Chapter VII

The Town In The Trenches

At the beginning of the war the German plan of campaign was to take France on the flank by marching through Belgium, and once the success of this northern venture assured, strike at the Verdun-Belfort line which had baffled them in the first instance.  Had they not lost the battle of the Marne, this second venture might have proved successful, for the body of the French army was fighting in the north, and the remaining troops would have been discouraged by the capture of Paris.  On the eve of the battle of the Marne the campaign seeming to be well in hand in the north, a German invasion of Lorraine began, one army striking at the defenses of the great plateau which slopes from the Vosges to the Moselle, and the other attempting to ascend the valley of the river.  It was this second army which entered Pont-a-Mousson.

Immediately following the declaration of hostilities the troops who had been quartered in the town were withdrawn, and the town was left open to the enemy who, going very cautiously, was on his way from Metz.  For several weeks in August, this city, almost directly on the frontier, saw no soldiers, French or German.  It was a time of dramatic suspense.  The best recital of it I ever heard came from the lips of the housekeeper of Wisteria Villa, a splendid, brave French woman who had never left her post.  She was short, of a clear, tanned complexion, and always had her hair tightly rolled up in a little classic pug.  She was as fearless of shells as a soldier in the trenches, and once went to a deserted orchard, practically in the trenches, to get some apples for Messieurs les Americains.  When asked why she did not get them at a safer place, she replied that she did not have to pay for these apples as the land belonged to her father!  Her ear for shells was the most accurate of the neighborhood, and when a deafening crash would shake the kettles on the stove and rattle the teacups, she could tell you exactly from what direction it had come and the probable caliber.  I remember one morning seeing her wash dishes while the Germans were shelling the corner I have already described.  The window over the sink opened directly on the dangerous area, and she might have been killed any minute by a flying eclat.  Standing with her hands in the soapy water, or wiping dry the hideous blue-and-white dinner service of Wisteria Villa, she never even bothered to look up to see where the shells were landing.  Two “seventy-sevens” went off with a horrid pop; “Those are only ‘seventy-sevens,’” she murmured as if to herself.  A fearful swish was next heard and the house rocked to the din of an explosion.  “That’s a ’two hundred and ten’—­the rogues—­oh, the rogues!” she exclaimed in the tone she might have used in scolding a depraved boy.

At night, when the kitchen was cleared up, she sat down to write her daily letter to her soldier son, and once this duty finished, liked nothing better than a friendly chat.  She knew the history of Pont-a-Mousson and Montauville and the inhabitants thereof by heart; she had tales to tell of the shrewdness of the peasants and diverting anecdotes of their manners and morals.  These stories she told very well and picturesquely.