Queen Marie of România

[The following pages have been selected by the Queen of Rumania from a journal which she kept during the war. They describe the hardships and sufferings of the Rumanian army during the tragic days when it was forced to retreat before the German-Bulgarian forces under Mackensen, and to take refuge in Moldavia.]

Whenever my mind turns back to these last two years, pictures innumerable defile before my eyes--pictures of war, with their quick alterations of horror and of hope. There are enough of them to fill volumes, and some day I may try to write them. To-day, the incidents are still too recent. They lack the perspective of time. I must first let them clarify and crystallize.

But now I turn for a moment and look back over the path I have just trod. It is a dark and thorny one. Why not select a few of the pictures left by the chaos, the suffering of these two years, which still makes my heart shudder, and perhaps will thrill yours? Certain of them weigh heavily on my memory; and when my hair is white, I shall still recall them with horror and with agony.

Snow and cold and mud and misery, endless highways, converted by the constant passage of armies into a bottomless mire which no vehicle can pass. Here and there, lost in this desolation, little villages, where our soldiers fall exhausted in miserable huts, which are the only shelter offered them in their precipitate retreat. Such suffering, such a seemingly endless night of horror, that it always seems to me I ought not to recall it except on my knees, my face buried I my hands, petitioning God for these humble human beings condemned to death without glory, buried without priest or prayer--men who had as much right to live as you and I, yet were doomed to die in the midst of horrors unrelieved by one single moment of respite or solace.

History had told us before what a winter retreat means. We had imagined men in tattered uniforms, staggering on, half-frozen, through the soft snow, pursued by the blasts of winter and by terror, fixing their haggard gaze upon a horizon which they know they will never reach. We had seen in imagination the long roads along which they struggled, and here and there by the wayside little heaps vaguely resembling human forms half-covered with the snow, where gaunt crows keep sinister guard. Scenes of this sort had been painted, had been described by poets. When in our childhood we heard such stories told, we never really believed them, but thought they were nightmare tales. Who fancied that such things would ever come into our sheltered lives, where what we fancied was that a higher civilization had provided us many sanctuaries of comfort and well-being! It took the war to demolish all these shelters, to which we were accustomed, and to carry us back with brutal suddenness to times and experiences we had fancied past forever. The nightmare tales suddenly became reality. The shrieks and groans of forgotten generations became the shrieks and groans of our own children. Worse than that--to all the horrors of ancient war, we had added new ones devised by modern science. Instead of the comparatively small bodies of professional soldiers of an earlier day, whole nations now go forth en masse to battle; the son of everyone against the son of everyone; a sacrifice is levied on every fireside, on every heart; an empty chair stands at every table.

And we had to learn to live, in this dreadful reality, against which we supposed we were so perfectly protected. That is why, when these memories crowd irresistibly upon me in the silence of my chamber, I even now greet them with a sort of stupid unbelief.

In the remote villages were the retreat had driven our famished troops, there was nothing: no food, no clothing, no shelter, no soap, no fire. On the heels of this privation and misery, strange and unfamiliar evils slipped into our exhausted ranks like a cunning enemy. Our men went forth to fight soldiers; instead they found themselves fighting hunger, cold, and pestilence.

Reports of these conditions did not reach me immediately. I was so preoccupied with matters in town that I had scarcely time to raise my eyes to see beyond the things immediately around me. When I finally did try to carry my services to these outside centres of desolation, I found it almost impossible to travel to them. Motor cars could not get through, baggage trains could not get through, horses were dying for lack of forage. Even the most modest assistance met incredible obstacles. But the cries of distress became louder and louder. We had to do something.

This brings to my memory my first visit to a village only a short distance from the city, but which I nevertheless reached with the utmost difficulty. It had begun to thaw, and the moon had risen with a pale and desolate look, as if beauty had vanished forever from the earth. The snow, which but recently stretched unbroken to the horizon and covered up so much, was now broken by dirty, dark patches, disclosing what should have been buried from human eyes. Everywhere there were sombre shadows of flitting crows. Beside the endless highway lay dead horses, their bodies half gnawed away by famished dogs. These raised their heads and growled at us as we passed, disclosing bloody teeth, like hungry wolves.

Finally we reached our destination. It was a large, irregular village of miserable huts scattered irregularly over a hillside, with a wooden church, looking like an old weather-worn priest bowed down with despair, and helpless to protect his deserted flock. One would have said that the huts were melting together with the snow and dissolving into mud. Their cornstalk thatches, blackened and saturated by the constant rains, kept up an incessant mournful trickling form their eaves. Here too, the fearful thaw drew the veil from things indescribable. But a single glance at the pale phantoms that glided here and there across the desolation was sufficient answer to the question why nothing had been done to clean things up. Surely these were not men. They were hardly walking spectres. Their hollow cheeks and haggard eyes were fixed uncomprehendingly upon the woman who had come to help them. They dragged themselves about here and there in groups, sitting on the decaying thresholds of the huts, or on the heaps of garbage, or leaning against the muddy walls, the snow, slipping here and there from the roofs, falling on their heads and shoulders.

Men wandered aimlessly about, mere bundles of rags, their tattered boots dripping fetid mud. One of them stopped, leaning on his stick, and stared at me with a glare of madness in his hollow eyes. His face looked more like a death’s-head than a human visage. Every bone was visible under the dry skin, which was stretched like a parchment and mottled with horrible blue spots.

All these people were suffering with a disease that we were just beginning to know about, exanthematic typhus, which we were absolutely helpless to combat.

‘Where is your doctor?’ I asked.

‘He has the fever also,’ he replied.

‘And your officers?’

‘Also sick.’

It was true. All those who might have been of assistance were prostrated with the fever, and these unfortunates, abandoned to themselves, were dying by hundreds.

The interior of the huts was, if possible, worse than the outside. Sick people were lying pell-mell on indescribable straw pallets, the living with the dead--a rigid corpse staring with glassy eyes at the broken roof, with fever-stricken living men on either side of him.

As spring advanced and the roads became more passable, although the mud was still so deep that I was never sure of reaching my destination, I could go to more distant places. Often I arrived on foot. Everywhere the same picture of misery and epidemic. I did the best I could. Others did the same. Everyone worked with all his energy and resolution. In spite of all that, the fearful moment came when I had to say to myself that we had no army. Death had so cruelly decimated our ranks that our regiments seemed to have disappeared. My horror grew as I watched the growing lines of crosses in our cemeteries, where we were requisitioning field after field to inter the dead.

We became hardened to fearful sights, even in the city streets. Our hospitals were so crowded that we were forced to discharge patients before they were in condition to travel. There was no asylum for such invalids. They could not reach their destination by train. We had no carts or carriages. So they started off on foot, through the snow and the cold and the mud. For the most part, they never reached their destination, but died by the wayside. Sometimes they were brought back to the hospital they had just left, where patients were already lying three in a bed. I shall never forget these carts, which we were always passing, bringing the sick and the dying to the city. I used to go about the streets and the suburbs and the neighboring country with my motor filled with food and warm clothing, trying to rescue some at least of these destitute refugees. Jassy was so crowded by the retreat, that there were no buildings available, especially since the Russians had taken possession of most of the larger structures. I hunted everywhere without finding a place in which to house these destitute invalids. When a disaster befalls a country, it disorganizes every detail of ordinary life. Our situation was still further complicated by the Russians. Although cruelly crushed ourselves, we had to provide for these innumerable legions of foreign soldiers, who had come to help us and who, alas, failed to perform their duty. But the Russians had at least one thing, inexhaustible stores of provisions. They have many faults, but their generosity is above reproach. They always gave freely. We must thank them for most of our supplies that winter. But though my hands were full, that helped little. It seemed as if we had no soldiers, nothing but pellucid skeletons covered by the dangling rags of tattered uniforms.

Finally, we managed to establish large convalescent camps in different parts of the country. They were melancholy places. One of them was near the city. I used to visit it from time to time on horseback. The men were quartered in couples in little dugouts. When spring came, they would stay out all day long, sunning their emaciated forms. At times they would dance round dances--a pathetic spectacle, which I never desire to see again and which always called to my mind those mediaeval pictures of the dance of death. Holding hands, these yellow, hollow-eyed spectres, with their shaven heads, would circle around in a sort of morbid excited shuffle to the scratching of a violin by some gypsy comrade. It was as if they were performing some strange rite in honor of the sun, which was now again climbing higher in the heavens.

Never did I feel so powerfully spring’s spirit of rebirth and resurrection. The winter had been so long and so fatal, that the return of life seemed like a miracle.

One day I arrived at this convalescent camp, galloping over a green meadow. When these dancing spectres saw me, they charged toward me with cries of joy. My horse also seemed to feel the contagion of spring, and the scattered fleecy clouds that coursed down the clear blue sky above appeared to race with us. However, my good steed did not fancy the poor convalescents, and trembled with fear when they approached. As they crowded around, throwing their hats in the air and cheering, their faces shining with gladness, I had great difficulty in controlling him. He reared and circled, his eyes dilated with fear, as if the presence of so much misery were horrifying. I always brought tobacco, sugar, and sometimes more substantial things, to distribute to the men. After this little ceremony was over, the throng of tatterdemalion spectres again began to dance madly to the music o f the violin. When I left, followed by their farewell cheers, my heart was heavy. I kept saying over and over again: ‘We no longer have any army. We no longer have any army.’

However, our national holiday, the tenth of May, arrived at last. In the good old days, this had always been a merry festival, with processions, and with flags floating from every window. Even the poorest always displayed a bit of the national colors somewhere. My children had been brought up to honor the day, and they always awaited it with joyous impatience....

But how different our feelings on this May tenth! To be sure the streets through which we passed were hung with flags, but sparsely, as our scanty means bade. There was a great crowd to welcome us; but behind the smiling faces, one could see the secret agony of men’s souls. Many were clothed in mourning.

We finally reached a great field outside the city. A haunting uneasiness overcame me. It was a sunny day, and the surrounding country was bright and green. This time, however, there were no bright uniforms. Our men were clothed in gray and green, colors that melted into those of the surrounding landscape. The only bright spots were the national flags--and they were tattered.

Suddenly my heart beat wildly! I scarce dared to turn my eyes toward these endless ranks of men clothed in green. I asked myself if my vision deceived me. My heart was so inured to suffering that I dared not rejoice. But the long procession began to defile before us, rank after rank of valiant young men until the columns seemed endless. Whence came they? Had they risen from the dead? Where had they left their rags and tatters? What had filled their eyes again with hope? What had become of the pale phantoms of a few months before?

The Living Age, 16 July 1921, pp. 131-134