June 23rd LA PANNE.
The particular hive that has taken us in is at the extreme end of
the esplanade, where asphalt and iron railings lapse abruptly into
sand and sea-grass. When I looked out of my window this morning I
saw only the endless stretch of brown sand against the grey roll of
the Northern Ocean and, on a crest of the dunes, the figure of a
solitary sentinel. But presently there was a sound of martial music,
and long lines of troops came marching along the esplanade and down
to the beach. The sands stretched away to east and west, a great
"field of Mars" on which an army could have manoeuvred; and the
morning exercises of cavalry and infantry began. Against the brown
beach the regiments in their dark uniforms looked as black as
silhouettes; and the cavalry galloping by in single file suggested a
black frieze of warriors encircling the dun-coloured flanks of an
Etruscan vase. For hours these long-drawn-out movements of troops
went on, to the wail of bugles, and under the eye of the lonely
sentinel on the sand-crest; then the soldiers poured back into the
town, and La Panne was once more a busy common-place _bain-de-mer_.
The common-placeness, however, was only on the surface; for as one
walked along the esplanade one discovered that the town had become a
citadel, and that all the doll's-house villas with their silly
gables and sillier names--"Seaweed," "The Sea-gull," "Mon Repos,"
and the rest--were really a continuous line of barracks swarming
with Belgian troops. In the main street there were hundreds of
soldiers, pottering along in couples, chatting in groups, romping
and wrestling like a crowd of school-boys, or bargaining in the
shops for shell-work souvenirs and sets of post-cards; and between
the dark-green and crimson uniforms was a frequent sprinkling of
khaki, with the occasional pale blue of a French officer's tunic.
Before luncheon we motored over to Dunkerque. The road runs along
the canal, between grass-flats and prosperous villages. No signs of
war were noticeable except on the road, which was crowded with motor
vans, ambulances and troops. The walls and gates of Dunkerque rose
before us as calm and undisturbed as when we entered the town the
day before yesterday. But within the gates we were in a desert. The
bombardment had ceased the previous evening, but a death-hush lay on
the town, Every house was shuttered and the streets were empty. We
drove to the Place Jean Bart, where two days ago we sat at tea in
the hall of the hotel. Now there was not a whole pane of glass in
the windows of the square, the doors of the hotel were closed, and
every now and then some one came out carrying a basketful of plaster
from fallen ceilings. The whole surface of the square was literally
paved with bits of glass from the hundreds of broken windows, and at
the foot of David's statue of Jean Bart, just where our motor had
stood while we had tea, the siege-gun of Dixmude had scooped out a
hollow as big as the crater at Nieuport.
Though not a house on the square was touched, the scene was one of
unmitigated desolation. It was the first time we had seen the raw
wounds of a bombardment, and the freshness of the havoc seemed to
accentuate its cruelty. We wandered down the street behind the hotel
to the graceful Gothic church of St. Eloi, of which one aisle had
been shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor
_bourgeois_ house that had had its whole front torn away. The
squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling
bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and
wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded
church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the
poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly
exposed in the glare of a great misfortune.
A few people stood in clusters looking up at the ruins, or strayed
aimlessly about the streets. Not a loud word was heard. The air
seemed heavy with the suspended breath of a great city's activities:
the mournful hush of Dunkerque was even more oppressive than the
death-silence of Ypres. But when we came back to the Place Jean Bart
the unbreakable human spirit had begun to reassert itself. A handful
of children were playing in the bottom of the crater, collecting
"specimens" of glass and splintered brick; and about its rim the
market-people, quietly and as a matter of course, were setting up
their wooden stalls. In a few minutes the signs of German havoc
would be hidden behind stacks of crockery and household utensils,
and some of the pale women we had left in mournful contemplation of
the ruins would be bargaining as sharply as ever for a sauce-pan or
a butter-tub. Not once but a hundred times has the attitude of the
average French civilian near the front reminded me of the gallant
cry of Calanthea in _The Broken Heart:_ "Let me die smiling!" I
should have liked to stop and spend all I had in the market of
Dunkerque...
All the afternoon we wandered about La Panne. The exercises of the
troops had begun again, and the deploying of those endless black
lines along the beach was a sight of the strangest beauty. The sun
was veiled, and heavy surges rolled in under a northerly gale.
Toward evening the sea turned to cold tints of jade and pearl and
tarnished silver. Far down the beach a mysterious fleet of fishing
boats was drawn up on the sand, with black sails bellying in the
wind; and the black riders galloping by might have landed from them,
and been riding into the sunset out of some wild northern legend.
Presently a knot of buglers took up their stand on the edge of the
sea, facing inward, their feet in the surf, and began to play; and
their call was like the call of Roland's horn, when he blew it down
the pass against the heathen. On the sandcrest below my window the
lonely sentinel still watched...
