Dearest Father:—

I’ve been there! Past the sentries, through the devastated villages, right into the army zone.

How many pictures I’ve seen marked, “Somewhere in France,” or, “Results of German Shells.” How endlessly have I pored over Sunday supplements or watched miles of film click by, trying always to imagine myself really standing on French soil, seeing real things. But the pictures were always just black and white, and I never managed to step into them.

The refugees at the Vestiaire tell vivid stories, and they all have that inborn dramatic instinct which can make live the scenes they describe. But even from their background I had no idea of the look and atmosphere of the ruined towns as they now are. No one ever told me that the trenches taken from the Germans a few months ago would now be half hidden by long grass and brilliant red poppies, nor that the summer sunshine could ever soften the grimness of barbed wire and dug-outs. Yesterday I saw for myself.

CompiÈgne is the sentinel to the “zone des armÉes.” At the railroad station you must present your sauf-conduit before you go through the gate, and frown as you do so, for certainly the official will frown at you. The streets are full of soldiers and officers, blue with them, and great military trucks grind past at every turn. Even the churchyard is filled with lines of military wagons, and horses were tethered at its portals.

We arranged to have a bite to eat at the hotel, and I, for one, was surprised at the naturalness and comfort of the atmosphere. One of us, after standing at the elevator shaft several minutes, turned to the manager of the hotel and asked if she would have long to wait. “I hope not, Madame,” he said,—“just until the end of the war.”

As we ate our luncheon we looked from the dining-window across the big square to the palace, now used as military headquarters. The sentries passed and repassed with their heavy guns before the entrance gate.

Our military cars, painted dull gray with the numbers in white across the wind shield, were waiting to take us on our wonderful journey. As we left the narrow streets of CompiÈgne, we passed several motors bearing important-looking officers going to or from the front; they tore around corners in just my idea of a warlike way—very little gold braid, but business-like and grim.

The country was lovely: rolling fields, and deep woods, rich with foliage. My idea of a devastated region had been a large plain, covered with small ruined villages, blackened by smoke. I had pictured everything bare and muddy—no grass, lowering clouds; but here was blazing sunlight, and such grass and flowers as I had never seen.

At Noyon we were joined by a French lieutenant, who acted as guide to us, and was High Mogul to all guards and officials along our route. He looked skeptical of a party of women, even Americans (who are known to be wild), tearing along on the roads where only soldiers, trucks, and beasts of burden are seen.

The crops interested me very much. Large fields of wheat and barley, as well as trim lines of lettuce and garden truck, were on each side of the road near every settlement. I asked who planted them. “Different people,” said our lieutenant; “the people who have been living here right along under the Germans, the soldiers who delivered the territory last March, the civil population who came back to their homes when the Boches were driven out.”

Until March 18th, the Germans held French territory up to the line passing through RossiÈres, AndrÉhy, Lassigny, Ribecourt, and Soissons. They retreated on that date, and the present line passes just west of Saint-Quentin, La FÈre, and BarÉsis. Our route was a big circle through the section between these lines among the towns most lately relinquished by the invader.

I felt reluctant to be whisked along so fast, for I wanted to see just how these bridges had been blown up. I wanted to ask that old man over there, hoeing in the field with a tiny little girl beside him in a black apron, what he had seen and felt, and how he liked the Boches. But we seemed always to keep the same pace.

At Chauny we slowed up, however. We passed down an aisle of ruins, and stopped in a big square. We were told: “They are shelling the town, so that you run a risk if you stop here, but they seem to be lazy to-day, so don’t worry.” I was so glad to get out of the car and wander around according to my fancy, that I didn’t give a thought to the possibility of shells. And I couldn’t see why they should want to keep on firing, as there didn’t seem much more to do to the place. I stood at first and looked about me. Not one roof to be seen—just walls, and not more than one or two stories of these. Nothing horizontal—just the perpendicular skeletons of buildings, and piles, piles, piles of stone in between.

The streets have been cleared of rubbish, by the French, so that the square or “place” looked as neat and ready for market-day as though the market-women might come at any moment with their pushcarts, station themselves in the center, and display piles of carrots, cherries, potatoes, and radishes to tempt the passing throng.

But the passing throng had passed somewhere else. We saw nobody. On one side was a wall marked “ThÉÂtre”—just the front of it left, all the rest ruins. Across the square was a large building with “Palais de Justice” carved over the portal, portions of the front ripped away so that we could see the different rooms and central staircase leading up, and up, to nothing.

Down the cobbled streets which radiated from the square were the remains of the shops and homes of the people of Chauny. Ruins everywhere. The houses had evidently been blown up from within, causing the roofs and floors to fall in a heap into the cellar, so that it was difficult to walk in and look about. The town has, of course, been shelled as well as mined; the Germans were determined to wipe it out completely, so that the iron and sugar industries which made Chauny well known may never be resumed.

The strangest kind of things would be lying in the piles of dÉbris—an iron bedstead, twisted and red with rust, an old baby carriage, a boot, a candlestick, all sorts of little domestic things. In many houses the tiled fireplaces were intact, and stood up among all the wreckage. Our lieutenant climbed into one of the houses and brought back a few tiles which he gave us. Mine is a heavenly turquoise blue, smooth and perfect. It is the one relic that I cared to keep. I prefer it to a charred brick or a bent piece of iron. It was there in its place in the war, during the burning and pillaging, and weathered the bombs and the shells.

Through the back windows were vistas of grass and trees. I saw an enchanting ravine with a stony brook running through it, and gardens, full of rank grass and weeds. Here and there a holly bush looked about in surprise at being so neglected this year.

The church in Chauny is only half destroyed. Most of the roof has been blown up, and the west end of the nave is piled high with wreckage, but the altar is untouched and there is enough roof left to shelter about ten rows of seats. A rough partition of wood and tarred paper has been built across the middle of the church, which divides the piles of broken stone, open to the blazing sunlight, from the altar half hidden and dim.

It was very quiet. I heard a bird chirping near by, and saw two sparrows fly through an opening and perch on a cornice over the cross. There is not much left in Chauny even for a bird.

The road leading north runs beside an embankment high enough to screen a motor from view. Where this embankment stops, a huge screen has been built of boughs woven in and out of a wire foundation; thus the road is hidden for miles, and military trucks, ammunition trains, themselves “camouflÉs,” pass to and fro unobserved.

Near Villquiers-Aumont we began to see the cut-down fruit trees: I don’t know whether to say fields of fruit trees, or orchards; for what we saw were rolling green fields, with fruit trees lying prone in even rows, their naked branches—

—ruined carefully and deliberately.

We stopped near an abrupt little hill. It looked like a giant thimble, with a rustic summer-house on top. This was once Prince Eitel Friedrich’s lookout, and as we climbed up the carefully made stone steps, we saw more and more of the wonderful view he had chosen. French landscapes stretched away on every side, smooth fields, winding roads, and poplars. The group of poilus who were stationed in the lookout gave us a gay welcome. They were ready with information about the surrounding countryside, and pointed out the various villages in the distance. The officer in charge lent us his field-glasses and showed us to the north the spires of the cathedral at Saint-Quentin—still held by the Boches.

We took a dÉtour in order to see the grave of Sergeant McConnell, the American aviator who was killed last spring. A French flag and two American flags nailed to a wooden cross mark the grave; fifty yards away are a few splinters of iron and wood, the remains of his aeroplane, which indicate the spot where he fell. Some splinters of wood, some rusty bits of iron, part of the engine, are all that is left of his aeroplane. As I looked back towards the grave I saw our soldier chauffeur stooping to place a bunch of wild poppies below the flags. He walked back to his place at the wheel without knowing that I had seen him. It was a small thing, but I felt grateful to the American who had made a simple Frenchman wish to pay this tribute. I felt, too, a warm pride to think of this corner of a foreign field (to paraphrase Rupert Brooke) that is forever America!

We went next to Flavy-le-Martel. This town is half ruined and is inhabited only by soldiers. The great sight is a ruined factory, which is now a grotesque pile of rubbish—wheels and boilers and chimneys; the mass of broken stone and twisted iron is heaped to an immense height and in extent it looked to one like an acre of pure destruction.

Suddenly we heard discomforting sounds—guns, big guns, and not very far away. The entrance gate to the factory had been locked and barred with a sign, “No Admittance,” in large letters, and we had to enter through a hole in the fence, but certainly that couldn’t mean that we were doing anything dangerous? One of the soldiers working near by motioned upwards, and we caught sight of a Boche aeroplane disappearing in a big white cloud—lesser white clouds kept multiplying as the French anti-aircraft guns fired on. Each shot sounded like hitting a barn door with a baseball—only fifty times as loud. I was all for standing with my neck craned waiting to see what would happen next, but the soldiers gave one laconic look (if a look can be laconic) at the signs in the heavens, and walked off to the “abri” or shelter. Our lieutenant asked us to follow, so down we plunged into a little cellar-like place after the soldiers.

“Five men were wounded here yesterday by pieces of flying shell,” said one of them; “so, Mon Dieu! it is not worth the trouble to make one’s self a target to-day.”

That seemed sensible enough, but it had never occurred to me that anything would ever come down and hit me. I’m not a soldier, I’m not even French, and everything about the front has always been a name to me until now. What am I usually doing the first week in July? I’m helping the kids set off firecrackers down on the beach—on a good old American beach; or getting the mail at the post-office to read the latest war news. Zum-zum! and here I am crouched down in an abri with some poilus, and a German biplane a mile in the air straight over my head. Wouldn’t it be funny if—I wonder how thick the roof of this place is, anyway? Zum, zum, zum! How foolish to drop bombs on a place that is destroyed, anyway.

The firing became less frequent and the explosions farther off. We climbed out to the great outdoors again, and looked around. Nothing to be seen or heard. Just as we started off, a last zum! and a fleeting glimpse of the Boche disappeared gayly into a cloud. That was a week ago; I’m wondering if they have got him by now.

Along the road on the way to Ham were rows of neat little brick and stone houses, so unlike anything I had seen that their very neatness looked strange. “The soldiers have already begun rebuilding,” said the lieutenant. And they have done well, may I add; the architecture is of an unimaginative, cubelike variety, but a touch of poetry is supplied by the white muslin curtains and climbing nasturtiums! The soldiers, working with sleeves rolled up and with gorgeous red sashes round their waists, smiled and waved as we passed, and if we had slowed down who knows but that we should have had an invitation to tea; with a Boche avion only just lost from view.

It was an interesting road all the way. We met a priest trotting comfortably down the road on a fat chestnut mare. His gown fluttered and his beads swung by his side in time to the horse’s gait. We all felt included in his smile as he lifted his shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed hat in greeting; we Americans bowed, the militaires saluted inflexibly.

Next we saw—or rather were stopped by—a herd of cows. They looked utterly peaceful and oblivious, and along with the window curtains and nasturtiums that we had just seen on leaving Flavy-le-Martel, they seemed to give hope that the forlorn shells of houses might one day become homes again. I asked our lieutenant what the enemy had done with the cattle that they had found when they came. He answered, smiling broadly, “Zay ett heem!”

Ham is interesting chiefly for its ancient chÂteau. The town itself is only partially destroyed, and there are at the moment fifteen hundred and thirty civilians living there. We got out of the motor by the bank of the canal, and looked first at the havoc wrought to it and the bridges. The sides have been blown up and great masses of stone have fallen into the ditch stopping up the deepest part of it. Rude wooden bridges have been built to replace the stone ones and to carry the traffic of trucks and military cars that are constantly passing. The trees that once stood in even rows along the banks have totally disappeared. Not a stump is left.

The canal widens just south of the main road, and begins to have the aspect of a stone quarry. There is a vast area of broken stone; groups of workmen applying themselves with pick and shovel; iron cars drawn by mules moving here and there; and the noise of incessant labor. Across the excavation stands a great wall, fifty feet high, split down the middle as though by a stroke of lightning. Over the top you can just see the tower, with a pointed slate roof.

“But where’s the chÂteau?” some one asked.

“Le voilÀ,” said our guide.

Oh, the hours of labor that must be put in to restore what was once built so carefully. New trees will be planted, but the chateau can never be replaced. It’s all unspeakable!

Just as we turned to take the road to Nesle (I never can be reconciled to pronouncing it “Nell” in view of neslerode pudding), I saw a storm-beaten signpost reading, “Saint-Quentin, 8 kilomÈtres”—just as though you could go there! I wonder just how soon one would be killed if she tried it?