On the Edge of the War Zone From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes

Huiry, Coui

6, 1914 Dea

nd that we humans

ossessed, like the "busy bee," to "employ each shining hour" by writing out my adventures. Yet, no

e, for days, I had no chance to send you the letters I had wri

tiful. The war was still going on. We still heard the cannon-they are booming this minute-but we had not seen the spiked helmets dashing up my hill, nor watched the walls of our little hamlet fall. I imagine that if hum

oming out there no one feels in the humor, though now and then we do get shaken up a bit. Everything seems a l

10th. That was only one week of absolute isolation. On that day we were told that postal communication with Paris was to be reopene

he hill, and dropped them hopefully in the box under the

iting to you again. I wanted to cable, but there is no way yet, so I can only h

fth day of the battle. Of course we had no newspapers; our mairie and post-office being closed, there was no telegraphic news. Besi

her off, and because the slopes and the hills before us, which had been burning the first three days of the battle, were ly

y the trees. But the silence over there seems different today. Here and there still thin ribbons of smoke-now rising straight in the air, and

he hot September sun, but that the fire department was already out there from Paris, and that it would only be a few days when the worst marks of the terrible fight would be removed. But they brought back no news.

just after noon. I was working in the garden on the south side of the house. I had instinctively put the house between me and the smoke of battle when Amélie came runn

ply started across the fields in the direction of the Demi-Lune, where the r

sses, and followed her to a point in th

r helmets, riding slowly towards Paris, as gaily as if returning

l detachment. Still, I could not help feeling that if any of them were retu

a mile. I could see her simply flying over the ground. I waited where I

The regiment which was here yest

ws. They really

me, "the war is over. The Germans have asked f

imed. "Where? Wh

ed for peace, those Boches, and General Gallieni, he told t

ey gone, Amé

d she was terribly hurt because I laughed, and remar

e to the vicinity of Verdun, where the Crown Prince was said to be vainly endeavoring to break through, his army acting as a sort of a pivot on which the great advance had swung. I could not help wonderin

e does. I have to guess, and I'm not a lucky guesser as a rule. I confess to you that even I am absolutely obsessed by the miracle which has turned the invaders back from the walls of Paris. I cannot get over the wonder of it. In

ering Paris has advanced, and that Joffre has called out his reserves which have been entrenched all about the sev

walked sadly beside me back to the garden, an altogether different person from the one who had

tte and other big shops in Paris, and that they not only knew all the country better than we do, they knew us all by name. One of them

e twice, and some of them three times a week. It is no secret that Paris was full of Germans,

y and sat down at my desk to possess my soul with what patienc

ss the valley of the Marne to the heights crowned by the bombarded towns. On the other I looked across the valley of the Grande Morin, where, on the heights behind the trees, I knew little towns like Coutevoult and Montbarbin were evacuated. In the valley at the

for Huiry? Well, our population-everyone accounted for before the mobilization-was twenty-nin

ie-and one can't die informally in France. If anyone should, so far as I can see, he would have to walk to his grave, dig it, and lie down in it himself,

llness in our little community since we

ng of its all being a dream. I wish I didn't. I wonder if that is not Nature's narcotic for all exp

ecial view of a really magnificent spectacle to which the rest of "my set" had no

hat frame of mind comes of my theatre-going habit. Well, it is not

ay's mental ad

"my little friend," though she is taller than I am, because she is only half my age. She came with the proposition t

brought back the news that the field ambulance at Neufmortier was short of nurses, and that it

she presented so strong a case in favor of volunteering that, at firs

r willing, an old lady very unsteady on her feet, absolutely ignorant of the simplest rules of "first aid to the wounded," that they needed skilled an

lves, in the back of my brain-or my soul-was running this query: "I wonder what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chanc

if told in the confessional in ancient times, go

would not let her go without me. I imagine the wise lady knew th

felt an imperative need to get the door closed between us. The habit I have-you know it well, it is often enough disconcerting to me-of getting an ill-timed comic pi

ed shoes over the fields ploughed by cavalry and shell-breathlessly bent on carrying consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked up with the dead and

drive deliberately nine miles-we should have had to make a wide detour to cross the Marne on the pontoons- behind a donkey who travels two miles an hour, to

und in a hospital, looking so pretty in her nurse's dress and veil. But she wil

lie loves beasties better than humans. She took him in and fed him. But as she has six cats already, she seemed to think that it was my duty to take this one. She cloaked that idea in the statement t

wned me-the very first cat I

idea which torments yo

week, for we have had no letters yet nor have I seen or heard anything of the promised automobile postale. However, once a stamped letter is out o