Wars I Have Seen

by Gertrude Stein

  To-night Rome is taken, and now that Saint Odile’s prophecy is being fulfilled it is a pleasure and such a pleasure that it is not the end but the beginning of the end and it has taken everybody’s mind a little off their feelings about the bombardments in France about the civilians killed, it really is funny that feeling about civilians, well not funny exactly because it comes from the time when the army was not only made of professional soldiers but very often of mercenaries, and so the difference between soldiers and the inhabitants of a country, civilians were important, but it was really in the American civil war that they first began not to make that difference, the army was a civilian army and when Sherman made his march through Georgia and said war was hell, he said you had to destroy the granary upon which the enemy depended, and that was the quickest way to finish a war, but here in Europe, the armies are civilian armies that is to say made up of the whole population the whole male population, and so what is there really different between civilians and the army. Our little servant in Bilignin when some one began to speak about the bombardments in Germany killing women and children said but every German woman means ultimately seven German soldiers, in other words, scotch the snake in the egg, but actually almost every one does not feel that way about it, not here, they still think of the civilian population as a population entirely apart from the military one, and as they are very unhappy about it naturally I do not explain to them that we have the same thing now that we had in the civil war, we are the granary which now is the munition producing material of the enemy and their railroad communications and they are destroying them just as they did in Sherman’s march to the sea, by pulling up the railroad tracks everywhere, only now it is by means of bombardments, at the same time of course everybody does make fun of the Germans who always are the first to betake themselves to the fields and the mountain for safety, they are not courageous no they are not they all say of them, those birds as they call them, our visitors as they call them, no they say they are pantless Sadies, they are not courageous. It is funny and yet it is true, they are not courageous as other men are courageous they are not, it is true. But to-night Rome is taken and everybody has about forgotten the bombardments, and for the French to forgive and forget and forget and forgive is very easy just as easy as that. Rome is taken and Saint Odile says it is not the end but the beginning of the end.

  To-day when I was out walking with one of the women and we found some German soldiers they said most pitifully how do you do, we naturally said nothing, later on I was sitting with the wife of the mayor in front of her house a German soldier passed along the road and he politely bowed to us and said how do you do, what is it I said they have never done this before, do you think that they have received orders to do it now, no said she no, it is only Rome.

  She told me a story. Her husband has of course to always supply the Germans with whatever they ask for and they are always asking for something, very often they do not want it after it has been gotten for them. One day they wanted something and they asked the mayor to go with them to find it, he said yes of course politely as he always does, and they called for him in a closed car, and she was standing at the gate to see him go, the officer who was going with him said to her, Madame weep because we are taking your husband away. No said she her eyes sparkling courageously no I do not weep, no, but said he you should weep because we are taking your husband away. No said she no. I do not weep. And then the car went away, she said to me if I was going to cry I would not cry in front of them, But said I, did you cry, no she said because I did not believe it but my husband stayed away about three hours and the last hour was hard to bear but at last as I was standing at the gate I saw my husband coming around the corner. It was a relief. He said nothing to me about what had been said so I supposed he had not heard it so of course I said nothing. But said I why did the officer do it, to see if he could make me cry. Sadism I said, yes to make themselves feel masters.

  Well that was yesterday and to-day is the landing and we heard Eisenhower tell us he was here they were here and just yesterday a man sold us ten packages of Camel cigarettes, glory be, and we are singing glory hallelujah, and feeling very nicely, and everybody has been telephoning to us congratulatory messages upon my birthday which it isn’t but we know what they mean. And I said in return I hoped their hair was curling nicely, and we all hope it is, and to-day is the day.

  While I was out walking to-day I talked to a little girl who looked nine but was really fourteen, her people came from the neighborhood of Rome but they had been French for some time and the children all born in France, she said they were all small, she certainly was and we talked about eating, and she said she would like an orange, and I said how about a banana do you know what a banana is oh yes she said I used to eat them, but my younger brothers and sisters they never saw a banana, and some of them cannot remember an orange, well she said sighing the time will come yes it will of course one does need bread but one does need oranges and lemons and bananas too.

  To-day is only the third day of the landing and what a change, everybody openly making fun of the Germans, the girls leaning out of the window and singing the Marseillaise, and all the people in the village, so pleased because it has been said that this department the department of the Ain will be the first to be free and then the Savoy and the Haute Savoy, and indeed the mountain boys are at it, Bourg the biggest city in the department has been completely cut off by them from contact with any one, they have cut the railroads, they guard the railroads and they have interrupted the telephone, and they have occupied quite a few important towns round about, and the few Germans that are left are getting mighty uncomfortable, the fifty who are here were called to go and fight the mountain boys and they said they did not want to and their officer harangued them and then they had to go, but there were no trains and so they requisitioned the French trucks and some autocars and away they went, I was sitting with the wife of the mayor and we saw them going off to fight and it was a very great contrast to the German army of 1940, my gracious yes. They have just told us that when the Germans started to attack the mountain boys the mountain boys just climbed a little higher, and sometimes they do not trouble to fight, they just throw stones down and call out cuckoo, cuckoo, of course to the French a cuckoo is some one who has stolen somebody else’s nest. The Germans did not like being called cuckoo but what else can they do. The young people are all feeling very gay, the older ones naturally are worried but the young ones are feeling very gay.

  The mayors now have to have the whole responsibility of their towns, there are no communications, so they cannot get into touch with a higher authority, and so they are the ultimate authority, and they are very capable the French mayors, even in the smallest places. Ours is taking care of us very well, he has managed to get flour for bread and that is important because French people do not like to live by bread alone but without bread they cannot live at all, potatoes they say are filling but an hour after you are as hungry as before while bread is really sustaining so they must have bread and so far our mayor has managed it for us. It would be nice if ours would be the first department to be completely freed of Germans, perhaps, the mountain boys around here are very active, and it would be nice.

  A buzzard has carried off one after the other three of our baby chickens, that is natural the hunters usually shoot enough buzzards every year so that they do not steal baby chickens, but after three years of not hunting, the air is full of buzzards full of buzzards.

  And full of everything just now but mostly rumors. There are however some funny true stories, the mountain boys the other day came into Amberieu and one of them got into the post office and sounded the alerte, the whole population and the Germans ran away supposing it was a bombardment and the mountain boys went into the round house and blew up a quantity of locomotives and left before the Germans got back. The latest rumor is that Belley is held by the mountain boys but one thing is certain at the station here no trains pass, I was around the station this afternoon and
I never saw a railroad station so dead not since in my youth I crossed the continent during the Pullman strike and what else can we do, it is the third time that we have been deprived of the telephones and this time fortunately they have left us electricity and the radio, which is a pleasure. But for how long this we do not know, anyway the landing goes on and when we hear the official French announcement that the Germans are perfectly calm, we know better, they are not, what we are afraid of now is that German deserters will try to get into the house, one did to-day, he said he was looking for a German lady, but as we are well up the mountain and not in the town it sounded fishy. Basket barks and barks as if he were a savage dog instead of a lamb which is just as well. Everything is going on that is to say nothing is going on no trains no mail no telephone, nothing coming and going except a few unfortunates, I saw one to-day who seemed a little queer, and there is a noonday hush all over the place all day long, the Germans are requisitioning more and more enormous logs to get themselves barricaded, away from the mountain boys and everybody chuckles they say much good that will do them, there are according to all calculations about three thousand of them in the whole department and as the mountain boys are killing them a few at a time it may take some time but on the other hand, they are stuck they can go up and down the road a distance of about fifty kilometers and then they have to come back again, all the youth are joining up with their friends, the police too, our friend came to see us from Belley yesterday Sunday and everything is peaceful except that everywhere the mountain boys guard the roads but they are very polite and help shove the cars when they get stuck, everybody for the moment is very polite, the mayor on his bicycle goes around gathering in food from the surrounding country to feed his population and so far has succeeded very well, the only thing that is a great trouble, is when there is a need for surgical operations and it is very difficult to get a conveyance, the men with the taxis are always getting their cars out of order to avoid going around with the Germans and they are frightened of putting them in order in order to take the French, but by the end of the week it is now the first Sunday since the landing everybody expects that the Germans will be gone. And they will, yes they will. My gracious they are all happy not the Germans but the population, even those who were collabo as they call them are happy why not they were collabo because they were afraid afraid of communism and afraid of Germans and then too the Germans to some French people did seem to be so strong but now well they are weak nobody uses the phrase that used to annoy us so they are still strong, and so there are no collabos because now that the Anglo-Americans have proved themselves so strong they are less afraid of communism and they are not at all afraid of Germans not at all so the rejoicing is practically universal, a little frightened still but complete. Some one has just told me about how the mountain boys in Bellegarde have taken German prisoners and have put them to work picking potato bugs off the potato plants, the only agricultural activity that every French man woman and child hates, they are looking forward to the clearance of the pests completely by the German prisoners. Everybody is delighted they say potatoes came from America and the potato pest seems to have come over these recent years from America and now because of America they have been able to take German prisoners here very far away from the Americans to be sure and these prisoners can spend their days destroying the potato bugs off the potato plants.

  Are we excited yes we certainly are all around us there is fighting, the conversation in the village sounds exactly like the communiqués of the Yugo-Slavs in their early days of guerrilla fighting only we have we hope one great advantage, the Germans cannot get reinforcements because all the railways are cut and all the roads guarded by the mountain boys and anyway these days the Germans have other uses for their men even if they could send them here which they cannot. All day long the Germans rush forward and back through the town they requisition all the trucks and alas with their French drivers and then they go first in one direction and then in a very short time back they come with guns sticking out in every direction, the other day they stationed such cannon as they had everywhere in the village and we all a little fearfully went down to look at them and then later in the day they took them all away, there had been no fighting, they had been told when they were elsewhere that the mountain boys were here but they were not of course they were not, that is what wears the Germans out to be continually going where there is nobody and then when not expecting having a truck with its German contents blown off the road suddenly, we are in the high hills and of course that kind of thing happens easily with everybody against them and helping the others, it must be pretty awful to be surrounded but completely surrounded by hate, it must be pretty awful really pretty awful. One German told the baker who had been a prisoner in the last war and so had learned a little German that the population had better be a little careful, he himself did not mind very much when the children called him a pig but there were others of them that might and there might be trouble. Sometimes there are a lot of them in the village and sometimes very few but few or many they certainly do look worn out, and the mountain boys do kill and wound a lot of them there were five ambulances came over from Aix, German ones of course and big ones, to take off the wounded in yesterday’s fighting, and the German captain who was here has just been caught at Amberieu. The mountain boys do not stay in the towns, they keep to the hills descending into the town to barricade all the roads and then they go back to the hills, they are always up and down, they have cut all the telephone and telegraph wires, and so the Germans cannot communicate with each other and they have to go on the road, the other day just a little further along an Italian in the ditch at the side of the road killed two motor cyclists as they were going along, and then he quietly got out of the ditch and went on, how can the Germans tell which is which, they cannot, it is most exciting, nobody works except in their gardens because the railroad and the few factories that are here have stopped working there being no material and no way of sending things in or out, it is a mighty effective blockade and the Germans who are gradually getting killed can really do very little except move forward and back they should have gotten out as soon as communication with Italy was cut, because after that there was no reason for their staying here, but they are slow, they always manage to do everything just too late, just too late, thank heaven they do. I suppose they are human but they do look pretty awful, and even in their most uppish days they were awfully dead and alive more dead than alive. This is not a prejudice it is a fact.

  We are excited.

  Perhaps the department of the Ain will be the first department to be completely cleared of the Boches. That would be nice.

  They are fighting all around us this afternoon I was raking the hay with a neighbor and we heard the sound of cannon fairly near, nobody seems to know very much of what is happening, the mayor who is usually very well informed has no time to think about things like that, he has to find calves to butcher to give us all something to eat, we ourselves are very well off because they have been bringing us fish and nice lake fish they are, the bread question not so serious for us because we do not eat much bread but terribly serious for the French population, potatoes no matter how many they eat after an hour or two leave them hungry, but since either the mountain boys or the Germans cut down trees to bar the roads that lead to the mills that grind the corn even if the mayor can get some wheat together how can it turn into bread, but there is always the Savoy, mysteriously the Savoy always has everything, some one has just given us a kilo of delicious fresh butter from the Savoy and the mayor is hoping he really is hoping to get flour from the Savoy, the Savoy is always rich in food no matter what happens you can always get meat and fish and fowl and butter and cheese and honey from the Savoy and meat, I do not know why this is so but it is so and as we are just across the river Rhone from the Savoy we do not fare too badly, even if we are completely cut off from the rest of the world which we certainly are. To-day for the first time since the landing we had some letters from Ly
on they came from the Swiss consul who has charge of American interests and they solemnly ask us to make out a paper stating if we wish or do not wish to be repatriated. It is a charming thought, ten days after the landing in France the American authorities seem to be quite certain that as soon as they like they can repatriate all Americans still in France. We giggled we said that is optimism. Naturally American authorities not really realising what it is to live in an occupied country ask you to put down your religion your property and its value, as if anybody would as long as the Germans are in the country and in a position to take letters and read them if they want to. The American authorities say they are in a hurry for these facts but I imagine that all Americans will feel the same better keep quiet until the Germans are gone just naturally play possum just as long as one can. Just that.

  It is a queer state living as we are all doing, you have no news except for the radio because there are no newspapers any more and no trains no mail no telephone and even going to Belley is impossible there are twenty-three barricades between here and there a distance of seventeen kilometers. As I say we live within the village completely within it, the Germans rush forward and back there are distant sounds of cannonading, some villages have been burned and that is all anybody knows. The Germans threatened to make a curfew at six o’clock and keep all vehicles including bicycles off the road, but the mayor told the Germans it was impossible as it is too hot to take the animals to pasture before half past five it is too hot and nobody can work in the fields until four because it is too hot, and as in France fields are a considerable distance from the house and now it is haying time carts have to move around so the Germans agreed and now the curfew is at nine o’clock.