The Return

I STOOD on the doorstone of the Hôtel Du Lac and poked holes in the dust with my walking stick. Should I go and look at the place where the camp had been, or should I pack my bag and go away without seeing it? My friends had assured me, with more enthusiasm than tact, that I was crazy. They need n’t have bothered. I knew it. It is always a mistake to return to a place that has been idealized by memory. Yet here I was, wandering over the French countryside where I had lived so vividly during my years of war nursing.

So far the experiment had been worse than I had expected. Paris-Plage, which I remembered as swarming with handsome English officers, was now filled with sedate English mammas and their offspring. Étaples was commercializing her ruins. Camiers was dead. Even the Hôtel Du Lac had passed away, for, although the familiar name was still painted over the door, the interior was that of any pension. The room that had been the Tommies’ bar, and which I had never seen except through a fog of cigarette smoke, had become a quiet, sunny dining-room. My bedroom was the very one in which I had had so many dinners, and its window the one through which — but no matter.

I ached with the loneliness of awakened memories as I stood there on the step, hesitating. The camp itself was the only place I had not yet visited, and I was not sure that I had the strength of mind to go — to look at what had been the home of the Harvard Unit, and see the huts tumbling down, and bare spaces where the tents had been. I had a moment of panic. I could n’t do it. I would go away at once. And yet, there were my hills. I had loved them so, and they would be the same — smooth and grassy and flecked with cloud-shadows, with the wind from the Channel whispering among the grasses. It was summer now, too, and they would be red with poppies. Perhaps, if I walked through the camp without looking at it, and climbed to the top of the range —

I moved slowly down the street, swinging my stick. How still the village seemed when there were no army boots clumping over the cobbles! There were girls standing in the doorways of the little thatched cottages, but no Tommies passed to look at them with admiring eyes. A whiff of peat smoke came to me on a little breeze and went away, leaving a lump in my throat.

There was the railroad track and the sentry box beside it, empty. And there—I stood still. The canteen was gone! Razed clean. I huddled my memories together and shoved them into a deep, dark hole in the back of my mind. I would n’t look any more. I must keep my mind on the hills. In a moment I could see them from the turn in the road, and they would be shimmering a little in the heat.

My eyes betrayed me, however. They strayed, and I caught a glimpse of the remains of the officers’ hospital before I had the will power to look elsewhere.

I walked rapidly after that, my attention on the road before me. But I was compelled to look up at last to see which road led into my own camp, and I stopped again, startled. Someone was living in our officers’ quarters. ‘French families,’ I thought bitterly.

Here was the sign: GENERAL HOSPITAL 22. B.E.F. Evidently the French had not yet decided to make kindling wood of signs. I turned in, and suddenly, at my very feet, there appeared a small, sunburned urchin dressed astonishingly like an American Boy Scout. He stared and so did I. Then I really looked at the camp. It was alive! Not a lent had been taken down, and through the open doors I saw rows of beds. Smoke was coming out of the chimneys of the cookhouse and the operating theatre. And in every direction I saw khaki-clad little boys running in and out of doorways, playing in the road, dashing after each other with shouts. I stood silent, looking from the camp to the youngster before me, and back again. Something cold and heavy was lifting from my heart.

‘What—’ I began, and was interrupted by the clear notes of a bugle call. A bugle there in camp, echoing among the huts as in the old days!

The small boy at my side forgot me instantly, and, turning, fled up the road in the direction of the football field. Every child in sight followed him, and more appeared every second. They scampered out of tents and huts. They leaped from the windows of the theatre. They rose up out of gutters. Camp swarmed with capering, yelling boys, not one of whom could have been older than twelve.

I ran after them, my feet, trained to those paths, carrying me safely over forgotten ditches. At the corner of the mess I halted, and gasped. I had never seen so many children at one time in my life.

They were forming a solid square on the football field, and their voices had the sound of surf on a pebbly shore. A grandstand had been erected at one end of the field, and on it stood a man in running trunks and jersey. Just as I looked, he raised a bugle to his lips and blew — a single note. The voices ceased at once, and the brown square spread out, two paces to the right, arms extended, finger tips touching. The man on the grandstand shouted something through a megaphone, and a wave of movement swept over the ranks. Hundreds upon hundreds of bare little arms shot out and up.

‘Well!’ I said aloud. ‘Setting-up exercises!’

‘Yes, of course,’ a voice remarked from behind me. I turned, and behold! another man in running trunks and jersey. He was tall, fair-haired, and American to his very shoestrings. And he was looking at me with an amused glint in his eyes.

‘What is all this?' I begged. ‘This is my camp, you know. I was a nurse here during the war.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see.’ And then he told me all the astonishing story, while I leaned against the weather-beaten side of the mess and listened, my eyes wandering now and then to the football field, and beyond to the smooth flanks of my hills.

He explained that these were Belgian children, who had lived in the area occupied by the Germans during the war, and whose growth had been retarded by malnutrition. There were six thousand of them here for three months, being fed, exercised, and toned up generally. Six thousand little girls had come first. Now it was the boys’ turn. They were all doing well. He himself was one of the physical instructors. There was a woman teacher to every twenty children, so that they got individual attention. The whole arrangement was being financed by a wealthy American whose son had been killed in the war. Yes, they had a good time. Went swimming every day at the beach, three thousand at a time. Certainly, I was to go anywhere I liked. Glad to have me.

So I stayed and rambled over the camp, poking into corners, looking into rooms, remembering. But I did n’t mind remembering now. Beyond the football field the hills lay warm and silent, the cornflowers at their feet rippling in the summer wind. Behind Matron’s hut a lark sprang from among the poppies and circled upward, singing.

It was long after lunch time when I went away, down the road to the village, and paused at the bend in the road for a last look at the hills. And then I heard it—the sound that was woven through my memories of every moment I had spent in this place — the sound of many feet, marching. It was ghostly. For a second I felt cold. Then I saw them, coming on steadily: three thousand little boys, going to the beach for a swim. They marched four abreast, bare legs moving in joyous unison. At the head of each company marched a woman, her eyes alert for mischief-makers. As they drew near me, the front ranks began to sing and the melody swept all down the lines. I heard my own voice taking up the loved refrain: —

They passed me, still singing, and their fresh young voices came back to me on the Channel breeze long after the last little straggler had disappeared into the grove beyond the village.

I stood looking after them. It may have been that there were tears in my eyes, for a peasant, passing, looked at me curiously. But I did not care. The camp still lived. The spirit of Number 22 was carrying on. It was all that mattered.