Wars I Have Seen (26 page)

It is now nearly the fifteenth of May and we all having been feeling rather low in our mind, the Russians have not been making those cheerful announcements which call for a celebration from Moscow guns and we have all kind of gotten discouraged about the landing, it is so long now that it has been promised, just to-day again the sister of our cook who is here on a vacation from her job is worried about traveling because of the coming landing and suddenly we remembered that just a year ago the same thing happened, she was afraid to go on the train for a long trip because of the imminence of a landing, it kind of made us gloomy that a
year ago we thought it was just as imminent as we think it now, it does make you kind of gloomy but to-night the Russians have once again announced cheerfully that they have broken the German lines at Sevastopol, so perhaps after all, the wolf did finally come after he had been announced so often so perhaps well yes perhaps.

We are getting a new lot of occupants that is Germans in our village, the mayor was telling me all about it this afternoon, he says it makes him tired and it undoubtedly does make him tired, quite weary and worn, and of course complications happen all the time, refugees come and he has to find a place to put them and sometimes it turns out to be quite comic and then again it does not, he told me a long story about one this afternoon, a family for whom they had found an apartment, and who then offered the landlady twice as much as the apartment would have rented for to a native and paid in advance besides which is never done, and the landlady was disturbed, she was pleased, she took the money but she was confused, but of course she said you must never interfere with people’s habits, and a good time was enjoyed by all. Oh dear well yes it is oh dear.

So we have been talking a lot about after war, and the future organisation of the world. We have a friend who has lots of convictions, he is a big manufacturer in Lyon, and he suggested electric force to replace gold and this and that and suddenly last night I realised suddenly and completely, that really gold has almost a religious quality it really has and that is the reason it is always the standard of money, it has to be. The reason why is this, it is the only metal in the world that is of no use, it is purely a luxury, you cannot use it in industry, dentistry which did make use of it, gave it up because it was not really useful, and think of it, even the Germans, who can turn anything into something useful with which to make war, can find no use for gold in war industries. It is really marvelous that the only metal in all this world of ours that is absolutely entirely and completely useless is gold, and therefore it must have the mystic quality of aloofness which makes which always will make it the standard of money. And beside it
has the extraordinary coincidence of just when there is too little of it of enough new being found to make the quantity necessary for its value to continue to go on. So how can there ever never be a gold standard. There has to be. The only metal that has no possibility of being made useful, must be the measure of all things, in short it is not utility that is mystic it is the thing that has no possibility of being useful that is mystic. It really is very extraordinary and very comforting, completely comforting and completely extraordinary.

One of our chickens is just hatching out its little ones, one of the egg-shells was a double one, nobody had ever before seen a double egg-shell and yet in some way, the outer shell had broken away leaving the inner shell intact but we could hear the little chicken moving, it is nice to have a chicken have little chickens, very nice in war-time when we are all waiting for the landing. There are a number of Germans here now and they say we cannot go walking up the mountain because if there is an alerte, then maybe there will be parachutists and so everybody that is away from home will be shot on sight, the Germans seem to be very nervous about parachutists and everybody is very polite to us just now, well they always are polite and say how do you do but now they all take off their hats as well as say how do you do, and so many stories and so many rumors and so many dates for a landing and so many dates for the end of the war, and to the disgust and amusement of the population the German soldiers here have two cows and goats and some pigs and they take them out grazing sitting there with a gun on their back, the French can never get over the fact that the Germans seem to be so afraid, so completely afraid of the population although the population is unarmed and peaceful, but that is the way it is, and it always is that way. Down in a field there was a woman with a goat and she was not just feeding it along the road the way everybody does but she took it into a meadow and she was heard to say feed little goat feed well little goat feed without tickets just feed little goat, after all the
people that own this field are rich people so feed well little goat. She was a very religious woman and does a great deal of good.

And so many people are afraid and some cry all the time but most of the French people just go on taking trains and traveling about and really do not stop to bother about anything except how to get something extra to eat. We all do, we all keep on doing it, and everybody does it and now nobody really pays any attention to it. But really what they all need now is a little rain, quite a good deal of rain, the ground is dry and the wind blows dryly, and that at the present moment that and the landing and the bombardments seem to be about all there is that is going on. It is funny about dates, the last time we all were told and the information I imagine comes generally through the Germans, that there was to be a landing and the Germans expected it in France so did we all and then not at all, it was the landing at Nettuno in Italy and the day that we were told to expect it, and now once again we were all told definitely that there would be a landing on the tenth or eleventh of May and instead there was the general offensive in Italy, it is funny that we are always being given the right date but the wrong event. There is nothing stranger than the way everybody knows everything, everybody does, but there is always a catch to it, that is the way it has been from the beginning and I suppose will go on being.

To-day when I was crossing the railway track I saw a long train filled with soldiers and each freight car had a flag that at a distance looked like the tricolor of France, and I had a funny feeling, naturally, but when I came near I saw that instead of red white and blue, it was black white and red, and I did not understand because the German troops never have flags, it is funny, I just realised it now, but all the German soldiers that we have seen and gracious goodness we have seen an awful lot of them on foot in cars and in these last years on the railroad, but never never at any time did any of them have a flag, it is rather strange that and strange that I never was conscious of it before until to-day the fifteenth of May nineteen forty-four, when I did see a flag hanging
out of each freight car filled with soldiers, the train had paused and I asked the woman at the crossing what that flag was, oh she said those were Italians and that flag is the one they use for the soldiers that fight for Hitler, so that was the flag of the new fascist republic. At least they have a flag, even if German soldiers have none.

I suppose these Italian soldiers are being brought into France to fight, but well they never not any Italian soldiers that we have seen and we have seen a lot of them were ever very enthusiastic about fighting even when they looked like winning and now, well it certainly is and now. We all are impatient but hopeful, and the three saints of ice and snow have brought the cold weather back into this mountain country, and everybody says what is the use of a war when the war is over, why does not everybody know that it is over when it is over and it is over.

Just now everybody here forgets the war because of the red moon. The April moon that is the after Easter moon is the one that always is dangerous for agriculture because it has in it the days of the three saints of ice and snow, and Assumption which is always dangerous for harvest because it is in the middle of the saints of the three saints of ice and snow and besides it had the further difficulty that if it rains on Assumption then it will rain when the hay and the wheat are cut. We first heard of this dreadful lune rouge or red moon from Mildred Aldrich who during the last war lived in the country and thought agriculturally and in this war we are living in the country and thinking agriculturally and alas to-day the second day of the ice and snow saints everything has frozen and as Easter was late and that made the red moon come late it is now the middle of May alas all the grapes were forward and the potatoes well up and they are all as the French say, scorched they use the word cooked for the action of freezing, and indeed the frozen vines and the frozen potato plants down in the plain do look as if a fire had passed over them. And of course as they all say ordinarily it would make a difference but not such a difference as now when all that they have to eat is what they grow, on the hillside the freeze cannot freeze so badly but in the fertile plain
oh dear me. It is extraordinary though how philosophically they all take it, they are sad and they did work so hard, but as all French people are terrien as they call themselves people who think and act and work in the ground, it is because of that that they can so well resist the disasters of war, they are so used to think in terms of farming, and a harvest is in constant danger until it is gathered, and so war is like that it is in constant danger and you are all in constant danger until it is ended and so it is like a harvest and it is all natural enough, and so French people take it as it comes and recover from it so quickly and go on to the next harvest so naturally.

To-day on the road I met a woman from Modane a refugee, and she said although her home was still standing though it had no roofs and no windows it was useless going back because as it was just at the railroad tunnel leading into Italy it was bound to be bombarded again and again. She had two goats and three black faced sheep and she said her father was a government employee, and she said as all refugees say, ah there again there is something not like this barren country where nothing grows. All refugees have a firm conviction that their home was in that favored part of France where agriculture develops admirably and here where they are refugeed the soil is bad the people ignorant and the animals starving. Undoubtedly this was true in the last war and it is true now, and also undoubtedly this conviction that where you live is the real right place makes the will to live, without that conviction anybody could give up the struggle but as long as everybody is convinced that where they live is God’s country there will be the will to live. A little later two little baby goats followed my dog Basket and there was great trouble in sending them back because their mother having died they had been mothered by a sheep, and they took Basket for a sheep and their mother. Basket was not flattered, he was very annoyed.

It is funny, all this time the French population managed to ignore the Germans round and about them, the younger generation even made a cult of not knowing that there were any Germans
existing, either in France or at home, but now that the Germans are being defeated and defeated by French troops everybody is willing to be conscious of them. Said one woman to me, they all say the German soldiers say that they are not Germans that they are Poles or Serbs or Czechs or something but that is too easy, naturally they are getting ready to be spared but after all there have to be some Germans in the German army said the woman. It is true they look longingly, when people are talking together. Basket the dog and I were standing before a window talking to a little boy and his aunt, and we were laughing together and three Germans came past and they wanted to look friendly and nobody noticed, of course nobody noticed but we knew they were there and wanted to be friendly and for all this long time we would not have known they were there and they would not have wanted to be friendly. Any thing changes even a German and nothing changes not even a German. We are all a little nervous these days a little discouraged because will it ever end and a little happy because the news from Italy is so very good and a little troubled because our friends in Paris are having a good deal of difficulty in keeping alive, we send them a large cheese from time to time but it is only from time to time and they have no gas and no electricity and no wood and no coal. Here in the country we have all we want to eat, more than we need to eat, such funny things happen some one sold us the other day a pound of rice. You have no idea what a pleasure it is to have a little rice in the soup, I used to be very indifferent to rice, but rice has become so rare that it is really angel food now, food for the gods, wonderful rice. When the Italian soldiers were here they always used to have rice in their soup and we used to envy them but just at this minute we are having rice in our soup. And not because we have lots to eat, butter and cheese, and bread, white bread and fish and meat and vegetables and cake and honey and plenty of it but as I keep saying on account of the lack of transport, everything that is produced in the country stays there and that is the way it is here. You certainly do not want to live in cities when there is a war, the country is the
place, but the two things that we think of the most besides is rice and orange marmalade. Well life is like that and appetites are like that.

Can you think that two makes three after a war, that is as to nations and eating, I wonder.

Certainly nobody no not anybody thinks that this war is a war to end war. No not anybody, no well no certainly nobody does think about it, they only think about this war ending, they cannot take on the future, no really not, certainly not as warless certainly not as a future. Better get through with this war first.

To-night I was listening to the wireless from America, and they began to give us directions in English how we should know all about roads and places for landing and woods for hiding and depths of rivers and it was just like being in a theatre with a romantic drama, the things we heard when we were young, Secret Service and Alabama and The Girl I Left Behind Me and Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night and Shenandoah, they were real American voices talking American and from headquarters and here we are in the heart of the French country with near a hundred German soldiers right in this village and wire entanglements and little block houses all around the railway station and it is exactly like a novel or a theatre more theatre than novel, and very exciting, and will they ever come well anyway I have always been quite certain that there will be no landing until Rome is taken, I have been certain of this more than a year more and more certain, certain because it is reasonable and then there always is Saint Odile, and a saint having a vision has to be reasonable and it would be reasonable to wait for the landing in northern Europe until Rome is taken, and Saint Odile did say that when Rome was taken it would not be the end of this war but it would be the beginning of the end and that too is reasonable. It is very reasonable to be a prophet if you see a thing completely and reasonably and even if it is five hundred years away that makes no difference being reasonable and complete and have a complete vision is all right and natural, and anybody is more or less a prophet more or less
more or less, but Saint Odile is quite completely a prophet and Rome will be taken and then a week or two after there will be a landing and we are listening in American English as to what everybody is expected to do.