On the Edge of the War Zone: From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and StripesAldrich, Mildred
History
On the Edge of the War Zone: From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes
Aldrich, Mildred
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Well, we are beginning to get a little light--we foreigners--on our
situation. On February 2, I was ordered to present myself again at the
mairie. I obeyed the summons the next morning, and was told that
the military authorities were to provide all foreigners inside the zone
des armées, and all foreigners outside, who, for any reason, needed
to enter the zone, with what is called a "carnet d'étrangère," and that,
once I got that, I would have the privilege of asking for a permission
to circulate, but, until that document was ready, I must be content not
to leave my commune, nor to ask for any sort of a sauf-conduit.
I understand that this regulation applies even to the doctors and
infirmières, and ambulance drivers of all the American units at work in
France. I naturally imagine that some temporary provision must be
made for them in the interim.
I had to make a formal petition for this famous carnet, and to furnish
the military authorities with two photographs--front view,--size and
form prescribed.
I looked at the mayor's secretary and asked him how the Old Scratch
--I said frankly diable--I was to get photographed when he had
forbidden me to leave my commune, and knew as well as I that there
was no photographer here.
Quite seriously he wrote me a special permit to go to Couilly where
there is a man who can photograph. He wrote on it that it was good
for one day, and the purpose of the trip "to be photographed by the
order of the mayor in order to get my carnet d'étrangère," and he
solemnly presented it to me, without the faintest suspicion that it was
humorous.
Between you and me, I did not even use it. I had still one of the
photographs made for my passport and other papers. Amélie carried
it to Couilly and had it copied. Very few people would recognize me by
it. It is the counterfeit presentment of a smiling, fat old lady, but it is
absolutely réglementaire in size and form, and so will pass muster. I
have seen some pretty queer portraits on civil papers.
We are promised these carnets in the course of "a few weeks," so,
until then, you can think of me as, to all intents and purposes, really
interned.
It may interest you to know that on the 9th,--just a week ago--a
Zeppelin nearly got to Meaux. It was about half past eleven in the
evening when the drums beat "lights out," along the hillside. There
weren't many to put out, for everyone is in bed at that hour, and we
have no street-lights, but an order is an order. The only result of the
drum was to call everyone out of bed, in the hope "to see a Zeppelin."
We neither heard nor saw anything.
Amélie said with a grin next morning, "Eh, bien, only one thing is
needed to complete our experiences--that a bomb should fall shy of
its aim--the railroad down there--and wipe Huiry off the map, and write
it in history."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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