Wars I Have Seen (27 page)

Everybody is so tired of darning everything, that is of course Alice Toklas who does all the darning, and darning darns and then darning the darned darns everybody is getting tired of darning everything, everybody is.

Just now near the first of June and there is a moon, only the bombardments the worst of them are done in the daytime. It was rather awful, when there are other places that are bombarded places one only knows a little there is not so much feeling about it but Chambery, we do know Chambery so well we go there so often everybody there is so kind and nice and obliging and just as it happened René Reulos was lunching with us and there was an alerte, and we paid no attention to it as one does not, and then we left to go in a taxi to Belley and he left to get back to Chambery and when we got to Belley we heard that Chambery had not only been bombarded but all the shops we always go to and nice elephant statue and the arcades were all wrecked bombed to bits and burned and then we thought of René on his way and his mother there alone with her invalid husband it was all so awful, to be sure it is necessary because well because it is necessary but oh dear me, it is so near and dear, I mean the places one sees every few days so pleasantly. They are courageous about it, they complain but who would not and a railroad employee whom I just saw this afternoon and who had been in Amberieu when the station was bombed and I said it is dangerous and he said no bombs always go down into the earth and we are not in the bowels of the earth we are on top so why be afraid. We have a shelter here in the garden and the children and the women are supposed to go into it but of course they do not, they pick daisies in the field instead and the women stand around and the siren takes so long to blow the second time and the littlest boy said but why do they not press the button. Naturally he knew that. And then yesterday a German soldier
came to ask if the German soldiers could come into the cellar or into the shelter and Alice Toklas said no that was for women and children he should go and ask the mayor, and then they decided to make trenches for themselves but when they started to dig they found that the subsoil in this country is granite so they came back to-day to say that they would just come and sit in the park when there was an alerte and Alice Toklas told them if they did they should not make a noise and they said they would not.

Day before yesterday when I was out walking, I heard behind me some one whistling the Madelon the marching song of the young recruits of the other war, and I said to him, I recognised him as an employee of the railroad of Lyon whom I used to talk to last year, when he came to work in his vegetable garden, and I said you are singing the Madelon and he said we will all be singing it in a month, in a month it will be all over and I said do you think so and he said I do not think it I am certain of it. Well anyway he told me how in the last war he had been taken at seventeen just after Verdun and when he and his baby comrades went to the front the Arab soldiers all chanted, look at the seventeen year olders they are not men they are infants and when the cannon commences to roar they will begin to cry for papa and mama. It was no fun he said and then I was made a stretcher bearer and I was taken prisoner and then thanks to the Spanish ambassador I was sent home and then I went back to the army and I was with the Americans at Saint-Mihiel, and they were great guys, they advanced to the charge smoking their pipes and with their guns on the shoulder at carry arms not at the charge and the Germans shot but not they not until they were on top, they were great guys he said and how we got drunk for armistice and at other times and how we talked French German English but we always understood each other. I can just see them in Italy now, and I asked how about the Germans at the station, he used to tell me funny stories about them last fall, how are they, how are they he said, well he said now if we step on their toes they say I beg your pardon.

Just to-day they told us again about the date of the end of the
war. There was a woman in a hospital, and she said one day to the doctor, it is useless to work over that woman in the bed next to me, she is going to die to-night, and the doctor said nonsense she is doing very well, I am telling you said the woman, and the other woman did die that night, she did other things like that and finally the doctor said to her well since you are an extra-lucide, which means you have second sight, tell us when the war is to end. Ah that, said she I cannot tell you until the day before my death, and one day she called the doctor and she said I am going to die to-morrow, so to-day I can tell you the day the war is going to be over, on Friday the thirteenth, which is in July, and the thirteenth of July the war will be over, and the next day she did die. Well we will see. Anyway Saint Odile did say that when Rome was taken it would not be the end but be the beginning of the end, and she certainly was right certainly was and is.

One of our friends who is a manufacturer in Lyon used to be of silk and now does rayon and glass to make textiles said that one thing was certain and sure and that is that after the war cotton will be king, everybody he said now has a passionate desire for the real thing, no more substitutes, everybody wants real cotton real coffee real chocolate. They want real mustard real oil real butter real sugar they want things made by nature and not substitutes created by man and they will have them they certainly will.

One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary but it is certainly true.

From war to war. I learned how to drive in the last war and I did drive and drive into this war and now for two years I have not driven and now I have sold my car just to-day and looking at it in preparation of giving it up I seem to have forgotten what a
number of the gadgets and buttons were for and so it goes from war to war, you begin a thing in one war and you lose it in the next war. From war to war.

Yes just like that you can almost say thank you for not troubling me before and during and after a war.

The siren that warns for the bombardments is not working any more, I suppose it was worn out as they say here they have succeeded in putting it out of order, but who the they are nobody knows and now the Germans are to warn us by trumpeting but after all that does not really wake one up if one is really asleep so everybody prefers it, that is all everybody talks about is bombardments and naturally nobody is pleased, and whether the aim is good or not is hotly discussed, they say they should not fly so high, though they do admit that the precision of hitting is very great, nevertheless they say if they flew lower there would be less destruction round and about and as the defence is practically non-existent why not fly lower, others say they should not bombard at all and, everybody will hate them and they did love the Americans but I said you know how they are here the French forget the past and enjoy the present yes they answer but our towns and all the dead, oh dear they say to me can you not stop them, alas I say I hate to have lovely places all smashed up and French people killed but what can I do, well they say, anyhow it is going on so long so long, and sometimes we that were most optimistic are getting kind of pessimistic it is going on so long. One woman told me to-day her brother-in-law who is a retired government employee wont even now spend his money all his money on food, he says that he has always been keeping his money in case of necessity to see him through a bad time, well said his sister-in-law indignantly what do you expect, can you expect anything worse than this, and he did not answer.

Anyway in this little town a hundred and sixty children were confirmed to-day but the bishop did not stay long, after all there are the bombardments and it is just as well not to stay too long anywhere. We have lots to eat except bread, but that is because
there is no transport, oh dear say all the French people oh dear if they would only land and fight on land, we would prefer it. Well I say I am sure that a week after Rome is taken they will land. Oh dear says everybody, anyway Saint Odile did say that when Rome was taken it would not be the end but it would be the beginning of the end and this evening the allies are in sight of Rome. I have just sold my automobile to a friend whose own was smashed to bits in Lyon last week in a bombardment, and as he is in the Red Cross he has to have another, and I was sad to see it go but nevertheless there will sometime be lots of others, it is hot weather and we are all waiting yes waiting.

To-night Rome is taken, and now that Saint Odile’s prophecy is being fulfilled it is a pleasure and such a pleasure that it is not the end but the beginning of the end and it has taken everybody’s mind a little off their feelings about the bombardments in France about the civilians killed, it really is funny that feeling about civilians, well not funny exactly because it comes from the time when the army was not only made of professional soldiers but very often of mercenaries, and so the difference between soldiers and the inhabitants of a country, civilians were important, but it was really in the American civil war that they first began not to make that difference, the army was a civilian army and when Sherman made his march through Georgia and said war was hell, he said you had to destroy the granary upon which the enemy depended, and that was the quickest way to finish a war, but here in Europe, the armies are civilian armies that is to say made up of the whole population the whole male population, and so what is there really different between civilians and the army. Our little servant in Bilignin when some one began to speak about the bombardments in Germany killing women and children said but every German woman means ultimately seven German soldiers, in other words, scotch the snake in the egg, but actually almost every one does not feel that way about it, not here, they still think of the civilian population as a population entirely apart from the military one, and as they are very unhappy about it naturally I do not explain
to them that we have the same thing now that we had in the civil war, we are the granary which now is the munition producing material of the enemy and their railroad communications and they are destroying them just as they did in Sherman’s march to the sea, by pulling up the railroad tracks everywhere, only now it is by means of bombardments, at the same time of course everybody does make fun of the Germans who always are the first to betake themselves to the fields and the mountain for safety, they are not courageous no they are not they all say of them, those birds as they call them, our visitors as they call them, no they say they are pantless Sadies, they are not courageous. It is funny and yet it is true, they are not courageous as other men are courageous they are not, it is true. But to-night Rome is taken and everybody has about forgotten the bombardments, and for the French to forgive and forget and forget and forgive is very easy just as easy as that. Rome is taken and Saint Odile says it is not the end but the beginning of the end.

To-day when I was out walking with one of the women and we found some German soldiers they said most pitifully how do you do, we naturally said nothing, later on I was sitting with the wife of the mayor in front of her house a German soldier passed along the road and he politely bowed to us and said how do you do, what is it I said they have never done this before, do you think that they have received orders to do it now, no said she no, it is only Rome.

She told me a story. Her husband has of course to always supply the Germans with whatever they ask for and they are always asking for something, very often they do not want it after it has been gotten for them. One day they wanted something and they asked the mayor to go with them to find it, he said yes of course politely as he always does, and they called for him in a closed car, and she was standing at the gate to see him go, the officer who was going with him said to her, Madame weep because we are taking your husband away. No said she her eyes sparkling courageously no I do not weep, no, but said he you should weep because we are
taking your husband away. No said she no. I do not weep. And then the car went away, she said to me if I was going to cry I would not cry in front of them, But said I, did you cry, no she said because I did not believe it but my husband stayed away about three hours and the last hour was hard to bear but at last as I was standing at the gate I saw my husband coming around the corner. It was a relief. He said nothing to me about what had been said so I supposed he had not heard it so of course I said nothing. But said I why did the officer do it, to see if he could make me cry. Sadism I said, yes to make themselves feel masters.

Well that was yesterday and to-day is the landing and we heard Eisenhower tell us he was here they were here and just yesterday a man sold us ten packages of Camel cigarettes, glory be, and we are singing glory hallelujah, and feeling very nicely, and everybody has been telephoning to us congratulatory messages upon my birthday which it isn’t but we know what they mean. And I said in return I hoped their hair was curling nicely, and we all hope it is, and to-day is the day.

While I was out walking to-day I talked to a little girl who looked nine but was really fourteen, her people came from the neighborhood of Rome but they had been French for some time and the children all born in France, she said they were all small, she certainly was and we talked about eating, and she said she would like an orange, and I said how about a banana do you know what a banana is oh yes she said I used to eat them, but my younger brothers and sisters they never saw a banana, and some of them cannot remember an orange, well she said sighing the time will come yes it will of course one does need bread but one does need oranges and lemons and bananas too.

To-day is only the third day of the landing and what a change, everybody openly making fun of the Germans, the girls leaning out of the window and singing the Marseillaise, and all the people in the village, so pleased because it has been said that this department the department of the Ain will be the first to be free and then the Savoy and the Haute Savoy, and indeed the mountain
boys are at it, Bourg the biggest city in the department has been completely cut off by them from contact with any one, they have cut the railroads, they guard the railroads and they have interrupted the telephone, and they have occupied quite a few important towns round about, and the few Germans that are left are getting mighty uncomfortable, the fifty who are here were called to go and fight the mountain boys and they said they did not want to and their officer harangued them and then they had to go, but there were no trains and so they requisitioned the French trucks and some autocars and away they went, I was sitting with the wife of the mayor and we saw them going off to fight and it was a very great contrast to the German army of 1940, my gracious yes. They have just told us that when the Germans started to attack the mountain boys the mountain boys just climbed a little higher, and sometimes they do not trouble to fight, they just throw stones down and call out cuckoo, cuckoo, of course to the French a cuckoo is some one who has stolen somebody else’s nest. The Germans did not like being called cuckoo but what else can they do. The young people are all feeling very gay, the older ones naturally are worried but the young ones are feeling very gay.