Frenchwoman Describes Her Experiences at Soissons

Printed Jan. 1915

Live in Daily Dread of Shrapnel as Bombardment Continues

Edinburgh, Scotland. — A letter has just been received here from a Frenchwoman whose home is in Soissons, long one of the hotly contested points on the French battlefront. She describes to her Scotch friend the misery of he inhabitants of the city. The Germans, it seems, were driven out, but not beyond the range of their big guns. The Frenchwoman did not desert her home. She says:

"We have to remain in our house, for we really could not bring ourselves to leave it and all our possessions, although most of the inhabitants have left the town.

"For three months the bombardment of the town has continued, sometimes for days and nights without ceasing, and then we hide in the cellar — you may guess how happy we are. We simply live in dread of the shrapnel, which is going to fall on our house and set it on fire and bury us in the ruins.

"You have no idea what terrible engines of war the Germans have. Seeing everything around us burn and fall to pieces, we live in a sort of nightmare. Everything in our quarter is demolished. Fortunately our house has so far escaped, though all the tiles are smashed and the windows broken by the force of the detonations. You may imagine how uncomfortable we are in this cold weather, and the terrible thing is that no one can say how long it will last.

"On their way back from the Marne the Germans took possession of all the quarries along the hills to the north, which they had carefully prepared on their way south with concrete and iron, making of them veritable forts. They are terribly clever, and now they are shelling Soissons from the quarries of Pasley, Clamency and Crouy, from which they can dominate all the main roads from the town. There is absolutely no chance of taking them by surprise, because from there they see everything that happens. They have got the light railway to Coucy, which enables them to revictual from the rear. From Coucy and Chauny they have the main lines right to Germany, so that they can bring up re-enforcements as they require them.

"They have driven away all inhabitants, and they take everything movable they come across.

"Quite a lot of English soldiers have been here — fine men and splendid horses (we have not a horse left in the district) — but now they have left this quarter and are in the north. They did well, too, and I am sorry for them where they are, for with the severe weather they are going to be very uncomfortable.

"We also had some of our own men from the south, and they were shivering with the cold, for now it is freezing hard. I forgot to tell you that Crouy, Cuffies, Vailly and all these villages you know so well are all razed to the ground — churches, houses, everything — nothing remains.

"As I write the bombardment commences afresh, and I must run. The room is shaking and the table dances. Who knows? It is perhaps our turn now, for as I told you, we await the shrapnel that is to finish us off."