XI

There were shrill voices one morning outside the gate of our quarters⁠—women’s voices, excited, angry, passionate. An orderly came into the mess⁠—we were at breakfast⁠—and explained the meaning of the clamor, which by some intuition and a quick ear for French he had gathered from all this confusion of tongues.

“There’s a soldier up the road, drunk or mad. He has been attacking a girl. The villagers want an officer to arrest him.”

The colonel sliced off the top of his egg and then rose. “Tell three orderlies to follow me.”

We went into the roadway, and twenty women crowded round us with a story of attempted violence against an innocent girl. The man had been drinking last night at the estaminet up there. Then he had followed the girl, trying to make love to her. She had barricaded herself in the room, when he tried to climb through the window.

“If you don’t come out I’ll get in and kill you,” he said, according to the women.