Fighting France | Page 5

them away. The very villages were deserted; not a human being appeared in them. You would have said that this train that was passing through in the wake of hundreds of other trains had blotted out all the inhabitants of the region.
We detrained at Alen?on, arriving there about mid-day. Alen?on is a tiny Norman village that is habitually calm and peaceful, but on that day it was crowded with people. An enormous wave, the wave of the men who were mobilizing, rushed through the main street of the little town in the direction of the two barracks. I went with the current. My captain, whom I found in the middle of a part of the barracks, had not even had time to put on his uniform. He explained the situation to me with military brevity:
"It's very simple.... It's now three o'clock in the afternoon. The day after tomorrow, at six o'clock in the morning, we entrain for Paris. We have one day to clothe, equip and arm our company."
It is no small matter to clothe, equip and arm two hundred and fifty men in twenty-four hours. You have to find in the enormous pile, which is in a corner of a shed, two hundred and fifty coats, pairs of trousers and hats which will fit two hundred and fifty entirely separate and distinct chests, legs and heads. You have to find five hundred pairs of shoes for two hundred and fifty pairs of feet. You have to arrange the men in rank according to their heights, form the sections and the squads. You have to have soup prepared and transport provisions. You have to go and get rifles and cartridges. You have to get funds advanced for the company accounts from the very beginning of the campaign. You have to get your duties organized, make up accounts and prepare statements. You have to breathe the breath of life into the little machine which is going to take its place in the big machine.
And there was not a person there to help us to do this--not a line officer, not a second lieutenant. The captain had to act on his own, to think on his own, to decide everything on his own. He had to do all by himself the work that yesterday twenty-five department store heads, twenty-five shoe makers and twenty-five certified public accountants would have had a hard time doing.
He did it! Every captain in the French Army did it. And the next morning at six o'clock our little machine was ready to go and take its place in the operations of the big machine. The following day, at six o'clock, we entrained again; but no longer was it the confused and disorganized crowd that it had been the evening before. It was a company with arms and leaders; a company which had already made the acquaintance of discipline. That was proved by the silence reigning everywhere. At the moment of departure the Colonel had commanded:
"Silence!"
There was not a sound. The long train, crowded with soldiers, was a silent train which passed through the open country, the towns and the villages all the way to Paris without a sound except the puffing of the engine. In the evening, silent always, we detrained at Paris and marched to a barracks situated to the north of the capital. We were to stay there a month.
* * * * *
The story of Paris during the month of August, 1914, is an extraordinary one that would deserve an entire volume to itself. That feverish city has never lived through hours that were more calm and peaceful. During the first two weeks Paris seemed to be in a sweet, peaceful dream, in which the citizens listened eagerly for sounds of victory coming from the far distant horizon. On the twenty-fifth of August Paris, which had heard only vague echoes of the Battle of Charleroi, awakened with a jolt when it read the famous communiqué beginning with the words: "De la Somme aux Vosges...."
So the enemy was already at the Somme, a few days' march from the capital! But the awakening was as free from disturbance as the dream had been. Paris felt absolute confidence in the army, in Joffre; and the Parisian reasoning was expressed in one phrase, "The army has retreated, but it is neither destroyed nor beaten; as long as the army is there, Paris has nothing to fear...." And when Sunday the thirtieth of August came, Paris was as calm and confident as it was on the first day of the war.
I shall remember the thirtieth of August for a long time.
They had posted on all the walls two notices. One of them was large, the other small. The large one was a proclamation of the Government announcing the departure of