Read Ebook: Life in the War Zone by Atherton Gertrude Franklin Horn

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Nevertheless, it had a character of its own! Every hundred yards or so along the base of the houses I noticed a pile of sand bags and a poster printed in heavy black letters and numbers: "Cave vout?e, pour 100 personnes." It was very hot but my brains were not addled. Bar-le-Duc is subject to frequent air raids and many have been killed by the bombs, which do not bury themselves in the earth, by the way, but explode as they touch and scatter death far and wide. These were the famous stone cellars into which the population tumbles p?le-m?le the moment the whistles shriek. I wondered if it would be my lot to spend a few hours in one of those damp "caves" with a mass of sweltering humanity. Almost I would brave the taube.

I must have walked fully a kilometer from that station, when, asking once more to be directed to the Hotel du Commerce, I was told that I stood before it. I looked up and saw faded letters confirming the fact, and then along its lower front in search of a door. The only mode of ingress, a large archway, apparently led to the rear. As I dislike asking too many questions, I explored this vaulted passageway and came upon a door at the side. I opened it without ceremony and found myself in quite the dirtiest cashier's office I have ever seen. ....

The girl was even more impertinent and indifferent than the one at Ch?lons. As girls are now scarce in the war zone, no doubt the few left become spoiled with too much attention. There was a dining room beyond, and I determined to banish my midday hunger before entering upon further adventures. There are two things that the French, no matter of what degree, morals, manners, or disposition, invariably understand, and those are politeness and formality. You gain nothing by sharpness or hauteur; on the contrary, you stand to lose all. When Americans attempt familiarity with strangers they receive contempt. Bearing this principle in mind, one can never go wrong in France.

As the dining room beyond and, no doubt, the hotel itself, was crowded with officers, there was a manifest intention on the young woman's part to treat me as if I did not exist. I, therefore, inquired in my best manner if I could leave my things in the office and have d?je?ner. She nodded and I went into a long, low, crowded dining room, which, had it not been for the uniforms, would have looked exactly like a Western eating shed. There was a seat vacant at one of the longer tables, to which I made my way unescorted. The entire company was waited on by two boys of about 16. They looked distracted. The tablecloth was soiled, but I was prepared to accept trifling variations upon ordinary standards with equanimity. I secured the attention of one of the boys, and, being left to my own devices for some time, my eyes, after wandering up and down the room, fell once more upon the table. I made another discovery. It was covered with flies. Large, torpid, viscous flies. I had a vision of these flies rising in a dark cloud from the battlefields of Verdun and traveling to Bar-le-Duc on top of the hundreds of covered army wagons that go back and forth daily.

While I was digesting this horrid fact a plate of potatoes swimming in oil was placed before me. I waved it away. Oil to me is more abhorrent than milk. It was succeeded by a dish of tripe. I covered my eyes and shuddered. C'est la guerre. Oh, yes. But--Mon Dieu!

I managed to make a spare meal of mutton that tasted as if killed an hour before, and dry potatoes, but dared not touch the water, and rose from that table in the least possible time, determined to accomplish the object of my visit during the afternoon and return to Paris that night. I did not even want to look at the upper rooms. Turpentine I felt would avail not in this hotel, which looked a thousand years old and resurrected from the dead.

I returned to the office. There was now an older woman there, and, chastened by years and the rivalry of youth, she answered my questions amiably. No, there was not a conveyance of any sort to be had in the city. How, then, was I to find the Commissaire of Police and have my carnet rouge vis?d, how visit the hospitals, which were out of town? She could not say. Then I bethought me once more of the letter given me by the War Office. I would go straight to military headquarters and ask them for an automobile. She vaguely directed me, and once more I started forth, leaving my things in her charge. The woman had told me to turn to the right. As I was leaving the girl called out that I must turn to the left. I revolved with that helpless feeling one has occasionally in the war zone, and they both began to talk at once, as is the habit of French people of that class when giving advice. If they had been ten they would all have talked at once and advised me differently.

It was cool under the trees and I was glad to rest. The soldier sent me an encouraging smile occasionally and finally made a triumphant signal indicating that the military nabobs were coming. A moment later several imposing figures marched past. They were chatting amiably and I was thankful that destiny had so arranged matters that I was to ask my favors of them after lunch. I knew they had not d?jeuned at the Hotel du Commerce.

I was summoned to the presence immediately. They acted exactly as I had anticipated, for they were Frenchmen, and gentlemen, and of exceeding importance. Of course they read the letter at once; in fact, I shoved it under their noses before they had time to say "How do you do?" and when I asked for an automobile assented promptly.

"Will you give your man orders to get me back to the station for the 5:20 train?" I asked. "I will not sleep in that hotel or eat another meal there if I have to walk back to Paris." They laughed sympathetically and assured me that I should accomplish the object of my visit in comfort and take my train. The chauffeur would take the best of care of me.

So it proved. I visited both of the great hospitals, Savoni?res and H?pital Central, inside of an hour, for a military automobile goes like lightning and turns aside for no one. The former hospital is situated in a beautiful park some distance from Bar-le-Duc, and the greater one in a cup of the hills, and looks like a new Western mining town. There are some twenty or thirty barracks, two of concrete; but it is so unmistakably a hospital and nothing else that a taube recently had no difficulty in picking out the main building and dropping a bomb in the operating room. It killed two men on the tables.

It is not my purpose to describe the hospitals here. I visited them in behalf of Le Bien?tre du Bless?, and later, when writing more fully of that oeuvre, shall describe these and other military hospitals which receive the wounded straight from Verdun. There had been few during the last two or three days, they told me, and the guns were still silent.

My amiable chauffeur then took me for a drive within the city limits, and once more I saw a silent shuttered town. No doubt the greater part of the population had been evacuated , but I saw thousands of military wagons and a signpost with an arrow painted on it and the words "? Verdun." It brought it pretty close, but I reflected that this was about as close as I would get. As we approached the station I observed that the roof looked as if it had been through a hurricane, and my driver nodded. Yes, they dropped a bomb there every once and a while. They usually came about 5 o'clock. It was now 3 and I had two hours and twenty minutes to wait in that station.

However, it was easy to get out of, the sky was so blue and clear that the taubes could be seen a long way off, and I certainly did not propose to wait until 5:20 in that hotel. I had retrieved my belongings, visited the police, and there was nothing to do but make myself as comfortable as possible and read Dumas.

The station was already packed with soldiers waiting for various trains. They move so constantly, these poilus, they produce an impression of indescribable confusion. I have never seen them betray the least excitement, any more than I have ever surprised an expression of anxiety on their cheerful faces, but the repose of their officers is unknown to them. Their bodies and their tongues never cease from movement. I often wonder if they ever feel tired. They look as if they could endure Verduns for the term of their natural lives.

There was a small first class waiting room and I took refuge in it. An officer was asleep on a bench. Another was talking to his mother and there were two other women in the room. Presently there entered a drunken Algerian soldier. He was very drunk and he carried a gun almost as tall as himself. As he was out of place in a ladies' waiting room two poilus entered and attempted to induce him to leave. He shouted defiance and, lifting his gun, flung it to the floor with a crash. It made such a noise that the soldiers without surged to the doorway. It is to our credit that not one of the women jumped. He repeated this performance four times, and we sat quite still and looked at him with curiosity.

If any one had told me a month earlier that I should sit unmoved while a drunken soldier flung a loaded gun on the floor in front of me--twice it pointed directly at me--I should have dismissed him as a contemptible flatterer. But there is something about this military area--well you simply experience no sensations at all. You are in the zone of death. Human life has no value whatever. You, too, suddenly become as callous as if inoculated.

He was led out, and I opened my book. But the room was very warm. I asked the doorkeeper to let me wait for the train on the platform beside the tracks. Of course he refused. Petty officials never deviate from their cast-iron rules. However, he was a r?form?, with one arm, and I determined to take a base advantage of him. The next time he had occasion to open the door I was behind him, and I walked out and seated myself on a bench in the fresh air. "Now," I said, "here I am, and here I shall stay. What are you going to do to me?" For a moment he scowled at me, then shrugged his shoulders and walked away. A few moments later the other women followed my example, and we sat and talked, occasionally glancing up through the shattered glass roof; particularly as the hour of 5 approached.

One of the women, who looked like a farmer's wife, judging by her dress and the large basket she held on her lap, told me that she had come from the south of France to the H?pital Central just too late to see her boy, who was dead of typhoid fever. Once or twice she looked as if she were going to cry, but did not. The mothers of France are stoics these days.

No taubes appeared, and I slept in Paris. The next day I took my wrath to the War Office. I now have a promise of a military automobile for a trip to R?vigny, Nancy and Remiramont. No Rheims, no Verdun--unless we can cajole some General within the lines. It is astonishing the high value the French place upon the life of a mere woman. James M. Beck visited Amiens on his way from England to Paris, and within two days of his arrival went off on a tour of the immediate front. The day after his return, off he went again with Owen Johnson, to call on General Joffre. I reminded my friends in the War Office that men were as easily killed as women, even American men. But they seem to think that the explosion of an American woman, especially if she happened to be "of a prominence," would make too much noise in the world to be agreeable. They have trouble enough on their hands.

PARIS, August 18.

Once more I was summoned to the War Office, this time to be informed that although they wanted me to feel satisfied and really see something of the great drama, they would not take the responsibility of sending me so far into the military zone unless I obtained the personal escort of an American Army officer. And where, I demanded, was I to find an American Army officer in Paris? They suggested the American Clearing House.

I took my troubles to Mr. Beatty, through whose hands, expert and generous, so many millions' worth of donations have passed for the benefit of afflicted France, and who seems to respond automatically to the most unreasonable demand. For me he produced an American Army officer six feet high, very imposing and distinguished, and the matter was settled.

We started on the following Tuesday--Major C., Mme. Lyon, a mechanician, and our driver, Monsieur G. B., whom I shall call the Lieutenant to avoid confusion, although as a matter of fact, and to his natural chagrin, there were no stripes on his sleeve. Refused for the army on account of an accident to his shoulder in boyhood, which prevented him from handling a gun properly, he had offered his services as driver at the outbreak of the war. Like many others, he anticipated a short war, or he would have gone as interpreter to the British Army ; that way lies promotion, and for the driver there is none. As he is a young man, wealthy, pampered, living his own life in his own way up to August, 1914, he is now no doubt enjoying the novel experience of hard and incessant work, constant danger and unremitting discipline, with no hope of reward. It was our gain, for he was altogether charming, and it was impossible to pity him, as, gay and grim, he certainly was determined to do what he could do for his country.

The Marquise d'Andign? , the President of Le Bien?tre du Bless?, was to have been one of the party, but as she was detained at the last minute I was asked to visit the hospitals in her place and ascertain which had received supplies and what each needed most. We started at 7:30 from Paris in admirable weather.

Traveling by automobile in the war zone is far more complicated than by train. Even in a gray military car, with two men in horizon blue on the front seat, you are held up at the entrance and exit of every town and hamlet, and often half way between, by the sudden appearance of a sentinel in the middle of the road, holding his gun horizontally above his head. He is accompanied by two others, who examine your papers, and if they possess the average quick intelligence of their race they make short work of it. If the first in authority happens to be slow, conscientious, and suspicious, he will pore over the papers for five minutes, and not infrequently disappear with them into his hut. Once they held us up so long in the blazing sun that our Lieutenant, who was not a patient mortal, poked his head into one of these tiny headquarters and demanded what was the matter, while even Major C. had visions of being turned back. They would give no answer until the Lieutenant made a second invasion, and then they informed him that they could not understand why the papers indicated four men and one woman in the party and the automobile contained two women. Mme. Lyon's first name is Martin! Why they could not have come out and asked instead of wasting their time and ours can only be explained by the fact that to a Frenchman time is nothing.

All this, save for the heat, concerned me not at all. I had not a second's responsibility on this trip. Major C. and the Lieutenant carried the papers, and although I am a feminist and admit no inferiority to man except in the matter of physical prowess, personally, when I have a man to take care of me, I am as meek as a lamb. He is welcome to all the responsibility and all the work. I never worry him by a suggestion. Our American officer in his khaki uniform, sitting like a ramrod on one of the single seats of the tonneau, inspired both curiosity and respect and spent a good part of his days returning salutes.

Our adventures were almost too insignificant to mention. I, alas! am a mascot. If I were taken to the front and given the hospitality of a trench I am positive that the guns for some inscrutable reason would be paralyzed. It has always been as if some mysterious force surrounded me, permitting me to see all that is necessary for my work at a safe distance, but saving even my nerves from shock. During the San Francisco earthquake I was in Berkeley! It is very annoying. I should have liked an adventurous life.

Nevertheless, the trip, which lasted four days, was more than interesting. It was as unlike traversing the war zone by train as possible. In the first place the roads, which I expected to see cut to pieces by the enormous amount of artillery and heavy camions that have rumbled over them constantly during the last two years, were in perfect condition. I don't know when they work on these roads, but while we were in the war zone there was but one short stretch under repair, and they were as dusty as California roads in Summer time. We must have passed during these four days no less than several thousand of these covered army wagons, great and small, which convey to the front every war commodity from soldiers to beef. I asked our Lieutenant how many of these camions France possessed and he said that, although he had never seen the amount stated, each was numbered and he had seen numbers as high as 130,000. This, of course, included every sort of vehicle, and we saw many kitchen wagons. The cooks, by the way, are among the heroes of the war and perish in large numbers.

If I was forced to complain of an unnatural calm during my first two visits into the war zone I had my fill of noise and incessant motion on this trip. Aside from the gray lumbering camions in their clouds of dust, there were, every few miles, "parcs" of artillery, the famous seventy-fives, hundreds of them, either undergoing repairs or awaiting demand. Of course, these parcs were filled with soldiers and their officers, and, indeed, before the end of those four days, it seemed to me that there must be as many men in the further precincts of the war zone doing practically nothing as there were at the front.

In certain of the larger towns, which for obvious reasons must not be named, the streets were so packed with soldiers that the car was obliged to crawl. All of these men were frankly loafing. Some of them were resting after the prescribed number of days in the trench, but as many more had never been to the front at all. They were ordered into the war zone that they might be on hand when needed, but meanwhile they were amusing themselves as best they could, and the majority looked bored. In one beautiful little town through which the Germans did not pass during their retreat from the Marne, I saw a number of soldiers seated on the banks of a stream fishing. Their only excitement they owe to the frequent visits of the taubes, but whether they avail themselves of the cellars hospitably marked "Cave Vout?e," I forgot to ask. Probably not.

Every estaminet, every restaurant and the "terrasse" before it with the little round white tables, was crowded, as well as the twisted streets and the frequent "place," with these soldiers in their faded blue, which, at a distance, seems to melt before your eyes. They hung from the windows, they gossiped at the pump, they mused on the bridges, and they were lined up in the fields just outside the towns, practicing arm exercise, one, two, three, four. Officers also strolled about, three and four in a party. Even in the villages, those old gray villages consisting of one long crooked street, widening to a "place" in the centre and embracing several "farms," there were often many soldiers home on leave, smoking in front of their houses or playing with their children.

On the other hand, we passed through many more of these villages without seeing a man. The women sat out of doors sewing, and the children swarmed. It is the bourgeoisie which has reduced the birth rate in France. The aristocracy and the poor have large families. Ever since my arrival I have heard almost daily of working class families of anywhere from five to sixteen children. In the great valleys through which we passed these children played bareheaded, but in the Vosges, where it rains most of the time, all the little boys wore military caps.

I also saw a large number of soldiers in the peaceful fields beside the noisy roads, and was told they had been sent by the authorities to help with the harvesting. I shall always be glad that I have seen "with my own eyes" something of the immense number of men that France still has at her disposal, and has not yet been able to use. And, as I have said before, they are nearly all big fellows. It is only the men of the south, of the Midi, that are small, and by no means all of those.

An amusing story came from Bulgaria while I was in Paris, and was sent by Joseph Reinach to Figaro. The Crown Prince of Germany invited the two older sons of the Bulgarian King to visit his headquarters before Verdun and be present at its downfall. The young men accepted the invitation, remained a month, then, very much bored, excused themselves and went home. "What impressed you the most?" their father asked. They replied simultaneously: "The resistance of the French."

The fields devoid of soldiers were a picturesque sight with the women in blue print frocks and white sunbonnets. Old and young, they were hard at work harvesting, and the children played among the stacks. In some of the hotels where we stopped either overnight or for luncheon we saw officers and their families, who had joined them here to save two or more precious days of their short leave. And there was more than one bride and bridegroom. Strange honeymoon, within sound of the guns that promised a quick disunion. The faces of the older wives looked philosophically happy, but those of the young women were drawn and pale. Life was beginning in tragedy; and no doubt twenty years hence they will be as torn with anxiety for their absent sons.

It was in a large and handsome hotel in Nancy where we spent the first night of our journey that I saw so many of these couples and reunited families; as it was as admirably run as in times of peace, I should like to give its name, but forbear lest it incur the just wrath of the enemy.

Nancy is little over five miles from the front, so that the roar of the guns may be heard plainly. It is bombarded by cannons now and again, but I missed one of these delicate attentions by two days. The "caves" are indicated by the double cross of the House of Lorraine, for Taubes are among the daily commonplaces in Nancy.

Major C., our Lieutenant and I were at dinner in the dining-room about eight o'clock , when the iron shutters were hastily lowered and the ma?tre d'h?tel came to our table and said solemnly: "It is my duty to tell you that there is a taube over the city and to ask you to go to the cellars." "Are you going?" I asked my companions. "Certainly not." they replied simultaneously and without raising their eyes from their excellent meal. I concluded that the bright restaurant with two men to protect me was infinitely preferable to a dark, damp, rat-infested cellar and sat tight. In a moment we heard a fusillade; the guns were searching out the invader. But whether the taube dropped a bomb or not no one remembered to inquire!

The next morning at six, Madame Lyon, hearing a noise, opened her window and looked out. A group of people were staring upward, and following their gaze she saw a taube surrounded by five French airplanes, which finally drove it off. I, alas! missed this thrilling sight, for although I was awake I was listening so intently to the guns at the front, only nine kilometres away, that I heard nothing else.

PARIS, August 15.

In Nancy we met Miss Polk and Miss Ethel Crocker of California, who are associated with Princess Poniatowska in a projected work of reconstruction. It is her aim to raise a large amount of money in her native State and rebuild a certain number of the wrecked towns and villages in the war zone. This is a truly great idea, and will redound to the glory of California, which, with the entire West, lags far behind New York and other Eastern States in practical sympathy for the sufferers of this war; but all the same I hope they will let the ruins alone and build the new towns beside them. In the first place, these ruins should be a source of revenue to France from tourists after the war is over, amounting to many millions of francs , and, in the second place, a certain type of smug American, who, without experience or imagination, has refused to believe in the attendant horrors of war, should be encouraged to visit these deliberately wrecked towns and hear at first hand far worse stories than even Lord Bryce has printed. This is the type that always asks; "Now, did you ever meet anybody who really has seen these things, or did somebody hear it from somebody else?" &c. Well, let these self-righteous citizens, who have grown fat on the European war, take a motor trip through the ruined district a year hence and spend an hour or two with the survivors.

It is, of course, legitimate to bombard any town during a battle, if care is taken to spare great monuments, but not deliberately to set fire to it, house by house, when retreating in fury after having missed victory by a hair. When traveling through stark fire ruins of whole towns like Sermaize and Gerb?viller, to say nothing of countless villages, and cities half destroyed, like R?vigny and certain sections of Nancy, it was natural to remember the prophetic words of Heine about his own country: "Christianity has in a certain degree softened this brutal martial ardor of the Germans, but it has not been able to destroy it, and when the Cross, that talisman which keeps it enchained is broken, then the ferocity of the ancient combatants will break forth anew. Then--and, alas, this day also will come--the old war gods will arise from their mythical tombs and wipe the dust of centuries from their eyes. Thor will rise and with his gigantic hammer will demolish the Gothic cathedrals."

They would not let me go to Arras, as, although deserted, it is under constant bombardment, while Nancy these days only gets an occasional attention from the big guns, and nobody minds taubes. So far, therefore, although Sermaize and the others are impressive and shocking enough, the most interesting and beautiful ruin I saw, in spite of its sadness, was the little town of Gerb?viller, between Nancy and Remiramont. Situated on a steep hillside, its irregular streets leaving the ridge to dip and rise again, and two years ago one of the prettiest and most thriving of the smaller towns of Lorraine, it is now a mass of broken walls against the sky, already mellowed by time and creepers.

The automobile was obliged to make its way slowly between the d?bris that lined either side of the narrow streets, and I noticed that families had set up housekeeping once more in the cellars, and even opened shops. Before the war it had a population of about 2,000 . All the men who were not mobilized or did not take flight at the approach of the enemy were shot upon that terrible retreat; but I saw a few smoking philosophically in the shade of the walls before their shops. The business here as elsewhere, however, is carried on mainly by the women. One old woman seemed to be doing well with post cards, although, as outsiders are few, no doubt her main support is derived from the soldiers on march. Here lives the heroic Soeur Julie, decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, for saving her hospice in the face of Prussian fury. But her story must be told elsewhere. About eight hundred people have returned to Gerb?viller and are living either in the cellars or the few houses surrounding the hospital saved by Soeur Julie. There is ample room in all directions for their new homes without sacrificing one of the most picturesque and significant ruins of the war.

I think it was at Sermaize that after driving through a number of streets as completely wrecked as Gerb?viller, we came suddenly upon a terrace of houses quite intact. We inquired the meaning of this odd forebearance and learned that these mansions had been the property of Germans, who had been warned before the outbreak of the war and fled. Naturally their homes were spared by their loyal countrymen. Germany not only knew who owned every square inch of ground in France, but where every work of art great and small was installed. One woman who lived in an unpretentious flat in Paris showed me her one rare possession, an ancient silver censer, which was on the German list when they advanced upon Paris. If the French Army surrendered and they spared the city, they purposed to loot it, and their spies had been for years locating every object worth seizing.

Even before the German case became utterly hopeless it seems to me they must have felt very sad at times while looking back over the past and recalling the many objects of desire they just failed to grasp. Outside of Nancy one may see a high hill where one fine morning in September, 1914, the German Emperor and his Staff sat their horses, clad in long white mantles and glittering helmets, a truly superb sight, waiting for the news that the French Army was in full retreat and the hour had come for their triumphal entry through the historic gates of Nancy. But General Castlenau, as all the world knows, reversed this theatrical d?nouement, and they made off in hot haste for Strasburg.

We slept at Remiramont the second night, after a moist trip through the Vosges, a mildly pretty range of mountains, so far as we were permitted to penetrate. They are formidable enough closer to the front. Before the American ambulance men conquered them with their little Fords, the wounded were carried out on mule back and generally died. Remiramont is a headquarters for supplies, and we saw a number of officers but few poilus. Major C., knowing that I wanted to go to Thann, a town in that little strip of Alsace retaken in the first days of the war, spent the morning at the military headquarters, where he had friends , waiting for the return of the General. As it was raining the rest of us spent the time gossiping in the little hotel parlor or strolling under the arcades of the principal streets. When Major C. returned and said that the General, refusing to take the responsibility, had telephoned to the Grand Quartier G?n?rale I knew it was all up. They had said positively that I could not go to any town under constant bombardment, and a military mind once made up is like a steel mask with the key lost.

There is but one way by which a woman can get into any of these bombarded towns, Rheims, Thann, Verdun. After she is in the war zone, if she happens to know one of the Generals there, knows him quite well, so that he feels a certain degree of friendship for her, and if he happens to be in a very good humor, and if the bombardment at that moment happens to be weak or non-existent, as it was when I was at Ch?lons and Bar-le-Duc, then he will put her in an automobile and whizz her through the famous target. She will hardly have time to experience the expected thrill before she is out again, but at least she can say she has been there.

I, alas, did not know any General, and although Lord Northcliffe had written me that I should have a letter to General Joffre whenever I applied to his Paris office for it, I had not felt like bothering the hero of the war with one more American, particularly as he had been written to death. Nor had I been in France long enough to form ties of friendship with any of the others; therefore I had entered the war zone resigned to a route which, after all, few women were allowed to traverse.

But Major C. was hopeful, and very much crestfallen when word came that he might go to Thann if he liked, but I must remain in Remiramont. Of course, he was too gallant to go without us, even if it had not been his duty barely to let me out of his sight, but he hardly would speak for two hours. Nothing annoys an American man, a real American of the good old stock, more than to fail in the endeavor to get something for a woman that she especially desires and he has pledged himself to obtain. Our charming Lieutenant was almost equally annoyed when I called his attention to this fact, and said that no one hated to disappoint a woman as much as a Frenchman did, but that if he appeared philosophical it was because he had never had any hope. Major C., undaunted, made another attempt at Bar-le-Duc to induce the military authorities there to let us go to a little town named Dugny, within four miles of Verdun, but with the same result. They were on the point of consenting when they decided it was safer to telephone General Joffre, and when I heard that I left the car with Mme. Lyon and went in search of something to eat.

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