“The big guns rumbled very much and the shells whistled over our heads.  Every one heard:  ‘So-and-so is killed’ or ’wounded, by a shell.’  ‘Such-and-such-a-house is ruined by a shell.’

“After having spent more than seven months in incredible fear, my brothers and myself have left the village, at the order of the gendarmes, and the English took us to Hazebrouck, from where we went to Paris.”

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally the case, the mother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed and repassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris, sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place of comparative safety until the end of the war.  Young Bruno Van Wonterghem told his experience in characteristically simple words: 

“Towards the evening of September 6th, 1914, the Germans arrived at our village with their ammunition.  One would have thought the Last Judgment was about to begin.  All the inhabitants were hiding in their houses.  I was hiding in the attic, but, desirous to see a German, I was looking through a little window in the roof.  Nobody in the house dared to go to bed.  It was already very late when we heard knocks at the door of our shop.  It was some Germans who wanted to buy chocolate.  Some paid but the majority did not.  They left saying, ’Let us kill the French.’  The following morning they marched away toward France.  In the evening one heard already the big guns in the distance.

“Turned out of France the Germans came to St. Eloi, where they remained very long.  Then they advanced to Ypres.  The whole winter I heard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells.  I learned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awful war.  I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leave for France with my companions.”

While I was in Paris the refugee children, of course, were from the invaded districts of France; the Belgian stream had long since ceased.  Already twelve hundred little victims of the first months of the war, both Belgian and French, either had been returned to their mothers or relatives by the Franco-American Committee, or placed for the educational period of their lives in families, convents, or boys’ schools.  The more recent were still in the various colonies established by Mrs. Hill and the other members of the Committee, where they received instruction until such time as their parents could be found, or some kind people were willing to adopt them.

It was on my first Sunday in Paris that Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill asked me to drive out with them to Versailles and visit a sanitorium for the children whose primary need was restoration to health.  It was on the estate of Madame Philip Berard, who had contributed the building, while the entire funds for its upkeep, including a trained nurse, were provided by Mrs. Bliss.