Woman's Experiences in the Great War — Chapters 52-53
THE RAVENING WOLF
How hard it must be for the soldiers to remember chat there ever was Summer!
How far off, how unreal are those burning, breathless days that saw the fighting round Namur, Termonde, Antwerp.
Here in Flanders, in December, August and September seem to belong to centuries gone by.
Ugh!
How cold it is!
The wind howls up and down this long, white, snow-covered road, and away on either side, as far as the eyes can see, stretches wide flat Flanders country, white and glistening, with the red sun sinking westward, and the pale little silvery moon smiling her pale little smile through the black bare woods.
In this little old Flemish village from somewhere across the snow the thunder and fury of terrific fighting makes sleep impossible for more than five minutes at a time.
Then suddenly something wakes me, and I know at once, even before I am quite awake, that it is not shell-fire this time.
What is it?
I sit up in bed, and feel for the matches.
But before I can strike one I hear again that extraordinary and very horrible sound.
I lie quite still.
And now a strange thing has happened.
In a flash my thoughts have gone back over years and years and years, and it is twenty-eight years ago and I have crossed thousands and thousands of "loping leagues of sea," and am in Australia, in the burning heat of mid-summer.
I am a schoolgirl spending my Christmas holidays in the Australian bush.
It is night.
I am a nervous little highly-strung creature.
A noise wakes me.
I shriek and wake the household.
When they come dashing in I sob out pitifully.
"There's a wolf outside the window, I heard it howling!"
"It's only a dingo, darling!"
says a woman's tender voice, consolingly.
"It's only a native dog trying to find water!
It can't get in here anyway."
I remember too, that I was on the ground floor then, and I am on the ground floor now, and I find myself wishing I could hear that comforting voice again, telling me this is only a dingo, this horrible howling thing outside there in the night.
I creep out of bed, and tiptoe to the window.
Quite plainly in the silvery moonlight I see, standing in the wide open space in front of this little Flemish Inn, a thin gaunt animal with its tongue lolling out.
I see the froth on the tongue, and the yellow-white of its fangs glistening in the winter moonlight.
I ask myself what is it?
And I ask too why should I feel so frightened?
For I _am_ frightened.
From behind the white muslin curtains I gaze at that apparition, absolutely petrified.
It seems to me that I shall never, never, never be able to move again when I find myself knocking at the Caspiar's door, and next minute the old proprietor of the Inn and his wife are peeping through my window.
"Mon Dieu!
It is a wolf!"
Old Caspiar frames the word with his lips rather than utter them.
"You must shoot it," frames his wife.
Old Caspiar gets down his gun.
But it falls from his hands.
"I can't shoot any more," he groans.
"I've lost my nerve."
He begins to cry.
Poor old man!
He has lost a son, eleven nephews, and four grandsons in this War, as well as his nerve.
Poor old chap.
And he remembers the siege of Paris, he remembers only too well that terrible, far-off, unreal, dreamlike time that has suddenly leapt up out of the dim, far past into the present, shedding its airs of unreality, and clothing itself in all the glaring horrors of to-day, until again the Past is the Present, and the Present is the Past, and both are inextricably and cruelly mixed for Frenchmen of Caspiar's age and memories.
A touch on my arm and I start violently.
"Madame!"
It is poor old Madame Caspiar whispering to _me_.
"You are English.
You are brave n'est-ce-pas?
Can _you_ shoot the wolf."
I am staggered at the idea.
"Shoot!
Oh!
I'd miss it!
I daren't try it.
I've never even handled a gun!"
I stammer out.
I see myself revealed now as the coward that I am.
"Then _I_ shall shoot it!"
says old Madame Caspiar in a trembling voice.
She picks up the gun.
"When I was a girl I was a very good shot!"
She speaks loudly, as if to reassure herself.
Old Caspiar suddenly jumps up.
"You're mad, Terèse.
Vous êtes folle!
You can't even see to read the newspapers, _You!
_" He takes the gun from her!
She begins to cry now.
"I shall go and call the others," she says, weeping.
"Be quiet," he says crossly.
"You'll frighten the beast away if you make a noise like that!"
He crosses the room and peers out again!
"It's eating something!"
he says.
"Mon Dieu!
_It's got_ Chou-chou."
Chou-chou is--_was_ rather, the Caspiar's pet rabbit.
"You shall pay for that!"
mutters old Caspiar.
Gently opening the window, he fires.
* * * * * "Not since 1860 have I seen a wolf," says Caspiar, looking down at the dead beast.
"Then they used to run in out of the forest when I was an apprentice in my uncle's Inn.
We were always frightened of them.
And now, even after the Germans, we are frightened of them still."
"I am more frightened of wolves than I am of Germans," confesses Madame Caspiar in a whisper.
We stand there in the breaking dawn, looking at the dead wolf, and wondering fearfully if there are not more of its kind, creeping in from the snow-filled plains beyond.
Other figures join us.
Two Red-Cross French doctors, a wounded English Colonel, la grandmère, Mme.
Caspiar's mother, and a Belgian priest, all come issuing gradually from the low portals of the Inn into the yard.
Then in the chill dawn, with the glare of the snow-fields in our eyes, we discuss the matter in low voices.
It is touching to find that each one is thinking of his own country's soldiers, and the menace that packs of hungry wolves may mean to them, English, Belgian, French; especially to wounded men.
"It's the sound of the guns that brings them out," says a French doctor learnedly.
"This wolf has probably travelled hundreds of miles.
And of course there are more.
Oui, oui!
C'est ça Certainly there will be more."
"C'est ça, c'est ça!"
agrees the priest.
"Such a huge beast too!"
says the Colonel.
He is probably comparing it with a fox.
I find myself mentally agreeing with Madame Caspiar that Germans are really preferable to wolves.
The long, white, snow-covered road that leads back to the world seems endlessly long as I stare out of the Inn windows realizing that sooner or later I must traverse that long white lonely road across the plains before I can get to safety, and the nearest town.
Are there more wolves in there, slinking ever nearer to the cities?
That is what everyone seems to believe now.
We see them in scores, in hundreds, prowling with hot breath in search of wounded soldiers, or anyone they can get.
We are all undoubtedly depressed.
Then a Provision "Motor" comes down that road, and out of it jumps a little, old, white-moustached man in a heavy sheepskin overcoat and red woollen gloves, carrying something wrapped in a shawl.
He comes clattering into the Inn.
His small black eyes are swimming with tears.
"Mon Dieu!"
he says, gulping some coffee and rum.
"Give me a little hot milk, Madame!
My poor monkey is near dying."
A tiny, black, piteous face looks out of the shawl, and huskily the man with the red gloves explains that he has been for weeks trying to get his travelling circus out of the danger-zone.
"The Army commandeered my horses.
We had great difficulty in moving about.
We wanted to get to Paris.
All my poor animals have been terrified by the noises of the big guns.
Especially the monkeys.
They've all died except this one."
"You poor little beast!"
says the Colonel, bending down.
He has seen men die in thousands, this gaunt Englishman with his eye in a sling.
But his voice is infinitely compassionate as he looks with one eye at the little shivering creature, and murmurs again, "You _poor_ little brute!"
"Yesterday," adds the man with the red gloves, "my trick wolf escaped.
She was a beauty, and so clever.
When the War began I used to dress her up as a French solider,--red trousers, red cap and all!
_I s'pose you haven't seen a wolf, M'sieur, running about these parts?
_" Nobody answers for a bit.
We are all stunned.
* * * * * But the old fellow brightens up when he hears that his wolf ate the rabbit.
"Ah, but she was a clever wolf!"
he cries excitedly.
"Very likely the reason why she ate your Chou-chou was because she has played the part of a French soldier.
_French soldiers always steal the rabbits!
_" CHAPTER LIII BACK TO LONDON
I am on my way back to London, grateful and glad to be once more on our side of the Channel.
"Five days!"
exclaims a young soldier in the train.
He flings back his head, draws a deep breath, and remains staring like an imbecile at the roof of the railway carriage for quite two minutes.
Then he shakes himself, draws another deep breath, and says again, still staring at the roof: "Five days!"
The train has started now out into the night.
We have left Folkestone well behind.
We have pulled down all the blinds because a proclamation commands us to do so, and we are softly, yet swiftly rushing through the cool, sweet-smelling English country back towards good old Victoria Station, where all continental trains must now make their arrivals and departures.
"Have you been wounded, Sir?"
asks an old lady in a queer black astrakhan cap, and with a big nose.
"Wounded?
Rather!
Right on top of the head."
He ducks his fair head to shew us.
"I didn't know it when it happened.
I didn't feel anything at all.
I only knew there was something wet.
Blood, I suppose.
Then they sent me to the Hospital at S. Lazaire, and I had a ripping Cornish nurse.
But lor, what a fool I was!
I actually signed on that I wanted to go back.
Why did I do that?
I don't know.
I didn't want to go back.
_Want to go back?
_ Good lor!
Think of it!
But I went back!
and the next thing was Mons!
Even now I can't believe it, that march.
The Germans were at us all the time.
It didn't seem possible we could do it.
'Buck up, men!
only another six kilometres!'
an officer would say.
Then it would be: 'Only another seven kilometres!
keep going, men!'
Sometimes we went to sleep marching and woke up and found ourselves still marching.
Always we were shifting and relieving.
It was a wonderful business.
It seemed as if we were done for.
It seemed as if we couldn't go on.
But we did.
Good lor!
_We did it!
_ Somehow the English generally seem to do it.
Some of us had no boots left.
Some of us had no feet.
_But WE DID IT!
_'" The old lady with the black astrakhan cap nods vigorously.
"And the Germans wouldn't acknowledge that victory of ours," she says!
"I didn't see it in any of their papers."
It is rather lovely to hear the dear creature alluding to Mons as "our victory!"
But indeed she is right.
Mons is, in truth, our glory and our pride!
But it is still more startling to find she knows secret things about the German newspapers, and we all look at her sharply.
"I've just come from Germany!"
the old lady explains.
"Just come from Dresden, where I've been living for fifteen years.
Oh dear!
I did have a time getting away.
But I had to leave!
They made me.
_Dresden is being turned into a fortified town and a basis for operations!
_" We all now listen to _her_, the soldiers three as well.
"Whenever we heard a noise in Dresden, everyone said, 'It's the Russians coming!'
So you see how frightened they are of the Russians.
They are scared to death.
They've almost forgotten their hatred for England.
They talk of nothing now but the Russians.
Their terror is really pathetic, considering all the boasting they've been doing up to now.
They made a law that no one was to put his head out of the window under _pain of death_!"
"Beasts!"
says the wounded one.
"There's only military music in Dresden now.
All the theatres and concert rooms are shut.
And of course from now there will be nothing but military doings in Dresden!
Yes, I lived there for fifteen years.
I
tried to stay on.
I had many English friends as well as Germans, and the English all agreed to taboo all English people who adopted a pro-German tone.
Some did, but not many.
My greatest friends, my dearest friends were Germans.
But the situation grew impossible for us all.
We were not alienated personally, but we all knew that there would come between us something too deep and strong to be defied or denied, even for great affection's sake.
So I cut the cables and left when the order was given that Dresden was henceforth to be a fortified town.
Besides, it was dangerous for me to remain.
I was English, and they hissed at me sometimes when I went out.
It was through the American Consul's assistance that I was enabled to get away.
I saw such horrid pictures of the English in all the shops.
It made my blood boil.
I saw one picture of the Englishmen with _three legs to run away with!
_" "Beasts!"
says the wounded one.
"Wait till I travel in Germany!"
"And, oh dear!"
goes on the old lady, "I was so frightened that I should forget and put my head out without thinking!
As I sat in the train coming away from Dresden, I said to myself all the time, 'You must not look out of the window, or you'll have your head shot off!'
That was because they feared the Russian spies might try to drop explosives out of the trains on to their bridges!"
"Beasts!"
says the wounded one again.
It is really remarkable what a variety of expressions this fair-haired young English gentleman manages to put in a word.
He belongs to a good family and at the beginning of the War he cleared out without a word to anyone and enlisted in the ranks.
Now he is coming home on five days' leave, covered with glory and a big scar, to get his commission.
He is a splendid type.
All he thinks about is his Country, and killing Germans.
He is a gorgeous and magnificent type, for here he is in perfect comradeship with his pal Tommy in the corner, and the Irishman next to him.
Evidently to him they are more than gentlemen.
They are men who've been with him through Mons, and the Battle of the Aisne, and the Battle of Ypres, and he loves them for what they are!
And they love him for what he is, and they're a splendid trio, the soldiers three.
"When I git into Germany," says Tommy, "I mean to lay hands on all I can git!
I'm goin' to loot off them Germans, like they looted off them pore Beljins!"
"Surely you wouldn't be like the Crown Prince," says the old lady, and we all wake up to the fact then that she's really a delightful old lady, for only a delightful old lady could put the case as neatly as that.
"Shure, all I care about," says the big, quiet Irishman in the corner, "is to sleep and sleep and sleep!"
"On a bed," says the wounded one.
"Good lor!
Think of it!
To-night I'll sleep in a bed.
I'll roll over and over to make sure I'm there.
Think of it, sheets, blankets.
We don't even get a blanket in the trenches.
We might get too comfortable and go to sleep."
"What about the little oil stoves the newspapers say you're having?"
asks the old lady.
"We've seen none of them!"
assert the soldiers three.
"Divil a one of them," adds the Irishman.
"I've eat things I never eat before," says Tommy suddenly, in his simple way that is so curiously telling.
"I've eat raw turnips out of the fields.
They're all eatin' raw turnips over there.
And I've eat sweets.
I've eat pounds of chocolates if I could get them and I've never eat them before in my life sinst I was a kid."
"Oh, chocolates!"
says the wounded one, ecstatically.
"But chocolate in the sheet--thick, wide, heavy chocolate--there's nothing on earth like it!
I wrote home, and put all over my letters, Chocolate, _chocolate_, CHOCOLATE.
They sent me out tons of it.
But I never got it.
It went astray, somewhere or other."
"But they're very good to us," says Tommy earnestly.
"We don't want for nothin'.
You couldn't be better treated than what we are!"
"What do you like most to receive?"
asks the old lady.
"Chocolate," they all answer simultaneously.
"The other night at Ypres," says Tommy with his usual unexpectedness, "a German came out of his trenches.
He shouted: 'German waiter!
want to come back to the English.
Please take me prisoner.'
We didn't want no German waiters.
We can't be bothered takin' the beggars prisoners.
We let go at him instead!"
"They eat like savages!"
puts in the Irishman.
"I've see them shovelling their food in with one hand and pushing it down with the other.
'Tis my opinion the Germans have got no throats!"
"The Germans have lots to eat," asserts Tommy.
"Whenever we capture them we always find them well stocked.
