Fetes were organised, colours were paraded in the square, torchlight
processions were started on Saturday nights, when the boys of the town
went crying and whooping behind the march of the flares. Artists were
sent for from Paris, took train to Nancy, and were driven laboriously
through hours of snow, over miles of shell-pitted roads, that they might
sing and play in the theatre or in the house of the Governor. To the
dances, to the dinners, to the plays came the Lorraine women, wearing
white cotton stockings to set off their thick ankles, and dancing in
figures and set dances unknown to the officers from Paris.
The Commandant Dormans, head of all motor transport under the Grand
Quartier General, having prepared his German drawing-room as a ballroom,
having danced all the evening with ladies from the surrounding hills,
found himself fatigued and exasperated by the side of the head of
Foreign Units attached to the Automobile Service.
"I thought you had Englishwomen at Bar-le-Duc," he said to the latter.
"I have--eight."
"What are they doing at Bar-le-Duc? Get them here."
"Is there work, sir?"
"Work! They shall work from dawn to sunset so long as they will dance
all night! Englishwomen do dance, don't they?"
"I have never been to England."
"Get them here. Send for them."
So through his whim it happened that six days later a little caravan of
women crossed the old front lines beyond Pont-a-Mousson as dusk was
falling, and as dark was falling entered the gates of Metz.
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