War's Dark Frame/Lorraine and the Devastation
CHAPTER V
LORRAINE AND THE DEVASTATION
ONE learns to shrink from the great railway terminals in war time. On several occasions I left Paris by rail to visit the front, and each time the excitement of the prospect died at the ticket window. I think it is because these stations have witnessed too many departures for battle, too much of the tearing of warm life from warm life and the definitive rupture of romance, too many broken returns, too many shocked greetings.
My first introduction came not long after dawn of a grey morning. The foreign office had asked if I would like to visit Lorraine, suggesting that I take the day train for Nancy where a staff officer and an automobile would meet me. An elderly English Quaker, who was interested in Red Cross work and the rebuilding of devastated villages, joined me, and together we drove through the scarcely awakened streets to the Gare de l'Est. We entered to present our papers and accomplish the formalities that are necessary before one may take a ticket. With a pronounced reluctance the dun light penetrated the great hall, which had an air of mourning. Soldiers crowded the wide spaces, shivering. Their uniforms were soiled. Some retained the white marks of the trenches. The young faces were drawn, unhappy, wondering. For the most part these fellows were permissionaires, returning to the trenches after eight days of home and love and hero worship. They had swung their backs on all that, knowing, if they were not hit, it would be many months, perhaps a year, before they could experience such blessings again. They were like a band of men of whom a certain number has been chosen for some violent discipline and who are left in doubt as to the actual selections.
The place was saturated with melancholy. Instinctively we left it. Across the plaza we saw a café whose name was in harmony with the spirit of the station.
"Café du Départ."
"A cup of coffee?" the elderly Quaker suggested, for neither of us had had any breakfast.
We sat on the terrasse among the soldiers, watching regretful faces above faded uniforms. Accoutrements littered the pavement between the tables. One or two men spoke to us formally, and we answered formally. Beyond that there was no companionable morning chatter. We all stared at the grey façade of the station. The huge clock mocked us, pacing the minutes too quickly. In the eyes of the soldiers smouldered their doubt. Would they enter at that portal once more? Would they look again upon the familiar and the desirable ?
From the summit of the facade gazed back the stone figure of a woman. There would have been no mistaking it even if it hadn't been labelled. It was the figure of Strassburg. It had an appearance of summoning the staring and melancholy soldiers through that portal and on to the East for a violent and necessary redemption. Our compartment was filled with officers. Even my Quaker companion wore a uniform of the Red Cross. On that long train I was the only one in civilian clothing.
We glided quickly into the district entered by the Germans just before the battle of the Marne. About bridgeheads many buildings lay in ruins. We passed the once charming little town of Sermaize-les-Bains. Scarcely a wall showed more than two feet high.
An officer spoke.
“They say it was because the mayor of Sermaize failed to come out and greet the commander of the entering forces. That offended the commander. Wherefore —"
His hand made a circling gesture in the direction of the accusing rubbish.
All morning and during a portion of the afternoon we were carried through the war zone, pausing at towns whose names have become immortal. And in the fields between we saw many graves, marked with crosses, here and there supporting a faded cap. About the graves the fields were cultivated, yet no mound had been disturbed. The French have come to look upon the random tombs of the men who fell saving Paris as national monuments. They impress one as the most imposing memorials a nation has ever constructed.
During this trip I received one or two examples of the social justice of compulsory military service as it is practised in France. My Quaker companion and I were gossiping of Japan at luncheon in the wagon restaurant. Next to the Quaker sat a pleasant, middle-aged man, wearing the uniform, made of a sort of overall material, of the transport corps. Suddenly he turned and spoke in excellent English.
“You are interested in Japan?"
We embarked on a random conversation.
Quite naturally it developed before we were through, that the man in overalls owned coal mines in Japan, in South America, in Belgium.
"Of course," he smiled," the Belgian mines must be looked upon for the present as a bad investment.
In overalls, driving soldiers and supplies to the front, this man of exceptional wealth!
"I'm going back after my first permission in more than a year."
"You despise such work?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
One does one's share, and that is arranged according to the best interests of France. My task has its compensations. For instance, at the commencement of the battle of Verdun when things looked rather dark I helped in that marvel of transport You must have heard. We moved fifty thousand men in motor trucks from Revigny to the Verdun sector in a twinkling."
A little later we passed Revigny. He waved his hand, buttoned his coat of overall material, and left us.
Across the aisle a colonel shared a bottle of wine with a private. They chatted amiably. Yet at work the discipline of the French develops results that more than match the iron bound German system.
We halted at Bar-le-Duc, the base for Verdun. The third great attempt of the Germans to break through was in progress. The booming of the guns came to us across rolling hills. There was scarcely an entire pane of glass in the station. The squat barrack-like temporary hospitals, filled with the martyrs who had entered the turmoil, to return shattered along the Sacred Way, sent forth an air of suffering and misgiving. For the Ger- mans at that time were in the habit of raiding Bar-le-Duc with their air squadrons. The day after my last visit, indeed, they dropped a shower of bombs, killing and maiming more than thirty civilians.
Beyond we left the main line, taking a tangent to the south to avoid the salient at St. Mihiel.
At the first station west of Nancy the controlleur told us we must alight.
“The train," he explained," does not stop in Nancy itself, because of the Boche bombardment.
We were greeted on the platform by a stout, hospitable man in the uniform of the Etat Major. He drove us into Nancy whose chief beauties, in spite of the bombardment, have remained intact. There was enough of ruin, however, for the most part in the vicinity of the station, which the Germans have been unable to hit directly. An apartment house in the middle of a block had recently been struck. All that had survived was a heap of rubbish in a yawning hole. More pitiful, more productive of anger, was the rubble and charred beams that marked the site of a children's school. If it has been the purpose of the Germans to make the innocent suffer in Nancy they have achieved an admirable success. We noticed particularly the wreck of a dwelling house.
"That," our captain explained," was struck by a great shell, and afterwards bombed by an aeroplane."
Strangely, when I was in Champagne sometime later I met an officer who, when he learned I had been in Nancy, asked me if I remembered this particular ruin.
"It was my home," he said simply.
"Fortunately my family was not there when the shell struck."
Close to this circle of devastation lay the hotel, so far practically untouched, in which we were to spend the night.
Perhaps," our officer grinned at me," a shell will fall through monsieur's bedroom, and furnish America with a casus belli."
I patiently explained to him that I entered the war zone at my own risk, but his wit intrigued him, and each time he repeated his joke we tried to laugh. Affairs in Nancy, there was no doubt, progressed much as in time of peace.
“Why not?" such inhabitants as I talked to said. "We go along. We merely hope that the next shell won't fall near us."
On the walls of many houses we saw, painted in red, the cross of Lorraine.
“Why?" we asked.
“Because," the captain replied, "each one of those marked houses has a cellar. When the bombardment commences, people caught in the street enter the nearest house marked with a cross, and the inhabitants must receive them and give them shelter."
The elderly Quaker shook his head.
"Why should Nancy be bombarded in this fashion?
The captain shrugged his shoulders.
"It might be a little pique," he answered. “You see, just before the battle of the Marne the Kaiser and the Crown Prince were decked out in all their plumage and waited, mounted on horseback, to make a triumphant entry of the capital of Lorraine. At the last minute they had to change their plans. That was very sad—for them. I think they have never quite forgiven us. To-morrow in the devastated districts I will show you worse things. Wait until you have seen Gerbéviller."
His eyes held a disturbing promise.
In our hotel, surrounded by shattered buildings, we dined comfortably that night. Other officers came to our table from time to time with the gossip of the sector. One of them, a charming young fellow, a captain in the machine gun service, was particularly pleased to find an American, because he had heard a good story that day about one of my countrymen in the Foreign Legion. Over coffee he told it with much joy.
"You know," he said, " that the soldiers have been in the habit of making finger rings out of the aluminum they gather from shells of the Bosches. They send them to Paris, where they are sold, and lots, I daresay, have found their way to America."
I told him that as far back as a year ago I had seen such rings in New York.
"Then you will understand," he went on," how eager the soldiers are to get this material, which in good condition isn't very plentiful. They are quite jealous about it. The other night, it seems, this American in the Foreign Legion was on solitary in a listening post between the lines. Those places are never very comfortable, as you may learn for yourself some day. The Bosches try to locate them with their artillery, and when they do they simply blow them to pieces. That night they got the range of this post and turned their guns loose. Your poor countryman thought the end of the world had come. His escape was cut off. The sap, leading out, was obliterated by great shells. There was nothing for him to do except to stay and take his chances, and they were pretty slender. At the end of an hour nothing whatever was left of the post except a heap of formless earth; yet, through one of the miracles of war, the sentry remained untouched. As soon as the fire had lifted, the poor devil crawled back to the front line trench and climbed the parapet. He expected to be greeted as a hero, as the saviour of France. He pictured a deputation welcoming him at the parapet with the Croix de Guerre, with the Military Medal, with the Legion of Honour.
“There was a deputation at the parapet—of poilus, crowding around him with anxious and envious faces. They greeted him in an excited fashion.
"You lucky devil!'" they cried. “For the love of Heaven, let us see! How much aluminum did you get from those Boche shells?'"
The machine gun officer, in spite of his appreciation of the incident as humorous, expressed can a visible pride in its climax. He sipped his cof- fee.
"That legionaire," he said, "will be a better soldier for his adventure."
“How," the Quaker asked thoughtfully, any one hope to defeat soldiers who take death and war with that blagueur attitude?"
Through the quiet reply of the machine gun officer vibrated an unconditional assurance.
“We do not believe such men can be defeated."
And we thought of the guns of Verdun which we had heard that afternoon, roaring from the German lines their desperation and their anger.
For some time after dinner we chatted. We talked of nothing but war, for that is all there is to talk about in Europe these days.
A general officer strolled in, nodding pleasantly to one and another.
"We must make an early start to-morrow, our staff officer said.
"Shan't we go to bed?"
He showed us our rooms. He made sure that we were quite comfortable. He brought a map, the very last thing, explaining the trip he had arranged for the next day.
"Of course," he said, "they might send a shell in here to-night, or an air raid isn't an impossibility."
I hoped he was at his humour again, yet his eyes were uncomfortably serious.
“If that doesn't happen," he said, "you will see some things that will surprise you.
Again his face altered with that disturbing promise.
Among other things,” he added softly as he turned to go, you will visit the ruins of Gerbéviller—of Gerbéviller-la-Martyre."