 | DOWN A BLIND ALLEY |
| | DOWN A BLIND ALLEY |
T.W. DROVE me through the night to St. Jean. She had waited in the car while I talked to Réquin and asked no questions when I came out. I said "General Réquin is leaving. Home, please." Lecomte stood in the lighted doorway, as we moved off.
The dark fields of Lorraine were desolate. Strange fields of a strange land. I was turning my back on England. I felt a little sick, my head was tight again inside an iron band. "You are frightened," I told myself. Yes. Réquin had frightened me. The war seemed to be waiting out there in the dark beyond the headlights of the car, like a pack of wolves.
Staring at T. W.'s steady shoulders, I thought, "How shall I get the girls home if the worst happens?" And I followed the road back to Paris in my mind. (How long would it remain open?) And beyond Paris? Which port should we make for? Dieppe, Le Havre, Cherbourg? It would depend on the enemy. Cherbourg was the best bet. They wouldn't reach Cherbourg.
There had been treachery, they said, in the IInd Army. The French hadn't blown up the bridges. But that, someone said, was because of the refugees. You couldn't, it appeared, blow up bridges packed with women and children who were flying for their lives---not if you were civilized---you would prefer to let the enemy across.
But what did I mean by the words "if the worst happened"? Well, if Weygand didn't close the gap, if German armor fanned out, turned south as well as north, attacked the IVth Army from the rear. All those little men in their underground forts of the Maginot Line, what good would they be then? And there was no IVth Army now in Lorraine. Réquin was taking it with him. His staff, he had said, and some divisions. There would be troops of course left to hold our sector. There would be a battle, many wounded. Well, that was what we had come for.
But why, a sick voice whispered, have you come, why bring twenty-five English girls to this far eastern corner of France? What induced you to assume such responsibility? The French are not your people. No, but they are allies. France is not your country. No, but our battle is joined in France.
When we defend France we are defending our own soil, it's the same thing. Is it? Would you be willing to die in defense of the Convent of St. Jean, as you would be ready to die for any British workingman's cottage?
Be quiet.
All right. All right, but if the worst came to the worst, who would you count on?
T. W. obviously. Dorea, Barbara, Maria. I could count on the whole British lot to hold together, do what was expected of them. Even the more foolish and less plucky would stick it. They'd have to. The worse things got, the tighter the bond that bound us together. But what of the French? Would they feel bound to us? I thought of Gosset. Who could foretell the behavior in a crisis of that gloomy incalculable man? He awaited defeat with bitter exultation, but curiously enough I felt that he would behave well, out of pride, out of hatred, out of revenge. Because we, the British, had brought this war on France, had come in our insolence to witness her crucifixion, because we were the real enemy, he would heap coals of fire on our heads, save us if he could, if not go down with us into the German maw.
Then there was Dr. Bernard. A Jew though his face didn't carry the signature of his race. It was more like the face of an Englishman than any of the others. I had always counted on him as a special friend and ally. He had been the peacemaker in the unit, his gentleness and his reasonableness had been soothing to Gosset. His value lay in his kindliness and his understanding of our English ways. One couldn't tell how he would behave in danger. He would remain calm, he was much less excitable than the other, but would he show courage and energy? And again, what of the three young surgeons? And Lelong, our chemist, and Rousset? They were ready enough to beguile the time and forget the war in flirtations, but what claim had we on any of them? Up against the ultimate test of survival, wouldn't they become strangers? Who was there in the French Army who would care in the last resort what became of the Strawberry Queen? General Réquin. Yes. He would care. He had made himself responsible for us. Now that he had gone, there was no one. Well, we must follow him. Lecomte had promised to see we were sent for. And we would be sent for. We must stick to the IVth Army. It was the best I could do for the girls, the only precaution that I had a right to take.
It was late when we got back but Gosset was waiting to tell me that my husband had been on the phone and would ring up again. I stared dumbfounded. Then B. must be in Paris. The news, with its sudden content of relief, reassurance, promise of help, made me feel weak in the knees. We went to my garden hut and T. W. produced cold sausage and champagne, the remains of the gala dinner that General Réquin had meant to attend. How long ago it seemed. The hut was full of the flowers he had sent. I told Gosset that Réquin was moving to another sector and would send for us. He scowled. Should I tell him the rest? No---better not---better tell no one.
Then the telephonist came running up the shadowed garden to fetch me. I hurried back with him and was immediately involved in a violent argument with the voice I preferred to all voices in the world of men.
It was wonderful. He was so cross, so natural, so incredibly cantankerous, that all the world seemed normal and ordinary.
Yes, he was in Paris. But where had I been? Why hadn't I been there when he first called up? What did I mean by rushing about the country at this time of night?
I had been to see Réquin.
Why?
Well, for reasons---
What reasons?
Never mind, they were good reasons. Was he staying on in Paris?
Yes---for a bit.
For how long?
He couldn't say.
What was he doing?
He couldn't say that, either. What he wanted to say, if I would only give him a chance, was that we were on no account to move from our present position. Did I understand? We were not to move.
But we probably would move.
What?
I had just asked to be moved. It was wiser.
Wiser to move? Nonsense. I was talking nonsense.
A difficult conversation since we could say nothing of military matters, but very revivifying.
He had been very upset by an account of the German bombing of a big hospital in Ostend. This news he gave me. Nothing more. I understood well enough what he was feeling about that. He feared the same thing might happen to us and believed we were comparatively safe in our far corner. Well, I couldn't argue with him over the phone, explain that Réquin was going.
He would ring up again, he said, in a day or two. In the meantime I was not to move. If I wanted to get hold of him I was to ask for l'Ambassade d'Angleterre---and would be put through immediately.
He rang off. I said to myself, "It's all very well for him to talk like that. If we get orders to move, we move. I know I'm right about sticking to Réquin and the IVth Army."
I felt much better. If I had known what he knew I would have felt worse but I didn't.
Our orders to pack up and be ready to take the road came next day. General Réquin had acted quickly---or was Gosset right in thinking this had nothing to do with Réquin? However that might be, we were to evacuate all the patients who could be safely sent to the rear, hand over to another unit and stand by.
B. rang up again that night. He was furious when I told him. He was flying to London in two or three days and wanted me to come to Paris at once. I said it was impossible and was roundly trounced over the wire, but stuck to it. I couldn't come.
Strange to recall those quarrels over the telephone. I longed to go to him. But we had stripped the wards, loaded up the lorries, were expecting our movement orders any day---any hour. How could I go to Paris? The unit might move off while I was gone.
Every night or two he came through on the phone. Each time more urgent. He wanted to see me. He particularly wanted to see me. Didn't I understand? Didn't I want to come? Of course, I wanted to come. But I couldn't.
He flew to London, was back two days later. I had no idea what he went for. Dunkirk in the meantime was evacuated. A quarter of a million British troops and a hundred and fifty thousand French were rescued from the beaches. We knew nothing about this. All was quiet in our sector. We had handed over our patients to their new nurses and were waiting with nothing to do but sit in the garden, go fishing, play the gramophone.
Extraordinary to remember my utter ignorance of what was going on. I had had a moment of horrid realization the evening I said good-by to Réquin. It had passed, I was my normal pigheaded optimistic self again. I hadn't the sense to be frightened any more or to realize what lay behind my husband's urgency.
No two people could have been more eager, each one to make the other understand, nor more hopelessly at odds while they talked together than B. and I during those brief exasperating telephone calls.
The trouble was that he could explain nothing. I knew that Winston must have sent him to Paris, but I didn't know what his job was; I had no idea that as Winston's personal representative with Paul Reynaud he was in daily contact with the French Premier, Pétain and Weygand, and French G.H.Q. and was striving with all his might, not only to make the French understand and trust the British, but to make them believe in victory---so how could I know that he was fighting a losing battle against the mass defeatism of the French Army, that the attitude of Pétain, Weygand and Reynaud himself filled him with the gravest misgivings and that he already envisaged the total collapse of French armed resistance.
I, at my end of France, knew only what the wireless allowed us to know. Reynaud told us to put our trust in Pétain, the hero of Verdun, and Weygand, the trusted chief of staff of the great Maréchal Foch. If there was a note of hysteria in the French Premier's voice when he implored us to have confidence in these great men of another war, if a horrid doubt made me shudder for an instant, it was only for an instant. The girls, with nothing to do, were clamoring to be allowed to go to Sarrebourg, Saverne, the lakes, the mountains. Why keep them cooped up? It was summer; the sun was shining, there wasn't an airplane to be seen in the sky. Oh, all right, they could go on their picnic provided I knew just where they were going. I turned on the wireless. A voice exhorted courage, confidence across the sunny air of my little white room. Maureen brought in a tray with coffee. Dorea followed with a pot of honey.
"Cheer up, May. If they are back by seven, it'll be all right. Even if we get orders to move this minute, we couldn't leave till tomorrow. There's the kitchen to pack up and our own belongings---and T. W. says your car has blown a gasket---and Barbara is in a frenzy over the Bedford. Turn off that wireless, it's all lies anyhow, and have some coffee. Here's to the Weygand Line."
How could I know that France was crumbling under our feet? Our part of France was utterly peaceful. Never had she been more beautiful. Why should I sit in my room with this wretched wireless?
Boddles came running one Sunday morning. "You must come, May. I've found an enchanted village. Too fantastic. It's strawberry pink. Too lovely--- you must come---you must. Where are your paints?"
She whirled me away up the road to Saverne and there it was---an absurd storybook village perched on the side of a green hill. All the little houses were the color of strawberries. The mountain rising steep behind them was vivid green. We set up our easels beside the village street. The sun poured down. White fluffy clouds sailed softly overhead. How lovely it was. Presently the young men and maidens of the village gathered round us, in their Sunday best. "Bon jour," they said gaily and stood watching us, laughing pleasantly among themselves. Then an old old man, bent almost double, came out of a door at the far end of the dreaming street under the big green mountain and began ringing a great bell and he was calling out something in a thin cracked voice, and the young men and maidens all laughed when they saw him coming in the distance, but I couldn't hear what he was calling, so I said, "What is he calling out?" And they answered, "Oh, it's only old Auguste, the town crier, calling a new class to the colors"---and went off laughing, their arms round each other's waists. That was how the war appeared in Lorraine.
B. rang up again that night and ordered me this time to come to Paris.
"This is an order, you understand."
"It's no good talking like that. I can't leave I tell you."
"Why? What are you doing?"
"Waiting. As a matter of fact I've been painting with Elaine up the Saverne road."
"What?" His voice was a roar. "Did you say painting?"
"Yes---water colors."
He thought I'd gone mad-but when he said so, I put it down as just a way of showing ill temper. That it was insane to go on a sketching expedition within a few miles of the Germans didn't seem to strike anyone, even Gosset. At last, however, on the sixth of June (German armor was dashing forward from a Somme bridgehead making for Rouen and the Seine), I started for Paris in the Buick, our most reliable staff car, Barbara Graham driving and Lemaire beside her again with his rifle.
A note in my diary reminds me that Gosset was in a state about my going. He was in fact dead against it, fearing the road might be cut by German raiders. All our officers were against it, for that matter. Dr. Bernard said he could not attempt to dissuade me as my husband had sent for me---but---well, they would be anxious until I got safely back. Boutron offered to go with me to protect me; an offer I lightheartedly refused. Indeed I didn't see how the gentle creature could help me much against German armed raiders---nor did I believe such an encounter probable. I hadn't a qualm as I drove off. My one worry was the thought that the unit might get orders to move while I was gone. But I was only spending one night in Paris. I would be back the next day. Still, to make quite certain we decided to go. via Troyes and stop on the way at General Réquin's headquarters. If orders. to move had been sent, he would tell me and I would turn back.
Colonel Dumas, chief of staff at IVth Army, was very surprised when I walked in. The general, he regretted to say, was absent. He would be désolé to have missed my visit. Yes. Everything was arranged. It had been a little difficult. The Grand Q.G. had made difficulties but the general had won the day and we were to join up with the IVth Army as promised. Soon? Yes, quite soon. The sooner in fact, the better. But I could quite well go on to Paris and return next day. Why not dine with the general and sleep at Châlons on my way back to St. Jean? They were moving their H.Q. in the morning to a village near Châlons. He would show me the place on the map. If Miss Graham would look. . .
Miss Graham studied the large scale map on the wall, compared it with her own road map and marked the place where the general would expect us to dine. It sounded delightful. Colonel Dumas conducted me to my car. He paused at the top of the steps and looked at me out of dark harassed brown eyes. Did I believe that all would be well?
It was only much later that I realized how odd it was of him to put me such a question. The look in his eyes as he spoke must have startled me for I remembered it. I had caught sight for an instant of a mind assailed with horrid doubt. But I dismissed it at the time and went happily on my way.
An uneventful journey. Barbara drove with her usual elegance. We were lucky, we said, to find so few convoys on the road. There was nothing in fact to suggest any new menace to Paris save the cement road blocks as we neared the Porte de Vincennes. We weren't stopped. No control post asked for our papers. We rolled through the strangely empty Paris streets in the late afternoon and arrived at the Ritz where B., I knew, was staying.
It was very quiet in the Ritz. There was no one about but the concierge.
I asked if the general was expecting me.
But certainly---if I cared to go up, the rooms were on the second floor.
Was he there?
No. He was at his office.
Then I would telephone first.
The concierge was sorry. There was no telephone.
No telephone at the Ritz?
No---the telephone was cut off. Government orders. There were no civil telephones now in Paris.
What was I to do?
I would find the general at the British Embassy. If I cared to go.
I did. I went back to the car and explained to Barbara. "He's at the Embassy. I can't telephone. Telephone's cut off. Let's go."
B. was with the Ambassador when I arrived. His secretary, a very pleasant Englishwoman, was typing by the window as I was shown into his office. She went to fetch him. I waited. Then he came in and as I looked at his face, the world of illusion that I had been living in vanished.
I had been thinking of him as he was in 1916, when I first saw him at Bray-sur-Somme; we had met during one war, now we met again in another, and I was horrified. His eyes were bloodshot. There were lines inches deep in his face. But it was not because he was twenty-five years older. I had seen him two months before when he came to stay with Réquin. Then, he hadn't looked like this. Never had I seen him look like this. His smile of greeting was sweet, it was the same old smile. The horrible thing was that it didn't belong to his face, only crept on to it for an instant, then was gone, leaving it naked, ravaged, savage and exhausted. I saw, as I looked, what was happening to France---and I saw, for one second, what was going to happen. The war leaped at me out of his eyes. I was terrified.
We said little. He had only a few minutes to give me. We could talk, he said, later. I was to go back to the Ritz, order a cold supper for two in his sitting room; he hoped to join me by nine.
My instinct warned me to be matter of fact.
"How is Paul Reynaud?"
He didn't answer. I waited. He said nothing.
It took me a minute to digest the meaning of this---then--
"And Weygand?"
"Weygand went near the battle some days ago. He hasn't yet recovered from the shock."
"I don't understand."
"Weygand has never commanded troops in the field. He always had staff jobs in the last war. He had never been under fire until the other day. He is a very old man."
"Then you don't believe in him?"
"I never believed in him."
"But if the Weygand Line doesn't hold---what happens?"
"God knows---"
I went back to the Ritz. Cynthia's mother was at Vichy but her American stepfather, Bill Gower, was in Paris and Barbara was to spend the night at their flat. Lemaire was to stay with the car. She deposited me at the Ritz, would call for me with car and Lemaire at eight next morning. It was awkward not being able to telephone---if anything happened---but nothing would happen before morning.
I went up to B.'s rooms, ordered our cold supper in the salon for nine o'clock and had a hot bath. The rooms gave on the garden. All was quiet. There seemed to be no one in the hotel. Michael's photograph stood on the table. Michael was in England. When would I see him again?
It was ten before B. got back. He kissed me absent-mindedly. When he had had a wash we sat down to supper. Cold chicken and ham, salad, Camembert cheese, a bottle of Chablis.
"About our moving---I want to explain."
"Yes?" He was only half listening. Immense preoccupations absorbed him. He looked at me like a blind man.
"Réquin is a friend. If we get into trouble I can turn to him for advice---otherwise in the confusion we might be forgotten-"
The telephone rang. He had an Embassy extension in his sitting room. It was Maureen calling from St. Jean to say that they had received orders to move next morning, would I please start back at once? I couldn't hear her distinctly nor could she hear me.
"You want me to come back tonight?"
"Yes. We leave first thing in the morning."
"But I was told at Troyes---"
"I can't hear---"
"I was told by Colonel Dumas---"
"Colonel who?"
"Never mind. Hold on a minute---"
I turned to B. "I've got to go back---now---tonight."
"Nonsense."
"But I must. They are leaving early in the morning. It's a six hours' run." "You can't. Where's your car?"
"I don't know."
"Well then---"
I spoke again on the phone. "I'll start back," I said, "by midnight---should be with you by six."
She rang off.
There was a knock on the door. A gentleman was announced. Very grave, very correct. He presented himself. He was Monsieur le Grand. He apologized for disturbing us. He was Captain Lecomte's father-in-law and he had a message for me. The message was to the effect that General Réquin would expect me to dine with him the next night at the place that had been shown me that morning on the map.
I thanked him. He bowed and withdrew.
"I must now," I said, "get hold of Barbara."
"You must first finish your supper."
I ate my chicken, gulped down a glass of Chablis.
"How can I get hold of her?"
"Where is she?"
"At Constance's flat. Can you send a car?"
"Yes---if you must go." He looked dreadfully tired.
"I must," I said.
Then Barbara and Bill Gower walked in.
"Barbara! How extraordinary! I was just going to send for you. We've got to go back tonight."
"I'm sorry, May. We can't. I've wrecked the car. Ran---into one of those road blocks in the dark."
"Where is the car?"
"In the middle of the Champs Elysées where I crashed."
"Can't you get it repaired?"
"Afraid not. It's a total wreck."
I was frantic. I lost my temper. What to do? It was by now nearly midnight. I kept repeating that I must get back. If the unit moved off without us, we might never find them. Barbara had no more to say. I was sorry I had lost my temper. It wasn't her fault. She didn't know about the road blocks in the Champs Elysées. But there it was. We were stranded without a car and had two hundred and fifty miles to do before morning.
B. took matters in hand. He would ask General Colson, French chief of staff at the Ministère de la Guerre, to send us back early in the morning. But he could not and would not disturb him before seven. I must get through to Gosset, tell him what had happened and say that I would leave as early as possible.
I got Gosset without delay. What? I had meant to start back tonight? Quite unnecessary. Madame Schreiber was mistaken. She had acted without his knowledge. They were not leaving until one o'clock. Treize heures. If I left by eight in the morning all would be well.
B. said, "You women!" I told Barbara I was sorry I'd been angry, that if she would collect Lemaire and be at the Ritz at eight o'clock I'd be ready. B. would get us a car somehow.
It was one in the morning when Barbara and Bill left us. A peculiar evening. We prepared for bed. Had just turned out the light when the bombing began. It was spasmodic, but combined with my anxiety about the unit made sleep impossible. I woke B. at seven and he rang Colson. "Ma femme est en panne. Sa formation fait mouvement." Colson agreed at once. A fast car would be at the Ritz by eight o'clock. I dressed, packed my bag, drank some coffee---said good-by. B. was talking to London on the telephone as I left the room. He waved a distraught hand.
It was Saturday the seventh of June. German armor sweeping south, reached Rouen the next day, crossed the Seine on the tenth and entered Paris on the fourteenth. B. had been to London and had rejoined Reynaud on the Loire by that time, but I knew nothing about that. My line of communication with my husband snapped as I left the Ritz. I didn't see him or hear from him again until I reached England on the twenty-sixth of July. It was to be five years before I went back to Paris.
THE car General Colson had put at my disposal was a supercharged Peujot shaped like a torpedo. Two lean, swarthy, hawk-faced French soldiers in steel helmets, one at the wheel, the other with a rifle between his knees, were in front. Barbara and I wedged ourselves into the narrow back seat, Lemaire between us, our bags under our feet. We were very cramped. It was eight-thirty. I said, "We must make St. Jean le Bassel by one." The eagle at the wheel nodded. We shot across the Place Vendôme.
I like being driven fast. The girls knew this and would go all out on the straight. But the straight and the crooked were all the same to this driver. Traffic lights, control posts, convoys, farm wagons, market squares and crowded thoroughfares were no obstacle. Never before or since have I been driven as I was driven that day. The car in those steel hands was a live thing. It was like being on the back of the winner in a dog race. We made St. Didier by ten forty-five. We were halfway and had averaged just over sixty miles an hour. But it took us half an hour to get petrol. Barbara hadn't spoken nor I---with the car lurching and leaping through the air, talk was impossible. But at the petrol point we looked at each other.
"Can we make it, Barbara?"
"I don't think so. He can't keep it up. No man could."
It was a quarter past twelve when we reached Nancy and I realized as we left the town that the superb silent creature in charge was slacking off very slightly.
Should I say anything? I remember, as if it were yesterday, staring with awe at those lean shoulders, that narrow, steady head---those incredible hands. Then I leaned forward.
"If you can keep up your speed," I said, "we can just do it."
He stiffened. It was like touching a racehorse with the whip. The speedometer moved to kilos 120. We turned sharp right in Fénétrange on two wheels at one-fifteen and pulled up at one-thirty in front of the convent gates to find the hospital convoy drawn up in the road about to move off.
We had done the two hundred and fifty miles in four hours and a half. Ten minutes later we were on our way back along the road we had come.
Barbara and Lemaire tumbled out. Gosset stepped forward. I stood in the road. Would I please stay where I was. Everyone was placed. He had given orders that none were to leave their vehicles. If I would be so kind as not to disturb his arrangements. There was unfortunately no room for me in the convoy. Without the Buick it had been extremely difficult to caser everyone. Miss Fuhlroth was installed in my Renault with her bad leg (she had phlebitis) on a strapontin, thus taking up two places. Madame Schreiber and Dr. le Canouet were traveling with her. Lemaire could get into the old Bedford with the French orderlies. Miss Graham would join Miss Toulmin and Dr. Guénin, but it would cause the greatest confusion if I insisted on transferring myself to the Renault. I could see for myself that the Ford station wagons were packed with nurses.
There was nothing for it but to stick to General Colson's car for the rest of the day.
I turned to my hawk-faced driver. Could he drive me back? But certainly, his orders were to take me to my destination---what was our destination?
A place, Gosset said, called Maison Blanche.
And where was that?
It was fifteen miles south of Châlons.
We were to go back?
Just so. He unfolded his map---pointed it out to my driver. It was a hundred miles back on the road to Paris.
So we needn't have been in such a hurry.
No. He had expected to meet us on the road.
The two eagles in helmets made no sign. They had been told to bring me to St. Jean as quickly as possible. They had done what they were told. I turned again to Gosset.
Were we to set up the hospital at Maison Blanche?
He didn't know. We would get further orders when we arrived. If I would be good enough to step into my car.
Maureen had joined me and was staring at me intently. I could see Evelyn lying back on a white pillow in the Renault. Cheerful hands waved to me from car windows. But where were the nuns? Where was Sister Marie Jeanne? She would be sad if I didn't say good-by to her. But Gosset was pawing the ground.
"Allons madame, en route."
Then Maureen intervened. Hadn't I better have something to eat? Certainly, Gosset snapped. I could stop at the café in Fénétrange if I was hungry and catch them up. I said I would do that. My two escorts were hungry, if I was not.
We moved off. Our retreat had begun. We didn't suspect it, but the Hadfield-Spears Unit was to keep on moving till it reached England.
I don't know how or why it was that Nancy Wright got in beside me. I thought she was Barbara, but when we stopped at Fénétrange I found it was Wright. I said, "Oh it's you, Nancy," and stumbled into the café. But we were too late. There was no food, only coffee and beer. So we sat with the two drivers drinking coffee while they devoured their rations, and I think Nancy told me the story of those last hours of incredible confusion, of how everyone had got in everyone's way, how Boddles had kept them all waiting, and how Kelsey's little Zouave had cried and had nearly fallen out of the window waving good-by. It was very hot in the café, my head was swimming and I don't remember very clearly what she said, but I do recall the savage gleam of our drivers' great knives as they slashed at their hunks of bread, and the buzzing as it seemed of a myriad flies. Then we were off again at the same headlong speed, lurching and leaping over the road.
The country fled past again. There was the turn to Vic. What ages it seemed since I had taken it to say good-by to Réquin. He was expecting me to dine with him somewhere, where was it? Someone had turned up with a message, a nice man, while I was at supper with B. Poor B. I must ring him up from Maison Blanche. How worried he was about Reynaud, and they had once been such friends. The little Frenchman had seemed so full of fire and ardor when he came to see us in London. The best of the lot, B. had said. But that had been long ago in another world. A world where one only talked of war. I hadn't even kissed B. good-by. He was at the telephone, had waved a hand. I wished----Oh I wished
The car gave a bound, I swung against Wright and came back to the present. Our job was to set up our hospital at Maison Blanche and be prepared to take in the wounded. "Nous allons avoir des batailles terribles," Réquin had said---so we were in for a busy time.
After that it was all like a dream where everything you grasp melts in your hand, familiar things twist into ghostly shapes. And all through the dream I was being rushed through space at breakneck speed in a car driven by grinning demons---toward a place that didn't exist.
We passed our convoy just beyond Nancy, catching up first the heavy lorries, then the old Bedford with its load of orderlies, then the two Dodge vans. Dorea seemed to be in trouble. Wilky driving the Hotchkiss wore an agonized expression. Cynthia was leading in her Ford station wagon with Dr. Guénin standing on the running board. In a flash we had left them behind.
I tried to imagine our new hospital in Maison Blanche, pictured to myself a large white house, nice clean wards like those in the convent, rows of neat beds with white sheets, blue blankets.
But when we reached the spot on the map there was no such place as Maison Blanche. No large white house, nor even a small house, no village nor house of any kind, nothing but a dream forest of great trees and a crossroads and a couple of distracted French officers waving their arms at the passing motors who told me to turn left and proceed to Chatel Raoult where Ambulance 282 was to be billeted for the night.
But the forest and the dream deepened as we sped south and when we reached Chatel Raoult all we found was a deaf commandant, who knew nothing about us, hidden away in a jungle in a little wooden pavilion---and it was like a scene in a fairy tale. The grass was so high round the porch that the pavilion was smothered and the late afternoon sunlight streaming into his untidy room was very hot, and spread over everything was deep silence and dust. He was a sad, gray little man, very deaf, with weak watery eyes, and he had received no orders nor any warning of our coming. No one had thought to tell him, or perhaps he hadn't heard when they told him over the telephone, but when at last I did make him hear and he realized that thirty women were descending on him for the night he was very frightened and said in the curious small voice of the very deaf, "Mais madame, je ne peux pas. Il n'y a rien ici, rien," and indeed there did seem to be nothing, nothing but great silent trees and an old barn.
Gosset had said we would receive further orders when we reached our destination, and this apparently was it, but there were no orders. There must be some mistake. The Service de Santé couldn't be mad enough to expect us to set up our hospital in a jungle. How would we get the wounded? How send them on? There wasn't a sign of an ambulance, nor of any military vehicle of any kind. Not a living soul to be seen, for that matter. The commandant appeared to be quite alone. I must find General Wörms, make him do something. But where was the Service de Santé? I turned to the commandant.
"I must telephone the Service de Santé."
"Comment, madame?" He held his right ear with his hand and blinked. "I must telephone," I shouted, "to the Service de Santé."
"What Service de Santé, madame?"
"The Service de Santé of the IVth Army."
"Which army did you say?"
"The IVth Army. I want to speak to the Médecin Inspecteur Wörms." He shook his head. "I am sorry."
"General Wörms," I shouted. "I want to speak to the Médecin Inspecteur of the IVth Army, General Wörms."
He had either never heard of General Wörms, or he didn't hear now. A horrid suspicion darted into my mind.
"Don't you belong to the IVth Army?" I screamed into his poor deaf ear.
"But no, madame, I belong to the---the region of the rear."
'But we have been sent here to rejoin the IVth Army."
He blinked again. I gave it up, and went out into the porch, leaving him waving his helpless little hands.
"What sort of a war is this?" I grumbled to Nancy Wright. "How in heaven's name are we supposed to set up a hospital in this place?"
"Dans la verdure peut-être, madame. Ici il n'y a que de la verdure."
It was the commandant again at my elbow, hearing for once when hearing was useless, and using a phrase that I had never heard applied to a hospital before but was to hear often enough during the days that followed. I thought it funny at the time, or perhaps I was slightly hysterical for I remember turning to Wright and saying, "He suggests we should put up our tents in the greenery"---and going off into a wild fit of laughter.
"But we aren't prepared---" Sister Wright was shocked.
"Of course, we are not prepared."
"We have only three tents, one for the theater, one for the reception, one for stores."
"I know."
'We were never intended---"
"You're telling me-"
"We must have a building of some sort to house the patients."
"A building. Exactly. A building--well, there's a barn over there."
But here was the Renault with Maureen and Fuhlroth and Le Canouet and here came Gosset, thank God, in his two-seater. This was his show. This was his war, whatever he might feel about it. I would let him cope with Wörms and the Service de Santé and la verdure and all the rest of it.
The remainder of that day is a blur. Maureen told me later that I looked so wildly exhausted when she arrived at Chatel Raoult that she thought it best to take me away from the others. I daresay she was right. I remember finding myself in a hot hotel bedroom, sitting vaguely on a hard yellow chair opposite a dizzy wall covered with pink roses---and asking where I was.
"We're in Châlons."
"Oh, are we all here?"
"No."
"Why not? Where are the others?"
"Gosset has taken them to a village called St. Chéron."
"Where is that?"
"Thirty miles south. We'll join them tomorrow."
"South, you say?"
"Yes. South."
"Well, that's a good thing."
I remember no more. I fell on my bed and slept like a log, till morning, reassured, please note the foolishness of it, by the thought that the girls were thirty miles farther from the enemy than I was.
There is, I fear, a good deal that was idiotic in my conduct during the forty-eight hours that followed my departure from the Ritz. My mad dash across France had been unnecessary. To have allowed myself to be whisked away from the unit to Châlons for the night was wrong and very unwise. For General Colson's car was gone. The eagles having landed us at the only hotel still open in Châlons had gone back to Paris. We were without transport in a town awaiting the arrival of the enemy. We didn't know this. That is to say we didn't believe, though we knew the Germans weren't far off, that they would get through. Why we didn't believe it, I can't tell you. But it was so. And this, in spite of the fright B. had given me in Paris. It doesn't make sense, as I say, it was idiocy, to go peacefully to sleep while Maureen hunted the ghostly streets along the Marne for a telephone.
She found one in a cellar, and a captain who telephoned to Réquin's headquarters and promised to lend us a car to take us there if we would turn up at his office at eight o'clock in the morning. Then she too came back to the deserted hotel and to bed. And in the morning, rested, refreshed, full of confidence, there we were, a couple of fools discussing solemnly over our excellent coffee the problem of finding a suitable place in which to install the hospital. That, I declared, was the first thing and Réquin must help us. He must requisition a chateau somewhere or a school. Wörms was hopeless. Fancy sending us on a wild-goose chase to a place like Chatel Raoult. We agreed, very smug we were on the way to General Réquin's headquarters, that the confusion, the lack of control and direction in the Service de Santé was shocking.
"I must ring up B.," I said, "as soon as we are installed and have a telephone number of our own." The idea that 282 was never to have such a thing again didn't occur to me as a remote possibility.
General Réquin's headquarters were this time in a large pleasant farm house. Captain Lecomte received us and conducted us to the general's office. He looked more cheerful than at our last meeting.
"You didn't give us the pleasure of your company at dinner after all."
"No. I'm sorry. We received orders to move. I rejoined the unit. It was late by the time I reached Châlons."
It was, he said, of no consequence. We were here, that was the main thing. But where exactly were we?
I said I didn't quite know and explained what had happened. He was incensed. I must see Wörms immediately, he declared, and decide myself where I would set up my hospital. He would like to have us as near as possible to his headquarters so that he could keep an eye on us. He would telephone Wörms that I was coming. The doctors seemed to make a sad muddle of their affairs. If I had any trouble with Wörms, I was to let him know.
I thanked him. Maureen and I got up to go. He stopped us to point out his sector on the map, and the plain of Champagne spreading behind it. "Clean as a table," he said in his dry way. "Nothing to bang on to. I shall try to hold them on the Aisne."
He came with us to the front door. "At night when I can't sleep," he said, "I think sometimes of Mademoiselle Alice and her handsome Zouave." He smiled. We were in full retreat before I saw him again.
We found Gosset with General Wörms in a stuffy little house in the village of Songy. Wörms in a dither, Gosset very angry. It was to be our last conference with the Service de Santé. Though we didn't know it, there would be no more talk after today about a suitable place for our hospital. We were about to be scattered over the country like chaff in a high wind. The fact that nothing we said that day mattered in the least makes my conduct no more excusable.
I had done an unpardonable thing, Gosset put it bluntly, in going over Wörms's head to the army commander. I said I was sorry, that I had no such intention. I had gone to the general merely to ask for a car to take me to St. Chéron, to which Gosset replied rudely that had I stayed with the unit I would have had no need of a car. Maureen very pink said it had been absolutely necessary to find me a bed, I had been exhausted. Gosset gave a snort. Wörms waved his worried little hands over the map on the table. "Voyons---Il s'agit de vous trouver un emplacement."
Gosset flung a long leg over his knee and stared out of the little window into the hot street. It was all very unpleasant. I knew I was in the wrong, but I didn't trust Wörms and I did trust Réquin and I was by that time in such a rage with Gosset that when Wörms suggested sending us to Troyes to work in the big military hospital of that town I turned the suggestion down flat. Troyes? But Troyes was a hundred and fifty kilometers behind the lines. We were a mobile field unit and a self-contained unit. To attach us to a great military base hospital was to destroy our raison d'être.
Poor little Wörms. I can see his worried pinched old face. But he was right that day and I was wrong. He knew much better than I what lay ahead of us. If the line on the Aisne didn't hold, the hundred and fifty kilometers in front of Troyes would curl up in a flash under the German armor. Our best, perhaps our only, chance of being useful was to take ourselves off now, immediately, to a spot well behind the battle zone. Of all this he was painfully aware. But he couldn't tell me that he didn't believe the IVth Army could hold the Aisne. He could only advise me timidly to join forces with his very excellent hospital at Troyes. The médecin chef, he said, would be more than grateful for the help we could give him. Gosset said nothing. When I asked his opinion, his shoulders informed me that he wasn't interested---so when I turned the proposal down, Wörms gave it up. The army commander had ordered him to let me choose my own emplacement. I was determined to stay near the front, very well I could stay. If I would go with Captain Gosset to Rosnay I would find there a small chateau that might do. He pointed it out on the map. It was about fifty kilometers south of us on the main road from Châlons to Troyes.
Gosset and I were silent during the drive to St. Chéron. Actually he was no more eager than I to be attached to the hospital at Troyes. I learned this later from Dr. Bernard, but that didn't help matters at the moment. He held himself responsible for the safety of the unit and was furious that I had gone to see Réquin without consulting him. I don't blame him. I had behaved in a very foolish and highhanded manner.
I realize now how seriously he took his responsibility. Believing that defeat was certain, inclined by temperament to expect and even welcome calamity, he nevertheless was determined to do his duty, and discharge his obligation to the band of strange British women who must have maddened him by their optimism---and though I, for my part, hated his defeatism, I could not but admire his conduct of the unit during the harassing days that followed. He exerted himself to the utmost on our behalf and I came to count on him.
Indeed it is probable that if it had not been for Gosset and Dr. Guénin we would have been taken prisoner. For our unit was to be left very soon to look after itself and find its own way across France as best it could. We could never have done it if these two hadn't known the country intimately. That was to become a question of great importance. For once the flood of refugees began to pour down the highroads of France south of Paris our one hope was to follow the little country roads, and avoid the congested towns with their milling throngs, their groaning bridges, their eternal traffic blocks. No, without Gosset and Guénin we couldn't have made it. We would have been lost.
But I anticipate. There was no thought of retreat in my mind that lovely ninth of June when I found the unit camping in the straggling village street of St. Chéron. What a gay dirty lot of gypsies they were. The trucks were all drawn up under the trees on one side of the street, the staff cars on the other; the orderlies, down at the bottom of the hill, were gathered round the rolling kitchen. Girls came running from cottages and barns to welcome us.
"It's Madame la Générale. Hi! everybody---here is Madame la Générale." Maria came at a gallop through the dust under the blazing sky. Barbara waved a spanner, wiped her nose with a black hand and grinned.
It was lunchtime. I was hustled up the hill to the village pub. Dorea and Dodo produced an excellent meal of bully beef, salad, cheese and a cool white wine. After lunch I was taken to inspect the billets. Fuhlroth, our invalid, had been installed in the one comfortable furnished room available. I found her lying in a large double bed in a blue crepe-de-Chine nightie with the window open on poppy fields that shimmered in the heat. Most of the drivers and nurses were sleeping in barns. Cynthia, Rosie and Pip Scott-Ellis had moved into an abandoned piggery. They had put up a sign over the broken door, "Château du Porc," and had turned the interior into an apartment not unlike the most modern of night clubs. Cynthia had pulled gay strips of cloth out of her tin box. Pip had drawn cartoons in charcoal on large squares of brown paper.
"But wait till you see your domain, boss."
Dorea and Maria conducted Maureen and me proudly to the derelict bungalow they had prepared for us. It had once been white. It had two rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom, and a veranda; four battered chairs, a table with a dirty crimson cloth, and two handsome brass candlesticks. Maureen, Dorea and Maria were to sleep in the sitting room. I was to have the small bedroom to myself. They had put up my camp bed, made me a dressing table out of a packing case and retrieved a jug and basin from one of the trucks.
"Isn't it grand, boss?"
"Grand."
We sat down on the veranda steps. There was a giant plane tree before the front door. The village dozed in the heat. The sound of cannon was far away. I must go with Gosset presently to Rosnay to inspect the building where we proposed to set up the hospital. It was wonderful to be back---it was like coming home.