The Beauty and the Sorrow (25 page)

There is more digging after dinner and it does not stop until the light has faded into a twilight that saps all the colour from the world. The sun goes down quickly at this latitude. The remainder of the day consists of
moonlight, the whine of mosquitoes and the smells of burning rubbish and red lava sand.

MONDAY
, 30
AUGUST
1915
Sarah Macnaughtan gives a lecture in Cardiff

Her lecture tour began at the start of June and she has already spoken in many places: Erith, London, Sheffield, Barrow-in-Furness, Newcastle, Parkhead, Whiteinch, Rosebank, Dumbarton, Greenock; Beardmore’s and Denny’s shipyards. The venues have almost always been full and the audiences have sometimes numbered upwards of 3,000. Bands have played and the atmosphere has been tense—she has seen and heard grown men weep. The experience has been a powerful one for her, too: “The cheers of horny-handed workmen when they are really roused just get me by the throat till I can’t speak for a minute or two.” She recognises how important it all is: “Somehow I knew that I must speak, that I must arouse slackers, and tell rotters what is going on.”

After the meetings she has a feeling of unreality. She lies in bed in the dark and all she can see is “a sea of faces, and eyes all turned my way.” She refuses to accept payment for her lectures. She feels tired but satisfied.

Her energy is by no means at an end. One of the women she worked with earlier in Belgium has asked her whether she will come to the Russian front with a volunteer ambulance unit. After some private but well-concealed doubts Macnaughtan has said yes. Duty again: how could she have done otherwise? There is important work to be done in Russia: “The Russian wounded are suffering terribly, and getting no doctors, nurses, or field ambulances.” Her maid has tried to advise her against going: “I feel sure you will never return alive, ma’am.”

Macnaughtan is currently in South Wales to give a series of fourteen lectures to audiences made up predominantly of coal miners. Her tour of this district is supported by the Bute family, major mine-owners, who have her to stay with them in Cardiff Castle for the duration of the tour. There she walks in the garden, meets the organising committee and writes a little. At midday she stands on the back of a lorry and addresses several hundred dock workers.

The big meeting of the day is later that evening and is held in Cardiff’s grand City Hall. The event has been advertised as “Stories and Pictures of the War” and it is packed. A military band plays and Macnaughtan is introduced by the Lord Mayor, who takes the opportunity to tell them she has just been awarded the Belgian honour “Chevalier de l’Ordre de Léopold.” All eyes turn to the little woman on the stage.

And Sarah speaks.

About the war: that it is the result of a German plan, a plan that has been many years in the preparation, and it has to be seen as a test of character for all of them. About Great Britain: that the nation is afflicted by selfishness and greed, and that strikes and quarrels and the class struggle are crippling the country. About duty and principles: that this is a time when they must all gather round the flag; that they must ask whether all those present are really doing what they can. About the British army: that it may be small but it is the finest army in the history of the world (she is interrupted by applause at this point). Macnaughtan is a good speaker: energetic and clear and with a good rapport with her audience.

A local journalist reports the rest of the speech:

Miss Macnaughtan then related a number of interesting incidents, one of which was, that when a party of wounded Englishmen came to a station where she was tending the Belgian wounded, every wounded Belgian gave up their bed to accommodate an English soldier. The idea of a German occupation of English soil, she said, was the idea of a catastrophe that was unspeakable. People read things in the papers and thought they were exaggerated, but she had seen them, and she would show photographs of ruined Belgium which would convince them of what the Germans were now doing in the name of God. However unprepared we were for war, the wounded had been well cared for, and she thought there never was a war in which the care of the wounded had been so well managed or so efficient. (Applause.) They had to be thankful that there had been no terrible epidemic, and she could not speak too highly of the work of the nurses and doctors in the performance of their duties. This was the time for every man to do his duty, and strain every nerve and muscle to bring the war to an end and get the boys home again. (Applause.)

The speaker who follows her asks the audience whether they are prepared “to fight for right till right had won.” They all rise to their feet, raise their hands in the air and roar a resounding “Aye” in unison. Then Macnaughtan shows her lantern slides of villages and towns destroyed by the Germans. The meeting comes to an end.

ONE DAY AT THE END OF AUGUST
1915
Laura de Turczynowicz is filled with despair in Suwalki

The summer is coming to an end. Lemberg has fallen. Zamoś? has fallen. Przasnysz has fallen. Windau has fallen. PuŁtusk has fallen. Ivangorod has fallen. Warsaw has fallen. Kovno has fallen. Novo-Georgievsk has fallen. Brest-Litovsk has fallen. For Laura and the people in Suwalki the seemingly endless series of German victories on the Eastern Front are not just distant abstractions on a map, they also have direct consequences. The armies are moving north-east and the town no longer has any “military significance.” The columns of horse-drawn wagons and singing infantrymen are becoming a less frequent sight and units that have been stationed in the town for some time are now moving on. Things are getting quieter. It is weeks since anyone heard the sound of cannon.

The children are ill again. Dysentery this time, with bloody diarrhoea. Once again she is trapped in a nightmare cycle of vigil and endless worry. A German army doctor who has helped her before helps her again and gives the children cholera serum. The outcome is uncertain. And the shortage of food has become acute.

Laura does not know how much longer she can go on. (She is not alone in this. More and more people in the town are committing suicide, acts of pure despair caused by a lack of food or an equally dreadful lack of hope. One acquaintance hanged herself in a wardrobe.) She has applied several times to the German authorities for permission to leave Poland—she is an American, after all. But permission has been refused every time. She writes:

Something broke down in me those days. I had come to the point where I knew if we were not released it meant giving up my children; and now I wished to give them up rather than see them
suffer. I had clung to them so desperately, calling on them not to leave me. They had been left to me, but now I was willing to leave the decision to the Higher Power, not forcing things my way. Looking Death in the eyes, one loses the fear of Him.

One of the twins is in a particularly bad way. She spoon-feeds him with red wine, one drop at a time.

THURSDAY
, 9
SEPTEMBER
1915
Michel Corday takes the train to Paris

An autumn morning, and an autumn feel to the air. Michel Corday is on the train to Paris. As usual he finds it hard not to eavesdrop on the conversations of his fellow passengers. Some of them are leafing through the morning papers they have just bought. One of them asks: “Anything new?” The answer is brief: “A Russian victory.” Corday is amazed. Are they unaware of the fact that the Russians have been retreating ever since the German-Austrian breakthrough at Gorlice and Tarnów in the middle of May? Those laconic remarks are the only references to the war on the whole trip from Fontainebleau to Paris.

He recalls another railway journey, when he saw a woman at a station skimming through the official war communiqué in a newspaper and then exclaiming in a very satisfied voice: “We have advanced 400 metres!” Then she immediately proceeded to talk about other things. Corday comments: “That’s enough for them. Enough to satisfy them completely.”

Once he reaches his office he talks on the telephone to Tristan Bernard, a close friend and successful vaudeville writer. Bernard shares Corday’s scepticism about the war and is always quick to make caustic comments about what is going on. Talking of the developments on the Eastern Front he has said that the Russians “always retreat in good order whereas the Germans advance successfully in disorder.” (With reference to the attacks on Tout-Vent and Moulin-sous-Touvent, two places very distant from each other, he claims that one of the attacks was a mistake caused by someone at headquarters quite simply muddling up the names: the attack that was never intended to happen was the one that succeeded.)

These two men know—as do many others—that the Allies are preparing to mount a major offensive up in Artois and in Champagne. Most people are pinning enormous hopes on this. Since the two of them know their conversation might well be listened in to, they have developed a private code so that they can discuss the planned action. They pretend that they are writing a play together and questions about dates are camouflaged as questions about page numbers. Thus, when Bernard enquires whether the manuscript has been expanded or cut, what he really wants to know is whether the date for the offensive has been brought forward or moved back. (At one point there was a rumour that the operation had been cancelled and the question then asked was, “Is it true the manuscript has been thrown in the fire?”) Bernard now asks Corday how many pages the manuscript adds up to. Corday answers, “Fifteen.”

Later Corday reads a circular the Ministry of Education is sending out to all schools before the approaching autumn term. The circular exhorts teachers in all subjects to remind their pupils about the war in the most explicit way possible: “heroic examples and the noble lessons that can be drawn from them” should be given special emphasis.

On this same day Florence Farmborough, who is exhausted, writes in her journal:

At 7 a.m. I tumbled out of bed, I was on duty from 7:30 onwards, and walked downstairs with a heavy head and legs which felt they would crumble under me at every step. Ekaterina, whom I relieved, looked white and drawn from sleeplessness; she was puffing away at a cigarette outside the dressing-room door. “Slava Bogu!” [Thank God!] she said brusquely. “Now I can go and get some sleep,” and she threw the end of her cigarette away. There had been no wounded to occupy her hands; I could well believe that the hours had hung heavily.

Today Laura de Turczynowicz is making a short trip in a cab to visit the area where the family’s summer villa had been. Her mind is easier: her application to be allowed to leave Poland and return to the United States has at last been approved by the German authorities. She writes:

We drove a little way from Suwalki. I wondered why we didn’t come to the woods of Augustów—but then understood. The woods were all gone—graves, myriads of graves instead. I begged the man to turn around; it was too much to bear. The town, in its desolation was not much better—roofless houses, and windowless—and doorless; no animals, no people, and no children! They were gone—wiped out! There I made also a pilgrimage to say good-bye to the old house, our palace! Most of it I had not seen in months, and now I am sorry I looked upon it in its desecration.

FRIDAY
, 10
SEPTEMBER
1915
Elfriede Kuhr visits the military cemetery outside Schneidemühl

There is a war cemetery immediately outside the town and it has grown significantly in the last six months. The road there passes through a dark pine wood and then through a beautiful ornamental gateway. Elfriede and a schoolfriend have decided to visit the cemetery today. Elfriede is carrying a bouquet of roses in her hand.

They see an empty, freshly dug grave. Alongside it six spades lie waiting. Elfriede drops her bouquet into the grave and says to her friend, “When a soldier is buried here he will rest on my flowers.” At that moment a small funeral procession enters through the carved gateway: a group of soldiers with rifles comes first, followed by an army chaplain and then a small cart with a plain black coffin. Bringing up the rear is a small funeral party carrying a large burial wreath. The little procession stops at the open grave and the soldiers form up.

The coffin was lifted from the cart and carried to the grave. The command “Attention! Present arms!” rang out. The soldiers stood as if rooted to the ground. The coffin was slowly lowered into the earth. The soldiers removed their helmets and the chaplain said a prayer. Then another command: “Load! Ready! Fire!” The soldiers fired three volleys over the coffin. Six men then stepped forward, took up the spades and shovelled earth on to the coffin lid. It made a dull, hollow sound.

Elfriede stands there trying to imagine how the man in the coffin is slowly disappearing beneath the earth that is being thrown in. “Now his face is covered … now his chest, now his stomach.”

Afterwards they ask the cemetery superintendent who was being buried. “An airman—non-commissioned rank,” he answers. “Almost certainly an accident. But you never know. Sometimes they drink too much.”

SUNDAY
, 12
SEPTEMBER
1915
Laura de Turczynowicz travels from Suwalki to Berlin

It is a cold morning, grey and misty. As the cart carrying Laura and the children moves off she takes a last look back. Her glance does not settle on the house but on the piano, the piano that German soldiers carried outside during an alcohol-fuelled party sometime at the beginning of the summer and which has remained out there in the open air ever since. The instrument, once so elegant but now ruined by the rain and the sun, stands crookedly, leaning to one side, with one leg broken.