They knew not in ninety–nine cases out of a hundred where they were going; their only destination was summed up in the words, "Away from the Front"—away from the ominous rumbling which began to get louder, away from that western horizon which was beginning to have a lurid glow at nights, like a sunset prolonged to dawn.
Then, as the Germans advanced more and more, the character of the tide changed, the civilian element was outnumbered by the military. Companies, battalions, brigades, sometimes in good order, sometimes in no order, marched through the village. They would often halt for a short time, and the officers would come up to the house, where my mother and I gave them what we could. My father lived amongst his books and accounts, and bemoaned the extravagance of the war. Then there were the deserters, the stragglers, the walking wounded, the—but you know, my Karl, what an army in retreat means.
I must proceed with my story, for time moves relentlessly on.
One day a desperately wounded officer, a young Lieutenant of the Guard, a boy of twenty–five, was taken out of a motor ambulance to die.
The ambulance had stopped opposite our gates, and lying on his stretcher he had seen our garden, my garden. He knew he was to die, and he had begged with tears in his eyes to the doctor that he might be left in the garden.
Who could refuse him?
He died within two hours, amongst our flowers, with Alex and I at his side.
Before he died, he begged us, implored us, almost ordered us, to move east before it was too late.
We repeated his arguments to my father, but the latter was obdurate, and he swore that a regiment of angels would not move him from his ancestral home. So we made up our minds to stay.
Things got worse and worse, and one day shells fell in the grounds and we hid in the cellars. That night all our servants ran away, and my father cursed them for cowards. Next day in the early morning we heard machine guns fire outside the village, and then all was still.
At six o'clock Alex, white–faced, came running into the house. He had been down to the gates and he had seen the enemy. They were drunk, he said, and going down the street firing the houses and shooting the people as they came out.
It seemed impossible and yet it was true. It was growing dark, when we heard shouts and saw lights, and from the top of the house I saw a crowd of singing and shouting soldiers, with pine torches, half running, half walking up the drive.
They massed in a body opposite the house. Paralysed with terror, I looked down on the scene, and shuddered to see that every second man seemed to have a bottle. One of them fired a shot at the house, and next I remember a flood of light on the drive, and, in the circle of light, my father standing with hand raised. What my father intended can never be known, for, as he paused and faced the mob, a solitary shot rang out, and he fell in a huddled heap.
As he fell, a boyish voice from the door shouted "Murderers!" It was Alex. With his little pistol I had given him for a birthday present in his hand, he ran forward and, standing over my father's body, head thrown back, he pointed his pistol at the mob and fired twice. A man dropped, there was a flash of steel, the crowd surged forward, and—and, oh! my Karl, they had murdered my beloved brother, my darling Alex.
The next moment they were in the house. I escaped from my window on to the roof of the dairy, and from there down a water–pipe, across the yard to an old hay–loft. For a long time they ran in and out of the house, like ants, looting and pillaging; then there was a great shout, and for some time not a soul came out of the house. I guessed they had got into the cellars. At about midnight I saw that the house was on fire. In a few minutes it was an inferno and the drunken soldiers came pouring out, firing their rifles in all directions.
