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He kindly sent down to us one of the officers of his staff to act as escort. The officer sat by our chauffeur, warning him of the' dangerous spots in the road which the Germans had the habit of "watering" from time to time with "marmites," and ordering him to put on extra speed. Our speed along the road into Verdun averaged well over a mile a minute. The "Movies" Under Fire
So then we begin to fill pots and take steaming "marmites" off the fire. The "sitting cases" come in first, hobbling, or carried on their comrades' backs heads and feet bandaged or poor hands maimed. When they have been carried or have stiffly and slowly marched through the entrance to the train, the "brancard" cases are brought in and laid on the floor.
From the house next to the one struck, a black cat came slinking, paused for an indecisive second in the middle of the street, and ran back again. Through the canvas partition of the ambulance, I heard the voices of my convalescents. "No more marmites!" I cried to them as I swung down a road out of shell reach. I little knew what was waiting for us beyond the next village.
Shrapnel and air-bombs, incendiary shells and monstrous marmites had fallen within its boundaries week by week; sometimes only one or two on an idle day, sometimes in a raging storm of fire, but always killing a few more people, always shattering another house or two, always spoiling another bit of sculptured beauty.
As soon as the train arrives I carry out one of my boiling "marmites" to the middle of the stone entrance and ladle out the soup, while a Belgian Sister takes round coffee and bread. Now that I have bought my pots and pans and stoves we are able to do soup, and much more.
Afterwards, during many months as a wanderer in this war, I came to know the French soldier with the intimacy of long conversations to the sound of guns, in the first line of trenches facing the enemy, in hospitals, where he spoke quietly while comrades snored themselves to death, in villages smashed to pieces by shell-fire, in troop trains overcrowded with wounded, in woods and fields pockmarked by the holes of marmites, and in the restaurants of Paris and provincial towns where, with an empty sleeve or one trouser-leg dangling beneath the tablecloth, he told me his experiences of war with a candour in which there was no concealment of truth; and out of all these friendships and revelations of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands before my mind in heroic colours.
He kindly sent down to us one of the officers of his staff to act as escort. The officer sat by our chauffeur, warning him of the dangerous spots in the road which the Germans had the habit of "watering" from time to time with marmites, and ordering him to put on extra speed. Our speed along the road into Verdun averaged well over a mile a minute.
"Yes," said the officer; "we had no ditch during the fight with the Germans, and we were short of telephone wire for a while; so we had to carry messages back and forth as in the old days. It was a pretty warm kind of messenger service when the German marmites were falling their thickest."
One wonders how there could be a single living man there. Only a few trees of a wood are left standing, the others beaten down by the "marmites," and everywhere may be seen the yellow color of the literally plowed-up earth. It seems incredible that all these details can be seen from a height of over 3000 meters. I could see to a distance of 60 or 70 kilometers, and never lost sight of Compiègne.
One is a little round iron thing which burns, and the other is a sort of little "kitchener" which doesn't! With this equipment, and various huge "marmites," we make coffee and soup for hundreds of men every day. The first convoy gets into the station about 9.30 a.m., all the men frozen, the black troops nearly dead with cold.
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