WAR SCENES I SHALL NEVER FORGET

By Carita Spencer

Published By
Carita Spencer
10 East 68TH St. New York

Price Fifty Cents




Foreword

The scenes and occurrences which are recorded in these pages
made such a deep impression upon me and have remained so vivid
that I hope the recital of them may be found interesting to others.

My sole purpose in publishing this book is to obtain funds for war
relief. Every penny of the proceeds from its sale will be devoted to
that object.

The reader will note that casual reference without mention of names
is made to a number of individuals who are directing relief work with
efficiency and devotion. These are only a few of the many I had the
privilege of meeting, and whose methods of work I studied. If any
one is interested in sending assistance to a particular class of war
sufferers suggested by the reading of these sketches, he or she
may communicate with me at 10 East 58th Street, New York City. I
shall take pleasure in giving the names and addresses of those on
the other side of the water most responsible to act as distributors of
such generosity.

CARITA SPENCER. New York, 1917





War Scenes I Shall Never Forget

Paris, April, 1916. "La Legation de Belgique a I'honneur de faire
connaitre a Miss Spencer que Sa Majeste la Reine la recevra
Vendredi prochain, 28 avril, a La Panne, a 2 heures et demie. Miss
Spencer est priee de vouloir d'en prevenir La Legation, du lieu et de
l'heure ou on pourrait la faire prendre a, Dunkerque ou a Calais."

FOB, six weeks I had wondered where and how the door to the war
zone would open, and here at last came the answer. "The Belgian
Legation has the honor to inform Miss Spencer that Her Majesty,
the Queen, will receive her on Friday at La Panne at half past two."
My only anxiety was to be the decision whether the motor should be
sent for me to Calais or to Dunkerque. At last I could reply to the
ingenuous suggestions from home that, being in the land of war,
why didn't I see something of military activity? Just as if going to the
front was like walking down Fifth Avenue, and I could arrive by
placing one foot after the other. It was midnight when the letter
came, too late to do anything until the morrow, when I must find the
way to break all rules for civilians and get out of Paris in three hours
instead of eight days.

My official invitation was certainly a wonderful gate-opener.
Legations, embassy and war office armed me with the necessary
papers in less time than it usually took to reach the sub-clerk in the
commissaire's office. Dressed in my khaki suit and my little brown
hat with the laurel leaves,--funny little hat, since become famous
because so many officers thought I wore the leaves as a presage of
victory in honor of the Allies,--with my small handbag, heavy coat
and an umbrella, I reached the Gare St. Lazare with twenty minutes
to spare. Ahead of me were two English officers, shiny and polished
from head to foot, with their elaborate hand luggage all neatly
marked. One might think they were running down for a week-end at
the Casino. On all sides crowded sky-blue-coated poilus, the faded
dull looking sky-blue which blends into the horizon and helps to hide
the French soldier from the keen-sighted Boche.

Have you ever stood by the gate to the trains and watched the men
come up to go back to the front? Some come slowly, slouching
along in their stiff boots under the weight of their heavy knapsacks
and equipment, tired-eyed but determined. Others come running up
in twos and threes, cheerful and carefree. Others come with their
wives and children, their mothers, their sweethearts; and these do
not talk, unless it be the tiny tots, too small to know what it is all
about. Nor do they weep. They just walk up to the gate, kiss him
good-by and stand aside, and look as long as their eyes can follow
him. Sometimes he turns back, but not often. I watched a while,
then I too went through, showing my papers to several inquisitive
officials in succession.

Everything was quite like ordinary times until we passed E------,
where we lost the last of the civilians on the train except myself. My
compartment was quite empty, and as I stuck my head into the
corridor it seemed as if the rest of the car were also empty. But no,
there was a turkey gobbler in a wooden cage, and in a moment a
French officer bending over him with a cup of water. It seemed the
gobbler, poor innocent bird, was on his way to make gay an officer's
mess. Soon we came to what still remains one of the most
impressive sights of my trip, the miles of English reserve camp.
Sand dunes, setting sun and distant sea, and tents and tents, and
barracks and tents, and men in khaki never ending! Those bright,
happy, healthy faces! Why, as the train crawled through them, so
close I could shake hands out of the window, I fairly thrilled with the
conviction that they could never be beaten. I wanted to shout at
them: "Boys, I'm from over the water too, God bless you all!" But it
choked in my throat, for they came from Canada and Australia and
New Zealand to give their lives for a principle, while I came from the
land "too proud to fight." (Today, Aug., 1917, thank God, proudest of
all to fight.)

There were the shooting ranges and the bayonet targets, burlaps
the size of a man's torso stuffed with straw, hanging on a clothesline
in a row. The boys stand off a hundred yards and with fixed
bayonets charge the bursting burlap. But now, at sunset, they are
sitting around in groups or playing games, waiting for their evening
meal. They have not faced fire yet, but their turn is coming and they
are keen for it.

The officer and the turkey descended at Boulogne and darkness
closed down about the same time. There was only a shaded night
lamp in the car, and the lonesomeness of the unknown began to
take hold of me. The train crawled on about as fast as a horse
would jog. I was hungry, as with civilian-like lack of forethought I had
provided myself with no lunch or dinner. I sat close to the window,
looking for the lights of Calais which never came. The train stopped
and a kindly conductor with a white badge on his arm, which shows
that he is mobilized, helped me to stumble out in the dark. There
had been a "Zep" alarm, and not a single light was visible in the
overcast night. I pushed along with groups of soldiers into the
station, where, in an inner room, an officer sat at a small table with a
small shaded safety lamp and examined passports. He was duly
suspicious of me until I showed him the Legation paper. Stumbling
and groping like the blind man in Blind Man's Buff, I was finally
rescued by a small boy who piloted me across the bridge to a door
which he said was the G------hotel.

They refused to give me food because not even a candle was
permitted. In the dark I went to bed.

Early next morning I looked from the window on an animated
square. Tommies, Tommies everywhere. Was it England after all
instead of France? The Belgian reforme who will carry a limp to his
dying day as his ever-present memory of the great war, and who
acted as my chamberman, could not do enough for me when he
heard that I was going to see his Queen. He spoke of her as of the
dearest loved member of his family. She was a real Queen, he said.
She loved and cared for the poor and suffering. He had even seen
her once and she had smiled at him when he wore his uniform with
his croix de guerre.

The palace motor came promptly at 12:30 and into it I got with my
little bag, wondering whether I was going into Belgium to remain two
hours, two days or two weeks. I noticed that the car had seen
service. The glass was cracked even where protected by wire
netting and the upholstering was threadbare in spots, but there was
nothing the matter with the engine, and we whizzed along at a
goodly pace. And now began what I call the saluting habit. All the
two weeks that I was on Belgian soil I was of course never
unattended, and if any passing soldier did not salute the officer at
my side or the official motor in which I rode, I was conscious of an
extraordinary omission.

We passed in and out of towns with guards at attention. Even at the
frontier we were not stopped. The country was flat and the roads
fearfully dusty. The heavy motor lorries and trucks which were
constantly traveling with supplies from the base to the front
interested me greatly, as they were the first I had seen in action.
They came in groups of three to thirty, and the boys on the drivers'
seats were so caked with dust I could hardly distinguish their
features. My official motor carried a special horn which cleared the
road of man and beast. The fields on all sides were tilled. I
wondered who the workers were, when what do you think I saw?
Forty children in a row, boys and girls, all ages, from the little tot to
the boy who would next year be in the army, each with a hoe. In
front of them stood an old man who beat time with a stick while the
children plied the hoe, and I warrant they had a happy time doing it.

At last I knew we must be nearing La Panne, for soldiers became
more numerous. There is always one division of the Belgian Army
en repos at La Panne. The motor made several sharp turns, and as
long as I live I shall never forget the scene. Warm sunshine, a
sandy beach over an eighth of a mile wide--small breakers--a line of
brightly colored seaside houses and villas--little sloops on the sea
and warships in the distance--cavalry maneuvering on the sands--
the dunes at either end and behind--neat white veiled nurses and
brightly clad convalescent soldiers on the walk and in the sands--the
distant booming of big guns, probably English--and the nearer
sounds of practice rifle and machine gun firing.

In a small villa I met the Queen, pretty, charming and gracious, with
wonderful eyes that seemed to look straight through me and
beyond. We talked for quite a long time and she asked me what
would interest me most to see in the little corner of Belgian Belgium.
I replied that I should like to see everything that was being done in a
constructive way for the soldiers, civilians, children. With the
promise that my wish would be gratified I took my leave and was
then escorted to the villa of the famous Dr. De-page, where I
remained for a week as his guest. The hospital is a wonder of
excellence in every way. Charming ladies efficiently shoulder the
burdens of the trained nurse, and they and doctors work hours on
end when the wounded come in crowds from the nearby trenches.

At sunset descended an English aeroplane on the beach. In a few
minutes it was surrounded by a couple of hundred men in khaki, just
as if they had sprung out of the ground. Then off it went, gracefully
dipping in a low sweeping curve in front of the "palace," then soaring
high as it struck out to sea. Then the beach guard changed, and
suddenly over the front only a few miles away appeared a Belgian
plane with German shrapnel bursting in little black puffs around it. I
went with Dr. Depage to see the wounded arriving in the
ambulances, and I took a thirty second peep at a leg operation in
the doing. At dinner--a very frugal but good one--we talked of
everything except war. And this was my first day at the front.


II


Trenches La Panne, May, 1916.

SEVEN o'clock in the morning and I had just returned from the
trenches, fairly well-behaved trenches, but real ones nevertheless,
for several German bullets had sought us as a target in the early
morning mist. It was all unreal, for I saw nothing. Yet I had to believe
it, for I heard.

Thanks to the courtesy of a gallant staff captain and a charming
gray-haired general, I made this unique expedition. The captain and
I started before daylight in the cold of a gray morning and rode to
the trenches in a comfortable limousine. The fields about were
desolate, even the trees destroyed. Here and there a heap of
stones, the remains of a thrifty farm, sheltered a small company of
soldiers. The roads were unspeakable, so deep the holes and ruts.
We passed through P------. There were still a few walls standing,
and there we picked up a piece of marble to make me a paper
weight. I knew the Germans were not far off, for the cannonading
was continuous about three miles down on our right. But for all I
could see I might as well have been on the western prairies.

"What in the world is straw fixed up that way for?" I asked.

"That is a curtain of straw which stretches for miles along the road
behind the trenches to hide our motors from the enemy. A motor
means an officer, and if they could see us we would not be here
long."

We stopped behind the straw screen and got out, crawling under it
into a communication trench. I had better call them ramparts, for this
district, you know, was the inundated land of the Yser. One hundred
yards in this winding alley of concrete and sand-bag wall and we
reached the main trench, a solid substantial rampart of concrete,
sand-bags and earth, with the grass growing on the side facing the
enemy. Here the soldiers on duty lived in their little cubby-holes in
the wall. They slept in groups of fours, stretched out on clean straw
with their guns beside them ready for sudden call. And, if you
please, do not suppose that these domiciles went unnamed or
unadorned. By the irony of fate the first wooden door we came to
was thus inscribed, all in French, of course:

Villa "Ne T'en Fais Pas"! War with Notes! Wilson-Bethman!

Hurry up, you Neutrals! How common-place trench life has become
after these two long years of habit!

Nowadays men do not go to the office and the shop. They go up to
the trenches for daily duties. These trenches we were in were main-
line, where the enemy was not supposed to penetrate unless rude
enough actually to break through. So the soldiers portioned off the
rough earth beside the board walk that ran parallel to the rampart,
and first they had a little vegetable garden, and next to it for beauty's
sake a little flower garden, and next to that a little graveyard, and
then the succession repeated. Five hundred yards beyond the main
lines, across the inundated fields streaked with barbed wire sticking
up out of the water, was the front line trench, a rougher rampart,
mostly of earth, and when it rained, oh mud! Under cover of
darkness the boys went out and returned, walking across a rickety
board walk.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Those were sharp shots and sounded like
business. They might become more personal than the steady heavy
roar of guns sending up their smoke at D------on our right. We dared
not tarry, for the sun was coming up.

The Major of the line was waiting to greet us and offered us early
morning refreshment in his dug-out. His dug-out was a cozy, comfy
little place, two boarded rooms in the rampart wall, high enough to
stand up in, and furnished with a cot and blankets and some chairs
and a stove and a mirror and some pictures, and, yes, a latch on
the door to enter by. If I had had no ears it would have been difficult
to persuade me that there were men not far off who, without
personal animosity, would gladly have landed a shell in our midst.

The war as I glimpsed it in the many phases I was able at least to
touch upon always gave me the impression of running up against a
blank wall of contradiction. To people who live week in and week out
in the range of shell fire, life and death take on a new relationship.
Death may come at any moment, and yet meantime life must be
lived, and one can't live all the time at high pressure. Perhaps no
more vivid instance of this came to me than when I was sitting in
barracks near F------as the guest of that wonderful woman, Mrs. I----
--T------. Up with the dawn, she and her fellow worker slaved without
intermission, caring for the poor civilians of F------. They taught and
fed the kiddies, dispensed medical and even surgical help, going 
out across the fields through the darkness at any call; gave out food
and clothing to the women who came daily to claim their portion.
Then, the day's hard work over, came dinner, at which an officer or
two, French, Belgian, English, even American, might drop in, and
afterwards my hostess would sit at the piano and sing Debussy with
a voice of beauty and volume, while all the time the guns would
thunder, the aeros might be overhead, and men were being killed
on all sides. One's mind hardly grasped it, but one's emotions ran
high.




Ill



P-----, May, 1916.

P------ was close by the famous Ypres and had the honor at the
moment of being a bombarded town. Hardly a day passed that
shells did not fall here in greater or less quantity. Have you ever
been in a bombarded town? Gloom? You could cut it with a knife,
and yet I could not make out why the gloom was so oppressive. The
streets were full of soldiers--Tommies, Canadians, Australians--
bustling about, cheerfully whistling, talking in groups or going about
their individual duties. Peasant women were in evidence too, and
the little shops had window displays; but oh the gloom! Many of the
houses were destroyed and in some sections there was no such
thing as a pane of glass left. The noise of the guns was almost
constant.

I was staying in a hospital with the Countess V------, a front line
ambulance in this section where fighting had been heavy. It was an
old red brick building, probably the home of one of P------'s wealthier
residents.

The high-ceilinged rooms were bare of furniture and in its place
were rows of cheap iron cots with a wounded man in each. The
Countess was one of those charming, dainty feminine creatures
with a will of iron and a courage beyond words. The story of her life
during the first invasion of Belgium and her escape from German
territory was thrilling. She came to P------, where she cared not only
for this house full of wounded soldiers, but worked and planned with
others the support and care of civilian wounded, men, women and
little children, and of hundreds of little orphan boys and girls. My
room was on the ground floor. It had half a window pane, one
boarded-up window and some heavy blankets to hang up at night to
hide the candle light from a prying aero. I simply can't describe the
gloom. The Countess said that when she felt that she could not go
on another minute, she just hunted out the box her husband had
sent her when she got word to him that she had no more clothes
and to send on some of her old ones. The box contained three filmy
negligees, the ones he loved her best in. She got them out and
spread them about the dismal room, and then she stood in the
middle and laughed and cried until she felt better.

I sat outside on a bench one morning talking to a young Belgian
officer who was so badly wounded the first year of the war that he
will probably never go back to the front. We were talking of beautiful
things, music, painting and such like. One of the ambulances drove
in. He paid no attention, it was such a common occurrence, but I
was all eyes. You have seen the ice wagon dripping on a warm
day? The ambulance was dripping too, but the drops were red! One
stretcher was lifted out and an orderly standing by raised the cover
at one end. I saw something that had once been a head with a
human face on it. The next stretcher contained a man wounded in
the legs. One of the nurses spoke to him and he tried to smile. The
next was carried without comment to the tiny stone hut in the fast-
growing little graveyard just back of the house. These kind folk
would find time to bury him and send a picture of his grave with a
few words of how bravely he had died, together with the number on
the chain at his wrist, to Headquarters to be forwarded to his family.
And he was a cook who had never held a gun or seen an enemy.
So they emptied the ambulance to the number of six and then they
turned the hose on it and started it back for its next load. And may I
tell you how the ever-present contrast came in here? Upstairs in the
convalescent ward a boy, to cheer his comrades, was banging the j
oiliest kind of music on an old tin piano, impatiently waiting the day
when he would be declared well enough to go back to be wounded
again.




IV



P------, May, 1916.

ONE of the big hospital clearing stations for this active point in the
English lines was at P------. It was a great big gloomy old barracks of
a building with never a window pane in its many windows. After an
active night, lines of ambulances would arrive and disburden at its
doors. Generally before twenty-four hours had passed the arrivals of
that day must be moved on to the beautiful new barracks hospital
near the station or direct into the hospital train, which waited until it
was full and then started out for the rear.

I went with the young wounded Belgian officer to visit this new
English barracks hospital. It was a model. The head nurse, neat and
trim as though she had stepped out from a private case, showed us
around. The operating room was perfect, three operations going on
at once. I stopped to watch the extraction of a bullet. Such sights
were always horrible, but the consciousness that the man was
temporarily out of pain under the aenesthetic made it much easier
than looking on when the dressings were done. We saw the
kitchens, the storerooms, the regular wards where the men lay in
neat white cots, and finally the receiving ward. That was not nice.
Some seventy-five wounded had just arrived. Most of them were still
in their uniforms, lying on cots covered with blankets, or on the very
stretchers that brought them. The only sounds in the long narrow
room were muffled groans, an occasional curse, and now and then
a louder cry from some poor soul, even though he was being
handled by nurse and surgeon as gently as possible. As we entered
the door it seemed as if every eye was turned in our direction, and
every eye was full of pain, almost the kind of look you would see
come from a silent suffering animal. At my very feet lay a six-foot
stalwart Englishman, his clothes caked with mud, his beard and hair
a tangled mat. He was doing his best to endure, but in spite of
himself his head and arms thrashed about, he gripped the sides of
the stretcher, he jerked the blanket which covered him and
disclosed one leg from the hip down, a mangled mass of clothes,
blood and flesh. Another, a boy of about eighteen, sat on the edge
of his cot with a face like chalk and his breath coming in quick
gasps, while a doctor was hurriedly stuffing a great, round, red hole
in his back with what seemed like yards of the gauze packing the
women in America are making.

Another one sat propped against pillows, his head and face
completely bandaged, with two rubber tubes sticking out of the
bandage. I felt so sick I wondered whether I could stick it out. For
some unexplainable reason my mind shifted back home to a
conversation I had overheard not many weeks before. Two of my
friends were discussing the merits of a couple of gowns. One gown
could be had for $300, but the other was a bit prettier, and, after all,
it only cost $50 more. I suppose such things have to be, but I do not
believe they would be quite so often, if more of us could visit in fact
or in imagination the scenes of Europe to-day. It made me think of
the phrase I had recently heard spoken by an American. "And so it
goes! We spend money for things we really don't need and eat far
too much food--and they go on fighting for everything we hold dear.
Oh, if we could only show the people at home all that we have seen
--and what it means!"

Of course there must always be poverty, and there must always be
suffering, but the ordinary every-day physical suffering is not that of
the strong and well, who, for the sake of a principle and with almost
super-human self-sacrifice, go forth to be mutilated or killed. Nor is it
the suffering of those who, through interminable days of anxiety and
oppression, cheerfully face the drudgery of war-life behind the lines,
again with that supreme sense of sacrifice of themselves to the
good of the state and to the principle of what they believe is justice.

The young Belgian saw the horror which I could scarcely hide from
my face and smiled wearily. "You think this is awful, don't you? You
should have seen what was here last winter before these beautiful
barracks were built. It was January, fearfully cold, and the rain had
been incessant for days. The Boches were bombarding P------ so
hard that every hospital there had to be evacuated and we were all
brought here, no matter what our condition. This place then
consisted of hospital tents with one small stove in the center and no
floor but the muddy ground under our feet. I was brought here along
with eighty-two others, and we were all placed in a big, round tent,
some of us on stretchers, some of us rolled in blankets, and some
of us just in the mud. The next morning I was one of seven to be
taken out alive. Oh, we know what the fellows have to go through
when a big push is on, and we know what the necessities and
comforts sent us from over the water mean in such awful times. Tell
your American friends that, and how grateful we are."

We were on a hospital tour that morning, so although I felt as if I had
seen enough pain and blood to last me for the rest of my normal life,
I did not refuse to go on. We stopped at the new little hospital
barracks for wounded civilians, who were being so happily cared for,
thanks to the never-failing activity of the Countess V------. It may
seem strange that the peasant would rather remain in his own little
home in the midst of his own little fields and garden patch, with the
shells falling all about him, than to pack his cart and move his family
to another section. Yet it is perfectly natural when you stop to think.
The whole world to the European peasant is the little spot on which
he was born and has lived. The rest of the earth is a great and
horrible unknown to him. And then, what shall he do? His entire
livelihood depends upon the bit of earth he owns. Who is going to
give him a garden and a house somewhere miles over the hills? So
it is often only by military force that the peasant can be driven out of
range of the guns, and meantime every day brings its casualties.
The pathetic sight of old men and old women, little babies, bright-
eyed boys and girls, enduring the same suffering as the soldier,
seemed so unnecessary, but yet there it was.

I bought some pretty lace which the children made at a little school
nearby this hospital, and which they sold for the benefit of their
wounded brothers and sisters. I wouldn't have believed such little
girls could have done it, if I had not seen them at work.

We returned to the Countess' hospital about sundown for tea and a
much-needed rest from the sight of horrors. That night we were
guests at the officers' mess. It is not often that a woman graces the
dinner table in this gloomy town, and so everything was done to
make the occasion festive. There was a menu card, an artistic
creation, and place cards and two beautiful wild flower bouquets for
the Countess and myself, and the best wine that still remained in the
almost depleted cellar. After dinner, as usual, we talked about nearly
everything except war, and yet I felt all the time the undercurrent of
tension. I knew that some part of each one's consciousness was
ever watchful for the shell or aero bomb which might come any
minute. One of their dearest comrades had been killed on the
doorstep of this very house only a few weeks previous.

Usually the arrival of enemy aeroplanes is announced and every
one takes to cover. Sometimes it is the custom to ring a bell or to
blow whistles, and sometimes a boy rides through the town on a
bicycle sounding a horn of peculiar quality, which means the aeros
are coming. But no aeros came that night, and about 10 o'clock we
rode through the deserted, silent, narrow, little streets back to the
hospital and to bed.




V



Orphelinats, P.------, May, 1916.

THE next morning we went on a long ride over the hills to visit the
little Belgian orphans and see how they were being cared for on
French soil. As there was no military motor available, and as, for the
one and only time in my war travels, I was unarmed with papers to
get me across the frontier, we decided to do the eighty miles in an
ambulance, where I could hide in the back as we whizzed past the
familiar sentries. Mile.

M------, in her well-worn khaki suit with the Red Cross badge, sat in
front with the chauffeur. Within the ambulance, on the hard wooden
bench, was I with that wonderful hero of Ypres, the Abbe of St.
Pierre. What a face of strength and poise and thoughtfulness he
had! To the people of that country he was a saint, specially
protected by heaven. He seemed to have led a charmed life. He
was the last to leave the battered ruins of the once beautiful Ypres.
They say he saved even the cats before he would depart, and still
the longing to return to his beloved town came over him so strongly
that at times his friends had great difficulty in restraining him. He
loved every stone and he god-fathered every poor child of the
village. Shells have burst all around him, killing those at his side,
but, by some wonder of fate, have left him untouched. His smile was
a delight, his conversation a charm.

Along the white, dusty road we flew, for we had many miles to cover
and several stops to make. Every one is familiar with the beautiful
rolling country of this part of France, the cultivated fields, the neat
little villages, the white ribbon of road between the well-ordered rows
of trees. I could not resist waving a triumphant salute at the
astonished sentries when they realized they had let pass an
ambulance with a civilian in it, and a woman at that! But the clouds
of dust hid us from view before they could do anything about it. We
passed through B------, a lovely little town way up on a hilltop, from
which we could look down over the distant valley in whose heart the
hostile lines of trenchmen fought for supremacy. We stopped here
to leave a message with an officer and learned that nearly every
one in the town was ill with a touch of asphyxiating gas. It seemed
that the fumes had penetrated this far during the night, but were not
strong enough to awaken people. So they had inhaled unconsciously.
Every one sleeps with a gas mask at the head of his bed in these parts.

We coasted down the long hill on the other side of the town, glorying
in the beauty of the extended view before us. How could there be
anything but happiness in the world that brilliant morning! The Abbe
and I talked of many things and he told me how he and the
Countess planned and worked to get enough money and clothing
for the hundreds of orphans in their care. If only some of the
discarded but still useful warm clothing of my little friends in America
could be sent! And think of the untold joy some of their superfluous
toys would give!

Our first stop was to see the boys, and certainly for me it was a
unique experience. The Abbe announced that a great treat was in
store for us, as we were to lunch with the priests of W------, who ran
the orphelinat.

He told me to be sure to ask Father------, the jolly, fat, old fellow, to
sing and recite for us. He said it would please him enormously and
would give us untold amusement, and he was right. We entered the
courtyard of an old stone house, and after shaking off several layers
of the white dust, went in to the bounteous feast prepared in our
honor. The welcome was simple and cordial. We washed our hands
in an old tin basin and used the coarsest towel I have ever seen. I
am sure it will never wear out. Then we sat down to enough food for
twenty instead of six, and how they did enjoy it!

I don't wonder Father------was almost as broad as he was long, if he
enjoyed every meal as much as he did this one. He ordered up the
wine from the cellar, the last precious bottle he had carried away
from Ypres, and then, after much persuasion, he rose at his end of
the table and in a dear, gentle, cracked old voice, mouthing his
words so that his apparently one remaining front tooth was much in
evidence, he sang the favorite songs of his youth. I am sure they
were funny because he laughed at them so heartily himself.

Luncheon over, we walked to the boys' dormitories. How they did
love the jolly old priest, and how glad they were to see the Abbe!
From all corners of the courtyard they dropped their play or their
fight, as the case was, and came running with all the joy of a pack of
little tail-wiggling fox terriers, to throw themselves upon the two men.
Where he carried it, I do not know, but the Abbe produced cake
after cake of chocolate and every boy had a bite.

The boys are taught all the simple studies and always to sing. The
Belgian peasant children really sing beautifully. Even the little tots
can take parts. We went up through the dormitories. There were
closely filled rows of cots graduated in size, and over the foot of
each one the sisters in charge had neatly laid out the boy's other
suit, for to-morrow would be Sunday and they would all be dressed
up. The lavatories consisted of wooden benches, again graduated
in height, with tin basins and towels on them, about one to every
three boys. It made me shiver to think how cold that place must be
during the long damp winter, but then the peasant is used to such
hardships. Finally we came to the schoolroom, where the older boys
were already hard at work, learning in both Flemish and French.
And of all the cute sights I ever saw, here happened the very cutest.
The tiny tots, three and four years old, had finished their lunch and
their playtime, and must have their noonday nap. Were they put to
bed like ordinary babies? Oh, no. They tumbled into the
schoolroom, their big eyes staring out of their chubby, round, little
faces, full of wonder as to who the strange lady was. Somewhat
abashed and very quietly they slid along their baby bench,
snuggling up to each other as close as they could. Then at a word
from the teacher all the little right arms went up on the long bench
table in front of them, the perfectly round little heads flopped over
into the crook of the row of little elbows, three blinks, and all the
little eyelids closed, and like peas in a pod they were asleep. How
I wished for a moving picture of that scene!

Last we visited the chapel, of which Father ------ was so proud. A little
musty-smelling chapel with a crude figure of the Madonna in a high
window niche at one end. Father ------ had placed above it a pane of
blue glass, of a blue which turned the sunlight into a wonderfully
cool, pure color. He said it was the emblem of hope to him, and that
when his heart was heavy behind his cheerful smile, he would come
in there alone to think and to pray.

We were in no hurry to go, but there was still a long stretch to be
covered before we reached Wisques, where the girls were housed.
So we said good-by to Father ------, his priests, and his children. I
only hope I may see them again some day.

Our ride was now enlivened by the presence of many aeroplanes,
friendly ones, maneuvering now near the earth, now so high that
they were almost lost to sight. They were probably indulging in
preliminary exercises before scouting over the German lines.

Arrived at Wisques, we were welcomed by the nuns into the
beautiful old chateau, now an orphan asylum. The Queen had
recently paid a visit here and the whole place was decorated in her
honor with colored papers and garlands of leaves and branches. It
had been a very great and wonderful occasion for the motherless
little girls. Coffee was served us out of a brilliantly shining kettle from
the huge old-fashioned stove in the great open fireplace. Everything
was so spotlessly clean! The nuns certainly took good care of the
children. The girls' dormitories were neat, here and there brightened
by a piece of colored cloth or a picture or a bit of ribbon. There were
only the barest necessities, and none too many of them. The girls
were taught to do the housework and to sew, in addition to their
regular school studies. They were all dressed in black and the
Mother Superior bemoaned the fact that the Abbe simply could not
keep them in shoes. Several classes were assembled to sing for us,
Belgian and French songs, and finally in my honor the nearest they
could come to anything American, "God Save the King"--at least
that was in the "strange lady's" language--English.

I wandered away from the others and out of doors into the garden.
There were the real babies, most of them just big enough to walk.
They were digging and playing, twenty-five or more of them, in
charge of a couple of the older girls and one nurse. I sat down on a
broken stump and tried to make love to one of the little boys. He
was awfully shy at first and would just look at me out of his big blue
eyes. All of a sudden he toddled over to the other side of the yard
and after him toddled the whole bunch. He was certainly a coming
leader. In the far corner was a perfect carpet of dandelions. Each
baby picked one or two and, like a flock of little chicks, they came
tumbling back again to present me with the flowers. It was too sweet
for words and the tears came to my eyes. I wanted to hug them all. I
asked the nurse whether this was a customary performance and
she said she had never seen them do such a thing before. If only all
the little war orphans were cared for as well as these in charge of
the good Abbe! May money and supplies never fail to come to him
for this good work.

The Abbe took us to see the trenches and barbed wire
entanglements which surrounded the hilltop. Even these many miles
behind the lines they were prepared. Thank heaven we feel sure
that now these trenches will never see blood.

It was a long ride back, and I am sure there were no springs to that
ambulance. How does a wounded soldier survive the jolting even if
he is suspended on a stretcher? was the question I kept asking
myself, for I was sore from head to foot. We arrived back at the
hospital too late for dinner with the others and tired enough to go
straight to bed, but the Countess said I must stay up a while and
see the "fireworks." So we climbed up into the tower, from which we
had a very extensive view over the not far distant battle line. It is a
strange fact that in the humdrum routine of war nowadays the men
stay buried in their holes during the daylight, because it is really too
dangerous to go forward without the protection of night. Then when
darkness has fallen they turn on the artificial light and go at each
other. In a word, fire balloons rise and blaze their glare at intervals
unceasingly along the whole horizon. You must keep a sharp
lookout or the enemy will take you by surprise. And then the flash of
the guns and the trail of the shells. It looks for all the world like a
Coney Island display on the Fourth of July without the many colors.




VI



Depot des Eclopes, May, 1916.


WITH Mme. B------I went to visit one of the military depots around
Paris, where every day at sunset hundreds of French soldiers
assembled to march away to take their places beside their
comrades in the trenches. Some had been home on leave, some
were just discharged from hospitals, some had been given the
privilege of the convalescent, and an occasional one was reporting
for the first time. Once a day those called to return duty entrained for
the front. During the preceding twenty-four hours they had arrived,
singly and in company, from all directions, and had made
themselves "comfortable" on the rough straw beds provided in the
depot. They wore patched and faded uniforms, often those of their
dead comrades. The government had supplied them with these
uniforms and added what spare clothing it could and a few
inadequate necessities, but no comforts.

Of course, we did not go empty-handed, for Mme. B------and her
committee saw to it that no man went back to the front without his
"comfort packet"--a little package containing a warm garment,
perhaps a sweater, flannel drawers or a shirt, a cap, a muffler,
socks and half a dozen useful little gifts of small value, such as
razor, penknife, bit of string to tie his shoe, little mirror to admire
himself in, writing paper, cigarettes, vermin destroyer, and such like.
We loaded two motors with these packets and reached the depot
an hour or so before the time for the men's departure.

It was all most interesting. The sentinels at the gate smiled a
welcome for Mme. B------and said the boys were expecting her.

We went into the big, barn-like barracks, where blue-coated poilus
and khaki-clothed colonials sat or stood about in groups, sometimes
silent, sometimes earnestly talking. Others rested apart, examining
their equipment and repacking their knapsacks. Others slept on the
straw, while some were buying most unwholesome looking doughnuts
and consuming them without any attempt at chewing.

The bags of comfort packets were brought in and laid on a long
table at one end of the barracks. Was there a rush and a push to be
first served? Not a bit of it. With quiet interest the men waited to be
invited and then came forward without elbowing each other. Every
man received a packet, many of which had been made in far-away
America. Just think for a moment what this little human touch of
kindness meant at such a time. It was not the value of the gift,
though the articles were often most useful. It was the spirit behind it
which touched the man and not infrequently brought a tear of
emotion to his eye. He had left home in all probability for the last
time, for no man really expects to return from the trenches these
days. What a worth-while kind of courage this almost commonplace
courage of the soldier of to-day is! We need not imagine that he
does not think. He knows what this war means to him and his. It is
that ever-present spirit of simple, unquestioning, determined self-
sacrifice which verily awes one each time it is encountered.

With the interest of children, the men took their packets, saluted
their thanks and stepped aside to examine the prizes they had
drawn. It was amusing and pathetic to watch them. The seasoned
veteran with the tired eyes over in the corner heaved an almost
audible sigh of satisfaction. He had drawn a muffler, just what he
needed, and the bit t of soap and the very handy jack-knife were not
to be disdained. The boy near him was more or less amused by his
present. He felt too well equipped to need anything, for he was
going out to beat the Boches for the first time. A tough-looking,
healthy fellow standing by the table opened his parcel and drew a
rubber poncho. At his side stood a pale-faced man with glasses and
the unmistakable stamp of education on his face. He looked
longingly at the poncho and tightened the muffler around his neck.
Then after a moment's hesitation he turned to me and asked if it
would be possible for him to have one of those, even if he paid for it.
I did not know where to find one in the few remaining packets, and
as I hesitated his comrade turned and said, "But you take it, my
friend. I can get along without it. I have slept in the fields all my life.
You belong to the city. Take it and may it bring you luck." That is
typical of the spirit of the men.

The packets distributed, there remained huge boxes of candy and
cigarettes. I took the cigarettes and went among the men, talking as
I offered them. I was so eager to understand their point of view that I
permitted myself to ask a rather cruel question. "How do you feel
when, like to-day, you are going back to the front?" The replies were
all alike in spirit. "It is our duty!" "We do not think of the future, but
only to do our duty now!" "The Boches must be beaten!" "France
comes first!" Of course, out of the many I here and there received a
flippant answer, but the majority were simple, direct, resigned.

In one corner three jolly fellows were having a home-made lunch
before they left. They insisted that I taste it. It was the best
sausages in the world that "la femme" had made as a parting gift,
and wrapped up with hard brown bread. The fingers that handled it
and the knife that cut it were not appetizing, but we made gay
together.

I came to a red-fezzed, black-faced son of Africa, handsome as a
Greek god, neat and trim in his khaki uniform three times decorated.
He must have seen action to have acquired three crosses, so I
made bold to ask him what of all his experiences stood out most
vividly in his memory. He smiled rather tolerantly as he answered
that I would probably be disappointed when he told me that it was
the dinner party he and three of his comrades had offered to four
Germans who came during a lull to visit their trench. I looked
puzzled, so he went on to explain. "The trenches were so close
together we could almost shake hands. It was a pitch black night
and we heard the Boches complaining that they were hungry. We
whispered to them to come over and we would give them a treat. It
took them a long time to get up their courage. Finally we felt rather
than saw them coming, and suddenly they tumbled into our trench.
We gave them all we had, and how those fellows atel It was a joy to
see them! And, do you know, they just managed to get back to their
own trench when we had orders to attack!"

He had hardly finished speaking when the bugle sounded the call to
fall in. The men shouldered their packs, heavy packs they looked,
with tin cans and paper parcels tied on with string. The roll was
called, and when the last man was marked present the bugle
sounded again. No boomaladdie parade this, with shining boots and
brass band. Two by two in sloppy formation they dragged their well-
worn boots along. There was a stoop to most shoulders, even to the
young ones, but the spirit was all right. I studied the faces as they
passed and I tried to realize where they were going and blindly
sought to understand why. There was a smile of good-by from most
and perhaps an additional "Merci bien, Madame!" Or if not a smile,
then something that made me feel the greatness of each one of
these human beings, willingly offering himself a sacrifice.




VII



Venetia, June, 1916.


STILL another front and so very different from the others. After an
interesting two weeks in Rome, where I had business to attend to
for our Committee, I received the unexpected but welcome
permission to enter the Italian war zone. My first stop was Bologna,
that uniquely beautiful city of terra cotta towers and heavily arcaded
streets. To-day it is one of the big hospital centers of Italy, and I
walked through miles of wards and studied surgical dressings in
active use in the operating and dressing rooms until I felt as if I
could not stand the sight of another one.

By contrast my nine-hour trip in the train last night over the
mountains was full of the most restful beauty and romance. I found
a little corner compartment which I managed to keep all to myself by
the simple expedient of pulling down the shades and feigning sleep
on the sofa when we stopped at stations. I left Bologna at six o'clock
and for two hours feasted my eyes on the beauty of the lovely Italian
hills in the setting sunlight. Then the moon came up, big and round
and calm. After a while we stopped at a cross-roads. There was a
block on the single track ahead. I opened my window. Not a sound
to be heard. My train companions in the other compartments
seemed to be asleep. It was just so beautiful, I drank it in. Then in
the distance a tenor voice broke the stillness with a Neapolitan love
song. Slowly it came nearer and grew louder and sweeter until a
figure appeared at the top of the road. He came on down to the
track, singing all the while.

I never enjoyed a Caruso aria as I did that song from the heart. Next
came a lumbering hay-wagon drawn by oxen, a drop in the bucket
of supplies for the front. Then a special dispatch carrier on a
motorcycle, beastly sound which broke the spell of beauty and took
me back to the guns. He dismounted and silenced his machine, as
the train was blocking the crossing. Two other men appeared from
somewhere, arm in arm. The Italians never sleep and they always
sing. It was not many minutes before the group had gathered
together and were giving us a concert around the ox cart in the
moonlight. I sat back in my corner and wondered if there really were
a war.

At last we moved on at our usual snail pace which is characteristic
of the trains in the war zone. Also trains seem to be always late in
the war zone. No matter what time I started from a place, I was sure
to land at my destination between two and three A. M. True enough,
about half-past two in the morning we drew into the station shed at
Mestre, the point where all the gray-green uniformed soldiers and
officers descended to return to their posts in the trenches. The train
would stop some twenty minutes before it went on to Venice, so I
got out on the platform, an object of interest to the many soldiers, as
I was noticeably a civilian, a foreigner and a woman.

Almost simultaneous with our arrival a hospital train drew slowly into
the station on the track next to ours. It came from the other
direction. I stood in the center of the platform and looked at my train
on the right. Many of the coaches were still filled with groups singing
and gay, buying fruit and cheap wine from the shrill-voiced
youngsters who ran up and down the platform with their wares.
Officers of importance lounged about, non-coms ran the length of
the train giving orders. I looked to the left, where huge Red Crosses
stamped the sides of the light-truck, third-class carriages filled with
enduring, pain-racked human beings. Here and there glued to the
window was a bandaged head with two eyes looking out of hollow
black-rimmed holes. The bandages were nearly always stained red.
Even though the hospital car was but very dimly lighted, thanks to
the ever-present aeroplane, I could see the feverish ones tossing
about on their stretchers, disclosing bloody bandages on arm or leg
or body as the case might be. As I carried a special permit to visit
any military hospital or dressing station in Italy, I climbed into the
train and walked through half a dozen cars. How I wished I had a
hundred or so odd-sized little cushions with me! What a comfort
they would have been to those men who yesterday did their duty to
the end, and who would now for three or four days travel unwashed,
their mud-caked uniforms still on them, in most cases their
dressings unchanged, through the blistering heat of the Italian
summer, to their destination in Rome. I tried to say a cheerful word
here and there in my best Italian, but somehow it seemed so futile.
There they lay through no fault of their own, alone and suffering
hour after hour, and there on the other track, with courage
undaunted by this sight, hundreds more were going north to take
their turn. The physical side of war may be hell, but in the moral side
there is certainly some kind of divinity.

The engine of my train whistled and I hopped back into the carriage.
In ten minutes we had crossed the lagoon and were in Venice.
Venice again by full moon. Years ago I arrived at this very station at
midnight when the moon was full. Life and bustle were then
everywhere, and the gay-lanterned gondolas were gliding up and
down the Grand Canal with music and song in full blast. This night
the same full moon shone down, but the silence and lonesomeness
were overwhelming. After some waiting an old man managed to find
me a gondola. I got into it with my little handbag and heavy coat,
and for three-quarters of an hour we moved slowly and silently up
the Grand Canal, where every window in the medieval palaces was
barred and shuttered, and every branch canal and narrow passage
deathlike in its stillness. Not a voice in the Venice one thinks of as
always awake. Not a sign of life did I see except the aero patrol on
the tops of several of the high buildings, their guns pointed skyward,
ready for action.

When we reached the Hotel D------all was barred and closed. The
old, stooped-back porter, who was finally aroused by the loud
pounding of the gondolier, looked as though he had seen a ghost
when he opened the door to let in a woman traveler in Venice in war
time at three o'clock in the morning.




VIII


Italian Front, June, 1916. I CAME down from the highest mountain
peaks on all the Italian front, the Dolomites, where General di R------
sent me in his motor to the very peak next to one occupied by the
Austrian guns. For the first and only time in my travels I was on soil
conquered from the enemy. We could easily see the position of their
guns through the glasses, and we were at great pains to hide the
motor behind a screen of trees out of sight of those evil guns. I
simply cannot describe the picturesqueness of that two-hundred-
mile ride through one of the most beautiful mountain sections in
Europe, over magnificent new roads, now the pathway for man,
beast and food on the way up to the unbelievable war among the
snowcaps. We passed through all kinds of camps, and I had
excellent opportunity to realize the terrific difficulties of this front.

The following day we motored down out of the hills and into the
flatter country behind the front where the Austrians had for the
moment broken through. I was honored by being taken by the
Duchesse d'A------to visit a front line hospital here. In a little
village the stone schoolhouse had been turned into a temporary
ambulance. A shell had fallen in the yard the day before, so the
head surgeon feared they might be driven back any moment. Think
what that means when you already have two hundred freshly
wounded men in a place that can only accommodate a hundred and
fifty, and ambulances are arriving every half hour with more. In the
operating room six naked men, or what remained of them, lay on six
different dressing tables, each with a red hole or stump out of which
the doctor was pulling red gauze, or into which he was poking white
gauze. For over thirty-six hours without rest these surgeons had
been on duty. Is it any wonder that they could not be over-gentle,
that they were sometimes blind to the writhing of their victims, or
deaf to their groans and shrieks! That is a sight I can never forget
and I left it as quickly as I could, weak in the knees, and glad to hear
the door slam behind me.

The next room we entered was somewhat less awful. Iron cots were
crowded into it as close as you could pack them, with a human
wreck in each one. They were what are known as the "Grands
Blesses," that is, the men most dangerously wounded. I won't
describe them, though the picture will never become indistinct. As
the Princess entered every hand that had the strength to move
attempted a salute. She went about, speaking a kind word to each
one and tying a little tin medal with the colors of Italy on their wrists.
The two women who were taking care of these two hundred or more
men told me they were not quite sure whether it was two or three
days since they had gone to bed. They were ladies who before the
war had never known what manual labor meant. "There come
moments like this," they said, "and then somehow we seem to find
the strength, but it is awfully hard on the surgeons. Besides it's so
difficult to keep the men clean and supplied with what they should
have even as bare necessities. We hate to see them in dirty, blood-
stained linen, but what can we do? Look I there come two more
ambulances." And all the time they were working while they talked.

Oh! we at home, who are often bored by the daily headlines telling
of trenches taken and lost, let us stop, think and imagine! What is
our responsibility and how do we meet it? Is there really one of us
with a heart and mind who dares to let twenty-four hours pass
without dropping his mite of time, sympathy or money into the brave
hand of suffering Europe! Men, women and children, they need us!
If we do all we can, then we are not doing half enough! The horror of
their suffering is hideous! The magnificence of their sacrifice is
sublime!


