Hide-And-Seek: A Short Story

Every child's favourite game. One mother's worst nightmare.In a

seemingly endless game of hide-and-seek, a mother looks for her child
in all his favourite hiding spots. But he has hidden himself so well
she's unable to find

Author: Anitha Krishnan

ISBN: 9781998472086
Category: Contemporary
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File Details: 11.3 MB
Language: English
Publisher: Dream Pedlar Books
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.
 ADVENTURES OF WOMEN WHO
FACE DEATH ON BATTLEGROUNDS
Little Stories of Woman's Indomitable Courage

This is a group of little tales of brave women—direct from the

battlefields. They are but typical of the noble deeds of the
mothers and daughters of all nations throughout the war. It has
been estimated that forty thousand women have fought in the
armies—thousands of them in soldiers' uniforms. The first three
stories told here are from the New York American, and the
fourth is from the New York World.

I—STORY OF ENGLISHWOMAN WHO RISKED LIFE ON RUSSIAN

BATTLEFRONT
Mrs. Hilda Wynne has youth, beauty, wealth and fascination—she
cast them all into the great pool of the war in Europe, and added
bravery to them—a limitless bravery. She wears the Croix de Guerre,
the gift of France. King Albert of Belgium decorated her with the
Order of Leopold, and Russia honored her with the Order of St.
George. These rare distinctions she won by unique service. She
drove her ambulance between the first trenches. Back and forth she
went, driving her automobile at furious pace with the fire pouring
upon her from the allies on one side and the Germans on the other,
but a mile separating them. Her unit worked between the first
trenches, the only workers permitted to operate on this danger line.
Mrs. Wynne and her organization, the Bevan-Wynne Unit, have
saved more than 25,000 lives of wounded that but for her speedy
aid would have been lost. She then came to America for the specific
purpose of interesting Americans in the needs of Russian soldiers.
Told by Hilda Wynne, herself
I have looked into the eyes of death and seen there many things.
Looking upon the human carnage I have witnessed, from this
distance and in the little breathing space I have taken from service
to make you Americans know the Russians and their needs better, I
testify that I have seen thousands of heroic acts, but the bravest act
happened on the Russian front.
I saw two aviators go up to certain death. They were a Russian and
a Frenchman. Both were little men. They went up to meet twenty
German aeroplanes. It was suicidal. But they had been ordered to go
—and theirs was the spirit of the gallant six hundred. I stood near
them as they made ready to go. They said nothing. That is one of
the lessons you learn in war—not to waste time nor words.
They got their machines ready as a rider tests his saddle straps and
stirrups before starting for his morning gallop through the park. A
little pothering and fixing of the machinery and they had gone. They
went straight up and began blazing away at the German planes. I
watched and the cords of my heart tightened, for the German
planes, looking like great gray birds with wings wide spread, came
closer and closer. They surrounded them. They formed a solid
double circle about them. Then they began to fire. And I turned and
covered my eyes with my hands, for out of that solid, ominous group
two dots detached themselves and fell. A few seconds later what
had been aeroplanes were splintered wood and what had been men
a broken mass covered by smoking rags.
While this was the bravest act I saw in two and a half years on the
firing line, I readily recall the most pathetic. It was the second line of
men in the Russian trenches. They were unarmed soldiers. There
were no guns for them. They took their places there expecting that
the man in front might drop, and the second line man could pick up
his gun and take his place. The reports that some of the Russian
soldiers have desperately fought with switches I have no doubt is
true.
I have seen many of the allies die. They all die bravely. At Dixmude
when the fusiliers arrived 8,000 and went out 4,000 there was
magnificent courage in death. The Frenchman dies calling upon his
God. The Englishman says nothing or feebly jests; just turns his face
to the wall and is still. The Russian is mystic and secretive. The
Russian lives behind a veil of reserve. You never fully know him. In
the last moments you know by his rapt look that his soul is in
communion with his God.
One of the deepest, unalterable truths of the war is the German
power of hatred. It is past measuring. An example occurred at
Dixmude. When we had been there three days we were driven out. I
took my car filled with the wounded across a bridge just in time. A
second after we had crossed there was a roar, then a crash. A shot
had torn the bridge to pieces. Three weeks later to our hospital was
brought a wounded German.
"I know you," he said. "We nearly got you at the bridge at
Dixmude."
"I remember," I said.
That man's eyes used to follow me in a strange way. Build no
beautiful theories of his national animosity disappearing, or being
swallowed up in his gratitude. There was no such thought in his
mind. The eyes said: "I wish I had killed you. But since I didn't I
wish I might have another chance."
This after I had driven away a group of zouaves who had taken
everything from him, including his iron cross, and who were
debating whether to toss him into the canal then or that night.
It is quite true that the Germans fire upon hospitals. Don't believe
any disclaimers of such acts. There have been many of them. The
aeroplanes were circling about and above a rough hospital we had
constructed and we had to leave it in a hurry. We told the patients of
their danger and hurried them into ambulances to take them to a
safer spot. One of the patients was a German. Both his arms had
been shot away. He was in great pain. I went to his cot and offered
to help him.
"Lean on me," I said. But he turned upon me a baleful look.
"No," he said, staggering to his feet. His tormented body reeled as
he made his way to the door. "No," he repeated. "I will take no help
from the enemy."
It is true that a shell has burst at my feet. It has happened dozens
of times. That isn't alarming. If it burst a few feet away I should be
killed. Shells glance down and under the ground. That saves one if
he is near it. A shell bursting near one is a commonplace in war.
The shells have a disturbing way about them, more disturbing to
your plans than your equanimity. Shells prevented my having a nice
comfortable illness. In southern Russia one can get little to eat.
Coarse black bread is the chief food. It causes unpleasant disorders.
I, afflicted with one of them, arranged a table in the corner of my
tent. I placed remedies on the table, undressed and turned in,
intending to have a cozy illness of a few days. But as I lay there
came an angry buzzing. A shell hissed through, carrying away a
corner of my tent. That ended my illness. I had no more time to
think of it.
The greatest peril I encountered was not from shells. I have said
that one becomes used to them. One of the greatest dangers I faced
was on a dark night drive along a precipice in the Caucasus. It was
while the plan to bring troops through Persia to Russia was expected
to be successful. I went ahead with some ambulances. It was
necessary to take two Russian officers across the mountain. I
offered my services. The road was an oddly twisting one. On one
side was a high wall, on the other a precipice whose depth no one
calculated. But as I allowed myself to look into it at twilight I could
see no bottom to it. We started on the all night drive at dusk. The
precipice remained with us, a foot away, most of the distance. Had
my car skidded twelve inches the story would have been different.
Then, too, I wandered once within the Turkish lines, mistaking them
for our own. But amidst a courteous silence I was allowed to
discover my mistake and escape without harm.
I think I owe my opportunity to do my bit, in the way I have, to the
fact that I arrived in Flanders a few hours before the fight and the
officers were too busy to send me back. I had seven automobiles,
and knew how to use them. I took them to Dixmude and offered the
automobiles and my services to the cause. I established
headquarters at Furnes, which is seven miles from Nieuport, eight
from Dixmude and twenty from Ypres. I drove along the Yser Canal
to the parts of the field that were under the heaviest fire, for there, I
knew, my cars and I would be most needed. For a year I worked for
the relief of the wounded of the French armies. Then I went to
Russia, where I found the need of help and the sacrifice of life
because of lack of that help, almost inconceivable. The French
armies have 6,600 ambulances. The Germans have 6,200. Russia,
with a firing line of 6,000 miles has but 600 motor ambulances.
I established dressing stations in the mountains. Some of these were
10,000 feet above the sea level. There, on the canvas stretched
between two horses, the wounded were brought, or so they started.
For many of them died in the long journey, every step of which was
torture to a wounded man.
The most exciting experience I ever had was on the Galician border.
We could approach the battle line only along the Tranapol road,
which ran for fifteen miles directly under German guns. I was
speeding along it with an ambulance full of wounded soldiers when a
shell struck the roadside and exploded, tearing a great hole in the
earth fifty feet away. The concussion stopped us. Then we went on.
I travel on my luck. Some time, I suppose, I shall travel too far.
I have given all my fortune to the work. That is what we should do—
give not what we can afford, but all we have.
II—STORY OF THE "SPY-TRAPPERS" OF ENGLAND WHO CAUGHT
CARL LODY
Everybody has heard of the tremendous ramifications of the German
military spy system, which had every move of England's army and
navy under observation, every gun emplacement mapped out and
knew every order given to the army before it reached the
subordinate officers.
Englishmen were powerless to shake off this spy danger, which
penetrated into every branch of national life, but English women
took up the matter, brought the most dangerous spies to trial, put
the others under armed guard and in various other ways made the
lives of spies and suspected spies a burden to them.
They have proved that women are the only efficient "spy trappers."
The leaders of the undertaking are women of title, for they alone
would have the authority, means and prestige to carry out such a
difficult and far-reaching work.
The organizer and "chairman" of the committee that has been
rounding up the spies is Lady Glanusk, wife of a peer and officer, a
woman of keen mind and very determined, yet tactful personality.
Other members are the Duchess of Wellington, who is president; the
Duchess of Beaufort, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Marchioness of
Sligo, Countess Bathurst, the Countess of Lanesborough,
Viscountess Massereene and Ferrard, Viscountess Combermere,
Viscountess Cobham, Lady Vincent, Lady Leith of Fyvie, Mrs. Harold
Baring and others.
Among them are some of the most notably beautiful women in
English society and others who are distinguished by their winning
personality. Perhaps the most striking beauty is the Viscountess
Massereene and Ferrard, whose husband is the chief of a celebrated
Irish family. Equally attractive in her way is the young Duchess of
Sutherland, whose husband is the largest landowner in Scotland and
the United Kingdom.
Another member of the committee noted for her beauty is Mrs.
Harold Baring, who was formerly Miss Marie Churchill, of New York.
Her husband belongs to the famous English banking family that
possesses four peerages. Lady Leith of Fyvie, is another American
born member. She was Miss Marie January, of St. Louis. Womanly
intuition and womanly guile exercised by these attractive "spy
trappers," on many social occasions, have led many Germans to
make admissions they would never have made to a man.
Before the war thousands of Germans were in positions of trust in
England, ranging from heads of banks down to such positions as
butlers in prominent English families and headwaiters in leading
hotels. Many people believe that German butlers in the employ of
British Cabinet ministers and British generals have been the most
important agents for conveying military information to the enemy.
Standing silent and discreet behind their employers and their guests
at the table, they listened to many military secrets and they also had
other opportunities for gathering information.
One of the fair members of the committee dined one evening at the
house of an English general with a small party of persons highly
placed in military and official life. When the general joined the ladies
in the drawing room after dinner the fascinating "spy trapper" drew
him aside and said:
"General, before I go, I want you to arrest your butler and search his
belongings. He is a German spy," she said.
"But Lady ——," said the general in amazement, "he has been with
me for ten years. The man is an excellent butler."
"No doubt," said the lady, "but he is also an excellent spy. Never
speak to me again if I am wrong."
The butler's room was searched and many notes of an incriminating
character were found. The lack of positive evidence that he had sent
information to the German Government saved his life, but he was
sent to prison with a host of other German spies.
It is generally understood that Carl Hans Lody, the German spy
executed in the Tower of London, was brought to trial through the
efforts of the women's committee, although the members disclaim
the achievement.
Lody was an officer of the German naval reserve who had resided
some years in the United States, married and deserted his wife
there. He was engaged for a time as an agent of an English tourist
agency in America, work which gave him an excellent opportunity for
watching military preparations.
Last August he obtained an American passport from the American
Embassy in Berlin, under the name of Charles A. Inglis, of New York,
American citizen. He went to England with instructions to obtain
information concerning the movements of the English fleet for the
German Government.
In the disguise of an American tourist, he visited the principal
seaports of the United Kingdom. While he was viewing the romantic
scenery in the vicinity of Edinburgh, an attractive member of the
ladies' committee made his acquaintance. Under the influence of
sympathetic society Lody became more communicative than
discretion warranted.
Behind the superficial American accent the natural German accent
revealed itself in the warmth of confidence. A few days later, Lody
was arrested and letters, which he had written to Germany, giving
information concerning English naval movements and which had
been seized in the mails, were produced.
Lody admitted that he was acting as a spy. After a short trial he was
condemned to be shot in the old Tower of London. He met his fate
very bravely.
The "ladies' committee" has hunted down all German headwaiters
and waiters employed in the principal English hotels and restaurants
and caused them to be removed to detention camps. These men,
owing to the peculiar character of their work, enjoyed an excellent
opportunity for meeting persons of all the important classes of
society, and in the free expansion that ordinarily takes place at the
table all kinds of confidences were exchanged within their hearing.
Many Germans of high social position and great wealth, some of
them naturalized British subjects, have been pursued by the
relentless "ladies' committee." Professor Arthur Schuster, a born
German, but a naturalized Englishman, was surprised at his
luxurious country seat, when a band of detectives descended on him
and seized his private wireless apparatus.
Lady Glanusk explained to the correspondent of this newspaper
some of the aims and labors of the committee.
She has turned the drawing and reception rooms of her fine house,
at No. 30 Bruton street, Mayfair, into offices for the committee.
"Owing to the fact," said Lady Glanusk, "that no serious effort has
been made by our menkind to round up the 73,000 alien enemies in
our midst, I felt the call to start a protest by women, as it is women
who are the greatest sufferers by war. My husband and two sons are
fighting at the front and thousands of women can say very much the
same.
"Ten days after I issued my appeal to the women of England I had
formed my committee with the definite object that all alien-born
enemies, whether German, Austrian or Turk, of military age, be
forthwith interned, whether naturalized or not. Other alien enemies
above military age or under should be removed at least twenty miles
from the coasts and kept under surveillance.
"I consider that women as spies and decoy ducks are more
dangerous than men.
"To such an extent have the women of England been roused that in
the first couple of weeks more than 200,000 signatures to the
petition to be presented to Parliament were obtained.
"Alien enemies, Germans and Austrians particularly, were spread all
along the coast towns and it was impossible to know whether or not
they were in constant communication with the enemy. For my part, I
would like to see as many as possible of these 'useless non-
combatants' dumped right onto German soil. It would be amusing to
think of the embarrassment of the German authorities having to find
food and shelter for something like 70,000 fresh mouths. Another
trouble is the shameful favoritism shown to wealthy and highly
placed Anglo-Germans while their humbler compatriots are interned
without ado.
"Out of the petition of protest has grown what we have named 'the
anti-German League,' by which it is resolved that no member will
employ or sanction the employment of any German or alien enemy.
Members will further refuse to deal with any shops or establishments
selling any German or alien enemy goods. As the members of our
committee are highly influential people the movement should be
effective and will continue for several years. Further, no pains will be
spared to improve the usefulness of British hotel waiters and other
hotel and restaurant employees.
"If every British woman will realize that it is shameful and
treacherous to give financial help to the Germans there will be no
future need to protect the public from this alien peril, for the German
Empire will never be in a position to menace us again, for war
cannot be waged except by a commercially flourishing nation."
Lady Glanusk is a typical Englishwoman, full of energy, go and spirit.
She is tall and stately, with a beautiful complexion. She received the
American correspondent cordially and with a friendly grasp of the
hand.
During the interview Mr. Joynson-Hicks, Member of Parliament, and
just recently appointed Chairman of the Unionist Parliamentary
Committee lately formed to inquire into this alien enemy question,
was present, as was also Lord Euston, heir to the Dukedom of
Grafton.
III—STORY OF DAUGHTERS OF ENGLISH NOBILITY WHO WORK IN
TRENCHES
Many beautiful girls of the most delicate breeding have gone to the
front to nurse the wounded—to see the worst horrors of this most
horrible of wars.
It must not be assumed that they have merely gone to the base
hospitals to attend to the wounded soldiers brought to them from
the front and carried to them through the dangerous area. Some at
least have gone right to the trenches into the midst of the inferno of
bullets and shells and poisonous gases, where the air is filled with
the groans of the dying and the stench of the unburied dead and
where the very soil trembles from the force of the new and devilish
explosives that reduce humanity to a pulp.
The sights that these delicately reared girls must witness can only be
hinted at. Many strong men have turned sick at the same
experience, and even veteran soldiers are only able to endure their
surroundings by smoking the strongest kind of tobacco. How the
spoiled darlings of society will come through their terrible experience
must be one of the most interesting problems of the war.
One of the most strikingly beautiful girls at the front is Miss Gladys
Nelson, daughter of Sir William and Lady Nelson, who have a house
noted for its art treasures in Hill Street, Mayfair, the most aristocratic
quarter of London.
Sir William Nelson is a great railroad magnate, having large
enterprises of this character in the colonies and other parts of the
world. He is probably one of the wealthiest men in the United
Kingdom. He has two sons in the army, and four daughters married
to army officers. His only unmarried daughter, Miss Gladys,
determined that she would not do less for her country than any of
her family.
Miss Nelson is the purest and most refined type of English beauty.
She is tall, lithe and athletic, with beautiful golden hair and a very
delicate, fair complexion. This exquisite daughter of millions is
actually running a motor ambulance from the trenches in the North
of France to the base hospital. She helps to carry the poor wounded
soldiers in her car back of the firing line and then drives them to the
base hospital. She has been repeatedly under fire and runs the risk
of being killed almost daily. She was within the firing zone when the
Germans first began their use of poisonous gases, and it was only
because she had a full load of wounded in her car that she moved to
the rear before the deadly fumes reached her.
All the risks of death and injury, however, would seem to be less of
an ordeal to a woman of sensitive nerves than the sights she must
constantly witness. The bodies of dead and wounded have been
turned black, green and yellow, so that they become in many
instances a caricature of humanity.
Then so furious is the fighting and so difficult the work of attending
to the wounded that the dead have often been left unburied for
days. The wounded are often terribly mangled and sometimes left to
lie in the dirt for hours or even days before the ambulances can find
them. Before they can be relieved at all their clothes and boots may
have to be cut from them, and in this process very often large
masses of flesh come away with the garments. These and other
services are rendered by the women ambulance workers.
The exquisite Miss Gladys Nelson has been doing her share in this
terrible work, and, according to last accounts, doing it very
creditably. Will she come through the ordeal a stronger and nobler
character or will she break down under it?
One of the bravest English nurses is Miss Muriel Thompson, of the
First Aid Yeomanry Corps. She belongs to a well-known English
family. She is a pretty girl of robust physique. She has been right up
to the trenches in one of the worst centres of carnage in the whole
field of war. Many badly wounded Belgians, who had no hope of
medical attention from their own forces, were carried by Miss
Thompson from the firing line. King Albert of Belgium presented to
her on the battlefield a medal for bravery.
The beautiful Marchioness of Drogheda, a young matron of the
highest aristocracy, is nursing the wounded in a houseboat on the
Yser River, in Belgium, where some of the most terrible fighting of
the whole war has occurred. This is the spot where the Germans put
forth their greatest force in the West last October to break down the
allied lines and reach the English Channel.
The Germans in their advance either killed the Belgian inhabitants or
at least drove them out and destroyed their homes. The allies in
their anxiety to stop the Germans flooded the country and destroyed
hundreds more Belgian homes. The world has never seen a more
pitiful and death-strewn waste than this once very populous and
prosperous region.
The Marchioness of Drogheda and some other English women are
laboring among the wounded and starving on the Yser, within sound
of the guns to relieve some little part of the unspeakable misery.
Two of the most noted beauties of the British aristocracy are in
training to act as war nurses. One of them is Lady Diana Manners,
daughter of the Duke of Rutland and sister of the former Lady
Marjorie Manners, whose heart affairs have been of so much interest
to the world.
Lady Diana is one of the most charming, dainty and sprightly girls in
the liveliest set of fashionable society. To think of such a girl amid
the blood, dirt and horrors of trench warfare gives one the greatest
shock of all. It has not yet been decided where Lady Diana will take
up her duties in the war area, but her friends say that her spirit is so
great that she will go to the most dangerous places that any woman
has yet ventured to.
Another beautiful girl of equal social prominence who has been
training as a war nurse is Miss Monica Grenfell, daughter of Lord
Desborough, one of the most noted sportsmen in England.
In the earlier stages of the war considerable adverse comment was
excited by the numbers of society women who forced themselves
through their influence with high officials into the fighting area,
where they were not fitted to be of help and were often a serious
hindrance.
This evil has now been nearly eliminated. With a growing sense of
the awful seriousness of the war the most frivolous of society
women have become subdued. Under the direction of such masterful
men as General Kitchener and General Joffre the army officers and
other officials have refused to allow any women, however highly
connected, who were actuated merely by curiosity, to proceed to the
front.
Only women qualified to nurse and belonging to a recognized war
nursing organization are now allowed to go near the fighting area.
At one time criticism was excited by the sight of Lady Dorothy
Fielding, the twenty-year-old daughter of the Earl of Denbigh,
standing among a group of admiring French and Belgian officers at
the front. It was assumed that a girl of such an age and such
training could only be a hindrance among the fighting men, and it
was even hinted that she was addicted to flirting.
Whatever she may have been at first, the young Lady Dorothy has
now changed all opinions of her and become a real heroine. With
training and experience now lasting for months she has become a
most valuable as well as courageous nurse in rescuing and caring for
the wounded. Naturally a strong girl and accustomed to athletic
sports, she has shown herself peculiarly fitted for this kind of work.
Many ladies of rank interested in the wounded have lately shown
their good sense by not trying to go to the fighting area. The
handsome and skittish Duchess of Westminster, who excited some
attention at first by bustling around among the soldiers in France
has now gone to Serbia, where there is the greatest need of Good
Samaritans. The hospital founded by her at Le Touquet, near Paris,
has done good work.
The condition of Serbia is such that any women who ventures there
must see the extremes of human misery. The whole country has
been turned into a charnel house by the invading Austrians, followed
by the still more terrible typhus fever. Men, women and children are
dying of disease without being able to find a bed to lie on or a roof
to cover them.
One report stated that young Lady Paget had died while nursing
typhus patients in Serbia. Her mother is the well-known American
Lady Paget, wife of General Sir Arthur Paget, and the daughter is
married to a distant cousin, named Sir Richard Paget, British Minister
to Serbia. Later news came that young Lady Paget had not died of
the fever, but she is passing through scenes of horror that have not
been known in Europe for three centuries.
IV—STORY OF A NEW YORK MOTHER WHO SOUGHT HER SON IN
THE TRENCHES
Paul Planet was sailing away from New York and from the mother he
adored to fight under the colors of France.
Other women—mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts—pressed
forward. They also gazed tearfully after the slowly receding steamer.
The girlish figure with the great brown eyes and firm, resolute
mouth, stood motionless.
"Paul," she murmured. "He is my only child—my boy!"
Weeks passed—months.
Paul Planet's regiment was at the front. He had learned what it
means to look death in the face, to live in the trenches, to see the
horrors and devastation of war. He had fought and fought bravely,
and experienced no regrets save one—that he must be separated
from his mother.
"We have always been more like chums than mother and son," he
confided to his comrades. "Since my earliest recollection until now
we have never been separated."
But when he drew forth a small picture from over his heart and said
it was a likeness of the mother for whose loneliness he sighed, his
friends ridiculed his statement.
"Your sweetheart," they said, "or perhaps your sister. But never,
never ask us to believe that the likeness is of your mother."
"She is always young—always beautiful—to me she will never grow
old," declared the young soldier. But after that he did not show the
picture again.
In far away New York the fair young mother of so stalwart a son
learned, as months rolled by, what it means to watch and wait, to
tremble at the sound of the postman's ring lest it be the harbinger of
ill news; to live, day by day, in a state of suspense and agony
bordering upon despair, and to envy every mother she saw whose
son walked by her side.
Then she, too, sailed for France.
"I must find my boy," she told those who sought to dissuade her
from undertaking the trip.
For nearly a year had passed and no word had been received from
Paul Planet. His name had not appeared in the lists of dead and
missing, yet of his whereabouts his mother could learn nothing.
She applied to the officials at the Army Headquarters in Paris for
information or assistance in locating her son. Her efforts were
fruitless. Passports she received to certain sections of the country
where the family name was known and where she had relatives or
friends to visit or business to transact, but no permission was
accorded her to leave the train at any intermediate point nor to visit
a military camp.
Day after day Mme. Planet planned and schemed how she might find
her boy. She made journey after journey in the vain hope that
chance might bring her near him. Her aged mother now
accompanied her.
"It will be a miracle if you ever find him," declared the elder woman
as they looked forth upon miles of devastated country through which
long lines of trenches intersected. Everywhere madame's inquiry met
with the same discouraging reply. Paul Planet, the young soldier in
the automobile service, might be in one of any number of places.
Even if located it would be impossible for madame to visit him.
The train in which madame was travelling drew up at a siding near
the ruins of what had once been a small village. Several troop trains
sped by. Slowly the sidetracked train pulled forward toward the main
tracks again. Madame, restless and anxious, crossed the
compartment and peered from the window. The next instant a
startled exclamation escaped her lips.
"What is it?" asked her mother.
With frantic haste the younger woman turned and commenced to
collect their travelling bags.
"I have found Paul," she whispered. "We must leave the train at the
next station."
Now, all that day Paul Planet, for some strange psychological reason
which he could not have explained, had felt conscious of his
mother's nearness. Yet she was in New York, he reasoned and fear
smote his heart lest sickness or accident had befallen her.
"Rest—for two hours."
Down along the marching line of soldiers the order was repeated.
Planet heard it and fell out with alacrity. He heard himself detailed
for temporary duty with a corporal's guard to unload automobile
trucks. A troop train rushed by and a waiting passenger train pulled
slowly out from a siding.
Planet glanced up. From the window of the latter train a face looked
forth—a hand waved. Was he dreaming? Surely that was his
mother's face he had seen! He dashed forward. The face was very
distinct now. Impulsively he laid his finger across his lips as his
mother had been wont to do when, as a child, she had desired him
to remain silent. If the face at the window was that of his mother
they must be discreet or she would never be permitted to join him.
"My mother was on that train," he confided to the soldier beside
him. The man laughed.
"Impossible," he exclaimed. "You have seen a vision."
But Paul Planet had not seen a vision. Two miles further on, when
the train had come to a halt at the little village station, Mme. Planet
almost pulled her protesting mother of seventy down the steps. The
guards also protested.
"Your passports, madame? Where are your passports?" they asked.
"My passports?" she repeated. "Oh, monsieur, I am so excited I do
not know. There are passports there—papers—anything you want—
in that bag."
Madame was so charming—the name of Planet was so well known—
that the bag remained at the station, unopened, and the clever
French-American mother hurried off in search of her supposed
friends.
She found them down along the railroad. A little squad of uniformed
men unloading automobile trucks.
"Vive la France!" she cried. "Vive la France!" and all the while her
brown eyes were gazing hungrily, eagerly into the equally brown
orbs of her son. It would not do to single him out from the others.
To do so might result in difficulties for him and for her.
The two hours' rest was lengthened to six. Still the detachment
waited by the roadside. Still madame and her mother waited.
Again the former's ready wit came to their aid. Madame was so
distressed! The friends she had expected to find in the village had
gone away. There was no place for herself and her mother to dine.
Would the soldiers be so kind—so generous——
The soldiers would. They hospitably provided a tent for madame and
her mother. It might be two days, the officers told them, before
another passenger train stopped at that station. Madame, overjoyed,
resigned herself to Providence and basked in the sunshine of her
son's presence. The ban of secrecy had been lifted now. Their
relationship was made known and pocket kodaks drafted into service
as the troops were breaking camp.
"I will have the pictures developed when I reach Paris," said
madame as she once more clasped her boy in her arms. "I have
seen you again and I am content. That two hours' respite by the
roadside that resolved itself into a two days' encampment was a
special dispensation of Providence."
"It was a miracle, mother," declared the son. "There have been
miracles all through this war. That you found me was one of them."
Then he kissed her and marched away.
AN AMERICAN WOMAN'S STORY OF
THE "ANCONA" TRAGEDY
Told by Dr. Cecile Greil, an American Physician

Dr. Cecile Greil was the only native-born American on the liner
Ancona, which was shelled and sunk by an Austrian submarine.
She tells this intensely graphic account of the terrible event in
the New York Times. She precedes it with a description of the
crowd of passengers, mostly poor Italian women and children,
that had passage on the ship—the most pathetic gathering, it
seemed to her as they came aboard the ship, that she had ever
seen.

I—"WHEN THE TORPEDO STRUCK US"

The bell for luncheon rang at 11:30. As we sat at the table, still
without the Captain, we joked and laughed together, to hide our lack
of ease. We spoke of trivial things. We were through with lunch
now; the others were going out; I was rising from my seat, at the
same time drinking the remainder of my coffee. Then the thing came
upon us that we had all, strangely enough, felt coming, in our
hearts.
A terrific vibration shook the ship. I was thrown back into my seat. I
knew that the ship must be stopping. I heard a running and
scurrying about the deck outside. Looking out, I saw, through the
dining saloon window, six or ten stewards in white whirling out of
sight around an angle.
"What could be wrong, Doctor?" I asked one of the ship's doctors in
French.
"Heaven only knows!" he answered, as he carefully adjusted his
military cape, and hurried out. The dining saloon was emptied in an
instant; everybody had bolted as if they were running to a fire.
It was evident that something had gone wrong with the ship,
though, by some queer process of mind, at that moment nobody
thought of a submarine. But hearing the next moment a sharp, quick
crash, as of lightning that had struck home close by, at the same
instant I both thought of the possibility of a submarine—and saw
one!
The fog had lifted slightly. There, in full view framed in the window
with a curious, picture-like effect, lay a submarine with its deck out
of the water. It was long and flat, horribly longer and bigger than the
mental conception I had formed of what such a thing would be like.
There was a gun mounted in front, and another at back, and both
had their muzzles leveled directly at the Ancona.
The submarine stood out in clear, black outline against the white
background of mist. The fog seemed only to make it more distinct,
as it always does with objects near by. From a staff in the back
broke a red and white drapeau. Afterward I learned that this was the
combination of colors that made the Austrian flag. I was ignorant of
it, then, though I remembered the exact colors.
So far, I could find nothing tragic or terrible in the situation. Possibly
we would be in danger of considerable exposure in open boats,
before other ships, summoned by wireless, would pick us up. I did
not rush out as the others had done. I stood quite still, in order to
calm myself, to give myself time to think what would better be done.
The Ancona had come to a stop. Of that I was certain. I also knew
that the ship was doomed.
But now there came another terrible crash, and another, and
another, in different parts of the ship, followed by explosions and the
sound of débris falling into the water and on deck. Well, they were
merely destroying the wireless. Still there was no fear of death.
But now I was aware of a terrible shrieking. Everybody was in a
frightened panic.
II—"THE HORROR OF WHAT I SAW"
Well, as for myself—to get excited wouldn't help. I went to my cabin
as calmly as I could, determined to save what I could of my
valuables. I put them in my lifebelt. I took a receipt for 20,000 lire,
which I had left with the purser. I went toward the bow of the ship. I
descended the staircase to the second cabin, on the way to the
purser's office. A large part of the staircase had been shot away—
and the horror of what I saw at the bottom of it made me instantly
forget what I was going for. There lay three or four women, four or
five children, and several men. Some of them were already dead, all,
at least, badly wounded. I made sure two of the children were dead.
The purser sprawled limply across his desk, inert, like a sack of meal
that has been flung down and stays where it lies. He had been shot
in the head. The blood was running bright like red paint, freshly
spilt, down his back, and his hair was matted with it.
The first series of shots had wrecked this part of the ship, breaking
through and carrying away whole sections of the framework. I tried
to get back up the stairs. But in the slight interval of time I had
consumed, enough additional shells had been discharged to finish
the wreck of the staircase.
I saw that this was not what the nations call, ironically enough,
"legitimate warfare," but wholesale and indiscriminate massacre.
Seeing my exit that way cut off, I started through the second cabin
to go up the central stairway. The sight that I ran into there was
indescribable. All the passengers from the third cabin had rushed up
into the second. They had altogether lost their wits. The only thing
that was left them was the animal instinct for self-preservation in its
most disastrous and most idiotic form. Men, women, and children
were burrowing headforemost under chairs and benches and tables.
I saw one man, his face pressed close against the floor sidewise,
heaving a chair up in the air with his back, in an effort to efface
himself.
All the while the detonations, like continuous thunder and lightning,
increased the panic. Women were on their knees in mental agony,
each supplicating the particular saint of the part of the country from
which she came to save her from death. I pushed and shoved them
by the shoulders. I took them by the legs and arms and clothes, and
urged them, in Italian, to get up, to put on lifebelts, to get off the
ship. I told them that, at least, they would find no security from
shells under chairs and tables.
I found a poor old woman at the foot of the stairs, huddled in prayer.
Her thin, gray hair straggled loose over her shoulder. I recognized
her as a woman I had got acquainted with in my search for a fellow-
citizen to join me in the first cabin. She was 65 years old, she had
told me. She had seen two sons off to the war, and was now going
to a third who had emigrated to America and lived in Pennsylvania.
It was the first time she had ever crossed the ocean. She was sick of
the thought of war. In the New World she would find peace and
comfort for her old age, with her "Bambino," as she still called the
grown-up man who was her son. So when I saw her lying there I
was possessed of but one idea—to get her off alive. I told her to
come with me, that I would protect her. She acquiesced, but her
fright was so great that she hung limp as if she had no spine while I
half dragged her to the first cabin deck.
A boat was being lowered. It had been swung out on the davits. It
already seethed full of people. And more men and women and
children were fighting, in a promiscuous, shrieking mass, to get into
it as it swung out and down. The men, with their superior strength,
were, of course, getting the best of the struggle. Age or sex had no
weight. It was brute strength that prevailed.
At the sight before her the old woman grew frantic with unexpected
strength. She suddenly jerked loose from me, and before I could
prevent her, ran with all the agility of fear and jumped overboard.
Others flung their bodies pell-mell on the heads of those already in
it. Some, in their frenzy, missed the mark at which they aimed
themselves and fell into the sea. To make the horror complete, the
boat now stuck at one end, tilted downward, and spilled all its
occupants into the sea, ninety or a hundred at once. They seized
each other. Some swam. Others floundered and sank almost
immediately, dragging each other down. Some drowned themselves
even with lifebelts on, not knowing how to hold their heads out of
the water.
I tried to speak with the passengers still on deck. It was useless.
Everybody was talking in his own particular dialect. Then I realized
the predicament I myself was in—an utter foreigner, whom they
would sacrifice in an instant for one of their own nationality. Perhaps
if only I had some of my jewelry I might be able to bribe my way to
safety in some such crisis.
III—"THE DEAD WERE LYING ON DECK"
I made my way back to my cabin again. There were people dead
and dying on the deck. I saw one man who had started to run up
the gangway to the officer's deck come plunging down again. He
had been struck in the back of the head. Somehow or other, I just
felt that my time had not yet come. This conviction enabled me to
keep my wits about me.
In my cabin I flung up the top of my steamer trunk. As I was
searching for my valuables my chambermaid appeared in the
doorway; half a dozen times I had met her rushing frantically and
aimlessly up and down.
"Oh, madame, madame—we shall all be killed, we're all going to get
killed!"
"Maria," I advised as quietly and soothingly as I could, still stooping
over my trunk; "don't be so mad, get a lifebelt on, and get up out of
here."
Before she could speak again she was a dead woman. A shot carried
away the port-hole and sheared off the top of her head. It finished
its course by exploding at the other side of the ship. If I had not
been stooping over at the time I would not have lived to write this
story.
I snatched up my little jewel-basket with a few favorite trinkets in it.
I put on my cap and sweater. When I got up on deck I saw the
submarine carefully circumnavigating its victims and deliberately
shooting toward us at all angles. I ran along the deck. The sea was
full of deck rails, parts of doors, and other wreckage, and dotted
with human beings, some dead, others alive, and screaming for
help. There was another boat in front that tilted and dumped out its
frantic load into the sea. Peering over the side of the ship, I saw a
boat that had already been lowered to the water's edge. In it I
recognized the two ship's doctors, and two of the seamen. There
was also an officer in the boat, Carlo Lamberti, the chief engineer.
He sat at the helm. I called out to them to take me in.
"Jump!" they shouted back.
I threw my basket down. I had a good twenty-foot drop. I have
always been a good swimmer. Furthermore, I saw that if I jumped
into the boat, crowded with people, sails, water-barrels, and pails for
bailing, I might cause it to capsize. So I told them to push the boat
away and then they could pick me up out of the water.
I escaped with a ducking.
An immigrant girl who followed me flung herself down wildly and
broke both her legs on the side of the ship.
We were powerless to save any more. The ship might at any
moment receive the final torpedo from the submarine. The sailors
rowed madly to get out of danger.
Then the torpedo was discharged. It whizzed across the ship,
drawing a tail behind it like a comet. It plunged beneath the Ancona
as if guided by a diabolical intelligence of its own. There followed a
terrific explosion. Huge jets of thick black smoke shot up, with
showers of débris. Our boat rocked and swayed in the roughened
water. The Ancona lurched to the left, righted herself, shivered a
moment—then her bow shot high in the air like a struggling, death-
stricken animal. She went under, drawing a huge, funnel-like vortex
after her.
The Captain and some officers were the last to drop astern, in a
small boat. Passengers were still to be seen, clinging forward, like
ants on driftwood, as the ship was drawn down. There were many
people wounded, so that they could not get off unaided. They were
left to die.
The sea now looked absolutely empty, swept smooth. The ship had
drawn everything down with it. The fog undulating upward, the
submarine was seen lying in full view, as if in quiet Teutonic
contemplation of what it had done. Then it moved off, and was soon
merged into the waste of sea and fog. We felt a great relief when it
had departed.
IV—SURVIVORS DRIFTING ON THE OCEAN
All that afternoon our six surviving boats drifted within sight of each
other. When darkness fell large yellow lanterns were lit, and from
time to time Bengal lights flared and fell. It looked like a regatta held
on the River Styx, in Hell. The sailors had exhausted themselves
rowing, so the improvised sails were set. The boat-loads of survivors
had run the gamut of every emotion. They were now mere stocks of
insensibility, numb, dumb, and inert.
At six in the afternoon a boat just behind us began sending us
signals of distress. The men had taken off their shirts and were
waving them to us on oars. Our sailors objected to turning back,
saying that both boats would be sunk if we tried to relieve them. But
Carlo Lamberti, the chief engineer, with a quiet look in his blue eyes,
with a rather careless, engaging smile, which was habitual to him all
the time, presented his revolver—and we went back to see what was
wrong.
We found that the boat had been struck by a shell and was leaking
badly. True enough, most of the people in it tried to make an
immediate stampede into our boat. But again Lamberti presented his
eloquent pistol and his quiet smile, and with order and precision we
took aboard the wounded, the women, and children. Then the leaky
craft was tied to our stern and the men left were easily able to keep
it afloat by bailing.
"We'll save you, or go down with you!" Lamberti reassured them.
This chief engineer was the only man who showed signal bravery.
One of the first of the wounded rescued from the leaky boat was my
former companion, the Marquis Serra Cassano. He did not wish to
join in the incipient stampede. With four toes of his foot shot away,
he rose limpingly to assist the other wounded into our boat first,
before he himself came in. Then with an air of pathetic aristocracy
he seated himself by me, and wanted to know if any one had a
cigaret to spare. We had four cigarets on the boat. The men took
turns puffing them.
A frantic mother had dropped her baby in the water. I jumped out
and rescued it. Later on, she got separated from it, and I had it in
my charge for several days—but that is not in the present story.
We kept close watch on each other's boats till nightfall. As the other
five would appear and disappear, we would be alternately cheered
and frightened.
It must have been nearly midnight when one of our sailors cried out
that he saw a ship's light. But for a long while nothing appeared but
thin threads of light that filtered through the fog. After some
discussion as to whether it might not be an enemy craft, we
approached the direction of the light, till it burst on us in a powerful,
searching blaze. And we discerned the other boats converging
toward it, mere moving yellow splurges in the gloom.
The ship that was rescuing us was a French mine layer, the Pluton. It
was hellish-looking, as it beetled over us, but none the less it looked
like heaven, too!
And now our boat-loads of survivors were close together, and
suddenly everybody grew voluble and chatty. We shouted across the
water to each other. I even heard a voice singing. We were saved!
We were saved!
 THE STRATEGY OF SISTER
MADELEINE
The Story of a French Captain's Escape from the Germans
Told by himself, and translated by G. Frederic Lees

Few men who have succeeded in slipping through the clutching

fingers of the Mailed Fist have such a moving record of
adventure to their credit as Captain X——, who here relates his
remarkable experiences. There is the true Stevensonian flavor in
some of the episodes narrated; and at the same time the story
has real historical value, since it opens with a graphic account of
the Battle of Charleroi, which has not yet been described by the
French Staff, or by any of the unofficial historians of the war.
The officer's name is suppressed in deference to his own
request when he related his experiences in the Wide World
Magazine.

I—MY EXPERIENCES AT THE BATTLE OF CHARLEROI

In relating my adventures, extending over more than fifteen months,
I cannot do better than begin with the starting-point of the whole
affair—the Battle of Charleroi. To describe the events which grouped
themselves around August 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th, 1914, seems
like telling old news, but, as a matter of fact, the gigantic struggle
named after the Belgian town of ironworks and mines has yet to be
recorded. The French Staff has published nothing, unofficial
historians—eager to be the first to place their researches before the
public—have only given general and often erroneous descriptions of
the advance of Von Kluck, Von Buelow, and Von Hausen against Sir
John French's forces on the Condé-Mons-Binche line and the Fifth
French Army holding the line of the Sambre, and the newspaper
accounts are sometimes contradictory.
I am not going to weary you with military technicalities; we will
leave questions of strategy and tactics alone and direct our attention
to the battlefield as seen from two points of view: that of myself, an
officer in the French Army, and that of an inhabitant of Charleroi,
with whom I was later thrown into contact, and by whose
observations, made from the roof of his house, I was fortunate in
benefiting.
Picture to yourself the sinuous Sambre, flowing in its deep bed
through the densely-populated suburbs of Charleroi and the
southern end of this formerly fortified town. The town itself,
imprisoned by its walls, is but a small place of some thirty thousand
inhabitants, but the population is swelled to five hundred thousand
by the contiguous suburbs of Montigny, Couillet, Marcinelle, Gilly,
Châtelet, Marchiennes, Roux, Jumet, Gosselies, and others which
cluster around the ancient nucleus and stretch principally
northwards. To fight a battle on such a ground as this was
impossible, so the German forces, descending from the north and
the east in unknown hundreds of thousands, determined to make for
the open-wooded country which lies beyond the southern suburbs of
the town. Two tremendous obstacles stood in their way—the closely-
packed houses of the suburbs and the strongly-held river. The
inhabitants soon learnt to their cost how the first of these was to be
overcome. Suddenly, shortly after the appearance of the advance-
guard of the German army, violent explosions were heard,
accompanied by the pop! pop! pop! of machine-guns and the
discharge of musketry. The Huns were blasting a broad way through
the suburbs, setting fire to the houses, and—under pretense that
they were being fired upon by civilians—shooting the people down in
their houses and in the streets. Right through the quarters of
Gosselies and Jumet they penetrated; then branched off to the right
and left, one band of incendiaries reaching the river through
Marchiennes, the other cutting its way through the town and
reaching the bridge which connects Montigny and Couillet. These