MORE STORM-WRACK

A small volume might be written about those days at the MarchÉ Couvert, about the war gossip that circulated, the adventures that were related.

In spite of the terrific shelling of Verdun only one civilian was reported to have been killed during that first week, and she imprudently left her cellar. The bombardment was methodical. Three minutes storm, then three minutes calm, then three minutes storm again. Then the pulse-beat lengthened: fifteen minutes storm, fifteen minutes calm. A priest told Madame B. that, stop-watch in hand, he was able to visit his people during the whole of the time, diving in and out of cellars with a regularity equalled only by that of the Germans. Two women, on the other hand, ran about their village comme des fous for eight days, shells dropping four to the minute, but no one was hurt, because the inhabitants had all gone to their cellars. How they themselves escaped they did not know. They had no cellar, that was why they ran.

Another woman was in her kitchen when a shell struck the house. Seeing that her sister was badly hurt she ran out, ran all the way down the village street, scoured the vicinity looking for a doctor, found one, brought him back, and as she was about to help him to dress her sister's wound, realised that her foot was wet, and looking down saw that her boot was full of blood. Not only had the shell, or a fragment of shell, torn her thigh badly, but it had shattered her hand as well. Only the thumb and index finger can be moved a little now, the other fingers are bent and twisted, without any power, the arm is shrivelled and cannot be raised above her head.

This woman was one of several who were turned out of the Civil Hospital one bitter afternoon when the wind cut into our flesh and sharp hail stung our faces. No doubt the hospital was full, no doubt a large number of bed or stretcher cases had come in, but somehow we could find no excuse for the thoughtlessness which turned that pitiful band of ailing, crippled, or blinded women into the dark streets to stumble and fumble their way through a strange town and then face the horror of the market. Some were frankly idiotic from fright, strain and age-weakened intellect; all were terrified, cold and suffering. One, very old, sat on the ground talking rapidly to herself. "She is dÉtraquÉe," they whispered, so she was tucked up on a palliasse, covered with rugs and left to her mumbling, her monotonous, wearying babble. Next morning our nurse, going her rounds, found that the unfortunate creature was not dÉtraquÉe but delirious, that her temperature was high and both lungs congested. It was just a question whether she would survive the journey to Fains, where, in the Departmental Lunatic Asylum, some wards had been set aside for the overflow from the hospital.

One of our coterie, burning with what we admitted was justifiable wrath, gave a hard-hearted official from the Prefecture a Briton's opinion of the matter.

"It was inhuman to treat these women so. Some of them were wandering in the streets for hours. Why didn't you send them direct to Fains?"

"There was no conveyance, the hospital was full ..." so he excused himself.

"But they cannot stay here," she thundered. "It is utterly unfit. They need nursing, comfort, special care."

"Oh, well, there is always the Ornain," he replied, with a gesture towards the river, and the Briton, unable to determine whether a snub, a sarcasm, or an inhumanity was intended, for the only time in our knowledge of her was obliged to leave the field to France.

But she was restored to her wonted good-humour later on by an old lady who undressed placidly in the new dormitory, peeling off one garment after another because she "had not taken her clothes off for three days and three nights," who then knelt placidly by her bedside and said her prayers, asking, as she tucked the blankets round her, at what time she would be called in the morning.

Called! In that Bedlam!

Most of them were "called" by the big steam whistle at the factory long before the cocks began to crow. Zeppelins, tired of inactivity, began to prowl at night. One, as everybody knows, was brought down in flames near RÉvigny—a shred of its envelope lies in my writing-case, my only souvenir de la guerre, unless a leaflet dropped by a Taube counts as such—causing great excitement among the boys in the hospital at Sermaize. No sooner did they hear the guns and the throb of its engines than with one accord they scrambled from their beds and rushed to the verandah, where a wise matron rolled them in blankets and allowed them to remain to "see the fun," a breach of discipline for which she was amply rewarded when, seeing the flames shoot up through the skies, the boys rose to their feet and shrilled the "Marseillaise" to the night in their clear, sweet trebles. A dramatic moment that! The long, low wooden hospital a blur against the moonlit field, behind and all around the woods, silent, dark, clustering closely, purple in the half-light of the moon, the boys' white faces, their shrill cheer, and through the sky the wide fire of Death falling, to lie a mammoth dragon on the whitened fields. It is said that there was a woman in that Zeppelin—some fragments of clothing, a slipper were found....

Another, more fortunate, dropped bombs at RÉvigny and Contrisson, where by bad luck an ammunition wagon was hit. One at least of the wagons caught fire, but was quickly uncoupled by heroic souls who were subsequently decorated. The first explosion shook our windows in Bar-le-Duc, and then for two or more hours we heard report after report as shell after shell exploded. In the morning wild tales were abroad. The main line to Paris had been cut, TrÈmont (miles in the other direction) had been bombed, numbers of civilians had been killed and injured; RÉvigny was in even smaller shreds than before; in short, Rumour, that busy jade, was having a well-occupied morning. But that is not unusual in the War Zone. She is rarely idle there. The number of times we were told a bombardment by long-range guns was signalled for Bar is incalculable. The town passed from one crise de nerfs to another, some one was always in a panic over a coming event which did not honour us even by casting its shadow before.

The Zeppelins, to be quite frank, were a nuisance. They never reached the town, which has reason to be grateful for the narrowness of its valley and the protecting height of its hills, but they made praiseworthy attempts at all sorts of odd hours, and generally the most inconvenient that could well be chosen. The doings at RÉvigny and Contrisson warned us that a visit might be fraught with disagreeable results, for Bar is a concentrated place, it does not straggle, and when raids occur practically every street is peppered.

So though we did not go to the cellars, we felt it incumbent upon us to be ready to do so should necessity arise, which probably explains why the syren invariably blew when one or two shivering wretches were sitting tailor-wise in rubber or canvas basins, fondly persuading themselves that they were having a bath.

When there are twenty degrees of frost, when water freezes where it falls on your uncarpeted bedroom floor, bathing in a canvas basin has its drawbacks; but if, just as your precious canful of hot water has been splashed in and you "mit nodings on" prepare to get as close to godliness as it is possible for erring mortal to do, the syren's long, lugubrious note throbs on the air, well, you float away from godliness fairly rapidly on the wings of language that would have shocked the most condemnatory Psalmist of them all. I really believe those Zeppelins KNEW when our bath-water boiled. We went to bed at ten-thirty or we waited till midnight. "Let's get the beastly thing over, it is such a bore dressing again." We dodged in at odd hours of the evening, it was just the same. Venus was always surprised. In the end, and when in spite of nightly and daily warnings, nothing happened, our faith in French airmen became as the rock that moveth not and is never dismayed. Though syrens hooted and bugles blew, though the town guard turning out marched under our windows, the unclothed soaped and lathered and splashed with unemotional vigour, while the clothed chastely wondered what would happen if a bomb struck the house and Venus.... Oh, well, the French rise magnificently to any situation.

Once I confess to rage. We had a visitor. We had all worked hard all day at the market, we had come home after ten, and, wearied out, had tucked ourselves into bed, aching in every limb. The visitor and the smallest member of the coterie returned even later. Slumber had just sealed my eyelids when a voice said in my ear, "Miss Day, I'm so sorry, there's a Zeppelin." Just as though it were sitting on the roof, you know, preparing to lay an egg.

"Call me when the bombs begin to fall." Slumber seized me once more. Again the voice. "I think you must get up; Visitor says it is not safe."

"Oh, go to—the Common-room."

It was no use. I was dragged out. There are moments when one could cheerfully boil one's fellow-creatures in a sausage-pot.

At the market when danger threatened every one was ruthlessly hunted to the cellar. And French cellars are the coldest things on earth. Even on the hottest day in summer they are cool, in the winter they would freeze a polar bear. Indeed, we were sometimes tempted to declare that the cellars did more harm than Zeppelin or Taube.

Air-raids affect different people differently. One woman said they—well, she said, "Ça fait sauter (to jump) l'estomac," which must have been sufficiently disagreeable; another declared, "Ça fait trop de bile." Nearly all developed nerve troubles, and Madame Phillipot—who succeeded Madame Drouet as our femme de mÉnage, refused to undress at night. In vain we reasoned with her. She slept armed cap-À-pie, ready for immediate flight, and not until a slight indisposition gave us a weapon, which we used with unscrupulous skill and energy, did we wring from her a promise to go to bed like a respectable Christian. Madame Albert died trembling in the darkness one night: an old woman, affected by bronchial trouble, flying from Death, found him in the icy cellar; many a case of bronchitis and lung trouble was reported as an outcome of these nightly raids, children especially began to suffer, their nerves breaking down, their little faces becoming pinched, dark shadows lying under their eyes.

In the War Zone people don't write letters to the Press discussing the advisability of taking refuge in a raid, nor do they talk of "women and children cowering in cellars." No one suggests that the well-to-do "should set an example or show the German they are not afraid." France is too logical for nonsense of that kind. It knows that soldiers do not sit on the parapet of a trench when strafing is going on—it would call them harsh names if they did, and so would we. It believes in reasonable precautions. After all, the German object is to kill as many civilians as possible—why gratify him by running up the casualty rate? Why occupy ambulances that might be put to better use? Why occupy the time of doctors and nurses who are more urgently wanted in the military wards? Why put your relatives to the expense of a funeral? Why indeed? Why court suicide for the sake of a stupid sentiment? Logic echoes why? Logic goes calmly to its cellar or to that of its neighbour, if it happens to be out and away from its own when trouble begins. Logic comes up again and goes serenely about its business when trouble is over.

Only the nerve-wrecks, people who have sustained long bombardment by shell-fire for the most part, really lose presence of mind. And for them there is every excuse. Let no one who has not suffered as they have presume to judge them.

Once—it was downright wicked, I admit—two of us, both, be it confessed, wild Irishwomen, with all the native and national love of a row boiling in our veins, hearing the syren one evening, somewhere about nine o'clock, put on our hats and coats, and kilting our skirts, set off up the hill. We left consternation behind us, but then we did so want to see a Zeppelin!

The valley was bathed in soft fitful light. The moon was almost full, but misty clouds flitted across the sky, fugitives flying before a wooing wind. Below us the town lay in darkness. Not a lamp showing. About us rose the old town, the rue ChavÉ looming cliff-like high above our heads. We pressed on, pierced the shadows of that narrow street and gained the rue des Grangettes, there to be met with a sight so weird, so suggestive of tragedy I wish I could have painted it. From the tall, grim houses men and women had poured out. Children sat huddled beside them, others slept in their mother's arms. On the ground lay bags and bundles. Whispers hissed on the air. It was alive with sibilant sound. No one talked aloud. They were as people that watch in an ante-room when Death has touched one who relinquishes life reluctantly in a room beyond. In the rue Tribel were more groups. In the rue des Ducs de Bar still more. We thought the population of those old ghost-haunted houses must all have come forth from a shelter in which they no longer trusted. A Zeppelin bomb, it is said, will crash through six storeys and break the roof of the cellar beneath. Here in the street there was no safety. But in the woods beyond the town, in the woods high on the hill.... Many and many a poor family spent long night hours in the cold, the wet and the storm, their little all gathered in bundles beside them during those intense months of early spring. We felt—or at least I know that I felt—as we walked through this world of whispering shadow, utterly unreal. I ceased to believe in Zeppelins; earth, material things slid away, in the cloud-veiled moonlight values became distorted; I felt like a spectator at a play, but a play where only shadows act behind a dim, semi-transparent screen.

Then we came to the Place Tribel, and the world enclosed us again. A soldier with a telescope swept the heavens, others gazed anxiously out over the hills towards St Mihiel. The night was very still and beautiful; strange that out there, somewhere in the void, Death should be riding, coming perhaps near to our own souls, with his message written already upon our hearts. In the streets below a bugle call rang out clear and sweet, the Alerte, the danger signal.... We thought of the hurried wretches making their way to the woods.... Odd that one should want to see a Zeppelin!