Part 5 (2/2)
As we neared Paris there was another stop before the train went over the temporary bridge that had been erected over the Oise. We could still see the other that had been blown up by the French in order to stem the German advance on Paris in August 1914. This shattered bridge brought it home to me how very near to Paris the Boche had been.
As I stepped out of the Gare du Nord all the people were looking skywards at two Taubes which had just dropped several bombs. Some welcome, I thought to myself!
Paris in War time at that period (June, 1915) wore rather the appearance of a deserted city. Every third shop had notices on the doors to the effect that the owners were absent at the war. Others were being run by the old fathers and mothers long since retired, who had come up from the country to ”carry on.” My friend told me that when she had returned to Paris in haste from the country, at the beginning of the war, there was not a taxi available, as they were all being used to rush the soldiers out to the battle of the Marne. Fancy taxi-ing to a battlefield!
The Parisians were very interested to see a girl dressed in khaki, and discussed each item of my uniform in the Metro quite loudly, evidently under the same impression as the old _commercant_! My field boots took their fancy most. _”Mon Dieu!”_ they would exclaim. ”Look then, she wears the big boots like a man. It is _chic_ that, hein?”
In one place, an old curiosity shop in the Quartier St. Germain, the woman was so thrilled to hear I was an _infirmiere_ she insisted on me keeping an old Roman lamp I was looking at as a souvenir, because her mother had been one in 1870. War has its compensations.
I also discovered a Monsieur Jollivet at Neuilly, a job-master who had a few horses left, among them a little English mare which I rode. We went in the Bois nearly every morning and sometimes along the race course at Longchamps, the latter very overgrown. ”Ah, Mademoiselle,” he would exclaim, ”if it was only in the ordinary times, how different would all this look, and how Mademoiselle would amuse herself at the races!”
One day walking along near the ”Observatoire” an old nun stopped me, and in broken English asked how the war was progressing. (The people in the shops did too, as if I had come straight from G.H.Q.!) She then went on to tell me that she was Scotch, but had never been home for thirty-five years! I could hardly believe it, as she talked English just as a Frenchwoman might. She knew nothing at all as to the true position of affairs, and asked me to come in to the Convent to tea one day, which I did.
They all cl.u.s.tered round me when I went, asking if I had met their relation so-and-so, who was fighting at the front. They were frightfully disappointed when I said ”No, I had not.”
I went to their little chapel afterwards, and later on, the Reverend Mother, who was so old she had to be supported on each side by two nuns, came to a window and gave me her blessing. My Scotch friend before I left pressed a little oxidized silver medal of the Virgin into my hand, which she a.s.sured me would keep me in safety. I treasured it after that as a sort of charm and always had it with me.
A few days later I was introduced to Warneford, V.C., the man who had brought down the first Zeppelin. He had just come to Paris to receive the _Legion d'Honneur_ and the _Croix de Guerre_, and was being feted and spoilt by everybody. He promised towards the end of the week, when he had worked off some of his engagements, to take me up--strictly against all rules of course--for a short flight. I met him on the Monday, I think, and on the Wednesday he crashed while making a trial flight, and died after from his injuries, in hospital. It seemed impossible to believe when first I heard of it--he was so full of life and high spirits.
We went to Versailles one day. The loneliness and general air of desertion that overhang the place seemed more intensified by the war than ever. The gra.s.s had grown very long, the air was sultry, and not a ripple stirred the calm surface of the lake. It seemed somehow very like the Palace of a Sleeping Beauty. I wondered if the ghost of Marie Antoinette ever revisited the Trianon or flitted up and down the wooden steps of the miniature farm where she had played at being a dairymaid?
As we wended our way back in the evening, the incessant croaking of the frogs in the big lake was the only sound that broke the stillness. There was something sinister about it as if they were croaking ”We are the only creatures who now live in this beautiful place, and it is we, with our ugly voices and bodies, who have triumphed over the beautiful vain ladies who threw pebbles at us long ago from the terraces.”--We turned away, and the croaking seemed to become more triumphant and echoed in our ears long after we had left the vicinity.
At night, in Paris, aeroplanes flew round and round the city on scout duty switching on lights at intervals that made them look like travelling stars. They often woke one up, and the noise of the engines was so loud it seemed sometimes as if they must fly straight through one's window. I used to love to get up early and go down to ”Les Halles,” the French Covent Garden, and come back with literally armfuls of roses of all shades of delicate pink, white, and cream. Tante Rose (the only name I ever knew her by) was a widow, and the aunt of my friend. She was one of the _vieille n.o.blesse_ and had a charming house in Pa.s.sy, and was as interesting to listen to as a book. She asked me one day if I would care to go with her to a Memorial Service at the _Sacre-Coeur_. Looking out of her windows we could see the church dominating Paris from the heights of Montmartre, the mosque-like appearance of its architecture gleaming white against the sky.
At that moment the dying rays of the sun lit up the golden cross surmounting it, and presently the whole building became a delicate rose pink and seemed almost to float above the city, all blue in the haze of the evening below. It was wonderful, and a picture I shall always carry in my mind. I replied I would love to go, and on the following day we toiled up the dazzling white steps. The service was, I think, the most impressive I have ever attended. Crowds flocked to it, all or nearly all in that uniform of deep-mourning incomparably _chic_, incomparably French, and gaining daily in popularity. Long before the service began the place was packed to suffocation. Tante Rose looked proudly round and whispered to me, ”Ah, my little one, you see here those who have given their all for France.” Indeed it seemed so on looking round at those white-faced women; and how I wished that _some_ of the people in England, who had not been touched by the war, or who at that time (June, 1915) hardly realized there even was one, could have been present.
During another visit to Tante Rose's I heard the following story from an _infirmiere_. A wounded German was brought to one of the French hospitals. In the bed adjoining lay a Zouave who had had his leg amputated. The Boche asked for a drink of hot water, the hottest obtainable. When the Nurse brought it to him he took the gla.s.s, and without a word threw the scalding contents in her face! The Zouave who had witnessed this brutal act, with a snarl of rage, leapt from his bed on to the German's and throttled him to death there and then. The other _blesses_ sat up in bed and cheered. ”It is thus,” she continued calmly, ”that our brave soldiers avenge us from these brutes.” I looked at her as she sat there so dainty in her white uniform, quite undismayed by what had taken place. It was just another of those little incidents that go to show the spirit of the French nation.
Some American friends of mine took me over their hospital for French soldiers at Neuilly. It was most beautifully equipped from top to bottom, and I was especially interested in the dental department where they fitted men with false jaws, etc. Every comfort was provided, and some of the patients were lying out on balconies under large umbrellas, smiling happily at all who pa.s.sed. I sighed when I thought of the makes.h.i.+fts we had _la bas_ at Lamarck.
I also went to a sort of review held in the Bois of an _Ambulance Volant_ (ambulance unit to accompany a Battalion), given and driven by Americans. They also had a field operating theatre. These drivers were all voluntary workers, and were Yale and Harvard men who had come over to see what the ”show” was really like. Some of them later joined the French Army, and one the famous ”Foreign Legion,” and others went back to the U.S.A. to make sh.e.l.ls.
It was very interesting to hear about the ”Foreign Legion.” In peace time most of the people who join it are either fleeing from justice, or they have no more interest in life and don't care what becomes of them.
It is composed of dare-devils of all nationalities, and the discipline is of the severest. They are therefore among the most fearless fighters in the world, and always put in a tight place on the French front. There is one man at the enlisting depot[9] who is a wonderful being, and can size up a new recruit at a glance. He is known as ”Le Sphinx.” You must give him your real name and reason for joining the Legion, and in exchange he gives you a number by which henceforth you are known. He knows the secrets of all the Legion, and they are never divulged to a living soul; he never forgets, nor do they ever pa.s.s his lips. One of the most cherished souvenirs I have is a plain bra.s.s b.u.t.ton with the inscription ”Legion etrangere” printed round it in raised letters.
As early as June, 1915, the French were showing what relics they had brought back from the battlefields. No better place than the ”Invalides,” with Napoleon's tomb towering above, could have been chosen for their display. Part of the courtyard was taken up by captured guns, and in two separate corners a ”Taube,” and a German scout machine, with black crosses on their wings, were tethered like captured birds. There the widows, leading their little sons by the hand, came dry-eyed to show young France what their fathers had died in capturing for the glory of _La Patrie_.
”Dost thou know, Maman,” I heard one mite saying, ”I would like well to mount astride that cannon there,” indicating a huge 7.4, but the woman only smiled the saddest smile I have ever seen, and drew him over to gaze at the silvery remains of the Zeppelin that had been brought down on the Marne.
The rooms leading off the corridors above were all filled with souvenirs and helmets, and in another, the captured flags of some of the most famous Prussian Regiments were spread out in all their glory of gold and silver embroideries and ta.s.sels.
We went on to see Napoleon's tomb, which made an impression on me which I shall never forget. The sun was just in the right quarter. As we entered the building, the ante-room seemed purposely darkened to form the most complete contrast with the inner; where the sun, streaming through the wonderful gla.s.s windows, shone with a steady shaft of blue light, almost ethereal in colouring, down into the tomb where the great Emperor slept.
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING A CONCERT, CANTEEN WORK, HOUSEKEEPING, THE ENGLISH CONVOY, AND GOOD-BYE LAMARCK
<script>