Part 6

"J'ai ete blesse le ... devant.... J'ai deux blessures hideuses et je n'en aurai pas pour bien longtemps. Les majors ne me le cachent meme pas.

"Je pars sans regret avec la conscience d'avoir fait mon devoir.

"Prevenez donc mes parents le mieux que vous pourrez; qu'ils ne cherchent pas a venir, ils n'en auraient pas le temps.

"Adieu vous tous que j'aimais.

"VIVE LA FRANCE!"

"DEAR GODFATHER AND GODMOTHER.

"I am writing to you, so as not to kill mother, whom such a shock would surprise too much. I was wounded on the ... at.... I have two terrible wounds and I cannot last long. The surgeons do not even attempt to conceal this from me. I go without regret, with the consciousness of having done my duty. Kindly break the news to my parents the best way you can; they should not attempt to come because they would not have time to reach me before the end.

"Farewell to all you whom I have loved.

"LONG LIVE FRANCE!"

Whilst loving his relatives tenderly, the last thought of the dying Frenchman is for his country. Each one dies as a hero, yet not one realises it. It would be impossible to show greater simplicity; they salute the flag for the last time, and that is all.

From Triancourt we went straight to the headquarters of General Nivelle. They had just brought him the maps rectified to mark the French advance. The advance had been made whilst we were standing on the terrace at Verdun the night before. We had seen the rockets sent up, requesting a tir de barrage (curtain of fire). The '75's had replied at once and the French had been able to carry out the operation.

Good news had also come in from the Somme, and General Nivelle did not hesitate to express his admiration for the British soldiers.

He said that there was no need to praise the first troops sent by Britain to France--everyone knew their value; but it should be a great satisfaction to Britain to find that the new Army was living up to the traditions of the old Army.

He added: "We can describe the new army of Britain in two words: 'Ca mord'--it bites."

The Father of his own men, it is not surprising that General Nivelle finds a warm corner in his heart for the British Tommy, since his mother was an Englishwoman.

At lunch General Nivelle and the members of his staff asked many questions as to the work of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. I told them that what appealed to us most in our French patients was the perfect discipline and the gratitude of the men. We are all women in the hospitals, and the men might take advantage of this fact to show want of discipline, but we never had to complain of lack of obedience. These soldiers of France may some of them before the war have been just rough peasants, eating, drinking, and sleeping, even having thoughts not akin to knighthood; but now, through the ordeal of blood and fire, each one of them has won his spurs and come out a chivalrous knight, and they bring their chivalry right into the hospitals with them. We had also learned to love them for their kindness to one another. When new wounded are brought in and the lights are low in the hospital wards, cautiously watching if the nurse is looking (luckily nurses have a way of not seeing everything), one of the convalescents will creep from his bed to the side of the new arrival and ask the inevitable question: "D'ou viens-tu?" ("Where do you come from?"). "I come from Toulouse," replies the man. "Ah!" says the inquirer, "my wife's grandmother had a cousin who lived near Toulouse." That is quite a sufficient basis for a friendship; the convalescent sits by the bedside of his new comrade, holding the man's hand whilst his wounds are being dressed, telling him he knows of the pain--that he, too, has suffered, and that soon all will be well.

Lions to fight, ever ready to answer to the call of the defence of their country, yet these men of France are tender and gentle. In one hospital through which I passed there was a baby. It was a military hospital, and no civilian had any right there, but the medical officers who inspected the hospital were remarkably blind--none of them could ever see the baby. One of the soldiers passing through a bombarded village saw a little body lying in the mud, and although he believed the child to be dead, he stooped down and picked it up. At the evacuating station the baby and the soldier were sent to the hospital together; the doctors operated upon the baby and took a piece of shrapnel from its back, and once well and strong it constituted itself lord and master and king of all it surveyed. When it woke in the morning it would call "Papa," and twenty fathers answered to its call. All the pent-up love of the men for their own little ones from whom they had been parted for so long they lavished on the tiny stranger, but all his affection and his whole heart belonged to the rough miner-soldier who had brought him in. As the shadows fell one saw the man walking up and down the ward with the child in his arms, crooning the Marseillaise until the tired little eyes closed. He had obtained permission from the authorities to adopt the child, as the parents could not be found, and remarked humorously: "Mademoiselle, it is so convenient to have a family without the trouble of being married!"

What we must remember is that the rough soldier, himself blinded with blood and mud, uncertain whether he could ever reach a point of safety, yet had time to stoop and pick that little flower of France and save it from being crushed beneath the camion wheels. I told General Nivelle that the hospital staff intended to keep the child for the soldier until the end of the war, and we all hoped that he might grow up to the glory of France and to the eternal honour of the tender-hearted fighter who had rescued him.

After lunch we stood for some time watching the unending stream of camions proceeding into Verdun. I believe it has been stated that on the average one passed through the village every fifteen seconds, and that there are something like twelve thousand motor vehicles used in the defence of Verdun. The splendid condition of the roads and the absence of all confusion in the handling of this immense volume of traffic is a great tribute to the organising genius of the chiefs of the French Army.

We left General Nivelle, as General Petain predicted we should find him--smiling.

We slept that night at Epernay, in the heart of the Champagne district. The soil of France is doing its best to keep the vines in perfect condition and to provide a good vintage to be drunk later to celebrate the victory of France and her Allies.

The keeping of the roads in good condition is necessary for the rapid carrying out of operations on the front, and a "marmite" hole is promptly filled if by a lucky shot the German batteries happen to tear up the roadway. We were proceeding casually along one road when a young officer rode up to us and told us to put on speed because we were under fire from a German battery which daily landed one or two shells in that particular portion of the roadway. It is wonderful how obedient one becomes at times! We promptly proceeded to hasten!

After visiting General Debeney and obtaining from him the necessary authorisation and an officer-escort, we entered Rheims.

The cathedral is now the home of pigeons, and as they fly in and out of the blackened window-frames, small pieces of the stained glass tinkle down on to the floor. The custodian of the cathedral told us that during the night of terror the German wounded, lying in the cathedral, not realising the strength and beauty of the French character under adversity, feared, seeing the cathedral in flames, that the populace might wreak vengeance on them, and it was exceedingly difficult to get them to leave the cathedral. Many of the prisoners fled into corners and hid, and some of them even penetrated into the palace of the Archbishop, which was in flames. All the world knows and admires the bravery of the cure of the cathedral, M. Landrieux, who took upon himself the defence of the prisoners, for fear insults might be hurled at them. He knowingly risked his life; but when, next day, some of his confreres endeavoured to praise him, he replied: "My friends, I never before realised how easy it is to die."

One of the churches in the city was heavily draped in black, and I asked the sacristan if they had prepared for the funeral of a prominent citizen. He told me that they were that day bringing home the body of a young man of high birth of the neighbourhood, but that it was not for him that the church was decked in mourning. The draperies had hung there since August 1914--"Since every son of Rheims who is brought home is as noble as the one who comes to-day, and alas! nearly every day brings us one of our children."

We lunched in the hotel before the cathedral, where each shell-hole has an ordinary white label stuck beside it with the date. The landlord remarked: "If you sit here long enough, and have the good luck to be in some safe part of the building, you may be able to go and stick a label by a hole yourself."

After lunch we went out to the Chateau Polignac. To a stranger it would appear to be almost entirely destroyed, but when M. de Polignac visited it recently he simply remarked that it was "less spoilt than he had imagined." This was just one other example of the thousands one meets daily of the spirit of noble and peasant de ne pas s'en faire, but to keep only before them the one idea, Victory for France, no matter what may be the cost.

We went later to call on the "'75," chez elle. Madame was in a particularly comfortable home which had been prepared for her and where she was safe from the inquisitive eyes of the Taubes. The men of the battery were sitting round their guns, singing a somewhat lengthy ditty, each verse ending with a declamation and a description of the beauty of "la belle Suzanne." I asked them to whom Suzanne belonged and where the fair damsel resided. "Oh," they replied, "we have no time to think of damsels called 'Suzanne' now. This is our Suzanne," and the speaker affectionately gave an extra rub with his coat-sleeve to the barrel of the "'75."