"They ate it," said the priest graphically. "A bite at a time."

We walked through the town. One street after another opened up its perspective of destruction. The strange antics that sh.e.l.l fire plays had left doors and lintels standing without buildings, had left intact here and there pieces of furniture. There was an occasional picture on an exposed wall; iron street lamps had been twisted into travesties; whole panes of gla.s.s remained in facades behind which the buildings were gone. A part of the wooden scaffolding by which repairs were being made to the old tower of the Cloth Hall hung there uninjured by either flame or sh.e.l.l.

On one street all the trees had been cut off as if by one sh.e.l.l, about ten feet above the ground, but in another, where nothing whatever remained but piles of stone and mortar, a great elm had apparently not lost a single branch.

Much has been written about the desolation of these towns. To get a picture of it one must realise the solidity with which even the private houses are built. They are stone, or if not, the walls are of ma.s.sive brick coated with plaster. There are no frame buildings; wood is too expensive for that purpose. It is only in prodigal America that we can use wood.

So the destruction of a town there means the destruction of buildings that have stood for centuries, and would in the normal course of events have stood for centuries more.

A few civilians had crept back into the town. As in other places, they had come back because they had no place else to go. At any time a sh.e.l.l might destroy the fragment of the building in which they were trying to reestablish themselves. There were no shops open, because there were no shops to open. Supplies had to be brought from long distances. As all the horses and automobiles had been commandeered by the government, they had no way to get anything. Their situation was pitiable, tragic. And over them was the daily, hourly fear that the German Army would concentrate for its onward drive at some near-by point.

CHAPTER XIV

LADY DECIES' STORY

It was growing dark; the chauffeur was preparing to light the lamps of the car. Sh.e.l.ls were fewer. With the approach of night the activity behind the lines increased; more ammunition trains made their way over the debris; regiments prepared for the trenches marched through the square on their way to the front.

They were laden, as usual, with extra food and jars of water. Almost every man had an additional loaf of bread strapped to the knapsack at his back. They were laughing and talking among themselves, for they had had a sleep and hot food; for the time at least they were dry and fed and warm.

On the way out of the town we pa.s.sed a small restaurant, one of a row of houses. It was the only undestroyed building I saw in Ypres.

"It is the only house," said the General, "where the inhabitants remained during the entire bombardment. They made coffee for the soldiers and served meals to officers. Sh.e.l.ls. .h.i.t the pavement and broke the windows; but the house itself is intact. It is extraordinary."

We stopped at the one-time lunatic asylum on our way back. It had been converted into a hospital for injured civilians, and its long wards were full of women and children. An English doctor was in charge.

Some of the buildings had been destroyed, but in the main it had escaped serious injury. By a curious fatality that seems to have followed the chapels and churches of Flanders, the chapel was the only part that was entirely gone. One great sh.e.l.l struck it while it was housing soldiers, as usual, and all of them were killed. As an example of the work of one sh.e.l.l the destruction of that building was enormous. There was little or nothing left.

"The sh.e.l.l was four feet high," said the Doctor, and presented me with the nose of it.

"You may get more at any moment," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "What must be, must be," he said quietly.

When the bombardment was at its height, he said, they took their patients to the cellar and continued operating there. They had only a candle or two. But it was impossible to stop, for the wards were full of injured women and children.

I walked through some of the wards. It was the first time I had seen together so many of the innocent victims of this war--children blind and forever cut off from the light of day, little girls with arms gone, women who will never walk again.

It was twilight. Here and there a candle gleamed, for any bright illumination was considered unwise.

What must they think as they lie there during the long dark hours between twilight and the late winter morning? Like the sentry, many of them must wonder if it is worth while. These are people, most of them, who have lived by their labour. What will they do when the war is over, or when, having made such recovery as they may, the hospital opens its doors and must perforce turn them out on the very threshold of war?

And yet they cling to life. I met a man who crossed the Channel--I believe it was from Flushing--with the first lot of hopelessly wounded English prisoners who had been sent home to England from Germany in exchange for as many wrecked and battered Germans on their way back to the Fatherland.

One young boy was all eagerness. His home was on the cliff above the harbour which was their destination. He alternately wept and cheered.

"They'll be glad enough to see me, all right," he said. "It's six months since they heard from me. More than likely they think I'm lying over there with some of the other chaps."

He was in a wheeled chair. In his excitement the steamer rug slipped down. Both his legs were gone above the knees!

Our hands were full. The General had picked up a horseshoe on the street at Ypres and given it to me to bring me luck; the Commandant had the framed pictures. The General carried the gargoyle wrapped in a newspaper. I had the nose of the sh.e.l.l.

We walked through the courtyard, with its broken fountain and cracked walks, out to the machine. The pa.s.sword for the night was "ecosse,"

which means "Scotland." The General gave the word to the orderly and we went on again toward Poperinghe, where we were to have coffee.

The firing behind us had ceased. Possibly the German gunners were having coffee also. We went at our usual headlong speed through almost empty roads. Now and then a lantern waved. We checked our headlong speed to give the pa.s.sword, and on again. More lanterns; more challenges.

Since we pa.s.sed, a few hours before, another car had been wrecked by the road. One sees these cars everywhere, lying on their sides, turned turtle in ditches, bent and twisted against trees. No one seems to be hurt in these accidents; at least one hears nothing of them, if they are. And now we were back at Poperinghe again.

The Commandant had his headquarters in the house of a notary. Except in one instance, all the houses occupied by the headquarters' staffs that I visited were the houses of notaries. Perhaps the notary is the important man of a French town. I do not know.

This was a double house with a centre hall, a house of some pretension in many ways. But it had only one lamp. When we went from one room to another we took the lamp with us. It was not even a handsome lamp. In that very comfortable house it was one of the many anomalies of war.

One or two of the best things from the museum at Ypres had been secured and brought back here. On a centre table was a bronze equestrian statue in miniature of a Crusader, a beautiful piece of work.

While we were waiting for coffee the Commandant opened the lower drawer of a secretary and took out a letter.

"This may interest Madame," he said. "I have just received it. It is from General Leman, the hero of Liege."

He held it close to the lamp and read it. I have the envelope before me now. It is addressed in lead pencil and indorsed as coming from General Leman, Prisoner of War at Magdeburg, Germany.

The letter was a soldier's simple letter, written to a friend. I wish I had made a copy of it; but I remember in effect what it said.

Clearly the hero of Liege has no idea that he is a hero. He said he had a good German doctor, but that he had been very ill. It is known, of course, that his foot was injured during the destruction of one of the fortresses just before he was captured.

"I have a very good German doctor," he wrote. "But my foot gives me a great deal of trouble. Gangrene set in and part of it had to be amputated. The wound refuses to heal, and in addition my heart is bad."

He goes on to ask for his family, for news of them, especially of his daughter. I saw this letter in March. He had been taken a prisoner the previous August. He had then been seven or eight months without news of his family.

"I am no longer young," he wrote in effect, for I am not quoting him exactly, "and I hope my friends will not forget me, in case of an exchange of prisoners."

He will never be forgotten. But of course he does not realise that. He is sixty-four and very ill. One read through all the restraint of the letter his longing to die among his own people. He hopes he will not be forgotten in an exchange of prisoners!

The Commandant's orderly announced that coffee was served, and we followed the lamp across the hall. An English officer made a fourth at the table.

It was good coffee, served with cream, the first I had seen for weeks.

With it the Commandant served small, very thin cakes, with a layer of honey in the centre. "A specialty of the country," he said.

We talked of many things: of the att.i.tude of America toward the war, her incredulity as to atrocities, the German propaganda, and a rumour that had reached the front of a German-Irish coalition in the House of Representatives at Washington.

From that the talk drifted to uniforms. The Commandant wished that the new French uniforms, instead of being a slaty blue, had been green, for use in the spring fighting.

I criticised the new Belgian uniform, which seemed to me much thinner than the old.

"That is wrong. It is of excellent cloth," said the General, and brought his cape up under the lamp for examination.

The uniforms of three armies were at the table--the French, the Belgian and the English. It was possible to compare them under the light of a single lamp.