Part 52

Overhead tangled electric wires swung dangerously near the road, the poles shattered or knocked agog, while in the distance the stumps of a once-majestic row of poplars made the horizon look like a grinning toothless face.

Time and again we were obliged to leave the road to avoid accident by passing over unexploded shells, and I shall always recall a gigantic oak tree which though still standing was cleft in twain by a 77-shell embedded intact in the yawning trunk; the impact, not the explosion, had caused the rift.

The farther we advanced the more evident became the signs of recent conflict. Hay stacks seemed to have been a favorite target as well as refuge. One we saw was almost completely tunneled through, and the blood bespattered sides of the opening told that the occupant had been caught as in a trap. Around these stacks were scattered the remains of old boots and shoes, scarlet blood-soaked rags, dry beans, bits of soap, playing cards and songs. Oh, lighthearted sons of France, it can be truly said that death held no terrors for you, since from Barcy to Soissons the ground you loved and so valiantly defended was strewn white with hundreds of thousands of tender ditties and chansons de route.

From Vareddes we passed on to Congis, the only living soul we met being a little old white-haired parish priest, who had set himself the task of blessing each new-made grave.

"If this rain continues some of them will be so effaced in a fortnight that we shall never find them. See--this cross is but two bits of straw, bound together by a shoe string!"

And he held up the fragile ornament for my inspection.

"These are more durable," and he showed another relic made of a bayonet sheath, crossed on the blade itself!

"And you--Monsieur le Cure--bow is it you are here?"

"Alas--would to God they had taken me in the place of our boys! Seven of them, Madame, carried off as hostages. I was too old to be of use!"

"And the women?"

The poor little man hung his bead.

"Twere better they had died!"

I understood and shuddered.

"God speed you, my daughter, and never cease to thank Him for preserving you!"

Again we went our way.

Lizy-sur-Ourq, which we reached in the late forenoon, presented a more animated, though hardly more pleasing spectacle. On the tracks in front of the station dozens of flat cars and freight trains had been purposely run together. Some had telescoped, others mounted high in piles, one upon the other, their locomotives as well as their contents being smashed and damaged--the whole scene presenting the aspect of a gigantic railway wreck.

On the steps of the station, seated gun in hand, three soldiers sat playing a game of cards. Across the street a sentry mounted guard in front of a large door over which floated a Red Cross flag.

"What's in there?" I asked.

"Prisoners and wounded."

"Can I be of any assistance?"

"Hardly--only flesh wounds."

I peeked into the courtyard.

In one corner lounging upon the ground were a dozen untidy, unshaven men, whom I recognized by their uniforms to be Germans. One man cast an insolent glance toward me and turned his back. Two others smiled and pointed toward the bread they held in their hands. On some straw in a couple of drays lay five or six individuals, their arms in slings, their heads bandaged.

"Nothing serious," explained a sergeant. "We're waiting for our men to clear up the tracks and the genie to throw a bridge across the canal. Then we'll evacuate them."

He was neither sad nor triumphant.

"Were you in the battle?"

"Rather!"

"How did your regiment come off?"