Our Part in the Great War

"Our people ran out, chased by angry Germans who fired on them as if they were hunter's game. Jules Gand, 58 years old, was shot down at the threshold of his door. A seventeen-year-old boy named Georges Lecourtier, taking refuge with me, was shot. Alfred Lallemand hid himself in a kitchen. His body was riddled with bullets. We found it burned and lying in the rubbish, eight days later. He was 54 years old. Men, women and children fled into the gardens and the fields. They forded the river without using the bridge which was right there. They ran as far as Brizeaux and Senard. My cook ran. She had a packet of my bonds, which I had given her for safe-keeping, and she had a basket of her own valuables. In her fear she threw away her basket, and kept my bonds.

"The daughter of one of our women, shot in this panic, came to me and said:

"'My mother had fifty thousand francs, somewhere about her.'

"The body had been buried in haste, with none of the usual rites paid the dead, of washing and undressing. So no examination had been made. We dug the body up and found a bag.

"'Is that the bag?' I asked the daughter.

"'It looks like it,' she replied. It was empty.

"A day later we found another bag in the dead woman's room, and in it were the bonds for fifty thousand francs. That shows the haste and panic in which our people had fled, picking up the wrong thing, leaving the thing of most value.

"It was in the garden of the Procès family that the worst was done. It was Hélène Procès, you remember, who was insulted by the German soldier. The grandmother, 78 years old, Miss Laure Mennehand, the aunt, who was 81 years old, the mother, 40 years old, and Hélène, who was 18, ran down the garden. They placed a little ladder against the low wire fence which separated their back yard from their neighbor's. Hélène was the first one over, and turned to help the older women. The Germans had followed them, and riddled the three women with bullets. They fell one on the other. Hélène hid herself in the cabbages.

"That same evening some of the villagers went with me to the garden. The women looked as if they were sleeping. They had no trace of suffering in the face. Miss Mennehand had her little toilet bag, containing 1,000 francs, fastened to her left wrist, and was still holding her umbrella in her right hand. Her brains had fallen out. I collected them on a salad leaf and buried them in the garden.

"We carried the three bodies to their beds in their home. In one bed, as I opened it, I saw a gold watch lying. From Monday evening till Wednesday morning, the bodies lay there, with no wax taper burning, and no one to watch and pray. By night the Germans played the piano, close by.

"'Your people fired on our soldiers,' said a Captain to me next day. 'I'll show you the window.'

"He led me down the street, and pointed.

"'It is unfortunate you have chosen that window,' I replied to him; 'at the time you started burning our village the only person in the house was a paralytic man, who was burned in his bed.'

"It was the house of Jean Lecourtier, 70 years old.

"In front of the Poincaré house, I met a General, who, they said, was the Duke of Württemberg. He said to me:

"'I am glad to see you, Curé. I congratulate you. You are the first chaplain I have seen. Generally, when we get to a village, the mayor and the curé have run away. We officers are angry at what has taken place here. You have treated us well.'

"'Perhaps you will be able to stop the horror,' I said to him.

"'Ah, what can you expect? It is war. There are bad soldiers in your army and in ours.'

"The next day I saw him getting ready to enter a magnificent car. His arm was bandaged.

"'You are wounded, General?' I asked him.

"'No, not that,' he answered.

"'A strained ligament (entorse)?' I asked.

"'No,' he said, 'don't tell me the French word,' He opened a pocket dictionary with his unhurt hand, wetting his finger and turning the pages.

"'It is a sprain (luxation),' he said.

"That is the way they learn a language as they go along.

"'You are leaving us?' I asked.

"Yes, I am going to my own country to rest."

The afternoon had passed while we were talking. We rose to make our good-bys.

"Come with me," said the curé. He led us down the village street, to a small house, whose backyard is a little garden on the little river. All the setting was small and homelike and simple, like the village itself and the curé. A young woman stepped out from the kitchen to greet us.

"This is the girl," said Father Viller. Hélène Procès is twenty years old, with the dark coloring, soft, slightly olive skin, brown eyes, of a thousand other young women in the valley of the Meuse. But the look in her eyes was the same look that a friend of mine carries, though it is now twelve years since the hour when her mother was burned to death on board the General Slocum. Sudden horror has fixed itself on the face of this girl of Triacourt, whose mother and grandmother and aunt were shot in front of her in one moment.

She led us through the garden. There were only a few yards of it: just a little homely place. She brought us to the fence – a low wire affair, cheaply made, and easy to get over.

"The bullets were splashing around me," she said.

The tiny river, which had hardly outgrown its beginnings as a brook, went sliding past. It seemed a quiet place for a tragedy.

VII

THE THREE-YEAR-OLD WITNESS

Two persons came in the room at Lunéville where I was sitting. One was Madame Dujon, and the other was her granddaughter. Madame Dujon had a strong umbrella, with a crook handle. Her tiny granddaughter had a tiny umbrella which came as high as her chin. As the grandmother talked, the sadness of the remembrance filled her eyes with tears. Her voice had pain in it, and sometimes the pain, in spite of her control, came through in sobbing. The little girl's face was burned, and the wounds had healed with scars of ridged flesh on the little nose and cheek. The emotion of the grandmother passed over into the child. With a child's sensitiveness she caught each turn of the suffering. Troubled by the voice overhead, she looked up and saw the grandmother's eyes filled with tears. Her eyes filled. When her grandmother, telling of the dying boy, sobbed, the tiny girl sobbed. The story of the murder tired the grandmother, and she leaned on her umbrella. The little girl put her chin on her tiny umbrella, and rested it there.

Madame Dujon said:

"I will try to tell you the beginning of what I have passed through, Monsieur, but I do not promise that I shall arrive at the end. It is too hard. The day of the twenty-fifth of August, which was a Monday – "

As she spoke her words were cut by sobs. She went on:

"When the Germans came to our house, my son had to go all over the house to find things that they wanted. I did not understand them, and they were becoming menacing. I said to them:

"'I am not able to do any better. Fix things yourself. I give you everything here. I am going to a neighbor's house.'"

She went with the tiny grand-girl, who was three years old, her son, Lucien, fourteen years old, and another son, sixteen. The Germans came here too, breaking in the windows, and firing their rifles. The house was by this time on fire. The face of the little girl was burned.

"My poor boys wished to make their escape, but the fourteen-year-old was more slow than the other, because the little fellow was a bit paralyzed, and he already had his hands and body burned. He tried to come out as far as the pantry. I saw the poor little thing stretched on the ground, dying.

"'My God,' he said, 'leave me. I am done for. Mamma, see my bowels.'

"I saw his bowels. They were hanging like two pears from the sides of his stomach. Just then the Germans came, shooting. I said to them:

"'He has had enough.'

"The little one turned over and tried to get the strength to cry out to them:

"'Gang of dirty – ' ("Bande de sal – ")

"Every one called to us to come out of the fire. The fire was spreading all over the house. I did not want to understand what they were saying. I went upstairs again where the little girl was, to try to save her (see still the marks which she received). I succeeded, not without hurt, in carrying away the little girl out of the flames.

"I had to leave my boy in the flames, and, like a mad person, save myself with the little girl.