Polly the Pagan: Her Lost Love Letters

These letters and the journal of a young American girl travelling in Europe came to me under circumstances as strange as they themselves were unusual. Some of the letters were written on heavy blue stationery without monogram or heading; some bore the names of various continental hostelries: many were written on the embossed paper of the United States Embassy at Rome. All were faded with age and were without envelopes, definite dates, or identifying signatures. They came into my possession in the following manner. I was in Paris on leave that terrible Good Friday night of 1918, when the spring drive was on. The Red Cross had ordered me to start for the front next morning with some other nurses, and we were to leave at an early hour, so I had paid my hotel bill, packed my bag, and gone to bed, partly-clad, as was the custom in those exciting times. But I had hardly got settled for sleep when the shrieking siren announced an air raid. My room was on the top floor, and offered too good a target, so I jumped out of bed, slipped into my uniform, seized my bag, and ran out into the hall. It was in darkness, save for flashes from pocket-torches. Half-dressed people were hurrying through the corridor and groping their way down the staircase to the cellar for safety. As I passed an open door, I heard a woman call loudly, “Oh, won’t somebody come and help me?” I went in to find, as I turned my flashlight about the room, a pretty, golden-haired lady, an American, with big deep blue eyes, struggling to get into a black dress. One of her arms was in a sling and she was having trouble. She looked ill and weak, but seemed a perfectly plucky and determined little person. I slipped her heavy coat over her shoulders, wondering, at the time, where I had seen her before. As we started for the door, she remembered something she had left, and said, “Wait—take this,” putting a small morocco bag into my hands, while she ran back to find something she wanted.