the other side of it, saying:
"You know, Doctor, I am not the faintest bit superstitious, but I am not taking any chances these days." And that is the position of the Army in the field. They are not taking any chances.
Your leave comes one day after many months beyond the three required of you. You start to a railhead where you put up for a night at an Officers' Club and mingle with the other happy beings who are leaving for the same purpose on the nine-mile-per-hour French train in the morning. As you sit about after a dinner that makes your ration meals for the past six months look literally like "thirty cents," you light a cigarette, cock up your heels, and look at the world through a beaming face, made ruddy by an extra portion of the grape juice of France, and wearing a smile that won't come off.
"You going on leave, too?" you ask genially of your neighbor, a young officer of that Suicide Club, the Royal Flying Corps. He is about twenty-one, and you feel old enough to almost patronize him. But before you do it you glance carefully at his left breast to see if it is, or is not, covered with D.S.O., M.C., and perhaps, V.C., ribbons. To your relief you find it isn't. However, on second thought, you decide you will keep your patronizing for the Army Service Corps and not for these smiling, gay, life-risking, dare-devil boys about you.
"Y-yes in a w-w-way," the young chap answers with a charming boyish smile, "sick leave. My old b-bus hit the earth s-s-suddenly, and I'm g-going for a rest. I d-d-didn't always talk l-l-like this." And in an engaging way he stammers out an invitation for you to take a Crême de Menthe with him. Of course, courtesy compels you, much against your desire, to accept. He has with him two others of the R.F.C., all young like himself, and for a couple of hours you listen to their modest tales of their really wonderful exploits, undreamed of except by the far-seeing few twenty-five years ago. One of the others has a scraped nose, blackened eye and swollen lip, which he says he received when his "waggon," in landing, struck a rough bit of ground which, "he tried to plow up and he must have hit the bally gravel underneath."
"W-were you t-t-tight?" asks the first with that boyish smile.
"Certainly not," indignantly replied the other, and he laughed. "Of course, I had had a couple in the morning, but I had a sleep afterwards, and anyway, the O.C. smelt my breath, and he wouldn't have allowed me up if he had smelt anything."
And you listen with fascination to their comparisons of their machines and their methods of diving; and "stalling," in which they drive up against the wind in such a way that they can keep stationary in relation to a certain bit of earth; and "corkscrewing," or nose-diving, towards the earth with a circular turning of the whole aeroplane, out of the midst of enemies, and righting the machine thousands of feet lower down out of danger.
You become quite an expert as you listen. They tell you that earlier in the war the German aviators were very chivalrous foes, returning courtesy for courtesy, never shooting a fallen enemy, and dropping notes as to the fate of some of our missing airmen. On one occasion the great German aviator, Immelman, who remained chivalrous till his death, dropped a box of cigars on the aerodrome of a great British pilot, "with the compliments of the German Air Service." The following night the Briton returned the compliment in the same manner. But now the Germans in the air, as on the sea and on land, are much less sportsmanlike and take mean advantages of a fallen foe.
You listen to stories of the great exploits of Baron Richtofen's "circus," and still greater of the "circus" of our own Captain Ball—unhappily since killed—who at times went up in his pyjamas. He had a trick of shooting straight up through the roof of his plane at an enemy overhead and, fearing that the enemy might some day try the same trick on him, he had a machine gun so placed that he could also shoot through the floor directly downwards. Oh, what entrancing, picturesque stories, beyond the wildest dreams of imagination two generations ago!
"I always take up with me a goodly supply of cigarettes in case I have to land where I can't get any. Do you?" asks one.
"N-no, I d-d-don't. That's looking for t-t-trouble. I order b-b-breakfast of p-porridge and cream and b-b-bacon and eggs," smiles our young stammering friend. "And then it's all ready when I c-c-come in."
You listen for hours to these gallant boys who have all the fine natural courtesy and modesty of the well-bred English, and the gayety of a Charles O'Malley. Unconsciously they make you feel that you really have seen such a prosaic side of the war in comparison with them. Then, like all good Britons, they for some time curse the Government, and you aid and abet them. The night wears on, the liqueur bottle runs low, and at last you must say good-night to these rollicking boys who insist that you must not fail when you come back to visit their mess, "for you C-C-Canadians, you know, are such d-damned fine chaps, and we l-love to meet you."
The little sin of flattery is so easily forgiven when it is accompanied by that frank, fascinating smile, and when you have all been tasting a drop of good French liqueur.
You wend your way up creaky old stairs to No. 13, or is it 31, and, luxury of luxuries, you find a tub of hot water—or it was hot at the hour for which you ordered it—awaiting you. Divesting yourself of your clothes you double your body this way and that in a vain endeavor to dip more than half of yourself at once.
At last you feel clean, and you struggle into pyjamas, and crawl into bed between real, white, clean linen sheets for the first time in six months, and you sleep as no emperor can sleep on the most silken of divans, while you dream of the morrow when you really begin your leave.
Leave! Ah, we were speaking of leave! Well, let us, you and I, take it together. Let us enjoy to the full the flesh-pots of London. For our leave lasts only ten days, and the war must go on till we have shown the Hun that he cannot autocratically put his Prussian militaristic crown of thorns on the fair brow of Civilization.
Paris, that queen of cities, has been an interesting study to all who have paid her a visit at any time, but particularly interesting is that study since the war began.
Previous to the war I had the good fortune to visit this city on a number of occasions, my last visit having been but a few months before the beginning of this great militaristic conflagration which is still sweeping over the civilized world. At that time I had just returned from a "grand tour," taking in Italy, Austria, and Southern Germany, where no signs were discernible on the horizon of the stupendous attempt at world domination which the Prussian junkers were to engineer within four months' time. Paris at that time was enjoying bright and balmy spring weather; the boulevards were crowded with visiting tourists, the Champs-Elysées with gay and merry crowds, and the Bois de Boulogne with riders and motorists in its wooded avenues, and rowers and paddlers on its lakes. It remained in my memory a picture of beauty, peace, gayety, and prosperity.
My return to it came within the year, at the beginning of 1915, when the war cloud that hung over the whole of Europe particularly dimmed the sun of Paris. I came into it in the afternoon from the north, and my first view of it showed that beautiful edifice, the Church of the Sacre Coeur, on the hill of Montmartre standing outen silhouette, "just as if cut from paper," as a traveling companion remarked.
Since the war began, on one's arrival at his hotel in Paris he has to give many particulars of himself not required in peace times. The following morning he must call at the nearest police station and obtain, after many more questions as to nationality, occupation, and reasons for being there, apermis de séjour—permit to remain—good for a certain length of time, at the expiration of which the permit must be renewed.
On stepping out of my hotel the following morning to go to the police station, the first thing that struck my attention was the large number of women in mourning, though it was then only a matter of months since the beginning of hostilities. The thought that flitted sadly through my mind was that one-half of the women of Paris are in mourning now, and ere long the other half will be. It must not be forgotten that the French wear mourning for relations much more distant than those for whom we wear it; but even at that the war must not have gone on many months before a very large percentage of the French homes had been touched by the deaths of those near and dear to them. For the soil of France was under the heel of the foreign invader, and there are no people in the world who love their mother country with a deeper devotion than the French. A very old woman, living away up in the north of France in a town that was shelled by the Germans almost daily showed me her love for la belle France and her hatred of its enemies in one expressive sentence. I had asked her if she did not tire of the continuous pounding of the guns.
"No, I love them, I love them," she answered passionately, "for when they cease it means that the accursed boche is being left alone; but when they roar, roar, roar, it means that we are driving him out of our beautiful France." Her face showed, as an old woman's wrinkled face can show so well, her hatred of the Germans. The soldiers of France by their traditional gallantry, their superb courage and their patience, have not only shown their love for their country, but have been an example of noble heroism to us all.
One of the next notable changes on the streets of Paris was the fact that one saw no young men in civilian clothes. All were serving their country in some capacity in the armies. The little hotel in the Rue Bergere at which I was a guest, a hotel of not many more than one hundred rooms, had given thirty men—waiters, porters, clerks—to the armies of France, for it was one of those small, select hotels that one finds scattered throughout Europe. The only male help that remained of its original staff was the concierge, and he was a Dutchman from Amsterdam. The manager, accountant, and all the other help were women. No meals were served except a French déjeuner—so hateful to hungry Anglo-Saxons—of bread, and tea, coffee, or cocoa.
And the same condition was noticeable all over the city. Anyone who has visited this fair metropolis of France in peace times will remember the delicious, snow-white bread that is served with the meals, that French bread with the crackly brown crust as delicious as pastry. The first day of my stay I noticed that this bread was served no longer. In its place we were given some of a much inferior quality and not nearly so white. When this had occurred in many different restaurants and cafés, I asked the reason.
"Mais, monsieur," was the reply, accompanied by that Gallic gesture of helplessness, the turning upward of the palms, "the good bakers are all serving with the armies." Of course, this reason was enhanced by the conservation of the wheat which prevented the mixing or blending of the superior qualities of grains to produce the high-grade flours used by the good bakers.
The streets by day were the same crowded thoroughfares as of old, except for the black of those in mourning, the blue-gray of the military uniforms, and the military cars and Red Cross ambulances. The touts who in peace times had tried to inveigle the tourist into moving picture houses in which the films hadnotbeen passed by the censor; or who offered to take him around the forbidden night-sights for a small honorarium; or who endeavored to sell him postcards so indecent that the ordinary man would not accept a fortune and have them found on his corpse; all these fellows still plied their trade. They were not quite so obtrusive or so numerous as usual, but it was difficult to cross the Place de l'Opéra without having one of them step up behind you and whisper his enterprise, whatever it was.
The girls of the boulevards were perhaps even more in evidence than at other times, for in those early months of the war few chose to cross the submarine-infested channel, and still fewer to cross the Atlantic through the areas laid out by the Huns as danger zones, unless good cause made them do so. Paris, usually the Mecca of tourists from all the countries of the world, had become instead the business and military headquarters of France. And to Paris came, instead of the gay youth bent on pleasure, the gray youth bent on business, whose eyes were so busy studying his engagement book, or reading the market reports, that they had not time to meet the roaming glances of the girls of the boulevards. New friends were hard to find, forles riches Américainscame no more except on business, and the old friends in the persons of gay Pierre or gallant Paul were serving in the trenches—perhaps dead, for news of them came but seldom. So the girls had plenty of time to promenade and one found it necessary to keep his eyes fixed steadily on some imaginary object straight in front, as he walked down the Boulevard des Italiens or the Boulevard des Capucines, to avoid receiving too many inquiring glances from the boulevardières. Generally speaking the annoyances were limited to glances, as the rules of the city are strict.
One noticeable thing about these women was the fact that many of them wore black, probably for two reasons—on the one hand, war economy, and on the other, to attract sympathy for real or supposed losses at the front. Those who were not in black went with the prevailing styles which seemed to be governed also by war economy, for less and less materials were being used in the dresses: the waists were getting lower, and the skirts higher. One would imagine that if this kept on till they met, some kind of catastrophe would be likely to happen, even though it were Paris!
At that famous corner of the Café de la Paix the chairs on the street were well patronized, though the weather was chilly; and I found myself wondering if it were the same crowd who had occupied them a few months before on my last visit. No one ever passes here without taking a seat, unless he is pressed for time. Someone has said that if you sit here long enough you will see everybody in the world who is anybody in the world pass by. I took a seat and a cup of coffee and glanced about me. It was the usual mixed crowd, with, perhaps, fewer of those who chase Bacchus and Venus, and more of those who pursue Mammon. But, after all, men and women are much the same the world over, and this was much the same group of coffee-sipping, liqueur-tasting people that one finds in the cafés from 4 to 6 p.m. in any of the continental cities from Paris to Vienna, from Naples to Berlin. There were a few more men in uniform, a little less gayety than usual, a trifle more business talked in one's hearing. Otherwise, it was the same group.
A couple of tables from me was a handsome officer in a French uniform, but plainly, from his cast of features and his mannerisms, not a Frenchman. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor on his tunic, and he was, perhaps for this reason, saluted by many of the officers who passed on the boulevard. Many glances of admiration were thrown in his direction by civilians. Some of the officers stopped for a moment and chatted with him. I watched him for some time, my curiosity increasing. He was sitting alone at the moment when I got up to leave, and I made the excuse of asking him something about British hospitals.
Apparently glad to hear his own tongue spoken he welcomed me, and we exchanged confidences for a few minutes, as strangers sometimes will when there is something in common between them. He was an Australian who had been in France when the war broke out, and he had not agreed with England's hesitation in entering the war by the side of Belgium and France; so he joined the French army.
"Oh, yes, that is the Legion of Honor," he returned smilingly to my remark as to his decoration. "A very ordinary bit of work at the front brought it to me," he continued modestly, apparently not caring to give details. Though I was in Paris some time, I did not come across him again, nor have I ever met since this Australian lover of freedom.
At that time the women of France were already doing much of the work usually performed by men. This was long before London had reached the stage that she has attained today, with women filling such a wide variety of occupations, so that it was very noticeable in France at that time. At the border my goods had been looked over by women customs inspectors; women guards in the train had examined my ticket; and in Paris women were everywhere, handling the motor buses, conducting on the tramways, collecting fares on the Metropolitan, or Underground, and filling the hundred and one other positions that, since the war, woman has proved herself so capable of filling.
All the women of the world have proved themselves heroines in this war, but none more than the women of France. At the early stage of the war of which I am writing, they showed those characteristics of patience, loyalty, and nobility of mind which have distinguished them in the straining times that have come and gone since then. They seemed to have become resigned to all things. If one spoke to them petulantly of the raw, cold weather:
"Ah, well," they returned, smiling, "it is the season, and one must expect bad weather." Or you may, perchance, have known some woman whose son or brother was serving in the lines. At that time the French Government gave out but little information as to any of the happenings at the front, and unless the government knew positively that a man was killed, no word of news was sent to the anxious friends. Often many weary months of waiting passed without knowledge on the part of the soldier's nearest of kin as to his fate. And if during this time of waiting you asked this woman whom you knew for tidings of her loved one, her reply invariably was:
"No, no. I have had no news ofmon cherJacques for a long time now. But I do not fear," she would continue with a patient smile, "for the good God will protect him, I am sure. And if it is necessary, we must give all for our beloved France." And it may have been many more long, long months, and it may have been never, that she learned the real fate of her "cher Jacques."
One morning during this visit, as I entered a car on the subway, a living picture of sorrow passed in ahead of me. The picture was made up of a beautiful young widow, leading tenderly by the hands her two lovely children, now fatherless. Her deep brown eyes looking sadly out from her pale face saw no one. Those eyes were looking into the far-off distance of the blank and lonely years to come, those years without hope "for the touch of a vanished hand, or the sound of a voice that is still." All that saved her from black despair was the knowledge that she had to bear up because of the helpless children at her side. But, God! The pity of the thousands of these lonely widows! What a contribution France and her allies are making to the cause of liberty!
At this period of the war the restaurants of Paris—and no other city is so famous for its restaurants—were not appreciably curtailed in their food supplies. They still served the well-seasoned, dainty dishes of the French chefs, though their clientèle was considerably smaller in numbers.
You could still get a delicious cut off the joint at Boeuf à la Mode near the Palais Royal; or you could have a choice of many luscious dishes at Voison's well-known dining place. If you preferred French society, you could still go to Larue's aristocratic restaurant, opposite the Madeleine, patronized by the society of Paris. Prunier's oyster house was apparently as busy as it had been in the piping times of peace and tourists; and the most deliciously cooked fish in Europe—according to my taste—was still being served at Marguery's under the title ofSole à la Marguery.
The less pretentious eating places of the modest diner, such as Duval's dining-rooms or the Bouillon Boulant, served good meals at reasonable prices. These latter are akin to the Child's restaurants in America. But already the food question was beginning to cause some anxiety throughout the world, because of the lessened production and increased consumption due to the millions of men taken from productive occupations who had to be kept fit as fighters.
For this reason I decided one day to see how cheaply I could obtain a satisfying meal during wartime in Paris. The Diner de Paris advertised exceptionally cheap meals, and they seemed to be well patronized, so I entered one of these eating places. The large dining-room was filled to overflowing with a well-dressed throng, no doubt mostly clerks from the adjoining business blocks. Here I partook of a tastily cooked meal of soup, roast pork and potatoes, apple pie, and a bottle of milk, all for the munificent sum of twenty-six cents, plus the regulation tip of two cents, most certainly a reasonable price for a good meal in the principal city of a country with the invader on its soil. Unfortunately since that time the food situation in all the countries at war has become much more complicated.
The hotels of the first class still kept open doors, and a few of them seemed to have an air of prosperity, but these were very few. Many of them who, in the season, considered it "infra-dig" to have more than a small card in the hotel columns of the daily papers, which card never hinted at their prices, had descended to the habit of advertising "special rates during the war." But others still preferred their small, select clientèle—and a deficit—to accepting prosperity obtained by any such plebeian method.
One point noticeable was the fact that unless the traveler carried them himself he saw no gold Louis or half-Louis, so much in evidence in times of peace. I had brought with me some English gold, but once it disappeared from my hand it never returned. A journalist friend of mine told me he was collecting the equivalent of one hundred dollars in gold to keep for an emergency, and was delighted when I gave him a few sovereigns in exchange for French money. The gold was being gathered in by the government, and today in France only paper money is used in exchange. All the smaller cities issue paper currency in denominations as low as one-quarter franc, or five cents.
Among my letters was one of introduction to the director of a large hospital in the Rue de la Chaise. This hospital was supported by funds collected byLa Presse, a daily journal of Montreal, and so it was partial to any Canadian visitors, though it received as patients only French officers and soldiers. The institution was doing much good work, all of which was done by Paris medical men, Dr. Faure, a well-known surgeon, performing most of the operations. My reception was cordial, and I became a regular visitor to its operating theater during my stay in the city.
On one of my early visits I was watching Dr. Faure remove some dead bone from an old wound of the leg, when a tall, distinguished lady entered. She had donned a sterilized gown over her street dress, and was apparently a visitor like myself. Noting that Dr. Faure's English and my French were both a trifle labored, she, during my visits, acted as interpreter for us, her English having the soft intonation of the educated Britisher. She informed me that she was neither doctor nor nurse, but was simply learning something of nursing in order that she could be of service to her country in its need, though she had a little son and daughter of her own to care for. That was the extent of my knowledge of her, though I saw that she was treated with more than ordinary consideration by surgeons, and nurses, one of the younger surgeons, by the way, being a stepson of the idolized Joffre.
The last day I visited the hospital she was not there, and as I was leaving Paris the following day I left my card for her with one of the sisters, with a word of thanks scribbled upon it for her kindness to a stranger. That afternoon I went to Cook's to get my railway tickets, and as I came out of the door this lady stepped from an automobile to enter Cook's. Recognizing me, she told me that she had been at the hospital after I had left, and had been given my card. She was leaving the following day for Switzerland for a two weeks' rest; and hoped that when I returned to Paris I would call and meet her husband.
"I should be delighted, madam, but I fear I do not know your name."
"Comtesse (Countess) de Sonlac," she replied.
All the French women were doing their bit. A very clever, cultured woman-journalist whom I met at the home of a high Canadian official in Paris was leaving in a few days to take a position ascookon an ambulance train in the north of France!
At night the streets of Paris were well lit up, even more brightly than those of London, though a little later, after the Germans had made a couple of Zeppelin raids, the lighting was dimmed. When a raid was expected the police warned the people by the blowing of sirens, and the hurrying about of motor cars under police direction tooting foghorns. The warnings were given when word had been received that Zeppelins had been seen going toward Paris; and on receiving these warnings the street lights were extinguished, and all other lights that could be seen, including the headlights of motor cars, had to be switched off.
The Opera was closed, but most of the theaters were in full swing, for it had been found that the people must have some recreation, and the order issued at the beginning of the war closing all places of amusement had been rescinded. The far-famed and somewhat notorious Moulin Rouge music hall, well known to all visitors to Paris, had been burned a short time before, and had but recently reopened its doors at the Folies Dramatique in the Place République. Wandering one evening along the boulevards I came to it, and entered. A very ordinary vaudeville was in progress, equaling neither in quality nor in gayety the performances at the original Red Mill in Montmartre. Here and there throughout the evening skits in English were put on, in compliment to their British allies; just as French playlets are common today in the London theaters—a social touch to the Entente Cordiale.
About ten-thirty I tired of the rather tawdry performance, and made my exit to find the streets in pitch black darkness, only broken here and there by the small side-lights of a flitting automobile or a dim light far back in a boulevard café. A gendarme, with whom I accidentally collided as I strolled slowly along the street, told me that a warning had been sent out that the Zeppelins were coming. Rain was pattering on the pavement which glistened as the automobiles hurried by, and occasionally searchlights swept overhead, flashing from l'Étoile. The people were good naturedly jostling their way along, and as someone near me struck a match to help him grope his way, a giggle was heard and a bright-eyed French girl pulled herself back from the escort who had just kissed her. They apparently were not worrying about the Zeppelins that were coming, and so far as I could see neither was anyone else. As the people collided in the dark, jokes and friendly banter were bandied to and fro. Someone on the opposite side of the boulevard knocked something down which hit the pavement with a crash, and a gay voice cried:
"C'est un obus! Les bodies, les boches!" (It's a shell! The boches, the boches!) And a roar of laughter greeted the remark.
All took the expected raid as a joke; and yet a few nights before the Zeppelins had reached Paris and had done some damage to property and life by dropping what the Parisians gaily call "a few visiting cards." But this attack reached only the outskirts of the city, though the inhabitants had no way of knowing that such would be the case.
The following day I had dinner with some friends who live on the Champs Elysées, and the hostess was envying one of her maids who had had "the good fortune" to be spending the previous night with her family on the outskirts of the city, and had seen the Zeppelins!
In the more than two years since that time, I have been in London during a number of air raids, some by Zeppelins and others by aeroplanes. The last was on July 7, 1917, on which occasion twenty-two planes sailed over London, dropping bombs and doing considerable damage in broad daylight. The people of London accepted these raids as spectacles too precious to miss. I was writing a letter in the Overseas Officers' Club in Pall Mall at the moment when I received my first intimation that anything out of the ordinary was happening. This intimation came to me by my noticing that everyone in the club, men and women alike, was rushing into the streets to see the German planes overhead, surrounded by the bursting shells of our anti-aircraft guns. Only in the immediate neighborhood of the exploding bombs was anything but curiosity shown by the populace. The spots where the bombs struck attracted the curious during the rest of the daylight hours.
All of which goes to show that human nature is much the same the world over—except in Germany, where by some kind of perverted reasoning the people seem to imagine that these child-mutilating, women-killing raids cause widespread terror amongst the English and French people. The real result is disgust for such barbarous methods, hatred against the Huns who employ them, and a more firm determination on the part of the allies to continue the war until the German perpetrators of these atrocities, realizing the enormity of their offenses against the laws of civilization and real culture, decide to honor their treaties, abide by the laws of nations, and keep faith with the other people of the world.
On Sunday morning I visited Napoleon's old church, the Madeleine, noting as I walked along the streets that any business houses with German names had an extra allowance of French and allied flags across their fronts. These air raids made them nervous! The Madeleine was jammed to the doors, many of those present being, like myself, strangers in the city. The service was an elaborate high mass, and I found it high in more ways than one, for four collections were taken up: the first for the seats; the second for the clergy; the third forles blessés—the wounded; and the fourth for the soldiers. I could not help but think that they should have taken up a fifth from the soldiers, the clergy, and the wounded, for the rest of us, for when I got outside I possessed only my gloves and a sense of duty well done!
That afternoon I visited the Bois de Boulogne. Thousands were there. It might easily have been a Sunday during any of the previous forty years of peace. On superficial inspection one could not see any sign of the injury done to the trees due to many of them being cut down at the beginning of the war in preparation for the defense of Paris. The tea houses of the Bois were doing their usual business, and it was just as difficult as at other times to find a table.
Two of the famous sights of Paris to which the tourist always goes are Napoleon's Tomb in the Invalides, and Notre Dame. At the former in ordinary times one will always find a crowd of sightseers of various nationalities, admiring the beauty of the immense porphyry sarcophagus and its surroundings; dreaming of Napoleon's days of greatness as a youthful general in Italy, or as dictator of the whole of Europe except Britain; or giving a pitying thought to his last days at St. Helena. Today, as I strolled in, few were there, and they were mostly the veterans who live in the Invalides, and I have no doubt their thoughts consisted of hopes that another would arise with the military genius of Napoleon to drive the invader from the soil of France, and to once more dictate terms from Berlin.
On my return I went for a moment into the Louvre from which most of the art treasures, such as the Venus of Milo, have been removed to underground vaults, safe from bombs dropped by the destruction-loving Hun. And a painting that I looked for, but did not find, was Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the lady of the mysterious smile, the stealing of which had caused such a furore in the world of art. It had just been returned before my last visit to the Louvre.
The following day I wandered across the Seine and viewed again that magnificent Gothic pile, the church of Notre Dame de Paris. It happened to be a holy day and immense crowds were entering. Someone said to me that the war seems to have brought back religion to the spirit of France. After all, there are few people in the world who, when beset by troubles, do not glance upward at times and utter a prayer that the Supreme Being will take notice of them and have pity on them. I joined those entering, and mingled with them as they made their way into the solemn interior of the great edifice. It seemed that thousands were there. Those entering were directed in such a way that they passed in order before two immense lifelike paintings arranged on one side of the church, one above the other—the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion. Before these paintings myriads of candles were burning, and as the people passed each took one or two or three more candles and lit them. It was a splendid, solemn, and impressive spectacle.
To send telegrams or cables from France was a most troublesome procedure. You had to get the written consent of the military police after they had interviewed you as to your objects in sending the message, and had scrutinized the message carefully to find if, perchance, you had hidden somewhere within it information that might be of service to the enemy.
But even this was an easy matter compared with getting out of Paris once you had entered. For to get out was very much more difficult than to get in. You had first to report to the police station nearest to your hotel that you were leaving the city. Then you had to go to the office of the Consul of the country to which you were going, explain the purpose of your change of residence, and have the consul or his representativeviséyour passport. Then finally you had to call at the Prefecture of Police—akin to our central police station in a large city—and again get your papers certified. Each of these moves meant considerable time lost, sometimes as much as a day, since long lines of people were at each of these places hours before they opened for business.
On my departure, during my visit to the British Consulate, I had an amusing experience that is worth relating. As I turned into the court of the building in which the consulate is situated, an automobile drove up, and out stepped a stylish and pretty woman of perhaps thirty years. She followed me into the court, and after looking about her doubtfully for a minute, she turned and asked if I could direct her to the office of the British Consul. I had walked there the day before to "learn the ropes," and so knew my way about. I replied that it was up a couple of flights of stairs, but as I was just going there I should be pleased to show her the way.
We went up the two flights of stairs, and reaching the waiting room found some thirty or forty people ahead of us. We took our place in the line to await our turn, which meant a delay of an hour or two. As the people waited conversation was quite free, as was also criticism of the consulate for not having more help at a time of pressure such as the present. The lady whom I had shown up was next to me in the line. She looked upon me as an American compatriot, for she was from New York, and apparently felt quite safe in carrying on a conversation with a stranger in a strange city. She mentioned that she was on her way back from Spain to England.
"Spain," I said in some surprise. "Might I be curious enough to ask why a young woman like yourself should be traveling in Spain in times like the present?"
"Oh, I'm a eugenist," she replied readily, "and I have been in Spain studying the effects of the war on the Spanish people in relation to eugenics for a book I am preparing for publication. I am going to spend some time in London, in the British Museum, looking up some data to complete my manuscript." And then quite voluntarily she went on to criticize the majority of all the cherished institutions of society, and as she became more enthusiastic her criticisms became more free, more radical, almost nihilistic. She ended in a tirade against civilization as we know it, not by any means becoming at all boisterous, but simply youthfully animated in her fault-finding with the world in general.
I could hardly believe my ears. Here was a pretty American woman of thirty, highly educated, whose outlook on life was more nihilistic than that of the most extreme German socialist. But finally she capped the climax by telling me frankly that she was an anarchist; had taken part in two anarchistic plots in Italy; and promised me that the next ruler who was going to pay the death penalty for his tyranny was King Alfonso of Spain. Beginning to feel certain that she was "ragging" me, I asked her jokingly if she expected me to believe her.
"Does it sound like something that a young woman would claim were it untrue?" she asked, and I was forced to admit that it did not. "I will tell you something further," she continued, "I dare not return to New York at the present time or I should be put in jail. For the last time I was there I was jailed for some of my writings. I obtained my freedom on bail of three thousand dollars, and, hearing that I was to be railroaded to prison, I jumped it."
"Why do you tell a stranger like myself this story?" I asked. "How do you know that I am not going to report you to the police?"
"I know you are not going to report me to the police," she answered coolly, "because if you did I would shoot you."
"Do you carry much of your artillery on your person?" I asked, laughing. And seeing that I was taking it all as a joke, she joined in the laugh.
"It's your turn, madam," said the porter to her, and she passed out of the line into the office of the consul, giving me a charming smile and curtsy as she left.
Whether her story was the result of mischief, insanity, or conviction, I really have no idea; but I do know that I have in my life passed many more tedious and less interesting hours than the one I passed while awaiting my turn at the office of the British Consul that day.
Early in the conflict, after the Germans had been pushed back from their rush on Paris, the French were in a bad way for many of the necessities of a country at war. Among the necessities that France lacked was sufficient hospital accommodation for the sick and wounded of her armies, and for the first year of the war this shortage was partially supplied by voluntary ambulances—the word ambulance in French being employed for a field hospital. Many rich Americans gave valuable service at this time to their sister republic, the American ambulances at Neuilly and Juilly being among the most noted of the war hospitals.
It was not at all difficult to get staffs for these hospitals, for thousands of young Americans with red blood in their veins and the love of romance in their hearts were only awaiting the opportunity to do something useful anywhere between Paris and the firing line. Between the people of the United States and the French there has always been a deep sympathy, possibly engendered up to half a century ago by their common antipathy to England, a sentiment forever removed by mutual sufferings and common interests and ideals in this war. A witty writer one time said that "good Americans, when they die, go to —— Paris"; jokingly showing the love which the people of the southern half of this continent have for the French. But, no matter what the reasons, the greatest republic in the world was early in responding to the call, and so placed her sister republic, France, under deep obligations for assistance of surgeons, nurses, and hospitals long before Mr. Wilson led the United States to join with the other civilized peoples in their fight against barbarism.
The British were very early up and doing in the same manner, and not many months after Kitchener's Contemptibles—a name now revered in Britain—had made their heroic retreat from Mons, many well-equipped hospitals manned by Britons were doing excellent work behind the French lines.
It was my good fortune to serve at the beginning of 1915 in one of these, the Château de Rimberlieu, just three miles from the point at which the German lines came nearest to Paris, and seven miles north of Compiègne where a little over one hundred years ago Napoleon for the first time met Marie Louise of Austria when she came to replace the unhappy Josephine.
I obtained the position after much searching for an opportunity to be of service. Going across from New York to London I had been refused a position by the British unless I could enlist, which personal reasons prevented at the time. Then, after two days interviewing, taxicabbing, viséing, pleading, and explaining, I obtained a permit to go to France. At Boulogne the authorities of the British Red Cross and St. Johns Ambulance Association told me they were oversupplied with surgeons and I decided to go to Amiens, where I had a surgical friend.
I could not get away till the following morning, so I spent the afternoon wandering about. The streets were filled with a cosmopolitan throng of soldiers of all shades of color—white, black, and brown—and of various nationalities, British and Canadian Tommies in their khaki, French poilus in their blue-gray uniforms, Ghurkas from India in their picturesque dress, and French Soudanese with strange accouterments. The better hotels were all occupied by the military authorities as headquarters, and the harbor was filled with hospital ships and transports. Walking about the streets one had to look sharp to avoid being run down by hurrying Red Cross ambulances or lumbering motor lorries.
I strolled to the beach, where on the sands Tommies were lounging, gazing longingly across at the shores of England, dimly visible in the distance. One of the soldiers turned to me with a smile and said:
"I was just taking a last look at the old 'ome, sir. Of course, I 'opes to see it again sometime if I don't 'appen to stop somethink." And it was all said most cheerfully. I added my wishes for his luck to his own.
On the slow train from Boulogne to Amiens we passed many military camps with their white tents in orderly rows. Here and there oxen were being used by old men and women on their farms, and in one little brook some boys were fishing. I could hardly believe that forty miles or less away two armies of millions of men were contending for the mastery, with civilization depending on the outcome. When, later, I was much nearer to the front I was struck again and again by the matter-of-fact manner in which the French peasant accepts his or her military surroundings. He works coolly in fields into which at times enemy shells are dropping, or over which long range guns are firing into some semi-ruined town of Northern France. Something which is always a cause of wonder and admiration to the observer is that, despite the fact that all the young and able Frenchmen are in the trenches, the women, old men and children who remain succeed in cultivating the farmlands of France right up to the lines.
At Amiens my surgeon friend, who had over twelve hundred war operations to his credit in the past six months, much regretted that I could not be used at the moment,—much regretted; but still regretted. I began to feel that the gods of ill luck were camping on my trail. I went on to Paris. Here my letters of introduction were looked at with anxiety and I with suspicion, for in the early months of the war some foreign surgeons were found to be giving information to the enemy. At any rate, though courtesies and promises were showered upon me, I remained a useless guest at my hotel in the Rue de Rivoli until I reached an almost desperate stage, realizing that, though surgeons were urgently needed, I could not be of service.
Sickly visions of returning home after a futile attempt to be of use came to me, when suddenly luck changed. The director of the Ambulance Anglo-Française in the Château de Rimberlieu came to Paris in search of assistance. Being an Englishman, he looked in at the British Red Cross in the Avenue d'Ièna where they told him of this forlorn Canadian who had been haunting their offices, but of whom they had lost track. By a bit of luck their commanding officer met me that afternoon on the Place de l'Opéra, and gave me the director's address at the Hotel de Crillon. I hurried at once to call upon him, and offered to take any position from chauffeur to surgeon. There is a biblical quotation that the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. I inherited the surgeoncy—not a lucrative inheritance, it must be admitted, for it carried no salary, no railway fares, no uniform, all of which must be supplied by the inheritor.
After obtaining asauf conduitfrom the military authorities to take me as far as Creille, I left on the train that afternoon for Compiègne, sixty miles to the north, accompanied by an affable young Red Cross orderly, of English parents and Paris birth, who in civil life was a drygoods salesman. At Creille, which was the beginning of the war zone, our troubles began. I was in civilian dress, my uniform not yet being completed. The French military officers here were almost adamant. My passport, director's letter, Red Cross authority, all proved of no avail to get me further. Rather strangely, the letter which obtained the desired permission to proceed was an ordinary letter of introduction from a prominent French Canadian parliamentarian which I had in my pocket.
Presto! The officer knew his name, and by I went.
We arrived at Compiègne about midnight, and for the first time we heard the sound of the guns ten miles away. As we were now only seven miles from the Château, we thought our troubles were over. But we had reckoned without the sous-prefet de police, who said in the morning when we called that we could go no further without a special permit.
"That chap's a bit of an awss," remarked my young friend, expressing my sentiments to a nicety.
However, about 10 a.m. the director whirled into town in his 60-horsepower Rolls-Royce, and learning of our troubles, he smilingly said that he thought he could get around that difficulty. He pulled from beneath the rear seat a military overcoat and cap which I put on; and out of the town we whirled, past sentries at crossroads and railway crossings, to whom the director yelled the password—it was "Clairemont" that day. The password changes daily at a certain hour, and anyone without the new word when required is hailed before the authorities. The director ran some slight risk in thus smuggling me through the lines, but nothing ever came of it; and I gave a sigh of relief when we at last swung into the spacious grounds of the château.
The house was a large stone building, used in peace times as the summer home for the family of the Count de Bethune, one of the oldest titled families in France. His two daughters, the Countess de Ponge and the Marquise de Chabannes, lived in a small corner of the building, and gave their time to help us in our nursing work. They did everything in their power, and it was much, to make life pleasant for the patients and for the staff.
The building was ideal for a hospital with room for a couple of hundred patients. The reception hall was used as a general reception room for patients, as well as a lounging room for us in our spare time. Its immense, exquisitely carved mahogany mantel was one of the artistic ornaments that had not been removed to avoid injury. The drawing and reception rooms and the dining hall had been transformed into wards, called the Joffre, French, and Castelnau wards, as were also the larger of the bedrooms on the next floor. The surgeons, nurses, and staff occupied the servants' quarters on the top floor. The oak-paneled library and smoking room had become the operating theater and the X-ray studio. Our dining-room was the original servants' dining-room in the basement. The French officers and men who were cared for here received, as they deserved to receive, the best we had to give, the staff gladly taking second place in all things. And at that our life was so much easier than that of the boys in the trenches that we often felt a bit ashamed of the difference.
The château was surrounded by some two or three hundred acres of well-laid-out gardens, artificial lakes, fountains, and woods. These grounds had been cut up to a certain extent by trenches, wire entanglements, dugouts, funk-holes, and gun emplacements, all in order and ready for use if the enemy should drive the French back in this direction. The fighting trenches were only three or four miles to the north of us, this château being said to be the nearest hospital to the lines in the whole theater of war. We worked, slept, ate, and killed time to the sound of the guns and shells, the latter often bursting well within a mile of us.
The really interesting part of the hospital was the personnel of the staff. There were four surgeons, a French military medical officer, Villechaise; Allwood, a Jamaican, an old college friend of mine whom I had neither seen nor heard of for twelve years until the day I arrived at the château, when he came forward to give an anesthetic for me to a case which General Berthier had ordered me to operate upon; King, a Scotsman; and myself. And we four were practically the only members of the staff who were not paying for the privilege of being allowed to serve. The rest of the staff were well-to-do society people who not only financed the institution but also did the nursing and orderly work, gave their automobiles as ambulances, and their personal servants and chauffeurs to act as servants in the hospital.
Besides the Comtesse and the Marquise, we had as nurses a niece of an ex-president of France; a grand-niece of Lord Beaconsfield; and another was a sister-in-law to Lord Something-or-other in Scotland. The latter nurse had as a pal Miss C——, who had stumped her father's constituency for him during the last general elections in England. She was a clever girl of twenty-three, an exceptionally good nurse, but oh, what a Tory. She had all the assurance of her age, and Mrs. Pankhurst in her palmiest moments could not put Lloyd George "where he belonged" as could this charming girl of twenty-three. The son of a prominent Paris lawyer, a young, black-eyed chap of seventeen who was doing his bit there till he became old enough to join the army, was one of her great admirers; and when he was not scrubbing floors or performing some other necessary work, he sometimes wrote poetry to her. The last four lines of one of his rhymes I remember:
May your years of joy be many,Your hours of sorrow few;Here's success in all ambitionsTo the man who marries you.
A Mr. and Mrs. G——, of Cambridge, originally of Belfast, were two of the most pleasant, kindly, and useful people the hospital possessed. Their automobile was now an ambulance which their chauffeur handled at their expense; they paid two hundred dollars per month in cash; they were continually buying luxuries for the patients and necessities for the hospital. Mrs. G—— acted as nurse in a most capable manner; and her husband as an orderly. A Mr. and Mrs. R—— from Cairo, Egypt, were also with us. In Cairo he was a professor in the University; here he acted as chauffeur on his own automobile ambulance, and his wife looked after the checking and arranging of the laundry for the whole hospital. One afternoon I went into Compiègne with him in his car, and he delighted some French African troops by chatting to them in Arabic, after which they followed him around like little boys. Mr. R—— also paid a goodly sum toward the upkeep of the hospital.
The director of whom I have already spoken, and the directress, both were heavy donors to the hospital, as well as giving automobiles and servants as assistants. A godly clergyman from York acted in the triple capacity of chaplain, chauffeur on his own auto-ambulance, which his parishioners had given him when he left, and general chore boy. One of my finest recollections of him is on a Sunday evening when he held service, while outside the guns roared and shells from the enemy burst a mile or so to the north of us in plain view from the windows of the room in which the clergyman was interpreting the word of God. It was a most impressive ceremony. My last recollection of him, and it's just as fine, he had thrown aside his tunic and was working with pick and shovel digging a dump for the refuse of the hospital, the sweat rolling down his honest face.
The above people are only among the most interesting of the staff. There were also a sheep farmer from the north of England, a journalist of London, a student from Oxford, and many other ladies and gentlemen who gave of their best, all of them, giving the French soldier scientific, sympathetic, and kindly attention. Those names mentioned will illustrate the personnel of hospitals such as this, for there were many of them on the western front in the early months of the war. Ours was a part of General Castelnau's army, and while nominally under the Red Cross we were under the discipline of the French army. General Berthier, who had charge at that time of the medical arrangements of that sector of the line, visited us daily, inspecting the whole institution, ordering this, advising that, and perhaps insisting upon something else. More ether and hydrogen peroxide were used by the French military surgeons in wounds than appealed to my ideas; but one little trick they had of sterilizing basins by rinsing them out with alcohol and touching a match to it—"flammer," they called it—was both rapid and thorough where steam sterilizers were not too common.
Sometimes we were also inspected by civilian surgeons on behalf of the military authorities. Dr. Tuffier, a famous Paris surgeon, who is as well known on this continent as in Europe, came to make one of these periodical inspections. I had first met him at a surgical congress in Chicago before the war; then in Paris I had called upon him.