One of Ours
Book V: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On"
Chapter XVII
When the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling over their good
days, they will say to each other, "Oh, that week we spent at Beaufort!" They
will close their eyes and see a little village on a low ridge, lost in the
forest, overgrown with oak and chestnut and black walnut . . . buried in autumn
colour, the streets drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing
over the roofs of the houses, wells of cool water that tastes of moss and tree
roots. Up and down those streets they will see figures passing; themselves,
young and brown and clean-limbed; and comrades, long dead, but still alive in
that far-away village. How they will wish they could tramp again, nights on days
in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old billets at Beaufort! To
sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old
women washed and dried their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes
frites in the garden,—rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh, the
days that are no more!
As soon as Captain Maxey and the wounded men had been started on their long
journey to the rear, carried by the prisoners, the whole company turned in and
slept for twelve hours—all but Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the house off the
square, beside the body of his chum.
The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men, just created
in a new world. And the people of the town came to life . . . excitement,
change, something to look forward to at last! A new flag, le drapeau etoile,
floated along with the tricolour in the square. At sunset the soldiers stood in
formation behind it and sang "The Star Spangled Banner" with uncovered heads.
The old people watched them from the doorways. The Americans were the first to
bring "Madelon" to Beaufort. The fact that the village had never heard this
song, that the children stood round begging for it, "Chantez-vous la Madelon!"
made the soldiers realize how far and how long out of the world these villagers
had been. The German occupation was like a deafness which nothing pierced but
their own arrogant martial airs.
Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner arrived
from Colonel Scott, notifying him that he was in charge of the Company until
further orders. The German prisoners had buried their own dead and dug graves
for the Americans before they were sent off to the rear. Claude and David were
billeted at the edge of the town, with the woman who had given Captain Maxey his
first information, when they marched in yesterday morning. Their hostess told
them, at their mid-day breakfast, that the old dame who was shot in the square,
and the little girl, were to be buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the
Americans might as well have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would
ask the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he and David set off through
the brilliant, rustling autumn sunshine to find the Cure's house. It was next
the church, with a high-walled garden behind it. Over the bell-pull in the outer
wall was a card on which was written, "Tirez fort."
The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak like his
doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands against his breast to
keep them from shaking, and looked very old indeed,—broken, hopeless, as if he
were sick of this world and done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a
face so sad as his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian
burial, and they were far from home, poor fellows! David asked him whether the
German rule had been very oppressive, but the old man did not answer clearly,
and his hands began to shake so uncontrollably over his cassock that they went
away to spare him embarrassment.
"He seems a little gone in the head, don't you think?" Claude remarked.
"I suppose the war has used him up. How can he celebrate mass when his hands
quiver so?" As they crossed the church steps, David touched Claude's arm and
pointed into the square. "Look, every doughboy has a girl already! Some of them
have trotted out fatigue caps! I supposed they'd thrown them all away!"
Those who had no caps stood with their helmets under their arms, in attitudes
of exaggerated gallantry, talking to the women,—who seemed all to have errands
abroad. Some of them let the boys carry their baskets. One soldier was giving a
delighted little girl a ride on his back.
After the funeral every man in the Company found some sympathetic woman to
talk to about his fallen comrades. All the garden flowers and bead wreaths in
Beaufort had been carried out and put on the American graves. When the squad
fired over them and the bugle sounded, the girls and their mothers wept. Poor
Willy Katz, for instance, could never have had such a funeral in South Omaha.
The next night the soldiers began teaching the girls to dance the "Pas Seul"
and the "Fausse Trot." They had found an old violin in the town; and Oscar, the
Swede, scraped away on it. They danced every evening. Claude saw that a good
deal was going on, and he lectured his men at parade. But he realized that he
might as well scold at the sparrows. Here was a village with several hundred
women, and only the grandmothers had husbands. All the men were in the army;
hadn't even been home on leave since the Germans first took the place. The girls
had been shut up for four years with young men who incessantly coveted them, and
whom they must constantly outwit. The situation had been intolerable—and
prolonged. The Americans found themselves in the position of Adam in the garden.
"Did you know, sir," said Bert Fuller breathlessly as he overtook Claude in
the street after parade, "that these lovely girls had to go out in the fields
and work, raising things for those dirty pigs to eat? Yes, sir, had to work in
the fields, under German sentinels; marched out in the morning and back at night
like convicts! It's sure up to us to give them a good time now."
One couldn't walk out of an evening without meeting loitering couples in the
dusky streets and lanes. The boys had lost all their bashfulness about trying to
speak French. They declared they could get along in France with three verbs, and
all, happily, in the first conjugation: manger, aimer, payer,—quite enough!
They called Beaufort "our town," and they were called "our Americans." They were
going to come back after the war, and marry the girls, and put in waterworks!
"Chez-moi, sir!" Bill Gates called to Claude, saluting with a bloody hand, as
he stood skinning rabbits before the door of his billet. "Bunny casualties are
heavy in town this week!"
"You know, Wheeler," David remarked one morning as they were shaving, "I
think Maxey would come back here on one leg if he knew about these excursions
into the forest after mushrooms."
"Maybe."
"Aren't you going to put a stop to them?"
"Not I!" Claude jerked, setting the corners of his mouth grimly. "If the
girls, or their people, make complaint to me, I'll interfere. Not otherwise.
I've thought the matter over."
"Oh, the girls—" David laughed softly. "Well, it's something to acquire a
taste for mushrooms. They don't get them at home, do they?"
When, after eight days, the Americans had orders to march, there was mourning
in every house. On their last night in town, the officers received pressing
invitations to the dance in the square. Claude went for a few moments, and
looked on. David was dancing every dance, but Hicks was nowhere to be seen. The
poor fellow had been out of everything. Claude went over to the church to see
whether he might be moping in the graveyard.
There, as he walked about, Claude stopped to look at a grave that stood off
by itself, under a privet hedge, with withered leaves and a little French flag
on it. The old woman with whom they stayed had told them the story of this
grave.
The Cure's niece was buried there. She was the prettiest girl in Beaufort, it
seemed, and she had a love affair with a German officer and disgraced the town.
He was a young Bavarian, quartered with this same old woman who told them the
story, and she said he was a nice boy, handsome and gentle, and used to sit up
half the night in the garden with his head in his hands—homesick, lovesick. He
was always after this Marie Louise; never pressed her, but was always there,
grew up out of the ground under her feet, the old woman said. The girl hated
Germans, like all the rest, and flouted him. He was sent to the front. Then he
came back, sick and almost deaf, after one of the slaughters at Verdun, and
stayed a long while. That spring a story got about that some woman met him at
night in the German graveyard. The Germans had taken the land behind the church
for their cemetery, and it joined the wall of the Cure's garden. When the women
went out into the fields to plant the crops, Marie Louise used to slip away from
the others and meet her Bavarian in the forest. The girls were sure of it now;
and they treated her with disdain. But nobody was brave enough to say anything
to the Cure. One day, when she was with her Bavarian in the wood, she snatched
up his revolver from the ground and shot herself. She was a Frenchwoman at
heart, their hostess said.
"And the Bavarian?" Claude asked David later. The story had become so
complicated he could not follow it.
"He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot himself
through the temples. His orderly, stationed at the edge of the thicket to keep
watch, heard the first shot and ran toward them. He saw the officer take up the
smoking pistol and turn it on himself. But the Kommandant couldn't believe that
one of his officers had so much feeling. He held an enquete, dragged the girl's
mother and uncle into court, and tried to establish that they were in conspiracy
with her to seduce and murder a German officer. The orderly was made to tell the
whole story; how and where they began to meet. Though he wasn't very delicate
about the details he divulged, he stuck to his statement that he saw Lieutenant
Muller shoot himself with his own hand, and the Kommandant failed to prove his
case. The old Cure had known nothing of all this until he heard it aired in the
military court. Marie Louise had lived in his house since she was a child, and
was like his daughter. He had a stroke or something, and has been like this ever
since. The girl's friends forgave her, and when she was buried off alone by the
hedge, they began to take flowers to her grave. The Kommandant put up an affiche
on the hedge, forbidding any one to decorate the grave. Apparently, nothing
during the German occupation stirred up more feeling than poor Marie Louise."
It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely little grave,
the shadow of the privet hedge falling across it. There, at the foot of the
Cure's garden, was the German cemetery, with heavy cement crosses,—some of them
with long inscriptions; lines from their poets, and couplets from old hymns.
Lieutenant Muller was there somewhere, probably. Strange, how their story stood
out in a world of suffering. That was a kind of misery he hadn't happened to
think of before; but the same thing must have occurred again and again in the
occupied territory. He would never forget the Cure's hands, his dim, suffering
eyes.
Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the church, and
went back to meet him.
"Hello! I mistook you for Hicks at first. I thought he might be out here."
David sat down on the steps and lit a cigarette.
"So did I. I came out to look for him."
"Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize, Claude, you
and I are the only men in the Company who haven't got engaged? Some of the
married men have got engaged twice. It's a good thing we're pulling out, or we'd
have banns and a bunch of christenings to look after." "All the same," murmured
Claude, "I like the women of this country, as far as I've seen them." While they
sat smoking in silence, his mind went back to the quiet scene he had watched on
the steps of that other church, on his first night in France; the country girl
in the moonlight, bending over her sick soldier.
When they walked back across the square, over the crackling leaves, the dance
was breaking up. Oscar was playing "Home, Sweet Home," for the last waltz.
"Le dernier baiser," said David. "Well, tomorrow we'll be gone, and the
chances are we won't come back this way."